By "serious", I mean the compiler itself doesn't crash, issues no warnings or errors, but generates incorrect code. Maybe I've just been lucky. (Or maybe QA just never found them;-)
I saw this once - took me weeks to solve it. Basically I had a flash driver that would occasionally erase the boot block (bad!). It was odd because we had protected the boot block both in the higher level OS as well as the code itself.
Well, it happened and I ended up tracing through the assembly code - it turned out the optimizer worked a bit TOO well - it completely optimized out a macro call used to translate between parameters (the function to erase the block required a sector number. The OS called with the block number, so a simple multiplication was needed to convert). End result, the checks worked fine, but because the multiplication never happened, it erased the wrong block. (The erase code erased the block a sector belonged to - so sectors 0, 1,... NUM_SECTORS_PER_BLOCK-1 erased the first block).
A little #pragma to disable optimizations on that one function and the bug was fixed.
First, Samsung would be doing to Apple what Samsung accused Apple of doing. Remember the reason that Samsung got to see the HTC-Apple contract? Samsung said that they believe that some of the patents in that contract are the same ones Apple sued Samsung for and is asking for an injunction for. Now if Apple is willing to license the patents out (say to HTC), injunctions should NOT be an option. Oh, the patents Samsung is suing Apple for that they just dropped? Patents that Samsung is willing to license to others (because they're FRAND). Oops.
Second - they're FRAND patents. Microsoft and Apple have managed to bring up interesting points about FRAND patents that has the EU (and many other governments, including South Korea) that they believe what Samsung is doing is abusive of the whole FRAND thing, and the EU has made very loud noises about investigating abuses of the FRAND system. Well, Samsung is doing just that, too. (And Microsoft is doing the same to Motorola).
What the EU could do is strip Samsung of the ability to use those patents for any purpose and force an agreement (which if they deem Samsung to be abusive, could go Apple's way and end up being declared "free" or extremely cheap).
Dropping the lawsuit was the more intelligent choice Samsung has done because it wouldn't have been good to Samsung at all - first you argue against your own case, followed by potential of the EU doing some investigations.
It wasn't about "honor" or "costs" or whatever. It's that Samsung's case had very shaky legs - if Samsung could get an injunction over FRAND patents, Apple could turn around and say they illegally saw the HTC contract and should pay (even more) damages because their argument was null and void. Or the EU would do some investigations and end up declaring FRAND patent rates to be decided by the EU, not the company that owns them. Continuing the lawsuit was really not in Samsung's interest.
At $.90 per GB, SSDs are still about 15 times more expensive than the same amount of hard disk space. Forget about trying to put your 2 TB of data on SSDs. I like the trend of reduced prices for SSDs. They are finally affordable enough to put my most active data on (e.g. boot files, applications), but if you think they will be a viable complete substitute for hard drives anytime soon, think again.
SSDs are an excellent example of Moore's Law in action - because doubling the transistors at a basic level doubles the storage.
Thing is, everything else doesn't have to follow Moore's Law - spinning rust has been growing faster than Moore's Law for a little while now. And in some formfactors, spinning rust has made an exit because it's not possible to cram all that mechanical stuff in there (see the 1.8" formfactor - exclusively SSD these days because the largest spinning rust is 160GB - while you can get 256GB SSDs for cheaper!).
But where space isn't a problem (2.5" and 3.5" drives), the SSD will always be more expensive unless someone comes up with a way of storing data more densely with the same access times.
However, SSDs are big and cheap enough to be the only hard drive in many computers these days. And given the pervasiveness of networking, having a few TB of spinning rust attached and accessible via one's "personal in-home cloud" will serve to handle most people's bulk storage needs.
Of course, there will be industries where the files are so large and sequentially accessed that an SSD benefits are basically nil - like movie editing, where they can stream through TB of data, sequentially accessed.
After all, SSDs excel at random I/O, but spinning rust excels at sequential continuous access - if all you're doing is accessing data in megabyte or larger chunks, the slowness of moving the head around is hidden by the sheer speed of pulling the data off the media.
re: "the technology field as we know it would be completely different" .
Yes and no. There would be a different balance of powers. But I'm willing to bet that there would have been some other one or two or three person company that would instead have become the leader in supplying personal computers. And that other company would also probably have had a mix of creative talent and marketing/sales talent. . The converse of your specific example is also true. If Jobs hadn't teamed with Wozniak, perhaps Jobs might not have gotten as far in his life either. Or perhaps he would have found another partner to work with. Perhaps even Woz might have talked to someone else at HP who could have seen his talents and his electronic creations and a different company might have arisen near Sand Hill Drive.
Well, one of Woz's claim to fame was the computer that had a local console and display. He built a terminal that cleverly used timing tricks to generate an ordinary NTSC signal so you could use a keyboard and a regular TV. The Apple I was then built to interface to this terminal. Add to that the necessary ROMs so you could interact instantly with the processor. Prior to this, the traditional form of computer interaction was to boot it using switches and punched tape to load the program into memory, then kick the processor into action. All Woz did was add a ROM chip and got the processor into a mode where you could type the code into memory - so what used to take an hour took 10 minutes.
And the Apple II continued the tradition - and ever since the Apple I, personal computers became even friendlier with built in displays and keyboards.
And yes, things will be different. Remember around this time Bill Gates - who was used to loading his BASIC interpreter into MIPS Altair via punched tape.
Of course, if computers remained hard to use, perhaps IBM wouldn't have entered the PC market, which means Microsoft wouldn't have been created and Gates would still be selling BASIC around.
It would be much different, since so many things got spawned off the early Apple I. (Jobs getting that first 100-unit order from the computer shop took a lot of skillful negotiation between suppliers who didn't believe Jobs+Woz had money (they didn't - Jobs would pick up the finished computers (then just a PCB at the time - you supplied the keyboard, power supply and TV) and drive them to the store to pick up the money which he they used to pay the suppliers). And the computer store only bought them because they were the closest to a "finished computer" almost anyone could own (putting it all in a case so the user could just take it out of the box, plug it in and connect to their TV - another Woz innovation)
if its such a wast of time and money then why are you going to wast more time and money fighting it,
It's a waste of *taxpayer* money. For facebook, though, it isn't a waste because it means their ads are worth less because of the German law, so spending money to ensure that they have high-quality data to sell advertisers is worth it. Remember, it's good for their customers if everyone can lead to a real person.
Of course, how long until Google's G+ falls under the same restrictions? After all, G+ linking your name is getting more insidious across Google sites now, like say, replying to a YouTube comment now uses your real name.
I think Woz did more for Apple than Jobs. Yes, Jobs could code and such but he generally was better at making things pretty and usable in terms of vision...Woz did the heavy lifting.
Depends what you value more - being able to see raw talent and nurture it (Jobs) or having talent (Woz).
Woz is a great engineer. However, he wasn't very social and more than likely, had it not been for Jobs, he would've been working away at HP's calculator division through and through. Woz loved HP and didn't consider leaving (in fact, it was the hardest single decision he made to resign from HP).
Jobs could talk the walk - he was the one who could talk to customers and suppliers and get orders in for the Apple I. Heck, he was the one who got Woz the DRAMs necessary for the Apple I (even sweet-talking Intel into sampling some). Woz at the time was incredibly shy - he wouldn't dare pick up the phone, call a component supplier and ask for parts he couldn't afford to buy. Jobs could.
Jobs and Woz like the yin and yang - complete opposites, yet completely complementary. What Woz lacked, Jobs had. What Jobs lacked, Woz had.
Engineers favor Woz naturally because he was the technical guy behind it all - without Woz, Apple wouldn't have existed. On the flip side, it was Jobs who managed to make it a business - Woz was happy to sell circuit boards and everything to hobbyists, while Jobs was the one who wanted to sell complete assemblies to everyone. Without Jobs' social talent, Woz would have continued designing calculators for HP, the Apple I board being just a mere curiosity and probably just a footnote in the history of computers. Had the two not get together it's likely the technology field as we know it would be completely different. The only thing I can't tell you is if we would be better or worse off, though. Woz and Jobs would've just been regular no-names in the field, though
Just a note, for the reference of anybody reading this: The WRT-54/GL is very similar to the wildly popular classic WRT-54G that put the 'WRT' in 'OpenWRT' and 'DD-WRT'. However, the WRT-54G(non L) has gone through something like 5 revisions, and the later ones are more or less entirely different animals in the same box. Less flash, less RAM, vxworks(yeah, like hell it works) based firmware, poor compatibility with anything but the most stripped down 3rd-party firmwares. In fact, the 'L' model was actually a re-release of the older revision designed to cater to the enthusiasts who had been alienated by the later revisions of the 54G.
You need to know your OSes really.
VxWorks is a great OS - as long as what you're doing requires hard real time tasks. It comes with a relatively flimsy network stack otherwise (and there are MANY third party companies that do nothing but sell you a TCP/IP stack for such RTOSes).
The reason the "L" and original WRT-54G were great? Because they ran an OS with a decent network stack - Linux. This was basically a first at the time (and yes, Linksys shipped them without supplying source code initially).
And yes, the added hardware cost for Linux (flash/RAM) probably cost more than a VxWorks license.
These days, a lot of routers tend to run Linux, purely because the drivers for the new hardware are practically Linux first and the sweet spot for memory has tended to allow even the larger 2.6 kernels to fit just fine (a lot of high end ones have a whopping 128MB of RAM and 128MB of flash).
Yes, but do you notice how the Chinese companies didn't start producing their own bladeless fans until AFTER Dyson had popularized it and sold a physical product? Yes, it's not a cut and dry case with companies as concerns lookalike products. But clearly Chinese firms are amongst the most unapologetic and blatant copycats on the world market. They wait for other companies to do the R&D, then leech off the public demand for said products while hiding behind the shield of poor/non-existent IP laws in China.
There's a big reason they're suing them in Germany and not China: They know it would be useless to attempt it in Chinese courts. It's the same reason the RIAA/MPAA don't bother prosecuting all the blatant infringement that goes on in China.
The Chinese can be compared to the ultimate Republicans. Basically all laws are good as long as it benefits them (as in, makes them $$$ and lots of it). A law is bad if it impedes this in any way.
Naturally, this brings up multiple problems - such as exploitation of workers (many Chinese business people have commented how hard it is to do business in North America - all the worker protection laws and such - if you're not a "management elite" you're a nobody who should be happy they could work to feed their family), to opposing sides of the same coin (e.g., patents - after all, one uses it to make $$$ the other unfairly feels the other is taking $$$ away from them), etc.
Basically, as long as they're making $$$, those laws are good. But use those same laws against them so they can't make $$$, and they squeal about being robbed.
Yes, even the same law that benefits them that now "kills them" - basically the interpretation is that it should always be in THEIR FAVOR.
Forget this tea party nonsense - learn from the Chinese - they have the conservative principles down pat. Perhaps that's why Romney lost - too much whites, not enough Chinese.
I consider someone *else* running as root a security hole. As long as you need physical access, this is a feature. A phone that will not let you install what you want is broken.
So how do you know what you're installing WON'T take advantage of this and break through the Android permissions model? (Permissions system doesn't apply if you have root, after all).
Several Android malware apps have attempted to root the user's phone before, so it's possible that some app you download may try the same. And all they'd need is enough permissions to access that device - probably innocent ones.
In other words - it's a great way to get root on your phone, if you want it. Or a security exploit if an app also roots your phone to download and install some malware. Or install a rootkit, since it allows access to kernel memory(!).
We have financial disclosure laws and public-release laws because of situations like this...
The problem is that, as usual, the law hasn't kept up with changes in technology and how people communicate. It's possible to view anything posted on Twitter (to the best of my knowledge) without logging in to view it. That would make it, by definition, "public". Anyone can access it. This differs from Facebook where an account is required to view it.
Thus, Twitter at least would seemingly meet the requirements for public disclosure; The information is available equally to everyone, and at the same time. And yet, here we are. The fact is, social media websites are where people are, and if you want to talk to them, you have to go there. The SEC however hasn't caught up with that, and still believes in pomp and circumstance like quarterly meetings and reports -- information exchange at the speed of molasses in an age where milliseconds matter.
Well, the law doesn't say you couldn't post it on a million websites simultaneously.
FIrst off - there are MANY public disclosure companies out there. When a company wants to make a public release, they issue it to these companies who then cross-post it to all the public news services at the same time.
Second - to avoid timing issues, such releases are normally done AFTER trading hours so that everyone has the information by the time the exchange opens the next day.
Social media is the same - and there's nothing saying you can't cross post something to twitter, your PR block, your facebook page and all that simultaneously. In fact, cross posting your press release to multiple places seems to keep the SEC at bay.
You can keep your own systems safe, and even use one-off CC#'s for online purchases, but you can't verify that retailers' POS equipment is clean (you'll probably be tossed out of the store just for asking). When in public use cash. Lets just hope you can trust the ATM's that you use.
So... the big problem is that someone will capture your credit card number?
I don't know, but I don't think that's exactly a good hack - after all, you're legally protected if someone uses your credit card without your authorization. Either you spot a strange transaction and call your bank (and they reverse it and send you a new number), or you get a call about some flagged transaction. Either way, you're not out any money at all.
And these days, most places take the chip, so the POS terminal can't even get at the number (it's usually even a separate pad with minimal communications so even if the terminal is hacked, it can't get at the actual number).
Of course, given how everyone argues about how crappy credit cards are... I guess enjoy it until you're forced to use debit cards only that don't necessarily have those protections...
Nope, it quite clearly says overall album sales are down 3.6%.
That does not equate to growth. In any way shape or form. They may be selling 4% more "units" - but the average value of those units is down significantly.
Yeah, because people stop buying full 12-tracks bundles of music, preferring to go after the ONE song they want.
So instead of spending $15 for a CD or digital download of an album ($10), they're spending $0.99 to get the one song they want, and ignoring the 11 other pieces of crap they don't want. The album isn't dead - there's a lot of genres of music where the album is the preferred form (e.g., soundtrack scores), but for popular music, most people just want the song they heard on the radio. Perhaps they may want others, but they'll buy the one song they want rather than pay $9 or $14 more for a collection on them to get the one song they want. (And many people have complained of just this - having to buy a whole CD just for one song. And singles at $5?)
Obviously, the solution is to raise single track prices. Yeah, that'll fix it.
And yes, even the most reluctant of bands eventually caved into single track sales - deciding that the "integrity of the album" was costing them sales and better to sell the song the listener wants at 99 cents than have their $15 album downloaded for free just to get the one song.
You realize that Google has been making it harder to do so, right?
First off, the "install" button is now at the top of the screen. A nice bright blue button on a sea of dark text of the permissions. Where does the user tap? On the button immediately.
The permission list only shows a few of them, then another "More permissions" link to see additional ones.
Plus, you're also competing against dancing pigs. User wants Delta app to do stuff like check in for their flight without lining up, etc. You'll have to be pretty damn convincing to get someone forgo 5 minutes to download and run the app versus lining up 20 minutes at the airport to check in.
Ultimately, technology is going to make us more egalitarian. There might be a few rich people in charge of the robots that provide us with cheap goods, but you know what will get to the average Joe... that they cannot complete with the average Joe's anymore.
Alas, I don't think this is the case - technology can go both ways, and so far, it's shifting away from egalitarianism and being explotied by those in power to gain more money and power.
Think about what technology has given us, then think about how it's been misused such that we're in the state we're in. Stuff like HFT (which while serving a purpose on the market by offering liquidity, is also a great way to completely screw up the financial system - see flash crashes), the Internet (supposedly the bastion of free speech, is now used to oppress and divide - like joins like and people generally gravitate towards others who share their views), and all sorts of other stuff.
Technology is neutral - it can be used for good purposes and bad, and so far it seems that the bad is taking over faster than the good. I believe someone once mocked "To err is human. To royally f**k up requires a computer".
Also. unions, while typically considered blue collar work, are increasingly appearing in white collar jobs - there are plenty of people who belong to office worker unions doing the regular clerical duties around the office (filing, finding documents, keeping the place orderly, odering supplies, organizing, cleaning, etc.). Automation is correctly removing low skill repetive boring jobs that humans don't want to do - jobs that increasingly go to immigrants because no American wants to clean toilets all day, for example.
Our country makes it too easy for nutcases to have guns. I, for one, would give up the right to bear arms for everyone, and not miss it.
I wouldn't say that. I'd rather say Americans have a very strong gun culture, perhaps a gun fetish. It's just very unusual - plenty of other places have easy access to guns but don't come to blows as quickly. It seems like that's the first thing that's brought out the moment there's a disagreement.
It's basically seen that the gun is a solution, often the first and only, versus trying to work it out in a more civilized way. It's probably because Americans tend to be less community-oriented and more individualistic - you don't deserve to live if you can't live by your hands only (even if it's just going to the store to buy food), and strong suspicions about ulterior motives (why did my neighbour give me these cookies? What do they want?!).
Of course, I suppose the flip side is, people don't believe that there's any responsibility associated with guns.
Guns can be used safely and responsibly and as part of many hobbies from target shooting, hunting, gunsmithing, etc. I suppose the big question is not should the right to bear arms exist as we know it today, but why do we resort to gun violence first and foremost, or why guns seem to always be the solution.
Re:Uh...it's still there, you know
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The Web We Lost
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Most of the stuff this guy is bitching about is stuff that is STILL THERE. You can still create your own website and post whatever the hell you like, create whatever community you damn well please, etc. Unless you're in a country like China or Iran, you have every bit as much freedom today on the internet as you did 10 or 15 years ago.
Exactly.
All that's happened is the same thing that's happened when any piece of technology starts being used by the masses.
Think stuff like cars - I'm sure all the mechanics cried out when cars became more difficult to service and starting being rather generic and computer controlled. Whereas the masses appreciate a car that starts with the twist of a key (or push of a button) pretty much always, over having to crank the engine, floor the accellerator and do whatever other tricks are necessary (or when it rains, hope to wait it out because the car won't start, period).
We see the same with computers - from people who cling to the superiority of the command line and that GUIs are for wimps (even when the sole purpose is to more conveniently control multiple command line windows), to how people are wanting more appliance-like computing (hence walled gardens, locked down smartphones and tablets, etc).
Ditto the Internet.
Unless you wanted to keep the technology in the hands of the elite, it's what's going to happen to everything that makes it out to the general public. Their demands on the technology are far different from the demands of the techies (usually because they're interested in other things, so the technology has to answer "what's does it do for me?". Anything high-maintenance gives way to lower-maintenance technology (hence walled gardens and such).
See all those sites you visit with a facebook like button. Those images are usually served from facebook, not the site you're visiting.
So, unless you're careful with your privacy settings, you are likely reporting a huge amount of your browsing to facebook.
At the very least, I'd recommend logging out of facebook when you're done and trying to browse with 3rd party cookies disabled.
Don't forget Google as well - besides all the AdSense and DoubleClick and other ad companies Google owns, don't forget all those +1 buttons Google has.
Probably a bit more insidious than Facebook since it's probably impossible to avoid hitting a website that doesn't have a Google-owned something or other on it
Given that a more efficient power supply generates less heat, does it last longer? And does it generate less noise, since it doesn't need as fast a fan? Which gets kinda importat at the wee hours of the morning.
Another differentiator is that a more efficient power supply is probalby of better quality.
A power supply can be had for $20-30. Or they can cost $100 or $250+. The $20-30 ones are completely nasty that will either burn themselves out after a year or so (and lead to all sorts of mysterious problems - BSoDs, kernel panics, file corruption, lockups, hangs, etc). Even the $100 ones aren't necessarily immune from this as parts are substituted and such. And some have even been known to fail and blow up the rest of the computer with it by putting +12V on 3.3V/5V lines and such.
The more efficient ones tend to be the higher end ones which generally also use higher quality components that let you use the power supply to its rated capacity (the cheap ones are often half or less before they can spectacularly blow up (fire, explosions, etc).), provide stable power (a LOT of computer issues can be traced back to the power supply).
Of course, it's not necessarily true, but in general the higher BOM costs allowed in a more expensive supply allows use of premium spec caps and such.
And cooler power supplies do last longer - electrolytic capacitors are notoriously horrible parts (when you have tolerances of +50/-20%...), with lifespans in the low thousands of hours at the rated temperature. However, every 10 C cooler you run them at roughly doubles their lifespan, so a 105C cap running at 45C has a lifespan 64 times that of one running at 105C.
Well, that's the end of that pointless, stupid feature if they ever want to sell another TV again. If you want to watch TV, watch TV. If you want to web chat on skype and stuff, get a real computer. That actually was the solution the whole, Samsung's marketing department just didn't know it apparently.
Except well, computers are hard. This you can get your grandparents as a gift, then gather the family around the TV to say hello (rather than a cramped laptop where no one can fit their head entirely in the screen).
And really, it's just an evolution of the modern videoconferencing system - which already uses large screen displays so multiple people can chat together.
These TVs aren't for just face chatting between people, but for families to chat with each other, or for more well, dramatic chats between people.
People do stuff. They don't care how stuff is done. If they want to video chat with loved ones over the holidays, they'd prefer doing it from the sofa with the family gathered around the TV, rather than everyone crowding a room or a table where the PC is located
I have seen a modern embedded x86-compatible CPU platform with 256MB of RAM. The CPU was not by Via, but it was an x86 compatible one that implemented only the 486 instruction set.
Great fun to be had as most of the Linux stuff we had was compiled for i586 and higher. It just crashes.
You have utterly succeeded in missing the point - you are an aberration. The problem here is that normal people, behaving normally, are unknowingly subject to this shit through no fault of their own. We should not need to be randian privacy ubermen in order to have privacy.
These stalking companies are taking advantage of the fact that by default society requires a certain level of openness to function. They are abusing that openness for their own enrichment - they are encouraging people to behave like you and in the long run as more people take similar countermeasures that makes society less functional. In effect they are stealing from all of us by leeching away at the trust that greases the gears of a functioning society.
You mean companies like Google (who have their G+ +1 buttons everywhere), Facebook (Like buttons), Twitter (Tweet This buttons) etc also?
The only difference between those companies and this one is well, this one's intent is overt - they're doing it for marketing. But Google/Facebook/etc. are also marketing that data you provide as well (how do you think Google knows which site you're +1'ing? Or Facebook knows you Like that site?). And that Google/Facebook/etc offer portals that people are addicted to using.
That was back then, before the music industry decided that the losses from outdated business models and general economic decline, where because of piracy. As far as I see it, they have to choose: Either copying is illegal and therefor must not happen, OR they agree to non commercial copying and get some compensation for it (aka music flat rate). You can choose either way, but you can't have both.
Not completely mutually exclusive - copying to untaxed media (e.g., download to your hard drive which isn't taxed) is illegal, but not if you immediately copy it to blank media which has the tax paid.
So copy away, as long as the destination has paid the tax, you're fine (hope you kept your reciept!). If it's being put on media that hasn't paid the tax...
Oh, and it's music. If you do it to a TV show or movie, that doesn't count. You need to have them agree to tax blank media as well.
Heh. I wasn't thinking about defending patents so much as coming up with patentable material in the first place--and thinking "hey, we should round off those corners" is not hard work by any reasonable definition.
Except there never was a patent on rounded corners. Look it up.
FIrst, it starts with a "D". It means it's not a utility patent (one the describes how to do something), it's a design patent. The rules are completely different, and other than the word "patent" are completely unrelated pieces of IP.
Basically a design patent is a narrower form of trademark - it exists for a specific time period (5 years, IIRC) and is non-renewable (trademarks are valid as long as they're used in trade). They also must describe what exactly makes the thing being patented unique compared to all the other things out there. (It's an AND situation - if you change one detail in the design, it's no longer violating the patent. So if it was "rounded corners with a centered logo on one of the long edges on the front", if you put your logo on the corner, or the short side (anywhere but centered on a long edge), you're golden.
You'd think with/.'ers having a greater than normal interest in IP law that they'd actually study well, the IP laws in question. It's not hard to understand the basics...
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I saw this once - took me weeks to solve it. Basically I had a flash driver that would occasionally erase the boot block (bad!). It was odd because we had protected the boot block both in the higher level OS as well as the code itself.
Well, it happened and I ended up tracing through the assembly code - it turned out the optimizer worked a bit TOO well - it completely optimized out a macro call used to translate between parameters (the function to erase the block required a sector number. The OS called with the block number, so a simple multiplication was needed to convert). End result, the checks worked fine, but because the multiplication never happened, it erased the wrong block. (The erase code erased the block a sector belonged to - so sectors 0, 1, ... NUM_SECTORS_PER_BLOCK-1 erased the first block).
A little #pragma to disable optimizations on that one function and the bug was fixed.
No, it's because of several things.
First, Samsung would be doing to Apple what Samsung accused Apple of doing. Remember the reason that Samsung got to see the HTC-Apple contract? Samsung said that they believe that some of the patents in that contract are the same ones Apple sued Samsung for and is asking for an injunction for. Now if Apple is willing to license the patents out (say to HTC), injunctions should NOT be an option. Oh, the patents Samsung is suing Apple for that they just dropped? Patents that Samsung is willing to license to others (because they're FRAND). Oops.
Second - they're FRAND patents. Microsoft and Apple have managed to bring up interesting points about FRAND patents that has the EU (and many other governments, including South Korea) that they believe what Samsung is doing is abusive of the whole FRAND thing, and the EU has made very loud noises about investigating abuses of the FRAND system. Well, Samsung is doing just that, too. (And Microsoft is doing the same to Motorola).
What the EU could do is strip Samsung of the ability to use those patents for any purpose and force an agreement (which if they deem Samsung to be abusive, could go Apple's way and end up being declared "free" or extremely cheap).
Dropping the lawsuit was the more intelligent choice Samsung has done because it wouldn't have been good to Samsung at all - first you argue against your own case, followed by potential of the EU doing some investigations.
It wasn't about "honor" or "costs" or whatever. It's that Samsung's case had very shaky legs - if Samsung could get an injunction over FRAND patents, Apple could turn around and say they illegally saw the HTC contract and should pay (even more) damages because their argument was null and void. Or the EU would do some investigations and end up declaring FRAND patent rates to be decided by the EU, not the company that owns them. Continuing the lawsuit was really not in Samsung's interest.
SSDs are an excellent example of Moore's Law in action - because doubling the transistors at a basic level doubles the storage.
Thing is, everything else doesn't have to follow Moore's Law - spinning rust has been growing faster than Moore's Law for a little while now. And in some formfactors, spinning rust has made an exit because it's not possible to cram all that mechanical stuff in there (see the 1.8" formfactor - exclusively SSD these days because the largest spinning rust is 160GB - while you can get 256GB SSDs for cheaper!).
But where space isn't a problem (2.5" and 3.5" drives), the SSD will always be more expensive unless someone comes up with a way of storing data more densely with the same access times.
However, SSDs are big and cheap enough to be the only hard drive in many computers these days. And given the pervasiveness of networking, having a few TB of spinning rust attached and accessible via one's "personal in-home cloud" will serve to handle most people's bulk storage needs.
Of course, there will be industries where the files are so large and sequentially accessed that an SSD benefits are basically nil - like movie editing, where they can stream through TB of data, sequentially accessed.
After all, SSDs excel at random I/O, but spinning rust excels at sequential continuous access - if all you're doing is accessing data in megabyte or larger chunks, the slowness of moving the head around is hidden by the sheer speed of pulling the data off the media.
Well, one of Woz's claim to fame was the computer that had a local console and display. He built a terminal that cleverly used timing tricks to generate an ordinary NTSC signal so you could use a keyboard and a regular TV. The Apple I was then built to interface to this terminal. Add to that the necessary ROMs so you could interact instantly with the processor. Prior to this, the traditional form of computer interaction was to boot it using switches and punched tape to load the program into memory, then kick the processor into action. All Woz did was add a ROM chip and got the processor into a mode where you could type the code into memory - so what used to take an hour took 10 minutes.
And the Apple II continued the tradition - and ever since the Apple I, personal computers became even friendlier with built in displays and keyboards.
And yes, things will be different. Remember around this time Bill Gates - who was used to loading his BASIC interpreter into MIPS Altair via punched tape.
Of course, if computers remained hard to use, perhaps IBM wouldn't have entered the PC market, which means Microsoft wouldn't have been created and Gates would still be selling BASIC around.
It would be much different, since so many things got spawned off the early Apple I. (Jobs getting that first 100-unit order from the computer shop took a lot of skillful negotiation between suppliers who didn't believe Jobs+Woz had money (they didn't - Jobs would pick up the finished computers (then just a PCB at the time - you supplied the keyboard, power supply and TV) and drive them to the store to pick up the money which he they used to pay the suppliers). And the computer store only bought them because they were the closest to a "finished computer" almost anyone could own (putting it all in a case so the user could just take it out of the box, plug it in and connect to their TV - another Woz innovation)
It's a waste of *taxpayer* money. For facebook, though, it isn't a waste because it means their ads are worth less because of the German law, so spending money to ensure that they have high-quality data to sell advertisers is worth it. Remember, it's good for their customers if everyone can lead to a real person.
Of course, how long until Google's G+ falls under the same restrictions? After all, G+ linking your name is getting more insidious across Google sites now, like say, replying to a YouTube comment now uses your real name.
Alas, at the moment it looks not to be - are there open-source schematic to RTL and RTL to transistor layout tools yet?
After all, the existing VHDL and Verilog compilers are horrendously buggy and expensive.
Depends what you value more - being able to see raw talent and nurture it (Jobs) or having talent (Woz).
Woz is a great engineer. However, he wasn't very social and more than likely, had it not been for Jobs, he would've been working away at HP's calculator division through and through. Woz loved HP and didn't consider leaving (in fact, it was the hardest single decision he made to resign from HP).
Jobs could talk the walk - he was the one who could talk to customers and suppliers and get orders in for the Apple I. Heck, he was the one who got Woz the DRAMs necessary for the Apple I (even sweet-talking Intel into sampling some). Woz at the time was incredibly shy - he wouldn't dare pick up the phone, call a component supplier and ask for parts he couldn't afford to buy. Jobs could.
Jobs and Woz like the yin and yang - complete opposites, yet completely complementary. What Woz lacked, Jobs had. What Jobs lacked, Woz had.
Engineers favor Woz naturally because he was the technical guy behind it all - without Woz, Apple wouldn't have existed. On the flip side, it was Jobs who managed to make it a business - Woz was happy to sell circuit boards and everything to hobbyists, while Jobs was the one who wanted to sell complete assemblies to everyone. Without Jobs' social talent, Woz would have continued designing calculators for HP, the Apple I board being just a mere curiosity and probably just a footnote in the history of computers. Had the two not get together it's likely the technology field as we know it would be completely different. The only thing I can't tell you is if we would be better or worse off, though. Woz and Jobs would've just been regular no-names in the field, though
You need to know your OSes really.
VxWorks is a great OS - as long as what you're doing requires hard real time tasks. It comes with a relatively flimsy network stack otherwise (and there are MANY third party companies that do nothing but sell you a TCP/IP stack for such RTOSes).
The reason the "L" and original WRT-54G were great? Because they ran an OS with a decent network stack - Linux. This was basically a first at the time (and yes, Linksys shipped them without supplying source code initially).
And yes, the added hardware cost for Linux (flash/RAM) probably cost more than a VxWorks license.
These days, a lot of routers tend to run Linux, purely because the drivers for the new hardware are practically Linux first and the sweet spot for memory has tended to allow even the larger 2.6 kernels to fit just fine (a lot of high end ones have a whopping 128MB of RAM and 128MB of flash).
The Chinese can be compared to the ultimate Republicans. Basically all laws are good as long as it benefits them (as in, makes them $$$ and lots of it). A law is bad if it impedes this in any way.
Naturally, this brings up multiple problems - such as exploitation of workers (many Chinese business people have commented how hard it is to do business in North America - all the worker protection laws and such - if you're not a "management elite" you're a nobody who should be happy they could work to feed their family), to opposing sides of the same coin (e.g., patents - after all, one uses it to make $$$ the other unfairly feels the other is taking $$$ away from them), etc.
Basically, as long as they're making $$$, those laws are good. But use those same laws against them so they can't make $$$, and they squeal about being robbed.
Yes, even the same law that benefits them that now "kills them" - basically the interpretation is that it should always be in THEIR FAVOR.
Forget this tea party nonsense - learn from the Chinese - they have the conservative principles down pat. Perhaps that's why Romney lost - too much whites, not enough Chinese.
So how do you know what you're installing WON'T take advantage of this and break through the Android permissions model? (Permissions system doesn't apply if you have root, after all).
Several Android malware apps have attempted to root the user's phone before, so it's possible that some app you download may try the same. And all they'd need is enough permissions to access that device - probably innocent ones.
In other words - it's a great way to get root on your phone, if you want it. Or a security exploit if an app also roots your phone to download and install some malware. Or install a rootkit, since it allows access to kernel memory(!).
Well, the law doesn't say you couldn't post it on a million websites simultaneously.
FIrst off - there are MANY public disclosure companies out there. When a company wants to make a public release, they issue it to these companies who then cross-post it to all the public news services at the same time.
Second - to avoid timing issues, such releases are normally done AFTER trading hours so that everyone has the information by the time the exchange opens the next day.
Social media is the same - and there's nothing saying you can't cross post something to twitter, your PR block, your facebook page and all that simultaneously. In fact, cross posting your press release to multiple places seems to keep the SEC at bay.
So... the big problem is that someone will capture your credit card number?
I don't know, but I don't think that's exactly a good hack - after all, you're legally protected if someone uses your credit card without your authorization. Either you spot a strange transaction and call your bank (and they reverse it and send you a new number), or you get a call about some flagged transaction. Either way, you're not out any money at all.
And these days, most places take the chip, so the POS terminal can't even get at the number (it's usually even a separate pad with minimal communications so even if the terminal is hacked, it can't get at the actual number).
Of course, given how everyone argues about how crappy credit cards are ... I guess enjoy it until you're forced to use debit cards only that don't necessarily have those protections...
Yeah, because people stop buying full 12-tracks bundles of music, preferring to go after the ONE song they want.
So instead of spending $15 for a CD or digital download of an album ($10), they're spending $0.99 to get the one song they want, and ignoring the 11 other pieces of crap they don't want. The album isn't dead - there's a lot of genres of music where the album is the preferred form (e.g., soundtrack scores), but for popular music, most people just want the song they heard on the radio. Perhaps they may want others, but they'll buy the one song they want rather than pay $9 or $14 more for a collection on them to get the one song they want. (And many people have complained of just this - having to buy a whole CD just for one song. And singles at $5?)
Obviously, the solution is to raise single track prices. Yeah, that'll fix it.
And yes, even the most reluctant of bands eventually caved into single track sales - deciding that the "integrity of the album" was costing them sales and better to sell the song the listener wants at 99 cents than have their $15 album downloaded for free just to get the one song.
You realize that Google has been making it harder to do so, right?
First off, the "install" button is now at the top of the screen. A nice bright blue button on a sea of dark text of the permissions. Where does the user tap? On the button immediately.
The permission list only shows a few of them, then another "More permissions" link to see additional ones.
Plus, you're also competing against dancing pigs. User wants Delta app to do stuff like check in for their flight without lining up, etc. You'll have to be pretty damn convincing to get someone forgo 5 minutes to download and run the app versus lining up 20 minutes at the airport to check in.
Alas, I don't think this is the case - technology can go both ways, and so far, it's shifting away from egalitarianism and being explotied by those in power to gain more money and power.
Think about what technology has given us, then think about how it's been misused such that we're in the state we're in. Stuff like HFT (which while serving a purpose on the market by offering liquidity, is also a great way to completely screw up the financial system - see flash crashes), the Internet (supposedly the bastion of free speech, is now used to oppress and divide - like joins like and people generally gravitate towards others who share their views), and all sorts of other stuff.
Technology is neutral - it can be used for good purposes and bad, and so far it seems that the bad is taking over faster than the good. I believe someone once mocked "To err is human. To royally f**k up requires a computer".
Also. unions, while typically considered blue collar work, are increasingly appearing in white collar jobs - there are plenty of people who belong to office worker unions doing the regular clerical duties around the office (filing, finding documents, keeping the place orderly, odering supplies, organizing, cleaning, etc.). Automation is correctly removing low skill repetive boring jobs that humans don't want to do - jobs that increasingly go to immigrants because no American wants to clean toilets all day, for example.
I wouldn't say that. I'd rather say Americans have a very strong gun culture, perhaps a gun fetish. It's just very unusual - plenty of other places have easy access to guns but don't come to blows as quickly. It seems like that's the first thing that's brought out the moment there's a disagreement.
It's basically seen that the gun is a solution, often the first and only, versus trying to work it out in a more civilized way. It's probably because Americans tend to be less community-oriented and more individualistic - you don't deserve to live if you can't live by your hands only (even if it's just going to the store to buy food), and strong suspicions about ulterior motives (why did my neighbour give me these cookies? What do they want?!).
Of course, I suppose the flip side is, people don't believe that there's any responsibility associated with guns.
Guns can be used safely and responsibly and as part of many hobbies from target shooting, hunting, gunsmithing, etc. I suppose the big question is not should the right to bear arms exist as we know it today, but why do we resort to gun violence first and foremost, or why guns seem to always be the solution.
Exactly.
All that's happened is the same thing that's happened when any piece of technology starts being used by the masses.
Think stuff like cars - I'm sure all the mechanics cried out when cars became more difficult to service and starting being rather generic and computer controlled. Whereas the masses appreciate a car that starts with the twist of a key (or push of a button) pretty much always, over having to crank the engine, floor the accellerator and do whatever other tricks are necessary (or when it rains, hope to wait it out because the car won't start, period).
We see the same with computers - from people who cling to the superiority of the command line and that GUIs are for wimps (even when the sole purpose is to more conveniently control multiple command line windows), to how people are wanting more appliance-like computing (hence walled gardens, locked down smartphones and tablets, etc).
Ditto the Internet.
Unless you wanted to keep the technology in the hands of the elite, it's what's going to happen to everything that makes it out to the general public. Their demands on the technology are far different from the demands of the techies (usually because they're interested in other things, so the technology has to answer "what's does it do for me?". Anything high-maintenance gives way to lower-maintenance technology (hence walled gardens and such).
Don't forget Google as well - besides all the AdSense and DoubleClick and other ad companies Google owns, don't forget all those +1 buttons Google has.
Probably a bit more insidious than Facebook since it's probably impossible to avoid hitting a website that doesn't have a Google-owned something or other on it
Another differentiator is that a more efficient power supply is probalby of better quality.
A power supply can be had for $20-30. Or they can cost $100 or $250+. The $20-30 ones are completely nasty that will either burn themselves out after a year or so (and lead to all sorts of mysterious problems - BSoDs, kernel panics, file corruption, lockups, hangs, etc). Even the $100 ones aren't necessarily immune from this as parts are substituted and such. And some have even been known to fail and blow up the rest of the computer with it by putting +12V on 3.3V/5V lines and such.
The more efficient ones tend to be the higher end ones which generally also use higher quality components that let you use the power supply to its rated capacity (the cheap ones are often half or less before they can spectacularly blow up (fire, explosions, etc).), provide stable power (a LOT of computer issues can be traced back to the power supply).
Of course, it's not necessarily true, but in general the higher BOM costs allowed in a more expensive supply allows use of premium spec caps and such.
And cooler power supplies do last longer - electrolytic capacitors are notoriously horrible parts (when you have tolerances of +50/-20%...), with lifespans in the low thousands of hours at the rated temperature. However, every 10 C cooler you run them at roughly doubles their lifespan, so a 105C cap running at 45C has a lifespan 64 times that of one running at 105C.
Already done. Yes, Toshiba has a wide-screen 21:9 ultrabook running at an oddball 1792x762 resolution.
Sony sold a small laptop with a 1600x768 screen as well - a tiny Atom-powered UMPC.
Except well, computers are hard. This you can get your grandparents as a gift, then gather the family around the TV to say hello (rather than a cramped laptop where no one can fit their head entirely in the screen).
And really, it's just an evolution of the modern videoconferencing system - which already uses large screen displays so multiple people can chat together.
These TVs aren't for just face chatting between people, but for families to chat with each other, or for more well, dramatic chats between people.
People do stuff. They don't care how stuff is done. If they want to video chat with loved ones over the holidays, they'd prefer doing it from the sofa with the family gathered around the TV, rather than everyone crowding a room or a table where the PC is located
I have seen a modern embedded x86-compatible CPU platform with 256MB of RAM. The CPU was not by Via, but it was an x86 compatible one that implemented only the 486 instruction set.
Great fun to be had as most of the Linux stuff we had was compiled for i586 and higher. It just crashes.
You mean companies like Google (who have their G+ +1 buttons everywhere), Facebook (Like buttons), Twitter (Tweet This buttons) etc also?
The only difference between those companies and this one is well, this one's intent is overt - they're doing it for marketing. But Google/Facebook/etc. are also marketing that data you provide as well (how do you think Google knows which site you're +1'ing? Or Facebook knows you Like that site?). And that Google/Facebook/etc offer portals that people are addicted to using.
It really isn't that much different.
Not completely mutually exclusive - copying to untaxed media (e.g., download to your hard drive which isn't taxed) is illegal, but not if you immediately copy it to blank media which has the tax paid.
So copy away, as long as the destination has paid the tax, you're fine (hope you kept your reciept!). If it's being put on media that hasn't paid the tax...
Oh, and it's music. If you do it to a TV show or movie, that doesn't count. You need to have them agree to tax blank media as well.
Ditto books. And artwork...
Except there never was a patent on rounded corners. Look it up.
FIrst, it starts with a "D". It means it's not a utility patent (one the describes how to do something), it's a design patent. The rules are completely different, and other than the word "patent" are completely unrelated pieces of IP.
Basically a design patent is a narrower form of trademark - it exists for a specific time period (5 years, IIRC) and is non-renewable (trademarks are valid as long as they're used in trade). They also must describe what exactly makes the thing being patented unique compared to all the other things out there. (It's an AND situation - if you change one detail in the design, it's no longer violating the patent. So if it was "rounded corners with a centered logo on one of the long edges on the front", if you put your logo on the corner, or the short side (anywhere but centered on a long edge), you're golden.
You'd think with /.'ers having a greater than normal interest in IP law that they'd actually study well, the IP laws in question. It's not hard to understand the basics...