Also, don't forget about secondary tracking. Stuff like sending an email to someone who uses Google Mail (gmail or for domains, for example). In which case Google gets to violate your privacy as you didn't really agree to any privacy policy because you don't use google services nor agreed to them.
No one is forced to use Google. If you don't want them to do things with your data, don't give it to them.
How?
Avoiding Google owned properties eliminates a good chunk of the 'net - and not just obvious ones like google search, gmail, picasa, youtube, etc. The +1 buttons are everywhere, google-owned ads are everywhere (and not just adsense, we're talking about doubleclick, admob and other google-owned ad companies). Plus they have CDNs and other things like google-analytics.
If google were to disappear tomorrow, the internet would end up horribly broken - many websites use google analytics on every link in order to track you.
Google has literally reached a point where they are too big to fail
Bungie seems to have immediately taken to making interesting new ideas once free of Microsoft. Who could have expected that?
You mean, making a game that would be monetized to all hell and back? That's an interesting new idea.
Look at the publisher behind them - and look at what they did to Blizzard. Everything freaking thing is monetized, and Activision is also known for their nickle and diming of people.
Plus, Bungie was spun off from Microsoft sround 2008 or so - they continued with Halo because Microsoft kept paying big bucks to keep the lights on (I think Microsoft guaranteed that - though Microsoft was not exclusively using Bungie).
This game will probably be like what happened to Blizzard - you'll need a new combined battle.net/bungie.net account to play single player, you'll be asked for a name that will also permanently link you to that account (without warning you so they can ding you $10 because you used your real name). And yeah, you can play the campaign, but they'd also offer ways to upgrade yourself or buy more save slots.
Etc. etc. I bought Starcraft 2. Wanted Diablo 3, but my poor SC2 experience meant I skipped D3 and will not buy the upcoming "expansion".
Oh yeah, MMO - this will be like WoW as well. And yet another good studio circles the drain, driven that way by executive greed.
I'm Canadian... and I've tried to stay informed about the copyright reform laws, and I'm completely unaware of any sort of compromise that supposedly protects consumers. Bill C-32, which passed just last year, leaves consumers of copyrighted content with virtually no choices with respect to almost any technology developed since roughly the turn of the 21st century. So... how is buggery considered "protection", exactly?
Because of a few completely worthless provisions in C-32.
That is, a user is allowed to space and time-shift, provided there are no digital locks.
It also allows mashups and other stuff under fair dealing provided there are no digital locks.
The last part is key - which makes the whole endeavour worthless because very little is sold without digital locks.
Well, if you meant to keep it private, why did you post it online for the world to see?
Oh, right, so-called "privacy" controls. Which are a brilliant social engineering hack meant to extract more information from users who wouldn't otherwise readily give it up. Unless you can control all your friends, anything they can see, the world can see. All it takes is someone to re-post it, or mention it or something and the beans are spilled.
Truth is, anything you post online is public. As someone's very famous sister found out when one of her "friends" re-posted a family photo and put it up on Twitter as well.
Sorry, the old adage is still true - don't put online stuff that you want to remain private. And stuff that ends up on the internet, stays on the internet.
(1) Less greed, (3) Proper labor relations and management?
You're kidding, right?
Asians are some of the MOST greedy people around - you've never done business until you've done it in Asia.
They will bulldoze a seller to save a few pennies - paying full price is for chumps. Ever wonder why people use the crappy capacitors that'll fail early? That's why - unless you demand top quality components, they'll sub in the cheapest.
And labor? Really? You think Apple demands that Foxconn mistreats its workers?
Driving the car on last drops of energy is bad for the battery. The reporter says he saw the warnings about recharge for half of the way. He shouldn't have driven the last 19 miles, especially because at that time the car failed hard, locking the transmission. The battery was really empty at that time, below the level that is necessary to keep the car functional.
Actually, that was recanted. There was still charge in the battery. What happened was the 12 V system battery was depleted. The 12V battery runs the usual 12 V stuff, and it derives its charge from the high-voltage battery.
What happened in the end was the reporter set the parking brake, which used the last of the 12V battery to engage. The 12V battery was depleted, but the high voltage battery had a little charge left. If the brake was NOT set, it could've been driven up the flatbed. But since it was drained, there was no way to release the parking brake (and with that low a charge, I presume the 12V battery wouldn't charge at all to give you endurance).
There are actually two electrical systems - the big high voltage battery that goes to the propulsion motors, which powers a small 12V charger and battery to poewr everything else in a car (radios, windshield wipers, lights, climate control, etc). You charge the main battery which charges the little 12V battery.
The log should be a recording of the value that was displayed on the speedometer. So one of them is clearly misrepresenting the truth.
Fun fact - speedometers in cars typically OVER read the actual speed. If it says "50" you're really doing 45 if you compare it with a GPS.
If the log was the speedometer value, he would be going 40, if it was reading 45. Of course, if he claims it to be reading 45, then the log would show 45, so he loses as going 5mph too fast (he was doing 50 per the log). If it was the GPS value, it means the speedometer would be reading even higher - 55 in this case.
Either way, I'm still impressed that the display can read 35 and got 51 miles, nearly 50% more. Though, even in a gas car, if the tank gets 300 miles, I won't set off on a 100 mile trip when it reads 1/4 tank. Hell, I wouldn't set out on 1/3rd tank. I'd probably fill it up to 3/4 minimum (especially since a lot of gas gauges aren't linear). If I had a 61 mile trip, and the gauge said 32, I would keep it on charge even if someone said "I had enough charge to make it".
But it also is somewhat onerous that Musk could get that much information, damning or not. I think that tracking that deeply is an invasion of privacy.... although it's a double-edged sword at this rate.
TFA states that ever since the Top Gear thing, they've put data loggers in all the cars they send to the media to review, precisely to avoid the kind of situation that happened with dishonest reporters.
Production vehicies will probably have similar data loggers, but with less data captured (akin to the black boxes that exist in practically every car sold today). Though, I'd also guess a modern vehicle today has that capability as well through their black boxes. Especially since they practically all have built-in satnavs.
I know the standard OS X AppleScript comes with bindings for ruby, perl and python as well as AppleScript, so in theory, you could use AppleScript to interact with Numbers (Apple's spreadsheet program), directly from the AppleScript bindings in Perl, Python or Ruby or whatever else Apple put bindings in (I think you can even do it in Cocoa/C).
Of course, I've nevery actually tried it, but it looks like it's possible...
I enjoyed seeing the Hobbit, but I'm quite sure I would gain more than I would lose if copyright were abolished. The massive influx of entertainment and educational materials into the public domain would more than offset any loss of blockbuster movies or other unsustainable business models.
And the loss of every open-source software project in the world, as well, because copyright oddly protects them as well.
Without copyright, anyone can take Linux, ignore the GPL (the GPL grants rights you don't have with "all rights reserved" - so you can choose "all rights reserved" or the GPL), and then release a product on it. They're not bound to the GPL if they with to follow copyright's restrictions (without copyright, there are no restrictions).
It's why people like RMS tend to take a more nuanced view - yes copyright, but no to the crazy terms - back to 14 year max terms. Even Linux of 14 years ago should go into public domain, but it's not terribly interesting because many modern conveniences are missing (USB and SATA, for example).
So yes, there will be a huge influx of new materials into the public domain, including open-source software. Even Creative Commons stuff as well.
People used to repair TVs. Today, it is often cheaper to just buy another one. Good for the consumer. Good for the manufacturer. Bad for the repairman.
TVs also used to cost several year's worth of pay. Nowadays they can be had for generally a month's worth of disposable income (minimum wage). For most people, you can get them for pbably a week's worth of saving.
Back in the old days, people replaced tubes also because the MTBF of their TV was horrendously low before a tube would blow.
So you bought a device that required scrimping and saving for YEARS and which can fail in a month (or two), well, of course you fixed it.
I suppose the only equivalent these days would be if you bought the latest 4K TVs ($10-15K) or OLED TV ($40K). Even then it's not much of a comparison because you can still march into Best Buy and walk out with an equivalently sized HDTV for under $2K (the 4K's are pushing around 60"+, the OLEDs 50"). And they'd still pretty much last for years.
Stores used to have huge displays of tubes complete with tube testers. You'd take out all the tubes in your TV or radio and test them and pick up replacements and then reinstall them all. These things promptly died out with the invention of the transistor, enabling far cheaper electronics that lasted longer.
I'm sure back when computers also cost between $5-10K not too long ago, people cared about repairability. These days, they're practically disposable because you can pick up a laptop for well under $500.
It turns out, that especially when cooled, the RAM may in fact retain information for some period short enough to allow the device to be unpowered and repowered, and essentially retain all its data. (there may be a few errors).
Actually, the period can be quite significant. One of my projects involved a kernel that could only dump messages to RAM. To get it out, I'd reboot the board and dump the log buffer. At regular room temperature, but elevated board temperature (jthe CPU was running for a good tilt so the board heated up), a power cycle (under 1s) would let you read it out perfectly. After 10s off, you could see corruption but was mostly readable. After 30s or so, it was barely readable.
It appears the main physical phenomena is that the memory capacitors "distort" ever so slightly so the RAM doesn't completely powerup randomly, but is influenced by what was held there previously. It's a time related thing as well - a memory cell that was rapidly cycled would tend to have a lower time before corruption than a cell which held data staticly for a long time. Since encryption keys tend to fall in the latter, the memory tends to stay that way a bit longer (unless the code periodically switches memory buffers and scrubs the old one - it doesn't take much - just store a new pattern in then and it'll overwrite the old one).
Sections 7 and 8 of the famous Gutmann paper detail this effect in memory as well (you may recall the paper dealt with recovery of data off hard drives - but it also dealt with semiconductor nonvolatile memory as well).
A followup paper(PDF) goes into more detail on semiconductor memory including flash storage.
Really? How does current Bluetooth protocol allow you to tell Siri/Google Voice search to expect input? The answer is it doesn't! You have to put your phone somewhere where you can reach it and use whatever method you use to launch it when you're not operating hands free (Siri is actually better than Google voice search in this regard as it's tied to a hardware button by default, but it's still less safe/convenient than having a button on the HU or steering wheel controls that does this for you).
Uh, actually, Bluetooth has the vapability to as part of the headset protocol. Siri can activate by pushing the headset button (like you would to hang up a call). You know, like how most voice command things worked on non-smartphones. Push and hold the button, a little voice asks you who to call and it dials it. Push it again to hang up.
I would presume Google Voice has a similar function.
Yes, companies can spend far more time and effort on customizing an ERP system to meet their needs than the system itself costs. Then, when new releases of the system come out, the customizations need to be done again. The other alternative is to change the company's systems to match the ERP. That's what my employer did when it outgrew the previous system and realized that it was too difficult to keep customizing the system. It meant changing lots of little things throughout the company. For example, every part number had to change to match the rules for the new ERP system. All said, it was probably cheaper to make the changes in the company than in the ERP, and now we can upgrade to new releases without much difficulty.
Great if you can, a nightmare if you can't.
Like some industries have LOOOOOONNNNGGG support cycles. Take a car, for example - by law all parts must be available for 10 years after production stops. Now you do an ERP system upgrade and all the part numbers change. Now you have a problem because people will be ordering with the old part numbers until you can drop it (up to 10 yeras later). (This is why you find special "automotive" hard drives - nothing's changed,just that you can get that exact part for 10 yeras. Ditto automotive grade ICs)
You can come out with big (printed) books of part number equivalancies, but people will still buy on the old part, so someone will have to do a part number translation and hang around answering questions on why they bought part XXX but got part YYY instead. Or even worse, have the same item listed as two different parts on the ordering system, causing even more confusion as people don't know what they should be ordering.
If your company is small, it's relatively easy to maintain a translation list and if your customer base is equally small, to distribute notices of part number changes. Plus retraining and redoing business practices is much easier (like being able to get rid of certain reports if they're no longer available in the new system - this can be a huge problem if the information is now scattered amongst 10 different reports when previously it was on one nice neat summary report).
But deepen the supply chain and lengthen the time of support, and things get hairy, fast.
most existing UEFI systems on OEM computers have a text based configuration tool and don't even secure boot. (Windows 8 mandates the change of the later of course.)
I'll have to check, but I'm fairly sure my home PC doesn't have secure boot, yet it does have Win8 on it.
It's probably legacy booting WIndows 8.
And truth be told, any modern PC capable of running Windows 8 has probably already shipped with UEFI in it. Yes, UEFI. Intel has not provided an old style BIOS with any chips since at least he Core 2 Duo era (they provided both at first, then phased out the BIOS since UEFI BIOS emulation legacy boot worked well enough). Ditto for the BIOS vendors. The BIOS setup program is typically just a UEFI configuration program nowadays, and it just jumps straight into the old legacy BIOS boot chain.
And yes, BIOS is a nasty hack nowadays. Just look at the contortions GRUB goes through in order to work - the various stage loaders that each chain load one another because the BIOS is too stupid to do it at once. On (U)EFI, it's just a 32-bit binary sitting on a FAT32 partition that the firmware loads directly and runs.
Next step would be a CPU class based licensing of Windows.
Windows did do that actually.
If you installed Windwos XP Home, it will run on a dual core, but NOT dual socket machine. Dual socket means you need XP pro.
And for a time, NT was sold as a 1-2 CPU pack and 3+ CPU pack. And to keep it up, the old DOS line Windows only supported 1 CPU - you were encouraged to move to NT if you had a dual proc machine.
Third thing, Harper has been attempting to get the senate reformed for his last three mandates, and the liberals and quebec have been throwing a hissy fit over the entire thing. Because he wants an elected senate--you know just like MP's.
Funny thing that. Harper's been in power for 7 years now, and he's done didly, except appoint more senators. Yes, Harper, the one true person who wanted to usher in elected senators, has become the PM to appoint the most senators. Heck, he even ignored Alberta's (his home province, at that) elected results!
He's just as crooked as the rest of 'em.
Now, I think having two houses is a great idea - you have Parliament with representatives based on population, and you have a Senate with fixed number of representatives from every province and territoty. The first lets you figure out what the majority want, the second lets the minority actually have a say. Because representation can take either form, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. Proportional based presentation is great because it represents what the population wants in a majority. However, they can tend to shove aside minority concerns. Fixed representation allows minority concerns to be heard, but it under-rereposents majority concerns. You'd want both to balance things out because it's one of democracy's bad sides - the minority tend to get shoved aside.
There is also no evidence they will keep your brain healthy in old age or anything else they are claiming they will do.
Playing any game, will improve your ability to play that game. That is about it.
Well, some tasks of the brain training games DO help you in every day life. I mean, if you're doing 100 math problems every day, you'll get good at doing math problems (just basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division). This actually has extreme usefulness in daily life for everyone, because math is everywhere. And even though all the numbers are between 0 and 99, being able to do basic math has almost no downsides.
From calculating how much your lunch (or your gear) will cost, to seeing if you can mentally budget your money is extremely useful. And being able to add up your shopping cart, or figure out if something is a real deal without having to break out a calculator makes life just that bit less frustrating.
Or being able to stand at the cashier, glance at your coins and how much you owe, and figure out how to make "convenient" change, getting rid of a bunch of coins and getting a nicer quarter or something back. Spending jars of coins is easy if you know how to quickly add and subtract.
Or knowing how much your shopping car is supposed to cost before tax, with tax, and able to know when the register overcharged you.
Wow, if you call UEFI new, I have to tell you, Linux 3.0 is new as well. UEFI has been around for years now. In fact, your motherboard probably runs it without you knowing - Intel has shipped UEFI only BIOSes for years with their new chips (prior to the Core Duo era). Sure, most of them run the legacy BIOS payload, but it's been around for a long time now.
Nevermind that a certain fruity company has been using it exclusively (and publicly) in their PCs for 7 odd years now. And that Linux has had support for EFI boot for ages as well - mostly because of said company's computers (it boots Grub directly).
And most BIOS manufacturers have been using it for ages as well.
Supposedly it is calculator keyboards that are upside down. Two reasons touch tone phones use the order they do:
Touch tone phones replaced rotary phones, which already had 123 at the top of the dial, and 789 at the bottom. So it made sense to keep the same order that millions of people were already used to, in order to make the transition easier.
Touch tone phones have the alphabet sharing the keys, starting with ABC on key 2. Thus the letters are alphabetic from top to bottom, which also properly follows reading order.
Apparently no real research was done in the choice of calculator keyboards having the numbers descending from 9 down. It just happened, and since calculator keyboard layout was more arbitrary (it had neither a predecessor like touch tone phones, nor the alphabet sharing the keys), it would have made sense for calculator designers to match the touch tone phone layout.
I don't know if any studies have been done, but I don't see any reason why one layout would be more intuitive than the other for pure numerical use to a human than the other. It's whatever you get used to. If calculators matched telephones from the beginning then today no one would feel something was inherently wrong with their calculator or that it is upside down from what it should have always been.
Sorta, kinda accurate.
The main reason actually relates to the position of the zero. On a rotary phone, the numbers go 7-8-9-0 (phone phreaks should know that dialing 0 generates 10 pulses - just like 1-9 generate 1-9 pulses, respectively).
On an adding machine and other such hardware, the zero is actually beside the 1-2-3. As at the time the numbers were in a vertical column, you'd see them as 0-1-2-3... -8-9.
So when they went to the key pad, the phone engineers decided that since the 0 was besides the 9 on every phone they made, it should stay close to the 9 on the final phone layout. Hence 1-2-3 on top, 7-8-9 on the bottom, and *-0-# on the bottom. (Or on old keypads, 0 aligned with either the 8 or 9).
LIkewise, calculator engineers saw that people who used adding machines expect the 0 to be near the 1-2-3, so they designed their keypads with that in mind as adding machine users expected 0 to be near 1.
And look at your keyboard to this day - the number row reflects the telephone layout (1-2-3... -7-8-9-0) while the numeric keypad reflects the calculator layout. Presumably, this was because the typewriter guys saw that the telephone kept the 0 near the 9 so they kept their 0 near the 9 as well (being that more people would've seen a phone at the time than a calculator. I'm certain back in the late 19th century when keyboards weren't standardized on QWERTY and the phone was for rich folks, they probably had 0-1-2-3 just as often as 1-2-3..-9-0.
I've never really understood the purpose of the UEFI though.
Think of it this way - the PC boots the same way today as it did 30 years ago. The BIOS reads the first sector ot the first hard drive at a specific location in low memory and jumps there. Now, in most cases, that is a standard MBR loader - it reads the partition table (also embedded in the first sector - great design, eh?), the calculates where the next sector (the first sector of the partition) should be ont he disk. It calls the BIOS to load that into another location in RAM, then jumps into it. That one hopefully loads more of itself so it can then load the OS. All this happens in 16 bit real mode.
EFI boot allows the loader to reside in a special EFI storage partition, where it can find the OS loader, and then the OS loader can directly, instead of chain loading various sectors all over the place (and often having to have a bootstrap loader be the one to fit in 512 bytes, that loads the main part of the boot loader - think the nasty hack that is grub's stage 1/2/2.5/etc loader and think how much nicer it would be if the BIOS would just read it off the disk)
In fact, practically all PCs sold have an EFI/UEFI bootloader by default - Intel has been shipping them for many years now (prior to 2006 - when Apple introduced the Intel Macs, even - probably the first experience most people have with EFI). What's been happening is that the EFI loader has been calling into the BIOS emulation layer to perform the BIOS legacy boot.
Basically, its a more advanced bootloader because really, initializing hardware is getting more complex. Think stuff like USB for example - it requires a lot of high level integration in order to work, and stuff like EFI can make it much easier to do so because it's like a mini OS. Plus getting rid of the 512 byte loader limitation.
Finally, (U)EFI is a joint collaboration between Microsoft and Intel - Intel created several technologies, including the GPT (which is required if you want a >3TB drive to be useful and not truncated to 3TB - MBR is useless at this point - and important if you're running huge RAID arrays)., while using others from Microsoft (the on-disk EFI partition is... FAT32, and the binaries it loads are PE COFF exe's).
This is great news for Linux distributions, and a small victory in the losing battle for openness.
But in the spirit of openness, hopefully bootloaders for NetBSD, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD will also be eventually signed.
Everyone should be able to install and run whatever they want on their own computers.
You still can.
You see, in order to get that "Windows" logo, a PC (x86/x64) MUST have an option to disable secure boot. In which case, the UEFI will perform a "legacy boot" using the MBR/partition loaders as has been the PC architecture for 30 years now.
The only reason for signed loaders is so a user doesn't have to dive into the UEFI to switch the setting around.
And this option will be around for a while as Windows 7 can't do UEFI boot unless you're 64-bit, and a lot of companies are only beginning their Windows 7 migrations.
its a proud day for doing stuff you love, but not all of us can dedicate the time or money to give stuff away while hoping someone drops a dollar in the guitar case, cause its just not happening
Which is why you do this stuff for fun on your off time, and have a regular job like everyone else to pay the bills. It's usually known as a "hobby". Some people are so dedicated to their hobbies in that they scrimp and save for years then take a whole year off or something to just pursue it.
Some people have even written great pieces of software during their off time, used by millions of people, given away for free, with little expectation or demand of payment in return.
Others have created books, artwork, music, and other cultural goods that are given away with little expectation of remuneration (usually the remuneration comes from permission to re-use said work in some context).
Hell, sometimes the compensation comes back in the form of recognition - which can pay even more dividends, especially in a crowded field where you are merely a name amongst others. Doing something high profile and "newsworthy" can elevate you above the other names and get some real payoffs, as well.
There are lots of reasons to do something. Money is one, and pretty common, but it doesn't have to be even the biggest reason why some people do things. Otherwise why do people volunteer at charities? Some people get paid a nominal amount, others give their time and effort for free to them.
Users are bombarded with dialog boxes, permission boxes, info bars, tray notifications, software update notifications, and so forth all day long. They don't read them, they just click YES/OK. If it pops up again, they try CANCEL (even if the text is different - remember they don't read it!)
The technical term for it is dancing pigs (or Dancing Rabbits).
The premise is that any security that relies on getting in the user's way of a task will be promptly bypassed. The user will always choose dancing rabbits/pigs/whatever over security every time.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, don't forget about secondary tracking. Stuff like sending an email to someone who uses Google Mail (gmail or for domains, for example). In which case Google gets to violate your privacy as you didn't really agree to any privacy policy because you don't use google services nor agreed to them.
How?
Avoiding Google owned properties eliminates a good chunk of the 'net - and not just obvious ones like google search, gmail, picasa, youtube, etc. The +1 buttons are everywhere, google-owned ads are everywhere (and not just adsense, we're talking about doubleclick, admob and other google-owned ad companies). Plus they have CDNs and other things like google-analytics.
If google were to disappear tomorrow, the internet would end up horribly broken - many websites use google analytics on every link in order to track you.
Google has literally reached a point where they are too big to fail
You mean, making a game that would be monetized to all hell and back? That's an interesting new idea.
Look at the publisher behind them - and look at what they did to Blizzard. Everything freaking thing is monetized, and Activision is also known for their nickle and diming of people.
Plus, Bungie was spun off from Microsoft sround 2008 or so - they continued with Halo because Microsoft kept paying big bucks to keep the lights on (I think Microsoft guaranteed that - though Microsoft was not exclusively using Bungie).
This game will probably be like what happened to Blizzard - you'll need a new combined battle.net/bungie.net account to play single player, you'll be asked for a name that will also permanently link you to that account (without warning you so they can ding you $10 because you used your real name). And yeah, you can play the campaign, but they'd also offer ways to upgrade yourself or buy more save slots.
Etc. etc. I bought Starcraft 2. Wanted Diablo 3, but my poor SC2 experience meant I skipped D3 and will not buy the upcoming "expansion".
Oh yeah, MMO - this will be like WoW as well. And yet another good studio circles the drain, driven that way by executive greed.
Because of a few completely worthless provisions in C-32.
That is, a user is allowed to space and time-shift, provided there are no digital locks.
It also allows mashups and other stuff under fair dealing provided there are no digital locks.
The last part is key - which makes the whole endeavour worthless because very little is sold without digital locks.
Well, if you meant to keep it private, why did you post it online for the world to see?
Oh, right, so-called "privacy" controls. Which are a brilliant social engineering hack meant to extract more information from users who wouldn't otherwise readily give it up. Unless you can control all your friends, anything they can see, the world can see. All it takes is someone to re-post it, or mention it or something and the beans are spilled.
Truth is, anything you post online is public. As someone's very famous sister found out when one of her "friends" re-posted a family photo and put it up on Twitter as well.
Sorry, the old adage is still true - don't put online stuff that you want to remain private. And stuff that ends up on the internet, stays on the internet.
You're kidding, right?
Asians are some of the MOST greedy people around - you've never done business until you've done it in Asia.
They will bulldoze a seller to save a few pennies - paying full price is for chumps. Ever wonder why people use the crappy capacitors that'll fail early? That's why - unless you demand top quality components, they'll sub in the cheapest.
And labor? Really? You think Apple demands that Foxconn mistreats its workers?
Actually, that was recanted. There was still charge in the battery. What happened was the 12 V system battery was depleted. The 12V battery runs the usual 12 V stuff, and it derives its charge from the high-voltage battery.
What happened in the end was the reporter set the parking brake, which used the last of the 12V battery to engage. The 12V battery was depleted, but the high voltage battery had a little charge left. If the brake was NOT set, it could've been driven up the flatbed. But since it was drained, there was no way to release the parking brake (and with that low a charge, I presume the 12V battery wouldn't charge at all to give you endurance).
There are actually two electrical systems - the big high voltage battery that goes to the propulsion motors, which powers a small 12V charger and battery to poewr everything else in a car (radios, windshield wipers, lights, climate control, etc). You charge the main battery which charges the little 12V battery.
Fun fact - speedometers in cars typically OVER read the actual speed. If it says "50" you're really doing 45 if you compare it with a GPS.
If the log was the speedometer value, he would be going 40, if it was reading 45. Of course, if he claims it to be reading 45, then the log would show 45, so he loses as going 5mph too fast (he was doing 50 per the log). If it was the GPS value, it means the speedometer would be reading even higher - 55 in this case.
Either way, I'm still impressed that the display can read 35 and got 51 miles, nearly 50% more. Though, even in a gas car, if the tank gets 300 miles, I won't set off on a 100 mile trip when it reads 1/4 tank. Hell, I wouldn't set out on 1/3rd tank. I'd probably fill it up to 3/4 minimum (especially since a lot of gas gauges aren't linear). If I had a 61 mile trip, and the gauge said 32, I would keep it on charge even if someone said "I had enough charge to make it".
TFA states that ever since the Top Gear thing, they've put data loggers in all the cars they send to the media to review, precisely to avoid the kind of situation that happened with dishonest reporters.
Production vehicies will probably have similar data loggers, but with less data captured (akin to the black boxes that exist in practically every car sold today). Though, I'd also guess a modern vehicle today has that capability as well through their black boxes. Especially since they practically all have built-in satnavs.
I know the standard OS X AppleScript comes with bindings for ruby, perl and python as well as AppleScript, so in theory, you could use AppleScript to interact with Numbers (Apple's spreadsheet program), directly from the AppleScript bindings in Perl, Python or Ruby or whatever else Apple put bindings in (I think you can even do it in Cocoa/C).
Of course, I've nevery actually tried it, but it looks like it's possible...
And the loss of every open-source software project in the world, as well, because copyright oddly protects them as well.
Without copyright, anyone can take Linux, ignore the GPL (the GPL grants rights you don't have with "all rights reserved" - so you can choose "all rights reserved" or the GPL), and then release a product on it. They're not bound to the GPL if they with to follow copyright's restrictions (without copyright, there are no restrictions).
It's why people like RMS tend to take a more nuanced view - yes copyright, but no to the crazy terms - back to 14 year max terms. Even Linux of 14 years ago should go into public domain, but it's not terribly interesting because many modern conveniences are missing (USB and SATA, for example).
So yes, there will be a huge influx of new materials into the public domain, including open-source software. Even Creative Commons stuff as well.
TVs also used to cost several year's worth of pay. Nowadays they can be had for generally a month's worth of disposable income (minimum wage). For most people, you can get them for pbably a week's worth of saving.
Back in the old days, people replaced tubes also because the MTBF of their TV was horrendously low before a tube would blow.
So you bought a device that required scrimping and saving for YEARS and which can fail in a month (or two), well, of course you fixed it.
I suppose the only equivalent these days would be if you bought the latest 4K TVs ($10-15K) or OLED TV ($40K). Even then it's not much of a comparison because you can still march into Best Buy and walk out with an equivalently sized HDTV for under $2K (the 4K's are pushing around 60"+, the OLEDs 50"). And they'd still pretty much last for years.
Stores used to have huge displays of tubes complete with tube testers. You'd take out all the tubes in your TV or radio and test them and pick up replacements and then reinstall them all. These things promptly died out with the invention of the transistor, enabling far cheaper electronics that lasted longer.
I'm sure back when computers also cost between $5-10K not too long ago, people cared about repairability. These days, they're practically disposable because you can pick up a laptop for well under $500.
Actually, the period can be quite significant. One of my projects involved a kernel that could only dump messages to RAM. To get it out, I'd reboot the board and dump the log buffer. At regular room temperature, but elevated board temperature (jthe CPU was running for a good tilt so the board heated up), a power cycle (under 1s) would let you read it out perfectly. After 10s off, you could see corruption but was mostly readable. After 30s or so, it was barely readable.
It appears the main physical phenomena is that the memory capacitors "distort" ever so slightly so the RAM doesn't completely powerup randomly, but is influenced by what was held there previously. It's a time related thing as well - a memory cell that was rapidly cycled would tend to have a lower time before corruption than a cell which held data staticly for a long time. Since encryption keys tend to fall in the latter, the memory tends to stay that way a bit longer (unless the code periodically switches memory buffers and scrubs the old one - it doesn't take much - just store a new pattern in then and it'll overwrite the old one).
Sections 7 and 8 of the famous Gutmann paper detail this effect in memory as well (you may recall the paper dealt with recovery of data off hard drives - but it also dealt with semiconductor nonvolatile memory as well).
A followup paper(PDF) goes into more detail on semiconductor memory including flash storage.
Uh, actually, Bluetooth has the vapability to as part of the headset protocol. Siri can activate by pushing the headset button (like you would to hang up a call). You know, like how most voice command things worked on non-smartphones. Push and hold the button, a little voice asks you who to call and it dials it. Push it again to hang up.
I would presume Google Voice has a similar function.
Great if you can, a nightmare if you can't.
Like some industries have LOOOOOONNNNGGG support cycles. Take a car, for example - by law all parts must be available for 10 years after production stops. Now you do an ERP system upgrade and all the part numbers change. Now you have a problem because people will be ordering with the old part numbers until you can drop it (up to 10 yeras later). (This is why you find special "automotive" hard drives - nothing's changed ,just that you can get that exact part for 10 yeras. Ditto automotive grade ICs)
You can come out with big (printed) books of part number equivalancies, but people will still buy on the old part, so someone will have to do a part number translation and hang around answering questions on why they bought part XXX but got part YYY instead. Or even worse, have the same item listed as two different parts on the ordering system, causing even more confusion as people don't know what they should be ordering.
If your company is small, it's relatively easy to maintain a translation list and if your customer base is equally small, to distribute notices of part number changes. Plus retraining and redoing business practices is much easier (like being able to get rid of certain reports if they're no longer available in the new system - this can be a huge problem if the information is now scattered amongst 10 different reports when previously it was on one nice neat summary report).
But deepen the supply chain and lengthen the time of support, and things get hairy, fast.
It's probably legacy booting WIndows 8.
And truth be told, any modern PC capable of running Windows 8 has probably already shipped with UEFI in it. Yes, UEFI. Intel has not provided an old style BIOS with any chips since at least he Core 2 Duo era (they provided both at first, then phased out the BIOS since UEFI BIOS emulation legacy boot worked well enough). Ditto for the BIOS vendors. The BIOS setup program is typically just a UEFI configuration program nowadays, and it just jumps straight into the old legacy BIOS boot chain.
And yes, BIOS is a nasty hack nowadays. Just look at the contortions GRUB goes through in order to work - the various stage loaders that each chain load one another because the BIOS is too stupid to do it at once. On (U)EFI, it's just a 32-bit binary sitting on a FAT32 partition that the firmware loads directly and runs.
Windows did do that actually.
If you installed Windwos XP Home, it will run on a dual core, but NOT dual socket machine. Dual socket means you need XP pro.
And for a time, NT was sold as a 1-2 CPU pack and 3+ CPU pack. And to keep it up, the old DOS line Windows only supported 1 CPU - you were encouraged to move to NT if you had a dual proc machine.
Funny thing that. Harper's been in power for 7 years now, and he's done didly, except appoint more senators. Yes, Harper, the one true person who wanted to usher in elected senators, has become the PM to appoint the most senators. Heck, he even ignored Alberta's (his home province, at that) elected results!
He's just as crooked as the rest of 'em.
Now, I think having two houses is a great idea - you have Parliament with representatives based on population, and you have a Senate with fixed number of representatives from every province and territoty. The first lets you figure out what the majority want, the second lets the minority actually have a say. Because representation can take either form, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. Proportional based presentation is great because it represents what the population wants in a majority. However, they can tend to shove aside minority concerns. Fixed representation allows minority concerns to be heard, but it under-rereposents majority concerns. You'd want both to balance things out because it's one of democracy's bad sides - the minority tend to get shoved aside.
Well, some tasks of the brain training games DO help you in every day life. I mean, if you're doing 100 math problems every day, you'll get good at doing math problems (just basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division). This actually has extreme usefulness in daily life for everyone, because math is everywhere. And even though all the numbers are between 0 and 99, being able to do basic math has almost no downsides.
From calculating how much your lunch (or your gear) will cost, to seeing if you can mentally budget your money is extremely useful. And being able to add up your shopping cart, or figure out if something is a real deal without having to break out a calculator makes life just that bit less frustrating.
Or being able to stand at the cashier, glance at your coins and how much you owe, and figure out how to make "convenient" change, getting rid of a bunch of coins and getting a nicer quarter or something back. Spending jars of coins is easy if you know how to quickly add and subtract.
Or knowing how much your shopping car is supposed to cost before tax, with tax, and able to know when the register overcharged you.
Wow, if you call UEFI new, I have to tell you, Linux 3.0 is new as well. UEFI has been around for years now. In fact, your motherboard probably runs it without you knowing - Intel has shipped UEFI only BIOSes for years with their new chips (prior to the Core Duo era). Sure, most of them run the legacy BIOS payload, but it's been around for a long time now.
Nevermind that a certain fruity company has been using it exclusively (and publicly) in their PCs for 7 odd years now. And that Linux has had support for EFI boot for ages as well - mostly because of said company's computers (it boots Grub directly).
And most BIOS manufacturers have been using it for ages as well.
Sorta, kinda accurate.
The main reason actually relates to the position of the zero. On a rotary phone, the numbers go 7-8-9-0 (phone phreaks should know that dialing 0 generates 10 pulses - just like 1-9 generate 1-9 pulses, respectively).
On an adding machine and other such hardware, the zero is actually beside the 1-2-3. As at the time the numbers were in a vertical column, you'd see them as 0-1-2-3 ... -8-9.
So when they went to the key pad, the phone engineers decided that since the 0 was besides the 9 on every phone they made, it should stay close to the 9 on the final phone layout. Hence 1-2-3 on top, 7-8-9 on the bottom, and *-0-# on the bottom. (Or on old keypads, 0 aligned with either the 8 or 9).
LIkewise, calculator engineers saw that people who used adding machines expect the 0 to be near the 1-2-3, so they designed their keypads with that in mind as adding machine users expected 0 to be near 1.
And look at your keyboard to this day - the number row reflects the telephone layout (1-2-3 ... -7-8-9-0) while the numeric keypad reflects the calculator layout. Presumably, this was because the typewriter guys saw that the telephone kept the 0 near the 9 so they kept their 0 near the 9 as well (being that more people would've seen a phone at the time than a calculator. I'm certain back in the late 19th century when keyboards weren't standardized on QWERTY and the phone was for rich folks, they probably had 0-1-2-3 just as often as 1-2-3..-9-0.
Think of it this way - the PC boots the same way today as it did 30 years ago. The BIOS reads the first sector ot the first hard drive at a specific location in low memory and jumps there. Now, in most cases, that is a standard MBR loader - it reads the partition table (also embedded in the first sector - great design, eh?), the calculates where the next sector (the first sector of the partition) should be ont he disk. It calls the BIOS to load that into another location in RAM, then jumps into it. That one hopefully loads more of itself so it can then load the OS. All this happens in 16 bit real mode.
EFI boot allows the loader to reside in a special EFI storage partition, where it can find the OS loader, and then the OS loader can directly, instead of chain loading various sectors all over the place (and often having to have a bootstrap loader be the one to fit in 512 bytes, that loads the main part of the boot loader - think the nasty hack that is grub's stage 1/2/2.5/etc loader and think how much nicer it would be if the BIOS would just read it off the disk)
In fact, practically all PCs sold have an EFI/UEFI bootloader by default - Intel has been shipping them for many years now (prior to 2006 - when Apple introduced the Intel Macs, even - probably the first experience most people have with EFI). What's been happening is that the EFI loader has been calling into the BIOS emulation layer to perform the BIOS legacy boot.
Basically, its a more advanced bootloader because really, initializing hardware is getting more complex. Think stuff like USB for example - it requires a lot of high level integration in order to work, and stuff like EFI can make it much easier to do so because it's like a mini OS. Plus getting rid of the 512 byte loader limitation.
Finally, (U)EFI is a joint collaboration between Microsoft and Intel - Intel created several technologies, including the GPT (which is required if you want a >3TB drive to be useful and not truncated to 3TB - MBR is useless at this point - and important if you're running huge RAID arrays)., while using others from Microsoft (the on-disk EFI partition is... FAT32, and the binaries it loads are PE COFF exe's).
You still can.
You see, in order to get that "Windows" logo, a PC (x86/x64) MUST have an option to disable secure boot. In which case, the UEFI will perform a "legacy boot" using the MBR/partition loaders as has been the PC architecture for 30 years now.
The only reason for signed loaders is so a user doesn't have to dive into the UEFI to switch the setting around.
And this option will be around for a while as Windows 7 can't do UEFI boot unless you're 64-bit, and a lot of companies are only beginning their Windows 7 migrations.
Which is why you do this stuff for fun on your off time, and have a regular job like everyone else to pay the bills. It's usually known as a "hobby". Some people are so dedicated to their hobbies in that they scrimp and save for years then take a whole year off or something to just pursue it.
Some people have even written great pieces of software during their off time, used by millions of people, given away for free, with little expectation or demand of payment in return.
Others have created books, artwork, music, and other cultural goods that are given away with little expectation of remuneration (usually the remuneration comes from permission to re-use said work in some context).
Hell, sometimes the compensation comes back in the form of recognition - which can pay even more dividends, especially in a crowded field where you are merely a name amongst others. Doing something high profile and "newsworthy" can elevate you above the other names and get some real payoffs, as well.
There are lots of reasons to do something. Money is one, and pretty common, but it doesn't have to be even the biggest reason why some people do things. Otherwise why do people volunteer at charities? Some people get paid a nominal amount, others give their time and effort for free to them.
The technical term for it is dancing pigs (or Dancing Rabbits).
The premise is that any security that relies on getting in the user's way of a task will be promptly bypassed. The user will always choose dancing rabbits/pigs/whatever over security every time.