If you're using large intervals between keyframes for better compression, and you don't want the client to have to spend a bunch of CPU time decoding ten seconds of preroll starting at the previous keyframe, you need something on the server, which has far more CPU than a netbook, tablet, or smartphone, to reencode all frames between that point and the next keyframe.
The CPU is mostly idle playing back video - the GPU handles all the h.264 decodes and doing that consumes very little power.
And HTTP live streaming is basically a PLS file specifying a bunch of files to play back - a very trivial format that many players can actually handle (I think the Apple default handles around 30 seconds or so per file, letting you skip back quite easily.). It could be done with a basic webserver that only served up static pages (with someone else continually modifying the PLS file).
And the PLS file is the common every day playlist file format that every player for the last decade can handle.
As somebody who has worked on many embedded Linux devices in the past, and who continues to do so today, I can tell you that you're completely wrong. Even the cheapest embedded hardware we deal with today is more than powerful enough to handle Linux and glibc, and that's what almost everybody chooses to use. This has been true since about 2003-2004. In fact, it takes more work and effort to not use glibc these days! Nobody will take you seriously if you suggest having a single developer waste even a single day trying to use a non-glibc library in an embedded Linux system. It's much cheaper and more efficient to use the well-tested and very capable glibc, given that the embedded hardware constraints of the 1950s-1990s are no longer of any concern.
Not really. Most use uClibc internally, even though they could use glibc. uClibc and newlib are two of the more common libc's to use for embedded, even when there's plenty of flash and processor power to go around. Hell, there are piles of toolchains prebuilt around uClibc.
Heck, most embedded systems can get away from using busybox, but most choose to use it because the reference design chosen uses it (very few devices are customized beyond the basics - mostly cost reductions and such).
Honestly, I run across far few glibc based toolchains for cross compiling than non - uClibc/newlib's by far the more popular, and with the ease at which people can obtain it versus having to build it themselves. Heck, I'm sure the glibc folks weren't helping themselves by concentrating on x86-based systems.
Detecting gamma rays is pretty easy. Detecting within a few degrees which direction they came from is much harder. Lenses and mirrors won't work (at least, at any reasonable scale) to form an image.
Well, the obvious solution to how it works is light-field imaging. To which you may have heard of the Lytro camera that allows one to take pictures and refocus them later. A light-field camera takes not only the intensity of the light hitting it, but also direction (allowing for refocusing).
Since a gamma ray is just another form of EM radiation (ionizing, though), the camera would basically be a more advanced form of it. The technology to image it exists today.
Software defined radio has the government worried and paralyzed. The government is used to individually regulating the frequencies and power levels and signal characteristics of each kind of radio-using device. An AM/FM radio specifically does not pick up police or cell phone frequencies, and things like CBs and walkie-talkies and cellphones and baby monitors all have specific power levels and specific frequencies they can broadcast on, and they only broadcast in specific radio formats. And those limits are hard-baked into the devices by their exact circuitry. Software defined radio throws that entire idea out the window. A software defined radio is going to have some inherent power limit based on the exact hardware, and some minimum and maximum frequency range based on the hardware, but generally it can handle a very broad range from low frequency bands to high frequency bands, and they can send/detect absolutely any radio format over that entire range, and they can do it at full power. There's no way to regulate "don't detect police/cell frequencies", and no way to regulate "don't broadcast FM on what is supposed to be an AM band", and there is no way to regulate different power levels on different bands. Once you sell a software defined radio, the end user can load in any software they want.
Not really. You can receive any frequency you want - you can buy equipment that very easily receives 100kHz-3GHz, legally.
The only trouble is with transmit, and the FCC controls intentional radiators. And no, government is not worried about it because there are some Very Nasty Fines for transmitting illegally. And they're levied on you, the operator, not the equipment manufacturer (though they can be found liable for making the equipment as well if its sole purpose was to do it, or even lose FCC certification). Pirate radio? That's really small potatoes.
Heck, the government has allowed many people to build their own radio transmitters legally and encourages people to do so legitimately - for the cost of obtaining the appropriate license (which is really quite minimal - if you can build your own transmitter, you can afford the license). It's called amateur radio and it really gives people full flexibility in building intentional radiators.
But receiving is always free. And the 800MHz cell law is hopelessly obsolete since no one uses AMPS anymore. Decoding digital transmissions is a lot harder, especially since there are now over a dozen frequency bands to which a cell call can be transmitted
And transmitters also have the limitation that they're fairly narrowband devices because the amplifiers tend to not have huge bandwidths. At least if you don't want to generate such crappy output that makes it even easier for people to find you.
SDR is revolutionary, yes. Even the government is using SDR technology as part of their SIGINT programs because they're very effective at scanning huge swaths of frequencies at once and isolating signals. And they're quite cheap - a whole bank of SDRs packed into a rackable unit isn't that expensive and can gather easily 24+ different freqeuncies at once (at 192kHz bandwidth each - using cheap-ass 192kHz/24bit audio ADCs used for consumer electronics). The beauty of this is as long as the signal you're looking at is less than 192kHz wide, you can pick it up. And TV's pretty much one of the few signals that requires a bit more bandwidth (6MHz).
...but not on Slashdot, which just rolled out a Flash-based feature.
Which I find completely infuriating since it doesn't load half the time I want to use it... why couldn't they use YouTube, which makes it instantly work practically everywhere? Hell, my TiVo has YouTube so I can watch long videos on my nice big-screen!
A couple of months ago, they withdrew flash support for mobile, and now for Linux. it's like Adobe wants the death of flash.
It's because Adobe was spending a lot of money on Flash player and they still couldn't reach a very large market - iOS. Steve Jobs killed flash by not allowing it on iOS, and everyone else's "It has the full web" wasn't enough to sustain its development. Sure Android had it, but it ran crappily and appeared to be basically a checkbox feature "runs Flash" (instead of "runs Flash well").
iOS users didn't complain because most of the web still worked - YouTube videos played, Vimeo videos played, etc. There were a lot of Flash games that didn't, but they often had native apps that supported native OS features (Farmville addicted loved how Farmville notified you when it was ready, something the Flash version wouldn't be able to do).
The biggest loser would've been Flash ads that everyone blocks anyways, which losing those isn't a big deal on iOS, and Android users never activated them as well.
I suppose the continuous abuses of Flash to spread malware and super cookies soured the public on it. And the continuous maintenance of Flash required by Android users (it took a little while for the Xoom to finally get Flash player, ditto ICS). Adobe was hoping that iOS users would petition Apple to allow Flash, but in the end the only thing they ended up allowing was a Flash compiler to native iOS apps. Probably supports Android now, too.
What? So many posts and no one makes the obvious joke about Glibc being so big and bloated that it impacts high-speed-trading platforms? Really?
And that's a good reason not to not do the reverse memcpy, I agree. All I'm saying is that I'm weary of compromises that allows bad code to survive just to keep things running. I think that it works great in the short term, and gets your users happy that things are working again, but it just makes it more likely to break something else in the future as you make unrelated changes in the code. If the library user depends on implementation details instead of the API contract, you can inadvertently break him with routine maintenance. The end user certainly doesn't appreciate software that breaks with every six-month update. Like I said above, I would not be against a temporary compromise, as long as the actual bug gets fixed instead of grandfathered in.
And you're basically saying the difference between Apple and Microsoft. Microsoft has to work hard to keep bad code running - because the companies and users that run said bad code will more often blame the shiny new version of Windows that broke it, than the software itself (which worked fine with the last version). See Windows XP and Windows Vista (Vista broke many bad pieces of software).
Even worse is if you can't get access to the source to fix it (a potentially real problem for open-source as well, as more obscure packages simply die out and mirrors fade away, so the original source is literally unobtainable anymore).
Apple's mentality is to let said software break - they only support what's documented and if you code against it, you should be fine. But if you stray, don't expect the program to work in the next OS release. (And this has resulted in MANY spectacular breakages - from haxies (input manager hacks) to dock additions leading to unbootable systems). And yes, it happens on iOS a lot too when you see "Fixed issues running on latest version of iOS" in the update notes, or better yet, "We know about issues running on latest iOS".
As for which way is better - it really depends. The good thing with Linux is it tends to be really stable for long periods of time, so stick on an Ubuntu LTS and you're golden. Problems occur when upgrading (Android FroYo and Ubuntu 10.04 is a popular one when Sun JDK was removed and OpenJDK was not quite working). Though I suppose users would blame whatever Linux they're using if things break and stop working after an upgrade
I've read horror stories of being "slammed" to an expensive data plan once someone puts a SIM for a voice-only plan into a smartphone. Has AT&T stopped doing this, or has it never applied to GoPhone?
It's definitely possible.
Every GSM phone has an IMEI number, which is a globally unique serial number for the phone. It encodes the phone's serial number as well as stuff like model and submodel. This can often be used by carriers to determine if a phone will work on their network.
Sticking your SIM into a smartphone tells the carrier that you have a smartphone, and they can determine if they should be slamming you with a data plan. Of course, some carriers prefer to not tell you this and charge you per use - stuff like $0.05/kB (not kiB - note!), or roughly $50/MB (not MiB), in the hopes you'll add a data plan.
The only thing I'm concerned with though is Android. These are probably low end crapphones that barely run Android, and most likely stuck with 1.5, 1.6 or 2.1, maybe 2.2 if you're lucky...
...they tried to sell me a discount video card for $120, and then I went home and got it online, with overnight shipping for about $30. Similar story for hard drives or any kind of cable (they tried to sell me a SATA cable for $30 -- they're literally $1 online).
I find it funny that people blame Amazon's success and brick-and-mortar's failure on lack of sales taxes, when examples like these are rampant.
I've always wondered how this was possible. I mean, Amazon.ca's prices for CDs and books are generally good (it's usually selection moreso than price - it doesn't matter if you can't get it locally), but for popular books, at times Amazon is more expensive. $1 HDMI cables are nice but then the stores doing it don't offer free shipping, so you have to pay $20 in shipping, in which case going to Wal-Mart (who sells them for $20) is quicker and easier.
Online shopping in Canada is terrible. The only reason to do it is to get items you can't find in store. Hell, even our Best Buy (and Future Shop) stores, trying to encourage online sales, still have substantially more inventory in the store than the US version. (Always wondered - US Best Buys are just plain terrible in selection).
Even with the currency the way it is, B&M's still seem to manage to do better than online - I still pay the same sales tax, but I can get the item now rather than wait a week, and the cost is cheaper at the B&M (no shipping charges), or the price is the same (savings eaten by shipping).
Really doesn't make sense. And yes, I've paid more for stuff at Amazon only to discover it was $20 cheaper in a store. Quite annoying.
Anyone note the irony to which Sony is going? I mean, they're making the Xbox 2 - still x86 based (like the original Xbox).
Makes me wonder if Bunnie Huang and eveyrone else will dust off all the old Xbox hacks they have and give them a go on the new machine. Don't think Sony can secure it any better than Microsoft could. Heck, it would be amusing to see if Windows 8 would run on it...
Pennies cost more to make than their worth, that can't be good for an economy or cash strapped government. I wonder how Canadian retailers will price things now though. Instead of pricing something at $4.99, (to psychologically make you think it's $4 not $5) will they drop the price to $4.95 and lose 4 cents on every purchase, or just mark it up to an even $5.00? And yeah, even though that little trick doesn't work on most of us, it works on enough people that they keep doing it. Or at least US retailers do, I'm not sure about Canadian ones.
That trick is useful too because when people ask for "under $5", if the item costs $5, it technically isn't included in the search, but a $4.99 item will.
Anyhow, the price change would depend on the local tax rate. Here in BC where it's 12%, a $4.99 item would cost $5.59 after tax. Though they probably would price it at $4.97 for an after tax amount of $5.57, thus getting 3 cents for free. If the item was 99 cents though, they'd probably bump it to $1.01 or something to get a free couple of cents.
And other retailers will just round up and hope the customer doesn't catch it. I mean, if it says $5.61 on the register, they'd probably demand $5.65. And throw a big fuss if you try to object.
Yes, there are retailers that sc[au]mmy.
Of course, I'm not sure on why people hoard pennies. I spend them constantly turning them into more convenient change. Is it because they can't do the simple math so when a price comes up like $5.81 they can only make it $6? (I'd pay $6.01 and get two dimes in return). Heck, I had a price of $9.84 and I paid $10.09 to get a quarter back. (Even if I didn't have a nickle and 4 pennies, I'd use a dime to get a penny and quarter over getting a dime/nickel/penny combo).
This was before my new card arrived, which actually shortened the amount of time that I had no credit card. I wanted to know who had the breach, so I could avoid ever giving them business that wasnt cash based, but they would not tell me. That part pisses me off. There needs to be an awareness as to which vendors dont find it worth their time to protect me , so I can make a decision to not use them.
And what makes you think it was the *business* that was hacked? Retailers obtain a merchant account and the merchant bank provides the processing equipment. That equipment talks to a credit card processor who handles the transactions and transfers and such.
A credit card processor being breached means it affects MANY retailers at once. Boycotting one business over the breach may mean you're still vulnerable as your new go-to place can use the same processor.
For many businesses, there's nothing to breach - the information is temporairly stored on that terminal you use for the duration, and the only thing the retailer has is the tiny slip of paper they get at the end. Which is probably why credit card processors get attacked, rather than individual companies.
Even online companies do the same - that box you enter your information into may be temporarily hosted by the store, but the information is promptly forwarded to a credit card processor and forgotten by the store's server to reduce PCI requirements. Some make it obvious when they forward you to Google, Amazon or Paypal, or to a processor's site directly. Most don't, even though in the back end they're really proxying the processor's site.
According to TFA, they did do the final test, and it showed problems. Unfortunately, they came to the conclusion that the test was bad, not the mirror. They assumed that since the mirror was no longer on it's 'bed of nails', it was sagging under gravity, and that was causing the test error.
Given the thickness error in the mirror was less than the thickness of a piece of paper, that is a reasonable explanation. It was really small error given the size and weight of the mirror and gravity unfortunately does have a huge effect in slightly deforming such heavy optics. And yes, the optics were carved with gravity deformation in mind as well.
And the other bad thing is, well, the further something is away from you, the tighter the tolerances needed in order to resolve that object, so an error as tiny as it is makes for very blurry images.
The other reason Apple gets singled out is because of their singular ability to change things if they had the will to do so - manufacturerâ(TM)s will bend over backwards for an Apple contract in a way that they won't do for any other company.
Do you really want to give Apple this power? I mean, let's say Samsung shows off something that blows the iPad out of the water and pre0orders are lining up. You really want Apple to demand that Foxconn now double the salaries of all its workers, reduce working day to 40 hours and pay them time-and-a-half or double-time for hours over?
Because they can, and they will if it will kill the competition. Like say, a few months prior to said tablet's release, thus ensuring massive shortages and possibly a huge price jump on release day to pay for the increased costs.
Because if manufacturers are listening ot Apple, Apple can easily say "this applies to the entire company and other customers as well".
Which is odd. AFAIK, in Canada the government only seems to really care about tax returns if you owe (or they believe you owe) them money. In my case I've always filed my taxes anyhow... especially because the government tends to owe *ME* money at tax time, but I know others who file months or even years late when they don't owe money.
True. As long as you paid your estimate taxes you owe on time (always pay more), they don't care - you can always amend later.
The only reason to file tax returns when you don't have to is for government benefits - if there's a program you want, the eligibility criteria is often based on your tax return. Don't have one, you get denied. (This also applies to retirement savings and even someone with a summer job is encouraged to file taxes - they can often get the GST/HST credit (free money!) and build up savings room.
For those who owe taxes and don't file or pay an estimate, well, if your employer is honest, they already know what you make and assume you have no deductions, with the interest clock starting after April 30.
Anyone going to apply the same pressure to ALL the other computer/phone companies that use the same facilities? I know Slashdot has a extreme anti-Apple bias, but does it blind you to the obvious? The computer you're using right now has parts that were made by Foxconn.
Easy. Apple can, because it'll become a great competitive advantage.
Imagine Samsung is about to release a new phone, and Apple sends FLA inspectors to the Foxconn factory to ensure that it's not just Apple employees getting the good treatment. If the conditions are worse (because Apple forces inspections so Apple lines are nicer), then boom, line is shut down, and Samsung is short of phones.
Apple's got immense power now - they can point to what they're doing, and point to how bad everyone else is, and use that power to abuse their position.
I don't understand why not. Hardware makers sell hardware, not drivers. Why protect something you stand to make no money on. What's the worse that can happen? Could someone write a better driver than the hardware company? So? Am I going to refuse to buy a video card because I can download good drivers for it? What am I missing here?
The problem is a lot of hardware is heavily patented, and the patents cover the hardware-software combination.
A sound card would be the best example - you can have a basic sound card with open drivers (it's just a combination ADC and DAC on a board, after all). But then people want justification for their purchases, so you add in Dolby Headphone support to give you surround sound with headphones (patented, licensing fees to use). Or DTS/Dolby Digital encoders so people can get surround sound piped to their A/V receivers. Or HDMI audio injectors that support HDCP.
Ditto video cards - HDMI+HDCP is a spec that does not allow for open drivers. A lot of 3D technologies are patented, heavily.
Network cards - well the TCP offload egnines are considered "secret sauce" because a good TOE can ensure your host system can be full bandwidth and hardly take any CPU resources. And this can include onboard firmware for the onboard processors. LIkewise, WiFi is similar.
Nevermind software controlled parts of hardware that cannot be modified for compliance reasons.
Hell, half the hardware guys out there would kill if they can release the drivers as source and give it all away - less work for them to support (they can direct people to a community support page). Or just release the hardware and let the community write the damn driver for it.
Of course, there's also the irony in that Qualcomm supplies a lot of binary blobs for stuff using their processors... especially with Android.
The problem is twofold - all the good writers left, and the damned site design killed off all the thoughtful commenters and pageviews shrunk.
Because pageviews shrunk, all the leftover writers (who are paid by the pageview) have to scramble to raise viewership or get stuck with ever-shrinking paycheques.
So writing goes down, and it's more trolling and flamebaiting to get the eyeballs in. And when you stoop to that level, the only people who comment are trolls and it spirals down from there.
There are many more forums and commenters that offer wise and insightful comments. I mean, even/. have more thoughtful commenters (if you browse at +1) that what you get at gawker. Some other communities have even better commenters (e.g., Ars Technica), because their writing is generally high quality, unbiased (Gizmodo has officially claimed to be biased a few weeks ago), and informative. LIkewise the comments are same.
There are too many problems at Gawker. From lousy site design (you can't open more than 10-20 tabs before your browser chews through memory and CPU cycles - doing what in javascript, I don't know), to articles that really are flamebait to the loss of all the original writers. Gawker's dying.
I blame this part on the 4G standards body. If they had taken a hard stand when some carriers advertised "4G" when they were not, then AT&T and Apple and the like wouldn't have much room to argue. Instead there's some wiggle room as they can argue that 4G designation applies to them as well.
Yeah, and it's highly annoying. If you want an LTE device (phone, stick, hotspot, whatever), you can't just look at 4G devices, because an annoyingly large number of them are really just HSPA+.
Now, technically Apple sells the iPad as 4G, with LTE support. But since the iPad also supports HSPA+, if other HSPA+ devices are sold as "4G" devices, Apple's in the clear as it's just LTE is not supported and following everyone else's convention of calling HSPA+ "4G".
Now if Apple sells it at 4G LTE, they're in trouble since the "LTE" part doesn't work.
Heck, maybe at the end it'll clarify "faux G" from real 4G.
Technically, Red Hat's "product" is a compiled copy the Linux kernel and associated Open Source Packages required to create a working operating system. Yes the source is free, and Red Hat does follow through on the GPL obligations, but on it's own the source is useless, you can't actually use it without you or someone else spending the time and effort to compile it first. Thus Red Hat is "selling" a compiled and packaged form of the associated source code, however it's sold in the form of a subscription which includes access to software updates and some level of support.
So Red Hat's competing with CentOS, then? I mean, why pay for Red Hat binaries when I can get the equivalent by getting CentOS for free? And they're both built from the same sources.
Hell, Oracle's Linux is based on Red Hat's as well...
No, the compiled product is really not worth that much. The support though, is worth a lot, especially since Red Hat also charges for CentOS installs as part of its newer support agreements...
dodgy parts can come from anywhere... even reputable suppliers accidentally let the odd bad egg slip through the noose (i have worked in civil aviation as an engineer). that's why there is supposed to be inspection of parts and documentation at every step of the lifecycle.
You omit the fact that in the 80's, many American suppliers were caught with counterfeit airplane parts with stolen FAA tags on them. It got so bad it made it all the way into the presidential 747! And given the security of that, if counterfeit parts coming from American suppliers can still make it through... it's why the FAA in conjunction with the FBI did massive arrests.
The parts in question were basically time-expired or rebuilt worn parts resold as new.
Why does our own Government insist on purchasing military equipment and components from non-US suppliers? What is wrong with American industry that we have to send our money to other countries to have defense-essential items produced? One often hears the "Generals" say that this approach yields the best value for the American people. Tell me again how it is good for Americans to be put out of work and to not have the education and training to make them economically viable. Tell me again how it is a good thing to destroy American industry and employment opportunity by sending jobs to other countries. Tell me again how it is good for America to create a huge out-of-work and under-employed population. Tell me again how our being past our individual and national debt limits is a good thing. America is on a very slippery slope and is not going to recover if it stays on its current track.
Tell me again your reaction to the military purchasing $500 hammers and such, again. The problem has been the past 40 years or so, the defense department is no longer the technology driver it has been the past 150 or so. The ICs NASA used for Apollo? Mostly built and funded with DoD dollars.
But these days, the biggest driver of technology comes from the consumer sector.
If the DoD needs ICs for their newest jet avionics, they have to wait. I mean, I think the DoD is buying what, 2200 F-35's? That would mean that part counts would be a multiple of that, over a number of years. An IC supplier like Intel, IBM or Texas Instruments (who all have fabs in the US) would laugh at such pitiful quantities. Oh sure they'll sell the DoD parts, but given the special requirements for mil-spec parts, in quantities that these companies build at it would probably be double the price. But since only the DoD is ordering mil-spec parts, and not a lot of them, they're easily going to be 100x the cost because it's a special run.
Ditto if it's a regular IC - if you specify you want it fabbed specially for you, they can do it, it just costs a hell of a lot more money (especially if they have to build another set of masks as they're being used in fabs at other countries, and each mask is $100K or more which easily turns a complex chip into a $3M production run. If you only want 10 chips, you're looking at $300K/chip!).
If you want to save money (and the DoD's tends to like saving money for use on other things), you end up going with COTS parts that anyone can go to Digikey and order from. But then you run into issues like this (and even reputable dears like Digikey have been shipped bad parts too)
If Word would use a Mac developer certificate, starting in 10.8 Apple could pull the kill switch and the application would not launch on any Mac any more. However, that's quite a drastic step and would probably not be done in this case for such a widely-deployed piece of software.
Incorrect. Gatekeeper has 3 security settings. Most secure is "App Store Only" requiring Apple vetting the app. Default is "App Store and Mac Developer Certificate" which allows App Store apps, as well as 3rd party apps like Photoshop and Microsoft Office. The last setting is basically allow all apps. Even if Apple revokes Microsoft's certificate, the app can always be run in that mode.
Publishers have already managed to kill the used market for PC games with stuff like this. Console games are next. A lot of new console games are already requiring online activation for certain features (like Mass Effect 3). It's only a matter of time before they require online activation to work at all, and then ultimately require an online verification check each time the game is started.
A requiem for the days when consumers actually owned videogames, and could still play them just fine, even ten years later, using just the original game discs/cartridges.
Funny thing is, it's really how the console gaming market is dying.
The PC gaming market is "dead" to the traditional AAA publishers, however it's very much alive and thriving in the indie game market (no doubt helped by stuff like Humble Bundle).
Consoles don't have many avenues for indie developers because of platform requirements (usually either established companies or security requirements), and thus only the bigger publishers and the small breakout indie games show up.
And you see a lot of indie devs spurred to develop for smartphones and tablets as well - the Apple "consoles" being extremely popular. Hell, Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft may find an unexpected 4th contender soon enough.
PC gaming has evolved into indie games - big AAA's are pretty much unpalatable on the PC. Big AAA's move to consoles, but their policies are going to kill gaming for it and consoles aren't in a spot to adapt like the PC market will.
We live in interesting gaming times, though whether the future will continue to have those old AAA games or we'll be having a billion clones of Angry Birds, it's hard to say.
They lost the right to sell the books at a reasonable price. People on Slashdot keep forgetting that the iBookstore or whatever it's called came along with negotiations that contractually forced Amazon to raise ebook prices by >50%.
No, that's not an author right they lost. They gained that right with Apple's agency model.
Otherwise what happened was Amazon was selling books at a loss (to them) in an effort to drive out everyone else from selling e-books. The publishers and authors had no right to say what price Amazon could sell at. So if Amazon decided your books were worth $1, sure they could be paying you $3 for each copy, but you won't be able to sell your next book for any more than $0.50 per copy as everyone thinks your book is only worth $1.
As well, Sony/B&N/Kobo won't be able to compete and exit the e-book market (if they have to pay $3 per book and Amazon's big enough to dump it at $1...), leaving Amazon the only player in town.
Amazon went for the wholesale model - they bought N books for $X, and sold it for $Y (X and Y have no general relation, though Y > X for a profit). Apple went with the agency model - the publisher sets the price, and Apple sells it for that price.
Consumers love the wholesale model - books are cheaper and get discounted, though publishers hate it (devalues the book) as do authors. If you want to see this in action, check out developer complaints about 99 cent games making it hard for other developers to charge $4.99 for games (better ones, of course) and such.
Of course, Amazon could be devaluing the market to be the only contender (Amazon's Kindle store is the largest after all) and with the DRM, once you're locked in and the other stores are gone, Amazon is free to jack up prices.
In the old days all of the top 10 ad companies would sell all your private info to to anybody. Google has changed the game and changed the level of privacy and transparency people expect in all the online services.
By now, doesn't Google OWN the top 10 ad companies? I mean, they bought DoubleClick (probably the biggest and most notorios offender), and they have AdMob (largest presence for mobile devices, Android AND iOS), and probably own the other ad companies as well...
Slashdot Mirror
The CPU is mostly idle playing back video - the GPU handles all the h.264 decodes and doing that consumes very little power.
And HTTP live streaming is basically a PLS file specifying a bunch of files to play back - a very trivial format that many players can actually handle (I think the Apple default handles around 30 seconds or so per file, letting you skip back quite easily.). It could be done with a basic webserver that only served up static pages (with someone else continually modifying the PLS file).
And the PLS file is the common every day playlist file format that every player for the last decade can handle.
Not really. Most use uClibc internally, even though they could use glibc. uClibc and newlib are two of the more common libc's to use for embedded, even when there's plenty of flash and processor power to go around. Hell, there are piles of toolchains prebuilt around uClibc.
Heck, most embedded systems can get away from using busybox, but most choose to use it because the reference design chosen uses it (very few devices are customized beyond the basics - mostly cost reductions and such).
Honestly, I run across far few glibc based toolchains for cross compiling than non - uClibc/newlib's by far the more popular, and with the ease at which people can obtain it versus having to build it themselves. Heck, I'm sure the glibc folks weren't helping themselves by concentrating on x86-based systems.
Well, the obvious solution to how it works is light-field imaging. To which you may have heard of the Lytro camera that allows one to take pictures and refocus them later. A light-field camera takes not only the intensity of the light hitting it, but also direction (allowing for refocusing).
Since a gamma ray is just another form of EM radiation (ionizing, though), the camera would basically be a more advanced form of it. The technology to image it exists today.
Not really. You can receive any frequency you want - you can buy equipment that very easily receives 100kHz-3GHz, legally.
The only trouble is with transmit, and the FCC controls intentional radiators. And no, government is not worried about it because there are some Very Nasty Fines for transmitting illegally. And they're levied on you, the operator, not the equipment manufacturer (though they can be found liable for making the equipment as well if its sole purpose was to do it, or even lose FCC certification). Pirate radio? That's really small potatoes.
Heck, the government has allowed many people to build their own radio transmitters legally and encourages people to do so legitimately - for the cost of obtaining the appropriate license (which is really quite minimal - if you can build your own transmitter, you can afford the license). It's called amateur radio and it really gives people full flexibility in building intentional radiators.
But receiving is always free. And the 800MHz cell law is hopelessly obsolete since no one uses AMPS anymore. Decoding digital transmissions is a lot harder, especially since there are now over a dozen frequency bands to which a cell call can be transmitted
And transmitters also have the limitation that they're fairly narrowband devices because the amplifiers tend to not have huge bandwidths. At least if you don't want to generate such crappy output that makes it even easier for people to find you.
SDR is revolutionary, yes. Even the government is using SDR technology as part of their SIGINT programs because they're very effective at scanning huge swaths of frequencies at once and isolating signals. And they're quite cheap - a whole bank of SDRs packed into a rackable unit isn't that expensive and can gather easily 24+ different freqeuncies at once (at 192kHz bandwidth each - using cheap-ass 192kHz/24bit audio ADCs used for consumer electronics). The beauty of this is as long as the signal you're looking at is less than 192kHz wide, you can pick it up. And TV's pretty much one of the few signals that requires a bit more bandwidth (6MHz).
Which I find completely infuriating since it doesn't load half the time I want to use it... why couldn't they use YouTube, which makes it instantly work practically everywhere? Hell, my TiVo has YouTube so I can watch long videos on my nice big-screen!
It's because Adobe was spending a lot of money on Flash player and they still couldn't reach a very large market - iOS. Steve Jobs killed flash by not allowing it on iOS, and everyone else's "It has the full web" wasn't enough to sustain its development. Sure Android had it, but it ran crappily and appeared to be basically a checkbox feature "runs Flash" (instead of "runs Flash well").
iOS users didn't complain because most of the web still worked - YouTube videos played, Vimeo videos played, etc. There were a lot of Flash games that didn't, but they often had native apps that supported native OS features (Farmville addicted loved how Farmville notified you when it was ready, something the Flash version wouldn't be able to do).
The biggest loser would've been Flash ads that everyone blocks anyways, which losing those isn't a big deal on iOS, and Android users never activated them as well.
I suppose the continuous abuses of Flash to spread malware and super cookies soured the public on it. And the continuous maintenance of Flash required by Android users (it took a little while for the Xoom to finally get Flash player, ditto ICS). Adobe was hoping that iOS users would petition Apple to allow Flash, but in the end the only thing they ended up allowing was a Flash compiler to native iOS apps. Probably supports Android now, too.
What? So many posts and no one makes the obvious joke about Glibc being so big and bloated that it impacts high-speed-trading platforms? Really?
And you're basically saying the difference between Apple and Microsoft. Microsoft has to work hard to keep bad code running - because the companies and users that run said bad code will more often blame the shiny new version of Windows that broke it, than the software itself (which worked fine with the last version). See Windows XP and Windows Vista (Vista broke many bad pieces of software).
Even worse is if you can't get access to the source to fix it (a potentially real problem for open-source as well, as more obscure packages simply die out and mirrors fade away, so the original source is literally unobtainable anymore).
Apple's mentality is to let said software break - they only support what's documented and if you code against it, you should be fine. But if you stray, don't expect the program to work in the next OS release. (And this has resulted in MANY spectacular breakages - from haxies (input manager hacks) to dock additions leading to unbootable systems). And yes, it happens on iOS a lot too when you see "Fixed issues running on latest version of iOS" in the update notes, or better yet, "We know about issues running on latest iOS".
As for which way is better - it really depends. The good thing with Linux is it tends to be really stable for long periods of time, so stick on an Ubuntu LTS and you're golden. Problems occur when upgrading (Android FroYo and Ubuntu 10.04 is a popular one when Sun JDK was removed and OpenJDK was not quite working). Though I suppose users would blame whatever Linux they're using if things break and stop working after an upgrade
It's definitely possible.
Every GSM phone has an IMEI number, which is a globally unique serial number for the phone. It encodes the phone's serial number as well as stuff like model and submodel. This can often be used by carriers to determine if a phone will work on their network.
Sticking your SIM into a smartphone tells the carrier that you have a smartphone, and they can determine if they should be slamming you with a data plan. Of course, some carriers prefer to not tell you this and charge you per use - stuff like $0.05/kB (not kiB - note!), or roughly $50/MB (not MiB), in the hopes you'll add a data plan.
The only thing I'm concerned with though is Android. These are probably low end crapphones that barely run Android, and most likely stuck with 1.5, 1.6 or 2.1, maybe 2.2 if you're lucky...
I've always wondered how this was possible. I mean, Amazon.ca's prices for CDs and books are generally good (it's usually selection moreso than price - it doesn't matter if you can't get it locally), but for popular books, at times Amazon is more expensive. $1 HDMI cables are nice but then the stores doing it don't offer free shipping, so you have to pay $20 in shipping, in which case going to Wal-Mart (who sells them for $20) is quicker and easier.
Online shopping in Canada is terrible. The only reason to do it is to get items you can't find in store. Hell, even our Best Buy (and Future Shop) stores, trying to encourage online sales, still have substantially more inventory in the store than the US version. (Always wondered - US Best Buys are just plain terrible in selection).
Even with the currency the way it is, B&M's still seem to manage to do better than online - I still pay the same sales tax, but I can get the item now rather than wait a week, and the cost is cheaper at the B&M (no shipping charges), or the price is the same (savings eaten by shipping).
Really doesn't make sense. And yes, I've paid more for stuff at Amazon only to discover it was $20 cheaper in a store. Quite annoying.
Where the hell are the online super deals .. ?
Anyone note the irony to which Sony is going? I mean, they're making the Xbox 2 - still x86 based (like the original Xbox).
Makes me wonder if Bunnie Huang and eveyrone else will dust off all the old Xbox hacks they have and give them a go on the new machine. Don't think Sony can secure it any better than Microsoft could. Heck, it would be amusing to see if Windows 8 would run on it...
That trick is useful too because when people ask for "under $5", if the item costs $5, it technically isn't included in the search, but a $4.99 item will.
Anyhow, the price change would depend on the local tax rate. Here in BC where it's 12%, a $4.99 item would cost $5.59 after tax. Though they probably would price it at $4.97 for an after tax amount of $5.57, thus getting 3 cents for free. If the item was 99 cents though, they'd probably bump it to $1.01 or something to get a free couple of cents.
And other retailers will just round up and hope the customer doesn't catch it. I mean, if it says $5.61 on the register, they'd probably demand $5.65. And throw a big fuss if you try to object.
Yes, there are retailers that sc[au]mmy.
Of course, I'm not sure on why people hoard pennies. I spend them constantly turning them into more convenient change. Is it because they can't do the simple math so when a price comes up like $5.81 they can only make it $6? (I'd pay $6.01 and get two dimes in return). Heck, I had a price of $9.84 and I paid $10.09 to get a quarter back. (Even if I didn't have a nickle and 4 pennies, I'd use a dime to get a penny and quarter over getting a dime/nickel/penny combo).
And what makes you think it was the *business* that was hacked? Retailers obtain a merchant account and the merchant bank provides the processing equipment. That equipment talks to a credit card processor who handles the transactions and transfers and such.
A credit card processor being breached means it affects MANY retailers at once. Boycotting one business over the breach may mean you're still vulnerable as your new go-to place can use the same processor.
For many businesses, there's nothing to breach - the information is temporairly stored on that terminal you use for the duration, and the only thing the retailer has is the tiny slip of paper they get at the end. Which is probably why credit card processors get attacked, rather than individual companies.
Even online companies do the same - that box you enter your information into may be temporarily hosted by the store, but the information is promptly forwarded to a credit card processor and forgotten by the store's server to reduce PCI requirements. Some make it obvious when they forward you to Google, Amazon or Paypal, or to a processor's site directly. Most don't, even though in the back end they're really proxying the processor's site.
Given the thickness error in the mirror was less than the thickness of a piece of paper, that is a reasonable explanation. It was really small error given the size and weight of the mirror and gravity unfortunately does have a huge effect in slightly deforming such heavy optics. And yes, the optics were carved with gravity deformation in mind as well.
And the other bad thing is, well, the further something is away from you, the tighter the tolerances needed in order to resolve that object, so an error as tiny as it is makes for very blurry images.
Do you really want to give Apple this power? I mean, let's say Samsung shows off something that blows the iPad out of the water and pre0orders are lining up. You really want Apple to demand that Foxconn now double the salaries of all its workers, reduce working day to 40 hours and pay them time-and-a-half or double-time for hours over?
Because they can, and they will if it will kill the competition. Like say, a few months prior to said tablet's release, thus ensuring massive shortages and possibly a huge price jump on release day to pay for the increased costs.
Because if manufacturers are listening ot Apple, Apple can easily say "this applies to the entire company and other customers as well".
True. As long as you paid your estimate taxes you owe on time (always pay more), they don't care - you can always amend later.
The only reason to file tax returns when you don't have to is for government benefits - if there's a program you want, the eligibility criteria is often based on your tax return. Don't have one, you get denied. (This also applies to retirement savings and even someone with a summer job is encouraged to file taxes - they can often get the GST/HST credit (free money!) and build up savings room.
For those who owe taxes and don't file or pay an estimate, well, if your employer is honest, they already know what you make and assume you have no deductions, with the interest clock starting after April 30.
Easy. Apple can, because it'll become a great competitive advantage.
Imagine Samsung is about to release a new phone, and Apple sends FLA inspectors to the Foxconn factory to ensure that it's not just Apple employees getting the good treatment. If the conditions are worse (because Apple forces inspections so Apple lines are nicer), then boom, line is shut down, and Samsung is short of phones.
Apple's got immense power now - they can point to what they're doing, and point to how bad everyone else is, and use that power to abuse their position.
The problem is a lot of hardware is heavily patented, and the patents cover the hardware-software combination.
A sound card would be the best example - you can have a basic sound card with open drivers (it's just a combination ADC and DAC on a board, after all). But then people want justification for their purchases, so you add in Dolby Headphone support to give you surround sound with headphones (patented, licensing fees to use). Or DTS/Dolby Digital encoders so people can get surround sound piped to their A/V receivers. Or HDMI audio injectors that support HDCP.
Ditto video cards - HDMI+HDCP is a spec that does not allow for open drivers. A lot of 3D technologies are patented, heavily.
Network cards - well the TCP offload egnines are considered "secret sauce" because a good TOE can ensure your host system can be full bandwidth and hardly take any CPU resources. And this can include onboard firmware for the onboard processors. LIkewise, WiFi is similar.
Nevermind software controlled parts of hardware that cannot be modified for compliance reasons.
Hell, half the hardware guys out there would kill if they can release the drivers as source and give it all away - less work for them to support (they can direct people to a community support page). Or just release the hardware and let the community write the damn driver for it.
Of course, there's also the irony in that Qualcomm supplies a lot of binary blobs for stuff using their processors... especially with Android.
The problem is twofold - all the good writers left, and the damned site design killed off all the thoughtful commenters and pageviews shrunk.
Because pageviews shrunk, all the leftover writers (who are paid by the pageview) have to scramble to raise viewership or get stuck with ever-shrinking paycheques.
So writing goes down, and it's more trolling and flamebaiting to get the eyeballs in. And when you stoop to that level, the only people who comment are trolls and it spirals down from there.
There are many more forums and commenters that offer wise and insightful comments. I mean, even /. have more thoughtful commenters (if you browse at +1) that what you get at gawker. Some other communities have even better commenters (e.g., Ars Technica), because their writing is generally high quality, unbiased (Gizmodo has officially claimed to be biased a few weeks ago), and informative. LIkewise the comments are same.
There are too many problems at Gawker. From lousy site design (you can't open more than 10-20 tabs before your browser chews through memory and CPU cycles - doing what in javascript, I don't know), to articles that really are flamebait to the loss of all the original writers. Gawker's dying.
Yeah, and it's highly annoying. If you want an LTE device (phone, stick, hotspot, whatever), you can't just look at 4G devices, because an annoyingly large number of them are really just HSPA+.
Now, technically Apple sells the iPad as 4G, with LTE support. But since the iPad also supports HSPA+, if other HSPA+ devices are sold as "4G" devices, Apple's in the clear as it's just LTE is not supported and following everyone else's convention of calling HSPA+ "4G".
Now if Apple sells it at 4G LTE, they're in trouble since the "LTE" part doesn't work.
Heck, maybe at the end it'll clarify "faux G" from real 4G.
So Red Hat's competing with CentOS, then? I mean, why pay for Red Hat binaries when I can get the equivalent by getting CentOS for free? And they're both built from the same sources.
Hell, Oracle's Linux is based on Red Hat's as well...
No, the compiled product is really not worth that much. The support though, is worth a lot, especially since Red Hat also charges for CentOS installs as part of its newer support agreements...
You omit the fact that in the 80's, many American suppliers were caught with counterfeit airplane parts with stolen FAA tags on them. It got so bad it made it all the way into the presidential 747! And given the security of that, if counterfeit parts coming from American suppliers can still make it through... it's why the FAA in conjunction with the FBI did massive arrests.
The parts in question were basically time-expired or rebuilt worn parts resold as new.
Tell me again your reaction to the military purchasing $500 hammers and such, again. The problem has been the past 40 years or so, the defense department is no longer the technology driver it has been the past 150 or so. The ICs NASA used for Apollo? Mostly built and funded with DoD dollars.
But these days, the biggest driver of technology comes from the consumer sector.
If the DoD needs ICs for their newest jet avionics, they have to wait. I mean, I think the DoD is buying what, 2200 F-35's? That would mean that part counts would be a multiple of that, over a number of years. An IC supplier like Intel, IBM or Texas Instruments (who all have fabs in the US) would laugh at such pitiful quantities. Oh sure they'll sell the DoD parts, but given the special requirements for mil-spec parts, in quantities that these companies build at it would probably be double the price. But since only the DoD is ordering mil-spec parts, and not a lot of them, they're easily going to be 100x the cost because it's a special run.
Ditto if it's a regular IC - if you specify you want it fabbed specially for you, they can do it, it just costs a hell of a lot more money (especially if they have to build another set of masks as they're being used in fabs at other countries, and each mask is $100K or more which easily turns a complex chip into a $3M production run. If you only want 10 chips, you're looking at $300K/chip!).
If you want to save money (and the DoD's tends to like saving money for use on other things), you end up going with COTS parts that anyone can go to Digikey and order from. But then you run into issues like this (and even reputable dears like Digikey have been shipped bad parts too)
Yeah, I remember that. It was featured in several Star Trek magazines (including the TV Guide special edition) of the day.
Was definitely interesting - they apparently designed it for farmers (a number of whom were trekkies).
Was such a pity that when I could afford one, they went out of business.
And it was called a Mark I specifically because of its limitations - given I think the one on TNG was Mark III or Mark IV.
I wonder how much these are on eBay....
Incorrect. Gatekeeper has 3 security settings. Most secure is "App Store Only" requiring Apple vetting the app. Default is "App Store and Mac Developer Certificate" which allows App Store apps, as well as 3rd party apps like Photoshop and Microsoft Office. The last setting is basically allow all apps. Even if Apple revokes Microsoft's certificate, the app can always be run in that mode.
Funny thing is, it's really how the console gaming market is dying.
The PC gaming market is "dead" to the traditional AAA publishers, however it's very much alive and thriving in the indie game market (no doubt helped by stuff like Humble Bundle).
Consoles don't have many avenues for indie developers because of platform requirements (usually either established companies or security requirements), and thus only the bigger publishers and the small breakout indie games show up.
And you see a lot of indie devs spurred to develop for smartphones and tablets as well - the Apple "consoles" being extremely popular. Hell, Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft may find an unexpected 4th contender soon enough.
PC gaming has evolved into indie games - big AAA's are pretty much unpalatable on the PC. Big AAA's move to consoles, but their policies are going to kill gaming for it and consoles aren't in a spot to adapt like the PC market will.
We live in interesting gaming times, though whether the future will continue to have those old AAA games or we'll be having a billion clones of Angry Birds, it's hard to say.
No, that's not an author right they lost. They gained that right with Apple's agency model.
Otherwise what happened was Amazon was selling books at a loss (to them) in an effort to drive out everyone else from selling e-books. The publishers and authors had no right to say what price Amazon could sell at. So if Amazon decided your books were worth $1, sure they could be paying you $3 for each copy, but you won't be able to sell your next book for any more than $0.50 per copy as everyone thinks your book is only worth $1.
As well, Sony/B&N/Kobo won't be able to compete and exit the e-book market (if they have to pay $3 per book and Amazon's big enough to dump it at $1...), leaving Amazon the only player in town.
Amazon went for the wholesale model - they bought N books for $X, and sold it for $Y (X and Y have no general relation, though Y > X for a profit). Apple went with the agency model - the publisher sets the price, and Apple sells it for that price.
Consumers love the wholesale model - books are cheaper and get discounted, though publishers hate it (devalues the book) as do authors. If you want to see this in action, check out developer complaints about 99 cent games making it hard for other developers to charge $4.99 for games (better ones, of course) and such.
Of course, Amazon could be devaluing the market to be the only contender (Amazon's Kindle store is the largest after all) and with the DRM, once you're locked in and the other stores are gone, Amazon is free to jack up prices.
By now, doesn't Google OWN the top 10 ad companies? I mean, they bought DoubleClick (probably the biggest and most notorios offender), and they have AdMob (largest presence for mobile devices, Android AND iOS), and probably own the other ad companies as well...