As as platform for Android development (one of the reasons I got it) it is fairly disappointing. Their "every game has a demo" model pretty much means anyone developing for it is giving them free content. It' is rare that a game will convince me with a great demo. More often than not a demo just gives me enough to know it is not worth buying.
If that's the case, the free-to-play model will come to Ouya like it has Android and iOS.
The only real reason I want an Ouya? Emulators. Stick in a MAME for Android emulator on there and a USB hard drive full of ROMs, and you've got a nice gaming machine right there. The controller could be better I suppose, but meh, it's one of the few ways to play arcade games on your big screen with controller, without having to set up a PC and front end and all that.
My dad programmed COBOL from the early 70's until he retired. He always came back to this point. You get an auditor comes in and wants to really know what your program is doing, he'd actually look at the listing. He wasn't a programmer, he was an accountant, an auditor. He could follow what you were doing without feeling like you were pulling the wool over his eyes. And if you don't think keeping an auditor happy is important, you haven't been audited.
That's probably why it's verbose. But it's probably also where we get a lot of the oddball "ickiness" - just like what you get when you let your boss get VB to do everything.
COBOL code isn't written by programmers, but by business admins - the accountants, management, etc who basically don't want to learn "code" but do something that feels natural to them.
Heck, if you've tried to do some accounting thing and get the wrong numbers, the accountant will probably be able to read the COBOL and figure out the problem. With C or other programming languages, you'll probably need to sit with the accountant and step through the code with them. Maybe even having to translate it to pseudocode (which has its own issues).
The Chinese have successfully copied Cisco's HW so there's no reason to buy the genuine product.
I thought that Cisco's advantage over its competitors was in its SW, not HW...
That's the point. They've cloned the hardware enough that the Cisco software runs "well enough" on it. Of course, some stuff might not work, or work poorly or just crash, but it powers up and runs!
What I don't have is a right to get Google to delete all information or random but accurate information about me.
It's a fine line actually.
If you tell Google to delete your Google account, then the Right To be Forgotten says that Google must delete all information contained in your account - your GMail emails, your G+ profiles, updates, friends, and any data Google may have collected about you.
HOWEVER, it does NOT mean Google must remove you from the index - since the index is created by trawling through other websites. Your information revealed through other websites is NOT Google's problem.
Right now, when you delete an account, who knows what happens to that data. RTBF simply means that information should be deleted. It does not mean that incidentally acquired information unlinked to the account should be deleted as well.
Consider a library. RTBF means if you turn in your library card, they get rid of all information about you in the system - including what books you borrowed (the book information would change your name to "No longer a patron"). However, it does NOT say the librarian has to erase you from their memory, or that any books, newspapers, etc., that mention you have to eliminated either.
It's just his opinion. And his curve is a straw man that he puts out of his ass. Where is the evidence that some patent protection is good? Ah right there is none. Everybody just assumes that some patent protection is good for innovation. That is just like creationism or like any other theology.
There is evidence that more patent protection is bad. See software patents. But where is the evidence for the other side, i.e. no patent protection as bad?
You can apply history to it - patents have been around only a few hundred years - dating back to just before America.
You could also try to frame it in context of say IP protection. Is copyright good? Bad? Too much? Too little?
Will open-source succeed without copyright? Would you write a program to scratch your itch if it wasn't under copyright protection? Realize that the latter means it's effectively modified-BSD licensed.
Software is a tricky thing because until its invention, patents were used for "things" and copyright was used for "creative works" and neither the twain shall meet. After all, writing a book doesn't get patent protection (other than design patents, if the book has certain ornamental features). The work itself doesn't have utility other than being entertaining (hopefully), but that's it. Likewise, the printing press used to make the book isn't copyrightable - there's no "expression" going on other than maybe a few decorative items to give it better form.
Software though, is both. It can be a creative work meant to be enjoyed, or a part of a machine. In effect, it's forcefully combining two areas of IP protection that were never intended to be combined in the first place. And both are being twisted to accommodate this ill-fitting piece.
Perhaps what needs to happen is sitting down and realizing this - that software should not be patented nor copyrighted, but covered under its own IP protection category because of its unique nature. After all, if you get rid of software patents, you're saying if I build a machine out of electromechanical parts, I can patent that, but if I replace some of those electromechanical parts with software to make it more flexible, simpler and more reliable, it's suddenly unpatentable? (And software can be hardware, too, thanks to modern VLSI RTL).
It's probably time to stop forcing software into copyright and patents and realize it's got its own attributes from both, and crafting IP protection appropriate for this reality than bending existing protections about.
Tunneling is an old friend. It's also used for erasing NOR Flash.
And writing/erasing NAND flash, which is why NAND flash has traditionally been faster and more reliable than NOR flash.
(Writing NOR flash uses hot electron injection - basically, you establish a huge potential difference and the electrons shoot through the insulator. Tunnelling, used in erase of NOR and write/erase of NAND, simply has the electrons jumping the gap without disturbing the insulating layer.)
Of course, with the small geometries of NAND flash these days, electrons are starting to spontaneously tunnel, and the thin gate oxides mean they're not as resistant to high electric fields (which is what generally causes the breakdown). Annealing helps because it moves "stuck" electrons off the floating gate (you can never remove them all, it seems) as well as rebuild some of the damaged oxide (mostly damage to the crystal structure).
The non-technological hurdles are exactly what you'd expect - government regulations, air-traffic restrictions and (restrictions on) emergency landing procedures.
Given crop dusting is generally done 100' AGL, air traffic isn't as big a deal (you truck in the UAV - even regular crop dusters need a ground support vehicle, so you're having to drive there anyhow). Emergency landings generally you plop right down on the field. It's unmanned, so falling down is an option. You'll trample some crop, but the same happens when a regular Ag plane fails.
It's also likely to cause less traffic accidents - nothing's more startling than to have a plane suddenly fly low over the highway where it almost appears to want to collide with that semi. Helicopters being what they are don't need to fly beyond the end of the field.
If you think Apple chose pentalobe (which has been a standard screw type available my entire life) to stop people from opening up their case to replace the soldered in battery, you're just a moron.
Actually, I suspect a good reason was to avoid ham-fisted individuals from opening the case.
Because when someone doesn't have a screwdriver, ANYTHING becomes a screwdriver, including knives (butter and the like) and other objects.
Unfortunately, the average individual will try to "fix stuff themselves" even though they don't have the tools, the knowledge or the competence. For a more IT example - imagine you get a helpdesk caller saying their computer doesn't boot. Of course, what they didn't tell you was they read some website and blithely followed its instructions on deleting this, that and there system file.
The people who go to ifixit and buy the tool? They've already shown a level of competence way above the general consumer. Unfortunately, the number of people who use ifixit is very small compared to the number of people who will try to "fix it themselves".
In effect, Apple has created a user competency test for even attempting the repair.
You're ignoring the existence of security updates Ã" which are future updates. Sony have an interest in them, for PR if nothing else.
Why? Sony will patch security updates if they allow homebrew, as they are ought to do, but other than that, why bother?
There will be very few services actually running on a PS4 to be pwnable, and most of them will reside behind a firewall anyways.
There will be a flurry of updates, yes, because the initial hardware will be full of holes (it's x86, after all - it's well understood and all that), but the basic system DRM and signed code requirements will probably keep much of any potential exploits from running.
So reading between the lines, someone probably complained, because Waze is too small to affect the market place, already crowded with mapping companies ranging from Nokia to Apple to Microsoft to Tele Atlas. I wouldn't be surprised to find any of those names on the original complaint.
There aren't that many, actually
You have Tele Atlas and Navteq for maps available commercially. TomTom owns Tele Atlas. Nokia owns Navteq.
Google uses a combination of Tele Atlas and Street View (the Street View generates maps, and where there isn't street view data, they use Tele Atlas. They used to use Navteq but the licensing fees got too much).
For non-commercial map data, you have Waze and OpenStreetMaps.
Apple internally uses TomTom/Tele Atlas. They combine it with their own overhead flybys.
Garmin etc., use Navteq.
There isn't a whole lot of mapping going on - really two companies providing worldwide coverage that everyone else uses. The value-add that everyone else provides is combined with the maps - POIs, street view, aerial view, satellite view, routing, traffic, etc.
It's not really that crowded a market, and Waze is pretty much one of the few independent mapping companies out there.
It isn't any more difficult to crack. Moreover, the absolute only way it would introduce any difficulty at all is if the NSA is scanning images of text. You can bet 95% or more of the data they intercept is already in digital form. The computer already knows what letters are what, so this will help precisely not at all, unless you start sending your emails in image formats, in which case, which is... yeah, not exactly a good plan. Just use encryption if it needs to be secure. This doesn't do anything.
Not only that, but anything printed out in the crap font is now 100% harder to read by the recipient. It's basically a really good way to irritate anyone who might receive the printed document (electronically, well, just like I can select a new font from the Font menu...).
Really, it's just another form of WingDings in the end.
^^^ THIS. People say that Bitcoin has deflation. This is currently NOT true, it is subject to inflation. If we assume that all new coins are sold then $388.800 new money needs to come in each and every day at current MtGox ticker price $108. Say $100 and that's still $360.000 new fiat money required each and every day.
For now. The rate of new coins coming into existence gets lower and lower every day by its very nature, and there's a hard cap on how many bitcoins there ever will be. In fact, just over half the bitcoins available are out there, and the other half will come into existence over the next 100 years.
Also, it means your economy can grow by 3600 bitcoins every day (for now). This was a major reason most economies went away from the gold standard - if you have a period of high growth, you're stifling the economy because you can't find enough gold to cover it, stalling out the economy and leading to economic problems as people go into hoard mode.
If some major business started using bitcoins, this limited growth can create some pretty severe economic issues, namely, deflation.
That's how good the first generation programmers were. I am still in awe of that. And he was a very modest man, very generous with his experience. I'm proud to have learned from him.
Technically, things were also a lot simpler - the ROM was probably only a few K in size, so manual disassembly was a very doable thing. In addition, a programmer had to work at the machine code level - asesmblers were often quite hard to come by (or expensive), so code being hand-assembled was common. Which isn't too bad a thing as there weren't that many instructions to assemble anyhow.
Instruction sets were simpler (most microprocessors had under 200 instructions, many under 100).
In addition, the systems were a lot simpler as well - the printer may do something like read a character from the I/O port, then look up the pattern in ROM and then output the pattern to the print head (which was probably a simple write-to-port, delay, write to port, delay, check printer carriage bits (end of line, etc), etc. etc. etc.
It was all very easy to understand because things had to be simple out of necessity - software couldn't be terribly complex because there was no space, and hardware generally was simple as well - PIO mode being really common. Also, no multitasking or anything.
These days things are much more complex - you have DMA running doing things (like reading from the I/O port), threads and tasks (even in a printer - because multiple things are going on simultaneously including generating next line of dots, advancing the paper, monitoring the laser or print head, etc).
Basically, you can still do it all today - we still have 8 bit micros around doing simple tasks whose firmware can easily be hacked apart. Hell, go reverse some Arduino code. And you can easily hand-compile and assemble code as well - it's not that hard. Hello World is trivially simple to hand compile, and even hand-assemble (into a.out - the real masochists will be able to convert it to ELF).
A key difference between GPL and BSD licenses are the _patent_ rules. GPLv3 covers _patents_ very carefully, and for sound historical reasons. The "TIVO" set topo bax used GPL code, but locked it down with patents so customers could duplicate the very "ideas" you mention, even if they were allowed to read the modified code under the GPL. Patents were used to lock down the box and make it difficult, even dangerous, to duplicate or modify.
Bzzt. Incorrect. The TiVoization rules are NOT because of patents. In fact, GPLv2 had patent rules as well - basically by agreeing to release code under GPLv2, any patents covering said code are licensed for that code only.
TiVoization referred to "look but don't touch" - TiVo released the OS code per the GPLv2. However, because of various hacks bricking systems and in generally messing things up horribly, their Series 2 boxes included signature checks. The end result was yes, you had all the modified source code, but you could not run it because you couldn't sign the kernel nor filesystem, so any changes you made got blown away by the official build.
It wasn't patents. It was look but don't touch. It's why GPLv3 is now considered toxic to most companies wanting to use open-source code - they don't want to accidentally reveal their signing keys and what not (which is now a requirement - that the entire build system used must be available).
OTOH, GPLv3 has at least brought open-source licensing to the same scrutiny that commercial code licenses have gotten at the same companies, so inadvertent violations should be reduced and more open-source usage policies get developed.
Currently, I think LiOn batteries are a crap shoot. Of the dozen or so I have on various bits of equipment, I've had one Apple brand battery expand rapidly, one aftermarket battery for an older white MacBook do the same, one Nikon battery actually start smoking, two Wasabi batteries go tits up and one GoPro battery just petulantly refuse to do anything right out the box.
The problem is not the battery, it's energy density. Unfortunately, energy density is also related to two important factors - battery life and form factor. A more energy-dense battery gives you longer life and the whole device can be made smaller and more portable (otherwise why do you use such batteries? A UPS uses un-dense lead-acids because formfactor and weight don't matter, and deep-cycle batteries that work better than other chemistries).
Problem is, such energy density leads to problems - like any energy-bearing good, the end result can be harmless and productive or harmful and destructive. There's not a lot that differentiates a combustion from an explosion (indeed, an explosion in a car engine is usually referred to as "knock" which can damage the engine). Or a nuclear bomb from a nuclear reactor (an uncontrolled reaction versus controlled). Or a battery from "venting with flame" and operating normally.
1. The reason reactors are not being built has to do with the cost -- they're not cost-effective for utilities unless they get huge subsidies.
Like, say, burning coal and oil? Let's see what the price of those would be if you had to store the waste.
Except decommissioning a nuclear reactor takes DECADES to do. And in the meantime, the land is useless for anything else. Usually it requires active maintenance as well, so money is being spent.
The subsidy is usually huge discounts on taxes and getting taxpayers to support the ongoing shutdown of the reactor - because no private operator will ever take it on. Even worse is the taxpayer is often held hostage because the operator can walk away from it all.
I can update my 'do not track' tech even further. It's called Tor, and the more people who use it, the safer it becomes. Bonus: Comes with free tin foil hat, extended digital middle finger to pervasive electronic surveillance.
Captcha: Doesn't work on Slashdot, which hates Tor and has banned all the exit nodes. "Slashdot is a Dice Holdings, Inc. service." *cough*
But seriously; if they can't link you to an IP address (which let's face it: with all the DNT in the world, your IP is logged by your ISP and your ISP is only too happy to whore out your realworld identity for a few scheckles, and it's trivial to link all your activity now to you, whether you login or not, use cookies, or all the browser magic in the world.
The only tech that can help you right now is one that mixes in all your traffic into everyone else's so you can't mine the data.
Yeah, too bad you can be identified without your IP address.
IP address tracking has been useless since NAT got popular because there can easily be dozens of people behind one IP address with disparate interests and tastes.
It may be why IPv6 adoption will be heavily pushed by advertisers who can now glean both a household and a PC - most PCs aren't used by more than a few people and nowadays most people have one PC per member (at least, the people of interest to advertisers). A household can be identified by the prefix of an IPv6 address (since most ISPs give out a full prefix/64 to a subscriber), while an individual PC will have an IP address within said prefix. Might be wise to invest in NATv6...
Even without that, your uniqueness can be gleaned from your browser - the EFF Panopticlick can identify how unique you are by your browser. Unless you use a different one while using Tor, your browser fingerprint will easily be used to link your identities together.
In fact, if Firefox wants to upgrade privacy? They could start by standardizing the headers they send so every firefox user appears like every other firefox user. Perhaps even restrict what javascript information is allowed to be retrieved.
I just did a test and with javascript off, my browser was 1 in 3500. With it on, its unique.
Wow. It's easy to forget that the entire industry of programmable computers is younger than a lot of ordinary people walking around today. It makes me wonder what entirely new industry I might see develop from nothing over my lifetime.
Actually no, Computers have been around far longer.
It's only been 65 years since the first ELECTRONICALLY STORED PROGRAM computer has been around.
Prior to this, computers existed, but the program they ran had to be set up before hand by moving jumpers and other such things around to perform the desired operations. This could be simply be a tape of punched holes that dictate the operations (e.g., a weaving machine), a fixed function machine (e.g., the 19th century census computers built by a company we know today as IBM). Or even hardcoded (e.g., the Babbage analytical and differencing engines).
Basically the program to be run was created, the electronics wired for it, then the computer was turned on and the program runs. When it was done, it had to be turned off, reconfigured (or new tape loaded), then turned on again. If you could reprogram them.
65 years ago, this all changed because now the computer could get its instructions from electronic memory - as in it could load its program off storage into memory, then run it from memory while another program was loaded in after. Or you could "type" in the code into memory and have it run. This allows a lot of things we now associate with a Von Neumann architecture - including code is data and other things. Or, more importantly, the ability to debug as we know it - before debugging involved manually looking over the code and manual execution. Fix the bog, then rebuild the tape/diodes/whatever to have the new bit patterns and then repeat it. (It did mean you basically have to submit a bug-free program).
But now, with electronically stored programs, you could "patch" the code it runs...
I can't recall the last time I heard anybody complaining about the PC market being fragmented.
Except that APIs like DirectX and the like smooth over a lot of the differences.
And people do complain - because they complain PC games are ports of consoles. And that ATI sucks because you need to install this beta driver to play this game. Or NVidia sucks for the same reason.
Hell, how many times have you heard that Intel graphics sucks? (And Intel graphics is the most popular by volume). Or how games on PCs have very little AAA titles, more indie games targeting lower end systems?
Of course, Windows itself doesn't actually add many new killer features - maybe by DirectX level, so you don't actually lose that much if you target say, Windows XP.
Thing is, Windows is remarkably unfragmented - a lot of differences are hidden away. Graphics? Intel. AMD. NVidia. It's remarkably easy to develop for them because you pick a card and use it. Windows? DirectX 9, 10, 11. They add spiffy eye candy the later you go, but unless you have a huge budget, you probably can stick with 9 because taking advantage of those features gets more difficult (and the need for fancier assets that cost more increases).
Screen size? Well, this one is interesting because PC gamers almost universally say the default FOV sucks and hack in their own values.
Beyond that, Windows abstracts it all - audio, keyboard, mouse, hard disk, network, etc. The PC is more monoculture now than ever. Hell, Android fragmentation can be akin to PCs when they ran DOS where you had dozens of video cards (with drivers that were completely different), audio boards could be somewhere in the memory map, etc.
Also, how much of the sales of Android are BECAUSE of the fragmentation? Or in other words, is Android successful BECAUSE of fragmentation? If I had a device that continued to be upgraded from 3.x to 4.x and beyond, would I be so anxious to jump to the new versions (sort of like how the 4s wasn't a big enough reason to jump from the 4)?
Android IS successful because of fragmentation. Because it means device makers can scale their devices to whatever price point they way. For example, you can have a flagship phone like an SGS4. But you can also make a crap phone for $100 and call it Android as well. The big thing is that carriers LOVE cheap phones - they get you in a contract for a $100 off contract phone? Lots of money for them. In fact, the biggest Android phones by sales volumes ARE the free phones.
Yes, the previous SGS3 sold a lot, but it isn't for example, the majority of Android phones sold (it's around 10%). The rest of the phone sales went to Samsung's other cheaper models.
People see an iPhone 5 on the shelf, see the $300 price tag, and get turned off. People see a Samsung Galaxy Whatchamacallit for $0 in big bold letters? Sold. Doesn't matter that the screen is "small", or that the processor is barely 1GHz, if that, or it has 512MB of RAM, and ships with 2.3.
It's free. That's all that matters.
So yes, fragmentation helps because manufacturers can make "free phones" carriers love to ship that take little subsidy over the flagships and iPhones.
Of course, it also means a lot of Android users have POS phones that run poorly. Which can explain why the user satisfaction with Android is on the low side (it's lower than Windows Phone...). The people who love them are the ones who spend the money for the SGS4 and the like, but they're the minority. Everyone else just gets a POS crap that barely runs Android.
The entire point and purpose of the 4th amendment is to prevent this sort of thing. The government is not supposed to search someone unless they have evidence that that specific person committed some specific crime.
That principle is important, because it prevents (sadly real world) problems like "a liquor store got robbed - detain every black person in a 3 block radius, one of them probably did it" or "it's Wednesday, round up every Jew in a 3 block radius and search them all - we'll find something to arrest some of them for" or "these Tea Party guys sure do oppose the party in power, lets search them all and see if we can find any grounds to arrest some of them".
Any power you grant the government or the police will be abused to the maximum extent consistent with human nature. You need to constrain the power to search more narrowly than "that guy looks suspicious to me".
But it DOES happen.
The fourth amendment only keeps the police from arresting everyone - they can (and do) set up a roadblock to quickly scan everyone passing through it. However, they're not allowed to do a search - just to see what everyone else can see.
Basically, if it's out in the open for the world to see, the "world" includes cops. If the alcohol that was robbed was put into a bunch of plastic bags tied up, unless it's plainly obvious that it was stolen, they're not allowed to search the bags or even ask you for a receipt that you actually paid for it. But if you roll pass the roadblock with a car full of bottles of expensive alcohol visible through your car windows...
Likewise, if you were doing something illegal and what you were doing was plainly visible to someone on the street, then the fourth amendment doesn't mean a cop walking past the window can't look. Of course, that observation can be taken to court to get a search warrant. However, should the curtains be drawn so someone on the street cannot observe the activities inside, then a copy cannot ask you to open said curtains, and will need other evidence to get a warrant.
Heck, I think that's the legal test as well - is what you were doing visible to others? Just like the stolen liquor - if it was in the trunk, the cops can't ask to see the contents of your trunk (because it's not visible). However, if cases of it are sitting on the front seat...
MPEG-4 er, which was that, Part 2 aka H.263 aka ISO/IEC 14496-2 or Part 10 AVC aka h.264 aka ISO/IEC 14496-10 MS MPEG-4v3 aka (unofficially) Divx;-)
Actually, MS MPEG4 is a form of h.263. In fact, MPEG4 Part 2 is also known as DivX/Xvid/etc, and to be more correct still, they fall under MPEG4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP).
MPEG4 Part 10 (h.264) is Advanced Video Codec (AVC).
Of course, one needs to realize that MPEG4 is a comprehensive standard and nothing "implements" MPEG4 - it's just a related group of standards, including the use of a subset of the QuickTime MOV format (Part 14) for the containers, various video codecs (including h.263-based ones like DivX and the like, h.264), audio codecs (preferred AAC) and many other standards, including stuff like DRM, bitstream formats, subtitles, integration testing, reference software, hardware implementations, etc.
Effectively, MPEG4 is a "meta standard" of standards - it really is just an accumulation of standards others have written.
Other than OS X, what other OSes support high DPI displays that work well?
Windows is relatively horrible - set it to 150% and yeah, it's usable, but it seems most apps don't properly handle it so you have text exceeding their bounding boxes constantly. Set it to 100% and it's squint central.
Linux is no better - it just assumes a standard DPI display, and X is just.. horrible to deal with. Yeah, I can have a huge terminal window, but that's relatively useless to me because I want nice crisp text.
Hell, Google spent a lot of time with ChromeOS, it does look great on high DPI mode on the Chromebook Pixel. Alas, regular Linux beside it? Awful.
So, OS X and ChromeOS. Though I like the OS X implementation - because when I run the display in "most text" mode (virtual 1920x1200) it looks damn nice, and looks native still (the scaling is 150% to native panel pixels). Obviously Apple worked hard getting it to that point, better than Windows any day (no text exceeding their bounding boxes! UI widgets scaled up!)
iOS is becoming a much less credible gaming proposition with every day that passes. Why? Shovelware IAP-laden crap which barely even qualifies as "games".
I believe the Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo parlance for that is "DLC".
And you can bet that as DLC has exploded, that both the Xbox One and PS4 will be having this business model.
PC games are, as well - everyone seems to be moving to the freemium-type business model
Slashdot Mirror
If that's the case, the free-to-play model will come to Ouya like it has Android and iOS.
The only real reason I want an Ouya? Emulators. Stick in a MAME for Android emulator on there and a USB hard drive full of ROMs, and you've got a nice gaming machine right there. The controller could be better I suppose, but meh, it's one of the few ways to play arcade games on your big screen with controller, without having to set up a PC and front end and all that.
That's probably why it's verbose. But it's probably also where we get a lot of the oddball "ickiness" - just like what you get when you let your boss get VB to do everything.
COBOL code isn't written by programmers, but by business admins - the accountants, management, etc who basically don't want to learn "code" but do something that feels natural to them.
Heck, if you've tried to do some accounting thing and get the wrong numbers, the accountant will probably be able to read the COBOL and figure out the problem. With C or other programming languages, you'll probably need to sit with the accountant and step through the code with them. Maybe even having to translate it to pseudocode (which has its own issues).
That's the point. They've cloned the hardware enough that the Cisco software runs "well enough" on it. Of course, some stuff might not work, or work poorly or just crash, but it powers up and runs!
It's a fine line actually.
If you tell Google to delete your Google account, then the Right To be Forgotten says that Google must delete all information contained in your account - your GMail emails, your G+ profiles, updates, friends, and any data Google may have collected about you.
HOWEVER, it does NOT mean Google must remove you from the index - since the index is created by trawling through other websites. Your information revealed through other websites is NOT Google's problem.
Right now, when you delete an account, who knows what happens to that data. RTBF simply means that information should be deleted. It does not mean that incidentally acquired information unlinked to the account should be deleted as well.
Consider a library. RTBF means if you turn in your library card, they get rid of all information about you in the system - including what books you borrowed (the book information would change your name to "No longer a patron"). However, it does NOT say the librarian has to erase you from their memory, or that any books, newspapers, etc., that mention you have to eliminated either.
You can apply history to it - patents have been around only a few hundred years - dating back to just before America.
You could also try to frame it in context of say IP protection. Is copyright good? Bad? Too much? Too little?
Will open-source succeed without copyright? Would you write a program to scratch your itch if it wasn't under copyright protection? Realize that the latter means it's effectively modified-BSD licensed.
Software is a tricky thing because until its invention, patents were used for "things" and copyright was used for "creative works" and neither the twain shall meet. After all, writing a book doesn't get patent protection (other than design patents, if the book has certain ornamental features). The work itself doesn't have utility other than being entertaining (hopefully), but that's it. Likewise, the printing press used to make the book isn't copyrightable - there's no "expression" going on other than maybe a few decorative items to give it better form.
Software though, is both. It can be a creative work meant to be enjoyed, or a part of a machine. In effect, it's forcefully combining two areas of IP protection that were never intended to be combined in the first place. And both are being twisted to accommodate this ill-fitting piece.
Perhaps what needs to happen is sitting down and realizing this - that software should not be patented nor copyrighted, but covered under its own IP protection category because of its unique nature. After all, if you get rid of software patents, you're saying if I build a machine out of electromechanical parts, I can patent that, but if I replace some of those electromechanical parts with software to make it more flexible, simpler and more reliable, it's suddenly unpatentable? (And software can be hardware, too, thanks to modern VLSI RTL).
It's probably time to stop forcing software into copyright and patents and realize it's got its own attributes from both, and crafting IP protection appropriate for this reality than bending existing protections about.
And writing/erasing NAND flash, which is why NAND flash has traditionally been faster and more reliable than NOR flash.
(Writing NOR flash uses hot electron injection - basically, you establish a huge potential difference and the electrons shoot through the insulator. Tunnelling, used in erase of NOR and write/erase of NAND, simply has the electrons jumping the gap without disturbing the insulating layer.)
Of course, with the small geometries of NAND flash these days, electrons are starting to spontaneously tunnel, and the thin gate oxides mean they're not as resistant to high electric fields (which is what generally causes the breakdown). Annealing helps because it moves "stuck" electrons off the floating gate (you can never remove them all, it seems) as well as rebuild some of the damaged oxide (mostly damage to the crystal structure).
Given crop dusting is generally done 100' AGL, air traffic isn't as big a deal (you truck in the UAV - even regular crop dusters need a ground support vehicle, so you're having to drive there anyhow). Emergency landings generally you plop right down on the field. It's unmanned, so falling down is an option. You'll trample some crop, but the same happens when a regular Ag plane fails.
It's also likely to cause less traffic accidents - nothing's more startling than to have a plane suddenly fly low over the highway where it almost appears to want to collide with that semi. Helicopters being what they are don't need to fly beyond the end of the field.
Actually, I suspect a good reason was to avoid ham-fisted individuals from opening the case.
Because when someone doesn't have a screwdriver, ANYTHING becomes a screwdriver, including knives (butter and the like) and other objects.
Unfortunately, the average individual will try to "fix stuff themselves" even though they don't have the tools, the knowledge or the competence. For a more IT example - imagine you get a helpdesk caller saying their computer doesn't boot. Of course, what they didn't tell you was they read some website and blithely followed its instructions on deleting this, that and there system file.
The people who go to ifixit and buy the tool? They've already shown a level of competence way above the general consumer. Unfortunately, the number of people who use ifixit is very small compared to the number of people who will try to "fix it themselves".
In effect, Apple has created a user competency test for even attempting the repair.
Why? Sony will patch security updates if they allow homebrew, as they are ought to do, but other than that, why bother?
There will be very few services actually running on a PS4 to be pwnable, and most of them will reside behind a firewall anyways.
There will be a flurry of updates, yes, because the initial hardware will be full of holes (it's x86, after all - it's well understood and all that), but the basic system DRM and signed code requirements will probably keep much of any potential exploits from running.
There aren't that many, actually
You have Tele Atlas and Navteq for maps available commercially. TomTom owns Tele Atlas. Nokia owns Navteq.
Google uses a combination of Tele Atlas and Street View (the Street View generates maps, and where there isn't street view data, they use Tele Atlas. They used to use Navteq but the licensing fees got too much).
For non-commercial map data, you have Waze and OpenStreetMaps.
Apple internally uses TomTom/Tele Atlas. They combine it with their own overhead flybys.
Garmin etc., use Navteq.
There isn't a whole lot of mapping going on - really two companies providing worldwide coverage that everyone else uses. The value-add that everyone else provides is combined with the maps - POIs, street view, aerial view, satellite view, routing, traffic, etc.
It's not really that crowded a market, and Waze is pretty much one of the few independent mapping companies out there.
Not only that, but anything printed out in the crap font is now 100% harder to read by the recipient. It's basically a really good way to irritate anyone who might receive the printed document (electronically, well, just like I can select a new font from the Font menu...).
Really, it's just another form of WingDings in the end.
For now. The rate of new coins coming into existence gets lower and lower every day by its very nature, and there's a hard cap on how many bitcoins there ever will be. In fact, just over half the bitcoins available are out there, and the other half will come into existence over the next 100 years.
Also, it means your economy can grow by 3600 bitcoins every day (for now). This was a major reason most economies went away from the gold standard - if you have a period of high growth, you're stifling the economy because you can't find enough gold to cover it, stalling out the economy and leading to economic problems as people go into hoard mode.
If some major business started using bitcoins, this limited growth can create some pretty severe economic issues, namely, deflation.
Technically, things were also a lot simpler - the ROM was probably only a few K in size, so manual disassembly was a very doable thing. In addition, a programmer had to work at the machine code level - asesmblers were often quite hard to come by (or expensive), so code being hand-assembled was common. Which isn't too bad a thing as there weren't that many instructions to assemble anyhow.
Instruction sets were simpler (most microprocessors had under 200 instructions, many under 100).
In addition, the systems were a lot simpler as well - the printer may do something like read a character from the I/O port, then look up the pattern in ROM and then output the pattern to the print head (which was probably a simple write-to-port, delay, write to port, delay, check printer carriage bits (end of line, etc), etc. etc. etc.
It was all very easy to understand because things had to be simple out of necessity - software couldn't be terribly complex because there was no space, and hardware generally was simple as well - PIO mode being really common. Also, no multitasking or anything.
These days things are much more complex - you have DMA running doing things (like reading from the I/O port), threads and tasks (even in a printer - because multiple things are going on simultaneously including generating next line of dots, advancing the paper, monitoring the laser or print head, etc).
Basically, you can still do it all today - we still have 8 bit micros around doing simple tasks whose firmware can easily be hacked apart. Hell, go reverse some Arduino code. And you can easily hand-compile and assemble code as well - it's not that hard. Hello World is trivially simple to hand compile, and even hand-assemble (into a.out - the real masochists will be able to convert it to ELF).
Bzzt. Incorrect. The TiVoization rules are NOT because of patents. In fact, GPLv2 had patent rules as well - basically by agreeing to release code under GPLv2, any patents covering said code are licensed for that code only.
TiVoization referred to "look but don't touch" - TiVo released the OS code per the GPLv2. However, because of various hacks bricking systems and in generally messing things up horribly, their Series 2 boxes included signature checks. The end result was yes, you had all the modified source code, but you could not run it because you couldn't sign the kernel nor filesystem, so any changes you made got blown away by the official build.
It wasn't patents. It was look but don't touch. It's why GPLv3 is now considered toxic to most companies wanting to use open-source code - they don't want to accidentally reveal their signing keys and what not (which is now a requirement - that the entire build system used must be available).
OTOH, GPLv3 has at least brought open-source licensing to the same scrutiny that commercial code licenses have gotten at the same companies, so inadvertent violations should be reduced and more open-source usage policies get developed.
The problem is not the battery, it's energy density. Unfortunately, energy density is also related to two important factors - battery life and form factor. A more energy-dense battery gives you longer life and the whole device can be made smaller and more portable (otherwise why do you use such batteries? A UPS uses un-dense lead-acids because formfactor and weight don't matter, and deep-cycle batteries that work better than other chemistries).
Problem is, such energy density leads to problems - like any energy-bearing good, the end result can be harmless and productive or harmful and destructive. There's not a lot that differentiates a combustion from an explosion (indeed, an explosion in a car engine is usually referred to as "knock" which can damage the engine). Or a nuclear bomb from a nuclear reactor (an uncontrolled reaction versus controlled). Or a battery from "venting with flame" and operating normally.
Except decommissioning a nuclear reactor takes DECADES to do. And in the meantime, the land is useless for anything else. Usually it requires active maintenance as well, so money is being spent.
The subsidy is usually huge discounts on taxes and getting taxpayers to support the ongoing shutdown of the reactor - because no private operator will ever take it on. Even worse is the taxpayer is often held hostage because the operator can walk away from it all.
Good thing the only thing that "smells" it is the servers, and smells can't be sent through the Internet, yet.
Yeah, too bad you can be identified without your IP address.
IP address tracking has been useless since NAT got popular because there can easily be dozens of people behind one IP address with disparate interests and tastes.
It may be why IPv6 adoption will be heavily pushed by advertisers who can now glean both a household and a PC - most PCs aren't used by more than a few people and nowadays most people have one PC per member (at least, the people of interest to advertisers). A household can be identified by the prefix of an IPv6 address (since most ISPs give out a full prefix /64 to a subscriber), while an individual PC will have an IP address within said prefix. Might be wise to invest in NATv6...
Even without that, your uniqueness can be gleaned from your browser - the EFF Panopticlick can identify how unique you are by your browser. Unless you use a different one while using Tor, your browser fingerprint will easily be used to link your identities together.
In fact, if Firefox wants to upgrade privacy? They could start by standardizing the headers they send so every firefox user appears like every other firefox user. Perhaps even restrict what javascript information is allowed to be retrieved.
I just did a test and with javascript off, my browser was 1 in 3500. With it on, its unique.
Actually no, Computers have been around far longer.
It's only been 65 years since the first ELECTRONICALLY STORED PROGRAM computer has been around.
Prior to this, computers existed, but the program they ran had to be set up before hand by moving jumpers and other such things around to perform the desired operations. This could be simply be a tape of punched holes that dictate the operations (e.g., a weaving machine), a fixed function machine (e.g., the 19th century census computers built by a company we know today as IBM). Or even hardcoded (e.g., the Babbage analytical and differencing engines).
Basically the program to be run was created, the electronics wired for it, then the computer was turned on and the program runs. When it was done, it had to be turned off, reconfigured (or new tape loaded), then turned on again. If you could reprogram them.
65 years ago, this all changed because now the computer could get its instructions from electronic memory - as in it could load its program off storage into memory, then run it from memory while another program was loaded in after. Or you could "type" in the code into memory and have it run. This allows a lot of things we now associate with a Von Neumann architecture - including code is data and other things. Or, more importantly, the ability to debug as we know it - before debugging involved manually looking over the code and manual execution. Fix the bog, then rebuild the tape/diodes/whatever to have the new bit patterns and then repeat it. (It did mean you basically have to submit a bug-free program).
But now, with electronically stored programs, you could "patch" the code it runs...
Except that APIs like DirectX and the like smooth over a lot of the differences.
And people do complain - because they complain PC games are ports of consoles. And that ATI sucks because you need to install this beta driver to play this game. Or NVidia sucks for the same reason.
Hell, how many times have you heard that Intel graphics sucks? (And Intel graphics is the most popular by volume). Or how games on PCs have very little AAA titles, more indie games targeting lower end systems?
Of course, Windows itself doesn't actually add many new killer features - maybe by DirectX level, so you don't actually lose that much if you target say, Windows XP.
Thing is, Windows is remarkably unfragmented - a lot of differences are hidden away. Graphics? Intel. AMD. NVidia. It's remarkably easy to develop for them because you pick a card and use it. Windows? DirectX 9, 10, 11. They add spiffy eye candy the later you go, but unless you have a huge budget, you probably can stick with 9 because taking advantage of those features gets more difficult (and the need for fancier assets that cost more increases).
Screen size? Well, this one is interesting because PC gamers almost universally say the default FOV sucks and hack in their own values.
Beyond that, Windows abstracts it all - audio, keyboard, mouse, hard disk, network, etc. The PC is more monoculture now than ever. Hell, Android fragmentation can be akin to PCs when they ran DOS where you had dozens of video cards (with drivers that were completely different), audio boards could be somewhere in the memory map, etc.
Those were NOT fun days.
Android IS successful because of fragmentation. Because it means device makers can scale their devices to whatever price point they way. For example, you can have a flagship phone like an SGS4. But you can also make a crap phone for $100 and call it Android as well. The big thing is that carriers LOVE cheap phones - they get you in a contract for a $100 off contract phone? Lots of money for them. In fact, the biggest Android phones by sales volumes ARE the free phones.
Yes, the previous SGS3 sold a lot, but it isn't for example, the majority of Android phones sold (it's around 10%). The rest of the phone sales went to Samsung's other cheaper models.
People see an iPhone 5 on the shelf, see the $300 price tag, and get turned off. People see a Samsung Galaxy Whatchamacallit for $0 in big bold letters? Sold. Doesn't matter that the screen is "small", or that the processor is barely 1GHz, if that, or it has 512MB of RAM, and ships with 2.3.
It's free. That's all that matters.
So yes, fragmentation helps because manufacturers can make "free phones" carriers love to ship that take little subsidy over the flagships and iPhones.
Of course, it also means a lot of Android users have POS phones that run poorly. Which can explain why the user satisfaction with Android is on the low side (it's lower than Windows Phone...). The people who love them are the ones who spend the money for the SGS4 and the like, but they're the minority. Everyone else just gets a POS crap that barely runs Android.
But it DOES happen.
The fourth amendment only keeps the police from arresting everyone - they can (and do) set up a roadblock to quickly scan everyone passing through it. However, they're not allowed to do a search - just to see what everyone else can see.
Basically, if it's out in the open for the world to see, the "world" includes cops. If the alcohol that was robbed was put into a bunch of plastic bags tied up, unless it's plainly obvious that it was stolen, they're not allowed to search the bags or even ask you for a receipt that you actually paid for it. But if you roll pass the roadblock with a car full of bottles of expensive alcohol visible through your car windows...
Likewise, if you were doing something illegal and what you were doing was plainly visible to someone on the street, then the fourth amendment doesn't mean a cop walking past the window can't look. Of course, that observation can be taken to court to get a search warrant. However, should the curtains be drawn so someone on the street cannot observe the activities inside, then a copy cannot ask you to open said curtains, and will need other evidence to get a warrant.
Heck, I think that's the legal test as well - is what you were doing visible to others? Just like the stolen liquor - if it was in the trunk, the cops can't ask to see the contents of your trunk (because it's not visible). However, if cases of it are sitting on the front seat ...
Actually, MS MPEG4 is a form of h.263. In fact, MPEG4 Part 2 is also known as DivX/Xvid/etc, and to be more correct still, they fall under MPEG4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP).
MPEG4 Part 10 (h.264) is Advanced Video Codec (AVC).
Of course, one needs to realize that MPEG4 is a comprehensive standard and nothing "implements" MPEG4 - it's just a related group of standards, including the use of a subset of the QuickTime MOV format (Part 14) for the containers, various video codecs (including h.263-based ones like DivX and the like, h.264), audio codecs (preferred AAC) and many other standards, including stuff like DRM, bitstream formats, subtitles, integration testing, reference software, hardware implementations, etc.
Effectively, MPEG4 is a "meta standard" of standards - it really is just an accumulation of standards others have written.
Other than OS X, what other OSes support high DPI displays that work well?
Windows is relatively horrible - set it to 150% and yeah, it's usable, but it seems most apps don't properly handle it so you have text exceeding their bounding boxes constantly. Set it to 100% and it's squint central.
Linux is no better - it just assumes a standard DPI display, and X is just.. horrible to deal with. Yeah, I can have a huge terminal window, but that's relatively useless to me because I want nice crisp text.
Hell, Google spent a lot of time with ChromeOS, it does look great on high DPI mode on the Chromebook Pixel. Alas, regular Linux beside it? Awful.
So, OS X and ChromeOS. Though I like the OS X implementation - because when I run the display in "most text" mode (virtual 1920x1200) it looks damn nice, and looks native still (the scaling is 150% to native panel pixels). Obviously Apple worked hard getting it to that point, better than Windows any day (no text exceeding their bounding boxes! UI widgets scaled up!)
I believe the Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo parlance for that is "DLC".
And you can bet that as DLC has exploded, that both the Xbox One and PS4 will be having this business model.
PC games are, as well - everyone seems to be moving to the freemium-type business model