I was under the (informed) impression that case modding died years ago, once everyone and their mother got plexi windows on their prefab cases.
People just don't care anymore. They want something that works and blends in with their home decor. The more discreet, the better. That's why I've been selling lots of very sedate-looking systems - lots of black anodized finishes and brushed aluminum "home theater style" fascia.
True. It died because of the shift to laptops, as well as people demanding more stylish looks that go with the furniture (probably driven by the likes of Apple who proved computers *can* look good).
But there will always be someone out there who has the skill to do this stuff and perhaps a man cave or such where the garishness of it can be hidden by closing a door.
Premodded cases are probably dying, but there's a strong modding community out there still who mod their own cases and do it for others as part of themes and such. But it's niche and one needs to have a spot where the WAF won't be an issue.
That's the big problem though. What constitutes a "read", and how do they really track it? Simply clicking on a link to an article shouldn't really count as a read, as you could denial-of-service a whole bunch of people simply by sending them to a page with a bunch of iframes. It doesn't even fit with how many people use the internet, where they will open 15 links in different tabs, gloss over the first paragraph, decide the rest isn't worth reading and close the tab.
I know the old exception is quite easy. You could go to NYTimes.com and read 20 articles a month there.
Linked articles from blogs don't count, and neither do articles linked from search engines. The reasoning for this is simple - blogs and search engines bring in viewers. If they stay, they can read 20 more (or 10 now) articles for free on the main site.
Basically, occasional readers (those who read via blogs and such) aren't subject to much paywalling at all.
And that's why the NYTimes paywall is a success where other paywalls failed.
Other paywalls let you read a paragraph or two before demanding payment. NYTimes lets you read the rest for free. If you like it, you may read more until you hit your limit. But you won't hit your limit if you only read NYTimes via another website.
There are enough ways to bypass the paywall that those who really wanted to could (basically by googling the headline and clicking that way), but most people are lazy and having to google to read another article gets old fast.
Basically, NYTimes found a way to get its articles read (via blogs and news aggregators like Google) but still being able to get some money from those who like it enough to read it (by not offering it entirely for free). So it doesn't matter how many times NYTimes articles appear in say,/. since they don't count. But those who wanted to read the NYTimes for free by using its website is blocked.
Pretty brilliant, actually. Blogs and aggregators bring people in, and you only charge them if they stay. First hit's free.
The computer would definitely struggle with that one because you spelled 'Center' incorrectly.:)
There is a nasty one inside the crossword app on the Nook Color (not sure if it's in other Nooks, but I'm guessing it is) where the answer is spelled "CENTRE". The problem is the down answers really want "CENTER" to make any sense (one of the down ones was "TENT" which became "TRNT").
Not sure if it was a typo or not. And the puzzles have no identifier so you can point it out.
That said, CDs are today very impractical. It's physically too large. No one carries a player anywhere near that size. The RIAA needs to get that clue bashed into their stupid heads and figure out better marketing. Still, I have bought a couple CDs in the past few years... and "ripped" them so they could be a part of my collection. If I can't "rip" them I can't play them. If I can't play them, what's the point in buying them.
Yes. Even Steve Jobs had trouble. In the end, he had to use the pathetic Mac marketshare (under 10% in the US) as a reason to try. Where else would a single digit marketshare be considered a good thing to launch a new venture? Ask any reasonable person and they wouldn't launch such a demanded product as Mac-only - they'd go after Windows with its 90% marketshare.
Face it - the only reason the RIAA is as stubborn as it is, it's because they don't care about it. They want control - total control. The Mac market is too small for the RIAA so if iTunes Music Store was a blazing success, they wouldn't lose control of the music. And of course it was a blazing success, because it offered what everyone wanted - a place to download music conveniently, easily, legally, and relatively "high quality". Jobs then pulled the rug out and released iTunes for Windows, thus offering to the public what they wanted. And with the iPod and clever non-licensing of FairPlay, it forced the music industry to open up since the only way to sell for iPod was... sell DRM-free.
And the big question was - how could Jobs compete with free (pirated music)?
They have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future.
Same goes for the MPAA. Though this time they're a bit more sneaky and make only parts of catalogs available to every provider, so Netflix has to compete with RedBox and iTunes and all sorts of other services, keeping ultimate control with the MPAA. When one of these services gets TOO successful, they'll start doing the "you cannot show this for N days after release".
Some intel chips use PowerVR, which has no OSS driver
And no windows driver either. Obviously, that's hyperbole. The chip does have Windows drivers and Linux drivers. The Windows ones are beyond terrible and the Linux ones were even worse.
This may have changed when since I last looked, but I'll bet the intel partners were furious for being given a dud with such awful drivers.
PowerVR doesn't have any open-source drivers - the only ones you get are binary blobs.
Of course, awful drivers is interesting, considering an awful lot of smartphones are running the Linux kernel, and an awful lot of them have PowerVR chips powering them.
Yes I'm talking about Android... and PowerVR has been a staple in the ARM world for ages for decent 3D embedded graphics.
Then again, I suppose the big issue is how Intel adapted PowerVR for PCs - because they probably don't have PCIe interfaces. And perhaps the Windows driver was awful because they had to adapt the Windows CE one (which has significant differences in DirectX and Direct3D over desktop Windows). But as am embedded chip, it's pretty solid.
Parasitic trading is tolerated not desired. It diverts profit from investors into traders, reducing the number of investors in a market by reducing the profits they can make and thus reducing the capital available to companies. Fewer companies go to the stock market to obtain capital as a result.
Once a company IPOs, that's pretty much all the capital they get. And the bank handling the IPO pays the company to do so at a fixed price. Now, a company may choose to only sell say, 10% of itself, holding onto 90% of itself for times it may need extra money.
At which point, it becomes tricky because to sell a share, you need a buyer - if the bid-ask spread is too high, the shares are thinly traded and being able to sell a share for what you want gets a LOT harder.
E.g., XYZ company owns 1,000 shares in itself. Its last trade price was $5. But the bid-ask is huge, say, bid $4, ask $6. If XYX needed $1000 now, it would have to sell 250 shares at $4 and lose a quarter of its holdings in itself. They could offer 200 shares at $5/share (lowering bid-ask since it's bid $4, ask $5), but there's no guarantees they would sell (i.e., low liquidity - it's hard to convert shares into cash and vice-versa). Heck, the person bidding $4/share may not even want 250 shares. They may want say, 10. At which point 10 shares are sold, and XYX still needs to raise $960 and hope the next guy in line is bidding close to $4.
HFT does lower the margin - purely because they're trying to put in bids higher than the current bid, and asks lower than current ask because they're trying to make money on the fractions. But it also means that the next bidders in line are more likely closer to the last trade price (so XYZ may have to sell shares at say, $4.95, $4.90, $4.85,... until it reaches $1000).
Sure the person who asks $6/share gets screwed because they're forced to sell at say, $5.05 rather than $6. Except they're also more likely to move stock at $5.05 - they could very well be asking $6 and fail to sell a single share while everyone else is buying and selling XYZ simply because of the lower ask.
Thinly traded stocks are especially annoying to hold because of this - there's not enough liquidity in the market to be able to liquidate those stocks except at substantially discounted rates.
I work with cash only, because Momma Visa charges 3-6% for debit card and up to 15% for credit card. I sell comic books, these have a fixed 30% markup, so visa gets no money from me. I considered them, but i figured if i go that way it'll just mean that my current cash payers will turn to credit card, and in the end it will be a net loss.
15%?! Now I know you're joking because even the risky dealers (porn sites) only pay 7.5% max. So either the comic stores in your area are really prone to fraud, or you misplaced the decimal point.
Of course, it also depends, I don't know your store, so I guess you just sell books and not GNs or trades or collectibles. Last time I used a credit card at the comic store, it was for $50 of items. The largest purchase was around the $500 range.
Of course, I suppose in Argentina comics are a bit cheaper - they're around $5 after tax each here, and given some people buy 10-20 of them at a time, accepting credit cards is required. Heck, a lot of places don't take $100 bills, and some don't even take $50 bills. I'd hate to take $500 worth of twenties to the store...
Or better yet... why doesn't Firefox on Android use the standard, pre-licensed, OS library to play back h.264?
All Android devices support h.264 playback these days and it's baked into Android's media playback architecture, so it's prelicensed by the device manufacturer.
I don't think an app needs to pay in order to use h.264 playback if it's already been paid for and provided for everyone else to use.
Heck, Firefox on regular PCs can do the same - Windows 7 supports it, and I'm sure Firefox could leverage other plugins like QuickTime to support h.264 playback on other OSes (really, Apple's giving away a h.264 decoder, for free. Licensed that they have to pay for! Each download costs Apple money!)
Not sure what they want to do with Boot 2 Gecko though, since there won't be a pre-licensed library already.
If you want people to buy your app, create a good app and provide a malware/adware/shareware free/lite version of it. If it is a good app then people will buy it. You piss people off before they have a real chance to test your app then you stand to lose that customer. Those that do not buy your app after trying it would not buy it under any circumstance. I will continue to block apps as long as I have a means to do so. And, I will continue to buy apps from those DEV's that actually create good apps and provide them without the hassle of dealing with the garbage on the side.
Works great on iOS, where the App Store is available everywhere iDevices are sold.
Not so much for Android, which are sold where Google Checkout isn't supported.
In the beginning, support for paid apps in Android was atrocious, at best. This forced developers to have to start offering the apps for free just to show up in the listing (otherwise only places where you could pay for the app would see it). This resulted in a market that started out as an alternative to the App Store turn into one where the vast majority of apps are free. (Across other platforms, it's roughly 25% free, 75% paid. For Android, it's well over 50% free).
It doesn't help that iOS users seem to pay for 2-3 apps a month, whilst most Android users either don't buy apps, or don't pay for them (i.e., pirate).
So developers who aren't developing apps for free have to stick ads in them.
It happens on iOS as well,but it's usually as a choice - either in-app purchase or two separate apps (a free ad-supported one, and a paid ad-free one). It's just on Android, it's a lot harder to charge for stuff when a good chunk of your users can't pay.
It also doesn't help when people are talking about global ad-blocking at the system level. That just scares away developers and leaves all the crapps left over
The reason Apple labor is âoebest than the rest" is that Apple, thanks to these controversies (so some good came out of it anyways,) has made sure their assembly staff gets treated better. Foxcon has no reason to treat the assemblers for any other client any better, and they don't.
Plus, all this attention to Apple can backfire, because if Apple's the only one doing the supplier audits (horrible as they may be), it puts Apple in a powerful position.
Because Apple can march into the plant making say, Samsung phones, and demand it be shut down until worker conditions match that of Apple. Or a plant making HTC phones. Or LG phones. Or ASUS tablets.
In fact, I'm surprised no one else wants to step up to the plate and do stuff like this. Because all the emphasis on Apple could lead to things going right that way.
Unfortunately, EFI essentially 'solves' the problem of the BIOS by taking every vice available and adding a giant screaming heap of complexity(the quality of which is generally at the mercy of your motherboard maker)... It's sort of an enormous clusterfuck, pretty much what would happen if you took the people who gave us ACPI and told them to write an operating system...
Wintel EFI firmwares are lurching toward ubiquity and not-complete-brokenness(albeit defined pretty much exclusively by whether Windows7 works properly, not by any reference to standards, where they exist), while Mac ones are blatantly contemptuous of things that are supposed to be nailed down by the 'standard'; but at least tend to fairly closely track the hardware and OS, since Apple is behind all of them.
Practically all motherboards for Intel processors have had EFI in them. Macs have been the ones to primarily use them up front, but Intel's been pushing EFI for a long time. And most BIOSes are actually EFI running a BIOS compatibility layer (not unlike Boot Camp). It's just the EFI functionality has been hidden away and the BIOS "application" that EFI runs takes over, using EFI to do all the stuff in the background.
As for problems - well, it's the same thing that happens with Windows - you have hardware manufacturers who have no right to touch a C compiler creating crap-ass drivers
What you are failing to account for is the burden of proof required is only "on a balance of probabilities", i.e. 50.0001% chance it was a manufacturing defect. If you go to court with an iPhone that won't turn on and there are no signs of physical abuse the judge will rule that it must have failed due to poor workmanship or poor quality parts.
Seems like a case to argue for more sealed consumer products that the consumer can't get into. At least, beneficial to the consumer.
After all, if it has screws, then there's a chance that the consumer opened it and destroyed it that way. But a sealed product like an iPad, well, it's kinda hard to put it back together exactly the way it was out of the factory. But something like an iPhone 4 or 4s has screws and now the consumer could've messed something up. Contrast this with say the 3GS which is sealed and pretty much an open-and-shut case (other than the liquid sensors, I suppose).
you're a wasteful consumer with too much money and not enough tech savy to save some money and upgrade or fix your own devices.
Repairing stuff is not a hobby, Im an electrical engineer, and making / fixing stuff is my job and life. So if I want to fix something I damn well fix it, I dont send it off to some other chump.
It is a hobby to you - you just like fixing stuff so much you do it in you free time as well. And no, I don't throw away much - I also fix stuff, even when it's stupid (like spending $120 to fix a decade old Celeron (Pentium III era) PC a few years ago).
But most other people? They'd toss it - these days sending it to the recycler or something.
You need to consider that if something is under $200, labor alone to fix it will probably cost half that for an hour's work. Since fixing stuff is your hobby, your labor's free. And that's the way it is - labor is, for the most part, the biggest cost of all.
Unless you work for minimum wage (as an EE, I really doubt it), your company probably charges twice what your hourly pay is (overhead, downtime, etc), so if you make $50/hr fixing stuff, the company is charging the consumer $100/hr.
Now explain to a consumer that should the backlight fail in the monitor (parts cost - about $10), they should pay $100+parts (depending - it can take longer than an hour) to fix it? Especially when they can buy a new one for $150? Even more, they can get the new one today, while you probably have to order the part in?
The only places where it's economically viable to fix are developing nations, where labor is insanely cheap. Like say, China or other countries.
I keep fixing stuff as well - I have the aforementioned 10 year old PC serving regular desktop use, an old Palm PDA where I spent $50 for a screen (though I probably could've gotten a used complete one off eBay for that), etc. But the only reason I do is laziness - it's easier to fix than migrate my data to a new PC, or to switch ways (i.e., going from my Palm to an iPhone or Android, where half the apps don't work the same as the way I'm used to). Hell I have a NAS sitting on my table apart because a software bug keeps it from getting on the network. Easy fixes, but I do it because I spent $400 a year ago to buy 4 500GB PATA hard drives (at $100 each - cheapest place was best buy. Online was $120/each + shipping)) for it.
I had to get another NAS appliance in the meantime, but still want to resurrect the old one, if only to have another 1.5TB of storage online. (And a year later, the new NAS appliance cost me $600 and has twice the space, while the old one cost me $600, plus the $400 in hard drives I bought to upgrade it last year)
I guess I'm just out of it. When I was a boy I'd go to Toys R Us and see an entire aisle of board games, for all ages. Everybody had a closet full, and everybody played them with their family and friends.
Am I to understand that this behavior is not actually mainstream? Monopoly, Risk, Parcheesi, these aren't mainstream? Or is there some class of board games here that are not mainstream? I'll admit not everyone knows about Settlers of Catan and such.
The games you quote are mainstream board games, by big name companies (i.e., Hasbro). Even stuff like Magic the Gathering is by Hasbro in the end.
But there's a LOT more games that aren't in the mainstream by smaller publishers. I found a nice little haven for these at a local mall. (Craving for a Game, if you're in Western Canada - the owner's VERY friendly and he runs the entire thing. Just a satisified customer). There's probably around 5000-odd games there, including interminable varieties of Monopoly, but many more by smaller publishers like Rio Grande and Fantasy Flight.
Heck, one of the most fun things was gathering up a few coworkers and playing Seven Seals (Zing in English, but the translation is Seven Seals). It's a neat trick-taking card game similar to Spades (the best description is "spades with evil"). The trick is to decide when to take the trick, when to make someone else take it (and sandbag them, costing them points), and when to trump it out (thus not making the bid). Many strategies to the game, including self-sacrificial ones (the bids you can place are limited to tokens available, so having people take ALL the tokens is a valid maneuver).
Helps blow of steam and much fun to be had. Plus it plays quick enough for a lunch break.
From the slide show/article it says the drives were removed before hand to prevent customer info from being leaked.
I'm wondering why these had hard drives with data on them at all. Wouldn't the data be on a SAN on the backend? Kind of defeats the purpose of a blade in the first place, seeing you want to be able to replace it quick if something goes wrong.
In fact, if there are using the local drives, they better be sure to remove the RAID controller, as these might have info left in the cache as they are battery backed up.
Most of the customer data would be on the back end, yes. But sometimes you need to cache stuff locally for whatever reason.
It could be character information, for example. It may not have carried any PII, but it's a lot easier to guarantee it didn't by simply not providing the drives. Heck, maybe one of their servers started swapping and who knows what sorts of stuff was in the swapfile - it won't be the first case where information was leaked that way.
So why take the risk?
As for the RAID card, the battery on those things lasts a few days tops - it's rechargable. It was designed for performance after all so the power efficiency of the RAID cache wouldn't be terribly great, and they're designed for short term outages. The server was decommissioned in July 2010. Either it was reassigned other duties elsewhere, or the whole thing was offline by which time the RAID battery would've drained.
This article is really full of it. It looks at Apple, and then says the entire electronics industry is going that way. It couldn't be more wrong. Yes, Apple crap is made to be as non-repairable as possible, but all the competition is completely the opposite. All the Android and Windows phones I've seen have easily-replaced batteries. I haven't looked at tablets, but I imagine they're the same. Apple is in a category by itself, and its practices do not reflect the industry in general. The fact that a bunch of morons happily buy their junk doesn't mean the whole world is moving to unrepairable electronics, and they're not a monopoly so consumers do have plenty of choices.
First, the reason why products are going adhesive sealed is not to impact user-repairability (I'd be surprised if anyone really cared) but because it's easier to assemble, and it looks a lot neater. And people care about looks.
Want to know what I hate most about Samsung phones? Especially after buying a Gnex? The damn battery cover! Such a flimsy piece of plastic holding the battery in and threatening to break if you pop it on or off a bit too often. Sorry, but for a premium smartphone I demand something more than a flimsy piece of plastic cheaply clicked in.
And you know why? It's because it's the only way to make a battery cover that doesn't take up huge amounts of volume with the latching mechanism. Short of going the Apple way, it's practically impossible. And the plastic has to be flimsy because it has to have elasticity so it doesn't break the first time you take it out of the box to put in the battery.
Hell, Apple does have something to the whole sealed battery thing. Outside of business users, who has purchased a spare battery for their laptop or cellphone? I'd bet a good 99.5% of the population doesn't. As long as the battery doesn't completely crap out, if it still works by the end of the contract, most consumers go for a new phone on contract. And I'm sure half the people who complain about their phone getting crap battery life could fix it by replacing the battery. But they won't - they'd just get a new phone.
Ditto with laptops - if the battery lasts 3 years, that's good enough. If the laptop still works, they'll just treat it as a computer without a battery. I know of a lot of people who run laptops with dead batteries. And no, they won't buy a replacement - even if they can buy it. Spending $50 to buy a battery for a computer now worth $50 on Craigslist?
So Apple realized if people aren't willing to change batteries, might as well make the whole device nicer and use the volume for more battery.
As for fixing, it's a niche. It's economically infeasible to repair technology these days, at least in North America. For example, you buy a TV for $1000. Three years down, it breaks and getting it fixed will probably cost you easily $500. Do you fix it, or buy a new brand new TV with gee-whiz-bangs? Ditto a computer - if the motherboard dies after 3 years, are you going to spend the $400 to fix it, or just buy a newer faster one for more?
And anything under $200 or so is not worth fixing. That 20" monitor? It'll cost $200 for a tech to fix it out of warranty, so just buy a new one.
Hell, some of the budget brand crap have horrendous warranties. Sure they'll fix it - just pack your 52" TV back in the box, and send it to our China repair warehouse. It has to get there in 30 days. Thus shipping alone would cost you couple hundred bucks to get a warranty repair.
Repairing stuff is a hobby. Treat it as such and you'll be happy - you'll get tons of broken and "broken" stuff from friends, family and neighbours that you can fix up and enjoy.
I suppose that you could possibly tell what compiler was used by the arrangement of the machine code, but I still don't see what the point is. Who cares if it was written in assembly language, C or Atari Basic?
Because knowing the compiler and version helps analysis - each compiler tends to emit code for the same statement very differently. By knowing the compiler, its idiosyncracies in the way it emits code is understood and it makes reversing the assembly back to C much easier.
Analyszing assembly code is difficult but if you know how higher layer structures are translated into machine code by the compiler used, it's a lot easier to "decompile" the code.
While Apple throws around lawsuits like toilet paper, I think that, like Foxconn, they'll leave it alone. For one, there's the Streisand Effect to consider - filing suit will allow the whole case to live on, and with a higher profile. Second, it won't do any good - even if Apple can demonstrate damages, which I doubt, it's not like Daisey could cough up enough money to matter. Third, it presents an avenue for real investigation in a court of law, where every undercover investigation and audit could be admissible, and Foxconn workers subpoenaed and testify.
It's not good business at all. In fact, this whole thing will probably have damaged claims of mistreatment at Foxconn for years to come, like how ecoterrorists tend to give a bad name to environmentalists. Sure they have a point, but in conveying that point, they lost the audience.
Better for Foxconn and Apple to leave well alone than force a court of law to have to go and dig through the muck. This way, Foxconn and Apple come out "better" in the end. A retraction is worth far more than whatever PR Apple and Foxconn could get through a lawsuit. And by doing this, Daisey's work is now going to be seriously questioned in the future. I suggest he apply to Fox News.
Tim Cook's email about Apple's supplier practices suddenly starts ringing a lot more truer when it was sent a month ago.
Plus, Foxconn and Apple aren't doing too badly, so a lawsuit illustrating actual damages is pretty hard to come by. (Like those who argued about the backdated share optoins - sure you suffered damages, but considering Apple did REALLY well for all involved, there's very little evidence to show what would've happened otherwise).
Sit back, and quietly watch the fireworks. Daisey has done more to damage the case of the poor Chinese worker than what Apple/Foxconn could do via PR and lawsuits.
Liberals misdirecting their own supporters to pin it on the Cons? Sorry, that's conspiracy theory horse shit and a lame attempt to muddy the waters, and even the Cons backed away from trying to push that idea.
The easiest way is to watch Harper's reaction. IF it was a Liberal ploy, Harper would be all over inquiries and everything - anything to make the opposition look bad and tie up their time and money in investigations to weaken/kill them.
Harper's an excellent politician (not to be confused with leader). He'll go after the jugular of any weak opponent. It's why he runs tightly scripted campaigns (less possibility of a candidate to trip over themselves - which they do when they go off script), runs ads that are highly effective at creating soundbites, etc. He knows what the people will remember and crafts his ads accordingly.
And yet he's resisting all calls for an inquiry, especting underfunded and understaffed Elections Canada will be able to get to the bottom of it. Which probably means that there's no easy evidence linking back to the Conservatives, but someone who digs deeper might very well uncover something.
Mastering for cars is important. I hate music with high dynamic range because it cannot be used consistently to drown out other things. If I have some classical music (which is almost always mastered with lots of dynamic range), then I generally have to quickly skip it, otherwise the office/plane background noise that I'm trying to mute just annoys me too much.
The problem is competing requirements. Home listening often demands high dynamic range, because that's the whole point - to feel the thumps in your whole body when the drums are hit to hearing the faintest winds in the quieter parts. (this is important in movies and video games as well for dramatic effect)
The thing though is once you've lost dynamic range, you're not getting it back - the information on what was soft and what was loud gets lost. However, it's trivially easy to take a piece with a large dynamic range and compress it so the dynamic range is reduced.
Many audio systems have methods for dynamic range compression - for home use, it's often called "night mode", but cars should also have some form of it to accomodate audio that would be more pleasant to listen at home and annoying in the car.
So it worked? I had found this thread that suggested that approach, but it sounded like a crapshoot because the cellco can tell you actually have a smarphone. On the previous slashdot story on this I could have sworn some guy said he worked for a carrier and they periodically "upgraded" everybody with a smartphone to a data plan (and sent them a bill), although I couldn't seem to find that post just now.
I think I might go for it though.
You're not as transparent as you think you are, even with GSM. Every phone has an identifier called the IMEI number (international mobile equipment identity, I think?). It's a super-serial number for the cellphone. It not only identifies the phone (model, submodel, etc) but it also is its serial number. And it's unique worldwide.
Every time you put your SIM card in a new phone, your carrier knows (because the IMEI is new). Every phone manufactured is in the database, so put your SIM in a smartphone, and they know if you moved from a dumbphone to an Android or iPhone or whatever.
Whether or not they care is another thing. Some carriers don't, because they know one mistake and they can ding you for those bytes (a lot of carriers offer "pay as you go data" plans - i.e., it's a data plan you're always signed up for as part of your voice plan. Of course, it's some stupidly high rate like 10 cents a kilo (not kibi) byte).
Yup, and *talk* to them. Tell them a few funny stories. Give them an understanding of what you do but also who you are.
You have an advantage here. The audience is other employees in the company, and your talk is about the network.
Guess what? You have a steady source of things to keep things interesting. Perhaps QA always complains that server X is always screwing up the tests, and you haven't fixed it. Well, talk about it! Tell them WHY server X is screwing up. Tell them WHY it's not fixed. Perhaps it's something like security causing it.
Or perhaps there was a balky server everyone hated using because it always went down/was slow/etc. And perhaps you did something that fixed it. Well, talk about what you did.
You can detail how the network is set up. Then detail how this can result in some stuff people can see.
Heck, detail some stuff that you found when diagnosing issues. Perhaps you accidentally deleted a vital driver. Or installed the wrong one.
Detail your backup systems and what is backed up and what isn't.
Indeed. What's so amazing about inconsistency? It would be fairly amazing if some organization dumb enough to implement censorship did it 100% effectively. Even something as simple as DRM on itunes files, there are workarounds that were simple, like burning it to a CD, then ripping it back as an MP3.
(Yes yes, apple apologists, they HAVE stopped adding DRM, though they haven't released files that were bought previous to that date, and their legal teams prevent anyone from unlocking those songs to play on, say, an android phone.)
Actually, the burn to CD is a supported method. Apple even says you should back up your purchases by using the Burn to CD function! Heck, they tried to make it "hard" by restricting you to burning a playlist 3 times or so. Of course, you could always delete the playlist and make a new one. Or delete the last track and re-add it back and get 3 more burnings out of it.
It was always one of the DRM'd iTunes Music Store rights - that you can always burn the track to CD. What you did afterwards, Apple didn't care.
Apple's response should be to keep quiet. Don't bash the guy when he's down. At best, a comment saying the status quo - that Apple is working hard to improve working conditions at its supplier's factories. Nothing more.
If This American Life is a respectable news organization, that alone is enough. You don't gloat in a PR saying "See? It was all a lie, our working conditions aren't THAT bad!" because that just galvanizes opinion. At best, you can congratulate TAL by saying stuff like "We like to thank TAL for showing journalistic integrity in their latest report".
Basically, just being the "bigger man" and not trying to bash up everyone or make comparisons to everyone else (I don't think anything made today DOESN'T pass through Foxconn in some way).
Keeping quiet works. Hell, let everyone ELSE bring up the old press releases and emails stating that Apple is working hard to increase living and working standards in China. It also gives opponents less ammunition to fire against you.
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True. It died because of the shift to laptops, as well as people demanding more stylish looks that go with the furniture (probably driven by the likes of Apple who proved computers *can* look good).
But there will always be someone out there who has the skill to do this stuff and perhaps a man cave or such where the garishness of it can be hidden by closing a door.
Premodded cases are probably dying, but there's a strong modding community out there still who mod their own cases and do it for others as part of themes and such. But it's niche and one needs to have a spot where the WAF won't be an issue.
I know the old exception is quite easy. You could go to NYTimes.com and read 20 articles a month there.
Linked articles from blogs don't count, and neither do articles linked from search engines. The reasoning for this is simple - blogs and search engines bring in viewers. If they stay, they can read 20 more (or 10 now) articles for free on the main site.
Basically, occasional readers (those who read via blogs and such) aren't subject to much paywalling at all.
And that's why the NYTimes paywall is a success where other paywalls failed.
Other paywalls let you read a paragraph or two before demanding payment. NYTimes lets you read the rest for free. If you like it, you may read more until you hit your limit. But you won't hit your limit if you only read NYTimes via another website.
There are enough ways to bypass the paywall that those who really wanted to could (basically by googling the headline and clicking that way), but most people are lazy and having to google to read another article gets old fast.
Basically, NYTimes found a way to get its articles read (via blogs and news aggregators like Google) but still being able to get some money from those who like it enough to read it (by not offering it entirely for free). So it doesn't matter how many times NYTimes articles appear in say, /. since they don't count. But those who wanted to read the NYTimes for free by using its website is blocked.
Pretty brilliant, actually. Blogs and aggregators bring people in, and you only charge them if they stay. First hit's free.
There is a nasty one inside the crossword app on the Nook Color (not sure if it's in other Nooks, but I'm guessing it is) where the answer is spelled "CENTRE". The problem is the down answers really want "CENTER" to make any sense (one of the down ones was "TENT" which became "TRNT").
Not sure if it was a typo or not. And the puzzles have no identifier so you can point it out.
Yes. Even Steve Jobs had trouble. In the end, he had to use the pathetic Mac marketshare (under 10% in the US) as a reason to try. Where else would a single digit marketshare be considered a good thing to launch a new venture? Ask any reasonable person and they wouldn't launch such a demanded product as Mac-only - they'd go after Windows with its 90% marketshare.
Face it - the only reason the RIAA is as stubborn as it is, it's because they don't care about it. They want control - total control. The Mac market is too small for the RIAA so if iTunes Music Store was a blazing success, they wouldn't lose control of the music. And of course it was a blazing success, because it offered what everyone wanted - a place to download music conveniently, easily, legally, and relatively "high quality". Jobs then pulled the rug out and released iTunes for Windows, thus offering to the public what they wanted. And with the iPod and clever non-licensing of FairPlay, it forced the music industry to open up since the only way to sell for iPod was ... sell DRM-free.
And the big question was - how could Jobs compete with free (pirated music)?
They have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future.
Same goes for the MPAA. Though this time they're a bit more sneaky and make only parts of catalogs available to every provider, so Netflix has to compete with RedBox and iTunes and all sorts of other services, keeping ultimate control with the MPAA. When one of these services gets TOO successful, they'll start doing the "you cannot show this for N days after release".
PowerVR doesn't have any open-source drivers - the only ones you get are binary blobs.
Of course, awful drivers is interesting, considering an awful lot of smartphones are running the Linux kernel, and an awful lot of them have PowerVR chips powering them.
Yes I'm talking about Android... and PowerVR has been a staple in the ARM world for ages for decent 3D embedded graphics.
Then again, I suppose the big issue is how Intel adapted PowerVR for PCs - because they probably don't have PCIe interfaces. And perhaps the Windows driver was awful because they had to adapt the Windows CE one (which has significant differences in DirectX and Direct3D over desktop Windows). But as am embedded chip, it's pretty solid.
Once a company IPOs, that's pretty much all the capital they get. And the bank handling the IPO pays the company to do so at a fixed price. Now, a company may choose to only sell say, 10% of itself, holding onto 90% of itself for times it may need extra money.
At which point, it becomes tricky because to sell a share, you need a buyer - if the bid-ask spread is too high, the shares are thinly traded and being able to sell a share for what you want gets a LOT harder.
E.g., XYZ company owns 1,000 shares in itself. Its last trade price was $5. But the bid-ask is huge, say, bid $4, ask $6. If XYX needed $1000 now, it would have to sell 250 shares at $4 and lose a quarter of its holdings in itself. They could offer 200 shares at $5/share (lowering bid-ask since it's bid $4, ask $5), but there's no guarantees they would sell (i.e., low liquidity - it's hard to convert shares into cash and vice-versa). Heck, the person bidding $4/share may not even want 250 shares. They may want say, 10. At which point 10 shares are sold, and XYX still needs to raise $960 and hope the next guy in line is bidding close to $4.
HFT does lower the margin - purely because they're trying to put in bids higher than the current bid, and asks lower than current ask because they're trying to make money on the fractions. But it also means that the next bidders in line are more likely closer to the last trade price (so XYZ may have to sell shares at say, $4.95, $4.90, $4.85, ... until it reaches $1000).
Sure the person who asks $6/share gets screwed because they're forced to sell at say, $5.05 rather than $6. Except they're also more likely to move stock at $5.05 - they could very well be asking $6 and fail to sell a single share while everyone else is buying and selling XYZ simply because of the lower ask.
Thinly traded stocks are especially annoying to hold because of this - there's not enough liquidity in the market to be able to liquidate those stocks except at substantially discounted rates.
Given Bay has been actively seen with an iPad in hand during shooting, I'm guessing he's putting the capabilities of the new iPad to test...
15%?! Now I know you're joking because even the risky dealers (porn sites) only pay 7.5% max. So either the comic stores in your area are really prone to fraud, or you misplaced the decimal point.
Of course, it also depends, I don't know your store, so I guess you just sell books and not GNs or trades or collectibles. Last time I used a credit card at the comic store, it was for $50 of items. The largest purchase was around the $500 range.
Of course, I suppose in Argentina comics are a bit cheaper - they're around $5 after tax each here, and given some people buy 10-20 of them at a time, accepting credit cards is required. Heck, a lot of places don't take $100 bills, and some don't even take $50 bills. I'd hate to take $500 worth of twenties to the store...
Or better yet... why doesn't Firefox on Android use the standard, pre-licensed, OS library to play back h.264?
All Android devices support h.264 playback these days and it's baked into Android's media playback architecture, so it's prelicensed by the device manufacturer.
I don't think an app needs to pay in order to use h.264 playback if it's already been paid for and provided for everyone else to use.
Heck, Firefox on regular PCs can do the same - Windows 7 supports it, and I'm sure Firefox could leverage other plugins like QuickTime to support h.264 playback on other OSes (really, Apple's giving away a h.264 decoder, for free. Licensed that they have to pay for! Each download costs Apple money!)
Not sure what they want to do with Boot 2 Gecko though, since there won't be a pre-licensed library already.
Works great on iOS, where the App Store is available everywhere iDevices are sold.
Not so much for Android, which are sold where Google Checkout isn't supported.
In the beginning, support for paid apps in Android was atrocious, at best. This forced developers to have to start offering the apps for free just to show up in the listing (otherwise only places where you could pay for the app would see it). This resulted in a market that started out as an alternative to the App Store turn into one where the vast majority of apps are free. (Across other platforms, it's roughly 25% free, 75% paid. For Android, it's well over 50% free).
It doesn't help that iOS users seem to pay for 2-3 apps a month, whilst most Android users either don't buy apps, or don't pay for them (i.e., pirate).
So developers who aren't developing apps for free have to stick ads in them.
It happens on iOS as well ,but it's usually as a choice - either in-app purchase or two separate apps (a free ad-supported one, and a paid ad-free one). It's just on Android, it's a lot harder to charge for stuff when a good chunk of your users can't pay.
It also doesn't help when people are talking about global ad-blocking at the system level. That just scares away developers and leaves all the crapps left over
Plus, all this attention to Apple can backfire, because if Apple's the only one doing the supplier audits (horrible as they may be), it puts Apple in a powerful position.
Because Apple can march into the plant making say, Samsung phones, and demand it be shut down until worker conditions match that of Apple. Or a plant making HTC phones. Or LG phones. Or ASUS tablets.
In fact, I'm surprised no one else wants to step up to the plate and do stuff like this. Because all the emphasis on Apple could lead to things going right that way.
Practically all motherboards for Intel processors have had EFI in them. Macs have been the ones to primarily use them up front, but Intel's been pushing EFI for a long time. And most BIOSes are actually EFI running a BIOS compatibility layer (not unlike Boot Camp). It's just the EFI functionality has been hidden away and the BIOS "application" that EFI runs takes over, using EFI to do all the stuff in the background.
As for problems - well, it's the same thing that happens with Windows - you have hardware manufacturers who have no right to touch a C compiler creating crap-ass drivers
Seems like a case to argue for more sealed consumer products that the consumer can't get into. At least, beneficial to the consumer.
After all, if it has screws, then there's a chance that the consumer opened it and destroyed it that way. But a sealed product like an iPad, well, it's kinda hard to put it back together exactly the way it was out of the factory. But something like an iPhone 4 or 4s has screws and now the consumer could've messed something up. Contrast this with say the 3GS which is sealed and pretty much an open-and-shut case (other than the liquid sensors, I suppose).
It is a hobby to you - you just like fixing stuff so much you do it in you free time as well. And no, I don't throw away much - I also fix stuff, even when it's stupid (like spending $120 to fix a decade old Celeron (Pentium III era) PC a few years ago).
But most other people? They'd toss it - these days sending it to the recycler or something.
You need to consider that if something is under $200, labor alone to fix it will probably cost half that for an hour's work. Since fixing stuff is your hobby, your labor's free. And that's the way it is - labor is, for the most part, the biggest cost of all.
Unless you work for minimum wage (as an EE, I really doubt it), your company probably charges twice what your hourly pay is (overhead, downtime, etc), so if you make $50/hr fixing stuff, the company is charging the consumer $100/hr.
Now explain to a consumer that should the backlight fail in the monitor (parts cost - about $10), they should pay $100+parts (depending - it can take longer than an hour) to fix it? Especially when they can buy a new one for $150? Even more, they can get the new one today, while you probably have to order the part in?
The only places where it's economically viable to fix are developing nations, where labor is insanely cheap. Like say, China or other countries.
I keep fixing stuff as well - I have the aforementioned 10 year old PC serving regular desktop use, an old Palm PDA where I spent $50 for a screen (though I probably could've gotten a used complete one off eBay for that), etc. But the only reason I do is laziness - it's easier to fix than migrate my data to a new PC, or to switch ways (i.e., going from my Palm to an iPhone or Android, where half the apps don't work the same as the way I'm used to). Hell I have a NAS sitting on my table apart because a software bug keeps it from getting on the network. Easy fixes, but I do it because I spent $400 a year ago to buy 4 500GB PATA hard drives (at $100 each - cheapest place was best buy. Online was $120/each + shipping)) for it.
I had to get another NAS appliance in the meantime, but still want to resurrect the old one, if only to have another 1.5TB of storage online. (And a year later, the new NAS appliance cost me $600 and has twice the space, while the old one cost me $600, plus the $400 in hard drives I bought to upgrade it last year)
The games you quote are mainstream board games, by big name companies (i.e., Hasbro). Even stuff like Magic the Gathering is by Hasbro in the end.
But there's a LOT more games that aren't in the mainstream by smaller publishers. I found a nice little haven for these at a local mall. (Craving for a Game, if you're in Western Canada - the owner's VERY friendly and he runs the entire thing. Just a satisified customer). There's probably around 5000-odd games there, including interminable varieties of Monopoly, but many more by smaller publishers like Rio Grande and Fantasy Flight.
Heck, one of the most fun things was gathering up a few coworkers and playing Seven Seals (Zing in English, but the translation is Seven Seals). It's a neat trick-taking card game similar to Spades (the best description is "spades with evil"). The trick is to decide when to take the trick, when to make someone else take it (and sandbag them, costing them points), and when to trump it out (thus not making the bid). Many strategies to the game, including self-sacrificial ones (the bids you can place are limited to tokens available, so having people take ALL the tokens is a valid maneuver).
Helps blow of steam and much fun to be had. Plus it plays quick enough for a lunch break.
Most of the customer data would be on the back end, yes. But sometimes you need to cache stuff locally for whatever reason.
It could be character information, for example. It may not have carried any PII, but it's a lot easier to guarantee it didn't by simply not providing the drives. Heck, maybe one of their servers started swapping and who knows what sorts of stuff was in the swapfile - it won't be the first case where information was leaked that way.
So why take the risk?
As for the RAID card, the battery on those things lasts a few days tops - it's rechargable. It was designed for performance after all so the power efficiency of the RAID cache wouldn't be terribly great, and they're designed for short term outages. The server was decommissioned in July 2010. Either it was reassigned other duties elsewhere, or the whole thing was offline by which time the RAID battery would've drained.
First, the reason why products are going adhesive sealed is not to impact user-repairability (I'd be surprised if anyone really cared) but because it's easier to assemble, and it looks a lot neater. And people care about looks.
Want to know what I hate most about Samsung phones? Especially after buying a Gnex? The damn battery cover! Such a flimsy piece of plastic holding the battery in and threatening to break if you pop it on or off a bit too often. Sorry, but for a premium smartphone I demand something more than a flimsy piece of plastic cheaply clicked in.
And you know why? It's because it's the only way to make a battery cover that doesn't take up huge amounts of volume with the latching mechanism. Short of going the Apple way, it's practically impossible. And the plastic has to be flimsy because it has to have elasticity so it doesn't break the first time you take it out of the box to put in the battery.
Hell, Apple does have something to the whole sealed battery thing. Outside of business users, who has purchased a spare battery for their laptop or cellphone? I'd bet a good 99.5% of the population doesn't. As long as the battery doesn't completely crap out, if it still works by the end of the contract, most consumers go for a new phone on contract. And I'm sure half the people who complain about their phone getting crap battery life could fix it by replacing the battery. But they won't - they'd just get a new phone.
Ditto with laptops - if the battery lasts 3 years, that's good enough. If the laptop still works, they'll just treat it as a computer without a battery. I know of a lot of people who run laptops with dead batteries. And no, they won't buy a replacement - even if they can buy it. Spending $50 to buy a battery for a computer now worth $50 on Craigslist?
So Apple realized if people aren't willing to change batteries, might as well make the whole device nicer and use the volume for more battery.
As for fixing, it's a niche. It's economically infeasible to repair technology these days, at least in North America. For example, you buy a TV for $1000. Three years down, it breaks and getting it fixed will probably cost you easily $500. Do you fix it, or buy a new brand new TV with gee-whiz-bangs? Ditto a computer - if the motherboard dies after 3 years, are you going to spend the $400 to fix it, or just buy a newer faster one for more?
And anything under $200 or so is not worth fixing. That 20" monitor? It'll cost $200 for a tech to fix it out of warranty, so just buy a new one.
Hell, some of the budget brand crap have horrendous warranties. Sure they'll fix it - just pack your 52" TV back in the box, and send it to our China repair warehouse. It has to get there in 30 days. Thus shipping alone would cost you couple hundred bucks to get a warranty repair.
Repairing stuff is a hobby. Treat it as such and you'll be happy - you'll get tons of broken and "broken" stuff from friends, family and neighbours that you can fix up and enjoy.
Because knowing the compiler and version helps analysis - each compiler tends to emit code for the same statement very differently. By knowing the compiler, its idiosyncracies in the way it emits code is understood and it makes reversing the assembly back to C much easier.
Analyszing assembly code is difficult but if you know how higher layer structures are translated into machine code by the compiler used, it's a lot easier to "decompile" the code.
It's not good business at all. In fact, this whole thing will probably have damaged claims of mistreatment at Foxconn for years to come, like how ecoterrorists tend to give a bad name to environmentalists. Sure they have a point, but in conveying that point, they lost the audience.
Better for Foxconn and Apple to leave well alone than force a court of law to have to go and dig through the muck. This way, Foxconn and Apple come out "better" in the end. A retraction is worth far more than whatever PR Apple and Foxconn could get through a lawsuit. And by doing this, Daisey's work is now going to be seriously questioned in the future. I suggest he apply to Fox News.
Tim Cook's email about Apple's supplier practices suddenly starts ringing a lot more truer when it was sent a month ago.
Plus, Foxconn and Apple aren't doing too badly, so a lawsuit illustrating actual damages is pretty hard to come by. (Like those who argued about the backdated share optoins - sure you suffered damages, but considering Apple did REALLY well for all involved, there's very little evidence to show what would've happened otherwise).
Sit back, and quietly watch the fireworks. Daisey has done more to damage the case of the poor Chinese worker than what Apple/Foxconn could do via PR and lawsuits.
The easiest way is to watch Harper's reaction. IF it was a Liberal ploy, Harper would be all over inquiries and everything - anything to make the opposition look bad and tie up their time and money in investigations to weaken/kill them.
Harper's an excellent politician (not to be confused with leader). He'll go after the jugular of any weak opponent. It's why he runs tightly scripted campaigns (less possibility of a candidate to trip over themselves - which they do when they go off script), runs ads that are highly effective at creating soundbites, etc. He knows what the people will remember and crafts his ads accordingly.
And yet he's resisting all calls for an inquiry, especting underfunded and understaffed Elections Canada will be able to get to the bottom of it. Which probably means that there's no easy evidence linking back to the Conservatives, but someone who digs deeper might very well uncover something.
The problem is competing requirements. Home listening often demands high dynamic range, because that's the whole point - to feel the thumps in your whole body when the drums are hit to hearing the faintest winds in the quieter parts. (this is important in movies and video games as well for dramatic effect)
The thing though is once you've lost dynamic range, you're not getting it back - the information on what was soft and what was loud gets lost. However, it's trivially easy to take a piece with a large dynamic range and compress it so the dynamic range is reduced.
Many audio systems have methods for dynamic range compression - for home use, it's often called "night mode", but cars should also have some form of it to accomodate audio that would be more pleasant to listen at home and annoying in the car.
You're not as transparent as you think you are, even with GSM. Every phone has an identifier called the IMEI number (international mobile equipment identity, I think?). It's a super-serial number for the cellphone. It not only identifies the phone (model, submodel, etc) but it also is its serial number. And it's unique worldwide.
Every time you put your SIM card in a new phone, your carrier knows (because the IMEI is new). Every phone manufactured is in the database, so put your SIM in a smartphone, and they know if you moved from a dumbphone to an Android or iPhone or whatever.
Whether or not they care is another thing. Some carriers don't, because they know one mistake and they can ding you for those bytes (a lot of carriers offer "pay as you go data" plans - i.e., it's a data plan you're always signed up for as part of your voice plan. Of course, it's some stupidly high rate like 10 cents a kilo (not kibi) byte).
You have an advantage here. The audience is other employees in the company, and your talk is about the network.
Guess what? You have a steady source of things to keep things interesting. Perhaps QA always complains that server X is always screwing up the tests, and you haven't fixed it. Well, talk about it! Tell them WHY server X is screwing up. Tell them WHY it's not fixed. Perhaps it's something like security causing it.
Or perhaps there was a balky server everyone hated using because it always went down/was slow/etc. And perhaps you did something that fixed it. Well, talk about what you did.
You can detail how the network is set up. Then detail how this can result in some stuff people can see.
Heck, detail some stuff that you found when diagnosing issues. Perhaps you accidentally deleted a vital driver. Or installed the wrong one.
Detail your backup systems and what is backed up and what isn't.
Actually, the burn to CD is a supported method. Apple even says you should back up your purchases by using the Burn to CD function! Heck, they tried to make it "hard" by restricting you to burning a playlist 3 times or so. Of course, you could always delete the playlist and make a new one. Or delete the last track and re-add it back and get 3 more burnings out of it.
It was always one of the DRM'd iTunes Music Store rights - that you can always burn the track to CD. What you did afterwards, Apple didn't care.
Apple's response should be to keep quiet. Don't bash the guy when he's down. At best, a comment saying the status quo - that Apple is working hard to improve working conditions at its supplier's factories. Nothing more.
If This American Life is a respectable news organization, that alone is enough. You don't gloat in a PR saying "See? It was all a lie, our working conditions aren't THAT bad!" because that just galvanizes opinion. At best, you can congratulate TAL by saying stuff like "We like to thank TAL for showing journalistic integrity in their latest report".
Basically, just being the "bigger man" and not trying to bash up everyone or make comparisons to everyone else (I don't think anything made today DOESN'T pass through Foxconn in some way).
Keeping quiet works. Hell, let everyone ELSE bring up the old press releases and emails stating that Apple is working hard to increase living and working standards in China. It also gives opponents less ammunition to fire against you.