The thing is, it's sunlight/UV that turned the cases yellow in the first place, and the Retr0brited stuff is turning back yellow far, far faster than the initial yellowing - and it's doing it even if the computer was stored in an opaque cardboard box.
No, it's not the UV that's doing it directly.
It's the flame retardants put in the plastic that make it yellow, specifically, Bromine-based retradants. The plastic is mixed with it, and over time the bromine compounds change and brown the plastic, encouraged by UV breakdown of the plastic.
Modern plastic doesn't do that because we don't bother with fire retardants anymore - if you want to see a story that played out like tobacco, lead and now climate change - the big chemical companies did the whole "without flame retardants your house will burn up instantly" thing. Complete with family-friendly lobby groups funded by the chemical companies. In the end, it turns out the health of the children won out especially since the flame retardants, while they worked, didn't really do all that much in the grand scheme of things. Because when the room's on fire anyways...
these codec specs reads like there are 100 engineers each with 2 lawyers and a patent attorney trying to get there little block filter or other obvious optimisation into the spec. Each little "feature" is another patented "invention". It is litterly designed by committee to *be a licensing nightmare*.
Which is why patent pool organizations were set up. Instead of trying to figure out which of the thousands of people you have to negotiate with, you go to the patent pool, and buy your licenses. No negotiations needed - they're all standard and sold per-unit. Need to make 1000 widgets? Buy 1000 licenses and you're done.
For the MPEG family of codecs, the pool is the MPEG Licensing Authority, aka MPEG-LA. For h.264, they realized that they needed to get broad adoption which they did by having a ceiling of fees (once you ship N units, each addition unit license costs are "free". Netflix, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, etc., all do this), free licenses for "free to view" streams (e.g., you can put up ads, and as long as users don't pay directly, it's free). Of course, this lead to wide and broad adoption - since for the most part everyone big paid a lump sum of money for unlimited use (why do you think companies like Microsoft and Apple give away decoders?).
The big problem is the h.265 patent owners decided they hated this. They saw the widespread adoption of h.264 and that the MPEG-LA wasn't giving them more money. And MPEG-LA was planning on using the same licensing terms to encourage adoption of HEVC (and may help that by increasing fees of h.264 to encourage people to adopt HEVC/h.265).
Of course, the patent owners disagreed, and formed their own patent pool. Which is fine if everyone did it, but now you have patents only covered by MPEG-LA, and others only covered by the HEVC alliance.
You can predict the end result - HEVC adoption will probably stall out - there's no reason to use HEVC to justify the extra costs - and yes, that includes sites like YouTube as well which are covered under both the "free" streaming and the license payment cap. (There's no more free streaming of HEVC - while MPEG-LA allows it, the HEVC alliance wants per-stream payment even on free streams).
So yeah, you'd be hard-pressed to get the same adoption of HEVC as h.264, because the guys involved ignored the fact that the reason h.264 is the dominant codec is because it's easy and cheap to use.
The big difference between Westerners and hunter gatherers is that if they get tired during the day, they can take a nap. We can't do that. In fact, there are a lot of places, Mexico, for instance, that let people sleep an hour or so in the afternoon.
It doesn't matter how much sleep I get, about 2:00ish, I get sleepy, just like a lot of people in the rest of the world. The difference is, a fair amount of the rest of the world can actually go to sleep.
Actually, a number of other countries have "siesta time" as well where businesses and offices close for an hour or two in the early afternoon for that reason - people are naturally tired midway through and this time is to take a nap, rejunenate and be productive for the rest of the day.
Scientific studies have shown that this power nap does significantly improve productivity as well - instead of workers dragging through the time, those that took the nap were more alert and more productive.
Other countries that do it I know include Italy and Greece - stores will close after lunch for siesta. However, it's changing because of tourism - naturally tourists are out and about during siesta time.
And odd sleeping patterns did carry over into the Western world, too. It's called segmented sleep and there are tons of old books that mention it. What we are doing now came about as a result of the industrial age, when we started to have to work 8 - 10 hour shifts.
Actually, it wasn't the industrial age that caused it. It was the light bulb. Before that the night was broken into two sleeps - the first sleep to rejuvenate, then an hour or two to do things, then the second phase. The general saying Is the first sleep is to rejuvenate, while the second one is where everyone gets frisky.
Before the light bulb, the source of light was a lantern or candles, both of which are very poor light sources, so once the sun went down, pretty much the only thing to do was go to bed.
With the introduction of reliable artificial light bright enough to work to, once the sun went down, the work continued, and the segmented sleep disappeared.
I've seen a lot of brits whine for that. I guess they've never seen TV outside UK. I'd gladly pay that money. BBC content is just fantastic, way superior to the ad-supported bullshit you get everywhere else.
Well, there are three models for funding TV, each with its pros and cons.
You have ad-supported networks, where advertising pays for the programming. I'll lump in cable networks as part of the same. Here, the pro is that the end user pays nothing, while the con is the networks produce content to gather the most eyeballs. For a lot of the time, this means serving the lowest common denominator. The other con is that the network will not run content that potentially antagonizes an advertiser, for they represent dollars.
You have subscriber funded networks, where subscribers pay for the content, which include networks like HBO, Netflix and even Amazon Prime. The pro here is the content tends to be better because the only way to make money is to attract subscribers, so they will produce programming that attracts new subscribers. They use lots of analytics to find out who are the ones likely to subscribe, then produce programming that will attract them. The con is, well, you have to pay money, and if you fall out of the desired subscriber demographic, then the programming is less and less interesting to you. The other con is well, they will not produce content that may be potentially controversial because they don't want half their subscriber base leaving.
The third model is state-level funding. The pro here is the ability to produce any kind of content (in free countries) - you can stir controversy, anger advertisers and other groups provided you tell the truth (e.g., pro-consumer advocacy shows). You can also take risks and produce more specialized programming. The cons include, well, people complain about their tax dollars being mis-spent, especially if the programming is contrary to their beliefs. The other con is, well, in less free country, it's an ideal propaganda source.
There's no ideal form of funding for TV, they all have their pros and cons.
If you let somebody in (say a babysitter to watch your kids) that doesn't give them permission to peruse through a diary hidden in a drawer in a night stand.
Besides that, I would also liken it to expected permission.
The owner of the PC may give them access to the computer to view Netflix. That implies a single instance access to the computer to do one thing - view Netflix. It doesn't give permission to view the guy's email or other things, or even if he logs out permission to log in again.
This permission can be extended implicitly - e.g., the person comes over regularly and the owner regularly gives them permission to log in and view Netflix. Still no permission to view email, though. But in this case, the person can reasonably assume that since he's been given permission to use Netflix while he's over, he can continue to do so.
If an email alert pops up, he's allowed to read the alert, but not to dig deeper - while he didn't get permission to view the alert, he really couldn't NOT read it since it popped up on the screen while he was watching Netflix. However, reading just the preview alert doesn't give permission to read the rest of it, as he only had permission to use Netflix.
I mean, just because you got the credentials, they were provided to you in trust to do one specific thing. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
They've been doing that for decades in aviation and yet we still require humans in the cockpit. We've been able to automate most flights for some time now but there is a demonstrable benefit to having a human pilot involved in many cases. You are quite correct that over time it will get better but I think the time where a computer only system outperforms a computer/human system will be a long way off.
Actually, around 90% of aviation accidents are caused by pilot error.
We've automated so much that the automation failure is rarely the cause of problems - it's usually humans causing the problems or more likely, humans exacerbating the problem. The other 10% is generally engine failure or other mechanical failure. And it still holds regardless of which sector of aviation - be it commercial, general aviation or military.
Humans are really poor troubleshooters. We suffer from fixation, confirmation bias, and many other faults that really prove to be big problems. In fact, a good chunk of problems can be filed under "get-there-itis" where pilots believe that no matter the problem, they can continue. (Fuel starvation is a big problem in general aviation).
We recently ran a "security awareness" month at the UNI I work for, giving away free flash keys to students who could show us their phone was secured at least with a password or pattern. They seemed surprised that no one bothered and most people told them they are too lazy to have to swype a pattern to unlock their phones.
Why do you think Apple did TouchID? It was because Apple realizes that most people don't use a PIN code or whatever because it's a hassle. And looking at usage patterns of phones, it's not really a big surprise - those things are used literally 1000 times a day for seconds to minutes per use. Entering even a 4 digit PIN 1000 times a day gets old, quick.
So most people don't actually use it.
Apple realized the only way to fix this is to have some sort of thing where users don't have to do anything - unlocking their phone happens automatically within seconds of picking it up.
Doing this means users can have a PIN (or even a complex one!) to lock their phone, yet still have the convenience of being able to use their phone at a moment's notice.
Because having a PIN is way better than not having one. And having one is a PITA when you want to quickly look at something and it takes a few seconds to enter your pin/swipe your pattern/scan your face.
No, TouchID is not perfect, and Apple treats fingerprints as lower security than passcodes or PINs (hence the requirement to use a PIN after 48 hours, or on a reboot). But if it brings up the PIN code usage from 10% to 60% or more, that's a net benefit to security.
For example, nowadays social media has made conventional wars between major world powers highly unlikely. Censorship only works for short-duration wars like Desert Storm before the sight of bloodied soldiers and civilians spread through the Internet and turn public opinion against the war.
Conventional warfare, maybe.
But look at ISIL. They're savvy at social networking - that's how they recruit vulnerable young people (including Americans and all that) to join their cause.
Yes, the public is against war - that's why Obama and the rest of 'em won't send in troops because war is unpalatable. Instead, ISIL recruits young people to fight for their "cause" using promises that young people like.
Social media has an interesting effect - far from broadening horizons, it narrows them. In effect, people enter a political echo chamber where they associate with those of a similar mentality. It's something ISIL knows, and why they recruit one person, they can usually get the rest of the guy's friends to come along as well.
And it doesn't matter than they were promised 42 virgins or whatever - the real truth is these recruits typically do menial jobs - fetching food and water for the leaders and other stuff.
Re:1996 was the year of Linux on the desktop
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KDE Turns 19
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People keep misinterpreting the rapid increase in PC specs and the constant buying of a new $300 eMachine every 6 months as a healthy product market, and the more moderate pace of PC replacement as the death of the PC. They're also misinterpreting the boom of excessive numbers of mobile apps--mostly games--as the end of the PC industry.
The rapid rise in specs really occurred in the 90s. The 2000's had increase in specs, but at a far slower pace.
Though, there was a trend in the early 00's that everyone needed a computer, so when the netbook came out in 2007-ish (remember them), these low-margin, low spec PCs sold like hotcakes because now everyone in the household could have their very own PC and not need to share.
Then came the tablet, and the realization that netbooks were getting more pricey (approaching laptop pricing), and the only reason people needed PCs was for stuff like Netflix and web browsing and other "content consuming" tasks that tablets were better suited for.
The PC will never die - it's like a truck. You need trucks as they accomplish tasks cars can't do. But not everyone needs a truck - most people can get by with a car.
The days of people needing 1 computer per person is over, but 1 computer per household is probably the least you need.
Of course music is art, and classical-type composers and symphony orchestras have done versions of music from Zelda, Mario, and others. As for visual art, there is a rich vein of it in gaming -- I've seen some breathtaking work, and I'm not much of a gamer.
Video games are more a medium - they can show artistic merit in many different ways. It's like TV - there are very many aspects of "art" that can be expressed through TV, and there are many aspects that can be expressed through video games.
At a basic component level, you have the actual assets - sound, music, graphics, story. But there's also an aspect that's larger than the sum of its parts - the combination of the assets in a way can be artistic as well.
There are games like Gone Home, or The Stanley Parable or Depression Quest whose goal can be considered artistic expression. They use the medium in creative ways to express their message.
And we can even argue about whether these are "games" or "non-games", which to me basically mean they're art - stirring controversy and discussion.
Video games in general aren't art - it's a medium to which one can, at one's choosing, create art. Just like you won't say a TV is art, but some of the programming available for it can be art.
The Radio Shack that the summary is referring to is your granddaddy's Radio Shack, where overpriced electronic parts, kits and tools were available just around the corner. If you had a battery card, you could pick up a free 9-volt battery every month for your transistor radio.
Ah yes, back when Radio Shack was named because well, it was for Ham Radio enthusiasts to get all they need. Remember, this was the day where if you used Digikey, you were looking at a 4-6 week turnaround for parts, unless you worked for a company and had the luxury of a fax machine, or a long distance phone call and could place an order the same day. The rest of us filled out order forms, added a stamp, and mailed it in.
I did like going to Radio Shack - got to know the employees quite well back when I was young (the 80s). Then something in the early 00's, Tandy Corp pulled the license on the name from Radio Shack Canada, and our stores were bought up by Circuit City (The Source - By Circuit City). Then CC folded, and we still have The Source. But it's really just a sadder version of Best Buy.
Yes, it is true that most movie and video game music is pretty boring without being attached to its original material (much like Beethoven's Egmont suite I mentioned in my original post - with the exception of the overture, essentially the equivalent of a Main Title theme in modern terms - it's not all that interesting). That said, the vast majority of music written during the 17th through 19th centuries (the period of time that what people now call "classical" was written) is not heard any more. What we hear now is the best music, the music that has survived the test of time. The same will be true in 100 years - most video game music will be virtually lost, never heard again unless someone happens to dig up the actual game. Some of it, however, is actually quite good, and will survive to become part of the standard classical repertoire. I think the Zelda Symphony alluded to in the article is a potential example of this.
Actually, it's happening now. Video game symphonies don't play all that much music - they really don't have a huge setlist (even big ones like Video Games Live only really have a setlist of 100+ pieces, of which they can only really do about 10-15 per show). And the setlist only grows by a handful every year. These are themes - rarely individual songs, but more a medley combining the best of an entire score condensed down into a few minutes.
You have your standard Super Mario Brothers theme (which has immense recognition value), Tetris themes, then you have your Halo, God of War, Civilization IV, World of Warcraft and others. There's the Sonic themes, Final Fantasy and other Square-Enix (Chrono Cross/Trigger), Portal (Still Alive), etc (Indie games too!).
If you consider just how many video games are released every year, and of that how much music is produced for them, the amount that actually makes it in is quite small.
Oh sure, in a crowd of 500, you can't please everyone, but stunningly few music pieces from video games actually make it out, even amongst gamers.
Same goes for movie soundtracks - a lot of music is produced, but few actually enter public consciousness - most is easily forgettable.
Perhaps your memory is failing you again..? A metre is defined as the distance light travels in 1/299792458 of a second. Originally, I believe in the 18th century, this was intended to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the pole to the equator. The former is obviously a better definition because Earth is not perfectly spherical.
Through Paris.
The metre was officially defined as 1/10,000,000th the straight line distance between the North Pole and the Equator, through Paris, France.
It's why everything's in French (why the official term for "metric" is SI, or Systeme Internationale... French!).
Anyhow, the kilogram is the only unit of measure still based on a physical object, something they've been trying to change for decades now. The importance of this is if you can derive all the fundamental units of measure from physical constants, then it becomes a universal system of measurement.
And the reference kilogram has been losing weight, which means all of us have steadily started weighing more and more as time goes on.
I know you're being funny, but there really is a war on sharks, and the Chinese are winning. Every year they kill something like 100 million sharks, although as there is an awful lot of illegal fishing, the figure could be twice that. If that rate of slaughter continues, one of the oldest types of animals in the Earth's oceans will become extinct in our lifetimes.
I don't think there's much "legal" shark hunting going on - finning is basically an undercover operation these days. Albeit, it's done out in the open, with the authorities doing a wink wink nod nod to the fact it happens. (It provides a valuable export to those countries, and you can bet organized crime is heavily involved).
Getting pirated games to work on the 360 wasn't that difficult either, i mean yah you had to take it apart and buy a $10 device to do it. Even with the PS1 you wouldn't just use a copied CD, it need to be modded to allow for that. You don't need to be tech savy yourself, just need a friend who is, which most people have. Anyways piracy isn't as big of an issue as companies think it is. They think every person that pirated their product would have bought it instead, that's definitely not the case. Some people are just looking for free content, they would otherwise have no bothered purchasing it.
It's still a relative pain for the 360 because new games require new operating systems, and you cannot connect a modded 360 to the internet. So you lose multiplayer (Microsoft will deactivate your Live account on that console if they detect mods) and updates can revert the mod.
It's why console piracy rates are around the 10% level, while PC piracy rates are close to the 90% level or higher. Enough so that the PC basically is shitcanned - if a console game comes out, chances are the PC version will be a crappy port that comes out months later (which granted, help since instead of asking $60, they ask $30). Sure there's a few day-1 PC releases - like Call of Duty and Battlefield, but they have online servers enforcing DRM (and remember the loss of local servers?), and sometimes you get a good PC port, but they're few and far between - piracy has killed most PC gaming. The only PC games you see are indie games - the AAA releases are far fewer than consoles these days.
Anyhow, it's a bit late to add DRM to the spec - it'll be like JPEG2000 - a format few, if any, support.
1) the first employee to be hit was standing behind the vehicle as it backed out. That sounds bad to me since the employee shouldn't have been there. 2) the ATV may have been blocking egress by the reporters' vehicle, but we can't tell. 3) One of the managers approached the vehicle after it had already struck at least two things. That was particularly dumb. 4) If the driver had intended to hurt someone, the injuries (the only damage from the vehicle described) would probably have been a lot more severe and likely the Sheriff's Department would have arrested the driver on a charge of assault and battery or even attempted murder rather than just assault. They may still do that, but the blog indicates a lesser charge was selected for some reason.
It doesn't matter. All it boils down is you hit someone with a car. Doesn't matter if you were escaping or illegally on the property. Unless there was a proper self-defense role for leaving (i.e., you were being shot at), what you did is a hit and run, and is a criminal offense in many places. Especially since you got caught - you never intended to stop and render aid.
Second, you're a reporter. You know the law very well. Why run? If you're legally acquiring photos from a public place, then you are allowed to be where you are. If you're really trespassing on private property - then why are you there? Every reporter knows their rights, and they know if they're on legal public property, all photos taken are legitimate. So why run?
It better be some whistleblower thing, because really, a reporter on private property and trespassing, knowingly because you ran away when confronted (so you know you're not supposed to be where you are), and causing several hit and runs is a serious list of charges for mere interest.
Of course, is Tesla is smart, this is all they'd do - they'd let the people file charges against the newspaper and reporters (since it's official vehicles, it can be assumed it was officially sanctioned, and you always go for the sugar daddy). Then you'd just blacklist the RGJ from any future press conference and events. Like how Apple denies press tickets to Gawker over the whoel iPhone 4 thing.
The problem is that it doesn't stop any of the really annoying ads, because Google doesn't serve annoying ads.
No, Google does serve annoying ads. Not directly, but through one of their many corporate acquisitions and ad networks like DoubleClick. So yes, Google serves up annoying ads, pop ups, pop unders, punch the monkey, malware, etc.
Google Ads is another advertising service Google owns. So you can pay to not see those ads, but I haven't seen one of those ads in a long time - I think Google pushed everyone to use one of their other ad network services.
If you could pay $7 a month to get rid of all ads Google provided, I'd take that deal as that gets rid of a good chunk of online advertising. Remember, Google owns like 98% of the advertising market, the 2% being the shadier sites that Google doesn't touch (torrent sites, etc).
At least of you have an x86 Chromebook, you can always load Windows 10 on it if ChromeOS doesn't work out for you.
Depends on the bootloader. Some just ship with coreboot and that's it - you can't boot Windows that way. Windows requires either BIOS or EFI to boot, and most Chromebooks ship with neither.
Plus, chomebooks are a pain if you want to use them as anything other than chromeos - the security means you get prompted every boot (including reboots) that your chromebook is compromised. You have to hit a key combination (Ctrl-D?) to tell it you intentionally want to boot developer mode. Miss the opportunity and it goes into the recovery screen asking for you to insert a USB recovery key.
Yes, this is intentional. Chromebooks are supposed ot be super secure devices immune to malware. So the bootloader checks the kernel and filesystem it's about to run to make sure they're original.
The only situation where something like the LSB really makes sense is proprietary copy and run programs that depend on proprietary pieces
That is, I believe, one of the primary reasons why the LSB was created - because a robust software archive, including both free and proprietary apps, is generally a good thing.
Then again, depending on the app, sometimes it's easier to just modify the environment than the app. Like a few programs we use that are designed and supported on RHEL. LSB would make life easier so we can run said program on say, Ubuntu, but given the general low quality of the code and high expense, it's easier ot just run RHEL for that software than try to get it working on Ubuntu. Hell, even running CentOS will probably work, but then again...
Chances are it'll work, but oddball failures and crashes are really something I don't want to waste time with.
LSB was probably more for consumer level applications like Photoshop and whatnot, where support is generally better, and games and stuff like that.
Perhaps you might be able to optimize things so that both the md5 and sha1 hashes were computed simultaneously as the bytes were read so that they only had to be traversed once. But do you think you'd be able to shave in this example 30% the combined time to equal the sha256 time? And then you'd still be left with two individually broken algorithms.
The goal of combining isn't to save time, it's because it's what's available. Let's say you have an embedded device, and it can do SHA1 and MD5 already in hardware (hardware accelerators aren't much faster, but they are a lot easier to code up in primitive environments). So the hardware supports MD5 and SHA1 in hardware, and your verification code can be modified.
You can't add SHA2 support, nevermind SHA3, but you have to work with what you have. In this case, two broken algorithms, you can't upgrade the device (or you can, but people still use legacy devices), and want to at least make it harder.
Android fanboy here... just wondering - when Apple pulls an app from the store, does it force it to uninstall from your device(s) as well?
Nope.
So far, if Apple even has the ability to uninstall an app, they've never used it. They've never used their ability to disable apps, either (though limited to ones which use CoreLocation, since the disabling code is in there, so if you never touch GPS...).
All Apple has done is basically prevent users from redownloading apps. But even that's not as big a limitation - you can still back up an app using iTunes. Or download the app using iTunes and install it via iTunes (recommended method for large apps). Even if the app is removed, as long as you have the IPA (the app file, similar to apk for Android) file somewhere, and iTunes is available, you can install it via iTunes. iTunes doesn't check - as long as the app is in your name and account, iTunes will install it on your device long after the developer has disappeared.
This was how users of a particular (medical) assistance app kept using it - after the developer has been sued by some larger company or patent violations that forced Apple to remove the app, the users backed up the app via iTunes and use that to install it on every new device.
The only thing is, it's unmaintained, so if it doesn't work with a new OS version...
And if you wanted, using iTunes you can back up old versions of apps too, so if they try to screw you or add stuff like ads or IAPs (in app purchase) you don't like, you can always revert by installing that particular version of the app.
'Once it arrives, attach the appliance to your local network, download and run the Snowball client to establish a connection, and then use the client to select the file directories that you want to transfer to the appliance. The client will then encrypt and transfer the files to the appliance at high speed.'
So unless the client is absolute crap, it's a pretty good solution
Anyone see this as a way to infiltrate a network?
I mean, the only way to get data into and out of it is a 10gE connection, to which you need to use a client to connect to it. So it's entirely possible for the OS that's running on it (presumably it's just an x86 based PC with a lot of disk) to surreptitiously monitor, scan and potentially plant malware on your network. Sure, SOME people will do data precautions and firewalling, but considering the PC running the client needs access to the data AND access to the snowball, it seems like most people would probably just hook it up to a spare network port.
While I'm sure Amazon probably wants to ensure those things are clean, I'm not so sure if anything can be implanted in them along the way...
How with mobile devices? What about warranties when the company want them back to RMA?
Don't mobile devices have a clear and delete everything that works?
I know iOS does - since iOS 3. On iPhone 3GS and higher, what it does is it deletes the flash storage key and regenerates a new one (which is why the older ones needed a OS reload - it wiped the OS as well). On older iPhones, it physically erased the storage because the stores are unencrypted. Which is why on those phones it took hours to run, while on the new ones, it takes mere seconds.
As for RMA - that's where you have to decide - is your data more important than the drive? You have to realize a 2TB drive is well under $100 new these days, so if your data is worth more than $100 if it got out, you probably are better off not returning it and just buying a new one.
Our IT guy has decided that 2TB drives are not worth his time to RMA - they're cheap, and return shipping covers a good portion of the cost of a new drive, so it's pointless.
If they're going to mandate locking down, lock down the WiFi radio, as that's the part that uses the radio waves. The WiFi radio can be a "black box" with it own firmware, much like on cellular phones, where the cellular radio is a similar black box.
This keeps the FCC happy, because people won't be able to violate FCC rules, and it keeps users happy because they can keep running custom software. The WiFi firmware isn't typically something you want to mess with anyway.
And that's what the FCC really wants The problem the FCC is seeing right now is the modified firmware allows access to frequencies that aren't allowed to be used for WiFI in the US. This is more than just channels 12 and 13 on 2.4GHz, but also on the complex 5GHz band.
The FCC has many complaints already from airports and other entities whose radar is being interfered with by 5GHz WiFi (the band plan is complex enough that channels are "locked out" because they're used by higher priority services like radar).
And you really can't blame the open firmware guys either - mostly because they don't know any better and they only build one binary that works for all devices worldwide. (the available channels on 5GHz vary per country - depending on the radar in use).
All the FCC really wants (and they've clarified it in the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) is the steps wifi manufacturers are taking to prevent people from loading on firmware that does not comply with FCC regulations - i.e., allows transmissions on frequencies they are not allowed to transmit on.
It can either take place as hardware (filters blocking out the frequencies), or software that cannot be modified by the open firmware (e.g., firmware on wifi chip reads a EEPROM or something and locks out those frequencies).
The thing it cannot be is rely on "goodwill" or firmware that respects the band plan - i.e., you cannot rely on "blessed" open firmware that only uses the right frequencies (because anyone can modify it to interfere).
The FCC has all the powers to enforce compliance right now - users of open firmware who are caught creating interference with higher priority services can already be fined, equipment seized and all that stuff (and that would not include just the WiFi router - any WiFi device like PCs can be seized if they attach to that network). That's the heavy handed legal approach they have. However, they don't want to do that, because most users probably don't realize the problem, and the FCC really doesn't want to destroy all that stuff. So instead, the FCC is working with manufacturers to fix the issue at the source.
The problem lies in the fact that most manufacturers are cheap and will not spend a penny more, so instead of locking out the radio from interfering, they'll lock out the entire firmware.
The FCC mentions DD-WRT and all that by name because their investigations revealed that when they investigate interference, the offending routers run that firmware (and which doesn't lock out frequencies that they aren't supposed to transmit on).
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No, it's not the UV that's doing it directly.
It's the flame retardants put in the plastic that make it yellow, specifically, Bromine-based retradants. The plastic is mixed with it, and over time the bromine compounds change and brown the plastic, encouraged by UV breakdown of the plastic.
Modern plastic doesn't do that because we don't bother with fire retardants anymore - if you want to see a story that played out like tobacco, lead and now climate change - the big chemical companies did the whole "without flame retardants your house will burn up instantly" thing. Complete with family-friendly lobby groups funded by the chemical companies. In the end, it turns out the health of the children won out especially since the flame retardants, while they worked, didn't really do all that much in the grand scheme of things. Because when the room's on fire anyways...
Which is why patent pool organizations were set up. Instead of trying to figure out which of the thousands of people you have to negotiate with, you go to the patent pool, and buy your licenses. No negotiations needed - they're all standard and sold per-unit. Need to make 1000 widgets? Buy 1000 licenses and you're done.
For the MPEG family of codecs, the pool is the MPEG Licensing Authority, aka MPEG-LA. For h.264, they realized that they needed to get broad adoption which they did by having a ceiling of fees (once you ship N units, each addition unit license costs are "free". Netflix, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, etc., all do this), free licenses for "free to view" streams (e.g., you can put up ads, and as long as users don't pay directly, it's free). Of course, this lead to wide and broad adoption - since for the most part everyone big paid a lump sum of money for unlimited use (why do you think companies like Microsoft and Apple give away decoders?).
The big problem is the h.265 patent owners decided they hated this. They saw the widespread adoption of h.264 and that the MPEG-LA wasn't giving them more money. And MPEG-LA was planning on using the same licensing terms to encourage adoption of HEVC (and may help that by increasing fees of h.264 to encourage people to adopt HEVC/h.265).
Of course, the patent owners disagreed, and formed their own patent pool. Which is fine if everyone did it, but now you have patents only covered by MPEG-LA, and others only covered by the HEVC alliance.
You can predict the end result - HEVC adoption will probably stall out - there's no reason to use HEVC to justify the extra costs - and yes, that includes sites like YouTube as well which are covered under both the "free" streaming and the license payment cap. (There's no more free streaming of HEVC - while MPEG-LA allows it, the HEVC alliance wants per-stream payment even on free streams).
So yeah, you'd be hard-pressed to get the same adoption of HEVC as h.264, because the guys involved ignored the fact that the reason h.264 is the dominant codec is because it's easy and cheap to use.
Actually, a number of other countries have "siesta time" as well where businesses and offices close for an hour or two in the early afternoon for that reason - people are naturally tired midway through and this time is to take a nap, rejunenate and be productive for the rest of the day.
Scientific studies have shown that this power nap does significantly improve productivity as well - instead of workers dragging through the time, those that took the nap were more alert and more productive.
Other countries that do it I know include Italy and Greece - stores will close after lunch for siesta. However, it's changing because of tourism - naturally tourists are out and about during siesta time.
Actually, it wasn't the industrial age that caused it. It was the light bulb. Before that the night was broken into two sleeps - the first sleep to rejuvenate, then an hour or two to do things, then the second phase. The general saying Is the first sleep is to rejuvenate, while the second one is where everyone gets frisky.
Before the light bulb, the source of light was a lantern or candles, both of which are very poor light sources, so once the sun went down, pretty much the only thing to do was go to bed.
With the introduction of reliable artificial light bright enough to work to, once the sun went down, the work continued, and the segmented sleep disappeared.
Uh, the P-code is already encrypted. Selective Availability was turned off only on the C/A (Coarse Acquisition) code.
Civilian GPS usage is C/A only. Military uses the C/A and P code.
In fact, to use the P-code, you must already lock onto the C/A code to get rough positioning. You cannot acquire the P-code directly.
Well, there are three models for funding TV, each with its pros and cons.
You have ad-supported networks, where advertising pays for the programming. I'll lump in cable networks as part of the same. Here, the pro is that the end user pays nothing, while the con is the networks produce content to gather the most eyeballs. For a lot of the time, this means serving the lowest common denominator. The other con is that the network will not run content that potentially antagonizes an advertiser, for they represent dollars.
You have subscriber funded networks, where subscribers pay for the content, which include networks like HBO, Netflix and even Amazon Prime. The pro here is the content tends to be better because the only way to make money is to attract subscribers, so they will produce programming that attracts new subscribers. They use lots of analytics to find out who are the ones likely to subscribe, then produce programming that will attract them. The con is, well, you have to pay money, and if you fall out of the desired subscriber demographic, then the programming is less and less interesting to you. The other con is well, they will not produce content that may be potentially controversial because they don't want half their subscriber base leaving.
The third model is state-level funding. The pro here is the ability to produce any kind of content (in free countries) - you can stir controversy, anger advertisers and other groups provided you tell the truth (e.g., pro-consumer advocacy shows). You can also take risks and produce more specialized programming. The cons include, well, people complain about their tax dollars being mis-spent, especially if the programming is contrary to their beliefs. The other con is, well, in less free country, it's an ideal propaganda source.
There's no ideal form of funding for TV, they all have their pros and cons.
Besides that, I would also liken it to expected permission.
The owner of the PC may give them access to the computer to view Netflix. That implies a single instance access to the computer to do one thing - view Netflix. It doesn't give permission to view the guy's email or other things, or even if he logs out permission to log in again.
This permission can be extended implicitly - e.g., the person comes over regularly and the owner regularly gives them permission to log in and view Netflix. Still no permission to view email, though. But in this case, the person can reasonably assume that since he's been given permission to use Netflix while he's over, he can continue to do so.
If an email alert pops up, he's allowed to read the alert, but not to dig deeper - while he didn't get permission to view the alert, he really couldn't NOT read it since it popped up on the screen while he was watching Netflix. However, reading just the preview alert doesn't give permission to read the rest of it, as he only had permission to use Netflix.
I mean, just because you got the credentials, they were provided to you in trust to do one specific thing. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
Actually, around 90% of aviation accidents are caused by pilot error.
We've automated so much that the automation failure is rarely the cause of problems - it's usually humans causing the problems or more likely, humans exacerbating the problem. The other 10% is generally engine failure or other mechanical failure. And it still holds regardless of which sector of aviation - be it commercial, general aviation or military.
Humans are really poor troubleshooters. We suffer from fixation, confirmation bias, and many other faults that really prove to be big problems. In fact, a good chunk of problems can be filed under "get-there-itis" where pilots believe that no matter the problem, they can continue. (Fuel starvation is a big problem in general aviation).
Why do you think Apple did TouchID? It was because Apple realizes that most people don't use a PIN code or whatever because it's a hassle. And looking at usage patterns of phones, it's not really a big surprise - those things are used literally 1000 times a day for seconds to minutes per use. Entering even a 4 digit PIN 1000 times a day gets old, quick.
So most people don't actually use it.
Apple realized the only way to fix this is to have some sort of thing where users don't have to do anything - unlocking their phone happens automatically within seconds of picking it up.
Doing this means users can have a PIN (or even a complex one!) to lock their phone, yet still have the convenience of being able to use their phone at a moment's notice.
Because having a PIN is way better than not having one. And having one is a PITA when you want to quickly look at something and it takes a few seconds to enter your pin/swipe your pattern/scan your face.
No, TouchID is not perfect, and Apple treats fingerprints as lower security than passcodes or PINs (hence the requirement to use a PIN after 48 hours, or on a reboot). But if it brings up the PIN code usage from 10% to 60% or more, that's a net benefit to security.
Conventional warfare, maybe.
But look at ISIL. They're savvy at social networking - that's how they recruit vulnerable young people (including Americans and all that) to join their cause.
Yes, the public is against war - that's why Obama and the rest of 'em won't send in troops because war is unpalatable. Instead, ISIL recruits young people to fight for their "cause" using promises that young people like.
Social media has an interesting effect - far from broadening horizons, it narrows them. In effect, people enter a political echo chamber where they associate with those of a similar mentality. It's something ISIL knows, and why they recruit one person, they can usually get the rest of the guy's friends to come along as well.
And it doesn't matter than they were promised 42 virgins or whatever - the real truth is these recruits typically do menial jobs - fetching food and water for the leaders and other stuff.
The rapid rise in specs really occurred in the 90s. The 2000's had increase in specs, but at a far slower pace.
Though, there was a trend in the early 00's that everyone needed a computer, so when the netbook came out in 2007-ish (remember them), these low-margin, low spec PCs sold like hotcakes because now everyone in the household could have their very own PC and not need to share.
Then came the tablet, and the realization that netbooks were getting more pricey (approaching laptop pricing), and the only reason people needed PCs was for stuff like Netflix and web browsing and other "content consuming" tasks that tablets were better suited for.
The PC will never die - it's like a truck. You need trucks as they accomplish tasks cars can't do. But not everyone needs a truck - most people can get by with a car.
The days of people needing 1 computer per person is over, but 1 computer per household is probably the least you need.
Video games are more a medium - they can show artistic merit in many different ways. It's like TV - there are very many aspects of "art" that can be expressed through TV, and there are many aspects that can be expressed through video games.
At a basic component level, you have the actual assets - sound, music, graphics, story. But there's also an aspect that's larger than the sum of its parts - the combination of the assets in a way can be artistic as well.
There are games like Gone Home, or The Stanley Parable or Depression Quest whose goal can be considered artistic expression. They use the medium in creative ways to express their message.
And we can even argue about whether these are "games" or "non-games", which to me basically mean they're art - stirring controversy and discussion.
Video games in general aren't art - it's a medium to which one can, at one's choosing, create art. Just like you won't say a TV is art, but some of the programming available for it can be art.
Ah yes, back when Radio Shack was named because well, it was for Ham Radio enthusiasts to get all they need. Remember, this was the day where if you used Digikey, you were looking at a 4-6 week turnaround for parts, unless you worked for a company and had the luxury of a fax machine, or a long distance phone call and could place an order the same day. The rest of us filled out order forms, added a stamp, and mailed it in.
I did like going to Radio Shack - got to know the employees quite well back when I was young (the 80s). Then something in the early 00's, Tandy Corp pulled the license on the name from Radio Shack Canada, and our stores were bought up by Circuit City (The Source - By Circuit City). Then CC folded, and we still have The Source. But it's really just a sadder version of Best Buy.
Actually, it's happening now. Video game symphonies don't play all that much music - they really don't have a huge setlist (even big ones like Video Games Live only really have a setlist of 100+ pieces, of which they can only really do about 10-15 per show). And the setlist only grows by a handful every year. These are themes - rarely individual songs, but more a medley combining the best of an entire score condensed down into a few minutes.
You have your standard Super Mario Brothers theme (which has immense recognition value), Tetris themes, then you have your Halo, God of War, Civilization IV, World of Warcraft and others. There's the Sonic themes, Final Fantasy and other Square-Enix (Chrono Cross/Trigger), Portal (Still Alive), etc (Indie games too!).
If you consider just how many video games are released every year, and of that how much music is produced for them, the amount that actually makes it in is quite small.
Oh sure, in a crowd of 500, you can't please everyone, but stunningly few music pieces from video games actually make it out, even amongst gamers.
Same goes for movie soundtracks - a lot of music is produced, but few actually enter public consciousness - most is easily forgettable.
Through Paris.
The metre was officially defined as 1/10,000,000th the straight line distance between the North Pole and the Equator, through Paris, France.
It's why everything's in French (why the official term for "metric" is SI, or Systeme Internationale... French!).
Anyhow, the kilogram is the only unit of measure still based on a physical object, something they've been trying to change for decades now. The importance of this is if you can derive all the fundamental units of measure from physical constants, then it becomes a universal system of measurement.
And the reference kilogram has been losing weight, which means all of us have steadily started weighing more and more as time goes on.
I don't think there's much "legal" shark hunting going on - finning is basically an undercover operation these days. Albeit, it's done out in the open, with the authorities doing a wink wink nod nod to the fact it happens. (It provides a valuable export to those countries, and you can bet organized crime is heavily involved).
Gordon Ramsay and crew were expelled from Costa Rica while filming illegal finning operations.
It's still a relative pain for the 360 because new games require new operating systems, and you cannot connect a modded 360 to the internet. So you lose multiplayer (Microsoft will deactivate your Live account on that console if they detect mods) and updates can revert the mod.
It's why console piracy rates are around the 10% level, while PC piracy rates are close to the 90% level or higher. Enough so that the PC basically is shitcanned - if a console game comes out, chances are the PC version will be a crappy port that comes out months later (which granted, help since instead of asking $60, they ask $30). Sure there's a few day-1 PC releases - like Call of Duty and Battlefield, but they have online servers enforcing DRM (and remember the loss of local servers?), and sometimes you get a good PC port, but they're few and far between - piracy has killed most PC gaming. The only PC games you see are indie games - the AAA releases are far fewer than consoles these days.
Anyhow, it's a bit late to add DRM to the spec - it'll be like JPEG2000 - a format few, if any, support.
It doesn't matter. All it boils down is you hit someone with a car. Doesn't matter if you were escaping or illegally on the property. Unless there was a proper self-defense role for leaving (i.e., you were being shot at), what you did is a hit and run, and is a criminal offense in many places. Especially since you got caught - you never intended to stop and render aid.
Second, you're a reporter. You know the law very well. Why run? If you're legally acquiring photos from a public place, then you are allowed to be where you are. If you're really trespassing on private property - then why are you there? Every reporter knows their rights, and they know if they're on legal public property, all photos taken are legitimate. So why run?
It better be some whistleblower thing, because really, a reporter on private property and trespassing, knowingly because you ran away when confronted (so you know you're not supposed to be where you are), and causing several hit and runs is a serious list of charges for mere interest.
Of course, is Tesla is smart, this is all they'd do - they'd let the people file charges against the newspaper and reporters (since it's official vehicles, it can be assumed it was officially sanctioned, and you always go for the sugar daddy). Then you'd just blacklist the RGJ from any future press conference and events. Like how Apple denies press tickets to Gawker over the whoel iPhone 4 thing.
No, Google does serve annoying ads. Not directly, but through one of their many corporate acquisitions and ad networks like DoubleClick. So yes, Google serves up annoying ads, pop ups, pop unders, punch the monkey, malware, etc.
Google Ads is another advertising service Google owns. So you can pay to not see those ads, but I haven't seen one of those ads in a long time - I think Google pushed everyone to use one of their other ad network services.
If you could pay $7 a month to get rid of all ads Google provided, I'd take that deal as that gets rid of a good chunk of online advertising. Remember, Google owns like 98% of the advertising market, the 2% being the shadier sites that Google doesn't touch (torrent sites, etc).
Depends on the bootloader. Some just ship with coreboot and that's it - you can't boot Windows that way. Windows requires either BIOS or EFI to boot, and most Chromebooks ship with neither.
Plus, chomebooks are a pain if you want to use them as anything other than chromeos - the security means you get prompted every boot (including reboots) that your chromebook is compromised. You have to hit a key combination (Ctrl-D?) to tell it you intentionally want to boot developer mode. Miss the opportunity and it goes into the recovery screen asking for you to insert a USB recovery key.
Yes, this is intentional. Chromebooks are supposed ot be super secure devices immune to malware. So the bootloader checks the kernel and filesystem it's about to run to make sure they're original.
That is, I believe, one of the primary reasons why the LSB was created - because a robust software archive, including both free and proprietary apps, is generally a good thing.
Then again, depending on the app, sometimes it's easier to just modify the environment than the app. Like a few programs we use that are designed and supported on RHEL. LSB would make life easier so we can run said program on say, Ubuntu, but given the general low quality of the code and high expense, it's easier ot just run RHEL for that software than try to get it working on Ubuntu. Hell, even running CentOS will probably work, but then again...
Chances are it'll work, but oddball failures and crashes are really something I don't want to waste time with.
LSB was probably more for consumer level applications like Photoshop and whatnot, where support is generally better, and games and stuff like that.
The goal of combining isn't to save time, it's because it's what's available. Let's say you have an embedded device, and it can do SHA1 and MD5 already in hardware (hardware accelerators aren't much faster, but they are a lot easier to code up in primitive environments). So the hardware supports MD5 and SHA1 in hardware, and your verification code can be modified.
You can't add SHA2 support, nevermind SHA3, but you have to work with what you have. In this case, two broken algorithms, you can't upgrade the device (or you can, but people still use legacy devices), and want to at least make it harder.
Nope.
So far, if Apple even has the ability to uninstall an app, they've never used it. They've never used their ability to disable apps, either (though limited to ones which use CoreLocation, since the disabling code is in there, so if you never touch GPS...).
All Apple has done is basically prevent users from redownloading apps. But even that's not as big a limitation - you can still back up an app using iTunes. Or download the app using iTunes and install it via iTunes (recommended method for large apps). Even if the app is removed, as long as you have the IPA (the app file, similar to apk for Android) file somewhere, and iTunes is available, you can install it via iTunes. iTunes doesn't check - as long as the app is in your name and account, iTunes will install it on your device long after the developer has disappeared.
This was how users of a particular (medical) assistance app kept using it - after the developer has been sued by some larger company or patent violations that forced Apple to remove the app, the users backed up the app via iTunes and use that to install it on every new device.
The only thing is, it's unmaintained, so if it doesn't work with a new OS version...
And if you wanted, using iTunes you can back up old versions of apps too, so if they try to screw you or add stuff like ads or IAPs (in app purchase) you don't like, you can always revert by installing that particular version of the app.
Anyone see this as a way to infiltrate a network?
I mean, the only way to get data into and out of it is a 10gE connection, to which you need to use a client to connect to it. So it's entirely possible for the OS that's running on it (presumably it's just an x86 based PC with a lot of disk) to surreptitiously monitor, scan and potentially plant malware on your network. Sure, SOME people will do data precautions and firewalling, but considering the PC running the client needs access to the data AND access to the snowball, it seems like most people would probably just hook it up to a spare network port.
While I'm sure Amazon probably wants to ensure those things are clean, I'm not so sure if anything can be implanted in them along the way...
Don't mobile devices have a clear and delete everything that works?
I know iOS does - since iOS 3. On iPhone 3GS and higher, what it does is it deletes the flash storage key and regenerates a new one (which is why the older ones needed a OS reload - it wiped the OS as well). On older iPhones, it physically erased the storage because the stores are unencrypted. Which is why on those phones it took hours to run, while on the new ones, it takes mere seconds.
As for RMA - that's where you have to decide - is your data more important than the drive? You have to realize a 2TB drive is well under $100 new these days, so if your data is worth more than $100 if it got out, you probably are better off not returning it and just buying a new one.
Our IT guy has decided that 2TB drives are not worth his time to RMA - they're cheap, and return shipping covers a good portion of the cost of a new drive, so it's pointless.
And that's what the FCC really wants The problem the FCC is seeing right now is the modified firmware allows access to frequencies that aren't allowed to be used for WiFI in the US. This is more than just channels 12 and 13 on 2.4GHz, but also on the complex 5GHz band.
The FCC has many complaints already from airports and other entities whose radar is being interfered with by 5GHz WiFi (the band plan is complex enough that channels are "locked out" because they're used by higher priority services like radar).
And you really can't blame the open firmware guys either - mostly because they don't know any better and they only build one binary that works for all devices worldwide. (the available channels on 5GHz vary per country - depending on the radar in use).
All the FCC really wants (and they've clarified it in the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) is the steps wifi manufacturers are taking to prevent people from loading on firmware that does not comply with FCC regulations - i.e., allows transmissions on frequencies they are not allowed to transmit on.
It can either take place as hardware (filters blocking out the frequencies), or software that cannot be modified by the open firmware (e.g., firmware on wifi chip reads a EEPROM or something and locks out those frequencies).
The thing it cannot be is rely on "goodwill" or firmware that respects the band plan - i.e., you cannot rely on "blessed" open firmware that only uses the right frequencies (because anyone can modify it to interfere).
The FCC has all the powers to enforce compliance right now - users of open firmware who are caught creating interference with higher priority services can already be fined, equipment seized and all that stuff (and that would not include just the WiFi router - any WiFi device like PCs can be seized if they attach to that network). That's the heavy handed legal approach they have. However, they don't want to do that, because most users probably don't realize the problem, and the FCC really doesn't want to destroy all that stuff. So instead, the FCC is working with manufacturers to fix the issue at the source.
The problem lies in the fact that most manufacturers are cheap and will not spend a penny more, so instead of locking out the radio from interfering, they'll lock out the entire firmware.
The FCC mentions DD-WRT and all that by name because their investigations revealed that when they investigate interference, the offending routers run that firmware (and which doesn't lock out frequencies that they aren't supposed to transmit on).