And not often mentioned is the role Harper's lot played in getting the Canada on that list.... thanks to Wikileaks we can see the coordination between Harper and the US.
Industry Minister Tony Clementâ(TM)s policy director asked U.S. officials to add Canada to their Special 301 Priority Watch List. See, they have an agenda, they ask Canada to be put on the list, then they can use the presence of Canada on the list as an excuse to enact a lot of nasty IP laws they wanted to do anyway. Cute huh?
It's already started, bill C-11 for example. But there's also Canada's unwavering suppor for ACTA and the TPP...
Hell, Harper/Clement has yet to properly respond to the thing where C-11 increases fair dealing, but disallows breaking digital locks. Given very few media is sold without locks, it basically takes away everything it gives. To which neither have given any response to. Other than "It's good for Canada!"
IPV6 is great in theory, but it's solving a problem that does not exist. When the internet was started, the idea was that every workstation would be on the internet. Once security became a concern, all those workstations ended up behind firewalls. With firewalls, there is no reason to not NAT. Since only the firewalls need be internet facing, the number of IPs drops drastically. Multiple web servers and web sites can share a single IP. There are people that think that they still need an internet facing IP on every workstation, but the reasons are more personal than practical.
While mostly true, there are needs for individual IP addresses still. However, I suppose a big problem is everyone thinks IPv6 means complete end-to-end connectivity and the end of NAT.
Which is completely wrong - NAT is STILL useful even in an all-IPv6 solution, Because as you said, we've got firewalls and things will be even worse in an IPv6 world because things will assume end-to-end connectivity and fail in new and mysterious ways because of some firewall along the line. (And most of these things probably would work just fine in a NAT'ed IPv4 environment - it's just devs got lazy with IPv6).
And even worse, there's no way for either end to tell - unlike IPv4 where if your local IP is in the reserved range, you can pretty much assume NAT, with IPv6, you can get a route check and get a valid IP for the 'net (the machine will also have a link-local and maybe a reserved address as well, hence doing a route-check and figuring out which IP you will be using), and not realize that you still can't communicate.
And NAT is still useful because it isolates the internal network from the external - basically the only Internet-visible machine is the firewall/gateway, to which the ISP is free to redo their prefixing however they want. And I'm sure ISPs will be changing prefixes once they get full on IPv6 and start figuring out ways to properly segment their network and splitting nodes and such. Of course, not everything may pick up the new prefix so you'll end up with being able to ping stuff fine (because it uses link-local or private addresses) but can't access the internet due to the incorrect prefix.
Knowing home users, it's going to be a fun time on the phone helping parents fix problems like that - if only we could have NATv6 where the internal network could have their own private addresses, isolated from their ISP given prefix (which they don't care about - for 90% of home users, NAT is perfectly adequate).
Hell, NAT even has NAT-PT that allows IPv4-only hosts to communicate on IPv6 networks and vice-versa ("protocol translation"). It's available in RFC and in BSD I believe. And in a way, in Windows as well (which abuses DNS to allow an IPv4 host ot actually specify an IPv6 address transparently).
Of course, the **AAs love IPv6, since it gets rid of the "an IP address does not identify an individual" defense since an IPv6 can be traced to a specific PC, and it's possible to forensically analyze said PC to figure out which individuals are most likely to have done the crime. (Not so with NATv6 - because all traffic is routed through one IPv6 address).
Uhhh...Why have USB slots on the PCs in the first place? Its really not that hard to just epoxy some plugs into the slots in the back and pull the cable to the front ya know. Even if they did do what you say its still possible an enemy might in the future blackmail an employee into plugging a drive in, can't do that if its common knowledge there ain't no USB slots on their machines.
If it were me while I was at it I'd set a GPO blocking Windows from enabling any CDROM or floppy drives along with the USB drivers so even if somebody in some out of the way place cracked the case open and reconnected the headers it wouldn't do any good as Windows wouldn't load the drivers.
Well, if you did security right, you have an airgapped network, which means the critical network and the corporate LAN are separated.
But that brings a question - how do you update anything on the airgapped network? And yes, things do need updating now and again, including any Windows machines used to manage it. May be a software update, may be a configuration update (e.g., some new machinery was installed, or something was replaced and now the whole setup has to be reconfigured).
The easiest way is a thumb drive.
Otherwise what you have is a completely useless network that runs ancient software that has to be maintained somehow.
Airgapped networks work, but they have a serious vulnerability in that going from an insecure to secure environment (let's say you gateway it so all data brought to the isolated network must be scanned by a gateway PC - now the gateway PC needs to have latest antivirus etc. - and how do you get those onto it, since it's airgapped?).
Some people make fancy "data diodes" that are very strict firewalls - it lets the isolated network go and talk to the corporate network for updates, etc, but prevents anything from the isolated network from leaving it.
But it's a huge problem with no easy solution - Stuxnet, the USAF, they all suffered when airgapped computers got infected. (The USAF when their UAV control PCs got infected because they used a thumbdrive to move a map update across).
They're all competing twice as hard as a year ago to bringout the fastest, biggest, cheapest drive and suddenly an OCZ Vertex costs $139 instead of the $79.99 I paid on 4 builds that I used them in in the past. That's the definition of price fixing. Companies are killing each other over price and then suddenly they all stop for no apparent reason and raise their prices.
That's not price fixing, that's just market economics.
Your competitor decides they want marketshare and basically dumps product on the market at just above cost. What do you do? Do you keep the same price and watch sales plummet? Or are you now forced to discount as well in order to keep sales going and inventory low?
Now your competitor decides they'd like to make some money and bump prices up, Are you going to give away profit now that the biggest reason the price is low is gone?
Price fixing is when companies get together to say they will never sell an item below a certain price. It's very tricky to prove since you must show that the companies actually did collude.
But when prices are pulled down because of someone dumping, when they stop dumping, then prices return to their original levels because the market was temporarily distorted.
In thise case OCZ decided they wanted to make money instead of crap SSDs (seriously, 5% return rate? I suspect they had to dump 'em because no one would touch them otherwise). Everyone else saw that OCZ raised their prices and followed suit - rather than leave money on the table.
The same goes for gas prices as well - someone will discount, forcing others to discount, then decide that they're done and everyone raises prices in practical unison. (Most stations need approval from head office to lower prices, but raising prices is generally up to the station).
Would you say there was price fixing when Best Buy was forced to match Walmart's iPhone 5 sale, and when it was over, they raised the price back up again? Perhaps Best Buy and Walmart are fixing prices on the iPhone 5!
That's the reason my client didn't pay me for my October hours until mid-January. They even violated their own contractual payment terms by several days, just so they could avoid writing down the accounts payable in 2012.
If you're a contractor, you probably have some terms to that and can/should charge interest for the late payment. After all, you should be submitting invoices on something like net 30 or whatever your contract specifies (usually net 30), so October must be paid by end of November. Delaying a month and a half gives you the right to charge a month and a half of interest, plus half a month for November (also overdue).
Once the arbitrary deadline is passed, you can start doing the job hunt that you should have started in October.
You mean in November. That's after the US election and its uncertainty are over (for example, whether or not Obamacare was going to survive the next four years). The people hiring now have some idea of what the business environment is going to be like in the US.
As to end of calendar year financials, I think we don't need to look any further than taxes to find a reason there for hiring practices.I doubt many places are going to want to deal with employing someone for two weeks and dealing with all that paperwork when they can hire them a little later and get a year's worth of work for the same paperwork load.
Don't forget the fiscal cliff crap as well. Because companies were really looking closely at what would happen - would they pass something/anything and avoid massive hikes in taxes and cuts in spending? Or will they manage to hold on for a few more months of business as usual?
In other words - could companies spend money and invest in new technology and people, or should they hold onto that cash in order to weather what may happen?
In a larger sense, I don't think we need printer control in response to this, because (a) not a single one of the new regulations being proposed would have stopped any of these mass shootings, and (b) because I can't see these plastic magazines working exceptionally well.
Plus, there are plenty of existing legislations that cover the scenario. I mean, just because you can't buy a high-cap mag, doesn't mean you can't build one yourself. Any skilled gunsmith should have the tools and materials to create one at will. And they may even have the license that lets them use it.
It never really was about 3D printing - it's just another way to manufacture stuff. Ditto receivers and other tracked parts - any good gunsmith can produce their own. Who are probably licensed and all that.
And there are probably plenty of unlicensed gunsmiths working too (by unlicensed, I mean someone who isn't working under the license of someone else or a business),
In the end, all it really means is one needs to examine why US culture is so violent, and cultivates violence. Fixing that would probably fix a lot of gun violence issues as there are many other countries where people don't reach for guns at every opportunity of conflict, despite widespread availability. Or even the need to be armed in order to feel "safe" in their home. Guns are merely the symptom of a more widely spread societal disease. (Of course, now cue the guy that went havoc in China or somesuch around when Sandy Hook took place and stabbed 20+ people...).
The whole proposal covers all the amateur bands - but I think (the FCC are not my radio authority) that the mode issue is something which only affects the HF bands.
I agree that it's a great thing though - I was amazed just the other day when I suggested sending data during silent portions of a voice conversation and was told that this would be against US rules.
For HF bands, mode is a significant issue, and no, the FCC can't actually do a damned thing about it because it's all dictated by the ITU.
Remember, the HF band can reach beyond a country quite easily (after all, people do contests to see the furthest location they can reach on 5W), so it ends up being a whole multinational mess. And the ITU moves very slowly - we're talking on the order of decades to get anything passed because every country is affected.
Far easier on the VHF and UHF+ bands since the signals stay local.
I've come to believe that it's down to appearances in the end.
Take a wall street exec for example - they dress nice, they may be a bit extravagant, but are otherwise "normal" in the eyes of society. They "obey" the rules (for the most part), generally follow the norms of society, wash regularly and look presentable. Prosecutors know if you want to charge them, you really need an airtight case, otherwise they'll just pull out the charm card of how they help starving children, blah blah blah and are otherwise upstanding citizens.
Take an OWS protestor - as a whole, most are unkempt, "hippies", and while some generally are presentable, the others clad in the tie-dyes and masks/balaclavas and torn jeans, not so much. It's much easier to cast these people as "lazy bums who could work but choose not to" in the eyes of society, and thus, if you were prosecuting them, easier to find a jury who will view them in the same way. They're basically "yucky", and once cast in that light, the defense needs to prove that they are upstanding citizens.
In the tragic case of Aaron Schwartz, I think a similar thing happened - the prosecutor sees a teenaged rebel intent on causing havok in "civilized" society, and they know all they have to do is cast him as someone society really doesn't want (despite all the good he does).
And I suspect even people like RMS run into similar issues - they can preach all they want, but the unkempt hair, potential odours etc., just give everyone a negative first impression.
Or perhaps why the typical stereotype of a scammer generally is one of a street hoodlum - when in reality they tend to be very appropriately dressed for the occasion (even sharply dressed), so people are instantly disarmed.
I suppose TL;DR - people judge books by their cover, and if you're a reasonably dressed person, you can get away with quite a lot. But if you're not up to what society expects in general hygiene, attire or behavior, it's a lot easier to convince others you're a detriment despite all the good.
Hence OWS arrests, while Wall Street looks on after plundering all the money. Or the prosecutor dumping over the top charges on Aaron. They know they can get away with it because they can portray them as people society doesn't want based on looks and behavior alone. And you know juries will form their first opinions (he LOOKS guilty!) the moment they step into the courtroom.
"What the hell are you talking about? The EU/US price difference doesn't come from this. It's because none of these things are assembled or manufactured here, everything is imported."
What the hell are you talking about? It is long ago that prices are unrelated to costs but to whatever the buyer is wanting to pay.
Well, costs too.
Let's say a $2200 MacBook Pro which costs EU2200 as well (approximately US$2969, but let's say $3000).
FIrst you have anywhere from 15-20% import duties for foreign made goods ($330-440). Another 10-15% for sales tax (EU builds sales tax into price) ($220-330). And for fairness, let's say we have 8% sales tax in the US.
Right now, we're at US$2200+8% or $2376 for the one in the US. For the EU, we have $2200 base price, plus $330 for import duties, plus $220 for sales tax, so we're anywhere from $2750-2950, depending on country, local taxes, etc. And the EU one sells for $3000 all in (vs. 2376 for the US one all-in), so if you're in a low-tax country, you're getting screwed nearly 10%, but if you're in a high-tax country you're pretty much sitting pretty since the prices cover taxes.
Of course, businesses set prices in advance without knowing how the currencies fluctuate.
Now we'll add $275 for AppleCare to the EU one (because the law says we have to provide 2 years warranty), so the EU one should cost anywhere from $3025-3325 all-in, or EU2275-2500. Which is what the new ones will cost now because they include all taxes, duties, and extended warranty. We don't add it to the US price because US consumers can choose the standard 1 year warranty or buy AppleCare for 2/3 years.
Of course, the $2200 is what Apple determined as a "fair market price" as is the $275 for Applecare. But taxes and duties are set by the government.
I guess the TLDR version is - the EU isn't being horrendously gouged in the end - between built-in sales tax, duties and extended warranties. Though the question becomes - what happens when someone imports from the US?
And yes, Apple should get dinged for this, because they know the law demands 2 years, so they should've priced in AppleCare into the whole thing to begin with.
Of course, what's ridiculous is in the US, many things only come with a 90 day warranty
All Apple has to do is build in the price of AppleCare into every new purchase. That's all. Like everyone else who sells stuff in the EU - the extended warranty price is built into the price EU customers pay. Just like sales taxes and other stuff needed to comply. It just becomes another reason why US prices are "lower" than EU prices.
Though, there is a *slight* difference between AppleCare and just a bog-standard warranty - since AppleCare offers support as well (you get 90 days of phone support standard, it extends to the full AppleCare period if you buy it).
Perhaps Apple will just offer an "AppleCare lite" for the EU that extends support and all that extra stuff it gives other than a warranty.
Though, the easiest way though is to just scrap AppleCare in the EU, and say all Apple products sold in the EU come with a standard 2 year AppleCare built in and adjust the prices accordingly. Or if the law says 3 years, then the 3 year AppleCare price gets built in. Or 5 years, or whatever.
Would there be any reasonable reason otherwise? I mean, instead of trying to convince probably 10% of people to buy it, just build it in so 100% of people get it and comply with the law at the same time.
Like perhaps the holidays are over? I'm sure a bump in the number of users could be due to the holidays and snapping lots of photos of family and their holiday preparations and such.
And now, a month later, the holidays are over and the drab January days are here. Which likely means well, there's less stuff to post about?
That's like saying Apple is failing because their iPhone sales are falling in January after spiking in November-December. January is a very slow month to begin with for most businesses (especially after the holiday bills come due), and likely, is very slow because it's a drab month to begin with.
So anything a doctor uses to make a treatment decision must be FDA validated. Which also includes the EHR system because the doctor needs to know the medical history as well as any drugs or other things you're taking (your chart is part of the EHR)....
The whole point of this exercise, from Google's point of view, was to intimidate the monopolies into providing real connectivity. They don't want to be in the ISP business, but they also aren't going to sit idly by when those monopolies choke progress with high prices and poor bandwidth.
Or for Google, being able to push more ads down your throat. After all, Google owns basically the entire online ad market by owning practically all the ad companies.
Of course, Google puts them at a distance - seeing how they like to hold AdSense as the model for advertising, and trying to hide the connection that they too own the companies behind popover/popunder/rollover/noisy "rich" ads as well.
Of course, by offering their own high speed service, they can offer TV service as well, with Google ads now, rather than generic old style TV ads. This time personalized to your content - search for divorce lawyers and now the TV will show lots of ads for them as well.
Why not just have skype/similar video conferencing software and a few web cams in a different offices?
What do I get by having a webcam-on-wheels?
Perhaps the answer is that the distance person controls where they move to... so an issue of power? But I can see low-powered workers subverting that very easily ("oops, sorry, I forgot I put some boxes down, that why you can't come through here. Wait just one moment... / Oh dear we had a small oil spill / the IT techs are working under the carpets... so your robot won't be able to come into Room X123 today....)
thoughts? Ideas on the benefits of these devices? Down the line maybe if they have arms and can get involved rather than just talking. But while it's just talking then why not webcams?
Because people are social and mobile. If you were on Skype and I wanted to to prevent you from hearing something, it's a lot easier to move the conversation to another room without you knowing ("I need to step out for a moment"). With a telepresence robot, you can easily follow the other people around.
Plus, unless the entire company is virtual, getting people on Skype or such requires effort on their part, and I've seen plenty of instances where people forget to do it during a meeting, or on impromptu meetings held in a hallway etc.
So just "being there" moving around can give you a better grasp of a situation than merely forcing people to a meeting to see you on Skype, or trying to dig out information that people won't give you voluntarily through email.
You think Intel's branding doesn't matter? Fine, then show me an example of a laptop of similar thinness and specs as an Ultrabook or Macbook Air that's without the branding. (Bonus points if you can find one with an AMD processor.)
Sure, thin, light and powerful laptops don't have to use Intel's "Ultrabook" branding... but they don't have to exist, either!
Blame the PC manufacturers. When Intel came out with the Ultrabook standard, the ones that were released were quite... pitiful compared to the then standard MacBook Air (which had been around a few years prior).
Basically Intel was fed up - Apple was releasing MacBook Airs with some popularity, but NO ONE on the PC side was doing the same - they were releasing cheap ass crap netbooks and sub-$1000 laptops and PCs. Hell, very few PC manufacturers were even contemplating a PC that cost more than $1000.
A year after the Ultrabook standard, Intel made a $100M "investment" to get them to release them, as well as relax the standards significantly (it went from "Must be like a MacBook Air" to something like "generally like a MacBook (Air|Pro)" - dropping the SSD requirement, allowing 15" screens, etc).
Effectively, the race to the bottom had scared PC manufacturers away from releasing premium PCs, leaving Apple all alone at the time.
Of course, with signs that the ultrabooks aren't really moving in any significant quantities (or at least stealing a chunk of sales from Apple)...
No, it's really much simpler than that. Encourage a parent to install a free game from the app store, and then guide the child to the 'buy more gems' IAPs before the 15 minutes password window expires. The reason analytics has become so prevelant, is that its a way for game designers to mentally divorce the ethically dubious mechanics of their game, from the profit it's generating. I've actually had conversations with people about their daily graphs, which clearly show huge profits from new players within the first 10 minutes of play, followed by no profit thereafter. When I've pointed out what those graphs indicate, by and large the response was always "but the analytics says these people are all in the 30-40 year old age range, so we aren't exploiting children in the way you're suggesting". Sure there are some people who will make IAPs to get around some of the grind, but by and large, the vast majority of profit is made within that frst 10 minute window. It's a business ethic that made me quit the industry.
Except that business model died out two years ago when Apple fixed it in iOS4, requiring password entry for both purchasing (15 minute timer for that) and in-app purchases (separate 15-minute timer). Plus adding controls that basically disable in-app purchases completely, or to require the password always (no timers). So you coudln't buy an app and do an IAP without re-entering the password.
The smurfberries basically killed it. (Not that Apple didn't refund people for that, and actually won out over that because refunds cause the developer to pay 100% of the price back, including the 30% Apple took).
If people are still doing it, well, they've had to enter the password multiple times. And with the new iTunes complexity requirements...
The reason this bullshit happens is that people are saying "the app" instead of "the open protocol." If Sony says "our camera let's you view and control wi--" interrupt and finish with "--with 'CamVNCp 1.0?'" and if they say anything other than YES then yawn and start walking toward next manufacturer.
If a 'feature' does not involved a documented (and preferably legal-to-implement) protocol then it does not exist. You can save thousands of dollars per year (and more importantly avoid annoyance/heartbreak) on useless gadget purchases by choosing this policy.
Problem is, until very recently, no one really knew they wanted their smartphone to control their camera. To transfer photos maybe (through the Eye-Fi) but it wasn't a HUGE product with a lot of demand.
So of course no one standardized because everyone was experimenting.
And this whole "WiFi" control of stuff happened because of Apple - since it's impossible to do an iOS device driver, you're limited to the few remote control mechanisms allowed - Bluetooth (but Apple prevents you from installing your own profile, and the serial profile is prohibited), WiFi (easiest - it's just a TCP/IP socket), and maybe a little dongle on the bottom (more hardware and software development) or top (ditto).
Oh, it's not just that they want you to buy a 'professionally made' audiobook. You need to pay extra [or rather, must be denied the ability] for the text to be mechanically read to you [see the crap that happened on the Kindle when they added the ability to read books to you, the publishers went out of their minds because they couldn't turn it off].
That's a different issue, related to dilution of value. Basically if a cheap alternative is offered that's crappy, people may opt to go for that and live with "good enough'. Or even worse, believe that it's the only thing around. It also devalues the work as people wonder why they should pay for what they could "get for free".
We see this with ebooks - people are wanting them to be substantially cheaper as there's no warehousing, printing or distribution costs. Truth is, that's really a minor part of the cost - only about 10-15% tops (most books are printed once, shipped and sold, and the unsold copies are remaindered and recycled).
But it really discounts the other work that goes into making a book - the author's job is to deliver a manuscript - someone else has to typeset/edit/generate the ToC/Index (if necessary)/check/verify and do the covers and marketing, handling the money, etc.
You can also do exercises that require little or no equipment. Push-ups and crunches are good, as are resistance bands because they are easy to carry.
And use the resources around you, too. Like say, going for a walk during lunch. If you have a big campus, walk around the perimeter. If it's cold/wet/rainy, see if you can find a path around the building you're in. You not only get some exercise, but you get to see what other people are doing and see if you can engage them in conversation. So you're not only keeping somewhat active, but you're networking and getting familiar with other people's work.
And see if you can find a loop where you can walk out, circle through the office and come back without backtracking - if you're feeling tired it's an excellent way to wake up.
If your workplace is in a populated area, like downtown, even better. Now you can have a bunch of varied paths to walk.
If you have a tall tower nearby, use it to do stair exercises - if it's your building, even better. Use the stairs - and even if you're on the 2nd floor of a 10 storey building, there's no rule saying you can't go to the 10th, then walk back down to your floor. Use the stairs to commute between floors, too - if you need to go up, take the stairs.
And during downtime, don't sit in front of the computer surfing - get out and about, even more so.
my recollection is that it patched the Toolbox Memory Manager with a proper virtual memory system - giving OS9 shared pages, efficient swapping and some compression on the pages. It was done by the same folks who did the PC emulator and the various mags of the day saw very positive benchmark results... why does everybody here seem to regard it as snake oil?
Because it sounded too good to be true.
Thing is, the MacOS (classic) memory manager sucked. It was designed in an era where MMUs were optional and thus only allocated contiguous areas of RAM. You may have had 8MB of RAM free, but if it was fragmented, there was a chance you couldn't launch the program that needed 2MB, and things only got worse from there. (it's why there's two memory limits reported - the first was total ram, the second was largest free block).
RAM Doubler was basically a rewritten memory manager that actually used the MMU and could handle fragmented memory, it also handled pagefiles much more effectively and a bunch of other things that we take for granted.
Or think of it this way - when the PowerPC Macs first came out 20 years ago - people found out turning on swapfile was ESSENTIAL because it made the OS faster. On a 68K Mac you never turned it on because it killed performance. On a PowerMac, you did because it made the system faster.
Heck, the RAMDoubler guys (Connectix, bought by Microsoft for the VirtualPC product which actually differs on Mac and Windows - they only share a name) mentioned it wasn't for increasing a too-little RAM situation so you can run a larger app like Photoshop, but so you could run multiple apps together - Photoshop AND something else AND other stuff at the same time. As long as each could fit in your Mac's RAM alone, RAMDoubler worked wonders.
Wrong, presuming we're talking about utility patents. They also have to be useful. Something which is fundamentally incapable of achieving the specified effect is categorically not useful in the context of the claimed invention. That's why perpetual motion machines cannot be patented.
Incorrect.
There are plenty of crank patents filed that have little hope of actually working (parachute hats for jumping out of buildings, anyone?). The "utility" part is that it fulfills a need (e.g., free energy, safely escaping a building in an emergency), this is to exclude stuff like written works (the need for entertainment is not a utility), designs (there's design patents for that, which are a different beast despite sharing the word "patent"), and trademarks (which are used for marketing).
Perpetual motion machines ARE allowed to be patented, however, because the patent office received so many patents for them (everyone and their dog was filing patents on them and causing the patent office to back up), they decided to institute a rule that if you want to patent a perpetual motion machine, you must demonstrate a working prototype.
Most managers are tasked with creating stability and predictability.
Most entrepreneurs have no such commission - the goal is to make money. It's easier to take risks in that pursuit.
Or, another way is most entrepreneurs are "serial entrepreneurs" - they start a company around an idea, build it up, and sell it off. Then they start up some other company on another idea, build it up, sell it off.
This means they're basically in the growth stage of the company but rarely carry into the maintenance stage where the money isn't as easy to get and now you have to make sales and support the customers. That's when the managers take over.
So yeah, entrepreneurs are more innovative because they have to be - otherwise why would customers visit your business? A manager's job is to manage competing demands - customers, resources, support, etc., after the entrepreneur has left. And sometimes, the entrepreneurs leave nothing - they managed a build a business on some great ideas, but impractical in practice or the idea was a flash in a pan.
Actually, a third time to get the audiobook version as well...
At least the audiobook is a substantive transformation that's worth paying for.
What I do is buy the deadtree version of the book and pirate the ebook - the ebook isn't a substantive transformation of the book work, just another medium of the same. At least an audiobook had effort put into it - a voice actor having to spend hours reading it aloud and some guy to add sound effects and edit the final recording.
As for the music industry - Steve Jobs mentioned that the final thing that sold the labels to let iTunes sell music? That the marketshare of the Mac was a GOOD thing. Yes, the then sub-5% marketshare of Mac users was hailed as an advantage. Now tell me in what business does one entering a market where 5% marketshare is seen as a good thing, especially when Windows had over 90%? The only sane one is if the 5% are the ones who would buy your product, while the 90% normally wouldn't. Except well, music is universal, so going after Windows would've resulted in more sales.
So there you go - the limited marketshare of the Mac was the thing that sealed the deal - go after the 5% when that 90% would've bought it as well.
In the Android case, it's not like entropy related issues are news to linux users or hardware makers. Devices that do lots of crypto(ie. network gear designed to support a lot of VPN users, http load balancers designed to serve a lot of SSL sessions, etc.) are frequently provided with dedicated hardware RNGs precisely to prevent performance issues on entropy depletion. VIA's more recent CPUs come with an on-die hardware RNG, and you can buy assorted RNGs for various expansion busses if your applications require it.
Intel CPUs have hardware RNGs as well. As do most ARM SoCs as part of their security accelerators.
And some of these are pretty fast - a coworker of mine worked on one that generated about 20Mbits/sec of random bits in normal operation, and a special "double speed" mode that works at 40Mbits/sec (don't ask me why it's not on all the time). It takes a few seconds to start up from cold, but that just means the kernel starts it up and the by the time Android finishes booting, it's ready.
Unless you're using a lame cheap Chinese ARM SoC, there should be no reason why the kernel entropy pool runs out - the kernel can be rather wasteful and still have a large entropy pool.
And I've also learned there are apparently tests on how random an RNG is - NIST has a set of tests to analyze how random the output is and can tell you if there's a bias.
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It's already started, bill C-11 for example. But there's also Canada's unwavering suppor for ACTA and the TPP...
Hell, Harper/Clement has yet to properly respond to the thing where C-11 increases fair dealing, but disallows breaking digital locks. Given very few media is sold without locks, it basically takes away everything it gives. To which neither have given any response to. Other than "It's good for Canada!"
While mostly true, there are needs for individual IP addresses still. However, I suppose a big problem is everyone thinks IPv6 means complete end-to-end connectivity and the end of NAT.
Which is completely wrong - NAT is STILL useful even in an all-IPv6 solution, Because as you said, we've got firewalls and things will be even worse in an IPv6 world because things will assume end-to-end connectivity and fail in new and mysterious ways because of some firewall along the line. (And most of these things probably would work just fine in a NAT'ed IPv4 environment - it's just devs got lazy with IPv6).
And even worse, there's no way for either end to tell - unlike IPv4 where if your local IP is in the reserved range, you can pretty much assume NAT, with IPv6, you can get a route check and get a valid IP for the 'net (the machine will also have a link-local and maybe a reserved address as well, hence doing a route-check and figuring out which IP you will be using), and not realize that you still can't communicate.
And NAT is still useful because it isolates the internal network from the external - basically the only Internet-visible machine is the firewall/gateway, to which the ISP is free to redo their prefixing however they want. And I'm sure ISPs will be changing prefixes once they get full on IPv6 and start figuring out ways to properly segment their network and splitting nodes and such. Of course, not everything may pick up the new prefix so you'll end up with being able to ping stuff fine (because it uses link-local or private addresses) but can't access the internet due to the incorrect prefix.
Knowing home users, it's going to be a fun time on the phone helping parents fix problems like that - if only we could have NATv6 where the internal network could have their own private addresses, isolated from their ISP given prefix (which they don't care about - for 90% of home users, NAT is perfectly adequate).
Hell, NAT even has NAT-PT that allows IPv4-only hosts to communicate on IPv6 networks and vice-versa ("protocol translation"). It's available in RFC and in BSD I believe. And in a way, in Windows as well (which abuses DNS to allow an IPv4 host ot actually specify an IPv6 address transparently).
Of course, the **AAs love IPv6, since it gets rid of the "an IP address does not identify an individual" defense since an IPv6 can be traced to a specific PC, and it's possible to forensically analyze said PC to figure out which individuals are most likely to have done the crime. (Not so with NATv6 - because all traffic is routed through one IPv6 address).
Well, if you did security right, you have an airgapped network, which means the critical network and the corporate LAN are separated.
But that brings a question - how do you update anything on the airgapped network? And yes, things do need updating now and again, including any Windows machines used to manage it. May be a software update, may be a configuration update (e.g., some new machinery was installed, or something was replaced and now the whole setup has to be reconfigured).
The easiest way is a thumb drive.
Otherwise what you have is a completely useless network that runs ancient software that has to be maintained somehow.
Airgapped networks work, but they have a serious vulnerability in that going from an insecure to secure environment (let's say you gateway it so all data brought to the isolated network must be scanned by a gateway PC - now the gateway PC needs to have latest antivirus etc. - and how do you get those onto it, since it's airgapped?).
Some people make fancy "data diodes" that are very strict firewalls - it lets the isolated network go and talk to the corporate network for updates, etc, but prevents anything from the isolated network from leaving it.
But it's a huge problem with no easy solution - Stuxnet, the USAF, they all suffered when airgapped computers got infected. (The USAF when their UAV control PCs got infected because they used a thumbdrive to move a map update across).
That's not price fixing, that's just market economics.
Your competitor decides they want marketshare and basically dumps product on the market at just above cost. What do you do? Do you keep the same price and watch sales plummet? Or are you now forced to discount as well in order to keep sales going and inventory low?
Now your competitor decides they'd like to make some money and bump prices up, Are you going to give away profit now that the biggest reason the price is low is gone?
Price fixing is when companies get together to say they will never sell an item below a certain price. It's very tricky to prove since you must show that the companies actually did collude.
But when prices are pulled down because of someone dumping, when they stop dumping, then prices return to their original levels because the market was temporarily distorted.
In thise case OCZ decided they wanted to make money instead of crap SSDs (seriously, 5% return rate? I suspect they had to dump 'em because no one would touch them otherwise). Everyone else saw that OCZ raised their prices and followed suit - rather than leave money on the table.
The same goes for gas prices as well - someone will discount, forcing others to discount, then decide that they're done and everyone raises prices in practical unison. (Most stations need approval from head office to lower prices, but raising prices is generally up to the station).
Would you say there was price fixing when Best Buy was forced to match Walmart's iPhone 5 sale, and when it was over, they raised the price back up again? Perhaps Best Buy and Walmart are fixing prices on the iPhone 5!
If you're a contractor, you probably have some terms to that and can/should charge interest for the late payment. After all, you should be submitting invoices on something like net 30 or whatever your contract specifies (usually net 30), so October must be paid by end of November. Delaying a month and a half gives you the right to charge a month and a half of interest, plus half a month for November (also overdue).
Might want to investigate it.
Don't forget the fiscal cliff crap as well. Because companies were really looking closely at what would happen - would they pass something/anything and avoid massive hikes in taxes and cuts in spending? Or will they manage to hold on for a few more months of business as usual?
In other words - could companies spend money and invest in new technology and people, or should they hold onto that cash in order to weather what may happen?
Business hates uncertainty.
Plus, there are plenty of existing legislations that cover the scenario. I mean, just because you can't buy a high-cap mag, doesn't mean you can't build one yourself. Any skilled gunsmith should have the tools and materials to create one at will. And they may even have the license that lets them use it.
It never really was about 3D printing - it's just another way to manufacture stuff. Ditto receivers and other tracked parts - any good gunsmith can produce their own. Who are probably licensed and all that.
And there are probably plenty of unlicensed gunsmiths working too (by unlicensed, I mean someone who isn't working under the license of someone else or a business),
In the end, all it really means is one needs to examine why US culture is so violent, and cultivates violence. Fixing that would probably fix a lot of gun violence issues as there are many other countries where people don't reach for guns at every opportunity of conflict, despite widespread availability. Or even the need to be armed in order to feel "safe" in their home. Guns are merely the symptom of a more widely spread societal disease. (Of course, now cue the guy that went havoc in China or somesuch around when Sandy Hook took place and stabbed 20+ people...).
For HF bands, mode is a significant issue, and no, the FCC can't actually do a damned thing about it because it's all dictated by the ITU.
Remember, the HF band can reach beyond a country quite easily (after all, people do contests to see the furthest location they can reach on 5W), so it ends up being a whole multinational mess. And the ITU moves very slowly - we're talking on the order of decades to get anything passed because every country is affected.
Far easier on the VHF and UHF+ bands since the signals stay local.
I've come to believe that it's down to appearances in the end.
Take a wall street exec for example - they dress nice, they may be a bit extravagant, but are otherwise "normal" in the eyes of society. They "obey" the rules (for the most part), generally follow the norms of society, wash regularly and look presentable. Prosecutors know if you want to charge them, you really need an airtight case, otherwise they'll just pull out the charm card of how they help starving children, blah blah blah and are otherwise upstanding citizens.
Take an OWS protestor - as a whole, most are unkempt, "hippies", and while some generally are presentable, the others clad in the tie-dyes and masks/balaclavas and torn jeans, not so much. It's much easier to cast these people as "lazy bums who could work but choose not to" in the eyes of society, and thus, if you were prosecuting them, easier to find a jury who will view them in the same way. They're basically "yucky", and once cast in that light, the defense needs to prove that they are upstanding citizens.
In the tragic case of Aaron Schwartz, I think a similar thing happened - the prosecutor sees a teenaged rebel intent on causing havok in "civilized" society, and they know all they have to do is cast him as someone society really doesn't want (despite all the good he does).
And I suspect even people like RMS run into similar issues - they can preach all they want, but the unkempt hair, potential odours etc., just give everyone a negative first impression.
Or perhaps why the typical stereotype of a scammer generally is one of a street hoodlum - when in reality they tend to be very appropriately dressed for the occasion (even sharply dressed), so people are instantly disarmed.
I suppose TL;DR - people judge books by their cover, and if you're a reasonably dressed person, you can get away with quite a lot. But if you're not up to what society expects in general hygiene, attire or behavior, it's a lot easier to convince others you're a detriment despite all the good.
Hence OWS arrests, while Wall Street looks on after plundering all the money. Or the prosecutor dumping over the top charges on Aaron. They know they can get away with it because they can portray them as people society doesn't want based on looks and behavior alone. And you know juries will form their first opinions (he LOOKS guilty!) the moment they step into the courtroom.
Well, costs too.
Let's say a $2200 MacBook Pro which costs EU2200 as well (approximately US$2969, but let's say $3000).
FIrst you have anywhere from 15-20% import duties for foreign made goods ($330-440). Another 10-15% for sales tax (EU builds sales tax into price) ($220-330). And for fairness, let's say we have 8% sales tax in the US.
Right now, we're at US$2200+8% or $2376 for the one in the US. For the EU, we have $2200 base price, plus $330 for import duties, plus $220 for sales tax, so we're anywhere from $2750-2950, depending on country, local taxes, etc. And the EU one sells for $3000 all in (vs. 2376 for the US one all-in), so if you're in a low-tax country, you're getting screwed nearly 10%, but if you're in a high-tax country you're pretty much sitting pretty since the prices cover taxes.
Of course, businesses set prices in advance without knowing how the currencies fluctuate.
Now we'll add $275 for AppleCare to the EU one (because the law says we have to provide 2 years warranty), so the EU one should cost anywhere from $3025-3325 all-in, or EU2275-2500. Which is what the new ones will cost now because they include all taxes, duties, and extended warranty. We don't add it to the US price because US consumers can choose the standard 1 year warranty or buy AppleCare for 2/3 years.
Of course, the $2200 is what Apple determined as a "fair market price" as is the $275 for Applecare. But taxes and duties are set by the government.
I guess the TLDR version is - the EU isn't being horrendously gouged in the end - between built-in sales tax, duties and extended warranties. Though the question becomes - what happens when someone imports from the US?
And yes, Apple should get dinged for this, because they know the law demands 2 years, so they should've priced in AppleCare into the whole thing to begin with.
Of course, what's ridiculous is in the US, many things only come with a 90 day warranty
All Apple has to do is build in the price of AppleCare into every new purchase. That's all. Like everyone else who sells stuff in the EU - the extended warranty price is built into the price EU customers pay. Just like sales taxes and other stuff needed to comply. It just becomes another reason why US prices are "lower" than EU prices.
Though, there is a *slight* difference between AppleCare and just a bog-standard warranty - since AppleCare offers support as well (you get 90 days of phone support standard, it extends to the full AppleCare period if you buy it).
Perhaps Apple will just offer an "AppleCare lite" for the EU that extends support and all that extra stuff it gives other than a warranty.
Though, the easiest way though is to just scrap AppleCare in the EU, and say all Apple products sold in the EU come with a standard 2 year AppleCare built in and adjust the prices accordingly. Or if the law says 3 years, then the 3 year AppleCare price gets built in. Or 5 years, or whatever.
Would there be any reasonable reason otherwise? I mean, instead of trying to convince probably 10% of people to buy it, just build it in so 100% of people get it and comply with the law at the same time.
Like perhaps the holidays are over? I'm sure a bump in the number of users could be due to the holidays and snapping lots of photos of family and their holiday preparations and such.
And now, a month later, the holidays are over and the drab January days are here. Which likely means well, there's less stuff to post about?
That's like saying Apple is failing because their iPhone sales are falling in January after spiking in November-December. January is a very slow month to begin with for most businesses (especially after the holiday bills come due), and likely, is very slow because it's a drab month to begin with.
So anything a doctor uses to make a treatment decision must be FDA validated. Which also includes the EHR system because the doctor needs to know the medical history as well as any drugs or other things you're taking (your chart is part of the EHR)....
Or for Google, being able to push more ads down your throat. After all, Google owns basically the entire online ad market by owning practically all the ad companies.
Of course, Google puts them at a distance - seeing how they like to hold AdSense as the model for advertising, and trying to hide the connection that they too own the companies behind popover/popunder/rollover/noisy "rich" ads as well.
Of course, by offering their own high speed service, they can offer TV service as well, with Google ads now, rather than generic old style TV ads. This time personalized to your content - search for divorce lawyers and now the TV will show lots of ads for them as well.
Because people are social and mobile. If you were on Skype and I wanted to to prevent you from hearing something, it's a lot easier to move the conversation to another room without you knowing ("I need to step out for a moment"). With a telepresence robot, you can easily follow the other people around.
Plus, unless the entire company is virtual, getting people on Skype or such requires effort on their part, and I've seen plenty of instances where people forget to do it during a meeting, or on impromptu meetings held in a hallway etc.
So just "being there" moving around can give you a better grasp of a situation than merely forcing people to a meeting to see you on Skype, or trying to dig out information that people won't give you voluntarily through email.
Blame the PC manufacturers. When Intel came out with the Ultrabook standard, the ones that were released were quite... pitiful compared to the then standard MacBook Air (which had been around a few years prior).
Basically Intel was fed up - Apple was releasing MacBook Airs with some popularity, but NO ONE on the PC side was doing the same - they were releasing cheap ass crap netbooks and sub-$1000 laptops and PCs. Hell, very few PC manufacturers were even contemplating a PC that cost more than $1000.
A year after the Ultrabook standard, Intel made a $100M "investment" to get them to release them, as well as relax the standards significantly (it went from "Must be like a MacBook Air" to something like "generally like a MacBook (Air|Pro)" - dropping the SSD requirement, allowing 15" screens, etc).
Effectively, the race to the bottom had scared PC manufacturers away from releasing premium PCs, leaving Apple all alone at the time.
Of course, with signs that the ultrabooks aren't really moving in any significant quantities (or at least stealing a chunk of sales from Apple)...
Except that business model died out two years ago when Apple fixed it in iOS4, requiring password entry for both purchasing (15 minute timer for that) and in-app purchases (separate 15-minute timer). Plus adding controls that basically disable in-app purchases completely, or to require the password always (no timers). So you coudln't buy an app and do an IAP without re-entering the password.
The smurfberries basically killed it. (Not that Apple didn't refund people for that, and actually won out over that because refunds cause the developer to pay 100% of the price back, including the 30% Apple took).
If people are still doing it, well, they've had to enter the password multiple times. And with the new iTunes complexity requirements...
Problem is, until very recently, no one really knew they wanted their smartphone to control their camera. To transfer photos maybe (through the Eye-Fi) but it wasn't a HUGE product with a lot of demand.
So of course no one standardized because everyone was experimenting.
And this whole "WiFi" control of stuff happened because of Apple - since it's impossible to do an iOS device driver, you're limited to the few remote control mechanisms allowed - Bluetooth (but Apple prevents you from installing your own profile, and the serial profile is prohibited), WiFi (easiest - it's just a TCP/IP socket), and maybe a little dongle on the bottom (more hardware and software development) or top (ditto).
That's a different issue, related to dilution of value. Basically if a cheap alternative is offered that's crappy, people may opt to go for that and live with "good enough'. Or even worse, believe that it's the only thing around. It also devalues the work as people wonder why they should pay for what they could "get for free".
We see this with ebooks - people are wanting them to be substantially cheaper as there's no warehousing, printing or distribution costs. Truth is, that's really a minor part of the cost - only about 10-15% tops (most books are printed once, shipped and sold, and the unsold copies are remaindered and recycled).
But it really discounts the other work that goes into making a book - the author's job is to deliver a manuscript - someone else has to typeset/edit/generate the ToC/Index (if necessary)/check/verify and do the covers and marketing, handling the money, etc.
And use the resources around you, too. Like say, going for a walk during lunch. If you have a big campus, walk around the perimeter. If it's cold/wet/rainy, see if you can find a path around the building you're in. You not only get some exercise, but you get to see what other people are doing and see if you can engage them in conversation. So you're not only keeping somewhat active, but you're networking and getting familiar with other people's work.
And see if you can find a loop where you can walk out, circle through the office and come back without backtracking - if you're feeling tired it's an excellent way to wake up.
If your workplace is in a populated area, like downtown, even better. Now you can have a bunch of varied paths to walk.
If you have a tall tower nearby, use it to do stair exercises - if it's your building, even better. Use the stairs - and even if you're on the 2nd floor of a 10 storey building, there's no rule saying you can't go to the 10th, then walk back down to your floor. Use the stairs to commute between floors, too - if you need to go up, take the stairs.
And during downtime, don't sit in front of the computer surfing - get out and about, even more so.
Because it sounded too good to be true.
Thing is, the MacOS (classic) memory manager sucked. It was designed in an era where MMUs were optional and thus only allocated contiguous areas of RAM. You may have had 8MB of RAM free, but if it was fragmented, there was a chance you couldn't launch the program that needed 2MB, and things only got worse from there. (it's why there's two memory limits reported - the first was total ram, the second was largest free block).
RAM Doubler was basically a rewritten memory manager that actually used the MMU and could handle fragmented memory, it also handled pagefiles much more effectively and a bunch of other things that we take for granted.
Or think of it this way - when the PowerPC Macs first came out 20 years ago - people found out turning on swapfile was ESSENTIAL because it made the OS faster. On a 68K Mac you never turned it on because it killed performance. On a PowerMac, you did because it made the system faster.
Heck, the RAMDoubler guys (Connectix, bought by Microsoft for the VirtualPC product which actually differs on Mac and Windows - they only share a name) mentioned it wasn't for increasing a too-little RAM situation so you can run a larger app like Photoshop, but so you could run multiple apps together - Photoshop AND something else AND other stuff at the same time. As long as each could fit in your Mac's RAM alone, RAMDoubler worked wonders.
Incorrect.
There are plenty of crank patents filed that have little hope of actually working (parachute hats for jumping out of buildings, anyone?). The "utility" part is that it fulfills a need (e.g., free energy, safely escaping a building in an emergency), this is to exclude stuff like written works (the need for entertainment is not a utility), designs (there's design patents for that, which are a different beast despite sharing the word "patent"), and trademarks (which are used for marketing).
Perpetual motion machines ARE allowed to be patented, however, because the patent office received so many patents for them (everyone and their dog was filing patents on them and causing the patent office to back up), they decided to institute a rule that if you want to patent a perpetual motion machine, you must demonstrate a working prototype.
Or, another way is most entrepreneurs are "serial entrepreneurs" - they start a company around an idea, build it up, and sell it off. Then they start up some other company on another idea, build it up, sell it off.
This means they're basically in the growth stage of the company but rarely carry into the maintenance stage where the money isn't as easy to get and now you have to make sales and support the customers. That's when the managers take over.
So yeah, entrepreneurs are more innovative because they have to be - otherwise why would customers visit your business? A manager's job is to manage competing demands - customers, resources, support, etc., after the entrepreneur has left. And sometimes, the entrepreneurs leave nothing - they managed a build a business on some great ideas, but impractical in practice or the idea was a flash in a pan.
At least the audiobook is a substantive transformation that's worth paying for.
What I do is buy the deadtree version of the book and pirate the ebook - the ebook isn't a substantive transformation of the book work, just another medium of the same. At least an audiobook had effort put into it - a voice actor having to spend hours reading it aloud and some guy to add sound effects and edit the final recording.
As for the music industry - Steve Jobs mentioned that the final thing that sold the labels to let iTunes sell music? That the marketshare of the Mac was a GOOD thing. Yes, the then sub-5% marketshare of Mac users was hailed as an advantage. Now tell me in what business does one entering a market where 5% marketshare is seen as a good thing, especially when Windows had over 90%? The only sane one is if the 5% are the ones who would buy your product, while the 90% normally wouldn't. Except well, music is universal, so going after Windows would've resulted in more sales.
So there you go - the limited marketshare of the Mac was the thing that sealed the deal - go after the 5% when that 90% would've bought it as well.
Intel CPUs have hardware RNGs as well. As do most ARM SoCs as part of their security accelerators.
And some of these are pretty fast - a coworker of mine worked on one that generated about 20Mbits/sec of random bits in normal operation, and a special "double speed" mode that works at 40Mbits/sec (don't ask me why it's not on all the time). It takes a few seconds to start up from cold, but that just means the kernel starts it up and the by the time Android finishes booting, it's ready.
Unless you're using a lame cheap Chinese ARM SoC, there should be no reason why the kernel entropy pool runs out - the kernel can be rather wasteful and still have a large entropy pool.
And I've also learned there are apparently tests on how random an RNG is - NIST has a set of tests to analyze how random the output is and can tell you if there's a bias.