Large Binary blob, developed for IIRC Kernel 2.6.5. The kernel is so old it predates even Android 2.2 and with WebOS using a more standard kernel and Android having it's modified kernel interfaces its darn near impossible for them to make the port.
2.6.5 is ancient - the kernel logs say April 2004. It predates iOS and Android, period (it may be around the time the iPad was merely a twinkle in Jobs' eye before it became the iPhone).
I'm actually surprised that a kernel that old would be running on it - I would expect maybe a 2 or 3 year old kernel, but not a (at the time) 7 year old kernel.
I've seen products shipped with ancient kernels, but that's because they were first released years ago and were still on sale (a rarity!) and the software hasn't been updated since...
All 100 Atari Greatest Hits games are free on iOS today.
Actually, it is 1 Atari game for free (Missile Command)
Quote: Buy additional games in 2 unique ways: 1. 25 separate packs available for download at $0.99 2. Buy all 100 games for a discounted price of $9.99 (basically the price of a movie ticket)
Not a bad price at all though, and in fact I bought the full 100 set too. I just wanted to point out they aren't free however.
Actually, while that's normally true, TODAY, if you download the game and run it (very important!), it'll unlock all the games for free.
What sucks is that it's only valid until the game is redownloaded, so it's not a permanent unlock. I might just explore it via jailbreak and see if I can find the unlock file.
Additionally, no such deal for Android owners, oddly.
...because the potential entrepreneur expects that if they become successful, a patent troll will take all their money?
Actually, patent trolls have a self-interest in seeing you succeed. Suing you out of business isn't in their interests as well.
Think about it - they rely on patents to earn them money. Suing someone who makes $20M in revenue for $100M in damages does little - at the end of the day, the guy will close up shop, the product stops being sold, and that's it - it's really a pyhrric victory.
A patent troll who extracts a modest licensing income that leaves the business enough money and ROI to keep going and selling the product will continue to pay royalties for a long time, monetizing the patent.
Unlike patent lawsuits between companies like Apple v. Samsung (where Apple's goal is to prevent sales as it's in their interest to do so), a patent troll's purpose is to leech. And a bad leech kills their host (killing the golden goose).
Remember, patent trolls are in it for the money, and they have every interest to see that money flows in. If you're too small, they won't bother because the lawsuits will probably kill your business (and any chance of future success at which point they can get money) and possibly cost them more than they'll get back.
And yes, even their licensing fees are calculated - if after paying the fees it's not profitable enough for you to continue and you drop the product, again, that's a loss in future licensing fees.
A patent troll's success is directly tied to your success in the past, present AND future. Killing a successful product means the troll has to go hunt for ANOTHER target to get income, rather than suck on the teat and then hunt for another target.
What would be funny is "Samsung stops selling Apple parts, every single Apple product now discontinued."
And Samsung shareholders will go ballistic, literally that they're turning down sales from their #1 customer (Apple beat Sony in parts purchased from Samsung).
The other effect is a greatly distorted market - with the exception of the A4/A5 processor (though TSMC or Intel is supposed to help out), everything else is multiply-sourced. The NAND flash and RAM, especially. All that would happen is that Toshiba and the like suddenly get the orders and make money while Samsung is stuck with excess stock they have to clearance out. In fact, you'll see arbitrage happening - Toshiba etc. will see that simply relabel Samsung parts and cash in on the difference.
Also, all those multibillion dollar fabs like the one in Austin Tx that Samsung opened? Idled. And when a fab is idled, it's losing tons of money because the equipment is depreciating fast and will turn into a multibillion dollar sinkhole. Running fabs is horribly expensive and if it's not running at basically 100%, it's losing money. If nothing else, few companies can afford a fab - Apple might just pick one up on the cheap because of it.
It's a love-hate relationship that's probably giving Samsung more angst than anything because they're pitting two divisions of Samsung against each other - the semiconductor division which makes tons of money making parts for Apple versus the mobile division, which makes money (but likely less since it's spread out over more phones).
I chatted with some guys on an FPGA forum about this. They were convinced that HFT was good, as it increased the liquidity of the market.
I ran the line that it's bad, as it exploits that over the short term all players in the market do not have complete information on the state of the market, and is therefore a highly sophisticated form of insider trading.
In truth it it is just a mechanism to suck wealth away from those who actually create it (or invest in stocks of companies that create wealth), and does more harm than good.
It's good and bad. The problem right now is HFT accounts for 80% of trades executed in a day. The liquidity aspect is bunk at that point - if it was purely for liquidity, then at best you'd have 50% trading with HFT (live trader with an HFT trader).
Of course, it helps narrow the bid-ask spread which for thinly traded companies helps add to trading volume and thus liquidity (it's easier to convert a thinly traded stock to cash and vice versa).
If you want to slow down HFT trading, you don't slow down the match engines (the computers that take buyers and sellers and match them up to determine if a trade occurs). Instead, you go for the profits. If the exchange imposed a simple fraction of a penny per trade, that will definitely slow down HFT since HFT works by only making fractions of a penny every buy and sell. A regular trader won't care since a fraction of a penny for a trade that happens once a year is nothing.
It's like spamming - it relies on fractions of a penny in costs - increase them and it turns profitable into barely breaking even.
I am all for "fair access" but if the CC was not made available by the content maker, than how is it netflixes fault for not having them? Shouldnt the judge be charging the movie maker for not providing CC to begin with??
Depends on the age of the program. Most of the recent stuff (probably the past 20 years) that people watch (movies, etc) should be closed captioned by default. Hell, even the movie theatres support closed captioning (usually a mirror mounted on the seat back in front reflecting the back wall of the auditorium where a LED sign displays the captions).
There's probably older programming still, and I'd be surprised if captioning isn't available. Heck, most catalog released DVDs have captions and subtitles already. I'd actually bet that a good 90% or more of Netflix's entire library is already captioned or subtitled (which is probably 99%+ of what is actually watched).
To be honest, even though I have above-average hearing, I enjoy having captions on - it's great for the times when some sound mixer gets the levels wrong and background effects drown out the dialog.
Some channels actually have "descriptive audio" here. It's actually exactly what it sounds like. A voice describes what is happening, overlaid onto the audio. Once in a while I'll turn it on and try watching something with my eyes closed.. surprisingly for stuff that's heavily dialog driven, it works surprisingly well.
I think there's a requirement of around 20% of content or so must have descriptive audio in it. Mostly driven by the fact that the few (there's only like 3 companies) are so overloaded with work that they can't convert any faster. The latest TV shows are easy (they get a copy of the script and basically verify that the actions in the script match on screen or add their own, then produce the voice overlay).
Older TV shows, they have to do way more work as there's no scripts to start from so they have to really take notes and produce a script.
I would. I hate how every app I download on my android phone requires access to my contacts, phone state, text messages and a dozen other things a non internet enabled app asks for. Why does a game need to know who my contacts are? It's a single player game, not an online social game. Why does a game require my text messages? Why does it require my GPS location?
Easy - ads. The only way to make money on Android is via in-app ads, and most of them require such permissions to show up "appropriate" ads.
Sad to say that it's pretty much the only way to sell apps in the Google Play market - if they're not free, you're limited to what Google Wallet supports. If it's free, you're everywhere but the only way to get paid is selling ads.
Doesn't help that Android APKs are DRM-free and often shared, so Android piracy is pretty rampant.
I know iOS 6 is supposed to finally add protections - I wonder what happens when you deny it access to contacts and such - does it return no contacts or error out? (No contacts is a valid state - you download an app and use it before setting up your phone).
I'm sure the geniuses on the Android side have some app for rooted phones that does this - I'm sure of it - stuff like this Android gets before iOS typically.
We're supposed to have both. The right to bear arms came around back in the days where there was no difference between the gear the armed forces had and that which was available to the citizens. The gap has been getting wider yes, but wouldn't it be better to try, than to just give up?
Well, the reason for the 2nd amendment was because of what the British armies were doing to the colonies. Think entering homes and killing and all sorts of other things. Hence the right to bear arms was meant to be able to repel an invading force because the citizens would be armed. Of course, it never was against the government (which barely existing, and thus no military to protect itself). In the absence of a military, citizens were called upon to defend the nation. Of course, the spirit and the letter of the amendment differ (it was expected that citizens will rise up to defend their nation voluntarily), but that's the historical context.
It never really was about the citizens vs. their own government, more citizens vs. an invading force. One could argue about it being redundant (the US can defend itself just fine, the spirit implies a draft, etc), but that's really a more thorny discussion.
It makes more sense when one reviews their history and puts the context for everything in historical perspective. Many other free countries don't have a right to bear arms (and heavily regulate them), for example. It's just the US pretty much came into being after that war and decided it would be wise to ensure there was a militia ready to fight.
Think the Government and the British state don't have a large measure of control? Think again
Officially they don't. There have been numerous governments that have criticised the reporting of the BBC but been unable to prevent it - the BBC dutifully reported NATO airstrike civilian victims during the Balkans wars, leading to government criticism that BBC in fact stood for "Belgrade Broadcasting Corporation":
You do what politicians do in Canada - you cut funding. The CBC is effectively state-sponsored and they manage to piss everyone off because they cover things that'll make everyone hate them at one time or another. The conservatives see them as too liberal, the liberals see them as too conservative and they run programming that often irritates those in power
The Diamond Rio had a whopping 64 megabytes of storage that, if you felt like dropping the money on it, could be expanded to 128. At best that got you two hours of music. The Nomad (I'm assuming you meant the Nomad and not an MP3 player for Windows....) had more storage than the iPod, but it was physically larger, nearly the size of a portable CD player. Both of those players also required a very slow and clumsy parallel port connection to sync the music and neither came with rechargeable batteries. Let's not forget that iTunes came along and.. well you know the history, there.
The later verisons of the Rio had 64MB. I had the early 32MB version and got lucky when I could buy 32MB addon cards for a whopping $20 (marked down from $200).
I got a nomad as well, and to say it's portable-CD-player sized is making portable CD players bigger than they are. I have a portable CD player from the 80's that's SMALLER than the Nomad!
Of course, the problem was the Nomad used a USB1.1 connection, USB2 was still bleeding edge whe nthe 3rd gen iPod came out (without iTunes, but with Windows support). Loading music via USB1.1 was... painful.
Oh, the Nomad was also proprietary USB connectivity - and Creative drivers were never the best.
What Apple did do was create a Rio-sized player that held almost as much as a Nomad that had more efficient ways of navigating huge music collections. It also had more RAM meaning it had the ability to buffer more music, handle larger libraries with aplomb (Nomad strugged with MP3s with ID3 tags that were ever-so-slightly-off and if ID3v1/v2 didn't agree, things got messy fast. Oh, and Nomad wasn't mass storage, so it had a database as well). Navigating the Nomad with just an up/down button got painful, fast.
Apple also got lucky because they entered the Mp3 player market just when it was taking off (iPod was the first to ship its 1 millionth player, and that was on the 3rd gen iPod. Yes, the market was that small back then when the first and second gen didn't sell collectively 1 million units). Though, the white earbuds apparently helped a lot as a bit of a viral marketing campaign.
So what does NFC get me? The ability to pay without my wallet? That's not a big advantage.
Really - what is NFC's advantage for the consumer? So far, all I've seen is payment processors like Google and carriers each eating into the pie (and you thought a merchant account and Paypal was bad?), but what's in it for the consumer?
All I see is it's an electronic credit card. Other than carrying my phone instead of having my wallet (which I might need anyways because it has my bus pass and work RFID cards and medical insurance and cash...).
Really, what's in it for me, the consumer?
The only real use I can see for it is bumping into people with my phone and emulating their PayPass cards so I can get free coffee or food for life. (It seems like a big enough advantage to buy an Android phone exclusively... Apple will never allow an app to provide ability to steal money).
I used the analogy of mech. engineer vs CAD operator because I think it is basically the same as the distinction between software engineer and programmer. The software field is far less mature than any engineering fields, so the difference is far less clear. A coworker of mine once said, "If you can't easily tell the difference between a software engineer and programmer, you are a programmer [or not in the field]."
Or it can be the difference between a technician and a professional.
Programming is a trade job - you can go to a trade school, learn to do your Java or C++ or whatever and graduate and go on coding it up. Someone else would've drawn up your tasks and you basically execute on it. (Simllar to most other trades like construction, plumbing, electrician, etc).
Ditto technicians - they know how to operate the equipment to do what's requested (be it say an X-Ray or other medical device, or CAD operator or machinery). However they are working under someone else's orders - a doctor, a draftsperson/architect, etc.
A professional is the one who coordinates it all and tries to come up with solutions - they ask an X-Ray tech to do an X-ray and that's it. It's up to the doctor to go an interpret the X-Ray. It's up to the architect to ensure the CAD operator has drawn what was designed. It's up to the software engineer to verify that the coded item performs to specifications and operates as designed.
The confusion comes in because to be a good professional, one should've done what they are asking others to do - if nothing more to understand the capabilities and limitations. Plus, they too are often required to do the work at times (an architect will often do their own CAD drawings, especially on more complex tasks that would otherwise require a lot of work to explain, or to simply see if something will work). The real problems come in when someone who hasn't done the job starts asking for pie-in-the-sky demands.
If you won't allow us to write software for your crappy cards, then they'll be no software for your cards. I don't understand why these Microsoft-style closed source morons always think not allowing people to use what they sell will help them. They're letting their paranoia get in the way of good business.
Because it's a balance of interests - financial, engineering, IP, etc.
Let's say someone like nVidia or AMD open up their drivers completely - how much extra money would that make them?
Given that Intel is the predominant graphics card on the market with the vast majority of PCs sold sporting Intel graphics, the market that nVidia and AMD go for is quite a niche one. Then add to that how many people will buy a $500 graphics card (the profitable line - the midline and low ends are just to round out the offerings) and run Linux. And then add the remaining percentage of those who care for open-source drivers (hint - not everyone uses Linux because of it's FOSS - they use it because they want to get stuff done, like build Android or other stuff and care little about anything else Linux other than "just make Linux work on the PC")
The only reason there are Linux drivers is simply because it's a checkmark in the feature list for marketing, and it appears that Linux folks love checkmarks (given how many seem to always point out how featureless Apple products are at not supporting 10,000 obscure features).
Intel does it because they have little skin in the game, and it helps them in one big area - servers which predominantly run Linux or other OS that isn't Windows. Servers sell profitable server chips, and people care about stability so even if a server is equipped with a crappy graphics card, no one cares.
nVidia and AMD's primary market is still Windows users (and probably OS X as well - Apple's bound to ship millions of their laptops). Heck, it's probably why Apple went with a wimpy 650M graphics - they could've gone higher end but nVidia couldn't make them fast enough! At least without having to flood the low and mid-end market with chips and starving the high end.
Maybe put your work phone on your desk, forward calls using Google voice to your personal cell phone. Problem solved on the occasion when you need to sneak out, maybe?..I'm sure those brainiacs already covered that possibility?
Except Google shares data with Google now that they moved to a unified privacy model (courtesy Steve Jobs - makes you wonder if this was his revenge on Google). So the tracker probably lets you trace through Google Voice as well.
If you're trying to make the joke that Canadian dollars may as well be monopoly money compared to US dollars... I'm afraid to tell you one Canadian dollar is currently worth more than one US dollar. So it takes more than one US dollar to purchase one Canadian dollar.:(
Actually, it's reverted a few few weeks ago - 1 Canadian dollar buys aorund 97-98 US cents or so.
Anyhow, no more ATI. It's AMD, which is decidedly 'merkin. And AMD has sought to wipe out all reference to ATI as well - it's "AMD Graphics" now. Plenty annoying when I have a small driver collection and half of it is AMD and the other half installed in ATI. (I keep drivers around because of regressions - some I can ignore, others I have to revert because they get annoying).
Unplug everything critical. If you owe your life to it, it's worth needing to be physically present to make it work rather than risking vulnerability over a network. Then just make sure only people you want have physical access. Electronic warfare is simple to defend against, so far, it just takes a little foresight to realize that being fat, lazy, happy, and dead is worse than being a little busier, happy, and alive.
I think the problem is the computer. Isolated networks help, but Stuxnet (and probably Flame) has shown that it's ineffective. And the moment you have a computer involved it's vulnerable.
If you look at how nuclear enrichment is done, it involves a LOT of centrifuges running in tandem that have to be precisely controlled in synchronicity (or something breaks). Each round of centrifuging only enriches uranium a fraction of a percent (you need several thousand centrifuges to go from mined uranium to weapons-grade).
Even then you can't be sure - Stuxnet kept sending back "everything is fine!" messages to the PLC controller so everything looked fine unless you actually got out and measured it (practically impossible).
For a country like the US, doing it is not only very expensive, you also don't gain much. The first month everything is good, and then the humans monitoring and controlling the equipment get complacent and skip steps and miss clues to breakdown until catastrophic disaster happens. It's a well-studied problem and human nature. Once complacency happens, things go downhill very fast (humans just aren't good at monitoring and doing repetitive, boring jobs, which is why we automate. Plenty of analysis has been done in other situations.
Also, anyone reading Slashdot who needed such a post, your geek card has been downgraded to "minion" level. Minion level cards do not get access to the second-floor gym or the breakroom, but can still use the reference library. Take advantage of it!
I think it should be turned in.
The summary even stated what it was about - "providing reasonably accurate time". Sure it's not a full technical description, but it's a good quick summary of the project and what NTP is. If you want more, look it up. If not, you know it's not something you're interested in.
I think the biggest benefit of this would be giving the teachers a trusted software repository where they can tell their students to just go download it through the SteamEDU client, and not have to worry about them going to an impostor site and getting a school computer infected with malware (because obviously nobody knows how to ask for a rebuild of that system from the school's IT dept).
Actually, I see it as one better - if you need software for a particular class, it can be distributed and licensed properly via Steam. If the alternative is to run it on the lab computers, it makes sense to have this as a way for people to do the work using the software at home using a personal install. It beats distribution via CD (and often pesky license key hassles). All the student has to do is launch Steam, select the program and download and install.
That, I think is the biggest benefit. Especially since it's targeted at the highschool group.
There's a place in Victoria that says point blank, "The climate here is worth about $15,000 a year."
Compared to the rest of Canada, the south-west part of BC has some of the best climate around. Winters generally don't get too cold (anything lower than -5C in the morning is unusual), and summers aren't too hot (rarely above 30C), and there may be a lot of rain, there's less snow (and less driving in it). Not all sun and beach weather all year, but it beats having to sit through day highs of -10C in the winter and 35C+ summer (like what Eastern Canada is currently experiencing).
Nevermind days in spring where it's cool enough to go skiing followed by a warm afternoon to go golfing (on the same day).
For a number of people, $15k is probably about right. Though, foreign talent will be much harder to come by - especially if you want an American.
Hardware can fail for a much wider variety of reasons; poor maintenance, overuse, physical abuse, one off manufacturing defects, etc. Software failures are caused by an error in design or implementation; they are almost guaranteed to be present in every single instance of the device even if it takes an oddball corner case to set it off.
For hardware, to combat failures you overdesign it. E.g., if it's powered by the AC line, you make sure the power supply components are overrated for their worst case load (derating of parts makes them last much longer).
If there's an alarm, you add a microphone and light sensors to determine that if you're in the alarm state, there is an alarm sound playing and the lights are flashing. You build in extra annunciators as well just in case the LED dies. You count 75% battery capacity as "low battery".
And yes, I've seen those countermeaures actually implemented for a medical device.
Of course, it also impacts software as now it's even more complex as it has to handle and detect these conditions as well
It took the price of a desktop PC from about $3600 to about $500 (in 2010 dollars) over that period, all while massively improving the technology. Yeah, that's a real loss.
See, here's the thing: What's a loss for the PC industry in terms of higher margins is a win for every industry and consumer that uses PCs for anything. That competitive pressure would cause the price to go down isn't a flaw, it's capitalism doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing.
Yeah, that's why I can buy a 1080p monitor for $200, Or if you want a 15" laptop that has something better than 1366x768.
The real price of computing hasn't gone down - it's still around $1000-1500 for a decent laptop (which is admittedly cheaper than in the past, but for the last few years, prices dropped, but decent PCs haven't). All that's happened is manufacturers have found more ways to build to a price.
Even then it's not so successful - try buying a netbook these days. What was once a flourishing segment with dozens of models is now reduced to a few.
Hell, we all bitched when hard drives got into the cost-cutting game and ended up with warranties down to a year (which sitll do exist - though higher priced retail ones can give you up to 5 again).
All the innovation that's happening is less technology, and more "how can we save a penny on this part" or "do we need to use this expensive chip when this older cheaper one works?" (and still call it validly an i3/i5/i7 CPU, though last-gen), etc.
You need the 3 digit "security code" for online purchases, so it wouldn't work online. And what do you do in person, just read them a credit card number?
Most contactless (hah - you usually end up touching the reader with your card) transactions are a free-for-all for stuff under $25. No PIN, no swipe, no signature. Just tap and go (debit AND credit).
Just make a semi-realistic looking card (the cashier doesn't handle it - you just have to flash it and tap the reader) and you're done.
And $25 is small, but it doesn't mean you can't make larger purchases. After all, you can always use it to buy $25 gift cards one at a time then use them all at once to purchase something for $100 (happens often enough everywhere - people get small gift cards as gifts).
Larger transactions the reader doesn't work - you have to use the chip.
SONY has been on my "do not patronize" list for years and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
Thta's quite hard actually, because Sony's like Google in that regard - they're big enough that they have tentacles everywhere that are practically impossible to avoid.
E.g., Sony makes a lot of components - especially imaging ones. A Sony camera sensor can be in your digital camera (point and shoot/dSLR), your cellphone camera may hae a Sony sensor. Your PC might have Sony batteries. If you play Blu-Rays, you are using Sony's patents in that (and probably Sony has a pile related to h.264 as well, covering practically all media), etc. etc.
The truth is, the sheer benevolence of our humanity is why most of us are alive. Most people wouldn't kill others if not in defense, and so we are alive. It doesn't take a genius to see what *could* happen, but *doesn't* happen. We are lucky to be so well protected by our nature. The police, TSA, your dad, or your God will have little impact on your safety.
Actually, humanity's general benevolence also led us to well, where we are today technologically. After all, if we decided the best way to survive was compete for food rather than cooperate and trade, we wouldn't be anywhere close to where we are now.
Think about it - if you're fighting off your neighbours, you don't have time to think about arts, technology, etc. (Same goes for those calling for anarchy - once all the bullets run out, now what? No one's going to make a factory that makes bullets if people keep breaking in, plus the stuff about acquiring raw materials and energy to process them).
Now, granted, many of man's greatest achievements happened during periods of heightened readiness, but that's one of some unknown foriegn entity and nothing really ever happens (usually a peace treaty is worked out as everyone still rather prefers it than an all-out war).
So instead of a market of 100 space suits a year, there's maybe a total market of 5,000 (best case for the forseeable future, at that rate you'd be launching 100 people into space every week). If you expect at least a couple manufacturers competing, that's 2,500. I can tell you that probably doesn't even count as mass manufacturing for something like a space suit...
Compare this to a bullet proof vest. There are about 20,000 law-enforcement agencies in the US. Assuming only 1/10th of them would buy 1 bullet proof vest (a ridiculously small number). If this were the case, who would make a "cheap" bullet proof vest...
The problem right NOW is that space suits are actually form-fitted - they're not generic garments you can put on (except maybe in an emergency). Every astronaut has their own that fits them.
I don't know about the Russian suits - they may be made in a more generic fashion and then have laces that fit them to a particular astronaut for that mission and then re-fitted to someone else.
But that's the state of them right now. The reason is simple - they're bulky enough that if something doesn't fit right, it'll be even worse in a vacuum (and possibly dangerous).
For bulletproof vests, the math is a lot different - given they have a max life of around 5 years, they need to be replaced fairly often. And there's a huge worldwide demand (don't forget military!). They're generically made garments with sizing velcro to fit them to the person, so it's easier to stock a range of sizes as if they were normal clothing.
As for why you have a suit - the challenger disaster revealed that the astronauts actually survived the explosions, only to die of hypoxia in the thin air. If you look at shuttle photos before and after, you'll see they used light jumpsuits prior to the disaster, and then wore the orange pressure suits (launch/reentry suits) afterwards.
Wouldn't have helped Columbia (which broke up during reentry when the frictional heating was highest), as they're not made to handle extreme atsmosphere re-entry temperatures - just for cases of decompression.
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2.6.5 is ancient - the kernel logs say April 2004. It predates iOS and Android, period (it may be around the time the iPad was merely a twinkle in Jobs' eye before it became the iPhone).
I'm actually surprised that a kernel that old would be running on it - I would expect maybe a 2 or 3 year old kernel, but not a (at the time) 7 year old kernel.
I've seen products shipped with ancient kernels, but that's because they were first released years ago and were still on sale (a rarity!) and the software hasn't been updated since...
Actually, while that's normally true, TODAY, if you download the game and run it (very important!), it'll unlock all the games for free.
What sucks is that it's only valid until the game is redownloaded, so it's not a permanent unlock. I might just explore it via jailbreak and see if I can find the unlock file.
Additionally, no such deal for Android owners, oddly.
Actually, patent trolls have a self-interest in seeing you succeed. Suing you out of business isn't in their interests as well.
Think about it - they rely on patents to earn them money. Suing someone who makes $20M in revenue for $100M in damages does little - at the end of the day, the guy will close up shop, the product stops being sold, and that's it - it's really a pyhrric victory.
A patent troll who extracts a modest licensing income that leaves the business enough money and ROI to keep going and selling the product will continue to pay royalties for a long time, monetizing the patent.
Unlike patent lawsuits between companies like Apple v. Samsung (where Apple's goal is to prevent sales as it's in their interest to do so), a patent troll's purpose is to leech. And a bad leech kills their host (killing the golden goose).
Remember, patent trolls are in it for the money, and they have every interest to see that money flows in. If you're too small, they won't bother because the lawsuits will probably kill your business (and any chance of future success at which point they can get money) and possibly cost them more than they'll get back.
And yes, even their licensing fees are calculated - if after paying the fees it's not profitable enough for you to continue and you drop the product, again, that's a loss in future licensing fees.
A patent troll's success is directly tied to your success in the past, present AND future. Killing a successful product means the troll has to go hunt for ANOTHER target to get income, rather than suck on the teat and then hunt for another target.
And Samsung shareholders will go ballistic, literally that they're turning down sales from their #1 customer (Apple beat Sony in parts purchased from Samsung).
The other effect is a greatly distorted market - with the exception of the A4/A5 processor (though TSMC or Intel is supposed to help out), everything else is multiply-sourced. The NAND flash and RAM, especially. All that would happen is that Toshiba and the like suddenly get the orders and make money while Samsung is stuck with excess stock they have to clearance out. In fact, you'll see arbitrage happening - Toshiba etc. will see that simply relabel Samsung parts and cash in on the difference.
Also, all those multibillion dollar fabs like the one in Austin Tx that Samsung opened? Idled. And when a fab is idled, it's losing tons of money because the equipment is depreciating fast and will turn into a multibillion dollar sinkhole. Running fabs is horribly expensive and if it's not running at basically 100%, it's losing money. If nothing else, few companies can afford a fab - Apple might just pick one up on the cheap because of it.
It's a love-hate relationship that's probably giving Samsung more angst than anything because they're pitting two divisions of Samsung against each other - the semiconductor division which makes tons of money making parts for Apple versus the mobile division, which makes money (but likely less since it's spread out over more phones).
It's good and bad. The problem right now is HFT accounts for 80% of trades executed in a day. The liquidity aspect is bunk at that point - if it was purely for liquidity, then at best you'd have 50% trading with HFT (live trader with an HFT trader).
Of course, it helps narrow the bid-ask spread which for thinly traded companies helps add to trading volume and thus liquidity (it's easier to convert a thinly traded stock to cash and vice versa).
If you want to slow down HFT trading, you don't slow down the match engines (the computers that take buyers and sellers and match them up to determine if a trade occurs). Instead, you go for the profits. If the exchange imposed a simple fraction of a penny per trade, that will definitely slow down HFT since HFT works by only making fractions of a penny every buy and sell. A regular trader won't care since a fraction of a penny for a trade that happens once a year is nothing.
It's like spamming - it relies on fractions of a penny in costs - increase them and it turns profitable into barely breaking even.
Depends on the age of the program. Most of the recent stuff (probably the past 20 years) that people watch (movies, etc) should be closed captioned by default. Hell, even the movie theatres support closed captioning (usually a mirror mounted on the seat back in front reflecting the back wall of the auditorium where a LED sign displays the captions).
There's probably older programming still, and I'd be surprised if captioning isn't available. Heck, most catalog released DVDs have captions and subtitles already. I'd actually bet that a good 90% or more of Netflix's entire library is already captioned or subtitled (which is probably 99%+ of what is actually watched).
To be honest, even though I have above-average hearing, I enjoy having captions on - it's great for the times when some sound mixer gets the levels wrong and background effects drown out the dialog.
I think there's a requirement of around 20% of content or so must have descriptive audio in it. Mostly driven by the fact that the few (there's only like 3 companies) are so overloaded with work that they can't convert any faster. The latest TV shows are easy (they get a copy of the script and basically verify that the actions in the script match on screen or add their own, then produce the voice overlay).
Older TV shows, they have to do way more work as there's no scripts to start from so they have to really take notes and produce a script.
Easy - ads. The only way to make money on Android is via in-app ads, and most of them require such permissions to show up "appropriate" ads.
Sad to say that it's pretty much the only way to sell apps in the Google Play market - if they're not free, you're limited to what Google Wallet supports. If it's free, you're everywhere but the only way to get paid is selling ads.
Doesn't help that Android APKs are DRM-free and often shared, so Android piracy is pretty rampant.
I know iOS 6 is supposed to finally add protections - I wonder what happens when you deny it access to contacts and such - does it return no contacts or error out? (No contacts is a valid state - you download an app and use it before setting up your phone).
I'm sure the geniuses on the Android side have some app for rooted phones that does this - I'm sure of it - stuff like this Android gets before iOS typically.
Well, the reason for the 2nd amendment was because of what the British armies were doing to the colonies. Think entering homes and killing and all sorts of other things. Hence the right to bear arms was meant to be able to repel an invading force because the citizens would be armed. Of course, it never was against the government (which barely existing, and thus no military to protect itself). In the absence of a military, citizens were called upon to defend the nation. Of course, the spirit and the letter of the amendment differ (it was expected that citizens will rise up to defend their nation voluntarily), but that's the historical context.
It never really was about the citizens vs. their own government, more citizens vs. an invading force. One could argue about it being redundant (the US can defend itself just fine, the spirit implies a draft, etc), but that's really a more thorny discussion.
It makes more sense when one reviews their history and puts the context for everything in historical perspective. Many other free countries don't have a right to bear arms (and heavily regulate them), for example. It's just the US pretty much came into being after that war and decided it would be wise to ensure there was a militia ready to fight.
You do what politicians do in Canada - you cut funding. The CBC is effectively state-sponsored and they manage to piss everyone off because they cover things that'll make everyone hate them at one time or another. The conservatives see them as too liberal, the liberals see them as too conservative and they run programming that often irritates those in power
The later verisons of the Rio had 64MB. I had the early 32MB version and got lucky when I could buy 32MB addon cards for a whopping $20 (marked down from $200).
I got a nomad as well, and to say it's portable-CD-player sized is making portable CD players bigger than they are. I have a portable CD player from the 80's that's SMALLER than the Nomad!
Of course, the problem was the Nomad used a USB1.1 connection, USB2 was still bleeding edge whe nthe 3rd gen iPod came out (without iTunes, but with Windows support). Loading music via USB1.1 was... painful.
Oh, the Nomad was also proprietary USB connectivity - and Creative drivers were never the best.
What Apple did do was create a Rio-sized player that held almost as much as a Nomad that had more efficient ways of navigating huge music collections. It also had more RAM meaning it had the ability to buffer more music, handle larger libraries with aplomb (Nomad strugged with MP3s with ID3 tags that were ever-so-slightly-off and if ID3v1/v2 didn't agree, things got messy fast. Oh, and Nomad wasn't mass storage, so it had a database as well). Navigating the Nomad with just an up/down button got painful, fast.
Apple also got lucky because they entered the Mp3 player market just when it was taking off (iPod was the first to ship its 1 millionth player, and that was on the 3rd gen iPod. Yes, the market was that small back then when the first and second gen didn't sell collectively 1 million units). Though, the white earbuds apparently helped a lot as a bit of a viral marketing campaign.
So what does NFC get me? The ability to pay without my wallet? That's not a big advantage.
Really - what is NFC's advantage for the consumer? So far, all I've seen is payment processors like Google and carriers each eating into the pie (and you thought a merchant account and Paypal was bad?), but what's in it for the consumer?
All I see is it's an electronic credit card. Other than carrying my phone instead of having my wallet (which I might need anyways because it has my bus pass and work RFID cards and medical insurance and cash...).
Really, what's in it for me, the consumer?
The only real use I can see for it is bumping into people with my phone and emulating their PayPass cards so I can get free coffee or food for life. (It seems like a big enough advantage to buy an Android phone exclusively... Apple will never allow an app to provide ability to steal money).
Or it can be the difference between a technician and a professional.
Programming is a trade job - you can go to a trade school, learn to do your Java or C++ or whatever and graduate and go on coding it up. Someone else would've drawn up your tasks and you basically execute on it. (Simllar to most other trades like construction, plumbing, electrician, etc).
Ditto technicians - they know how to operate the equipment to do what's requested (be it say an X-Ray or other medical device, or CAD operator or machinery). However they are working under someone else's orders - a doctor, a draftsperson/architect, etc.
A professional is the one who coordinates it all and tries to come up with solutions - they ask an X-Ray tech to do an X-ray and that's it. It's up to the doctor to go an interpret the X-Ray. It's up to the architect to ensure the CAD operator has drawn what was designed. It's up to the software engineer to verify that the coded item performs to specifications and operates as designed.
The confusion comes in because to be a good professional, one should've done what they are asking others to do - if nothing more to understand the capabilities and limitations. Plus, they too are often required to do the work at times (an architect will often do their own CAD drawings, especially on more complex tasks that would otherwise require a lot of work to explain, or to simply see if something will work). The real problems come in when someone who hasn't done the job starts asking for pie-in-the-sky demands.
Because it's a balance of interests - financial, engineering, IP, etc.
Let's say someone like nVidia or AMD open up their drivers completely - how much extra money would that make them?
Given that Intel is the predominant graphics card on the market with the vast majority of PCs sold sporting Intel graphics, the market that nVidia and AMD go for is quite a niche one. Then add to that how many people will buy a $500 graphics card (the profitable line - the midline and low ends are just to round out the offerings) and run Linux. And then add the remaining percentage of those who care for open-source drivers (hint - not everyone uses Linux because of it's FOSS - they use it because they want to get stuff done, like build Android or other stuff and care little about anything else Linux other than "just make Linux work on the PC")
The only reason there are Linux drivers is simply because it's a checkmark in the feature list for marketing, and it appears that Linux folks love checkmarks (given how many seem to always point out how featureless Apple products are at not supporting 10,000 obscure features).
Intel does it because they have little skin in the game, and it helps them in one big area - servers which predominantly run Linux or other OS that isn't Windows. Servers sell profitable server chips, and people care about stability so even if a server is equipped with a crappy graphics card, no one cares.
nVidia and AMD's primary market is still Windows users (and probably OS X as well - Apple's bound to ship millions of their laptops). Heck, it's probably why Apple went with a wimpy 650M graphics - they could've gone higher end but nVidia couldn't make them fast enough! At least without having to flood the low and mid-end market with chips and starving the high end.
Except Google shares data with Google now that they moved to a unified privacy model (courtesy Steve Jobs - makes you wonder if this was his revenge on Google). So the tracker probably lets you trace through Google Voice as well.
Actually, it's reverted a few few weeks ago - 1 Canadian dollar buys aorund 97-98 US cents or so.
Anyhow, no more ATI. It's AMD, which is decidedly 'merkin. And AMD has sought to wipe out all reference to ATI as well - it's "AMD Graphics" now. Plenty annoying when I have a small driver collection and half of it is AMD and the other half installed in ATI. (I keep drivers around because of regressions - some I can ignore, others I have to revert because they get annoying).
I think the problem is the computer. Isolated networks help, but Stuxnet (and probably Flame) has shown that it's ineffective. And the moment you have a computer involved it's vulnerable.
If you look at how nuclear enrichment is done, it involves a LOT of centrifuges running in tandem that have to be precisely controlled in synchronicity (or something breaks). Each round of centrifuging only enriches uranium a fraction of a percent (you need several thousand centrifuges to go from mined uranium to weapons-grade).
Even then you can't be sure - Stuxnet kept sending back "everything is fine!" messages to the PLC controller so everything looked fine unless you actually got out and measured it (practically impossible).
For a country like the US, doing it is not only very expensive, you also don't gain much. The first month everything is good, and then the humans monitoring and controlling the equipment get complacent and skip steps and miss clues to breakdown until catastrophic disaster happens. It's a well-studied problem and human nature. Once complacency happens, things go downhill very fast (humans just aren't good at monitoring and doing repetitive, boring jobs, which is why we automate. Plenty of analysis has been done in other situations.
I think it should be turned in.
The summary even stated what it was about - "providing reasonably accurate time". Sure it's not a full technical description, but it's a good quick summary of the project and what NTP is. If you want more, look it up. If not, you know it's not something you're interested in.
Better than that Opa summary.
Actually, I see it as one better - if you need software for a particular class, it can be distributed and licensed properly via Steam. If the alternative is to run it on the lab computers, it makes sense to have this as a way for people to do the work using the software at home using a personal install. It beats distribution via CD (and often pesky license key hassles). All the student has to do is launch Steam, select the program and download and install.
That, I think is the biggest benefit. Especially since it's targeted at the highschool group.
Compared to the rest of Canada, the south-west part of BC has some of the best climate around. Winters generally don't get too cold (anything lower than -5C in the morning is unusual), and summers aren't too hot (rarely above 30C), and there may be a lot of rain, there's less snow (and less driving in it). Not all sun and beach weather all year, but it beats having to sit through day highs of -10C in the winter and 35C+ summer (like what Eastern Canada is currently experiencing).
Nevermind days in spring where it's cool enough to go skiing followed by a warm afternoon to go golfing (on the same day).
For a number of people, $15k is probably about right. Though, foreign talent will be much harder to come by - especially if you want an American.
For hardware, to combat failures you overdesign it. E.g., if it's powered by the AC line, you make sure the power supply components are overrated for their worst case load (derating of parts makes them last much longer).
If there's an alarm, you add a microphone and light sensors to determine that if you're in the alarm state, there is an alarm sound playing and the lights are flashing. You build in extra annunciators as well just in case the LED dies. You count 75% battery capacity as "low battery".
And yes, I've seen those countermeaures actually implemented for a medical device.
Of course, it also impacts software as now it's even more complex as it has to handle and detect these conditions as well
Yeah, that's why I can buy a 1080p monitor for $200, Or if you want a 15" laptop that has something better than 1366x768.
The real price of computing hasn't gone down - it's still around $1000-1500 for a decent laptop (which is admittedly cheaper than in the past, but for the last few years, prices dropped, but decent PCs haven't). All that's happened is manufacturers have found more ways to build to a price.
Even then it's not so successful - try buying a netbook these days. What was once a flourishing segment with dozens of models is now reduced to a few.
Hell, we all bitched when hard drives got into the cost-cutting game and ended up with warranties down to a year (which sitll do exist - though higher priced retail ones can give you up to 5 again).
All the innovation that's happening is less technology, and more "how can we save a penny on this part" or "do we need to use this expensive chip when this older cheaper one works?" (and still call it validly an i3/i5/i7 CPU, though last-gen), etc.
Most contactless (hah - you usually end up touching the reader with your card) transactions are a free-for-all for stuff under $25. No PIN, no swipe, no signature. Just tap and go (debit AND credit).
Just make a semi-realistic looking card (the cashier doesn't handle it - you just have to flash it and tap the reader) and you're done.
And $25 is small, but it doesn't mean you can't make larger purchases. After all, you can always use it to buy $25 gift cards one at a time then use them all at once to purchase something for $100 (happens often enough everywhere - people get small gift cards as gifts).
Larger transactions the reader doesn't work - you have to use the chip.
Thta's quite hard actually, because Sony's like Google in that regard - they're big enough that they have tentacles everywhere that are practically impossible to avoid.
E.g., Sony makes a lot of components - especially imaging ones. A Sony camera sensor can be in your digital camera (point and shoot/dSLR), your cellphone camera may hae a Sony sensor. Your PC might have Sony batteries. If you play Blu-Rays, you are using Sony's patents in that (and probably Sony has a pile related to h.264 as well, covering practically all media), etc. etc.
Actually, humanity's general benevolence also led us to well, where we are today technologically. After all, if we decided the best way to survive was compete for food rather than cooperate and trade, we wouldn't be anywhere close to where we are now.
Think about it - if you're fighting off your neighbours, you don't have time to think about arts, technology, etc. (Same goes for those calling for anarchy - once all the bullets run out, now what? No one's going to make a factory that makes bullets if people keep breaking in, plus the stuff about acquiring raw materials and energy to process them).
Now, granted, many of man's greatest achievements happened during periods of heightened readiness, but that's one of some unknown foriegn entity and nothing really ever happens (usually a peace treaty is worked out as everyone still rather prefers it than an all-out war).
The problem right NOW is that space suits are actually form-fitted - they're not generic garments you can put on (except maybe in an emergency). Every astronaut has their own that fits them.
I don't know about the Russian suits - they may be made in a more generic fashion and then have laces that fit them to a particular astronaut for that mission and then re-fitted to someone else.
But that's the state of them right now. The reason is simple - they're bulky enough that if something doesn't fit right, it'll be even worse in a vacuum (and possibly dangerous).
For bulletproof vests, the math is a lot different - given they have a max life of around 5 years, they need to be replaced fairly often. And there's a huge worldwide demand (don't forget military!). They're generically made garments with sizing velcro to fit them to the person, so it's easier to stock a range of sizes as if they were normal clothing.
As for why you have a suit - the challenger disaster revealed that the astronauts actually survived the explosions, only to die of hypoxia in the thin air. If you look at shuttle photos before and after, you'll see they used light jumpsuits prior to the disaster, and then wore the orange pressure suits (launch/reentry suits) afterwards.
Wouldn't have helped Columbia (which broke up during reentry when the frictional heating was highest), as they're not made to handle extreme atsmosphere re-entry temperatures - just for cases of decompression.