The question is why the Frell would you "like" a commercial organisation in the first place?
Because people like deals and one thing you can do is send messages to those that have "like"d your page. So perhaps you frequent an establishment a lot, you may "Like" them and get discount coupons for use monthly or weekly. Or tell you about special deals and offers.
I'm sure many companies already do this, and companies like NewEgg and such probably offer some spiffy discounts and such. Sure someone will eventually repost it elsewhere, but if it's a time limited deal, it can take a little while versus just hitting your inbox.
Is this better hardware, perhaps with higher resolution? Or is there some hurdle put in the hardware and API for windows-kinect to prohibit us from using the cheaper xbox one with future windows kinect games?
Both.
The retail SDK will not support Xbox kinect, while the beta SDK will.
Second, the PC version features a "near mode" that allows for PC use without needing the living room space. So instead of hving to interact with Kinect from 6-10' away, you can be as close as a couple of feet (it degrades gently though, so the absolute minimum is just under a foot and a third).
Finally, the Xbox Kinect runs the IR camera at QVGA resolution. This is because the Xbox's USB 2 host is not fast enough (theoretical performance is 30MB/sec, and they're only getting about half that). So the sensor resolution is compromised because the USB bus is too slow on the Xbox. (They're supposed to be working hard to fix it and to get closer to the theoretical max).
PCs don't have this issue, except for cheaper lower end ones. This means Windows Kinect can run both cameras at VGA resolution enabling far better depth mapping. Heck, it may be possible to adjust based on PC performance (some PCs have crappy USB ports that cause USB errors and USB downshifts to 1.1 because of it). This would be interesting as Kinect may be one of the first USB peripherals with high isochronous bandwidth demands that most PCs would rarely encounter.
The only way to stop this bullshit is to mandate that all campaigns be publicly funded and disallow direct financial contribution to any candidate by anyone, period. We need to get money out of politics, not start throwing more in on the other side. All that's going to accomplish is a fucking cold war type situation where both sides try to outspend the other, and the fact is, the people are going to lose that fight every time. People struggling to pay their bills don't have the means to donate to political candidates, so their voice is ignored. This must end.
Good suggestion, but doesn't last. The next government will just scrap it.
Look at Canada - we had a per-vote subsidy for party members (everyone got $1.25 per vote). The present Harper Government (yes, the Government of Canada is officially known as the Harper Government) scapped it under the guise of "budget deficit". (Plus a few people were complaining that they had to support a "losing" party). Total amount saved - around $10M or so per year.
Perhaps the biggest thing that can be done is to drop the tax benefits that come from campaign contributions (yes, that curious little loophole was NOT removed...). That way if people want to contribute, they can do it from after tax income and not expect any plum tax benefits out of it. if you want to know, contributing $1 to a political party gets you far more in tax benefits than contributing $1 to charity.
The "reading" app should take care of that, just stick with ePub or mobi formats, plenty of apps to read them.
Problem is, they're really just glorified web browsers. ePub and mobi are effectively HTML subsets, so you can toss your book at a web browser and read it there.
The issue is that web browsers often have horrible typography and layout issues. Fonts aren't hinted or leaded properly, numbers aren't "traditional" with ascenders and descenders, etc. (Most readers offer a "font" option, but the ones with ascenders and decenders still end up shown that way in tables - ascending and descending numbers are for text to make it look more natural, while table numbers (sans ascenders and decenders) are for tables to make everything line up). Plus of all the readers I've tried, only one font was available of them all that had numbers with ascenders and decenders (Georgia).
Someone really ought to make a ePub/Mobi reader that can take the limited HTML markup, convert it and shove it through something like (La)TeX and use that for typesetting and display.
Why do you claim that over population is a huge problem? The rate of human population growth has been declining for decades. It currently seems as we'll never even hit 10 billion before we drop in total numbers.
Population growth has to slow down, bacause it's been excessively high for the past centure.
Just scant century ago, the population of the world was under 2 billion. Now it's 7. In just 100 years, the human population more than tripled. In contrast, the previous 100 years prior to that, it barely doubled from about 1B to just under 2.
Anyone who sees the population curve over the past few hundred years would see exponential growth, but anyone who knows history that it's unlikely to be sustainable.
The question becomes, though, can the Earth sustain it? Are we using up banked natural resources (like oil) faster than such resources can be renewed? And more importantly - what about the environment - climate change or no, pollution is an issue (unless you believe Beijing's air quality reports).
Not to mention how many CEOs had Bill Gates' home number and could call and say "Bill give me a hand" and actually have him do it? Oh Gates wasn't doing it to be nice for sure, he knew if Apple went tits up that antitrust was gonna rip him a new asshole, but despite the fact Apple guys HATE to admit this Gates really helped to calm the market and get developers back on board with Apple. Remember at that time the investors were shitting kittens and the stock was doing lousy thanks to all those "Is this the death of Apple?" stories being run at the time but when Gates showed up and said to the effect 'We believe Apple has a bright future so we are gonna invest in their stock and make sure Microsoft software is available to the Mac" a LOT of developers and investors said "Hey, if Gates thinks there is money to be made there maybe there is!". Of course the money was a pittance compared to what Apple had but it was the act that helped to calm the panicked market.
Exactly. That's the ENTIRE purpose of Microsoft's $150M "investment" in Apple. It was an investor confidence move, and not a move that was to save Apple. (Remember, Apple paid $430M for NeXT. Surely if Apple needed, Jobs could've found $150M in spare change from that).
Microsoft sold that stock when they could a few years later for 3 times as much money.
Steve Jobs knew he needed to calm the markets, and what better way than going after the world's largest software manufacturer to make some investments. The money was trivial. The biggest news was development of Microsoft Office for Mac and IE. (The Mac Business Unit at Microsoft at one point had a nicer version of Office than Windows' Office).
Of course, a Microsoft-hating Apple user wouldn't admit it, but they wouldn't admit that Apple "needed" that $150M either. In the end, that whole $150M was just an investor confidence thing, coupled with Microsoft's commitment for at least 5 years of developing Office for Mac.
Jobs just reached out to one of this oldest associates knowing they both had problems - Microsoft and antitrust, Apple and investor confidence, and cunningly engaged in a plan that mutually benefits both.
Oh and another one, are they actually using apps or is this apps that are updating? I used to always dread seeing Battle for Wesnoth update on my ipod touch because here comes a third of a gig each update. Are there any apps out there bigger than wesnoth? I know the xplane flight simulators are a bit on the large side.
Could it be a phone that is broken and continually downloading over the air updates over and over and over and over?
There are plenty of apps bigger than 300MB.
GPS apps for starters - it's the primary reason the maximum size of an IPA was upped from 1GB to 2GB. The map data for North America is close to 1.2GB+ and all the extras can push it to 1.8GB.
Not that it matters - iOS refuses to use 3G for apps larger than 20MB or so - it will insist on using a WiFi connection (though I suppose it will gladly update over a 3G hotspot).
It's also one of the times iTunes is handy - downloading huge updates on the device is already iffy using WiFi - so use your PC and transfer it over using faster USB...
Also, plenty of games are larger - Gameloft's Halo wannabe, NOVA, is routinely 600MB-1GB (most of Gameloft's games are pretty big). And there's plenty more - kind of a pity you can't sort the App Store by size.
My eyes cross at how one is going to "spawn" a "backup."
You don't. Salmon die after spawning. So your spawned backup becomes your new primary storage.
(Incidentally, lazy bald eagles rely on this phenomenon to feed - they "catch" the salmon after they've spawned and eat the carcass. Saves them having to hunt and grab live ones.)
Further, if warming trends were to continue, the grain belt of the midwestern US would stretch up into Canada, potentially doubling the population support capacity of the farms of North America, to say nothing of those of Russia.
Ah, but that assumes the grain belt expands, and not, as emperically determined, moves northwards. You see, just because Canada's getting warmer, doesn't mean the US isn't as well, and former grain belts turn into basically dust belts because it's too hot to grow anything - at least without trucking in huge amounts of water.
In addition, the Earth's tilt does not change. This means the growing season in the northern latitudes is far shorter. Studies into global warming (simulated with heaters) have shown that midwestern plants do not grow well at all in the northern lattitudes - they sprout way too late, leading to basically no growth of the plant nor fruiting (it becomes too cold too quickly). Northern lattitude plants have adapted and grow quicker sooner, but they expend so much energy they do not reproduce much.
Aren't most displays still TN panels anyway with only 6 bit color? Granted I have noticed there seems to be a rise in the number of S-IPS and S-PVA monitors on the market so that trend appears that it may finally be changing.
Yes, most displays are TN.
PVA (and its variants) and IPS panels are the minotity - because people love getting the "free" monitor with their PC, or buying the sub-$200 ones.
You can find PVA and IPS panels in more premium monitors and TVs, but usually those aren't the ones costing under $200 on sale. They'll be in the larger ones (e.g., 30" non-1080p ones - the ones costing $1000+) because those can command a handy premium. The 1080p TVs of 30+" are probably cheap TN ones (30" Apple Cinemas run something like 2560x something or more).
It also applies to tablets as well - the Kindle Fire and Nook Color/Tablets use nice IPS screens, while the cheapass ones often use TNs. The more premium Androids and iPad do use nice IPS ones.
Laptops - it's a crapshoot. It's one of the few places where Apple still uses TN panels, and few use PVA or IPS.
You may be noticing that more people are advertising their screens as PVA or IPS though, usually in an effort to justify a higher price to hopefully draw you away from the TN screen on sale. Not that they aren't worth the extra cost, but they need something to give the best buy drone to spew.
Until the public can store movies legally on hard drives without any problems these hard drives will not come close to being filled up. Only by giving people a reason to have get hard drives in the terabytes will we increase the demand and thus increase and diversify the places where they are manufactured.
But the public CAN do this. There are, in the US, many legitimate places to buy movies online and store them locally.
First, there's "Digital Copy" included with many Blu-Ray discs, for free.
Next we have iTunes, Amazon and other services selling movies that download to your hard disk. And there are often other strange services - I know sometimes buying PNY memory cards they throw in a "free movie" offer, as well.
Sure it's DRM'd to hell and back, but it's a legal source to obtain your movies.
Unless you meant "downloading for free DVD rips and such"...
While not a horribly bad idea, it would be of limited use. The reason science doesn't dwell on the odd irregular result, and especially on results that can't be reproduced, is that you cannot draw any conclusions from them.
Maybe not by itself, but sometimes interesting correlations pop up because of strange combinations. Or more likely, someone gets the results they were expecting, but sees an odd variance they can't explain. Perhaps if it was seen elsewhere, the odd data correllation may have some merit in investigation.
It's like an odd bug you find when using some software. You don't think it's important (perhaps it happens occasionally), but someone else decides to just mention it in passing, and then others chime in as it happened to them, and then hey, perhaps it's a bigger bug than expected.
Just putting it out there may bring others to notice they see the same thing as well and then provide incentive to do proper research in it.
I'm a PC, but I'm guessing this also means Macs aren't the kind of folks who might have one power adapter at home and another one for traveling.
I have 3 different adapters I might use with my ThinkPad between home, work, and traveling. Would you need a matched set of adapters with the same memory chip in each? Would using an adapter with a different chip change the encoding on the passwords?
Thta's the entire point. The password is encrypted using the "home charger" key. Presumably, you'd travel with a travelling charger or something else, this way if your Mac is stolen, they can't recover your password (which otherwise defeats the purpose of stuff like FileVault full disk encryption).
This is meant for home users where the laptop never strays outside the house - they can recover the password easily. It just provides a more convenient way to recover the password.
Presumably, the other methods of password recovery (single user mode, boot DVD) still work, though you lose your keychain (and all the saved passwords) when you do this.
Is it possible to put something into a phone to detect when the phone is being tracked? How about is a surveillance camera is operating?
If not, it could be a cool thing to develop.
People's phones could beep when it detects they are being spied on. The owners could then walk up to whatever local manager there is and let them know they will not be shopping there.
Better yet, a phone app that will jam such technology without hurting the hardware.
Is it possible to put something on my wifi access point to detect when it's being sniffed?
Perhaps my access point could beep if it detects someone trying to collect packets from my network. Then the owners could walk to the sniffer and let them know.
Better yet, an app that will jam such sniffing without hurting the network.
Oh wait.
The technology relies on the fact your phone is broadcasting the information. The hardware is just listening in - it's not doing anything different than what Google does when they map access points - it captures packets, records the details, discards the data.
So the answer is "no", you cannot detect when your broadcasts are being received (otherwise Neilson would've gone out of business ages ago if stations knew exactly how many people watched their channel at every moment). Well, you can - the impedance changes ever so slightly, but below the noise of normal operations and handling.
And yes, you can jam it. It's called a "cell phone jammer". The downside is, well, no one else's phones work, either.
The thing works by passively monitoring RF signals. There's no active pinging or anything - it's like the old days of analog cellphones where anyone with a scanner could pick up your call (until it was outlawed). Or how anyone with a scanner can listen in to stuff - as long as you didn't transmit, it was basically impossible to determine if eavesdropping was taking place.
Your best bet is, literally, to turn off the transmitter called your phone.
And no, the only thing they know about you is effecitvely an ID number (phone serial number). They can't take that number and convert it to a phone number, a name or anything else anymore than you can take a MAC address and convert it to a name. At least not without asking someone.
Do DSLRs still use mirrors, or internal displays that don't necessarily need to be "blocked" during shooting like an old-school SLR?
Mirrors, it's what the "SLR" bit means.
However, many modern dSLRs can do live preview (using the LCD display instead of viewfinder), where the mirror blocks the viewfinder, but the sensor can capture data continually - required if you want to do video capture. Live preview is just a toy feature for those used to using point and shoots though. The main reason it's there is for video mode.
And yes, many TV shows and episodes have been shot using dSLRs.
Going to Chrome because of version bloat on Firefox seems a trifle funny. There may be reasons to go to Chrome, but protesting version bloat isn't one of them.
Chrome makes it so you don't care what version you use.
Updates are applied transparently in the background (no admin needed), which happen when you start the browser. Extensions stay working and AREN'T version-dependent. (Firefox is supposed to have a stable extension API so new versions don't break extensions, but...).
And no funky UI changes that keep tweaking the way stuff acts.
And when will they add low integrity mode support that IE and Chrome have, and the ability to do no-admin updates.
I'm lucky in that migrating to the rapid release is possible now I figured out al lthe crap - using the new profile manager (a separate download, but it's stable now), which extensions are required to keep a "traditional" look and feel (and how to move stuff like NoScript back t othe bottom-right corner) and what extensions are outdated and what the new extensions to use are. But it's a huge PITA.
And requiring admin means I basically have to physically go into my parent's computer periodically and update firefox. Bleh. (They don't have passwords, so RDP doesn't work, and RDP'ing into the admin account does a force-logoff for them (can't figure out how to get around this - I have fast user switching on and it's win7 enterprise...)).
Considering the past holiday season was the call to "upgrade and update your parent's browser"...
Even if you store the image on a clean source, what if the restoring application itself is infected? You simply can't trust anything that boots from he same hard drive.
Well, you think it through a bit.
First, the recovery image has to be "safe". There are very few admin tasks you can do that won't trigger some sort of UAC thing or other task, and users run as low priviledge by default. Thus standard OS permissoins can keep the recovery image safe (priviledge escalation bugs notwithstanding). Next you sign the images - the private key of which requires a password), but verification of which can be done with the public key.
Finally - Windows 8 can boot from a VHD disk image - guess what? The recovery image is the boot source. The image can be verified using the public key, if it fails, the recovery fails.
Not foolproof, but a lot can be accomplished using standard OS protections and security.
And most malware these days don't bother trying to get admin because it triggers alarms. So they just infect the local user profile and perform botnet duties.
How do you "break the legs" of a registered charity like Wikimedia Foundation, which operates the Wikibooks project to create collaborative textbooks licensed as free cultural works?
By making it hard to donate. You know, by making it really hard to whip out your card and click the "donate" button. Donations to online things drop rather quickly if you force everyone who wants to donate to have to write a cheque and mail it off. No credit card instant donation. No online bank transfers. Snail mail.
Not only that, but since processing out of contry cheques is significantly more expensive, international donations would basically dry up - international postage and inability to cash the donations.
The MSFS series has unfortunately never been procedure approved. However, I'm pretty sure that X-plane has a special version which is procedure approved (I don't know what the difference between this and the standard version is though). I don't think flightgear is, but i've not followed them in a while.
There's no more special X-Plane version - you do have to unlock the approved version though by buying a USB license key.
Basically it reconfigures it to FAA requirements for flight training devices. More details
Don't be fooled by "unlock" - traditional X-Plane has a DVD check to get it out of demo mode. The USB key just ensures you don't have to buy a copy of X-Plane AND the USB key for every computer - the USB key will bypass the DVD check.
Now if they can just resolve the CCI-bit issues, those of us that are Tivo users will once again be happy. Cable companies are exploiting customers by not allowing DVR devices to transfer in-between them (CCI-bit 0x02) and cite federal laws for doing so. And yet, they ignore those federal rules in order to offer identical multi-room-viewing products.
Loopholes, actually.
TiVo is forced to oblige to the CableLabs rules regarding CableCARD, which includes the "do not copy" bit.
Cable providers can claim their set top boxes don't use CableCARDs (patently false - their cableboxes are regular boxes with a CableCARD). However, since "it's their system", they don't have to obey by any of that crap.
Other third-party DVRs (Moxi, etc) are also obliged to obey.
TiVo's apparently got a workaround that involves streaming the video to the other box instead of their current copy to the other box. (Copying was preferable as the hardware could be bogged down that the source unit may not be able to keep up with streaming demands). After all, the bit is "do not copy".
So what happens when your open source project gets kicked out of a popular distribution's main repository because of patent threats?
Two options - you fight the patent threat, or you abandon the project. The latter is a popular option.
One thing is that open-source projects rarely die - there's usually someone with the source code bundle. Just because it comes under patent threat - so what? You stop development and move on. If it's a good project, it'll live on - let the patent holders continue their whack-a-mole. And if you did things right, old distributions might hold an old copy of the code.
Unlike commercial software, of which there is only one vendor for, open-source software is ephermeral. Suing an open-source project just means it closes up, but it's definitely free to spring up elsewhere out of the author's control (at least free software).
So if you write FOSS software - the best answer is, "don't worry about it". You may have to give up your status as chief maintainer, but the project can live on.
Cracked screens aren't usually covered under warranty, but firmware can damage components by forcing frequencies that are not supported by those components, overcharging batteries, etc... Mind you Apple said they wouldn't cover jailbroken devices under warranty but in many cases they still did. So there's probably a good chance that if it's something highly unlikely to have been damaged by firmware they'll still likely cover it, but if you've bricked it you're probably SOL.
That's because it's trivially easy to undo a jailbreak - you just put the phone in DFU mode, and click "Restore" in iTunes. Voila, jailbreak wiped.
ASUS, HTC, they know when you unlock the bootloader because you visit their website and enter in the serial number (the unlocks are keyed to the devices). So just that act already invalidates the warranty.
If you push the issue, they can probably check the NVRAM and determine if you really did or didn't apply the unlock (the unlock changes some variables to allow the bootloader to boot unsigned binaries). In the case of the ASUS, it looks like it clears the DRM key fields as well which breaks Google Movies and can't be recovered by flashing an official image again.
(Archos does this - using their jailbreak erases all the DRM keys and disables DRM functions which cannot be restored even using official firmware).
It was supposed to be a good idea, but each app must be adapted for varying screen sizes and input constraints (and some just don't run at all because cellphone gaming isn't a high priority). Heck, the old marketplaces for apps for these phones typically only support 5 or 6 featurephones.
And yes, while featurephones rule the market (smartphones are just a mere 20-30% of the market), and they all come with J2ME, most won't run any apps at all.
Also - most feature phones DO have data connections - it's required in order to send MMS. It may not lead to the internet except through proxies, but it's there. And I believe the java apps come through via MMS or even the proxied data connections. (Remember data service can be adapted as necessary - a laptop plan may give way more service than a smartphone plan, which will give more than a "social networking" featurephone plan and a "communications" texting/MMS plan)
Anyhow, J2ME licensing represents a large proportion of Java income for Sun/Oracle, which is why Oracle is suing Google over the patents. J2SE/J2EE - Oracle doesn't care so they license the patents freely in order to get marketshare as a platform. J2ME - well, that's a whole different kettle of fish and as long as featurephones outsell smartphones, it's a significant source of income.
Apple has never had to exercise its "Kill Switch" option for an App already in the Wild
From the BBC article: "Apple declined to comment. It also removed the app and barred the developer from its store."
No "kill switch". You know, when Amazon decided to remove 1984 from everyone's devices. Or when Google force-uninstalled all those malware apps 2 or 3 times now.
All Apple's done is removed an app from the App Store. If you bought the app, you can still use it and it's probably still in your iTunes library so you can reinstall it.
In fact, we don't know if Apple can force-uninstall an app, or prevent you from using an app because Apple has never done it yet. We know the ability exists in CoreLocation, but does it require an app use CoreLocation or apply to any app?
Slashdot Mirror
Because people like deals and one thing you can do is send messages to those that have "like"d your page. So perhaps you frequent an establishment a lot, you may "Like" them and get discount coupons for use monthly or weekly. Or tell you about special deals and offers.
I'm sure many companies already do this, and companies like NewEgg and such probably offer some spiffy discounts and such. Sure someone will eventually repost it elsewhere, but if it's a time limited deal, it can take a little while versus just hitting your inbox.
Both.
The retail SDK will not support Xbox kinect, while the beta SDK will.
Second, the PC version features a "near mode" that allows for PC use without needing the living room space. So instead of hving to interact with Kinect from 6-10' away, you can be as close as a couple of feet (it degrades gently though, so the absolute minimum is just under a foot and a third).
Finally, the Xbox Kinect runs the IR camera at QVGA resolution. This is because the Xbox's USB 2 host is not fast enough (theoretical performance is 30MB/sec, and they're only getting about half that). So the sensor resolution is compromised because the USB bus is too slow on the Xbox. (They're supposed to be working hard to fix it and to get closer to the theoretical max).
PCs don't have this issue, except for cheaper lower end ones. This means Windows Kinect can run both cameras at VGA resolution enabling far better depth mapping. Heck, it may be possible to adjust based on PC performance (some PCs have crappy USB ports that cause USB errors and USB downshifts to 1.1 because of it). This would be interesting as Kinect may be one of the first USB peripherals with high isochronous bandwidth demands that most PCs would rarely encounter.
Good suggestion, but doesn't last. The next government will just scrap it.
Look at Canada - we had a per-vote subsidy for party members (everyone got $1.25 per vote). The present Harper Government (yes, the Government of Canada is officially known as the Harper Government) scapped it under the guise of "budget deficit". (Plus a few people were complaining that they had to support a "losing" party). Total amount saved - around $10M or so per year.
Perhaps the biggest thing that can be done is to drop the tax benefits that come from campaign contributions (yes, that curious little loophole was NOT removed...). That way if people want to contribute, they can do it from after tax income and not expect any plum tax benefits out of it. if you want to know, contributing $1 to a political party gets you far more in tax benefits than contributing $1 to charity.
That's how lopsided the laws are.
Problem is, they're really just glorified web browsers. ePub and mobi are effectively HTML subsets, so you can toss your book at a web browser and read it there.
The issue is that web browsers often have horrible typography and layout issues. Fonts aren't hinted or leaded properly, numbers aren't "traditional" with ascenders and descenders, etc. (Most readers offer a "font" option, but the ones with ascenders and decenders still end up shown that way in tables - ascending and descending numbers are for text to make it look more natural, while table numbers (sans ascenders and decenders) are for tables to make everything line up). Plus of all the readers I've tried, only one font was available of them all that had numbers with ascenders and decenders (Georgia).
Someone really ought to make a ePub/Mobi reader that can take the limited HTML markup, convert it and shove it through something like (La)TeX and use that for typesetting and display.
Population growth has to slow down, bacause it's been excessively high for the past centure.
Just scant century ago, the population of the world was under 2 billion. Now it's 7. In just 100 years, the human population more than tripled. In contrast, the previous 100 years prior to that, it barely doubled from about 1B to just under 2.
Anyone who sees the population curve over the past few hundred years would see exponential growth, but anyone who knows history that it's unlikely to be sustainable.
The question becomes, though, can the Earth sustain it? Are we using up banked natural resources (like oil) faster than such resources can be renewed? And more importantly - what about the environment - climate change or no, pollution is an issue (unless you believe Beijing's air quality reports).
Exactly. That's the ENTIRE purpose of Microsoft's $150M "investment" in Apple. It was an investor confidence move, and not a move that was to save Apple. (Remember, Apple paid $430M for NeXT. Surely if Apple needed, Jobs could've found $150M in spare change from that).
Microsoft sold that stock when they could a few years later for 3 times as much money.
Steve Jobs knew he needed to calm the markets, and what better way than going after the world's largest software manufacturer to make some investments. The money was trivial. The biggest news was development of Microsoft Office for Mac and IE. (The Mac Business Unit at Microsoft at one point had a nicer version of Office than Windows' Office).
Of course, a Microsoft-hating Apple user wouldn't admit it, but they wouldn't admit that Apple "needed" that $150M either. In the end, that whole $150M was just an investor confidence thing, coupled with Microsoft's commitment for at least 5 years of developing Office for Mac.
Jobs just reached out to one of this oldest associates knowing they both had problems - Microsoft and antitrust, Apple and investor confidence, and cunningly engaged in a plan that mutually benefits both.
There are plenty of apps bigger than 300MB.
GPS apps for starters - it's the primary reason the maximum size of an IPA was upped from 1GB to 2GB. The map data for North America is close to 1.2GB+ and all the extras can push it to 1.8GB.
Not that it matters - iOS refuses to use 3G for apps larger than 20MB or so - it will insist on using a WiFi connection (though I suppose it will gladly update over a 3G hotspot).
It's also one of the times iTunes is handy - downloading huge updates on the device is already iffy using WiFi - so use your PC and transfer it over using faster USB...
Also, plenty of games are larger - Gameloft's Halo wannabe, NOVA, is routinely 600MB-1GB (most of Gameloft's games are pretty big). And there's plenty more - kind of a pity you can't sort the App Store by size.
You don't. Salmon die after spawning. So your spawned backup becomes your new primary storage.
(Incidentally, lazy bald eagles rely on this phenomenon to feed - they "catch" the salmon after they've spawned and eat the carcass. Saves them having to hunt and grab live ones.)
Ah, but that assumes the grain belt expands, and not, as emperically determined, moves northwards. You see, just because Canada's getting warmer, doesn't mean the US isn't as well, and former grain belts turn into basically dust belts because it's too hot to grow anything - at least without trucking in huge amounts of water.
In addition, the Earth's tilt does not change. This means the growing season in the northern latitudes is far shorter. Studies into global warming (simulated with heaters) have shown that midwestern plants do not grow well at all in the northern lattitudes - they sprout way too late, leading to basically no growth of the plant nor fruiting (it becomes too cold too quickly). Northern lattitude plants have adapted and grow quicker sooner, but they expend so much energy they do not reproduce much.
Yes, most displays are TN.
PVA (and its variants) and IPS panels are the minotity - because people love getting the "free" monitor with their PC, or buying the sub-$200 ones.
You can find PVA and IPS panels in more premium monitors and TVs, but usually those aren't the ones costing under $200 on sale. They'll be in the larger ones (e.g., 30" non-1080p ones - the ones costing $1000+) because those can command a handy premium. The 1080p TVs of 30+" are probably cheap TN ones (30" Apple Cinemas run something like 2560x something or more).
It also applies to tablets as well - the Kindle Fire and Nook Color/Tablets use nice IPS screens, while the cheapass ones often use TNs. The more premium Androids and iPad do use nice IPS ones.
Laptops - it's a crapshoot. It's one of the few places where Apple still uses TN panels, and few use PVA or IPS.
You may be noticing that more people are advertising their screens as PVA or IPS though, usually in an effort to justify a higher price to hopefully draw you away from the TN screen on sale. Not that they aren't worth the extra cost, but they need something to give the best buy drone to spew.
But the public CAN do this. There are, in the US, many legitimate places to buy movies online and store them locally.
First, there's "Digital Copy" included with many Blu-Ray discs, for free.
Next we have iTunes, Amazon and other services selling movies that download to your hard disk. And there are often other strange services - I know sometimes buying PNY memory cards they throw in a "free movie" offer, as well.
Sure it's DRM'd to hell and back, but it's a legal source to obtain your movies.
Unless you meant "downloading for free DVD rips and such"...
Maybe not by itself, but sometimes interesting correlations pop up because of strange combinations. Or more likely, someone gets the results they were expecting, but sees an odd variance they can't explain. Perhaps if it was seen elsewhere, the odd data correllation may have some merit in investigation.
It's like an odd bug you find when using some software. You don't think it's important (perhaps it happens occasionally), but someone else decides to just mention it in passing, and then others chime in as it happened to them, and then hey, perhaps it's a bigger bug than expected.
Just putting it out there may bring others to notice they see the same thing as well and then provide incentive to do proper research in it.
Thta's the entire point. The password is encrypted using the "home charger" key. Presumably, you'd travel with a travelling charger or something else, this way if your Mac is stolen, they can't recover your password (which otherwise defeats the purpose of stuff like FileVault full disk encryption).
This is meant for home users where the laptop never strays outside the house - they can recover the password easily. It just provides a more convenient way to recover the password.
Presumably, the other methods of password recovery (single user mode, boot DVD) still work, though you lose your keychain (and all the saved passwords) when you do this.
Is it possible to put something on my wifi access point to detect when it's being sniffed?
Perhaps my access point could beep if it detects someone trying to collect packets from my network. Then the owners could walk to the sniffer and let them know.
Better yet, an app that will jam such sniffing without hurting the network.
Oh wait.
The technology relies on the fact your phone is broadcasting the information. The hardware is just listening in - it's not doing anything different than what Google does when they map access points - it captures packets, records the details, discards the data.
So the answer is "no", you cannot detect when your broadcasts are being received (otherwise Neilson would've gone out of business ages ago if stations knew exactly how many people watched their channel at every moment). Well, you can - the impedance changes ever so slightly, but below the noise of normal operations and handling.
And yes, you can jam it. It's called a "cell phone jammer". The downside is, well, no one else's phones work, either.
The thing works by passively monitoring RF signals. There's no active pinging or anything - it's like the old days of analog cellphones where anyone with a scanner could pick up your call (until it was outlawed). Or how anyone with a scanner can listen in to stuff - as long as you didn't transmit, it was basically impossible to determine if eavesdropping was taking place.
Your best bet is, literally, to turn off the transmitter called your phone.
And no, the only thing they know about you is effecitvely an ID number (phone serial number). They can't take that number and convert it to a phone number, a name or anything else anymore than you can take a MAC address and convert it to a name. At least not without asking someone.
Mirrors, it's what the "SLR" bit means.
However, many modern dSLRs can do live preview (using the LCD display instead of viewfinder), where the mirror blocks the viewfinder, but the sensor can capture data continually - required if you want to do video capture. Live preview is just a toy feature for those used to using point and shoots though. The main reason it's there is for video mode.
And yes, many TV shows and episodes have been shot using dSLRs.
Chrome makes it so you don't care what version you use.
Updates are applied transparently in the background (no admin needed), which happen when you start the browser. Extensions stay working and AREN'T version-dependent. (Firefox is supposed to have a stable extension API so new versions don't break extensions, but...).
And no funky UI changes that keep tweaking the way stuff acts.
And when will they add low integrity mode support that IE and Chrome have, and the ability to do no-admin updates.
I'm lucky in that migrating to the rapid release is possible now I figured out al lthe crap - using the new profile manager (a separate download, but it's stable now), which extensions are required to keep a "traditional" look and feel (and how to move stuff like NoScript back t othe bottom-right corner) and what extensions are outdated and what the new extensions to use are. But it's a huge PITA.
And requiring admin means I basically have to physically go into my parent's computer periodically and update firefox. Bleh. (They don't have passwords, so RDP doesn't work, and RDP'ing into the admin account does a force-logoff for them (can't figure out how to get around this - I have fast user switching on and it's win7 enterprise...)).
Considering the past holiday season was the call to "upgrade and update your parent's browser"...
Well, you think it through a bit.
First, the recovery image has to be "safe". There are very few admin tasks you can do that won't trigger some sort of UAC thing or other task, and users run as low priviledge by default. Thus standard OS permissoins can keep the recovery image safe (priviledge escalation bugs notwithstanding). Next you sign the images - the private key of which requires a password), but verification of which can be done with the public key.
Finally - Windows 8 can boot from a VHD disk image - guess what? The recovery image is the boot source. The image can be verified using the public key, if it fails, the recovery fails.
Not foolproof, but a lot can be accomplished using standard OS protections and security.
And most malware these days don't bother trying to get admin because it triggers alarms. So they just infect the local user profile and perform botnet duties.
By making it hard to donate. You know, by making it really hard to whip out your card and click the "donate" button. Donations to online things drop rather quickly if you force everyone who wants to donate to have to write a cheque and mail it off. No credit card instant donation. No online bank transfers. Snail mail.
Not only that, but since processing out of contry cheques is significantly more expensive, international donations would basically dry up - international postage and inability to cash the donations.
There's no more special X-Plane version - you do have to unlock the approved version though by buying a USB license key.
Basically it reconfigures it to FAA requirements for flight training devices. More details
Don't be fooled by "unlock" - traditional X-Plane has a DVD check to get it out of demo mode. The USB key just ensures you don't have to buy a copy of X-Plane AND the USB key for every computer - the USB key will bypass the DVD check.
Loopholes, actually.
TiVo is forced to oblige to the CableLabs rules regarding CableCARD, which includes the "do not copy" bit.
Cable providers can claim their set top boxes don't use CableCARDs (patently false - their cableboxes are regular boxes with a CableCARD). However, since "it's their system", they don't have to obey by any of that crap.
Other third-party DVRs (Moxi, etc) are also obliged to obey.
TiVo's apparently got a workaround that involves streaming the video to the other box instead of their current copy to the other box. (Copying was preferable as the hardware could be bogged down that the source unit may not be able to keep up with streaming demands). After all, the bit is "do not copy".
Two options - you fight the patent threat, or you abandon the project. The latter is a popular option.
One thing is that open-source projects rarely die - there's usually someone with the source code bundle. Just because it comes under patent threat - so what? You stop development and move on. If it's a good project, it'll live on - let the patent holders continue their whack-a-mole. And if you did things right, old distributions might hold an old copy of the code.
Unlike commercial software, of which there is only one vendor for, open-source software is ephermeral. Suing an open-source project just means it closes up, but it's definitely free to spring up elsewhere out of the author's control (at least free software).
So if you write FOSS software - the best answer is, "don't worry about it". You may have to give up your status as chief maintainer, but the project can live on.
That's because it's trivially easy to undo a jailbreak - you just put the phone in DFU mode, and click "Restore" in iTunes. Voila, jailbreak wiped.
ASUS, HTC, they know when you unlock the bootloader because you visit their website and enter in the serial number (the unlocks are keyed to the devices). So just that act already invalidates the warranty.
If you push the issue, they can probably check the NVRAM and determine if you really did or didn't apply the unlock (the unlock changes some variables to allow the bootloader to boot unsigned binaries). In the case of the ASUS, it looks like it clears the DRM key fields as well which breaks Google Movies and can't be recovered by flashing an official image again.
(Archos does this - using their jailbreak erases all the DRM keys and disables DRM functions which cannot be restored even using official firmware).
Also, J2ME on each phone is different.
It was supposed to be a good idea, but each app must be adapted for varying screen sizes and input constraints (and some just don't run at all because cellphone gaming isn't a high priority). Heck, the old marketplaces for apps for these phones typically only support 5 or 6 featurephones.
And yes, while featurephones rule the market (smartphones are just a mere 20-30% of the market), and they all come with J2ME, most won't run any apps at all.
Also - most feature phones DO have data connections - it's required in order to send MMS. It may not lead to the internet except through proxies, but it's there. And I believe the java apps come through via MMS or even the proxied data connections. (Remember data service can be adapted as necessary - a laptop plan may give way more service than a smartphone plan, which will give more than a "social networking" featurephone plan and a "communications" texting/MMS plan)
Anyhow, J2ME licensing represents a large proportion of Java income for Sun/Oracle, which is why Oracle is suing Google over the patents. J2SE/J2EE - Oracle doesn't care so they license the patents freely in order to get marketshare as a platform. J2ME - well, that's a whole different kettle of fish and as long as featurephones outsell smartphones, it's a significant source of income.
No "kill switch". You know, when Amazon decided to remove 1984 from everyone's devices. Or when Google force-uninstalled all those malware apps 2 or 3 times now.
All Apple's done is removed an app from the App Store. If you bought the app, you can still use it and it's probably still in your iTunes library so you can reinstall it.
In fact, we don't know if Apple can force-uninstall an app, or prevent you from using an app because Apple has never done it yet. We know the ability exists in CoreLocation, but does it require an app use CoreLocation or apply to any app?
And yet missing other tech news.
Like PSN being hacked and down for 6 weeks. Or the various breakins since that.