If you compare the Tea Party or Occupy to the Civil Rights campaign, you will see the latter was much longer in duration, had far more people participating, and had locally major economic impact (the Montgomery bus boycott). So the reason the Tea Party and Occupy failed is they did not have enough people with enough commitment.
Well, the Tea Party simply couldn't get enough people to believe in the cause - being exposed as a scheme for the rich to get richer at the expense of the public certainly didn't help. Plus there just wasn't enough anger to tap into.
Occupy had the requisite anger (see the many Occupy events held worldwide). The problem is the people Occupy represent (in general) are pretty powerless - and they represented a threat to the establishment. So the establishment simply overpowered them (it's Wall street - the people there have money and therefore power). And given the media was owned by those in power, it was easy to hide any Occupy news to some hidden section of the paper (or website).
Of course, it didn't help that Occupy was badly fragmented in what they wanted as well, so while people could understand the anger, the message got lost.
I remember when I was in graduate school looking over a member of my group's shoulder and realizing he thought that the ^ operator in C meant raise to the power of instead of being the bitwise XOR operator. Scientists are often pretty indifferent programmers.
Scientists and researchers generally write lousy code. If you think TheDailyWTF is bad, you haven't seen researcher code.
Generally write-only, lots of copy-pasta going on, variables that *might* make sense (and probably declared globally) and if you're really lucky, lack of subroutines or functions.
Hell, the code itself may only compile on one specific machine - the researcher's - due to hidden dependencies, version issues, etc. And may even involve a lot of convoluted mechanisms involving formatting the input, sending it through one program, then taking the output, reformatting it (manually, of course) and shoving it through a second program with a different script, etc.
Code is generally secondary to the actual research at hand - it's done to facilitate the analysis by being quicker
If you're really lucky, the researcher would've actually done an analysis manually to verify the program(s) actually work properly.
Exactly. Ever. And that is the root of the problem.
The FDA came about this because there were a HUGE number of apps that did medical quackery.
Yes, quackery, as in back to the snake oil days. You may recall many apps claimed to do stuff like cure acne and analyze your skin for stuff like melanoma and things like that.
The problem was the first claimed to do it by "exposing the acne to a special light", which ended up just being a specific color of the screen. And there was no evidence whatsoever that said a particular color of light would cure acne, nor was there any evidence that even a smartphone screen could generate the required light.
Of course, that app sold a ton of copies because it appealed to a huge market who generally tend to own such devices.
The second kind of app is positively dangerous if it makes a wrong diagnosis. If it's a false positive, not generally a problem since your doctor (who you need to go through in order to get treatment anyways) will probably discover it's not melanoma.
But if it's a false negative, then there's a big problem because someone may wait far too long with it (thinking it isn't melanoma) before deciding they really need to seek treatment. By then, the cancer may have spread and (in the best case) make for a complex series of treatments, or be completely inoperable and terminal.
And then there's a whole new set of apps that are designed for doctors to aid in diagnosis and many that patients use to send medical data to their doctors. If there's ever a case for privacy protection - sensitive information like this would be it. It would make apps stealing your contacts list seem trivial by comparison if a developer decides they want to get your medical information and sell it to people who shouldn't get it.
I think embedded and mobile development benefits from open source.
Only in that you can get a ready made embedded OS on the cheap.
Proprietary stuff it depends - partners of SoC vendors (you usually have to be one in order to use their stuff) get access to documents and source code to what gets turned into a binary blob a lot of the time.
So embedded OEMs and vendors can get access to the code if they need it, make changes to suit them build it and ship it. As far as they're concerned, it's "open source" to them.
They even get access to the private documentation too, but like most SoC vendors, the documentation typically sucks. If you're lucky, all you get is a register list and have to figure out how something works on your own (if you're a partner, you mean your support contact who'll answer your questions). If you're really lucky, you'll get a document telling you how it works and how to drive it. If you're unlucky, you'll just get an abbreviated register list.
That was my first thought as well, though I cynically suspect this new openness from NVidia suggests the Steam box will be AMD based
oh mah dog! That would be something:) AMD would own gaming market for next 5-10 years.
Well, it would make Intel very happy if that's the case - AMD's in loads of hurt, so having both the Xbox One and PS4 be AMD based is good news for Intel - it means AMD will not likely fold in the next 5-10 years. And having AMD around means Intel is pretty much free to do what they want as there's still viable competition. AMD was looking fairly dicey and Intel's probably worried it may attract government oversight and investigations. Or worse yet, force AMD's patents to be sold off to many competitors, making it very expensive to license (since Intel and AMD cross-license).
Yeah, i was going to post that too. It may also be that Nvidia is worried that AMD will try to gain mindshare among Linux gamers. PS4 is running orbis (~freebsd) with AMD. Developers of C++ games may find it easier to port code to Linux from BSD than in previous generations. If the Steambox idea holds up, and the PS4 is truly indie-friendly, I can see a lot of games being ported.
Make that gamers in general, because all next-gens are using AMD chips. NVidia may hate the console business, but it does generate a lot of PR for AMD, and if AMD comes out with a mobile chip, that's going to have a fair bit of mindshare.
All in all, Intel's in a good spot - with AMD making console chips, they've got steady cashflow and will survive (and console CPUs may consume enough fab time that AMD may only be able to produce limited amounts of regular PC chips - meaning Intel will end up having to make up for the shortfall in CPUs for servers and desktops.
AMD is in a good spot - they have good income for the next 5+ years to stem the red tide and provide competition for Intel.
The only one losing out is NVidia - they have to compete hard for attention now.
I let my 3 kids play the GTA series. I even taught them how to fire REAL guns.
Yet they have never committed a violent act against another human being. Because they know video games are entertainment and fantasy. And they know the devastating power of real firearms and their intended purpose. They also know the value of human life and that violence is a desperate last resort.
They also know that if it ever comes to violence.... you need to be able to dish it out effectively and win.
Ya see.... I don't need the ESRB or the government telling me how I should raise my own kids. I'll raise them how I see fit and society can f**k off. I really don't care about the opinion of the masses of panicky, scared, arrogant, pompous mothers with extra cash to throw at lobbyists and "ratings boards". As far as I'm concerned they'd be better off spending all that cash on booze and choking on their own vomit.
They can shelter their kids to the point of being useless, "entitled", drooling retards but the second they try to force their views upon me, we have a problem. Oh... and for the record.... my kids are straight A students with a great interest in the Sciences and History. They also happen to like mowing down prostitutes in GTA for amusement after their homework is finished.
And you sound like a responsible parent who probably talks with their kids and does everything right. And probably imposes reasonable limits and forces them to be more balanced in life, so they're not babysat by a screen.
The problem is never responsible parents - if you read TFA, the writer lets their kids play M rated games.
The problem is the IRresponsible parents - who just blindly buy what their kids want without taking time to be critical of their purchase. They treat video games as being all the same, when they aren't. Some games parents should treat like tobacco, alcohol and guns - to be consumed responsibly in controlled situations. Others fine, go right ahead.
The big problem are those are the same kind of parents that demand that such games be regulated. Hell, I'm sure the same parents won't buy some adult film for their kids, but are perfectly happy buying adult games for their kids.
It's all about responsible parenting. If parents are responsible and care for their children growing up, no big deal - a little indulgence is probably fine, educational even (you get to discuss the morality of the choices - GTA is great for such topics of discussion).
The problem is not the parents who know and understand what's going on - it's the ones who don't, and who use the screen as a babysitter.
Can we finally put this concept to bed, please? Your ten-year-old isn't going to be irreparably mentally harmed from playing GTA5. Or from watching a violent movie or sneaking a look at some porn on the Internet.
While they may not be harmed nor turn into violent mass murderers, exposure to violence does have a measured desensitizing effect. Enough so that militaries use it as a tool to condition soldiers to get used to the violence and expect it.
Whether it's a good thing or not, is debatable. Though desensitization may account for increased violent tendencies. While they won't take a gun and shoot up a school, they may be more prone to acts of violence as a first response.
So your kid may end up throwing punches first, rather than trying to seek more peaceful resolution mechanisms first.
This effect is measurable, though it's also not exclusive to video games - violent movies and TV shows have similarly desensitizing effects. Of course, if you want to do it properly, it's not video games, but screen violence, in which case limiting screen time is probably the best solution.
It is their walled garden, is it not? They exercise editorial control over what is or is not offered, do they not? AMC may have been the ones who tried to screw customers, but they did it through the Apple App store, which apple polices and staffs.
Only on the App Store, not to be confused with the iBookstore, Music Store, and Movie & TV store.
Apple exercises less control on the latter stores as the publishers are the ones who do it and it makes very little sense for Apple to go about reviewing every new music track, movie, and TV show for content purposes as you expect it to be the same as what Amazon and everyone else has.
From time to time Apple may ban a whole category, but that's generally the whole category and not individual shows. For the iBookstore, Apple does also exercise some control for self-published works, less so from content from other publishers.
It's a horrendous mishmash, but in general, only App Store apps are subject to editorial control because only those are walled gardens. Music, TV shows, books, movies, they're all "sideloadable" and generally users expect them to be the same as what you get in the store.
I don't think Apple even does a Wal-Mart and actually force artists to remaster explicit tracks to not be explicit.
Bashing Apple has become a favorite past time for some people. Yes, AMC is at fault here. Apple did the right thing - I'm curious if AMC is going to reimburse Apple for the loss.
Probably not. But Apple did it because you don't save much - it's what, $3 per episode? And the full "season" (as defined by AMC) is $24? So you're saving a whopping... $1?
I think in light of that, Apple decided it was stupid and let them have the full season for $23 (saving $25) versus charging it twice for a full whopping savings of $1 each.
AMC gets 70% of those values given general Apple standard contracts... and I think Apple can eat the "loss" of that money from AMC.
It's iTunes credit, after all. $23 means Apple pays out 70% of that to someone.
For the last ten years I've been part of an unofficial and unpaid test team that has been examining how safe it is to use mobile phones and similar transceivers during take-off and landing. My planes have never had problems.
Let's try it again with a 108-144MHz oscillator.
(For those who don't know, that's the VHF aviation band. It starts right above the FM band, and ends just below the 2m ham band).
It's a bit of a problem because a lot of LCD screens we were driving had pixel clocks somewhere in that range, so we had strong spikes in the range where even the FCC has a reduced envelope for on avionics (there's a dip in allowed emissions over that band to prevent interference with communications).
Of course, if you can unlock the GPS receiver (some phones are known to do it), you can have loads of fun on landing because more and more carriers are going RNP (required navigation performance) which requires GPS units that can provide high precision lateral and vertical positioning. Unlock it and you can be travelling to an alternate airport because the RNP is not there. Of course, if it happens while you're doing an RNP approach, not a problem - that's why there's redundancy. But do it just before beginning and you cannot do RNP because you need all the redundant systems fully operational prior to the approach.
I am astonished they didn't al least take the opportunity to drop the price of the pro and create a mini pro at $200. Anything else is waiting another year to enter the tablet market. To come up with a different strategy is going to take time.
Probably because doing so would require going to Atom, and Bay Trail was only recently announced and probably just was available long after Microsoft had a chance to stabilize the hardware.
And Atoms not including Bay Trail and later, run like crap. Which would make Windows run like crap, and you'll probably end up in a situation where the Surface RT runs faster than the Surface Pro.
The national airspace administrator here in New Zealand is CAA (our equivalent of the USA's FAA). They, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that since what I'm working on has significant commercial potential, I can not continue my development work (ie: strap this thing to a small foam RC model and fly it over a grassy paddock in the countryside) without first gaining a "commercial operating authority".
Now I've been flying RC models for almost 50 years and have a very high level of skill. Hell, I have two very popular YouTube channels with a total of over 45 million views and 100K subscribers in which I entertain and inform folks on the subject of RC models. However, all this counts for nothing and, according to CAA, if I want to continue my development of this technology by strapping it (as a passive payload) to the type of small foam model that thousands of folk fly here every weekend, I must jump a raft of ridiculous hurdles.
My suggestion? If your product is as good as you say it is, it's worth a LOT of money. I'd suggest moving to the US where the air regs are a bit looser - you can probably still do RC testing. If you wish to graduate it to real planes, there's a whole pile of levels you can go through (though you will probably need a sport pilot's license and fly an experimental LSA - but these are much cheaper).
If you don't like the US, there's always Canada, which shares many of the same rules. Though if you're under 400', it's pretty much open season And yes, the US and Canada have some of the loosest air regulations around - it's generally a lot tighter and a lot more expensive to fly anywhere else in the world.
And then once you build it, you can look into scaling it up for real aircraft - 1 mile is plenty for light single engine GA planes - for the faster ones, you'd probably want to increase the range a bit.
Once it's done, you can write a nice letter to your government explaining that the air regulations pretty much kept you from doing it in NZ and you had to export the technology and manufacturing to other countries, so perhaps it's time to update the regulations somewhat.
People forget when Microsoft injected cash in Apple when it was going nowhere.
Actually, Apple didn't need Microsoft's money. It was instead a very cavalier move that was meant more as a signal to developers than anyone else - that if Microsoft was investing in Apple, they should too. Microsoft sold their shares a few years later, making a tidy profit from it.
And it worked because developers jumped on the Apple bandwagon again. It was the only way to avoid the death spiral of developers leaving, which force users to switch, which cause more developers to leave, etc. etc. etc. Not to mention that during this time, Office for Mac became a much preferred version of Office (over the Windows version) because Microsoft wasn't screwing around with stuff as much (it was way more Mac-like an application than Office Windows was a Windows application).
Proof: people wanted a phone just because it was golden. That is not innovation, is hype, sooner or later the bubble will burst and all the chickens will come home to roost.
Actually, it is innovation. It's not technological innovation. In fact, Apple does not do technological innovation. They do practical innovation. And by that, I mean by making technology appropriate to the customer. There was nothing new in ANY Apple product that could not have been done by anyone else. Other than the fact that anyone else didn't do it.
The iMac proved form factor and colors were what people wanted - they wanted a PC that wasn't just a beige box that looked ugly - they wanted a PC that looked stylish and would fit just fine in the living room and not hidden away in a den or "computer room". They wanted a PC they could show off with.
And in a way, it really broke out from the PC modding craze where PC modders would add lights, windows and other bling to their computers to turn them from beige boxes to flashy things that Did Important Stuff. Just a bit more tasteful, though.
People wanted something different, Apple's experimenting with that - colorful phones, and a color few have ever seen in a phone. Which will pan out? Who knows, who cares. If the 5C sales a dismal, it means people didn't want color, so Apple won't bother trying to make colorful phones anymore. (If you don't try, you don't know).
Likewise, fingerprint sensors are old hat - they've been around for decades. But Touch ID is somewhat different - it puts the sensor on a surface people touch anyways so at the same time you're using the button, it's reading your fingerprint. It's somewhat "magical" in that most fingerprint sensors require you to use them explicitly - to unlock my PC, I need to slide my finger over the sensor. Here, I do a motion I'd do anyways, and it automatically reads and unlocks. It's like how in the movies the computer would recognize the user when they approach.
Siri wasn't new either. Just Apple put it in a "fun" form factor that most people were not aware of.
Touchscreens, ditto - but add a proximity sensor and it suddenly gets a whole lot more useful that you're not accidentally pushing onscreen objects. And you can do a "magical" thing and put a big fat "End Call" button on the screen so when they remove the phone from their face, it shows up and the user wonders if the phone is psychic. (It happened to me the first couple of times I used an iPhone. Then logic set in and the wonder goes away).
Too much technology is tied up in shit UIs and poor UXes because they're often invented by engineers (who are not designers or user interaction researchers), so they just toss crap up and expect people to know. For someone in the field, yes, great, but for the common user, they want to know if they can use it, and how useful it would be to them. Apple excels at that - where an engineer would go "Why would you do that? A user might need that option!" Apple goes "Well, our research shows that 90% of users don't care about it and amon
While I wont comment on the Xbox360 I find my PS3 loads a game in well under a minute (usually 20~30 seconds) and that is not even enough time to play one round of Angry Birds. Not only that but the controllers are totally different so you would play one or the other but both?.
I don't play my consoles daily, so on the PS3, everytime I turn it on, I have to go through the entire update rigamarole, which can easily take 40+ minutes (system update, game update, blah blah blah). Yes, I timed it once and I gave up because I only had an hour to play.
Heck, even Xbox updates can take 5-10 minutes. And someone mentioned waiting for friends to come online (I remember I decided to participate in a limited invite Halo multiplayer game - it took us half an hour to get everyone settled down and ready to play - would've been nice to spend that half hour playing something else).
And matchmaking... sometimes the waits are deadly long. (Of course, since the game loads the maps etc., you have plenty of time to suspend the other game).
If you're playing offline single player, yeah, the dealys aren't too long, but when you're waiting for others (or waiting for your friend to come online, even) it's certainly handy to be doing something else while keeping watch.
What the enthusiast wants is open specs, common interfaces, accessible GPIO, non-DRM memory or hardware, and open source code.
Unfortunately, enthusiasts like you and me are in the minority. The fact that people buy locked-down video game consoles for ease of use is evidence that the majority don't care about owning their devices. It's unclear whether there are still enough enthusiasts to sustain a market for such owner-respecting computing devices.
Nonsense.
There will always be an enthusiast market.
Always.
I wouldn't hesitate to say that enthusiasts probably make the same amount of users as they always did - maybe more. However, the market is a whole lot bigger now. If you want an example, take iOS vs. Android. Both userbases are growing, despite iOS's marketshare shrinking. How? Because iOS isn't growing as fast as Android, that's how.
Now treat enthusiast PC users as iOS users, and you can grow while the market grows faster.
Enthusiast PCs will ALWAYS be a niche. Now, granted, back when only enthusiasts owned PCs, things were great, but now that's not the case. But it's still a sizable niche, and like iOS, a very profitable one.
While Dell may sell 1000 PCs for every enthusiast who buys a custom made PC with their choice of parts and specs, you can bet that the profit margin on that enthusiast PC is probably a lot higher because the enthusiast is willing to pay for quality and what they want, and not buy bottom of the barrel parts (unless they really just wanted a PC to tinker with and didn't care that stuff kept breaking, but I'm sure over the life of the machine it's more profitable).
And like iOS users, enthusiasts are willing to spend money and not shave every penny off. (Cue and odd Kickstarter where the first version of an app will be on a platform decided by kickstarter rewards, and iOS beats Android 4:1 - iOS users pledged $32k vs. Android $8k).
As long as you're still a profitable niche, people will make products for your demand. The prices may rise somewhat, since volumes are lower than before and you're a niche, but the market will not stop servicing a profitable segment.
There are enthusiasts in any market - cars is a popular one - despite millions of cars sold every year, there's still a market for those who want a car kitted out with good performance parts, people who want to restore 50-100 year old cars, etc. It's not as big, but it's big enough that many companies servicing just that market can survive and make a profit.
Likewise, the enthusiast PC market will survive and many companies may specialize only in enthusiast PCs and still survive. Hell, someone's gotta be buying those top end $600 video cards from AMD and NVidia.
How about a rollon-rolloff cargo ship? Or a supertanker? The bulk of the worlds commodities are still transported by sea (even to and from the most isolated of nations like NZ. The limitation of a 747 would be the weight it could carry, rather than volume (microSD cards sink so they are heavier than water.
The latency goes up significantly though. The example is LA to New York, a 4 day trip by vehicle or so. Going by boat means going through the Panama Canal, and sea shipping generally is slow enough that you're looking at a month or two (or more) to make the trip.
Sea shipments of consumer goods typically takes a couple of months - and it's slow enough that usually it's best to go between ports, and finish the shipping by land.
In other words, screw the ship. Take a train - far more efficient energy wise and they can hold a heck of a lot of SUVs. And quicker too - probably take a week or so go to from LA to New York.
Does anybody know (or at least want to take a guess) how this shit's supposed to work? How do you store this unique ID without using cookies, or something that works just like cookies?
First, Google owns the ad networks - the vast majority of them, anyhow.
So what Google does is when you download a page using Google's ad networks, Google takes their cookie that identifies you (either anonymously, or named, if you use Google+/Google ID), and translates that to a number, probably by hashing it. Google then passes the ad URL appending the hashed identifier.
Of course, it'll only work on Google owned ad networks, but since they own the vast majority of it, well, that's practically all you're likely to encounter.
Only if they plan on finally implementing CORRECT and realistic gravity and inertia models. Look at Gollum in Lord of the Rings, or the hundreds of apes in Planet of the Apes, etc.etc. Not one of them move realistically, not one of them has a realistic gravity or inertia model, so they are obviously CGI. Why is this? Why do the movie studios go to the huge effort of making them look incredibly realistic in still frames, but deliberately make the gravity and inertia models incorrect?
Actually, gravity and inertia are NOT simulated anymore in movie productions. Animators very rarely animate body motions - they only make minor adjustments.
Instead, to animate characters, movies use motion capture - where a motion actor wears a suit and his body movements are captured and digitized. And practically everything is motion captured - from walking to fighting. This takes care of gravity (it influences the motion actor) and inertia.
HOWEVER, there are limitations. First long distance walks are impossible (you're only talking about a capture volume of 30'x30' or so), so animators often splice the animations in a loop. Secondly, if your world and the capture don't line up perfectly, you end up with strange walking artifacts (slippery feet) because the actor walks 1 foot, but onscreen the character moves more or less than 1 foot.
Next, heavy objects usually aren't simulated well - if a weapon is heavy, the motion actor will rarely get a properly weighted and balanced prop, so their reactions are thrown off, which leads to inertia error. Of course, if the CGI animation is of different mass than the mocap, the inertia reactions will be wrong (i.e., if the character is smaller or larger than the actor or more massive).
This is a great feature for people too stupid to just use the other HDMI input on their TV.
How many TVs out there let you see the content of both HDMI ports simultaneously?
When you "snap" the TV view, it shows side by side your game so you can see both at the same time.
Not many do, and if you're waiting for your game to load (xbox or ps4), you can snap and play the other while waiting. Or if you're waiting for your friend to get on and log in, no one said you can't play a quick game on the other port while waiting.
If Sony was smart, they'd put a mode that lets you see your friends on PSN that works well in "snapped" mode so you can monitor your friends list while waiting and playing something else.
It's a bit much for casual purposes; but it effectively demonstrates that Apple's little toy is just another fingerprint sensor (albeit a more attractive one than the usual little stripe-thing) with no more resistance to an under-a-hundred-bucks, probably a few bucks per print, in quantity, attacks than any of the others.
Still beats no passcode at all against a casual attacker; but it sounds like the CCC technique works just fine with digital reproductions (ie, you don't need the original thumbprint to use as a mold, or develop with cyanoacrylate vapor, or anything like that) so it's fuck up once, have your fingerprint on file for however long it stays roughly the same, which is never terribly encouraging.
Actually, the take away is that the fingerprint sensor is unreliable. So unreliable that a 4-digit PIN trumps the fingerprint reader. Yes, I said trumps because your PIN is more important to the OS. If you reboot the phone, you need the PIN - the fingerprint will NOT unlock it. If you don't use the fingerprint reader for 48 hours, you need the PIN.
The only benefit the fingerprint reader has is that people who won't use PINs because they're so inconvenient to use (having to enter it all the time) that they leave their phone at the default swipe to unlock. Which apparently is around 50% of smartphone users out there. The reader simply upgrades their security a tiny bit since it's now PIN-locked rather than people leaving it open.
And for those who already use PINs, they can upgrade to full complex passcodes (or passphrases), but not have to deal with entering their 100 character long phrase every time they need to send a text.
It's like how laptop fingerprint readers work - when it worked on my laptop, I locked my laptop all the time when I left it. But since it broke, I don't lock it all the time.
People seem to think it's unbreakable, yet on the iPhone and on any laptop, it's used to bypass the password. But if you have the password, you don't need the fingerprint. Except Apple's implementation is slightly more secure because it requires using the alternative unlock mechanism.
Here, the fingerprint reader is quicker to unlock your phone than Android's face unlock (which is equally insecure).
Thing is, most devs don't want to code for Linux. When you are talking modern games with modern 3D graphics, and the demands those bring on the hardware, porting to Linux is not trivial. Even without that it still takes time and effort (and thus money) but particularly when you talk a game that wants to use modern features of the 3D card.
Given that, and the fact that so far games sales on Linux are pretty low, most developers will give the port a miss. Just not worth the money in their assessment.
This is where SteamBox comes in. It's a fixed Linux distribution where there is well known locations for libraries and everything. No need to worry about what version of a library a user has, when on SteamBox it's guaranteed you'll get the version you need.
No screwing around with AMD or nVidia or Intel drivers - it uses just one driver and one chip and guaranteed to work in the way you expect.
Basically, it console-ifies Linux into one configuration. Linux purists may hate it, and if they try to do something beyond the basics (like say, upgrade a library) things can break so badly it has to be restored (which if fine - users are not supposed to do such things).
Sales for SteamBox will probably be better than doing it for Linux because it's something you plop beside the TV and play. Steam for Linux will probably start to tightly control libraries so SteamBox games will run on Steam for Linux relatively easily, even if it means breaking the Linux tradition by having Steam ship with tons of libraries.
The problem with robotics and its failure to catch on widely I think is largely related to the fact that robots are still expensive to manufacture. Willow Garage doesn't seem to have made much progress with that. If you could put the hardware for an arm or a human-height telepresence robot in people's hands for less than $1000, the software would take care of itself. Working on 'robot operating systems" and similar software right now probably remains wasted effort; by the time the costs for the hardware has come down, all that work will likely be obsolete anyway.
The big problem with robotics is its a marriage of two very distinct engineering disciplines - mechanical engineering, and electrical. And it's not easily separable, either - both disciplines have to work very closely together because it's easy to screw yourself either way, and the two disciplines don't generally interact this closely.
Take for example a robot joint. Now, the mechanical engineer might want to simplify things and eliminate costly gears or a tricky mechanical mount, but in doing so, it puts demands on the electrical side - perhaps higher torque motor, or one that is more precise. Or maybe the feedback devices need more precision - if it's a simple pot, perhaps you need higher quality power supplies (less noise), coax cabling because you now need a more expensive 20-bit ADC where before you could get away with a cheap 16 bit one. These are huge tradeoffs that have to happen - perhaps wanting to use cheaper electronics results in more complex mechanical systems that may cost more to fabricate, or lower reliability.
It's why universities have a middle of the road option called mechatronics which combines both at a high level, because it's not an easy problem to solve - where do you draw the line? And experience is needed - when can you get away with cheaper parts, and slightly more complex mechanicals, or is it better to spend more on the electronics and less on the mechanicals to get a reliable system?
And what about failsafes? If the motor is full of torque, what happens when it encounters resistance? Do you push it away, maybe burning out or ruining the mechanics or blowing the fuse? What if the resistance was a misplaced hand? What if someone pushed the E-stop? IF it's a hand, yes, you want it to release pressure. But what if it was holding up a heavy engine block? Releasing power could hurt somebody when it moves, indeed, it could pin someone else down. (Generally speaking, robots and humans are kept separate to ensure that E-stop would simply de-power equipment and as long as no one is in the danger zone (which they shouldn't be if the robots were on), it doesn't matter.)
Robotics is not a simple task, and it's not just manufacture, but also engineering and R&D. Manufacture is just one aspect.
And yes, once the hardware is figured out, the software can be concentrated on later - each hardware decision has a ripple effect to the software.
The problem was the Windows 9x dialog was not for logging in, but for entering your network credentials so you can access network resources.
Clicking cancel merely meant you couldn't access a network fileshare without rebooting and re-entering the credentials there.
I think it took until XP before you could actually log into a fileserver using alternative credentials...
Alas, the dialog was so poorly worded that many people thought you could use it to password protect your PC, but no. It just set your network credentials.
I noticed that you could access the camera from the lock screen
While it's elegantly done on iOS (swipe up to activate camera versus right when unlocking), on Android, this one feature (introduced in Jellybean 4.2) is probably implemented in the most asinine fashion.
In 4.2, they turned the lock screen into another home screen with limited privileges, so they added pages to the left and right of the lock (left page(s) - user defined widgets, right page - camera). The problem is if you're using the swipe code and start the swipe on the sides, you can easily go "too far" to the left and right and end up changing the lock screen page instead of unlocking the phone. Most annoying. There are fixes to it (there's an app that disables widgets and camera auto-activation this way), but it's a huge PITA as 4.2 makes the unlocking area much smaller.
Of all the iOS features Android could've taken, they take and implement poorly the camera on the lock screen
This is strange that they couldn't find the M7. Either it is incorporated into the A7 or they missed it somehow. Given the functionality of the M7, it might very small compared to the A7. There appears to be some metal shielding next to the A7. It could be under there. Also the chip next to the Qualcomm WTR1605L isn't identified.
Not really. It's probably part of the silicon that the A7 uses - modern ARM SoCs are full of processors besides the main ARM core - often many auxiliary processors exist. The M7 is probably just another block on the silicon.
In fact, it's not entirely surprising if you find a small ARM core is the only thing that boots when you apply power - the main big beefy cores are kept in reset and power down states. The little ARM core (ARM11 in some cases or a Cortex-M ARM microcontroller in other cases) boots up and is responsible for initializing the system and loading the next block of code up and preparing the main cores to boot it.
Heck, one SoC I worked on had 8 cores (for big.LITTLE), a Cortex-M core to boot and manage power, and a Cortex-R core for modem functionality.
It won't be out of place for Apple to put it on the came silicon. It would just be another programmable processor in a sea of them that makes up a modern SoC.
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Well, the Tea Party simply couldn't get enough people to believe in the cause - being exposed as a scheme for the rich to get richer at the expense of the public certainly didn't help. Plus there just wasn't enough anger to tap into.
Occupy had the requisite anger (see the many Occupy events held worldwide). The problem is the people Occupy represent (in general) are pretty powerless - and they represented a threat to the establishment. So the establishment simply overpowered them (it's Wall street - the people there have money and therefore power). And given the media was owned by those in power, it was easy to hide any Occupy news to some hidden section of the paper (or website).
Of course, it didn't help that Occupy was badly fragmented in what they wanted as well, so while people could understand the anger, the message got lost.
Scientists and researchers generally write lousy code. If you think TheDailyWTF is bad, you haven't seen researcher code.
Generally write-only, lots of copy-pasta going on, variables that *might* make sense (and probably declared globally) and if you're really lucky, lack of subroutines or functions.
Hell, the code itself may only compile on one specific machine - the researcher's - due to hidden dependencies, version issues, etc. And may even involve a lot of convoluted mechanisms involving formatting the input, sending it through one program, then taking the output, reformatting it (manually, of course) and shoving it through a second program with a different script, etc.
Code is generally secondary to the actual research at hand - it's done to facilitate the analysis by being quicker
If you're really lucky, the researcher would've actually done an analysis manually to verify the program(s) actually work properly.
The FDA came about this because there were a HUGE number of apps that did medical quackery.
Yes, quackery, as in back to the snake oil days. You may recall many apps claimed to do stuff like cure acne and analyze your skin for stuff like melanoma and things like that.
The problem was the first claimed to do it by "exposing the acne to a special light", which ended up just being a specific color of the screen. And there was no evidence whatsoever that said a particular color of light would cure acne, nor was there any evidence that even a smartphone screen could generate the required light.
Of course, that app sold a ton of copies because it appealed to a huge market who generally tend to own such devices.
The second kind of app is positively dangerous if it makes a wrong diagnosis. If it's a false positive, not generally a problem since your doctor (who you need to go through in order to get treatment anyways) will probably discover it's not melanoma.
But if it's a false negative, then there's a big problem because someone may wait far too long with it (thinking it isn't melanoma) before deciding they really need to seek treatment. By then, the cancer may have spread and (in the best case) make for a complex series of treatments, or be completely inoperable and terminal.
And then there's a whole new set of apps that are designed for doctors to aid in diagnosis and many that patients use to send medical data to their doctors. If there's ever a case for privacy protection - sensitive information like this would be it. It would make apps stealing your contacts list seem trivial by comparison if a developer decides they want to get your medical information and sell it to people who shouldn't get it.
Only in that you can get a ready made embedded OS on the cheap.
Proprietary stuff it depends - partners of SoC vendors (you usually have to be one in order to use their stuff) get access to documents and source code to what gets turned into a binary blob a lot of the time.
So embedded OEMs and vendors can get access to the code if they need it, make changes to suit them build it and ship it. As far as they're concerned, it's "open source" to them.
They even get access to the private documentation too, but like most SoC vendors, the documentation typically sucks. If you're lucky, all you get is a register list and have to figure out how something works on your own (if you're a partner, you mean your support contact who'll answer your questions). If you're really lucky, you'll get a document telling you how it works and how to drive it. If you're unlucky, you'll just get an abbreviated register list.
Well, it would make Intel very happy if that's the case - AMD's in loads of hurt, so having both the Xbox One and PS4 be AMD based is good news for Intel - it means AMD will not likely fold in the next 5-10 years. And having AMD around means Intel is pretty much free to do what they want as there's still viable competition. AMD was looking fairly dicey and Intel's probably worried it may attract government oversight and investigations. Or worse yet, force AMD's patents to be sold off to many competitors, making it very expensive to license (since Intel and AMD cross-license).
Make that gamers in general, because all next-gens are using AMD chips. NVidia may hate the console business, but it does generate a lot of PR for AMD, and if AMD comes out with a mobile chip, that's going to have a fair bit of mindshare.
All in all, Intel's in a good spot - with AMD making console chips, they've got steady cashflow and will survive (and console CPUs may consume enough fab time that AMD may only be able to produce limited amounts of regular PC chips - meaning Intel will end up having to make up for the shortfall in CPUs for servers and desktops.
AMD is in a good spot - they have good income for the next 5+ years to stem the red tide and provide competition for Intel.
The only one losing out is NVidia - they have to compete hard for attention now.
And you sound like a responsible parent who probably talks with their kids and does everything right. And probably imposes reasonable limits and forces them to be more balanced in life, so they're not babysat by a screen.
The problem is never responsible parents - if you read TFA, the writer lets their kids play M rated games.
The problem is the IRresponsible parents - who just blindly buy what their kids want without taking time to be critical of their purchase. They treat video games as being all the same, when they aren't. Some games parents should treat like tobacco, alcohol and guns - to be consumed responsibly in controlled situations. Others fine, go right ahead.
The big problem are those are the same kind of parents that demand that such games be regulated. Hell, I'm sure the same parents won't buy some adult film for their kids, but are perfectly happy buying adult games for their kids.
It's all about responsible parenting. If parents are responsible and care for their children growing up, no big deal - a little indulgence is probably fine, educational even (you get to discuss the morality of the choices - GTA is great for such topics of discussion).
The problem is not the parents who know and understand what's going on - it's the ones who don't, and who use the screen as a babysitter.
While they may not be harmed nor turn into violent mass murderers, exposure to violence does have a measured desensitizing effect. Enough so that militaries use it as a tool to condition soldiers to get used to the violence and expect it.
Whether it's a good thing or not, is debatable. Though desensitization may account for increased violent tendencies. While they won't take a gun and shoot up a school, they may be more prone to acts of violence as a first response.
So your kid may end up throwing punches first, rather than trying to seek more peaceful resolution mechanisms first.
This effect is measurable, though it's also not exclusive to video games - violent movies and TV shows have similarly desensitizing effects. Of course, if you want to do it properly, it's not video games, but screen violence, in which case limiting screen time is probably the best solution.
Only on the App Store, not to be confused with the iBookstore, Music Store, and Movie & TV store.
Apple exercises less control on the latter stores as the publishers are the ones who do it and it makes very little sense for Apple to go about reviewing every new music track, movie, and TV show for content purposes as you expect it to be the same as what Amazon and everyone else has.
From time to time Apple may ban a whole category, but that's generally the whole category and not individual shows. For the iBookstore, Apple does also exercise some control for self-published works, less so from content from other publishers.
It's a horrendous mishmash, but in general, only App Store apps are subject to editorial control because only those are walled gardens. Music, TV shows, books, movies, they're all "sideloadable" and generally users expect them to be the same as what you get in the store.
I don't think Apple even does a Wal-Mart and actually force artists to remaster explicit tracks to not be explicit.
Probably not. But Apple did it because you don't save much - it's what, $3 per episode? And the full "season" (as defined by AMC) is $24? So you're saving a whopping... $1?
I think in light of that, Apple decided it was stupid and let them have the full season for $23 (saving $25) versus charging it twice for a full whopping savings of $1 each.
AMC gets 70% of those values given general Apple standard contracts... and I think Apple can eat the "loss" of that money from AMC.
It's iTunes credit, after all. $23 means Apple pays out 70% of that to someone.
Let's try it again with a 108-144MHz oscillator.
(For those who don't know, that's the VHF aviation band. It starts right above the FM band, and ends just below the 2m ham band).
It's a bit of a problem because a lot of LCD screens we were driving had pixel clocks somewhere in that range, so we had strong spikes in the range where even the FCC has a reduced envelope for on avionics (there's a dip in allowed emissions over that band to prevent interference with communications).
Of course, if you can unlock the GPS receiver (some phones are known to do it), you can have loads of fun on landing because more and more carriers are going RNP (required navigation performance) which requires GPS units that can provide high precision lateral and vertical positioning. Unlock it and you can be travelling to an alternate airport because the RNP is not there. Of course, if it happens while you're doing an RNP approach, not a problem - that's why there's redundancy. But do it just before beginning and you cannot do RNP because you need all the redundant systems fully operational prior to the approach.
Probably because doing so would require going to Atom, and Bay Trail was only recently announced and probably just was available long after Microsoft had a chance to stabilize the hardware.
And Atoms not including Bay Trail and later, run like crap. Which would make Windows run like crap, and you'll probably end up in a situation where the Surface RT runs faster than the Surface Pro.
My suggestion? If your product is as good as you say it is, it's worth a LOT of money. I'd suggest moving to the US where the air regs are a bit looser - you can probably still do RC testing. If you wish to graduate it to real planes, there's a whole pile of levels you can go through (though you will probably need a sport pilot's license and fly an experimental LSA - but these are much cheaper).
If you don't like the US, there's always Canada, which shares many of the same rules. Though if you're under 400', it's pretty much open season And yes, the US and Canada have some of the loosest air regulations around - it's generally a lot tighter and a lot more expensive to fly anywhere else in the world.
And then once you build it, you can look into scaling it up for real aircraft - 1 mile is plenty for light single engine GA planes - for the faster ones, you'd probably want to increase the range a bit.
Once it's done, you can write a nice letter to your government explaining that the air regulations pretty much kept you from doing it in NZ and you had to export the technology and manufacturing to other countries, so perhaps it's time to update the regulations somewhat.
Actually, Apple didn't need Microsoft's money. It was instead a very cavalier move that was meant more as a signal to developers than anyone else - that if Microsoft was investing in Apple, they should too. Microsoft sold their shares a few years later, making a tidy profit from it.
And it worked because developers jumped on the Apple bandwagon again. It was the only way to avoid the death spiral of developers leaving, which force users to switch, which cause more developers to leave, etc. etc. etc. Not to mention that during this time, Office for Mac became a much preferred version of Office (over the Windows version) because Microsoft wasn't screwing around with stuff as much (it was way more Mac-like an application than Office Windows was a Windows application).
Actually, it is innovation. It's not technological innovation. In fact, Apple does not do technological innovation. They do practical innovation. And by that, I mean by making technology appropriate to the customer. There was nothing new in ANY Apple product that could not have been done by anyone else. Other than the fact that anyone else didn't do it.
The iMac proved form factor and colors were what people wanted - they wanted a PC that wasn't just a beige box that looked ugly - they wanted a PC that looked stylish and would fit just fine in the living room and not hidden away in a den or "computer room". They wanted a PC they could show off with.
And in a way, it really broke out from the PC modding craze where PC modders would add lights, windows and other bling to their computers to turn them from beige boxes to flashy things that Did Important Stuff. Just a bit more tasteful, though.
People wanted something different, Apple's experimenting with that - colorful phones, and a color few have ever seen in a phone. Which will pan out? Who knows, who cares. If the 5C sales a dismal, it means people didn't want color, so Apple won't bother trying to make colorful phones anymore. (If you don't try, you don't know).
Likewise, fingerprint sensors are old hat - they've been around for decades. But Touch ID is somewhat different - it puts the sensor on a surface people touch anyways so at the same time you're using the button, it's reading your fingerprint. It's somewhat "magical" in that most fingerprint sensors require you to use them explicitly - to unlock my PC, I need to slide my finger over the sensor. Here, I do a motion I'd do anyways, and it automatically reads and unlocks. It's like how in the movies the computer would recognize the user when they approach.
Siri wasn't new either. Just Apple put it in a "fun" form factor that most people were not aware of.
Touchscreens, ditto - but add a proximity sensor and it suddenly gets a whole lot more useful that you're not accidentally pushing onscreen objects. And you can do a "magical" thing and put a big fat "End Call" button on the screen so when they remove the phone from their face, it shows up and the user wonders if the phone is psychic. (It happened to me the first couple of times I used an iPhone. Then logic set in and the wonder goes away).
Too much technology is tied up in shit UIs and poor UXes because they're often invented by engineers (who are not designers or user interaction researchers), so they just toss crap up and expect people to know. For someone in the field, yes, great, but for the common user, they want to know if they can use it, and how useful it would be to them. Apple excels at that - where an engineer would go "Why would you do that? A user might need that option!" Apple goes "Well, our research shows that 90% of users don't care about it and amon
I don't play my consoles daily, so on the PS3, everytime I turn it on, I have to go through the entire update rigamarole, which can easily take 40+ minutes (system update, game update, blah blah blah). Yes, I timed it once and I gave up because I only had an hour to play.
Heck, even Xbox updates can take 5-10 minutes. And someone mentioned waiting for friends to come online (I remember I decided to participate in a limited invite Halo multiplayer game - it took us half an hour to get everyone settled down and ready to play - would've been nice to spend that half hour playing something else).
And matchmaking... sometimes the waits are deadly long. (Of course, since the game loads the maps etc., you have plenty of time to suspend the other game).
If you're playing offline single player, yeah, the dealys aren't too long, but when you're waiting for others (or waiting for your friend to come online, even) it's certainly handy to be doing something else while keeping watch.
Nonsense.
There will always be an enthusiast market.
Always.
I wouldn't hesitate to say that enthusiasts probably make the same amount of users as they always did - maybe more. However, the market is a whole lot bigger now. If you want an example, take iOS vs. Android. Both userbases are growing, despite iOS's marketshare shrinking. How? Because iOS isn't growing as fast as Android, that's how.
Now treat enthusiast PC users as iOS users, and you can grow while the market grows faster.
Enthusiast PCs will ALWAYS be a niche. Now, granted, back when only enthusiasts owned PCs, things were great, but now that's not the case. But it's still a sizable niche, and like iOS, a very profitable one.
While Dell may sell 1000 PCs for every enthusiast who buys a custom made PC with their choice of parts and specs, you can bet that the profit margin on that enthusiast PC is probably a lot higher because the enthusiast is willing to pay for quality and what they want, and not buy bottom of the barrel parts (unless they really just wanted a PC to tinker with and didn't care that stuff kept breaking, but I'm sure over the life of the machine it's more profitable).
And like iOS users, enthusiasts are willing to spend money and not shave every penny off. (Cue and odd Kickstarter where the first version of an app will be on a platform decided by kickstarter rewards, and iOS beats Android 4:1 - iOS users pledged $32k vs. Android $8k).
As long as you're still a profitable niche, people will make products for your demand. The prices may rise somewhat, since volumes are lower than before and you're a niche, but the market will not stop servicing a profitable segment.
There are enthusiasts in any market - cars is a popular one - despite millions of cars sold every year, there's still a market for those who want a car kitted out with good performance parts, people who want to restore 50-100 year old cars, etc. It's not as big, but it's big enough that many companies servicing just that market can survive and make a profit.
Likewise, the enthusiast PC market will survive and many companies may specialize only in enthusiast PCs and still survive. Hell, someone's gotta be buying those top end $600 video cards from AMD and NVidia.
The latency goes up significantly though. The example is LA to New York, a 4 day trip by vehicle or so. Going by boat means going through the Panama Canal, and sea shipping generally is slow enough that you're looking at a month or two (or more) to make the trip.
Sea shipments of consumer goods typically takes a couple of months - and it's slow enough that usually it's best to go between ports, and finish the shipping by land.
In other words, screw the ship. Take a train - far more efficient energy wise and they can hold a heck of a lot of SUVs. And quicker too - probably take a week or so go to from LA to New York.
First, Google owns the ad networks - the vast majority of them, anyhow.
So what Google does is when you download a page using Google's ad networks, Google takes their cookie that identifies you (either anonymously, or named, if you use Google+/Google ID), and translates that to a number, probably by hashing it. Google then passes the ad URL appending the hashed identifier.
You know, like how instead of retrieving http://example.com/ad_image.gif, they'll do http://example.com/ad_image.gif?adid=blahblah.
Of course, it'll only work on Google owned ad networks, but since they own the vast majority of it, well, that's practically all you're likely to encounter.
Actually, gravity and inertia are NOT simulated anymore in movie productions. Animators very rarely animate body motions - they only make minor adjustments.
Instead, to animate characters, movies use motion capture - where a motion actor wears a suit and his body movements are captured and digitized. And practically everything is motion captured - from walking to fighting. This takes care of gravity (it influences the motion actor) and inertia.
HOWEVER, there are limitations. First long distance walks are impossible (you're only talking about a capture volume of 30'x30' or so), so animators often splice the animations in a loop. Secondly, if your world and the capture don't line up perfectly, you end up with strange walking artifacts (slippery feet) because the actor walks 1 foot, but onscreen the character moves more or less than 1 foot.
Next, heavy objects usually aren't simulated well - if a weapon is heavy, the motion actor will rarely get a properly weighted and balanced prop, so their reactions are thrown off, which leads to inertia error. Of course, if the CGI animation is of different mass than the mocap, the inertia reactions will be wrong (i.e., if the character is smaller or larger than the actor or more massive).
How many TVs out there let you see the content of both HDMI ports simultaneously?
When you "snap" the TV view, it shows side by side your game so you can see both at the same time.
Not many do, and if you're waiting for your game to load (xbox or ps4), you can snap and play the other while waiting. Or if you're waiting for your friend to get on and log in, no one said you can't play a quick game on the other port while waiting.
If Sony was smart, they'd put a mode that lets you see your friends on PSN that works well in "snapped" mode so you can monitor your friends list while waiting and playing something else.
Actually, the take away is that the fingerprint sensor is unreliable. So unreliable that a 4-digit PIN trumps the fingerprint reader. Yes, I said trumps because your PIN is more important to the OS. If you reboot the phone, you need the PIN - the fingerprint will NOT unlock it. If you don't use the fingerprint reader for 48 hours, you need the PIN.
The only benefit the fingerprint reader has is that people who won't use PINs because they're so inconvenient to use (having to enter it all the time) that they leave their phone at the default swipe to unlock. Which apparently is around 50% of smartphone users out there. The reader simply upgrades their security a tiny bit since it's now PIN-locked rather than people leaving it open.
And for those who already use PINs, they can upgrade to full complex passcodes (or passphrases), but not have to deal with entering their 100 character long phrase every time they need to send a text.
It's like how laptop fingerprint readers work - when it worked on my laptop, I locked my laptop all the time when I left it. But since it broke, I don't lock it all the time.
People seem to think it's unbreakable, yet on the iPhone and on any laptop, it's used to bypass the password. But if you have the password, you don't need the fingerprint. Except Apple's implementation is slightly more secure because it requires using the alternative unlock mechanism.
Here, the fingerprint reader is quicker to unlock your phone than Android's face unlock (which is equally insecure).
This is where SteamBox comes in. It's a fixed Linux distribution where there is well known locations for libraries and everything. No need to worry about what version of a library a user has, when on SteamBox it's guaranteed you'll get the version you need.
No screwing around with AMD or nVidia or Intel drivers - it uses just one driver and one chip and guaranteed to work in the way you expect.
Basically, it console-ifies Linux into one configuration. Linux purists may hate it, and if they try to do something beyond the basics (like say, upgrade a library) things can break so badly it has to be restored (which if fine - users are not supposed to do such things).
Sales for SteamBox will probably be better than doing it for Linux because it's something you plop beside the TV and play. Steam for Linux will probably start to tightly control libraries so SteamBox games will run on Steam for Linux relatively easily, even if it means breaking the Linux tradition by having Steam ship with tons of libraries.
The big problem with robotics is its a marriage of two very distinct engineering disciplines - mechanical engineering, and electrical. And it's not easily separable, either - both disciplines have to work very closely together because it's easy to screw yourself either way, and the two disciplines don't generally interact this closely.
Take for example a robot joint. Now, the mechanical engineer might want to simplify things and eliminate costly gears or a tricky mechanical mount, but in doing so, it puts demands on the electrical side - perhaps higher torque motor, or one that is more precise. Or maybe the feedback devices need more precision - if it's a simple pot, perhaps you need higher quality power supplies (less noise), coax cabling because you now need a more expensive 20-bit ADC where before you could get away with a cheap 16 bit one. These are huge tradeoffs that have to happen - perhaps wanting to use cheaper electronics results in more complex mechanical systems that may cost more to fabricate, or lower reliability.
It's why universities have a middle of the road option called mechatronics which combines both at a high level, because it's not an easy problem to solve - where do you draw the line? And experience is needed - when can you get away with cheaper parts, and slightly more complex mechanicals, or is it better to spend more on the electronics and less on the mechanicals to get a reliable system?
And what about failsafes? If the motor is full of torque, what happens when it encounters resistance? Do you push it away, maybe burning out or ruining the mechanics or blowing the fuse? What if the resistance was a misplaced hand? What if someone pushed the E-stop? IF it's a hand, yes, you want it to release pressure. But what if it was holding up a heavy engine block? Releasing power could hurt somebody when it moves, indeed, it could pin someone else down. (Generally speaking, robots and humans are kept separate to ensure that E-stop would simply de-power equipment and as long as no one is in the danger zone (which they shouldn't be if the robots were on), it doesn't matter.)
Robotics is not a simple task, and it's not just manufacture, but also engineering and R&D. Manufacture is just one aspect.
And yes, once the hardware is figured out, the software can be concentrated on later - each hardware decision has a ripple effect to the software.
The problem was the Windows 9x dialog was not for logging in, but for entering your network credentials so you can access network resources.
Clicking cancel merely meant you couldn't access a network fileshare without rebooting and re-entering the credentials there.
I think it took until XP before you could actually log into a fileserver using alternative credentials...
Alas, the dialog was so poorly worded that many people thought you could use it to password protect your PC, but no. It just set your network credentials.
While it's elegantly done on iOS (swipe up to activate camera versus right when unlocking), on Android, this one feature (introduced in Jellybean 4.2) is probably implemented in the most asinine fashion.
In 4.2, they turned the lock screen into another home screen with limited privileges, so they added pages to the left and right of the lock (left page(s) - user defined widgets, right page - camera). The problem is if you're using the swipe code and start the swipe on the sides, you can easily go "too far" to the left and right and end up changing the lock screen page instead of unlocking the phone. Most annoying. There are fixes to it (there's an app that disables widgets and camera auto-activation this way), but it's a huge PITA as 4.2 makes the unlocking area much smaller.
Of all the iOS features Android could've taken, they take and implement poorly the camera on the lock screen
Not really. It's probably part of the silicon that the A7 uses - modern ARM SoCs are full of processors besides the main ARM core - often many auxiliary processors exist. The M7 is probably just another block on the silicon.
In fact, it's not entirely surprising if you find a small ARM core is the only thing that boots when you apply power - the main big beefy cores are kept in reset and power down states. The little ARM core (ARM11 in some cases or a Cortex-M ARM microcontroller in other cases) boots up and is responsible for initializing the system and loading the next block of code up and preparing the main cores to boot it.
Heck, one SoC I worked on had 8 cores (for big.LITTLE), a Cortex-M core to boot and manage power, and a Cortex-R core for modem functionality.
It won't be out of place for Apple to put it on the came silicon. It would just be another programmable processor in a sea of them that makes up a modern SoC.