I'm reminded of when Microsoft cut off the original XBox from XBox Live.
Except that was because the Xbox was holding back Xbox Live development - all for the thousand or so people (900 of which were playing Halo 2, the rest a few other games). At the time, that meant the other hundreds of thousands on Xbox Live suffer because they're stuck with the original Xbox's limitations.
Plus, it came after many years after the Xbox360 came out - until then, Microsoft worked around the limits of the original Xbox. Heck, most of the people using the original Xbox Live were playing original Xbox games on the Xbox360 (in compatibility mode). Xbox Live for original Xbox was shut down in 2010, 5 years after the Xbox360 came out (in 2005).
For the Wii, it's just data that's being supplied. There shouldn't be any compatibility issues - the Wii U probably even has a different URL to get at the data, so that any enhanced features don't interfere and require re-testing with the Wii. Unlike Xbox Live where Microsoft still has to test interoperability.
With all those 400+dpi displays out there - are they actually... useful? Short of holding the phone to your nose or otherwise uncomfortably close (to make it hard to actually... use it) does one notice the difference between the 320-odd "retina" DPI vs. the 440 DPI these new 1080p screens offer?
Or is it, as it seems, more mindless measurebating because it's a number that can be manipulated "more is better!". Like CPU GHz. Or megapixels.
Want "Hollywood" money? How about programmers banding together and insisting on the protections that stop Hollywood management from moving every aspect of production to the cheapest outsourced labor: Unions. Writers, actors, makeup, costume, camera --- they've all got unions, so their jobs aren't competing with $9/hour H1-B labor.
Then again, Hollywood is under attack because of piracy, at which point people keep pointing out there's a growing amount of "Indie" movies coming out that are becoming readily available and high quality, so why bother with crap like that and laws and lawsuits.
Sort of like how these programmers will be under attack by "indie" programmers (i.e., open-source)....
One word: advertising. Right in front of your eyes is the most prime advertising space I can imaine.
Bzzt. Wrong target.
Advertising yes, but not to the user. The user is merely a tool to capture the goings on and identities of everyone else. Couple with GPS and other sensors and facial recognition, Google would now have a more complete picture of you.
So if a Glass user catches you walking out of a bar, you can find new Google ads for bars, ladies and other things around that area when you surf the web.
So yes, advertising, but it's putting more effective advertising in front of more people. Glass users will be few, but they'll be able to collect more information about more people than ever before.
Heck, if a Glass user catches you walking out of a porn store, Google can then prompt you if you want to turn off safe search the next time you visit it.
I can't see how Motorola's using the lawsuit as a business strategy. They didn't file it, they don't want to be in court, and they have no choice about showing up or about what claims they have to defend against. I'm getting more and more annoyed at judges who get mad at defendants for having the temerity to stand up and defend themselves against the claims the plaintiff has made. If their defenses are meritless, then just rule so and be done with it. If they aren't meritless, then the blame for any complexity lies with the party making the claims, not the defense.
The summary is wrong.
It's Motorola Mobility v. Apple, not Apple v. Motorola Mobility.
Motorola filed a lawsuit against Apple over patent violations in 2010, and expanded it in 2011 (with Google's permission as the Motorola-Google acquisition happened in the meantime) over more patents. Apple then charged Motorola (then) with patent violations as well.
Motorola Mobility LLC v. Apple Inc., 12cv20271, U.S. District Court for the District of Florida (Miami)
This behavior not going away until it becomes to expensive, in terms of bad PR as well as fines, for dishonest practices. You either honor your customers' request/expectation of privacy or you don't. If you don't it should cost you. Currently it simply doesn't, so the so-called free market being what it is, we see rampant abuse like this. Mind you, the clueless legions who so blithely bend over to have their privacy raped by Facebook et al deserve a fair share of the blame here, but it is not realistic to expect most of them to fully understand just how bad an idea it is to let some of these go on. For that reason, regulation is in order, and I mean real regulation, with teeth and a budget to enforce it. I will not hold my breath.
Hint: You're not their customer. You're their product.
RapLeaf, Facebook, Google's customers are not who we normally consider the users. They're advertisers,marketers, etc, the ones who pay these companies money in exchange for information collected.
Contrast this with say, buying an iPhone, in which case you're Apple's customer and Apple strives to satisfy the people who pay for it. For Microsoft, things are more blurry because you're their customer sometimes (e.g., buy Windows, Office, Xbox, etc), and sometimes you're the product (e.g., Bing, Hotmail/Outlook.com, etc).
by Joce640k (829181) Alter Relationship on Thursday April 11, @07:42AM (#43422251) Homepage
Every time a company is not 100% vertically integrated you get these kind of fearmongering articles. NAND flash is a commodity, they can find it somewhere else.
But not necessarily at a price that makes people happy.
People would be a lot more unhappy than Apple though. Think of who uses flash memory. And then think of what happens if Apple were to pay a premium to lock in supply.
Basically if Samsung puts Apple on allocation, Apple will go to Toshiba, Micron, Intel, etc., for their memory and probably pay a premium to lock it in. Which means everyone ELSE who buys flash has to pay more as well, AND be put on allocation as supplies will go to Apple first.
Which means all your non-Samsung SSDs and non-Samsung, non-Apple phones will be a LOT more expensive. Perhaps driving them off the market.
Flash is a commodity. It's affected by everything else as well, and companies dependent on the commodity will all suffer equally. Those who can lock in supplies will at the expense of everyone else. Same thing happens to ever other commodity out there - oil, gas, oranges, bacon, etc.
Of course the bigger problem for MSFT is the cat is now out the bag which means they won't get the early adopters that actually read the Internet, especially since Sony made it VERY clear after the whole thing broke that the PS4 will NOT be online only. But considering this is the same company that has given us such "hits" as Zune, Kin, Zune Market (boy THAT was fucking retarded, they had with playsforsure a growing rental business that was looking like it could compete with the Apple model and just shot it in the head for a lame appstore ripoff), shoving the X360 out with a billion dollar flaw, paying insane amounts for an ad company that went nowhere and for Yahoo Search which likewise did squat, and finally the twin clusterfucks of Win 8 and WinRT? Honestly doing stupid market killing shit isn't even a surprise anymore, hell its practically their SOP.
Many people forget parts of the Xbox360 are "online only" right now.
Think about it - you buy a digital download game from Microsoft. Your license includes anyone on the purchasing console, or the Xbox Live account of the purchaser (so you can play your game on the original purchasing console offline, or play the game on any other console while logged into Xbox Live (free or paid).
The thing is, if you're disconnected from Live, your game ends. If you're not using the on-purchasing-console license, then a momentary blip in Xbox Live connectivity will end the game.
So the fact that it's changed to 3 minutes could be a good thing if it means your game doesn't end the instant you drop offline because the modem or router rebooted.
The real point is, no one knows what he means because a tweet is too damn short to go into details. Good soundbite, yes, but awful when the devil's in the details.
Hell, it could be an option for publishers as well - if they wish, they can have always on connectivity (i.e., must be logged into Xbox Live (either free or paid)) for their title. (Microsoft Studios is Microsoft's first-party publisher, so their head would think the same way as EA, Ubisoft, Activision, etc, which can put it in conflict with Xbox (the console/service/backend/etc) heads).
Of course, it's like saying there's an Apple smartwatch on the way - it's all rumors until it's announced, and Microsoft hasn't said anything yet.
Hell, the PS4 was rumored to require an always-on connection as well. And that it won't play used games.
Heck, there are games for iOS and Android that require always-on connections as well - doesn't mean the SGS5 or iPhone 6 will require it. Steam was always-on as well unless you used offline mode.
All we know for sure is the ex-head of Microsoft Studios doesn't see always-on as a problem. Whether it translates to the Xbox head is a completely different question.
Yup, and I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to transmit on the tower frequency from the nearest approach/center ATC. Those are usually in office buildings miles from airports.
There's a reason why aviation uses AM modulation, and not FM or a digital mode. When an AM transmission is "stepped on" (that is, two people transmitting), the receiver squeals, which indicates to anyone listening that there were two people transmitting simultaneously (or what people would call a "collision").
Ah, but the even fancier trick to AM? The highest power can still be intelligible over the squeal! A flying transceiver only outputs around 20-25W. ATC normally transmits with 100-250W, and can usually overpower the other person transmitting so despite the squeal, the pilot can still make out what the tower is saying.
FM won't work - it suffers from the "capture effect" where if two FM stations transmit on the same frequency, the stronger one at the receiving antenna is demodulated, with no indication that there were two transmitting simultaneously.
Digital modes, depends on the transmission, but usually results in bit errors that make it unintelligible and unrecoverable.
TCAS doesn't work for ALL traffic. It does revert to TAS (traffic alerting system) mode when it encounters an aircraft that is NOT TCAS-equipped (not all planes are TCAS-equipped). In which case it's designed to call out traffic and most likely collision vector. And even then there are transponder-less aircraft that fly around too, where even TAS doesn't work (and most airplanes don't have traffic radar). ATC would also just see an unidentified dot that they may call out.
To have TCAS working, TCAS negotiates with the other TCAS unit (which is why it doesn't work in all circumstances - it requires TCAS-to-TCAS communication) to figure out a conflict resolution - usually one plane climbs while the other descends. Modern ones are a bit more sophisticated too ever since the accident where they may switch their alerting to the other direction if it sees the other plane is NOT cooperating (both TCAS will have to switch their displays, of course, so they have to stay in communication).
With traffic advisory, it's up to the pilot to figure out a resolution - which may not be a climb or descent, but a turn.
Electronics have gotten so good that these days you can get portable collision advisory systems as well, called PCAS. They won't alert to the resolution, just to most likely conflicting traffic.
And yes, ground radar for non-transponder traffic is erratic since it can pick up a flock of birds, or in one case, a ferry.
At best, a TIS-B would mean the pilot would start looking out for traffic, but ATC will usually re-confirm as well. And there are fallbacks because equipment fails. Often. So your spoofing may just result in the pilot shutting it down assuming faulty equipment.
That's because mechanical failures in aircraft, even GA ones, are extremely uncommon these days. It's like a modern car breaking down causing an accident - it almost never happens (even the Toyota ones were found to be purely human error). It's usually human error purely because we got mechanical failure under control.
It's so rare that it's typically a chain of events that lead to an incident - usually precipitated by some human failing and compounded by more human failings. Perhaps the closest relation to mechanical failure would be poor human interface design (which for any complex piece of machinery, is very common) in which case pilots get caught with misleading signals, false alarms, flipping wrong switches in the wrong place, indicators that don't... well, indicate (or noticeably - partial autopilot disconnects without warning, for example). And it's sometimes not the fault of the equipment manufacturer - it can be poor HID on integration - where an indicator can be hidden by a body part (a knee is common).
And yes, I've had it happen to me - I accidentally engaged the autopilot on a Cessna 172 during a touch-and-go. The controls felt "weird" (did I break the airplane?), but I was still in positive control (you can overpower the autopilot as a backup), and my instructor was on board to diagnose the issue so I kept in positive control while he figured the problem. And yes, there's now an airwothiness directive because others weren't so lucky - basically to have the autopilot alarm go off when it's engaged AND disengaged (the standard was an alarm when it disengages to warn the pilot it's not in control).
Tnw commercial for PBS fundraising says "If PBS didn't do it, who would?" Discovery Channel History Channel TLC Science Channel Animal Planet etc. It was their own advertising which got me thinking that maybe it isn't necessary for them yo forcibly take money from everyone's paychecks. ( PBS is partially taxpayer funded.)
Have you watched those channels? Have you seen what they air? Trust me, PBS is way more cerebral and informative than this week's trucker tow, crab fishing, gold mining, oil drilling,... sure they're interesting shows, but they're also having to cater to the lowest common denominator to get ad rates up. Plus all the alien, UFO and paranormal hunters.
Also, if you notice, they've started pushing new episodes of shows across channels on the network - so if you want new episodes of your favorite shows, you'll have to buy 4 or 5 channels when they used to be on one (and the rest of it is old episodes from the other channels). All in preparation for a-la-carte channel offerings. Knowing that the typical crowd will want to watch that and buy all the channels on the network. Mythbusters on one, crab fishing on another, aliens on a third,...
Heck, one thing I like about publicly funded channels - they can create programming that's more controversial and programming that will anger advertisers.
How many businesses really depend on shows that usually are only there about twice a year or whatever?
Sure its a great bonus, but if your business depends on it, you may have been investing wrongly. Especially since you claim local businesses, not ones that would follow the airshow wherever they go.
Generally, the whole goal of an annual airshow (snd smaller events) isn't advertising, it's community relations. Lots of people in the local community generally aren't aware that there's a small airport nearby generating lots of jobs (high paying ones at that) and funnelling people through the community as well.
And of course, bringing up issues in the community that people may not be aware of - it's easy to generate a petition to shut down the airport to local city council just because you decided you wanted to live in a house beside the airport. It's less so when the airport makes it known as to what they do actually generates taxes, brings money into the community and provides good paying high-quality jobs. Even if the only thing planes do is stop over for fuel. Also helps bring awareness to effects such as "pilots are rich - let's tax them to hell" that results in lower utilization (if you're going to stop for gas - would you stop at an airport where they're going to ding you like an airliner, or go a few miles and land where they'll greet you warmly for stopping by and spending money? And yes, many city councils have seen it happen, states as well when people simply bypass it and go to a neighbouring one).
There's SOME advertising going on - after all, perhaps if you're interested in learning to fly, a local airport's airshow is a perfect opportunity to get out and explore.
Blue Angels and Thunderbirds are also generalized military recruiting - the shows they do outside of the US are generally token shows unless they can attract significant American population presence. Remember, their #1 goal is recruiting for all branches of the US armed forces. Glitzy aerobatics generally fulfill that need and bring new people into the fold.
My theory as to what is happening is that most Universities are becoming less generalized in their education and are instead becoming more narrowly focused. So if you judge whether a newly graduated engineer is "better" or "worse" based on general knowledge over a wide section of the discipline they might seem worse. If on the other hand you judge them based on their knowledge of whatever their specific area of study is they may seem better.
I do think there is some truth to the idea that Universities are just easier now. I know that I have compared notes with various relatives about what we studied in college. My sister's husband, just to pick an example, was a liberal arts major in the early 70's. Graduated 71 or 72. At my school Liberal Arts was a bunch of fluff courses for people who couldn't decide upon "a real major". Back when he took it Liberal Arts wasn't like that. As part of that degree he had to learn Latin, Ancient Greek, a modern foreign language, a surprising amount of mathematics, logic, rhetoric, history, economics, chemistry, biology, physics and various literature courses in English as well in his chosen foreign language. Frankly I am not at all sure I could have graduated from his Liberal Arts program.
It's partly because of demand - engineering course loads are extremely heavy - easily 50-100% more than the liberal arts or business degrees (especially when you include labs). The sciences didn't have as heavy course loads either.
So the engineering requirements for "generalized courses" (aka "complementary studies" and the like) have gotten lower and lower - when I was there, it was only 2 were required to be taken to graduate. Yes, 2.
And if you poll/., you'll find a LOT of people hate these courses - because it distracts them from narrow goals of what they want to learn.
Personally, I didn't like it either, but felt it was important (just as liberal arts and business are forced to also take science and engineering courses to graduate), because it helps round out the student to become more aware of greater issues in the world. Or to gather viewpoints outside the field or even how to express your viewpoint in ways others can relate. (Effective communication is quite lacking - sure there are courses on technical writing, but only the liberal arts ones force one to realize what others see as important).
Perhaps the goal is to figure out a better balance - sure engineering schools like MIT can turn out great grads in their field, but perhaps are a bit out of touch with the rest of the world's population and what matters to them. Of course, people will complain because it's crap they don't feel they need, and perhaps its true - if they only intend to ever communicate with their peers.
Customers will always be expected to put up with DRM. That is, until customers stop buying DRM software AND companies somehow equate the DRM as being the cause. Even if the former were to happen, the company would probably find some other thing to blame for low sales figures.
The best way is to stop giving these companies publicity in any form except how the DRM is a problem.
Don't publicize the game, don't even pirate the game. If you see a torrent for it, have the torrent taken down as well (it's a form of publicity).
Basically the goal is keep awareness down. The worst thing that could happen to anything is to die from obscurity.
Heck, when publicising the failings of DRM, don't even bother with the game name. Just say "EA's latest release has failed because their DRM servers went don't hours after release".
You hit a good point. There is a corollary to it, most devices have a method of resetting the login to the default (usually something that requires physical access to the device) because there are a significant number of times when for one reason or another the correct login credentials have been lost. If the manufacturer does not use the same default login credentials for every one of a particular device and the end user has lost the card they sent with it that has the default credentials (an eventuality that is likely in those cases where the changed credentials have been lost) the company will either have to have maintained a database of the default credentials for every one of their devices they have shipped, or the end user will be SOL (which will probably result in them being very unhappy with the manufacturer).
If resetting the device requires physical access. then just engrave the default password on the case like you do the serial number and other vital details. That way, when you reset the box, the details to log in are there on the case.
If you manufacture it right, the reset button will be above the details of that device (serial number MAC address, etc) and the technician need only to look further down for the password.
No cards to lose, even if it's dirty it's still readable, no sticker to fall off, etc.
Isn't that the game of all mobile operating systems these days? iOS tries to leverage you into their universe by corralling you into their shop system, but here you can't easily escape. MS is hoping for the same thing, hooking you into their universe, with no escape. Amazon is doing the same, with their gimped version of Android. At least Google allows you to escape, and install apps from other sources, and avoid using their services (which obviously they'd prefer you use, but they are still mostly optional san third party shenanigans).
Have you tried non-Play alternatives?
Other than The Pirate Bay style services (which constantly bring up "Use the Play Store!" comments whenever a new Android malware comes around), very few alternatives exist. Amazon is probably the most viable, but they're still a tiny fraction of what's available, and not available in most countries where Android is available (just two, I think).
If you're lucky, it's open-source and the APK is available. If not, you're pretty much hosed as the developer chose to stick with play.
Fact is, unless you're China (where Play isn't available), you can't really sell an Android without the Play store. Has also pretty much always been true. Heck, Google managed to get exceptions to Taiwan's consumer protection laws (which everyone else, including Apple, agreed to follow) when Taiwan started enforcing them and Google withdrew Wallet support.
Anyhow, there's an interesting absence on that list of companies forming the complaint.
How do you associate your cancer to the airplane rides you took 20 years previously?
Given we've had pretty much global air travel for a few decades now, it should be fairly easy to see if the amount of cancer cases has grown in relation to air traffic. If it takes 20 years to show up, we have data on air travel from the 60s through the 90s and there should be a strong correlation in cancer rates and passenger-miles travelled worldwide. In a decade, we should likewise see a dip in cancer cases as the effects of 9/11 cause a chill to air travel.
Curious... have you deleted all other accounts from other web services? Yahoo? MSN? AOL? Not going to debate how much data Google has gathered on it's users - but you cannot compare that to the massive privacy breaches committed by Facebook. Beacon, anyone? Probably the biggest thing Google knows about me is that I have a huge penchant for gay porn, and I don't mind that - they make it easier to find more gay porn.
Facebook may have committed more privacy breaches, but Google has more information on you no matter what, because they have tentacles everywhere. Facebook, at least they're on entity and it's relatively easy to block them from spying on you.
Google, not so much. Google owns practically the entire online advertising market, including mobile (both iOS and Android, which forms effectively 95% of the market), they have CDNs and script repos that people reference on their webpages, enforce use of javascript through Google Analytics (a webmaster can force you to go through Analytics - something NoScript actually has to implement workarounds for), and nevermind all the other services - youtube embeds, g+ buttons which tie back to you, and so forth. Hell, even if you never had a Google account, Google's got information on you (and possibly your email address as well - if you've ever sent any email to a gmail account - and it's free and clear information as you've never agreed to a privacy policy).
At least Facebook gets smacked down whenever they do stuff like Beacon. Google, it seems, has enough Android fanatics that they really can do no evil.
So, will we see OEM Windows PCs come by default with Thunderbolt ports? Or is this another fantastic, magical, extraordinary Apple Inc. exclusive?
There are laptops coming with Thunderbolt.
Sony's integrated one where the "mobile" mode is a standard Intel 4000 graphics for low power, but then you can dock it (via proprietary USB connector - grr...) which adds a Blu-Ray optical drive AND a decent GPU to the mix. Some company is actually making a PCIe enclosure so you can drive an external card through thunderbolt.
Heck, that's one of Thunderbolt's interesting applications - you can wire up a PCIe video card to it and have powerhouse graphics that suck down the watts, but easily unplug when you don't need it. Essentially, it's a form of hot-pluggable PCIe. And it lacks all the funkiness that USB adapters typically entail.
A thunderbolt serial port, while overkill, will present itself to your laptop as a NATIVE serial port - no messing with icky USB serial adapters that are iffy - this works just like a built-in serial port because it is using the standard busses your PC expects. As far as anyone is concerned, it hooks straight to the PCIe bus, and does normal PCIe things, and other than some minor hardware bridging, acts like it's plugged into an internal PCIe bus.
plain and simple, we should not outlaw "darwin awards", if people want to kill themselves by doing something stupid, good for them, in fact i encourage it, the planet has to many people on it as it. (and yes I know some will say they are putting others at risk.....but)
but plain and simple, we are allowed to do many things in the car legally we should not be doing, shaving, putting on makeup, hell even reading a map or newspaper! if the law says one cannot make calls and text, than thats what they cannot do. Do the logs show a call or a text send within 1-4 minutes of being stopped? if not, there is NO reason said driver should be charged guilty for breaking a law that he did not in fact break. a modern smartphone is just a computer, that has a radio in it. it not a phone that "can do other stuff" and should be treated as such per the law.
having said that, i am also a firm believer that GPS should not be able to be accessible while driving. meaning if the device is in motion, you should not be able to fiddle with the device, cell phone or standalone, set it before you leave the driveway/parking lot and be done with it.
Darwin awards are great. IF the person being killed is the doer.
The problem is with driving, the person MOST likely to get hurt from the driver's (in)action ISN'T the driver. It's the innocent third party - either a pedestrian or cyclist (who can suffer permanent life changes) - or another motorist (who now suffers the inconvenience of having to fix their car, the time lost making alternate arrangements, and the money lost because accident cars are valued much less than non-accident cars). And potential injury as well.
Most other activities generally only endanger the person partaking in the activity, so Darwin would be helpful here.
If you store the signature in the same place, then anyone in a position to modify the document can simply generate a new signature too.
Not without the key they can't.
You're confusing a signature with a hash. The latter can be easily regenerated. However, a signature cannot as it requires signing the hash. Change the hash, and the signature cannot be verified anymore.
It's why people are interested in breaking the hash algorithms - break SHA2-224/256/384/512 and anything signed with those algorithms is vulnerable.
You can sign it with your private key, and thus let anyone with the public key verify its authenticity (this is how stuff like DRM usually works - including signed bootloaders and such). Or you can sign it with the public key and only you know if it's authentic or not.
In this case, you want to sign the document with your private key because anyone can re-sign with a public key. The only way to alter the document would be to obtain the private key. If they signed the altered document with your public key, you can't use the public key to verify it.
It's never ceased to amaze me how with a set of eyeballs and maybe ibid binoculars you can to a high degree determine the goings on on military intallations. All the while being under a regime 'you're not to know, not to publish'.
Depends on the installation. Many aren't doing anything particularly secretive or even restricted or classified, so they don't bother.
But if you try to do some of your "observation" around say, Area 51, armed guards will come out in fairly short order to shoo you along. Even if you're on public land (the nearby hill is particularly well-patrolled).
And even just being on the hill will send them out to observe what you're doing.
Many systems used IrDA communications after that. Of course, it's probably been a lot of engineering work increasing the speed of the system, but it's not a fundamentally new idea, just the evolution of old technology.
802.11 also includes an infrared PHY layer in the standard - sure it was only 1-2Mbps, but it was there. This was the original 802.11 standard, but it was there as an alternative to IrDA.
I agree. The impression that I have from Fisker is that their product was not well engineered compared to competitors like Tesla. The Fisker Karma looked nice but they did have quality problems. Using lithium-ion batteries from A123 was one of their mistakes (even before bankruptacy, A123 had problems).
The most damning photo of Fisker (and I don't know why people still buy them) would be of a car lot right after Hurricane Sandy. You see new cars all ruined with flood waters, then there's a little group of burned out cars - brand new - that were Fiskers.
Sure, it may not have been the battery, but damn, there were a bunch of other cars in the lot that suffered the same floods, and they didn't catch on fire. And I'm sure they were all write offs as well.
Funny enough, you don't hear of Teslas failing like that - but Fiskers... let's say a Google search would bring up plenty of other examples where they can seemingly spontaneously catch fire or other deal.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that was because the Xbox was holding back Xbox Live development - all for the thousand or so people (900 of which were playing Halo 2, the rest a few other games). At the time, that meant the other hundreds of thousands on Xbox Live suffer because they're stuck with the original Xbox's limitations.
Plus, it came after many years after the Xbox360 came out - until then, Microsoft worked around the limits of the original Xbox. Heck, most of the people using the original Xbox Live were playing original Xbox games on the Xbox360 (in compatibility mode). Xbox Live for original Xbox was shut down in 2010, 5 years after the Xbox360 came out (in 2005).
For the Wii, it's just data that's being supplied. There shouldn't be any compatibility issues - the Wii U probably even has a different URL to get at the data, so that any enhanced features don't interfere and require re-testing with the Wii. Unlike Xbox Live where Microsoft still has to test interoperability.
With all those 400+dpi displays out there - are they actually... useful? Short of holding the phone to your nose or otherwise uncomfortably close (to make it hard to actually... use it) does one notice the difference between the 320-odd "retina" DPI vs. the 440 DPI these new 1080p screens offer?
Or is it, as it seems, more mindless measurebating because it's a number that can be manipulated "more is better!". Like CPU GHz. Or megapixels.
Then again, Hollywood is under attack because of piracy, at which point people keep pointing out there's a growing amount of "Indie" movies coming out that are becoming readily available and high quality, so why bother with crap like that and laws and lawsuits.
Sort of like how these programmers will be under attack by "indie" programmers (i.e., open-source)....
Bzzt. Wrong target.
Advertising yes, but not to the user. The user is merely a tool to capture the goings on and identities of everyone else. Couple with GPS and other sensors and facial recognition, Google would now have a more complete picture of you.
So if a Glass user catches you walking out of a bar, you can find new Google ads for bars, ladies and other things around that area when you surf the web.
So yes, advertising, but it's putting more effective advertising in front of more people. Glass users will be few, but they'll be able to collect more information about more people than ever before.
Heck, if a Glass user catches you walking out of a porn store, Google can then prompt you if you want to turn off safe search the next time you visit it.
The summary is wrong.
It's Motorola Mobility v. Apple, not Apple v. Motorola Mobility.
Motorola filed a lawsuit against Apple over patent violations in 2010, and expanded it in 2011 (with Google's permission as the Motorola-Google acquisition happened in the meantime) over more patents. Apple then charged Motorola (then) with patent violations as well.
Motorola Mobility LLC v. Apple Inc., 12cv20271, U.S. District Court for the District of Florida (Miami)
Hint: You're not their customer. You're their product.
RapLeaf, Facebook, Google's customers are not who we normally consider the users. They're advertisers ,marketers, etc, the ones who pay these companies money in exchange for information collected.
Contrast this with say, buying an iPhone, in which case you're Apple's customer and Apple strives to satisfy the people who pay for it. For Microsoft, things are more blurry because you're their customer sometimes (e.g., buy Windows, Office, Xbox, etc), and sometimes you're the product (e.g., Bing, Hotmail/Outlook.com, etc).
People would be a lot more unhappy than Apple though. Think of who uses flash memory. And then think of what happens if Apple were to pay a premium to lock in supply.
Basically if Samsung puts Apple on allocation, Apple will go to Toshiba, Micron, Intel, etc., for their memory and probably pay a premium to lock it in. Which means everyone ELSE who buys flash has to pay more as well, AND be put on allocation as supplies will go to Apple first.
Which means all your non-Samsung SSDs and non-Samsung, non-Apple phones will be a LOT more expensive. Perhaps driving them off the market.
Flash is a commodity. It's affected by everything else as well, and companies dependent on the commodity will all suffer equally. Those who can lock in supplies will at the expense of everyone else. Same thing happens to ever other commodity out there - oil, gas, oranges, bacon, etc.
Many people forget parts of the Xbox360 are "online only" right now.
Think about it - you buy a digital download game from Microsoft. Your license includes anyone on the purchasing console, or the Xbox Live account of the purchaser (so you can play your game on the original purchasing console offline, or play the game on any other console while logged into Xbox Live (free or paid).
The thing is, if you're disconnected from Live, your game ends. If you're not using the on-purchasing-console license, then a momentary blip in Xbox Live connectivity will end the game.
So the fact that it's changed to 3 minutes could be a good thing if it means your game doesn't end the instant you drop offline because the modem or router rebooted.
The real point is, no one knows what he means because a tweet is too damn short to go into details. Good soundbite, yes, but awful when the devil's in the details.
Hell, it could be an option for publishers as well - if they wish, they can have always on connectivity (i.e., must be logged into Xbox Live (either free or paid)) for their title. (Microsoft Studios is Microsoft's first-party publisher, so their head would think the same way as EA, Ubisoft, Activision, etc, which can put it in conflict with Xbox (the console/service/backend/etc) heads).
Of course, it's like saying there's an Apple smartwatch on the way - it's all rumors until it's announced, and Microsoft hasn't said anything yet.
Hell, the PS4 was rumored to require an always-on connection as well. And that it won't play used games.
Heck, there are games for iOS and Android that require always-on connections as well - doesn't mean the SGS5 or iPhone 6 will require it. Steam was always-on as well unless you used offline mode.
All we know for sure is the ex-head of Microsoft Studios doesn't see always-on as a problem. Whether it translates to the Xbox head is a completely different question.
There's a reason why aviation uses AM modulation, and not FM or a digital mode. When an AM transmission is "stepped on" (that is, two people transmitting), the receiver squeals, which indicates to anyone listening that there were two people transmitting simultaneously (or what people would call a "collision").
Ah, but the even fancier trick to AM? The highest power can still be intelligible over the squeal! A flying transceiver only outputs around 20-25W. ATC normally transmits with 100-250W, and can usually overpower the other person transmitting so despite the squeal, the pilot can still make out what the tower is saying.
FM won't work - it suffers from the "capture effect" where if two FM stations transmit on the same frequency, the stronger one at the receiving antenna is demodulated, with no indication that there were two transmitting simultaneously.
Digital modes, depends on the transmission, but usually results in bit errors that make it unintelligible and unrecoverable.
Which shows you don't know how TCAS works.
TCAS doesn't work for ALL traffic. It does revert to TAS (traffic alerting system) mode when it encounters an aircraft that is NOT TCAS-equipped (not all planes are TCAS-equipped). In which case it's designed to call out traffic and most likely collision vector. And even then there are transponder-less aircraft that fly around too, where even TAS doesn't work (and most airplanes don't have traffic radar). ATC would also just see an unidentified dot that they may call out.
To have TCAS working, TCAS negotiates with the other TCAS unit (which is why it doesn't work in all circumstances - it requires TCAS-to-TCAS communication) to figure out a conflict resolution - usually one plane climbs while the other descends. Modern ones are a bit more sophisticated too ever since the accident where they may switch their alerting to the other direction if it sees the other plane is NOT cooperating (both TCAS will have to switch their displays, of course, so they have to stay in communication).
With traffic advisory, it's up to the pilot to figure out a resolution - which may not be a climb or descent, but a turn.
Electronics have gotten so good that these days you can get portable collision advisory systems as well, called PCAS. They won't alert to the resolution, just to most likely conflicting traffic.
And yes, ground radar for non-transponder traffic is erratic since it can pick up a flock of birds, or in one case, a ferry.
At best, a TIS-B would mean the pilot would start looking out for traffic, but ATC will usually re-confirm as well. And there are fallbacks because equipment fails. Often. So your spoofing may just result in the pilot shutting it down assuming faulty equipment.
That's because mechanical failures in aircraft, even GA ones, are extremely uncommon these days. It's like a modern car breaking down causing an accident - it almost never happens (even the Toyota ones were found to be purely human error). It's usually human error purely because we got mechanical failure under control.
It's so rare that it's typically a chain of events that lead to an incident - usually precipitated by some human failing and compounded by more human failings. Perhaps the closest relation to mechanical failure would be poor human interface design (which for any complex piece of machinery, is very common) in which case pilots get caught with misleading signals, false alarms, flipping wrong switches in the wrong place, indicators that don't ... well, indicate (or noticeably - partial autopilot disconnects without warning, for example). And it's sometimes not the fault of the equipment manufacturer - it can be poor HID on integration - where an indicator can be hidden by a body part (a knee is common).
And yes, I've had it happen to me - I accidentally engaged the autopilot on a Cessna 172 during a touch-and-go. The controls felt "weird" (did I break the airplane?), but I was still in positive control (you can overpower the autopilot as a backup), and my instructor was on board to diagnose the issue so I kept in positive control while he figured the problem. And yes, there's now an airwothiness directive because others weren't so lucky - basically to have the autopilot alarm go off when it's engaged AND disengaged (the standard was an alarm when it disengages to warn the pilot it's not in control).
Have you watched those channels? Have you seen what they air? Trust me, PBS is way more cerebral and informative than this week's trucker tow, crab fishing, gold mining, oil drilling, ... sure they're interesting shows, but they're also having to cater to the lowest common denominator to get ad rates up. Plus all the alien, UFO and paranormal hunters.
Also, if you notice, they've started pushing new episodes of shows across channels on the network - so if you want new episodes of your favorite shows, you'll have to buy 4 or 5 channels when they used to be on one (and the rest of it is old episodes from the other channels). All in preparation for a-la-carte channel offerings. Knowing that the typical crowd will want to watch that and buy all the channels on the network. Mythbusters on one, crab fishing on another, aliens on a third, ...
Heck, one thing I like about publicly funded channels - they can create programming that's more controversial and programming that will anger advertisers.
Generally, the whole goal of an annual airshow (snd smaller events) isn't advertising, it's community relations. Lots of people in the local community generally aren't aware that there's a small airport nearby generating lots of jobs (high paying ones at that) and funnelling people through the community as well.
And of course, bringing up issues in the community that people may not be aware of - it's easy to generate a petition to shut down the airport to local city council just because you decided you wanted to live in a house beside the airport. It's less so when the airport makes it known as to what they do actually generates taxes, brings money into the community and provides good paying high-quality jobs. Even if the only thing planes do is stop over for fuel. Also helps bring awareness to effects such as "pilots are rich - let's tax them to hell" that results in lower utilization (if you're going to stop for gas - would you stop at an airport where they're going to ding you like an airliner, or go a few miles and land where they'll greet you warmly for stopping by and spending money? And yes, many city councils have seen it happen, states as well when people simply bypass it and go to a neighbouring one).
There's SOME advertising going on - after all, perhaps if you're interested in learning to fly, a local airport's airshow is a perfect opportunity to get out and explore.
Blue Angels and Thunderbirds are also generalized military recruiting - the shows they do outside of the US are generally token shows unless they can attract significant American population presence. Remember, their #1 goal is recruiting for all branches of the US armed forces. Glitzy aerobatics generally fulfill that need and bring new people into the fold.
It's partly because of demand - engineering course loads are extremely heavy - easily 50-100% more than the liberal arts or business degrees (especially when you include labs). The sciences didn't have as heavy course loads either.
So the engineering requirements for "generalized courses" (aka "complementary studies" and the like) have gotten lower and lower - when I was there, it was only 2 were required to be taken to graduate. Yes, 2.
And if you poll /., you'll find a LOT of people hate these courses - because it distracts them from narrow goals of what they want to learn.
Personally, I didn't like it either, but felt it was important (just as liberal arts and business are forced to also take science and engineering courses to graduate), because it helps round out the student to become more aware of greater issues in the world. Or to gather viewpoints outside the field or even how to express your viewpoint in ways others can relate. (Effective communication is quite lacking - sure there are courses on technical writing, but only the liberal arts ones force one to realize what others see as important).
Perhaps the goal is to figure out a better balance - sure engineering schools like MIT can turn out great grads in their field, but perhaps are a bit out of touch with the rest of the world's population and what matters to them. Of course, people will complain because it's crap they don't feel they need, and perhaps its true - if they only intend to ever communicate with their peers.
The best way is to stop giving these companies publicity in any form except how the DRM is a problem.
Don't publicize the game, don't even pirate the game. If you see a torrent for it, have the torrent taken down as well (it's a form of publicity).
Basically the goal is keep awareness down. The worst thing that could happen to anything is to die from obscurity.
Heck, when publicising the failings of DRM, don't even bother with the game name. Just say "EA's latest release has failed because their DRM servers went don't hours after release".
If resetting the device requires physical access. then just engrave the default password on the case like you do the serial number and other vital details. That way, when you reset the box, the details to log in are there on the case.
If you manufacture it right, the reset button will be above the details of that device (serial number MAC address, etc) and the technician need only to look further down for the password.
No cards to lose, even if it's dirty it's still readable, no sticker to fall off, etc.
Have you tried non-Play alternatives?
Other than The Pirate Bay style services (which constantly bring up "Use the Play Store!" comments whenever a new Android malware comes around), very few alternatives exist. Amazon is probably the most viable, but they're still a tiny fraction of what's available, and not available in most countries where Android is available (just two, I think).
If you're lucky, it's open-source and the APK is available. If not, you're pretty much hosed as the developer chose to stick with play.
Fact is, unless you're China (where Play isn't available), you can't really sell an Android without the Play store. Has also pretty much always been true. Heck, Google managed to get exceptions to Taiwan's consumer protection laws (which everyone else, including Apple, agreed to follow) when Taiwan started enforcing them and Google withdrew Wallet support.
Anyhow, there's an interesting absence on that list of companies forming the complaint.
Given we've had pretty much global air travel for a few decades now, it should be fairly easy to see if the amount of cancer cases has grown in relation to air traffic. If it takes 20 years to show up, we have data on air travel from the 60s through the 90s and there should be a strong correlation in cancer rates and passenger-miles travelled worldwide. In a decade, we should likewise see a dip in cancer cases as the effects of 9/11 cause a chill to air travel.
Facebook may have committed more privacy breaches, but Google has more information on you no matter what, because they have tentacles everywhere. Facebook, at least they're on entity and it's relatively easy to block them from spying on you.
Google, not so much. Google owns practically the entire online advertising market, including mobile (both iOS and Android, which forms effectively 95% of the market), they have CDNs and script repos that people reference on their webpages, enforce use of javascript through Google Analytics (a webmaster can force you to go through Analytics - something NoScript actually has to implement workarounds for), and nevermind all the other services - youtube embeds, g+ buttons which tie back to you, and so forth. Hell, even if you never had a Google account, Google's got information on you (and possibly your email address as well - if you've ever sent any email to a gmail account - and it's free and clear information as you've never
agreed to a privacy policy).
At least Facebook gets smacked down whenever they do stuff like Beacon. Google, it seems, has enough Android fanatics that they really can do no evil.
There are laptops coming with Thunderbolt.
Sony's integrated one where the "mobile" mode is a standard Intel 4000 graphics for low power, but then you can dock it (via proprietary USB connector - grr...) which adds a Blu-Ray optical drive AND a decent GPU to the mix. Some company is actually making a PCIe enclosure so you can drive an external card through thunderbolt.
Heck, that's one of Thunderbolt's interesting applications - you can wire up a PCIe video card to it and have powerhouse graphics that suck down the watts, but easily unplug when you don't need it. Essentially, it's a form of hot-pluggable PCIe. And it lacks all the funkiness that USB adapters typically entail.
A thunderbolt serial port, while overkill, will present itself to your laptop as a NATIVE serial port - no messing with icky USB serial adapters that are iffy - this works just like a built-in serial port because it is using the standard busses your PC expects. As far as anyone is concerned, it hooks straight to the PCIe bus, and does normal PCIe things, and other than some minor hardware bridging, acts like it's plugged into an internal PCIe bus.
Darwin awards are great. IF the person being killed is the doer.
The problem is with driving, the person MOST likely to get hurt from the driver's (in)action ISN'T the driver. It's the innocent third party - either a pedestrian or cyclist (who can suffer permanent life changes) - or another motorist (who now suffers the inconvenience of having to fix their car, the time lost making alternate arrangements, and the money lost because accident cars are valued much less than non-accident cars). And potential injury as well.
Most other activities generally only endanger the person partaking in the activity, so Darwin would be helpful here.
Not without the key they can't.
You're confusing a signature with a hash. The latter can be easily regenerated. However, a signature cannot as it requires signing the hash. Change the hash, and the signature cannot be verified anymore.
It's why people are interested in breaking the hash algorithms - break SHA2-224/256/384/512 and anything signed with those algorithms is vulnerable.
You can sign it with your private key, and thus let anyone with the public key verify its authenticity (this is how stuff like DRM usually works - including signed bootloaders and such). Or you can sign it with the public key and only you know if it's authentic or not.
In this case, you want to sign the document with your private key because anyone can re-sign with a public key. The only way to alter the document would be to obtain the private key. If they signed the altered document with your public key, you can't use the public key to verify it.
Depends on the installation. Many aren't doing anything particularly secretive or even restricted or classified, so they don't bother.
But if you try to do some of your "observation" around say, Area 51, armed guards will come out in fairly short order to shoo you along. Even if you're on public land (the nearby hill is particularly well-patrolled).
And even just being on the hill will send them out to observe what you're doing.
802.11 also includes an infrared PHY layer in the standard - sure it was only 1-2Mbps, but it was there. This was the original 802.11 standard, but it was there as an alternative to IrDA.
The most damning photo of Fisker (and I don't know why people still buy them) would be of a car lot right after Hurricane Sandy. You see new cars all ruined with flood waters, then there's a little group of burned out cars - brand new - that were Fiskers.
http://jalopnik.com/5958523/fisker-lost-30-million-worth-of-cars-in-hurricane-sandy
Sure, it may not have been the battery, but damn, there were a bunch of other cars in the lot that suffered the same floods, and they didn't catch on fire. And I'm sure they were all write offs as well.
Funny enough, you don't hear of Teslas failing like that - but Fiskers... let's say a Google search would bring up plenty of other examples where they can seemingly spontaneously catch fire or other deal.