Approach #4: ignore UEFI Secure Boot. It's a blunt solution to an obscure problem. More importantly, it's such a huge pain in the ass, not just for Linux but for ALL system integrators, that anyone actually preventing the user from disabling Secure Boot will end up limiting their own marketability.
I thought the requirement to run Windows 8 was to have a BIOS option to disable secure boot, or rather, enable legacy (BIOS) booting. So if the user wishes to run another OS, they could - disable secure boot, and the PC boots like it always has - via the old BIOS method. Of course, if you want to boot back into Windows requires flipping the option back (the files are signed and verified before loading, so it's not like running another OS will break the security - the UEFI verifies the loader, the loader verifies the kernel, the kernel verifies the drivers and Windows binaries, etc.).
I know RedHat and Canonical were worried that the option would be well, optional, but I thought it was now required. And it will be for a little while because Windows 7 isn't ready for secure boot - it can be EFI-booted in 64-bit mode but that's experimental.
Then there is well, Apple. Whose EFI-based firmware probably doesn't have secure boot in it and thus unable to boot Windows 8... (and probably the only provider that has an easily-accessible EFI boot - is there any other reason why there's an EFI bootloader for Linux for the past few years?)
Food in the US is mostly domestic because it's pretty damn hard to bring a lot of it in. Fish is usually American-caught on American waters (Salmon off the west coast in particular), though sometimes Canadian. Now, if you're not near the coast, said fish would have to be flown in to bring it to the middle of nowhere, USA, but short of something exotic, it's mostly domestic.
Fruits as well. It's actually pretty damn hard to bring fruit in from Canada - because in Canada you can import a lot more exotic fruit that are forbidden (and not grown) in the US.
The US has some very prime farmland - especially with climates randing from near tropical to temperate, allowing it to grow a huge variety of produce domestically. That's the reason they don't like importing stuff because diseases can really wipe out huge swaths of crop.
Google aren't subsidizing anything at these prices. According to Forbes, "The $199 Nexus 7 8 GB variant costs exactly $151.75 to build while the $249 Nexus 7 16 GB variant costs $159.25. This implies gross margins of nearly 25% to 35% for the device, which are closer to what Apple makes on each iPad." Apple's gross margin on the "new iPad" is around 20%.
And Google is giving every Nexus tablet $25 to spend in the play store (about $18 that has to be paid out), plus books and movies that has to be paid a licensing fee for.
Plus many retailers have free shipping (Google refunded shipping for me) which means that $39 profit is basically breaking even. The 16GB model has more leeway, which is probably why the retailers have it over the 8GB which is probably making a loss when all is said and done (manufacturing, shipping, warehousing, distribution, special offers, etc).
And I looked at the other 7" tablets. About the only one with specs close to the Nexus? The Blackberry Playbook. I saw an Acer 7" with worse specs (worse screen, worse processor, half the storage) for $40 more. I didn't even want to see what the Galaxy Tab was selling for, but at $200, they aren't making much even with cheaper lower end hardware.
How about we just treat drones like Military Hardware, because that's exactly what they are.
This one is quite hard to determine. What differentiates it as military hardware versus some rich guy with a remote controlled helicopter/quadrocopter/plane?
That's what a drone is, at its very core. And the RC world has its own share of wireless video links, video cameras (in HD!), telemetry, etc.
I think there were several videos on the 'net where they strapped cameras to RC planes and helicopters and used them to film crowds, new construction (used to spy on say, new Apple Store construction above the fence), etc.
At which point do we consider these military drones, versus just civilian toys (that police can use)?
So now that we're past plastic plates, here we really go to Star Trek's Replicator. All that remains now is the ever growing list of "objects supported".
I'm just amazed that even as late as TNG/DS9/Voyager/Enterprise let's say less than five scripts out of _____ even mentioned property rights, let alone the kind of thing we're wrangling with now.
So for a 3D printable object, is the object covered by a patent because it's an object, or copyright because of the software that produces that object is essentially identical?
The deal with the Star Trek universe is that humanity effectively gave up its need for greed and decided furthering humanity and knowledge was a far better goal.
It's why you also don't see them fighting over money and other things.
Unfortunately, it's pretty unrealistic, idealized view of the positive aspects of humanity. Nice to strive for, but ultimately impossible - greed is part and parcel of the human condition.
As for a 3D printable object, the file itself will be under copyright, while the object being printed out would be under patent laws (because patents cover physical manifestations - software patents have to do end runs because software doesn't have a physical manifestation other than a computer). Of course, patent trolls would love the new future as everyone will be a possible patent infringer.
And yes, DMCA requests have occurred to sites hosting 3D shape files.
I know this might go over the edge of the creepy factor for some people but maybe if there was a way to track frequency of use of an app and show the percentage of time the app was uninstalled within a week or something. Those stats would be very useful in gauging an app's quality in addition to the star and download numbers we have now.
That happens right now actually. Well, not the uninstall part, but the usage part. First, if the app has ads in it, it's easy because of the analytics. And when they use AdMob (owned by Google) you can bet Google's got some great analytics on stuff like that.
Further that, there are other common analytic companies tracking app use - Flurry is a particularly common third party. It seems most of the bigger app developers use them.
I've been speaking to coworkers about app stores in general, most of them say if you paid anything for an app, you've paid too much...
Your coworkers' cynicism seems a little naive to me. True not every app is worth buying (those are the ones you, um, don't buy) but there are a few I've purchased and I'm very happy about. I've been playing Aralon on my Xoom lately and I love it.
There's other ways to read it.
1) For every paid app, there's a free version that probably does the same task. Though, granted it may be full of ads and steal your information...
2) For every paid app, you can find it for free if you just Google it. After all, if you type the app name into Google, add "Android", and one of the suggested searches is "apk" or "download". So why pay when you can get it for free? Do it on your device and it's pretty easy - just tap install.
Yes, it even applies to iOS - just a little jailbreaking required and installing some "helpful" sources.
Because it is made in USA...that added up the cost...
Partially.
It was made in the USA, from a manufacturing design for China. If you take a design to manufacture something in China and move it ot the USA, it's going to cost way to omuch. Instead, you have to iterate and optimize the design for domestic manufacture - understanding what the robots can do and ensuring your assembly and build process will work within those limitations so you employ as few human hands as possible (it's a dull, boring job that fall into the same range of jobs as janitor, housemaid, unskilled laborer, farm picker, etc).
Why don't we just start advocating small claims cases en masse? This shifts the tables in favor of the consumer immensely. There are no lawyers to get rich and they are extremely expensive to fight (rather than just settle). You can't get much more punative than that, and the claimant likely gets something out of the deal.
Class actions deal with cases that fall in the grey area where the harm done is too low to justify the expense of going to small claims.
For example, let's say your wireless provider decided to raise your rates you pay on your contract by $2 a month. And let's say your contract states "small increases are allowed by this contract". Your option would be to pay up the extra $24/year for the remainder of your contract, pay the $200 to cancel the contract, or fight it out in court to get the contract cancelled.
Now, fighting it out costs something like a $40 filing fee, plus having to take a day off work and whatever else. All to save maybe $72 over a 3 year contract. Or $32 after paying the non-refundable filing fee.
You'll find most consumers shrug it off. The ones that fight it out? Well, the company would just not show up, and you win and they'll write you a cheque for that amount. So your win probably costed you more time and money and the company didn't do a single thing different. They ignored the court, don't bother showing up, and probably just prepared the cancellation paperwork for you just like everyone else who cancelled normally.
Let's say Valve decides to impose a $10 annual maintenance fee every year you don't buy something from the store, or you lose your account. They'll say that $10 fee will give you a $10 discount off a game you purchase that year, so if you buy something, you get it back. Is that fair? Would you go through the effort of fighting it out individually for the principle of it, knowing Valve will probably hand you the money the moment you win, probably on pre-prepared cheques? Not many people would go through the effort to save $10.
And yet, $10 times the number of steam accounts? Probably a few million dollars a year.
Companies have long figured it out - if you need $10M, it's easier, cheaper, and less chance of getting caught to steal $10 from 1 million customers than steam $10M from 1 entity. And yes, that case I mentioned earlier did happen in a very unconsumer-friendly contract that the company wanted $3/month extra or $200 to break the contract.
And some charities unfortunately have done the same too - they've bumped the "default contribution" up a couple of bucks hoping people don't notice (it was in small print) and give, resulting in millions more for the charity.
...that makes it worth $300 anyway? No screen, only 16Gb storage... it doesn't seem like an overly complicated device.
It was probably a bunch of people pulling it in various ways treating it as a pet project without realizing the practicalities of it.
First - it only pulls from the internet. You queue up stuff on your Android device to it, but the content must exist "in the cloud". E.g., YouTube, Google Music, etc. You could not stream video from your personal device to it, or from your home content server. It has to be in the cloud.
Heck, an Android device with an *AppleTV* is more useful - there are various Android apps that can stream local content to it, for 1/3rd the price.
The other thing was, they decided to manufacture in the US. The problem was they did not optimize for domestic manufacturing. Looking at the tear-apart, and there are plenty of things you would NOT do in the US. If I had to guess, they were going ot manufacture in China, then someone decided it would be cool to manufacture in the US as-is, without re-doing the design-for-manufacture stage to optimize it. The build was complex already, and while probably acceptable for Chinese manufacture, it's not something you'd want to build in the US - too complex, requiring too much manual labor to put together (== expensive).
Finally, no one really understood what it was *for*. I paid $300, I got what? A ball that plays music, OK, but not any kind of music... Phone, I understand. tablet, I undrestand. Media streamer/player, I understand. This... not so much.
I suppose it's like a ChromeBox or something - something that costs way too much for what it does and lacks what a lot of competing devices also do.
That is if they even want the product back at all for warranty.
It just means the company knows how much it costs to process a warranty claim.
I had the same from Logitech - they sent me a brand new mouse after my existing one quit working - even in the new packaging.
I figure it's because when they bother doing an RMA and shipping back and forth, plus paying guys to process RMAs, it would cost them more in the end than just shipping out the replacement alone.
After all, a mouse is a relatively low-value item and doing a warranty replacement would probably just cost more money in the end than whatever fraud could occur (want another mouse? Call in yours as defective and get a free new one).
It looks like Microsoft is taking a page from Apple and emphasizing design now - along with the warts that go with it. I've never used the wedge mouse but instinct tells me that using one will invoke carpal tunnel induced rage like Apple's Bondi iMac puck mouse and clit-scroll Mighty Mouse.
Generally speaking, Apple mice are among the worst, and always have been since the original Mac. Mice, though. Their trackballs tended to be quite nice at least on the powerbooks way back when). Their touchpads have gotten way better in the last few years (acreage... I don't understand where PC manufacturers get their awful smaller-than-the-original-ipod-screen touchpads from that you can barely fit your finger on).
Maybe cheekyjohnson didn't miss the point, but is providing an alternative effective argument against tracking. It's not just an affront to liberty, it's an unjustified financial burden. Sometimes money talks louder than liberties.
Yeah, I'm sure it'll fly at City Hall - the automated scanners are probably much cheaper to run than doing it by police walking the beat and calling in every plate they see.
The only possible way to justify it is if they constantly check parking meters and issue tickets when they expire - the increase in revenue that way may pay for the increased overhead in personnel.
Or were you expecting that if the police didn't buy the automated scanners, they'd stop doing it?
(Of course, tracking someone with a tracking device is a lot different than scanning license plates - first, scanning plates doesn't identify the person, just who owns the car, and in many places with car rental services, who owns it and who drove it can be completely different (like using an IP address to identify who downloaded infringing content). The other issue is well, they don't snapshot location at all - they sample. It's possible for you to drive around your daily business and they'd never run your plate because they were never around where you parked. In Bittorrent terms, a snapshot would be using the tracker to get a list of IPs distributing infringing content. A sampling would be to join the torrent and see who connects to you to give you or ask for content.)
It will actually be interesting to hear if any call centers that claimed Serious Redundancy And Stuff were a tad... optimistic... and will find customers going elsewhere in the near future.
It's not like backup power is total rocket surgery; but things that cost money all the time and only prove useful occasionally have a nasty habit of being neglected...
India's always had power issues. If you look at some Indian electronics magazines, what's the #1 most advertised product in them? Yes, power equipment - power conditioners, UPSes, battery banks, generators, etc.
The only guaranteed thing about India's electricity was that it was unreliable.
I think all the equipment is tested quite regularly purely because of it. They're not "occasionally useful", they're essential equipment unless one likes to live intermittently.
Unless homebrew means "writing software by breaking through console security", there's plenty of homebrew out there.
The fact that Android is mentioned means the original question is vague to begin with!
First off, Android has basically no restrictions - you can install any app any which way you want. There's no "security" to break through so homebrew is basically legitimized - anyone can download the Android SDK and whip out an app. For iOS, it's mostly true as well - homebrew apps games well, they just get the SDK, pay $99 and publish it.
If you want apps that Apple doesn't approve, there's jailbreaking (all Apple devices except AppleTV have a method to do so - all iPhones through (and including) the 4s, iPod Touches and iPads), of which there's a homebrew community as well.
And the Xbox has a homebrew games community they call Xbox Live Indie Arcade as well.
Then there's the venerable PC which even with Mountain Lion can still run any valid executable code.
Of course, if the question is about people breaking security for fun, there's iOS jailbreaking and console security busting.
Between the PC, Xbox Live Indie Arcade, Android, and iOS, there's an outlet for one's programming talents that has legit paths that require no work to customize, really. And since the signing keys for the PS3 are public as well, the PS3 is also an open target that no firmware update can remove (though you can get your console banned from PSN if they discover "strange packages" installed on it).
Perhaps the better question is - what is the real question?
Gatekeeper is getting the most press probably, and while I find the trend that it might be indicative of to be a frightening one, I do think that it, taken alone, is a great feature that helps to keep novice users much more secure while keeping hassle to a minimum, and since it can be easily circumvented without needing to be a pro user, I don't see it as problematic
Well, with good reason, because people fear that the "Anywhere" optoin can be removed at any time.
Which is very unlikely for many reasons.
First, gatekeeper only applies to applications downloaded off the Internet which have been tagged as downloaded (extended attribute). "Local" applications don't have that (and the attribute can be removed). Interestingly, applications you compile don't have that attribute. This can be the makings for an OS that enforces open-source by ensuring applications are distributed open-source...
Second, various policies make the Mac App Store unsuitable. E.g., a maximum price of $1000 for an app may be far too low for more specialized apps (E.g., AutoCAD 2012. The LE version is on the MAS, but the full package is not because it costs a lot more than the limit). Plus, apps have to be self-contained (no utilities, exnteions, or other stuff - so menubar things, drivers and the like have to be distributed elsewhere. Also, no demo apps.
Finally - well, there's Adobe and Microsoft, who have shown very little interest in the MAS and are unlikely to do so for various reasons.
The only reason to use MAS is access to iCloud, which also enforces sandboxing. Why regular apps can't is probably easy to see from a security perspective - if an app gets infected through some mechanism, that app can infect its own iCloud documents (reminicient of Word infections). If iCloud was available to all apps, it can result in basically a Mac that can never be cleaned of malware since a vulnerable app (without sandboxing) would read the infected iCloud document, get infected and infect the rest of the Mac (assuming the developer doesn't update the app and the user didn't download an updated version - with boxed software, this is common). With MAS sandboxing, the infection stays with the app alone. I suppose you can ask why not sandboxed apps - well, sandboxed apps can easily request every permission because the developer is lazy, and Apple can verify MAS apps for excessive permission usage.
As for the enforcing open-source, well, like I said, Gatekeeper doesn't apply to non-internet sourced apps. So if you compile it yourself, gatekeeper should be out of your way. If you use open-source, skip the binary and build from source....
I wonder how much Apple likes being on the receiving end?
IP lawsuits are great!... until you get slapped by one.
People suing Apple isn't exactly a *NEW* thing. It's actually been quite steady or so (one every week or so) the past decade or more.
Heck, Creative sued Apple about a decade ago over the use of categories to help find music (Artist/Album/Genre/etc) on the iPod way back when. (I believe Apple settled, in exchange for a pile of stuff Creative was to make to support the iPod or so). Ditto Sony and others.
It's actually unusual to have Apple NOT being sued by someone or other on a weekly basis.
Look at the money being squandered on patent battles in courts in the IT and also manufacturing industries.
Despite your fear mongering, when you look outside the tech/consumer electronics industries - you don't see this happening, or at worse it happens very rarely. Toyota isn't suing Ford over having a six cylinder engine, GM isn't suing Mercedes Benz over having tail lights. Etc... The tech and consumer electronics industries operate under some unique pressures - and it's dangerous to generalize from them to other industries.
It's happening, we just don't hear about it.
Toyota did sue Ford a few years ago, over hybrid vehicle patents (I believe they ended up cross-licensing and settling).
And nevermind way back in the 1900's or so when the ICE was first new and novel that there were patent lawsuits flying everywhere. Heck, it took until the 80s or so for the patent on an intermittent windshield wiper to expire, of which there was a huge patent fight over by its inventor and the big three. (And literally, the big three were trying to run the inventor out of money. It was the late 70s or so that the courts finally ruled and awarded damages).
It's just that cars are pretty much mature technology these days that lawsuits don't happen because it's all been invented already. About the only patenting going on comes from radical changes to the power train and the like (see Toyota hybrid patents, Ford hybrid patents).
There were plenty of patents for other technology too, all resolved today because of time. I'm sure 100 years from now we'd be saying the same about mobile telecommunications, and complaining about how flying car manufacturers are suing each other to death or something.
If Apple trades another phone for a stolen one that someone brings in, isn't it now in possession of stolen property and couldn't the owner demand it back?
Thief steals iPhone. Police warn Apple Store there's a thief who may bring a stolen iPhone in. Thief walks out with new iPhone since old one is locked. Police reclaim stolen iPhone from Apple and give it back to owner.
Apple is out one iPhone (the one the thief got) and owner got their iPhone back. Apple loses in this situation.
Of course, there's also big issues with bricking phones - if you allow that, then someone is gonna get their phone bricked as a prank by their friends. Especially if the only way to recover is to take it in for service, and then you'll get a bunch of complaints about this happening.
Oh, and the carriers don't benefit from stolen phones unless the thief activates it - you can phone your carrier, tell them your phone is stolen and they'll deactivate the SIM (which requires a new SIM to reactivate), so your thief can only run up the bill during the time he steals the phone and when you notice and call to cancel.
No, the drive generally does not remap bad sectors on writes. Even today writes are done blindly; the drive seeks to the track and then pumps out the bits when the sector comes under the head. The drive has no idea whether or not the media was good or the bits were written properly. It used to be many years ago that the drive had to read a "sector header" (which was located just before the data area) to find the sector, and during a write an error on this small read (only a few bytes) could trigger a remap. I don't know if sector headers are still used today, but if not a write won't trigger the remap.
You have to do both. A read alone will not cause a remap, however enough reads to a bad sector will convince a drive that the sector is bad, and the remap happens the next write afterwards. This lets software try to see if it can recover partial data without actually remapping the sector and losing it.
Though for some drives, the first N hours or N loads of the head brand new will cause writes to be followed by a silent read to verify the surface to map in any new sectors that may have gone bad since the drive was built (best to do it when new and writes are plentiful as the user installs the OS or copies their data onto it). If an error is discovered, the drive can rewrite the data since it's fresh and the user doesn't lose data.
Note that "signed" does not imply "sandboxed". The default Gatekeeper setting means that, unless you do Special Stuff, applications downloaded from the Intertubes (by programs that set the "quarantined" extended attribute, at least; dunno if any applications that set it do so only if they were downloaded from an "external" site, for some definition of "external") can't be launched with a double-click (or, presumably, automatically through some code paths) unless they're from the Mac App Store or signed by a "registered developer", even if they're not sandboxed. There are ways (involving a context menu, i.e. Control+click, I think) to override that without changing the default setting.
An interesting point - Gatekeeper does NOT restrict applications NOT downloaded from the internet (determined by an external attribute on the file).
This could be when the lockdown happens, a golden opportunity for Open Source - by providing two ways to put programs on the new OS X if (a very unlikely if) Apple decides the only way to get stuff from the 'net is via Mac App Store. You see, all one needs to do is install the developer tools, then compile the program oneself.
Mac OS X - binaries only via Mac App Store, source code otherwise (in the unlikely case Apple makes it MAS only. Notably - there are policy issues (Free to $1000 is too limiting for some apps that cost multiple thousands of dollars, Adobe, Microsoft, some stuff you can't do as a MAS app, etc).). Won't be long until someon resurrects Fink and other projects - the package manager would have to be passed around somehow, but then the whole world of open-source is at one's fingertips.
Not only the Surface, but the Xbox can be a full blown PC with an interface just like Win8. What about the Microsoft Store? Sounds like the Apple store doesn't it? Just wait till Microsoft comes out with their own phone. This is another reason OEM's and deveopers are giving Linux another serious look. There is no viable alternative for them.
What about Google? I mean Google has created a bunch of hardware they call as "reference" which can disrupt the market. You think any of the 7" tablet makers are happy with Google releasing the Nexus 7? Considering the price point, the 7" tablets until now pretty much sucked - with crappy low-res screens (600x1024, if you're lucky. Usually 480x800 or so), huge bulkiness, crappy processors, etc. In fact, the Nook Color/Tablet and Kindle Fire were probably one of the best 7" tablets around - decent formfactors, decent processors.
For Linux - I'd be wary. There are enough differences between distributions that you'll probably find each Linux application comes with its own distribution - all the libraries and binaries it needs and uses bundled up as part of the application in order to present a "it works on all Linux" image to users. Of course, it also means having to deal with multiple painful versions of libraries and GUI toolkits and maybe even so far as having said toolkits ignore user settings because the developer pointed to their own configuration file.
Then again, maybe what happens is they just end up being Android apps with an Android runtime - starting up the app starts up the user mode portion of Android just for that app.
The user is paying for their iCloud service (if use more than the free quota, if they need more moeny remove the low the free quota), why the developer must be forced to a store for that?. Do Google force developers using Google Drive APIs to use Google Play or Chrome Store? If I pay for Google Apps for domains, do every XMPP messaging client must distribute their app using the Google methods if they will connect to Google Talk server. There is no excuse for Apple blocking iCloud
Easy, to prevent abuse and malware spreads.
First off, developers suck. Yes, that includes you and me. For every well-written to-the-API app, there's dozens of others that take shortcuts and cheat at things, usually in the name of "making release" or "fixing a bug".
The sandboxing requirement was well known going into the App Store at least over a year ago. All developers knew about the deadline, and it was extended, twice as they weren't ready. Why? Because they didn't have to do it! But now that Apple forced them, they suddenly realize that they need to do it, and fast. It's unfortunately also Business 101 - even if you announce a change years in advance, remind them to the point of nagging, some company with something that's worked fine for all those years suddenly realizes you mean business and has to scramble to meet new requirements. Despite having years to get ready. Very few, if any, will actually try to get ahead of the curve and meet the new requirement ahead of time.
As for limiting iCloud to App Store Apps - it's probably with sandboxing. Imagine you had a regular app that had a bug and used iCloud. A smart malware writer will exploit your app to infect a user's document stored on iCloud so even if the user wipes their mac, the instant they use the app, they're infected again because of an exploit in your app.
Try diagnosing THAT as technical support. Sandboxed apps using iLcoud - well the app can get infected, but that infection is confined through the sandbox to that app only.
Or imagine it's a different file - let's say a specially crafted file using some exploit in libjpeg or other imaging library. If a sandboxed app loaded it, it gets infected, but that infection is confined to that app only. If it was available to all apps, all it would take is a vulnerable one to infect *all* your Macs simultaneously through iCloud.
The other alternative is to have Apple scan and delete infected files off their servers. But I'm sure that will go over really well with people.
One final reason is well, everywhere you have the app, you have access to your files via iCloud, since all app stores Apple has are tied to iCloud now. Let's say you buy some nifty editor off the Mac App Store. You go to a new Mac, login and redownload the editor and boom, the files are there. If it was the other way, you'd have to find the editor's website, somehow manage to get the registered copy (hoping it's not machine-locked!) and then get at your files. Less convenient, while the other way puts more work on the developer, the user gets a much better experience.
As for developers screwing their customers - two sides to the coin. Apple is withholding from developers the IDs of who purchased their apps, probably for the better (given all the hacks and stealing of customer databases, you'll probably fine many developers would have pretty shoddy websites vulnerable to SQL attacks, buffer overflows, plain text customer lists out in the open, etc. Hell, there's probably someone out there who stores their entire customer database as a series of emails on a publicly-accessible IMAP server. (You will easily find that while they can code up wicked stuff for an app, but then fail to take basic security precautions for their website...).
I really don't see Zuckerberg, the Banks, the SEC, or anybody else giving FB shareholders any money.
If I was an FB stockholder, I wouldn't ask for money, I'd ask for access to some of the information I own as a stockholder... i.e., access to all that user data FB collects!
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I thought the requirement to run Windows 8 was to have a BIOS option to disable secure boot, or rather, enable legacy (BIOS) booting. So if the user wishes to run another OS, they could - disable secure boot, and the PC boots like it always has - via the old BIOS method. Of course, if you want to boot back into Windows requires flipping the option back (the files are signed and verified before loading, so it's not like running another OS will break the security - the UEFI verifies the loader, the loader verifies the kernel, the kernel verifies the drivers and Windows binaries, etc.).
I know RedHat and Canonical were worried that the option would be well, optional, but I thought it was now required. And it will be for a little while because Windows 7 isn't ready for secure boot - it can be EFI-booted in 64-bit mode but that's experimental.
Then there is well, Apple. Whose EFI-based firmware probably doesn't have secure boot in it and thus unable to boot Windows 8... (and probably the only provider that has an easily-accessible EFI boot - is there any other reason why there's an EFI bootloader for Linux for the past few years?)
And Google is giving every Nexus tablet $25 to spend in the play store (about $18 that has to be paid out), plus books and movies that has to be paid a licensing fee for.
Plus many retailers have free shipping (Google refunded shipping for me) which means that $39 profit is basically breaking even. The 16GB model has more leeway, which is probably why the retailers have it over the 8GB which is probably making a loss when all is said and done (manufacturing, shipping, warehousing, distribution, special offers, etc).
And I looked at the other 7" tablets. About the only one with specs close to the Nexus? The Blackberry Playbook. I saw an Acer 7" with worse specs (worse screen, worse processor, half the storage) for $40 more. I didn't even want to see what the Galaxy Tab was selling for, but at $200, they aren't making much even with cheaper lower end hardware.
This one is quite hard to determine. What differentiates it as military hardware versus some rich guy with a remote controlled helicopter/quadrocopter/plane?
That's what a drone is, at its very core. And the RC world has its own share of wireless video links, video cameras (in HD!), telemetry, etc.
I think there were several videos on the 'net where they strapped cameras to RC planes and helicopters and used them to film crowds, new construction (used to spy on say, new Apple Store construction above the fence), etc.
At which point do we consider these military drones, versus just civilian toys (that police can use)?
The deal with the Star Trek universe is that humanity effectively gave up its need for greed and decided furthering humanity and knowledge was a far better goal.
It's why you also don't see them fighting over money and other things.
Unfortunately, it's pretty unrealistic, idealized view of the positive aspects of humanity. Nice to strive for, but ultimately impossible - greed is part and parcel of the human condition.
As for a 3D printable object, the file itself will be under copyright, while the object being printed out would be under patent laws (because patents cover physical manifestations - software patents have to do end runs because software doesn't have a physical manifestation other than a computer). Of course, patent trolls would love the new future as everyone will be a possible patent infringer.
And yes, DMCA requests have occurred to sites hosting 3D shape files.
That happens right now actually. Well, not the uninstall part, but the usage part. First, if the app has ads in it, it's easy because of the analytics. And when they use AdMob (owned by Google) you can bet Google's got some great analytics on stuff like that.
Further that, there are other common analytic companies tracking app use - Flurry is a particularly common third party. It seems most of the bigger app developers use them.
Partially.
It was made in the USA, from a manufacturing design for China. If you take a design to manufacture something in China and move it ot the USA, it's going to cost way to omuch. Instead, you have to iterate and optimize the design for domestic manufacture - understanding what the robots can do and ensuring your assembly and build process will work within those limitations so you employ as few human hands as possible (it's a dull, boring job that fall into the same range of jobs as janitor, housemaid, unskilled laborer, farm picker, etc).
Class actions deal with cases that fall in the grey area where the harm done is too low to justify the expense of going to small claims.
For example, let's say your wireless provider decided to raise your rates you pay on your contract by $2 a month. And let's say your contract states "small increases are allowed by this contract". Your option would be to pay up the extra $24/year for the remainder of your contract, pay the $200 to cancel the contract, or fight it out in court to get the contract cancelled.
Now, fighting it out costs something like a $40 filing fee, plus having to take a day off work and whatever else. All to save maybe $72 over a 3 year contract. Or $32 after paying the non-refundable filing fee.
You'll find most consumers shrug it off. The ones that fight it out? Well, the company would just not show up, and you win and they'll write you a cheque for that amount. So your win probably costed you more time and money and the company didn't do a single thing different. They ignored the court, don't bother showing up, and probably just prepared the cancellation paperwork for you just like everyone else who cancelled normally.
Let's say Valve decides to impose a $10 annual maintenance fee every year you don't buy something from the store, or you lose your account. They'll say that $10 fee will give you a $10 discount off a game you purchase that year, so if you buy something, you get it back. Is that fair? Would you go through the effort of fighting it out individually for the principle of it, knowing Valve will probably hand you the money the moment you win, probably on pre-prepared cheques? Not many people would go through the effort to save $10.
And yet, $10 times the number of steam accounts? Probably a few million dollars a year.
Companies have long figured it out - if you need $10M, it's easier, cheaper, and less chance of getting caught to steal $10 from 1 million customers than steam $10M from 1 entity. And yes, that case I mentioned earlier did happen in a very unconsumer-friendly contract that the company wanted $3/month extra or $200 to break the contract.
And some charities unfortunately have done the same too - they've bumped the "default contribution" up a couple of bucks hoping people don't notice (it was in small print) and give, resulting in millions more for the charity.
But hey, if that's fair for you, good on you.
It was probably a bunch of people pulling it in various ways treating it as a pet project without realizing the practicalities of it.
First - it only pulls from the internet. You queue up stuff on your Android device to it, but the content must exist "in the cloud". E.g., YouTube, Google Music, etc. You could not stream video from your personal device to it, or from your home content server. It has to be in the cloud.
Heck, an Android device with an *AppleTV* is more useful - there are various Android apps that can stream local content to it, for 1/3rd the price.
The other thing was, they decided to manufacture in the US. The problem was they did not optimize for domestic manufacturing. Looking at the tear-apart, and there are plenty of things you would NOT do in the US. If I had to guess, they were going ot manufacture in China, then someone decided it would be cool to manufacture in the US as-is, without re-doing the design-for-manufacture stage to optimize it. The build was complex already, and while probably acceptable for Chinese manufacture, it's not something you'd want to build in the US - too complex, requiring too much manual labor to put together (== expensive).
Finally, no one really understood what it was *for*. I paid $300, I got what? A ball that plays music, OK, but not any kind of music... Phone, I understand. tablet, I undrestand. Media streamer/player, I understand. This... not so much.
I suppose it's like a ChromeBox or something - something that costs way too much for what it does and lacks what a lot of competing devices also do.
It just means the company knows how much it costs to process a warranty claim.
I had the same from Logitech - they sent me a brand new mouse after my existing one quit working - even in the new packaging.
I figure it's because when they bother doing an RMA and shipping back and forth, plus paying guys to process RMAs, it would cost them more in the end than just shipping out the replacement alone.
After all, a mouse is a relatively low-value item and doing a warranty replacement would probably just cost more money in the end than whatever fraud could occur (want another mouse? Call in yours as defective and get a free new one).
Generally speaking, Apple mice are among the worst, and always have been since the original Mac. Mice, though. Their trackballs tended to be quite nice at least on the powerbooks way back when). Their touchpads have gotten way better in the last few years (acreage... I don't understand where PC manufacturers get their awful smaller-than-the-original-ipod-screen touchpads from that you can barely fit your finger on).
But Apple mice? Generally crap.
If you're in Canada, this was featured a year or so ago on Daily Planet on the Discovery Channel:
Daily Planet - Embedded with Mark Miller - Land Walker. Though it just burns me that they seem to not say "mech" at all.
I think this one was slightly cheaper...
Yeah, I'm sure it'll fly at City Hall - the automated scanners are probably much cheaper to run than doing it by police walking the beat and calling in every plate they see.
The only possible way to justify it is if they constantly check parking meters and issue tickets when they expire - the increase in revenue that way may pay for the increased overhead in personnel.
Or were you expecting that if the police didn't buy the automated scanners, they'd stop doing it?
(Of course, tracking someone with a tracking device is a lot different than scanning license plates - first, scanning plates doesn't identify the person, just who owns the car, and in many places with car rental services, who owns it and who drove it can be completely different (like using an IP address to identify who downloaded infringing content). The other issue is well, they don't snapshot location at all - they sample. It's possible for you to drive around your daily business and they'd never run your plate because they were never around where you parked. In Bittorrent terms, a snapshot would be using the tracker to get a list of IPs distributing infringing content. A sampling would be to join the torrent and see who connects to you to give you or ask for content.)
India's always had power issues. If you look at some Indian electronics magazines, what's the #1 most advertised product in them? Yes, power equipment - power conditioners, UPSes, battery banks, generators, etc.
The only guaranteed thing about India's electricity was that it was unreliable.
I think all the equipment is tested quite regularly purely because of it. They're not "occasionally useful", they're essential equipment unless one likes to live intermittently.
Unless homebrew means "writing software by breaking through console security", there's plenty of homebrew out there.
The fact that Android is mentioned means the original question is vague to begin with!
First off, Android has basically no restrictions - you can install any app any which way you want. There's no "security" to break through so homebrew is basically legitimized - anyone can download the Android SDK and whip out an app. For iOS, it's mostly true as well - homebrew apps games well, they just get the SDK, pay $99 and publish it.
If you want apps that Apple doesn't approve, there's jailbreaking (all Apple devices except AppleTV have a method to do so - all iPhones through (and including) the 4s, iPod Touches and iPads), of which there's a homebrew community as well.
And the Xbox has a homebrew games community they call Xbox Live Indie Arcade as well.
Then there's the venerable PC which even with Mountain Lion can still run any valid executable code.
Of course, if the question is about people breaking security for fun, there's iOS jailbreaking and console security busting.
Between the PC, Xbox Live Indie Arcade, Android, and iOS, there's an outlet for one's programming talents that has legit paths that require no work to customize, really. And since the signing keys for the PS3 are public as well, the PS3 is also an open target that no firmware update can remove (though you can get your console banned from PSN if they discover "strange packages" installed on it).
Perhaps the better question is - what is the real question?
Well, with good reason, because people fear that the "Anywhere" optoin can be removed at any time.
Which is very unlikely for many reasons.
First, gatekeeper only applies to applications downloaded off the Internet which have been tagged as downloaded (extended attribute). "Local" applications don't have that (and the attribute can be removed). Interestingly, applications you compile don't have that attribute. This can be the makings for an OS that enforces open-source by ensuring applications are distributed open-source...
Second, various policies make the Mac App Store unsuitable. E.g., a maximum price of $1000 for an app may be far too low for more specialized apps (E.g., AutoCAD 2012. The LE version is on the MAS, but the full package is not because it costs a lot more than the limit). Plus, apps have to be self-contained (no utilities, exnteions, or other stuff - so menubar things, drivers and the like have to be distributed elsewhere. Also, no demo apps.
Finally - well, there's Adobe and Microsoft, who have shown very little interest in the MAS and are unlikely to do so for various reasons.
The only reason to use MAS is access to iCloud, which also enforces sandboxing. Why regular apps can't is probably easy to see from a security perspective - if an app gets infected through some mechanism, that app can infect its own iCloud documents (reminicient of Word infections). If iCloud was available to all apps, it can result in basically a Mac that can never be cleaned of malware since a vulnerable app (without sandboxing) would read the infected iCloud document, get infected and infect the rest of the Mac (assuming the developer doesn't update the app and the user didn't download an updated version - with boxed software, this is common). With MAS sandboxing, the infection stays with the app alone. I suppose you can ask why not sandboxed apps - well, sandboxed apps can easily request every permission because the developer is lazy, and Apple can verify MAS apps for excessive permission usage.
As for the enforcing open-source, well, like I said, Gatekeeper doesn't apply to non-internet sourced apps. So if you compile it yourself, gatekeeper should be out of your way. If you use open-source, skip the binary and build from source....
People suing Apple isn't exactly a *NEW* thing. It's actually been quite steady or so (one every week or so) the past decade or more.
Heck, Creative sued Apple about a decade ago over the use of categories to help find music (Artist/Album/Genre/etc) on the iPod way back when. (I believe Apple settled, in exchange for a pile of stuff Creative was to make to support the iPod or so). Ditto Sony and others.
It's actually unusual to have Apple NOT being sued by someone or other on a weekly basis.
It's happening, we just don't hear about it.
Toyota did sue Ford a few years ago, over hybrid vehicle patents (I believe they ended up cross-licensing and settling).
And nevermind way back in the 1900's or so when the ICE was first new and novel that there were patent lawsuits flying everywhere. Heck, it took until the 80s or so for the patent on an intermittent windshield wiper to expire, of which there was a huge patent fight over by its inventor and the big three. (And literally, the big three were trying to run the inventor out of money. It was the late 70s or so that the courts finally ruled and awarded damages).
It's just that cars are pretty much mature technology these days that lawsuits don't happen because it's all been invented already. About the only patenting going on comes from radical changes to the power train and the like (see Toyota hybrid patents, Ford hybrid patents).
There were plenty of patents for other technology too, all resolved today because of time. I'm sure 100 years from now we'd be saying the same about mobile telecommunications, and complaining about how flying car manufacturers are suing each other to death or something.
Yes, and it has happened, before, actually.
http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/01/03/apples-theft-policies-in-question-after-it-gives-a-thief-a-free-replacement-iphone/
Thief steals iPhone. Police warn Apple Store there's a thief who may bring a stolen iPhone in. Thief walks out with new iPhone since old one is locked. Police reclaim stolen iPhone from Apple and give it back to owner.
Apple is out one iPhone (the one the thief got) and owner got their iPhone back. Apple loses in this situation.
Of course, there's also big issues with bricking phones - if you allow that, then someone is gonna get their phone bricked as a prank by their friends. Especially if the only way to recover is to take it in for service, and then you'll get a bunch of complaints about this happening.
Oh, and the carriers don't benefit from stolen phones unless the thief activates it - you can phone your carrier, tell them your phone is stolen and they'll deactivate the SIM (which requires a new SIM to reactivate), so your thief can only run up the bill during the time he steals the phone and when you notice and call to cancel.
You have to do both. A read alone will not cause a remap, however enough reads to a bad sector will convince a drive that the sector is bad, and the remap happens the next write afterwards. This lets software try to see if it can recover partial data without actually remapping the sector and losing it.
Though for some drives, the first N hours or N loads of the head brand new will cause writes to be followed by a silent read to verify the surface to map in any new sectors that may have gone bad since the drive was built (best to do it when new and writes are plentiful as the user installs the OS or copies their data onto it). If an error is discovered, the drive can rewrite the data since it's fresh and the user doesn't lose data.
An interesting point - Gatekeeper does NOT restrict applications NOT downloaded from the internet (determined by an external attribute on the file).
This could be when the lockdown happens, a golden opportunity for Open Source - by providing two ways to put programs on the new OS X if (a very unlikely if) Apple decides the only way to get stuff from the 'net is via Mac App Store. You see, all one needs to do is install the developer tools, then compile the program oneself.
Mac OS X - binaries only via Mac App Store, source code otherwise (in the unlikely case Apple makes it MAS only. Notably - there are policy issues (Free to $1000 is too limiting for some apps that cost multiple thousands of dollars, Adobe, Microsoft, some stuff you can't do as a MAS app, etc).). Won't be long until someon resurrects Fink and other projects - the package manager would have to be passed around somehow, but then the whole world of open-source is at one's fingertips.
What about Google? I mean Google has created a bunch of hardware they call as "reference" which can disrupt the market. You think any of the 7" tablet makers are happy with Google releasing the Nexus 7? Considering the price point, the 7" tablets until now pretty much sucked - with crappy low-res screens (600x1024, if you're lucky. Usually 480x800 or so), huge bulkiness, crappy processors, etc. In fact, the Nook Color/Tablet and Kindle Fire were probably one of the best 7" tablets around - decent formfactors, decent processors.
For Linux - I'd be wary. There are enough differences between distributions that you'll probably find each Linux application comes with its own distribution - all the libraries and binaries it needs and uses bundled up as part of the application in order to present a "it works on all Linux" image to users. Of course, it also means having to deal with multiple painful versions of libraries and GUI toolkits and maybe even so far as having said toolkits ignore user settings because the developer pointed to their own configuration file.
Then again, maybe what happens is they just end up being Android apps with an Android runtime - starting up the app starts up the user mode portion of Android just for that app.
Easy, to prevent abuse and malware spreads.
First off, developers suck. Yes, that includes you and me. For every well-written to-the-API app, there's dozens of others that take shortcuts and cheat at things, usually in the name of "making release" or "fixing a bug".
The sandboxing requirement was well known going into the App Store at least over a year ago. All developers knew about the deadline, and it was extended, twice as they weren't ready. Why? Because they didn't have to do it! But now that Apple forced them, they suddenly realize that they need to do it, and fast. It's unfortunately also Business 101 - even if you announce a change years in advance, remind them to the point of nagging, some company with something that's worked fine for all those years suddenly realizes you mean business and has to scramble to meet new requirements. Despite having years to get ready. Very few, if any, will actually try to get ahead of the curve and meet the new requirement ahead of time.
As for limiting iCloud to App Store Apps - it's probably with sandboxing. Imagine you had a regular app that had a bug and used iCloud. A smart malware writer will exploit your app to infect a user's document stored on iCloud so even if the user wipes their mac, the instant they use the app, they're infected again because of an exploit in your app.
Try diagnosing THAT as technical support. Sandboxed apps using iLcoud - well the app can get infected, but that infection is confined through the sandbox to that app only.
Or imagine it's a different file - let's say a specially crafted file using some exploit in libjpeg or other imaging library. If a sandboxed app loaded it, it gets infected, but that infection is confined to that app only. If it was available to all apps, all it would take is a vulnerable one to infect *all* your Macs simultaneously through iCloud.
The other alternative is to have Apple scan and delete infected files off their servers. But I'm sure that will go over really well with people.
One final reason is well, everywhere you have the app, you have access to your files via iCloud, since all app stores Apple has are tied to iCloud now. Let's say you buy some nifty editor off the Mac App Store. You go to a new Mac, login and redownload the editor and boom, the files are there. If it was the other way, you'd have to find the editor's website, somehow manage to get the registered copy (hoping it's not machine-locked!) and then get at your files. Less convenient, while the other way puts more work on the developer, the user gets a much better experience.
As for developers screwing their customers - two sides to the coin. Apple is withholding from developers the IDs of who purchased their apps, probably for the better (given all the hacks and stealing of customer databases, you'll probably fine many developers would have pretty shoddy websites vulnerable to SQL attacks, buffer overflows, plain text customer lists out in the open, etc. Hell, there's probably someone out there who stores their entire customer database as a series of emails on a publicly-accessible IMAP server. (You will easily find that while they can code up wicked stuff for an app, but then fail to take basic security precautions for their website...).
If I was an FB stockholder, I wouldn't ask for money, I'd ask for access to some of the information I own as a stockholder... i.e., access to all that user data FB collects!