I'm going to assume that they mean "assembled in the USA" in the same way that Levis means "made in the USA," which is to say they are fabricated in China, then a tiny sticker or a single screw or some such is applied in the US so that they can legally say the product was made in the US.
There are very strict rules (the FTC enforces them) about the terms "Made in the USA" and "Assembled in the USA".
The former means that all or virtually all of a product is made in the US. Obviously, the iMac doesn't quality for this (the FTC proposed defining it as 75% of manufacturing costs were spent in the USA AND the product was "last transformed" in the USA).
"Assembled in the USA" means that it's made up of foreign parts, but the last substantial transformation (or assembly) of the product is done in the US. Interestingly, "screwdriver" assembly of foreign parts does not count. This could easily mean that the iMac was more than importing the parts into the US and put-together there - perhaps the case assembly was produced from US manufacturing processes (including say, the friction-stir-welding), then the rest of the parts (which are China and foreign made out of supply-chain necessity)
Do not confuse the two terms "Made in USA" and "Assembed in USA" as they are significantly different in meanting. The FTC enforces the terminology and has found companies liable for violating "Made in USA" rules. Heck, I think some companies dubiously put "Made in USA from domestic and foreign parts"....
First of all, most of those "billionaire dropouts" were dropouts from Ivy League schools with plenty of startup money from daddy already at their disposal, not dipshits coming out of no-name-high-school. Secondly, most of them only left college when they already had contacts and solid plans (and financing) in place for starting their own businesses. They didn't need degrees because they were going to be hiring *themselves*, not having to worry about some HR department that will toss any non-degree applicants right into the trash.
For most of the non-rich, non-Ivy League assholes like the rest of us--we still need a college degree if we're going to get beyond the front door to any stable job. We're not Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates.
Not to mention, we're talking about a handful of people here. The number of people who are "not them" are in the billions, or if you want to be more exact, I'm sure for every Zuckerberg, there's probably 1,000 more people who fail (either to get a job, or fail at creating a company).
It's a celebrity effect - we all lust after those who are wildly successful and thing we can emulate them, but without realizing that they're one person, and we are many. It's a great dream, but one that is pretty impractical for a lot of us.
The other part of it is well, luck. Business is all about luck - if you just happen to get the right things done and the right people to see it and the people are in the right mood...
A capacitor is a capacitor, yes, there's room for capacitors going off spec, but people here are complaining about TVs that stop working after three years, rather than a few days - if the problem was "cheap capacitors" (ie a serious quality control problem at the plant leading to significantly off-spec capacitors) methinks we'd be see complaints about an entirely different issue.
What this sounds like, to me, is a design flaw that's causing capacitors to get overloaded (or something similar) - it's easy for a group of engineers to push this onto an anonymous "PHB" somewhere involved in the buying/selling chain, but design flaws happen, and they seem to fit this instance more than a quality control issue at a supplier.
There are plenty of good capacitor brands - Panasonic, Nippon Chemi-Con among others (note: Japanese). There are plenty of crap capacitor brands (e.g., CrapXon, er, CapXon) that make crappy cheapass ones.
The thing is the electrolyte. An electrolytic capacitor gets its capacitance from an ultra thin oxide layer only a few atoms thick that exists on one of the plates (reversing the polarity dissolves the oxide and puts it on the other plate). It's a thin fragile layer so they put a paper separator with a high-conductivity electrolyte solution so the other plate can electrically connect ot the oxide layer. (A "low ESR" cap means the electrolyte is a bit more conductive). The other plate doesn't have much capacitance (remember capacitance increases with the inverse of the separation - make the separation smaller, the capacitance increases, and why electrolytics get high capacitances because of the thin oxide layer).
The cheap crappy caps have lousy electrolytes that can boil and dry off, which is why the capacitance decreases, and while the ESR increases. (And also why your electrolytics have easily a +20%/-50% tolerance).
As for why they're used, easy - you'll find them almost always in the power supply section (where you need high value, low ESR caps). The power supply is almost always designed by a third party company (many common ones like Jet, MeanWell, etc.) to the customer's specs. So the engineer simply asks for a power supply that provides +5V @ 5A, +12V @ 30A etc, the power connector and form factor/mechanicals. The company goes off, designs the supply and comes up with an initial BOM and quote for production. The company often negotiates the price downwards and cheaper parts get used as a result.
One ought ot note that the per-unit price of the wall-warts ranges anywhere from 50 cents to a few dollars, and that's the price the company purchasing htem pays. A built-in power supply board can also cost a few bucks to a few tens of dollars, while really high end equipment may pay much more for top-notch parts.
Equipment where the performance of the power supply is paramount (e.g., audio gear, including A/V receives) often have inhouse designed supplies and you'll very often find much higher build quality as a result (and higher spec parts - audio gear often uses a linear supply (bulky, heavy, inefficient) because a switcher can have switching harmonics that extend down into the audio band that cannot be eliminated.
It is usually bad input: People who press both the "up" and the "down" button to make the elevator come sooner.
The best way to solve this is to make the interior buttons reject floor selections which are not in the direction of travel (accompanied by a warning siren and message to help educate the retarded user)
A lot of elevators do that - if the button pushed is going in the wrong way, they don't allow it to light up.
Then I've seen ones that do allow you to push it, but it will continue that way until the bottomost floor is serviced (and no one else needs the elevator to go down) before it changes direction. But then it then services everyone going up, including the original up request (if no other elevator serviced it yet).
The trickiest I seen was it let you push the button, but once it stopped going down (if you wanted it to go up), it cleared all the selections and idled. If you push a lower floor, it went, if you push a higher, it doesn't move (parked). If you push the current floor, it reopens the door. It won't change directions unless there was a reason for it to (e.g., ground or top floor)
Between Apple and Microsoft, Valve has to fight for a less restrictive platform.
The interesting thing here is that Microsoft, Google, and Apple are all building app stores with serious restrictions as a way to improve security, but aside from making stronger brands and improving user experience in removing malware, they don't get a lot out of the restrictiveness.
Actually, Valve is simply moving their walled garden elsewhere. And yes, Steam is a walled garden - until recently, unless you were someone Valve wanted to talk to, you weren't invited into the Steam store. Which keeps the quality of games high, but also meant that various indie games also weren't in.
And now Valve implemented a vetting process called Greenlight, which costs $100 per entry to add games to the store. Of course, it's also a popularity contest, which means a developer who wants to write a game for the PC platform (after having games on iOS, Android, PS3, PS Vita, Wii, Xbox360 and MacOS, but NOT PC). They could do it themselves, but they need a payment platform and really, Steam is it. Hell it's so bad they're considering Origin.
I sure wish cities would hire guys like you to work on their traffic lights.
I highly question whether or not anyone pays any attention at all to the timings of these things; It seems that they would have more luck getting anyone who has ever milked a cow to design one, as they would have some inner sense as to how timing results in smooth flow. Improperly time your efforts and you get no milk and infuriate the cow.
The problem is light timing is a very hard problem. First off, take a basic city with a grid style street layout. You can optimize the greens for flows in certain directions, but then the cross streets often get blocked up because they don't have an optimized pattern.
You can try optimizing flows differently - perhaps two get timed greens southbound because everyone's heading home (and they turn northbound int he morning rush), while a third street goes the other way. If you go southbound on that, you'll hit lights (and it's actually faster to navigate to the other streets than taking a direct route). Yes, the longer way can be faster because only some streets have timed lights in order to not cause total gridlock looking for an optimal solution. The goal is to find which ones are timed in which direction at what times (because the primary flow differs due to morning and afternoon rushes), and to see if the time it takes to navigate to the longer but timed routes is faster than the time it takes to go by the obvious route. In some places, the lights are timed in a circle (one street north, one street west, one street south, one street east) so choosing the optimal path may mean going the opposite direction to join it quicker.
Next, you have complications like parking, left/right turn lanes/lights/not-allowed. And idiot drivers who floor it at the green to hit the red in front, or more likely, those who see the light ahead is red, and don't move much above creeping speed to not have to slow down much.
And the lights are also timed to a speed - a road with a limit of 40 might have its lights timed to 30.
And yes, city planners have a headache of it all - allow a bicycle lane here, mess up traffic there, roadwork forcing diversions, etc. Illegal parkers and pickup/dropoffs don't help, either.
Elevators are easy - when making decisions, you have all the information ahead of who - who's calling for an elevator, and which floors the elevator must stop at. Some more intelligent systems may even schedule elevators by requesting that those who call an elevator enter in their destination floor as well.
Honestly, if they are making it available, I think they should put a warning up for people, that by downloading and compiling the code you could be in violation of the law, or require everything free for non commercial use.
It's not an unreasonable assumption that something available for download is less than fully encumbered.
Well, assuming the developer who wrote the code is the one making it available, downloading it would be fine. Running it is a bit trickier, though - would the act of turning it into an executable be considered a derivative work? If not, feel free to compile it, and run it (not a copyright event). You just can't distribute, sell, or otherwise use the code for anything else.
However, as "all rights reserved", it would be like it was CC NC (because you can't sell the compiled work or the source code), as well as CC ND, because you can't use that code for anything else. (It's one of the arguments for getting rid of ND/NC in CC licensed stuff because it's for the most part the same as "all rights reserved").
Github's merely redistributing it according to the policy and that the author holds copyright but is otherwise allowing free download rights (you're allowed to "give away" copyrighted "all rights reserved" content that you own - many authors do this with e-books).
Actually, it wasn't always like this - in the beginning, text messages were... well, free. Because it was assumed voice would be primary and SMS would be used sparingly, after all, you only have a 10-digit keypad to enter characters in. So even the 160-character limit wasn't a huge thing as who had the patience to type it all in.
Then what happened is people realized that instead of paying for a phone call, they could send a text for free, so it took off in Asia and Europe because it was free.
Of course, carriers now had a problem because the control channel was being clogged with people sending texts - it was meant as a side thing added to the spec, but now enough were being sent that control channels were being seriously overloaded, which is why carriers went to a variable bandwidth control channel (Europe and Asia).
So then the carriers (in Asia) started implementing limits, and eventually the limits fell and they became charged items. In poorer parts of the world, answering the phone is now bad - they instead rely on the phone ringing a certain number of times to be the code as SMS charged them and a phone call is still expensive.
In North America, texting was a late comer, mostly due to the delayed introduction of GSM. It's really only been a "big" thing for just under a decade or so (while EMEA started implementing limits before that - late 90s). So none of the adaptations really made it in.
The explosion of texting has impacted the control channel which is why carriers like AT&T actually have plenty of cell tower capacity, except they have an absolutely congested control channel. And congested control channels mean dropped calls, failure to establish data connections (but once established, supremely fast as there is plenty of voice channel bandwidth), zero/no signal as the phone can't ping the tower and vice-versa, unable to make or receive a call, and many other problems. Of course, the iPhone didn't help because its aggressive power management meant it collapsed data connections as soon as they were over (huge data users often had 200+ page bills that detailed every data "call" from this) but also added to the control channel congestion.
And yes, any businessperson is an idiot who didn't see the profit-making potential in texting - if you have a service millions are using billions of times a day that those millions consider essential and it costs you practically nothing (other than having to erect new equipment to provide new control channels), why wouldn't you charge for it? They're addicted to texting and know of no other means of communication, so you have a captive audience who can't resist the urge to text 100 times a day.
Hell, even texting is dying out slowly if you look at the progression of plans. First we had the demolition of roaming charges on your home network (where if you leave your city and go to a neighbouring one you started paying roaming fees, now it's "nationwide roaming"). Next you had very cheap long distance ("unlimited nationwide calling!"). These days, they're practically giving unlimited voice calls away (underutitlized channels). and now texting is easily becoming unlimited in the cheapest plans.
The reason? The next place is data - that's the profit segment. SMS etc., are slowly dying out as everyone wants to update their Facebooks and their Twitters and everything. LTE being exclusively packet switched (and probably variable control channel bandwidth as well) it's built for data. Voice over LTE is practically VoIP (though some carriers don't do it - using 3G to handle the voice call instead).
On the one hand, Ouya has no disc slot and is thus not limited by physical shelf space. On the other hand, it's still limited by screen space above the fold of the list of games in each genre.
Order by popularity and the problem will mostly sort itself out, like you say over 90 percent of the releases on Android and iOS are crap but 99 percent of the buyers don't see them. They see Angry Birds and whatever else is in the top 100 or so per category, what's featured you can have a process for or they've been reading some game review and actually look for something that's not crap. Good luck "bootstrapping" the Ouya market though, it's a classic chicken and egg situation where you either need to bring a lot of heavy hitting games or a rabid following of fans. Otherwise this could be another Firefly, the fans love it but most people don't want it.
Then comes the other problem - discovery. Just like the Android and iOS stores, newcomers who aren't the first movers will get stuck at the very bottom of the list, so either the list stays stagnant because users aren't finding the new stuff, or only the ones who could afford a marketing budget and buy premium placement.
And it's such a big problem that Apple had to buy a company (Chomp) who specializes in app searches, and people complain Google's search isn't that great either (ironically).
The problem is the size and shape of the old dollar coins. They're very close to quarters in size and weight. In our first attempt, the dollar coins were also silver like the quarters. So it was hard to quickly identify which coins are dollars and which are quarters.
Funny, but US notes are all the same color, so if I'm looking at a pile of US dollars, I have to spread 'em out to count 'em individually to figure out how much I have.
Unlike say, every other country's notes which are color coded, so I can quickly glance through my wallet and count.
Or, I can also hand over a note to the cashier which I know how much is there without needing ot visually inspect and have said cashier also inspect. (In Canada - blue = $5, purple = $10, green = $20, red = $50, and brown = $100. If I need $5, I grab the blue note. No need to go through my stack and see if I have a $5 note or accidentally give 4 $1 notes and 1 $10 note...
nintendo should have put more hardware into the actual console and not used that tablet thingy they ship with it. just write an android/IOS app to run on the cheapest tablets and connect to the console like MS is doing with Smartglass.
The problem is latency. It's incredibly difficult, but the Wii U's screen latency on the tablet is practically real time (I think I heard 1 frame latency). So much so that yes, you CAN game on it.
The latency using your smartphone is much higher - it's why smartglass and such don't display in-game information that changes immediately but can tolerate a delay. You certainly can't "remote play" using your smartphone without incurring a half-second of display lag.
Well, Android users don't really USE their phones for the web it seems.
iOS devices seem to take in (depending on who you ask) around 65-80% of mobile web traffic to sites. The rest is mostly Android, but despite Android selling way more than iOS (and being around 75% marketshare), the vast majority of those devices aren't being used for the Internet.
Given that Android phones sell just as cheap as featurephones, it's probably not a surprise people buy them - free featurephone vs. free android phone.
So Windows 8 traffic surpassing Android isn't a huge surprise - despite being the market leader, few Android users actually use it to surf the 'net.
Apparently there is no reason why this wouldn't work with robots. Apparently robots are still to expensive or not smart (in terms of physical skills) enough.I wonder when we'll see Amazon experimenting with robots.
You can get smart systems - either using robotic pickers and conveyor belts or floor pickers that pick entire shelves of systems. These systems are entirely intelligent enough to handle chaotic storage, and often do by moving "hot items" to the spots closest to the packers and leaving the colder items further down.
And the robotic picker systems don't pick an item out, they pick up a plastic container containing multiple items and send it down the ramp to the packer, who picks the correct item out of the container, scans it and puts it into the box. The container then zips around to another packer (if there's something they need) or back onto the shelf.
They're all barcoded systems so the computers easily figure out where everything is.
The only advantage Amazon has with their human-based system is that shelving systems can be rearranged cheaply and easily - te robot systems require extensive infrastructure to be built up (either laying down of cables for tracking, or installing the robotic pickers). So if Amazon needs to expand their warehouse, they can do so far quicker since no robots have to be reprogrammed or anything. And if they decide they hold a lot of small items, they can break down those shelves to hold small items better (robot pickers require every container to be the same size).
USENET is an efficient way to distribute files, and very popular because it's download only (so no uploading or tagging your IP address). The thing with Newzbin2 is that they provide NZB files which are index files that your usenet provider (for those that offer web-based interfaces like Easynews) or your NNTP client can easily parse and retrieve the appropriate postings to reconstruct the file. It's basically a list of posts.
This is important as retention at the two major USENET providers (most are resellers of their service) is over 1000 days now, but the indexes are only valid for around 300-600 days. The only way to retrieve the other files are through index files like NZBs.
Avast, AVG, Avira, and others that are free for home personal usage does quite a bit better then MSE. MSE mainly specially fails at 0 day stuff which accounts for the majority of it's low score (a large 20% detection difference from the average). However, MSE is also the most light weight having about half the system slow downs as the average antivirus.
So, MSE is definitely the most lightweight but at the cost of detection compared to the others. For me, this is acceptable since otherwise, I wouldn't even bother with an antivirus program.
The problem with 0 day detection is it's often heuristic detection. And you can find numerous examples where it's gone wild and rendered systems completely unbootable because some system file matched the heuristic.
And it's happened to every vendor, except it seems, Microsoft. One definition update gone awry and a pile of systems go tits up because a critical system file got quarantined.
And then you have to weigh whether or not such aggressiveness is warranted - would you want such great 0-day protection only to run the risk that 6 hours down the road, your computer is unbootable and did you happen to have a backup?
It is the secure boot technology. I don't want to buy a laptop or desktop that does not easily let me use the Operating System of my own build and choice.
So how easy is easy? Would going into the menu, finding the setting that says "Secure Boot" and changing that from "Enabled" to "Disabled" be too hard? (or Yes to No, or selecting "Disable Secure Boot" or whatever that open is called. Maybe it's something obtuse, like "Enable legacy boot"?).
Because every x86-based PC MUST have the option to disable secure boot. It's a requirement to get the Windows 8 certified logo on it.
The most obvious reason why is because people may want to well, boto a legacy OS like Windows 7.
And WIndows 8 can boot in legacy mode too, because despite most PCs shipping with UEFI (for a few years now - it's been Intel's thing except they also splash it with a BIOS setup app that configures the BIOS boot), most UEFI BIOSes out there right now do NOT support secure boot (again, legacy - UEFI has been around a while far longer than secure boot). And heck, I don't think Macs even support secure boot period even when booting in EFI mode.
Practically? This clearly demonstrates that it pays for the windows license and is also a revenue stream.
Or, it demonstrates that there isn't a lot of competition in the market for manufacturer-optimized linux-installed laptops, and that Dell is using the lack of competition in that market to extract rents. The idea that prices can be expected to closely mirror manufacturer costs is correct so far as the expected long-term result in a competitive market where no player is pricing based on influencing some other market, but its not necessarily true in the short run, or when there is little competition for a specific class of good, or where there are market participants that are using one product to draw people into another market.
Also, I suppose it keeps support calls and returns down because a clueless user is less likely to buy a laptop that for the most part costs $50 more than one that's practically the same.
If the Linux one was cheaper (and it's debatable because OEM crapware does add to the profit margin), Dell would find a lot of customers would order it and then complain they can't run Office or other thing, thus forcing a return and markdown as refurbs.
But do this and those users will gravitate towards the Windows version as well.
So price discimination, combined with lower profit margins because preinstalled crapware isn't as prevalent on Linux (for now) ensure the Linux one will cost more. Better to have fewer Linux sales (they're small anyways) than to have a huge amount of returns because users bought it because it was cheaper but can't run Windows apps.
Few people live/work high enough for it to make much difference, and ground level is easy to adjust for based on approximate location (1km).
Could you do a Lat/Long lookup to obtain a "good enough" altitude for the measurement? Hopefully GPS is better at these readings.
Let's see, all around me I see what qualifies as high-rises (10-20 storeys, though a few are higher). If you're not properly taking altitude into account (and these pressure sensors are usually good to +/- 20 feet vertically) then there are pressure differences. Heck, my aircraft altimeter even shows a difference, and it's precision is only +/- 50 feet on a good day (it's older, so its mechanics do get "stuck", but still compares against my Gnex.
The whole reason to do this project is to get an idea of the variations in air pressure over a region - which will be fairly minor (altimeter settings don't change that much - usually less than 0.1"Hg over 40 miles or so). If you're wanting small localized pressure variation data, you'll want finer data and altitude must be taken into account (0.1"Hg is roughly 100 feet).
Plus, buildings can be pressurized.
Oh, and in his area, there are LOT of people, so there will likely be a higher percentage of people who would participate in this project. Plus, places like New York City I'm sure only have "few" people working in high rises (and are ripe for very widely varying micro-climates and weather cells).
And if I want HD radio, I'm out of luck, I'd need an aftermarket unit that came with a complete center console replacement and who knows what to connect to the remote audio controls. Oh well, the fancy tires are probably too loud for me to hear the difference between HD and plain old FM anyway.
FYI - the "HD" in HD radio does NOT stand for "high definition". It stands for "hybrid digital" - inside the standard FM signal is an embedded digital signal that a hybrid digital radio receiver can tune (think of it as a digital sub-band).. This is basically so an HD radio station can offer traditoinal FM but also additional programming on the digital side.
You aren't getting better sound quality (it can actually be worse depending on the audio compression and how many subchannels they're offering due to bandwidth), and in the end, it's really more of the same old FM you're used to. Just in some markets the bands are so crowded there's no way for a new station to get a license.
They just call it HD radio as a marketing thing. It's digital, it sounds better (or not - like I said, bitrate compression is involved) and to get consumers confused because they see HD as meaning high-definition.
I did understand that part, but again: how can you say this for sure? Every program is considered pork by someone, even education. All the news I get out of California (and I don't live there, so I don't get everything) is cut after cut after cut. Some of those may be good, some of those may be bad, but every cut has people cheering and jeering about it.
Exactly. Every program done by governement is considered pork by someone. Teachers want a pay raise? Pork - chop their salaries - who else gets 10+ weeks of vacation a year? 5 people at the police station nightly? Cut it down to 2 and save 3 union OT salaries. Library? Cut it - who reads books anymore? Lighting up some tree in city square (it's the season)? Definitely pork - let's just refuse to honor the season and make it as miserable as possible - happy feelings are pork.
Hell, people will complain about road maintenance as well - those who don't drive probably complain how much is spent on them, and those who do complain how little is spent.
For NASA, perhaps this was considered pork as well - surely if it wasn't, the private sector would be more than happy to pay for it all. After all, they're doing al lthe space-y things as well.
Kids/teens don't know what has been lost/don't care. People who grew up during the earlier gaming (pre online only games) era are hugely disappointed by the downright criminal changes in the industry because they WATCHED the industry grow from when it was tiny so they have superior understanding and perspective. They were there during game-modding golden years of Quake/duke/doom/etc that has been smothered (Supcom 2 was locked down and made difficult to mod at publisher request). Games like diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 have been increasingly fucked with because of publishers greed.
Or perhaps it's because there's been a population shift in the market. What once appealed to a few people now appeals to a greater many. Sure DRM was annoying in the 90s, but there were fewer gamers back then as well, and the ones that were tended to be expert computer users in the end.
Nowadays, "computer users" is a dead term because modern society requires using a computer to accomplish everyday tasks. Computers have gone from a highly niche and technical product to something that's a part of everyday life and living in the span of around 30 years.
And the fact that everyone uses computers also means that the techies are no longer the population to target. Remember, since the modern general population has to use a computer, they often have very different priorities than techies.
I'm sure there are plenty of kids who don't want to go into computer engineering or computer science, and who are otherwise happy to lead a balanced life doing many things as well as playing computer games. To which Steam DRM is a non-issue because it makes their life more convenience - if they want a game, they just go to the Steam store, buy it and download it. While it's downloading they do other things - study, do homework, etc. They have no interest in using a computer, they just want to play a game.
Likewise, many people use the internet to get news and keep in touch with friends and then get on with their lives and hobbies. They don't care about net neutrality, copyright,, patents, trademarks, etc. They just want to sit down, share a few stories, then head off and do something else.
I'm sure there are many technologies that end up like this - hell, people used to be technical enough to take the covers off their TVs, find the tubes, walk to the store to the tube tester and buy replacement ones in order to fix the TV. These days, TVs are everywhere and not just an enclave for the rich or a special event thing that people gather around the TV to watch it.
Or cars - you have shadetree mechanics versus those who just want a way to get from point A to point B reliably and efficiently. Hell, shadetree mechanics are probably cursing the modern car - there's less to tweak and twist and turn (or to even just work around), and most of the work takes place with a computer. So intead of getting to deal with mechanical bits and working under the car, they sit in front of a screen clicking and pointing their way through the car's systems. They don't care about the computer, they want to play with the car (like how Linux users may like to play around with Linux itself)..
Not everyone who uses computers has a techie compatible priority list. I'm sure the stock traders don't care how their trading computers work, just how the trading is done and resolved and if the PC bluescreens, you call IT and have them replace it - trying to fix it themselves will probably make things worse.
One of the main reasons why I didn't do this KS was because they said on their main page that the initial developer units are NOT compatible with glasses, but the one that becomes commercially avialable will.
Since the design has to be locked down - did they end up supporting glasses or not?
What's stopping the same company from offering a long warranty with an intentionally nightmarish experience for them to try and honor a replacement/repair request? That alone will do well to stave off the desire for customers to utilize their warranties features, with the mindset of, "I have to go through that to get a replacement? I'm better off just buying another one." Obviously one can try and justify them by saying that they're trying to prevent false positives or abuse of the system, but giving people disincentives is just as profitable an economic practice as any, so I would not put it past them.
Some companies do just that - especially the cheaper brands. Want to exchange your new flatscreen? Send it back to us in China! And it's not necessarily easy to ship something so large overseas because you'll probably end up paying $200+ in shipping fees. Probably more if they insist you deliver to their door and not just to the airport (as most freight services only do).
An SSD is at least somewhat easier and cheaper to ship even if you have to ship it all the way to China. Though it might end up costing you easily $50 or so to ship, and by then that SSD would cost new $50 or less.
And yeah, I think SSDs have reached the point of marginal performance gains - for the oost part, they're "fast enough".
And I'd stick with what the OEMs are using - see what Apple, Dell, etc., are using for SSDs and buy those, which in most cases is Samsung.
Mr. Williamson promptly left Apple headquarters in Antarctica, and walked to his home in Middelfart, Denmark."
I don't get it. Is this some kind of humor, or some kind of random gibberish added to the submission to see if anyone notices?
Maybe the submitter was trying to see if the editors were paying attention . . . ?
The joke is that the iOS 6 maps app couldn't find the right place you're looking for. Often mocked by the Motorola ad which touts the superiority of Google's maps (but which really turns out to be a non-existent address - if you specified a city, it would figure it out, but if you didn't, it found the right address in a different city), the problem was a few notable errors (of which Motorola could've picked instead of making one up) that were particularly egregious. And we're not talking about "a place with the same name", but well-known places that were in the wrong location period (wrong country, even).
So the joke goes that the Apple Maps are so bad, if you asked it to direct you across the street, you'll find yourself in another country if you followed its directions.
Maybe in the FAQ, but not in the bill. While the digital lock bits are fairly terrible, there are some other benefits of the bill. From Geist's blog:
Canadians can also take greater advantage of fair dealing, which allows users to make use of excerpts or other portions of copyright works without the need for permission or payment. The scope of fair dealing has been expanded with the addition of three new purposes: education, satire, and parody.
Fair dealing now covers eight purposes (research, private study, news reporting, criticism, and review comprise the other five). When combined with the Supreme Court of Canada's recent decisions that emphasized the importance of fair dealing as users' rights, the law now features considerable flexibility that allows Canadians to make greater use of works without prior permission or fear of liability.
The law also includes a unique user generated content provision that establishes a legal safe harbour for creators of non-commercial user generated content such as remixed music, mashup videos, or home movies with commercial music in the background. The provision is often referred to as the "YouTube exception", though it is not limited to videos.
True, provided you break no digital lock to do this
So you can't take a snippet of video from a DVD or Blu-Ray or other stream and use it for your fair dealing, which makes the exception fairly pointless.
So yes, the rights are enshrined in law. However, the digital lock part overrides that law - so even if you wanted to share a 30 second video, if it involves breaking a digital lock (again, no mention how "weak" the lock has to be, like DVDs), you can't do it.
So yeah, they're very generous. It's just you can't do anything with them because of the locks.
I suppose we can use the analog hole still as selective availability is still not around, yet.
And would connecting a device that converts protected content to unprotected format be considered a digital lock? I mean, if I take my blu-ray player, connect it via HDMI (&HDCP) to an HDFury (HDMI (with or without HDCP) to analog component video converter) and record that using a component video digitizer (e.g. Hauppage HD-PVR), did I break a lock?
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There are very strict rules (the FTC enforces them) about the terms "Made in the USA" and "Assembled in the USA".
The former means that all or virtually all of a product is made in the US. Obviously, the iMac doesn't quality for this (the FTC proposed defining it as 75% of manufacturing costs were spent in the USA AND the product was "last transformed" in the USA).
"Assembled in the USA" means that it's made up of foreign parts, but the last substantial transformation (or assembly) of the product is done in the US. Interestingly, "screwdriver" assembly of foreign parts does not count. This could easily mean that the iMac was more than importing the parts into the US and put-together there - perhaps the case assembly was produced from US manufacturing processes (including say, the friction-stir-welding), then the rest of the parts (which are China and foreign made out of supply-chain necessity)
Do not confuse the two terms "Made in USA" and "Assembed in USA" as they are significantly different in meanting. The FTC enforces the terminology and has found companies liable for violating "Made in USA" rules. Heck, I think some companies dubiously put "Made in USA from domestic and foreign parts"....
Not to mention, we're talking about a handful of people here. The number of people who are "not them" are in the billions, or if you want to be more exact, I'm sure for every Zuckerberg, there's probably 1,000 more people who fail (either to get a job, or fail at creating a company).
It's a celebrity effect - we all lust after those who are wildly successful and thing we can emulate them, but without realizing that they're one person, and we are many. It's a great dream, but one that is pretty impractical for a lot of us.
The other part of it is well, luck. Business is all about luck - if you just happen to get the right things done and the right people to see it and the people are in the right mood...
There are plenty of good capacitor brands - Panasonic, Nippon Chemi-Con among others (note: Japanese). There are plenty of crap capacitor brands (e.g., CrapXon, er, CapXon) that make crappy cheapass ones.
The thing is the electrolyte. An electrolytic capacitor gets its capacitance from an ultra thin oxide layer only a few atoms thick that exists on one of the plates (reversing the polarity dissolves the oxide and puts it on the other plate). It's a thin fragile layer so they put a paper separator with a high-conductivity electrolyte solution so the other plate can electrically connect ot the oxide layer. (A "low ESR" cap means the electrolyte is a bit more conductive). The other plate doesn't have much capacitance (remember capacitance increases with the inverse of the separation - make the separation smaller, the capacitance increases, and why electrolytics get high capacitances because of the thin oxide layer).
The cheap crappy caps have lousy electrolytes that can boil and dry off, which is why the capacitance decreases, and while the ESR increases. (And also why your electrolytics have easily a +20%/-50% tolerance).
As for why they're used, easy - you'll find them almost always in the power supply section (where you need high value, low ESR caps). The power supply is almost always designed by a third party company (many common ones like Jet, MeanWell, etc.) to the customer's specs. So the engineer simply asks for a power supply that provides +5V @ 5A, +12V @ 30A etc, the power connector and form factor/mechanicals. The company goes off, designs the supply and comes up with an initial BOM and quote for production. The company often negotiates the price downwards and cheaper parts get used as a result.
One ought ot note that the per-unit price of the wall-warts ranges anywhere from 50 cents to a few dollars, and that's the price the company purchasing htem pays. A built-in power supply board can also cost a few bucks to a few tens of dollars, while really high end equipment may pay much more for top-notch parts.
Equipment where the performance of the power supply is paramount (e.g., audio gear, including A/V receives) often have inhouse designed supplies and you'll very often find much higher build quality as a result (and higher spec parts - audio gear often uses a linear supply (bulky, heavy, inefficient) because a switcher can have switching harmonics that extend down into the audio band that cannot be eliminated.
A lot of elevators do that - if the button pushed is going in the wrong way, they don't allow it to light up.
Then I've seen ones that do allow you to push it, but it will continue that way until the bottomost floor is serviced (and no one else needs the elevator to go down) before it changes direction. But then it then services everyone going up, including the original up request (if no other elevator serviced it yet).
The trickiest I seen was it let you push the button, but once it stopped going down (if you wanted it to go up), it cleared all the selections and idled. If you push a lower floor, it went, if you push a higher, it doesn't move (parked). If you push the current floor, it reopens the door. It won't change directions unless there was a reason for it to (e.g., ground or top floor)
Actually, Valve is simply moving their walled garden elsewhere. And yes, Steam is a walled garden - until recently, unless you were someone Valve wanted to talk to, you weren't invited into the Steam store. Which keeps the quality of games high, but also meant that various indie games also weren't in.
And now Valve implemented a vetting process called Greenlight, which costs $100 per entry to add games to the store. Of course, it's also a popularity contest, which means a developer who wants to write a game for the PC platform (after having games on iOS, Android, PS3, PS Vita, Wii, Xbox360 and MacOS, but NOT PC). They could do it themselves, but they need a payment platform and really, Steam is it. Hell it's so bad they're considering Origin.
The problem is light timing is a very hard problem. First off, take a basic city with a grid style street layout. You can optimize the greens for flows in certain directions, but then the cross streets often get blocked up because they don't have an optimized pattern.
You can try optimizing flows differently - perhaps two get timed greens southbound because everyone's heading home (and they turn northbound int he morning rush), while a third street goes the other way. If you go southbound on that, you'll hit lights (and it's actually faster to navigate to the other streets than taking a direct route). Yes, the longer way can be faster because only some streets have timed lights in order to not cause total gridlock looking for an optimal solution. The goal is to find which ones are timed in which direction at what times (because the primary flow differs due to morning and afternoon rushes), and to see if the time it takes to navigate to the longer but timed routes is faster than the time it takes to go by the obvious route. In some places, the lights are timed in a circle (one street north, one street west, one street south, one street east) so choosing the optimal path may mean going the opposite direction to join it quicker.
Next, you have complications like parking, left/right turn lanes/lights/not-allowed. And idiot drivers who floor it at the green to hit the red in front, or more likely, those who see the light ahead is red, and don't move much above creeping speed to not have to slow down much.
And the lights are also timed to a speed - a road with a limit of 40 might have its lights timed to 30.
And yes, city planners have a headache of it all - allow a bicycle lane here, mess up traffic there, roadwork forcing diversions, etc. Illegal parkers and pickup/dropoffs don't help, either.
Elevators are easy - when making decisions, you have all the information ahead of who - who's calling for an elevator, and which floors the elevator must stop at. Some more intelligent systems may even schedule elevators by requesting that those who call an elevator enter in their destination floor as well.
Well, assuming the developer who wrote the code is the one making it available, downloading it would be fine. Running it is a bit trickier, though - would the act of turning it into an executable be considered a derivative work? If not, feel free to compile it, and run it (not a copyright event). You just can't distribute, sell, or otherwise use the code for anything else.
However, as "all rights reserved", it would be like it was CC NC (because you can't sell the compiled work or the source code), as well as CC ND, because you can't use that code for anything else. (It's one of the arguments for getting rid of ND/NC in CC licensed stuff because it's for the most part the same as "all rights reserved").
Github's merely redistributing it according to the policy and that the author holds copyright but is otherwise allowing free download rights (you're allowed to "give away" copyrighted "all rights reserved" content that you own - many authors do this with e-books).
Actually, it wasn't always like this - in the beginning, text messages were ... well, free. Because it was assumed voice would be primary and SMS would be used sparingly, after all, you only have a 10-digit keypad to enter characters in. So even the 160-character limit wasn't a huge thing as who had the patience to type it all in.
Then what happened is people realized that instead of paying for a phone call, they could send a text for free, so it took off in Asia and Europe because it was free.
Of course, carriers now had a problem because the control channel was being clogged with people sending texts - it was meant as a side thing added to the spec, but now enough were being sent that control channels were being seriously overloaded, which is why carriers went to a variable bandwidth control channel (Europe and Asia).
So then the carriers (in Asia) started implementing limits, and eventually the limits fell and they became charged items. In poorer parts of the world, answering the phone is now bad - they instead rely on the phone ringing a certain number of times to be the code as SMS charged them and a phone call is still expensive.
In North America, texting was a late comer, mostly due to the delayed introduction of GSM. It's really only been a "big" thing for just under a decade or so (while EMEA started implementing limits before that - late 90s). So none of the adaptations really made it in.
The explosion of texting has impacted the control channel which is why carriers like AT&T actually have plenty of cell tower capacity, except they have an absolutely congested control channel. And congested control channels mean dropped calls, failure to establish data connections (but once established, supremely fast as there is plenty of voice channel bandwidth), zero/no signal as the phone can't ping the tower and vice-versa, unable to make or receive a call, and many other problems. Of course, the iPhone didn't help because its aggressive power management meant it collapsed data connections as soon as they were over (huge data users often had 200+ page bills that detailed every data "call" from this) but also added to the control channel congestion.
And yes, any businessperson is an idiot who didn't see the profit-making potential in texting - if you have a service millions are using billions of times a day that those millions consider essential and it costs you practically nothing (other than having to erect new equipment to provide new control channels), why wouldn't you charge for it? They're addicted to texting and know of no other means of communication, so you have a captive audience who can't resist the urge to text 100 times a day.
Hell, even texting is dying out slowly if you look at the progression of plans. First we had the demolition of roaming charges on your home network (where if you leave your city and go to a neighbouring one you started paying roaming fees, now it's "nationwide roaming"). Next you had very cheap long distance ("unlimited nationwide calling!"). These days, they're practically giving unlimited voice calls away (underutitlized channels). and now texting is easily becoming unlimited in the cheapest plans.
The reason? The next place is data - that's the profit segment. SMS etc., are slowly dying out as everyone wants to update their Facebooks and their Twitters and everything. LTE being exclusively packet switched (and probably variable control channel bandwidth as well) it's built for data. Voice over LTE is practically VoIP (though some carriers don't do it - using 3G to handle the voice call instead).
Then comes the other problem - discovery. Just like the Android and iOS stores, newcomers who aren't the first movers will get stuck at the very bottom of the list, so either the list stays stagnant because users aren't finding the new stuff, or only the ones who could afford a marketing budget and buy premium placement.
And it's such a big problem that Apple had to buy a company (Chomp) who specializes in app searches, and people complain Google's search isn't that great either (ironically).
Funny, but US notes are all the same color, so if I'm looking at a pile of US dollars, I have to spread 'em out to count 'em individually to figure out how much I have.
Unlike say, every other country's notes which are color coded, so I can quickly glance through my wallet and count.
Or, I can also hand over a note to the cashier which I know how much is there without needing ot visually inspect and have said cashier also inspect. (In Canada - blue = $5, purple = $10, green = $20, red = $50, and brown = $100. If I need $5, I grab the blue note. No need to go through my stack and see if I have a $5 note or accidentally give 4 $1 notes and 1 $10 note...
The problem is latency. It's incredibly difficult, but the Wii U's screen latency on the tablet is practically real time (I think I heard 1 frame latency). So much so that yes, you CAN game on it.
The latency using your smartphone is much higher - it's why smartglass and such don't display in-game information that changes immediately but can tolerate a delay. You certainly can't "remote play" using your smartphone without incurring a half-second of display lag.
Well, Android users don't really USE their phones for the web it seems.
iOS devices seem to take in (depending on who you ask) around 65-80% of mobile web traffic to sites. The rest is mostly Android, but despite Android selling way more than iOS (and being around 75% marketshare), the vast majority of those devices aren't being used for the Internet.
Given that Android phones sell just as cheap as featurephones, it's probably not a surprise people buy them - free featurephone vs. free android phone.
So Windows 8 traffic surpassing Android isn't a huge surprise - despite being the market leader, few Android users actually use it to surf the 'net.
You can get smart systems - either using robotic pickers and conveyor belts or floor pickers that pick entire shelves of systems. These systems are entirely intelligent enough to handle chaotic storage, and often do by moving "hot items" to the spots closest to the packers and leaving the colder items further down.
And the robotic picker systems don't pick an item out, they pick up a plastic container containing multiple items and send it down the ramp to the packer, who picks the correct item out of the container, scans it and puts it into the box. The container then zips around to another packer (if there's something they need) or back onto the shelf.
They're all barcoded systems so the computers easily figure out where everything is.
The only advantage Amazon has with their human-based system is that shelving systems can be rearranged cheaply and easily - te robot systems require extensive infrastructure to be built up (either laying down of cables for tracking, or installing the robotic pickers). So if Amazon needs to expand their warehouse, they can do so far quicker since no robots have to be reprogrammed or anything. And if they decide they hold a lot of small items, they can break down those shelves to hold small items better (robot pickers require every container to be the same size).
The problem with 0 day detection is it's often heuristic detection. And you can find numerous examples where it's gone wild and rendered systems completely unbootable because some system file matched the heuristic.
And it's happened to every vendor, except it seems, Microsoft. One definition update gone awry and a pile of systems go tits up because a critical system file got quarantined.
And then you have to weigh whether or not such aggressiveness is warranted - would you want such great 0-day protection only to run the risk that 6 hours down the road, your computer is unbootable and did you happen to have a backup?
A very fine line that has to be walked.
So how easy is easy? Would going into the menu, finding the setting that says "Secure Boot" and changing that from "Enabled" to "Disabled" be too hard? (or Yes to No, or selecting "Disable Secure Boot" or whatever that open is called. Maybe it's something obtuse, like "Enable legacy boot"?).
Because every x86-based PC MUST have the option to disable secure boot. It's a requirement to get the Windows 8 certified logo on it.
The most obvious reason why is because people may want to well, boto a legacy OS like Windows 7.
And WIndows 8 can boot in legacy mode too, because despite most PCs shipping with UEFI (for a few years now - it's been Intel's thing except they also splash it with a BIOS setup app that configures the BIOS boot), most UEFI BIOSes out there right now do NOT support secure boot (again, legacy - UEFI has been around a while far longer than secure boot). And heck, I don't think Macs even support secure boot period even when booting in EFI mode.
Also, I suppose it keeps support calls and returns down because a clueless user is less likely to buy a laptop that for the most part costs $50 more than one that's practically the same.
If the Linux one was cheaper (and it's debatable because OEM crapware does add to the profit margin), Dell would find a lot of customers would order it and then complain they can't run Office or other thing, thus forcing a return and markdown as refurbs.
But do this and those users will gravitate towards the Windows version as well.
So price discimination, combined with lower profit margins because preinstalled crapware isn't as prevalent on Linux (for now) ensure the Linux one will cost more. Better to have fewer Linux sales (they're small anyways) than to have a huge amount of returns because users bought it because it was cheaper but can't run Windows apps.
FYI - the "HD" in HD radio does NOT stand for "high definition". It stands for "hybrid digital" - inside the standard FM signal is an embedded digital signal that a hybrid digital radio receiver can tune (think of it as a digital sub-band).. This is basically so an HD radio station can offer traditoinal FM but also additional programming on the digital side.
You aren't getting better sound quality (it can actually be worse depending on the audio compression and how many subchannels they're offering due to bandwidth), and in the end, it's really more of the same old FM you're used to. Just in some markets the bands are so crowded there's no way for a new station to get a license.
They just call it HD radio as a marketing thing. It's digital, it sounds better (or not - like I said, bitrate compression is involved) and to get consumers confused because they see HD as meaning high-definition.
Exactly. Every program done by governement is considered pork by someone. Teachers want a pay raise? Pork - chop their salaries - who else gets 10+ weeks of vacation a year? 5 people at the police station nightly? Cut it down to 2 and save 3 union OT salaries. Library? Cut it - who reads books anymore? Lighting up some tree in city square (it's the season)? Definitely pork - let's just refuse to honor the season and make it as miserable as possible - happy feelings are pork.
Hell, people will complain about road maintenance as well - those who don't drive probably complain how much is spent on them, and those who do complain how little is spent.
For NASA, perhaps this was considered pork as well - surely if it wasn't, the private sector would be more than happy to pay for it all. After all, they're doing al lthe space-y things as well.
Or perhaps it's because there's been a population shift in the market. What once appealed to a few people now appeals to a greater many. Sure DRM was annoying in the 90s, but there were fewer gamers back then as well, and the ones that were tended to be expert computer users in the end.
Nowadays, "computer users" is a dead term because modern society requires using a computer to accomplish everyday tasks. Computers have gone from a highly niche and technical product to something that's a part of everyday life and living in the span of around 30 years.
And the fact that everyone uses computers also means that the techies are no longer the population to target. Remember, since the modern general population has to use a computer, they often have very different priorities than techies.
I'm sure there are plenty of kids who don't want to go into computer engineering or computer science, and who are otherwise happy to lead a balanced life doing many things as well as playing computer games. To which Steam DRM is a non-issue because it makes their life more convenience - if they want a game, they just go to the Steam store, buy it and download it. While it's downloading they do other things - study, do homework, etc. They have no interest in using a computer, they just want to play a game.
Likewise, many people use the internet to get news and keep in touch with friends and then get on with their lives and hobbies. They don't care about net neutrality, copyright,, patents, trademarks, etc. They just want to sit down, share a few stories, then head off and do something else.
I'm sure there are many technologies that end up like this - hell, people used to be technical enough to take the covers off their TVs, find the tubes, walk to the store to the tube tester and buy replacement ones in order to fix the TV. These days, TVs are everywhere and not just an enclave for the rich or a special event thing that people gather around the TV to watch it.
Or cars - you have shadetree mechanics versus those who just want a way to get from point A to point B reliably and efficiently. Hell, shadetree mechanics are probably cursing the modern car - there's less to tweak and twist and turn (or to even just work around), and most of the work takes place with a computer. So intead of getting to deal with mechanical bits and working under the car, they sit in front of a screen clicking and pointing their way through the car's systems. They don't care about the computer, they want to play with the car (like how Linux users may like to play around with Linux itself)..
Not everyone who uses computers has a techie compatible priority list. I'm sure the stock traders don't care how their trading computers work, just how the trading is done and resolved and if the PC bluescreens, you call IT and have them replace it - trying to fix it themselves will probably make things worse.
One of the main reasons why I didn't do this KS was because they said on their main page that the initial developer units are NOT compatible with glasses, but the one that becomes commercially avialable will.
Since the design has to be locked down - did they end up supporting glasses or not?
Some companies do just that - especially the cheaper brands. Want to exchange your new flatscreen? Send it back to us in China! And it's not necessarily easy to ship something so large overseas because you'll probably end up paying $200+ in shipping fees. Probably more if they insist you deliver to their door and not just to the airport (as most freight services only do).
An SSD is at least somewhat easier and cheaper to ship even if you have to ship it all the way to China. Though it might end up costing you easily $50 or so to ship, and by then that SSD would cost new $50 or less.
And yeah, I think SSDs have reached the point of marginal performance gains - for the oost part, they're "fast enough".
And I'd stick with what the OEMs are using - see what Apple, Dell, etc., are using for SSDs and buy those, which in most cases is Samsung.
The joke is that the iOS 6 maps app couldn't find the right place you're looking for. Often mocked by the Motorola ad which touts the superiority of Google's maps (but which really turns out to be a non-existent address - if you specified a city, it would figure it out, but if you didn't, it found the right address in a different city), the problem was a few notable errors (of which Motorola could've picked instead of making one up) that were particularly egregious. And we're not talking about "a place with the same name", but well-known places that were in the wrong location period (wrong country, even).
So the joke goes that the Apple Maps are so bad, if you asked it to direct you across the street, you'll find yourself in another country if you followed its directions.
True, provided you break no digital lock to do this
So you can't take a snippet of video from a DVD or Blu-Ray or other stream and use it for your fair dealing, which makes the exception fairly pointless.
So yes, the rights are enshrined in law. However, the digital lock part overrides that law - so even if you wanted to share a 30 second video, if it involves breaking a digital lock (again, no mention how "weak" the lock has to be, like DVDs), you can't do it.
So yeah, they're very generous. It's just you can't do anything with them because of the locks.
I suppose we can use the analog hole still as selective availability is still not around, yet.
And would connecting a device that converts protected content to unprotected format be considered a digital lock? I mean, if I take my blu-ray player, connect it via HDMI (&HDCP) to an HDFury (HDMI (with or without HDCP) to analog component video converter) and record that using a component video digitizer (e.g. Hauppage HD-PVR), did I break a lock?