The thing with a state sponsored broadcaster is that they can fund programs that otherwise will never air.
We all like to complain about the crap on TV, but guess what? That crap makes money, and TV stations and networks are in it to make money. Anything they can use to sell eyeballs they will do it. If it means doing a Fox News, so be it.
But that neglects the positive aspects of TV - it can be a source of useful information. A lot of state-sponsored media is considered higher quality - BBC, CBC, PBS, NPR because they're not having to chase after advertising dollars. They're not beholden to the advertisers. They want to run some program against corporate interests? They can. (My current favorite is CBC Marketplace which exposes all sorts of scams and mis-dealings companies pull - from the big names everyone shops at to no name Ponzi schemes. No commercial broadcaster would touch that content because some advertiser would get offended and pull their money).
Hell, if you're wondering why channels like History, Discovery, TLC and such have gone away from "educational" or "edutainment" programming to reality style shows - again, it's money. Educational documentaries just don't make money and pull in ad money.
Heck, even Doctor Who might not have lasted as long if it was faced with having to compete with American Idol or Big Brother or other show. A cult following only gets you so far (see Star Trek), and moment it stops bringing in adequate bacon, it'll be axed. (I say adequate, because if some show the network carries brings in a lot more money, stable standbys will be expected to do better).
In ten years we'll be using equipment that makes the current best look like pocket calculators, just like we're buying gear today for a few hundred that would have been worth tens of thousands ten years ago, if we could even manufacture it. Goddamn I love living in the future.
The circle of computing comes around again, actually.
We had IDE drives that could be hung straight off the ISA bus ("integrated drive electronics" - the drive controller and drive were one and the same and you could access them using a few IN and OUT instructions - the software picked master/slave by writing the write value to the M/S bit in the drive register.
As drives and computers got faster, we moved from strict ISA control to putting them on controllers and changing the PHYs (PATA to SATA, UDMA, etc).
Now we're back to hanging the drive "controllerless" (the controller exists on the drive itself) back on the main bus again. Then we'll abstract out the bus again to get even more speed and hang SSD PCIe controllers off them...
It's piston-engine stuff like Cessnas that make up the remaining leaded avgas users, and even there, only the subset of engines that require the 100-octane avgas. Both newer and some older stuff can use 91-octane stuff that's now unleaded.
There are however a LOT of older planes around that require leaded - plenty of them dating to when liability lawsuits resulted in halted production sometime in 1986, and plenty more during the boom period of 1997 (when production resumed thanks to Clinton's limited product liability act) and 2008. Newer ones generally are certified for low octane, but there's plenty of planes flying about that aren't.
In fact, the industry has seen this coming and actually has done formal research into research and testing leaded avgas alternatives - an association formed between associations representing pilots, manufacturers, the FAA and others.
The basic goal is to come up with an equivalent to 100LL that can be used transparently, because certifying all the old aircraft for new fuels is finicky, at best, and an boondoggle of costs at worst. Having an unleaded 100LL alternative that is equivalent means all those old engines don't require a lick of work being done to them.
As for unleaded "mogas" (car gas), it turns out that a lot of them are now out of reach because biogas is incompatible - I think they can handle 5% ethanol, but newer ones have higher percentages and are actually not certified for flight use.
Many large institutions cannot legally continue using an out of support operating system.
Yeah, but many large institutions aren't going to throw out in-warranty machines just because they need to upgrade.
If XP support ended 5 years ago, maybe we have a case. But today, most XP machines are new machines capable of running Windows 7 acceptably. And that's key - the machines are usable, just the OS is old. It just means that the companies need to upgrade the OS.
Now, if conveniently they refreshed their PCs every 3 years (usually as long as the warranty is on the machines), they may chance it for a year until support runs out and buy new PCs on rotation. But that won't impact sales because the machines were due to be replaced anyways.
But if they just upgrade to Windows 7, with the machines still in use, then that results in no new PC sales either.
The premise that the end of XP support means a surge in PC purchases is only true if the machines running XP now are too old to run Windows 7 and require upgrades (i.e., new PCs). Given most XP machines are fully capable of running 7, that's not likely to happen. XP came out 12 years ago. There are few people using 12 year old machines, and if they are, they probably will continue to run XP beyond its support period.
The difference between Sony removing the "Other OS" option on the PS3 and patching the PS4 to add mandatory internet connection or remove the ability to share/sell games is that the former only affected a tiny minority of owners of the PS3 (far less than the number who complain about it).
But if Sony made a patch to make the console match the XBox One, it would affect 100% of their customers. Every. Single. Gamer! That would be a huge PR nightmare.
Sony ONLY removed the OtherOS option because they were afraid. Afraid that some hacker will use the Geohot OtherOS timing bug to go and investigate how the security system of the PS3 worked and pirate games.
Just like how threats of homebrew on Vita caused Sony to remove downloadable games from the store.
With the fact that the discs now have to have DRM on them (Blu-Ray writers and discs are falling in price), you can bet that there's going to be heavy DRM on them, and a flurry of system updates as people keep breaking the DRM.
Hell, given it's x86, the chances it'll be broken like the original Xbox are huge and there's a good chance Sony might have to do recant, or force stuff like daily updates to the firmware to counter each new attack. Assuming they can - they gave up updating the PS3 when someone finally broke through all the keys, and I think even lvl0 keys have been revealed. (Which didn't require the geohot hack to OtherOS, mind you - so OtherOS was removed because it could've been used, but wasn't - everyone else found another way).
Microsoft is keeping still purely because the 360 system worked - there was a low level of piracy (always inevitable, and really couldn't be fixed because it was due to vulnerable drive firmware).
And Sony doesn't have to do anything - if they want to implement the new DRM, they just have to do one thing - make the disc available later and distribute the game online first - no used game sales, no piracy via discs for online distributed games. And you can couch it in terms of "due to declining physical media sales..." and "Preorder online and preload it to play the first minute!".
We don't have any specs yet, but it looks like the internal flash is at least connected to a standard PCIe slot; so in theory you should be able to replace it with third party storage. It looks like they are using the same thing as they are using in their MacBook Airs, and there are third party options available for that as well.
Actually, no. The Airs use a modified form of mSATA (which is SATA routed over a miniPCIe connector, but which is NOT miniPCIe - it's just a reused connector).
This one appears to be truly PCIe based, like what stuff from Wozniak's company Fusion IO produces. These offer superior performance (straight to the bus - no SATA interface) but are a huge PITA to boot from. Of course, given the versatility of EFI, I suspect that it simply has onboard drivers to allow booting, or a tiny SATA SSD to boot enough to finish booting off the SSD.
(Yes, those Fusion IO boards do not allow booting from them, at least not directly).
Or maybe Apple worked with the PCIe vendor to produce an EFI/BIOS extension ROM to allow booting direct from the module as well. (BIOS? Because face it - someone's gonna Boot Camp it).
Internal FLASH only - that's fine for a MacBook Air, but aren't the target users for this video editors?
Yes, and that's why it' has SIX FireWire 800 ports (on 3 separate controllers), PLUS Thunderbolt 2.
Most video editing pros use external RAID 0 arrays (yes, RAID 0 - they need speed more than redundancy), so an external Thunderbolt or FireWire port is all they really need. When you're dealing with multi-terabyte files, it makes no sense to use internal storage because there will never be enough drive bays. But if you have 16TB RAID 0 arrays, not such a big deal.
Basically, Apple figured that the pros aren't really using the options given them in the main Mac Pro case - they were plugging in external arrays to begin with. The only reason for the insane PCIe SSD was for temp files.
The video editors who don't use a Mac Pro? They tend to use a MacBook Pro.
Cylindrical - Great, now nothing fits next to it Exhaust from the top - Can't put anything on top and if you spill a drink on it, it goes straight into the machine.
I think that's the intent - the Pro will get hot - best to have a bit of space around it, and vent the heat straight up. Not too long ago the overclockers were putting in "blow holes" in their PC cases (basically a fan venting straight up), the Mac Pro is basically doing the same thing. Rather than venting the heat horizontally (as in the old Mac Pro - sucked in the front and exhausted out the back), this one exhausts upwards, where the heat wants to go naturally.
I'll know it is modest if the general public can get a dump of the meta data for every elected office holder as well as their staff members, and all judges. If they have nothing to hide then this shouldn't be a problem. If not then the NSA can fuck off.
Technically, meta data was always obtainable. After all, you need a warrant in order to tap a phone line, but you don't if you just want to hook up a DNR (dialed-number-recorder) to the line. The DNR basically just records down when you picked up the phone, what number you dialed, and how long until you hung up - basically all the information the phone company needs anyways. They can't capture the conversation itself (because the phone company doesn't need it for its tasks), but all the stuff around it, legally and without warrant.
Or like how police can request logs from servers - but only of data the server would've gotten anyways, not of content. So IP address, time and date, maybe even transfer statistics that the OS has. All that can be had without a warrant.
On the contrary, Apple didn't really show anything very new here. Maybe the new Mac, but iOS 7 in particular is just an incremental upgrade with no big headline features like they have always had in the past.
Well, given it's a DEVELOPER conference, it should be compared to Google I/O. Which as I recall, was also pretty much a yawner this year.
About the only interesting things was an all-day ultrabook with 9-12 hours of battery life. Which for Apple, tends to be fairly spot on - 8-14+ hours can be expected (yes, quite a few people seem to be able to exceed the battery life estimates, quite easily in fact.). The danged thing has more battery life than an iPad!
For iOS 7, the fact that they are cramming in full multitasking should be VERY interesting, because generally the argument against is developers suck - they cannot write battery efficient code (that timer coalescing on OS X? It's actually very important and something I've personally done on other embedded OSes. It's not an easy job, and finding a pesky thread that wakss up every 100ms took weeks). I'm not entirely sure how it'll work - after all, if you have a game running, in the background, how does the OS handle it? (Most OSes don't and it spins away consuming cycles).
The new, "flatter" look is kinda impressive. I first thought they would do a Windows with the ultra flat plain shaded thing, but no, it's actually aesthetically pleasing. At least Apple didn't copy the fugly Android clock with the bolded hour.
Other than some well publicised issues at launch time I've found that for me Apple Maps works at least as well as Google Maps. Maybe its down to where you are in the world.
I can't speak for the parent since I'm not an iPhone user.
But could it be that Apple doesn't have turn-by-turn walking directions yet, or real-time transit directions, or even somekind of street-view equivalent.
And most likely, Apple doesn't want to tread heavily on app developers.
Apple Maps was done in response to Apple and Google not being able to work out an agreement to have serious deficiencies in the Maps program fixed. Like say, turn-by-turn navigation (it's consistently the #1 problem, and what Android users say is better about Android than iOS).
Of course, Apple doesn't want to be in the maps business (there are worthy competitors there already and Apple can't really contribute much to it). Plus with potential threats of monopoly and all that, they really don't want to get into something that other more experienced companies have done already. Transit directions? Plenty of apps already do that - and have plenty of open-data agreements and back ends to solve the issue. Including Google. Ditto pedestrian paths - lots of stuff out there already.
Two weeks before Thanksgiving, you can find Durkees Fried Onion Rings on the shelf. Two days before, and all you can find is the store brand.
Is this because the brand name product is sold out, or because they understocked it, and are selling their brand at a higher profit to those who waited to the last moment to buy? After all, they wouldn't run out of that very popular ingredient on purpose, would they?
Store brands inevitably sell for LESS than the name-brand ones. Even if you take two identical products (many store brands are really just repackaged name brands that the store contracts to), the store brand will be cheaper.
One of the tricks to save money is to find equivalences - find out which store brands represent which name brands (notably, both the store and the manufacturer keep it top secret). This way you get the quality of the name brand, but the price of the store brand.
In fact, if the store wants, they'd jack up the price of the name brand onion rings to make more money off the name brand, knowing people often splurge for special occasions.
All photography and recording is disallowed. So, no shit glass is banned. I assume it has something to do with archaic SEC regulations. But, lets not let that stop writing stupid articles
Two problems:
1) So prohibiting cameras is the way to prevent use of Google Glass? Expect to see "No photography or recording equipment allowed on premises" signs pop up everywhere - in stores, private-but-publicly-accessible spaces (e.g., shopping malls), etc. I'm sure the end result is no one will give a crap, and this applies to shareholder meetings as well.
2) Shareholder meetings are supposed to be public. Because Google is a public company - they're not allowed to do things that the owners and public doesn't know. Now, Google may themselves record the meeting (as they should so prospective shareholders can do their due diligence), but that shouldn't me an independent recorder can't be brought in to help verify against shenanigans in the official transcript.
One thing this book did for me was explain the Canadian connection. I knew about phone phreaks and such, and I heard lots of stuff about how our beloved BC phone company (BC Tel then, Telus now) was at the center of it all. No one explained why or how.
Very fascinating, really, about how the local phone company ended up being the nexus of phreaking activity.
Get every carrier to whitelist IMEIs rather than blacklist.
Yeah, do you REALLY want to give this to the carriers?
After all, if they detect a phone you didn't buy from them, or that you're off contract, they could keep removing your IMEI from the list and denying you service. Sure you can call them and they'll probably reinstate it, then it'll mysteriously revert itself a few months later.
Switch, and that IMEI will be deactivated permanently. Get on a contract and it'll work normally again.
I wish Google had chosen GPL3 as the licence and required all programs in Google Play to conform to that licence. Then maybe there would be no Android malware to speak of, just as there is no significant GNU/Linux malware.
Yeah, but thta's because there'll be practically no Android apps at all. Sure you'll get ports of common GNU/Linux apps and utilities, but that's about it.
And nevermind the fact that GPLv2 and GPLv3 are completely incompatible. GPLv2+ and GPLv3 are fine for obvious reasons, though some of that GPLv2+ code may be mixed with GPLv2 code, making the whole work GPLv2...
And we'd still have the same problem because everyone will then install other proprietary app stores to do the same thing, and we'd still be in the same boat.
Steam guarantees that I'll have those games available to me no matter what happens to my computer
Unless you have the unmitigated gall to object to any change they might decide to shove into their TOS. If that's the case, well then fuck you, peasant. Eat it, or kiss your library goodbye.
Steam is certainly "DRM done right," as so many love to parrot: You do what they say, or they take your games away. That's what DRM is supposed to do, after all.
Or a more common case - the game is no longer able to be distributed. I have stuff in my steam library that cannot be downloaded. They don't show up anymore. I can install them from backups (a good idea to backup your library), but if you don't download and back up your library regularly, you can find yourself with the inability to play games you bought.
Yes, you own the license, but you just cannot reinstall it from Steam via download. You can restore a backup and authorize it against your account, though.
Anyhow, I did come across something interesting - people were dissing the Xbox One because of the used game fees and saying they're going to get a PC and play on that. Of course, used gaming on PCs is dead since Steam doesn't let you transfer purchases (without account trickery, that is). Which made things interesting - you don't want an xbox because of the used game fees, so you get a PC and buy games new?
These aren't the results of judgments, they're the rewards for settlements. So if you ever wondered why the end result is so awful it's because the actual money goes to the lawyers while the people for which the lawsuit was intended to provide justice get cheap plastic kazoos. This is supposed to be okay, though, because "class action lawsuits are intended to punish companies, not restore damages." The best part is that by accepting your cheap plastic kazoo you're also signing away any other legal recourse you may have had.
Class actions happen because companies figured it was better to steal $1M from 100,000 people than to steal $1M from 10 people.
Yes, by accepting the kazoo you give up the legal right. But if you were wronged for $20, will you prefer to take the kazoo or to file suit? Even in small claims court, with filing fees of around $30, plus a day of your time, doing all that to get back $20 In damages is an extremely poor ROI.
Companies figured that out and it was a great way to make money hand over fist. It's sort of the spam model of moneymaking - steal from one and it's tricky, steam from thousands and most don't care and will put up with the annoyance. And you only really have to deal with the odd few who decide to go all the way on principle. After all, if you ripped off $10 from those 100,000 people, you can probably expect to only need to repay maybe $20 tops (you don't even need to show up for court!). What a bargain! The plaintiff gets to waste a whole day and filing fees, and you do nothing but make money and pay the $10 in damages owed.
And yes, such abuses are common - you'll see in contracts wording like "from time to time, the cost of your service may go up and are not a reason for the termination of this contract". And there are cases where the service provider ups the cost of service by $5 a month. Cancel, and pay the contract cancellation fee of $300. Or put up with it because the contract expires in 2 years (additional cost - $120). The number of people willing to go to court over it is extremely low.
Any chance this has to do with the horrible caste system there? Id like to see whos grades were changed. I wouldnt be surprised if they failed people of lower social standing to not let them move up.
Technically, in a caste system, you're not allowed to move up except in very narrow circumstances. You're not actually allowed to move at all - up or down. You can be the most brilliant person on the planet, but if you were born to an untouchable in India, well, no one would listen to you.
More likely though, it would be done by people from higher castes because they have a certain image to maintain.
Remember, in Asia, this all derived from the old school British system where exams basically set you on your path through life - basically the final exams at the end of high school was The Final Exam(tm). Score well, and you'd go to university. Score not-so-well, you got to a second-rate college. Score less and you're a lowly tradesperson. Score even worse and you're an unskilled labourer.
So in general, it's an extremely high-stress period where teens would basically be locked in their rooms spending all the time studying because it really is it - no chance to take it over (well, I suppose there are certain humanitarian reasons they allow), and it basically determines your future.
Likewise, for anything with this much pressure on it, people succumb to the human condition - suicide is common, both before and after the exame. Cheating is as well - and many elaborate cheating machines have been conjured up over the years - this isn't your own hide-a-cheat-sheet scale - this is full on tiny 2-way radios and other mechanisms. And of course, hacking of grades to improve one's score.
Interestingly, I think in China one district is forcing all test-takers through a very sensitive metal detector and forcing them to strip - just one step below forcing test-takers to be stark naked during testing. The metal detector is extremely sensitive and basically won't allow anything metal in.
That's how serious the test is, and how serious everyone takes it.
For all its flaws, the modern American system is generally better and more "available" (and even the modern British education system isn't as strict). I'm not entirely sure that letting one test determine your future is entirely wise, and it's one reason why a lot of students travel abroad to study. Some do it because they scored well and got prestigious international study scholarships from their country, but others do it because they couldn't get in, and studying abroad is an option for those that do not pass.
Will it automate servicing the machines that build the other machines? Those grease fittings, bearings, valves, flow meters, circuit breakers, tool dies, taps, drills, and other things don't service themselves you know...
That's actually where most of the new jobs are going - the machines generally need daily maintenance and service and handling when things are just a bit off. But for the most part, all the dull boring jobs that took thousands of Chinese workers to do are replaced by robots.
Manufacturing is not generally a nice job - it's boring mind-numbing work that really you do automate because with few exceptions, most people will not want to do it. The few exceptions would be those whose job consisted of a bit more than "put part A in slot B" once a second for 8 hours - e.g., heavy machinery manufacture (cars, trucks, etc) where people get 2 minutes to put on a part but in general at least have other coworkers to take the dullness out of the job.
But robot maintenance and others are generally nice high-skilled trade jobs - especially ones that have to fix them when they break down and halt production. Of course, the robots are probably replacing 10-20 Chinese workers easily.
Don't get me wrong, I like the added features, but I hope nobody expects laptops that can be used for multiple days in a row without recharging (with sleep mode enabled between sessions of course) or next-gen smart phones that can go a week without recharging. They will figure out how to use that extra power somewhere, leaving us at around the same runtime as before.
While I can see a few niche cashes for extended use, laptop batteries have been getting longer and longer battery life over the past 10-15 years. Before that, 2 hours was considered a "typical" battery life (real usage: 1.5 hrs normally). These days, laptops that get 4+ hours aren't unusual at all, even 6+ real use hours.
Though, given the average person, a battery that lasts longer than 24 hours Is pointless - short of extended computing periods mobile with no breaks and such. After all, people need sleep, and sleep is generally a great time to put your devices on charge so they're ready to go when you wake up in the morning.
I've never understood the desire for week long battery life - for a smartphone, 2 days is generally reasonable (for the times you do accidentally forget to plug it in before bed). Even for a laptop more than 20-odd hours isn't generally as useful anymore.
Perhaps for a laptop the most useful thing would be to have a way to dock the adapter with the laptop - most are used near sources of power - it's just generally people don't want to haul piles of accessories at the same time. If the AC adapter came along, most needs for battery life vanish.
Same problem here. I rarely go by planes nowadays (My body isn't as tough as it was before). Maybe I'd go once a year or so to visit family. Everytime I'd pack and go to the airport, I forget the things I';m not supposed to carry on. I keep on surrendering my bottles of alcohol and nail cutters as a result.
I know it's not cool, but there's a useful resource called "the internet" that one can use to look up such information. I know, you probably phone your travel agency and book your tickets through them (though I'm sure if you ask nicely they'll include a little pamphlet with the information as well).
I know, you're probably in a rush and don't have time to check in via the internet and all that cool stuff they do these days, or to even check if your plane is on time before you leave for the airport.
They should just charge a $5 fee and mail it to you if you don't want it destroyed.
Some do actually. When they confiscate, they ask if you want to have it sent home or just tossed. Of course it may depend on the airport and how busy they are, but I believe it was an option.
Because you absolutely have to have a 4Ghz quad code, eight thread CPU with 2048 stream processors and 8 GB ram to emulate a 1Mhz 6502 with 16K of RAM....
Maybe not that powerful, but close.
Because the weaker the console, the more performance it takes to do it accurately. The best way to do it is a cycle-accurate emulation because a lot of code written in those days took advantage of oddball features and oddball timings to work properly. For a "dumb" emulation like MAME, most of the time it works, but some games don't work requiring various patches and such in order to settle down the game.
It's not just the CPU, but also the timing of the other chips, and often things happen within a clock cycle as well that gets taken advantage of.
It's why emulators like bsnes require specs close to your PC, but run games basically perfectly with no hacks or patches required to get them to work.
The need for cycle accurate simulations ended sometime in the PS2 era - before which things like the PSX often made such cycle timing tricks necessary. Especially since the modern processor is superscalar, has caches everywhere and is heavily pipelined, making cycle counting impossible (especially caches since it made memory access timing unpredictable).
Heck, that still doesn't rule out the possibility some game took advantage of the way the system hardware glitched, requiring not just cycle accuracy, but behavior accuracy as well - perhaps some instruction caused some data line to glitch which caused RAM to gitch and it achieved the desired effect.
The funny thing is, this is for college "kids"... in other words -- grown fucking adults.
When I saw the shitty Slashdot blurb, I assumed this was going to be for disadvantaged children or something. Instead, it's for those poor unfortunate ADULTS who are so disenfranchised and disadvantaged that they're attending (through one manner or another) tens of thousands of dollars for college tuition and related expenses, but need to beg and spam people for the $600 for a laptop.
Not to mention a perfectly usable PC for schoolwork (not necessarily gaming or such) can be had quite cheaply - even an old minimum wage summer job could get a laptop that works well enough. Brand new here, just your average POS $500 laptop, less on sale. Yeah, crappy screens, heavy, blah blah blah, but for schoolwork, it suffices.
Hell, even a used laptop can be had cheaply that'll work for probably under $200. Or heck, organizing a used computer recycling event - going to the big companies who often replace stocks of old PCs that are still functional but hit their 3 year refresh cycle.
(Yes, I do participate in Kickstarters, but that's because I believe in the goal (crowdfunding is a great way for niche products to get exposure and make it to production). Begging friends and family to buy you a computer for college? I'm less sold on that. Especially since well, one should've been old enough to get a summer job and make a few bucks, even if it's a crappy minimum wage retail job)
Let's think about this for a second, lets say you were falsely arrested for rape, it happens EVERY day thanks to a certain breed of woman, would you really want that footage to immediately be uploaded for the public's viewing?
The tape would probably consist of me laughing about the accusation, then politely asking the officer what the result from the rape kit were.
Oh, you say no rape kit was administered? So, then, what am I being arrested for?
Yea, don't see where that would be an issue for me (since I'm not a rapist and all).
You realize that sexual assault is one crime that you can be accused of and never be acquitted?
It doesn't matter if the justice system throws out the charges. Once you're accused, you're guilty. Maybe not in a formal court of law, but in the court of public opinion.
And your laughter will probably be taken as some sort of smug response as in "oh look, he really did it! He's laughing it off!". (In fact, there's NO response you can do that won't be found as "you're guilty").
False accusations of sexual assault have killed careers and destroyed families and many have had to move in order to at least begin life afresh (though, thanks to the Internet...).
Do these measures address arguably the most fundamental problem: too many things are patentable in the US and patents are awarded too easily in the first place?
No, because that would be idiotic and stupid. Having one person dictate what is and isn't patentable opens a huge can of worms that can hinder innovation because government cannot adapt to changes and innovations in other fields.
For example, let's say the current patentable stuff includes stuff for a carriage drawn by a horse, given the technology of the day. Now you have a horseless carriage - it's unpatentable. No one foresaw that horseless carriages would become real, but now the government has to get together to declare those are patentable.
Anyhow, IT is not the only sector that has experienced patent wars. Automobiles used to have them all the time - over many things, including the ICE. Go into any field and you'll see that IT is no longer special. Perhaps the latest sector, but calls to reform the patent system have been coming in since the 19th century.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing with a state sponsored broadcaster is that they can fund programs that otherwise will never air.
We all like to complain about the crap on TV, but guess what? That crap makes money, and TV stations and networks are in it to make money. Anything they can use to sell eyeballs they will do it. If it means doing a Fox News, so be it.
But that neglects the positive aspects of TV - it can be a source of useful information. A lot of state-sponsored media is considered higher quality - BBC, CBC, PBS, NPR because they're not having to chase after advertising dollars. They're not beholden to the advertisers. They want to run some program against corporate interests? They can. (My current favorite is CBC Marketplace which exposes all sorts of scams and mis-dealings companies pull - from the big names everyone shops at to no name Ponzi schemes. No commercial broadcaster would touch that content because some advertiser would get offended and pull their money).
Hell, if you're wondering why channels like History, Discovery, TLC and such have gone away from "educational" or "edutainment" programming to reality style shows - again, it's money. Educational documentaries just don't make money and pull in ad money.
Heck, even Doctor Who might not have lasted as long if it was faced with having to compete with American Idol or Big Brother or other show. A cult following only gets you so far (see Star Trek), and moment it stops bringing in adequate bacon, it'll be axed. (I say adequate, because if some show the network carries brings in a lot more money, stable standbys will be expected to do better).
The circle of computing comes around again, actually.
We had IDE drives that could be hung straight off the ISA bus ("integrated drive electronics" - the drive controller and drive were one and the same and you could access them using a few IN and OUT instructions - the software picked master/slave by writing the write value to the M/S bit in the drive register.
As drives and computers got faster, we moved from strict ISA control to putting them on controllers and changing the PHYs (PATA to SATA, UDMA, etc).
Now we're back to hanging the drive "controllerless" (the controller exists on the drive itself) back on the main bus again. Then we'll abstract out the bus again to get even more speed and hang SSD PCIe controllers off them...
There are however a LOT of older planes around that require leaded - plenty of them dating to when liability lawsuits resulted in halted production sometime in 1986, and plenty more during the boom period of 1997 (when production resumed thanks to Clinton's limited product liability act) and 2008. Newer ones generally are certified for low octane, but there's plenty of planes flying about that aren't.
In fact, the industry has seen this coming and actually has done formal research into research and testing leaded avgas alternatives - an association formed between associations representing pilots, manufacturers, the FAA and others.
The basic goal is to come up with an equivalent to 100LL that can be used transparently, because certifying all the old aircraft for new fuels is finicky, at best, and an boondoggle of costs at worst. Having an unleaded 100LL alternative that is equivalent means all those old engines don't require a lick of work being done to them.
As for unleaded "mogas" (car gas), it turns out that a lot of them are now out of reach because biogas is incompatible - I think they can handle 5% ethanol, but newer ones have higher percentages and are actually not certified for flight use.
Yeah, but many large institutions aren't going to throw out in-warranty machines just because they need to upgrade.
If XP support ended 5 years ago, maybe we have a case. But today, most XP machines are new machines capable of running Windows 7 acceptably. And that's key - the machines are usable, just the OS is old. It just means that the companies need to upgrade the OS.
Now, if conveniently they refreshed their PCs every 3 years (usually as long as the warranty is on the machines), they may chance it for a year until support runs out and buy new PCs on rotation. But that won't impact sales because the machines were due to be replaced anyways.
But if they just upgrade to Windows 7, with the machines still in use, then that results in no new PC sales either.
The premise that the end of XP support means a surge in PC purchases is only true if the machines running XP now are too old to run Windows 7 and require upgrades (i.e., new PCs). Given most XP machines are fully capable of running 7, that's not likely to happen. XP came out 12 years ago. There are few people using 12 year old machines, and if they are, they probably will continue to run XP beyond its support period.
Sony ONLY removed the OtherOS option because they were afraid. Afraid that some hacker will use the Geohot OtherOS timing bug to go and investigate how the security system of the PS3 worked and pirate games.
Just like how threats of homebrew on Vita caused Sony to remove downloadable games from the store.
With the fact that the discs now have to have DRM on them (Blu-Ray writers and discs are falling in price), you can bet that there's going to be heavy DRM on them, and a flurry of system updates as people keep breaking the DRM.
Hell, given it's x86, the chances it'll be broken like the original Xbox are huge and there's a good chance Sony might have to do recant, or force stuff like daily updates to the firmware to counter each new attack. Assuming they can - they gave up updating the PS3 when someone finally broke through all the keys, and I think even lvl0 keys have been revealed. (Which didn't require the geohot hack to OtherOS, mind you - so OtherOS was removed because it could've been used, but wasn't - everyone else found another way).
Microsoft is keeping still purely because the 360 system worked - there was a low level of piracy (always inevitable, and really couldn't be fixed because it was due to vulnerable drive firmware).
And Sony doesn't have to do anything - if they want to implement the new DRM, they just have to do one thing - make the disc available later and distribute the game online first - no used game sales, no piracy via discs for online distributed games. And you can couch it in terms of "due to declining physical media sales..." and "Preorder online and preload it to play the first minute!".
Actually, no. The Airs use a modified form of mSATA (which is SATA routed over a miniPCIe connector, but which is NOT miniPCIe - it's just a reused connector).
This one appears to be truly PCIe based, like what stuff from Wozniak's company Fusion IO produces. These offer superior performance (straight to the bus - no SATA interface) but are a huge PITA to boot from. Of course, given the versatility of EFI, I suspect that it simply has onboard drivers to allow booting, or a tiny SATA SSD to boot enough to finish booting off the SSD.
(Yes, those Fusion IO boards do not allow booting from them, at least not directly).
Or maybe Apple worked with the PCIe vendor to produce an EFI/BIOS extension ROM to allow booting direct from the module as well. (BIOS? Because face it - someone's gonna Boot Camp it).
Yes, and that's why it' has SIX FireWire 800 ports (on 3 separate controllers), PLUS Thunderbolt 2.
Most video editing pros use external RAID 0 arrays (yes, RAID 0 - they need speed more than redundancy), so an external Thunderbolt or FireWire port is all they really need. When you're dealing with multi-terabyte files, it makes no sense to use internal storage because there will never be enough drive bays. But if you have 16TB RAID 0 arrays, not such a big deal.
Basically, Apple figured that the pros aren't really using the options given them in the main Mac Pro case - they were plugging in external arrays to begin with. The only reason for the insane PCIe SSD was for temp files.
The video editors who don't use a Mac Pro? They tend to use a MacBook Pro.
I think that's the intent - the Pro will get hot - best to have a bit of space around it, and vent the heat straight up. Not too long ago the overclockers were putting in "blow holes" in their PC cases (basically a fan venting straight up), the Mac Pro is basically doing the same thing. Rather than venting the heat horizontally (as in the old Mac Pro - sucked in the front and exhausted out the back), this one exhausts upwards, where the heat wants to go naturally.
Technically, meta data was always obtainable. After all, you need a warrant in order to tap a phone line, but you don't if you just want to hook up a DNR (dialed-number-recorder) to the line. The DNR basically just records down when you picked up the phone, what number you dialed, and how long until you hung up - basically all the information the phone company needs anyways. They can't capture the conversation itself (because the phone company doesn't need it for its tasks), but all the stuff around it, legally and without warrant.
Or like how police can request logs from servers - but only of data the server would've gotten anyways, not of content. So IP address, time and date, maybe even transfer statistics that the OS has. All that can be had without a warrant.
And most likely, Apple doesn't want to tread heavily on app developers.
Apple Maps was done in response to Apple and Google not being able to work out an agreement to have serious deficiencies in the Maps program fixed. Like say, turn-by-turn navigation (it's consistently the #1 problem, and what Android users say is better about Android than iOS).
Of course, Apple doesn't want to be in the maps business (there are worthy competitors there already and Apple can't really contribute much to it). Plus with potential threats of monopoly and all that, they really don't want to get into something that other more experienced companies have done already. Transit directions? Plenty of apps already do that - and have plenty of open-data agreements and back ends to solve the issue. Including Google. Ditto pedestrian paths - lots of stuff out there already.
Store brands inevitably sell for LESS than the name-brand ones. Even if you take two identical products (many store brands are really just repackaged name brands that the store contracts to), the store brand will be cheaper.
One of the tricks to save money is to find equivalences - find out which store brands represent which name brands (notably, both the store and the manufacturer keep it top secret). This way you get the quality of the name brand, but the price of the store brand.
In fact, if the store wants, they'd jack up the price of the name brand onion rings to make more money off the name brand, knowing people often splurge for special occasions.
Two problems:
1) So prohibiting cameras is the way to prevent use of Google Glass? Expect to see "No photography or recording equipment allowed on premises" signs pop up everywhere - in stores, private-but-publicly-accessible spaces (e.g., shopping malls), etc. I'm sure the end result is no one will give a crap, and this applies to shareholder meetings as well.
2) Shareholder meetings are supposed to be public. Because Google is a public company - they're not allowed to do things that the owners and public doesn't know. Now, Google may themselves record the meeting (as they should so prospective shareholders can do their due diligence), but that shouldn't me an independent recorder can't be brought in to help verify against shenanigans in the official transcript.
One thing this book did for me was explain the Canadian connection. I knew about phone phreaks and such, and I heard lots of stuff about how our beloved BC phone company (BC Tel then, Telus now) was at the center of it all. No one explained why or how.
Very fascinating, really, about how the local phone company ended up being the nexus of phreaking activity.
Yeah, do you REALLY want to give this to the carriers?
After all, if they detect a phone you didn't buy from them, or that you're off contract, they could keep removing your IMEI from the list and denying you service. Sure you can call them and they'll probably reinstate it, then it'll mysteriously revert itself a few months later.
Switch, and that IMEI will be deactivated permanently. Get on a contract and it'll work normally again.
Yeah, but thta's because there'll be practically no Android apps at all. Sure you'll get ports of common GNU/Linux apps and utilities, but that's about it.
And nevermind the fact that GPLv2 and GPLv3 are completely incompatible. GPLv2+ and GPLv3 are fine for obvious reasons, though some of that GPLv2+ code may be mixed with GPLv2 code, making the whole work GPLv2...
And we'd still have the same problem because everyone will then install other proprietary app stores to do the same thing, and we'd still be in the same boat.
Or a more common case - the game is no longer able to be distributed. I have stuff in my steam library that cannot be downloaded. They don't show up anymore. I can install them from backups (a good idea to backup your library), but if you don't download and back up your library regularly, you can find yourself with the inability to play games you bought.
Yes, you own the license, but you just cannot reinstall it from Steam via download. You can restore a backup and authorize it against your account, though.
Anyhow, I did come across something interesting - people were dissing the Xbox One because of the used game fees and saying they're going to get a PC and play on that. Of course, used gaming on PCs is dead since Steam doesn't let you transfer purchases (without account trickery, that is). Which made things interesting - you don't want an xbox because of the used game fees, so you get a PC and buy games new?
Class actions happen because companies figured it was better to steal $1M from 100,000 people than to steal $1M from 10 people.
Yes, by accepting the kazoo you give up the legal right. But if you were wronged for $20, will you prefer to take the kazoo or to file suit? Even in small claims court, with filing fees of around $30, plus a day of your time, doing all that to get back $20 In damages is an extremely poor ROI.
Companies figured that out and it was a great way to make money hand over fist. It's sort of the spam model of moneymaking - steal from one and it's tricky, steam from thousands and most don't care and will put up with the annoyance. And you only really have to deal with the odd few who decide to go all the way on principle. After all, if you ripped off $10 from those 100,000 people, you can probably expect to only need to repay maybe $20 tops (you don't even need to show up for court!). What a bargain! The plaintiff gets to waste a whole day and filing fees, and you do nothing but make money and pay the $10 in damages owed.
And yes, such abuses are common - you'll see in contracts wording like "from time to time, the cost of your service may go up and are not a reason for the termination of this contract". And there are cases where the service provider ups the cost of service by $5 a month. Cancel, and pay the contract cancellation fee of $300. Or put up with it because the contract expires in 2 years (additional cost - $120). The number of people willing to go to court over it is extremely low.
Technically, in a caste system, you're not allowed to move up except in very narrow circumstances. You're not actually allowed to move at all - up or down. You can be the most brilliant person on the planet, but if you were born to an untouchable in India, well, no one would listen to you.
More likely though, it would be done by people from higher castes because they have a certain image to maintain.
Remember, in Asia, this all derived from the old school British system where exams basically set you on your path through life - basically the final exams at the end of high school was The Final Exam(tm). Score well, and you'd go to university. Score not-so-well, you got to a second-rate college. Score less and you're a lowly tradesperson. Score even worse and you're an unskilled labourer.
So in general, it's an extremely high-stress period where teens would basically be locked in their rooms spending all the time studying because it really is it - no chance to take it over (well, I suppose there are certain humanitarian reasons they allow), and it basically determines your future.
Likewise, for anything with this much pressure on it, people succumb to the human condition - suicide is common, both before and after the exame. Cheating is as well - and many elaborate cheating machines have been conjured up over the years - this isn't your own hide-a-cheat-sheet scale - this is full on tiny 2-way radios and other mechanisms. And of course, hacking of grades to improve one's score.
Interestingly, I think in China one district is forcing all test-takers through a very sensitive metal detector and forcing them to strip - just one step below forcing test-takers to be stark naked during testing. The metal detector is extremely sensitive and basically won't allow anything metal in.
That's how serious the test is, and how serious everyone takes it.
For all its flaws, the modern American system is generally better and more "available" (and even the modern British education system isn't as strict). I'm not entirely sure that letting one test determine your future is entirely wise, and it's one reason why a lot of students travel abroad to study. Some do it because they scored well and got prestigious international study scholarships from their country, but others do it because they couldn't get in, and studying abroad is an option for those that do not pass.
That's actually where most of the new jobs are going - the machines generally need daily maintenance and service and handling when things are just a bit off. But for the most part, all the dull boring jobs that took thousands of Chinese workers to do are replaced by robots.
Manufacturing is not generally a nice job - it's boring mind-numbing work that really you do automate because with few exceptions, most people will not want to do it. The few exceptions would be those whose job consisted of a bit more than "put part A in slot B" once a second for 8 hours - e.g., heavy machinery manufacture (cars, trucks, etc) where people get 2 minutes to put on a part but in general at least have other coworkers to take the dullness out of the job.
But robot maintenance and others are generally nice high-skilled trade jobs - especially ones that have to fix them when they break down and halt production. Of course, the robots are probably replacing 10-20 Chinese workers easily.
While I can see a few niche cashes for extended use, laptop batteries have been getting longer and longer battery life over the past 10-15 years. Before that, 2 hours was considered a "typical" battery life (real usage: 1.5 hrs normally). These days, laptops that get 4+ hours aren't unusual at all, even 6+ real use hours.
Though, given the average person, a battery that lasts longer than 24 hours Is pointless - short of extended computing periods mobile with no breaks and such. After all, people need sleep, and sleep is generally a great time to put your devices on charge so they're ready to go when you wake up in the morning.
I've never understood the desire for week long battery life - for a smartphone, 2 days is generally reasonable (for the times you do accidentally forget to plug it in before bed). Even for a laptop more than 20-odd hours isn't generally as useful anymore.
Perhaps for a laptop the most useful thing would be to have a way to dock the adapter with the laptop - most are used near sources of power - it's just generally people don't want to haul piles of accessories at the same time. If the AC adapter came along, most needs for battery life vanish.
I know it's not cool, but there's a useful resource called "the internet" that one can use to look up such information. I know, you probably phone your travel agency and book your tickets through them (though I'm sure if you ask nicely they'll include a little pamphlet with the information as well).
I know, you're probably in a rush and don't have time to check in via the internet and all that cool stuff they do these days, or to even check if your plane is on time before you leave for the airport.
Some do actually. When they confiscate, they ask if you want to have it sent home or just tossed. Of course it may depend on the airport and how busy they are, but I believe it was an option.
Maybe not that powerful, but close.
Because the weaker the console, the more performance it takes to do it accurately. The best way to do it is a cycle-accurate emulation because a lot of code written in those days took advantage of oddball features and oddball timings to work properly. For a "dumb" emulation like MAME, most of the time it works, but some games don't work requiring various patches and such in order to settle down the game.
It's not just the CPU, but also the timing of the other chips, and often things happen within a clock cycle as well that gets taken advantage of.
It's why emulators like bsnes require specs close to your PC, but run games basically perfectly with no hacks or patches required to get them to work.
The need for cycle accurate simulations ended sometime in the PS2 era - before which things like the PSX often made such cycle timing tricks necessary. Especially since the modern processor is superscalar, has caches everywhere and is heavily pipelined, making cycle counting impossible (especially caches since it made memory access timing unpredictable).
Heck, that still doesn't rule out the possibility some game took advantage of the way the system hardware glitched, requiring not just cycle accuracy, but behavior accuracy as well - perhaps some instruction caused some data line to glitch which caused RAM to gitch and it achieved the desired effect.
Not to mention a perfectly usable PC for schoolwork (not necessarily gaming or such) can be had quite cheaply - even an old minimum wage summer job could get a laptop that works well enough. Brand new here, just your average POS $500 laptop, less on sale. Yeah, crappy screens, heavy, blah blah blah, but for schoolwork, it suffices.
Hell, even a used laptop can be had cheaply that'll work for probably under $200. Or heck, organizing a used computer recycling event - going to the big companies who often replace stocks of old PCs that are still functional but hit their 3 year refresh cycle.
(Yes, I do participate in Kickstarters, but that's because I believe in the goal (crowdfunding is a great way for niche products to get exposure and make it to production). Begging friends and family to buy you a computer for college? I'm less sold on that. Especially since well, one should've been old enough to get a summer job and make a few bucks, even if it's a crappy minimum wage retail job)
You realize that sexual assault is one crime that you can be accused of and never be acquitted?
It doesn't matter if the justice system throws out the charges. Once you're accused, you're guilty. Maybe not in a formal court of law, but in the court of public opinion.
And your laughter will probably be taken as some sort of smug response as in "oh look, he really did it! He's laughing it off!". (In fact, there's NO response you can do that won't be found as "you're guilty").
False accusations of sexual assault have killed careers and destroyed families and many have had to move in order to at least begin life afresh (though, thanks to the Internet...).
No, because that would be idiotic and stupid. Having one person dictate what is and isn't patentable opens a huge can of worms that can hinder innovation because government cannot adapt to changes and innovations in other fields.
For example, let's say the current patentable stuff includes stuff for a carriage drawn by a horse, given the technology of the day. Now you have a horseless carriage - it's unpatentable. No one foresaw that horseless carriages would become real, but now the government has to get together to declare those are patentable.
Anyhow, IT is not the only sector that has experienced patent wars. Automobiles used to have them all the time - over many things, including the ICE. Go into any field and you'll see that IT is no longer special. Perhaps the latest sector, but calls to reform the patent system have been coming in since the 19th century.