At one time, ages ago, getting admin privileges was easy. Make some good edits, prove you could contribute well, and you were basically in.
Then came editcountitis, where people with less than X thousand edits (I think it's at what, 50,000 now?) were cast aside. Editcountitis created the current "revert monkey" culture and the fast-action tools so that people can automatically revert anything that happens without even reading the edit. Push button, issue revert. Most of these monkeys sit around slapping "revert" all day without reading; some of them actually just use a script to automatically click "revert" on their tool of choice in order to pad their edit counts.
Then came, also, the cliques. Self-protecting groups formed, and the worst is the admins because once you are an admin, you are expected to ALWAYS back up the actions of another admin. You can't badmouth other admins - that's not the way the game is played - but you can be as ugly and mean-spirited to any normal user you want, and when they respond in kind you can either issue a block yourself or ask a supposedly "uninvolved" admin to be your proxy in return for Favors To Be Named Later. Because after all, "civility" only applies to those who don't have the Special Buttons.
The way the game is played, if you are trying to influence an article on Wikipedia, is simple. You revert-monkey someone right to the point of 3RR. You never discuss anything on a talk page and if you've hit 3RR, you find someone to collude with to start reverting in tag-team, then you accuse the other side of either "breaking 3RR" or "not discussing." If you want to and have the backing of a friendly admin, you get them blocked and then issue gloating messages or just template the hell out of them to further infuriate them and bait them into responding "incivilly" to your harassment, at which point your friend the admin gets to escalate the blocks over and over again. Eventually, you'll run the new person off and you get to [[WP:OWN]] your article again, so long as you can keep new editors from ever sticking around long enough for them to actually work and discuss and change the consensus.
The goal of wikipedia's admins is to drive off new editors, and anyone who tells you differently is likely a wikipedia admin.
I think the problem with Wikipedia is basically described by Animal House. Initially conceived as a criticism of communism, Wikipedia's editing system was also a form. Except there was no central bureau to control it all. That's the only difference.
Basically, Wikipedia's goal is an encyclopedia where "Everyone is equal".
But as we all know the full quote is "Everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others".
And Wikipedia is a perfect modern day illustration of what happened in the early to mid 20th century - it starts out as everyone is equal, but soon, some become "more equal" and thus end up in control.
So we basically had the 21st century exploration into communism - and the same results occur - you end up with a group of "elites" that end up controlling the entire site while the proles think they have power and control.
And the unfortunate thing is, human nature will ensure that "some are more equal than others" because there will always been a human desire for power. (Or greed.).
The only good thing is that it's only Wikipedia so as an experiment, its effect on the world are minimal.
It's also why most successful FOSS projects are benevolent dictator style things because power abhors a vacuum. If no one is a leader, someone will become one either by mutual agreement or through forcefulness.
Actually we can only resolve individual pixels at 50pixels/degree, we can still perceive details way below that limit, just not as individual pixels. Similar to how there is a huge difference between 20fps and 60fps, it is just that 20fps is where we stop being able to spot individual frames and they start to blur together.
This apple retina craze has really started to make people underestimate the human eye.
Not really, the human eye is actually quite horrible. It's a very low res capture device, just coupled with a very powerful image processor running powerful image processing software.
First - peripheral vision is just lousy - if you fix your gaze on an object and attempt to see stuff in your peripheral vision, it's very low resolution. (A fancy trick was to show a big X on a board about 20-30 feet away, then have two cheerleaders stand about 30-40 feet away from it in a line and have people stare at the X and pick the prettier cheerleader. The trick was that one of the two was always male, and after reviewing the choices (the test was repeated with several groups of cheerleaders on the same person), they'd end up with roughly 50-50 split of male and female picks).
Central vision is better at color resolution, but has poor lowlight sensitivity (peripheral vision is better). Nevermind the huge gaping hole in your vision because of the blind spot.
Though, central vision is able to handle more "channels" of motion than peripheral vision - peripheral vision is limited to one type of motion and it will fail to detect other motion properly if it's tracking.
It's all compensated for by the brain though - your eyes actually are always in motion and the brain stitches together a cohesive, high-definition image out of the movements of the eye as it darts around.
Of course, it's very easy to fool the brain - optical illusions and other tricks of the trade, especially in its ability to take a 2D image (e.g., from TV or a monitor - say a photo) and convert it into 3D (even though the photo is 2D, the brain automatically figures out depth from visual cues. This is important when it comes to the fact that stereoscopic vision only gets you so much - once you're beyond a mere 10-30', there's not enough separation to determine depth and the brain figures it out from experience).
It's remarkably easy to fool your brain - all the various static and non-static optical illusions show just how much processing the brain does - enough to be able to get completely fooled into thinking concave objects are convex (especially faces) and other things.
What drives me bananas is when friends (well, friends of friends really) say "My car needs $1500 worth of repairs! I can't afford that, so I'm just going to get rid of it and buy a 2013."
WFT?
You can't afford $1500, but you can afford $4800 / year in new car payments?
It's called "remaining value".
If the car needs $1500 worth of repairs, especially older models, a lot of people start questioning whether or not it's actually worth it.
Would you spend $1500 to fix a vehicle that's only worth $4000? Especially since that $1500 may only be the start - it's a transmission now, then it's the power brake boosters next month, etc. etc. etc.
The term is "Beyond economical repair" - where it either costs more to repair than it's worth, or where repair costs are a significant fraction of its worth that it's far better to either scrap it or sell it and get a new vehicle.
And yes, for a lot of older cars, they start nickel and diming you as various things start to go - a clutch here, a CV joint there, a door latch, power window motor, etc. etc. etc.
So there comes a time when it's not practical to continue to use the vehicle because it's just going to cost you $4500/year in repairs, when you can get a new one and pay $4800/year for a brand new one that won't have significant issues for many years.
And yes, people do drive such vehicles - we usually call them beaters, where they don't care that windows don't move, or doors don't latch properly, or the check engine light has been on for years - they're just happy someone sold them a nice vehicle for $1000. If it breaks down, take the plates and walk away (though some are crazy enough to put In thousands of dollars to fix them up..).
Same reason people buy new electronics when something breaks in their old one - because even if it's a relatively nice device, the new model doesn't cost a lot more than what it would cost to repair it.
If this is the case, why can ford do it? I can download sync updates and install them with flash myself. I don't need to go to the dealership and my iPhone does work over bluetooth with sync. (iOS 7 iPhone 5)
Because Ford was smart - they designed a common platform and uses it across their entire line. Given Sync was originally a Microsoft collaboration, they probably also designed a lot of future proofing, device detection and other features into it initially so the platform itself can last 10+ years and still run off a common software base with the software disabling features that configuration data says does not exist and all that.
It's a lot easier to do it properly when you do it right from the beginning (and being Microsoft, well...). Of course, today's Sync is no longer Microsoft but I think something Ford took ownership of working with a third party.
A lot of other manufacturers don't do this and simply either outsource the system design to someone else or do it themselves based on requirements at the time and finding a suitable SoC.
Why not do it the same way as for PC motherboard BIOS upgrades? Have the hardware recognize whether any given update is compatible with it, and refuse the upgrade if not. Then, on the download site, users can chose between Toyota Prius Model year 2008-2010, or 2012-2013 for example.
Simple no?
Apparently not, because Toyota is not even able to make sure that the owner's manual matches the installed navigator unit...
That requires that updating is a scenario they thought about. Unlike say routers, car manufacturers generally think of the infotainment system as a black box - like the radio. They don't care about updates because it's supposed to ship with whatever it comes with. So updating mechanisms are tricky - either using JTAG, or some debug header on the main board or something else, which can include pesky switching of jumpers and using specially prepared update discs and USB sticks.
I hope this isn't a silly question, but why on earth do you care about accurate colour matching on mobile devices? Given that they have screens of very variable quality and no decent colour accuracy themselves it seems that putting much effort in will be wasted.
Just because you use Android doesn't mean people don't care.
The iPhone 4s was about 90% sRGB (mostly due to a faulty blue filter that lets in a little green), the iPhone 5 (and 5s, 5c, and associated iPods) are actually a little over 99% sRGB. And Apple calibrates every display as they come off the line. tests done on the displays have shown excellent calibration with very little variability between devices.
While Androids have better screens, the AMOLED ones, especially Samsung Pentile variants tend to be far worse - the OLED display is nice but oversaturates for the most part. LCD Androids may or may not be calibrated as well - some devices exhibit such wide variations in color accuracy and error that they're effectively uncalibrated screens, while others do calibrated them to an extent during manufacturing (usually the flagships).
The modern smartphone and tablet display is a far cry from early mobile LCD displays - they're often very good (especially Apple displays - if you need color accuracy on a portable, you're pretty much limited to Apple) and people do expect their photos to be somewhat like reality.
If you want to see what crap looks like, check out a cheap digital photo frame, then look at a modern smartphone or tablet display and you'll find they're much nicer.
If I'm not mistaken, you cannot buy or resell USB-based hardware if you're not certified. You can buy units like USB-Serial bridges and implement them but you can't solder a connector on yourself. It's basically buying a license to the patents of USB.
Better tell everyone then because there s lot more unofficial USB devices than official ones. A lot of them even re-use the OEM VID instead of getting their own (think cheap Androids and the like).
Heck, one of the reasons mini-USB-A and mini-USB-AB ports were deprecated was because the USB-IF wanted to reserve those ports for USB-OTG devices, but people kept using them for devices that support USB host. (Note: they did NOT deprecate mini-USB-B ports).
And in most cases, "USB OTG" is mis-used to mean "supports host and client" rather than true OTG. While having worked extensively on getting devices past OTG certification (including tricky stuff like Host Negotiation Protocol (HNP) and role-switching), no one really got any OTG devices certified and there aren't any on the open market. (HNP is used to figure out which end is to be the "host" regardless of the way the cable is plugged in, while role switching is where the two devices decide the host needs to be the client and vice-versa. Role-switches can happen long after HNP (you may need to role switch during HNP if the devices decide the user plugged the cable in the wrong way around)).
That's pretty impressive engineering. Think it allows Android to be installed on it?:)
Except the bootloader probably isn't designed to boot 32-bit OSes, ARMv8 isn't terribly impressive in AArch32 mode, and Android isn't 64-bit native yet.
Most of the speed ups the A7 gets are from 64-bit code as it cleans up a lot of the architecture. 32-bit code works, but the speedup is minimal.
And yes, the bootloader has to be 64-bit and then switch the CPU to 32-bit mode in order to boot a 32-bit OS. Running a 32-bit OS means you can't run 64-bit code at all. When you go down the privilege levels (secure monitor, hypervisor (VM), kernel, user) you can go from 64 to 32 bit mode, but to go the other way requires going up the stack.
I would hope that the wireless charging manhole covers would not be on the sidewalks, otherwise a large number of pedestrians will be peeved, not just the tinfoil hat crowd.
Well, you could always go *over* the vehicle on the sidewalk, you know...
Unless the contrary is specifically mentioned, it's probably a safe assumption. I suspect that the question will be 'is the proprietary firmware stored on the device, or loaded by the driver, and if it is loaded by the driver, are Qualcomm going to be total dicks about redistribution of the firmware blob?'...
Back in the NSLU2 days (233MHz StrongARM for only $99... how far we've come), that was the case with the NIC firmware for some inscrutable reason. If you wanted to use the built-in NIC, you needed to go through a clickwrap license agreement with Intel, despite the fact that the firmware you were 'licensing' was totally useless for any purpose except to use part of the silicon purchased from Intel. Just pure, pointless, hassle.
Sometimes it's not up to the vendor - a lot of these devices may run an embedded commercial RTOS that demands separate distribution agreements.
And yes, these things can be powerful enough to run a basic RTOS, so there's many commercial vendors that do sell RTOSes for that putpose - they don't provide memory protection or other modern OS features, but interrupt latency and other convenience things they do.
And sometimes it's due to agreements with third party libraries in the code - there's more than one commercial license that prohibits distribution of the binary blob with open-source software (being afraid of "taint" and "viral infection").
(In a lot of cases, the "No Derivatives" clause would be a better substitute for "Non-Commercial" with the share-alike clause, I think (i.e. "You can distribute my amazing genius musical works but you cannot incorporate them into the soundtrack for your $500,000,000 blockbuster Hollywood movie"), but that's probably not appropriate here since I assume The Dark Mod developers intend for people to be able to remix and add to it.)
Technically, ND and NC are both Non-Free.
ND because it defeats the entire purpose of sharing - that people can get inspired or use your work in their work, as long as they incorporate the other license terms.
SA is perfectly fine - if the music gets incorporated in that blockbuster movie, well, share away!
NC is thornier and also non-Free in that it restricts usage in ways that are potentially unintended, including putting the content up on a for-pay website. Like YouTube - perhaps you have a blog that you create content for and use a bit of music to. You put it up NC because it's a hobby, then you start making money off it (get popular enough an YouTube will split profits with you). Damn, that just violated the terms on the music you've been using forever!
It's not unusual that the CC folks have been getting a bit of pressure to remove ND and NC - if you really et down to it, ND+NC is only a minor variation away from "all rights reserved", so it's misleading to say it's a "free" license. ND violates the whole purpose CC because it's a "look but don't touch", and NC is so tightly worded to basically become practically useless - and a huge source of potential violations if you decide to distribute your software incorporating NC artwork and some commercial site picks it up for mirroring and such.
Fundamentally the problem is that games that suck seem to be where the money is, or at least, perhaps, the majority of people don't actually think those games suck.
Or maybe you're a snob.
There's room in the market for AAA games and the other side - the indies.
Complaining about how AAA games suck is like complaining about how blockbuster movies suck. Yes, you're not looking at high art here, but damn, sometimes you just want a fanciful escape for a few hours. Whether it was superheroes of Iron Man 3, or giant robots and monsters of Pacific Rim, people do want mindless entertainment.
Then there are plenty of indie games (alas, the vast majority do suck) which are free to do anything. Some attempt to be high art, others the beginnings of a AAA game, and all that.
Denying either really doesn't help anyone - sometimes you want mindless but pretty entertainment, and other times you just want something different.
I'd like to add my voice to this: What the hell are UI designers smoking these days? There used to be a time when user interfaces were very direct and to-the-point about what the user could and could not click to make things happen. Now we're seeing all these awful "flat" interfaces where it's nearly impossible to tell what can be interacted with and what's just there as part of the background!
The fact that Apple - who claim to be #1 in user interface design - seems to be leading this charge is mind-boggling to me. Why Windows and Ubuntu are following along is unfathomable.
Actually, Apple's the follower, not the leader.
Windows pretty much started it first - through Windows Phone UI that migrated to Windows 8. Android rapidly followed the flattening. And Apple went last after everyone complains that iOS looks "tired and date" as well as OS X.
Which really sucks, to be honest - I *liked* the fact that Apple tends to make only minor changes to the UI rather than huge freaking changes constantly.
Honestly, whoever said the flat UIs were the wave of the future ought to be shot. I do enjoy a tiny amount of skeumorphism (not as excessive as the linen and green felt or leather), and I enjoy the fact that UI elements were readily identifiable and looked like artwork.
Now they look like someone with Microsoft Paint drew it with the 16 color palette. It's like we're back in the DOS days again.
That enormous value is different from non-FRAND patents which have their value in being able to selectively license the patents or not, as you choose, and to license for whatever rate you and the other party can agree upon. That might result in people designing around your patent and you getting nothing at all or it might result in you earning a massive payday or prevent competitors from copying you.
And don't forget that's often the desired goal as well - to get people to work around your patent so your product doesn't have a million identically-working competitors.
It can also be used to force innovation because having people work around patents can come up with more innovative ways to do things.
Android and iOS UIs are fundamentally different because of this as Google worked around Apple's patents by default, leading to such things like the home screen layout and app launcher. Which is better? Who knows, it's a user preference nowadays. But certainly better than everyone just having an iOS like interface now, isn't it?
In the case of a game... who are the low-/un-paid actors? Riiiiiight... the engineers, graphic designers, voice talent, etc. etc. that actually MAKE the game under the direction of the "well-heeled exec" who's got a boatload of money.
Except for an actor in a 2 hour film, it requires a couple days of their time to show up, learn their lines, and shoot their scenes. For an "intensive" project, maybe a couple weeks. This sort of thing schedules nicely for actors - and let's be honest, much of Whedon's go-to crew, while talented, isn't pulling down "fuck you" money for the most part from their tv & film roles. They're probably doing nicely, but not exactly Brangelina territory.
For an engineer working on a game, it can requires months or years of their time to develop the finished product, and that's months or years of "14 hours a day, head down, slogging through code."
Except the movie industry has a lot of people who don't make as much as the talent - from onscreen extras (usually just lunch), to all the people who work around setting up the equipment and what not. And even in post there's a lot of people who work to keep all the equipment running.
And yes, the movie industry works LONG hours - so much so that child actors have special rules to prevent them from working so long that they miss school or don't get enough sleep and all that. But days that start at 4AM and run to 1AM aren't unusual. Or shots that run from 1PM to 10AM.
And the talent? They can work pretty long hours too - arrive at 4AM to get makeup put on, which can take 3 hours, shoot for 10 hours, then spend another hour getting makeup taken off. Then repeat the process the next day.
And filming is like that 7 days a week for 60+ filming days straight.
Maybe for TV they do the 2 hours learn lines, act, go home thing, but feature films are not that easy. And imagine when an actor has to do a movie AND TV show.
They bet too heavily on high performance, while not maintaining the kind of behavior that would bring back the customers who want devices like that.
No, they bet on performance as #1, ignoring what real people really want - stability and reliability! OCZ drives always used the latest and greatest chipsets, yes, and were very fast, but people wanted data safety first. What's the point of having a super fast drive if the data on it can randomly disappear? You can't even use it as a data buffer because you can't even rely on it being able to get the temporarily stored data back!
Plus, in the end, it really didn't matter - are you really going to notice the difference between 200MB/sec and 500MB/sec?
So you could go with high performance OCZ drives, or go with more stable drives from Intel and Samsung which don't clock as fast, but damn, other than initial teething problems, are rock solid and stable.
Now we just wait until they finally figure out to employ a smarter protocol than sending the whole frame buffer over the wire when only a tiny part of the screen has changed. It would do wonders for APUs and other systems with shared memory.
They exist - they're called "smart" LCD displays and are typically used by embedded devices. These maintain their own framebuffer, and the LCD controller sends partial updates as it needs to then shuts down. It saves some power and offloads a lot of the logic to the screen.
Of course, there's no standard for them and each LCD display has its own command set and connection protocol..
Sure it wasn't the lithium-ion batteries that caused it (it was a short on the 12V system) to catch on fire, but still, you can see in the background other brand new cars in the same port survived, who all have 12V systems as well.
It goes beyond shoddy parts to end up with a name associated with cars that catch fire when they get wet, to be honest. I don't know about you, but the number of cases of this happening is far from random.
Heck, in the meantime it took Tesla years before the first flaming car, and that happened because of an accident and everyone still made it out safely without incident. (The Fiskers seem to be completely consumed...)
For 2,000 years the human nose (standard equipment on most humans) was not the correct way to detect foul and spoiled milk? We were drinking bad milk the whole time, or what? My bad milk detector? No production cost, and zero use cost.
Well, the purpose of this label is not to detect sour milk, but to detect when conditions may lead to premature souring of the milk. Like say the reefer unit conks out midway through the Midwest. If caught early, the load might be salvageable. But if not, then the entire load must be scrapped (at the transporter's expense, of course). And of course, sometimes a partial salvage is possible.
The problem is, you may not be able to tell until it's far too late that it's spoiled (i.e., it's on store shelves and goes sour a few days before the date on the label). But by then it's far too late to know the reason why, and nevermind a bunch of customers buying milk and discovering it's sour when they get home.
That's what these labels do - they monitor environmental conditions and tell you if it was exceeded at any time. This is especially true in medicine as you cannot always tell if a medication is still viable. A lot of medications often require storage below freezing, and I'm sure you'll appreciate knowing if it was mistreated before being administered to you.
In the end they're no fancier than the shock labels they stick on goods to see if they've been dropped and such.
Devices running iOS sell at a premium, to people who don't mind paying more for goods they consider superior. Of course people with extra money will be able to buy more advertised products! People who are more cost-conscious will tend to gravitate to Android, and will also likely be more wary of advertising.
The big problem is that on Android, you can't differentiate between a valuable flagship Android phone user (e.g., HTC One, Moto X, SGS4, etc) and a worthless free Android phone user (who wouldn't be in the market).
Concentrating your ads towards iPhone and high-end Android users generates more returns, but Google doesn't offer the capabilities yet.
So perhaps that's the first thing Google needs - figure out if they're using flagship phones and sell premium ads for those users.
Pull out your cellphone. Click. Now your IP on the cell and phone are tied to your browser session and it's IP address. If geolocating wasn't easy enough, they have you at a doubley coordinated vector.
Not to mention your location. Getting location services is a standard part of HTML5 and is how mobile Google Maps works. So they can get your location, force you to watch some ads before letting you in, etc.
Actually, two smartphones required to browse. One to navigate to the website, the other to take the picture of the QR code on the first one's screen. Oh, and you'll probably need a third hand to type in the password that is computed on the second phone into the password box displayed on the first phone.
Keep in mind that between some of the more recent Snowden disclosures, and some of the disclosures coming out of Lavabit's shutdown (I think it was Lavabit that was printing SSL private keys in 4-point text???), the NSA can easily MITM these streams without anyone noticing as they are forcing US-based companies to provide them with SSL private keys for just this purpose.
If the password were a salted hash there would at least be some level of protection here, although as long as Apple has a password reset mechanism and a way to recover "old" messages after a reset - it's nearly impossible for them to guarantee that someone who has legal power over Apple (such as the FISA courts) can't read messages.
If the NSA were to MITM an iMessage stream - they could just as easily MITM an iTunes connection, an iCloud.com connection or even apple.com connection and get at your Apple ID and password information right there when you type it in on the web page.
Considering all the places where your Apple ID and password are available "in the clear" (well, inside an SSL tunnel), if the NSA can MITM iMessages, it doesn't really matter in the end since they can easily MITM many Apple SSL sites to get your Apple ID. Heck, they can hijack your Mac to get it straight from OS X itself.
You realize why Google's doing it right? Google knows a good chunk of their ad viewing population consists of users on Windows XP. They also know that XP browser support ends at IE8, with Firefox keeping current for maybe another year beyond that. They need to keep Chrome too because as long as there's a good chunk of people on the XP teat, there's a good chunk of ad-viewing population they make money off of.
What, you expect Google to give up what probably amounts to 40-50% of their ad revenue by desktop OS?
If XP continues to be a significant player, Google will keep supporting it as the money is there.
My kids are 4 and 7. They've been exposed to computers as early as possible. We play a lot of minecraft. The 7 year old has graduated to looking at odd things on youtube and "Movie Star Planet" She loves to tell me, "If you search Justin Beiber on google, it says, "Justin Beiber eats poop"
I think it's good.
Just last week I'm building a PC and the older one wants to help. It wasn't a full build, just plugging in cables. I was in shock though, she pretty much knew where everything was supposed to go. She just lacked the hand/eye to wiggle things in correctly.
In school they're both far ahead of their peers in terms of reading and typing.
The problem is not parents like you. You are the minority - the vast majority of those children are using the Internet as a babysitter.
And you know what happens? Parents start enacting "think of the children!" legislation because of stuff like this.
A properly supervised child can use the internet productively, and a responsible one can use it unsupervised. The problem is not this minority of people. It's the majority that use it unsupervised as an electronic babysitter who do not bother teaching their kids at all of the perils or the consequences.
The fundamental problem is lousy parents, not the internet, video games, TV, etc. They want a babysitter they don't have to pay and that their children will follow. Likewise, those are the same parents who want people to censor the internet, ban selling adult games to minors, etc.
It's not a statistic to be proud of - because the self-selected/. crowd probably can let loose their kids on the internet and they won't ask others to kill themselves for fun on ask.fm and the like. It's the rest of them who want to use the internet as a babysitter and damn you if you can't abide by simple rules like keeping "bad stuff" off of the internet.
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I think the problem with Wikipedia is basically described by Animal House. Initially conceived as a criticism of communism, Wikipedia's editing system was also a form. Except there was no central bureau to control it all. That's the only difference.
Basically, Wikipedia's goal is an encyclopedia where "Everyone is equal".
But as we all know the full quote is "Everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others".
And Wikipedia is a perfect modern day illustration of what happened in the early to mid 20th century - it starts out as everyone is equal, but soon, some become "more equal" and thus end up in control.
So we basically had the 21st century exploration into communism - and the same results occur - you end up with a group of "elites" that end up controlling the entire site while the proles think they have power and control.
And the unfortunate thing is, human nature will ensure that "some are more equal than others" because there will always been a human desire for power. (Or greed.).
The only good thing is that it's only Wikipedia so as an experiment, its effect on the world are minimal.
It's also why most successful FOSS projects are benevolent dictator style things because power abhors a vacuum. If no one is a leader, someone will become one either by mutual agreement or through forcefulness.
Not really, the human eye is actually quite horrible. It's a very low res capture device, just coupled with a very powerful image processor running powerful image processing software.
First - peripheral vision is just lousy - if you fix your gaze on an object and attempt to see stuff in your peripheral vision, it's very low resolution. (A fancy trick was to show a big X on a board about 20-30 feet away, then have two cheerleaders stand about 30-40 feet away from it in a line and have people stare at the X and pick the prettier cheerleader. The trick was that one of the two was always male, and after reviewing the choices (the test was repeated with several groups of cheerleaders on the same person), they'd end up with roughly 50-50 split of male and female picks).
Central vision is better at color resolution, but has poor lowlight sensitivity (peripheral vision is better). Nevermind the huge gaping hole in your vision because of the blind spot.
Though, central vision is able to handle more "channels" of motion than peripheral vision - peripheral vision is limited to one type of motion and it will fail to detect other motion properly if it's tracking.
It's all compensated for by the brain though - your eyes actually are always in motion and the brain stitches together a cohesive, high-definition image out of the movements of the eye as it darts around.
Of course, it's very easy to fool the brain - optical illusions and other tricks of the trade, especially in its ability to take a 2D image (e.g., from TV or a monitor - say a photo) and convert it into 3D (even though the photo is 2D, the brain automatically figures out depth from visual cues. This is important when it comes to the fact that stereoscopic vision only gets you so much - once you're beyond a mere 10-30', there's not enough separation to determine depth and the brain figures it out from experience).
It's remarkably easy to fool your brain - all the various static and non-static optical illusions show just how much processing the brain does - enough to be able to get completely fooled into thinking concave objects are convex (especially faces) and other things.
It's called "remaining value".
If the car needs $1500 worth of repairs, especially older models, a lot of people start questioning whether or not it's actually worth it.
Would you spend $1500 to fix a vehicle that's only worth $4000? Especially since that $1500 may only be the start - it's a transmission now, then it's the power brake boosters next month, etc. etc. etc.
The term is "Beyond economical repair" - where it either costs more to repair than it's worth, or where repair costs are a significant fraction of its worth that it's far better to either scrap it or sell it and get a new vehicle.
And yes, for a lot of older cars, they start nickel and diming you as various things start to go - a clutch here, a CV joint there, a door latch, power window motor, etc. etc. etc.
So there comes a time when it's not practical to continue to use the vehicle because it's just going to cost you $4500/year in repairs, when you can get a new one and pay $4800/year for a brand new one that won't have significant issues for many years.
And yes, people do drive such vehicles - we usually call them beaters, where they don't care that windows don't move, or doors don't latch properly, or the check engine light has been on for years - they're just happy someone sold them a nice vehicle for $1000. If it breaks down, take the plates and walk away (though some are crazy enough to put In thousands of dollars to fix them up..).
Same reason people buy new electronics when something breaks in their old one - because even if it's a relatively nice device, the new model doesn't cost a lot more than what it would cost to repair it.
Because Ford was smart - they designed a common platform and uses it across their entire line. Given Sync was originally a Microsoft collaboration, they probably also designed a lot of future proofing, device detection and other features into it initially so the platform itself can last 10+ years and still run off a common software base with the software disabling features that configuration data says does not exist and all that.
It's a lot easier to do it properly when you do it right from the beginning (and being Microsoft, well...). Of course, today's Sync is no longer Microsoft but I think something Ford took ownership of working with a third party.
A lot of other manufacturers don't do this and simply either outsource the system design to someone else or do it themselves based on requirements at the time and finding a suitable SoC.
That requires that updating is a scenario they thought about. Unlike say routers, car manufacturers generally think of the infotainment system as a black box - like the radio. They don't care about updates because it's supposed to ship with whatever it comes with. So updating mechanisms are tricky - either using JTAG, or some debug header on the main board or something else, which can include pesky switching of jumpers and using specially prepared update discs and USB sticks.
Just because you use Android doesn't mean people don't care.
The iPhone 4s was about 90% sRGB (mostly due to a faulty blue filter that lets in a little green), the iPhone 5 (and 5s, 5c, and associated iPods) are actually a little over 99% sRGB. And Apple calibrates every display as they come off the line. tests done on the displays have shown excellent calibration with very little variability between devices.
While Androids have better screens, the AMOLED ones, especially Samsung Pentile variants tend to be far worse - the OLED display is nice but oversaturates for the most part. LCD Androids may or may not be calibrated as well - some devices exhibit such wide variations in color accuracy and error that they're effectively uncalibrated screens, while others do calibrated them to an extent during manufacturing (usually the flagships).
The modern smartphone and tablet display is a far cry from early mobile LCD displays - they're often very good (especially Apple displays - if you need color accuracy on a portable, you're pretty much limited to Apple) and people do expect their photos to be somewhat like reality.
If you want to see what crap looks like, check out a cheap digital photo frame, then look at a modern smartphone or tablet display and you'll find they're much nicer.
Better tell everyone then because there s lot more unofficial USB devices than official ones. A lot of them even re-use the OEM VID instead of getting their own (think cheap Androids and the like).
Heck, one of the reasons mini-USB-A and mini-USB-AB ports were deprecated was because the USB-IF wanted to reserve those ports for USB-OTG devices, but people kept using them for devices that support USB host. (Note: they did NOT deprecate mini-USB-B ports).
And in most cases, "USB OTG" is mis-used to mean "supports host and client" rather than true OTG. While having worked extensively on getting devices past OTG certification (including tricky stuff like Host Negotiation Protocol (HNP) and role-switching), no one really got any OTG devices certified and there aren't any on the open market. (HNP is used to figure out which end is to be the "host" regardless of the way the cable is plugged in, while role switching is where the two devices decide the host needs to be the client and vice-versa. Role-switches can happen long after HNP (you may need to role switch during HNP if the devices decide the user plugged the cable in the wrong way around)).
Except the bootloader probably isn't designed to boot 32-bit OSes, ARMv8 isn't terribly impressive in AArch32 mode, and Android isn't 64-bit native yet.
Most of the speed ups the A7 gets are from 64-bit code as it cleans up a lot of the architecture. 32-bit code works, but the speedup is minimal.
And yes, the bootloader has to be 64-bit and then switch the CPU to 32-bit mode in order to boot a 32-bit OS. Running a 32-bit OS means you can't run 64-bit code at all. When you go down the privilege levels (secure monitor, hypervisor (VM), kernel, user) you can go from 64 to 32 bit mode, but to go the other way requires going up the stack.
Well, you could always go *over* the vehicle on the sidewalk, you know...
Sometimes it's not up to the vendor - a lot of these devices may run an embedded commercial RTOS that demands separate distribution agreements.
And yes, these things can be powerful enough to run a basic RTOS, so there's many commercial vendors that do sell RTOSes for that putpose - they don't provide memory protection or other modern OS features, but interrupt latency and other convenience things they do.
And sometimes it's due to agreements with third party libraries in the code - there's more than one commercial license that prohibits distribution of the binary blob with open-source software (being afraid of "taint" and "viral infection").
Technically, ND and NC are both Non-Free.
ND because it defeats the entire purpose of sharing - that people can get inspired or use your work in their work, as long as they incorporate the other license terms.
SA is perfectly fine - if the music gets incorporated in that blockbuster movie, well, share away!
NC is thornier and also non-Free in that it restricts usage in ways that are potentially unintended, including putting the content up on a for-pay website. Like YouTube - perhaps you have a blog that you create content for and use a bit of music to. You put it up NC because it's a hobby, then you start making money off it (get popular enough an YouTube will split profits with you). Damn, that just violated the terms on the music you've been using forever!
It's not unusual that the CC folks have been getting a bit of pressure to remove ND and NC - if you really et down to it, ND+NC is only a minor variation away from "all rights reserved", so it's misleading to say it's a "free" license. ND violates the whole purpose CC because it's a "look but don't touch", and NC is so tightly worded to basically become practically useless - and a huge source of potential violations if you decide to distribute your software incorporating NC artwork and some commercial site picks it up for mirroring and such.
Or maybe you're a snob.
There's room in the market for AAA games and the other side - the indies.
Complaining about how AAA games suck is like complaining about how blockbuster movies suck. Yes, you're not looking at high art here, but damn, sometimes you just want a fanciful escape for a few hours. Whether it was superheroes of Iron Man 3, or giant robots and monsters of Pacific Rim, people do want mindless entertainment.
Then there are plenty of indie games (alas, the vast majority do suck) which are free to do anything. Some attempt to be high art, others the beginnings of a AAA game, and all that.
Denying either really doesn't help anyone - sometimes you want mindless but pretty entertainment, and other times you just want something different.
Actually, Apple's the follower, not the leader.
Windows pretty much started it first - through Windows Phone UI that migrated to Windows 8. Android rapidly followed the flattening. And Apple went last after everyone complains that iOS looks "tired and date" as well as OS X.
Which really sucks, to be honest - I *liked* the fact that Apple tends to make only minor changes to the UI rather than huge freaking changes constantly.
Honestly, whoever said the flat UIs were the wave of the future ought to be shot. I do enjoy a tiny amount of skeumorphism (not as excessive as the linen and green felt or leather), and I enjoy the fact that UI elements were readily identifiable and looked like artwork.
Now they look like someone with Microsoft Paint drew it with the 16 color palette. It's like we're back in the DOS days again.
And don't forget that's often the desired goal as well - to get people to work around your patent so your product doesn't have a million identically-working competitors.
It can also be used to force innovation because having people work around patents can come up with more innovative ways to do things.
Android and iOS UIs are fundamentally different because of this as Google worked around Apple's patents by default, leading to such things like the home screen layout and app launcher. Which is better? Who knows, it's a user preference nowadays. But certainly better than everyone just having an iOS like interface now, isn't it?
Except the movie industry has a lot of people who don't make as much as the talent - from onscreen extras (usually just lunch), to all the people who work around setting up the equipment and what not. And even in post there's a lot of people who work to keep all the equipment running.
And yes, the movie industry works LONG hours - so much so that child actors have special rules to prevent them from working so long that they miss school or don't get enough sleep and all that. But days that start at 4AM and run to 1AM aren't unusual. Or shots that run from 1PM to 10AM.
And the talent? They can work pretty long hours too - arrive at 4AM to get makeup put on, which can take 3 hours, shoot for 10 hours, then spend another hour getting makeup taken off. Then repeat the process the next day.
And filming is like that 7 days a week for 60+ filming days straight.
Maybe for TV they do the 2 hours learn lines, act, go home thing, but feature films are not that easy. And imagine when an actor has to do a movie AND TV show.
No, they bet on performance as #1, ignoring what real people really want - stability and reliability! OCZ drives always used the latest and greatest chipsets, yes, and were very fast, but people wanted data safety first. What's the point of having a super fast drive if the data on it can randomly disappear? You can't even use it as a data buffer because you can't even rely on it being able to get the temporarily stored data back!
Plus, in the end, it really didn't matter - are you really going to notice the difference between 200MB/sec and 500MB/sec?
So you could go with high performance OCZ drives, or go with more stable drives from Intel and Samsung which don't clock as fast, but damn, other than initial teething problems, are rock solid and stable.
Hey, I live in BC, though I only earn about $6000 less (ok, let's say about $10,000 if we include currency conversion) below #25.
I did turn down a job that would've put my pay right in the middle of pack, too.
But I will say I only work 40 hours a week, so there's that aspect. I don't put in crazy hours at all.
They exist - they're called "smart" LCD displays and are typically used by embedded devices. These maintain their own framebuffer, and the LCD controller sends partial updates as it needs to then shuts down. It saves some power and offloads a lot of the logic to the screen.
Of course, there's no standard for them and each LCD display has its own command set and connection protocol..
We're talking Elon Musk of Tesla fame here, not Fisker. Teslas at least don't catch fire when exposed to water.
Then there were the images of brand new Fisker cars in port after Hurricane Sandy did its thing.
Sure it wasn't the lithium-ion batteries that caused it (it was a short on the 12V system) to catch on fire, but still, you can see in the background other brand new cars in the same port survived, who all have 12V systems as well.
It goes beyond shoddy parts to end up with a name associated with cars that catch fire when they get wet, to be honest. I don't know about you, but the number of cases of this happening is far from random.
Heck, in the meantime it took Tesla years before the first flaming car, and that happened because of an accident and everyone still made it out safely without incident. (The Fiskers seem to be completely consumed...)
Well, the purpose of this label is not to detect sour milk, but to detect when conditions may lead to premature souring of the milk. Like say the reefer unit conks out midway through the Midwest. If caught early, the load might be salvageable. But if not, then the entire load must be scrapped (at the transporter's expense, of course). And of course, sometimes a partial salvage is possible.
The problem is, you may not be able to tell until it's far too late that it's spoiled (i.e., it's on store shelves and goes sour a few days before the date on the label). But by then it's far too late to know the reason why, and nevermind a bunch of customers buying milk and discovering it's sour when they get home.
That's what these labels do - they monitor environmental conditions and tell you if it was exceeded at any time. This is especially true in medicine as you cannot always tell if a medication is still viable. A lot of medications often require storage below freezing, and I'm sure you'll appreciate knowing if it was mistreated before being administered to you.
In the end they're no fancier than the shock labels they stick on goods to see if they've been dropped and such.
It's easily a big disparity. . Their ad click-through rates are 2.5 times as high as Android, And we're talking about a platform that is outsold 4:1 by Android.
The big problem is that on Android, you can't differentiate between a valuable flagship Android phone user (e.g., HTC One, Moto X, SGS4, etc) and a worthless free Android phone user (who wouldn't be in the market).
Concentrating your ads towards iPhone and high-end Android users generates more returns, but Google doesn't offer the capabilities yet.
So perhaps that's the first thing Google needs - figure out if they're using flagship phones and sell premium ads for those users.
Not to mention your location. Getting location services is a standard part of HTML5 and is how mobile Google Maps works. So they can get your location, force you to watch some ads before letting you in, etc.
Geez, makes you wonder if someone simply applied an XKCD comic as a standard...
If the NSA were to MITM an iMessage stream - they could just as easily MITM an iTunes connection, an iCloud.com connection or even apple.com connection and get at your Apple ID and password information right there when you type it in on the web page.
Considering all the places where your Apple ID and password are available "in the clear" (well, inside an SSL tunnel), if the NSA can MITM iMessages, it doesn't really matter in the end since they can easily MITM many Apple SSL sites to get your Apple ID. Heck, they can hijack your Mac to get it straight from OS X itself.
You realize why Google's doing it right? Google knows a good chunk of their ad viewing population consists of users on Windows XP. They also know that XP browser support ends at IE8, with Firefox keeping current for maybe another year beyond that. They need to keep Chrome too because as long as there's a good chunk of people on the XP teat, there's a good chunk of ad-viewing population they make money off of.
What, you expect Google to give up what probably amounts to 40-50% of their ad revenue by desktop OS?
If XP continues to be a significant player, Google will keep supporting it as the money is there.
The problem is not parents like you. You are the minority - the vast majority of those children are using the Internet as a babysitter.
And you know what happens? Parents start enacting "think of the children!" legislation because of stuff like this.
A properly supervised child can use the internet productively, and a responsible one can use it unsupervised. The problem is not this minority of people. It's the majority that use it unsupervised as an electronic babysitter who do not bother teaching their kids at all of the perils or the consequences.
The fundamental problem is lousy parents, not the internet, video games, TV, etc. They want a babysitter they don't have to pay and that their children will follow. Likewise, those are the same parents who want people to censor the internet, ban selling adult games to minors, etc.
It's not a statistic to be proud of - because the self-selected /. crowd probably can let loose their kids on the internet and they won't ask others to kill themselves for fun on ask.fm and the like. It's the rest of them who want to use the internet as a babysitter and damn you if you can't abide by simple rules like keeping "bad stuff" off of the internet.