The only way to hope to make these things available for posterity is to provide source code. Then, even if you have to rewrite it a bit to make it work on current platforms, you'll be able to do that.
Therefore, I believe we should change copyright law for software, to say that for a piece of software to be protected by copyright, a copy of the source code must be provided to the Library of Congress. It can sit in a vault for however long the copyright holds, at which point it's republished under the public domain.
Source code for games aren't very useful - games are some of the worst-programmed pieces of software out there. They were written to get it working quick, not to be maintainable - once it's shipped, that's it, onto the next game. Very few games actually survive longer than release - like say, StarCraft and such which still get patches years later. But those are the exception and not the rule.
If there's any reuse at all, it's probably in the code that's meant to be reused - i.e., the engine. The scaffolding that integrates the engine into the game will probably be thrown away because it's not useful. Heck, the engine might be thrown out and the next game uses a fresh copy.
As for IP protection - software is really special. It doesn't fit in the copyright regime well, nor does it fit in the patent regime. Yet obviously it needs protection. Instead of trying to fit square pegs in round holes (like we do with software), it's time to realize that software IS special and can easily fit in multiple categories.
After all, copyright was traditionally used to protect creative works - works that humans use to communicate with other humans. Patents protect things - works that humans use to produce something. But software can be both - it can be used to create, or assist the creation of creative works, or it can be used to help create things.
And anyone complaining that software shouldn't be patented is missing the point completely - because the line is extremely fine. If I make a machine using gears and other bits (or electronic logic circuits and opamps and such) and it's novel, it's obvious it can be patented. But if I decide to do all the processing in software while using a generic hardware interfaces, then the entire system can't be patented? \ it's time to realize that software IS different, it cannot fit neatly in any existing IP protection category, and it really deserves a different set of rules in order to protect it.
that's the thing... these new codecs, they don't specify exactly how you should encode.
That's the point. Because codec quality is highly dependent on the tables you use, which is the main selling point of the codecs. In other words, the quality of the final output is strictly determined by the quality of the coder.
The decoder rarely adds quality loss itself - it just reconstructs the signal based on what it is given and few decoders actually have a say in quality decisions.
The coder part though is where the magic happens. It's where all the quality decisions are made. And it's how two coders can compete with each other - perhaps one encodes with higher quality, while another encodes faster.
It's why you use say, LAME to encode MP3s over some commercial codec - LAME's encoding model has been refined over the years to be so good it can be indistinguishable. Even x264 has pretty good quality
It's how the coders differentiate themselves on the market. There is no canonical encoding of a signal - there is so much flexibility that the encoder has a bunch of choices it can make that affect the final output.
I would also say their problem has been execution. Tablets and smartphones were done by MS long before Apple got into the markets. I had one of their WinMobile smartphones; it was just buggy and hard to use. Their tablets were little more than more expensive but foldable Windows laptops with touchscreens. It must really chide Ballmer that Apple not only moved into their markets later but overtook them in such a short time.
Basically what happened was Microsoft tried to take the same keyboard/mouse interface of Windows and shove it in a portable handheld form factor. Apple realized that the UIs must be different because interactions are different between a precise keyboard/mouse and an imprecise touchscreen - things that are easy with a mouse can be quite hard with a touchscreen (drags, for example), and vice versa.
Apple could've put OS X's UI on the iPad. They chose not to and went with a different UI because the two are different.
And the other mistake was confusing branding - Windows, Windows, Windows everywhere, people expect you can run Windows apps on handhelds, which you couldn't. Even if it was Windows CE on x86 - you couldn't run your regular full Windows app on that. And Microsoft did it again with Windows RT.
Apple decided to split it - Macintosh, and iPhone/iPad. One runs OSX, the other iPhoneOS/iOS. And Apple did get into a little confusion because the iPod Touch couldn't run iPod games. Enough so they killed iPod games.
Steve Jobs, also, told us what we want. The difference: he was right in what he chose to offer.
No, Jobs wasn't right. He has several notable flops (Mac G4 Cube, anyone?). And he did get lucky - the iPod was sold just at the point where portable music was moving from cassettes and CDs to MP3s. A bit of clever viral marketing in white earbuds and boom.
Heck, iTunes Music Store wasn't something people "didn't know they wanted" - Jobs knew people wanted it, and he worked hard to get it. It was the music industry that was reluctant (where else can you claim the tiny marketshare of the Mac was a huge advantage? Where else would being able to sell to a market of sub-5% of computer users be a huge selling point over making it available to 90+% of Windows users?).
Dell is running a company whose business is in serious decline where no-one really knwos where the market will be in five to ten years time.
Uh, the IT sector has changed drasticly every 5-10 years, so no one knows where anything is headed.
10 years ago, Symbian, PalmOS and Windows Mobile were king (hell, Microsoft released PocketPC 2003, considered to be first "real" version of Windows Mobile competitive with PalmOS). 5 years later, they were in serious decline (iPhone, 2007). And yet, during those times, all three were in serious peaks - customers demanded Windows Mobile, PalmOS devs were cranking out serious apps, S30 and S60 were popular phone OSes.
10 years before that, Windows was maturing, with Windows 3.1 being the in thing. Except for gaming, of course, since they still wanted DOS. Even 5 years later many games were still DOS focused, but were transitioning to Windows. It took a few years after that before gaming under Windows was the norm with Windows 2000 having decent DirectX support, and Windows XP coming out that forced everyone to adapt. (There were still games under that era that refused to run under NT based OSes).
Who knows what happens in 5-10 years? About the only certainty is that there'll still be demand for computers as we know them - either desktops or laptops. A much smaller demand as many uses of them are replaced by smartphones and tablets, but you'll still need them. Though instead of everyone needing their own, it'll probably be reduced to a shared PC.
Heck, 10 years ago people were saying consoles just don't have it to do "serious" gaming.
Apple can do the same thing. In a similar situation they didn't delete any books from users' devices but paid a fine of over $100,000 to the copyright owners. (Some poster here used that in an FSF vs. Apple thread to make claims how evil Apple is, by allowing itself being tricked by criminals, and then facing the cost instead of making the customers pay).
I'd expect them to delete software from my device if they reasonably know that the software will hurt _me_.
Strangely enough, Apple is probably the only company that HASN'T removed content from users. Content has been removed, and if no local copy exists, that content is gone, but if a local copy is available, it still works.
The only known ability is Apple can disable an app through CoreLocation (i.e., the app uses location services), but they haven't demonstrated that ability, either.
Google, Valve (Steam), Amazon, etc., have shown they can remove apps and content from user's devices and computers.
It's strange, really. You'd think Apple would've pulled the trigger by now. Google has, many times.
If they tightened up security better then many people wouldn't need a secondary "fake" account. This is after I pointed out a super easy trick to Facebook that will quickly give you the full friend list of a user, even if that person set visibility of his friend list to 'only me' and even if you're not friends with that person. (Not would they know that you acquired their friend list). Facebook claim that users shouldn't expect your friend list to be private, which makes it all the more misleading to offer restricted visibility of tour friends list. Broken / misleading security is a lot worse than no security, i.e. just telling people everyone can obtain their full friends list. This trick exists to this day, had not been addressed or even acknowledged as valid. So much for helping out Facebook through contacting them.
You're assuming the security is there for the users.
It's not. The whole notion of privacy on Facebook, or Google, or any other social networking site is purely for marketing purposes. Yes, marketing. The people who run these companies aren't stupid. They know that a number of people will refuse to put on personal information if they weren't in someway "protected" or can "control" it.
Of course, it's really like telling a secret - once you tell, it's not a secret anymore, and any promises made by the told party are mere words said to encourage the telling of secrets.
Facebook, Google, and others have the vast databases because they've hoodwinked everyone into believing they have control over the information. Just a few empty words to get people to open up.
The adage still holds true - don't put online what you don't want the whole world to know.
It goes into what could happen (and given current economics, the rest of us are housed in tiny apartments to keep the away from the owners). And yet, it also details an alternative view where automation is NOT shunned, but instead used to fulfill what people originally dreamed them to do - do all the chores while the humans relax, or speculate, or invent, or do other things.
Quite an informative read if you have a couple of hours.
Clearly the country doesnt need more STEM graduates, or they'd be paid better. Then no-one would have to pay them to study the subject, because they'd know it would provide them a good income for life.
The real problem is there is no skills shortage. The shortage is artificial - the jobs are written such as to take advantage of foreign workers and not hire many of the plentiful in-country ones.
H1Bs, "Temporary" Foreign Workers, etc., there's nothing wrong with them - they're good for the country. However, it's when business managers figure they can use it to pay artificially low wages that's the real problem. And many companies have figured out the system to not hire the recent graduate but to hire a foreign worker instead .
That, coupled with the unwillingness to invest in employees lead to the current situation.
Canada had, until last year allowed TFWs to work at up to 15% below market rate. When it was revealed that many companies were abusing this, it was the first provision to go - market rate or bust. Of course, they are all bitching and moaning about how they can't find workers and what not.
In fact, I would think that if you want to hire abroad, if they're so good at their job that you must have them, go ahead. Feel free to pay 15% above market plus all expenses (housing, food, etc). There are great foreign workers out there, and hiring for external expertise is a great thing to do. And if the job is so specialized that you cannot find anyone local, well, obviously you have to pay up for it anyways.
Personally, my phone lasts just long enough to get me through a day, and I hate it. A watch that only lasts a day is just useless. Not to mention that there's plenty of situations where that watch on my wrist wouldn't be getting direct sunlight, or even light of any kind. Any time I'm wearing a jacket outside, the thing would get no light. So basically from September to April. Solar power is only good for the "Designed by Apple in California" crowd, but it fails for a lot of other people, similar to touch screens that don't work with gloves.
For me, a watch is something I like to just wear all the time. I don't want to take it off at night to recharge it, I want to be able to wear it swimming. Personally, I think it would be nice if it had a little battery that you could pop in and out. Have a couple batteries and just swap the battery every few days. But that would probably go against Apple's design philosphy, as well as make it quite a bit more difficult to waterproof.
You know, the Apple rumors have said that unless it gets a week's worth of battery life, the watch is a no-go. Supposedly it already gets 2-3 days of life, but that's insufficient.
Which makes sense - a day is fairly useless because there may be times you're away from the charger. So Apple's probably pursuing other ways of extending battery life, including self-generation.
If Apple finds 2-3 days not cutting it, well. And that's probably using Bluetooth LE as well.
As for a changeable battery - the reason no smartwatch has it is because you'd be changing it weekly at the longest.
Waterproof is easy - we've had waterproof watches for years. Of course, the batteries also last anywhere from 5-10 years continuous.
But a changeable battery is a non-starter if it only lasts a week tops. Maybe two if Apple's demands for a week off rechargeable batteries. That's a super epic fail for any watch when you have to pay $5+ a week on batteries. (Plus an environmental nightmare).
I would count that under "Home economics" - how to do a budget, how to save, how to manage money, how to do your taxes (even if you still can't do them, at least you'll have the tools and know what to expect and need).
Just like I would count "basic mathematics" as a skill that is reinforced through Home Ec. as well. If there's anything people need to do more of is to realize when things are a deal, how to adjust recipes and all that, which can be done using just basic arithmetic. With emphasis on how to do rough estimates on taxes and such mentally so you're not constantly reaching for the calculator.
Same reason why you get more bang for your buck building your own computer. You get more bang for your buck by removing those very expensive middle men and old corrupt men (Senators) from the equation.
Actually, building your own computer isn't the cheapest way anymore. The reason is that you ignore economies of scale - Dell buying up videocards by the 1000s gets a huge discount on them versus you having to buy them through a retailer with many middlemen of markup and lower volume. Likewise, Dell can buy processors by the millions for far less than what you'll ever pay (the numbers that every IC manufacturer quotes on prices is 1000-piece quantities, and they're even lower if you want 10,000, 100,000 or 1,000,000 or more). But buy one, and what really happens is someone along the line buys 1000 of them at the price, breaks them into 1000 separate units and sells them, incurring risk, tying up money, and having to deal with individual orders, so they're going to pass those costs onto the next guy in line.
(In fact, dealing with small orders costs more money than dealing with a customer that wants something in the thousands or millions).
You tella car company that you're going to pay them a half million dollars for a special custom car. You sign the contract, which requires that you pay them $500000 and that they give you a car when it's completed. Halfway through the process you suddenly decide that you don't want the car after all.
Well, tough. You already signed the contract and they're already building the car. You have no choice but to pay for a car that you aren't going to use.
That's what goes on in vases like this. The government signed the contract saying that they'll pay. They can't renege on the deal just because they decided they didn't want what they were paying for any more, so instead they have to pay for it and let it gather dust once they have it. I can guarantee that if you or I signed a contract that said we'd pay for something we wouldn't be able to get out of it just because we no longer wanted what we were paying for.
Actually, most, if not all, contracts contain provisions for just that case - if either party wishes to back out before completion, there are termination clauses.
Sure there are punitive punishments in there, but termination clauses are in there because things happen and sometimes you need a way out. This applies to both parties - either may cancel at any time provided enough notice and the termination fee is paid to the other party.
If the supplier terminates, it can be they must return all monies paid since the beginning of the contract. If it's the customer, it can be payment for the current milestone in progress AND the next milestone.
Or, it can be like cellphone contracts - you pay a early termination fee plus whatever subsidy is left on your phone. If the carrier wishes to terminate, they cut you loose free and clear.
Breaking contracts is bad, but sometimes a necessity because of unforeseen events. It's why termination clauses exist - because it's not something you want to do willy-nilly, but it's also something you don't want to leave the other end hanging. So they specify any monetary damages that have to be paid, how much notice, etc.
I don't get it. Same thing here in Canada, people complain they don't see the same ads as shown in the US. I hate commercials, I change the channel or pick up my phone when the commercials come on. It blows my mind that people get excited about them.
That's because most ads are dull and boring and played to saturation.
But when ads cost $4M per 30 second slot, it tends to bring out the most creative because it's costing a LOT of money to run the ad, so using it to run a plain jane ad is stupid because you can buy timeslots for 1/40th the price every other day of the week.
So some of the best ads you see will be on during the superbowl, and that's it very few are run again, unless they're up for awards (in which case they have to run on regular TV).
Plus, it's all about ratings. The C3 numbers for the superbowl are huge (Commercial+3), which is how ad prices are set. Neilsen sells those numbers so stations can set ad rates. The "public" numbers of L, L+SD, and L+7 are "given away" to show how popular a show is. The difference is that the C numbers subtract out the non-commercial content from the ratings (i.e., the programming).
Sports is one of the highest rated shows on TV, and outside of sports, only TBBT really scores anything significant, but well short of sports. The superbowl pretty much feeds the idea - the sport brings in the audience which raises rates, the raised rates bring up the ante on what ads can do because no one wants to epend millions running the same old ad you can see everywhere else, so they run special ads. Which attracts more audience because the ads are new, novel and often only run that time.
In fact, TV stations say they care about TV show piracy, but they really don't. Because the C3 numbers they buy don't include the programming. All it means is the ratings go down, the show gets less money and it's either make do or get cancelled.
Or why they're more than happy to stream TV because the ads are unskippable.
There was a time, before we all lost our minds to Pong, Asteroids and Zelda (yes, I go way back) where we also spent time taking our world apart and figuring out how to make it better.
Oona rocks! She should be rewarded somehow.
BTW - the end of the article finally explains how a megahertz signal found its way onto the audio track.
Too bad it's not completely original.
Back in the 80s, Star Trek IV was released. In it, a 3 second burst is heard that sounded a lot like HF packet. After much effort (this was the 80's, 90's, remember), and much filtering and adjustments (the noise was captured for effects purposes and processed), it was actually decoded as a real HF packet signal (ham radio). It required a Cray-2 to help with signal processing.
It sort of depends on the value of your secrets. People are reasonably certain that if you wipe random data over a disk 32 times that it can never be recovered, reasonably certain, with current technology anyway, well with the current technology we know about anyway. Now you have to ensure of course that it's been done properly and some dimwit hasn't just cleared a partition instead of the whole volume, and of course when you start dealing with SSD's or more expensive drives with smarter controllers your ability to actually do a write to every sector to achieve this goal is somewhat questionable, and of course doing a 32 times rewrite on a large drive is going to take a few days to actually finish, days you're paying someone you trust with that data to sit and watch it, well presumably anyway.
On the other hand, physically destroying the disc is much faster and much more effective, depending on what the company charges, it might actually even be cheaper since you could actually do it to a whole bunch of hard drives at once.
You don't even need to do 32 wipes - a single pass of zeros is enough on a modern drive to render it impossible to retrieve. Even the big data recovery companies note that.
But it takes HOURS to do a wipe - easily 2-3 hours per drive.
You can physically destroy drives in a few seconds. Even one drive at a time, the time it takes to wipe one drive you can do over 1000 drives. And this is a press style which simply push the platters from the top through the bottom chassis.
Only SSDs can be erased faster - which work by simply regenerating the encryption key which destroys the FTL tables (rendering the sector maps useless) and the data irretrieveable.
HDTV's are garbage quality compared to what was out 10 years ago, yes UTTER garbage. They used to be repairable by swapping out separate boards, today they are throw-away items because they are made as cheap as possible. Electronics in general are utter crap quality compared to 10-20 years ago. THAT is why it's cheaper.
Of course, 10 years ago, I paid $8000 for an open-box Panasonic HDTV that was 720p. 42".
Today, I can buy a 42" HDTV for under $1000. The quality may be lesser, but for 1/8th the price, I get 1080p resolution, HDMI ports (they weren't invented yet), and a TV set that's a third of the weight, a third of the power consumption, and all around better.
Sure, it may be lesser quality, and everything is built down to a price, but it's so much more affordable now. Back when the Xbox360 was the hot item, SDTVs were still the rage and there were more than a few complaints that some games were unplayable because they required 720p to see text.
A year later, the PS3 came out, and most families had SDTVs. If you're lucky, there was a HDTV people gamed on. The Wii was released, with the expectation that most Wiis will be hooked to a SDTV set because very few people owned HDTVs, and fewer still let kids have an HDTV.
These days, HDTVs are everywhere, and you can pretty much assume everyone has an HDTV, most likely, multiple HDTVs.
Quality may have gone down, but accessibility has gone up. And that's the way technology moves. You want to argue about how digital cameras, used to cost $1000 for VGA snapshots, now can be had for $100 and still get you a better image than those early dinosaurs (nevermind more storage and features)? Or how a $10,000 IBM PC back in 1981 is still better than a decent $1000 laptop from today?
You just have to stop flying. Yeah, yeah, some people HAVE to, but a huge part of it is discretionary. Vacations, places you could drive to, etc.
There is actually an alternative to commercial flight - general aviation. General aviation is fairly big - it's basically all non-scheduled flight. And no, you don't have to be a super-rich CEO - because you'll probably be flying in a single engine prop plane, not a small business jet.
A lot of places are closer to a general aviation airport than the commercial airport (in fact, many people probably don't realize that there's an airport close by), and for many short flights, it's quicker to preflight and hop on the plane than to go to the airport, get through security, etc. Most security is basically because the people *know* you and you're carrying people you trust.
No TSA, no lineups. Just go to the counter, say hello, plan your flight while they pull your plane from the hangar, and off you go.
And if you decide you need to change your plans, well, no customer service - you just call Flight Service, notify them, and then do it. (This includes bathroom stops).
Electric cars could eliminate noise pollution. What did our bright lawmaker mavens did? Legislate it so electric cars must play artificial noise, because someone might be jaywalking with a nose in their smartphone.
Well, electric cars are silent under 30kph or so. Above that, the dominant noise cars make is road noise caused by the tires rolling on asphalt.
Though, it's not even necessarily people paying attention - in a parking lot, the sound of starting engines usually indicates a car is coming out (you could try to look for lights, but a bunch of people just waiting to pick up people often leave their lights on). An electric, or even a hybrid doesn't give an obvious notification that the driver is about to pull out so if you happen to be walking and in the blind spot, well, that can be s surprise.
And the blind spots created when a large vehicle shadows a small hybrid or electric, well...
Of course, the option is to walk in the middle of the road (give you more time to react), but that has other issues, like holding cars up.
I felt like our initial visit was almost like getting cased by a grifter; like they wanted to see how much I was willing to shell out. They started me out with a sample of a deworming med then asked for a stool sample from the pup which of course showed some parasite that had to be treated with another med. So, I've had her 2 weeks and besides vaccinations she's already been exposed to 2 medications. And, each visit has been a setup for another visit in the weeks to come. I just feel like i'm getting sucked into a merry-go-round of perpetual medication and unnecessary care. But, I'm not a professional so I don't have much ability to make judgements.
Don't be surprised if your vet is taking you for a ride.
First off - if they say you need medications, ask for a prescription. Then go to your local pharmacy to get it filled - the drugs are exactly the same. You'd think they'd be cheaper as animal ones get marked "Not for human consumption", but no. Your pharmacy has the same medications at often reduced prices compared to the vet.
And there are tons of meds and treatments that are completely unnecessary. CBC Marketplace did an investigation and found many areas where one could save some money.
In fact, don't be surprised at all if your vet refuses to write an Rx for you - selling meds is one of their big money makers.
Does it? To whom? No one over the age of 15 is going to buy a game like that for themselves , its just the kids market and in 2014 thats quite small for consoles. The adults game market is far larger.
And the kid market is huge - it's just that adults are often instead of getting their kids 3DSes and such, just handing over their phones and running into all sorts of in-app purchase, content and other issues. Stuff that Nintendo is more traditionally strong about protecting.
Hell, the 3DS is basically keeping Nintendo afloat - it's a license to print money. It had a lacklustre launch, but after that, it's really taken off since then.
That's because modern ICE cars have been under continuous development for over a century. Electric cars had a few early models, then languished undeveloped for a hundred years, before we recently started up development of them again.
The early cars were practically all electric or steam driven vehicles - ICE didn't come around until later.
I think it was Ford that actually got the whole gas infrastructure in place then ICE really took off and everyone abandoned electric and steam. Porsche himself noted that ICE was a novelty which is why his first car was electric.
Another domain of no interest to visitors, only scientists (and hobbyists, probably): 52k visits, 33% Chrome, 33% Firefox, 24% IE, 7% Safari, 2% Opera(!), 1% Android 85% Windows, 10% Mac, 2% iOS, 1% Linux (the site isn't very nice on a mobile, we don't think many people want to look at tables of data on a tiny screen).
The interesting thing is, or rather, something wrong, is that Android's marketshare is around 80% of smart devices, iOS around 20%. And yet in all your stats, iOS still comes out ahead of Android.
Even Ars Technica, a site for technical enthusiasts still records just over 50% IE usage. And on mobile, iOS takes 50% of the traffic, while Android is around 35% (Android+Chrome).
So the question is - why is iOS so over-represented? We know there are at least 4 times as many Android devices out there.
Or maybe, Android could deny approval of applications that try to seek location data for applications that have no location based function. Data mongering fuckers.
Android doesn't already have this? I mean, iOS has been asking about location usage for ages, and has an option to disable location services for individual apps for a while now. (An interesting side effect is that access to stored photos ALSO brings up the location services question as photos may have geotags in them - so apps can't get around it by snapping photos and reading out the geotag information).
And anyhow, you can always turn off location services on Android to keep apps from getting your location information.
OTOH, one has to consider that to Google, Android is really there to prevent Apple from locking Google out of mobile advertising. It's why Google acquired Android and why they made it open-source. Google knows mobiles would be a big part of it (and mobile traffic is roughly 2:1 iOS:Android), and that Apple could easily strangle Google in this field, hence, Android.
So perhaps it's all by design - Google's not wanting to give up mobile advertising. Sure they'll probably toss a bone or two - just enough to hobble mobile advertising competitors, but not Google's own advertising networks...
As the first response points out, most modern Linux installs will run Steam games fine. There's a Steam client for Linux in addition to the full SteamOS. SteamOS has been terrific in that it's driving heaving improvement to Linux video drivers, particularly AMD's.
One thing I wonder though - how is VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat) done?
I mean, in Linux, it's pretty trivial to create a kernel module to detect VAC, then isolate it from various "cheat" tools - e.g., bots that intercept the network (trivially done on Linux below the application), illegitimate video drivers that render all textures with a variable transparency, etc.
On Windows it's hard because you need to write the equivalent of a rootkit and have to deal with a lot of hooking and stuff. But on Linux, it's basically a simple "make; make install" to compile the necessary kernel modules and userspace code to neuter VAC to the point where it only responds "all is OK, no cheating here!'.
Sure, it's also the equivalent of a Linux rootkit, but considering the kernel is under your control, easier to write and distribute.
Yes, but all of those patents to actually make mobile phones work are so valuable to the industry that they were made FRAND and hence useless as defense or offense. In various forms, it is less useful to patent the underlying technology than stuff associated with it; others will win court cases to make you license the underlying technology at little cost, but they can't do that with auxiliary patents.
Yes, we literally live in a world so fucked up that the patent on god-damn cell phone technology is worth thousands of times less than a patent on how to autocomplete a text box a special way or a patent on searching multiple sources at the same time (both patents that Apple leveraged against the Android ecosystem).
Except that Motorola agreed to make those patents available under FRAND. There was no coercion, no force, nothing. It was voluntarily done by Motorola.
You see, when a standards body (any standards body - could be IEEE making up the next 802 spec, MPEG making the next video codec, ETSI coming up with next-gen celluar, etc) gets together, what happens is a great patent shuffle. All the participants are rushing in trying to influence the standard to it incorporates their patent. Of course, if the standard does, said patent must be licensed under FRAND terms, otherwise the standard will be troublesome to implement. Everyone implementing the standard will have to pay the same fee as everyone else implementing the standard.
Of course, a company is free to NOT participate in a standards process in which case their patent will probably not be in the standard.
So it's a choice - you can license your patent under FRAND terms and get paid a little bit by everyone, or you can implement your product and then use it to force others to license it for a lot more. Small fish in big pool, or lone big fish in small pool.
Of course, the courts have also ruled that you can't use FRAND patents as leverage - you're supposed to license it to everyone and anyone at the same rate everyone else pays.
So take away the Apple hate and Samsung love, and look a bit more objectively. Motorola agreed to the terms when they got their patents into the spec. Apple legitimately questioned whether it was paying the same rate as everyone else during negotiations. Samsung blatantly copied, then un-implemented certain features (in fact, given Samsung is not infringing on Apple's patents now indicates that it was never a necessary patent to begin with).
License negotiations can be extremely messy - it's possible Apple may force Motorola and everyone else to open their books to see what everyone else is paying. (Samsung did, when they asked to see the HTC agreement).
Of course, one wonders why the ETSI doesn't just go the way of MPEG and many other groups and just have a licensing board (e.g., the MPEG-LA) who simply license it all for you for one fee that everyone pays. Eliminates all sorts of nastiness, everyone pays the same rates, and the split is argued well beforehand.
Hell, the whole business is so messy, when Apple tried to get their patent in the FRAND pool, it became a "us vs. them" situation. All the carriers wanted the patent in. All the handheld makers wanted it out. Because naturally, they didn't want to pay Apple or have it influence negotiations.
Of course, one should also see that standards are made not based on technical superiority, but who has the most political power - who can get their patents in, who can kick the new guy to the curb and exclude their patents, who can scratch each other's back, etc.
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Source code for games aren't very useful - games are some of the worst-programmed pieces of software out there. They were written to get it working quick, not to be maintainable - once it's shipped, that's it, onto the next game. Very few games actually survive longer than release - like say, StarCraft and such which still get patches years later. But those are the exception and not the rule.
If there's any reuse at all, it's probably in the code that's meant to be reused - i.e., the engine. The scaffolding that integrates the engine into the game will probably be thrown away because it's not useful. Heck, the engine might be thrown out and the next game uses a fresh copy.
As for IP protection - software is really special. It doesn't fit in the copyright regime well, nor does it fit in the patent regime. Yet obviously it needs protection. Instead of trying to fit square pegs in round holes (like we do with software), it's time to realize that software IS special and can easily fit in multiple categories.
After all, copyright was traditionally used to protect creative works - works that humans use to communicate with other humans. Patents protect things - works that humans use to produce something. But software can be both - it can be used to create, or assist the creation of creative works, or it can be used to help create things.
And anyone complaining that software shouldn't be patented is missing the point completely - because the line is extremely fine. If I make a machine using gears and other bits (or electronic logic circuits and opamps and such) and it's novel, it's obvious it can be patented. But if I decide to do all the processing in software while using a generic hardware interfaces, then the entire system can't be patented?
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it's time to realize that software IS different, it cannot fit neatly in any existing IP protection category, and it really deserves a different set of rules in order to protect it.
That's the point. Because codec quality is highly dependent on the tables you use, which is the main selling point of the codecs. In other words, the quality of the final output is strictly determined by the quality of the coder.
The decoder rarely adds quality loss itself - it just reconstructs the signal based on what it is given and few decoders actually have a say in quality decisions.
The coder part though is where the magic happens. It's where all the quality decisions are made. And it's how two coders can compete with each other - perhaps one encodes with higher quality, while another encodes faster.
It's why you use say, LAME to encode MP3s over some commercial codec - LAME's encoding model has been refined over the years to be so good it can be indistinguishable. Even x264 has pretty good quality
It's how the coders differentiate themselves on the market. There is no canonical encoding of a signal - there is so much flexibility that the encoder has a bunch of choices it can make that affect the final output.
Basically what happened was Microsoft tried to take the same keyboard/mouse interface of Windows and shove it in a portable handheld form factor. Apple realized that the UIs must be different because interactions are different between a precise keyboard/mouse and an imprecise touchscreen - things that are easy with a mouse can be quite hard with a touchscreen (drags, for example), and vice versa.
Apple could've put OS X's UI on the iPad. They chose not to and went with a different UI because the two are different.
And the other mistake was confusing branding - Windows, Windows, Windows everywhere, people expect you can run Windows apps on handhelds, which you couldn't. Even if it was Windows CE on x86 - you couldn't run your regular full Windows app on that. And Microsoft did it again with Windows RT.
Apple decided to split it - Macintosh, and iPhone/iPad. One runs OSX, the other iPhoneOS/iOS. And Apple did get into a little confusion because the iPod Touch couldn't run iPod games. Enough so they killed iPod games.
No, Jobs wasn't right. He has several notable flops (Mac G4 Cube, anyone?). And he did get lucky - the iPod was sold just at the point where portable music was moving from cassettes and CDs to MP3s. A bit of clever viral marketing in white earbuds and boom.
Heck, iTunes Music Store wasn't something people "didn't know they wanted" - Jobs knew people wanted it, and he worked hard to get it. It was the music industry that was reluctant (where else can you claim the tiny marketshare of the Mac was a huge advantage? Where else would being able to sell to a market of sub-5% of computer users be a huge selling point over making it available to 90+% of Windows users?).
Jobs was right in people wanted designed computers rather than beige boxes, hence the fruity Bondi-blue iMac that was a hit. It was simple (one box!), looked different (less ugly!) and artsy enough for people to make it fit in their living room décor.
Uh, the IT sector has changed drasticly every 5-10 years, so no one knows where anything is headed.
10 years ago, Symbian, PalmOS and Windows Mobile were king (hell, Microsoft released PocketPC 2003, considered to be first "real" version of Windows Mobile competitive with PalmOS). 5 years later, they were in serious decline (iPhone, 2007). And yet, during those times, all three were in serious peaks - customers demanded Windows Mobile, PalmOS devs were cranking out serious apps, S30 and S60 were popular phone OSes.
10 years before that, Windows was maturing, with Windows 3.1 being the in thing. Except for gaming, of course, since they still wanted DOS. Even 5 years later many games were still DOS focused, but were transitioning to Windows. It took a few years after that before gaming under Windows was the norm with Windows 2000 having decent DirectX support, and Windows XP coming out that forced everyone to adapt. (There were still games under that era that refused to run under NT based OSes).
Who knows what happens in 5-10 years? About the only certainty is that there'll still be demand for computers as we know them - either desktops or laptops. A much smaller demand as many uses of them are replaced by smartphones and tablets, but you'll still need them. Though instead of everyone needing their own, it'll probably be reduced to a shared PC.
Heck, 10 years ago people were saying consoles just don't have it to do "serious" gaming.
Strangely enough, Apple is probably the only company that HASN'T removed content from users. Content has been removed, and if no local copy exists, that content is gone, but if a local copy is available, it still works.
The only known ability is Apple can disable an app through CoreLocation (i.e., the app uses location services), but they haven't demonstrated that ability, either.
Google, Valve (Steam), Amazon, etc., have shown they can remove apps and content from user's devices and computers.
It's strange, really. You'd think Apple would've pulled the trigger by now. Google has, many times.
You're assuming the security is there for the users.
It's not. The whole notion of privacy on Facebook, or Google, or any other social networking site is purely for marketing purposes. Yes, marketing. The people who run these companies aren't stupid. They know that a number of people will refuse to put on personal information if they weren't in someway "protected" or can "control" it.
Of course, it's really like telling a secret - once you tell, it's not a secret anymore, and any promises made by the told party are mere words said to encourage the telling of secrets.
Facebook, Google, and others have the vast databases because they've hoodwinked everyone into believing they have control over the information. Just a few empty words to get people to open up.
The adage still holds true - don't put online what you don't want the whole world to know.
It seems like more people should take a read of Marshall Brain's Manna, a book about this very thing. (Online version).
It goes into what could happen (and given current economics, the rest of us are housed in tiny apartments to keep the away from the owners). And yet, it also details an alternative view where automation is NOT shunned, but instead used to fulfill what people originally dreamed them to do - do all the chores while the humans relax, or speculate, or invent, or do other things.
Quite an informative read if you have a couple of hours.
The real problem is there is no skills shortage. The shortage is artificial - the jobs are written such as to take advantage of foreign workers and not hire many of the plentiful in-country ones.
H1Bs, "Temporary" Foreign Workers, etc., there's nothing wrong with them - they're good for the country. However, it's when business managers figure they can use it to pay artificially low wages that's the real problem. And many companies have figured out the system to not hire the recent graduate but to hire a foreign worker instead .
That, coupled with the unwillingness to invest in employees lead to the current situation.
Canada had, until last year allowed TFWs to work at up to 15% below market rate. When it was revealed that many companies were abusing this, it was the first provision to go - market rate or bust. Of course, they are all bitching and moaning about how they can't find workers and what not.
In fact, I would think that if you want to hire abroad, if they're so good at their job that you must have them, go ahead. Feel free to pay 15% above market plus all expenses (housing, food, etc). There are great foreign workers out there, and hiring for external expertise is a great thing to do. And if the job is so specialized that you cannot find anyone local, well, obviously you have to pay up for it anyways.
You know, the Apple rumors have said that unless it gets a week's worth of battery life, the watch is a no-go. Supposedly it already gets 2-3 days of life, but that's insufficient.
Which makes sense - a day is fairly useless because there may be times you're away from the charger. So Apple's probably pursuing other ways of extending battery life, including self-generation.
If Apple finds 2-3 days not cutting it, well. And that's probably using Bluetooth LE as well.
As for a changeable battery - the reason no smartwatch has it is because you'd be changing it weekly at the longest.
Waterproof is easy - we've had waterproof watches for years. Of course, the batteries also last anywhere from 5-10 years continuous.
But a changeable battery is a non-starter if it only lasts a week tops. Maybe two if Apple's demands for a week off rechargeable batteries. That's a super epic fail for any watch when you have to pay $5+ a week on batteries. (Plus an environmental nightmare).
I would count that under "Home economics" - how to do a budget, how to save, how to manage money, how to do your taxes (even if you still can't do them, at least you'll have the tools and know what to expect and need).
Just like I would count "basic mathematics" as a skill that is reinforced through Home Ec. as well. If there's anything people need to do more of is to realize when things are a deal, how to adjust recipes and all that, which can be done using just basic arithmetic. With emphasis on how to do rough estimates on taxes and such mentally so you're not constantly reaching for the calculator.
Actually, building your own computer isn't the cheapest way anymore. The reason is that you ignore economies of scale - Dell buying up videocards by the 1000s gets a huge discount on them versus you having to buy them through a retailer with many middlemen of markup and lower volume. Likewise, Dell can buy processors by the millions for far less than what you'll ever pay (the numbers that every IC manufacturer quotes on prices is 1000-piece quantities, and they're even lower if you want 10,000, 100,000 or 1,000,000 or more). But buy one, and what really happens is someone along the line buys 1000 of them at the price, breaks them into 1000 separate units and sells them, incurring risk, tying up money, and having to deal with individual orders, so they're going to pass those costs onto the next guy in line.
(In fact, dealing with small orders costs more money than dealing with a customer that wants something in the thousands or millions).
Actually, most, if not all, contracts contain provisions for just that case - if either party wishes to back out before completion, there are termination clauses.
Sure there are punitive punishments in there, but termination clauses are in there because things happen and sometimes you need a way out. This applies to both parties - either may cancel at any time provided enough notice and the termination fee is paid to the other party.
If the supplier terminates, it can be they must return all monies paid since the beginning of the contract. If it's the customer, it can be payment for the current milestone in progress AND the next milestone.
Or, it can be like cellphone contracts - you pay a early termination fee plus whatever subsidy is left on your phone. If the carrier wishes to terminate, they cut you loose free and clear.
Breaking contracts is bad, but sometimes a necessity because of unforeseen events. It's why termination clauses exist - because it's not something you want to do willy-nilly, but it's also something you don't want to leave the other end hanging. So they specify any monetary damages that have to be paid, how much notice, etc.
That's because most ads are dull and boring and played to saturation.
But when ads cost $4M per 30 second slot, it tends to bring out the most creative because it's costing a LOT of money to run the ad, so using it to run a plain jane ad is stupid because you can buy timeslots for 1/40th the price every other day of the week.
So some of the best ads you see will be on during the superbowl, and that's it very few are run again, unless they're up for awards (in which case they have to run on regular TV).
Plus, it's all about ratings. The C3 numbers for the superbowl are huge (Commercial+3), which is how ad prices are set. Neilsen sells those numbers so stations can set ad rates. The "public" numbers of L, L+SD, and L+7 are "given away" to show how popular a show is. The difference is that the C numbers subtract out the non-commercial content from the ratings (i.e., the programming).
Sports is one of the highest rated shows on TV, and outside of sports, only TBBT really scores anything significant, but well short of sports. The superbowl pretty much feeds the idea - the sport brings in the audience which raises rates, the raised rates bring up the ante on what ads can do because no one wants to epend millions running the same old ad you can see everywhere else, so they run special ads. Which attracts more audience because the ads are new, novel and often only run that time.
In fact, TV stations say they care about TV show piracy, but they really don't. Because the C3 numbers they buy don't include the programming. All it means is the ratings go down, the show gets less money and it's either make do or get cancelled.
Or why they're more than happy to stream TV because the ads are unskippable.
Too bad it's not completely original.
Back in the 80s, Star Trek IV was released. In it, a 3 second burst is heard that sounded a lot like HF packet. After much effort (this was the 80's, 90's, remember), and much filtering and adjustments (the noise was captured for effects purposes and processed), it was actually decoded as a real HF packet signal (ham radio). It required a Cray-2 to help with signal processing.
You don't even need to do 32 wipes - a single pass of zeros is enough on a modern drive to render it impossible to retrieve. Even the big data recovery companies note that.
But it takes HOURS to do a wipe - easily 2-3 hours per drive.
You can physically destroy drives in a few seconds. Even one drive at a time, the time it takes to wipe one drive you can do over 1000 drives. And this is a press style which simply push the platters from the top through the bottom chassis.
Only SSDs can be erased faster - which work by simply regenerating the encryption key which destroys the FTL tables (rendering the sector maps useless) and the data irretrieveable.
Of course, 10 years ago, I paid $8000 for an open-box Panasonic HDTV that was 720p. 42".
Today, I can buy a 42" HDTV for under $1000. The quality may be lesser, but for 1/8th the price, I get 1080p resolution, HDMI ports (they weren't invented yet), and a TV set that's a third of the weight, a third of the power consumption, and all around better.
Sure, it may be lesser quality, and everything is built down to a price, but it's so much more affordable now. Back when the Xbox360 was the hot item, SDTVs were still the rage and there were more than a few complaints that some games were unplayable because they required 720p to see text.
A year later, the PS3 came out, and most families had SDTVs. If you're lucky, there was a HDTV people gamed on. The Wii was released, with the expectation that most Wiis will be hooked to a SDTV set because very few people owned HDTVs, and fewer still let kids have an HDTV.
These days, HDTVs are everywhere, and you can pretty much assume everyone has an HDTV, most likely, multiple HDTVs.
Quality may have gone down, but accessibility has gone up. And that's the way technology moves. You want to argue about how digital cameras, used to cost $1000 for VGA snapshots, now can be had for $100 and still get you a better image than those early dinosaurs (nevermind more storage and features)? Or how a $10,000 IBM PC back in 1981 is still better than a decent $1000 laptop from today?
There is actually an alternative to commercial flight - general aviation. General aviation is fairly big - it's basically all non-scheduled flight. And no, you don't have to be a super-rich CEO - because you'll probably be flying in a single engine prop plane, not a small business jet.
A lot of places are closer to a general aviation airport than the commercial airport (in fact, many people probably don't realize that there's an airport close by), and for many short flights, it's quicker to preflight and hop on the plane than to go to the airport, get through security, etc. Most security is basically because the people *know* you and you're carrying people you trust.
No TSA, no lineups. Just go to the counter, say hello, plan your flight while they pull your plane from the hangar, and off you go.
And if you decide you need to change your plans, well, no customer service - you just call Flight Service, notify them, and then do it. (This includes bathroom stops).
Well, electric cars are silent under 30kph or so. Above that, the dominant noise cars make is road noise caused by the tires rolling on asphalt.
Though, it's not even necessarily people paying attention - in a parking lot, the sound of starting engines usually indicates a car is coming out (you could try to look for lights, but a bunch of people just waiting to pick up people often leave their lights on). An electric, or even a hybrid doesn't give an obvious notification that the driver is about to pull out so if you happen to be walking and in the blind spot, well, that can be s surprise.
And the blind spots created when a large vehicle shadows a small hybrid or electric, well...
Of course, the option is to walk in the middle of the road (give you more time to react), but that has other issues, like holding cars up.
Don't be surprised if your vet is taking you for a ride.
First off - if they say you need medications, ask for a prescription. Then go to your local pharmacy to get it filled - the drugs are exactly the same. You'd think they'd be cheaper as animal ones get marked "Not for human consumption", but no. Your pharmacy has the same medications at often reduced prices compared to the vet.
And there are tons of meds and treatments that are completely unnecessary. CBC Marketplace did an investigation and found many areas where one could save some money.
In fact, don't be surprised at all if your vet refuses to write an Rx for you - selling meds is one of their big money makers.
Pokémon is played by a lot of people over 15. I think half the people I see at the local pokemon card tournaments are adults.
And the kid market is huge - it's just that adults are often instead of getting their kids 3DSes and such, just handing over their phones and running into all sorts of in-app purchase, content and other issues. Stuff that Nintendo is more traditionally strong about protecting.
Hell, the 3DS is basically keeping Nintendo afloat - it's a license to print money. It had a lacklustre launch, but after that, it's really taken off since then.
The early cars were practically all electric or steam driven vehicles - ICE didn't come around until later.
I think it was Ford that actually got the whole gas infrastructure in place then ICE really took off and everyone abandoned electric and steam. Porsche himself noted that ICE was a novelty which is why his first car was electric.
The interesting thing is, or rather, something wrong, is that Android's marketshare is around 80% of smart devices, iOS around 20%. And yet in all your stats, iOS still comes out ahead of Android.
Even Ars Technica, a site for technical enthusiasts still records just over 50% IE usage. And on mobile, iOS takes 50% of the traffic, while Android is around 35% (Android+Chrome).
So the question is - why is iOS so over-represented? We know there are at least 4 times as many Android devices out there.
Android doesn't already have this? I mean, iOS has been asking about location usage for ages, and has an option to disable location services for individual apps for a while now. (An interesting side effect is that access to stored photos ALSO brings up the location services question as photos may have geotags in them - so apps can't get around it by snapping photos and reading out the geotag information).
And anyhow, you can always turn off location services on Android to keep apps from getting your location information.
OTOH, one has to consider that to Google, Android is really there to prevent Apple from locking Google out of mobile advertising. It's why Google acquired Android and why they made it open-source. Google knows mobiles would be a big part of it (and mobile traffic is roughly 2:1 iOS:Android), and that Apple could easily strangle Google in this field, hence, Android.
So perhaps it's all by design - Google's not wanting to give up mobile advertising. Sure they'll probably toss a bone or two - just enough to hobble mobile advertising competitors, but not Google's own advertising networks...
One thing I wonder though - how is VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat) done?
I mean, in Linux, it's pretty trivial to create a kernel module to detect VAC, then isolate it from various "cheat" tools - e.g., bots that intercept the network (trivially done on Linux below the application), illegitimate video drivers that render all textures with a variable transparency, etc.
On Windows it's hard because you need to write the equivalent of a rootkit and have to deal with a lot of hooking and stuff. But on Linux, it's basically a simple "make; make install" to compile the necessary kernel modules and userspace code to neuter VAC to the point where it only responds "all is OK, no cheating here!'.
Sure, it's also the equivalent of a Linux rootkit, but considering the kernel is under your control, easier to write and distribute.
Except that Motorola agreed to make those patents available under FRAND. There was no coercion, no force, nothing. It was voluntarily done by Motorola.
You see, when a standards body (any standards body - could be IEEE making up the next 802 spec, MPEG making the next video codec, ETSI coming up with next-gen celluar, etc) gets together, what happens is a great patent shuffle. All the participants are rushing in trying to influence the standard to it incorporates their patent. Of course, if the standard does, said patent must be licensed under FRAND terms, otherwise the standard will be troublesome to implement. Everyone implementing the standard will have to pay the same fee as everyone else implementing the standard.
Of course, a company is free to NOT participate in a standards process in which case their patent will probably not be in the standard.
So it's a choice - you can license your patent under FRAND terms and get paid a little bit by everyone, or you can implement your product and then use it to force others to license it for a lot more. Small fish in big pool, or lone big fish in small pool.
Of course, the courts have also ruled that you can't use FRAND patents as leverage - you're supposed to license it to everyone and anyone at the same rate everyone else pays.
So take away the Apple hate and Samsung love, and look a bit more objectively. Motorola agreed to the terms when they got their patents into the spec. Apple legitimately questioned whether it was paying the same rate as everyone else during negotiations. Samsung blatantly copied, then un-implemented certain features (in fact, given Samsung is not infringing on Apple's patents now indicates that it was never a necessary patent to begin with).
License negotiations can be extremely messy - it's possible Apple may force Motorola and everyone else to open their books to see what everyone else is paying. (Samsung did, when they asked to see the HTC agreement).
Of course, one wonders why the ETSI doesn't just go the way of MPEG and many other groups and just have a licensing board (e.g., the MPEG-LA) who simply license it all for you for one fee that everyone pays. Eliminates all sorts of nastiness, everyone pays the same rates, and the split is argued well beforehand.
Hell, the whole business is so messy, when Apple tried to get their patent in the FRAND pool, it became a "us vs. them" situation. All the carriers wanted the patent in. All the handheld makers wanted it out. Because naturally, they didn't want to pay Apple or have it influence negotiations.
Of course, one should also see that standards are made not based on technical superiority, but who has the most political power - who can get their patents in, who can kick the new guy to the curb and exclude their patents, who can scratch each other's back, etc.