We have Letter Grades, A, B, C, D, (E/F) then we need to determine if A is the Top or A+ is the top. Does F+ allow you to pass, or just pisses off the student. We have Percentages... What percentage is passing... 50% 60% 65%?
In most cases I've seen, everyone keeps track of percentages - once the final percentage is created is it translated to a letter grade. The letter grade doesn't matter - the percentage does.
E.g., just over 50% is required for passing. I won't translate that to a F+, but probably a D-, which is meaningless other than it's obvious you barely passed.
It's usually kept as percentages rather than letters because it allows for easy scaling and weighting, and even drop lowest N is trivially implemented. Or even ignore grade and use final weighted to 100%.
Translating to a letter grade is trivial in that system - percentages can be converted any time to a letter after all. Direct entry of letter grades is quite rare, even then it's usually a mapping back to percentage (e.g., A+ 100%, F = 0%, D- = 50.1%)
Actually, the people who do the actual refining disagree - doing the meltdown is actually far easier on an electronics waste stream than extracting it out from the ground - the concentrations are much higher and the usual extraction processes work just as well, except generating more product.
And yes, they also consider mining landfills for the same reason - a rich resource of raw materials.
in other words "you didnt write a bill that we like, so we are taking our ball and going home" It is the same thing as when the Ds in Wi left the state rather than have a vote. the Ds are all worried about the Rs "taking away the right to vote" from the avg american, yet they dont even want to have a vote. You say that "we know it wont win" well, no we dont, it hasnt been voted on, therefore we do not know.
That's due to oddity in laws.
Usually the requirements are something like 2/3rds of the legislature must be in session to have a quorum to discuss and vote on bills. But the vote is usually simple majority or other threshold of the attending members.
By disappearing, what happened is the legislature couldn't convene and conduct business - it was effectively stalled and if the R's controlled a majority (but not enough tor a quorum), it means they can't pass anything because the state constitution demanded a minimum number of attendees.
It's better than a filibuster. By disappearing, all that's happened is the state is effectively blocked from passing any legislation, including ones to amend the constitution. So if there are bills that are hated and the other side is unwilling to compromise, by not showing up it basically means the bill can never be passed. And it has to be out of state because they can't be recalled.
So does Apple. Apple still has a HUGE lock today but with them getting greedy and not supporting a mac more than 3 years old that might change sadly.
Anchorage school district is finally retiring its 2004 emacs and just updated city wide last year and the year before to new imacs. They also use Ubuntu netbooks for creative writting classes and other uses as you can't fit 30 macs in one classroom as easily.
Well, given the eMacs are 8 years old at this point... even Ubuntu doesn't support them (I think last supported Ubuntu Linux is 8.04LTS and even that's now an old version).
Of course, the latest Macs, even if not supported by OS X, do run Windows and Linux just fine as well. Heck, most of the major Linux distros have supported the Intel Macs with native EFI bootloaders (it's EFI bootloader to GRUB from what I've seen). The only issues I've seen were when people tried to use the legacy BIOS boot on a Mac when there was an EFI alternative.
""Engine Warning" icon lighting up, it can say "Your O2 sensor is broken""
They could do that already in the LCD or VFD screens that most cars have. They don't because car manufacturers want you to take it down the dealers and pay for a diagnostic.
They don't because of another reason - most people won't know WTF is going on. "WTF is an O2 sensor? Am I going to die?". Hell, you'll probably find people with windows rolled down in the winter because they think the climate control is broken because of a bad O2 sensor.
And given that every car has to have an OBD-II port, you don't have ot pay for a diagnostic anymore - a scan tool (they make 'em for smartphones now, and apps that let you adjust parameters on the fly) will read it out.
The light is there to warn that something is wrong with the engine, and if they don't want to be stranded, they better take it to a mechanic to find out what. (If it's particularly serious, it'll flash). Even then you have people who drive for years with the light on.
Of course, having a message is useful - perhaps the most common reason for the check engine light is a loose gas cap. Perhaps a message saying "Check gas cap" would help people who don't twist it until it clicks.
Heck, if there's something to fix - it's the little indicator showing which side has the gas cap. The little triangle by the fuel pump icon on the gauge is a very nice and Apple-y subtle reminder, but it seems most people just don't notice it. Or know/realize what it means (it's one of those things that is plainly obvious and intuitive once you realize what it means, but until then, it's a mystery).
I'm all for identifying evil as evil, but it would be nice to have some actual evidence before making the accusation.
The fact that a single "no" is not enough to get them to stop asking is evidence enough.
Not to mention Google really tries to hide the "No" button. It just pops up as a box that says you need to enter your phone number. If you look down, the link to skip it is very tiny, enough to miss it. I'm willing ot bet most people don't even know there's an option to skip it.
It also pops up randomly on you, and each time it seems the "No" link gets tinier and moved somewhere else.
For Do No Evil, they certainly are applying all the usual marketing tricks to hide stuff like free downloads and such. If they really cared, it would be in normal font with text saying it's completely optional and you can bypass it by clicking the nice big link.
So... you google and facebook future employees as part of the hiring process, and inadvertently learn their age / sex / race / orientation / marital status / religion basically all the stuff you can be sued for. You can lose quite a bit of money if you make an employment decision based on a candidates religion, for example.
There exists third party services that do the Googling and Facebook checks for you, and you get back a report containing only the information that's public, and even the photos are blacked out so race/age/sex information are hidden, giving you a completely "clean" report.
Mat Honan details one such report he obtained on himself. As an employer, if you're doing these things, offloading it to a third party is probably the best way to do it as the third party filters out the things you can't ask for as well as irrelevant things, and you have a physical report to which you can defend yourself.
The encryption used on the iPhone (the one that's always on) is that no data hits the flash unencrypted. It's done so you cannot take the flash chip from one iPhone and read it out, nor stick it in another iPhone and extract it that way. So you can't read the chip out (nor by the same token, put in a jailbreak so you can reinstall it on an iPhone and boot it, using the jailbreak to read it out).
There are other layers of encryption above that to protect your data against unencrypted backups and iCloud.
Well, if that's true then it shows that all those claims that "electronic devices need to be shut off to avoid interference with critical airplane controls" is just complete garbage. If airplane mode doesn't power down the baseband, then interference is still possible.
Congratulations, you just proved what everyone knew. The reason behind "airplane mode" was to prevent DDoS'ing the tower network (FCC rule, not FAA).
The FAA rules basically say ANYTHING that interferes with aircraft operations must be switched off - radios or not. This can include laptops, CD players, and other devices carried aboard aircraft.
Oh, and turning off the baseband isn't necessary. What airplane mode does is turn off the transmitter, power amplifier, receiver preamp, and receiver blocks. The DSP is also powered down (you want to save energy, right? Why keep a DSP powered up when it's not doing anything?). However, the processor controlling it all is still powered up - because there are plenty of operations that you can do still without the radio path at all - SIM operations (contact list maintenance, running SIM toolkit applications), other general inquiry commands and such.
You'll be surprised, but most phones cannot handle a baseband powerdown without resetting the entire OS. Or a reset of the baseband, period. In fact, there's a reason why phones use the battery to "lock" the SIM card in - for precisely that reason. There is a 3GPP (GSM) spec that enables hot-swapping SIMs, but it's convoluted, and only one phone in common availability actually supports it (iPhone - starting with the 3GS or so. Prior versions turned off the phone immediately if you ejected the SIM while they were on, while the 3GS onwards properly handles SIM switching). It's tricky because pretty much the only way is to reinitialize the baseband and the entire phone stack.
I must say i never had a black berry but i'd imagine this would be like if google got sued the day after the g1, my first smart phone, came out. And no I don't mean that to sound as insulting as it kind of does.
Which is why no patent troll ever sues on any infringement. There's no benefit to killing a product before it gets its legs, at least for patent trolls.
A patent troll's motivation is money. If they go after a product that's barely on the market, there's hardly any to be made. OTOH, if they sue AFTER it's successful and growing, there's a great chance to make a LOT of money in licensing fees and damages. Also, there's less likelihood that there could be workarounds without breaking something, thus ensuring future profits.
Killing a product before it can prosper isn't a good way to make money. Same as alerting the product's owners to work around your patents early on before there are any compatibility issues. Leeching off it once it's healthy enough to do so is, however.
You'll note that patent trolls only go after successful products.
You can get an 8 bay SATA JBOD enclosure for about $300 and that will include an extra SATA card. It won't be a proper RAID setup but it will allow you to mount 8 drives at once and it won't cost more than your car.
For backup purposes, I'd say skip the RAID card and use software RAID for multiple reasons.
First and foremost, if the card dies, you'd be hooped in trying to find a replacement with correct firmware down the line.
Instead, use Linux's software RAID support - the formats don't change that much (and there's lots of legacy support), plus being open source, and you're able to find a PC able to run Linux enough to be able to recover data from it - as long as ONE computer can run Linux, it'll work (even booting off a CD).
Between LVM and md, they should be supported for a good long time so your backup media will be accessible for ages.
They're running vxworks and they do have a backup computer. First the backup is flashed and verified, then the primary is flashed and verified.
Don't forget they also have a backup system right there - NASA actually built TWO Curiosity rovers - only one is over there, but there's another one right here on the ground. (Likewise, they had three last time - Spirit and Opportunity went to Mars while one stayed behind).
It's used for testing, naturally (especially when the rover gets stuck so they can test various fixes without incurring the various latencies in sending back a command and waiting for the results), so they would've tested the entire update procedure on the ground first (several times) to ensure they don't have any issues.
I asked developers whether Ouya will run games sold outside the official store (without having to root the device, like with to Android's "unknown sources"), but they never replied. Until they do, I don't consider this a particularly open console.
Have we reached an era when even those who advertise openness won't release commercial platforms that aren't like walled gardens?
Given everyone who buys one gets the SDK thrown in, there probably will be the option to do it. If not, there'll be a root for it within a week - there always will be. (And face it, people will do it to run pirated games, so if you can't do it by ticking an option, there's strong incentive for people to find a way).
The bigger question though is how well the store will be laid out, because everyone gets an SDK, and by the end of the week there'll be 100,000 Sudoku submissions ranging in price from 99 cents to $10 as everyone tries to cash in on the craze and people know the first-movers have significant advantages.
After all, both Google Play and Apple App Store have well over 600K apps, and we've all heard how terrible a good majority are.
Lying is part of freedom of speech. However, there are degrees of lying as well. If your lies result in damages or the potential to do harm, there are limitations on that (e.g., shouting Fire in a theatre, slander, libel). A falsehood or omission of fact where the recipient merely gets the wrong picture is allowed, as are little white lies.
All Fox News has done is discredit themselves as a legitimate news source, so they're really just another network channel that runs fictional TV shows. Though featuring talking heads more than anything.
And yes, advertising by mis-stating facts (i.e., lying) does cause damage to competitors, so they can seek recourse. Apple gets in trouble for this all the time.
You don't have to be a monopoly to be prosecuted. Microsoft certainly wasn't a monopoly on the desktop when it was prosecuted. Or Standard Oil when it was prosecuted. You only have to have a large enough share of a certain market that your presence is "anti-competitive" and blocks other companies from succeeding. Apple certainly fits that description in the cellphone & tablet markets.
Having a monopoly is perfectly legal. In some cases, it's a very practical move (natural monopolies, when properly regulated), in others, it just falls out because of the nature of the market (some software sold is so specialized, only one company really makes it because the market consists of 10-odd entities, say).
That's perfectly allowable by all the laws.
What's not allowable is when you use that monopoly to basically barge your way into another market (e.g. Microsoft Windows barging into the browser world by including IE).
Apple nearly fell into anti-trust with the iPod and iTunes Store - because they practically used the iPod and iTunes to lock people in. It would be a very fine line (because iPod+iTunes complemented each other, and iPod grew in dominance due to timing alongside iTunes first-mover advantage). The iPhone? Not so much - Android is a bigger seller and has more marketshrae. The iPad? Perhaps, though it's marketshare is dropping (it's down to sub-70%), and was really first-mover advantage compounded by well, crappy competitors with rushed products. Though, it's unclear where Apple is muscling in.
Heck, Google has to be careful - they own practically all the advertising networks out there (making them both the supplier of "good ads" like AdSense, and the purveyor of annoying ones like popunders courtesy DoubleClick, a Google-owned subsidiary).
Open source groups bickering over something insignificant?
It's not insignificant, it's trademark violation.
You may think it's insignificant, but it's the same reason why there's Debian IceWeasel, and CentOS. The former to prevent confusion with the trademark of FireFox, the latter gets rid of all RedHat references. You see, trademark law is very clear on this - use it and defend it, or lose it.
If CentOS slapped the RedHat logo everywhere, RedHat could find themselves with a logo so devalued to the courts that we can have Microsoft RedHat Windows, Apple OS X RedHat, etc. Ditto Firefox - there's the danger that well, Microsoft could rename Internet Explorer to FireFox with impunity.
Same as this - the OSI and OSHWA could find their logos devalued as confusing, enabling everyone to slap the OSI label on stuff NOT open-source, or the gear logo on hardware NOT open-hardware (like say, a Windows 8 RT tablet).
It's brand preservation and recognition. There are strict rules on how you use the logos spelled out in many agreements. They may be out in the open like many open-source projects (which usually boil down to you must be using that project from that branch - forking and reusing the logo is not allowed),
The OSI may lose their logo in the end because the OSHWA inadvertently made it a bit too close and since both are used widely. (Even the OSHWA may lose it because their logo looks too close to the similar OSI one).
All it would take is some company with deep pockets to start slapping the logos on everything they make and arguing that the logos mean nothing.
It's why Apple, Jack Daniels, etc. send C&D letters to the most seemingly fleeting resemblances (though with very different tones - an Apple C&D is very lawyerly, while the Jack Daniels one is more friendly, but it's still a C&D).
What if DoubleClick/AdSense sites require it. That would shut down a significant portion of the web.
Considering Google already does something similar for Google Analytics (Google owns DoubleClick, remember, so DoubleClick and AdSense are one and the same now) - i.e., it can require javascript to be enabled for GA, it's very possible that Google will require it. Most javascript blockers do implement stub functions to get around the click-tracking (it's been around a few years, but there's bound to be more).
Remember, DNT by default is basically a big gun pointed at Google (you think Microsoft doesn't know that Google through DoubleClick/AdSense/AdMob/etc own basically the entire online advertising and analytic market?).
And we know Google's really not beyond ignoring DNT anyhow, considering their past behavior. After all, Microsoft is threatening their core revenue source.
Now keep in mind, a regular HDD is about 70MB/s for sustained data. Put that in a raid 1 (mobo hardware, or software) and you can see 120-130, so an SSD on a bad connection may not be that much better than much less expensive RAID.
You're ignoring a very important fact.
An SSD is at least an order of magnitude faster still because the seek time is in the microsecond range. So even an SSD on a bad interface can easily peg the interface for random I/O, while the super RAID array doing the same accesses can bog down to a halt.
The reason? Seek times. A typical hard drive is around 7ms or so, which means if you're doing lots of seeks, you'll never get that sustained transfer rate. Worst case, you can easily get less than 1MB/sec if the hard drive is reading 4kB blocks at random locations.
A hard drive is great for long reads and writes. An SSD excels at random I/O and OS/application usage tends to be random I/O. It just makes the whole system feel "snappier" purely because read requets are fulfilled immediately versus skittering the head over the platters.
In fact, Windows 7 does a quick test to determine if it's running on an SSD - it does a bunch of random I/O. If the drive is capable of more than 50MB/sec, it's an SSD because no spinning rust can meet that requirement due to seek time.
Nice to see Apple losing their prime advantage: looks.
Now we just have to wait until Intel comes with DIY phones.
Apple's lost that advantage last year when Intel finally got fed up and spent at least $100M doing the R&D for all the ultrabook manufacturers. Now all we need is Intel to spend another $100M doing all the R&D for everyone eles to clone the iMac.
Who exactly is going to be paying the game developers in this scenario?
The same people who do now - the end users.
You do realize most games flop, right? For every Halo/Gears of War/Uncharted there's probably dozens others that fail to recoup their initial costs. Having the end user pay for the flop? That'll go over real well - someone has to make up the difference between the cost and the revenue.
You're suggesting the entire industry should be financed by Kickstarter
Or similar services. Kickstarter is good for indie projects - I imagine you'd need a more professional system, that details project milestones and holds money in escrow for projects requiring higher-value contributions. Hell, existing big name titles can pretty much do this already with pre-orders two years in advance.
You seem incredulous that "normal people" could generate enough money to fund game development. In practice, they already do - more than enough actually, as the publishers skim a sweet cut off the top before passing down what's left to the developers.
It's a great way to ensure only popular crap gets published - endless Halo/Gears of War/Unchated/God of War/Tetris games that sell millions and make tons of profit. The ones that break even will probably sell to those who paid up and disappear. The further a game strays from the tried and true moneymakers, the less likely it's going to get any money.
Truth is - plenty of kickstarter projects fail. Plenty of game kickstarter projects fail to meet funding. Now granted most are probably crap games to begin with, but there's guaranteed to be some that are real gems, just enough people didn't "get it" to warrant tossing a few bucks at it.
Gaming would become an even more dismal place than it would be today if the only reason games proceed to be developed is due to established audiences willing to buy it.
Don't forget Megacorporations like Samsung, Motorola, and Nokia; none of which don't have their own ace teams of lawyers and ongoing lawsuits.
Everyone seems to think that Apple is the only one doing this.
Hell, it's not even a new thing. Even way back when there are plenty of lawsuits that targeted Apple - especially in the iPod (but pre-iPhone) era. Creative, Sony, they all launched lawsuits. Nevermind the plenty of class actions and individual actions. It was enough that really, if there was a week where Apple wasn't getting sued over something or other, the lawyers probably got bored.
Hell, these days, the number of lawsuits where Apple's a participant is downright few (though well-publicized).
Would also make sense from a multiplayer gaming perspective - think of the VAC and such systems. I'm sure someone creative enough running some Linux can figure out a way to fake out VAC by pretending to be a normal unmodified Linux system even though it's highly customized for cheating.
Or a way to get an edge by hijacking the OpenGL commands used to draw and shoving the commands to another video card rendering in "wireframe" mode or other stuff.
A lot harder to do on Windows, and you can be sure the custom Linux distros with those features enabled would become popular...
The main difference being that those updates don't tend to kill your plugins like they do in firefox.
Or have UIs that mysteriously change every release or so. Lose the status bar one day. Then tabs act differently the next. Then the "awesomebar" becomes a little less awesome ("switch to tab" - annoying, and I need an extension to remove it?!). Autocomplete's screwy as well (it only does up to the domain now, before it used to do deep links - for some sites, the domain is irrelevant - I need the deep link and now I have to wait for the awesomebar to suggest it (autocomplete is, instant).
And none of them seem to have options in about:config to disable them...
I don't want to play "lets see what's different" everytime I start Firefox. Or discover that muscle memory doesn't work anymore (hint: Microsoft kept all the usual Alt-F-blah shortcuts on the ribbon for a reason - people either use Ctrl-S or Alt-F-S to save!).
iTunes cards - basically you need BB to convert your useless currency (their gift card) into usable currency (iTunes) - which you can then give away as presents or burn through yourself.
Just wait for sales though - iTunes cards are regularly 20% off (yes, it comes out of that 30% cut Apple takes) and you can bet while it's going on the store is still making a profit out of it (splitting the 10% leftover).
So you can buy 2 $50 cards, and 1 $20 card and have nothing left over except christmas presents for people.
You can do the same for Xbox Live cards as well (both points and gold subscription cards).
It's also one of my annoyances with Sony (because they are marked $50 or $20 on them, they NEVER go on sale), and Google Play (no gift cards, no chance for them to go on sale). The fact that iTunes and Xbox Live Gold and points cards go on sale so regularly means I end up getting a few and using them as gifts and such as well (no one needs to know I spent less than face value).
Yeah yeah yeah, gift cards and locked-in money, yadda yadda yadda. Of course, only if you're paying full price - and nothing like creating a sale when you need it.
Parent is on the right track though. You need some way to decide in advance how much of a pain it will be to recover down the road. Personally I'd love an option where they made it very difficult, even if at a cost to myself (like they actually verify my identity.. and charge me $200 for the time..).
And the next post on/. would be about someone who set their account to that because they were told "it was the safest" and now they're locked out because they can't cough up the $200 now.
Even if you made it $1, it'll be about how Apple is making billions off customers inability to remember a password.
Of course then the next day we'd have Google doing the same thing and cheer them on for being more secure.
Which brings up a question - people actually paid for me.com email addresses? Especially considering there are plenty of free services for email... Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail, some of which offer IMAP access as well.
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In most cases I've seen, everyone keeps track of percentages - once the final percentage is created is it translated to a letter grade. The letter grade doesn't matter - the percentage does.
E.g., just over 50% is required for passing. I won't translate that to a F+, but probably a D-, which is meaningless other than it's obvious you barely passed.
It's usually kept as percentages rather than letters because it allows for easy scaling and weighting, and even drop lowest N is trivially implemented. Or even ignore grade and use final weighted to 100%.
Translating to a letter grade is trivial in that system - percentages can be converted any time to a letter after all. Direct entry of letter grades is quite rare, even then it's usually a mapping back to percentage (e.g., A+ 100%, F = 0%, D- = 50.1%)
That's due to oddity in laws.
Usually the requirements are something like 2/3rds of the legislature must be in session to have a quorum to discuss and vote on bills. But the vote is usually simple majority or other threshold of the attending members.
By disappearing, what happened is the legislature couldn't convene and conduct business - it was effectively stalled and if the R's controlled a majority (but not enough tor a quorum), it means they can't pass anything because the state constitution demanded a minimum number of attendees.
It's better than a filibuster. By disappearing, all that's happened is the state is effectively blocked from passing any legislation, including ones to amend the constitution. So if there are bills that are hated and the other side is unwilling to compromise, by not showing up it basically means the bill can never be passed. And it has to be out of state because they can't be recalled.
Well, given the eMacs are 8 years old at this point... even Ubuntu doesn't support them (I think last supported Ubuntu Linux is 8.04LTS and even that's now an old version).
Of course, the latest Macs, even if not supported by OS X, do run Windows and Linux just fine as well. Heck, most of the major Linux distros have supported the Intel Macs with native EFI bootloaders (it's EFI bootloader to GRUB from what I've seen). The only issues I've seen were when people tried to use the legacy BIOS boot on a Mac when there was an EFI alternative.
They don't because of another reason - most people won't know WTF is going on. "WTF is an O2 sensor? Am I going to die?". Hell, you'll probably find people with windows rolled down in the winter because they think the climate control is broken because of a bad O2 sensor.
And given that every car has to have an OBD-II port, you don't have ot pay for a diagnostic anymore - a scan tool (they make 'em for smartphones now, and apps that let you adjust parameters on the fly) will read it out.
The light is there to warn that something is wrong with the engine, and if they don't want to be stranded, they better take it to a mechanic to find out what. (If it's particularly serious, it'll flash). Even then you have people who drive for years with the light on.
Of course, having a message is useful - perhaps the most common reason for the check engine light is a loose gas cap. Perhaps a message saying "Check gas cap" would help people who don't twist it until it clicks.
Heck, if there's something to fix - it's the little indicator showing which side has the gas cap. The little triangle by the fuel pump icon on the gauge is a very nice and Apple-y subtle reminder, but it seems most people just don't notice it. Or know/realize what it means (it's one of those things that is plainly obvious and intuitive once you realize what it means, but until then, it's a mystery).
Not to mention Google really tries to hide the "No" button. It just pops up as a box that says you need to enter your phone number. If you look down, the link to skip it is very tiny, enough to miss it. I'm willing ot bet most people don't even know there's an option to skip it.
It also pops up randomly on you, and each time it seems the "No" link gets tinier and moved somewhere else.
For Do No Evil, they certainly are applying all the usual marketing tricks to hide stuff like free downloads and such. If they really cared, it would be in normal font with text saying it's completely optional and you can bypass it by clicking the nice big link.
There exists third party services that do the Googling and Facebook checks for you, and you get back a report containing only the information that's public, and even the photos are blacked out so race/age/sex information are hidden, giving you a completely "clean" report.
Mat Honan details one such report he obtained on himself. As an employer, if you're doing these things, offloading it to a third party is probably the best way to do it as the third party filters out the things you can't ask for as well as irrelevant things, and you have a physical report to which you can defend yourself.
Congratulations, you just proved what everyone knew. The reason behind "airplane mode" was to prevent DDoS'ing the tower network (FCC rule, not FAA).
The FAA rules basically say ANYTHING that interferes with aircraft operations must be switched off - radios or not. This can include laptops, CD players, and other devices carried aboard aircraft.
Oh, and turning off the baseband isn't necessary. What airplane mode does is turn off the transmitter, power amplifier, receiver preamp, and receiver blocks. The DSP is also powered down (you want to save energy, right? Why keep a DSP powered up when it's not doing anything?). However, the processor controlling it all is still powered up - because there are plenty of operations that you can do still without the radio path at all - SIM operations (contact list maintenance, running SIM toolkit applications), other general inquiry commands and such.
You'll be surprised, but most phones cannot handle a baseband powerdown without resetting the entire OS. Or a reset of the baseband, period. In fact, there's a reason why phones use the battery to "lock" the SIM card in - for precisely that reason. There is a 3GPP (GSM) spec that enables hot-swapping SIMs, but it's convoluted, and only one phone in common availability actually supports it (iPhone - starting with the 3GS or so. Prior versions turned off the phone immediately if you ejected the SIM while they were on, while the 3GS onwards properly handles SIM switching). It's tricky because pretty much the only way is to reinitialize the baseband and the entire phone stack.
Which is why no patent troll ever sues on any infringement. There's no benefit to killing a product before it gets its legs, at least for patent trolls.
A patent troll's motivation is money. If they go after a product that's barely on the market, there's hardly any to be made. OTOH, if they sue AFTER it's successful and growing, there's a great chance to make a LOT of money in licensing fees and damages. Also, there's less likelihood that there could be workarounds without breaking something, thus ensuring future profits.
Killing a product before it can prosper isn't a good way to make money. Same as alerting the product's owners to work around your patents early on before there are any compatibility issues. Leeching off it once it's healthy enough to do so is, however.
You'll note that patent trolls only go after successful products.
For backup purposes, I'd say skip the RAID card and use software RAID for multiple reasons.
First and foremost, if the card dies, you'd be hooped in trying to find a replacement with correct firmware down the line.
Instead, use Linux's software RAID support - the formats don't change that much (and there's lots of legacy support), plus being open source, and you're able to find a PC able to run Linux enough to be able to recover data from it - as long as ONE computer can run Linux, it'll work (even booting off a CD).
Between LVM and md, they should be supported for a good long time so your backup media will be accessible for ages.
Don't forget they also have a backup system right there - NASA actually built TWO Curiosity rovers - only one is over there, but there's another one right here on the ground. (Likewise, they had three last time - Spirit and Opportunity went to Mars while one stayed behind).
It's used for testing, naturally (especially when the rover gets stuck so they can test various fixes without incurring the various latencies in sending back a command and waiting for the results), so they would've tested the entire update procedure on the ground first (several times) to ensure they don't have any issues.
Given everyone who buys one gets the SDK thrown in, there probably will be the option to do it. If not, there'll be a root for it within a week - there always will be. (And face it, people will do it to run pirated games, so if you can't do it by ticking an option, there's strong incentive for people to find a way).
The bigger question though is how well the store will be laid out, because everyone gets an SDK, and by the end of the week there'll be 100,000 Sudoku submissions ranging in price from 99 cents to $10 as everyone tries to cash in on the craze and people know the first-movers have significant advantages.
After all, both Google Play and Apple App Store have well over 600K apps, and we've all heard how terrible a good majority are.
Lying is part of freedom of speech. However, there are degrees of lying as well. If your lies result in damages or the potential to do harm, there are limitations on that (e.g., shouting Fire in a theatre, slander, libel). A falsehood or omission of fact where the recipient merely gets the wrong picture is allowed, as are little white lies.
All Fox News has done is discredit themselves as a legitimate news source, so they're really just another network channel that runs fictional TV shows. Though featuring talking heads more than anything.
And yes, advertising by mis-stating facts (i.e., lying) does cause damage to competitors, so they can seek recourse. Apple gets in trouble for this all the time.
Having a monopoly is perfectly legal. In some cases, it's a very practical move (natural monopolies, when properly regulated), in others, it just falls out because of the nature of the market (some software sold is so specialized, only one company really makes it because the market consists of 10-odd entities, say).
That's perfectly allowable by all the laws.
What's not allowable is when you use that monopoly to basically barge your way into another market (e.g. Microsoft Windows barging into the browser world by including IE).
Apple nearly fell into anti-trust with the iPod and iTunes Store - because they practically used the iPod and iTunes to lock people in. It would be a very fine line (because iPod+iTunes complemented each other, and iPod grew in dominance due to timing alongside iTunes first-mover advantage). The iPhone? Not so much - Android is a bigger seller and has more marketshrae. The iPad? Perhaps, though it's marketshare is dropping (it's down to sub-70%), and was really first-mover advantage compounded by well, crappy competitors with rushed products. Though, it's unclear where Apple is muscling in.
Heck, Google has to be careful - they own practically all the advertising networks out there (making them both the supplier of "good ads" like AdSense, and the purveyor of annoying ones like popunders courtesy DoubleClick, a Google-owned subsidiary).
It's not insignificant, it's trademark violation.
You may think it's insignificant, but it's the same reason why there's Debian IceWeasel, and CentOS. The former to prevent confusion with the trademark of FireFox, the latter gets rid of all RedHat references. You see, trademark law is very clear on this - use it and defend it, or lose it.
If CentOS slapped the RedHat logo everywhere, RedHat could find themselves with a logo so devalued to the courts that we can have Microsoft RedHat Windows, Apple OS X RedHat, etc. Ditto Firefox - there's the danger that well, Microsoft could rename Internet Explorer to FireFox with impunity.
Same as this - the OSI and OSHWA could find their logos devalued as confusing, enabling everyone to slap the OSI label on stuff NOT open-source, or the gear logo on hardware NOT open-hardware (like say, a Windows 8 RT tablet).
It's brand preservation and recognition. There are strict rules on how you use the logos spelled out in many agreements. They may be out in the open like many open-source projects (which usually boil down to you must be using that project from that branch - forking and reusing the logo is not allowed),
The OSI may lose their logo in the end because the OSHWA inadvertently made it a bit too close and since both are used widely. (Even the OSHWA may lose it because their logo looks too close to the similar OSI one).
All it would take is some company with deep pockets to start slapping the logos on everything they make and arguing that the logos mean nothing.
It's why Apple, Jack Daniels, etc. send C&D letters to the most seemingly fleeting resemblances (though with very different tones - an Apple C&D is very lawyerly, while the Jack Daniels one is more friendly, but it's still a C&D).
Considering Google already does something similar for Google Analytics (Google owns DoubleClick, remember, so DoubleClick and AdSense are one and the same now) - i.e., it can require javascript to be enabled for GA, it's very possible that Google will require it. Most javascript blockers do implement stub functions to get around the click-tracking (it's been around a few years, but there's bound to be more).
Remember, DNT by default is basically a big gun pointed at Google (you think Microsoft doesn't know that Google through DoubleClick/AdSense/AdMob/etc own basically the entire online advertising and analytic market?).
And we know Google's really not beyond ignoring DNT anyhow, considering their past behavior. After all, Microsoft is threatening their core revenue source.
You're ignoring a very important fact.
An SSD is at least an order of magnitude faster still because the seek time is in the microsecond range. So even an SSD on a bad interface can easily peg the interface for random I/O, while the super RAID array doing the same accesses can bog down to a halt.
The reason? Seek times. A typical hard drive is around 7ms or so, which means if you're doing lots of seeks, you'll never get that sustained transfer rate. Worst case, you can easily get less than 1MB/sec if the hard drive is reading 4kB blocks at random locations.
A hard drive is great for long reads and writes. An SSD excels at random I/O and OS/application usage tends to be random I/O. It just makes the whole system feel "snappier" purely because read requets are fulfilled immediately versus skittering the head over the platters.
In fact, Windows 7 does a quick test to determine if it's running on an SSD - it does a bunch of random I/O. If the drive is capable of more than 50MB/sec, it's an SSD because no spinning rust can meet that requirement due to seek time.
Apple's lost that advantage last year when Intel finally got fed up and spent at least $100M doing the R&D for all the ultrabook manufacturers. Now all we need is Intel to spend another $100M doing all the R&D for everyone eles to clone the iMac.
You do realize most games flop, right? For every Halo/Gears of War/Uncharted there's probably dozens others that fail to recoup their initial costs. Having the end user pay for the flop? That'll go over real well - someone has to make up the difference between the cost and the revenue.
It's a great way to ensure only popular crap gets published - endless Halo/Gears of War/Unchated/God of War/Tetris games that sell millions and make tons of profit. The ones that break even will probably sell to those who paid up and disappear. The further a game strays from the tried and true moneymakers, the less likely it's going to get any money.
Truth is - plenty of kickstarter projects fail. Plenty of game kickstarter projects fail to meet funding. Now granted most are probably crap games to begin with, but there's guaranteed to be some that are real gems, just enough people didn't "get it" to warrant tossing a few bucks at it.
Gaming would become an even more dismal place than it would be today if the only reason games proceed to be developed is due to established audiences willing to buy it.
Hell, it's not even a new thing. Even way back when there are plenty of lawsuits that targeted Apple - especially in the iPod (but pre-iPhone) era. Creative, Sony, they all launched lawsuits. Nevermind the plenty of class actions and individual actions. It was enough that really, if there was a week where Apple wasn't getting sued over something or other, the lawyers probably got bored.
Hell, these days, the number of lawsuits where Apple's a participant is downright few (though well-publicized).
Would also make sense from a multiplayer gaming perspective - think of the VAC and such systems. I'm sure someone creative enough running some Linux can figure out a way to fake out VAC by pretending to be a normal unmodified Linux system even though it's highly customized for cheating.
Or a way to get an edge by hijacking the OpenGL commands used to draw and shoving the commands to another video card rendering in "wireframe" mode or other stuff.
A lot harder to do on Windows, and you can be sure the custom Linux distros with those features enabled would become popular...
Or have UIs that mysteriously change every release or so. Lose the status bar one day. Then tabs act differently the next. Then the "awesomebar" becomes a little less awesome ("switch to tab" - annoying, and I need an extension to remove it?!). Autocomplete's screwy as well (it only does up to the domain now, before it used to do deep links - for some sites, the domain is irrelevant - I need the deep link and now I have to wait for the awesomebar to suggest it (autocomplete is, instant).
And none of them seem to have options in about:config to disable them...
I don't want to play "lets see what's different" everytime I start Firefox. Or discover that muscle memory doesn't work anymore (hint: Microsoft kept all the usual Alt-F-blah shortcuts on the ribbon for a reason - people either use Ctrl-S or Alt-F-S to save!).
Just wait for sales though - iTunes cards are regularly 20% off (yes, it comes out of that 30% cut Apple takes) and you can bet while it's going on the store is still making a profit out of it (splitting the 10% leftover).
So you can buy 2 $50 cards, and 1 $20 card and have nothing left over except christmas presents for people.
You can do the same for Xbox Live cards as well (both points and gold subscription cards).
It's also one of my annoyances with Sony (because they are marked $50 or $20 on them, they NEVER go on sale), and Google Play (no gift cards, no chance for them to go on sale). The fact that iTunes and Xbox Live Gold and points cards go on sale so regularly means I end up getting a few and using them as gifts and such as well (no one needs to know I spent less than face value).
Yeah yeah yeah, gift cards and locked-in money, yadda yadda yadda. Of course, only if you're paying full price - and nothing like creating a sale when you need it.
And the next post on /. would be about someone who set their account to that because they were told "it was the safest" and now they're locked out because they can't cough up the $200 now.
Even if you made it $1, it'll be about how Apple is making billions off customers inability to remember a password.
Of course then the next day we'd have Google doing the same thing and cheer them on for being more secure.
Which brings up a question - people actually paid for me.com email addresses? Especially considering there are plenty of free services for email... Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail, some of which offer IMAP access as well.