Don't like the higher speed limit? Don't drive on it.
Doesn't get any simpler than that.
Technically, the limit specifies a CEILING, not a floor speed. So just because the speed limit is 85mph, doesn't mean you HAVE to do 85mph. There probably is a minimum speed you must maintain, but you're free to choose any speed in-between.
Just try to stick to the right hand lane to let faster traffic pass. And if you're on the cellphone doing whatever, you're slower traffic (why is it that cellphone users always seem to be the cause of congestion? I mean, when you finally pass the car that's holding up traffic, it's because the driver is invariably texting or having the phone glued to their ear... If you can pass them. They weave in and out of lanes even worse than drunk drivers, stop suddenly and fail to observe the light has turned green...).
Im not sure it deserves to get modded to 5, it was admittedly a cheesy cheap shot. But I dont understand what you think Amazon is getting away with? They sold eBooks cheaper than regular books, and they bloody well should be cheaper. It worked out well for Amazon, worked out well for the consumers, worked out for the authors, and even for the publishers. Apple didnt like it because it undercut their business model but not being able to compete isnt a crime. What they did, effectively blackmailing publishers to enter into a price-fixing agreement, is very illegal and does not benefit consumers, not even Apple consumers. What 'bubble' is that living in?
It's called "competition".
Would you buy EVERY EBOOK from Amazon?
Because that's the way the world was headed - Amazon's discounting ebooks in an attempt to devalue them and lock people into the Kindle, basically being the only way to sell your ebook.
It's not a new business tactic - it's often used when a big guy wants to crush competition by selling products at a loss just long enough for competitors to close shop and not even try. And in the end, you get a monopoly.
It worked for Amazon - they have a lot of cash, a lot of books (the only competition at the time was Sony's store). So they have 90% of the ebook market.
It worked for consumers - yes, in the time Amazon was dumping product, consumers were paying low prices. But once all the competition leaves and everyone's stuck using Kindle store, why would Amazon continue offering low low low prices?
It worked for authors and publishers - yes, because they got paid full price. But once Amazon was the only game in town, Amazon can squeeze both ends of the spectrum - consumers get higher prices, authors and publishers get less (you think Apple's 30% cut is huge? Books routinely wholesale for 50% or less - it's how Amazon can sell books 30% off and still make money with free shipping).
All Apple did was see this, and offer a "better deal" like any new competitor. Except well, Apple's hard to drive out of business (though their iBookstore is laughable). Publishers rushed on in because they hated what Amazon was doing and ended up pressuring Amazon to stop dumping. About the only controversial part may be MFN clauses in the agreements, but those apparently are pretty standard throughout many agreements.
And hey, Amazon's still trying to lock everyone in - you think all those Amazon Prime benefits are purely because Amazon loves its customers?
And if you want to see what would've happened, I can say RIAA and MPAA.
In short, Amazon was heading towards ebook monopoly, and a competitor simply offered content producers a better deal because that's how you compete. (It's also a revenge move by Apple - Amazon did the same thing to Apple and its iTunes Music Store, too. Which resulted in DRM-free music across the board, at the expense of higher music prices on iTunes).
I don't know about the history of Christianity specifically in Korea, but I do know that even the term "fundamentalism" as applied to Christianity didn't exist until the early 20th century. (It's derived from The Fundamentals, a series of conservative Christian essays published between 1910 and 1915.) For most of Christian history, the Bible was interpreted metaphorically in areas where a literal interpretation would lead to absurd results. Even St. Augustine, a highly conservative Christian writing in the 4th-5th century, said that Christians should not hold up the faith to ridicule by insisting on a literal interpretation of the Bible: "Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn."
Fundamentalism is not a pre-modern ideology, but a specific reaction to modernity. The same is true of Islamic Wahabbism, which is akin to Christian Fundamentalism in many ways. They think they are "that old time religion" but they are actually nothing of the sort. A medieval Christian or Muslim would have found these ideologies both repulsive and unrecognizable.
Correct.
And modern "creationism" (aka ID) was really created by a group in the US (the "Discovery Institute") whose primary belief is that the world's ills are caused because of the shift away from religion towards secularism. (Which may be true to some extent - e.g., human greed causes a bunch of the world's problems, but it goes beyond mere greed. Nevermind that religion is the cause of many wars in human history...).
No, it's not just prayer in the classroom, but the non-teaching of religion in school and probably the conversion of followers of illegiimate (i.e., other) faiths to the One True Path(tm).
Basically, what you mention - modernism is driving people away from religion, which is why the world is full of dictators and unethical people who rob/steal/do drugs/etc. Of course, a lot of people believe times were better in the past when kids were more respectful of authority, there was less crime, etc. etc. etc., so their beliefs end up resonating with a larger group.
The irony is that tine DI's texts are full of evolution from creationism to ID (including transitional fossils).
However, the main thing is choice: the Creative Commons initiative currently offer a really good choice of licensees from the "Noncommercial/NoDerivs" (which is still one hell of an improvement from 'all rights reserved and I'd sue you for reading it to your kid if I thought I could get away with it' status quo) to full-blown 'copyleft' if you want it. It would be a pity if that was wrecked by idealism.
All rights reserved doesn't prevent you from posting your story online and letting everyone read it. NoCommercial/NoDerivs is basically All Rights Reserved in the end. You put your story online and to the reader, there's no functional difference. They can't commercially sell it under either license (NoCommercial), and they can't make much beyond fair use (NoDerivs).
The only difference is that someone running a non-commercial website (i.e., a personal blog, but not say/.) can copy and post it up and say "here's a cool story I found" without having to ask for permission first if it was All Rights Reserved. Everyone else, it's pretty much all rights reserved and the same rules would apply.
Short of that really narrow exception (which practically speaking isn't a big deal - since blogs lift all rights reserved content all the time and such, but get away with it because it's some small time thing that few know about).
Practically speaking, using CC-NC is the same as All Rights Reserved - a site like/. can't take your content withour your permission. CC-ND pretty much says "only use my work vebatim, do not adapt" which while allows for distribution beyond NC, really isn't in the spirit of CC (it's a "commons" to share and build upon other's work. ND doesn't allow that.).
Also remember that CC is supposed to give users rights beyond that of standard copyright law (all rights reserved is default - you can use CC or copyleft to give users more rights than they have under all rights reserved, but not take away what's already allowed), hence stuff like NC and ND are already redundant because that stuff is already prohibited.
If a phone is made in the USA today, it will be mostly built by robots with only a few humans involved in the process.
Any labor intensive parts that couldn't be done by a robot, will be done over seas.
Otherwise the phones would be 100 to 300 dollars more expensive.
Actually, most of the labor intensive parts will simply be not done. Everyone gives Apple crap for using stuff like glue and whatnot instead of screws, but guess what? Screws are labor-intensive!
Instead, a proper made-in-the-USA phone would probably be one of the most sealed things ever - I would imagine a single circuit board, LCD screen pretty much soldered to the board (or zebra-stripped - connectors are finicky) with stuff press-fit and such. Earpieces will be press-contacts and the entire assembly would be glued or welded shut. Because putting stuff like screens and earpieces and microphones in is trivial for a robot to do, as is sticking in a circuilt board and programming it (pogo pins) and then compressing it all in a nicely welded shut case.
It's called "design for manufacturing" and it's a highly-sought after skill. The less things have to be touched by human hands, the better (faster to assemble, faster to test, etc., which means real cost savings). Of course, it also impacts repairability because instead of screws, liberal use of adhesives (which are easily applied by robots) is the norm.
Of course, there will have to be SOME humans at the factory - you need people to maintain the robots, after all, and handle all the parts receiving and such.
Your point being that the capitalist system uses a different method of coercion than the communist system?
In a capitalist society, you need money to live and must work for money.
And it seems in the west, we call getting the necessary work experience so you can get a job and work for money "unpaid internship". (Emphasis on unpaid - most interships and summer jobs pay some nominal amount - at least minimum wage).
That's how markets used to work. You paid whatever the store owner feels like charging you, and it varied according to who you were.
Then new retailers like James Penney, Sears & Roebuck, and Montgomery Wards arrived on the scene with fixed prices attached to merchandise. Everyone paid the same regardless of who they were.
Neither method is the "correct" way of doing things but the new way drove the old way out of business during the 1920s. The "same price for everyone" stores came to dominate the U.S.
Price discrimination also relies on incomplete customer information. If the customer doesn't know the price may be different elsewhere, they probably would argue less about the price quoted.
The internet though has made it extremely difficult to do this because information on "what he paid" travels quickly, so attempts to do price discrimination doesn't work too well.
Amazon used to do it, but they got found out a decade ago. If you went a decade earlier (the 90s) you probably got away with it because it was much harder to distribute information around.
But now with everyone saying "You can buy $new_toy for $discount_price!" on social networks and other websites, it's a lot harder. Especially when you get replies like "Deal's over, I got $high_price", followed by others saying "No, I got $discount_price!" or "I couldn't get $discount_price, but got it as $middle_price".
In the end, people liked fixed prices because it meant they knew what they were going to pay, and it wasn't up to the whims of the shopkeeper. And it's usually treated as a max price - you can always get discounts off that, but going in you know what you were going to pay.
The old method - it didn't take long before you found a shopkeeper who didn't like you and sold stuff to you at a premium compared to others.
Price discrimination helps maximize profit, but with the communications systems of today, it's extremely hard to pull off since the only way it can thrive properly is when the consumer is uninformed about what others are paying.
If Sharp goes under the may have to go to Samsung for displays. I'm sure they would do it but there will be an extra $1B charge tacked in somewhere...
Samsung only makes AMOLED displays (they got rid of their LCD division). There are plenty of others who make LCDs - LG and Hitachi are the bigger ones, but there are various smaller ones as well.
Though, I'm surprised Apple didn't take it as an opportunity to invest in Sharp, perhaps doing it as a joint venture. Apple's been investing heavily in display technology, they could use it as a chance to own the display supply chain to do strategic R&D (i.e., higher res displays).
It's something Apple prides itself on (having some of the nicer displays in its products), so I'm surprised they wouldn't spend some of that huge warchest to acquire cutting edge display technology and manufacturing.
Actually, if you bothered to RTFA, Apple is lowering their profits and profit margins by censoring.
Please tell me how not selling apps maximizes profits? Tell me how spending the man hours to censor increases margins?
Well, when it avoids having to have users deal with trojans and other stuff in the marketplace (see Google Play malware that Google has had to forcibly remove from people's devices).
Right now, despite Android having a 2:1 advantage over iOS (500,000 new activations a day, according to Google, or close to 15M new Androids a month), it seems Android revenue is far lower than iOS revenue for app developers. Now there can be many factors for this, including piracy, but it seems at the moment, regardless of whatever the cause, the App Store sells apps, which attracts developers. And apps sell hardware, which is where Apple makes money (close to a couple of orders of magnitude more from iOS than iTunes).
Apple realized the profitable segment of the population doesn't want the "PC experience" on their phones - that users really just want to install the app, use it and get on with their day.
Same went for pornographic apps - a profitable segment of the population complained.
Or, it could simply mean that the FBI didn't get the information from Apple, but from some 3rd party.
This is probably it. Does the FBI have an app in the App Store? If so, that's where it could come from.
If not, there are plenty of social networks - from OpenFeint (aka Gree) to many others. Perhaps it came from Flurry? Or Admob? Or some popular developer like Gameloft? Or Zynga?
Thing is, the entire list of information is available to a developer so they can send push notifications or other things, so it probably didn't come from Apple, but from some other developer who either got hacked, or NSL'd, or just plain gave the FBI the information. Or it was a contractor laptop and that contractor worked at the FBI now, but worked for an iOS developer before.
Hell, if Apple gave out that information, it would probably be way more than 12M, and have way more information in it.
First, in the physical world, shelf-space is limited. A store can't carry everything because there isn't room. Thus, Barnes and Noble doesn't carry your novel because they'd rather stock their shelves with something they believe will sell. Needless to say, this isn't a factor in the digital world.
Well, I'm pretty sure if I wrote a game, Valve won't sell it on Steam, which is a perfectly virtual marketplace - adding my game would consume little on Valve's servers.
Hell, I know they're also being picky because there's a campaign to get a game ported to PC and distributed by Steam (it's on PS3, Xbox360, iOS, Android, and Mac, but not on PC and Valve for some reason won't talk to the developer to put it on Steam).
Anyhow, the other thing is well, you can bet Apple's actually sitting pretty - considering Androids are outselling iOS 2:1, iOS users though are buying apps and spending money on the whole ecosystem. (They're also using a LOT more data - Mobile Safari is still getting way more traffic than any mobile browser out there... so unless every Android user is using a different browser that fakes desktop user-agents...).
Apple's making money, developers are making money (compared to Google Play for the most part - there are a few devs making more money off Android than iOS), the question becomes - if Apple decided to be a free-for-all like Google Play, will they and developers earn even MORE money?
And that's the real question that needs to be asked. Apple's about making money. If opening up the App Store means Apple can sell even MORE iOS devices (iTunes makes very little money for Apple, so app sales really don't factor in) than they do now, then yes, it makes sense for Apple to open it up. If however, it does diddly, it's not worth it.
It's also got fairly good licensing terms - I mean the OS can be replicated (it is billions of times - once for ever cell), and the OS can make copies of itself (mitosis), and even end up altering itself through random changes (mutations).
A virus only infects one cell to duplicate itself - all the other uninfected cells have their own copy. The antivirus system basically works by killing infected cells.
So all in all, an interesting OS - security worse than Windows (i.e., none at all - just random strings of genetic code can alter the OS - you don't neve need root! just physical access!), yet it really works by sheer number of copies.
Rocketing up to +5 with an anti-Apple post, I see, but this kind of stupidity in patent-land has been going on a long time. I mean, come on--Slashdot has had a knife-fork-spoon icon for "patents" for quite some time, and for a reason. 1-click purchasing, anyone?
That's 21st century. This patent nonsense has been around since the 19th. It's not new. Just new to high-tech. In the 19th century it was patent fights over stuff like telephones, internal combustion engines (in particular, the 4-stroke cycle), 20th century had others, and so on. And heck, the car keeps generating patents as well - hybrid vehicles - between Toyota and Ford, they've got it pretty much all locked up (Toyota and Ford only cross licensed because they ended up suing each other over hybrid vehicles).
Also, I don't think the "non-practicing entity" lawsuits (aka patent trolls) are a new concept either.
Interestingly, some patents are long lived - intermittent windshield wipers had a lawsuit that started in the mid-50's and only ended up resolved in the early 80s, well after the patent expired.
As others mention below, the end result (if predictions are accurate, which is by no means guaranteed) is that the grain belt shifts northward into areas that aren't currently suitable for it, with the idea being that we don't really lose much staple crop farming capacity. While my organization focuses its efforts on soil reparative and water storage techniques which would mitigate such a situation, we don't see it as the Armageddon-level event predicted by the more strident GW acolytes. There are important things we need to be doing right now, rather than wasting our time arguing over what may or may not happen in the future.
The problem with this is that as the crops move north, the amoun ot sunlight received overall decreases. So where near the equator you might be able to plant and grow year round, once you hit the northern borders, one crop a year is about all you can reasonably expect to get.
And there have been observed differences in the way plants grow south versus north - the northern ones adapt to the less sunlight available and put their energy into reproduction, while the ones in the south put a lot of energy into growing big and tall first, then reproduction - because the increased sunlight means they can do that before the growing season ends.
Or would you really suggest that California and say, Washington get the same amount of sunlight year round?
Which isn't to say you shouldn't be able to, but that you shouldn't do it because it will be misused and serves no practical purpose. Also, why is it we ask "how can we shoot things or blow things up with this" every time a new technology comes to the market?
I think ti's mostly a US culture thing. American culture towards guns tends to be fairly unique throughout the world - other countries may be fairly casual about them (e.g., Canada) as well, but guns don't usually bring up the huge emotions as they would in the US. Talk about gun control and it's a call to arms in the US. In Canada, it's just mere discussion.
And other cultures (e.g., Japan) may not even believe guns exist. And many countries the only way to get access to them is via the military, which citizens usually are forced to serve a few years in (and some are mandated to keep their guns on reserve in good condition after they leave), but they too don't usually talk much about them. Almost taboo at times.
For using 3D printers ot make guns, I'm for it at the moment, at least hoping humanity is generally responsible about their use and laws are stroung enough that irresponsible use is curtailed (I know, I know, laugh all you want). Of course, people like TFA don't really give me much hope.
Of course, if gunsmithing were easy, everyone would be a gunsmith. But a gun is full of precision parts that have to work in generally the right way for things to go well. Otherwise things can go very badly.
And the laws will change - the parts that are trivially made on 3D printers will probalby end up being deregistered, and other parts will be the registered ones (which will be great fun for everyone concerned...).
Get it through your thick skulls MSFT, people like apps and they don't like distractions with flip-flopping tiles on the homescreen. I have to give you credit for trying to be original but give it a rest already. Also, nobody except fanboys like the "hub" concept. Stop trying to oversell your Xbox live and other services on the mobile platform.
Uh, the tile concept would be closer to Android than iOS.
Google did the "home screen" thing to avoid the "rounded rectangles with square grid of icons" patent on Android. So what happens when you unlock an Android phone? You see the home screen, which by default has a huge analog clock (only present on the lock screen on iOS, and it's digital there), and a bunch of frequently used apps (phone/messaging/browser), while the "grid of icons" is hidden by the "show all apps" button.
In its place, you can drop widgets to your heart's content on the home screen so you can see the weather at a glance as well when you unlock your phone, plus all your other social media things.
And judging by Android users, especially on/., they like the widget thing and seeing htat stuff.
Microsoft extended the concept with tiles - thus avoid any design issues with iOS and Android. The tiles are effectively widgets and you can see all your update stuff right there on your "home" screen (whatever it's called on WP8).
Why does "blocking innovation" mean "you must copy the UI"? Between Apple, Google and Microsoft experimenting with different UIs, I'd say it's far better they don't copy (Microsoft probably did LiveTiles to avoid anything Google might have.)
People want widgets - Microsoft extended Andorid's concept a bit further to explore stuff. iOS merely took popular widgets (weather and stocks) and tucked them away in a pull-down drawer (probably again to avoid anything Google might have), the concept of which well, came from Android (which would be hard for Apple to defend against if Google has patented that).
It's called innovation. Incremental at times, but worthy to test it out.
current wafers still yield large numbers of current-sized chips. and for the most part, chip architects are not primarily limited by available area: relentless process shrinks bring, if anything, more transistors than they know how to use. sure, you can always throw on more cache, especially L3. but the main issues today are power and IPC/TLP-type efficiency, not space. the K20 team at NVidia might disagree, but they _should_ be pushing the bounds, since their target is less cost-sensitive HPC, not commodity/gaming.
in short, the action is in litho, process, transistor topology, power and microarchitecture, not the number of chips spoiled by the edges.
That's correct for transistor-limited (aka pin-limited) chips, but not so for area-limited chips.
Yes, just like we have CPU-bound software and IO-bound software, we have area-limited and pin-limited chips. Pin-limited chips are where the I/O balls are keeping chips from becoming bigger - you see this as CPUs, SoCs, chipsets and other utility chips (many bus architectures are redesigned to be more conservative on their pin usage - why consume 64 pins when you can use 16).
Area limited chips are where the actual silicon area limits their usage - too big and flaws mean lower yields, too small and your devices may not meet requirements. These kind of devices are typically memory devices - the storage array is the largest consumer of area (the logic fits neatly around it) and the larger you can make the storage array, the bigger the memory.
Memory devices are also some of the most dense, transistor wise (a CPU has tons of "random logic" that means wiring is what keeps transistors spread apart, not transistor density). For a given process node, if you can double the area of the storage array, you double the storage.
And memory devices cover a wide gamut - from imaging devices (CCDs, CMOS), standard DRAMs and SRAMs, and EEPROM-style memory (including flash memory).
Basically the amount of storage you can stick is limited by area (double area, double storage, eseentially), but if you make the area too big, yields go down as the impact of an imperfection destorys the entire chip.
A larger wafer has more area available, and since wafer costs are mostly fixed (a single wafer costs anywhere from $1000-3000 or so), the number of good chips has to pay for it all. The more good chips (higher yield), the cheaper the cost.
A larger wafer means more chips can be made, so cheaper overall memory devices - which translate to cheaper SSDs, cheaper DRAMs, digital cameras with larger sensors, dSLRs with full-frame sensors at a budget price (this one especially - the sensor is the most expensive part because it's genuinely a HUGE piece of silicon and only a handful make it out of a wafer, even allowing for bad pixels).
For other chips, a larger area does allow for more wiring, which is what dominates chip design, not transistors. If you take something like an FPGA - the thing limiting it IS area - wiring area is extremely limited.
Then run the 32-bit operating system in a virtual machine on the 64-bit operating system, such as the XP Mode powered by Windows Virtual PC that is available to all Windows 7 Professional users, or run the 16-bit applications in Windows 3.1 in a real emulator such as DOSBox.
Once a processor is in x64 mode, it cannot run real mode/16-bit code at all. Even virtualized. It's just physically incapable of it.
The only way to run 16-bit code is to emulate it because the CPU will only take in 32-bit instructions in 32-bit compatibility mode.
Some virtualization software do have software emulators so they don't have to bother virtualizing 16-bit modes (VirtualBox does - in order to run the loaders of most OSes - the virtualization only takes over once the CPU is switched into 32 bit mode or better).
Windows has an interesting problem - because of the limitation of 64-bit mode, you'd think Microsoft would eliminate all the deprecated API calls for 64-bit Windows (but keep them around in the 32-bit libraries because theres enough legacy software out there that uses them). Calls like OpenFile(). But they didn't - their reasoning is purely developer convenience - you recompile your app for 64-bit windows without having to change many lines of code...
I'm not really surprised by this. Someone had the idea to create a purely virtual currency, and someone else has found it to be an attractive target.
The fact that it is vulnerable to this kind of attack probably indicates there's some real flaws in how this currency is supposed to work -- or at least a few places where someone can get through the cracks.
I remember when I first started hearing about this, and thinking "gee, I hope they've thought through all of the security issues". It's like security in operating systems... there's tons of things you could overlook which can let someone in, and until it starts happening, you likely haven't even thought of all of them.
I feel bad for anybody has lost their money on this, but I've been treating this like an experiment which has the potential to go really wrong. It's just so massively complex to try to design your own currency system that someone isn't going to try to exploit without going through a lot of growing pains.
And it's going to have the same problems as real money has.
You know, the things that caused us to be in the financial mess we're in right now.
Basically we have something we deem valuable, Bitcoins. We also have a bunch of people who have no experience running a bank, running banks. (Sorry to say it - but the reason real life banks have tons of regulations to deal with is because it's already happened. History repeats itself. And even then we still have problems).
It's only a matter of time before things get strengthened enough to be trustworthy, then we'll enter the next stage of problems. Bitcoin isn't immune from HFT, speculation, derivatives and all sorts of other fun stuff that happens in real life. In fact, the second stage may happen much sooner due to its volatility and deflationary issues (which cause even more volatility because they suppress transactions).
Now, what speculator or financial investment institution won't look at Bitcoin's volatility and find a way to exploit it? Do it right and cause enough swings to make many bucks much quicker and more easily than in real life (lack of regulations help).
Radiation damage builds up with time, see Total Ionizing Dose (TID) effects. Not so easy to "tweak" silicon devices to counteract lattice displacement effects (the only real solution being not relying on the silicon lattice, i.e., working with vacuum tubes).
Well, there are other semiconductors available, and additionally, the technology Voyager was using wasn't the advanced deep-sub-micron stuff we have today where a few displaced atoms can ruin the whole thing. The old generation technology was probably using BJT transistors than NMOS (CMOS was a luxury).
As for maintenance - other than radiation and debris, there isn't much that would affect Voyager. You don't have a corrosive osxygen atmosphere like on earth causing havoc with mechanical systems. You aren't likely to have much in the way of bacteria feeding off of metal in space, either. Short of flying into a planet, even a gas cloud of oxygen won't cause many problems (the density being low).
Heck, even thermal effects are minimal at this point (most of the heat is in the nuclear RTG).
by afidel (530433) Alter Relationship on Wednesday September 05, @08:21AM (#41235127)
Really? The US has three LTE providers, how many does the UK have, how many does Germany have? Can you roam between them (especially on LTE) without being raped in the pocket book? My wife has nationwide coverage with 300 voice minutes, 2.5GB of 3G data, unlimited texts all for only $25/month. That's competitive with any offer available anywhere in the world and with a much larger coverage area.
Actual network operators in Europe aren't much more than the US - it's just that there's enough regulations (evil! evil!) that ensure that you can have a pile of MVNOs providing competitive services.
That's basically what makes Europe different - the actual infrastructure providers are forced to share with competitors. And those competitors don't have to own any equipment (the "virtual" part of MVNO).
Of course, the US will work itself in a tizzy if any sort of law like that were to be introduced by either side.
Hell, when Canada introduced AWS band carriers (e.g., Wind, Mobilicity), the big carriers objected and threw up enormous roadblocks. You can expect even more lobbying should someone even make a peep about sharing infrastructure.
The mouse has evolved, and natural selection has killed the old style mice.
I mean, we have mousewheels now which seem to be essential (try using a mouse without one - they get annoying quick). But you have mice that have tried other things - IBM used to put their red nubs on them for scrolling, Apple put a touchpad on them, etc. And we have mice, trackballs, and touchpads (which have evolved greatly from their useless postage-stamp sized days to the acres of surface on the Apple ones).
Hell, there were laptops with built-in mice (not trackballs or touchpads or eraser points, but actual mouse).
Innovation may have stopped because they've matured, and we've reached a stage where they're really not much you can do that hasn't been tried before and natural selection killed it. Plus, considering a basic mouse is usable, costs probably $5 assembled tops, and is good enough (not a far cry from Jobs' demand that the Mac mouse cost $20 tops, though Apple makes terrible, horrendous mice (and always have), perhaps that's why they use touchpads).
Keyboards, again you see a bit, but there's only so much you can do with the key layout before people can't type on them anymore. Maybe if you made it a key pad for gaming or something.
Maybe a joypad can be improved a bit - though something like the Xbox360 one is pretty damn comfortable to use and definitely one I use for playing games on the PC with...
You do realize that for all of human history up until the late 1990's most of the world lived perfectly happy, fulfilled lives without a cell phone, right? You really don't need to be connected to everyone else all of the time. Try silencing the damned thing once in a while and connect with the meatsacks around you at the moment.
Amazingly enough, people get very angry when you suggest that - try separating a kid from their cellphone, and you'll get angry calls from their parents about that very aspect ("but what if i need to call my kid?!!?!"). Or suggest that movie theatres block cellphone signals ("doctors need to be alerted!").
It's as if as a society we've forgotten about the old ways of such. Emergency workers have pagers (which because they're VHF just above aviation bad, goes *really* deep into buildings). And you could always call the school/house/restaurant/other place and have them pass the call onwards in an emergency.
It's almost as if cellphones got popular and everyone said "screw the old methods" and abandoned it.
Something that did strike me as interesting is the requirement for a workweek of maybe 20-25 hours. Is this due to your mental disability or do you have other obligations in your life that would limit your ability to work? I would try to rectify that issue if possible, because even government jobs require that you work 37.5 hours a week. (Around here at least)
That's for full-time employment. If you can only do 20-25 hours, don't look for a full time job because they'd want 35+ hours/week. Instead, look for part-time employment, where 20-25 hours is more typical (and usually the maximum because after that you'll be counted as a FTE).
The only down side is that benefits to part timers are practicaly non-existent, and many tax benefits also only apply to FTEs.
Instead of looking for full time employment on part time hours, narrow your search down to part time employment. This way the hours you work can be discussed (and they will be in the range of 20-25 hours a week tops normally).
Plus, because the wages and benefits are a lot lower, many employers are more willing to hire part-timers (as more people are looking for full time positions).
Going to explain why they gave all the UID of their devices to the FBI?
It's not neessarily Apple that gave it to them - that sort of information seems to be available to developers for various reasons (UDID definitely, but others are related to push notifications).
It could very well be some developer gave them the database, or some analytics company like Flurry or AdMob or other service provided it as well.
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Technically, the limit specifies a CEILING, not a floor speed. So just because the speed limit is 85mph, doesn't mean you HAVE to do 85mph. There probably is a minimum speed you must maintain, but you're free to choose any speed in-between.
Just try to stick to the right hand lane to let faster traffic pass. And if you're on the cellphone doing whatever, you're slower traffic (why is it that cellphone users always seem to be the cause of congestion? I mean, when you finally pass the car that's holding up traffic, it's because the driver is invariably texting or having the phone glued to their ear... If you can pass them. They weave in and out of lanes even worse than drunk drivers, stop suddenly and fail to observe the light has turned green...).
It's called "competition".
Would you buy EVERY EBOOK from Amazon?
Because that's the way the world was headed - Amazon's discounting ebooks in an attempt to devalue them and lock people into the Kindle, basically being the only way to sell your ebook.
It's not a new business tactic - it's often used when a big guy wants to crush competition by selling products at a loss just long enough for competitors to close shop and not even try. And in the end, you get a monopoly.
It worked for Amazon - they have a lot of cash, a lot of books (the only competition at the time was Sony's store). So they have 90% of the ebook market.
It worked for consumers - yes, in the time Amazon was dumping product, consumers were paying low prices. But once all the competition leaves and everyone's stuck using Kindle store, why would Amazon continue offering low low low prices?
It worked for authors and publishers - yes, because they got paid full price. But once Amazon was the only game in town, Amazon can squeeze both ends of the spectrum - consumers get higher prices, authors and publishers get less (you think Apple's 30% cut is huge? Books routinely wholesale for 50% or less - it's how Amazon can sell books 30% off and still make money with free shipping).
All Apple did was see this, and offer a "better deal" like any new competitor. Except well, Apple's hard to drive out of business (though their iBookstore is laughable). Publishers rushed on in because they hated what Amazon was doing and ended up pressuring Amazon to stop dumping. About the only controversial part may be MFN clauses in the agreements, but those apparently are pretty standard throughout many agreements.
And hey, Amazon's still trying to lock everyone in - you think all those Amazon Prime benefits are purely because Amazon loves its customers?
And if you want to see what would've happened, I can say RIAA and MPAA.
In short, Amazon was heading towards ebook monopoly, and a competitor simply offered content producers a better deal because that's how you compete. (It's also a revenge move by Apple - Amazon did the same thing to Apple and its iTunes Music Store, too. Which resulted in DRM-free music across the board, at the expense of higher music prices on iTunes).
Correct.
And modern "creationism" (aka ID) was really created by a group in the US (the "Discovery Institute") whose primary belief is that the world's ills are caused because of the shift away from religion towards secularism. (Which may be true to some extent - e.g., human greed causes a bunch of the world's problems, but it goes beyond mere greed. Nevermind that religion is the cause of many wars in human history...).
No, it's not just prayer in the classroom, but the non-teaching of religion in school and probably the conversion of followers of illegiimate (i.e., other) faiths to the One True Path(tm).
Basically, what you mention - modernism is driving people away from religion, which is why the world is full of dictators and unethical people who rob/steal/do drugs/etc. Of course, a lot of people believe times were better in the past when kids were more respectful of authority, there was less crime, etc. etc. etc., so their beliefs end up resonating with a larger group.
The irony is that tine DI's texts are full of evolution from creationism to ID (including transitional fossils).
All rights reserved doesn't prevent you from posting your story online and letting everyone read it. NoCommercial/NoDerivs is basically All Rights Reserved in the end. You put your story online and to the reader, there's no functional difference. They can't commercially sell it under either license (NoCommercial), and they can't make much beyond fair use (NoDerivs).
The only difference is that someone running a non-commercial website (i.e., a personal blog, but not say /.) can copy and post it up and say "here's a cool story I found" without having to ask for permission first if it was All Rights Reserved. Everyone else, it's pretty much all rights reserved and the same rules would apply.
Short of that really narrow exception (which practically speaking isn't a big deal - since blogs lift all rights reserved content all the time and such, but get away with it because it's some small time thing that few know about).
Practically speaking, using CC-NC is the same as All Rights Reserved - a site like /. can't take your content withour your permission. CC-ND pretty much says "only use my work vebatim, do not adapt" which while allows for distribution beyond NC, really isn't in the spirit of CC (it's a "commons" to share and build upon other's work. ND doesn't allow that.).
Also remember that CC is supposed to give users rights beyond that of standard copyright law (all rights reserved is default - you can use CC or copyleft to give users more rights than they have under all rights reserved, but not take away what's already allowed), hence stuff like NC and ND are already redundant because that stuff is already prohibited.
Actually, most of the labor intensive parts will simply be not done. Everyone gives Apple crap for using stuff like glue and whatnot instead of screws, but guess what? Screws are labor-intensive!
Instead, a proper made-in-the-USA phone would probably be one of the most sealed things ever - I would imagine a single circuit board, LCD screen pretty much soldered to the board (or zebra-stripped - connectors are finicky) with stuff press-fit and such. Earpieces will be press-contacts and the entire assembly would be glued or welded shut. Because putting stuff like screens and earpieces and microphones in is trivial for a robot to do, as is sticking in a circuilt board and programming it (pogo pins) and then compressing it all in a nicely welded shut case.
It's called "design for manufacturing" and it's a highly-sought after skill. The less things have to be touched by human hands, the better (faster to assemble, faster to test, etc., which means real cost savings). Of course, it also impacts repairability because instead of screws, liberal use of adhesives (which are easily applied by robots) is the norm.
Of course, there will have to be SOME humans at the factory - you need people to maintain the robots, after all, and handle all the parts receiving and such.
And it seems in the west, we call getting the necessary work experience so you can get a job and work for money "unpaid internship". (Emphasis on unpaid - most interships and summer jobs pay some nominal amount - at least minimum wage).
Price discrimination also relies on incomplete customer information. If the customer doesn't know the price may be different elsewhere, they probably would argue less about the price quoted.
The internet though has made it extremely difficult to do this because information on "what he paid" travels quickly, so attempts to do price discrimination doesn't work too well.
Amazon used to do it, but they got found out a decade ago. If you went a decade earlier (the 90s) you probably got away with it because it was much harder to distribute information around.
But now with everyone saying "You can buy $new_toy for $discount_price!" on social networks and other websites, it's a lot harder. Especially when you get replies like "Deal's over, I got $high_price", followed by others saying "No, I got $discount_price!" or "I couldn't get $discount_price, but got it as $middle_price".
In the end, people liked fixed prices because it meant they knew what they were going to pay, and it wasn't up to the whims of the shopkeeper. And it's usually treated as a max price - you can always get discounts off that, but going in you know what you were going to pay.
The old method - it didn't take long before you found a shopkeeper who didn't like you and sold stuff to you at a premium compared to others.
Price discrimination helps maximize profit, but with the communications systems of today, it's extremely hard to pull off since the only way it can thrive properly is when the consumer is uninformed about what others are paying.
Samsung only makes AMOLED displays (they got rid of their LCD division). There are plenty of others who make LCDs - LG and Hitachi are the bigger ones, but there are various smaller ones as well.
Though, I'm surprised Apple didn't take it as an opportunity to invest in Sharp, perhaps doing it as a joint venture. Apple's been investing heavily in display technology, they could use it as a chance to own the display supply chain to do strategic R&D (i.e., higher res displays).
It's something Apple prides itself on (having some of the nicer displays in its products), so I'm surprised they wouldn't spend some of that huge warchest to acquire cutting edge display technology and manufacturing.
Well, when it avoids having to have users deal with trojans and other stuff in the marketplace (see Google Play malware that Google has had to forcibly remove from people's devices).
Right now, despite Android having a 2:1 advantage over iOS (500,000 new activations a day, according to Google, or close to 15M new Androids a month), it seems Android revenue is far lower than iOS revenue for app developers. Now there can be many factors for this, including piracy, but it seems at the moment, regardless of whatever the cause, the App Store sells apps, which attracts developers. And apps sell hardware, which is where Apple makes money (close to a couple of orders of magnitude more from iOS than iTunes).
Apple realized the profitable segment of the population doesn't want the "PC experience" on their phones - that users really just want to install the app, use it and get on with their day.
Same went for pornographic apps - a profitable segment of the population complained.
This is probably it. Does the FBI have an app in the App Store? If so, that's where it could come from.
If not, there are plenty of social networks - from OpenFeint (aka Gree) to many others. Perhaps it came from Flurry? Or Admob? Or some popular developer like Gameloft? Or Zynga?
Thing is, the entire list of information is available to a developer so they can send push notifications or other things, so it probably didn't come from Apple, but from some other developer who either got hacked, or NSL'd, or just plain gave the FBI the information. Or it was a contractor laptop and that contractor worked at the FBI now, but worked for an iOS developer before.
Hell, if Apple gave out that information, it would probably be way more than 12M, and have way more information in it.
Well, I'm pretty sure if I wrote a game, Valve won't sell it on Steam, which is a perfectly virtual marketplace - adding my game would consume little on Valve's servers.
Hell, I know they're also being picky because there's a campaign to get a game ported to PC and distributed by Steam (it's on PS3, Xbox360, iOS, Android, and Mac, but not on PC and Valve for some reason won't talk to the developer to put it on Steam).
Anyhow, the other thing is well, you can bet Apple's actually sitting pretty - considering Androids are outselling iOS 2:1, iOS users though are buying apps and spending money on the whole ecosystem. (They're also using a LOT more data - Mobile Safari is still getting way more traffic than any mobile browser out there... so unless every Android user is using a different browser that fakes desktop user-agents...).
Apple's making money, developers are making money (compared to Google Play for the most part - there are a few devs making more money off Android than iOS), the question becomes - if Apple decided to be a free-for-all like Google Play, will they and developers earn even MORE money?
And that's the real question that needs to be asked. Apple's about making money. If opening up the App Store means Apple can sell even MORE iOS devices (iTunes makes very little money for Apple, so app sales really don't factor in) than they do now, then yes, it makes sense for Apple to open it up. If however, it does diddly, it's not worth it.
It's also got fairly good licensing terms - I mean the OS can be replicated (it is billions of times - once for ever cell), and the OS can make copies of itself (mitosis), and even end up altering itself through random changes (mutations).
A virus only infects one cell to duplicate itself - all the other uninfected cells have their own copy. The antivirus system basically works by killing infected cells.
So all in all, an interesting OS - security worse than Windows (i.e., none at all - just random strings of genetic code can alter the OS - you don't neve need root! just physical access!), yet it really works by sheer number of copies.
That's 21st century. This patent nonsense has been around since the 19th. It's not new. Just new to high-tech. In the 19th century it was patent fights over stuff like telephones, internal combustion engines (in particular, the 4-stroke cycle), 20th century had others, and so on. And heck, the car keeps generating patents as well - hybrid vehicles - between Toyota and Ford, they've got it pretty much all locked up (Toyota and Ford only cross licensed because they ended up suing each other over hybrid vehicles).
Also, I don't think the "non-practicing entity" lawsuits (aka patent trolls) are a new concept either.
Interestingly, some patents are long lived - intermittent windshield wipers had a lawsuit that started in the mid-50's and only ended up resolved in the early 80s, well after the patent expired.
Everything old is new again.
The problem with this is that as the crops move north, the amoun ot sunlight received overall decreases. So where near the equator you might be able to plant and grow year round, once you hit the northern borders, one crop a year is about all you can reasonably expect to get.
And there have been observed differences in the way plants grow south versus north - the northern ones adapt to the less sunlight available and put their energy into reproduction, while the ones in the south put a lot of energy into growing big and tall first, then reproduction - because the increased sunlight means they can do that before the growing season ends.
Or would you really suggest that California and say, Washington get the same amount of sunlight year round?
I think ti's mostly a US culture thing. American culture towards guns tends to be fairly unique throughout the world - other countries may be fairly casual about them (e.g., Canada) as well, but guns don't usually bring up the huge emotions as they would in the US. Talk about gun control and it's a call to arms in the US. In Canada, it's just mere discussion.
And other cultures (e.g., Japan) may not even believe guns exist. And many countries the only way to get access to them is via the military, which citizens usually are forced to serve a few years in (and some are mandated to keep their guns on reserve in good condition after they leave), but they too don't usually talk much about them. Almost taboo at times.
For using 3D printers ot make guns, I'm for it at the moment, at least hoping humanity is generally responsible about their use and laws are stroung enough that irresponsible use is curtailed (I know, I know, laugh all you want). Of course, people like TFA don't really give me much hope.
Of course, if gunsmithing were easy, everyone would be a gunsmith. But a gun is full of precision parts that have to work in generally the right way for things to go well. Otherwise things can go very badly.
And the laws will change - the parts that are trivially made on 3D printers will probalby end up being deregistered, and other parts will be the registered ones (which will be great fun for everyone concerned...).
Uh, the tile concept would be closer to Android than iOS.
Google did the "home screen" thing to avoid the "rounded rectangles with square grid of icons" patent on Android. So what happens when you unlock an Android phone? You see the home screen, which by default has a huge analog clock (only present on the lock screen on iOS, and it's digital there), and a bunch of frequently used apps (phone/messaging/browser), while the "grid of icons" is hidden by the "show all apps" button.
In its place, you can drop widgets to your heart's content on the home screen so you can see the weather at a glance as well when you unlock your phone, plus all your other social media things.
And judging by Android users, especially on /., they like the widget thing and seeing htat stuff.
Microsoft extended the concept with tiles - thus avoid any design issues with iOS and Android. The tiles are effectively widgets and you can see all your update stuff right there on your "home" screen (whatever it's called on WP8).
Why does "blocking innovation" mean "you must copy the UI"? Between Apple, Google and Microsoft experimenting with different UIs, I'd say it's far better they don't copy (Microsoft probably did LiveTiles to avoid anything Google might have.)
People want widgets - Microsoft extended Andorid's concept a bit further to explore stuff. iOS merely took popular widgets (weather and stocks) and tucked them away in a pull-down drawer (probably again to avoid anything Google might have), the concept of which well, came from Android (which would be hard for Apple to defend against if Google has patented that).
It's called innovation. Incremental at times, but worthy to test it out.
That's correct for transistor-limited (aka pin-limited) chips, but not so for area-limited chips.
Yes, just like we have CPU-bound software and IO-bound software, we have area-limited and pin-limited chips. Pin-limited chips are where the I/O balls are keeping chips from becoming bigger - you see this as CPUs, SoCs, chipsets and other utility chips (many bus architectures are redesigned to be more conservative on their pin usage - why consume 64 pins when you can use 16).
Area limited chips are where the actual silicon area limits their usage - too big and flaws mean lower yields, too small and your devices may not meet requirements. These kind of devices are typically memory devices - the storage array is the largest consumer of area (the logic fits neatly around it) and the larger you can make the storage array, the bigger the memory.
Memory devices are also some of the most dense, transistor wise (a CPU has tons of "random logic" that means wiring is what keeps transistors spread apart, not transistor density). For a given process node, if you can double the area of the storage array, you double the storage.
And memory devices cover a wide gamut - from imaging devices (CCDs, CMOS), standard DRAMs and SRAMs, and EEPROM-style memory (including flash memory).
Basically the amount of storage you can stick is limited by area (double area, double storage, eseentially), but if you make the area too big, yields go down as the impact of an imperfection destorys the entire chip.
A larger wafer has more area available, and since wafer costs are mostly fixed (a single wafer costs anywhere from $1000-3000 or so), the number of good chips has to pay for it all. The more good chips (higher yield), the cheaper the cost.
A larger wafer means more chips can be made, so cheaper overall memory devices - which translate to cheaper SSDs, cheaper DRAMs, digital cameras with larger sensors, dSLRs with full-frame sensors at a budget price (this one especially - the sensor is the most expensive part because it's genuinely a HUGE piece of silicon and only a handful make it out of a wafer, even allowing for bad pixels).
For other chips, a larger area does allow for more wiring, which is what dominates chip design, not transistors. If you take something like an FPGA - the thing limiting it IS area - wiring area is extremely limited.
Once a processor is in x64 mode, it cannot run real mode/16-bit code at all. Even virtualized. It's just physically incapable of it.
The only way to run 16-bit code is to emulate it because the CPU will only take in 32-bit instructions in 32-bit compatibility mode.
Some virtualization software do have software emulators so they don't have to bother virtualizing 16-bit modes (VirtualBox does - in order to run the loaders of most OSes - the virtualization only takes over once the CPU is switched into 32 bit mode or better).
Windows has an interesting problem - because of the limitation of 64-bit mode, you'd think Microsoft would eliminate all the deprecated API calls for 64-bit Windows (but keep them around in the 32-bit libraries because theres enough legacy software out there that uses them). Calls like OpenFile(). But they didn't - their reasoning is purely developer convenience - you recompile your app for 64-bit windows without having to change many lines of code...
And it's going to have the same problems as real money has.
You know, the things that caused us to be in the financial mess we're in right now.
Basically we have something we deem valuable, Bitcoins. We also have a bunch of people who have no experience running a bank, running banks. (Sorry to say it - but the reason real life banks have tons of regulations to deal with is because it's already happened. History repeats itself. And even then we still have problems).
It's only a matter of time before things get strengthened enough to be trustworthy, then we'll enter the next stage of problems. Bitcoin isn't immune from HFT, speculation, derivatives and all sorts of other fun stuff that happens in real life. In fact, the second stage may happen much sooner due to its volatility and deflationary issues (which cause even more volatility because they suppress transactions).
Now, what speculator or financial investment institution won't look at Bitcoin's volatility and find a way to exploit it? Do it right and cause enough swings to make many bucks much quicker and more easily than in real life (lack of regulations help).
Well, there are other semiconductors available, and additionally, the technology Voyager was using wasn't the advanced deep-sub-micron stuff we have today where a few displaced atoms can ruin the whole thing. The old generation technology was probably using BJT transistors than NMOS (CMOS was a luxury).
As for maintenance - other than radiation and debris, there isn't much that would affect Voyager. You don't have a corrosive osxygen atmosphere like on earth causing havoc with mechanical systems. You aren't likely to have much in the way of bacteria feeding off of metal in space, either. Short of flying into a planet, even a gas cloud of oxygen won't cause many problems (the density being low).
Heck, even thermal effects are minimal at this point (most of the heat is in the nuclear RTG).
Actual network operators in Europe aren't much more than the US - it's just that there's enough regulations (evil! evil!) that ensure that you can have a pile of MVNOs providing competitive services.
That's basically what makes Europe different - the actual infrastructure providers are forced to share with competitors. And those competitors don't have to own any equipment (the "virtual" part of MVNO).
Of course, the US will work itself in a tizzy if any sort of law like that were to be introduced by either side.
Hell, when Canada introduced AWS band carriers (e.g., Wind, Mobilicity), the big carriers objected and threw up enormous roadblocks. You can expect even more lobbying should someone even make a peep about sharing infrastructure.
The mouse has evolved, and natural selection has killed the old style mice.
I mean, we have mousewheels now which seem to be essential (try using a mouse without one - they get annoying quick). But you have mice that have tried other things - IBM used to put their red nubs on them for scrolling, Apple put a touchpad on them, etc. And we have mice, trackballs, and touchpads (which have evolved greatly from their useless postage-stamp sized days to the acres of surface on the Apple ones).
Hell, there were laptops with built-in mice (not trackballs or touchpads or eraser points, but actual mouse).
Innovation may have stopped because they've matured, and we've reached a stage where they're really not much you can do that hasn't been tried before and natural selection killed it. Plus, considering a basic mouse is usable, costs probably $5 assembled tops, and is good enough (not a far cry from Jobs' demand that the Mac mouse cost $20 tops, though Apple makes terrible, horrendous mice (and always have), perhaps that's why they use touchpads).
Keyboards, again you see a bit, but there's only so much you can do with the key layout before people can't type on them anymore. Maybe if you made it a key pad for gaming or something.
Maybe a joypad can be improved a bit - though something like the Xbox360 one is pretty damn comfortable to use and definitely one I use for playing games on the PC with...
Amazingly enough, people get very angry when you suggest that - try separating a kid from their cellphone, and you'll get angry calls from their parents about that very aspect ("but what if i need to call my kid?!!?!"). Or suggest that movie theatres block cellphone signals ("doctors need to be alerted!").
It's as if as a society we've forgotten about the old ways of such. Emergency workers have pagers (which because they're VHF just above aviation bad, goes *really* deep into buildings). And you could always call the school/house/restaurant/other place and have them pass the call onwards in an emergency.
It's almost as if cellphones got popular and everyone said "screw the old methods" and abandoned it.
That's for full-time employment. If you can only do 20-25 hours, don't look for a full time job because they'd want 35+ hours/week. Instead, look for part-time employment, where 20-25 hours is more typical (and usually the maximum because after that you'll be counted as a FTE).
The only down side is that benefits to part timers are practicaly non-existent, and many tax benefits also only apply to FTEs.
Instead of looking for full time employment on part time hours, narrow your search down to part time employment. This way the hours you work can be discussed (and they will be in the range of 20-25 hours a week tops normally).
Plus, because the wages and benefits are a lot lower, many employers are more willing to hire part-timers (as more people are looking for full time positions).
That's probably the best place to start.
It's not neessarily Apple that gave it to them - that sort of information seems to be available to developers for various reasons (UDID definitely, but others are related to push notifications).
It could very well be some developer gave them the database, or some analytics company like Flurry or AdMob or other service provided it as well.