Then I realized that in some emergency situations, a lane change is absolutely required. Vibrating the steering wheel is ok, but if it's forcing you to move back to your lane, then this could cause accidents.
Or... if it's an emergency, most drivers would easily overpower the servos.
It's like the autopilot in an airplane - the servos are actually quite weak and any pilot is capable of overpowering them. It's considered the "failsafe" for the autopilot - the pilot can always overpower the automation.
In this case, if you're tired, you're not gripping the wheel with any much force so a relatively weak servo is capable of turning the wheel.
If you're needing to swerve, you're awake enough to overpower the servo. Ditto when changing lanes - it probably makes the wheel feel "heavy" but the servo's easily overpowered.
It always amazes me that some people still believe Microsoft is just chock full o' amazing ideas that would overwhelm the world - if ONLY their corporate culture didn't get in the way.
There's simply no evidence for this. Microsoft has done very little innovation - most of their successful products have resulted form iterative fine-tuning on ideas that originated elsewhere (e.g. Windows, Office). They've done this very well at times... but it's not innovative in the least.
Microsoft Research pumps out some amazing stuff - much of which is not commercially viable, but amazing nonetheless.
In fact, it IS their corporate culture that prevents them from really pulling off some amazing stuff.
Microsoft is organized as a series of fiefdoms - you have various divisions that will NOT talk to each other. The Windows sub-teams may have SOME communication with each other, but they don't talk to the Office team. Neither talks with the online (Windows Live) team, and probably none of them talk at all with the Entertainment and Devices sub-teams (which includes Windows Embedded, Xbox, and Windows Phone). Oh yeah, and the IE team and dev tools (Visual Studio) teams...
At best, Microsoft is really just a set of independent businesses with their own schedules, releases, and own ideas of doing stuff. The only difference is that each team can access the source code of other teams.
An anecdote - a friend of mine was working on Windows CE, and he found a memory leak bug in the javascript interpreter. He went over to someone he knew on the IE team and talked to them about it. The IE project manager saw this and got pissed off, chewed out the Windows CE project manager over this, etc. In the end, no one on the IE team wanted to "own" the bug (it was an IE bug, after all) as it was for a product they've shipped and it doesn't concern them anymore when they're working on the latest and greatest.
In the end, the only way any sort of engineering communications goes on between teams (without filtering through the hierarchy of managers and other crap) seems to be through contractors. People would sit down and do nothing, other than routing questions between their team's developers to another contractor who can route the question to the right developer.
Hell, i could bet you could split up Microsoft along these team lines, and nothing would change - it's that bad.
This page asserts that "Xcode 4 is a free download for all members of the iOS and Mac Developer Programs.", continuing "Sign in to your account to begin the download." and according to Apple, an account costs 99$/year.
Maybe I am missing something big here, for example "free" meaning "free" as in "free beer if you buy a subscription", but I have since suggested installing Debian. Proper package management makes it vastly easier to install and develop software.
All versions of OS X came with XCode. If you have Snow Leopard (10.6), it came with XCode 3, which is still a perfectly usable development environment. 10.7 (Lion) comes with Xcode 4.
XCode4 has some nice changes, enough so that Apple pulled the SOX thing as they've claimed revenue for the Mac purchase when you bought it and can't offer significant feature upgrades without restating revenues.
But you're not obliged to use the latest and greatest - you can just as well pop in your OS X CD and double click "Install Developer Tools". They still work. Just install it, and code away. You can even distribute apps outside the Mac App Store (amazing!).
We won't see a real solution to the spam epidemic until people acknowledge the simple truth that spam is an economic problem. There is still a lot of money to be made by sending out spam, with very little expense for the spammer. The profit margin is high enough that it is well worth their while to find various ways around filters and any other silly mechanisms we throw at them.
If you want to make an actual difference in the fight against spam, you need to approach the economic motivations behind it. If you stop of the flow of money to the spammers, you will stop the spam as well. Because no matter how much some people may want to believe otherwise, spam isn't sent just to piss you off and ruin your day. Spam is sent out because spammers are paid to do so. If they don't get paid, they won't send spam, it is as simple as that. Any other kind of countermeasure only prolongs the fight and throws more money in the wrong direction.
The problem is, you assume the one making the profit is the spammer, which is incorrect.
In the traditional spam model (emails sent for marketing, not distributing viruses to either control your machine or to keylog/proxy for your financial info), there are three entities.
First, you have the victim, you and me, who get their inboxes flooded. Enough said.
Second, you have the spammer. They advertise their "marketing services" - something like $100 for 10,000,000 emails.
Third, is the spammer's customer - the business buying spamming services.
The customer buys the services of the spammer - let's say $100. Spammer makes $100 profit, the customer is out $100 in marketing budget. Spammer then sends the emails. At which point, most of the victims don't even see it as a filter sends it to the bitbucket. Of the few remaining, most just delete it.
And there's zero feedback. The customer may or may not make that $100 marketing back in sales from that marketing campaign.
But to the spammer, it doesn't matter - they got paid ahead of time with no guarantee of results. And if the customer doesn't come back, no big deal - there's a lineup of other businesses needing "marketing services".
And most businesses don't have the ability to see that they spent $100 marketing to get orders that raked in only $10 in profit.
It's just like groupon - you get people to come, but the business never realizes that it's a really an expensive way to get the few new repeat customers.
Wal-Mart's data cycle is daily, and their planning cycle is weekly. Most small retailers don't have that clear an idea of what their stores are actually doing. This gives Wal-Mart a competitive advantage.
' Then why is Wal-Mart's distribution so bone-headed stupid?
If you're into Transformers toys, there are a few Wal-Mart exclusives that are only available from Wal-mart.
Inevitably, distribution inequities exist. It can easily be sold out in the West, but shelfwarming (and clearanced) on the East coast.
It's a huge source of frustration, because the only ways to get it are either hope Wal-Mart's distribution catches the gist that the west wants it and to stop shipping it East where it's not selling, or suffer eBay arbitrage.
I can understand initial distributions may be population based, but it doesn't make sense to clearance where it isn't selling when it's selling out in hours elsewhere. In fact, the west stores never had to discount because they were perpetually sold out.
Iran CLAIMS TO HAVE spoofed GPS signals and tricked the drone to land, undamaged, where they wanted it to land. What prevents someone them from doing the same (or far worse) with Homeland Security drones in the US?
I believe what they did was even more crude. They jammed GPS signals (trivial to do - ask LightSquared for how). This put the drone in a backup mode of operation (because well, it doesn't have positioning information, and it may not be able to determine last good location before the jamming interfered).
The Iranians simply exploited that mode to force the drone to land in Iran. I believe they simply transmitted manual control operations (backup mode).
Of course, everyone spins it as "GPS SPOOF!" when it's really a bug in the control software that allows anyone who knows the method of control to take over by simply jamming GPS.
I think you have a good point there. Samsung gets a lot of business from Apple as a supplier of flash chips. And yet at the same time they are ripping off Apple's device designs. Apple must be quite keen to ditch them as a supplier as soon as is possible.
Apple's actually got more power over Samsung than Samsung over Apple.
Samsung just opened a new fab to make chips for Apple. Apple is Samsung's #1 customer these days. The loss of Apple's business would immediately put Samsung in a bad spot - idle fabs lose money - if they're not making chips 24/7, the ROI goes down really quickly. And Samsung is fabbing Apple's chips, and selling Apple a LOT of flash chips.
Samsung's mobile handsets probably don't make as much money as being the supplier for Apple.
The only reason Apple is shopping for fabs is well, what happens if an earthquake or something takes out Samsung's fabs? Being such the large customer as it is, it would be impacted most. Sure Samsung will give Apple all the flash chips and leave everyone else short (which hurts everyone), but if Apple can't make the processors fast enough, it's still not good enough. Between TSMC (which has kicked people off in order to fab Broadcom's chips for sale to Apple), and Intel, each of which will demand a slightly modified A5/A6/Awhatever design to cope with their fab's differences, Apple wants to make sure if they're gonna crank out a quarter million devices a day, that the fabs can keep up by fabbing a quarter million devices a day.
I'm guessing the earthquake may have spooked Apple some because it impacted both sensors (AKM is Japanese), and batteries. Of course, Apple wrote a big cheque to ensure supply to help invest (i.e., "rebuild") the factories. All it would take is North Korea to make some moves. Oh wait...
Apple's been horrendously burned by single source supplies - first Motorola which couldn't supply PowerPC chips fast enough, then IBM, which couldn't make the desired PowerPC chips fast enough.
All Anobit's going to give Apple is the ability to roll out faster, more dense flash for Apple's iDevices and SSDs. While it seems Androids are stuck at 32GB (probably because eMMC/SDHC limit), Apple's wanting to differentiate by making 64GB and most likely beyond.
As a more sinister aspect of this monopoly, if everyone relies on a single private company to access information then they also control what we can and cannot access.
Actually, Google IS the internet.
Think about it - if you were to block every single Google owned domain, your ability to use the Internet would be severely constrained. Ignoring search, but think of the Google CDNs, Google-hosted javascript libraries, etc. Both iOS and Android would be almost useless. And Google's DNS. And Google Voice for those who use it.
Though, you would be getting a basically ad-free life as Google's ad services are basically the ad services used all over the net - between adwords and DoubleClick and AdMob.
And let's not forget the Google hosted anti-phishing blacklists used by everyone except IE (which uses Microsoft's version, naturally).
Or the group is tackling more complex things in those months.
Easy - it's the holiday season.
Or you have to realize that October is Ship Month(tm). If it's a physical product that goes in stores, it means the product is sitting in the factory waiting for the software to go on them (it takes many months to get stuff manufactured from component ordering and lead times to physical assembly, so it happens during software development). The code has to be shipped by end of October so the factory has November to program and ship the product to the distributors and then to retailers by December to be on the shelf.
And that's if they're fast at doing so - most of the time, the product can't be assembled and shipped because all factories are busy, which means what goes on them is a test firmware that downloads the latest on bootup. (Ever notice how many things do a firmware update when you first turn them on? That's why). In which case the deal is to have it ready by shipment in November.
If your product is software, but has a physical element (like a disc) then your timelines are still short as you have to ship *something* by October to the presses, and then you patch it during October/November while you wait for the discs to come back so you can ship for the holidays. And the goal is to have something
If your product is purely Internet download, then you need to compete with approvals and all that but that means you have all through October and November to squash bugs. But with any fixed ship date, well, squahing one bug can introduce two more.
It's because of the holiday seasons that people are furiously fixing and finishing software. No wonder that there's more bugs - people are doing more "quick fixes" that may not be properly tested in order to ship.
I wonder if this is also a clever way to avoid patent infringement claims. An overt reference to a world wide icon like that sort of blames the inspriration and any similarities to siri on unpatented prior art right out of the gate.
Actually, that's very likely.
Think about it. The Android app shopping place is called "Android Marketplace" and not "Android App Store". Curiously different from Apple's "App Store". (See Apple v. Amazon on "App Store")
Then look at the launcher - at how it avoids the iOS grid of icons organized by pages (with a bar for holding icons across all pages). (See Samsung's TouchWiz iOS faking - which makes their phones look very similar).
Heck, even Android's "slide to unlock" is distinctive as starting from the side. On the tablets, you start somewhere on a side of the screen and slide to the edge of the circle.
Google actually goes out of their way to make Android as different as possible from iOS.
Do you not realize that a VCR or a DVD recorder is a way to pirate?
Not easily.
First, most VCRs are made to fail when a Macrovision encoded signal is encountered. Yes, "made". Prior to Disney using Macrovision, most VCRs were loose enough that rendered it useless. By tightening up the AGC on the VCR, Macrovision screws up the signal and makes it difficult to copy.
DVD recorders are even easier - they detect a Macrovision encoded signal and shut down. (This is especially since DVDs do not always engage the "Macrovision Enable" bit during the movie - the DVDs pay for the amount of time it's on, so they only turn it on every now and again.).
Of course, anyone with a timebase corrector, or a "copyprotection stripper" like a GoDVD removes Macrovision and makes it possible to do a clean copy.
No, it means that it is not in the public domain. Proprietary does not mean "licensed," it means "licensed under proprietary terms." If we are going to have a free/libre cell phone OS, then we cannot promote proprietary licensing, and that includes licenses that forbid forking or that require upgrading.
Ultimately, the goal should be to open cell phones, so that your cell phone gives you as much freedom as a typical laptop can. Opening the source of Android was a step in the right direction; this is not the time to take a step backward.
Don't mistake AOSP for Android. Android is only available to OHA members, and it included stuff like Honeycomb source code (which was under a very restrictive license), as well as access to the Google Apps, which make Android, well, Android (e.g., the Google Marketplace - it's extremely difficult to get apps without Marketplace access - it's easier to pirate than to try to find an official download).
Cyanogen is using AOSP. And periodically Google pushes code from Android into AOSP. But Google controls the Android stuff for OHA members.
Google can very well dictate update terms - they dictated how the Honeycomb source code was to be distributed, after all. They even dictated what you can and cannot do with the source and what customizations you could apply.
Chinese manufacturers and everyone else using AOSP can disobey at will because they're using the free license, but the OHA members getting early code access and such cannot. Hell, Google can make it a part of the Google Apps licensing agreement.
Really, if you're too slow and unable to avoid a large, brightly colored, hand-thrown dart lobbed in the air, you probably should be driven to school and back and not allowed to play any sport involving more than one person at a time.
If you're playing with it actively, not a big deal. But then again, the sun does have a nasty habit of getting in your eye, so during the glare of day can make it quite difficult to see.
And given children may toss it and have it go off in a random direction because they released it wrongly could mean hitting someone who doesn't expect it. Like someone walking down the sidewalk, your neighbour, etc. Nevermind that people seem to be constantly distracted by their cellphones whilst walking down the street to even notice that there might be an object heading their way (this includes street furniture, cars, and lamp posts, too).
IE 6 is a very, very different browser from IE 9. We've had plenty of clients who can't move off IE 6 (or are in the middle of a large project to do so) because it's the only one that will run their Intranet site correctly. I've seen MS make this type of mistake before - they don't see many public-facing sites using a technology, so they feel safe getting rid of it. Well, yes, very few public-facing sites are going to use crazy IE specific stuff, and most are (by now) going to be making reasonable efforts to work between browsers.
Intranet sites are a whole other kettle of fish; corporate programmers often target a single browser - and for many of them, that was IE for a long time. They got away with that from IE 4 to IE 6 because MS just added stuff. With IE 7 and, particularly, Vista, they started fixing insecure and non-standard behaviors - and that's part of why so many companies are still on XP and IE 6.
You do realize that the reason why Microsoft has not forced everyone to go to iE7/8 for XP was because of this, right? Microsoft basically told everyone to get ready because eventually, they're going to force an upgrade. In fact, if you don't specifically enable the IE 7/8 block, it'll arrive via WSUS or Windows Update automatically.
The only people on IE6 are those who applied the block (the block exists because of them) as a stopgap measure.
Microsoft is badly wanting ot get rid of a lot of crap out there simply because it's a big pain to support all the hacks and workaround because of lousy coders.
The teachers have to constantly change their textbooks because all of the students get the teachers solutions manuals and pass them around even during class on jump drives. My CSci teachers would get around this by making their own homework instead of just using what the book gave them
Most courses get around that problem in one of two ways.
1) They make the homework optional. Good students automatically do it anyways because they understand tthe value of doing the work to help study and prepare.
2) The homework is worth a tiny fraction of your mark (5-10%).
Having a copy of the solutions manual is useless in both cases for your mark - the final exam score usually determines pass/fail and is usually rigged that you have to pass the final in order to pass the course.
Now, a student having a copy of the solutions manual is very helpful during studying to figure out where they got stuck and to review that they understood how to do the problem.
Good profs understand this and often the homework they assign has the solution available in the workbook completely worked out.
It's college/university - you're expected to be responsible for yourself and good students do homework even if it's not required.
Because sometimes, especially while listening to a quiet movie, you PREFER NOT TO BE SUDDENLY BLASTED WITH NOISE!!
It's annoying as hell. I do kind of agree with you though that it doesn't seem like something the government needs to regulate
I'm assuming that's why the government acted so late - they were hoping for a free market solution to the problem. Because really, it's silly that the government needs to do something that industry really can do itself. All the government has to do is normally just make whinings about it, and industry goes and does it pre-emptively to prevent regulation.
In this case, no one cared enough at the stations to actually do it, the government gave up waiting for the free market to do something that's generating tons of complaints, and acted on it.
Speaking of which, here in Canada, it seems the History Channel (Canada) is deliberately doing it. The ads are always MUCH louder than the show. The show's at normal volume with rest of channels I watch (except Discovery has seemed to gone DOWN in volume...), but when it switches to ads, the volume jumps sharply. It goes soft during programming again.
And no, I'm not always watching the show, I just know when the commercials are on because they really are louder.
Posting from a galaxy nexus, just buy it separately. Or do the usaian plans not work that way? The phone is really great.
Btw what's wrong with the marketing department of Samsung/Google? There is a Nexus, a Nexus S, a Galaxy S and now a Galaxy Nexus. Pretty confusing if you ask me.
It depends. Here in Canada, the only way to get a Galaxy Nexus is through Bell or Virgin Mobile, and neither will sell it without a contract. It's $160 with mandatory 3 year contract - you're not allowed to buy it outright or on a 1 or 2 year plan. 3 year, required.
So Verizon very well might be selling the Galaxy Nexus as a contract-only phone for now since demand is high for probably the best Android phone support-wise. They know people want it and maybe are even willing ot pay ETF fees to switch carriers.
As for the naming - it looks like the phones that are Google's are "Nexus" branded ones. So Nexus One, Nexus S, Galaxy Nexus are pure Google phones. Galaxy S - that's Samsung's iPhone^WTouchWiz phone.
What pisses me off is that these companies think they have some kind of entitlement to profit off of me and my data. If anyone should be able to monetize and sell my own information, it's me. If they offered to pay me for it, then and only then will I consent to anything.
Well, if it's Amazon, they did "pay you" for your information. And you did consent to it.
You chose to shop there for some reason - be it the cheaper prices (the "payment" is the discount), or the convenience of just having it right there rather than drive all over the city. That can effectively be seen as you voluntarily giving up your data for the priviledge of purchasing product from their store.
You're free to shop elsewhere. Your local whitebox computer store can sell you parts for cash only transactions - no need to give newegg your information. Barnes and Noble run a set of brick and mortar stores that accept anonymous cash, as do many independent bookstores (who can also order in any book you're looking for).
Sure you'll probably pay more in the end, but you can consider that the price of your data.
I'd rather have 25GB of MPEG-2 slightly compressed video over 9GB of MPEG-2 greater compression video.;)
Uh, everyone else, HD-DVD and Xbox included, were using VC-1 (WMV) or AVC (h.264) for their video.
The big problem with Blu-Ray (and it still is today) is shitty mastering, especially on catalog titles. Compare the version of Apollo 13 for HD-DVD versus the Blu-Ray - the Blu-Ray is significantly softer and has highlights blown out. Signs readable on the HD-DVD are unreadable now on Blu-Ray, despite the HD-DVD only having 30GB for everything while Blu-Ray has 50GB and uses higher bitrates. It's just the studio went and applied digital noise reduction (DNR) and other effects to get film grain down, which ends up destroying detail. It's better than DVD, but not by much - a good upconverter can probably do the same thing.
think that humble bundle inc should slow down a bit.. 2 bundles in a month?
I don't know if it's the games or just me but the last one I skipped because the games didn't intrigue me that much and this one seems about the same to me. It might also be that I'm just disenchanted because of the constant presence of some humble bundle to the point where it isn't something special anymore.
Am I being a fart or do others think less frequency more quality would be nice?
That's my same problem. I bought all the HiBs to date, but the last 4 or 5 of them have been coming out once a month, and I find I just give just above the minimums now.
Before that, sure, I'd toss $25 for the bundle, but the next time a month later I just threw in $10, then the past few just enough to be "above average" to get at those extras you get - which I think has been around $5-5.50 or so.
$25/month for a year is $300, which is a lot of money. When it was once, maybe twice a year it was $50 a year tops. Now if I'm just doing around $5-6 a month, that's $60-72. Acceptable, but I'm not sure if the devs want to split such a small pot amongst so many games.
Charities know this as "Donor Fatigue" - where there's more and more charities chasing the same pool of donors at the same time - each one gets a smaller amount. The same thing happened when for whatever reason, the charity lotteries all fell within the same few months - they all found that the tickets weren't selling and were effectively competing against each other. Had they spaced out their lotteries there would be far more money - buying a ticket for one every few months is a lot easier than trying to decide amongst the 3 or 4 which one to buy.
They also need a better download interface - they say to make backups and such as they can't guarantee the files will stay up, but it's a hassle downloading the files one by one and then having to compare the MD5's manually. You'd think they could provide a nice SHA1sums (MD5, seriously?) file so we can test the downloads in an automated fashion.
In Windows 7, Microsoft created a wonderful tool to help you. It's called Problem Steps Recorder. Basically the user runs it and it snaps screenshots while the user reproduces the problem. There's a comment box allowing the user to type in comments like what they typed, what they expect, etc.
The best part? It emits output as HTML (!!!). Just send the zip file to the devs (it offers a handy email option), and it gives them repro steps and everything.
Wonderful utility. Even more wonderful is it can be used as more than just recording problem steps - you can record tutorials in it and post them online and stuff.
It should be illegal for these companies to keep user generated content once the user deletes it.
Once a user gives the data to a company, it's not the user's data anymore.
Just like if you tell someone a secret, it's not a secret anymore.
And that information that's "deleted" - are you sure it's really gone? Perhaps someone else read it and reposted it?
Basically, if you don't want it online, don't post it online. Once it falls into the hands of someone else, there's nothing you can do about it.
Expecting facebook to not retain copies is the same as trying to retract an email. Unless we can successfully implement DRM for email, we can't really control what happens to the information we give someone else.
Even if they get Sony to service it, it comes back with a useless firmware on it that locks them out of using it for their purpose.
Exactly - the cluster just gets slower and slower and slower.
Eventually, I think the USAF will just take down the cluster and donate them to a charity for those who served in the armed forces.
The cluster will then be replaced with Cell computers from IBM. Or maybe Microsoft will make a generous (i.e., marketing) move and promote the next-gen Xbox with a special firmware build that will let them run Linux on it.
And Sony will be removed from the government's approved vendor list.
This is abandonware. That seems to be a trend. As something becomes unprofitable but still has a user base, it's open-sourced to make the support load go away.
So? At least it's still out there. The alternative to open-sourcing it is keeping it closed (see OS/2, BeOS, PalmOS, etc). If people are willing to support it and provide a community - why not?
Hell, probably a good chunk of Android phones are supported purely by the Cyanogen folks - the only support the hardware vendor gives you is warranty.
Especially something like WebOS which can be arguably superior to Android in a few ways (lacking s-t-t-t-t-u-t-t-tering is one of them), I say Android and everyone can benefit from it.
And if you don't like it, don't use it. HP could've just locked it up forever.
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Or ... if it's an emergency, most drivers would easily overpower the servos.
It's like the autopilot in an airplane - the servos are actually quite weak and any pilot is capable of overpowering them. It's considered the "failsafe" for the autopilot - the pilot can always overpower the automation.
In this case, if you're tired, you're not gripping the wheel with any much force so a relatively weak servo is capable of turning the wheel.
If you're needing to swerve, you're awake enough to overpower the servo. Ditto when changing lanes - it probably makes the wheel feel "heavy" but the servo's easily overpowered.
Microsoft Research pumps out some amazing stuff - much of which is not commercially viable, but amazing nonetheless.
In fact, it IS their corporate culture that prevents them from really pulling off some amazing stuff.
Microsoft is organized as a series of fiefdoms - you have various divisions that will NOT talk to each other. The Windows sub-teams may have SOME communication with each other, but they don't talk to the Office team. Neither talks with the online (Windows Live) team, and probably none of them talk at all with the Entertainment and Devices sub-teams (which includes Windows Embedded, Xbox, and Windows Phone). Oh yeah, and the IE team and dev tools (Visual Studio) teams...
At best, Microsoft is really just a set of independent businesses with their own schedules, releases, and own ideas of doing stuff. The only difference is that each team can access the source code of other teams.
An anecdote - a friend of mine was working on Windows CE, and he found a memory leak bug in the javascript interpreter. He went over to someone he knew on the IE team and talked to them about it. The IE project manager saw this and got pissed off, chewed out the Windows CE project manager over this, etc. In the end, no one on the IE team wanted to "own" the bug (it was an IE bug, after all) as it was for a product they've shipped and it doesn't concern them anymore when they're working on the latest and greatest.
In the end, the only way any sort of engineering communications goes on between teams (without filtering through the hierarchy of managers and other crap) seems to be through contractors. People would sit down and do nothing, other than routing questions between their team's developers to another contractor who can route the question to the right developer.
Hell, i could bet you could split up Microsoft along these team lines, and nothing would change - it's that bad.
All versions of OS X came with XCode. If you have Snow Leopard (10.6), it came with XCode 3, which is still a perfectly usable development environment. 10.7 (Lion) comes with Xcode 4.
XCode4 has some nice changes, enough so that Apple pulled the SOX thing as they've claimed revenue for the Mac purchase when you bought it and can't offer significant feature upgrades without restating revenues.
But you're not obliged to use the latest and greatest - you can just as well pop in your OS X CD and double click "Install Developer Tools". They still work. Just install it, and code away. You can even distribute apps outside the Mac App Store (amazing!).
I mean, really?
BASIC
Logo (for iPhone)
Python
No perl, unfortunately. But there's probably more available as well.
The problem is, you assume the one making the profit is the spammer, which is incorrect.
In the traditional spam model (emails sent for marketing, not distributing viruses to either control your machine or to keylog/proxy for your financial info), there are three entities.
First, you have the victim, you and me, who get their inboxes flooded. Enough said.
Second, you have the spammer. They advertise their "marketing services" - something like $100 for 10,000,000 emails.
Third, is the spammer's customer - the business buying spamming services.
The customer buys the services of the spammer - let's say $100. Spammer makes $100 profit, the customer is out $100 in marketing budget. Spammer then sends the emails. At which point, most of the victims don't even see it as a filter sends it to the bitbucket. Of the few remaining, most just delete it.
And there's zero feedback. The customer may or may not make that $100 marketing back in sales from that marketing campaign.
But to the spammer, it doesn't matter - they got paid ahead of time with no guarantee of results. And if the customer doesn't come back, no big deal - there's a lineup of other businesses needing "marketing services".
And most businesses don't have the ability to see that they spent $100 marketing to get orders that raked in only $10 in profit.
It's just like groupon - you get people to come, but the business never realizes that it's a really an expensive way to get the few new repeat customers.
'
Then why is Wal-Mart's distribution so bone-headed stupid?
If you're into Transformers toys, there are a few Wal-Mart exclusives that are only available from Wal-mart.
Inevitably, distribution inequities exist. It can easily be sold out in the West, but shelfwarming (and clearanced) on the East coast.
It's a huge source of frustration, because the only ways to get it are either hope Wal-Mart's distribution catches the gist that the west wants it and to stop shipping it East where it's not selling, or suffer eBay arbitrage.
I can understand initial distributions may be population based, but it doesn't make sense to clearance where it isn't selling when it's selling out in hours elsewhere. In fact, the west stores never had to discount because they were perpetually sold out.
I believe what they did was even more crude. They jammed GPS signals (trivial to do - ask LightSquared for how). This put the drone in a backup mode of operation (because well, it doesn't have positioning information, and it may not be able to determine last good location before the jamming interfered).
The Iranians simply exploited that mode to force the drone to land in Iran. I believe they simply transmitted manual control operations (backup mode).
Of course, everyone spins it as "GPS SPOOF!" when it's really a bug in the control software that allows anyone who knows the method of control to take over by simply jamming GPS.
Apple's actually got more power over Samsung than Samsung over Apple.
Samsung just opened a new fab to make chips for Apple. Apple is Samsung's #1 customer these days. The loss of Apple's business would immediately put Samsung in a bad spot - idle fabs lose money - if they're not making chips 24/7, the ROI goes down really quickly. And Samsung is fabbing Apple's chips, and selling Apple a LOT of flash chips.
Samsung's mobile handsets probably don't make as much money as being the supplier for Apple.
The only reason Apple is shopping for fabs is well, what happens if an earthquake or something takes out Samsung's fabs? Being such the large customer as it is, it would be impacted most. Sure Samsung will give Apple all the flash chips and leave everyone else short (which hurts everyone), but if Apple can't make the processors fast enough, it's still not good enough. Between TSMC (which has kicked people off in order to fab Broadcom's chips for sale to Apple), and Intel, each of which will demand a slightly modified A5/A6/Awhatever design to cope with their fab's differences, Apple wants to make sure if they're gonna crank out a quarter million devices a day, that the fabs can keep up by fabbing a quarter million devices a day.
I'm guessing the earthquake may have spooked Apple some because it impacted both sensors (AKM is Japanese), and batteries. Of course, Apple wrote a big cheque to ensure supply to help invest (i.e., "rebuild") the factories. All it would take is North Korea to make some moves. Oh wait...
Apple's been horrendously burned by single source supplies - first Motorola which couldn't supply PowerPC chips fast enough, then IBM, which couldn't make the desired PowerPC chips fast enough.
All Anobit's going to give Apple is the ability to roll out faster, more dense flash for Apple's iDevices and SSDs. While it seems Androids are stuck at 32GB (probably because eMMC/SDHC limit), Apple's wanting to differentiate by making 64GB and most likely beyond.
Actually, Google IS the internet.
Think about it - if you were to block every single Google owned domain, your ability to use the Internet would be severely constrained. Ignoring search, but think of the Google CDNs, Google-hosted javascript libraries, etc. Both iOS and Android would be almost useless. And Google's DNS. And Google Voice for those who use it.
Though, you would be getting a basically ad-free life as Google's ad services are basically the ad services used all over the net - between adwords and DoubleClick and AdMob.
And let's not forget the Google hosted anti-phishing blacklists used by everyone except IE (which uses Microsoft's version, naturally).
Easy - it's the holiday season.
Or you have to realize that October is Ship Month(tm). If it's a physical product that goes in stores, it means the product is sitting in the factory waiting for the software to go on them (it takes many months to get stuff manufactured from component ordering and lead times to physical assembly, so it happens during software development). The code has to be shipped by end of October so the factory has November to program and ship the product to the distributors and then to retailers by December to be on the shelf.
And that's if they're fast at doing so - most of the time, the product can't be assembled and shipped because all factories are busy, which means what goes on them is a test firmware that downloads the latest on bootup. (Ever notice how many things do a firmware update when you first turn them on? That's why). In which case the deal is to have it ready by shipment in November.
If your product is software, but has a physical element (like a disc) then your timelines are still short as you have to ship *something* by October to the presses, and then you patch it during October/November while you wait for the discs to come back so you can ship for the holidays. And the goal is to have something
If your product is purely Internet download, then you need to compete with approvals and all that but that means you have all through October and November to squash bugs. But with any fixed ship date, well, squahing one bug can introduce two more.
It's because of the holiday seasons that people are furiously fixing and finishing software. No wonder that there's more bugs - people are doing more "quick fixes" that may not be properly tested in order to ship.
Actually, that's very likely.
Think about it. The Android app shopping place is called "Android Marketplace" and not "Android App Store". Curiously different from Apple's "App Store". (See Apple v. Amazon on "App Store")
Then look at the launcher - at how it avoids the iOS grid of icons organized by pages (with a bar for holding icons across all pages). (See Samsung's TouchWiz iOS faking - which makes their phones look very similar).
Heck, even Android's "slide to unlock" is distinctive as starting from the side. On the tablets, you start somewhere on a side of the screen and slide to the edge of the circle.
Google actually goes out of their way to make Android as different as possible from iOS.
Not easily.
First, most VCRs are made to fail when a Macrovision encoded signal is encountered. Yes, "made". Prior to Disney using Macrovision, most VCRs were loose enough that rendered it useless. By tightening up the AGC on the VCR, Macrovision screws up the signal and makes it difficult to copy.
DVD recorders are even easier - they detect a Macrovision encoded signal and shut down. (This is especially since DVDs do not always engage the "Macrovision Enable" bit during the movie - the DVDs pay for the amount of time it's on, so they only turn it on every now and again.).
Of course, anyone with a timebase corrector, or a "copyprotection stripper" like a GoDVD removes Macrovision and makes it possible to do a clean copy.
Don't mistake AOSP for Android. Android is only available to OHA members, and it included stuff like Honeycomb source code (which was under a very restrictive license), as well as access to the Google Apps, which make Android, well, Android (e.g., the Google Marketplace - it's extremely difficult to get apps without Marketplace access - it's easier to pirate than to try to find an official download).
Cyanogen is using AOSP. And periodically Google pushes code from Android into AOSP. But Google controls the Android stuff for OHA members.
Google can very well dictate update terms - they dictated how the Honeycomb source code was to be distributed, after all. They even dictated what you can and cannot do with the source and what customizations you could apply.
Chinese manufacturers and everyone else using AOSP can disobey at will because they're using the free license, but the OHA members getting early code access and such cannot. Hell, Google can make it a part of the Google Apps licensing agreement.
If you're playing with it actively, not a big deal. But then again, the sun does have a nasty habit of getting in your eye, so during the glare of day can make it quite difficult to see.
And given children may toss it and have it go off in a random direction because they released it wrongly could mean hitting someone who doesn't expect it. Like someone walking down the sidewalk, your neighbour, etc. Nevermind that people seem to be constantly distracted by their cellphones whilst walking down the street to even notice that there might be an object heading their way (this includes street furniture, cars, and lamp posts, too).
You do realize that the reason why Microsoft has not forced everyone to go to iE7/8 for XP was because of this, right? Microsoft basically told everyone to get ready because eventually, they're going to force an upgrade. In fact, if you don't specifically enable the IE 7/8 block, it'll arrive via WSUS or Windows Update automatically.
The only people on IE6 are those who applied the block (the block exists because of them) as a stopgap measure.
Microsoft is badly wanting ot get rid of a lot of crap out there simply because it's a big pain to support all the hacks and workaround because of lousy coders.
Most courses get around that problem in one of two ways.
1) They make the homework optional. Good students automatically do it anyways because they understand tthe value of doing the work to help study and prepare.
2) The homework is worth a tiny fraction of your mark (5-10%).
Having a copy of the solutions manual is useless in both cases for your mark - the final exam score usually determines pass/fail and is usually rigged that you have to pass the final in order to pass the course.
Now, a student having a copy of the solutions manual is very helpful during studying to figure out where they got stuck and to review that they understood how to do the problem.
Good profs understand this and often the homework they assign has the solution available in the workbook completely worked out.
It's college/university - you're expected to be responsible for yourself and good students do homework even if it's not required.
I'm assuming that's why the government acted so late - they were hoping for a free market solution to the problem. Because really, it's silly that the government needs to do something that industry really can do itself. All the government has to do is normally just make whinings about it, and industry goes and does it pre-emptively to prevent regulation.
In this case, no one cared enough at the stations to actually do it, the government gave up waiting for the free market to do something that's generating tons of complaints, and acted on it.
Speaking of which, here in Canada, it seems the History Channel (Canada) is deliberately doing it. The ads are always MUCH louder than the show. The show's at normal volume with rest of channels I watch (except Discovery has seemed to gone DOWN in volume...), but when it switches to ads, the volume jumps sharply. It goes soft during programming again.
And no, I'm not always watching the show, I just know when the commercials are on because they really are louder.
It depends. Here in Canada, the only way to get a Galaxy Nexus is through Bell or Virgin Mobile, and neither will sell it without a contract. It's $160 with mandatory 3 year contract - you're not allowed to buy it outright or on a 1 or 2 year plan. 3 year, required.
So Verizon very well might be selling the Galaxy Nexus as a contract-only phone for now since demand is high for probably the best Android phone support-wise. They know people want it and maybe are even willing ot pay ETF fees to switch carriers.
As for the naming - it looks like the phones that are Google's are "Nexus" branded ones. So Nexus One, Nexus S, Galaxy Nexus are pure Google phones. Galaxy S - that's Samsung's iPhone^WTouchWiz phone.
Well, if it's Amazon, they did "pay you" for your information. And you did consent to it.
You chose to shop there for some reason - be it the cheaper prices (the "payment" is the discount), or the convenience of just having it right there rather than drive all over the city. That can effectively be seen as you voluntarily giving up your data for the priviledge of purchasing product from their store.
You're free to shop elsewhere. Your local whitebox computer store can sell you parts for cash only transactions - no need to give newegg your information. Barnes and Noble run a set of brick and mortar stores that accept anonymous cash, as do many independent bookstores (who can also order in any book you're looking for).
Sure you'll probably pay more in the end, but you can consider that the price of your data.
Uh, everyone else, HD-DVD and Xbox included, were using VC-1 (WMV) or AVC (h.264) for their video.
The big problem with Blu-Ray (and it still is today) is shitty mastering, especially on catalog titles. Compare the version of Apollo 13 for HD-DVD versus the Blu-Ray - the Blu-Ray is significantly softer and has highlights blown out. Signs readable on the HD-DVD are unreadable now on Blu-Ray, despite the HD-DVD only having 30GB for everything while Blu-Ray has 50GB and uses higher bitrates. It's just the studio went and applied digital noise reduction (DNR) and other effects to get film grain down, which ends up destroying detail. It's better than DVD, but not by much - a good upconverter can probably do the same thing.
That's my same problem. I bought all the HiBs to date, but the last 4 or 5 of them have been coming out once a month, and I find I just give just above the minimums now.
Before that, sure, I'd toss $25 for the bundle, but the next time a month later I just threw in $10, then the past few just enough to be "above average" to get at those extras you get - which I think has been around $5-5.50 or so.
$25/month for a year is $300, which is a lot of money. When it was once, maybe twice a year it was $50 a year tops. Now if I'm just doing around $5-6 a month, that's $60-72. Acceptable, but I'm not sure if the devs want to split such a small pot amongst so many games.
Charities know this as "Donor Fatigue" - where there's more and more charities chasing the same pool of donors at the same time - each one gets a smaller amount. The same thing happened when for whatever reason, the charity lotteries all fell within the same few months - they all found that the tickets weren't selling and were effectively competing against each other. Had they spaced out their lotteries there would be far more money - buying a ticket for one every few months is a lot easier than trying to decide amongst the 3 or 4 which one to buy.
They also need a better download interface - they say to make backups and such as they can't guarantee the files will stay up, but it's a hassle downloading the files one by one and then having to compare the MD5's manually. You'd think they could provide a nice SHA1sums (MD5, seriously?) file so we can test the downloads in an automated fashion.
In Windows 7, Microsoft created a wonderful tool to help you. It's called Problem Steps Recorder. Basically the user runs it and it snaps screenshots while the user reproduces the problem. There's a comment box allowing the user to type in comments like what they typed, what they expect, etc.
The best part? It emits output as HTML (!!!). Just send the zip file to the devs (it offers a handy email option), and it gives them repro steps and everything.
Wonderful utility. Even more wonderful is it can be used as more than just recording problem steps - you can record tutorials in it and post them online and stuff.
Once a user gives the data to a company, it's not the user's data anymore.
Just like if you tell someone a secret, it's not a secret anymore.
And that information that's "deleted" - are you sure it's really gone? Perhaps someone else read it and reposted it?
Basically, if you don't want it online, don't post it online. Once it falls into the hands of someone else, there's nothing you can do about it.
Expecting facebook to not retain copies is the same as trying to retract an email. Unless we can successfully implement DRM for email, we can't really control what happens to the information we give someone else.
Exactly - the cluster just gets slower and slower and slower.
Eventually, I think the USAF will just take down the cluster and donate them to a charity for those who served in the armed forces.
The cluster will then be replaced with Cell computers from IBM. Or maybe Microsoft will make a generous (i.e., marketing) move and promote the next-gen Xbox with a special firmware build that will let them run Linux on it.
And Sony will be removed from the government's approved vendor list.
Maybe.
So? At least it's still out there. The alternative to open-sourcing it is keeping it closed (see OS/2, BeOS, PalmOS, etc). If people are willing to support it and provide a community - why not?
Hell, probably a good chunk of Android phones are supported purely by the Cyanogen folks - the only support the hardware vendor gives you is warranty.
Especially something like WebOS which can be arguably superior to Android in a few ways (lacking s-t-t-t-t-u-t-t-tering is one of them), I say Android and everyone can benefit from it.
And if you don't like it, don't use it. HP could've just locked it up forever.