But isn't the sugar turned into ethanol, thus giving it its legs? I'm more than will to be wrong, but that was my understanding. And as far as a hydrometer is concerned, I rarely bring them to tastings. Folks seem to frown on bringing chemistry equipment to haughty affairs.
Not all of it.
Yeast used in brewing die around 5-7% alcohol (basically, from alcohol poisoning). It's why spirits and liquor are distilled. It's very possible to still have leftover sugar after the yeast dies. It's also possible to run out of sugar. It's one of those things that makes wine unique every batch.
Exactly. They'll want certificates proving the drives were destroyed per the contract.
Part of your contract bottom line includes the cost of replacing those drives. If your company bid too low and won't make a profit, that's really a shame, but that's something you'll have to take up with the salesperson who wrote the proposal.
Also, realize that hard drives are only expensive *NOW*. Remember what happened in Japan that was supposed to kill the electronics market until the end of the year? In 6 month's time, the prices of hard drives will come back down. Unless your contract is only a month long, the destruction probably won't happen until then, which is probably a year or more down the road (unless it gets renewed again). In the mean time, you only destroy hard drives of PCs that are being decomissioned, so they've already been replaced and no issue at all.
Also - why are you trying to find ways around it? It's in the contract and you wouldn't have gotten it if you didn't agree to the requirement. Is it really to save the company a few bucks? Or is it the inner geek who can't see the sight of tossing a 500GB drive away?
These aholes should just compromise. Raise taxes and cut spending. Do both. You can't agree? Well then why not fix the problem quickly by agreeing to these two points that would solve the problem in a hurry? Sure, I am not an economist, but I bet my understanding of solving the debt problem is just about as good as a senator or congressman who spends his time raising money all day, rather than trying to figure out this country's problems.
That's why when the committee was created, they had a set plan of cuts to be put in place in case no agreement was reached. The cuts are quite onerous to ensure that both sides will try to compromise - it's a $1.2T cut. $600M from defense, and $600M from everything else.
And best yet, those cuts are already in law - there's no dickering on it at all on who gets cut where. If there's no compromise and solution, those cuts take place automatically across the board by the enforced amounts. The committee's job is to avoid that by finding a better solution.
The D side knows that $600M across the board is going to hurt. The R side knows the $600M defense cut is really going to hurt.
I'm honestly surprised that something like that could be agreed to, really. Basically a suicide pill if the committee couldn't agree (it's split evenly on both sides - 6 each so no one party could bully the other).
I think that AdBlocking on a phone can only improve the usage.I don't see what problem you could possibly have with the idea? AdBlock Plus on my N900 works great, and makes certain sites much less intensive on my phone. Unfortunately, there's no NoScript equivalent for the Maemo browser, which IMO is a must have as well.
Alas, it's also not in the cards short of rooting your phone.
First, Google owns AdMob, the largest mobile ad company out there. They sell in-app ads (Google knows your app usage habits bevcause of this). It's not in their interest to let you easily block it.
Second, developers for Android find that's the only way to make money - with Google Checkout/Wallet still not available everywhere an Android phone is sold, paid apps are a non-starter. Plus with ease of piracy, "freemium" is the business plan of the day for Android. If adblocking on Android becomes popular, the apps left over would be stratified between the free open-source stuff and the big companies. (It's also an issue on iOS, but people do pay for apps there - apparently even the Chinese as Apple allowed the yuan as a valid currency).
You know it's bad when RIM can easily claim that Blackberry devs make the second most amount of money after Apple.
You could say the same thing for the Internet: don't download random stuff, research it and ensure it is safe. Hell that could apply to almost any activity like going to a restaurant: make sure that the kitchen is clean and that they buy safe ingredients.
The problem is that no one actually does either of those checks.
Well, it's called Dancing Pigs. A user is confronted with a scary looking permissions list with "install" and "cancel". User wants to play this kewl game they were shown. User taps Install. It'll happen often enough to matter.
And it also applies if said app costs money and they can get it for free - people will pirate apps. And just like on the desktop world - pirated apps can contain all sorts of wrappers that install malware.
I suppose the only interesting thing about Android is why malware uathors haven't bothered taking paid apps, adding their own crap to it, and then releasing it "for free" to show up on searches as a full version of app for free. (I've seen ebooks that did this - they take some Harry Potter epub and package it with a reader (pirated?) and release it as one app.
Then again - should the user be expected to do these checks? Does your mechanic/plumber/doctor/nurse/etc. go and say "I cannot fix your $FOO for you today - I need to research to make sure the new software we're transitioning to is safe"? No, they just install it. Heck, they normally have "IT" take care of that stuff for them. Or their neighbour's kid.
I suppose it's why people are going for "app stores" and "appliances" rather than full-fledged PCs. Computers literally have gotten to the point where it really is a scary place out there and anyone who doesn't do it as a full time occupation is easily overwhelmed into thinking that next click would steal all their banking information and the identities. (Or worse yet, ignorance and clicking somewhere that really does do it).
Anyone's who's had to clean out their relative's PC over the holidays (hey US Thanksgiving...) can attest to that...
That depends on whether they want it or not (and, as far as I know, social interaction isn't absolutely necessary for anyone). "Valuable" is subjective.
Being that humans are natually social beings (things like "cabin fever" erupt without it), it is essential.
Now, the question is whether face to face interaction is necessary to be social, or one can be social through technology (email, social sites, video/voice/text chat) remains to be answered. I'm guessing the answer is "everything in moderation". Some face to face is essential, because there will always be face to face interactions - even if it's just with the mailman for a package, and there may be times one is thrust into needing to interact, so proper behaviour and expectations in such situations is a necessity. (E.g., if you desire to have a family. Or maybe you need to ask for help with some task, or broke down at the side of the street and need to call a tow truck).
Those who don't seek social interaction are known as recluse, and there's a reason why there's a negative connotation associated with the term.
Hell, the act of reading and writing posts on/. is a social activity.
Like schools, libraries are have bought into the notion that their "mission" can't be accomplished without a social services component, because all members of the community have to be brought up to the same level.
A library's mission is to promote the spreading of knowledge.
Now, traditionally, say, just over a decade ago, this was done via books. Books of all kinds. Fiction counts too - even though they're read for enjoyment, that enjoyment may lead others to new conclusions. And nevermind the archives of newspapers and access to many journals of many fields.
With the spread of the Internet, libraries had to become ISPs as well, because it's a vital source of knowledge. And a librarian is skilled enough to help knowledge-seekers decide if something on the Internet is possibly truthful. It's also why libraries try not to be judgemental, either.
Many libraries also hold roundtables where authors and experts come in and give presentations - again, spreading knowledge. And the kid-reading-time helps inspire kids to seek out knowledge.
A maker space is a good way to spread hands-on knowledge - the book on the shelf can do so much, now take that knowledge and apply it.
A library's goal is to provide knowledge to those who seek it, regardless of means. They're often derided these days by people who think the internet is the be-all end-all of everything (usually by people of means who can buy the same books). Or perhaps by scared people of means who also want to keep the poor in their place - how dare they try to improve their lot and possibly compete.
Here's the rule: A computer that controls industrial machinery should not be connected to the Internet. The only part of an industrial process that can even possibly be connected to the Internet is historical data and alarming.
Therefore, don't connect your plant floor to the Internet.. unless you want China to be able to control it. If white-collar executive-type people want to see pretty screens, give them historical data.
Tell that to Iran. I heard their nuke program was set back a few years, even though their nuke control systems WERE isolated from the Internet.
It was a pretty brilliant hack as well.
Tell that to the USAF, whose UAV control stations managed to get infected despite not being connected to the internet.
No, isolating the networks is part of the solution. It's not the only solution and relying on that these days is like relying on security through obscurity. They both work, but they shouldn't be your ONLY source of protection. Hell, besides crap like USB keys and CDs introducing malware onto secure networks, there's also roving laptops (especially impotrant when the systems need reconfigurating).
The other big element is the human one. And time and time again, Dancing Pigs will win over security, always. Hell, Facebook shows the honor system virus is pretty damn virulent.
Heck, it's only a matter of time before SCADA systems move back to highly proprietary interfaces. Perhaps even per-facility proprietary so the only way to update them would be to call the vendor in at $10,000/day/person to update the system. And they're all going to sell it as a security enhancement.
It's nice to get the first last for once, but I have to say that I don't understand why developers still release their games at different dates in different regions. Especially with the internet, reviews are going to be coming out as soon as the game is out anyway, which if the game is bad will reduce sales in the regions where the game comes out later (not that this is a concern in this case).
i18n, mostly. Translating the story, translating the script, hiring voice actors to say the lines, re-doing UI elements in case stuff doesn't fit (like it often doesn't), doing culture checks etc. (some gestures may be considered obscene, some graphics may be illegal, etc.).
Doing 20+ languages simultaneously would drive anyone up the wall - a problem in one language then has to be fixed, and the fix tested on all the other languages to make sure they still work correctly, etc.
At least, you do Japanese first (easy, Nintendo's native). Then you do English(/French) for North America (maybe Spanish as well). Then you pick either Europe and do the other languages, or Asia and its languages.
Imagine the chaos caused if a worldwide release is held up because someone discovered a bug in some little used language.
Also, doing this allows the disc pressers time to press discs so they're not having to make millions of copies in a month, but hundreds of thousands as the demand ripples through the world.
If anything to me the interesting part is how much more poor the resolution on the Chinese sats are to the Americans since the Chinese targets are fricking huge and the bullseyes they have in AZ go down to some pretty tiny center targets. I'm sure in another decade though they'll have it tight enough they'll be able to read the license on a car, they'll just need a GUI in VB like the CSI guys.
The actual resolution of a spy satellite is classified. The use of smaller and smaller targets gives away the resolution of the satellite you're using it with. The fact that the targets have been getting smaller and smaller (and it's measurable) just means that they can ballpark the resolution easier.
The Chinese "huge targets" doesn't reveal a thing about the quality of their optics. It could be (as assumed) extremely bad. Or it could be extremely good and they're now focusing on parts of the design. Hell, the other test targets around the world are known - the Chinese could simply be targeting using those targets as well, and using these to throw everyone off.
Part of the role of a good spy is providing disinformation, after all.
What i would like to see is a CPU architecture that can have asymmetric cores:
Similar to your design, the Tegra 3 ARM SoC does that. It has a quad-core A9 running at 1.5GHz or more, but it also has a "slow" core running at 600MHz or so. When things are idling, the slow core takes over and does the job while the hefty quadcores are powered off, saving tons of power.
Marvell I think also has a similar idea for their SoCs. And ARM's A15 design is supposed to incorporate that as well.
and before that, N, 6, and 4. remember how much it cost to add another 4MB of RDRAM to that system?
Ah yes, but the price of the memory pak was probably mostly due to Nintendo markup as well. Though then again, it was before Rambus started really screwing over the world with patent lawsuits over stuff that was essential to create the cheaper/faster DDR2.
PS2 and PS3 came after the lawsuits started flying, and I'm not sure if the N64 was really all that popular compared with the PSX at the time...
Rambus must have some sort of war chest for suits and appeals. They've been at it for over a decade. By appearance it seems they're developing Lawyer Technology rather than memory technology.
Didn't they go out of business?
Unfortunately, not only are they still in business, they're still licensing designs.
In fact, maybe you have some Rambus-using stuff in your house, and maybe it was used in the past day.
And not only does Rambus have licensing revenue coming in for the near future, they may also be set for the next 10 years or so too.
Three characters: P, S, and 3.
10 years ago, when RDRAM was on its way out, Rambus picked up a licensor that was worth WAY more than all the RDRAM modules ever sold. The most popular console of that generation, the PlayStation 2, had 32MB of RDRAM.
The PS3, has 512MB of non-shared memory, split as 256MB of GDDR3 for the RSX,... and 256MB of QDR-DRAM, basically the next-gen RDRAM, licensed from Rambus. Certainly while the PS3 is not the most popular console, it still has respectable sales volume, and each PS3 sold means a little more money in Rambus' bank account.
Now, there's no guarantee that the PS4 will use RDRAM, but it's a possibility, which would mean Rambus has continuous source of income for the life of the PS4. Maybe they can extend it to the PS5, maybe.
You honestly don't believe they don't have the entire thing storyboarded and written BEFORE they even get as far as starting rendering?
Written yes, storyboarded, probably not. In fact, storyboards are on the way out - the new hotness is animatics - basically low-res renderings of the scene. Unlike a storyboard, which is a flat static comic-like picture, an animatic actually details the motion, which can include stuff like camera angles and such.
Of course, this stuff is very crude so it can be rendered in a flash (real-time basically). This is so shots can be tweaked and adjusted before the scene is acted out or rendered. Perhaps having higher quality renders mean they don't have to keep two sets of assets - the low res ones for fast laying out tweaking of shots, and high res final renders.
So you claim the iPhone was the first phone to exhibit this behavior?
Because if not, your point is moot.
It was the first to be that aggressive about it. That, coupled with the texting craze sweeping North America and the control channel fills up quickly.
And technically, the iPhone was the first to show the behaviour because the iPhone used the Infineon chipset - something most North American phones avoided because the chipset is more tuned to Asian and European networks, because of its aggressiveness and control channel utilization. For North American phones, it was generally required to use a Qualcomm chipset which wasn't so aggressive, but also meant it consumed more power. Remember, the iPhone was purely designed by Apple - AT&T/Cingular had zero input in the matter (they would've protested the use of the Infineon chipset).
For a comparison, note how the European networks and Asian networks fared. Heck, even the Antennagate iPhone 4 problem was virtually non-existent.
Haven't the mobile data networks been packet-switched for quite some time now?
Irrelevant, actually. In a cellphone, data channels (and voice) are allocated dynamically and last as long as you want. You basically "open" a data channel (which tells the carrier you intend to send data and set up all the billing and handling information). Then you can send and receive data at will. If you have no data to send, you give your timeslot to someone else.
For EDGE and GPRS, the system used unused voice channels, which is why these systems disallow simultaneous voice and data (because to support it requires supporting two upstream channels and two downstream channels - i.e., two receivers and transmitters plus control transceiver).
For 3G, the system is far more complex, but from the baseband side, you open up data channels (PDP contexts), the more you open, the faster the transfer (basically channel bonding like behaviour).
But each time you do this, you create control channel traffic as you open and tear down these data connections. And whilst having the data channel open, the baseband consumes more power because it's in active communications with the tower, ready to send and receive data.
If you want to compare it with WiFi, think of the "no data channel established" state as WiFi disabled - it's powered off. Then you want to transfer data, so you create the data channel, which is basically turning it on and associating it with the access point. It's not transferring data, but it's taking more power now as the module is consuming standby power, ready to respond to packets for it. The highest power mode happens when data is transferred, because the Rx and Tx are actively engaged.
A "normal" device associates with the AP, and leaves the connection idle. It takes power, but it also means it's ready to go in an instant.
If you had a battery-challenged device, you might try to do an iPhone and leave the WiFi off as much as possible to save power, then turn it on and associate it with an AP when you need to transfer data, then turn it off again. You'll find the AP load is increased and if enough devices do it, the AP can be so busy handling association/deassociation requests that it can't actually transfer useful data. (The analogy fails because WiFi uses one channel for both management and data transfer, while cellular uses multiple).
Indeed. It was genius, even if it wasn't intentional. When a phone drops calls or has data hiccups, who gets blamed? It's ALWAYS the cell carrier. Let someone else get all the blame. Funny thing though, my AT&T service was always fine until all the iPhone users appeared and clogged stuff up. Now the wireless network is getting clogged with people talking to Siri? Argh.
Well, the dropped call/AT&T sucky thing really did have the iPhone to blame partially.
You see, there's a control channel used to establish and tear down connections (voice/data), and also used for signalling and messaging (e.g., making/receiving a phone call, SMS).
The iPhone was extremely aggressive with its data connections. The instant data transfer stopped and there was no more data forthcoming, the immediately tore down the data connection. When data needed to be transferred, it established it again. If you're browsing the web, it basically meant everytime you visit a page, the page load creates a new connection, then when the page has finished, the connection is torn down.
What crippled AT&T was not running out of bandwidth for voice or data, but running out of bandwidth in the control channel. When the control channel was saturated, it means that requests get dropped. If you're being handed off to another cell, and your phone can't contact the tower in time to complete the handoff (because it can't get a word in edgewise on the control channel), boom, the call is dropped. And thus, AT&T service started degrading for everyone because basically all the iPhones overloaded the towers.
Europe and Asia didn't see this because all the texting that went on meant they saw control channel saturation happen many years ago, so they started doing dynamic bandwidth allocation - if the control channel is getting saturated, it allocates another channel to free up bandwidth.
The same thing happened to T-mobile when an IM app and Android apparently had timers that worked destructively - the IM app caused Android to release the data channel because it was idle "long enough", just after which it did a data transfer which required re-establishing the data link. So T-Mobile suffered from phones dropping and re-establishing the data connection again causing tower overload.
Incidentally, the iPhone did this to save power - holding a data connection open takes battery, so if you can drop it immediately, you can put the baseband into low power and save a significant amount of power.
AT&T was not prepared for the iPhone. Some people got bills that came in big boxes because every time the phone opened and closed the data connection, an entry was recorded and faithfully printed out, leading to phone bills that were thousands of pages long. Since it was unlimited, all it did was kill some extra trees.
While I'm with you on this on many levels (remember building things with the 4000 series? Yeah, we don't do that anymore.
Why not? The CMOS 4000 series and TTL 74xx series is still around, even in the various combinations (74HCxx CMOS, 74HS, etc). They're still availble from Digikey and the like, and many designs actually use them still.
But like bitcoin, the ownership could be easily established. I could establish that the song I'm playing actually does belong to me (or not as the case may be). I could see there being three formats of song available from, say Apple...
+ Apple Ecosystem; songs only play on i-somethings
+ Open ecosystem,; songs in mp3 format
+ Trade-able ecosystem, songs in "bitcoin" format
With different prices for each version. The online trading markets then would only accept the latter form.
There's only two - open and "bitcoin format". Apple's format is open (it's DRM-free AAC, which plays on most MP3 players these days, and all consoles). Though you do see people posting iTunes versions of albums on torrents without stripping out their Apple ID. Oops,
64k, even with government benefits would be on the very low side for a PhD in science or a qualified pilot of jet aircraft
I think the minimum was 1000 hours. Which isn't a lot (most airlines don't even consider you until you hit 2500, so it's the regionals for the most part). And regionals barely pay much above minimum wage.
A pilot's salary is actually pretty piss-poor. A pilot making 6 digits flying the nice birds had to get there basically through 30 years seniority and the like. It's why airline mergers are hugely contentious because most of the pilots are fighting for seniority.
But if you're starting out in the regionals with 1000 hours, you're lucky to make 36k.
Yes, it's something to think about when making a career change - pilot pay is rather bad. And for the first 1000 hours, you're working as an instructor, and the pay is even worse. If you don't have a way to support yourself, you're screwed.
Now with HTML5 becoming the the preferred nuisance apparatus, can we create something to block them browser side?
Yes. Block Javascript, or install an ad-blocker. Both of which are very well established technologies in the plugin world of most browsers today.
Unlike Flash, a browser is not obligated to display or render everything. So if a user purposely blocks ads, there's nothing that can be done. Flash can bypass most plugins, and display ads (e.g., the popup ones on YouTube, or the ones that play before the video).
Dude, even if you are too tone deaf to notice the difference, I totally sample my music at 740 kHz - it's the only way to go in order to get clean sound. 16b / 44.1 kHz is for the poor soiled masses, and 24b / 96 kHz is for studio jerk-offs.
There's actually a sane reason for 95kHz sampling - filtering.
Before any ADC, you need to put in an analog filter (anti-aliasing filter - basically it ensures that the signal going to the ADC is bandlimited below the Nyquist frequency).
The problem with filters is that it's very hard to get the desired characteristics (flat response in frequency band, narrow transition band) without doing a ton of work (lots of parts, etc).
Using 44kHz or 48kHz sampling, it means if you want to capture to 20kHz, your filter must "brickwall" in the 2-4kHz region between 20kHz and 22/24kHz. This is extremely hard to do, and the eng result is you usually get rolloff around 16kHz or so. Or the frequency response gets wilder and definitely not flat.
Using 96kHz or even 192kHz means the anti-aliasing filter can be much gentler and designed with more stuiable characteristics. When you can have rolloff start at 20kHz and extend all the way out to 48/96kHz, you can make some very nice filters indeed - flat from 20Hz-20kHz, very little phase distortion, etc.
The other end benefits as well - the antialiasing filter on the DAC side can be a lot nicer as well.
And of course, the more bandwidth you have to play with, it means the filters are also much cheaper and simpler (and that also means less distortion).
There *is* an unbroken chain of compatibility from the latest AMD processors back to the 8008
Actually, AMD processors are not 100% compatible. There are differences in behavior.
For example, everyone knows an x86 resets at FFFF:0000. But an AMD processor will throw an exception if somewhere along the line, it doesn't encounter a branch and ends up wrapping to 0000:0000. An Intel processor doesn't generate the exception. (This is because way back when, instead of putting ROM at the end of memory, designers could put it at the beginning and have the processor basically NOP its way through the 16 bytes).
It's one of the well-known well-publicized things that broke the original Xbox.
Of course, practically speaking, AMD's behaviour is probably "more correct" security wise, but Intel's is pure legacy.
The problem with that idea is that Kinect was a 90%+ finished product when they bought it. They polished it for use with the 360, it always takes them some time to fuck up a new technology sufficiently for their branding, and kicked it out the door.
Problem is, the final 10% polishing is actually pretty damn hard. If you've done software development, getting to the point where the basic features work is really quick. But getting to the point where it's releasable and usable takes a lot of effort.
It's one thing that Apple is known for (most innovations that are "cool" are at the 90% stage, but it still takes a ton of effort to get it to the stage where people other than geeks and engineers can USE it).
For Kinect, the final 10% would involve packaging (how does Kinect look, and will it fit with the rest of the equipment?), fitting the stuff inside the package (does it fit? Does the enclosure need redesign?), and more importantly, manufacturability.
Sticking a reference design in a box is not easy. A lot of work is required in order to be able to build in huge volumes - are the parts available in quantity (and cheaply)? Can it be assembled easily or are there fiddly calibration bits that'll take time to work? Are there simple pass/fail criterion?
It takes a lot of work. For open-source, you can abandon it after the 90% point (and most stuff is - the final work is the boring dull stuff no one wants to do), but it's not going to fly for commercial products that you want people to buy. And they know when a product was skimped on.
Heck, even the UI of a product is important, and Kinect took some beating there.
(It's why you get reviews on "solidness" - a minor detail but relates to build quality, ditto with use of "cheap plastic" or worse yet, "cheap feeling plastic".) It's that final 10% that Apple is well reknown for, and if it was easy, well, Apple would be dead and there would be tons of products with well designed UIs and very nice casings and such.
The most alarming fact, for me, is that they are sending all my speech data over the Internet to some enormous Cloud database. Oh, and while they have it all, I must trust Apple now that they are not gonna mine this data and send it backdoor to advertisers and other interests.
And yet you're fine with Google doing it?
Yes, remember 411-GOOG? It's SOLE purpose was to gather voice recognition data. It was shut down once Google got enough samples.
Google Voice's voicemail transcription is based on the data collected from that service as well.
And you can definitely bet that Google is using it for advertising purposes.
At least though, when you look at Siri's options, the privacy policy and information used by Siri is linked right there - it's not buried inside the general Apple privacy policy but front and center when setting up Siri.
RS232 is still handy for some home AV applications
Actually, it's handy for most high-end AV applications. Most of the AV switchers, high end AV receivers, and TVs and such have RS-232 inputs so they can be controlled by commands.
The reason for this is so home-control systems like Crestons and such can control and set up the devices as necessary. So they have a boatload of RS-232 ports to control devices with.
Slashdot Mirror
Not all of it.
Yeast used in brewing die around 5-7% alcohol (basically, from alcohol poisoning). It's why spirits and liquor are distilled. It's very possible to still have leftover sugar after the yeast dies. It's also possible to run out of sugar. It's one of those things that makes wine unique every batch.
Exactly. They'll want certificates proving the drives were destroyed per the contract.
Part of your contract bottom line includes the cost of replacing those drives. If your company bid too low and won't make a profit, that's really a shame, but that's something you'll have to take up with the salesperson who wrote the proposal.
Also, realize that hard drives are only expensive *NOW*. Remember what happened in Japan that was supposed to kill the electronics market until the end of the year? In 6 month's time, the prices of hard drives will come back down. Unless your contract is only a month long, the destruction probably won't happen until then, which is probably a year or more down the road (unless it gets renewed again). In the mean time, you only destroy hard drives of PCs that are being decomissioned, so they've already been replaced and no issue at all.
Also - why are you trying to find ways around it? It's in the contract and you wouldn't have gotten it if you didn't agree to the requirement. Is it really to save the company a few bucks? Or is it the inner geek who can't see the sight of tossing a 500GB drive away?
That's why when the committee was created, they had a set plan of cuts to be put in place in case no agreement was reached. The cuts are quite onerous to ensure that both sides will try to compromise - it's a $1.2T cut. $600M from defense, and $600M from everything else.
And best yet, those cuts are already in law - there's no dickering on it at all on who gets cut where. If there's no compromise and solution, those cuts take place automatically across the board by the enforced amounts. The committee's job is to avoid that by finding a better solution.
The D side knows that $600M across the board is going to hurt. The R side knows the $600M defense cut is really going to hurt.
I'm honestly surprised that something like that could be agreed to, really. Basically a suicide pill if the committee couldn't agree (it's split evenly on both sides - 6 each so no one party could bully the other).
Alas, it's also not in the cards short of rooting your phone.
First, Google owns AdMob, the largest mobile ad company out there. They sell in-app ads (Google knows your app usage habits bevcause of this). It's not in their interest to let you easily block it.
Second, developers for Android find that's the only way to make money - with Google Checkout/Wallet still not available everywhere an Android phone is sold, paid apps are a non-starter. Plus with ease of piracy, "freemium" is the business plan of the day for Android. If adblocking on Android becomes popular, the apps left over would be stratified between the free open-source stuff and the big companies. (It's also an issue on iOS, but people do pay for apps there - apparently even the Chinese as Apple allowed the yuan as a valid currency).
You know it's bad when RIM can easily claim that Blackberry devs make the second most amount of money after Apple.
Well, it's called Dancing Pigs. A user is confronted with a scary looking permissions list with "install" and "cancel". User wants to play this kewl game they were shown. User taps Install. It'll happen often enough to matter.
And it also applies if said app costs money and they can get it for free - people will pirate apps. And just like on the desktop world - pirated apps can contain all sorts of wrappers that install malware.
I suppose the only interesting thing about Android is why malware uathors haven't bothered taking paid apps, adding their own crap to it, and then releasing it "for free" to show up on searches as a full version of app for free. (I've seen ebooks that did this - they take some Harry Potter epub and package it with a reader (pirated?) and release it as one app.
Then again - should the user be expected to do these checks? Does your mechanic/plumber/doctor/nurse/etc. go and say "I cannot fix your $FOO for you today - I need to research to make sure the new software we're transitioning to is safe"? No, they just install it. Heck, they normally have "IT" take care of that stuff for them. Or their neighbour's kid.
I suppose it's why people are going for "app stores" and "appliances" rather than full-fledged PCs. Computers literally have gotten to the point where it really is a scary place out there and anyone who doesn't do it as a full time occupation is easily overwhelmed into thinking that next click would steal all their banking information and the identities. (Or worse yet, ignorance and clicking somewhere that really does do it).
Anyone's who's had to clean out their relative's PC over the holidays (hey US Thanksgiving...) can attest to that...
Being that humans are natually social beings (things like "cabin fever" erupt without it), it is essential.
Now, the question is whether face to face interaction is necessary to be social, or one can be social through technology (email, social sites, video/voice/text chat) remains to be answered. I'm guessing the answer is "everything in moderation". Some face to face is essential, because there will always be face to face interactions - even if it's just with the mailman for a package, and there may be times one is thrust into needing to interact, so proper behaviour and expectations in such situations is a necessity. (E.g., if you desire to have a family. Or maybe you need to ask for help with some task, or broke down at the side of the street and need to call a tow truck).
Those who don't seek social interaction are known as recluse, and there's a reason why there's a negative connotation associated with the term.
Hell, the act of reading and writing posts on /. is a social activity.
A library's mission is to promote the spreading of knowledge.
Now, traditionally, say, just over a decade ago, this was done via books. Books of all kinds. Fiction counts too - even though they're read for enjoyment, that enjoyment may lead others to new conclusions. And nevermind the archives of newspapers and access to many journals of many fields.
With the spread of the Internet, libraries had to become ISPs as well, because it's a vital source of knowledge. And a librarian is skilled enough to help knowledge-seekers decide if something on the Internet is possibly truthful. It's also why libraries try not to be judgemental, either.
Many libraries also hold roundtables where authors and experts come in and give presentations - again, spreading knowledge. And the kid-reading-time helps inspire kids to seek out knowledge.
A maker space is a good way to spread hands-on knowledge - the book on the shelf can do so much, now take that knowledge and apply it.
A library's goal is to provide knowledge to those who seek it, regardless of means. They're often derided these days by people who think the internet is the be-all end-all of everything (usually by people of means who can buy the same books). Or perhaps by scared people of means who also want to keep the poor in their place - how dare they try to improve their lot and possibly compete.
Tell that to Iran. I heard their nuke program was set back a few years, even though their nuke control systems WERE isolated from the Internet.
It was a pretty brilliant hack as well.
Tell that to the USAF, whose UAV control stations managed to get infected despite not being connected to the internet.
No, isolating the networks is part of the solution. It's not the only solution and relying on that these days is like relying on security through obscurity. They both work, but they shouldn't be your ONLY source of protection. Hell, besides crap like USB keys and CDs introducing malware onto secure networks, there's also roving laptops (especially impotrant when the systems need reconfigurating).
The other big element is the human one. And time and time again, Dancing Pigs will win over security, always. Hell, Facebook shows the honor system virus is pretty damn virulent.
Heck, it's only a matter of time before SCADA systems move back to highly proprietary interfaces. Perhaps even per-facility proprietary so the only way to update them would be to call the vendor in at $10,000/day/person to update the system. And they're all going to sell it as a security enhancement.
i18n, mostly. Translating the story, translating the script, hiring voice actors to say the lines, re-doing UI elements in case stuff doesn't fit (like it often doesn't), doing culture checks etc. (some gestures may be considered obscene, some graphics may be illegal, etc.).
Doing 20+ languages simultaneously would drive anyone up the wall - a problem in one language then has to be fixed, and the fix tested on all the other languages to make sure they still work correctly, etc.
At least, you do Japanese first (easy, Nintendo's native). Then you do English(/French) for North America (maybe Spanish as well). Then you pick either Europe and do the other languages, or Asia and its languages.
Imagine the chaos caused if a worldwide release is held up because someone discovered a bug in some little used language.
Also, doing this allows the disc pressers time to press discs so they're not having to make millions of copies in a month, but hundreds of thousands as the demand ripples through the world.
The actual resolution of a spy satellite is classified. The use of smaller and smaller targets gives away the resolution of the satellite you're using it with. The fact that the targets have been getting smaller and smaller (and it's measurable) just means that they can ballpark the resolution easier.
The Chinese "huge targets" doesn't reveal a thing about the quality of their optics. It could be (as assumed) extremely bad. Or it could be extremely good and they're now focusing on parts of the design. Hell, the other test targets around the world are known - the Chinese could simply be targeting using those targets as well, and using these to throw everyone off.
Part of the role of a good spy is providing disinformation, after all.
Similar to your design, the Tegra 3 ARM SoC does that. It has a quad-core A9 running at 1.5GHz or more, but it also has a "slow" core running at 600MHz or so. When things are idling, the slow core takes over and does the job while the hefty quadcores are powered off, saving tons of power.
Marvell I think also has a similar idea for their SoCs. And ARM's A15 design is supposed to incorporate that as well.
Ah yes, but the price of the memory pak was probably mostly due to Nintendo markup as well. Though then again, it was before Rambus started really screwing over the world with patent lawsuits over stuff that was essential to create the cheaper/faster DDR2.
PS2 and PS3 came after the lawsuits started flying, and I'm not sure if the N64 was really all that popular compared with the PSX at the time...
Unfortunately, not only are they still in business, they're still licensing designs.
In fact, maybe you have some Rambus-using stuff in your house, and maybe it was used in the past day.
And not only does Rambus have licensing revenue coming in for the near future, they may also be set for the next 10 years or so too.
Three characters: P, S, and 3.
10 years ago, when RDRAM was on its way out, Rambus picked up a licensor that was worth WAY more than all the RDRAM modules ever sold. The most popular console of that generation, the PlayStation 2, had 32MB of RDRAM.
The PS3, has 512MB of non-shared memory, split as 256MB of GDDR3 for the RSX, ... and 256MB of QDR-DRAM, basically the next-gen RDRAM, licensed from Rambus. Certainly while the PS3 is not the most popular console, it still has respectable sales volume, and each PS3 sold means a little more money in Rambus' bank account.
Now, there's no guarantee that the PS4 will use RDRAM, but it's a possibility, which would mean Rambus has continuous source of income for the life of the PS4. Maybe they can extend it to the PS5, maybe.
Written yes, storyboarded, probably not. In fact, storyboards are on the way out - the new hotness is animatics - basically low-res renderings of the scene. Unlike a storyboard, which is a flat static comic-like picture, an animatic actually details the motion, which can include stuff like camera angles and such.
Of course, this stuff is very crude so it can be rendered in a flash (real-time basically). This is so shots can be tweaked and adjusted before the scene is acted out or rendered. Perhaps having higher quality renders mean they don't have to keep two sets of assets - the low res ones for fast laying out tweaking of shots, and high res final renders.
It was the first to be that aggressive about it. That, coupled with the texting craze sweeping North America and the control channel fills up quickly.
And technically, the iPhone was the first to show the behaviour because the iPhone used the Infineon chipset - something most North American phones avoided because the chipset is more tuned to Asian and European networks, because of its aggressiveness and control channel utilization. For North American phones, it was generally required to use a Qualcomm chipset which wasn't so aggressive, but also meant it consumed more power. Remember, the iPhone was purely designed by Apple - AT&T/Cingular had zero input in the matter (they would've protested the use of the Infineon chipset).
For a comparison, note how the European networks and Asian networks fared. Heck, even the Antennagate iPhone 4 problem was virtually non-existent.
Irrelevant, actually. In a cellphone, data channels (and voice) are allocated dynamically and last as long as you want. You basically "open" a data channel (which tells the carrier you intend to send data and set up all the billing and handling information). Then you can send and receive data at will. If you have no data to send, you give your timeslot to someone else.
For EDGE and GPRS, the system used unused voice channels, which is why these systems disallow simultaneous voice and data (because to support it requires supporting two upstream channels and two downstream channels - i.e., two receivers and transmitters plus control transceiver).
For 3G, the system is far more complex, but from the baseband side, you open up data channels (PDP contexts), the more you open, the faster the transfer (basically channel bonding like behaviour).
But each time you do this, you create control channel traffic as you open and tear down these data connections. And whilst having the data channel open, the baseband consumes more power because it's in active communications with the tower, ready to send and receive data.
If you want to compare it with WiFi, think of the "no data channel established" state as WiFi disabled - it's powered off. Then you want to transfer data, so you create the data channel, which is basically turning it on and associating it with the access point. It's not transferring data, but it's taking more power now as the module is consuming standby power, ready to respond to packets for it. The highest power mode happens when data is transferred, because the Rx and Tx are actively engaged.
A "normal" device associates with the AP, and leaves the connection idle. It takes power, but it also means it's ready to go in an instant.
If you had a battery-challenged device, you might try to do an iPhone and leave the WiFi off as much as possible to save power, then turn it on and associate it with an AP when you need to transfer data, then turn it off again. You'll find the AP load is increased and if enough devices do it, the AP can be so busy handling association/deassociation requests that it can't actually transfer useful data. (The analogy fails because WiFi uses one channel for both management and data transfer, while cellular uses multiple).
Well, the dropped call/AT&T sucky thing really did have the iPhone to blame partially.
You see, there's a control channel used to establish and tear down connections (voice/data), and also used for signalling and messaging (e.g., making/receiving a phone call, SMS).
The iPhone was extremely aggressive with its data connections. The instant data transfer stopped and there was no more data forthcoming, the immediately tore down the data connection. When data needed to be transferred, it established it again. If you're browsing the web, it basically meant everytime you visit a page, the page load creates a new connection, then when the page has finished, the connection is torn down.
What crippled AT&T was not running out of bandwidth for voice or data, but running out of bandwidth in the control channel. When the control channel was saturated, it means that requests get dropped. If you're being handed off to another cell, and your phone can't contact the tower in time to complete the handoff (because it can't get a word in edgewise on the control channel), boom, the call is dropped. And thus, AT&T service started degrading for everyone because basically all the iPhones overloaded the towers.
Europe and Asia didn't see this because all the texting that went on meant they saw control channel saturation happen many years ago, so they started doing dynamic bandwidth allocation - if the control channel is getting saturated, it allocates another channel to free up bandwidth.
The same thing happened to T-mobile when an IM app and Android apparently had timers that worked destructively - the IM app caused Android to release the data channel because it was idle "long enough", just after which it did a data transfer which required re-establishing the data link. So T-Mobile suffered from phones dropping and re-establishing the data connection again causing tower overload.
Incidentally, the iPhone did this to save power - holding a data connection open takes battery, so if you can drop it immediately, you can put the baseband into low power and save a significant amount of power.
AT&T was not prepared for the iPhone. Some people got bills that came in big boxes because every time the phone opened and closed the data connection, an entry was recorded and faithfully printed out, leading to phone bills that were thousands of pages long. Since it was unlimited, all it did was kill some extra trees.
Why not? The CMOS 4000 series and TTL 74xx series is still around, even in the various combinations (74HCxx CMOS, 74HS, etc). They're still availble from Digikey and the like, and many designs actually use them still.
There's only two - open and "bitcoin format". Apple's format is open (it's DRM-free AAC, which plays on most MP3 players these days, and all consoles). Though you do see people posting iTunes versions of albums on torrents without stripping out their Apple ID. Oops,
I think the minimum was 1000 hours. Which isn't a lot (most airlines don't even consider you until you hit 2500, so it's the regionals for the most part). And regionals barely pay much above minimum wage.
A pilot's salary is actually pretty piss-poor. A pilot making 6 digits flying the nice birds had to get there basically through 30 years seniority and the like. It's why airline mergers are hugely contentious because most of the pilots are fighting for seniority.
But if you're starting out in the regionals with 1000 hours, you're lucky to make 36k.
Yes, it's something to think about when making a career change - pilot pay is rather bad. And for the first 1000 hours, you're working as an instructor, and the pay is even worse. If you don't have a way to support yourself, you're screwed.
Yes. Block Javascript, or install an ad-blocker. Both of which are very well established technologies in the plugin world of most browsers today.
Unlike Flash, a browser is not obligated to display or render everything. So if a user purposely blocks ads, there's nothing that can be done. Flash can bypass most plugins, and display ads (e.g., the popup ones on YouTube, or the ones that play before the video).
There's actually a sane reason for 95kHz sampling - filtering.
Before any ADC, you need to put in an analog filter (anti-aliasing filter - basically it ensures that the signal going to the ADC is bandlimited below the Nyquist frequency).
The problem with filters is that it's very hard to get the desired characteristics (flat response in frequency band, narrow transition band) without doing a ton of work (lots of parts, etc).
Using 44kHz or 48kHz sampling, it means if you want to capture to 20kHz, your filter must "brickwall" in the 2-4kHz region between 20kHz and 22/24kHz. This is extremely hard to do, and the eng result is you usually get rolloff around 16kHz or so. Or the frequency response gets wilder and definitely not flat.
Using 96kHz or even 192kHz means the anti-aliasing filter can be much gentler and designed with more stuiable characteristics. When you can have rolloff start at 20kHz and extend all the way out to 48/96kHz, you can make some very nice filters indeed - flat from 20Hz-20kHz, very little phase distortion, etc.
The other end benefits as well - the antialiasing filter on the DAC side can be a lot nicer as well.
And of course, the more bandwidth you have to play with, it means the filters are also much cheaper and simpler (and that also means less distortion).
Actually, AMD processors are not 100% compatible. There are differences in behavior.
For example, everyone knows an x86 resets at FFFF:0000. But an AMD processor will throw an exception if somewhere along the line, it doesn't encounter a branch and ends up wrapping to 0000:0000. An Intel processor doesn't generate the exception. (This is because way back when, instead of putting ROM at the end of memory, designers could put it at the beginning and have the processor basically NOP its way through the 16 bytes).
It's one of the well-known well-publicized things that broke the original Xbox.
Of course, practically speaking, AMD's behaviour is probably "more correct" security wise, but Intel's is pure legacy.
Problem is, the final 10% polishing is actually pretty damn hard. If you've done software development, getting to the point where the basic features work is really quick. But getting to the point where it's releasable and usable takes a lot of effort.
It's one thing that Apple is known for (most innovations that are "cool" are at the 90% stage, but it still takes a ton of effort to get it to the stage where people other than geeks and engineers can USE it).
For Kinect, the final 10% would involve packaging (how does Kinect look, and will it fit with the rest of the equipment?), fitting the stuff inside the package (does it fit? Does the enclosure need redesign?), and more importantly, manufacturability.
Sticking a reference design in a box is not easy. A lot of work is required in order to be able to build in huge volumes - are the parts available in quantity (and cheaply)? Can it be assembled easily or are there fiddly calibration bits that'll take time to work? Are there simple pass/fail criterion?
It takes a lot of work. For open-source, you can abandon it after the 90% point (and most stuff is - the final work is the boring dull stuff no one wants to do), but it's not going to fly for commercial products that you want people to buy. And they know when a product was skimped on.
Heck, even the UI of a product is important, and Kinect took some beating there.
(It's why you get reviews on "solidness" - a minor detail but relates to build quality, ditto with use of "cheap plastic" or worse yet, "cheap feeling plastic".) It's that final 10% that Apple is well reknown for, and if it was easy, well, Apple would be dead and there would be tons of products with well designed UIs and very nice casings and such.
And yet you're fine with Google doing it?
Yes, remember 411-GOOG? It's SOLE purpose was to gather voice recognition data. It was shut down once Google got enough samples.
Google Voice's voicemail transcription is based on the data collected from that service as well.
And you can definitely bet that Google is using it for advertising purposes.
At least though, when you look at Siri's options, the privacy policy and information used by Siri is linked right there - it's not buried inside the general Apple privacy policy but front and center when setting up Siri.
They're also summarized and displayed here.
Actually, it's handy for most high-end AV applications. Most of the AV switchers, high end AV receivers, and TVs and such have RS-232 inputs so they can be controlled by commands.
The reason for this is so home-control systems like Crestons and such can control and set up the devices as necessary. So they have a boatload of RS-232 ports to control devices with.
For lesser home theatres, you use a Harmony.