What I want to know is why do i need a 3rd party app to turn on the flash emitter? This is Doom 3 levels of stupidity regarding the utility of a light source.
You can turn on the flash without a third party app.
Camera App, click the thunderbolt and select "On". It defaults ot Auto, but you can have it forced on and off as well.
Third party apps make it a little easier though - some do nothing but turn it on at launch and turn it iff when you hit the home button.
It's for potentially improving photos, not as a general purpose flashlight. Which is why it eats a ton of battery and can get dimmer as the protection circuits kick in to prevent it from overheating.
Actually, Windows NT had better security than Unix.
The problem was, the legacy Windows systems had NO security. When developers are under the assumptions that they're on a single-user machine, running basically as administrator, it doesn't bode well for security when you try to run the same program under a more secure OS.
Since no one would move to NT if it didn't run their crap-programmed software, Microsoft had to basically disable security in order to get compatibility.
We see this in several places. First, Mac OS X 10.4 supported "fast user switching". Guess what? A bunch of Mac apps broke because they assumed one user to one Mac and there would never be two people simultaneously logged in.
Windows went through this as well - there were apps that couldn't run in anything but Session 0.
Next, you try redoing security again, and you have Vista. Which broke a TON of applications because Vista locked things down. In fact, that's what gave Vista its black eye - everyone thought it broke everything so stayed away. Basically Microsoft gave developers an ultimatum, and the developers decided to screw off. Microsoft made it just hard enough to revert to XP that people eventually lived with it. 7 basically came out 2 years later after the dust settled and developers actually decided to fix their software. Microsoft could've re-released Vista as 7.
Take away - developers suck, and the need to "get it working" often leads to shortcuts that screw everyone in the end. (Lots of programs have "C:\Program Files\" hardcoded into them, so if your system disk is another partition, or if you're using another language...)
Apple's method is to say if you don't use things as documented, you're on your own, so naturally tons of things break every release as Apple restructures private APIs and such.
Microsoft's method is to ensure compatibility because people will blame Windows for breaking stuff. It's why the root desktop window is still called Program Manager. Or why Windows has to make the system drive C:\ even though it would've been called D/E/F/etc normally.
The Kindle Fire is $200 the iPad starts at $500 and goes up to $830. They are competing at different levels of the market. And Apple's hardware margin is about 50% while Amazon's is around 10%. Which means people are getting a better hardware value.
Why would it be a shock if given those sorts of numbers the iPad was outsold?
Actually, it's -5% for Amazon - it costs around $210 to build a Kindle Fire. Amazon's going to make it up in Movie/Music/App sales (a total 180 from Apple's strategy where Movie/Music/App Sales drive hardware sales).
Yes, the Kindle Fire is probably THE iPad competitor. In fact, I think the biggest loser is Android tablets in general - the iPad will lose the biggest marketshare to the Kindle Fire (when you're on top, the only way to go is down), but the Kindle Fire will also drive a lot of sales away from Android tablets.
And because of the Kindle Fire, Android developers wanting to make some money will have to subject themselves to the "draconian Amazon Approval Process" (really no different from Apple's. I'm not sure why devs seem angrier at Amazon about it), in order to sell on the Fire. This could have impacts on the Marketplace.
That didn't stop them when they bought Doubleclick. You know all that big brother advertising evilness Google is famous for? Doubleclick was well known for it.
They're also int he two most popular smartphones as well. They bought AdMob (thanks to Apple - iAds was a "competitor"), which is responsible for mobile based advertising. They're used in in-app ads (very popular on Android in order to actually make money on apps).
So it's not just on the Internet, but also your smartphone and how you use it. Heck, when Apple tried to ban all sorts of data collection for anything but ad providers (basically ensuring AdMob wouldn't get usage data), Google/AdMob filed anti-trust complaints.
Google is literally Too Big To Fail(tm). The loss of Google will basically break most web sites around the world.
Larger chips provide for more interconnects (more edge space) but at some point, that'll be overkill because the system will be all in there, and only I/O will need to be brought out. We're seeing it (in a kind of feeble way) with some of the microcontrollers, but I rather expect (ok, hope) that this will be how computers are supplied, or at least, one way they are supplied.
Larger chips are also more expensive. A silicon wafer costs anywhere from $1000-3000 each. Each wafer has a fixed area, and the larger the chip, the less of them per wafer. Additionally, a larger chip means there's more of a chance of an imperfection in the wafer to destroy the entire chip, leading to lowered yields. Lowered yields meach the base price of each chip goes up as there are fewer chips to pay for the entire batch.
There are two kinds of chips - silicon-limited, and I/O limited. Memory devices (both volatile (DRAM) and non (Flash)) are silicon-limited - they are as big as economically possible (more area == more capacity after all) juggling yields and such to reach a usable price point.
CPUs are I/O limited - they are actually very small devices, the only thing keeping them back is the number of I/O pins. And it's not the actual silicon itself - it's the physical package that connects to the PCB. The most popular packages are BGA, but even those have specifications on ball size and ball spacing. Put the balls too close together and too small, and the cost of the base PCB holding the chip goes up significantly as the PCB has to be made to tighter tolerances.
Even so - we're talking about a thousand pins still in the latest high end Intel and AMD parts. This is doable as the PCB chip carrier can be made very specially (it only holds the chip, after all, and doesn't have to hold the rest of the circuits for the device) - basically it's a breakout board.
No. Battery life goes from 8hrs to 5hrs because Linux is actually "following the spec".
Hacks and reverse engineering should not be necessary.
In an ideal world, yes.
However, there are several truths. First, most developers are crap. Yes, even you. This goes for hardware developers as well.
You'll find all sorts of hacks in Windows just to work around developer problems. For proof - see Vista - Microsoft basically redid a bunch of stuff to be cleaner and removed the hacks, and things broke horribly. All Windows 7 did was come after Vista where the worst of the buggy programs have been updated to properly work under Vista and 7.
Yes, this also includes working around bugs in hardware and drivers - DirectX has various workarounds for drivers that lie about capabilities (and various probes for detecting such drivers).
Hell, even if Windows implemented "to the spec" and adhered to it, it would have to implement workarounds because devices that don't implement it properly would just find ways to disable it. And yes, hardware manufacturers have been known to do all sorts of those things. (Remember the unsigned drivers thing? Some crafty manufacturers actually click "Continue" automatically. Others will actually use the test signing keys and call it a day, leaving users with the "test keys" warning).
In military terms few things are less successful than an old successful strategy. You have to have change-ups to win in the long term because otherwise the other guy knows what you're going to do.
Except Apple does change things up. They've sacrificed product lines with the introduction of new products.
The iPod is nearly dead, despite just half a decade ago, being one of the most popular devices on the planet. Killed basically by smartphones, and the iPhone. Apple's low-end computers are taking a beating because people realize they just needed an iPad over the "complexities" of a computer.
Hell, even within a product line - the iPod mini (remember that?) was one of the most popular iPods in the lineup, killed by the Nano. The iPod Shuffle's currently dying, since the current Nano is basically better in every way. It and the Classic are only surviving because they're fulfilling niches (Shuffle - cheap ($50). Classic - carrying your entire library with you).
Hell, the only strategy they haven't changed was "make it feel premium and charge healthy margins" rather than race to the bottom. Mostly because they know their competitors are doing the race to the bottom thing. When the iPad came out, everyone was thinking it was a $1000 failure and got their $700 competitors just about to hit the market. When it came out at $500, it basically took a year for them to come out with a viable competitor.
Now, the biggest problem with the Kindle Fire is it's US only. Outside the US it's relatively useless - you can't access the Amazon App Store (unless you have a US billing address).
And yes, the iPad and Kindle Fire will be competitors (more than "iPad and everyone else"). But Android tablets need to take note - because the Kindle Fire is basically pushing them to the wayside. And the biggest thing is - the Amazon Android ecosystem isn't exactly sitting easy with a lot of Android developers. But if the Kindle sells well enough, it makes the Amazon App Store a tempting place to sell. Walled garden and app approvals a la the Apple App Store model.
I was watching the test on a friend's Cox Communications cable service, and they also switch to a shopping channel (cable channel 8) for emergency alert activations. Their cable system apparently is incapable of showing the alert on all the (digital?) channels, so they simply show it over analog shopping channel 8 and have a system in place to switch everyone to that channel automatically whenever an alert is triggered. It's a bit annoying if a test is scheduled during, say, an important football game... er... episode of Mythbusters... whatever. On the other hand, it is even more jarring than the alert tones, so you'll certainly know something's afoot.
If you have one of their Motorola digital cable boxes, when it goes into emergency alert mode and auto-switches to analog shopping channel 8 for the message, the front clock display changes to "EAS" as well. If you're suddenly watching the shopping channel and "EAS" is displayed on the cable box *and* you have the wonderfully annoying (and intentionally so) alert tones, you *should* be able to figure out that now's the time to read or listen. At least, that seems to be the general idea.
I did notice that I didn't get the alert over cable until after I'd finished watching it on OTA TV (and chatting about it afterward), so chalk up a minute or two of additional latency to the cable company.
All cableboxes must work this way.
If it's a newer "digital EAS", then the cablebox can decode it and display it, overlaying the programming in the background with the alert.
If it's the ancient analog system, then when the cablebox gets the signal, it MUST switch to the channel indicated to display the EAS alert.
This happens regardless of what cablebox you use - be it cable DVR, TiVo, Moxi, etc. It's part of the regulations that they have to do it, depending on the system in use.
Which one is in use depends on your provider and area (some providers have areas where one is predominant).
The analog ones suck though as they cancel recordings in most cases (dumb DVRs may continue recording the EAS channel...), whilst the digital ones only show up in the live output and never in the recorded video.
If an ISP decides that one type of traffic is more important than another, users will care.
True, but that's not the point of net neutrality. The whole point is like traffic is treated indiscriminately.
For example, imagine if Apple pays your iSP to throttle Google and all the Android sites, but to make all the iPhone sites come in blazingly fast?
Or, more conventionally, if Microsoft paid for Bing and other Microsoft services to be fast, and Google to be slow?
Or, Sony pays for their PSN gaming service to be as fast as possible, and to stuff Xbox Live to dialup speeds?
Of what has happened - Netflix gets throttled, ISP's on video service is free and clear. (In Canada, it got really bad - as part of UBB - Netflix users paid $$$, but Bell/Rogers's service was truly unlimited).
That's what network neutrality's about.
"Network Manage" all you want, but be transparent about it and fair. An ISP shall not use this ability to promote one service over their competitors.
Why are we even buying critical components such as these from China?
It actually doesn't matter where the parts originate from. In the 80s, the FAA discovered that counterfeit aviation parts were endemic throughout the entire industry. It even made it in the 747 used as Air Force One! These parts were often "reconditioned" worn out parts, illicitly rebuilt in the US.
And this is an industry where paperwork and traceability is paramount, turning a one-penny screw into a $10 screw. If's so traceable you can probably find the original mine where the ore came from and maybe even who was working the machines.
All it takes is someone to see that there's money to be made and the ability to make fake components to sell profitably. Hell, I'm sure even if the parts were US-sourced, some unscrupulous guy will buy Chinese parts and sell them as US parts.
With Chrome, the updates happen silently whenever you close and reopen it. With Firefox, the updates nag you to install them, and break stuff. Even worse is when UI behaviours change so now all of a sudden, muscle memory is broken. You then have to spend the next hour googling for a way to revert the behaviour.
I suppose the reason in Firefox it's hated so much is the releases keep breaking stuff, while in Chrome things just seem to continue - if you like the UI, it won't change on you suddenly. Users don't need to care because things work.
Chrome seems "stable" even if it's updating every day because users don't notice differences. Firefox seems "unstable" because users keep wondering why things change when they worked so well before.
Make sure they follow the language laws, if not, report them to the language police. They're apparently quite vicious.
Also, Quebec has very special status in Canada since they basically want to do everything themselves and only give token attention to Ottawa (they have their own sales tax - QST, that the Harper Government (tm) is paying $4B or so for them to change it to an "H" to implement the HST which would do the same thing). Quebec can easily make it very hard for a business that's not obeying its laws to do business inside Quebec, even if they're not in Quebec.
It's why in Canada there's lots of things that are "excluding Quebec" - not just sweepstakes/lottos/etc, but also products that basically are unavailable to be shipped to Quebec. They have the requisite French, but they don't meet some other part of Quebec law and are therefore disallowed.
There was a time I when I really liked Discovery, but they have been becoming the Crap channel with a lot of their junk. Guess thinking isn't encouraged there. Thoughtful, interesting programming is pushed aside for more visceral stuff.
Getting the same feeling about Sirius/XM, which had such a bright beginning, now they're adopting all the idiotic practices I so despise of broadcast radio stations. Must be some disease in the media - brought about from sitting in studios too long and not getting out among the people.
Problem is... money.
Networks need a lot of it to produce their shows, and the move to HD only worsened the problem as cameras and the like jumped in prices to accomodate. The RED cameras are popular because they're one of the cheapest, but the Epic kit's still $60k, and the broadcast HDTV cameras they're having to equip everyone with is easily in the $100k range. (Many shows known for destroying cameras still shot in SD purely because of economics - there's a flood of SD cameras on the market as everyone upgraded to HD).
Additionally, for cable channels, the cable/satellite networks have slowly been reducing the per-subscriber price per channel. And ad rates have been going down since there's really a ton of places to sell ads to nowadays (mostly online). It's why shows often have websites and direct people to view "bonus content" there. Plus the fact most people have competing choices for entertainment, lowering ad revenue further.
So you can air thoughtful shows on a very tight budget where you're basically sponsored by viewers (think PBS), but you're basically beholden to very little money as there aren't that many viewers wanting thoughtful TV. Or you can scramble for eyeballs and go for higher ad rates - hence viceral. Viceral sells, and you get more money out of it.
For satellite radio - that's a different story. Their CEO basically is scrapping everything that made satellite radio special in favor of trying to compete head on with terrestrial radio. I cancelled my sub after my favorite station went online only (close to $50/month with all the radios I had) and I had no more reason to listen. (Online only meant that I needed a smartphone, and why should I pay the online-only price of $8/month when there are free internet radio apps?).
It's the same reason why websites scramble to make the most inflammatory headlines possible - the more eyeballs, the more visitors, the more money. It's why we hear news on everything Apple (or everything is reframed to somehow involve Apple), and only the big things on Android or Linux or whatever - Apple attracts eyeballs, Android/Linux/etc doesn't. Especially since the Apple crowd is known to spend money.
Then you run into problems with data that needs updating, like say, a map. Putting it on CD/DVD only works until malware realizes it needs to embed itself on said media, and once it has, there's nothing to prevent another stuxnet-like attack.
If data needs to flow somehow between airgapped networks, you're screwed. Doesn't matter if you use a data diode, physical separation, etc. As long as there is some way that data needs to go from an insecure network or insecure PC to a secure one, it's a vulnerability vector. Stuxnet has proved it's possible.
Oh, and patches count too - regardless of what needs patching. Unless the patches originate as developed on the secure network, it's a mechanism for insecure systems to pass data to secure networks. Even if you go so far as to enforce that the source code be displayed on the insecure PC, and typed in manually on the secure PC - the typists may get complacent and type in the malware as well.
And there's a LOT of data that often has to be passed into a secure network - Intel (photos - where did the digital camera's memory card get plugged into?, maps - like the UAV fleet got infected, etc), reports, etc.
So then why has no one just built an app that is friendly until 10k downloads at which point it does some evil?
To me it seems like something spammers/malware folks would have thought of by now
Because it isn't possible. This app demonstrates a bug in the way the NX bit is working that makes it accidentally possible.
You see, one thing IOS4.3 did was use a new javascript engine in Safari. You may remember it as web clippings ran Javascript much slower than if they ran it inside Safari.
One trick Safari did was use a faster Javascript engine that compiled to native code, but because of the danger, Safari basically ran with even less permissions than an app. You can think of it as Safari running as "nobody" with basically permissions to read and write its caches, but not do anything else. Apps embedding WebKit won't benefit from the faster Javascript (because of the security issues - most apps can't do anything really useful if they were to be put into this more restrictive jail), and for a time, web clippings were treated as normal apps rather than home-screen bookmarks.
What was done was a bug was found to bypass the normal XN (ARM's version of NX - eXecute Never) mechanism. You see, it's normally set so even if you tried, your app would generate a prefetch abort and die (and a log of that, if enabled, would be sent to Apple so developers can debug their apps better. But you can bet Apple looks at what caused it as well).
But with the bug, you can have the XN bit removed from a piece of memory, download code to it, and execute from it.
It's a possible vector to jailbreak, but one that's likely to be closed quite quickly like the PDF one.
As for malware vector - yes, right now iOS is vulnerable. Problem is, Apple has all your developer details. It's like a spammer using their address, credit card (and business license - if you're registering under one. Apple's got some strict policies with busineses to ensure they're legitimate and taxes reported accurately). It's still possible to get around by using a prepaid credit card.
But then again, there's not much that can be done - the code can only execute under the normal chroot environment and access all the APIs that libraries expose to it. Short of finding a priviledge escalation bug, that is. If root is not achieved, the app has very limited access to system resources. Heck the app can't even run in the background very long (apps get 5 minutes to wrap up any general processing, after which they must start doing one of the 7 multitask capabilities or be frozen).
One I know is because he's so anti "walled garden" and pro-Open Source, so he posts lots of stuff that way.
Another I know is using a Facebook/G+ cross poster.
That's about it, really. Nothing really significant enough for me to check it daily - I only log in maybe once every few weeks just to clear the "1" away from my GMail.
No, I don't use Facebook much either, but things seem to be "happening" there. If I was Joe User, I wouldn't move to G+ when everything's happening just fine with Facebook. One of those "it's working and I get my stuff done - why should I bother with G+ and have to still check Facebook?" things.
14% of Americans think they've seen a UFO. An additional 20% haven't seen one, but believe they exist.
UFOs aren't really that interesting in the general sense. Even a meteor that shows up is counted as a UFO until it's identified. (As such, there's preally tons of UFOs). In fact, in the dullest sense, there's probably UFO "events" on a daily basis until NORAD gets a plane in the air and actually sees what it is.
Now, extraterrestrials, that's more interesting than UFOs (which aren often just manmade flying vehicles).
RMS, of course! Remember he advocates people to not use passwords and saw the mandatory passwords as draconian to freedom. (He campaigned for people to just hit enter when asked to set a password).
Of course, I jest, and I'm not sure if RMS even believes in that anymore. Though, then again, there may be a few people leaving blank accounts just in case RMS ever needed them...
Actually they do take Amex, but there you are paying the card fee instead of Costco...
No. Amex has one of the WORSE credit card rates - their rates are consistently higher than Visa or Mastercard. Amex sees themselves as a "premier" card and want to ensure their card is only accepted at places that are more lifestyle-related. So Visa/MC is accepted everywhere, and Amex in fewer places but often in places like restaurants and hotels and the like.
A small retailer wanting Amex can easily be dinged 5% for Amex, versus 2-3% for Visa/MC. Plus the per-transaction fees are higher for them.
As for cash discount - it only really works for mom and pop shops - where handling cash is cheaper than credit cards. But larger businesses can start having significant cash handling charges - from extra training of cashiers (all the cash handling needs to be taught to ensure the balance comes out right) to simply having to deposit those huge wads of cash at a bank (depending on the store, it may mean an armored car has to be hired which can cost $1000 easily. If you're depositing $30k, that's the 3% credit card fee right there).
The DoD/USAF may have paid for development on the GPL version - but did they pay Code Sorcery to do the work and retain the copyright? Perhaps they bought features to be implemented and Code Sorcery implemented them, owning the code.
It depends on the contract, but I'm guessing most government contracts let the developers keep the code - they just want to pay so if they say they need something added, it becomes a priority 1 item.
No, there is far too much molly-coddling and concern for people's feelings in these matters. Get a small group of professional men together and Mars will be easily visited. If we as humans put our minds to it - colonized.
Actually, that's less likely to happen. Most likely is that one of them would go batshit insane and the mission gets aborted.
The primary reason is humans are social creatures, and interactions with others are necessary for survival (it usually happens often enough for most people that no one thinks about it). Hell, even your old timey ships rarely sailed for 2 years without stopping for resupply somewhere (see "social"). Sure it may not be with family, but any contact is better than none. (With a Mars trip, the delay makes real-time communications impossible).
And like others have said, there's a lot of discipline and justice issued - "walking the plank" is not a metaphor but a common punishment. New crew can always be hired in the next port (which wouldn't usually be too long).
Basically, the experiment is if you put 5 people in a trailer with proper simulated contact - will they get cabin fever? And what kind of crew make up will lessen the chances? Long-distance discipline is much harder, so do you run the crew as a strict military unit, or as a loose organization?
I mean, NOBODY is going to confuse them for the Apple Store. This is just petty.
Trademark law demands it.
Basically "Use it or lose it. Let someone else use it and lose it". You must use a trademark in order to keep it (think Cisco's "iPhone"), and if you let someone else use it, then you can lose all exclusivity.
Think "Escalator", "Kleenex" and many others.
You literally have to act the instant you find out about a possible trademark violation - any delay can be seen as passive approval of that use, which can mean you lose it completely.
Same deal with Elder Scrolls and Scrolls, and many other conflicts. After all, Cisco immediately responded when the iPhone was released, even though the only thing to say iPhone was a mocked up box image. Ditto Psion and "netbook".
Of course, response can vary - it can be a C&D letter, it can be a polite letter, etc. I'm guessing Apple just uses a standard procedure for trademark violations that's been vetted over many years by many lawyers. Apple probably deals with tons of such things a year that no one hears about so they just standardized the procedure since a case-by-case basis would probably double Apple's employee count... in lawyers.
That's only if companies like Adobe and Microsoft start selling their apps in the App Store.
Apple will have to loosen restrictions on the Mac App Store further if they want to keep some app devs.
If you look, AutoCAD LT is in the Mac App Store, but AutoCAD is not. Autodesk has said the primary reason for this is that AutoCAD is too expensive for the Mac App Store - I think there's a limit that apps can only cost up to $999.99, while AutoCAD retails for far more.
AutoCAD LT was only $800 or so, and Autodesk has said they make more money off Mac App Store sales than their regular channels.
Also - Mac App Store apps can't install drivers and the like, developers will need a way to write Mac Apps and thus bypass the store, etc. etc.
Hell, imagine a world in which the only way to get apps on OS X is either by compiling them yourself, or Mac App Store. It would be a real boon for Open Source - every "sideloaded" app has to be distributed as source.... (I didn't say Free software, though).
The problem with iTunes is that Apple have designed it to work on a consumer level. For example, if I buy my employee an iPhone or iPad, I then probably need to buy him some apps so he can do work, i.e. an app to work with MS Office files, and probably one or two other apps. The apps have to be purchased under an iTunes account so we put it under his corporate e-mail, now what happens when he leaves? How do I transfer those licenses to his replacement? With just about EVERY other company out there that produces commercial software intended for business use, a license is not tied to an individual. I.E. Adobe, Microsoft, Cisco, etc. You puchase XX number of licenses and can reassign them at will, a license is never tied to a specific person, you only need to make sure you have sufficient licenses to cover the number of people using the software.
Or you can sign up for the enterprise program, then use the Volume Purchase Program to bulk-purchase apps that you can then deploy to enterprise-connected iOS devices.
You see, you purchase the Enterprise deployment solutions from Apple, which gets you a provisioning certificate that you install on every iOS device you want to attach. You can also deploy configuration information - so connected iOS devices already have Exchange, apps, VPN, etc auto configured and set up. The apps can be inhouse developed and maintained (but deployed through Apple so all connected devices can see the update - the app will not require approval nor be seen by unattached devices), or 3rd party apps bought in bulk.
The license on those apps is attached to the provisioning certificate
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You can turn on the flash without a third party app.
Camera App, click the thunderbolt and select "On". It defaults ot Auto, but you can have it forced on and off as well.
Third party apps make it a little easier though - some do nothing but turn it on at launch and turn it iff when you hit the home button.
It's for potentially improving photos, not as a general purpose flashlight. Which is why it eats a ton of battery and can get dimmer as the protection circuits kick in to prevent it from overheating.
Actually, Windows NT had better security than Unix.
The problem was, the legacy Windows systems had NO security. When developers are under the assumptions that they're on a single-user machine, running basically as administrator, it doesn't bode well for security when you try to run the same program under a more secure OS.
Since no one would move to NT if it didn't run their crap-programmed software, Microsoft had to basically disable security in order to get compatibility.
We see this in several places. First, Mac OS X 10.4 supported "fast user switching". Guess what? A bunch of Mac apps broke because they assumed one user to one Mac and there would never be two people simultaneously logged in.
Windows went through this as well - there were apps that couldn't run in anything but Session 0.
Next, you try redoing security again, and you have Vista. Which broke a TON of applications because Vista locked things down. In fact, that's what gave Vista its black eye - everyone thought it broke everything so stayed away. Basically Microsoft gave developers an ultimatum, and the developers decided to screw off. Microsoft made it just hard enough to revert to XP that people eventually lived with it. 7 basically came out 2 years later after the dust settled and developers actually decided to fix their software. Microsoft could've re-released Vista as 7.
Take away - developers suck, and the need to "get it working" often leads to shortcuts that screw everyone in the end. (Lots of programs have "C:\Program Files\" hardcoded into them, so if your system disk is another partition, or if you're using another language...)
Apple's method is to say if you don't use things as documented, you're on your own, so naturally tons of things break every release as Apple restructures private APIs and such.
Microsoft's method is to ensure compatibility because people will blame Windows for breaking stuff. It's why the root desktop window is still called Program Manager. Or why Windows has to make the system drive C:\ even though it would've been called D/E/F/etc normally.
Actually, it's -5% for Amazon - it costs around $210 to build a Kindle Fire. Amazon's going to make it up in Movie/Music/App sales (a total 180 from Apple's strategy where Movie/Music/App Sales drive hardware sales).
Yes, the Kindle Fire is probably THE iPad competitor. In fact, I think the biggest loser is Android tablets in general - the iPad will lose the biggest marketshare to the Kindle Fire (when you're on top, the only way to go is down), but the Kindle Fire will also drive a lot of sales away from Android tablets.
And because of the Kindle Fire, Android developers wanting to make some money will have to subject themselves to the "draconian Amazon Approval Process" (really no different from Apple's. I'm not sure why devs seem angrier at Amazon about it), in order to sell on the Fire. This could have impacts on the Marketplace.
They're also int he two most popular smartphones as well. They bought AdMob (thanks to Apple - iAds was a "competitor"), which is responsible for mobile based advertising. They're used in in-app ads (very popular on Android in order to actually make money on apps).
So it's not just on the Internet, but also your smartphone and how you use it. Heck, when Apple tried to ban all sorts of data collection for anything but ad providers (basically ensuring AdMob wouldn't get usage data), Google/AdMob filed anti-trust complaints.
Google is literally Too Big To Fail(tm). The loss of Google will basically break most web sites around the world.
Larger chips are also more expensive. A silicon wafer costs anywhere from $1000-3000 each. Each wafer has a fixed area, and the larger the chip, the less of them per wafer. Additionally, a larger chip means there's more of a chance of an imperfection in the wafer to destroy the entire chip, leading to lowered yields. Lowered yields meach the base price of each chip goes up as there are fewer chips to pay for the entire batch.
There are two kinds of chips - silicon-limited, and I/O limited. Memory devices (both volatile (DRAM) and non (Flash)) are silicon-limited - they are as big as economically possible (more area == more capacity after all) juggling yields and such to reach a usable price point.
CPUs are I/O limited - they are actually very small devices, the only thing keeping them back is the number of I/O pins. And it's not the actual silicon itself - it's the physical package that connects to the PCB. The most popular packages are BGA, but even those have specifications on ball size and ball spacing. Put the balls too close together and too small, and the cost of the base PCB holding the chip goes up significantly as the PCB has to be made to tighter tolerances.
Even so - we're talking about a thousand pins still in the latest high end Intel and AMD parts. This is doable as the PCB chip carrier can be made very specially (it only holds the chip, after all, and doesn't have to hold the rest of the circuits for the device) - basically it's a breakout board.
In an ideal world, yes.
However, there are several truths. First, most developers are crap. Yes, even you. This goes for hardware developers as well.
You'll find all sorts of hacks in Windows just to work around developer problems. For proof - see Vista - Microsoft basically redid a bunch of stuff to be cleaner and removed the hacks, and things broke horribly. All Windows 7 did was come after Vista where the worst of the buggy programs have been updated to properly work under Vista and 7.
Yes, this also includes working around bugs in hardware and drivers - DirectX has various workarounds for drivers that lie about capabilities (and various probes for detecting such drivers).
Hell, even if Windows implemented "to the spec" and adhered to it, it would have to implement workarounds because devices that don't implement it properly would just find ways to disable it. And yes, hardware manufacturers have been known to do all sorts of those things. (Remember the unsigned drivers thing? Some crafty manufacturers actually click "Continue" automatically. Others will actually use the test signing keys and call it a day, leaving users with the "test keys" warning).
Except Apple does change things up. They've sacrificed product lines with the introduction of new products.
The iPod is nearly dead, despite just half a decade ago, being one of the most popular devices on the planet. Killed basically by smartphones, and the iPhone. Apple's low-end computers are taking a beating because people realize they just needed an iPad over the "complexities" of a computer.
Hell, even within a product line - the iPod mini (remember that?) was one of the most popular iPods in the lineup, killed by the Nano. The iPod Shuffle's currently dying, since the current Nano is basically better in every way. It and the Classic are only surviving because they're fulfilling niches (Shuffle - cheap ($50). Classic - carrying your entire library with you).
Hell, the only strategy they haven't changed was "make it feel premium and charge healthy margins" rather than race to the bottom. Mostly because they know their competitors are doing the race to the bottom thing. When the iPad came out, everyone was thinking it was a $1000 failure and got their $700 competitors just about to hit the market. When it came out at $500, it basically took a year for them to come out with a viable competitor.
Now, the biggest problem with the Kindle Fire is it's US only. Outside the US it's relatively useless - you can't access the Amazon App Store (unless you have a US billing address).
And yes, the iPad and Kindle Fire will be competitors (more than "iPad and everyone else"). But Android tablets need to take note - because the Kindle Fire is basically pushing them to the wayside. And the biggest thing is - the Amazon Android ecosystem isn't exactly sitting easy with a lot of Android developers. But if the Kindle sells well enough, it makes the Amazon App Store a tempting place to sell. Walled garden and app approvals a la the Apple App Store model.
All cableboxes must work this way.
If it's a newer "digital EAS", then the cablebox can decode it and display it, overlaying the programming in the background with the alert.
If it's the ancient analog system, then when the cablebox gets the signal, it MUST switch to the channel indicated to display the EAS alert.
This happens regardless of what cablebox you use - be it cable DVR, TiVo, Moxi, etc. It's part of the regulations that they have to do it, depending on the system in use.
Which one is in use depends on your provider and area (some providers have areas where one is predominant).
The analog ones suck though as they cancel recordings in most cases (dumb DVRs may continue recording the EAS channel...), whilst the digital ones only show up in the live output and never in the recorded video.
True, but that's not the point of net neutrality. The whole point is like traffic is treated indiscriminately.
For example, imagine if Apple pays your iSP to throttle Google and all the Android sites, but to make all the iPhone sites come in blazingly fast?
Or, more conventionally, if Microsoft paid for Bing and other Microsoft services to be fast, and Google to be slow?
Or, Sony pays for their PSN gaming service to be as fast as possible, and to stuff Xbox Live to dialup speeds?
Of what has happened - Netflix gets throttled, ISP's on video service is free and clear. (In Canada, it got really bad - as part of UBB - Netflix users paid $$$, but Bell/Rogers's service was truly unlimited).
That's what network neutrality's about.
"Network Manage" all you want, but be transparent about it and fair. An ISP shall not use this ability to promote one service over their competitors.
It actually doesn't matter where the parts originate from. In the 80s, the FAA discovered that counterfeit aviation parts were endemic throughout the entire industry. It even made it in the 747 used as Air Force One! These parts were often "reconditioned" worn out parts, illicitly rebuilt in the US.
And this is an industry where paperwork and traceability is paramount, turning a one-penny screw into a $10 screw. If's so traceable you can probably find the original mine where the ore came from and maybe even who was working the machines.
All it takes is someone to see that there's money to be made and the ability to make fake components to sell profitably. Hell, I'm sure even if the parts were US-sourced, some unscrupulous guy will buy Chinese parts and sell them as US parts.
Exactly.
With Chrome, the updates happen silently whenever you close and reopen it. With Firefox, the updates nag you to install them, and break stuff. Even worse is when UI behaviours change so now all of a sudden, muscle memory is broken. You then have to spend the next hour googling for a way to revert the behaviour.
I suppose the reason in Firefox it's hated so much is the releases keep breaking stuff, while in Chrome things just seem to continue - if you like the UI, it won't change on you suddenly. Users don't need to care because things work.
Chrome seems "stable" even if it's updating every day because users don't notice differences. Firefox seems "unstable" because users keep wondering why things change when they worked so well before.
Ah, but it's Quebec.
Make sure they follow the language laws, if not, report them to the language police. They're apparently quite vicious.
Also, Quebec has very special status in Canada since they basically want to do everything themselves and only give token attention to Ottawa (they have their own sales tax - QST, that the Harper Government (tm) is paying $4B or so for them to change it to an "H" to implement the HST which would do the same thing). Quebec can easily make it very hard for a business that's not obeying its laws to do business inside Quebec, even if they're not in Quebec.
It's why in Canada there's lots of things that are "excluding Quebec" - not just sweepstakes/lottos/etc, but also products that basically are unavailable to be shipped to Quebec. They have the requisite French, but they don't meet some other part of Quebec law and are therefore disallowed.
Problem is ... money.
Networks need a lot of it to produce their shows, and the move to HD only worsened the problem as cameras and the like jumped in prices to accomodate. The RED cameras are popular because they're one of the cheapest, but the Epic kit's still $60k, and the broadcast HDTV cameras they're having to equip everyone with is easily in the $100k range. (Many shows known for destroying cameras still shot in SD purely because of economics - there's a flood of SD cameras on the market as everyone upgraded to HD).
Additionally, for cable channels, the cable/satellite networks have slowly been reducing the per-subscriber price per channel. And ad rates have been going down since there's really a ton of places to sell ads to nowadays (mostly online). It's why shows often have websites and direct people to view "bonus content" there. Plus the fact most people have competing choices for entertainment, lowering ad revenue further.
So you can air thoughtful shows on a very tight budget where you're basically sponsored by viewers (think PBS), but you're basically beholden to very little money as there aren't that many viewers wanting thoughtful TV. Or you can scramble for eyeballs and go for higher ad rates - hence viceral. Viceral sells, and you get more money out of it.
For satellite radio - that's a different story. Their CEO basically is scrapping everything that made satellite radio special in favor of trying to compete head on with terrestrial radio. I cancelled my sub after my favorite station went online only (close to $50/month with all the radios I had) and I had no more reason to listen. (Online only meant that I needed a smartphone, and why should I pay the online-only price of $8/month when there are free internet radio apps?).
It's the same reason why websites scramble to make the most inflammatory headlines possible - the more eyeballs, the more visitors, the more money. It's why we hear news on everything Apple (or everything is reframed to somehow involve Apple), and only the big things on Android or Linux or whatever - Apple attracts eyeballs, Android/Linux/etc doesn't. Especially since the Apple crowd is known to spend money.
Then you run into problems with data that needs updating, like say, a map. Putting it on CD/DVD only works until malware realizes it needs to embed itself on said media, and once it has, there's nothing to prevent another stuxnet-like attack.
If data needs to flow somehow between airgapped networks, you're screwed. Doesn't matter if you use a data diode, physical separation, etc. As long as there is some way that data needs to go from an insecure network or insecure PC to a secure one, it's a vulnerability vector. Stuxnet has proved it's possible.
Oh, and patches count too - regardless of what needs patching. Unless the patches originate as developed on the secure network, it's a mechanism for insecure systems to pass data to secure networks. Even if you go so far as to enforce that the source code be displayed on the insecure PC, and typed in manually on the secure PC - the typists may get complacent and type in the malware as well.
And there's a LOT of data that often has to be passed into a secure network - Intel (photos - where did the digital camera's memory card get plugged into?, maps - like the UAV fleet got infected, etc), reports, etc.
Because it isn't possible. This app demonstrates a bug in the way the NX bit is working that makes it accidentally possible.
You see, one thing IOS4.3 did was use a new javascript engine in Safari. You may remember it as web clippings ran Javascript much slower than if they ran it inside Safari.
One trick Safari did was use a faster Javascript engine that compiled to native code, but because of the danger, Safari basically ran with even less permissions than an app. You can think of it as Safari running as "nobody" with basically permissions to read and write its caches, but not do anything else. Apps embedding WebKit won't benefit from the faster Javascript (because of the security issues - most apps can't do anything really useful if they were to be put into this more restrictive jail), and for a time, web clippings were treated as normal apps rather than home-screen bookmarks.
What was done was a bug was found to bypass the normal XN (ARM's version of NX - eXecute Never) mechanism. You see, it's normally set so even if you tried, your app would generate a prefetch abort and die (and a log of that, if enabled, would be sent to Apple so developers can debug their apps better. But you can bet Apple looks at what caused it as well).
But with the bug, you can have the XN bit removed from a piece of memory, download code to it, and execute from it.
It's a possible vector to jailbreak, but one that's likely to be closed quite quickly like the PDF one.
As for malware vector - yes, right now iOS is vulnerable. Problem is, Apple has all your developer details. It's like a spammer using their address, credit card (and business license - if you're registering under one. Apple's got some strict policies with busineses to ensure they're legitimate and taxes reported accurately). It's still possible to get around by using a prepaid credit card.
But then again, there's not much that can be done - the code can only execute under the normal chroot environment and access all the APIs that libraries expose to it. Short of finding a priviledge escalation bug, that is. If root is not achieved, the app has very limited access to system resources. Heck the app can't even run in the background very long (apps get 5 minutes to wrap up any general processing, after which they must start doing one of the 7 multitask capabilities or be frozen).
There's a few hard core people on G+.
One I know is because he's so anti "walled garden" and pro-Open Source, so he posts lots of stuff that way.
Another I know is using a Facebook/G+ cross poster.
That's about it, really. Nothing really significant enough for me to check it daily - I only log in maybe once every few weeks just to clear the "1" away from my GMail.
No, I don't use Facebook much either, but things seem to be "happening" there. If I was Joe User, I wouldn't move to G+ when everything's happening just fine with Facebook. One of those "it's working and I get my stuff done - why should I bother with G+ and have to still check Facebook?" things.
UFOs aren't really that interesting in the general sense. Even a meteor that shows up is counted as a UFO until it's identified. (As such, there's preally tons of UFOs). In fact, in the dullest sense, there's probably UFO "events" on a daily basis until NORAD gets a plane in the air and actually sees what it is.
Now, extraterrestrials, that's more interesting than UFOs (which aren often just manmade flying vehicles).
RMS, of course! Remember he advocates people to not use passwords and saw the mandatory passwords as draconian to freedom. (He campaigned for people to just hit enter when asked to set a password).
Of course, I jest, and I'm not sure if RMS even believes in that anymore. Though, then again, there may be a few people leaving blank accounts just in case RMS ever needed them...
Question - does any cell carrier advertise the speeds they give?
All I see and hear are "blazing 3G" or "awesome 4G superspeed", which doesn't really say anything.
Anytime speeds are mentioned, it's theoretical perfect network speeds, like 14.4Mbps for the iPhone 4S, 21Mbps for "4G" phones, etc.
No. Amex has one of the WORSE credit card rates - their rates are consistently higher than Visa or Mastercard. Amex sees themselves as a "premier" card and want to ensure their card is only accepted at places that are more lifestyle-related. So Visa/MC is accepted everywhere, and Amex in fewer places but often in places like restaurants and hotels and the like.
A small retailer wanting Amex can easily be dinged 5% for Amex, versus 2-3% for Visa/MC. Plus the per-transaction fees are higher for them.
As for cash discount - it only really works for mom and pop shops - where handling cash is cheaper than credit cards. But larger businesses can start having significant cash handling charges - from extra training of cashiers (all the cash handling needs to be taught to ensure the balance comes out right) to simply having to deposit those huge wads of cash at a bank (depending on the store, it may mean an armored car has to be hired which can cost $1000 easily. If you're depositing $30k, that's the 3% credit card fee right there).
The DoD/USAF may have paid for development on the GPL version - but did they pay Code Sorcery to do the work and retain the copyright? Perhaps they bought features to be implemented and Code Sorcery implemented them, owning the code.
It depends on the contract, but I'm guessing most government contracts let the developers keep the code - they just want to pay so if they say they need something added, it becomes a priority 1 item.
Actually, that's less likely to happen. Most likely is that one of them would go batshit insane and the mission gets aborted.
The primary reason is humans are social creatures, and interactions with others are necessary for survival (it usually happens often enough for most people that no one thinks about it). Hell, even your old timey ships rarely sailed for 2 years without stopping for resupply somewhere (see "social"). Sure it may not be with family, but any contact is better than none. (With a Mars trip, the delay makes real-time communications impossible).
And like others have said, there's a lot of discipline and justice issued - "walking the plank" is not a metaphor but a common punishment. New crew can always be hired in the next port (which wouldn't usually be too long).
Basically, the experiment is if you put 5 people in a trailer with proper simulated contact - will they get cabin fever? And what kind of crew make up will lessen the chances? Long-distance discipline is much harder, so do you run the crew as a strict military unit, or as a loose organization?
Trademark law demands it.
Basically "Use it or lose it. Let someone else use it and lose it". You must use a trademark in order to keep it (think Cisco's "iPhone"), and if you let someone else use it, then you can lose all exclusivity.
Think "Escalator", "Kleenex" and many others.
You literally have to act the instant you find out about a possible trademark violation - any delay can be seen as passive approval of that use, which can mean you lose it completely.
Same deal with Elder Scrolls and Scrolls, and many other conflicts. After all, Cisco immediately responded when the iPhone was released, even though the only thing to say iPhone was a mocked up box image. Ditto Psion and "netbook".
Of course, response can vary - it can be a C&D letter, it can be a polite letter, etc. I'm guessing Apple just uses a standard procedure for trademark violations that's been vetted over many years by many lawyers. Apple probably deals with tons of such things a year that no one hears about so they just standardized the procedure since a case-by-case basis would probably double Apple's employee count... in lawyers.
Apple will have to loosen restrictions on the Mac App Store further if they want to keep some app devs.
If you look, AutoCAD LT is in the Mac App Store, but AutoCAD is not. Autodesk has said the primary reason for this is that AutoCAD is too expensive for the Mac App Store - I think there's a limit that apps can only cost up to $999.99, while AutoCAD retails for far more.
AutoCAD LT was only $800 or so, and Autodesk has said they make more money off Mac App Store sales than their regular channels.
Also - Mac App Store apps can't install drivers and the like, developers will need a way to write Mac Apps and thus bypass the store, etc. etc.
Hell, imagine a world in which the only way to get apps on OS X is either by compiling them yourself, or Mac App Store. It would be a real boon for Open Source - every "sideloaded" app has to be distributed as source.... (I didn't say Free software, though).
Or you can sign up for the enterprise program, then use the Volume Purchase Program to bulk-purchase apps that you can then deploy to enterprise-connected iOS devices.
You see, you purchase the Enterprise deployment solutions from Apple, which gets you a provisioning certificate that you install on every iOS device you want to attach. You can also deploy configuration information - so connected iOS devices already have Exchange, apps, VPN, etc auto configured and set up. The apps can be inhouse developed and maintained (but deployed through Apple so all connected devices can see the update - the app will not require approval nor be seen by unattached devices), or 3rd party apps bought in bulk.
The license on those apps is attached to the provisioning certificate