The Android security system itself is strong enough, but the inherent flaw is that a user is asked for permissions for everything all up front. This is terrible as novice users simply cannot really tell what they are being asked to do, and even experienced users may think some particular permission in theoretically needed.
On iOS, permissions are asked in context, at the time the service needing permission is going to be accessed. This gives especially novice users a much stronger inkling if they should agree.
This is true regardless of an app running on a jailbroken system or not.
In the end, the proof lies in action - iOS has zero examples of things like this SMS malware, whereas we have seen a number of stories just like that over the years. How can you possibly lay out the case Android is more secure when in the real world it is obviously not?
It's like Windows vs. Unix. Windows actually has a great permission system, ACLs and other things that could be used to lock it down tighter than Unix (which until recently only acquired stuff liek ACLs and such, usually bolted on and never quite working right). But Unix is considered far safer because its permission system is simpler (easier to understand) and that leads to a lot more effective protection. With ACLs and stuff, there's always a problem of "what do I do to make this work" and you end up asking for ALL permissions just because you're too lazy to figure it out (or your boss wants the fix out NOW).
The other problem is Dancing Pigs. Uesrs just don't care for popups, and this is a huge problem on iOS as well as Android. That permission list is useless if the user wants the app (and ICS/JB make it easier ot skip by put that nice big "Download and Install" button on top, coupled with the "Additional Permissions" list).
iOS has the same issue with notifications. The current notification on locatoin isn't the best though since it applies to anything that has location information embedded in it - photos for example (an app wanting access to the photo library will trigger the popup).
As for SMS and the like - the only reason IOS is "safer" is because Apple realized that and made the SMS APIs locked - if you want to send an SMS you have to go through the SMS app (or Siri), or use your own SMS gateway and write your own interface to it.
Of course, the other problem with Android permissions is context - WHY do you need the permissions? "Full Internet Access" - why? Is it for ads? Is it because of additional content? Contacts - why? Access to friends for gaming? Profiling for ads? Even iOS can't provide this information...
Thinkpads in particular need a proprietary adapter because the system senses the available wattage and reconfigures itself accordingly. For example, the T420s disables its discrete graphics when used in a docking station with a 60W adapter, because the total power consumption rises above 60W. It re-enables it when you plug in the 90W adapter. You can't sense this on a generic power adapter.
I've found a lot of laptops like that actually - from Apples, to Dells and Lenovos. They all tend to use the same connector across multiple lines (hint, hint), but different laptops have different requirements. Sometimes it results in a "this system cannot charge" message if the adapter is just barely enough, to modulating power consumption.
Not enabling discrete graphics is pretty unique - it's usually a case where it runs off a mix of battery and AC power - too small an adapter and it doesn't charge the battery (and if necessary, will pull power from the battery.
This is usually more an issue on aircraft sockets which usually only provide between 50-75W of power, and if it doesn't work, sometimes you have ot pull the battery to get it to work as the laptop's tripping the inverter trying to run itself and charge the battery. Though proper adapters can communicate that fact back so it works without having to do any tricks.
If the balance right now is Google's superior search vs. Amazon's superior convenience/prime shipping, I think that still gives the advantage to Amazon.
Amazon can improve their search mechanism over time, but it's much harder for Google to match Amazon's advantages.
I don't see any reason to believe that Amazon's advantages are any harder for Google duplicate than the other way around.
Fixing search is easy - it's just software. Offering useful online shopping experiences is much harder. The frontend is software, but the back end is all logistics - warehouses, shipping, tracking, etc. Given my recent experience with buying a Nexus 7 direct from Google (hint: I should've got it from Best Buy - I would have had it earlier and not had to fight to get shipping refunded), fixing this area is tons more work.
Google can move electrons with the best of 'em, but moving atoms takes a lot of work, and it's something Google has traditionally faltered at. Heck, during the 10 cent Android app promo, they couldn't even get their payment system working properly - the first day transactions were all revoked (Google eventually just gave everyone the apps for free).
Logistics is also some of the most expensive area to invest in - getting a proper warehouse workflow, proper order tracking systems that deal with real-life goods, customer service, tracking and preordering enough stock, etc. It's labor intensive and requires a ton of experience to actually do. Given the way Google is, I pretty much have no faith that they can even handle holiday shipments properly. You think Best Buy was bad last year...
That is the walled garden problem. As for the 3ds, it does have Netflix, which is nice if you have headphones, since the 3ds speakers sound a bit hollow.
I think that's a movie problem - the 3DS has some of the best sound on a portable platform using internal speakers. But I suspect it's because the 3DS games use Dolby Surround which helps enhances the audio significantly. DS/DSi games can't use it, and they do sound significantly worse. Perhaps Netflix needs to enable Dolby Surround.
Because there's a certification process required by the platform owner to ensure baseline quality.
And that process does not apply to DLC content? Are you sure?
Downloadables are faster.
You might not know this, but once a product is finished, there's often a 2+ month lead time before it can be sold. In that time, the pressings have to be scheduled in, followed by the warehousing and distribution.
If the game is ready, it goes into cert, which can take a month while issues that come up are fixed and resolved. In the meantime, you have a bunch of developers sitting around (rarely do you get something that involves the entire team - those kind of bugs are usually caught before it goes into cert). Once approved, the discs can be pressed (alongside with other things for special and limited editions), which can take another month, from then it's another month to ship it to the various retailer warehouses and for them to ship it to their individual stores.
So there can easily be a 2-to-3 month period of idleness for developers. You could either lay most of them off, keeping the few you need to handle launch day issues, or have them producing DLC in the meantime. As it's downloadable, once it's passed cert, it goes into the store - no waiting for pressing or distribution (which are the slow parts).
The process can be sped up if you're doing a console exclusive title or if the manufacturer really wants your game, but you're still looking at over a month.
Even if they put all the day-1 content on the disc and delay the certification and release by a month, you'd still have idle developers during cert/pressing/distribution. Who might as well work on DLC and probably finish some stuff they couldn't do during main development. Leading to more day-1 DLC.
As an increasing number of applications *DO* become available on the app store, I would suggest that a growing number of people are going to increasingly rely upon it. Eventually, I expect that a critical mass will be reached (I predict about 2 years from now), and Apple will shut the door to external sales on the Mac outside of jailbroken devices forever.
And how do developers develop apps then?
Right now, gatekeeper only applies to apps downloaded from the Internet. If you acquire the app some other way (compile from source, off other media) it doesn't get in the way. In fact, it relies on the "downloaded from internet" extended attribute which is bypassable by editing the attribute.
And back to the original question - iOS can be locked down because people cannot develop apps on it - it provides no native toolchain to do so. You have to develop on a Mac in order to write an iOS app.
If the only way to get apps on OS X is via the Mac App Store, where are those apps going to be built from? Windows?
Take this to its logical extreme in that developers need to upload a binary, get it signed by Apple and then run it off the Mac App Store - well, what's to keep end users from doing the same and writing their own apps, or better yet - using open-source apps?
Hell, if that's the case, the FSF would be super happy because the only ways to get software onto OS X would be the Mac App Store, or via the developer program in order to compile from source. Which means the only way to distribute apps outside of the Mac App Store is via source code, making OS X one of the most "open" platforms around because you cannot distribute a binary - but only as source.
And for the time being, gatekeeper's verified developer ID thing allows non-Mac App Store apps - it's just developers have to prove their identity. Firefox has two such keys and are using them for all their builds (one is for daily builds, the other for formal releases).
Finally - there are classes of software not allowed by the Mac App Store - ones that cannot be self-contained (e.g., drivers, utility programs), demos (Microsoft Office Trial, anyone?).
Oh yeah - limiting Mac App Store apps to $1000 max price, too. AutoCAD LE can work under that, but AutoCAD can't. Multi-thousand dollar software packages exist.
And how to jailbreak a Mac - I dunno, you could well, take out the hard drive or SSD, put it in an appropriate adapter via USB (you can mount every mac's Disk - PATA, SATA, mSATA, MacBook Air/Retina MacBook Pro wierd-SATA), and access files that way.
The lockdown isn't happening because it's a computer and computers are doing certain things. Locked down tablets and phones are nice and popular though because people realize they don't need a computer to do most of the things they actually do, and want to avoid the pain and trouble of having to maintain a computer. (After all, would you really want your mechanic to have to bill you for time spent futzing with the diagnostic computer because they had to recompile the Linux kernel to fix some issue? No, most of them expect them to just work and please-don't-bother-me-with-useless-computer-techy-things-just-let-me-do-my-job)
Not much changed. These days newspapers across the world (especially English-language papers) have identical articles too. They just take it from "the wire" and reprint it without any editing usually. I literally see the same articles in a local Hong Kong paper that I see later linked from/. so some US online paper.
The only difference is that nowadays this exchange goes a lot faster, and that papers usually pay for the privilege.
Well, it's a bit different these days - in that newspapers getting syndicated content from AP, Reuters, etc., pay for that priviledge. It wasn't wholesale cribbing of aritcles without attribution or anything.
All that's really happened is that with communications getting so quick these days, plagiarism is similarly easy to detect. Back then, it's a lot harder get between here and there, so if someone decided to plagiarize, it was pretty hard to detect because it would involve investing in a day or more's worth of travel to pick up the paper and compare, and for things like this, it was relatively pointless.
In effect - it happened because it was a lot harder to catch it happening. These days it's far easier to get caught.
Same goes for copyright and all that - people pirated a lot back then as well, usually sheet music, books, etc. Sure there was no international copyright treaty, but it was also a lot harder to enforce. What, Britain was going to send a fleet of ships to the colonies because someone reprinted Dickens?
I love this Judge, shes blunt and will not take Apples bullshit.
She doesn't take ANYONE's crap.
Or did you forget that Samsung was prevented from entering the F700 into evidence and a few other things?
Curious how that is - the same judge rules against Samsung and people are going 'BIASED! Samsung must appeal!" and now that it's Apple's turn to get smacked, they're going "She's awesome!"
Iran earlier this month said it plans to move key ministries and state bodies off the public Internet to protect them from such attacks
One wonders why they were on the internet (public or otherwise) to begin with.
Because they need to communicate with citizens? It's like a business that has a website, but insists that you phone htem to place an order because they don't want to have an attack that may expose customer data.
Of course, even airgapped networks aren't invulnerable... I hear some centrifuges got destroyed despite the control systems working on a completely separate, airgapped network, because said control systems got infected. What was it called? Stacks-net? Stock-net?
Don't take my comment the wrong way, I love BitCoin, and sincerely hope it succeeds to the point of driving every fiat currency on the planet into nothing more than an obscure quirk only used for paying taxes in legacy-currency-holdout nations. I won't hold my breath on that one, though.:)
You do realize that BitCoin will become and new fiat currency right? And since it has some severe flaws in it (notably, it's ripe for deflation), you're just going to end up with a currency that speculators are going to go nuts with.
BitCoin will cause even more wild fluctuations in financial markets, because the speculators (who already are using BitCoin) will just continue to do the same with bitcoin. And considering people "roll back" bitcoin transactions every time there's a hack that "devalues" the value of it versus current fiat currency (like how NYSE rolled back stock trades). All those hacks that steal bitcoins cause the price of it to crash, those transactions get rolled back because if you own a lot, suddenly they're worth less, etc.
Oh, and if you're wondering what bitcoin speculators are speculating on - think of the other currency the world has - precious metals. Bitcoin isn't a magic currency, it's just another fiat currency and all the usual financial market problems we have will still be present. We'd have high-frequency traders still, stocks, speculation, etc. And you can bet they're going to pursue arbitrage as well. Bitcoin just extends the human greed element to a new location.
If you are using Android, turn on Settings->Wireless and network->Mobile network settings->Data roaming.
Not sure why this is unchecked by default. T-Mobile is unusable even on Long Island without it.
Because data roaming can be expensive? It's off by default so people don't go overseas and suddenly come home to a $2000 phone bill because their phone was happily checking their email inbox. (Roaming data rates are around 5 cents per kB. A SI kB, not a kiB! Or $50/MB)
A movie can easily cost you $12K or more.
That's why it's off by default - in case the phone accidentally goes into roaming mode (which can happen near the border), you won't run up a huge bill. Especially if T-mo is that bad and you end up roaming on another network - that other network can easily be one across the border with a particularly strong signal.
From a technical POV, it's surprising just how much the Slashdot site sucks, given that it's written by and for geeks. Not only does it not work very well on mobile, but it also doesn't support Unicode. As a result, copying and pasting quotes will often result in garbage being inserted where there should be dashes, smart quotes, or other special characters. Come on, it's 2012; there's absolutely no excuse for this.
Do not confuse geeks with website designers. It's just the same as assuming that since you can program, you can design a UI. Different skillsets, different specialities. Sure people think it's possible to do the other job, but the end result is usually quite nasty.
And the reason Slashdot doesn't handle unicode is simple - it actually does, but it does it on a whitelist basis rather than a blacklist. There was a spurt of trolls sticking right-to-left override characters in their comments resulting in unreadable pages. So/. basically whitelists a few characters (since a lot of the valid codepoints aren't defined yet and may include even more control codes).
Though it is fun from time to time sticking right-to-left override in a comment system to see if they blindly handle unicode...
Those assholes really need to think about who they are hurting with this crap. It is the users, like me. I've got a substantial amount of PS3 games, both from PSN and retail. I just want to use them in peace without veing harassed by cyber-terrorists!
For every hack that Anonymous does, there's probably dozens of others that you don't hear about.
Same as vulnerable software - just because someone reports it to you doesn't mean you can ignore it - you can bet others have found it and may be exploiting it, just without the courtesy of telling you.
Of course, given what happened last year, I'm surprised you didn't resort to using PSN cards. Just buy them in a store and enter the redemption code on PSN. No credit card linked anywhere.
Though Sony, unlike Microsoft and Apple, doesn't seem to discount them (you can find Microsoft points cards and Xbox Live Gold subscriptoin on sale regularly (I've seen $5 off regular $20 cards, $20 off Xbox Live (regular price $60)), and iTunes cards seem to be 20% off somewhere or other. Why pay full price?
I'm terribly impressed that Canada is working on electronic payment systems that don't "donate" a portion of every transaction to the likes of Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, etc. Electronic payments and the defacto currency behind them are real, but "legal tender" offered by host countries has not kept pace with the technology and habits of citizens who use it. Let's hope Canadians can work through the problems with this, and we neandertals in the USA can learn from them. Next in line: national credit cards and checking accounts.
You make the assumption that handling cash is free - it actually isn't.
For the mom and pop shop who runs maybe a thousand dollars a day to the bank, it's fairly cheap, even if you get robbed once a year or so (a quarter to a third of a percent in "transaction fees", though I'm not counting emotional "damages" and such).
But if you're running a somewhat larger business, it does cost money to handle cash. Take a big-box store who may easily do anywhere from $20k-50k in transactions per day per store. If that was cash, you'd probably want to run an armored car or so, which can run into $1000 or more per trip, or a 5% "transaction fee". If it's $50k, it goes down to a 2% "transaction fee" for the armored car service. And yes, when games like Halo come out, stores often have to pre-arrange for things like this because even $10k in cash is racked up by selling 200 copies in cash (for a big game release, the store can go through a thousand or more).
Plus cash handling in store requires trained people. Ever wonder why stores close the registers during a power outage? It's the same reason - the books are electronic, and the registers maintain a transaction journal. If the cashier were to process sales while the servers are down, they'd have to manually make entries in the journal and then at the end of the shift, reconsolidate the register journal (it's called a cash *register* because it does the journalling) with the actual contents of the cash box and the actual sales that happened. And yes, while the cash box contents and register values do disagree due to human error (short changed or too much), it's supposed to be a small value.
If you ever see your order or purchase not rung up on a register, you can bet it's being done under the table.
That's why electronic payment systems are embraced - sure they charge transaction fees, but if you do a lot of large value transactions, you save in not having to handle cash. And if you have lots of salespeople, you can have customers rung out by anyone since all the book-keeping's electronic and reconciled automatically, no special training required (of course, a cash register needs to be available for those paying in cash, but those paying electronically don't have to line up and wait).
This electronic payment systme is more akin to cash, which means no server anywhere can really know that Alice sent Bob $10, because that eliminates the benefit of cash and we might as well just revert to using existing systems because it's there. Then again, you run the risk of losing the device holding the wallet, so how you handle that becomes more interesting...
The only message you send is one saying that they need more effective DRM. The way you get them to stop using DRM isn't to go "They aren't giving it to me how I want so I'm just gonna take it anyway!!!".
Exactly. Espcially since there's a DRM-free way to get it in the first place - in print! Deadtree is a perfect way to express your opinion on the matter - it's DRM-free (any scanner or photocopier can read it too), you can give it away/resell it/etc.
Oh, and what I do is I buy the deadtree, then pirate the ebook. Amazon etc. won't give a crap about DRM-free because they're selling more ebooks than deadtrees. Reverse that trend and it says something. (Plus, if there are OCR errors in the pirated ebook, you can reference the deadtree to figure out what it's supposed to be).
AND the author (and everyone else involved from editors to cover art) gets their cut.
It's right now a perfect way to show your displeasure for DRM and make a meaningful stand because the metrics people are using are comparing print sales to ebook sales.
The proper fix would be to not let click happy stupid people use the internet.
Then we might as well bottle the internet back up as a DARPA research curiousity then.
Generally speaking, the security model assumes people know what they're doing, which is patently false. The computer and the internet are essential tools these days for many occupations, whether or not the people want it. A mechanic probably has to use a computer to diagnose a modern car, but he certainly doesn't need to know how to reinstall Windows or compile a kernel or other crap (to him). He just wants to see what errors there are, use his experience and then find the mystical place to do the $1000 tap to fix the problem.
Ditto the internet - the sales guy is wheeling and dealing and sending specs to customers trying to make money for the company over the 'net. He doesn't need to know the details of TCP/IP or Ethernet or how the packet gets from here to there - he just makes the sales.
Basically these days, the security model should include the fact that people who do not know better have a necessity to use the computer and the internet. We don't train the mechanic how to type and install Windows/Linux/blah and admin it, we train the mechanic how to most effectively extract the data the ECU provides to solve the problem.
It's time security models take note that Dancing Pigs are here to stay. Which may explain the rise of locked down tablets and walled gardens.
It's already been proven that Linux & Mac OS's can also be infected so it really doesn't have anything to do with MS. It all comes down to the end user and installing every little stupid thing and clicking on anything that jumps in front of them.
Not to mention it seems a lot of malware these days are usermode based. They're not trying to hide from users anymore, other than being plausibly-sounding processes with plausible paths. Everything they need to do the user can do - they don't need admin anymore (admin was required because they wanted to hide).
Getting admin these days often requires a dialog box popping up on the user for admin priviledges. Which is a great way to announce your presence to the user. But just being an innoculous sounding process that can hide amongst the other processes is often good enough. After all, if the malware decided it would be called "init" on Linux or "launchd" on OS X, most users wouldn't know that something is wrong (other than it not being PID 0). Or perhaps the malware can see the user runs GNOME, and call itself gnome-terminal. Or on OS X, Safari.app.
I think the toilet superiority scale goes something like this:
Japan > U.S. (pre low-flow) > U.S. (post low-flow) > Europe > Third world
Actually, modern low-flow toilets probably are superior these days to the old ones period. The old low-flows were just high-flow ones using half as much water. Basically the high-flow ones worked by brute force - dump gallons of water down and the stuff will go with it.
Modern low-flows are better designed using hydrodynamics to assist in removal of waste, and can often do it using even *less* water than the old low-flows, while doing a much better job.
It's like using a hose to wash the floor - the old style toilets simply flooded water all over the floor and let the dirt work itself loose and into the drains. The modern low-flows are like using a high-pressure washer to clean the floor.
No offense, but what happened to the "WebM is super double plus good, and all we're gonna nom-nom on" dogma that was touted? I'm happy that they are adding support for H.264, but after all this baby mama drama, what was the point? I'm wondering what happened internally to reverse this choice. Was it a matter of "the world has moved on" or "we're just gonna make the best UX possible" that drove the decision?
Probably practicality.
First, it's mobile Firefox, not main desktop Firefox. Effectively all smartphones these days support h.264 in hardware, and the OS provides native hooks to use that hardware support. Very few mobiles support WebM out of the box in hardware, which means a software decoder, which either means very limited resolutions (back to ye olde QVGA video days - show off your fancy high res 720p screen with blocky pixellated video!), high power draw (why is my phone getting so hot and my battery life down to 1 hour?), and lousy framerates.
Nevermind that the mix of various mobile GPUs out there coupled with ancient versions of Android could easily mean that reusing the h.264 hardware for WebM would be tricky.
And given that the default browser supports HTML5 video right off the bat, Firefox was just going to get dinged on its inability to play video.
WebM on the desktop though remains a possibility - where big beefy power hungry CPUs are available, wall power is available, and flexible video cards with up-to-date drivers and OSes mean even software decode will have hardware assistance.
IMHO, the reason driving is so damn dangerous is because it's too easy to pass the driving test in the first place. What's worse is you can keep going back until you pass and then never have to take the driving test again. I had a cousin that failed three times before "getting lucky" at guessing on the multiple choice test. I also had a grandfather that was suffering from dementia, but was still allowed to drive until the year before he died. Sure most of the time he was ok, but a little more than once in a while he'd forget where he was or what he was doing. Eventually my Aunts and Uncles convinced him to give it up, but his problem would have easily been picked up if he had to retake his driving test.
Well, a big reason for that is in many places in North America, it's impossible to get around without a car. Public transit's a joke, and doesn't go where you need them to. So telling someone that they can't drive is basically jailing them and making them dependent on others (because they can't get basic necessities). And since people are fiercely independent, well, taking away someone's independence hurts, a lot.
If you have to explain to your mom or dad why they can't drive anymore, and that they must call you when you need an errand...
Roger that. Most people don't realize the challenges of operating in a 3D enviroment where your senses may be fooling you. Couple that with some of the junkers that haven't seen maintenance since the Nixon era and you have. Are wipe for disaster.
I think you're misunderstanding what most of us mean when we talk about flying cars. I'm envisioning vehicles whose Z axis is maintained automatically except when you are about to park, with vehicles traveling in three or four altitude ranges, up to a couple hundred feet roughly above existing roads, not vehicles that fly along arbitrary paths, at arbitrary altitudes, etc.
I would expect the Z axis to depend entirely on which direction you're traveling. A left turn would require you to be above the left lane. (You'd have an augmented reality HUD windshield showing the driving lanes below you.) Then, you would turn the steering wheel to the left, causing the vehicle to bank and automatically ascend or descend as you approached the road you're turning onto. When you got to that point, you would curve towards the road, and right after the turn, you'd have to merge into a gap in the traffic to your right.
When you're ready to park, you would enter a designated landing zone, whereupon the vehicle would show you an image of the parking lot on the HUD, with an outline of your car superimposed. You would then find an empty parking space and tell the vehicle to descend into it.
You realize you pretty much described flying as it exists right now, right?
Except for a small range (3000 ft AGL), altitudes ARE strictly controlled (IFR - thousands, VFR - thousands+500 ft), and it depends on which direction (track over the ground, yay wind) you're heading (East - odd thousands, West - even thousands).
And parking in a designated landing zone, we call them "aerodromes".
Of course, you're also assuming that flying cars are more VTOL style craft - so far most of them are really more like planes. VTOL is surprisingly difficult and fuel-inefficient.
It's been done before, and will continue to be done. Especially because a General Election is coming up. If you read that link I posted, it was reported that the Malaysian prime minister said "Whatever we do, we must put people first,". If that were truly the case, why wasn't that position taken in the first place before the law was passed?
Basically: 1. Pass draconian law 2. Wait for public outcry 3. Repeal draconian law 4. Look like a hero 5. Profit!
I'd say a lot of "democratic" countries are really false-democratic - if you really looked at how they operated, it's between authoritarian and dictatorship.
There are "elections" and people can "vote", however, if the vote strays too far to the "wrong" things... happen. And yes, people are forced to vote, and it's probably fully auditable and all that.
Malaysia is probably the perfect scenario for this. I remember many years ago the Opposition was actually getting pretty strong and popular, so what happened? The leader got arrested on "sodomy" charges and "semen on mattress" evidence. So far, the case is "ongoing" (and I think I observed this over a decade ago). I think at one point the charges got "dropped" after he was too weak to continue the trial. End result - the official government wins because the voters couldn't really vote for a party whose leader was in jail, and is now too weak to reorganize and regroup the opposition party, so the official government party gets free reign.
A law like this can be easily passed - all the government has to do is show lots of evidence that the law is good, and basically hush and discredit those who oppose it. If it gets any traction, just jail the leader on questionable charges.
Oh come on. I can't imagine that this $400 "satellite" has a propulsion system of any kind. It will deorbit in months if not weeks, and burn up on reentry in to the atmosphere. This satellite isn't going to be space junk.
Assuming it stays in 1 piece (not a safe assumption). All it takes is some collisions with other space junk to start ripping parts off which can take longer to deorbit and contribute to the ever growing pile of junk circling the planet.
The few months it's up there are a few months of it ablating away and sending pieces orbiting to hit other things up there (everything gets hit).
People like to swear by mechanical keyboards. However, mechanical keyboards make me start swearing. I find it hard to concentrate when suffering that cacophanous sound constantly and it ruins any semblance of a tranquil work environment for me.
Glad to know I'm not the only one who doesn't like the cacophony these keyboards generate. It seems they're even more annoying in an office environment. I understand the appeal on a tactile level, but never liked the noise. If they made it so they were quieter, perhaps...
Then again, I guess if you have kids, it's a great way to find out if the computer's in use - trying to use the computer discreetly is quite difficult with a noisy keyboard. (You can use on screen keyboards and character map to a limited extent with the mouse, but gaming would be impossible...).
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It's like Windows vs. Unix. Windows actually has a great permission system, ACLs and other things that could be used to lock it down tighter than Unix (which until recently only acquired stuff liek ACLs and such, usually bolted on and never quite working right). But Unix is considered far safer because its permission system is simpler (easier to understand) and that leads to a lot more effective protection. With ACLs and stuff, there's always a problem of "what do I do to make this work" and you end up asking for ALL permissions just because you're too lazy to figure it out (or your boss wants the fix out NOW).
The other problem is Dancing Pigs. Uesrs just don't care for popups, and this is a huge problem on iOS as well as Android. That permission list is useless if the user wants the app (and ICS/JB make it easier ot skip by put that nice big "Download and Install" button on top, coupled with the "Additional Permissions" list).
iOS has the same issue with notifications. The current notification on locatoin isn't the best though since it applies to anything that has location information embedded in it - photos for example (an app wanting access to the photo library will trigger the popup).
As for SMS and the like - the only reason IOS is "safer" is because Apple realized that and made the SMS APIs locked - if you want to send an SMS you have to go through the SMS app (or Siri), or use your own SMS gateway and write your own interface to it.
Of course, the other problem with Android permissions is context - WHY do you need the permissions? "Full Internet Access" - why? Is it for ads? Is it because of additional content? Contacts - why? Access to friends for gaming? Profiling for ads? Even iOS can't provide this information...
I've found a lot of laptops like that actually - from Apples, to Dells and Lenovos. They all tend to use the same connector across multiple lines (hint, hint), but different laptops have different requirements. Sometimes it results in a "this system cannot charge" message if the adapter is just barely enough, to modulating power consumption.
Not enabling discrete graphics is pretty unique - it's usually a case where it runs off a mix of battery and AC power - too small an adapter and it doesn't charge the battery (and if necessary, will pull power from the battery.
This is usually more an issue on aircraft sockets which usually only provide between 50-75W of power, and if it doesn't work, sometimes you have ot pull the battery to get it to work as the laptop's tripping the inverter trying to run itself and charge the battery. Though proper adapters can communicate that fact back so it works without having to do any tricks.
Fixing search is easy - it's just software. Offering useful online shopping experiences is much harder. The frontend is software, but the back end is all logistics - warehouses, shipping, tracking, etc. Given my recent experience with buying a Nexus 7 direct from Google (hint: I should've got it from Best Buy - I would have had it earlier and not had to fight to get shipping refunded), fixing this area is tons more work.
Google can move electrons with the best of 'em, but moving atoms takes a lot of work, and it's something Google has traditionally faltered at. Heck, during the 10 cent Android app promo, they couldn't even get their payment system working properly - the first day transactions were all revoked (Google eventually just gave everyone the apps for free).
Logistics is also some of the most expensive area to invest in - getting a proper warehouse workflow, proper order tracking systems that deal with real-life goods, customer service, tracking and preordering enough stock, etc. It's labor intensive and requires a ton of experience to actually do. Given the way Google is, I pretty much have no faith that they can even handle holiday shipments properly. You think Best Buy was bad last year...
I think that's a movie problem - the 3DS has some of the best sound on a portable platform using internal speakers. But I suspect it's because the 3DS games use Dolby Surround which helps enhances the audio significantly. DS/DSi games can't use it, and they do sound significantly worse. Perhaps Netflix needs to enable Dolby Surround.
I've always wondered about that - I mean demonoid was probably registered for a number of years (WHOIS says until 2016, but who knows).
And now a registrar can go and decide that they think they can make more money selling your domain from under you?
Especially since domains were prepaid...
Downloadables are faster.
You might not know this, but once a product is finished, there's often a 2+ month lead time before it can be sold. In that time, the pressings have to be scheduled in, followed by the warehousing and distribution.
If the game is ready, it goes into cert, which can take a month while issues that come up are fixed and resolved. In the meantime, you have a bunch of developers sitting around (rarely do you get something that involves the entire team - those kind of bugs are usually caught before it goes into cert). Once approved, the discs can be pressed (alongside with other things for special and limited editions), which can take another month, from then it's another month to ship it to the various retailer warehouses and for them to ship it to their individual stores.
So there can easily be a 2-to-3 month period of idleness for developers. You could either lay most of them off, keeping the few you need to handle launch day issues, or have them producing DLC in the meantime. As it's downloadable, once it's passed cert, it goes into the store - no waiting for pressing or distribution (which are the slow parts).
The process can be sped up if you're doing a console exclusive title or if the manufacturer really wants your game, but you're still looking at over a month.
Even if they put all the day-1 content on the disc and delay the certification and release by a month, you'd still have idle developers during cert/pressing/distribution. Who might as well work on DLC and probably finish some stuff they couldn't do during main development. Leading to more day-1 DLC.
And how do developers develop apps then?
Right now, gatekeeper only applies to apps downloaded from the Internet. If you acquire the app some other way (compile from source, off other media) it doesn't get in the way. In fact, it relies on the "downloaded from internet" extended attribute which is bypassable by editing the attribute.
And back to the original question - iOS can be locked down because people cannot develop apps on it - it provides no native toolchain to do so. You have to develop on a Mac in order to write an iOS app.
If the only way to get apps on OS X is via the Mac App Store, where are those apps going to be built from? Windows?
Take this to its logical extreme in that developers need to upload a binary, get it signed by Apple and then run it off the Mac App Store - well, what's to keep end users from doing the same and writing their own apps, or better yet - using open-source apps?
Hell, if that's the case, the FSF would be super happy because the only ways to get software onto OS X would be the Mac App Store, or via the developer program in order to compile from source. Which means the only way to distribute apps outside of the Mac App Store is via source code, making OS X one of the most "open" platforms around because you cannot distribute a binary - but only as source.
And for the time being, gatekeeper's verified developer ID thing allows non-Mac App Store apps - it's just developers have to prove their identity. Firefox has two such keys and are using them for all their builds (one is for daily builds, the other for formal releases).
Finally - there are classes of software not allowed by the Mac App Store - ones that cannot be self-contained (e.g., drivers, utility programs), demos (Microsoft Office Trial, anyone?).
Oh yeah - limiting Mac App Store apps to $1000 max price, too. AutoCAD LE can work under that, but AutoCAD can't. Multi-thousand dollar software packages exist.
And how to jailbreak a Mac - I dunno, you could well, take out the hard drive or SSD, put it in an appropriate adapter via USB (you can mount every mac's Disk - PATA, SATA, mSATA, MacBook Air/Retina MacBook Pro wierd-SATA), and access files that way.
The lockdown isn't happening because it's a computer and computers are doing certain things. Locked down tablets and phones are nice and popular though because people realize they don't need a computer to do most of the things they actually do, and want to avoid the pain and trouble of having to maintain a computer. (After all, would you really want your mechanic to have to bill you for time spent futzing with the diagnostic computer because they had to recompile the Linux kernel to fix some issue? No, most of them expect them to just work and please-don't-bother-me-with-useless-computer-techy-things-just-let-me-do-my-job)
Well, it's a bit different these days - in that newspapers getting syndicated content from AP, Reuters, etc., pay for that priviledge. It wasn't wholesale cribbing of aritcles without attribution or anything.
All that's really happened is that with communications getting so quick these days, plagiarism is similarly easy to detect. Back then, it's a lot harder get between here and there, so if someone decided to plagiarize, it was pretty hard to detect because it would involve investing in a day or more's worth of travel to pick up the paper and compare, and for things like this, it was relatively pointless.
In effect - it happened because it was a lot harder to catch it happening. These days it's far easier to get caught.
Same goes for copyright and all that - people pirated a lot back then as well, usually sheet music, books, etc. Sure there was no international copyright treaty, but it was also a lot harder to enforce. What, Britain was going to send a fleet of ships to the colonies because someone reprinted Dickens?
She doesn't take ANYONE's crap.
Or did you forget that Samsung was prevented from entering the F700 into evidence and a few other things?
Curious how that is - the same judge rules against Samsung and people are going 'BIASED! Samsung must appeal!" and now that it's Apple's turn to get smacked, they're going "She's awesome!"
Because they need to communicate with citizens? It's like a business that has a website, but insists that you phone htem to place an order because they don't want to have an attack that may expose customer data.
Of course, even airgapped networks aren't invulnerable... I hear some centrifuges got destroyed despite the control systems working on a completely separate, airgapped network, because said control systems got infected. What was it called? Stacks-net? Stock-net?
You do realize that BitCoin will become and new fiat currency right? And since it has some severe flaws in it (notably, it's ripe for deflation), you're just going to end up with a currency that speculators are going to go nuts with.
BitCoin will cause even more wild fluctuations in financial markets, because the speculators (who already are using BitCoin) will just continue to do the same with bitcoin. And considering people "roll back" bitcoin transactions every time there's a hack that "devalues" the value of it versus current fiat currency (like how NYSE rolled back stock trades). All those hacks that steal bitcoins cause the price of it to crash, those transactions get rolled back because if you own a lot, suddenly they're worth less, etc.
Oh, and if you're wondering what bitcoin speculators are speculating on - think of the other currency the world has - precious metals. Bitcoin isn't a magic currency, it's just another fiat currency and all the usual financial market problems we have will still be present. We'd have high-frequency traders still, stocks, speculation, etc. And you can bet they're going to pursue arbitrage as well. Bitcoin just extends the human greed element to a new location.
Because data roaming can be expensive? It's off by default so people don't go overseas and suddenly come home to a $2000 phone bill because their phone was happily checking their email inbox. (Roaming data rates are around 5 cents per kB. A SI kB, not a kiB! Or $50/MB)
A movie can easily cost you $12K or more.
That's why it's off by default - in case the phone accidentally goes into roaming mode (which can happen near the border), you won't run up a huge bill. Especially if T-mo is that bad and you end up roaming on another network - that other network can easily be one across the border with a particularly strong signal.
Do not confuse geeks with website designers. It's just the same as assuming that since you can program, you can design a UI. Different skillsets, different specialities. Sure people think it's possible to do the other job, but the end result is usually quite nasty.
And the reason Slashdot doesn't handle unicode is simple - it actually does, but it does it on a whitelist basis rather than a blacklist. There was a spurt of trolls sticking right-to-left override characters in their comments resulting in unreadable pages. So /. basically whitelists a few characters (since a lot of the valid codepoints aren't defined yet and may include even more control codes).
Though it is fun from time to time sticking right-to-left override in a comment system to see if they blindly handle unicode...
For every hack that Anonymous does, there's probably dozens of others that you don't hear about.
Same as vulnerable software - just because someone reports it to you doesn't mean you can ignore it - you can bet others have found it and may be exploiting it, just without the courtesy of telling you.
Of course, given what happened last year, I'm surprised you didn't resort to using PSN cards. Just buy them in a store and enter the redemption code on PSN. No credit card linked anywhere.
Though Sony, unlike Microsoft and Apple, doesn't seem to discount them (you can find Microsoft points cards and Xbox Live Gold subscriptoin on sale regularly (I've seen $5 off regular $20 cards, $20 off Xbox Live (regular price $60)), and iTunes cards seem to be 20% off somewhere or other. Why pay full price?
You make the assumption that handling cash is free - it actually isn't.
For the mom and pop shop who runs maybe a thousand dollars a day to the bank, it's fairly cheap, even if you get robbed once a year or so (a quarter to a third of a percent in "transaction fees", though I'm not counting emotional "damages" and such).
But if you're running a somewhat larger business, it does cost money to handle cash. Take a big-box store who may easily do anywhere from $20k-50k in transactions per day per store. If that was cash, you'd probably want to run an armored car or so, which can run into $1000 or more per trip, or a 5% "transaction fee". If it's $50k, it goes down to a 2% "transaction fee" for the armored car service. And yes, when games like Halo come out, stores often have to pre-arrange for things like this because even $10k in cash is racked up by selling 200 copies in cash (for a big game release, the store can go through a thousand or more).
Plus cash handling in store requires trained people. Ever wonder why stores close the registers during a power outage? It's the same reason - the books are electronic, and the registers maintain a transaction journal. If the cashier were to process sales while the servers are down, they'd have to manually make entries in the journal and then at the end of the shift, reconsolidate the register journal (it's called a cash *register* because it does the journalling) with the actual contents of the cash box and the actual sales that happened. And yes, while the cash box contents and register values do disagree due to human error (short changed or too much), it's supposed to be a small value.
If you ever see your order or purchase not rung up on a register, you can bet it's being done under the table.
That's why electronic payment systems are embraced - sure they charge transaction fees, but if you do a lot of large value transactions, you save in not having to handle cash. And if you have lots of salespeople, you can have customers rung out by anyone since all the book-keeping's electronic and reconciled automatically, no special training required (of course, a cash register needs to be available for those paying in cash, but those paying electronically don't have to line up and wait).
This electronic payment systme is more akin to cash, which means no server anywhere can really know that Alice sent Bob $10, because that eliminates the benefit of cash and we might as well just revert to using existing systems because it's there. Then again, you run the risk of losing the device holding the wallet, so how you handle that becomes more interesting...
Exactly. Espcially since there's a DRM-free way to get it in the first place - in print! Deadtree is a perfect way to express your opinion on the matter - it's DRM-free (any scanner or photocopier can read it too), you can give it away/resell it/etc.
Oh, and what I do is I buy the deadtree, then pirate the ebook. Amazon etc. won't give a crap about DRM-free because they're selling more ebooks than deadtrees. Reverse that trend and it says something. (Plus, if there are OCR errors in the pirated ebook, you can reference the deadtree to figure out what it's supposed to be).
AND the author (and everyone else involved from editors to cover art) gets their cut.
It's right now a perfect way to show your displeasure for DRM and make a meaningful stand because the metrics people are using are comparing print sales to ebook sales.
In Canada, Bell Canada still charges for touch-tone service, or at least did until very recently.
And no, you can't disable it saying you want to go back to pulse service - they won't honor that request. So you're stuck paying $2.80 a month for it.
Then we might as well bottle the internet back up as a DARPA research curiousity then.
Generally speaking, the security model assumes people know what they're doing, which is patently false. The computer and the internet are essential tools these days for many occupations, whether or not the people want it. A mechanic probably has to use a computer to diagnose a modern car, but he certainly doesn't need to know how to reinstall Windows or compile a kernel or other crap (to him). He just wants to see what errors there are, use his experience and then find the mystical place to do the $1000 tap to fix the problem.
Ditto the internet - the sales guy is wheeling and dealing and sending specs to customers trying to make money for the company over the 'net. He doesn't need to know the details of TCP/IP or Ethernet or how the packet gets from here to there - he just makes the sales.
Basically these days, the security model should include the fact that people who do not know better have a necessity to use the computer and the internet. We don't train the mechanic how to type and install Windows/Linux/blah and admin it, we train the mechanic how to most effectively extract the data the ECU provides to solve the problem.
It's time security models take note that Dancing Pigs are here to stay. Which may explain the rise of locked down tablets and walled gardens.
Not to mention it seems a lot of malware these days are usermode based. They're not trying to hide from users anymore, other than being plausibly-sounding processes with plausible paths. Everything they need to do the user can do - they don't need admin anymore (admin was required because they wanted to hide).
Getting admin these days often requires a dialog box popping up on the user for admin priviledges. Which is a great way to announce your presence to the user. But just being an innoculous sounding process that can hide amongst the other processes is often good enough. After all, if the malware decided it would be called "init" on Linux or "launchd" on OS X, most users wouldn't know that something is wrong (other than it not being PID 0). Or perhaps the malware can see the user runs GNOME, and call itself gnome-terminal. Or on OS X, Safari.app.
Actually, modern low-flow toilets probably are superior these days to the old ones period. The old low-flows were just high-flow ones using half as much water. Basically the high-flow ones worked by brute force - dump gallons of water down and the stuff will go with it.
Modern low-flows are better designed using hydrodynamics to assist in removal of waste, and can often do it using even *less* water than the old low-flows, while doing a much better job.
It's like using a hose to wash the floor - the old style toilets simply flooded water all over the floor and let the dirt work itself loose and into the drains. The modern low-flows are like using a high-pressure washer to clean the floor.
Probably practicality.
First, it's mobile Firefox, not main desktop Firefox. Effectively all smartphones these days support h.264 in hardware, and the OS provides native hooks to use that hardware support. Very few mobiles support WebM out of the box in hardware, which means a software decoder, which either means very limited resolutions (back to ye olde QVGA video days - show off your fancy high res 720p screen with blocky pixellated video!), high power draw (why is my phone getting so hot and my battery life down to 1 hour?), and lousy framerates.
Nevermind that the mix of various mobile GPUs out there coupled with ancient versions of Android could easily mean that reusing the h.264 hardware for WebM would be tricky.
And given that the default browser supports HTML5 video right off the bat, Firefox was just going to get dinged on its inability to play video.
WebM on the desktop though remains a possibility - where big beefy power hungry CPUs are available, wall power is available, and flexible video cards with up-to-date drivers and OSes mean even software decode will have hardware assistance.
Well, a big reason for that is in many places in North America, it's impossible to get around without a car. Public transit's a joke, and doesn't go where you need them to. So telling someone that they can't drive is basically jailing them and making them dependent on others (because they can't get basic necessities). And since people are fiercely independent, well, taking away someone's independence hurts, a lot.
If you have to explain to your mom or dad why they can't drive anymore, and that they must call you when you need an errand...
You realize you pretty much described flying as it exists right now, right?
Except for a small range (3000 ft AGL), altitudes ARE strictly controlled (IFR - thousands, VFR - thousands+500 ft), and it depends on which direction (track over the ground, yay wind) you're heading (East - odd thousands, West - even thousands).
And parking in a designated landing zone, we call them "aerodromes".
Of course, you're also assuming that flying cars are more VTOL style craft - so far most of them are really more like planes. VTOL is surprisingly difficult and fuel-inefficient.
I'd say a lot of "democratic" countries are really false-democratic - if you really looked at how they operated, it's between authoritarian and dictatorship.
There are "elections" and people can "vote", however, if the vote strays too far to the "wrong" things ... happen. And yes, people are forced to vote, and it's probably fully auditable and all that.
Malaysia is probably the perfect scenario for this. I remember many years ago the Opposition was actually getting pretty strong and popular, so what happened? The leader got arrested on "sodomy" charges and "semen on mattress" evidence. So far, the case is "ongoing" (and I think I observed this over a decade ago). I think at one point the charges got "dropped" after he was too weak to continue the trial. End result - the official government wins because the voters couldn't really vote for a party whose leader was in jail, and is now too weak to reorganize and regroup the opposition party, so the official government party gets free reign.
A law like this can be easily passed - all the government has to do is show lots of evidence that the law is good, and basically hush and discredit those who oppose it. If it gets any traction, just jail the leader on questionable charges.
Assuming it stays in 1 piece (not a safe assumption). All it takes is some collisions with other space junk to start ripping parts off which can take longer to deorbit and contribute to the ever growing pile of junk circling the planet.
The few months it's up there are a few months of it ablating away and sending pieces orbiting to hit other things up there (everything gets hit).
Glad to know I'm not the only one who doesn't like the cacophony these keyboards generate. It seems they're even more annoying in an office environment. I understand the appeal on a tactile level, but never liked the noise. If they made it so they were quieter, perhaps...
Then again, I guess if you have kids, it's a great way to find out if the computer's in use - trying to use the computer discreetly is quite difficult with a noisy keyboard. (You can use on screen keyboards and character map to a limited extent with the mouse, but gaming would be impossible...).
So... do they make quieter versions?