Vancouver region, according to Environment Canada, gets between 850mm to 2000mm of percipitation (west to east).
Less than 10% of that falls as snow.
So 2" of snow is practically an entire year's worth of snow to a quarter of the yearly precipitation. For the vast majority of the population in Metro Vancouver, 2" is basically a snowdump. (And some years, it snows not at all.)
Victoria gets even less - it basically shuts down. Snow's an extraordinary event here, which is why it's a favorite spot for seniors and retired people.
And yes we mock Torontonians that are dealing with blizzards when it's nice, sunny and warm here. There's a saying a Vancouver day is skiing in the morning, and golfing in the afternoon, because it does happen here.
That, and the Android phone I foolishly bought thinking "it's Android, it can't be that bad". (For those who've never tussled with Android: It's a fairly meaningless brand in terms of identifying quality. It's just as possible to build a terrible Android phone as it is to build a good one so really you want to find an Android phone that's got a reputation of being OK).
It's a lot easier if you think of it as being ONE Android phone and many Android-compatible phones out there.
That is, right now, the Nexus S - it's the cleanest Android implementation because Google's supporting it, and you're not getting some compatible-but-bastardized version that some OEM needed to add stuff to, and to which the carrier adds their own crap to as well.
Yes, I care little for Sense, Motoblur, TouchWiz (if I wanted an iPhone, I'd get an iPhone!), and the other stuff out there. Just stick with what Google's officially supporting and it'll be the best and slickest Android experience around.
Most people accept that texting and cellphones cause accidents. But, most people also think they're better drivers than everyone else, and therefore it's okay for them to do it.
And most people are oblivious that they're making themselves plainly obvious to what they're doing.
Anytime you see a car that's not keeping up with traffic, hell, doing 20 under the limit on a clear day with dry roads, or suddenly braking at a green light... you know the guy's on the phone.
Hell, in a mob moving the same direction, the same applies to the person walking slower than the rest who's not elderly. They'd be walking at a snail's pace with their eyes glued to their phone while a crowd of seniors overtakes them on both sides. In walkers. And nevermind going down stairs - they can't stop looking at their phone for 30 seconds to march down the stairs.
About the only surprise I have for people walking is they haven't dropped their phone from people bumping into them as they try to get around.
I have to admit, I keep getting fooled at Best Buy.
I took a walk down their tablet aisle. I can easily tell the Android tablets from each other, but the damn Galaxy Tab and the iPad confuse me constantly.
One thing I noticed yesterday while looking was how Acer, Asus, Toshiba, etc. went and differentiated themselves from the iPad. The Toshiba has a little silvery spot by the camera on front. The Acers and Asus have token trim pieces that break up the glass-to-metal-rim look of the iPad. The Sony's a wedge but has that nice rounded corner on top. All very easily Not-An-iPad looking thing. Heck, the closest I could come to iPad would be a PlayBook, but it's 7" screen makes it so small it's easy to tell.
Hell, those 7" tablets all look very similar to me - I'm surprised Samsung doesn't go after Acer and RIM for their 7" tablets - they really look similar.
It also didn't help that the iPads were in landscape mode.
Samsung: Make your tablet distinct. Add some trim pieces like Acer/Asus/Toshiba/Sony did, or add a nice little stripe around the bezel or something. Hell, do the popular thing and make the frame customizable and sell various colored and patterned bezels! (Pink is a popular color amongst the fairer sex, hint hint. Pink gadgets SELL)
is that the download is forced via the Android Market... my table doesn't have Android market... it has AppsLib... when I try and go via the android market, I get a snotty message about there being no android phones associated with this account (my gmail account is shown)... OF COURSE THERE ARE NO ANDROID PHONES ASSOCIATED WITH THE ACCOUNT... it's a fsking tablet... not a phone... and my manufacturer has been stupid and not put Android Market on it...
Your problem was you bought a cheapass tablet running AOSP and NOT OHA Android. The difference is OHA Android has the ability to license "with Google" which includes the Marketplace. Of cousre, I also call it a failing of Google to secure apps - if you could download a marketplace APK easily, then it'll be really easy to pirate apps (APKs from marketplace are not DRM-protected).
But AppsLib is for AOSP Androids which have no marketplace access (and no GMail, YouTube, Maps and Goggles). You may be able to pirate the apps from Cyanogen. Perhaps their forums has instructions on getting it all set up. If it's an Archos device there's plenty of howtos as well.
It's one of the reasons I like iOS - the ability to have a local backup (IPA files are, however, DRM locked to the account). Google tries to hide the APK files too much and getting them off requires use of ADB or Astro File Manager or rooted TiBackup. Atr least having a local backup of your apps...
It is a measure of heat/spicy based on human perception.
Actually it's a masure of dilution before the item is rendered undetectable.
So if pure capciacin is 15M, it means you need it something on the order of 67ppb before it's undetectable. Peppers have much lower levels, plus with extra proteins and such that make the kick much lower. And since peppers by themselves isn't a terribly fun eat, it's diluted even more by eating other foods.
IOS was falling behind and Apple scrambled to purchase a Speech recognition mobile app, quickly licensed Nuance and Wolfram Alpha knowledgebase technology, and added those APIs in the operating system. They had to remove Siri from their market place.
Actually, Siri was bought by Apple. They do license a bunch of stuff from Nuance and probably incorporated it into Siri, but from the Siri devs, the 3GS was simply incapable of doing the necessary processing without a lot of shortcuts.
Apple saw the Siri app, was impressed, and bought the company so they could integrate it into the OS (and have more deeper integration) as well as remove the cheats that were done in order to run smoothly on a 3GS.
At best they added WolframAlpha to Siri's database to consult, but I'm pretty sure that was a backend integration task with WolframAlpha than Apple buying that stuff.
Not only that, but Google voice recognition requires wifi or data connection. So, If you're out of office and out of 3G range (or don't have data plan (kbites left for the month)), you're practically talking to a brick.
Siri does too. It does a lot of heavy lifting locally, but also does a pile on the back end to understand.
On the flip side, the "sane" resolution would be for Apple's design patents to be nulled. While I agree with the judge here, I hate the fact it gives Apple reason to keep bullying because it's working. You should never be able to disrupt competition through such tenuous accusations (not even condemnations, mere accusations are enough!).
Design patents exist for a reason - they're a step down from trademarks (and trust me, you DO NOT want to force everyone into trademark wars - it's a lot nastier). They're also short-lived, 5 years or so, but serve to protect the unique looks of devices. At least with design patents, the claims are important - if a design feature is shown but not claimed, it's a free for all. With trademarks, degree of similarity is important.
Of course, perhaps if Samsung stopped making their devices look like Apple it would help. I mean, I walked down the tablet aisle of Best Buy, and the only two I got mixed up were the iPads and Galaxy Tabs. All others looked distinctly different with different trim pieces applied. The closest I could find would be a PlayBook, but it's so obviously different from an iPad and Galaxy tab. Maybe Samsung has a case since it looks a lot like a 7" Galaxy tab.
Seriously. Look at how the other tablets differ visibly from an iPad other than the Galaxy Tab. Just add a trim piece or something and the lawsuit would be meaningless. Maybe a stripe around the screen?
But what are the game prices like? The complaints I've heard about the PC hardware is that MS isn't competitive on price so if you want a Windows PC then a MS store is probably the last place you want to go.
Probably because Microsoft demands that all PCs they sell are free of crap preloadware. And where possible, to use Microsoft equivalents. So no loading Norton Antivirus or whatever - if you want to provide antivirus, it has to be MSE. No trial versions of Microsoft Works or Corel or whatever - you put on the Office demo, etc.
Of course, when you take away the big profit makers for OEMs, they have to raise the price to compensate.
The main benefit is as follows: Without at least one "complete" discharge (which still leaves quite a lot more than 0V in the cells), the device has no idea what the actual state of a partially-discharged battery pack ever is. But after a "complete" discharge, the battery life display has at least a fighting chance at being close to correct, which is useful to us humans.
The reason for the recalibration is simple - the battery gauges work by counting colombs. Cheap devices use a voltage check (simple two-wire battery packs, that are replacable - the third contact's usually a thermistor). The voltage is then compared with a curve to determine state of charge. You can tell this by looking at non-linearities of the battery (e.g., it takes forever to get to 50%, then drops to nothing in 10 minutes sort of deal).
A colomb counter is a bit more reliably, in that it counts (roughly) electrons going into and out of the battery pack. But to offer a good estimate on the battery level, it needs to know how much charge there is. When manufactured, they have a rough level based on battery design, but as they age, that level goes down and the estimate goes off. After 3 years or so, capacity can be reduced by 50+%, so if the colomb counter isn't recalibrated, it'll be off.
The colomb counter also offers an estimate into the life of the battery - when the capacity decreases it can easily signal that the battery has degraded.
Until they throw the kill switch on *your* app. Then you're just part of that vocal minority... blah, blah, move along. Nothing to see here...
Funny thing about that. Apple's the only provider that hasn't done it yet. Google? Yes, many times for perfectly valid reasons (so far...). Amazon? Ditto. Apple? Nope. And no one really knows if they can, or if it's limited to CoreLocation apps (the killswitch code is located in CoreLocation - not the best place as many apps can avoid using location services).
And even if Apple removes an app, if you have a local copy of the IPA file on your disk, you can easily reinstall it. Unlike say, users of the Tricorder Android app who may not have realized that they have to manually extract the APK file. (One of the reasons I like iTunes - I can have a local copy of apps automatically - none of thise "cloud backup" stuff that Google has that doesn't even list half the apps I got).
Another case of the tragedy of the commons... Don't think that the banks don't make back those rewards points somewhere else. Those cards cost the merchant significantly more to take than to regular credit cards or cash.
Depends on the business. If you're a tiny 2-person Mom and Pop shop, handling cash is cheap and easy. But once you grow to a certain size and start handling large sums of cash daily, it gets expensive.
Just think of it - you're closing up shop, and you need to deposit your cash somewhere, else your business may get robbed and money stolen. And it's at night, so you also don't want to carry huge amounts of cash to the bank. (The night depository - that's what people do with it).
So now you need to protect that cash and need to carry it around. If you're a company like Best Buy, you can always have a safe with alarms and security guards, but those cost money to run. Sometimes, when a big game is released, you'll hire an armoured car to carry the takings for the day (which can be tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars) to the bank. Also costs money.
Then there's the actual cash handling. The cash register records transaction amounts, so you know how much should be in at the end of the day. However, there's always some miscalculation (wrong change given or received) so the totals never exactly match. And cashiers know this, so they can easily slip a $5 bill every shift away and not get caught. Maybe $10. So now you need people to be trustworthy and understand the cash-handling procedure, which requires training.
It's why the Best Buys and other big companies have lackeys that can process credit/debit transactions (it's all handled by the computers) but you have to go to the front to pay by cash. And why if the server goes down, the power goes out, or something, they stop all business even though they can make change - the record-keeping gets extensive, and there's no register keeping an eye on the till.
So for Mom and Pop, no big deal. Cash is cheap to handle and they can walk with it to the bank nightly - it's not a huge amount of cash (well, to the business it is, since losing a day's take can be bankrupting). But once you start needing safes and security and process in order to properly handle and track cash, handling credit is cheap and convenient.
Heck, even business that don't do retail sales prefer not handling cash for the same reasons - electronic money transfers, credit cards, etc. are far preferred for the same reason. Sure they keep a LITTLE cash on hand ("petty cash") for those things, but keeping track is a pain.
Apparently I could install OS X on my i7 but it's about the last thing I would ever do. iTunes takes an 85% cut of music sales unless you're signed to an RIAA label, fucking indie vultures that they are, and they expect me to buy their software? I wouldn't be caught dead with an iPod, much less a Mac.
Apple takes a 30% cut. The rest of the 70% goes to the music industry. The 30/70 split has been around forever, and it's why Apple pretty much incorporates it everywhere.
If you're only getting 15 cents from every 99 cent song sold, you should talk to your label to find out where that extra 55 cents are going. In fact, 15 cents is pretty good from what I've seen after all the hands are stuffed - your RIAA label gives less than that (9 cents or less).
Though I think there were the likes of CDBaby and such that give back like 50 cents or more.
The music industry had watched mp3 players grow in popularity since the Rio 300 in 1998 and were eager to find any way to finally make some money from digital music rather than watch it be stolen and shared with software like Napster so they were more than happy to put their content on iTunes.
Actually, the music industry was very worried about Apple moreso than music. Steve Jobs had to actually play the "limited Mac marketshare" card to reassure the music execs. Of course, Jobs then opened it up to Windows later...
If the editing software companies are smart, they're saving the *actions* of the editor as well as the raster results. That way, the edits can be replayed later at a higher resolution, which is probably sufficient for most of most films - there would likely be areas that need more detailed editing, but that would be a much smaller expense than re-editing an entire film.
That's what non-linear editors do, and has been a standard part of video editing on computers for decades now.
Basically all the editing actions are saved into a cutlist, and the preview window renders low-res in order to do a real-time view. When complete, the final cut is "printed" using the original high-res video.
Heck, it's so common most consumer level video editors do the exact same thing.
And almost nobody will be willing to chop up their laptop's AC adapter plug to be able to hook it up to straight DC
.
Won't work for a lot of laptops - they draw so much power that unless the want lots of current flowing through the DC lead, they often use higher voltages. 16V, 18V, 20V+ are fairly common voltages.
(Modern laptops can easily require 75W, 130W, 200+W of power. We're talking of 6-10+A in the DC lead...).
It's not a matter of "you're doing it wrong", it's just the latest iteration of AT&T's systems not being able to handle the load of an insane day-of-release demand. Just like with every iPhone launch day that they've been involved with. There's plenty of blame to go around: throngs of people who have to have something the day it comes out instead of waiting a few days, back-end systems that don't scale properly to meet an anticipatable demand, etc.
Yeah. Except that AT&T has 4 years or experience with this, as every iPhone has come out on AT&T. Verizon's getting a hang of it 8 months after the first release (which sold pretty well). And Sprint's getting a first-hand look.
Apple screwed up the iPhone 3G launch - *it's* activation servers failed that day. Since then Apple seems to be able to handle the load. (The iPhone uses iTunes to download configuration info - including stuff like if the serial number is associated with a locked phone or not. It's slightly more interesting with the iCloud activation now).
As for getting it first day - unlike the iPhone4 launch last year which had 8+ hour lines, I stood in line for 20 minutes and got one. Which was really a lot quicker than any other cellphone at a cellphone store - it seems buying a phone can take 30+ minutes. It looks like our Apple Store got a few *thousand* phones in stock. Which will probably last until Saturday evening.
And nothing wrong with getting stuff on the day of release. I wouldn't have bought it if there were multi-hour lines, but they said 45 minutes, and I went through in 20. And with that I cancelled my preorder, so I got my phone a couple of weeks ahead of time.
Maybe the telco's could put some of the spicy curry around their cables -- the same recipe that put 10 Scots in the hospital in a recent "hottest curry eating contest".
One of my dogs kept chewing on some grommets on an outdoor metal grating, so we thought to put some hot chili sauce on the grommets. End result was the grommet was there nice and clean, chili sauce licked off. Then the next time we looked the grommet was gone again.
I think they ended up liking spicy food, or capsaicin doesn't seem to afflict them.
Why would a billionaire stand in line all night long to get a cellphone that his company sells?
you know he works for Fusion-IO, right? that he hasn't worked at apple for 20+ years?
His day job is Fusion IO. However, he still draws a small salary from Apple and is on the Apple payroll, even though he does absolutely nothing for Apple. Heck, Apple's probably paying him just because everyone associates him with Apple.
And yes, Woz has also spoken about the walled garden.
And from what I've seen, just because he's rich doesn't mean he's a recluse. He genuinely enjoys people and being social, and the spotlight as well (You should see the interview he did with AP on YouTube - they said "cut" and kept filming, and he broke down).
He's an extrovert, and gets his energy from the crowd. And hell, if you were in line, his antics make the time fly by.
He's probably one of the few people to whom money hasn't changed him - he's rich, but still interacts with people. The only thing money does is it allows him to have more fun easily.
Publicity hound... really? He's probably the guy reporters go to after Jobs made a comment.
I noted above, but I'll note it again. The Windows driver is known to have a lot of special paths for all the various cool games that people want to run as fast as possible. For Windows Embedded, they want a good all-around driver that is simple to port. This would be the Linux driver, as that's exactly what it is written to be.
I HATE Microsoft Marketing.
There is no such thing as Windows Embedded. There is Windows Embedded Compact 7, which is just WinCE 7. There is Windows Embedded Standard 7, which is a componentized version of Windows 7. Then there's Automotive and Enterprise and other crap.
The Windows Embedded Compact 7 driver is the one under question here, and I can understand why as the graphics stack on CE is quite a bit different from desktop x86 Windows. Plus, it has to be multi-arch - WEC7 runs on ARM, MIPS and x86 platforms, so the open-source driver would be more portable.
And yes, it's different enough to be problematic. Things like DirectX are different under CE. Even Windows Mobile had a different DirectX stack. The WinCE one originates from CE 2.0, while the Mobile version dervices from XP. Along the way the definitions and capability bits have changed, a bit can be missing on one implementation or the other.
The last time I did a simple inquiry via DirectDraw and had effectively two different programs because the capability bits were not very common between the two. I'd imagine the 3D stuff would be equally messy.
I set up a backup server on my home connection (which is Comcast Business, so they don't filter port 25, but I don't have an rDNS set up). Not a single message I sent was bounced. So I conclude that not only is it the case that this isn't an effective tactic, it's also not a technique that anybody uses, for some reasonable value of "anybody."
Lots of anti-spam systems DO NOT send bounces anymore. Because it's useless - if it's spam, then it's probably got a forged From: header, so sending a bounce does nothing but annoy the guy who owns the email address and who does not have one single connection to the spam. Sometimes a spammer will forge emails from a domain, flooding the domain owner with bounces (joe-job). This is doubly so if the domain isn't using domainkeys or SPF (adding those things seems to lessen the likelihood of a spammer using the domain).
Instead, most spam is just silently dropped.
Now, your email may have failed the rDNS checks everywhere, but most configurations have it soft-fail, so it'll get passed on as spam tagged but not dropped. The ones that hard-fail, well, they never got your email and may have wondered what happened.
Apple made it *very* clear after the iCloud announcement that iDisk was going away and iCloud wasn't going to provide a comparable interface to let a user store files. While someone could undoubtedly use the iCloud APIs to write an application that lets you store files of your own choosing (i.e. an iDisk-replacement), it's a good bet Apple would refuse to approve the app precisely because it would be an iDisk replacement.
There are apps that turn your iDevice into a "thumb drive" - files accessible via iTunes, WebDAV, FTP, HTTP, and maybe even SMB. Oh, there's also a TFTP server too. If iCloud backs up that app's files, it's effectively an iDisk, and there's tons of those apps in the App Store.
And many more have that capability (HTTP and WebDAV servers are the most popular), and can often hold arbitrary files since iTunes nor the app does any checking unless you try to open it. Many office apps support that as well.
If you want to get a PDF into the iPhone via iTunes you do have to go through 2 steps, I don't know why that is, but what you do is drag it into iTunes as a book and then sync it to your phone. You can't drag it directly onto the phone apparently. I'm not sure why this is, but I would say it is easier than emailing it to yourself.
It's non-obvious, but possible.
If you're using iBooks, you have to have "Manually manage music and videos" checked. This turns off syncing of music, videos AND books. Then you can drag and drive your music/videos/PDFs/epubs straight to the device listed in iTunes. If it's not checked, then its synced and you have to add it to your library first (because sync only works with library stuff).
The downside is, well, it's manually managed. It means iTunes will not sync it back after a restore operation, so you have to manually copy the stuff back (just drag and drop). The upside is you can add stuff from any iTunes library - it doesn't sync, so adding music/videos/books happens from any iTunes on any PC without wiping the device.
If it's a PDF reader app like GoodReader, then you click on the device in iTunes, head to the Apps tab, and scroll to the bottom. Select the app from the list and you can drag and drop to the box on the right of the list (app file area). Other readers feature FTP/HTTP/WebDAV servers.
On the other hand, apple would likely find most game makers highly uncooperative, as they are directly challenging their business models. So it's not that easy for apple either.
Eh? Apple's iOS app store guidelines are more lenient than what game makers are used to. If you want to develop for Xbox360/PS3/Wii officially (and not via Xbox Live Indie Arcade), there's a pile of requirements that just don't exist for the App Store. (separate work facilities wit locking doors - the closest would be the iPad pre-launch is a big one, no, you cannot work out of your bedroom or garage).
Apple's app store approval mechanism? Peanuts compared to what the console manufacturers demand.
They may have the software library but all those windows games depend on windows. Valve would have to do something profoundly do to more than be a kiosk application on top of that and Microsoft would likely be highly uncooperative since it'd be a direct competitor with their xbox. Apple on the other hand has the whole stack and experience with hardware production and distribution. Basically it'd be repurposing something like the Mac Mini into an entertainment center, maybe with beefier graphics.
Why would Microsoft refuse to sell Windows licenses to Valve? At the absolute worst, Valve would have to run down to their local computer store and pick up a bunch of OEM Windows licenses. Or they could just license Embedded Windows XP or Windows Embedded 7 Standard.
Even if Microsoft is uncooperative, they can't prevent Valve from buying Windows licenses. Or they can work with Dell or something to make the boxes and use Dell's Windows licensing.
The main problem would be the controller. As in, a living room console, handling 4x mice+keyboards is a lot harder than 4x gamepads. Hell, they can use Microsoft's xbox360 controllers and build in the receiver.
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Vancouver region, according to Environment Canada, gets between 850mm to 2000mm of percipitation (west to east).
Less than 10% of that falls as snow.
So 2" of snow is practically an entire year's worth of snow to a quarter of the yearly precipitation. For the vast majority of the population in Metro Vancouver, 2" is basically a snowdump. (And some years, it snows not at all.)
Victoria gets even less - it basically shuts down. Snow's an extraordinary event here, which is why it's a favorite spot for seniors and retired people.
And yes we mock Torontonians that are dealing with blizzards when it's nice, sunny and warm here. There's a saying a Vancouver day is skiing in the morning, and golfing in the afternoon, because it does happen here.
It's a lot easier if you think of it as being ONE Android phone and many Android-compatible phones out there.
That is, right now, the Nexus S - it's the cleanest Android implementation because Google's supporting it, and you're not getting some compatible-but-bastardized version that some OEM needed to add stuff to, and to which the carrier adds their own crap to as well.
Yes, I care little for Sense, Motoblur, TouchWiz (if I wanted an iPhone, I'd get an iPhone!), and the other stuff out there. Just stick with what Google's officially supporting and it'll be the best and slickest Android experience around.
And most people are oblivious that they're making themselves plainly obvious to what they're doing.
Anytime you see a car that's not keeping up with traffic, hell, doing 20 under the limit on a clear day with dry roads, or suddenly braking at a green light... you know the guy's on the phone.
Hell, in a mob moving the same direction, the same applies to the person walking slower than the rest who's not elderly. They'd be walking at a snail's pace with their eyes glued to their phone while a crowd of seniors overtakes them on both sides. In walkers. And nevermind going down stairs - they can't stop looking at their phone for 30 seconds to march down the stairs.
About the only surprise I have for people walking is they haven't dropped their phone from people bumping into them as they try to get around.
I have to admit, I keep getting fooled at Best Buy.
I took a walk down their tablet aisle. I can easily tell the Android tablets from each other, but the damn Galaxy Tab and the iPad confuse me constantly.
One thing I noticed yesterday while looking was how Acer, Asus, Toshiba, etc. went and differentiated themselves from the iPad. The Toshiba has a little silvery spot by the camera on front. The Acers and Asus have token trim pieces that break up the glass-to-metal-rim look of the iPad. The Sony's a wedge but has that nice rounded corner on top. All very easily Not-An-iPad looking thing. Heck, the closest I could come to iPad would be a PlayBook, but it's 7" screen makes it so small it's easy to tell.
Hell, those 7" tablets all look very similar to me - I'm surprised Samsung doesn't go after Acer and RIM for their 7" tablets - they really look similar.
It also didn't help that the iPads were in landscape mode.
Samsung: Make your tablet distinct. Add some trim pieces like Acer/Asus/Toshiba/Sony did, or add a nice little stripe around the bezel or something. Hell, do the popular thing and make the frame customizable and sell various colored and patterned bezels! (Pink is a popular color amongst the fairer sex, hint hint. Pink gadgets SELL)
Your problem was you bought a cheapass tablet running AOSP and NOT OHA Android. The difference is OHA Android has the ability to license "with Google" which includes the Marketplace. Of cousre, I also call it a failing of Google to secure apps - if you could download a marketplace APK easily, then it'll be really easy to pirate apps (APKs from marketplace are not DRM-protected).
But AppsLib is for AOSP Androids which have no marketplace access (and no GMail, YouTube, Maps and Goggles). You may be able to pirate the apps from Cyanogen. Perhaps their forums has instructions on getting it all set up. If it's an Archos device there's plenty of howtos as well.
It's one of the reasons I like iOS - the ability to have a local backup (IPA files are, however, DRM locked to the account). Google tries to hide the APK files too much and getting them off requires use of ADB or Astro File Manager or rooted TiBackup. Atr least having a local backup of your apps...
Actually it's a masure of dilution before the item is rendered undetectable.
So if pure capciacin is 15M, it means you need it something on the order of 67ppb before it's undetectable. Peppers have much lower levels, plus with extra proteins and such that make the kick much lower. And since peppers by themselves isn't a terribly fun eat, it's diluted even more by eating other foods.
Actually, Siri was bought by Apple. They do license a bunch of stuff from Nuance and probably incorporated it into Siri, but from the Siri devs, the 3GS was simply incapable of doing the necessary processing without a lot of shortcuts.
Apple saw the Siri app, was impressed, and bought the company so they could integrate it into the OS (and have more deeper integration) as well as remove the cheats that were done in order to run smoothly on a 3GS.
At best they added WolframAlpha to Siri's database to consult, but I'm pretty sure that was a backend integration task with WolframAlpha than Apple buying that stuff.
Siri does too. It does a lot of heavy lifting locally, but also does a pile on the back end to understand.
Design patents exist for a reason - they're a step down from trademarks (and trust me, you DO NOT want to force everyone into trademark wars - it's a lot nastier). They're also short-lived, 5 years or so, but serve to protect the unique looks of devices. At least with design patents, the claims are important - if a design feature is shown but not claimed, it's a free for all. With trademarks, degree of similarity is important.
Of course, perhaps if Samsung stopped making their devices look like Apple it would help. I mean, I walked down the tablet aisle of Best Buy, and the only two I got mixed up were the iPads and Galaxy Tabs. All others looked distinctly different with different trim pieces applied. The closest I could find would be a PlayBook, but it's so obviously different from an iPad and Galaxy tab. Maybe Samsung has a case since it looks a lot like a 7" Galaxy tab.
Seriously. Look at how the other tablets differ visibly from an iPad other than the Galaxy Tab. Just add a trim piece or something and the lawsuit would be meaningless. Maybe a stripe around the screen?
Probably because Microsoft demands that all PCs they sell are free of crap preloadware. And where possible, to use Microsoft equivalents. So no loading Norton Antivirus or whatever - if you want to provide antivirus, it has to be MSE. No trial versions of Microsoft Works or Corel or whatever - you put on the Office demo, etc.
Of course, when you take away the big profit makers for OEMs, they have to raise the price to compensate.
The reason for the recalibration is simple - the battery gauges work by counting colombs. Cheap devices use a voltage check (simple two-wire battery packs, that are replacable - the third contact's usually a thermistor). The voltage is then compared with a curve to determine state of charge. You can tell this by looking at non-linearities of the battery (e.g., it takes forever to get to 50%, then drops to nothing in 10 minutes sort of deal).
A colomb counter is a bit more reliably, in that it counts (roughly) electrons going into and out of the battery pack. But to offer a good estimate on the battery level, it needs to know how much charge there is. When manufactured, they have a rough level based on battery design, but as they age, that level goes down and the estimate goes off. After 3 years or so, capacity can be reduced by 50+%, so if the colomb counter isn't recalibrated, it'll be off.
The colomb counter also offers an estimate into the life of the battery - when the capacity decreases it can easily signal that the battery has degraded.
Funny thing about that. Apple's the only provider that hasn't done it yet. Google? Yes, many times for perfectly valid reasons (so far...). Amazon? Ditto. Apple? Nope. And no one really knows if they can, or if it's limited to CoreLocation apps (the killswitch code is located in CoreLocation - not the best place as many apps can avoid using location services).
And even if Apple removes an app, if you have a local copy of the IPA file on your disk, you can easily reinstall it. Unlike say, users of the Tricorder Android app who may not have realized that they have to manually extract the APK file. (One of the reasons I like iTunes - I can have a local copy of apps automatically - none of thise "cloud backup" stuff that Google has that doesn't even list half the apps I got).
Depends on the business. If you're a tiny 2-person Mom and Pop shop, handling cash is cheap and easy. But once you grow to a certain size and start handling large sums of cash daily, it gets expensive.
Just think of it - you're closing up shop, and you need to deposit your cash somewhere, else your business may get robbed and money stolen. And it's at night, so you also don't want to carry huge amounts of cash to the bank. (The night depository - that's what people do with it).
So now you need to protect that cash and need to carry it around. If you're a company like Best Buy, you can always have a safe with alarms and security guards, but those cost money to run. Sometimes, when a big game is released, you'll hire an armoured car to carry the takings for the day (which can be tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars) to the bank. Also costs money.
Then there's the actual cash handling. The cash register records transaction amounts, so you know how much should be in at the end of the day. However, there's always some miscalculation (wrong change given or received) so the totals never exactly match. And cashiers know this, so they can easily slip a $5 bill every shift away and not get caught. Maybe $10. So now you need people to be trustworthy and understand the cash-handling procedure, which requires training.
It's why the Best Buys and other big companies have lackeys that can process credit/debit transactions (it's all handled by the computers) but you have to go to the front to pay by cash. And why if the server goes down, the power goes out, or something, they stop all business even though they can make change - the record-keeping gets extensive, and there's no register keeping an eye on the till.
So for Mom and Pop, no big deal. Cash is cheap to handle and they can walk with it to the bank nightly - it's not a huge amount of cash (well, to the business it is, since losing a day's take can be bankrupting). But once you start needing safes and security and process in order to properly handle and track cash, handling credit is cheap and convenient.
Heck, even business that don't do retail sales prefer not handling cash for the same reasons - electronic money transfers, credit cards, etc. are far preferred for the same reason. Sure they keep a LITTLE cash on hand ("petty cash") for those things, but keeping track is a pain.
Apple takes a 30% cut. The rest of the 70% goes to the music industry. The 30/70 split has been around forever, and it's why Apple pretty much incorporates it everywhere.
If you're only getting 15 cents from every 99 cent song sold, you should talk to your label to find out where that extra 55 cents are going. In fact, 15 cents is pretty good from what I've seen after all the hands are stuffed - your RIAA label gives less than that (9 cents or less).
Though I think there were the likes of CDBaby and such that give back like 50 cents or more.
Actually, the music industry was very worried about Apple moreso than music. Steve Jobs had to actually play the "limited Mac marketshare" card to reassure the music execs. Of course, Jobs then opened it up to Windows later...
That's what non-linear editors do, and has been a standard part of video editing on computers for decades now.
Basically all the editing actions are saved into a cutlist, and the preview window renders low-res in order to do a real-time view. When complete, the final cut is "printed" using the original high-res video.
Heck, it's so common most consumer level video editors do the exact same thing.
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Won't work for a lot of laptops - they draw so much power that unless the want lots of current flowing through the DC lead, they often use higher voltages. 16V, 18V, 20V+ are fairly common voltages.
(Modern laptops can easily require 75W, 130W, 200+W of power. We're talking of 6-10+A in the DC lead...).
Yeah. Except that AT&T has 4 years or experience with this, as every iPhone has come out on AT&T. Verizon's getting a hang of it 8 months after the first release (which sold pretty well). And Sprint's getting a first-hand look.
Apple screwed up the iPhone 3G launch - *it's* activation servers failed that day. Since then Apple seems to be able to handle the load. (The iPhone uses iTunes to download configuration info - including stuff like if the serial number is associated with a locked phone or not. It's slightly more interesting with the iCloud activation now).
As for getting it first day - unlike the iPhone4 launch last year which had 8+ hour lines, I stood in line for 20 minutes and got one. Which was really a lot quicker than any other cellphone at a cellphone store - it seems buying a phone can take 30+ minutes. It looks like our Apple Store got a few *thousand* phones in stock. Which will probably last until Saturday evening.
And nothing wrong with getting stuff on the day of release. I wouldn't have bought it if there were multi-hour lines, but they said 45 minutes, and I went through in 20. And with that I cancelled my preorder, so I got my phone a couple of weeks ahead of time.
One of my dogs kept chewing on some grommets on an outdoor metal grating, so we thought to put some hot chili sauce on the grommets. End result was the grommet was there nice and clean, chili sauce licked off. Then the next time we looked the grommet was gone again.
I think they ended up liking spicy food, or capsaicin doesn't seem to afflict them.
His day job is Fusion IO. However, he still draws a small salary from Apple and is on the Apple payroll, even though he does absolutely nothing for Apple. Heck, Apple's probably paying him just because everyone associates him with Apple.
And yes, Woz has also spoken about the walled garden.
And from what I've seen, just because he's rich doesn't mean he's a recluse. He genuinely enjoys people and being social, and the spotlight as well (You should see the interview he did with AP on YouTube - they said "cut" and kept filming, and he broke down).
He's an extrovert, and gets his energy from the crowd. And hell, if you were in line, his antics make the time fly by.
He's probably one of the few people to whom money hasn't changed him - he's rich, but still interacts with people. The only thing money does is it allows him to have more fun easily.
Publicity hound... really? He's probably the guy reporters go to after Jobs made a comment.
I HATE Microsoft Marketing.
There is no such thing as Windows Embedded. There is Windows Embedded Compact 7, which is just WinCE 7. There is Windows Embedded Standard 7, which is a componentized version of Windows 7. Then there's Automotive and Enterprise and other crap.
The Windows Embedded Compact 7 driver is the one under question here, and I can understand why as the graphics stack on CE is quite a bit different from desktop x86 Windows. Plus, it has to be multi-arch - WEC7 runs on ARM, MIPS and x86 platforms, so the open-source driver would be more portable.
And yes, it's different enough to be problematic. Things like DirectX are different under CE. Even Windows Mobile had a different DirectX stack. The WinCE one originates from CE 2.0, while the Mobile version dervices from XP. Along the way the definitions and capability bits have changed, a bit can be missing on one implementation or the other.
The last time I did a simple inquiry via DirectDraw and had effectively two different programs because the capability bits were not very common between the two. I'd imagine the 3D stuff would be equally messy.
Lots of anti-spam systems DO NOT send bounces anymore. Because it's useless - if it's spam, then it's probably got a forged From: header, so sending a bounce does nothing but annoy the guy who owns the email address and who does not have one single connection to the spam. Sometimes a spammer will forge emails from a domain, flooding the domain owner with bounces (joe-job). This is doubly so if the domain isn't using domainkeys or SPF (adding those things seems to lessen the likelihood of a spammer using the domain).
Instead, most spam is just silently dropped.
Now, your email may have failed the rDNS checks everywhere, but most configurations have it soft-fail, so it'll get passed on as spam tagged but not dropped. The ones that hard-fail, well, they never got your email and may have wondered what happened.
There are apps that turn your iDevice into a "thumb drive" - files accessible via iTunes, WebDAV, FTP, HTTP, and maybe even SMB. Oh, there's also a TFTP server too. If iCloud backs up that app's files, it's effectively an iDisk, and there's tons of those apps in the App Store.
And many more have that capability (HTTP and WebDAV servers are the most popular), and can often hold arbitrary files since iTunes nor the app does any checking unless you try to open it. Many office apps support that as well.
It's non-obvious, but possible.
If you're using iBooks, you have to have "Manually manage music and videos" checked. This turns off syncing of music, videos AND books. Then you can drag and drive your music/videos/PDFs/epubs straight to the device listed in iTunes. If it's not checked, then its synced and you have to add it to your library first (because sync only works with library stuff).
The downside is, well, it's manually managed. It means iTunes will not sync it back after a restore operation, so you have to manually copy the stuff back (just drag and drop). The upside is you can add stuff from any iTunes library - it doesn't sync, so adding music/videos/books happens from any iTunes on any PC without wiping the device.
If it's a PDF reader app like GoodReader, then you click on the device in iTunes, head to the Apps tab, and scroll to the bottom. Select the app from the list and you can drag and drop to the box on the right of the list (app file area). Other readers feature FTP/HTTP/WebDAV servers.
Eh? Apple's iOS app store guidelines are more lenient than what game makers are used to. If you want to develop for Xbox360/PS3/Wii officially (and not via Xbox Live Indie Arcade), there's a pile of requirements that just don't exist for the App Store. (separate work facilities wit locking doors - the closest would be the iPad pre-launch is a big one, no, you cannot work out of your bedroom or garage).
Apple's app store approval mechanism? Peanuts compared to what the console manufacturers demand.
Why would Microsoft refuse to sell Windows licenses to Valve? At the absolute worst, Valve would have to run down to their local computer store and pick up a bunch of OEM Windows licenses. Or they could just license Embedded Windows XP or Windows Embedded 7 Standard.
Even if Microsoft is uncooperative, they can't prevent Valve from buying Windows licenses. Or they can work with Dell or something to make the boxes and use Dell's Windows licensing.
The main problem would be the controller. As in, a living room console, handling 4x mice+keyboards is a lot harder than 4x gamepads. Hell, they can use Microsoft's xbox360 controllers and build in the receiver.