2) Person is in a reception dead zone. (Soon to literally be a dead zone.)
3) Disaster scenario: What happens to mobile phone reception?
Both of those are current problems with the MedicAlert system (since it requires a phone call, as well). To suggest they're unique to the QR system is ignorant, at best. They also affect (to a lesser degree) a paramedic's access to information the hospital already has. If you're being pulled from a car crash in a tunnel, they're not going to have your information, and that's just too bad.
You know, you don't HAVE to make the call. There are people who can make calls for you.
First off - there's a wonderful technology called "radio" that paramedics have access too, that works as long as you can see the repeater. It's only simplex, but I'm sure before cellphones were ubiquitous, calling in to base asking them to call MedicAlert wouldn't be a huge issue. After all, paramedics didn't run to payphones to place a call.
Also a wonderful way for a paramedic to call in for more help if necessary.
Oh, radio works in disaster scenarios as well. They're independent of the cell network. And heck, there are wonderful people known as "ham radio operators" who have a backup radio network as well. And they have both short and long-range communications (though long range may take longer because of additional relay hops).
It would have been a disaster. Just about every operating system vendor, programming toolkit, developer of document formats and protocols would have to amend licenses to grant developers the rights to access the outward facing layers. Big guys like Microsoft could just crush projects like Wine. It would have been absolute chaos and would have created years of uncertainty, not to mention the fact that as the EU has already ruled APIs cannot be copyrighted, it would have created a monstrous rift in IP rules between Europe and the United States.
What about GPL projects? Like say, the Linux kernel?
If APIs cannot be copyrighted, does it mean I can use header files from Linux in my proprietary kernel module without having to go through all sorts of wrappers?
Or say other projects which support plugins - since the API for the plugin is not copyrightable, does it mean I am no free to write proprietary plugins for GPL projects?
And, if you're lucky enough to have a phone that's supported by Cyanogenmod (or possibly other custom ROMs), you can make the display monochrome. Looks cool, except for photos/vid/web.
Or you have a pentile display, in which case black and white can turn into color due to the way it works. There was a project created around the time of the Nexus One that turned regular color photos into specially coded black and white ones. When displayed on an RGB display, it appeared black and white. When displayed on the One's pentile display, it was in color.
From the article: Technicolor, which made the first colour movie 90 years ago, holds key patents in digital audio and video....I have to wonder if it's related to H264...
h.264 licensing is different than normal patents, like say, cellphones. The 3GPP decided they didn't want to form a patent pool licensing organization, so to produce a cellphone, you have to negotiate with everyone else for their patent. It's what the Samsung v. Apple, Motorola v. Apple lawsuits are about - licensing of essential patents.
h.264 was created by the MPEG working group. They decided to create the MPEG Licensing Authority (MPEG-LA) to manage the patent portfolio. If you want to implement h.264 in your product, you speak wit the MPEG-LA and pay a set per-device fee (ensuring everyone pays the same amount for the same purpose). The money paid in is then passed to patent holders at a set rate. Short of hidden submarine patents, it's the reason why none of the companies involved in h.264 are suing each other or anyone else. As long as the license is paid for, you're paid up and can use those patents for h.264 within the limitations of your fee schedule. Of course, the situation is different regarding patents in h.264 and non-h.264 video codecs.
Also why Apple's having a hard time with nano-SIM - Apple has a patent on it. Even if Apple gives the patent for free, it devalues the amount Apple will pay to Nokia/RIM/Samsung/Motorola/etc to license their patents. Those guys know who's bringing in the money and will oppose Apple at every step. Doesn't matter how technically superior Apple's spec is - they'll go for a clumsier version if it means Apple has to pay up.
I am in the UK and anything based in the USA, or controlled by US companies is by default insecure.
Sorry guys but anything your spooks think they can get away with fooling around with is not suitable for anything remotely confidential. That won't stop some crook who happens to work stealing it, as happened in NZ but we have to at least try.
And that is before we get into your commercial 'confidentiality' practices...
Perhaps you guys might consider offshoring your secure storage to somewhere with some decent Information Governance regulations.
Actually, that's why Microsoft created the private cloud version of Office365 (the "for Government" part). Right now, if any country chooses it, there's no guarantee where data is stored. It was one egg-in-face moment when Microsoft announced that Google doesn't guarantee your data is stored locally, then realized the same applied to it.
This is an attempt to rectify that - letting and ensuring that data is stored where you want it to be stored.
It's a big problem because yes, any data stored on a US machine is subject ot US laws, where even Canadian companies dealing with the Harper Government have to ensure that the data doesn't leave Canadian soil (yes, storing on a US server counts).
It's one of those more obvious errors about the cloud and government that you'd think the cloud providers would've thought of...
There are two NASAs: The Bad NASA that wastes billions on manned pork rockets to nowhere and the Good NASA (Jet Propulsion Lab) that has had one success after another with unmanned probes. I love it when the ex-pilots who run NASA try to take credit for JPL's success, even when they are trying to kill planetary exploration in favor of more manned pork.
There's actually a 3rd NASA. It's the "hidden NASA" that very few notice - I'll give you a hint - it deals with the first "A".
NASA actually does a lot of research/testing for aeronautics. It's just relatively low-key. If you're a pilot, you also keep a handy stack of NASA Aviation Safety Reporting forms with you (NASA is tasked as a neutral party to manage aviation safety issues - NASA anonymizes the forms before forwarding to the NTSB/FAA).
It's only the space parts that get all the glory. All the down-on-Earth parts work in relative obscurity.
I'm so glad they made the ID a fixed length 16-digit number. Experience shows that we are very good at predicting the total number of IDs ever to be needed.
You know, a financial payment card (credit card, debit card, etc) are 16 digits in length, The first 6 are special as is the last, which mean there are 9 unique ID digits in it. Yet we don't seem to be running out of numbers even though when a bunch get "liberated" from a payment processor, most financial institutions simply re-issue a new number to you. (And it's not like they dare re-issue an old number either - otherwise they could've saved all the effort and stayed with 14-digit numbers). There seems to be little concern about running out of card numbers.
And if they did the number coding right, they could make it a 17 digit number so when we're all spacers and such, you can prepend "0" to all existing numberholders and it'll still work out.
Good - class action lawsuits are bad for the individual consumers anyway, only make money for the law firms. I'd rather 200 people file small claims suits than someone file a class action.
Class actions are for wrongs done to many. Is it better to steal $1 from 100,000 people, or $100,000 from 1 person? (or any mix in-between)?
Without class-action lawsuits, it IS better to steal $1 from 100,000 people because you can get off scot-free (who's going to sue you for $1?). Given court costs, you can probably get away with stealing $100-200 from those people (filing fees plus time and effort). And out of that, only 200 people really would bother doing it on principle, to which the company doesn't have to do a thing - just pay back that amount of money.
If you do the math, stealing $100 from 100,000 people is $10M. Refunding 200 people that $100 is just a $20,000 chunk of change. Do it well enough and you can actually make money for "free" this way.
And yes, the numbers are like that - how many people sue spammers? They're literally stealing money daily - sure it's a penny or so (probably closer to a quarter when all costs are added up via higher ISP prices because of equipment purchases, etc).
Oh, and yes it happens to everyone. I'm sure if you go through your bills, you'll find some bogus charges ($3/month for touch-tone service? $7/month for "government regulatory fees"? This can easily add $10M+ to the bottom line). Plenty of fake voicemail charges being slammed onto phone bills.
This can also apply to say, the eBooks thing going on at the DoJ. Let's assume they're all guilty of raising prices - what are you going to do? Sue them for the $100 extra you paid in eBooks (and that will have to be split among Apple and the publishers, so if you sue 4 publishers and Apple, it's $20-ish average)?
Another incident - a communications company alerted its contract holders it's raising prices by $5-15/month. If they want out of their contract, they still have to pay the ETF (~$200).
A class action is less about making the class whole (because the amounts lost are generally very small to begin with - and after time/money in filing, even smaller), but to instead punish companies so that stealing even trivial amounts of money from large numbers of people is not an option.
Get rid of 'em, and you'll find yourself trapped in contracts where the company can jack up prices a little bit at a time with no consumer recourse. Sue? Sure, you'll make the money back minus fees, but it'll probably cost you a day off sitting in court.
Linus could, if he so desired, declare he will no longer accept GPL2 patches or code, and in probably just 10 or 20 years there would be no remaining GPL2 code in the kernel, probably. Aside from whatever personal views Linus has about the GPL3, re licensing linux just isn't going to happen, at least not any time soon.
You do know it's against the GPL to combine GPLv2-only with GPLv3-only code, right? Even the FSF says so. You can combine GPLv2+ with GPLv3 no issues, but using v3 code will violate the license of v2-only code!
The only thing that's come out of the GPLv3 license is that companies are now going through their software licensing policies, demanding the same scrutiny over open-source code as they are over commercially-licensed code. Including stuff like license reviews and software approvals. I've seen them mandate that if you wish to use software outside of a pre-approved list, it has to be reviewed by Legal - and it applies whether the software is for internal use only, or to be incorporated into the end product. Heck, even an edict came down along the lines of "No GPLv3 software will be approved - don't even try".
Reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend a while back. I'm not saying that Apple makes the bestest stuff evers, but if other smartphones really do have sharper screens than the iPhone, why are they not touting that? Am I just living under a rock?
Because they aren't.
If we take the 720p display on the Gnex, and assume that its Pentile resolution is equal to RGB resolution, it's got a lower pixel density still than the iPhone display.
Reason? The iPhone display is 3.5", as it has been for the past 5 years. The Gnex has a 4" screen. That 0.5" extra is enough to drop the pixel density to under 300dpi.
Assuming that the pixels on pentile are equivalent, though. If you're rendering a sharp edge like text, the effective resolution is much lower (pentile works best for photos and smooth transitions where the short-changed matrix is hidden by dithering).
Also, Samsung's new AMOLED displays are 720x1280, which have more pixels than the iPhone's 640x960. You can put more stuff on a bigger screen with more pixels.
Only the non-Pentile crap ones. I think Samsung has a 720p non-Pentile display which will be super-sharp, but the pentile ones, not so good. For normal use, because the UI is scaled to the size of the display rather than everything being super tiny, it's great. But once something tries to use all the pixels individually, it breaks down to a horrible mess - text becomes a shimmery mess of colors. Sorta like an Apple II display with all the purple and green fringing.
The 720p display for most things on my Gnex is great - enough pixels are used that things don't look too bad. But some games think it's a larger display and make everything smaller, which starts showing the fringing and color oddity effects.
Some of this is due to fashion and some of it to what has looked at times like a concerted negative PR attack from the competition. The Playbook on which I'm writing this is a convenient and useful tablet. RIM is now like Apple was at OS 9.2, except BB 7.1 isn't as bad as 9.2 was. Perhaps they will emulate Apple. Perhaps they will sink without trace. Still, old people like me who like real keyboards may hope to pick up a 9900 or a 9790 for silly money later this year. The 9790 is a small, convenient, well built and specified phone which would have been eye-opening - in 2010.
To RIM's credit, they did survive the smartphone apocalypse that happened in 2007. The iPhone, iike it or not, changed everything. The old stalwarts of smartphones were wiped out - Symbian, Windows Mobile, PalmOS. A new generation of platforms emerged - Android, Windows Phone (and of course, iOS). RIM is basically the only "old stalwart" smartphone company still selling smartphones of that era today.
Of course, the blackberry also represents stuff hated these days - the leash to the office of 24/7 connectivity, and while the iPhone and Androids evolved, the blackberry has had minor updates. (Until later this year, when BBX comes out).
The playbook is basically a decent tablet, yes, but that's because all the other $200 tablets suck. The playbook was a joke when it was released at $500 and only until they took a massive price cut did it even begin selling.
a "special" minority of people go round people's houses and make sure they vote the "right" way.
This.
Here's a great way to do it - you go knocking on people's door with a WWAN-equipped tablet or laptop and say "Hi, we're petitioning for issue foo. We think it should pass, do you agree? If so, help us by signing our petition". Of course, the petition is really either the voting site thinly veiled (i.e., by signing, you're directly voting that way) or just some fancy proxy that votes for you.
(A petition is a request to put something up to vote, not how you'd actually vote...)
That's why the Nook Tablet came with a locked bootloader, whereas the original Nook Color spawned a large ROM'mer community. Netflix required it in order to let them use their app. I think I'd rather deal with DRM for paid downloads than have my whole device locked down.
If you want Netflix HD you need a locked down Android. Netflix (with standard def) is available for all Androids - locked or not. It's why the Nook tablet's netflix video is better than the Kindle Fire's - the Fire's drawing from the SD low res stream, the Nook from the HD stream.
Maybe, they don't record but use something like DSP analysis to trigger an event when an audio signature event is detected? Considering the audio is being "captured" and "analyzed" it does raise the question; is this equivalent to "recording?"
But why not have a buffer, I wonder? Say, 5 minutes worth? Then, when a gunshot is detected that 5 minutes of audio can be saved along with subsequent audio providing context around the shot. If no gunshot (or automobile backfire?) is detected, the start of the 5 minute memory buffer would simply disappear.
Well, it's the same as Google. Is GMail's mail scanning to determine ads to show you "reading" your mail? In a technical sense, yes it is, but in a practical sense, it isn't since it's being "read" or "recorded" by a purely mechanical device that cannot comprehend what is being said (for now).
As for the audio recording - it's a camera. The way the system works is it hears a gunshot, figures out where it came from (it's a microphone array), then pans/tilts/zooms the camera to that position to possibly catch the shooter on video. It may do some audio recording purely for identification purposes - to make sure it triggered on a gunshot and not say, a backfire in case the image is vague. For this you'd need a short backbuffer to provide context (and probably why the argument was recorded - they just happened to be arguing when a gunshot went off around them). Of course, if they were arguing and one pulled a gun and fired at the other...
The whole purpose is basically to cut down on calls of gunshots fired - because usually the caller is wrong, it's not gunshot but someone with a loud rapport. So being able to identify real gunshots from merely someone making a loud noise means not having to send someone out to investigate and maybe pre-call ambulances
Or tor. Or VPN endpoints overseas. Or ssh tunnels.
I don't really see how legislation can reasonably expect to keep up with technological innovation.
Easy way is to limit "overseas" access. Australian limits on Internet were quite... low - think 10GB-ish. But the catch was that if it was within country, it was "free" and "unlimited" (hence a lot of local mirrors and Steam and other services being colocated there). So any attempts to use an outside VPN mean that you're just using up your quota faster.
The old reason was technical - the only way to get Internet access was either satellite or someone laying a cable, and the cable was the bottleneck...
I find it odd that, with his background is video games, the mac is not a more successful gaming platform.
Actually, Steve Jobs HATED games. If he had his way he wouldn't have it on his Mac platform (he wanted people to think of the Mac as a tool, not a toy).
Of course, over the years he softened his stance which basically led to iOS being one of the top portable gaming consoles around. (And yes, an iDevice IS a console - completely with console-like development mentality and approvals. The only thing it lacks are the demands for secure office space separate from residential accommodations [though some exist if you want the latest iDevice prototypes], company approval [Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony will not talk to you unless your well known], and cost [a Mac+iDevice will cost less than just a single developer platform (Nintendo - $5k, Microsoft/Sony - $10k, leased, not owned)]0.
It's an interesting experiment and I'm not sure if Apple really intended to be in the console game business...
Second problem.... 20 years ago the DOD had their own processor manufacturing facilities, IC chips, etc. They were shut down in favor of commercial equipment because some idiot decided it was better to have an easier time buying replacement parts at Radioshack than buying quality military-grade components that could last in austere environments. (Yes, speaking from experience). Servers and workstations used to be built from the ground up at places like Tobyhanna Army Depot. Now, servers and workstations are bought from Dell.
Fabs are expensive. The latest generation nodes cost billions of dollars to set up and billions more to run. If they aren't cranking chips out 24/7, they're literally costing money. Yes, I know it's hte military, but I'm sure people have a hard time justifying $10B every few years just to fab a few chips. One of the biggest developments in the 90s was the development of foundries that let anyone with a few tens of millions get in the game of producing chips rather than requiring billions in startup costs. Hence the startup of tons of fabless companies selling chips.
OK, another option is to buy a cheap obsolete fab and make chips that way - much cheaper to run, but we're also talking maybe 10+ year old technology, at which point the chips are going to be slower and take more power.
Also, building your own computer from the ground up is expensive - either you buy the designs of your servers from say, Intel, or design your own. If you buy it, it'll be expensive and probably require your fab to be upgraded (or you get stuck with an old design - e.g., Pentium (the original) - which Intel bought back from the DoD because the DoD had been debugging it over the decade). If you went with the older cheaper fab, the design has to be modified to support that technology (you cannot just take a design and run with it - you have to adapt your chip to the foundry you use).
If you roll your own, that becomes a support nightmare because now no one knows the system.
And on the taxpayer side - I'm sure everyone will question why youre spending billions running a fab that's only used at 10% capacity - unless you want the DoD getting into the foundry business with its own issues.
Or, why is the military spending so much money designing and running its own computer architecture and support services when they could buy much cheaper machines from Dell and run Linux on them?
Hell, even if the DoD had budget for that, some bean counter will probalby do the same so they can save money from one side and use it to buy more fighter jets or something.
30+ years ago, defense spending on electronics formed a huge part of the overall electronics spending. These days, defense spending is but a small fraction - it's far more lucrative to go after the consumer market than the military - they just don't have the economic clout they once had. End result is the miliary is forced to buy COTS ICs, or face stuff like a $0.50 chip costing easily $50 or more for same just because the military is a bit-player for semiconductors.
I would love for Paypal to have some competition. There asinine policies and terrible customer service have forever turned me of to the service.
That part of paypal already has competition.
Paypal's bread-and-butter are random two-people-get-together-and-send-money transactions. Try paying your friend with a credit card - unless your friend runs a business and has a merchant account set up, you can't. And if it's a somewhat significant amount of cash (e.g., $200+), it can be troubling for everyone involved. Paypal is the only service that makes it possible (well, you can use eGold or Western Union, but their cuts are even worse). Or try a random Craigslist transaction of significant value.
Especially in the age of eBay and internet shopping - sending money to random individuals is actually quite hard (other than credit card, you'd have to get off your ass, get a money order, stick it in an envelope, and send it out via the mail. Wait a week for it to arrive... then seller ships item...).
"ya know, THEY should be paying US (merchants) for accepting their cards..."
Yeah, cash that has to be sorted, counted, protected, insured, put in an expensive safe, guarded then transported by armored trucks with armed guards to a bank. For small mom and pop businesses it's risking your life when you transport the cash yourself.
2-3% to avoid all that is a bargain.
And that's what all the people forget. Operating a cash register is actually a lot harder than it appears - that tray the cashiers carry out contains a very *specific* amount of money in it, and the register gets told how much. As transactions are done, the register keeps track of how much should be in the tray. At the end of the shift, the cashier "cashes out" and the register closes out and prints out how much should be in the tray. Of course there will be discrepancies (people make mistakes) but they'll be low (a few dollars, tops).
It's this tracking that leads to stores shutting down cash transactions if the server goes out - electronic payments can go through fine, but having to go and manually record down cash tranasctions is a royal pain, especially since it has to be reconciled later.
And heck, I always wondered what the losses were to robberies at convenience stores and gas stations - those businesses may save money going cashless purely to from direct losses from the robbery (the cash lost) and indirect (counseling for employees, insurance, etc).
I'm not si sure I'm comfortable someone scanning my credit or especially debit Ward with a personal device like an ipad or iPhone. If its possible for a program to be written do do the transaction securely, then its possible for shadyy retailers to have an app on there that looks like the official app but that retains your card data. It easy enough to get your card duplicated with scanning it through consumer devices.
Well, a debit card is riskier, but that's easily mitigated by choosing a bank that offers the same protections for debit as credit.
For credit, it's easy - if your card is used to purchase something you didn't buy, you call your card company, say it's a fraudulent charge, and they'll go investigate it and send you a new card just in case. And it's legally enforced, as well.
And it's a swipe transaction, not a chip transaction so the protections of chip don't apply. The oddball thing is that only now when we're moving away from swipe that everyone comes out with swipe readers.
Risk is higher with debit cards (it always seems pinpads are compromized), but that's a bank issue. With credit, it's less of an issue on the consumer side.
I still don't get why people seem to insist on different laws for "cyber" something versus "in real life" something. Bullying is bullying. Threats are threats. Adjust your existing laws accordingly, but they should cover both things the same way.
Because there are twp properties about the Internet that do not apply to local life as we're used to.
1) The internet memory is infinite, and forever. Attempts to wipe the memory result in it being more spread out and diverse (aka Streisand Effect). Once something is put on it, it's impossible to take down. To do otherwise requires some sort of DRM, and we know how effective that is.
2) The internet is global. What was once a simple scrawl on a bathroom wall is now a broadcast heard from Timbuktu to Antartica.
These two, taken together, mean that the damage from simple cyberbullying is far greater than it ever was.
Hell, think of the Romney "Gay Hazing" incidents. We can't tell the truth because it lies only between a few people and memories are fragile. However, had it happened today, it's an indelible record that the whole world will know about.
There's an Onion piece about "the last electable President" because he doesn't use any form of social network or the Internet and is some redneck from some small town no one's heard of and thus has no scandal to possibly contaminate his leadership.
Hell, if you're a kid being bullied on Facebook - print out those posts. If you're down in the dumps 10-15 years from now, you can probably sue the heck out of your bullies for making you unemployable by all those things they said so many years ago. It might work. Or hey, maybe use it to draw up scandals in the future.
Malware is written for the largest target available; currently that is Microsoft Windows. If many businesses switched to *nix on the destop it would become more popular and more malware would be written for it. That would take one back exactly where Windows is today. It may be a short term gain to switch to *nix but as a long term solution it is doomed. This phenomenon can be seen with OSX. As OSX becomes more popular more malware is being written for it. Remember I am talking about *nix on a desktop and not server.
Exactly.
And Linux users shouldn't feel smug, because the exploit used by Flashback affects Linux as well. It's just the payload was written to only affect MacOS X - the very same Java flaws that made Flashback get in the news were present in the Linux version as well.
Additionally - there ARE a lot of Linux malware out there. It's just instead of infecting the machine, they take advantage of the server role and use it serve malware. All the infected installations of websites using WordPress and other blogging software that are manipulated into serving up crap for Windows and MacOS X (Flashback was spread from infected webservers). I suppose we usually attribute these to "vulnerable" installations of Apache/WordPress/PHP/what-have-you rather than Linux itself, since in Linux we treat each piece of software that comes with the distribution as a separate component, whereas in Windows and MacOS X, we treat what it comes with as part of the OS even though they can be separate items (e.g., if a vulnerable Apache ships with OS X, we attribute it to OS X and not Apache)
As for using Linux to stay secure in the business - it seems that updates in Linux are just... horrible. Sure most distributions have excellent update mechanisms, and they do have superb patch and update times, but the big problem is an update can easily screw you over in weird and wonderful ways. It's usually at the point where no one installs updates until they come to a point where they can deal with breakage - e.g., project's over, now upgrade from Ubuntu 8.04 LTS to 12.04LTS. After all, who knows if an update will suddenly cause something to break and slip the release?
The point is that even IF Google continues to be the search engine of choice on Mobile (as it will on Android), they still make way less than they do on the desktop. Think of how much space on the desktop Google they devote to ads in the result. Now do a search on a mobile device - there is hardly any space left for ads anywhere after you display the results, perhaps one or two...
Google owns AdMob, THE largest mobile (hence the "Mob" part of their name) advertising network around. The mobile may have less real estate, but it means that they have to maximize the use of every pixel in the ad.
And Google's got the app space covered as well - AdMob owns that market as well with developers sticking ads at the bottom of the screen and inbetween on loading screens.
And let's not forget tablets. They're coming out with desktop-sized screen resolutions (and in some cases, exceeding them) I mean, there's supposed to be 2 Android tablets with 1920x1200 screens on them. That's probably larger than the vast majority of PC users. And there's the iPad with the odd but still high res 1536x2048 screen - a resolution usually only bested by pricier non-1080p 27" screens.
Heck, cellphones aren't lacking of pixels either - 720p screens are getting popular, and it seems the minimum "decent" resolution is quarter-1080p (960x540 - note, iPhone "retina" is double-VGA at 960x640).
I say there's plenty of pixels to come, but they have to be used intelligently. And guess what? There are companies whose sole purpose is mobile advertising. And Google owns the biggest one.
As far as the food industry is concerned, labelling is equivalent to banning genetically modified food.
As far as I am concerned, if they can't sell it for what it is, then they shouldn't be selling it.
That's the fear, anyways. Look at how hard restaurants fight to get their food to have *nutrition information* labels. You know, you can get more information about what you eat from a fast-food joint like McD's or BK, than you can at a sit-down restaurant.
Heck, even adding calorie counts to the menu (no mention of sodium/fat/etc) seems to have the belief that it'll bring the end of eating out forever.
The flip side is - well, consumers are perfectly free to ignore the new information on the menu. It's just some numbers after all.
Just like having GMO food labelled, the consumer is perfectly free to choose it over non-GMO food.
Hell, it also means they need to step up their marketing efforts - they've been coasting on consumer ignorance. If GMO food is as bad as they fear, all they need to do is lower prices - at some point, the "fear" of GMO is overridden by the pocketbook, after all. Heck, maybe if it passes the savings onto the consumer, it can be a good thing.
My laptop consumes around 20W for normal desktop use. The HDD is rated at something like 1.5W. Cutting 20% off that 1.5W will have a negligible impact on battery life.
Ah, but we're neglecting the rest of the system. While the laptop hard drive is busy loading data, the rest of the system is consuming 20W. If it takes a minute grinding away to do something (and you're waiting for it), that's 20W-m of energy used up. If a more efficient SSD cuts it down to 20 seconds, that's 6W-m, and you get to do your stuff sooner. Win-win - laptop consumes less energy while waiting o nthe hard drive, user gets going faster.
Basically, individual component battery life measurements aren't as relevant as whole system power measurement.
It's just like the old Tom's Hardware report that SSDs consume more CPU, when in reality it's because the SSD is returning data faster so the CPU is busier giving it new I/O to do.
Hell, an SSD can give an older system new life - I have an old work laptop with a core2duo ("Vista Ready" to give you its age) in it. Replaced its hard drive with an SSD (from 160GB down to 120GB), damn laptop super-snappy and responsive.
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You know, you don't HAVE to make the call. There are people who can make calls for you.
First off - there's a wonderful technology called "radio" that paramedics have access too, that works as long as you can see the repeater. It's only simplex, but I'm sure before cellphones were ubiquitous, calling in to base asking them to call MedicAlert wouldn't be a huge issue. After all, paramedics didn't run to payphones to place a call.
Also a wonderful way for a paramedic to call in for more help if necessary.
Oh, radio works in disaster scenarios as well. They're independent of the cell network. And heck, there are wonderful people known as "ham radio operators" who have a backup radio network as well. And they have both short and long-range communications (though long range may take longer because of additional relay hops).
What about GPL projects? Like say, the Linux kernel?
If APIs cannot be copyrighted, does it mean I can use header files from Linux in my proprietary kernel module without having to go through all sorts of wrappers?
Or say other projects which support plugins - since the API for the plugin is not copyrightable, does it mean I am no free to write proprietary plugins for GPL projects?
It DOES go both ways...
Or you have a pentile display, in which case black and white can turn into color due to the way it works. There was a project created around the time of the Nexus One that turned regular color photos into specially coded black and white ones. When displayed on an RGB display, it appeared black and white. When displayed on the One's pentile display, it was in color.
h.264 licensing is different than normal patents, like say, cellphones. The 3GPP decided they didn't want to form a patent pool licensing organization, so to produce a cellphone, you have to negotiate with everyone else for their patent. It's what the Samsung v. Apple, Motorola v. Apple lawsuits are about - licensing of essential patents.
h.264 was created by the MPEG working group. They decided to create the MPEG Licensing Authority (MPEG-LA) to manage the patent portfolio. If you want to implement h.264 in your product, you speak wit the MPEG-LA and pay a set per-device fee (ensuring everyone pays the same amount for the same purpose). The money paid in is then passed to patent holders at a set rate. Short of hidden submarine patents, it's the reason why none of the companies involved in h.264 are suing each other or anyone else. As long as the license is paid for, you're paid up and can use those patents for h.264 within the limitations of your fee schedule. Of course, the situation is different regarding patents in h.264 and non-h.264 video codecs.
Also why Apple's having a hard time with nano-SIM - Apple has a patent on it. Even if Apple gives the patent for free, it devalues the amount Apple will pay to Nokia/RIM/Samsung/Motorola/etc to license their patents. Those guys know who's bringing in the money and will oppose Apple at every step. Doesn't matter how technically superior Apple's spec is - they'll go for a clumsier version if it means Apple has to pay up.
Actually, that's why Microsoft created the private cloud version of Office365 (the "for Government" part). Right now, if any country chooses it, there's no guarantee where data is stored. It was one egg-in-face moment when Microsoft announced that Google doesn't guarantee your data is stored locally, then realized the same applied to it.
This is an attempt to rectify that - letting and ensuring that data is stored where you want it to be stored.
It's a big problem because yes, any data stored on a US machine is subject ot US laws, where even Canadian companies dealing with the Harper Government have to ensure that the data doesn't leave Canadian soil (yes, storing on a US server counts).
It's one of those more obvious errors about the cloud and government that you'd think the cloud providers would've thought of...
There's actually a 3rd NASA. It's the "hidden NASA" that very few notice - I'll give you a hint - it deals with the first "A".
NASA actually does a lot of research/testing for aeronautics. It's just relatively low-key. If you're a pilot, you also keep a handy stack of NASA Aviation Safety Reporting forms with you (NASA is tasked as a neutral party to manage aviation safety issues - NASA anonymizes the forms before forwarding to the NTSB/FAA).
It's only the space parts that get all the glory. All the down-on-Earth parts work in relative obscurity.
You know, a financial payment card (credit card, debit card, etc) are 16 digits in length, The first 6 are special as is the last, which mean there are 9 unique ID digits in it. Yet we don't seem to be running out of numbers even though when a bunch get "liberated" from a payment processor, most financial institutions simply re-issue a new number to you. (And it's not like they dare re-issue an old number either - otherwise they could've saved all the effort and stayed with 14-digit numbers). There seems to be little concern about running out of card numbers.
And if they did the number coding right, they could make it a 17 digit number so when we're all spacers and such, you can prepend "0" to all existing numberholders and it'll still work out.
Class actions are for wrongs done to many. Is it better to steal $1 from 100,000 people, or $100,000 from 1 person? (or any mix in-between)?
Without class-action lawsuits, it IS better to steal $1 from 100,000 people because you can get off scot-free (who's going to sue you for $1?). Given court costs, you can probably get away with stealing $100-200 from those people (filing fees plus time and effort). And out of that, only 200 people really would bother doing it on principle, to which the company doesn't have to do a thing - just pay back that amount of money.
If you do the math, stealing $100 from 100,000 people is $10M. Refunding 200 people that $100 is just a $20,000 chunk of change. Do it well enough and you can actually make money for "free" this way.
And yes, the numbers are like that - how many people sue spammers? They're literally stealing money daily - sure it's a penny or so (probably closer to a quarter when all costs are added up via higher ISP prices because of equipment purchases, etc).
Oh, and yes it happens to everyone. I'm sure if you go through your bills, you'll find some bogus charges ($3/month for touch-tone service? $7/month for "government regulatory fees"? This can easily add $10M+ to the bottom line). Plenty of fake voicemail charges being slammed onto phone bills.
This can also apply to say, the eBooks thing going on at the DoJ. Let's assume they're all guilty of raising prices - what are you going to do? Sue them for the $100 extra you paid in eBooks (and that will have to be split among Apple and the publishers, so if you sue 4 publishers and Apple, it's $20-ish average)?
Another incident - a communications company alerted its contract holders it's raising prices by $5-15/month. If they want out of their contract, they still have to pay the ETF (~$200).
A class action is less about making the class whole (because the amounts lost are generally very small to begin with - and after time/money in filing, even smaller), but to instead punish companies so that stealing even trivial amounts of money from large numbers of people is not an option.
Get rid of 'em, and you'll find yourself trapped in contracts where the company can jack up prices a little bit at a time with no consumer recourse. Sue? Sure, you'll make the money back minus fees, but it'll probably cost you a day off sitting in court.
You do know it's against the GPL to combine GPLv2-only with GPLv3-only code, right? Even the FSF says so. You can combine GPLv2+ with GPLv3 no issues, but using v3 code will violate the license of v2-only code!
The only thing that's come out of the GPLv3 license is that companies are now going through their software licensing policies, demanding the same scrutiny over open-source code as they are over commercially-licensed code. Including stuff like license reviews and software approvals. I've seen them mandate that if you wish to use software outside of a pre-approved list, it has to be reviewed by Legal - and it applies whether the software is for internal use only, or to be incorporated into the end product. Heck, even an edict came down along the lines of "No GPLv3 software will be approved - don't even try".
Because they aren't.
If we take the 720p display on the Gnex, and assume that its Pentile resolution is equal to RGB resolution, it's got a lower pixel density still than the iPhone display.
Reason? The iPhone display is 3.5", as it has been for the past 5 years. The Gnex has a 4" screen. That 0.5" extra is enough to drop the pixel density to under 300dpi.
Assuming that the pixels on pentile are equivalent, though. If you're rendering a sharp edge like text, the effective resolution is much lower (pentile works best for photos and smooth transitions where the short-changed matrix is hidden by dithering).
Only the non-Pentile crap ones. I think Samsung has a 720p non-Pentile display which will be super-sharp, but the pentile ones, not so good. For normal use, because the UI is scaled to the size of the display rather than everything being super tiny, it's great. But once something tries to use all the pixels individually, it breaks down to a horrible mess - text becomes a shimmery mess of colors. Sorta like an Apple II display with all the purple and green fringing.
The 720p display for most things on my Gnex is great - enough pixels are used that things don't look too bad. But some games think it's a larger display and make everything smaller, which starts showing the fringing and color oddity effects.
To RIM's credit, they did survive the smartphone apocalypse that happened in 2007. The iPhone, iike it or not, changed everything. The old stalwarts of smartphones were wiped out - Symbian, Windows Mobile, PalmOS. A new generation of platforms emerged - Android, Windows Phone (and of course, iOS). RIM is basically the only "old stalwart" smartphone company still selling smartphones of that era today.
Of course, the blackberry also represents stuff hated these days - the leash to the office of 24/7 connectivity, and while the iPhone and Androids evolved, the blackberry has had minor updates. (Until later this year, when BBX comes out).
The playbook is basically a decent tablet, yes, but that's because all the other $200 tablets suck. The playbook was a joke when it was released at $500 and only until they took a massive price cut did it even begin selling.
This.
Here's a great way to do it - you go knocking on people's door with a WWAN-equipped tablet or laptop and say "Hi, we're petitioning for issue foo. We think it should pass, do you agree? If so, help us by signing our petition". Of course, the petition is really either the voting site thinly veiled (i.e., by signing, you're directly voting that way) or just some fancy proxy that votes for you.
(A petition is a request to put something up to vote, not how you'd actually vote...)
If you want Netflix HD you need a locked down Android. Netflix (with standard def) is available for all Androids - locked or not. It's why the Nook tablet's netflix video is better than the Kindle Fire's - the Fire's drawing from the SD low res stream, the Nook from the HD stream.
Well, it's the same as Google. Is GMail's mail scanning to determine ads to show you "reading" your mail? In a technical sense, yes it is, but in a practical sense, it isn't since it's being "read" or "recorded" by a purely mechanical device that cannot comprehend what is being said (for now).
As for the audio recording - it's a camera. The way the system works is it hears a gunshot, figures out where it came from (it's a microphone array), then pans/tilts/zooms the camera to that position to possibly catch the shooter on video. It may do some audio recording purely for identification purposes - to make sure it triggered on a gunshot and not say, a backfire in case the image is vague. For this you'd need a short backbuffer to provide context (and probably why the argument was recorded - they just happened to be arguing when a gunshot went off around them). Of course, if they were arguing and one pulled a gun and fired at the other...
The whole purpose is basically to cut down on calls of gunshots fired - because usually the caller is wrong, it's not gunshot but someone with a loud rapport. So being able to identify real gunshots from merely someone making a loud noise means not having to send someone out to investigate and maybe pre-call ambulances
Easy way is to limit "overseas" access. Australian limits on Internet were quite ... low - think 10GB-ish. But the catch was that if it was within country, it was "free" and "unlimited" (hence a lot of local mirrors and Steam and other services being colocated there). So any attempts to use an outside VPN mean that you're just using up your quota faster.
The old reason was technical - the only way to get Internet access was either satellite or someone laying a cable, and the cable was the bottleneck...
Actually, Steve Jobs HATED games. If he had his way he wouldn't have it on his Mac platform (he wanted people to think of the Mac as a tool, not a toy).
Of course, over the years he softened his stance which basically led to iOS being one of the top portable gaming consoles around. (And yes, an iDevice IS a console - completely with console-like development mentality and approvals. The only thing it lacks are the demands for secure office space separate from residential accommodations [though some exist if you want the latest iDevice prototypes], company approval [Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony will not talk to you unless your well known], and cost [a Mac+iDevice will cost less than just a single developer platform (Nintendo - $5k, Microsoft/Sony - $10k, leased, not owned)]0.
It's an interesting experiment and I'm not sure if Apple really intended to be in the console game business...
Fabs are expensive. The latest generation nodes cost billions of dollars to set up and billions more to run. If they aren't cranking chips out 24/7, they're literally costing money. Yes, I know it's hte military, but I'm sure people have a hard time justifying $10B every few years just to fab a few chips. One of the biggest developments in the 90s was the development of foundries that let anyone with a few tens of millions get in the game of producing chips rather than requiring billions in startup costs. Hence the startup of tons of fabless companies selling chips.
OK, another option is to buy a cheap obsolete fab and make chips that way - much cheaper to run, but we're also talking maybe 10+ year old technology, at which point the chips are going to be slower and take more power.
Also, building your own computer from the ground up is expensive - either you buy the designs of your servers from say, Intel, or design your own. If you buy it, it'll be expensive and probably require your fab to be upgraded (or you get stuck with an old design - e.g., Pentium (the original) - which Intel bought back from the DoD because the DoD had been debugging it over the decade). If you went with the older cheaper fab, the design has to be modified to support that technology (you cannot just take a design and run with it - you have to adapt your chip to the foundry you use).
If you roll your own, that becomes a support nightmare because now no one knows the system.
And on the taxpayer side - I'm sure everyone will question why youre spending billions running a fab that's only used at 10% capacity - unless you want the DoD getting into the foundry business with its own issues.
Or, why is the military spending so much money designing and running its own computer architecture and support services when they could buy much cheaper machines from Dell and run Linux on them?
Hell, even if the DoD had budget for that, some bean counter will probalby do the same so they can save money from one side and use it to buy more fighter jets or something.
30+ years ago, defense spending on electronics formed a huge part of the overall electronics spending. These days, defense spending is but a small fraction - it's far more lucrative to go after the consumer market than the military - they just don't have the economic clout they once had. End result is the miliary is forced to buy COTS ICs, or face stuff like a $0.50 chip costing easily $50 or more for same just because the military is a bit-player for semiconductors.
That part of paypal already has competition.
Paypal's bread-and-butter are random two-people-get-together-and-send-money transactions. Try paying your friend with a credit card - unless your friend runs a business and has a merchant account set up, you can't. And if it's a somewhat significant amount of cash (e.g., $200+), it can be troubling for everyone involved. Paypal is the only service that makes it possible (well, you can use eGold or Western Union, but their cuts are even worse). Or try a random Craigslist transaction of significant value.
Especially in the age of eBay and internet shopping - sending money to random individuals is actually quite hard (other than credit card, you'd have to get off your ass, get a money order, stick it in an envelope, and send it out via the mail. Wait a week for it to arrive... then seller ships item...).
And that's what all the people forget. Operating a cash register is actually a lot harder than it appears - that tray the cashiers carry out contains a very *specific* amount of money in it, and the register gets told how much. As transactions are done, the register keeps track of how much should be in the tray. At the end of the shift, the cashier "cashes out" and the register closes out and prints out how much should be in the tray. Of course there will be discrepancies (people make mistakes) but they'll be low (a few dollars, tops).
It's this tracking that leads to stores shutting down cash transactions if the server goes out - electronic payments can go through fine, but having to go and manually record down cash tranasctions is a royal pain, especially since it has to be reconciled later.
And heck, I always wondered what the losses were to robberies at convenience stores and gas stations - those businesses may save money going cashless purely to from direct losses from the robbery (the cash lost) and indirect (counseling for employees, insurance, etc).
Well, a debit card is riskier, but that's easily mitigated by choosing a bank that offers the same protections for debit as credit.
For credit, it's easy - if your card is used to purchase something you didn't buy, you call your card company, say it's a fraudulent charge, and they'll go investigate it and send you a new card just in case. And it's legally enforced, as well.
And it's a swipe transaction, not a chip transaction so the protections of chip don't apply. The oddball thing is that only now when we're moving away from swipe that everyone comes out with swipe readers.
Risk is higher with debit cards (it always seems pinpads are compromized), but that's a bank issue. With credit, it's less of an issue on the consumer side.
Because there are twp properties about the Internet that do not apply to local life as we're used to.
1) The internet memory is infinite, and forever. Attempts to wipe the memory result in it being more spread out and diverse (aka Streisand Effect). Once something is put on it, it's impossible to take down. To do otherwise requires some sort of DRM, and we know how effective that is.
2) The internet is global. What was once a simple scrawl on a bathroom wall is now a broadcast heard from Timbuktu to Antartica.
These two, taken together, mean that the damage from simple cyberbullying is far greater than it ever was.
Hell, think of the Romney "Gay Hazing" incidents. We can't tell the truth because it lies only between a few people and memories are fragile. However, had it happened today, it's an indelible record that the whole world will know about.
There's an Onion piece about "the last electable President" because he doesn't use any form of social network or the Internet and is some redneck from some small town no one's heard of and thus has no scandal to possibly contaminate his leadership.
Hell, if you're a kid being bullied on Facebook - print out those posts. If you're down in the dumps 10-15 years from now, you can probably sue the heck out of your bullies for making you unemployable by all those things they said so many years ago. It might work. Or hey, maybe use it to draw up scandals in the future.
Exactly.
And Linux users shouldn't feel smug, because the exploit used by Flashback affects Linux as well. It's just the payload was written to only affect MacOS X - the very same Java flaws that made Flashback get in the news were present in the Linux version as well.
Additionally - there ARE a lot of Linux malware out there. It's just instead of infecting the machine, they take advantage of the server role and use it serve malware. All the infected installations of websites using WordPress and other blogging software that are manipulated into serving up crap for Windows and MacOS X (Flashback was spread from infected webservers). I suppose we usually attribute these to "vulnerable" installations of Apache/WordPress/PHP/what-have-you rather than Linux itself, since in Linux we treat each piece of software that comes with the distribution as a separate component, whereas in Windows and MacOS X, we treat what it comes with as part of the OS even though they can be separate items (e.g., if a vulnerable Apache ships with OS X, we attribute it to OS X and not Apache)
As for using Linux to stay secure in the business - it seems that updates in Linux are just ... horrible. Sure most distributions have excellent update mechanisms, and they do have superb patch and update times, but the big problem is an update can easily screw you over in weird and wonderful ways. It's usually at the point where no one installs updates until they come to a point where they can deal with breakage - e.g., project's over, now upgrade from Ubuntu 8.04 LTS to 12.04LTS. After all, who knows if an update will suddenly cause something to break and slip the release?
Google owns AdMob, THE largest mobile (hence the "Mob" part of their name) advertising network around. The mobile may have less real estate, but it means that they have to maximize the use of every pixel in the ad.
And Google's got the app space covered as well - AdMob owns that market as well with developers sticking ads at the bottom of the screen and inbetween on loading screens.
And let's not forget tablets. They're coming out with desktop-sized screen resolutions (and in some cases, exceeding them) I mean, there's supposed to be 2 Android tablets with 1920x1200 screens on them. That's probably larger than the vast majority of PC users. And there's the iPad with the odd but still high res 1536x2048 screen - a resolution usually only bested by pricier non-1080p 27" screens.
Heck, cellphones aren't lacking of pixels either - 720p screens are getting popular, and it seems the minimum "decent" resolution is quarter-1080p (960x540 - note, iPhone "retina" is double-VGA at 960x640).
I say there's plenty of pixels to come, but they have to be used intelligently. And guess what? There are companies whose sole purpose is mobile advertising. And Google owns the biggest one.
That's the fear, anyways. Look at how hard restaurants fight to get their food to have *nutrition information* labels. You know, you can get more information about what you eat from a fast-food joint like McD's or BK, than you can at a sit-down restaurant.
Heck, even adding calorie counts to the menu (no mention of sodium/fat/etc) seems to have the belief that it'll bring the end of eating out forever.
The flip side is - well, consumers are perfectly free to ignore the new information on the menu. It's just some numbers after all.
Just like having GMO food labelled, the consumer is perfectly free to choose it over non-GMO food.
Hell, it also means they need to step up their marketing efforts - they've been coasting on consumer ignorance. If GMO food is as bad as they fear, all they need to do is lower prices - at some point, the "fear" of GMO is overridden by the pocketbook, after all. Heck, maybe if it passes the savings onto the consumer, it can be a good thing.
Ah, but we're neglecting the rest of the system. While the laptop hard drive is busy loading data, the rest of the system is consuming 20W. If it takes a minute grinding away to do something (and you're waiting for it), that's 20W-m of energy used up. If a more efficient SSD cuts it down to 20 seconds, that's 6W-m, and you get to do your stuff sooner. Win-win - laptop consumes less energy while waiting o nthe hard drive, user gets going faster.
Basically, individual component battery life measurements aren't as relevant as whole system power measurement.
It's just like the old Tom's Hardware report that SSDs consume more CPU, when in reality it's because the SSD is returning data faster so the CPU is busier giving it new I/O to do.
Hell, an SSD can give an older system new life - I have an old work laptop with a core2duo ("Vista Ready" to give you its age) in it. Replaced its hard drive with an SSD (from 160GB down to 120GB), damn laptop super-snappy and responsive.