Pretty much. Open standards can't gain ground unless someone insists on using them. It is like Microsoft's Office Documents in their battle agaisnt literally anything else. If no one objects to the propietary lock in, the open alternatives have to fight for their survival at a severe disadvantage.
Or prove superiority.
Right now, there is NO advantage to WebM or VP8 over h.264. The only reason to choose it is purely philosophical, especially since it's inferiority.
No, if you want to push an open standard, you go to prove its superiority. Why do you think Google has basically abandoned VP8 (which is a crap unimplementable standard) and pushing hard for VP9? Because the next-generation codec war has just begun. And it's between h.265 and VP9.
h.264 war is lost - there is too much entrenched.
But the next gen codec war is not, and in the battle between h.265 and VP9, there aren't as much legacy to worry about. If VP9 is completely royalty free, guess what? The industry consortium will pick it, even if it is inferior to h.265 because being able to crank out parts with VP9 decoders for free means more profit for them. (And didn't Google pretty much pay off all royalties for VP9?).
Standing your ground may win you the battle, but if you lose sight that h.264's relevance is going to diminish in the next few years to be replaced by the next gen h.265, then you've lost the war. Best to move on, and put your energy into promoting VP9 so it becomes standard.
Hell, Google's stopped promoting VP8 a while ago - they wanted to add it as an option for YouTube, and it's fizzled out for that reason - Google realizes it's not worth winning the WebM/VP8 war - it's too entrenched. Just move on to next gen when the standards are still malleable and inclusion and acceptance are easy.
And it'll be an easier sell, too. Right now if you make a graphics chip, you're going to pay the h.264 royalties even if you want WebM/VP9 because it's an expected feature. But in your new chip, you're still paying for h.264, but VP9, you don't have to pay! You as the manufacturer get to keep that extra 25 cents per unit.
While the intention was definitely good, I personally would not want to use a machine that the could be remotely accessed in such a mannter.
True, something like anti-virus software self-updating and removing a threat would be acceptable to most users. But this is more akin buying a car and discovering the manufacturer has a master key and a representative can come over and drive it around whenever he/she wants, and it's fully legal and you can't do anything about it.
Well, it's just that MSRT runs and executes a find and destroy script. In this case, it looked for a special version of Tor that the malware installed in a special location and configured in a special way. That way it would not destroy legitimate Tor installations.
And you have the option of not running it, if you really wanted to - you still own the machine.
It's the same as if you set your Linux box to self-update - are the updates it downloads able to remove other software? Yes. In fact, it's expected during updates that new versions remove old versions. And sometimes they also remove other software that are no longer prerequisites.
Sure you have the option to not do it, just like you have the option to not run the update.
In the end, for better or for worse, I think it's important that we actually own the devices we buy and pay for. Cases like this, and similar ones with Kindles and mobile devices remotely being accessed and modified or used to spy on us, are strong evidence that we do not. (I know that this particular case is not a big deal in of itself, but the fact that Microsoft can do what it did is not good news.)
It's really no different on any OS - updates automatically apply and they can remove stuff at will too.
Probably the most interesting thing is that Apple, of all companies, has not actually shown the need to remove apps remotely. We know they have the capability to disable apps (only the ones using CoreLocation, though), and they have removed apps from the store. But they have not removed apps from people's iTunes libraries, nor removed the ability of deleted apps to run, period. As long as you have a copy somewhere, it can be installed on other devices using iTunes long after it's been removed.
Heck, even when Disney forced the removal of its movies from Amazon and iTunes, they still play if you have a copy on your hard drive! Which can be copied to other devices or streamed to your AppleTV just fine. It only screwed you if you didn't already have a downloaded copy.
Funny how the most "walled" of walled gardens hasn't yet needed to flex its abilities. Even Steam has removed games from people's libraries (granted, the game didn't work anymore, but still - people paid for the game, and Valve deleted it!)
Expelled air contains some oxygen too - human lungs aren't 100% effective after all. I'll assume that the water flow figures posted elsewhere in this topic have taken that into account.
A lot of oxygen, actually - that's why rebreathers can take a tiny oxygen tank and provide 12+ hours of dive time without carrying loads of tanks.
But the real problem is the O2 content of water is actually quite low - air has far more O2 than water. The only reason why fish suffocate in air is because their gills dry out despite having far more oxygen available.
And there are pockets of water where the O2 levels can be dangerously low - deadzones do occur and something like this would be a huge PITA to deal with.
So the equipment required would have to be quite large, and you'd still need supplemental oxygen in case you swam into an oxygen deficient area. And cope with varying levels of dissolved oxygen - warm water holds less of it than cold. Heck, climate change can make this device completely unwieldy if you have to take something the size of a sub along.
This is the way the patent system is supposed to work. The university creates a useful product based on a real technology advance, patents the idea, and then when it becomes ubiquitous the university is able to calculate the worth of the technology and gets large firms to license appropriately. This is completely different from software patents where it's mostly "I did it first, haha."
Except well, Apple, Microsoft, etc., aren't using the patented technology in question. They bought parts that did, under the understanding that all necessary licenses have been paid for.
In other words, what happened is BU is pursuing people who bought the product with the patented invention rather than going after the manufacturer that used it.
So if you're fine with that, if you have any blue or white LEDs in any equipment you have, BU can go after YOU to pay up the licensing fees for the patents. (That you thought were paid when you bought the item, that the manufacturer of the equipment thought they paid when they bought the part in question,...).
This would be like Microsoft going after Linux uses for the FAT patents, after Android phone users who own Android products from companies that didn't pay the licensing fees, etc. Or Apple going after Samsung phone users because Samsung didn't pay up.
It's the same argument Apple makes w.r.t. the Nokia patents - Apple bought chips from Infineon expecting all license fees to be incorporated in the purchase price of those chips because the patented bits are all inside the chips. So it would be if Apple failed to pay up, Nokia could go after iPhone users for the missing money.
Imagine the chaos caused if patent holders, upon failing to obtain licensing agreements, went after customers of the product in question. Where buying that PC may subject you to lawsuits and demands to pay up. Or installing that piece of software, open-source or not.
Let Apple and Microsoft fight over who is a distant number 2. When sales are 3x, the installed base converts pretty quickly.
Not really.
Because while Androids outsell Apple 4:1 or more, there's a very strange thing going on. Mobile web traffic has iOS using TWICE the amount of data over Android. Or, put another way, 1 iOS user consumes as much data as 8 Android users.
On the spending front, it's about 1:1 iOS:Android - i.e., for every iOS user that buys stuff online, 1 Android user buys stuff online. And even with that, iOS users spend more.
And finally, advertisers apparently prefer iOS users - willing to pay up to twice as much per impression to an iOS user than an Android user.
I don't know what the vast majority of Android users are doing, but it certainly isn't contributing to the ecosystem. It would be more like Mac and PCs, except it appears the vast majority of PCs were used only to play Solitaire as their sole function - leaving the few Mac users being ones to actually use their computers. Then again, the vast majority of PCs are probably used in a similar fashion - surf the web, send email, do facebook, shut down PC....
Of course, given that most Androids are crap-droids that people are buying to replace their featurephones, I guess it makes sense - the phones sell, but they're only used to talk and text. No web browsing.
Makes you wonder, when reports of the average cellphone bill being close to $150, that most people are really paying for plans they're not using. They see shiny Android, they may browse the web the first few days, then boom, the phone's just a phone.
Even Samsung's flagship phones barely crack 10% of the Android market, and Samsung owns about 90% of the Android phones out there, so for every S4, they sell 8 other "budget class" Android phones.
OTOH, the good news is, developers don't have to worry about those phones - most users will probably access the Play store once or twice, then forget about it. Google's metrics only measure the last 3 or 4 weeks, so the vast majority of phones reported would be active users (the ones who probably bought an Android phone to use as a smartphone, and not a fancier featurephone that cost less).
Have a hardware device that contains the keys in secure storage that's on the same die as a fast hardware AES implementation (so they cant be read out by someone with full physical hardware access). Or alternately have the keys on some sort of removable storage that plugs directly into the specialized hardware (so as not to expose the keys to the host machine). The hardware would sit between the disk controller and the secure drive and basically MITM all data flowing in either direction and encrypt it as it went to the drive/decrypt it as it came from the drive).
Actually, such devices already exist - a modern SoC with encryption accelerator almost always has this function.
It usually consists of three parts - first, a fuse-based OTP memory containing a public signing key used to verify the first stage bootloader, second, a secure key-cache (that is either preloaded again from OTP, the hardware RNG, or secure storage) and the hardware accelerator.
The OTP keys can be loaded into the key cache with a simple software setting, basically you tell hardware to transfer the OTP key to the key cache. The key cache can be used by software for encryption/decryption keys but is not accessible by software - the key cache is referenced by index (i.e., encrypt data using key 1, decrypt using key 2, etc). It's also possible to preload the key cache using the hardware RNG (again, the hardware does it automatically while the software doesn't have access).
Or, the key can come from software itself - usually the initial bootloader is signed by the OEM, who programs the public key into the OTP. the bootloader contains within it the public key of the next bootloader in the chain (the entire bootloader and key are signed, so you can't change it), etc. etc. etc.
How do I know? I actually worked with such hardware and worked with the ROM code to deal with signatures.
When I buy an app and discover it is a steaming turd, I should be able to click to remove it and get a refund within 15 minutes. That way the parent should see the charges and then reverse them easily. Granted if the parent is too stupid to check why they are getting 30 email alerts in a row after little johnny jumped on the ipad... That's their own fault.
In general, you can. You have to contact Apple Support for it, though, but you can get refunded on app purchases.
Heck, in Taiwan, the law requires app stores have a 7 day return window. Apple obeys by it, Google does not. In fact, Google at one point removed the ability to buy apps if you're from Taiwan. Instead, they lobbied the government to give them an exception to the 7 day rule. (It was granted).
It is more profitable to accept the malware business than it is to staff people.
Far more profitable. actually. Spammers and such often pay substantially more for service so they can do their business while the hosting company turns a blind eye.
It's called Pink contracts. ISPs naturally hate to reveal what spammers and such REALLY pay them (hint: it's a good premium).
This is pretty much the reason I'd think about the Blackphone. Not to hide from the government(s), because that's an exercise in futility if we want to have connected technology.
Exactly. Even if everything on the phone is encrypted, the fact that you made a phone call is still noted (it's "metadata"!). Just like how everyone says "encrypt everything" are missing the point - IP packets can be logged (metadata), as can email headers (more metadata).
Of course, if you want to hide, another thing to do is not make it obvious - if everyone around you is making calls "in the clear", and your call is encrypted, well, that just draws unnecessary attention.
In the case of humans, cultural biases and any number of things skew our decision making to be less than perfect. And any theoretical model which assumes otherwise is pretty much the equivalent of assuming a perfectly spherical cow.
Hell, if you have two models of product, say, A and C, where A is better and more expensive than C, introducing a mid-range product B can skew sales towards A. I.e., if you have A and C, C sells more (generally because it's cheaper), but by having B, you can drive sales towards A. Even without having sold a single B. Or even an intention to sell B.
It's basic marketing and well-known for decades now. And you see it everywhere - from drink sizes, to menu choices, to your theatre (it skews sales towards the huge buckets of popcorn), and in product lines.
60 minutes has been extremely confrontational(to the point of making things up to fit their narrative) with many things in the past. How it manages to stay on the air I have no idea, but it does
Ratings.
CBS is one of the more successful networks - at least going by viewer count (CBS' programming skews OLD, but other than Big Bang Theory (which is one of the highest rated programs after sports), they have programming that routinely draws in 10-20M viewers in Live ratings, nevermind Live+Same Day).
(Live+SD ratings are generally close to the C3 ratings stations use to set ad rates (Commercial ratings+3 days). Yes, when networks decide which programs to cancel, they look at how the programs rate solely on commercial viewing. The program minutes itself (measured by Live, Live+Same Day, Live+7 ratings) are disregarded. Live+SD has trended to be about the same as C3). So yeah, those who pirate TV, well, it doesn't count in the cold, calculating decisions on whether to end a show.
On a number of days, CBS tends to win in total viewers. They skew old, so their ratings on most programming, despite having 10-20M Live viewers can be below other networks who get barely 1/10th the viewership. The only exception to this is Big Bang Theory with its huge ratings (unheard of for any other network).
When we were planning our breakfast, he was staying St. Paul because a charity his wife is involved with was having a board meeting. He wanted to pick a place he could WALK to, which is kind of challenge if you're in downtown St. Paul. I was thinking "Walk? You don't have a town car? A rental? Or a self-driving car?"
Anyone else making a $3M a year wouldn't be walking or would want to have some kind of fancy brunch at the St. Paul Hotel (which I don't think he was staying in, either).
You're making some dangerous assumptions here.
First, in that "driving" is better always - people do hate to commute, and sometimes driving in unknown places can be stressful enough that it's not worth it. Lots of people travel and ask where's a nearby "walkable" hotel to stay at for that reason. It may cost more (usually does), but if you're only there for a few days, not having to battle traffic in a place you don't know can be worth it.
And yes, there are others who love driving and will stay a cheap Motel 8 on the outskirts and commute in during rush hour because they love it, and driving In a new place excites them.
But loving to drive is quite independent of wealth (unless you cannot afford to stay near where you need to be).
As for fancy brunch - well, it depends on the person. Some people really hate "fancy" and formal events (ask any IT person) - the whole dressing up thing just doesn't do it for them. Even the rich may eschew fancy formal events for a place they can just go in a t-shirt and jeans.
Does anyone have that website handy where you can enter your card number to see if it was stolen? That could be pretty helpful for people to figure out their risk level here...
Sure, reply to this message and I'll look it up for you.
Of course, you might want to really consider what you're asking here... if a website claimed to have a list, they could use your lookup to verify your data. If they don't, they could use your lookup to add it to the list.
If you're not sure, call your bank. They'll issue you a new card. (The CC numbering system has been extended a decade ago, there's plenty of numbers to go around).
If Google isn't careful, they will loose this race. Right now it is a bit of a toss up. It wasn't always so. A few years ago OSM was just toy, and the Android Google Maps app did a reasonable job of offline maps and searching the local area. My how things have changed.
They already play fast and loose with the maps, what else is new? Or do you mean Google will lose?
But Google maps has basically been coasting for a long time now. Google maps still doesn't show my old house, 5 years after I moved into it and 2 years after I moved out. Oddly, every other maps (including well, Apple maps when they launched!) found it just fine, and hell, I know it was in the 2009 map database of a GPS app I was beta testing.
The problems pretty much started around that time when Google moved away from Navteq and TeleAtlas maps when they could - and everyone loves to make fun of Apple maps, but Google's aren't much better - they have typos and all that.
And Google pretty much doesn't make money off Maps. They'd probably can it, but it's much too popular to do it, plus well, it offers competition (the only other places to get worldwide map data are well... Navteq and TeleAtlas).
Of course, Google can easily monetize it - local ads are REALLY easy to do, especially on a turn-by-turn system. "Turn right onto Main Street. There's a McDonald's on your right - they have Big Macs on sale <play jingle>" "Turn left onto First Avenue. On your left is Don's Cadillac Dealership <play car dealership ad>".
These days, Google Maps work if the place has been around - otherwise it's best to consult other map sources. Google only ground-truths whenever their streetview cars get around to it.
The problem with VLC and most other media players is that it doesn't support bit perfect output. In WinAMP (with a plugin) and Foobar you can get out the exact bitstream from the original file, not re-sampled or mixed or scaled or equalized or whatever.
And yet, in most cases, the output will be re-sampled, mixed, scaled and equalized.
Windows has a built-in mixer, and WIndows 7 the audio subsystem does a whole pile of mixing and sample rate conversion to deal with audio routing and other things. And soundcards will often resample as well (a common one is do either resample 44.1kHz to 48kHz).
Why? Because well, people kinda want the ability to play multiple streams of audio together. Back in the "old days" of Windows 3.1, one app using audio would prevent other apps from using it, or even playing system sounds. Windows 95 pretty much fixed that by doing mixing in the OS so multiple apps can play streams, or more importantly, you can listen to music, and still get system sounds.
Since windows 7, the Audio Manager (audiodg.exe) was rewritten and supports things like per-app volume controls (so you can silence apps individually etc), audio effects (your soundcard can provide "effects" modules that plug in) and audio resampling/mixing. Heck, sound card manufacturers have fought Microsoft because they added a "Disable effects" checkbox that prevents the audio manager from running effect plugins globally - asking how their installers can disable that checkbox, or how it can be unchecked programmatically, etc.
And it handles audio routing. Because some people like to have Bluetooth headphones, so it has to handle routing audio from system speakers to Bluetooth and back, or multiple input sources (Bluetooth headsets, system microphone, etc) so why you Skype or whatever, it pulls your voice from the appropriate source.
So close, Google, but you are still protecting the advertisers at the expense of the users. Shut them UP.
You realize that "protecting the advertisers" really means "protecting Google's revenue stream", right?
Given Google's got a 95-98% marketshare on online advertising, that ad you're complaining about most likely has been served up by Google or one of the many ad networks they own. Yes, Google, the founder of "ethical" Google Ads, also serves up plenty of popup, popunder,"rich" (aka noisy) ads, blinking ads, etc.
So no, Google will NOT jeopardize their revenue stream. It also goes against what keeps Chrome alive.
And yeah, the middle east. Consider Palestine and Israel. That's going to be a real edit war.
Mapping, like dates and time, are hard. Heck, about the only good thing is you can fork OpenStreetMap to suit your political view of the world, I guess.
Not really. Mute background tabs by default (with a mute icon already "clicked") on the tab, then you can click it if you want sound from that tab if it is in the background. If you don't like it on the actual tab, put it next to the bookmarks/download/home icons
Except Safari on Mac used to do something similar. In an effort to save CPU cycles and give a better user experience, when a tab was idle, Safari stopped running plugins.
It lasted for all of a few months because feedback was immediate - people were using idle tabs and windows to listen to internet radio and other stuff in the background.
So unfortunately, most users expect noisy tabs by default because they're using it for pandora or spotify or whatever else. It's just that one tab that's playing an annoying ad that can be the issue
Perhaps the default should be if no tab is making noise, the first one that does keeps making noise, and new tabs are auto-muted until the noisy tab stops playing (then the next tab open is unmuted - i.e., if there's something playing, all new tabs are muted. If there's nothing playing, all new tabs are not muted).
But I suppose the nicest thing would be to have no plugins run or the ability to stop a plugin. Namely how YouTube always is set to autoplay if you de-embed a video (lots of reasons why - e.g., that website is horrible and busy and consumes too much CPU, etc). If someone can fix YouTube so it doesn't autoplay... (or is there a ClickToFlash extension now?)
Enh. If you say so. Save this article, it'll be interesting to see if you feel the same in a few years. Former CFL proponents are already starting to admit that CFLs have problems now that LEDs are becoming more common.
LEDs have about the same efficiency of CFLs, though they're SLOWLY getting better (LEDs had horrible efficiency before - thanks to the ban, the R&D effort at making LED lights mainstream has really kicked in).
And compared to CFLs, LEDs are superior - instant on (80% brightness instantly, 100% within a few seconds), no mercury, practically solid state (the only hard part is a switching power supply).
Government regulations have a nasty habit of kicking industry at times - and the bans on inefficient lighting has forced industry to look at alternatives and research them. High efficiency LEDs are becoming common, and only a few years ago they finally surpassed CFLs, and now, they're becoming super-cheap.
And it's revolutionized other industries - aircraft lighting is rapidly going LEDs - even though a LED bulb is $150 or so (for a landing or taxiing light), being able to change a power hog of a light from 20A down to 3A for the same or better brightness? Airplane batteries are tiny in light aircraft - barely enough to start the engine. Being able to have courtesy lights on and not drain the battery badly is a huge benefit.
More like: they thought it was a good thing to ban a simple glass tube with a filament in it and replace it with a circuit board with electrolytic capacitors and a glass tube with mercury vapor in it?
Ironically, when analyzed fully, an incandescent light typically emits MORE mercury into the atmosphere than the metallic mercury in a CFL. And when recycled, the mercury is recovered, while the emitted mercury isn't. The mercury comes from the fact that a good chunk of the US power grid still uses coal, and the added energy use of the lightbulb can translate into additional coal consumption and mercury emissions. (And metallic mercury is "safe" - it's not bio-available. But there are many bio-available mercury compounds that are and contribute to mercury poisoning).
From the (mistaken? wise?) use of a.300 in an IPv4 address in The Net, to the identification of some kind of 6502 assembly code in the Terminator's red overlay, it's always been something to try to do in the theater without freeze-frame available.
I think it's intentional - if you see any IP address shown on TV or movies, they're always invalid. IPv4 is either 3 groups instead of 4, or a number above 255. IPv6 they usually make it by putting a letter after F making it invalid.
Most likely it's like using the 555 prefix for phone numbers - they WANT invalid numbers, just in case the random numbers that get used actually belong to someone. (Happens with surprising frequency). Company names and other stuff are the subject of extensive trademark searches and registrations, and sometimes even on screen things like numbers are "rearranged to look prettier". so even if someone used a real IP address that belonged to no one, some set dresser or visual artist may change it because the director wanted a nicer number.
Xamarin has been endorsed by Microsoft as a legal and legitimate cross-platform c# vendor for a while now. Microsoft may still be evil, but whoever is running their C# ecosystem is yet untainted. *fingers crossed*
It's the same reason Google gave away Android. Because the only way they could compete was to give it away (to take away from iOS dominance).
C# on mobile is completely under-represented, so Microsoft would like it to be used for more than just "Windows development". Of course, their recent moves with discontinuing XNA and all that...
Of course, an issue is what happens when it takes off - Google has this problem now where Android is dominant, and they're losing control of it, leading to have to close-source a lot of the applications that make Android, well, Android.
Slashdot 2015: Google announces end of life for Nest products, citing low advertising revenue from the platform.
And yet, Nest has a nice screen on it (not touch). Which can display ads while the thermostat is otherwise idle... what possible use could the homeover have to seeing the set temperature all day? Why not just use that idle screen space to display ads?
If they had plans to keep Nest's data away from Google after the acquisition, they'd have said it plainly as they have with everything else they say. The fact that they aren't doing that here makes it pretty clear what their intent is.
Well, all it takes is for Google to "unify" the privacy policy of Nest with the rest of the Google privacy policy.
And yes, they probably give you an opt-out, in which case your Nest becomes a dumb thermostat because access via the (now-defunct iOS version) smartphone apps and web access require accepting G+ and the new privacy policy.
(And note to Apple, Google and Microsoft - please, can you stop buying up companies that make apps and discontinuing the competing versions? I know it's probably good for business, but c'mon now. There's nothing wrong with seeing Google and Microsoft in the Apple App Store, Apple and Microsoft in Google Play and Apple and Google in Microsoft Store...).
I'm worried about Google buying all those robotics companies. Profitability in advanced robotics is probably 5-10 years away. Google has not, in the past, demonstrated that kind of patience. "More wood behind fewer arrows" was their slogan for the first big round of cuts. Google could destroy the US robotics industry.
Unlikely. Most likely Google is simply preparing for the next generation of consumer products - robots. By buying up all the robotic companies, Google hopes to acquire a pile of patents that way - rather than catching up like they did for smartphones.
And I suspect, these robots will be Internet-connected, and able to help you go about your day, helpfully bombarding you with ads as well (heck, I saw DoubleClick redirect through Google now...).
You could already see it in this year's CES - where everything "smart" seems to get that way as a way to show you ads, and you KNOW Google's going to get in on that.
And by getting in on robotics, Google probably wants to bring back the old BattleBots type shows and sponsor competitions like FIRST Robotics. Both of which will require ads and such be done through Google, of course. In exchange for free patent licensing to high schools and competitors.
Slashdot Mirror
Or prove superiority.
Right now, there is NO advantage to WebM or VP8 over h.264. The only reason to choose it is purely philosophical, especially since it's inferiority.
No, if you want to push an open standard, you go to prove its superiority. Why do you think Google has basically abandoned VP8 (which is a crap unimplementable standard) and pushing hard for VP9? Because the next-generation codec war has just begun. And it's between h.265 and VP9.
h.264 war is lost - there is too much entrenched.
But the next gen codec war is not, and in the battle between h.265 and VP9, there aren't as much legacy to worry about. If VP9 is completely royalty free, guess what? The industry consortium will pick it, even if it is inferior to h.265 because being able to crank out parts with VP9 decoders for free means more profit for them. (And didn't Google pretty much pay off all royalties for VP9?).
Standing your ground may win you the battle, but if you lose sight that h.264's relevance is going to diminish in the next few years to be replaced by the next gen h.265, then you've lost the war. Best to move on, and put your energy into promoting VP9 so it becomes standard.
Hell, Google's stopped promoting VP8 a while ago - they wanted to add it as an option for YouTube, and it's fizzled out for that reason - Google realizes it's not worth winning the WebM/VP8 war - it's too entrenched. Just move on to next gen when the standards are still malleable and inclusion and acceptance are easy.
And it'll be an easier sell, too. Right now if you make a graphics chip, you're going to pay the h.264 royalties even if you want WebM/VP9 because it's an expected feature. But in your new chip, you're still paying for h.264, but VP9, you don't have to pay! You as the manufacturer get to keep that extra 25 cents per unit.
Well, it's just that MSRT runs and executes a find and destroy script. In this case, it looked for a special version of Tor that the malware installed in a special location and configured in a special way. That way it would not destroy legitimate Tor installations.
And you have the option of not running it, if you really wanted to - you still own the machine.
It's the same as if you set your Linux box to self-update - are the updates it downloads able to remove other software? Yes. In fact, it's expected during updates that new versions remove old versions. And sometimes they also remove other software that are no longer prerequisites.
Sure you have the option to not do it, just like you have the option to not run the update.
It's really no different on any OS - updates automatically apply and they can remove stuff at will too.
Probably the most interesting thing is that Apple, of all companies, has not actually shown the need to remove apps remotely. We know they have the capability to disable apps (only the ones using CoreLocation, though), and they have removed apps from the store. But they have not removed apps from people's iTunes libraries, nor removed the ability of deleted apps to run, period. As long as you have a copy somewhere, it can be installed on other devices using iTunes long after it's been removed.
Heck, even when Disney forced the removal of its movies from Amazon and iTunes, they still play if you have a copy on your hard drive! Which can be copied to other devices or streamed to your AppleTV just fine. It only screwed you if you didn't already have a downloaded copy.
Funny how the most "walled" of walled gardens hasn't yet needed to flex its abilities. Even Steam has removed games from people's libraries (granted, the game didn't work anymore, but still - people paid for the game, and Valve deleted it!)
A lot of oxygen, actually - that's why rebreathers can take a tiny oxygen tank and provide 12+ hours of dive time without carrying loads of tanks.
But the real problem is the O2 content of water is actually quite low - air has far more O2 than water. The only reason why fish suffocate in air is because their gills dry out despite having far more oxygen available.
And there are pockets of water where the O2 levels can be dangerously low - deadzones do occur and something like this would be a huge PITA to deal with.
So the equipment required would have to be quite large, and you'd still need supplemental oxygen in case you swam into an oxygen deficient area. And cope with varying levels of dissolved oxygen - warm water holds less of it than cold. Heck, climate change can make this device completely unwieldy if you have to take something the size of a sub along.
Except well, Apple, Microsoft, etc., aren't using the patented technology in question. They bought parts that did, under the understanding that all necessary licenses have been paid for.
In other words, what happened is BU is pursuing people who bought the product with the patented invention rather than going after the manufacturer that used it.
So if you're fine with that, if you have any blue or white LEDs in any equipment you have, BU can go after YOU to pay up the licensing fees for the patents. (That you thought were paid when you bought the item, that the manufacturer of the equipment thought they paid when they bought the part in question, ...).
This would be like Microsoft going after Linux uses for the FAT patents, after Android phone users who own Android products from companies that didn't pay the licensing fees, etc. Or Apple going after Samsung phone users because Samsung didn't pay up.
It's the same argument Apple makes w.r.t. the Nokia patents - Apple bought chips from Infineon expecting all license fees to be incorporated in the purchase price of those chips because the patented bits are all inside the chips. So it would be if Apple failed to pay up, Nokia could go after iPhone users for the missing money.
Imagine the chaos caused if patent holders, upon failing to obtain licensing agreements, went after customers of the product in question. Where buying that PC may subject you to lawsuits and demands to pay up. Or installing that piece of software, open-source or not.
Not really.
Because while Androids outsell Apple 4:1 or more, there's a very strange thing going on. Mobile web traffic has iOS using TWICE the amount of data over Android. Or, put another way, 1 iOS user consumes as much data as 8 Android users.
On the spending front, it's about 1:1 iOS:Android - i.e., for every iOS user that buys stuff online, 1 Android user buys stuff online. And even with that, iOS users spend more.
And finally, advertisers apparently prefer iOS users - willing to pay up to twice as much per impression to an iOS user than an Android user.
I don't know what the vast majority of Android users are doing, but it certainly isn't contributing to the ecosystem. It would be more like Mac and PCs, except it appears the vast majority of PCs were used only to play Solitaire as their sole function - leaving the few Mac users being ones to actually use their computers. Then again, the vast majority of PCs are probably used in a similar fashion - surf the web, send email, do facebook, shut down PC....
Of course, given that most Androids are crap-droids that people are buying to replace their featurephones, I guess it makes sense - the phones sell, but they're only used to talk and text. No web browsing.
Makes you wonder, when reports of the average cellphone bill being close to $150, that most people are really paying for plans they're not using. They see shiny Android, they may browse the web the first few days, then boom, the phone's just a phone.
Even Samsung's flagship phones barely crack 10% of the Android market, and Samsung owns about 90% of the Android phones out there, so for every S4, they sell 8 other "budget class" Android phones.
OTOH, the good news is, developers don't have to worry about those phones - most users will probably access the Play store once or twice, then forget about it. Google's metrics only measure the last 3 or 4 weeks, so the vast majority of phones reported would be active users (the ones who probably bought an Android phone to use as a smartphone, and not a fancier featurephone that cost less).
Actually, such devices already exist - a modern SoC with encryption accelerator almost always has this function.
It usually consists of three parts - first, a fuse-based OTP memory containing a public signing key used to verify the first stage bootloader, second, a secure key-cache (that is either preloaded again from OTP, the hardware RNG, or secure storage) and the hardware accelerator.
The OTP keys can be loaded into the key cache with a simple software setting, basically you tell hardware to transfer the OTP key to the key cache. The key cache can be used by software for encryption/decryption keys but is not accessible by software - the key cache is referenced by index (i.e., encrypt data using key 1, decrypt using key 2, etc). It's also possible to preload the key cache using the hardware RNG (again, the hardware does it automatically while the software doesn't have access).
Or, the key can come from software itself - usually the initial bootloader is signed by the OEM, who programs the public key into the OTP. the bootloader contains within it the public key of the next bootloader in the chain (the entire bootloader and key are signed, so you can't change it), etc. etc. etc.
How do I know? I actually worked with such hardware and worked with the ROM code to deal with signatures.
In general, you can. You have to contact Apple Support for it, though, but you can get refunded on app purchases.
Heck, in Taiwan, the law requires app stores have a 7 day return window. Apple obeys by it, Google does not. In fact, Google at one point removed the ability to buy apps if you're from Taiwan. Instead, they lobbied the government to give them an exception to the 7 day rule. (It was granted).
Far more profitable. actually. Spammers and such often pay substantially more for service so they can do their business while the hosting company turns a blind eye.
It's called Pink contracts. ISPs naturally hate to reveal what spammers and such REALLY pay them (hint: it's a good premium).
Exactly. Even if everything on the phone is encrypted, the fact that you made a phone call is still noted (it's "metadata"!). Just like how everyone says "encrypt everything" are missing the point - IP packets can be logged (metadata), as can email headers (more metadata).
Of course, if you want to hide, another thing to do is not make it obvious - if everyone around you is making calls "in the clear", and your call is encrypted, well, that just draws unnecessary attention.
Hell, if you have two models of product, say, A and C, where A is better and more expensive than C, introducing a mid-range product B can skew sales towards A. I.e., if you have A and C, C sells more (generally because it's cheaper), but by having B, you can drive sales towards A. Even without having sold a single B. Or even an intention to sell B.
It's basic marketing and well-known for decades now. And you see it everywhere - from drink sizes, to menu choices, to your theatre (it skews sales towards the huge buckets of popcorn), and in product lines.
Ratings.
CBS is one of the more successful networks - at least going by viewer count (CBS' programming skews OLD, but other than Big Bang Theory (which is one of the highest rated programs after sports), they have programming that routinely draws in 10-20M viewers in Live ratings, nevermind Live+Same Day).
(Live+SD ratings are generally close to the C3 ratings stations use to set ad rates (Commercial ratings+3 days). Yes, when networks decide which programs to cancel, they look at how the programs rate solely on commercial viewing. The program minutes itself (measured by Live, Live+Same Day, Live+7 ratings) are disregarded. Live+SD has trended to be about the same as C3). So yeah, those who pirate TV, well, it doesn't count in the cold, calculating decisions on whether to end a show.
On a number of days, CBS tends to win in total viewers. They skew old, so their ratings on most programming, despite having 10-20M Live viewers can be below other networks who get barely 1/10th the viewership. The only exception to this is Big Bang Theory with its huge ratings (unheard of for any other network).
You're making some dangerous assumptions here.
First, in that "driving" is better always - people do hate to commute, and sometimes driving in unknown places can be stressful enough that it's not worth it. Lots of people travel and ask where's a nearby "walkable" hotel to stay at for that reason. It may cost more (usually does), but if you're only there for a few days, not having to battle traffic in a place you don't know can be worth it.
And yes, there are others who love driving and will stay a cheap Motel 8 on the outskirts and commute in during rush hour because they love it, and driving In a new place excites them.
But loving to drive is quite independent of wealth (unless you cannot afford to stay near where you need to be).
As for fancy brunch - well, it depends on the person. Some people really hate "fancy" and formal events (ask any IT person) - the whole dressing up thing just doesn't do it for them. Even the rich may eschew fancy formal events for a place they can just go in a t-shirt and jeans.
Sure, reply to this message and I'll look it up for you.
Of course, you might want to really consider what you're asking here... if a website claimed to have a list, they could use your lookup to verify your data. If they don't, they could use your lookup to add it to the list.
If you're not sure, call your bank. They'll issue you a new card. (The CC numbering system has been extended a decade ago, there's plenty of numbers to go around).
They already play fast and loose with the maps, what else is new? Or do you mean Google will lose?
But Google maps has basically been coasting for a long time now. Google maps still doesn't show my old house, 5 years after I moved into it and 2 years after I moved out. Oddly, every other maps (including well, Apple maps when they launched!) found it just fine, and hell, I know it was in the 2009 map database of a GPS app I was beta testing.
The problems pretty much started around that time when Google moved away from Navteq and TeleAtlas maps when they could - and everyone loves to make fun of Apple maps, but Google's aren't much better - they have typos and all that.
And Google pretty much doesn't make money off Maps. They'd probably can it, but it's much too popular to do it, plus well, it offers competition (the only other places to get worldwide map data are well... Navteq and TeleAtlas).
Of course, Google can easily monetize it - local ads are REALLY easy to do, especially on a turn-by-turn system. "Turn right onto Main Street. There's a McDonald's on your right - they have Big Macs on sale <play jingle>" "Turn left onto First Avenue. On your left is Don's Cadillac Dealership <play car dealership ad>".
These days, Google Maps work if the place has been around - otherwise it's best to consult other map sources. Google only ground-truths whenever their streetview cars get around to it.
And yet, in most cases, the output will be re-sampled, mixed, scaled and equalized.
Windows has a built-in mixer, and WIndows 7 the audio subsystem does a whole pile of mixing and sample rate conversion to deal with audio routing and other things. And soundcards will often resample as well (a common one is do either resample 44.1kHz to 48kHz).
Why? Because well, people kinda want the ability to play multiple streams of audio together. Back in the "old days" of Windows 3.1, one app using audio would prevent other apps from using it, or even playing system sounds. Windows 95 pretty much fixed that by doing mixing in the OS so multiple apps can play streams, or more importantly, you can listen to music, and still get system sounds.
Since windows 7, the Audio Manager (audiodg.exe) was rewritten and supports things like per-app volume controls (so you can silence apps individually etc), audio effects (your soundcard can provide "effects" modules that plug in) and audio resampling/mixing. Heck, sound card manufacturers have fought Microsoft because they added a "Disable effects" checkbox that prevents the audio manager from running effect plugins globally - asking how their installers can disable that checkbox, or how it can be unchecked programmatically, etc.
And it handles audio routing. Because some people like to have Bluetooth headphones, so it has to handle routing audio from system speakers to Bluetooth and back, or multiple input sources (Bluetooth headsets, system microphone, etc) so why you Skype or whatever, it pulls your voice from the appropriate source.
You realize that "protecting the advertisers" really means "protecting Google's revenue stream", right?
Given Google's got a 95-98% marketshare on online advertising, that ad you're complaining about most likely has been served up by Google or one of the many ad networks they own. Yes, Google, the founder of "ethical" Google Ads, also serves up plenty of popup, popunder ,"rich" (aka noisy) ads, blinking ads, etc.
So no, Google will NOT jeopardize their revenue stream. It also goes against what keeps Chrome alive.
Yes.
Some of them but maybe more of your list as well.
Heck, it also plays MIDI on Linux and other systems with glib.
The basic thing is - if there's an open-source codec, VLC plays it without requiring any plugins.
Apple and Google have this problem - over Taiwan. China considers it a territory, while Taiwan naturally considers themselves an independent nation.
Heck, remember Windows 95 had a time-zone setting that used a map? Handy, right? But border disputes between Peru and Ecuador and India put an end of that..(And no, Microsoft used official UN-recognized maps for their borders).
And yeah, the middle east. Consider Palestine and Israel. That's going to be a real edit war.
Mapping, like dates and time, are hard. Heck, about the only good thing is you can fork OpenStreetMap to suit your political view of the world, I guess.
Except Safari on Mac used to do something similar. In an effort to save CPU cycles and give a better user experience, when a tab was idle, Safari stopped running plugins.
It lasted for all of a few months because feedback was immediate - people were using idle tabs and windows to listen to internet radio and other stuff in the background.
So unfortunately, most users expect noisy tabs by default because they're using it for pandora or spotify or whatever else. It's just that one tab that's playing an annoying ad that can be the issue
Perhaps the default should be if no tab is making noise, the first one that does keeps making noise, and new tabs are auto-muted until the noisy tab stops playing (then the next tab open is unmuted - i.e., if there's something playing, all new tabs are muted. If there's nothing playing, all new tabs are not muted).
But I suppose the nicest thing would be to have no plugins run or the ability to stop a plugin. Namely how YouTube always is set to autoplay if you de-embed a video (lots of reasons why - e.g., that website is horrible and busy and consumes too much CPU, etc). If someone can fix YouTube so it doesn't autoplay... (or is there a ClickToFlash extension now?)
LEDs have about the same efficiency of CFLs, though they're SLOWLY getting better (LEDs had horrible efficiency before - thanks to the ban, the R&D effort at making LED lights mainstream has really kicked in).
And compared to CFLs, LEDs are superior - instant on (80% brightness instantly, 100% within a few seconds), no mercury, practically solid state (the only hard part is a switching power supply).
Government regulations have a nasty habit of kicking industry at times - and the bans on inefficient lighting has forced industry to look at alternatives and research them. High efficiency LEDs are becoming common, and only a few years ago they finally surpassed CFLs, and now, they're becoming super-cheap.
And it's revolutionized other industries - aircraft lighting is rapidly going LEDs - even though a LED bulb is $150 or so (for a landing or taxiing light), being able to change a power hog of a light from 20A down to 3A for the same or better brightness? Airplane batteries are tiny in light aircraft - barely enough to start the engine. Being able to have courtesy lights on and not drain the battery badly is a huge benefit.
Ironically, when analyzed fully, an incandescent light typically emits MORE mercury into the atmosphere than the metallic mercury in a CFL. And when recycled, the mercury is recovered, while the emitted mercury isn't. The mercury comes from the fact that a good chunk of the US power grid still uses coal, and the added energy use of the lightbulb can translate into additional coal consumption and mercury emissions. (And metallic mercury is "safe" - it's not bio-available. But there are many bio-available mercury compounds that are and contribute to mercury poisoning).
I think it's intentional - if you see any IP address shown on TV or movies, they're always invalid. IPv4 is either 3 groups instead of 4, or a number above 255. IPv6 they usually make it by putting a letter after F making it invalid.
Most likely it's like using the 555 prefix for phone numbers - they WANT invalid numbers, just in case the random numbers that get used actually belong to someone. (Happens with surprising frequency). Company names and other stuff are the subject of extensive trademark searches and registrations, and sometimes even on screen things like numbers are "rearranged to look prettier". so even if someone used a real IP address that belonged to no one, some set dresser or visual artist may change it because the director wanted a nicer number.
It's the same reason Google gave away Android. Because the only way they could compete was to give it away (to take away from iOS dominance).
C# on mobile is completely under-represented, so Microsoft would like it to be used for more than just "Windows development". Of course, their recent moves with discontinuing XNA and all that...
Of course, an issue is what happens when it takes off - Google has this problem now where Android is dominant, and they're losing control of it, leading to have to close-source a lot of the applications that make Android, well, Android.
And yet, Nest has a nice screen on it (not touch). Which can display ads while the thermostat is otherwise idle... what possible use could the homeover have to seeing the set temperature all day? Why not just use that idle screen space to display ads?
Well, all it takes is for Google to "unify" the privacy policy of Nest with the rest of the Google privacy policy.
And yes, they probably give you an opt-out, in which case your Nest becomes a dumb thermostat because access via the (now-defunct iOS version) smartphone apps and web access require accepting G+ and the new privacy policy.
(And note to Apple, Google and Microsoft - please, can you stop buying up companies that make apps and discontinuing the competing versions? I know it's probably good for business, but c'mon now. There's nothing wrong with seeing Google and Microsoft in the Apple App Store, Apple and Microsoft in Google Play and Apple and Google in Microsoft Store...).
Unlikely. Most likely Google is simply preparing for the next generation of consumer products - robots. By buying up all the robotic companies, Google hopes to acquire a pile of patents that way - rather than catching up like they did for smartphones.
And I suspect, these robots will be Internet-connected, and able to help you go about your day, helpfully bombarding you with ads as well (heck, I saw DoubleClick redirect through Google now...).
You could already see it in this year's CES - where everything "smart" seems to get that way as a way to show you ads, and you KNOW Google's going to get in on that.
And by getting in on robotics, Google probably wants to bring back the old BattleBots type shows and sponsor competitions like FIRST Robotics. Both of which will require ads and such be done through Google, of course. In exchange for free patent licensing to high schools and competitors.