Although the cold hard economic facts of it is that there really isn't a market big enough... at typical phone hardware prices, $10m is, what... 15,000 phones? At that quantity, you won't get discounts on the manufacturing, so it won't cover anywhere near that. The math simply makes no sense...
15,000 phones gets you parts discounts - they normally start at 1000 parts. At 10,000, you get more discounts.
And 15,000 probably outsells a TON (if not the vast majority) of Android phones out there - probably a good chunk of Samsung's lineup, at that (the most popular Android phone of all time, the SGS3 sold what, 60M units? And that's like 10% of all Android phones out there).
Yes, there are tons of Android phone models out there and companies like Samsung release new ones daily. Not flagship ones, of course, but all those free phones you see advertised heavily.
The big question though is after those 15,000 phones are sold - is there still a market left? I mean, who's buying them, and will they buy next year's model? Or is there enough general interest that next year's consumers aren't self-selected?
... from the F2P scam, DRM, and taking away peoples ability to own games by making everything F2P or online, where Diablo 3 introduced us to the DEFECT of SINGLE PLAYER LAG. The entire industry at present and the corrupt whiny little bastard game devs (those who are among the corrupt) deserve everything they get.
Well, given the 90% piracy rate for PC games, what did you expect the industry to do? It's why developers have been going towards console development (piracy rate - 10% or so) - there's more money to be made for the same investment. Unless you're one to argue that developers/designers/etc don't deserve to eat or be rewarded for their work.
It's also why PC ports of console releases are lackluster - if you know that it'll be heavily pirated, why bother putting a lot of money in it? If you're lucky, you'll make a profit. If not, you'll probably just break even, so spend as little on the PC platform as possible.
It's perhaps the "decline" side of piracy we've seen - where piracy kills development has come true as companies all back off of PC development. Instead, they find new business models to compete with "free" - F2P, always online, MMOs, and the like - basically unpiratable goods. (One should note that F2P took off from another heavily pirated platform, Android).
Steam helps, but piracy of Steam games itself is fairly high still.
This isn't doom and gloom though - because indie game devs who can develop games on the cheap can survive with a huge piracy rate because the games don't cost millions to produce and it just takes one hit where even 95+% piracy rate can still make a decent living from. (Of course, most indie stuff is crap, for you only hear of the good ones, not the oceans of crap that are also available).
Bollocks - I was clearly drunk and disorderly this evening, even though no fuzz was around to see me. Reading the GPP, I was hoping that my mortgage would be cancelled because of that, and I'd not need to pay back the loan.
The bank cares about two things - that you can pay back the loan, and that you do not destroy the bank's property.
If you got arrested? The bank will note that down and it may affect your mortgage rate, but as long as you pay, they don't care.
Oh, and it's a secured loan - if it cancels the mortgage (aka foreclosure), the bank will evict you from your house. You don't have to pay back the mortgage from that point on, yes. Though you won't own the house anymore.
If you kill yourself or are murdered or die of natural causes, the bank will seek repayment through your estate (unless it's a joint mortgage which means the surviving family will pay). For unsecured loans like credit cards, well, the loan would be wiped as it's a "bad loan" unless it's a joint account that makes the survive responsible.
"Promised" is an elusive word, but assuming that the $70K offer comes thru, why not take it unless he has a gaming company offer in hand? which I assume he doesn't. It's always a good thing to be able to afford housing and food while looking for the job of one's choice.
Besides, he might be surprised, and like the promised job. (Or, it might be a small step above a Siberian work camp. One never really knows about these things until one tries it; but of course the same goes for the "dream" job at a gaming company!)
Exactly. Take the job in hand first. Just because you have a job doesn't mean you can't apply for other jobs.
And there's always a chance the "boring" job is fascinating, or if not, gaming is really accessible these days. On your off time, one can always program for iOS or Android and make their own games.
Even a "dream job" at a "dream studio" like Blizzard or Valve may not turn out that way. There will always be a need for dull and boring crap work, and there's always a good chance a person starting out will be put in such a job.
Go the other path, and if you build up a portfolio, there's also a greater chance of getting a better job at the same place - the gaming industry knows people want to "make games" and exploits the fact. They know those people will burn out in 5 years, so they can replace them. And as such, they work them to the bone and give them the crap jobs. However, if you show you have a reasonably good portfolio, you can graduate above the morass into a much more interesting job designing the games and such. Because those studios also know that you've got a steady job and can do indie stuff on the side, so they can't mistreat you anymore.
I agree with you. This study doesn't prove anything and is complete failure. It doesn't deserve to make its way on/. unless it is to discuss how bad studies can lead media to make false conclusions from thin data and no clue.
False. It's an interesting study that shows there's something to study.
Running a full study costs a lot of money. Before you commit $100,000 to do a more detailed study, you'd have to prove that there's something to study. And a small scale study can cost a lot less money - say $5-10K or so.
If you're doing research, you need to prove that it's worthwhile to study it first before people will commit more money. Better to spend $10K and find out what you thought isn't true than to spend $100K and realize that the data is inconclusive.
In addition, a small scale study can bring up more questions to study further along - which can bring up alternative questions to research in case you can't get funding for your primary question.
Sure, this article should probably not be announced at all - it's really a preliminary study. But it doesn't mean it's worthless.
Think of it this way - now you can try to find out if there is a causal relation. But now there's also more things to ask as well - does parenting have anything to do with it? Is there a relation between the number of cans and behavior?
Why does everyone assume you need to do a full study all the time? When researching, you need to do small scale ones to prove what you're looking at is something worth researching.
Like say, let's say you want to test whether or not eating beans make you emit more flatulence than normal. Well, you can't do a proper full scale study because you can't go towards a grant board with nothing - they want to know what you have before they loosen their purse strings. So you could do controlled studies among say, your family on the cheap to get some results. With that cheap study, you can apply for a small grant to study a broader population - you still won't get full study grant money, but you'll get a token amount that should cover enough to see if there's a relation. If you can prove something with $5k, you can then apply for more money to do a much bigger study. Or you might also find other interesting side results that can be studied - which even if your main results say there's no relationship, it doesn't mean you can't study something related that cropped up.
And that's what this study does - it simply proves there's more to study. It could've gone the other way as well - it could've shown there was no relationship at all, and it's best that only $10k was used to find that out than $100K.
And yes, there have been times when a small study shows there might be something, but a larger study doesn't because some factor wasn't considered (e.g., geographical - the small study population was just anomalous). That stuff is also important to know too - perhaps to find out what the small study had the anomaly and if it's potentially useful.
Probably no better or worse than that, given that the phone you link uses a Mediatek SoC with a PowerVR GPU, which guarantees at least one closed source blob. This phone would probably end up in the same state.
Well, Ubuntu Edge is supposed to be completely open with no blobs. This means one of two things.
1) FIrmware embedded in hardware (flash memory) is not counted by the FSF. Firmware blobs are only "bad" when they exist as a file on disk and loaded into the embedded RAM of the target hardware. So WiFi chips that have built in firmware storage are fine.
2) You don't have to use blocks that require proprietary blobs. It just means you don't use PowerVR at all. This means you need to ensure your software is able to use 2D accelerators (most of this is open) and do everything in 2D. (We use 3D purely because most 3D hardware is faster than 2D hardware at achieving the same results).
Of course, it means you're stuck with probably poor video playback performance (at least most 2D accelerators can do basic YUV surfaces), and no 3D at all.
the ubundu edge campain on indiegogo is escrowed, if they dont raise the $30M then everyone gets their money back.
And that's why I don't participate in Indiegogo, but do many Kickstarters.
Kickstarter doesn't charge you UNLESS the project is funded. Indiegogo charges you first, then refunds you if it fails.
There are two problems with the charge/refund model - one, if you're doing a currency conversion, that means an instant 5-10% hit on your pledge - just due to currency exchange losses. Neverminding currency fluctuations that occur from when you pledge to when you get refunded (and no, you can't win).
The second problem is well, you tie up money. Indiegogo makes a profit based on simply holding the money (and this isn't including the Indiegogo fees). I suppose it makes Indiegogo brilliant business people - they have this huge pool of cash they can pretty much invest with - all they need is enough cash to cover the payouts of the day, but money's coming in for future payouts.
But it's the currency losses that get to me. Pledge under $100, and it's not a huge deal - it's probably $5-10 you lose. But I've done bigger pledges on Kickstarter, and you're looking at huge losses. $1000 pledge? Are you really willing to give up $100 or so in the currency exchange?
If you have a phone, as you walk around a shopping center or store will are being tracked.
If you linger in the baby aisle, expect to get baby ads and coupons without asking for them. You might even find out your teenage daughter is pregnant from coupons you get
Two things.
1) Phone systems have no way to identify you. That is key - just because they can track which aisles you walk down and pause in front of, doesn't mean you're identifiable. You're just "Person 1" to them.
2) The baby tracking thing uses purchases, not what you looked at.
The first point is very important because everyone assumes that when recycling bins are tracking you that they can make the magic leap to identifying you personally. They can't. Your phone emits a bunch of ID numbers, but the store cannot link those ID numbers to you personally.
In fact, if you're worries about that kind of tracking, you should be extremely worried about online shopping, because the moment you purchase something, you link your behavior to an identity. Especially common sites like Amazon. If you browse a site then leave, you're like a shopper in a store - they have a list of what you did, but not who you are.
The second point is they used loyalty card information, and because purchases were linked to an identity.
It's vitally important to realize when you're tracked but anonymous, and tracked but linked to your identity. The former is creepy, but relatively innoculous.
When it's linked to an identity, things get interesting because one has to realize online shopping can track you even deeper than ever before. Especially since some of the bigger sites host ads (Google-owned company ads, mind you... - so Google ends up knowing your shopping habits and your identity.).
Not every field has night classes that allow someone to work full time (IT is kind of lucky in this respect.) So the person finishing up her PhD while juggling a husband and a kid is going to have to quit her job or drop hours, or go on assistanceship from the school (if one is even available) and take out loans to make up for the missing income.
You don't need night hours to take courses. If your employer is a decent one, they'd allow you to take time off for classes and make it up during the other part of the week. And last I checked, you didn't have to complete the curricula in the time allotted - just because the full time PhD takes 1 year doesn't mean you can't do half time and do it over 2 years.
Doing so with an employer that understands and allows you to make up work (so you do your 40 hours a week) can mean the only drop you have is that of free time. Of course, no one said it would be easy. And most employers do allow it - they get the same work, just understand you need some flexibility.
And there's always the option of saving up for your education as well - If you know it's going to cost $50K to do your PhD, then save up the $50k. It will take a lot of scrimping and saving, but it also means that you'll be debt-free, and having sacrificed, might decide that the PhD wasn't really that beneficial upon reflection. (It then means you have $50k to go into a college fund for your kid, or retirement savings).
It's amazing how perspective changes once you've done the hard work of saving up and realizing you won't get a huge ROI from that PhD, than to do the PhD, go into debt, then find out it wasn't useful anyhow.
Web apps are great. But then you get the W3C to try stuff a little bit controversial like DRM and everyone wants a "free web" and "they should make an app!".
And then get surprised when developers do.
The iTunes store is probably the best example of this - it's basically a few web pages strung together but which really wants to get you into iTunes. (Honestly - is it even possible to use iTunes preview? The only way I've seen it was through Google).
The reality is, we're going to have to have some long and very difficult discussions on what to do. Ideally we wouldn't need the discussion period, but since that doesn't seem realistic at all, we're going to need to see what the real solution is. Do we allow DRM and thus DRM content on the web? Or do we say no and end up in an app-universe where web sites are merely conduits for providing the app?
The original app did. That's when Google stepped in and dropped the hammer. They gave MS a list of things to do. Even from reading the article, the chap says that they haven't done all of these. Google wanted the app in HTML5 - the app isn't. They wanted other features implemented (which aren't for whatever reason, blame MS or Google - it sort of doesn't matter - they are not implemented) so Google has pulled the plug.
Yes, because TFA said it would be difficult and hard. So they made an interim player so their customers can get YouTube, and Google can get a few extra ad views (win-win), while in the meantime, they work on a HTML5 player.
It's really a case of a prisoner's dilemma - if both Google and Microsoft cooperate (Microsoft releases native YouTube client now, transitions later) - they both benefit. If Google plays hardball, they both suffer (Microsoft's customers can't get YouTube, Google doesn't get to show ads).
Google simply said the few extra views of ads isn't worth being flexible about. Though Microsoft might decide to "enhance user privacy" by making IE default to blocking third party cookies as well, and adding adwords, doubleclick, admob and other Google-owned ad companies on a privacy watch list...
Why would that require burning bridges though? Would a hiring bonus be conditional on writing a nasty letter to your previous boss? I would expect worst case scenario the new job requires you to start immediately, so you don't have the option of giving a 2 week notice, but you can still be somewhat gracious in your exit. "I'm sorry for the lack of notice, but their offer was too good to pass up and gave no flexibility." Most people would understand than at least why you did it, instead of assuming the worst. Some vindictive jealous types might not take it well, but they probably wouldn't have handled you quitting with notice well either.
Even with no flexibility some can still be found - by offering support for a couple of weeks to enable knowledge transfer and other things. It would mean the first couple of weeks you'd be working doggedly hard since you'd be doing two jobs, but it's only a couple of weeks and you did at least make an effort to simplify the transition period.
Though in general, most companies expect flexible starting dates - if nothing more than hiring something is a slow process because you have to have a position etc., to fill and unless you already had one person in mind to hire pretty much unconditionally, there are interviews and time required for applications etc., which takes time. What is a company to do? Hire the first person to waltz through the door asking for a job? And there's still a pile of general paperwork that happens when someone is hired and before they start (you may need to requisition supplies including computers, hardware, space to work, allocations of tasks, initial training, etc).
It would be extremely rare for a job to require one to start immediately the next day - usually one can work in at least a week if not more, and there are plenty of ways to turn a week notice into something mutually agreeable by providing after hours support and such.
You can still leave without burning bridges. If you just got expensive training and have to leave, well, work out a way to pay back the training costs. Yes, the company is still hurt, but at least you offered and made reparations. Likewise, a sales person shouldn't take a client list with them (they are, however, allowed to take clients from memory) - instead, once they settle in, they could make contact with those customers and offer them the ability to choose voluntarily if they want to switch suppliers.
There are ways to leave without being a complete dick about it. Sometimes it involves a lot of extra work on your part, but that doesn't excuse not doing it. And sometimes it will be viewed as being a dick by others, but so be it - what you should do is make it known that you at least tried to smooth over the transition by either paying back the training, letting customers decide to jump ship (you don't 'take' customers, you give them choice), and offering help for a short period of time. Hell, if it involves writing documentation in your free time to transfer knowledge, good on you.
And in general, it may be fun to burn bridges, but it's never bad to leave a lousy job as the "better" person. Just remember to document your efforts.
Because the PC is more a monoculture than you think.
First, an ARM SoC differs between models and manufacturers, whereas a PC is the exact same thing, at least the basics. You can always count on memory being at 0 (because the BIOS (or UEFI BIOS compatibility mode requires copying the MBR and other loaders to low addresses, and then copying expansion ROMs at other addresses, etc), so when you write the initial boot code, it's a lot easier. And before you say MMU hides it all, well, the MMU page tables have to be set up somewhere.
In addition, other things like peripherals are at known addresses - display is always between 640k-1M initially, serial ports and keyboards are at well known locations, etc.
An ARM SoC can put memory anywhere - I've seen some put RAM at 0, others at 0x4000_0000, 0x8000_0000, and 0xC000_0000, a serial port can be anywhere in the memory map, as can displays and such. Now, it took over 12 years before Linus got fed up and designed a new boot mechanism for ARM Linux (called device-tree, modeled after OpenFirmware) where the bootloader puts a blob somewhere in memory and the kernel uses it to figure out where the basics are (and it's flexible enough to potentially handle a moving memory map so memory can be relocated, thanks to a lot of careful assembly code).
The end result is that on the PC, you code for one platform only, while on Android, you have to code for the SoC you're using. And it often happens that the next gen SoC isn't completely compatible so you either pepper the code with #ifdefs or just abandon the old codebase (most common - SoC vendors rarely want to support old SoCs, unless you pay $$$).
At least Microsoft supports the code for a few years too - SoC vendors typically abandon the old generation code when the next SoC comes out a year later, so manufacturers are pretty much stuck as Android generally keeps up with the Linux kernel but the SoC is abandoned. (SoC vendors rarely push their changes upstream - saves having to deal with Linus' temper and actually submitting nice patches and other things).
Finally, generally speaking, Microsoft is good at making things "even" API-wse. There are three GPU vendors to consider for 99% of PCs out there (NVidia, AMD, Intel), and their drivers are generally quite good (they don't return fake capabilities). DirectX is relatively mature, and Microsoft does have a quality system in place to test Windows drivers (WHQL), and the APIs are stable for the most part so once you write a driver, you can continue using it down the line (something about Linux and not wanting to commit to even a driver API, nevermind an ABI).
I suppose if you wanted to make it easy, some things in Android would have to change - stuff like stable ABIs for drivers and such so following the kernel changes isn't difficult, the ability to use an older kernel in Android to save porting time, etc. And perhaps more rigorous testing of the system (right now all they run is CTS, which tests API level, they don't go down and actually drill into drivers and test them for capabilities they advertise and such).
"Google claims that one problem with our new app is that it doesnâ(TM)t always serve ads based on conditions imposed by content creators."
Nothing more needed to be said. The rest of the article is manipulation.
And Microsoft claims the API doesn't let them do that, which is possible. Perhaps Google doesn't expose the necessary APIs. Or perhaps to get the ad, you call "GetAd" with the video ID, and expect Google to Do The Right Thing(tm) and return an appropriate ad (which makes sense - do you expect the client to retrieve the ad, do some analysis and if it doesn't work, get another ad? Geez, look at the bandwidth waste!). Of course, perhaps Microsoft isn't dumb and they looked at how Google wrote their YouTube apps on iOS and Android, and saw they were calling some unknown API to fix it.
Of course, "Google Can Do No Evil" attitude is quite prevalent, and I suppose like Apple fanboys, they refuse to see any bad things their company does. It's easy to hate Microsoft. It's easy to hate Apple. But hate Google and the fanboys can be just as vicious as Apple ones.
Not quite. They are obligated to pay you for the time that you work. That is all. If you give two weeks notice, and they walk you out the door and ask you not to come back, they are not obligated to pay for the rest of that time. Otherwise people would give 5 years notice when they think they are about to be fired.
At will is exactly that. You have no contract. You can leave when you wish, and they can ask you to leave when they wish. It's a capitalist's dream situation.
That's only in countries where employee protection is nil, usually because the employees are "too smart" to be in a union or lobby for other job protection legislation.
In most other countries, if you give notice, you are paid for the notice period even if the company decides to walk you out the same day. If they refuse to pay for your notice period, you can bring an unjustified dismissal lawsuit against them as you can treat that as being "fired without cause" and actually get more than what you would've gotten had they just paid you out. (Courts don't generally look fondly on dismissing people who give notice, and often such dismissal comes with severance pay).
Of course, the interesting thing I suppose is how people in the US routinely allow themselves to get screwed over - especially in the IT field. Think about it - in every other profession other than IT, there's typically on-call pay if you have to carry the pager, potential compensation for overtime (yes, even if you're salaried, a lot of places do compensate for overtime) and many other rights and compensation that IT seems to have given up. And we call ourselves "smart" workers. Hell, I'm sure some of the unionized employees at McDonalds get far more rights than we get, only because "we're too smart" and "unions are for idiots" and we let our own labor rights get eroded "because we're better".
A requirement of the form factor. If you check, most ultrabooks in a similar formfactor already solder the RAM on board. You can find ones with removable RAM but they typically are pushing the "Ultrabook" definition because Intel couldn't get anyone to make them otherwise (typically they have hard drives, or 15" screens or are heavier and significantly thicker).
Though, to be honest, I've rarely ever installed additional RAM in any PC I had - given its cost, it's usually cheaper to buy the max up front than in a few years when memory standards change and it's difficult to buy it cheaply (e.g., DDR or DDR2) - especially the larger modules - they either simply stop existing or are still wildly expensive years later.
You know what the hardest part of it is? Going to ifixit, getting the screwdriver, and clicking "checkout now".
8 screws for the bottom cover, and 3 more securing the battery to the case. OK I take it back, the hardest part is possibly removing the bottom cover - Apple does use rather strong clips.
The same is true for everything OTHER than the MacBook Pro Retina 15", which has annoyingly-glued in batteries. I think the 13" is on a carrier frame.
They modulate the load seen by the tag readers antenna by modulating the power drawn from the tag antenna by short circuiting it.
It is a form of transmission, still, even though it's not actively broadcasting.
What you need ot know is that wireless power has been with us for a long time now - basically since the late 1800s. We've been putting energy in the air since then. Of course, it's what Tesla was experimenting with, except his system was trying to boost efficiency as wireless power transmission is still not very efficient.
Yes, your transmitter is putting energy in the air, and when a suitable antenna picks it up, a small voltage is generated (microvolts generally - a good receiver can generally pick up around 5uV or so).
Which also means that attempts to harness the energy actually does weaken the transmission somewhat, cuing the probably apocryphal stories about people living under power lines stringing long cables to harness the "free" power, to people living near AM/FM tranmitters doing the same thing and getting caught because they leave a visible "footprint" in the field distribution (if you can pull sufficient power, you can be noticed because you do detune the transmitter antenna).
So theoretically, if these devices get popular, you can expect to get "less bars" and worse cell reception...
California has some, shall we say interesting, minimum wage laws. Minimum Wage $8.25/hr. Minimum Wage for Management (people that spend > 50% of there time supervising people), if you don't want to pay overtime, but instead offer paid time off. $16.50. Minimum Wage for Computer Professionals if they are not management and you want to treat them like management $39.90/hr and $83,132.93/year Minimum Wage for Physicians that you want to treat like management even though they spend less than 50% of their time managing other employees: $72.70/hr.
The back story of these laws was that there were some companies that were hiring HB-1 visa holders at far sub market rate and using their immigration status to keep them in essentially indentured servitude. One of the results of this has been that desirable locations in California have become heavily populated by computer professionals.
The first two primarily apply towards retail establishments - in many retail stores, the "store manager" (who you'd refer to as managers since they deal with well, supervising other people) doesn't make a whole lot more than the clerk on the floor. In many cases, "Store Manager" is a position with no pay increase, but responsibility increase (you have to deal with customers who demand "to see the manager", the shift schedules, stock ordering, etc. and it's often far longer than a shift - nearly from opening to closing).
So that minimum wage is so that those people who do work a ton harder avoid getting exploited by the shop owner or franchisee.
Well, basically, the people on the ground in these disaster areas have a limited number of hours available to work, and they're currently spending a lot of time doing work that can be off-loaded to people on the Internet (e.g. identifying areas in need of help by way of pictures). While having more people on the ground would clearly be more useful most of the time, few people are willing to drop their lives for a few weeks or months and fly to a region that likely has no electricity, running water, or something that they would typically consider shelter (not to mention that many people would simply get in the way more than they would help), so the more we can do to enable the people that ARE willing to drop everything to get useful work done while they're over there, the better.
Basically, it's a gamer-community sourced version of the Mechanical Turk. Except instead of doing it for money, you're doing it to help some community in need.
Of course, one could realize that perhaps a better way would be to use more casual games like you see on Facebook and such. Hell, you could do it to speed up some wait for your crops to come in, thus doing some good while doing something pointless.
Or do it during some slow periods like when you're waiting to be matched for a game - gives yous omething to do instead of staring at the "please wait" prompt. Or other short delay - these tasks can be done in a few seconds, after all.
You really shouldn't use pseudo-science performed by special effects artists as a reference.
You realize that it isn't pseudoscience, right? It's true science. The article you linked didn't even dispute that. It disputed the analysis of the results and thus its conclusions, but otherwise it was a sound experiment.
Pseudoscience relies on something that is impossible to replicate - like say, creationism (intelligent design - though there was evolution from creationism to intelligent design - they found a transition fossil in the documentation). Or ESP.
Just because it's on TV doesn't automatically make it "bad" - they follow the scientific method (hypothesis, experimentation, analysis, conclusions) and people are free to reproduce the experiments. The only caveat is "don't try this at home" because replication can require special knowledge. But they lay bare the steps they took and their data.
And yes, science does come up (often) with errors in procedure, errors in analysis, and errors in conclusion. Even in regular scientific studies.
Is it sensationalized? Of course. It's a TV show, one that's fighting for eyeballs and ad money like everything else. But to dismiss it does a real disservice to everyone to whom thinks "science is hard and boring".
If you think speed cameras are easy to defeat, then repeat their experiment. You can choose to use their equipment or someone else's (remember part of the conclusion is to determine why your results differ, and it could be equipment used - has happened many times before).
In general, those sprays are worthless, though. And plastic holographic covers are easy to tell because they usually easily obscure your license place at ground level (i.e., if it works for the camera, the cops will easily notice it too and fine you for obscuring your plate).
Also, in general, jammers and such are easily detected - if you're trying to prevent your face from being imaged, then you'll either wear IR glasses or funny facepaint, in which case people remember you as the "guy with the funny glasses or funny makeup". Try to look more normal and boring, and people forget you the moment you pass them.
Same goes for jammers and such - a jammer is a transmitter and those are trivially easy to spot.
Part of evading surveillance is trying to not stand out. Making your emails encrypted, wearing odd clothes or accessories, funny makeup, transmitters all call attention to yourself and bring MORE surveillance on you. Being absolutely boring and looking like everyone else and not sticking out? Well now, you've just made it a lot harder because you look, act, and behave like everyone else and is completely forgettable.
That's exactly the same thought I've had rumbling around in my head for a while now, though if I were running one of these blocked sites I'd probably include all the government sites and such there, but leave all the questionable content - offering sites out of there just to mess with people even more. On that note I'm fully expecting someone to blanket a whole range of IP-addresses like this and watching Cameron burn. Too bad that I don't like popcorn.
Not just government sites, add in Google, Facebook, Gmail, YouTube and the like. Since a lot of browsers default to Google's home page, finding it's blocked should make for interesting times.
Can't search the web, can't use Facebook (which is still used by a number of people), can't even watch youtube videos.
All they learned was what anybody who does a lot of camping already knows: tortillas keep well, freeze-dried vegetables are a good way to add variety to a dreary and repetitive menu of preserved meat.
Tortillas aren't used because they keep well. They're used because they don't generate crumbs. That's why they don't use bread - the crumbs would fly everywhere and get into everything, which is not only an irritant (a crumb could fly into an eye), but also dangerous if it plugged a sensor onboard.
Living in space has unique dietary requirements because of various biological effects and restrictions. Food can't become easily airborne for starters. It also much keep relatively well because you have limited cooking options (no stove), and the long term effects of recycled air has to be taken into account (imagine the stench of food hanging around for days at a time and even worse, propagating throughout the habitat).
In addition, one's sense of smell and taste is severely compromised in space, so food tastes blander.
And it's also important to figure out what foods can be grown in space and what are impractical to produce (e.g., cheese) and thus must be brought up. But if you're bringing food up because it's impractical to grow, you need to know if it'll still be "good" up there (taste, texture, etc), and how much one should bring to be satisfied (due to limited weight).
Yes, it's a giant camping trip. Except it's done with 4 other people in a space barely larger than an elevator. No "wide open nature" to help dissipate smells and other things.
A near $1 billion write off. That would put most companies out of business, and even Microsoft can't keep taking losses like that.
Windows 8 is under-performing, people are pulling out of making Windows Phones, the XBone is facing a lot of backlash, their own tablet is becoming a huge flop, and the hardware makers are deciding they want to focus on other things.
Increasingly it's looking like Microsoft is asleep at the switch and just assuming they'll keep selling as much as they always have.
Either they need to start fixing some fundamentals, or Microsoft is going to face some serious long-term problems.
And it wasn't the first time, either. They did something similar back in 2007 because the RROD of Xbox360s.
In fact, imagine another company, say Apple, writing off nearly $1B and you won't have one class action, you'd have dozens and it would be reported as if some major disaster (think Fukushima style, not Hurricane Sandy) all over the world.
I'd say the sentiment is clear - if Apple did it, it's the end of the world. If Microsoft (or probably Google, or Samsung), meh, it's just another day. What's a billion dollars here or there?
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15,000 phones gets you parts discounts - they normally start at 1000 parts. At 10,000, you get more discounts.
And 15,000 probably outsells a TON (if not the vast majority) of Android phones out there - probably a good chunk of Samsung's lineup, at that (the most popular Android phone of all time, the SGS3 sold what, 60M units? And that's like 10% of all Android phones out there).
Yes, there are tons of Android phone models out there and companies like Samsung release new ones daily. Not flagship ones, of course, but all those free phones you see advertised heavily.
The big question though is after those 15,000 phones are sold - is there still a market left? I mean, who's buying them, and will they buy next year's model? Or is there enough general interest that next year's consumers aren't self-selected?
Well, given the 90% piracy rate for PC games, what did you expect the industry to do? It's why developers have been going towards console development (piracy rate - 10% or so) - there's more money to be made for the same investment. Unless you're one to argue that developers/designers/etc don't deserve to eat or be rewarded for their work.
It's also why PC ports of console releases are lackluster - if you know that it'll be heavily pirated, why bother putting a lot of money in it? If you're lucky, you'll make a profit. If not, you'll probably just break even, so spend as little on the PC platform as possible.
It's perhaps the "decline" side of piracy we've seen - where piracy kills development has come true as companies all back off of PC development. Instead, they find new business models to compete with "free" - F2P, always online, MMOs, and the like - basically unpiratable goods. (One should note that F2P took off from another heavily pirated platform, Android).
Steam helps, but piracy of Steam games itself is fairly high still.
This isn't doom and gloom though - because indie game devs who can develop games on the cheap can survive with a huge piracy rate because the games don't cost millions to produce and it just takes one hit where even 95+% piracy rate can still make a decent living from. (Of course, most indie stuff is crap, for you only hear of the good ones, not the oceans of crap that are also available).
The bank cares about two things - that you can pay back the loan, and that you do not destroy the bank's property.
If you got arrested? The bank will note that down and it may affect your mortgage rate, but as long as you pay, they don't care.
Oh, and it's a secured loan - if it cancels the mortgage (aka foreclosure), the bank will evict you from your house. You don't have to pay back the mortgage from that point on, yes. Though you won't own the house anymore.
If you kill yourself or are murdered or die of natural causes, the bank will seek repayment through your estate (unless it's a joint mortgage which means the surviving family will pay). For unsecured loans like credit cards, well, the loan would be wiped as it's a "bad loan" unless it's a joint account that makes the survive responsible.
Exactly. Take the job in hand first. Just because you have a job doesn't mean you can't apply for other jobs.
And there's always a chance the "boring" job is fascinating, or if not, gaming is really accessible these days. On your off time, one can always program for iOS or Android and make their own games.
Even a "dream job" at a "dream studio" like Blizzard or Valve may not turn out that way. There will always be a need for dull and boring crap work, and there's always a good chance a person starting out will be put in such a job.
Go the other path, and if you build up a portfolio, there's also a greater chance of getting a better job at the same place - the gaming industry knows people want to "make games" and exploits the fact. They know those people will burn out in 5 years, so they can replace them. And as such, they work them to the bone and give them the crap jobs. However, if you show you have a reasonably good portfolio, you can graduate above the morass into a much more interesting job designing the games and such. Because those studios also know that you've got a steady job and can do indie stuff on the side, so they can't mistreat you anymore.
False. It's an interesting study that shows there's something to study.
Running a full study costs a lot of money. Before you commit $100,000 to do a more detailed study, you'd have to prove that there's something to study. And a small scale study can cost a lot less money - say $5-10K or so.
If you're doing research, you need to prove that it's worthwhile to study it first before people will commit more money. Better to spend $10K and find out what you thought isn't true than to spend $100K and realize that the data is inconclusive.
In addition, a small scale study can bring up more questions to study further along - which can bring up alternative questions to research in case you can't get funding for your primary question.
Sure, this article should probably not be announced at all - it's really a preliminary study. But it doesn't mean it's worthless.
Think of it this way - now you can try to find out if there is a causal relation. But now there's also more things to ask as well - does parenting have anything to do with it? Is there a relation between the number of cans and behavior?
Why does everyone assume you need to do a full study all the time? When researching, you need to do small scale ones to prove what you're looking at is something worth researching.
Like say, let's say you want to test whether or not eating beans make you emit more flatulence than normal. Well, you can't do a proper full scale study because you can't go towards a grant board with nothing - they want to know what you have before they loosen their purse strings. So you could do controlled studies among say, your family on the cheap to get some results. With that cheap study, you can apply for a small grant to study a broader population - you still won't get full study grant money, but you'll get a token amount that should cover enough to see if there's a relation. If you can prove something with $5k, you can then apply for more money to do a much bigger study. Or you might also find other interesting side results that can be studied - which even if your main results say there's no relationship, it doesn't mean you can't study something related that cropped up.
And that's what this study does - it simply proves there's more to study. It could've gone the other way as well - it could've shown there was no relationship at all, and it's best that only $10k was used to find that out than $100K.
And yes, there have been times when a small study shows there might be something, but a larger study doesn't because some factor wasn't considered (e.g., geographical - the small study population was just anomalous). That stuff is also important to know too - perhaps to find out what the small study had the anomaly and if it's potentially useful.
Well, Ubuntu Edge is supposed to be completely open with no blobs. This means one of two things.
1) FIrmware embedded in hardware (flash memory) is not counted by the FSF. Firmware blobs are only "bad" when they exist as a file on disk and loaded into the embedded RAM of the target hardware. So WiFi chips that have built in firmware storage are fine.
2) You don't have to use blocks that require proprietary blobs. It just means you don't use PowerVR at all. This means you need to ensure your software is able to use 2D accelerators (most of this is open) and do everything in 2D. (We use 3D purely because most 3D hardware is faster than 2D hardware at achieving the same results).
Of course, it means you're stuck with probably poor video playback performance (at least most 2D accelerators can do basic YUV surfaces), and no 3D at all.
And that's why I don't participate in Indiegogo, but do many Kickstarters.
Kickstarter doesn't charge you UNLESS the project is funded. Indiegogo charges you first, then refunds you if it fails.
There are two problems with the charge/refund model - one, if you're doing a currency conversion, that means an instant 5-10% hit on your pledge - just due to currency exchange losses. Neverminding currency fluctuations that occur from when you pledge to when you get refunded (and no, you can't win).
The second problem is well, you tie up money. Indiegogo makes a profit based on simply holding the money (and this isn't including the Indiegogo fees). I suppose it makes Indiegogo brilliant business people - they have this huge pool of cash they can pretty much invest with - all they need is enough cash to cover the payouts of the day, but money's coming in for future payouts.
But it's the currency losses that get to me. Pledge under $100, and it's not a huge deal - it's probably $5-10 you lose. But I've done bigger pledges on Kickstarter, and you're looking at huge losses. $1000 pledge? Are you really willing to give up $100 or so in the currency exchange?
Two things.
1) Phone systems have no way to identify you. That is key - just because they can track which aisles you walk down and pause in front of, doesn't mean you're identifiable. You're just "Person 1" to them.
2) The baby tracking thing uses purchases, not what you looked at.
The first point is very important because everyone assumes that when recycling bins are tracking you that they can make the magic leap to identifying you personally. They can't. Your phone emits a bunch of ID numbers, but the store cannot link those ID numbers to you personally.
In fact, if you're worries about that kind of tracking, you should be extremely worried about online shopping, because the moment you purchase something, you link your behavior to an identity. Especially common sites like Amazon. If you browse a site then leave, you're like a shopper in a store - they have a list of what you did, but not who you are.
The second point is they used loyalty card information, and because purchases were linked to an identity.
It's vitally important to realize when you're tracked but anonymous, and tracked but linked to your identity. The former is creepy, but relatively innoculous.
When it's linked to an identity, things get interesting because one has to realize online shopping can track you even deeper than ever before. Especially since some of the bigger sites host ads (Google-owned company ads, mind you... - so Google ends up knowing your shopping habits and your identity.).
You don't need night hours to take courses. If your employer is a decent one, they'd allow you to take time off for classes and make it up during the other part of the week. And last I checked, you didn't have to complete the curricula in the time allotted - just because the full time PhD takes 1 year doesn't mean you can't do half time and do it over 2 years.
Doing so with an employer that understands and allows you to make up work (so you do your 40 hours a week) can mean the only drop you have is that of free time. Of course, no one said it would be easy. And most employers do allow it - they get the same work, just understand you need some flexibility.
And there's always the option of saving up for your education as well - If you know it's going to cost $50K to do your PhD, then save up the $50k. It will take a lot of scrimping and saving, but it also means that you'll be debt-free, and having sacrificed, might decide that the PhD wasn't really that beneficial upon reflection. (It then means you have $50k to go into a college fund for your kid, or retirement savings).
It's amazing how perspective changes once you've done the hard work of saving up and realizing you won't get a huge ROI from that PhD, than to do the PhD, go into debt, then find out it wasn't useful anyhow.
Web apps are great. But then you get the W3C to try stuff a little bit controversial like DRM and everyone wants a "free web" and "they should make an app!".
And then get surprised when developers do.
The iTunes store is probably the best example of this - it's basically a few web pages strung together but which really wants to get you into iTunes. (Honestly - is it even possible to use iTunes preview? The only way I've seen it was through Google).
The reality is, we're going to have to have some long and very difficult discussions on what to do. Ideally we wouldn't need the discussion period, but since that doesn't seem realistic at all, we're going to need to see what the real solution is. Do we allow DRM and thus DRM content on the web? Or do we say no and end up in an app-universe where web sites are merely conduits for providing the app?
Yes, because TFA said it would be difficult and hard. So they made an interim player so their customers can get YouTube, and Google can get a few extra ad views (win-win), while in the meantime, they work on a HTML5 player.
It's really a case of a prisoner's dilemma - if both Google and Microsoft cooperate (Microsoft releases native YouTube client now, transitions later) - they both benefit. If Google plays hardball, they both suffer (Microsoft's customers can't get YouTube, Google doesn't get to show ads).
Google simply said the few extra views of ads isn't worth being flexible about. Though Microsoft might decide to "enhance user privacy" by making IE default to blocking third party cookies as well, and adding adwords, doubleclick, admob and other Google-owned ad companies on a privacy watch list...
Even with no flexibility some can still be found - by offering support for a couple of weeks to enable knowledge transfer and other things. It would mean the first couple of weeks you'd be working doggedly hard since you'd be doing two jobs, but it's only a couple of weeks and you did at least make an effort to simplify the transition period.
Though in general, most companies expect flexible starting dates - if nothing more than hiring something is a slow process because you have to have a position etc., to fill and unless you already had one person in mind to hire pretty much unconditionally, there are interviews and time required for applications etc., which takes time. What is a company to do? Hire the first person to waltz through the door asking for a job? And there's still a pile of general paperwork that happens when someone is hired and before they start (you may need to requisition supplies including computers, hardware, space to work, allocations of tasks, initial training, etc).
It would be extremely rare for a job to require one to start immediately the next day - usually one can work in at least a week if not more, and there are plenty of ways to turn a week notice into something mutually agreeable by providing after hours support and such.
And Microsoft claims the API doesn't let them do that, which is possible. Perhaps Google doesn't expose the necessary APIs. Or perhaps to get the ad, you call "GetAd" with the video ID, and expect Google to Do The Right Thing(tm) and return an appropriate ad (which makes sense - do you expect the client to retrieve the ad, do some analysis and if it doesn't work, get another ad? Geez, look at the bandwidth waste!). Of course, perhaps Microsoft isn't dumb and they looked at how Google wrote their YouTube apps on iOS and Android, and saw they were calling some unknown API to fix it.
Of course, "Google Can Do No Evil" attitude is quite prevalent, and I suppose like Apple fanboys, they refuse to see any bad things their company does. It's easy to hate Microsoft. It's easy to hate Apple. But hate Google and the fanboys can be just as vicious as Apple ones.
That's only in countries where employee protection is nil, usually because the employees are "too smart" to be in a union or lobby for other job protection legislation.
In most other countries, if you give notice, you are paid for the notice period even if the company decides to walk you out the same day. If they refuse to pay for your notice period, you can bring an unjustified dismissal lawsuit against them as you can treat that as being "fired without cause" and actually get more than what you would've gotten had they just paid you out. (Courts don't generally look fondly on dismissing people who give notice, and often such dismissal comes with severance pay).
Of course, the interesting thing I suppose is how people in the US routinely allow themselves to get screwed over - especially in the IT field. Think about it - in every other profession other than IT, there's typically on-call pay if you have to carry the pager, potential compensation for overtime (yes, even if you're salaried, a lot of places do compensate for overtime) and many other rights and compensation that IT seems to have given up. And we call ourselves "smart" workers. Hell, I'm sure some of the unionized employees at McDonalds get far more rights than we get, only because "we're too smart" and "unions are for idiots" and we let our own labor rights get eroded "because we're better".
A requirement of the form factor. If you check, most ultrabooks in a similar formfactor already solder the RAM on board. You can find ones with removable RAM but they typically are pushing the "Ultrabook" definition because Intel couldn't get anyone to make them otherwise (typically they have hard drives, or 15" screens or are heavier and significantly thicker).
Though, to be honest, I've rarely ever installed additional RAM in any PC I had - given its cost, it's usually cheaper to buy the max up front than in a few years when memory standards change and it's difficult to buy it cheaply (e.g., DDR or DDR2) - especially the larger modules - they either simply stop existing or are still wildly expensive years later.
Yes you can, and it's not that hard.
You know what the hardest part of it is? Going to ifixit, getting the screwdriver, and clicking "checkout now".
8 screws for the bottom cover, and 3 more securing the battery to the case. OK I take it back, the hardest part is possibly removing the bottom cover - Apple does use rather strong clips.
The same is true for everything OTHER than the MacBook Pro Retina 15", which has annoyingly-glued in batteries. I think the 13" is on a carrier frame.
It definitely isn't rocket surgery.
It is a form of transmission, still, even though it's not actively broadcasting.
What you need ot know is that wireless power has been with us for a long time now - basically since the late 1800s. We've been putting energy in the air since then. Of course, it's what Tesla was experimenting with, except his system was trying to boost efficiency as wireless power transmission is still not very efficient.
Yes, your transmitter is putting energy in the air, and when a suitable antenna picks it up, a small voltage is generated (microvolts generally - a good receiver can generally pick up around 5uV or so).
Which also means that attempts to harness the energy actually does weaken the transmission somewhat, cuing the probably apocryphal stories about people living under power lines stringing long cables to harness the "free" power, to people living near AM/FM tranmitters doing the same thing and getting caught because they leave a visible "footprint" in the field distribution (if you can pull sufficient power, you can be noticed because you do detune the transmitter antenna).
So theoretically, if these devices get popular, you can expect to get "less bars" and worse cell reception...
The first two primarily apply towards retail establishments - in many retail stores, the "store manager" (who you'd refer to as managers since they deal with well, supervising other people) doesn't make a whole lot more than the clerk on the floor. In many cases, "Store Manager" is a position with no pay increase, but responsibility increase (you have to deal with customers who demand "to see the manager", the shift schedules, stock ordering, etc. and it's often far longer than a shift - nearly from opening to closing).
So that minimum wage is so that those people who do work a ton harder avoid getting exploited by the shop owner or franchisee.
Real managers make way more than that.
A copy of the story from The Verge.
Interestingly, Samsung paid out $200,000 in 2011 to Brazil for working conditions as well.
And China Labour Watch also has citations to Samsung.
Basically, it's a gamer-community sourced version of the Mechanical Turk. Except instead of doing it for money, you're doing it to help some community in need.
Of course, one could realize that perhaps a better way would be to use more casual games like you see on Facebook and such. Hell, you could do it to speed up some wait for your crops to come in, thus doing some good while doing something pointless.
Or do it during some slow periods like when you're waiting to be matched for a game - gives yous omething to do instead of staring at the "please wait" prompt. Or other short delay - these tasks can be done in a few seconds, after all.
You realize that it isn't pseudoscience, right? It's true science. The article you linked didn't even dispute that. It disputed the analysis of the results and thus its conclusions, but otherwise it was a sound experiment.
Pseudoscience relies on something that is impossible to replicate - like say, creationism (intelligent design - though there was evolution from creationism to intelligent design - they found a transition fossil in the documentation). Or ESP.
Just because it's on TV doesn't automatically make it "bad" - they follow the scientific method (hypothesis, experimentation, analysis, conclusions) and people are free to reproduce the experiments. The only caveat is "don't try this at home" because replication can require special knowledge. But they lay bare the steps they took and their data.
And yes, science does come up (often) with errors in procedure, errors in analysis, and errors in conclusion. Even in regular scientific studies.
Is it sensationalized? Of course. It's a TV show, one that's fighting for eyeballs and ad money like everything else. But to dismiss it does a real disservice to everyone to whom thinks "science is hard and boring".
If you think speed cameras are easy to defeat, then repeat their experiment. You can choose to use their equipment or someone else's (remember part of the conclusion is to determine why your results differ, and it could be equipment used - has happened many times before).
In general, those sprays are worthless, though. And plastic holographic covers are easy to tell because they usually easily obscure your license place at ground level (i.e., if it works for the camera, the cops will easily notice it too and fine you for obscuring your plate).
Also, in general, jammers and such are easily detected - if you're trying to prevent your face from being imaged, then you'll either wear IR glasses or funny facepaint, in which case people remember you as the "guy with the funny glasses or funny makeup". Try to look more normal and boring, and people forget you the moment you pass them.
Same goes for jammers and such - a jammer is a transmitter and those are trivially easy to spot.
Part of evading surveillance is trying to not stand out. Making your emails encrypted, wearing odd clothes or accessories, funny makeup, transmitters all call attention to yourself and bring MORE surveillance on you. Being absolutely boring and looking like everyone else and not sticking out? Well now, you've just made it a lot harder because you look, act, and behave like everyone else and is completely forgettable.
Not just government sites, add in Google, Facebook, Gmail, YouTube and the like. Since a lot of browsers default to Google's home page, finding it's blocked should make for interesting times.
Can't search the web, can't use Facebook (which is still used by a number of people), can't even watch youtube videos.
Heck, maybe even Netflix UK.
Tortillas aren't used because they keep well. They're used because they don't generate crumbs. That's why they don't use bread - the crumbs would fly everywhere and get into everything, which is not only an irritant (a crumb could fly into an eye), but also dangerous if it plugged a sensor onboard.
Living in space has unique dietary requirements because of various biological effects and restrictions. Food can't become easily airborne for starters. It also much keep relatively well because you have limited cooking options (no stove), and the long term effects of recycled air has to be taken into account (imagine the stench of food hanging around for days at a time and even worse, propagating throughout the habitat).
In addition, one's sense of smell and taste is severely compromised in space, so food tastes blander.
And it's also important to figure out what foods can be grown in space and what are impractical to produce (e.g., cheese) and thus must be brought up. But if you're bringing food up because it's impractical to grow, you need to know if it'll still be "good" up there (taste, texture, etc), and how much one should bring to be satisfied (due to limited weight).
Yes, it's a giant camping trip. Except it's done with 4 other people in a space barely larger than an elevator. No "wide open nature" to help dissipate smells and other things.
And it wasn't the first time, either. They did something similar back in 2007 because the RROD of Xbox360s.
In fact, imagine another company, say Apple, writing off nearly $1B and you won't have one class action, you'd have dozens and it would be reported as if some major disaster (think Fukushima style, not Hurricane Sandy) all over the world.
I'd say the sentiment is clear - if Apple did it, it's the end of the world. If Microsoft (or probably Google, or Samsung), meh, it's just another day. What's a billion dollars here or there?