IIRC Google negeoated patent protections/licensing for certain things in android, anything beyond that is the responsibility of the phone manufacturers because it's their software changes
It's not just patents that Google licenses - it's also avoidance. Apple went after Samsung because of TouchWiz - not Android. Android was fine (there were plenty of Android phones on the market) as it didn't violate the so-called "rounded corners" patent that involved a grid of icons with a static grid on the bottom (because on standard Android, there was no screen like that - the grid of icons, and the static grid, were not on the same screen - you have the app launcher, you have the home screen, and the widgets break up the grid of icons on the home screen).
Samsung, however, decided the default Android launcher was crap and decided to take inspiration from somewhere else.
(This was way back in the Galaxy S days, where the first impression everyone got on turning it on was "It's an iPhone!")
It's why no Nexus phone was every held up - running default Android meant it automatically either used licensed patents, or worked around other patents. Heck, if you wonder why Nexus phones don't have external storage - don't you see that as an elegant workaround for the FAT32 patents? Especially since Android doesn't support Mass Storage anymore so there's absolutely no reason to support FAT32.
2) Galaxy Nexus. No more updates after 4.3, not even security updates.
Hey now, you (and I) may be stuck at 4.3 but we're still getting updates on the stuff that matters. Other than the vulnerable web browser, that is.
Of course, Google Apps updates have made the phone practically unusable, I mean, it was a really fast really slick phone when it was new. Now it's a laggy thing that takes seconds to do anything. Typing on it is not an exercise in frustration as it stalls, catches up, stalls, etc.
And I thought it was only Apple that did that to make you update from your 2 year old iPhone.
Did HBO really shoot themselves in the foot by taking the cableless HBO subscription and screwing the pooch by limiting it to Apple TV for now?
No, because AppleTV is just for the big screen. It's also available on iOS, which if Netflix numbers are anything to go by, smartphones and tablets are the preferred viewing platform for the service.
Other countries do have regulations. They just have sensible regulations, based on the size, weight, and capabilities of the drone. In the US the regulations are based primarily on whether it is "commercial" or "non-commercial". So the FAA is not concerned about safety, or privacy. They are primarily concerned about drones competing with piloted aircraft. This is an example of regulatory capture. The FAA is running a protection racket for pilots.
Other countries generally have more restricted aviation industries than North America. In North America there's a lot of aviation activity out there - not just commercial and military, but general aviation which includes Joe out tor his $100 hamburger to Mr. Big CEO going from the west coast to the east for a meeting.
Other countries generally are more restrictive (Europe burdens GA with heavy taxes, China is slowly opening up despite their military's object (the Chinese military owns all Chinese airspace)), etc. So they don't have as many problems with trying to fit general aviation alongside drones.
Plus, the toy drones probably don't go high enough to be a problem, and well, if you're trying to use a DJI Phantom to take photos, I'm sure the local police and others have plenty to get you on. Plus, other countries generally are more regulated so you're not making huge quadcopters without the government already knowing.
In fact, model aircraft is an exemption the FAA grants provided you follow certain rules. You're not immune from the FARs just because you're flying under model aircraft 'rules". It's an advisory circular - something that just clarifies what the FAA will generally allow, but not a rule. Idiots flying drones in ways that endanger the public (including dive bombs, erratic flying through tunnels, etc) have been fined by FAA actions despite appeals to the NTSB. The ruling stands that even if it was under "model aircraft" rules, it was still an aircraft subject to the FAA.
We visited the Sistene Chapel and the tour stops right outside the room and the guide is very clear "Be quiet and absolutely no flash photography" and then you walk in and its absolutely packed with people being loud and taking flash pictures.
Last Spring when I went, it was a dull roar - the guards were all over people who were taking photographs. Perhaps they're more attentive now given the relative fragility of it. In fact, they didn't allow photos at all - the guards were the loudest ones there and they were mostly shouting "No photo".
same with the statue of David. they should just make fake art for some of these museums that can be damaged by photos and save the real thing
The guards were all over people at the Academy museum - they saw a camera and they practically pounced on the guy. not to mention they basically made you keep all your real cameras away, those who had cellphones up in the "taking a photo" stance were generally reminded to not take photos.
Though there are plenty of replica Davids around (the Ufitzi gallery has one) for your snapping pleasure. The Academy gallery was basically constructed to hold David.
I don't get why we even need to find black boxes and such. How much bandwidth would it really take to just stream that data in realtime over satellite, and how much would that cost compared to the tons of fuel in the tanks?
Well, for satellites, not a lot - even though modern flight data recorders can record over a thousand parameters at a time (satellite bandwidth is huge), even full high-res cockpit voice is but a drop.
The problem is more political than anything - why do you think we have 30 minute CVRs, despite the technology existing to record days worth of multichannel, high resolution digital audio? Just as a point of comparison, 30 minutes of CD quality audio is around 325MB or so. We can stuff 128GB+ in an SD card, and you could in theory have terabytes of that in the tiny space allocated for the memory (the rest is all survivability stuff, which can record an inordinate amount fo audio.
Then there's the whole storage/transmission thing - which country gets the right to store it? You want the US to do it? China? Find one that everyone trusts with that information - Switzerland probably comes close.
Hell, why not ask why don't we have externally-accessible data recorders? They exist today, are mature technology, auto-eject (and float!) on landing in water (with GPS beacons), can be propelled away from an accident on land (it's simple springs) to help get it away from fires and other stuff. Instead of the recorder sinking to the bottom of the ocean or inside the fuselage, an externally accessible one seems to be able to solve the problem using what we have today.
Perhaps if they pushed the boundaries in other ways, other than graphics? Like Story? Idea? Gameplay? Sorry but I'm sick of these endless FPS! And the graphics alone aren't going to hold a jaded player.
Why? There's a rather large group of players who care nought for crap like that. They just want to get the game, and go frag their friends 27 hours a day. There's a large contingent of players who will do just that, which is why games like that sell billions of dollars on the first day.
And to be honest, it's also one of the few games that justifies having a day-1 PC release. Besides being able to inflate the day-1 sales, it's one of the few games where PC players will literally buy it day 1 rather than wait for any sales, pirate the game, or whatever. That's just the way the market is.
Now, you want games with store and depth? They do make those - the video games industry is big enough that there are plenty of other games that concentrate on that stuff.
Hell, wasn't one of the "concerns" of the whole #gamergate thing the fact that a "game" like Depression Quest was going to wipe out all these Call of Duty/Battlefield/etc style games? Which is plainly ridiculous since the latter pull in way more money, so it doesn't matter how many perfect scores Depression Quest gets, it still won't make billions and billions of dollars. And secondly, history has shown that despite "good" works being produced (be it books, movies, music), there's plenty of "pulp" that's produced to satisfy the masses. I mean, we still have summer blockbusters despite the appeal of the arthouse flick.
$80K/yr? With presumably the elite skills and technological flexibility you need along with incredibly bad hours?
With that level (none) of job security?
Boy, am I glad I never got suckered into the game industry. Scary!
(Unless that's what they're paying right out of school.)
Supply >>> Demand.
That's generally considered good pay, too, because they know if you quit, there are 10 people waiting by the door for your spot.
Video games are a terrible business - you're spending years on a product that has no future - once the game is released, other than small amounts of DLC, it's done. Abandon it and begin afresh on a new codebase (even if it's for a sequel). There's no maintenance, future versions or anything for all but a handful of games.
And then there's the generation growing up with video games. I mean, the urge to get into the video games industry is fairly strong, given the appeal of modern video games and "how cool it is to have a job involving video games". I mean, think what a job description for a QA tester would sound like - "you play video games all day!" Hot damn, your parents have always said to hit the books instead of playing Call of Warfare for 8 hours a day to be able to get a job, and they make jobs where you do nothing but play video games?
Similar thinking goes towards "eSports" as well.
The video game industry is very seductive, the heads of video game companies know it, and they know they have a vast pool of those they can abuse because, well, "videogames!".
Try to drum up excitement on say, writing tax software, or writing an accounting program. Yeah.
You assume that those procedures are always going to work after....... a fire! Its not inconceivable that a fire on an airliner could damage vital components possibly related to the environmental, radio and even control systems. Don't get me wrong its an unlikely situation where the radio AND avionics/air handling/navigation systems and their backups (if any) are effected simultaneously but when you have 36.5 million commercial air flights per year its bound to happen eventually.
So a fire serious enough to incapacitate the cabin and crew, but not serious enough to damage any other avionics or other flight systems enough that it could continue to fly on until it ran out of fuel?
Every fire that's serious enough to cause problems... generally ends the flight quickly. Here you're assuming it's bad enough that the passengers and crew are incapacitated quickly, but it left all the avionics and control systems intact for hours. Especially when you consider the fragility of the satellite communications system - the transmitter and receivers are in the avionics bay (underneath the cockpit), while the satellite antennas are above. A fire serious enough would've burned through those antenna cables pretty readily.
It's why the fire theory, or catastrophic failure theory has been resoundly rejected - planes just do not last that long when on fire - eventually fire will consume something vital. How long you have until then is unknown, but it's definitely not hours and hours. Maybe if it was a tiny fire, but then that wouldn't incapacitate the crew. A fire big enough to do so that they couldn't don their quick-don masks or one that took out both oxygen systems would be serious enough to basically destroy the plane in well under an hour.
It's why in-flight fires basically demand getting it on the ground ASAP and not nearest airport facility - you don't know how long you have.
Even integrated video can handle Sketchup reasonably well, which is about as much CAD work as the average person will ever do.
As for video encoding, most people are fine with letting it run overnight so the speed delta doesn't matter.
That really helps when the deadline is 5:00 p.m.
The most amazing thing about the desktop/laptop wars is it always comes down to two things
1. We have to go to the "most people" scenario to invalidate the high end desktop performance. Sorry, some of us need more than what any laptop can deliver
2. There is no power/performance solution for laptops that couldn't be implemented better in a desktop, so it's a never ending chase.
It's a real estate and energy density issue. I love my laptops, but really need my desktops.
The "Most people" benchmark refers to the common class of users who use computers as tools and who really don't care either way.
You will always have desktops. Hell, Steve Jobs even said PCs will always be around. He compared them to trucks - useful tools that people do need, but not everyone needs a truck all the time - plenty of scenarios where a car is a far better option.
Video encoding for a 5PM deadline? If you're in a job that has that, then you'd invest in a video render farm to do just that. For the rest of us, including the days of YouTube videos uploaded every minute, whether your cat video shows up at 5PM or 5AM makes very little difference.
Oh yes, there are plenty of tasks that a desktop does better than a laptop. Especially in the high end. But you know what? Those people who need high-end performance are in the more niche category. Those who do those things know who they are, and pick the appropriate computer for their needs. The vast majority of users find a laptop is more than capable for banging out reports, term paper, facebook, youtube, watching TV, torrenting, and dozens of other things.
No, the desktop is NOT disappearing. It's been over 10 years since laptops outsold desktops, and desktops are still around. The low-ends don't move much (because shinier laptops can be had with similar or better specs), but the high end still sells. And there's enough "professions" that professionally bitch about it that even someone like Apple keeps a high end machine in production. Despite it being among the worst sellers in the entire product line.
Sorry, the desktop, like the PC will always be around. Rumors about its death have been exaggerated for years and it's still around. Like Jobs said - they're trucks, and they can fulfil any purpose, maybe not as well, but they can work. That fact alone keeps them alive because there will always be a use case that someone needs that won't be fulfilled.
Phone numbers are passed around like pocket change. Who has control today is not who has control tommorow.
But beyond that, if I buy a MagickJack today and send out 1,000,000 spams and 100,000 robo dials tomorow, how can the "owner" of that number be held responsible? Of course common sense says they cam't.
Phone numbers move far less than you think - when you port your phone number, it takes several hours for the change to happen. In the meantime, a call can ring one phone, the other phone, both, or none as the switching tables are updated. But in the meantime, the phone number is still owned by someone at that time. All you need to do is log when and who.
As for your magicjack? Well, at some point they have to interconnect to the phone system. If you can't trace beyond the phone system, then the interconnection is liable, to whom they'd probably be more than happy to send the bill to MagicJack to pay.
Basically, to make a phone call, you have the originating number. The thing is, your phone company providing you service actually knows the originating phone number that's not spoofed or anything - the originating phone number is sent as data to the called party's phone company. And logged. So your phone company knows who made the call and who's responsible.
If it goes through a third party call forwarding service, well, guess who holds liability now?
POTS is not like the Internet. POTS actually has verifiable sources - you cannot spoof the call as everyone exchanges connection information. Sure VoIP may make the real caller hard to find, but at some point the call had to enter the POTS network, and the gateway provider can be held responsible. And I'm sure for billing purposes they know who used that outgoing line - maybe not the subscriber, but the company that they contract POTS interconnection for.
Perhaps an auto-attendant might be an interesting way to solve the problem using grey listing - the autoattendant looks for familiar numbers, and if it's on the list, passes it through. If not, it answers the phone and walks through a script, asking the caller for their name, company and other details. It then asks the caller to hold, and rings the inside line, who passes the information onwards and you can decide if you want to take the call, black l ist, tar pit, or reject. Rejected calls get a simple "the party does not wish to speak with you, do you want to l eave a message?" while tarpitted calls get the "please wait" response every 30 seconds.
If people are that close to the edge then leaving for work an hour earlier / losing an hour's sleep is only a proximate cause to their death.
The root cause is that they were leading a fucked-up life and were susceptible to a final straw. Now, whether any given individual's life is fucked up due to their own choices or not probably runs the gamut from 0 to 1 on probability distribution.
Perhaps the few percent who get a heart attack the week of the hour change might be on the edge. But there are other effects.
Like how accident rates go up 5% the following week (somehow no one's clamoring for the DST-insurance company conspiracy yet). Which given everyone's always more tired, means an increased risk of getting involved in an accident which can kill you. Perhaps the sleepy texter whose already having a hard enough time seeing the screen blows through the red and right into you. Oddly enough, while they got hit from the front, you got hit from the side, meaning she's more likely to survive, and you, either serious injury or death. All because their eyes couldn't focus on the words on the screen.
Not to mention, it was bright the week before during the commute, now it's dark again. Behaviors don't change all that much.- people will be less cautious because a week ago, they could do it just fine and see traffic.
And as someone who commutes in at 6AM just before the rush, having it bright outside is nice. IF I wanted the bright light to commute, that would put me smack in the middle of rush, and make my commute take twice as long.
The init system handles the initial startup of a linux os. It's been acknowledged for some time that it has some limitations, especially in terms of threading and dependency management but for the server world that's usually not that big a deal since the primary users are technical specialists who are comfortable mucking around with that sort of thing. For desktops and mobile devices though those are more serious concerns because they impact user experience and many users don't have the skills to modify things themselves. Systemd is a replacement for init.
Kinda sorta. You missed the fact that init itself is also a process manager. In that it's responsible for starting and stopping processes based on runlevels. (Yes, init can start and stop processes on runlevels)
There's a nasty hack called SysVInit that adds a bunch of shell scripts to init in order to try to replicate the functionality of init. This is done because instead of fixing init's fundamental flaw, people decided to hack a workaround and create a lamer version of a process manager and its hacks. The flaw? Init relies on/etc/inittab for all its process management information needs. One file makes it extremely non-trivial to add and remove services from it programmatically.
It's why we have to deal with daemons that monitor other daemons that restart daemons should they quit (something init does quite well - even handling cases where a daemon restarts too quickly by pausing it so it doesn't hog system resources).
And on another note, we have userspace versions of init that manage user processes on login. The desktop/mobile use cases often have per-user applications that startup and run in the background for the user, and need to be managed on a per-user basis.
So in the end, we end up with the system master process manager, init, a set of hacks and shell scripts to try to emulate it (SysVInit), and one for individual users who wish to have personal services run. Because it's more unix-y to hack three different tools that do almost the same thing, but each with their own limitations and idiosyncrasies rather than one tool to do the job well.
Technology is increasingly removing our ability to make mistakes and move on with our lives. That is a hellish future.
This.
And it's actually occurring today because the internet doesn't forget. This has never happened before in human history - sure people can write stuff down to preserve it, but they retain the ability to self-edit, hence why history belongs to the victors.
But now, all your online activities are recorded pretty much permanently for everyone to see (sorry, privacy policies or settings just encourage people to spill the beans). People have lost jobs over stuff they posted on Facebook, by trolling others, and other stuff.
Forget government surveillance making everyone "do good". Simply having the inability to edit your history (because doing so can cause it to go viral) means everyone is forced to "do good" all the time. One fuckup and quite possibly you've screwed yourself.
Even worse, while we hope people would discount transgressions made decades ago, dates are often missing or hard to find. That one time you made a bad decision will haunt you down the road because even though it happened 20 years ago, no one put a date on it so it appears just as recent as it did 20 years ago. No one can tell without the hidden or missing timestamp.
Hell, kids are getting caught up in it too - where once we let kids be kids, they can't be kids if what they did when they're 5 will be recorded and exposed when they're 18.
If you use Source 2 for 'free', the only way to sell it is through Steam, which gets *30-40%* royalties. Source 2 isn't free, it's a hook to try to get more lock-in to keep Steam as the premiere distribution platform.
it's not royalties. Just like how selling in Google Play or Apple App Store doesn't charge 30% royalties. It's a flat charge for selling through the store where the provider (Google, Apple, etc) provide all the necessary payment, storage, download and other facilities for you. Some, like Apple, do way more so at the end of the day you get a cheque and a tax form, while others (Google) make you do most of the hard work.
But they basically provide a bunch of services for that 30% of the purchase price. Being able to track your purchases is fairly important so you can re-download your purchase over and over again (too many digital download sites give you 30 day links and charge you another $10 if you want to extend it to a year), plus all the payment integration.
Steam is the first app store to come to market. They generally charge around market rates.
Source is an incentive to use that app store. To say to use it costs you 30% royalties does a disservice because it isn't accurate - if you want to sell on steam, you still give up that 30% or so.
I've done a bit of system integration with bill acceptor machines, and they should be fine. They're not looking for visual spectrum stuff, or comparing a bitmap, they're checking for a finite number of specific features. Usually, it is 9 or 11 small spots that are each checked for one thing. None of them are the face visuals.
Actually, if they're spocking the old $5 bills, it's probably not going to be accepted anyways as we've moved to the new polymer bills. While for a time the old bill acceptors wouldn't accept the new bills, the new bills have pretty much taken over.
Granted, not being an artist, I have to admit I'd probably keep that $5 bill. Being a paper one it's probably close to being cycled out naturally.
e consoles that support PC games...means more developers make games for PC...means more games for ME to pirate! YEAH!!!
Not really, I think PC is going to be the red-headed stepchild for AAA games for a long time to come - the money just isn't there as much.
Consoles will be where it's at for the time being because of the money aspect - PC ports will continue to generally suck due to poor ROI unless you're an indie developer (where ROI can be measured in publicity generated and not actually dollars).
I mean what's one of the biggest draws of the PC platform? Steam sales! Yet I see new PC games that are just a few months old going for 40+% off easy. Making it almost pointless to buy any game on release day on PC when the next steam sale you can get it at a decent discount. (Heck, I've even saw games that cost $10 that I avoided buying as too expensive - next steam sale and it'll probably be $5).
It's why other than perhaps Call or Duty and similar have delayed PC releases, and often lame PC ports. A game like Call of Duty does it because of marketing - being able to say they sold a billion copies on launch day is worth a lot of money so a token PC port ready for launch day makes sense.
Insightful, really? I think a few mods must've missed a "whoosh" somewhere.
Either that or they haven't seen how modern Haynes books have reinvented themselves given their old business pretty much evaporated once the 90s hit. (Yes, I remember the shelves of Haynes books back in the day and the modern internet has pretty much killed that business.)
Yeah, so it's a bit more complex than just a power supply sequencer and simple "power good" monitor? It's actually recording "telemetry" off its own power supply continuously, then they correlate the data later?
But can they turn off a power supply and take a resistance reading, for example? Or how about varying the voltage while monitoring the current?
In a spacecraft, because it's really difficult to bring it in for service and diagnostics if something goes wrong, you pretty much have to build in all the diagnostics as telemetry. The more information you can gather the better diagnosing you can do - and if you miss one, well, you can't go and probe it later with a multimeter.
So easily measured stuff like voltages and currents of power rails is instrumented because if something goes awry, that's all the data you have. Analog channels are cheap (they're generally multiplexed together) while sending someone to go and measure it for you is pretty expensive, if it's even possible to do.
The power supply inputs (solar panels, RTG, etc) will have current and voltages measured on each input (e.g., each solar array input channel will have voltages and currents monitored, not just the aggregate), the battery current and voltage will be monitored (maybe even on a per-cell basis), the output power rails of the power supply will be monitored, and the input power used by each instrument as well. If an instrument starts drawing significantly more current, you can tell which one it is and see how the rails dip. If the sum of the currents used by the instruments don't match the current the power supply is providing, then you have a short somewhere. If a power rail is off but you're still seeing voltage and even current, you can tell if the switch is bad, or if it's being backfed or a short is carrying power on it. Or if a rail goes out of spec (overvolt or undervolt).
It's unlikely they can turn off a rail and measure it - it's generally not too useful a measurement if you have current and voltage measured every which way.
And yes, there is other telemetry that's possible, including temperature, angle encoders (encoding positions of each servo in an instrument and maybe even the wheels, etc).
I'd say it's more "real" than that - personally I'd regard the "optimal refactoring situation" the one where you have a piece of code that originally did one thing, then had years of frankensteinesque new functionality hurriedly bolted on to it until it barely resembles it's original self and is likely to blow up if you look at it wrong. At some point rewriting the code with the complete current functionality, and likely future expansion, in mind is going to make it much clearer and easier to modify further without random bits interfering with each other.
Well, refactoring also is the opportunity to apply previous experience to the new code as well.
When refactoring, you can trim out the fat - the original code may have been written to satisfy features X, Y and Z, but as it evolved, Y and Z were never used, yet its code exists and often has to ve special cased to support real use cases of Y1 and Z3 (Z1/Z2 were old requirements that were obsoleted).
Also, decisions may have been made because the system may have added possibilities for X1, X2 and X3 as they were planned into the requirements, but real business operations deemed there was no practical use case in the end.
So refactoring to current spec simply say you need to support X, Y1 and Z3. But experience has taught you that X is unlikely to ever change, Y was revised so maybe make it possible to revise it should it be necessary, and Z needs to be flexible because it's Z3 now, but past experience shows Z4 and Z5 are likely so that code should be made as adaptable as possible. And maybe redesigned since Z needs the flexibility, while X is static and Y changes are limited.
The problem is that the response is not proportional because everyone who hears about this and is offended on behalf of the victim can take their little piece of revenge. There is nothing to keep this public shaming reasonable or just.
The problem is idiots who don't realize the internet is not a toy. Trolls do it for the lulz and don't realize that no, they're actually creating a very permanent record of their activities.
People are worried about "government surveillance" because it chills online speech. Guess what? The Internet does that independent of government by having basically a permanent record - what you do today can impact you decades in the future.
So I've got little sympathy for those who don't know how to behave online, because it was instilled on me since the beginning the dated phrase "If you don't want it posted on the New York Times, don't post it online". Adjust it as necessary, but the truth is there - what you do online is NOT private, and is eternally recorded and what you did might end up plastered all over the news.
Troll all you want, but realize that your five minutes of fun is recorded and you may find yourself as the top news story worldwide. If you want to offend, go for it knowing it WILL haunt you forever. This isn't a bathroom wall in some gas station - it's a gigantic unforgetting bathroom wall that the world sees.
If you think it's going to be easy to put together a real techy product with software and circuits and PCBs and enclosures and EM certification and patent minefields and manufacturing and packaging and distributors and competition, you might want to examine why you think that.
it's not even that. it's scalability.
It is SUPER easy to put together a one-off or even a 10 or 100-off product.
Scale that up to the thousands and you're looking at a difficulty rating that grows exponentially - what used to work for small batches doesn't anymore when dealing with mass production.
Ordering 1000 parts through Digikey is simple. Ordering 10,000 of same, not so simple because lead times suddenly matter - Digikey may stock the item, but only in small quantities because by the time they sell out, the lead time has expired and they have a new batch.
Not to mention if you really want to order large quantities, you don't go to Digikey, but direct to the manufacturer. You can buy through Digikey and the like, but you're at the mercy of Digikey/Arrow/Newark/etc. Work with the manufacturer and they can quote you better times and availability because they know they can batch in a bigger order. But manufacturers are tricky and most don't want to deal with itty-bitty pseudo-companies. Or they find more lucrative markets (actually happened - the manufacturer of a SAW filter for GPS suddenly got their filter approved for LTE. So the manufacturer basically stopped selling to Digikey in favor of selling direct,
Then there are the companies who just don't want to deal with you, to which you are lucky you can get the part though a reseller.
Add in testing and design for manufacturability which are complicated topics in an of themselves. Testing that used to take half an hour per board needs to be condensed to be more efficient - whether it be custom designed test fixtures, test applications, test harnesses, equipment, etc. And automate, automate, automate so the QA person only has to take their board and stick it in the fixture. If there are dozens of little connectors and other crap, accommodations should be in the fixture to make those connections without human intervention.
And then design for manufacturability - knowing how to build the boards and stick them in cases and minimizing the amount of fiddly things that have to be done so it's more a matter of build the board, stick it in the test fixture, wait for a "PASS" from the automated tester, shove the board in the case that self-aligns and close it up.
No, it's just fucking dumb. By forcing people to have to tediously paint each piece by hand you limit the actual number of people who become interested.
The question is, do you turn off more people with such a requirement than you attract? Today, answer is probably yes, nobody has patience for anything. Back in the day, probably not, it was pre-internet and people sat around doing things that took a long time.
Well, considering to compete in a tournament you MUST paint the figures, that already excludes people like me who have NO artistic skill, Or even just fine painting skills. If it was up to me, the thing would be double the size when I'm done because it would be painted over and over and over again. And it'll still look like someone used a paintbrush they bought from Home Depot for painting walls.
I can understand side tournaments where people compete based on their artistic skill that's unrelated to the main event, but tying the two together means someone like me who can't paint worth a damn won't even bother trying to enter.
Not quite. Although you can compile C++ as part of an OSX or iOS project, there's no point - other than using someone else's library. The parts of projects that aren't Obj-C tend to be C.
Why?
You're dropping out of Obj-C for cross platform compatibility, because you're dealing with a low level Apple API, or because you want maximum speed for some part of the code. All these things are usually best served by C. If you're wanting objects at the expense of speed, then you wouldn't stray from Obj-C in the first place.
Technically, you can just call C code straight from ObjC - ObjC code compiles C code just fine (unlike C++, which cannot compile C code).
Whether that code is in the same file or different doesn't matter - ObjC is a superset of C.
Find me an 8TB SSD that is even within spitting disttance (hell, within ICBM distance) of $300 and you win the prize
I think that will be available in 6 years. Bear in mind though that this SMR drive is an exception. The other manufacturers are still producing 4-6 TB drives for that price.
Well, $2000 gets you spinning rust 8TB HDDs from the other guys with fancy helium and no SMR right now. You can easily buy 4x 1TB SSDs for that price.
But you can bet even those hard drives will probably drop to $300 range soon enough (probably a couple of years). Moore's law will see the price halve in that time, so you can get an "8TB" SSD (8x 1TB) for $2000 after the spinning rust version dropped to $300-ish.
What I see in Google is the only company that pulls off ads and spying *without* being annoying or terrible. I hate companies that inject ads into things such that it gets in the way or makes it harder to do what you were doing. I hate companies that spy on you without your permission and then do sketchy things with the results. Google ads don't get in the way, they tell you straight-up that they're spying on you, and they don't generally do anything terribly sketchy with the results. Thus, they can spy on me as much as they like, if they keep it up and use it for good.
You do realize Google is the biggest purvey of annoying ads online, right? Popups, popunders, flash ads, etc. Basically all the crap that ABP and others block. Heck, Google through its DoubleClick subsidiary created a nice flash-to-HTML5 converter.
And that Google is probably already spying on you through your apps with the in-app ads (Google owns AdMob, after all).
You have to remember that pretty much every ad on legitimate sites is served through Google. Shady sites like torrents and porn usually are where the other ad networks go. But pull up a site loaded with ads that's legit and pretty much it's all going back to Google.
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It's not just patents that Google licenses - it's also avoidance. Apple went after Samsung because of TouchWiz - not Android. Android was fine (there were plenty of Android phones on the market) as it didn't violate the so-called "rounded corners" patent that involved a grid of icons with a static grid on the bottom (because on standard Android, there was no screen like that - the grid of icons, and the static grid, were not on the same screen - you have the app launcher, you have the home screen, and the widgets break up the grid of icons on the home screen).
Samsung, however, decided the default Android launcher was crap and decided to take inspiration from somewhere else.
(This was way back in the Galaxy S days, where the first impression everyone got on turning it on was "It's an iPhone!")
It's why no Nexus phone was every held up - running default Android meant it automatically either used licensed patents, or worked around other patents. Heck, if you wonder why Nexus phones don't have external storage - don't you see that as an elegant workaround for the FAT32 patents? Especially since Android doesn't support Mass Storage anymore so there's absolutely no reason to support FAT32.
Hey now, you (and I) may be stuck at 4.3 but we're still getting updates on the stuff that matters. Other than the vulnerable web browser, that is.
Of course, Google Apps updates have made the phone practically unusable, I mean, it was a really fast really slick phone when it was new. Now it's a laggy thing that takes seconds to do anything. Typing on it is not an exercise in frustration as it stalls, catches up, stalls, etc.
And I thought it was only Apple that did that to make you update from your 2 year old iPhone.
No, because AppleTV is just for the big screen. It's also available on iOS, which if Netflix numbers are anything to go by, smartphones and tablets are the preferred viewing platform for the service.
Other countries generally have more restricted aviation industries than North America. In North America there's a lot of aviation activity out there - not just commercial and military, but general aviation which includes Joe out tor his $100 hamburger to Mr. Big CEO going from the west coast to the east for a meeting.
Other countries generally are more restrictive (Europe burdens GA with heavy taxes, China is slowly opening up despite their military's object (the Chinese military owns all Chinese airspace)), etc. So they don't have as many problems with trying to fit general aviation alongside drones.
Plus, the toy drones probably don't go high enough to be a problem, and well, if you're trying to use a DJI Phantom to take photos, I'm sure the local police and others have plenty to get you on. Plus, other countries generally are more regulated so you're not making huge quadcopters without the government already knowing.
In fact, model aircraft is an exemption the FAA grants provided you follow certain rules. You're not immune from the FARs just because you're flying under model aircraft 'rules". It's an advisory circular - something that just clarifies what the FAA will generally allow, but not a rule. Idiots flying drones in ways that endanger the public (including dive bombs, erratic flying through tunnels, etc) have been fined by FAA actions despite appeals to the NTSB. The ruling stands that even if it was under "model aircraft" rules, it was still an aircraft subject to the FAA.
Last Spring when I went, it was a dull roar - the guards were all over people who were taking photographs. Perhaps they're more attentive now given the relative fragility of it. In fact, they didn't allow photos at all - the guards were the loudest ones there and they were mostly shouting "No photo".
The guards were all over people at the Academy museum - they saw a camera and they practically pounced on the guy. not to mention they basically made you keep all your real cameras away, those who had cellphones up in the "taking a photo" stance were generally reminded to not take photos.
Though there are plenty of replica Davids around (the Ufitzi gallery has one) for your snapping pleasure. The Academy gallery was basically constructed to hold David.
Well, for satellites, not a lot - even though modern flight data recorders can record over a thousand parameters at a time (satellite bandwidth is huge), even full high-res cockpit voice is but a drop.
The problem is more political than anything - why do you think we have 30 minute CVRs, despite the technology existing to record days worth of multichannel, high resolution digital audio? Just as a point of comparison, 30 minutes of CD quality audio is around 325MB or so. We can stuff 128GB+ in an SD card, and you could in theory have terabytes of that in the tiny space allocated for the memory (the rest is all survivability stuff, which can record an inordinate amount fo audio.
Then there's the whole storage/transmission thing - which country gets the right to store it? You want the US to do it? China? Find one that everyone trusts with that information - Switzerland probably comes close.
Hell, why not ask why don't we have externally-accessible data recorders? They exist today, are mature technology, auto-eject (and float!) on landing in water (with GPS beacons), can be propelled away from an accident on land (it's simple springs) to help get it away from fires and other stuff. Instead of the recorder sinking to the bottom of the ocean or inside the fuselage, an externally accessible one seems to be able to solve the problem using what we have today.
Why? There's a rather large group of players who care nought for crap like that. They just want to get the game, and go frag their friends 27 hours a day. There's a large contingent of players who will do just that, which is why games like that sell billions of dollars on the first day.
And to be honest, it's also one of the few games that justifies having a day-1 PC release. Besides being able to inflate the day-1 sales, it's one of the few games where PC players will literally buy it day 1 rather than wait for any sales, pirate the game, or whatever. That's just the way the market is.
Now, you want games with store and depth? They do make those - the video games industry is big enough that there are plenty of other games that concentrate on that stuff.
Hell, wasn't one of the "concerns" of the whole #gamergate thing the fact that a "game" like Depression Quest was going to wipe out all these Call of Duty/Battlefield/etc style games? Which is plainly ridiculous since the latter pull in way more money, so it doesn't matter how many perfect scores Depression Quest gets, it still won't make billions and billions of dollars. And secondly, history has shown that despite "good" works being produced (be it books, movies, music), there's plenty of "pulp" that's produced to satisfy the masses. I mean, we still have summer blockbusters despite the appeal of the arthouse flick.
Supply >>> Demand.
That's generally considered good pay, too, because they know if you quit, there are 10 people waiting by the door for your spot.
Video games are a terrible business - you're spending years on a product that has no future - once the game is released, other than small amounts of DLC, it's done. Abandon it and begin afresh on a new codebase (even if it's for a sequel). There's no maintenance, future versions or anything for all but a handful of games.
And then there's the generation growing up with video games. I mean, the urge to get into the video games industry is fairly strong, given the appeal of modern video games and "how cool it is to have a job involving video games". I mean, think what a job description for a QA tester would sound like - "you play video games all day!" Hot damn, your parents have always said to hit the books instead of playing Call of Warfare for 8 hours a day to be able to get a job, and they make jobs where you do nothing but play video games?
Similar thinking goes towards "eSports" as well.
The video game industry is very seductive, the heads of video game companies know it, and they know they have a vast pool of those they can abuse because, well, "videogames!".
Try to drum up excitement on say, writing tax software, or writing an accounting program. Yeah.
So a fire serious enough to incapacitate the cabin and crew, but not serious enough to damage any other avionics or other flight systems enough that it could continue to fly on until it ran out of fuel?
Every fire that's serious enough to cause problems... generally ends the flight quickly. Here you're assuming it's bad enough that the passengers and crew are incapacitated quickly, but it left all the avionics and control systems intact for hours. Especially when you consider the fragility of the satellite communications system - the transmitter and receivers are in the avionics bay (underneath the cockpit), while the satellite antennas are above. A fire serious enough would've burned through those antenna cables pretty readily.
It's why the fire theory, or catastrophic failure theory has been resoundly rejected - planes just do not last that long when on fire - eventually fire will consume something vital. How long you have until then is unknown, but it's definitely not hours and hours. Maybe if it was a tiny fire, but then that wouldn't incapacitate the crew. A fire big enough to do so that they couldn't don their quick-don masks or one that took out both oxygen systems would be serious enough to basically destroy the plane in well under an hour.
It's why in-flight fires basically demand getting it on the ground ASAP and not nearest airport facility - you don't know how long you have.
The "Most people" benchmark refers to the common class of users who use computers as tools and who really don't care either way.
You will always have desktops. Hell, Steve Jobs even said PCs will always be around. He compared them to trucks - useful tools that people do need, but not everyone needs a truck all the time - plenty of scenarios where a car is a far better option.
Video encoding for a 5PM deadline? If you're in a job that has that, then you'd invest in a video render farm to do just that. For the rest of us, including the days of YouTube videos uploaded every minute, whether your cat video shows up at 5PM or 5AM makes very little difference.
Oh yes, there are plenty of tasks that a desktop does better than a laptop. Especially in the high end. But you know what? Those people who need high-end performance are in the more niche category. Those who do those things know who they are, and pick the appropriate computer for their needs. The vast majority of users find a laptop is more than capable for banging out reports, term paper, facebook, youtube, watching TV, torrenting, and dozens of other things.
No, the desktop is NOT disappearing. It's been over 10 years since laptops outsold desktops, and desktops are still around. The low-ends don't move much (because shinier laptops can be had with similar or better specs), but the high end still sells. And there's enough "professions" that professionally bitch about it that even someone like Apple keeps a high end machine in production. Despite it being among the worst sellers in the entire product line.
Sorry, the desktop, like the PC will always be around. Rumors about its death have been exaggerated for years and it's still around. Like Jobs said - they're trucks, and they can fulfil any purpose, maybe not as well, but they can work. That fact alone keeps them alive because there will always be a use case that someone needs that won't be fulfilled.
Phone numbers move far less than you think - when you port your phone number, it takes several hours for the change to happen. In the meantime, a call can ring one phone, the other phone, both, or none as the switching tables are updated. But in the meantime, the phone number is still owned by someone at that time. All you need to do is log when and who.
As for your magicjack? Well, at some point they have to interconnect to the phone system. If you can't trace beyond the phone system, then the interconnection is liable, to whom they'd probably be more than happy to send the bill to MagicJack to pay.
Basically, to make a phone call, you have the originating number. The thing is, your phone company providing you service actually knows the originating phone number that's not spoofed or anything - the originating phone number is sent as data to the called party's phone company. And logged. So your phone company knows who made the call and who's responsible.
If it goes through a third party call forwarding service, well, guess who holds liability now?
POTS is not like the Internet. POTS actually has verifiable sources - you cannot spoof the call as everyone exchanges connection information. Sure VoIP may make the real caller hard to find, but at some point the call had to enter the POTS network, and the gateway provider can be held responsible. And I'm sure for billing purposes they know who used that outgoing line - maybe not the subscriber, but the company that they contract POTS interconnection for.
Perhaps an auto-attendant might be an interesting way to solve the problem using grey listing - the autoattendant looks for familiar numbers, and if it's on the list, passes it through. If not, it answers the phone and walks through a script, asking the caller for their name, company and other details. It then asks the caller to hold, and rings the inside line, who passes the information onwards and you can decide if you want to take the call, black l ist, tar pit, or reject. Rejected calls get a simple "the party does not wish to speak with you, do you want to l eave a message?" while tarpitted calls get the "please wait" response every 30 seconds.
Perhaps the few percent who get a heart attack the week of the hour change might be on the edge. But there are other effects.
Like how accident rates go up 5% the following week (somehow no one's clamoring for the DST-insurance company conspiracy yet). Which given everyone's always more tired, means an increased risk of getting involved in an accident which can kill you. Perhaps the sleepy texter whose already having a hard enough time seeing the screen blows through the red and right into you. Oddly enough, while they got hit from the front, you got hit from the side, meaning she's more likely to survive, and you, either serious injury or death. All because their eyes couldn't focus on the words on the screen.
Not to mention, it was bright the week before during the commute, now it's dark again. Behaviors don't change all that much.- people will be less cautious because a week ago, they could do it just fine and see traffic.
And as someone who commutes in at 6AM just before the rush, having it bright outside is nice. IF I wanted the bright light to commute, that would put me smack in the middle of rush, and make my commute take twice as long.
Kinda sorta. You missed the fact that init itself is also a process manager. In that it's responsible for starting and stopping processes based on runlevels. (Yes, init can start and stop processes on runlevels)
There's a nasty hack called SysVInit that adds a bunch of shell scripts to init in order to try to replicate the functionality of init. This is done because instead of fixing init's fundamental flaw, people decided to hack a workaround and create a lamer version of a process manager and its hacks. The flaw? Init relies on /etc/inittab for all its process management information needs. One file makes it extremely non-trivial to add and remove services from it programmatically.
It's why we have to deal with daemons that monitor other daemons that restart daemons should they quit (something init does quite well - even handling cases where a daemon restarts too quickly by pausing it so it doesn't hog system resources).
And on another note, we have userspace versions of init that manage user processes on login. The desktop/mobile use cases often have per-user applications that startup and run in the background for the user, and need to be managed on a per-user basis.
So in the end, we end up with the system master process manager, init, a set of hacks and shell scripts to try to emulate it (SysVInit), and one for individual users who wish to have personal services run. Because it's more unix-y to hack three different tools that do almost the same thing, but each with their own limitations and idiosyncrasies rather than one tool to do the job well.
This.
And it's actually occurring today because the internet doesn't forget. This has never happened before in human history - sure people can write stuff down to preserve it, but they retain the ability to self-edit, hence why history belongs to the victors.
But now, all your online activities are recorded pretty much permanently for everyone to see (sorry, privacy policies or settings just encourage people to spill the beans). People have lost jobs over stuff they posted on Facebook, by trolling others, and other stuff.
Forget government surveillance making everyone "do good". Simply having the inability to edit your history (because doing so can cause it to go viral) means everyone is forced to "do good" all the time. One fuckup and quite possibly you've screwed yourself.
Even worse, while we hope people would discount transgressions made decades ago, dates are often missing or hard to find. That one time you made a bad decision will haunt you down the road because even though it happened 20 years ago, no one put a date on it so it appears just as recent as it did 20 years ago. No one can tell without the hidden or missing timestamp.
Hell, kids are getting caught up in it too - where once we let kids be kids, they can't be kids if what they did when they're 5 will be recorded and exposed when they're 18.
it's not royalties. Just like how selling in Google Play or Apple App Store doesn't charge 30% royalties. It's a flat charge for selling through the store where the provider (Google, Apple, etc) provide all the necessary payment, storage, download and other facilities for you. Some, like Apple, do way more so at the end of the day you get a cheque and a tax form, while others (Google) make you do most of the hard work.
But they basically provide a bunch of services for that 30% of the purchase price. Being able to track your purchases is fairly important so you can re-download your purchase over and over again (too many digital download sites give you 30 day links and charge you another $10 if you want to extend it to a year), plus all the payment integration.
Steam is the first app store to come to market. They generally charge around market rates.
Source is an incentive to use that app store. To say to use it costs you 30% royalties does a disservice because it isn't accurate - if you want to sell on steam, you still give up that 30% or so.
I've done a bit of system integration with bill acceptor machines, and they should be fine. They're not looking for visual spectrum stuff, or comparing a bitmap, they're checking for a finite number of specific features. Usually, it is 9 or 11 small spots that are each checked for one thing. None of them are the face visuals.
Actually, if they're spocking the old $5 bills, it's probably not going to be accepted anyways as we've moved to the new polymer bills. While for a time the old bill acceptors wouldn't accept the new bills, the new bills have pretty much taken over.
Granted, not being an artist, I have to admit I'd probably keep that $5 bill. Being a paper one it's probably close to being cycled out naturally.
Not really, I think PC is going to be the red-headed stepchild for AAA games for a long time to come - the money just isn't there as much.
Consoles will be where it's at for the time being because of the money aspect - PC ports will continue to generally suck due to poor ROI unless you're an indie developer (where ROI can be measured in publicity generated and not actually dollars).
I mean what's one of the biggest draws of the PC platform? Steam sales! Yet I see new PC games that are just a few months old going for 40+% off easy. Making it almost pointless to buy any game on release day on PC when the next steam sale you can get it at a decent discount. (Heck, I've even saw games that cost $10 that I avoided buying as too expensive - next steam sale and it'll probably be $5).
It's why other than perhaps Call or Duty and similar have delayed PC releases, and often lame PC ports. A game like Call of Duty does it because of marketing - being able to say they sold a billion copies on launch day is worth a lot of money so a token PC port ready for launch day makes sense.
Insightful, really? I think a few mods must've missed a "whoosh" somewhere.
Either that or they haven't seen how modern Haynes books have reinvented themselves given their old business pretty much evaporated once the 90s hit. (Yes, I remember the shelves of Haynes books back in the day and the modern internet has pretty much killed that business.)
In a spacecraft, because it's really difficult to bring it in for service and diagnostics if something goes wrong, you pretty much have to build in all the diagnostics as telemetry. The more information you can gather the better diagnosing you can do - and if you miss one, well, you can't go and probe it later with a multimeter.
So easily measured stuff like voltages and currents of power rails is instrumented because if something goes awry, that's all the data you have. Analog channels are cheap (they're generally multiplexed together) while sending someone to go and measure it for you is pretty expensive, if it's even possible to do.
The power supply inputs (solar panels, RTG, etc) will have current and voltages measured on each input (e.g., each solar array input channel will have voltages and currents monitored, not just the aggregate), the battery current and voltage will be monitored (maybe even on a per-cell basis), the output power rails of the power supply will be monitored, and the input power used by each instrument as well. If an instrument starts drawing significantly more current, you can tell which one it is and see how the rails dip. If the sum of the currents used by the instruments don't match the current the power supply is providing, then you have a short somewhere. If a power rail is off but you're still seeing voltage and even current, you can tell if the switch is bad, or if it's being backfed or a short is carrying power on it. Or if a rail goes out of spec (overvolt or undervolt).
It's unlikely they can turn off a rail and measure it - it's generally not too useful a measurement if you have current and voltage measured every which way.
And yes, there is other telemetry that's possible, including temperature, angle encoders (encoding positions of each servo in an instrument and maybe even the wheels, etc).
Well, refactoring also is the opportunity to apply previous experience to the new code as well.
When refactoring, you can trim out the fat - the original code may have been written to satisfy features X, Y and Z, but as it evolved, Y and Z were never used, yet its code exists and often has to ve special cased to support real use cases of Y1 and Z3 (Z1/Z2 were old requirements that were obsoleted).
Also, decisions may have been made because the system may have added possibilities for X1, X2 and X3 as they were planned into the requirements, but real business operations deemed there was no practical use case in the end.
So refactoring to current spec simply say you need to support X, Y1 and Z3. But experience has taught you that X is unlikely to ever change, Y was revised so maybe make it possible to revise it should it be necessary, and Z needs to be flexible because it's Z3 now, but past experience shows Z4 and Z5 are likely so that code should be made as adaptable as possible. And maybe redesigned since Z needs the flexibility, while X is static and Y changes are limited.
The problem is idiots who don't realize the internet is not a toy. Trolls do it for the lulz and don't realize that no, they're actually creating a very permanent record of their activities.
People are worried about "government surveillance" because it chills online speech. Guess what? The Internet does that independent of government by having basically a permanent record - what you do today can impact you decades in the future.
So I've got little sympathy for those who don't know how to behave online, because it was instilled on me since the beginning the dated phrase "If you don't want it posted on the New York Times, don't post it online". Adjust it as necessary, but the truth is there - what you do online is NOT private, and is eternally recorded and what you did might end up plastered all over the news.
Troll all you want, but realize that your five minutes of fun is recorded and you may find yourself as the top news story worldwide. If you want to offend, go for it knowing it WILL haunt you forever. This isn't a bathroom wall in some gas station - it's a gigantic unforgetting bathroom wall that the world sees.
it's not even that. it's scalability.
It is SUPER easy to put together a one-off or even a 10 or 100-off product.
Scale that up to the thousands and you're looking at a difficulty rating that grows exponentially - what used to work for small batches doesn't anymore when dealing with mass production.
Ordering 1000 parts through Digikey is simple. Ordering 10,000 of same, not so simple because lead times suddenly matter - Digikey may stock the item, but only in small quantities because by the time they sell out, the lead time has expired and they have a new batch.
Not to mention if you really want to order large quantities, you don't go to Digikey, but direct to the manufacturer. You can buy through Digikey and the like, but you're at the mercy of Digikey/Arrow/Newark/etc. Work with the manufacturer and they can quote you better times and availability because they know they can batch in a bigger order. But manufacturers are tricky and most don't want to deal with itty-bitty pseudo-companies. Or they find more lucrative markets (actually happened - the manufacturer of a SAW filter for GPS suddenly got their filter approved for LTE. So the manufacturer basically stopped selling to Digikey in favor of selling direct,
Then there are the companies who just don't want to deal with you, to which you are lucky you can get the part though a reseller.
Add in testing and design for manufacturability which are complicated topics in an of themselves. Testing that used to take half an hour per board needs to be condensed to be more efficient - whether it be custom designed test fixtures, test applications, test harnesses, equipment, etc. And automate, automate, automate so the QA person only has to take their board and stick it in the fixture. If there are dozens of little connectors and other crap, accommodations should be in the fixture to make those connections without human intervention.
And then design for manufacturability - knowing how to build the boards and stick them in cases and minimizing the amount of fiddly things that have to be done so it's more a matter of build the board, stick it in the test fixture, wait for a "PASS" from the automated tester, shove the board in the case that self-aligns and close it up.
Well, considering to compete in a tournament you MUST paint the figures, that already excludes people like me who have NO artistic skill, Or even just fine painting skills. If it was up to me, the thing would be double the size when I'm done because it would be painted over and over and over again. And it'll still look like someone used a paintbrush they bought from Home Depot for painting walls.
I can understand side tournaments where people compete based on their artistic skill that's unrelated to the main event, but tying the two together means someone like me who can't paint worth a damn won't even bother trying to enter.
Technically, you can just call C code straight from ObjC - ObjC code compiles C code just fine (unlike C++, which cannot compile C code).
Whether that code is in the same file or different doesn't matter - ObjC is a superset of C.
Well, $2000 gets you spinning rust 8TB HDDs from the other guys with fancy helium and no SMR right now. You can easily buy 4x 1TB SSDs for that price.
But you can bet even those hard drives will probably drop to $300 range soon enough (probably a couple of years). Moore's law will see the price halve in that time, so you can get an "8TB" SSD (8x 1TB) for $2000 after the spinning rust version dropped to $300-ish.
You do realize Google is the biggest purvey of annoying ads online, right? Popups, popunders, flash ads, etc. Basically all the crap that ABP and others block. Heck, Google through its DoubleClick subsidiary created a nice flash-to-HTML5 converter.
And that Google is probably already spying on you through your apps with the in-app ads (Google owns AdMob, after all).
You have to remember that pretty much every ad on legitimate sites is served through Google. Shady sites like torrents and porn usually are where the other ad networks go. But pull up a site loaded with ads that's legit and pretty much it's all going back to Google.