In this community we heard about it non-stop for what feels like years. Outside this community, no one really cared. Yes Sony lost some business, but even if everyone who could explain in a sentence what the OtherOS thing was about stopped buying Sony, it would probably be a tiny blip on the profit statement.
Same with the geohotz thing. Huge deal to us, non-issue for most. The rootkit thing is the closest Sony ever came to doing something that actually pissed of a large chunk of their users with an issue (outside the PSN thing, but again, people were upset for the wrong reason).. and even that most people wern't mad enough to swear of Sony products forever.. it was more of an amused "well that was naughty of them" response from the vast majority of people.
OtherOS was perfect. Microsoft learned with their Xbox what happens when hackers and pirates share a common goal - one inevitably helps the other. In that case, the Xbox-Linux folks found vulnerabilities that they told Microsoft about, in exchange for a legit way of running Linux. Microsoft rebuffed them, and Xbox Linux released their installation tools. The pirates siezed upon that and Xbox piracy was born.
OtherOS was the same - those who wanted homebrew had a perfect outlet for it, and busy playing there meant the pirates really didn't have much they could do since homebrew in OtherOS was restricted.
But remove OtherOS and all of a sudden those hackers had to break into GameOS to run Linux... and now that GameOS was broken, pirates could come in with ISO loaders. And then researchers came in and studied the hacks and realized what else they could do until ti cascaded to the point where the keys were discovered.
The Xbox360 has suffered piracy attacks, but also has a homebrew avenue (XNA studio). The interesting thing is while there's piracy on the Xbox, the integrity of the system hasn't been compromised - you cannot plug a modded Xbox into Xbox Live because the dashboard is signed and reports back to Microsoft, and unsigned dashboards don't really run.
PSN though is another story - with the master keys available, the whole "trust the client" part of PSN doesn't exist anymore, and you can get CFW's for PS3 that let you play ISOs AND get on PSN.
And all of it happened within a year of Sony removing OtherOS. Hell, the PSN hack was just over a year later (April 1, 2010 - OtherOS was removed. Aprile 2011 - PSN hacked).
You know, if Sony continually does this, one could make the Vita's PSN ability worthless if games keep getting removed.
I understand Sony's reluctance about piracy, given it helped speed the demise of the PSP, but perhaps if Sony wasn't so greedy on the PSP on the first place. Like how UMD videos could get full 60fps video decode, while memory stick videos could only do 30fps (later fixed). Or how an "install to memory stick" feature wasn't implemented to allow loading UMD games off faster memory stick. (Sony could use MagicGate to lock the UMD image to one PSP and require the UMD to be present to play the game, negating piracy fears a la the Xbox 360). But they didn't, and CFW made the whole PSP experience far better - the benefits of loading games from memory stick meant less loading screens to wait through, full res full framerate videos, etc.
I find text to be 10x faster to process than watching a video. Text is easier to skim, it's easier to search, a page of text can explain something in more detail and more precisely than 10 minutes of video, and it probably takes up 1000x less space/bandwidth, etc. When I watch video documentation it feels like everything is in slow motion compared to reading. As a bonus, text is also usable by people with visual and/or sound impairments, when using the right equipment.
Resorting to video is like the equivalent of GUI operating systems versus command-line: it's easier to do in some ways (just sit in front of a camera), and sometimes it's the better way to go (so feel free to experiment with new ways of doing things), but often you can be vastly more efficient with the old way of doing things. Personally, I've skipped every video that has been posted on slashdot in the last few months. I'd rather read the comments. Considering the extra time and effort it takes to set up a video shoot and process it afterwards, and the extra bandwidth to deliver it, I'll be surprised if it pays off. But keep experimenting. It's healthy.
I've never had the slashdot videos work for me at all. So I've never seen one, just generally skipped it. At least, the ones that weren't YouTube based. (FYI Slashdot: YouTube is supposed by a LOT of devices - you might want to use them).
And no, video is not easier to produce than text. Amateurs may think i tis, but it isn't if you want an enjoyable experience. Case in point - a website started doing video reviews - they took 20 minutes to do what text would've done in 5, had to spend extra effort putting up charts and such in the article, and the video was still unwatchable because it was obviously a first pass, full of "ums" "ahs" and "errs", and barely edited.
A proper video with proper sound (you better get and use a microphone at a minimum, directional ones if it's going to be stuck to a camera), as well as a definite plan of action and rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Some people are gifted enough to be able to do it in a single pass, but most aren't, so a script is handy (you want to know why the teleprompter was invented and why most speakers use one?).
And editing, lots of editing. Don't just hold a sheet of paper with a chart or other graphic, you should cut to the graphic in the video.
If you don't have a cameraperson to operate the camera, you better prepare to do a lot of editing, or have everything close at hand to reach and show.
Doing a good video can take far longer and requires far more preparation than doing it in text - which may explain why sites stopped doing everything in video and started doing selections to augment the text, proper use of multimedia capabilities.
Another reason- failure to move into the online space themselves. They do do online retailing these days, but they compare poorly to the likes of Amazon. When you're sat at your keyboard, and you open two websites, and one has a betteer range and is cheaper than the other, why would you use the latter? Instead of capitalising on their huge brand presence, they just let themselves slip. their digital download service isn't even run by them- it's just a rebadge of a whole different company's website.
Depends on the online culture, really. Don't know how well the UK has taken to online shopping, but in Canada, the only reason to shop at Amazon is because it's hard to find locally. Considering the taxes are the same, the prices aren't too much better at times (30% off isn't a big discount when you can find same at brick and mortars), the only "advantage" Amazon has is challenging you to get free shipping (no Prime available at all) and the patience of a week's wait for the item.
Consequently, if you want something immediately, it can cost the same just to go out and buy it. Even new releases have a week's wait (Amazon.ca doesn't ship early so if you want something on release day...).
There are stores trying ot push heavily online shopping (usually brick and mortars), but they often have a huge B&M component to their websites just because if you want it now...
Oddly competitive too - online sales prices generally aren't much cheaper - when it is, shipping eats away all the savings (taxed on both, so no difference there). Ditto when buying from the US - given most stores seem to love UPS for whatever reason, it usually means to add 30% to the final bill to accomodate UPS's tendency to add bogus fees you have to pay (average is around 30%, but it can be anywhere from 20%-200% of the value of the item) on TOP of taxes.
No, this retailer was worse. I mean, not having Mass Effect 3? That's just... idiotic.
Seems like Apple could have avoided the issue by advertising "4G LTE" instead of "4G".
Actually, that would make things worse, as LTE is what doesn't work.
Now, I don't know the Australian market, so I don't know if there are as many non-LTE (i.e., HSPA+) phones being marketed as "4G" ("faux G") phones. I do know a large number of 4G Andorid phones are really just "4G" phones (T-Mobile was one of them advertising 4G early on, but both AT&T and T-mo do it. Hell, didn't the iPhone get an update that changed the 3G to 4G?).
FInding a true LTE Android phone is actually quite challenging amid all the 4G phones.
Which may give Apple an out since the iPad also supports HSPA+ style "4G".
Not really. Most cell phones don't get updates, and even when they do they don't have all the fixes or a very fast turnaround. Mobile phone security is still very 1990s.
Considering its iPhones we're talking about, most are still getting updates - the only two phones not running the latest and greatest are the original iPhone (2007), and iPhone 3G (2008). The 3GS, 4 and 4s are receiving updates, and apparently Apple users tend to update quite often (it took roughly 2 months to get 50% update rate on iOS 4, and the latest (iOS 5.1) is already close to 50% released a few weeks ago, no doubt aided by the OTA update functionality).
Of course, if this is a good vulnerability, it points to a perfect jailbreak if you can get that level of access - ability to run code and get at the filesystem through USB.
Immaterial. If the summary is right and the passcode is limited to 4 digits (I don't own an iPhone), then any practical delay is useless. If you add a 1 minute delay between attempts (which is long enough to make any Apple user scream obscenities about user unfriendliness), you can try all 9999 possible combinations in 6.9 days. That's a trivial delay for law enforcement.
Actually, the iPhone does do delays.
I believe it lets you have 3 tries at full speed. Then it delays 1 minute between the 3rd and 4th try, 2 minutes between the 4th and 5th try, 5 and so on until it reaches an hour or so. After 10 attempts, if configured, it can wipe itself. So you can't try it in a practical amount of time (I believe the time just stays at an hour between attempts or so).
The real problem is that 4 digits is just too short for a device which grants access to so much private data. Heck, even Android's pattern code (9 dots, 4-9 dots used, each dot can be used only once) has only 409,104 possible combinations (9! + 8! + 7! + 6! + 5! + 4!). With a 5 second delay between failed attempts, it'll take just 24 days to try all possible combinations.
It's less. Because if you're at the edge dot, going down means you pass through the center, so that reduces the combinations. If you're at a corner dot, again, you must pass through the center to reach the directly opposite dot. Not sure if you can criss-cross through the center.
iOS (and I guess Android) have another layer of passcode lock that's more secure than the 4-digit PIN, though it requires a bit more work. They're basically passwords (or pass phrases?) and while they're a pain, they are supposedly much stronger than the PIN.
How does this thing fix that?
Also - it seems if they can run a program using it, it's a perfect jailbreak hole. Because the standard kernels now in iOS don't allow running unsigned programs. So either the dongle has to inject code into the kernel or other already-running process (if you can do that, it's a jailbreak avenue) in order to disable the signature check functionality, or they're running some sort of secret signed code...
It would seem to me that the current Canadian government is one of the most corrupt in the western hemisphere at the moment.
As a proud Canadian, normally I would be outraged by a comment like that. Unfortunately, with what the Conservative party has done (manipulating the previous election) and what Harper has been doing (the list is so damn long...), I find myself entirely unable to argue against that claim... It's disgusting that I can't argue against it...
I think the closest you can come would be a comparison to the Russian elections that happened recently, to which Russians are disputing the results, and to which the Harper Government has sent election officials to "monitor" the election.
This could very well turn into something like that if it got out - "you think those Russians elections were fixed, you should've seen the Canadian one! At least the Russians know the electrion was certainly fixed!" sort of joke.
Or even worse, one of the corrupt countries simply ejects Canadian election officials monitoring their elections over corruption.
I think widespread usage is a good metric and not just gloating over profit like the Apple fans like to do. "Apple derived the most profit from the cell phone industry." they say, to put down Android's usage gains. By that metric, IIS is totally killing Apache and Nginx in the web server space, but most folks consider Apache beats IIS. Which of this is true?
Both are metrics. Android vs. iOS, profit is a good metric - but so is usage. Android usage is under-reported because it's going by official Google Android numbers, and misses AOSP numbers. It's why the #2 tablet is the Kindle Fire, but isn't really seen in the Android listings. And there are many Android AOSP based phones out there (mostly in China) running nice "alternative" app stores. Profit's also a good metric too - after all, if Apple is making the most profit, it means that despite Android having a much larger marketshare (or usage), when combined with profits from non-smartphones, Apple is making more money then all of them combined. It helps explain why Nokia/RIM/Samsung are opposing any and all Apple proposals (money money money...)
As for Apache and IIS - I believe Apache actually has a larger marketshare over IIS (at least it did when all those IIS exploits were floating around), and quite possibly, the Apache-based ecosystem is far more profitable than the IIS ecosystem. But that's because of the licensing and support and many other factors.
In the end, success is whatever you want to define it. Some people consider success as making profits. Others may consider having someone else use the software a success. And others may define it as having most marketshare. Or maybe it's the entire economic profit of the software and its ecosystem. The only person that can judge the success of open-source software are the developers.
Heck, another definition of success may be the original creator can step down and see their software continue to evolve instead of becoming abandoned.
The reality of freedom of speech (at least the US concept) is that it is not consequence free speech. While the article does not mention any actual harm committed through racial insensitivity, I can only assume that someone was threatened and that the threat was taken seriously through Liam's postings. If no actual harm was committed, society does not benefit by having someone go to prison.
There is no true free say-anything-you-want speech. Typically what's meant by free speech is responsible speech - say anything you want, but you better be willing to stand behind those words. Like how you can yell "fire" in a theatre, but be prepared for a pile of charges (inciting a panic, possible manslaughter/murder if someone is trampled and dies, etc). Or libel and defamation laws.
It also doesn't preclude anonymity at all - a journalist shielding their source still has to do legwork in confirming details (sadly lacking these days even with non-anonymous sources).
Heck, the responsible part is also when it comes to everyone else - just because you can say something, doesn' tmean we have to hear it and many methods of being heard get banned even though they are a technical infringement (using bullhorns in ears of passers-by, for example, or by impeding traffic of those who care not what you say).
It could not because that would be an egregious violation of Google's privacy policy. You may not like what Google does with your information, but they have always been upfront about it.
Remember, Google is about collecting information. With Voice, they have lots of statistics - who called you, who left you a voice mail, your phone numbers. I'm betting those who use Google Voice never see one of those "You need to add your mobile phone number to your Google account" intersitials (with a tiny line under it that basically says "I do not want to add my number"). Sure, ostensibly it's to "protect your account", but it's a real number.
And it's NOT a violation of Google's policy if an advertiser came up to Google and said "I'd like to show this ad to people in ZZZ city with area code YYY." Given Google owns the best AND worst ad network out there...
And given employers and other people are using Google and Facebook and G+ and all other social networks, it could very well be Google aggregating the data and either making it public or selling it. I'm sure Google has a similar thing going on like Facebook where companies can pay extra $$$ to get unfettered access to the data as part of "we may share your data with interested third parties".
I agree... I want e-mail software that removes e-mail from spammers, but if a friend sends me an e-mail with a link to a spam site, I can decide for myself if I want to click the link.
Of course, if the software warns me and asks me to confirm when I click the link, that's ok too.
Too bad you're basically the 1%. Warning users doesn't work. In fact, what you propose is incredibly dangerous. Ignoring the dancing pigs problem, a LOT of spam rely on the whole "friend" thing. The old Facebook "I'm stuck in <foreign city> and need money, please send!" is the most common one with hijacked accounts, but it also has an email counterpart from harvested contact lists. And spammers have been doing this far longer than Facebook has been around - it's how many of the early virusese worked - they sent an email with the payload that scans the contact lists and propagates themselves onwards. Short of exchanging public keys with your friends...
Anyhow, the malware from tpb doesn't come from the software itself, it's from the cracks and keygens, and always has. The software you download from tpb will be the same as what you get if you bought it - the reason being that these days, it's all signed by the company making it. However, the keygens and cracks that patch after install aren't checked and people do blindly run them. They're usually wrapped trojans - the keygen/crack as distributed by the crackers is completely clean, but someone basically took that and wrapped their dropper trojans around it.
Of course, if you have the legit key and need a copy of the bits, you can ignore the keygens and crap and download the files via tpb with no issue.
And it seems movies are in the same boat - fake movies with links to "download required codec here!" in the video.
The question is, Why the fuck are we still using SIM cards?
Because the alternative is what we have in the US, with Verizon and Sprint selling phones that are basically only for them and make it a pain to move to another phone.
Whereas it's trivial for someone to go and take the SIM out of their old phone, and stick it in their new phone, and be done with it. SIMs basically separate out the "subscriber" part of the service from the phone.
It also allows people to have different subscriptions for their phone - say travelling. They pop out their home country SIM, and stick in the foreign country SIM, and away they go (provided it's not SIM-locked) - no need to buy another phone for that country for service and all that.
I suppose to go beyond that would be Apple's "reprogrammable SIM" idea where it's built into the phone and you enter in your subscription details and it automatically downloads the necessary SIM data. Basically it boils down to a phone that asks for your username and password to your account. And you know the majority of passwords would be weak and there'll be huge inquiries as to why people can easily steal cellphone service from others.
Anyhow, standards orgs like 3GPP are all about politics, and not technical superiority. A lot of standards are set with the "if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" type of thing. Companies are jostling around trying to get their patented stuff in the standard, and this can result in stuff like TD-CDMA being part of 3GPP even though it's not really used except by one company.
And the entire mobile industry is afraid of Apple. They sell very few phones overally, but they command the majority of the profits - Apple makes more profit than the rest of the mobile industry combined. It doesn't matter if the Apple proposal is superior, or if Apple gives everyone the right ot use it royalty free. They're afraid of what would happen if Apple gets a leg into the patent ballgame - all of a sudden the juicy cash Apple pays everyone for FRAND patents dries up or becomes smaller.
Apple's got a snowball's chance in hell. Everyone else will block it purely because letting Apple in means less money from Apple to everyone. And Nokia's got majority voting rights right now - letting Apple in means Nokia no longer can sway the vote easily for standards.
If Apple came up with an iPhone that got 1 year battery life, Gig+ bandwidth and all that, and made with everyday parts and really cheap, they still will reject it purely from the monetary standpoint.
It's politics, and it's why everyone's fighting so hard on something so trivial as a nano-SIM. I'm sure Apple didn't invent the micro-SIM (it was probably already in the spec for years, just Apple was one of the first to use it). And Apple certainly didn't invent hot-swap of SIMs (also in the spec - but hard to do, and the iPhone does let you do it successfully. Other phones, like the Galaxy Nexus let you remove the SIM, but require you reboot the phone to initialize the new SIM).
Hell, I bet no one but Apple is going to ever use nano-SIM (there's a FEW phones out there using micro-SIM that aren't from Apple, but there's pretty hard to find).
That would be nice if you could direct the outgoing air through an exchanger. It leaks out through bad door seals and other unintended openings. And it takes the moisture with it.
The vast majority of air "leaks" out through cabin pressurization valves near the back of the plane - it's designed that way since air has to be let out in order to let fresh air in (as well as to not keep the cabin at the same altitude as the departing airport - to climb up to 8000' requires releasing air).
My understanding is that exactly the opposite happens. Because of adiabatic heating, the air being compressed into an aircraft cabin actually needs to be cooled (it's bled off of compressors for the jet engine). At least, that's what I've been told by a few people.
Correct. The pressurized air for the cabin comes from the jet engine's bleed air (located after the compressor section). It's quite warm because of the compression (from -30-50C to +50-60C), so it needs to be cooled down via air conditioners to levels humans would prefer.
It's also one reason (among many) to keep the cabin at 8000' and why air quality has declined - using the bleed air saps power from the engine.
While I strongly disagree with you about 720p being fine (the difference is quite visible on my 16" laptop screen when watching a movie), I think it's a fair point that even with an 1080p HD TV, you're going to be watching 720 or non-HD content 99% of the time.
I'm guessing the people who claim 720p is fine and they can't see anymore are the same as how they're claiming the iPhone and iPad "Retina" displays aren't.
As for 720p content... it depends. The cable TV I watch is mostly 1080i now (need 1080p to display it fully). Blu-Ray content is 1080p. The only times I run into 720p content is when I play a PS3 game (some "full HD 1080" crap there - Sony was blasting HD-DVD over 1080i...)) or when I download crap re-encodes that downscaled the 1080i content down to 720p (rarely these days - I tend to seek out the original 1080i).
SD viewing's pretty limited to DVDs now that all the channels I watch on cable have HD equivalents. Even less these days when my cable company decided to move away from analogs and my TiVos don't record much (I can't believe how crappy a cable DVR can be... and no CableCARDs to enable TiVo use, either - Canada. The damn cable DVR can't even do season passes properly).
Java SE (J2SE) is F/OSS. Sun/Oracle has given patent licenses to any implementation of Java SE that meet some compatibility standard. Thus, OpenJDK is legal (because it's based off the referense Java SE implementation).
However, the money maker for Java has ALWAYS been Java ME (aka J2ME). Billions of cellphones, each of which is paying Sun/Oracle licensing fees for the patents in order to implement J2ME. And Android unfortunately impements J2ME (they could've gone J2SE, it's not like modern cellphones are lacking in CPU or memory these days). Thus they're in violation of the patents.
As a side note, Microsoft also has to pay for those Java patents as they're used in the.NET CLR.
The FOSS stuff is only for J2SE and the patent licensing is also for just J2SE.
Absolutely agree. Basically, if it were possible to bring a plane down merely by using a cellphone, it would already have been done by now. Certain groups have an intense interest in doing just that. They haven't, so they can't. Q.E.D.
No, the plane won't stop flying. But you may find yourself annoying back at your departure airport because of someone's cellphone.
All reports of interference are anecdotal - there are simply too many variables (device model, age, production run, seat, navigation in use, etc) to properly and conclusively determine interference. There are known reports of certain Samsung cellphones causing GPS to lose lock, or PDAs causing nav instruments to deviate significantly. Of course, nothing scientific and conclusive.
It's more critical when things like GPS go down because increasingly airlines are using RNP approaches (required navigation performance - you need 3 GPSes, 3 autopilots, all of them in lock and synchonicity before RNP can be accomplished), because it gets you on the ground faster, and saves them fuel as it's a more direct flight (no having to fly over mountains when RNP can guide you through quite narrow canyons - it specifies the minimum performance standards of navigation equipment which lets you do much trickier approaches) and better chances of making it in as RNP approaches often have much reduced minimums. Of course, if a cellphone on board desyncs a GPS prior to RNP, it means the approach is aborted and the pilot has to go "the long way" or more often, not at all (if it's short haul, it can mean returning back to departure airport, or diverting to alternate and either waiting for a mechanic to fix (and try again), or another airplane).
No, a cellhone won't take down the airplane, nor your ipad. At worst, it'll be major inconveniences to everyone involved, though if you manage to screw up the RNP approach GPSes without being detected, it's possible to fly into a mountain or something.
You might be surprised to find that it's now hard to find those 1920x1200 monitors in any size. Starting a couple of years ago the standard higher-end resolution became 1920 x 1080. Go into a computer store. You'll find 40 monitors at with that resolution and 1-2 with 1920x1200, and those ones might not have features you want like integrated speakers or webcam or usb hub built in or whatever.
I had your attitude before and then I had to buy computers for my office and I was pissed off that my options had gotten worse than before not better.
The problem is, it's not cheap. You want a $500 laptop? Sorry, 1366x768 it is. But open your wallet a little bit, say, $1000 and you'll get ones with 1440x900 screens easily enough.
And open your wallet up more, and you'll find laptops with 1920x1200 screens. Hell, Apple sells them by the boatload (17" Macbook Pro - 1920x1200 has been standard for a few years now, and an option a few years before that). And Dell still sells 1920x1200 screens. Just instead of paying under $200, you're looking at $400+.
Same goes for higher resolutions. Want a 27" or 30" monitor with more than 1080p? Apple has a 27" at 2560x1440 screen, as does Dell. Go 30" and Dell has 2560x1600. Again, you're looking at $500+, so look for stuff on sale.
If you're wanting to cheapskate it, you won't find anything good. Those nicer screens that cost more tend to be PVA or IPS screens, while your cheap ass WXGA screen is 99% TN.
Cheap laptops are $500, yes. But they're really nasty. I wonder if it's because it has something to do with the price. Cheap monitors are 1080p as well (because the electronics are cheap - the same as what they drive TVs with). But good monitors and laptops have always costed more - everyone with their 1600x1200 CRT screens probably doesn't remember how much they used to cost (especially if you wanted one that wasn't blurry, flickery and pretty damn nice to look at).
The laptops and monitors still all cost the same as they always had. The low end just moved lower by making things even crappier.
If you have a good lawyer, you can probably sue them already. In most facebook accounts, people provide a lot of information that it is illegal for the employer to ask about - age, gender, race, sexuality. Employers can't ask these questions, and similarly, they can't ask questions that they know will reveal that information. We don't really need a new law, just a smart lawyer
It's why there are services companies can use to scan social networks - they don't ask for passwords, but given a name and address they can look up what information is available via facebook, linked in, blogs, etc.
It seems creepy, but these companies actually obscure things that are illegal. So photos of you would have your hands and face blacked out as well as anything that would give away your sex and race.
It's about the only way to prove that googling or visiting your facebook page didn't have an influence. These companies even give confidence ratings as to how likely the proposed page could be the person in question.
So, when someone was talking about taking his games (which are what he makes his living on) and handing them out for free, he reacted in a rational manner, and those people who were wanting something for nothing got their feelings hurt?
I suppose that's one way to put it. But another way is - why does EVERYONE who plays need a copy of the books?
And that's the key.
I get a basic hang of the game and its rules, maybe borrow the books from my friend to get the nuances, but we can otherwise share a set of books amongst the few of us.
The problem is, SJG basically says that's illegal, and of my N friends, N-1 will be sued because we don't have N copies of the books.
And that apparently extends to online play - if you make an online game server so everyone can play without having to be physically close, every one of them better own a copy of the books. No sharing amongst friends, no lending out, etc.
That's the fundamental issue - sure some books may be useful if everyone had a copy, but most of the time it isn't necessary. Hell it makes introducing the game possibly difficult - you bring your books, teach people the basics and set up a scenario. That situation could get eveyrone else sued for copyright infringement.
This is just fearmongering. It's not complicated at all. If you don't hook GCC's (internal) intermediate code generation to run some custom process on, then you are covered by the compilation exemption.
Configuring your build to output GCC intermediate, retain that output, modify it with an external tool, and resume the build with the modified intermediate code is not something that will happen by accident. The implications of GCC being GPLv3 are, exactly, none.
FreeBSD's philosophical objections to GPLv3 are well known and they have the right to maintain those objections, but that has little bearing on GCC's use for a proprietary end product.
Actually, it was the result of GCC going GPLv3 that a number of companies ditched GCC. Apple did it (though they were long in the process of migrating away from GCC - it still took many years and OS releases (I think LLVM started appearling around 10.4 or so)). Apple's last contribution to GCC was to put in the necessary patches to support Grand Central Dispatch, in case someone else needed that code they have GCC and LLVM to choose from.
And many companies are instituting new "Open Source Usage Policies" that require anyone who even wants to contemplate using an open-source product fill out forms indicating its use and reasons for it (is it for internal use only (e.g., webserver/wiki/etc), or will it be distributed, final impacts etc). These get sent to the legal teams to scour what would happen to the released product(s), as well as what the obligations are. Sales and marketing get involved because if the final output is GPLv3, this could be seen as a competitive disadvantage with customers. And then possibly customers need to be consulted and informed on what they need to do.
And they also need to figure out if it's even *LEGAL* to do it. Because GPLv2-only code cannot be incorporated with GPLv3 code at all (fundamental incompatibility that even the FSF acknowledges), which means something has to give as the two cannot mix.
Considering the largest breach of 2011 happened to be Sony (started with Playstation Network, spread through to other Sony sites), it's hard to tell if this is the case. After all, Anonymous and Lulzsec kept breaking into other Sony sites All in all, Sony lost probably close to 150M customer records....
I would call that hackivism since it was meant more to embarass Sony over their lack of security.
Iâ(TM)ll add is what I can only refer to as âoethe CRT soundâ. That little âoevwhoomâ you hear when you turn them on and âoektchuckâ when you turn them off (onomatopoeia is fun!).
Or the high-pitched whine that was always in the background that drove me nuts.
Also the sounds stereo equipment used to make when you turned it on (relays clicking, various feedback sounds similar to the CRT up there) and the satisfying clicks all the various switches and knobs made (I still have a microwave that has physical dials and buttons on it in the basement.. I dare not turn it on!).
My A/V receiver (and I'd think most good equipment) still makes clicks and thunks from banks of relays inside it. There's the main power relay that kicks in when you turn take it out of standby, the speaker protection relay that keeps the speakers shorted while the finals warm up and the transients settle down (to avoid the initial inrush current from destroying the speakers - it's the "thump" you hear when you turn on a set of computer speakers, for example). There's also amplifier reconfiguration relays that get set depending on the speaker configuration or enabling alternate speaker zones.
Your phone provider could just email the file to you, you copy the file to the card and turn on the phone.
A SIM is not just a storage device. It's a full blown microcomputer with its own encryption engine and other stuff.
Sure you interact with it in a simple command-and-response fashion (usually to get at contacts and such), but the processor can do a LOT more. If you've seen "SIM Applications" on your phone, they are little programs that run on the SIM CPU, interacting with the host phone through a well-defined interface called SIM Toolkit.
Anyhow, if you know how ETSI works, or how most standards bodies work, it's really just a bunch of politics. There's a lot of backscratching and money that changes hands (because being part of the standard means patent licensing revenue). This is especially in cases where there's no patent pool entitiy (like MPEG-LA) that let you mass-license a bunch of patents at once so everyone has to go license the FRAND patents from everyone else.
And that's the problem. Apple, despite probably selling maybe 10% of the phones, makes more profit off the iPhone and the other 90% combined. So everyone else is rightly worried that should this proposal go through they'd have to pay licensing fees to Apple (under FRAND terms).
That's what it really boils down to - it's far more profitable to sue Apple over everything and hope to get forced licensing over Apple's much-desired non-FRAND patents than to let them in and then lose the leverage.
Heck, even in 3G there's a pile of standards that you will not need for a regular phone (TD-CDMA for example). They're used in niche areas with narrow customer base. For stuff like this, it's more about being able to bid on contracts that demand "3G Wireless Technology" with a proprietary technology that no one else uses. It's only standard because it's in the spec that no reasonable person would use.
This warm season actually doesn't have as much to do with Global Warming/Climate Change as it has to do with a double whammy of La Nina and an Arctic Oscillation. The former brought unusually warm weather while the latter kept the colder, arctic air away from us. The combination of the two warming effects gave us a warm, relatively snowless winter.
This isn't to say that GW/CC isn't real. Just that this winter is explained by other forces at play.
True. However one consequence of GW/CC is that temperature goes to either extreme far more often. So while you'e completely correct, the effect of GW/CC would be to make places that would've just had a cold winter have an even colder one (hello Europe!) and places that would've just been somewhat warmer be much hotter (hello eastern North America with your summer temperatures!).
So all GW/CC can conclusively be proven to do is make matters worse. I wouldn't blame GW/CC for this, just for the extremes we're seeing. So while colder places might be warmer due to GW/CC, it's likely that the winters will be much colder, and summers much warmer.
Of course, posting from the west coast, where we haven't had to break out the A/C in winter, yet.
Slashdot Mirror
OtherOS was perfect. Microsoft learned with their Xbox what happens when hackers and pirates share a common goal - one inevitably helps the other. In that case, the Xbox-Linux folks found vulnerabilities that they told Microsoft about, in exchange for a legit way of running Linux. Microsoft rebuffed them, and Xbox Linux released their installation tools. The pirates siezed upon that and Xbox piracy was born.
OtherOS was the same - those who wanted homebrew had a perfect outlet for it, and busy playing there meant the pirates really didn't have much they could do since homebrew in OtherOS was restricted.
But remove OtherOS and all of a sudden those hackers had to break into GameOS to run Linux... and now that GameOS was broken, pirates could come in with ISO loaders. And then researchers came in and studied the hacks and realized what else they could do until ti cascaded to the point where the keys were discovered.
The Xbox360 has suffered piracy attacks, but also has a homebrew avenue (XNA studio). The interesting thing is while there's piracy on the Xbox, the integrity of the system hasn't been compromised - you cannot plug a modded Xbox into Xbox Live because the dashboard is signed and reports back to Microsoft, and unsigned dashboards don't really run.
PSN though is another story - with the master keys available, the whole "trust the client" part of PSN doesn't exist anymore, and you can get CFW's for PS3 that let you play ISOs AND get on PSN.
And all of it happened within a year of Sony removing OtherOS. Hell, the PSN hack was just over a year later (April 1, 2010 - OtherOS was removed. Aprile 2011 - PSN hacked).
You know, if Sony continually does this, one could make the Vita's PSN ability worthless if games keep getting removed.
I understand Sony's reluctance about piracy, given it helped speed the demise of the PSP, but perhaps if Sony wasn't so greedy on the PSP on the first place. Like how UMD videos could get full 60fps video decode, while memory stick videos could only do 30fps (later fixed). Or how an "install to memory stick" feature wasn't implemented to allow loading UMD games off faster memory stick. (Sony could use MagicGate to lock the UMD image to one PSP and require the UMD to be present to play the game, negating piracy fears a la the Xbox 360). But they didn't, and CFW made the whole PSP experience far better - the benefits of loading games from memory stick meant less loading screens to wait through, full res full framerate videos, etc.
I've never had the slashdot videos work for me at all. So I've never seen one, just generally skipped it. At least, the ones that weren't YouTube based. (FYI Slashdot: YouTube is supposed by a LOT of devices - you might want to use them).
And no, video is not easier to produce than text. Amateurs may think i tis, but it isn't if you want an enjoyable experience. Case in point - a website started doing video reviews - they took 20 minutes to do what text would've done in 5, had to spend extra effort putting up charts and such in the article, and the video was still unwatchable because it was obviously a first pass, full of "ums" "ahs" and "errs", and barely edited.
A proper video with proper sound (you better get and use a microphone at a minimum, directional ones if it's going to be stuck to a camera), as well as a definite plan of action and rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Some people are gifted enough to be able to do it in a single pass, but most aren't, so a script is handy (you want to know why the teleprompter was invented and why most speakers use one?).
And editing, lots of editing. Don't just hold a sheet of paper with a chart or other graphic, you should cut to the graphic in the video.
If you don't have a cameraperson to operate the camera, you better prepare to do a lot of editing, or have everything close at hand to reach and show.
Doing a good video can take far longer and requires far more preparation than doing it in text - which may explain why sites stopped doing everything in video and started doing selections to augment the text, proper use of multimedia capabilities.
Depends on the online culture, really. Don't know how well the UK has taken to online shopping, but in Canada, the only reason to shop at Amazon is because it's hard to find locally. Considering the taxes are the same, the prices aren't too much better at times (30% off isn't a big discount when you can find same at brick and mortars), the only "advantage" Amazon has is challenging you to get free shipping (no Prime available at all) and the patience of a week's wait for the item.
Consequently, if you want something immediately, it can cost the same just to go out and buy it. Even new releases have a week's wait (Amazon.ca doesn't ship early so if you want something on release day...).
There are stores trying ot push heavily online shopping (usually brick and mortars), but they often have a huge B&M component to their websites just because if you want it now...
Oddly competitive too - online sales prices generally aren't much cheaper - when it is, shipping eats away all the savings (taxed on both, so no difference there). Ditto when buying from the US - given most stores seem to love UPS for whatever reason, it usually means to add 30% to the final bill to accomodate UPS's tendency to add bogus fees you have to pay (average is around 30%, but it can be anywhere from 20%-200% of the value of the item) on TOP of taxes.
No, this retailer was worse. I mean, not having Mass Effect 3? That's just... idiotic.
Actually, that would make things worse, as LTE is what doesn't work.
Now, I don't know the Australian market, so I don't know if there are as many non-LTE (i.e., HSPA+) phones being marketed as "4G" ("faux G") phones. I do know a large number of 4G Andorid phones are really just "4G" phones (T-Mobile was one of them advertising 4G early on, but both AT&T and T-mo do it. Hell, didn't the iPhone get an update that changed the 3G to 4G?).
FInding a true LTE Android phone is actually quite challenging amid all the 4G phones.
Which may give Apple an out since the iPad also supports HSPA+ style "4G".
Considering its iPhones we're talking about, most are still getting updates - the only two phones not running the latest and greatest are the original iPhone (2007), and iPhone 3G (2008). The 3GS, 4 and 4s are receiving updates, and apparently Apple users tend to update quite often (it took roughly 2 months to get 50% update rate on iOS 4, and the latest (iOS 5.1) is already close to 50% released a few weeks ago, no doubt aided by the OTA update functionality).
Of course, if this is a good vulnerability, it points to a perfect jailbreak if you can get that level of access - ability to run code and get at the filesystem through USB.
Actually, the iPhone does do delays.
I believe it lets you have 3 tries at full speed. Then it delays 1 minute between the 3rd and 4th try, 2 minutes between the 4th and 5th try, 5 and so on until it reaches an hour or so. After 10 attempts, if configured, it can wipe itself. So you can't try it in a practical amount of time (I believe the time just stays at an hour between attempts or so).
It's less. Because if you're at the edge dot, going down means you pass through the center, so that reduces the combinations. If you're at a corner dot, again, you must pass through the center to reach the directly opposite dot. Not sure if you can criss-cross through the center.
iOS (and I guess Android) have another layer of passcode lock that's more secure than the 4-digit PIN, though it requires a bit more work. They're basically passwords (or pass phrases?) and while they're a pain, they are supposedly much stronger than the PIN.
How does this thing fix that?
Also - it seems if they can run a program using it, it's a perfect jailbreak hole. Because the standard kernels now in iOS don't allow running unsigned programs. So either the dongle has to inject code into the kernel or other already-running process (if you can do that, it's a jailbreak avenue) in order to disable the signature check functionality, or they're running some sort of secret signed code ...
I think the closest you can come would be a comparison to the Russian elections that happened recently, to which Russians are disputing the results, and to which the Harper Government has sent election officials to "monitor" the election.
This could very well turn into something like that if it got out - "you think those Russians elections were fixed, you should've seen the Canadian one! At least the Russians know the electrion was certainly fixed!" sort of joke.
Or even worse, one of the corrupt countries simply ejects Canadian election officials monitoring their elections over corruption.
Both are metrics. Android vs. iOS, profit is a good metric - but so is usage. Android usage is under-reported because it's going by official Google Android numbers, and misses AOSP numbers. It's why the #2 tablet is the Kindle Fire, but isn't really seen in the Android listings. And there are many Android AOSP based phones out there (mostly in China) running nice "alternative" app stores. Profit's also a good metric too - after all, if Apple is making the most profit, it means that despite Android having a much larger marketshare (or usage), when combined with profits from non-smartphones, Apple is making more money then all of them combined. It helps explain why Nokia/RIM/Samsung are opposing any and all Apple proposals (money money money...)
As for Apache and IIS - I believe Apache actually has a larger marketshare over IIS (at least it did when all those IIS exploits were floating around), and quite possibly, the Apache-based ecosystem is far more profitable than the IIS ecosystem. But that's because of the licensing and support and many other factors.
In the end, success is whatever you want to define it. Some people consider success as making profits. Others may consider having someone else use the software a success. And others may define it as having most marketshare. Or maybe it's the entire economic profit of the software and its ecosystem. The only person that can judge the success of open-source software are the developers.
Heck, another definition of success may be the original creator can step down and see their software continue to evolve instead of becoming abandoned.
There is no true free say-anything-you-want speech. Typically what's meant by free speech is responsible speech - say anything you want, but you better be willing to stand behind those words. Like how you can yell "fire" in a theatre, but be prepared for a pile of charges (inciting a panic, possible manslaughter/murder if someone is trampled and dies, etc). Or libel and defamation laws.
It also doesn't preclude anonymity at all - a journalist shielding their source still has to do legwork in confirming details (sadly lacking these days even with non-anonymous sources).
Heck, the responsible part is also when it comes to everyone else - just because you can say something, doesn' tmean we have to hear it and many methods of being heard get banned even though they are a technical infringement (using bullhorns in ears of passers-by, for example, or by impeding traffic of those who care not what you say).
Remember, Google is about collecting information. With Voice, they have lots of statistics - who called you, who left you a voice mail, your phone numbers. I'm betting those who use Google Voice never see one of those "You need to add your mobile phone number to your Google account" intersitials (with a tiny line under it that basically says "I do not want to add my number"). Sure, ostensibly it's to "protect your account", but it's a real number.
And it's NOT a violation of Google's policy if an advertiser came up to Google and said "I'd like to show this ad to people in ZZZ city with area code YYY." Given Google owns the best AND worst ad network out there...
And given employers and other people are using Google and Facebook and G+ and all other social networks, it could very well be Google aggregating the data and either making it public or selling it. I'm sure Google has a similar thing going on like Facebook where companies can pay extra $$$ to get unfettered access to the data as part of "we may share your data with interested third parties".
Too bad you're basically the 1%. Warning users doesn't work. In fact, what you propose is incredibly dangerous. Ignoring the dancing pigs problem, a LOT of spam rely on the whole "friend" thing. The old Facebook "I'm stuck in <foreign city> and need money, please send!" is the most common one with hijacked accounts, but it also has an email counterpart from harvested contact lists. And spammers have been doing this far longer than Facebook has been around - it's how many of the early virusese worked - they sent an email with the payload that scans the contact lists and propagates themselves onwards. Short of exchanging public keys with your friends...
Anyhow, the malware from tpb doesn't come from the software itself, it's from the cracks and keygens, and always has. The software you download from tpb will be the same as what you get if you bought it - the reason being that these days, it's all signed by the company making it. However, the keygens and cracks that patch after install aren't checked and people do blindly run them. They're usually wrapped trojans - the keygen/crack as distributed by the crackers is completely clean, but someone basically took that and wrapped their dropper trojans around it.
Of course, if you have the legit key and need a copy of the bits, you can ignore the keygens and crap and download the files via tpb with no issue.
And it seems movies are in the same boat - fake movies with links to "download required codec here!" in the video.
Because the alternative is what we have in the US, with Verizon and Sprint selling phones that are basically only for them and make it a pain to move to another phone.
Whereas it's trivial for someone to go and take the SIM out of their old phone, and stick it in their new phone, and be done with it. SIMs basically separate out the "subscriber" part of the service from the phone.
It also allows people to have different subscriptions for their phone - say travelling. They pop out their home country SIM, and stick in the foreign country SIM, and away they go (provided it's not SIM-locked) - no need to buy another phone for that country for service and all that.
I suppose to go beyond that would be Apple's "reprogrammable SIM" idea where it's built into the phone and you enter in your subscription details and it automatically downloads the necessary SIM data. Basically it boils down to a phone that asks for your username and password to your account. And you know the majority of passwords would be weak and there'll be huge inquiries as to why people can easily steal cellphone service from others.
Anyhow, standards orgs like 3GPP are all about politics, and not technical superiority. A lot of standards are set with the "if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" type of thing. Companies are jostling around trying to get their patented stuff in the standard, and this can result in stuff like TD-CDMA being part of 3GPP even though it's not really used except by one company.
And the entire mobile industry is afraid of Apple. They sell very few phones overally, but they command the majority of the profits - Apple makes more profit than the rest of the mobile industry combined. It doesn't matter if the Apple proposal is superior, or if Apple gives everyone the right ot use it royalty free. They're afraid of what would happen if Apple gets a leg into the patent ballgame - all of a sudden the juicy cash Apple pays everyone for FRAND patents dries up or becomes smaller.
Apple's got a snowball's chance in hell. Everyone else will block it purely because letting Apple in means less money from Apple to everyone. And Nokia's got majority voting rights right now - letting Apple in means Nokia no longer can sway the vote easily for standards.
If Apple came up with an iPhone that got 1 year battery life, Gig+ bandwidth and all that, and made with everyday parts and really cheap, they still will reject it purely from the monetary standpoint.
It's politics, and it's why everyone's fighting so hard on something so trivial as a nano-SIM. I'm sure Apple didn't invent the micro-SIM (it was probably already in the spec for years, just Apple was one of the first to use it). And Apple certainly didn't invent hot-swap of SIMs (also in the spec - but hard to do, and the iPhone does let you do it successfully. Other phones, like the Galaxy Nexus let you remove the SIM, but require you reboot the phone to initialize the new SIM).
Hell, I bet no one but Apple is going to ever use nano-SIM (there's a FEW phones out there using micro-SIM that aren't from Apple, but there's pretty hard to find).
The vast majority of air "leaks" out through cabin pressurization valves near the back of the plane - it's designed that way since air has to be let out in order to let fresh air in (as well as to not keep the cabin at the same altitude as the departing airport - to climb up to 8000' requires releasing air).
Correct. The pressurized air for the cabin comes from the jet engine's bleed air (located after the compressor section). It's quite warm because of the compression (from -30-50C to +50-60C), so it needs to be cooled down via air conditioners to levels humans would prefer.
It's also one reason (among many) to keep the cabin at 8000' and why air quality has declined - using the bleed air saps power from the engine.
I'm guessing the people who claim 720p is fine and they can't see anymore are the same as how they're claiming the iPhone and iPad "Retina" displays aren't.
As for 720p content... it depends. The cable TV I watch is mostly 1080i now (need 1080p to display it fully). Blu-Ray content is 1080p. The only times I run into 720p content is when I play a PS3 game (some "full HD 1080" crap there - Sony was blasting HD-DVD over 1080i...)) or when I download crap re-encodes that downscaled the 1080i content down to 720p (rarely these days - I tend to seek out the original 1080i).
SD viewing's pretty limited to DVDs now that all the channels I watch on cable have HD equivalents. Even less these days when my cable company decided to move away from analogs and my TiVos don't record much (I can't believe how crappy a cable DVR can be... and no CableCARDs to enable TiVo use, either - Canada. The damn cable DVR can't even do season passes properly).
Java SE (J2SE) is F/OSS. Sun/Oracle has given patent licenses to any implementation of Java SE that meet some compatibility standard. Thus, OpenJDK is legal (because it's based off the referense Java SE implementation).
However, the money maker for Java has ALWAYS been Java ME (aka J2ME). Billions of cellphones, each of which is paying Sun/Oracle licensing fees for the patents in order to implement J2ME. And Android unfortunately impements J2ME (they could've gone J2SE, it's not like modern cellphones are lacking in CPU or memory these days). Thus they're in violation of the patents.
As a side note, Microsoft also has to pay for those Java patents as they're used in the .NET CLR.
The FOSS stuff is only for J2SE and the patent licensing is also for just J2SE.
No, the plane won't stop flying. But you may find yourself annoying back at your departure airport because of someone's cellphone.
All reports of interference are anecdotal - there are simply too many variables (device model, age, production run, seat, navigation in use, etc) to properly and conclusively determine interference. There are known reports of certain Samsung cellphones causing GPS to lose lock, or PDAs causing nav instruments to deviate significantly. Of course, nothing scientific and conclusive.
It's more critical when things like GPS go down because increasingly airlines are using RNP approaches (required navigation performance - you need 3 GPSes, 3 autopilots, all of them in lock and synchonicity before RNP can be accomplished), because it gets you on the ground faster, and saves them fuel as it's a more direct flight (no having to fly over mountains when RNP can guide you through quite narrow canyons - it specifies the minimum performance standards of navigation equipment which lets you do much trickier approaches) and better chances of making it in as RNP approaches often have much reduced minimums. Of course, if a cellphone on board desyncs a GPS prior to RNP, it means the approach is aborted and the pilot has to go "the long way" or more often, not at all (if it's short haul, it can mean returning back to departure airport, or diverting to alternate and either waiting for a mechanic to fix (and try again), or another airplane).
No, a cellhone won't take down the airplane, nor your ipad. At worst, it'll be major inconveniences to everyone involved, though if you manage to screw up the RNP approach GPSes without being detected, it's possible to fly into a mountain or something.
IEEE had an article 6 years back where they tried to probe some of these claims. http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/unsafe-at-any-airspeed
FYI - the FCC envelope for general consumer electronics is FAR more lenient than that for avionics.
The problem is, it's not cheap. You want a $500 laptop? Sorry, 1366x768 it is. But open your wallet a little bit, say, $1000 and you'll get ones with 1440x900 screens easily enough.
And open your wallet up more, and you'll find laptops with 1920x1200 screens. Hell, Apple sells them by the boatload (17" Macbook Pro - 1920x1200 has been standard for a few years now, and an option a few years before that). And Dell still sells 1920x1200 screens. Just instead of paying under $200, you're looking at $400+.
Same goes for higher resolutions. Want a 27" or 30" monitor with more than 1080p? Apple has a 27" at 2560x1440 screen, as does Dell. Go 30" and Dell has 2560x1600. Again, you're looking at $500+, so look for stuff on sale.
If you're wanting to cheapskate it, you won't find anything good. Those nicer screens that cost more tend to be PVA or IPS screens, while your cheap ass WXGA screen is 99% TN.
Cheap laptops are $500, yes. But they're really nasty. I wonder if it's because it has something to do with the price. Cheap monitors are 1080p as well (because the electronics are cheap - the same as what they drive TVs with). But good monitors and laptops have always costed more - everyone with their 1600x1200 CRT screens probably doesn't remember how much they used to cost (especially if you wanted one that wasn't blurry, flickery and pretty damn nice to look at).
The laptops and monitors still all cost the same as they always had. The low end just moved lower by making things even crappier.
It's why there are services companies can use to scan social networks - they don't ask for passwords, but given a name and address they can look up what information is available via facebook, linked in, blogs, etc.
It seems creepy, but these companies actually obscure things that are illegal. So photos of you would have your hands and face blacked out as well as anything that would give away your sex and race.
It's about the only way to prove that googling or visiting your facebook page didn't have an influence. These companies even give confidence ratings as to how likely the proposed page could be the person in question.
Gizmodo did a check of what these companies provide
I suppose that's one way to put it. But another way is - why does EVERYONE who plays need a copy of the books?
And that's the key.
I get a basic hang of the game and its rules, maybe borrow the books from my friend to get the nuances, but we can otherwise share a set of books amongst the few of us.
The problem is, SJG basically says that's illegal, and of my N friends, N-1 will be sued because we don't have N copies of the books.
And that apparently extends to online play - if you make an online game server so everyone can play without having to be physically close, every one of them better own a copy of the books. No sharing amongst friends, no lending out, etc.
That's the fundamental issue - sure some books may be useful if everyone had a copy, but most of the time it isn't necessary. Hell it makes introducing the game possibly difficult - you bring your books, teach people the basics and set up a scenario. That situation could get eveyrone else sued for copyright infringement.
Actually, it was the result of GCC going GPLv3 that a number of companies ditched GCC. Apple did it (though they were long in the process of migrating away from GCC - it still took many years and OS releases (I think LLVM started appearling around 10.4 or so)). Apple's last contribution to GCC was to put in the necessary patches to support Grand Central Dispatch, in case someone else needed that code they have GCC and LLVM to choose from.
And many companies are instituting new "Open Source Usage Policies" that require anyone who even wants to contemplate using an open-source product fill out forms indicating its use and reasons for it (is it for internal use only (e.g., webserver/wiki/etc), or will it be distributed, final impacts etc). These get sent to the legal teams to scour what would happen to the released product(s), as well as what the obligations are. Sales and marketing get involved because if the final output is GPLv3, this could be seen as a competitive disadvantage with customers. And then possibly customers need to be consulted and informed on what they need to do.
And they also need to figure out if it's even *LEGAL* to do it. Because GPLv2-only code cannot be incorporated with GPLv3 code at all (fundamental incompatibility that even the FSF acknowledges), which means something has to give as the two cannot mix.
Considering the largest breach of 2011 happened to be Sony (started with Playstation Network, spread through to other Sony sites), it's hard to tell if this is the case. After all, Anonymous and Lulzsec kept breaking into other Sony sites All in all, Sony lost probably close to 150M customer records....
I would call that hackivism since it was meant more to embarass Sony over their lack of security.
Or the high-pitched whine that was always in the background that drove me nuts.
My A/V receiver (and I'd think most good equipment) still makes clicks and thunks from banks of relays inside it. There's the main power relay that kicks in when you turn take it out of standby, the speaker protection relay that keeps the speakers shorted while the finals warm up and the transients settle down (to avoid the initial inrush current from destroying the speakers - it's the "thump" you hear when you turn on a set of computer speakers, for example). There's also amplifier reconfiguration relays that get set depending on the speaker configuration or enabling alternate speaker zones.
And it's a 2010 receiver.
A SIM is not just a storage device. It's a full blown microcomputer with its own encryption engine and other stuff.
Sure you interact with it in a simple command-and-response fashion (usually to get at contacts and such), but the processor can do a LOT more. If you've seen "SIM Applications" on your phone, they are little programs that run on the SIM CPU, interacting with the host phone through a well-defined interface called SIM Toolkit.
Anyhow, if you know how ETSI works, or how most standards bodies work, it's really just a bunch of politics. There's a lot of backscratching and money that changes hands (because being part of the standard means patent licensing revenue). This is especially in cases where there's no patent pool entitiy (like MPEG-LA) that let you mass-license a bunch of patents at once so everyone has to go license the FRAND patents from everyone else.
And that's the problem. Apple, despite probably selling maybe 10% of the phones, makes more profit off the iPhone and the other 90% combined. So everyone else is rightly worried that should this proposal go through they'd have to pay licensing fees to Apple (under FRAND terms).
That's what it really boils down to - it's far more profitable to sue Apple over everything and hope to get forced licensing over Apple's much-desired non-FRAND patents than to let them in and then lose the leverage.
Heck, even in 3G there's a pile of standards that you will not need for a regular phone (TD-CDMA for example). They're used in niche areas with narrow customer base. For stuff like this, it's more about being able to bid on contracts that demand "3G Wireless Technology" with a proprietary technology that no one else uses. It's only standard because it's in the spec that no reasonable person would use.
True. However one consequence of GW/CC is that temperature goes to either extreme far more often. So while you'e completely correct, the effect of GW/CC would be to make places that would've just had a cold winter have an even colder one (hello Europe!) and places that would've just been somewhat warmer be much hotter (hello eastern North America with your summer temperatures!).
So all GW/CC can conclusively be proven to do is make matters worse. I wouldn't blame GW/CC for this, just for the extremes we're seeing. So while colder places might be warmer due to GW/CC, it's likely that the winters will be much colder, and summers much warmer.
Of course, posting from the west coast, where we haven't had to break out the A/C in winter, yet.