If we can get the Adult Industry to sell their.COMs and go to.XXX it would make an easier to manage Internet. Especially if you are searching for name of an old XWindows software you were looking for.
Why should they give up.COM? They can just redirect the.COM to their.XXX domain, and no one would be the wiser.
Anyhow, the problem isn't the reputable sites - they want to only show to those interested and definitely don't want to show it to those who don't (the parents and their "think about the children" crowd are politically powerful - so not showing up is a Good Thing(tm)), it's the disreputable ones that want to show you something every click and popup and popunder and hide in a sea of legit Google results that are the problem.
Heck, some sites can do it one better. The.COM version is the legit site, while the.XXX has the more risque photos. Sites like Playboy, for example. The.COM can show legit content, whil the.XXX version can be more free spirited on the photos.
With max. RAM of about 256mb and probably a pretty low amount of storage, I'm guessing if you want to build apps for it, you would use a full-blown Debian install and cross-compile for ARM.
Uh, why? Native compilation works just fine. 256MB of RAM was a luxury in a PC 10 years ago, and we seemed to be able to compile all sorts of stuff that way.
Perhaps the issue is fitting the entire development environment in storage - it can be an issue (The kernel is over 200+ MB unpacked, after all), but you should be able to do modest amounts of compiling with 4GB of storage as well, with full gdb/gcc/etc and everything.
One of the big issues in IT departments is that many people want to use their "personal phone X" as their work phone. I can somewhat understand this, as having two phones on my own belt-holster is quite irritating.
Irritating, but practical from not just your security standpoint, but from a "who owns the data" standpoint.
Going back to the personal VM on company phone - who owns that VM? You? Or the company, who paid for the phone? If you send a text message from the personal VM to your personal SIM, using the company phone, does the company get the right to see it?
If you want, the first situation is sending a personal email from your work PC. The second, it's like plugging your own laptop into the company network (some companies aren't locked down, or provide a public VLAN) and using their network resources but your equipment.
It's great that it keeps the user from screwing up the secure corporate part, but it doesn't appear to resolve the issue of data ownership. Which... brings us back to carrying two phones around so the company has no right to your personal phone and its data.
I'd take that over crappy low resolution b&w fax any day.
Great, so you send your recipient an email with 20 different JPG files in it, and you know they're all going to get scrambled in order. So the first image may be the third page, the second the 19th page, etc. That's a lot more convenient for the recipient over a fax (which comes in a bundle in order).
Sure, PDF it. But that's just a set of scanned pages, and oh wait, it bounced because the PDF was too big. (What? You don't know how big an email you can send?).
Whereas fax... you dump the paper in the machine, dial the number, and hit start. None of this "scan to PC" then "new email" and "attach document" crap. Honestly, it's far simpler for most people to send a fax than to have them do the 10 steps necessary to scan in a document, futz with the quality settings, attach the document to an email and hope the attachment was small enough.
Ditto the "send back the signed portion" issue, which involves a round-trip to the printer, signing, scanning, emailing. Last time I did it I just wrote the number on a sheet, printed the page, walked to the printer, signed it, then fed it into the fax machine. To email it would involve me standing at the same machine, entering my email address, going to my desk, finding the email, saving the attachment, then replying to the original and finding the scan.
More steps, more hassle.
Faxes are easier and more convenient to use for most people. Hell, I'm surprised no machines exist to simplify the process - dump the paper in, type the email address and the machine figures it all out for you - scans it and emails it direct. Splitting the email if it's too big, etc. Something Apple-esque in simplicity. Drop it in, type the email/fax, and hit start.
Also, many people feel that snooping of phone lines is much less likely to occur than snooping of email, when is sent in the clear.
Well, it's harder to tap alright. For email it's trivial - if you have access to a server at the receiving end, game's over. Or if you can fake an MX record so your server gets to be the intermediary... (emails pass through at least two servers - your email server, and their email server. Not counting spam firewalls or third party spam filters who may also retain a copy of the email).
Also, email scanning is trivial - it's all digital. Scanning all the faxes sent and received is a lot harder since you're sending images around which have to be OCR'd and then recognized. (There was a period where spammers emailed images of spam to bypass filters...).
Finally, a fax is trivial to use. If someone needs a signature on a document, you get the document, whatever it may originate (if it's electronic, you print, if it's deadtress, you're already done), sign it, then stick it in the fax machine and send it.
If you were doing it by email, you'd stick it in the scanner like you do with a fax machine, scan it, save it to disk, make a new email to the person who needs the signatures, attach the document, send, hope it's small enough, blah blah blah. Really.
Some places got it right with scanners that can email the document anywhere - if only the UI didn't suck. And you didn't have to worry that your scans were too big. And if there was a way to get positive confirmation of reception...
That's all it is. The email equivalent is too damn messy and hard compared to fax. Look at an Apple-ish way of doing it where in the end it's just drop the paper in, type the email address, and away it goes, with the unit figuring out if the email is too big and splitting it automatically and all that.
I'm curious why you'd write them off completely based on a single night. Sure, it was a bad business decision on their part--they like many others might not have known the serious issues with doing Groupon promos. And yes, you paid full price for crap service that one night. If you're a regular, can't you try speaking to the owner next time you're there to explain yourserious issues with them last time, and give them at least one chance to make things right for you?
One thing about being a regular is, especially for small businesses, the owners or employees know you. Even if they're harried they'd stop and say hello, or even a simple "sorry, we're really busy tonight."
Hell, some businesses go out of the way to apologize.
The customer shouldn't need to demand attention and service - they should be getting it all the time. A regular shouldn't need to talk to the owners at all - they should've come over and apologized directly.
This is especially true in the restaurant business where patrons may literally go next door.
Hello bank? I'd like to pay my loan with quality of service and stable patrons. What, you only accept money?!
Almost everyone will tell you a successful business is one that makes money.
And a successful business depends a lot on repeat customers who can provide a base level of income consistently. It costs way more money to recruit a new customer than to keep an existing one, and existing ones often serve as unofficial marketing agents.
Sites like Groupon don't promote that, often devalue the product, and in general, if a business is so desparate for business that they're willing to take a 50% cut in revenue in order to get a bunch of customers who they'll never see again (Groupon customers are the worst kind of customers a business can get - people in it for the deal), things aren't boding well.
That's 33 seasons right there. And what self respecting geek wouldn't have those?
And yet you miss BSG - another 4 seasons right there.
Add in Fringe for another 3 seasons (so far), maybe X-Files, etc.
Nevermind if you went and got Blu-Ray versions. I think the Blu-Ray of BSG ran around 24 discs for just the miniseries+standard shows (not counting the Plan or Caprica).
If I could have 100+TB to hold 1:1 images of my DVDs and Blu-Rays, I would (I want quality - I hate rerips or downrezzed 720p crap).
Now I won't be allowed to wear shoes when I sign on to PSN.
But you'll have a choice of being x-rayed or having your crotch groped.
Considering the average PS/3 user, I'm pretty sure I know which option they'll choose.
It'll be a huge bureaucracy of amalgamated entities. The TSA will be there if you want to sign into PSN (take off your shoes, all electronics are subject to scanning, please use the full body scanner provided with your PS3, and all liquids must fit in a plastic baggie and contained in 1oz or smaller containers). Oh, and you may be randomly selected for an enhanced screening where your PS3 will now scan your computers and hard drives for anything possibly related to hacking. Linux, vi, emacs counts.
There's a CIA division who will use your EyeToy to spy on any possible deviancy you may show with regards to the the PS3. Anything other than "Insert Money", "Insert Blu-ray" or "Sony Approved Accessories Only" counts.
Then there's the FBI division who'll monitor everything done on PSN - anyone who possibly cheats or sends/speaks of anything related to security, you're on the watchlist.
Don't worry, your credit card numbers are *safe*! See all the pain we make customers go through?
Seems a green 1W laser would be pretty nice to have in a liferaft or if stranded on a mountain top. Signal flares are very time limited and heavy to transport ammo for.
Yeah, it's a really good idea to blind the search-and-rescue crew with your laser.
And blind it does. During daylight, your best bet is a signal mirror that catches the sun and presents a bright, but relatively harmless flickering light at the crew. At night, the lasers can blind crew (unlike cars, aircrew dim the lights - and that nightvision is destroyed pretty quickly by a bright light suddenly appearing - hence pointing lasers at aircraft is a really bad idea - even the crappy 5mW lasers can light up a cockpit and ruin the night vision). And that's without using NVGs.
Electronic payments instead of sending checks, Fax, Email, IRC, FB.... DHL, UPS, USA couriers, Bongo, MyUS, FEDEX, Parcel2Go,....
Over half a million errand boys and >218000 vehicles don't come cheap these days.
yeah, it's also a great way to ensure you don't ship international.
UPS - charges anywhere between 30% to 200%+ for a package (those are the rates I've been charged). They wanted $20 for a $10 item (TOTAL, including shipping) - I rejected it. The tax owing was $1. USPS/Canada Post would've just ignored it (because it'll cost them that much to collect $1). They also wanted $140 for a $300 item as well. The least I've been charged was $21 for $50 items. And there was the time they wanted $40 for a $50 item. Bleh. Useless, and an instant skip if I can. Hell, just a couple of those pays for a US mailing address for a year.
FedEx - OK, we're more reasonable here, as FedEx charges just $25 brokerage plus taxes. Not useful for anything under $500, but hey.
DHL - Probably the most reasonable - $8, same as expedited (express) mail.
USPS - $5 for priority and slower, $8 for express.
The US address we have is mostly for the "free shipping US" deals most places have - where you can save $20 over shipping to Canada. It only takes two UPS packages to pay it off - the Canadian shipping ($30+) plus UPS' ourtrageous brokerage charges. Hell, even *one* moderately sized order ($300) could pay it off for two years!
The problem is, most people ship UPS. FedEx/USPS are rarer. DHL is practically non-existent.
The dirt cheap ones wind up seriously costing you in operating costs and tend not to live as long, a 5000 black page toner cartridge for the one you listed was seen for $75 cheapest, $150 on average, mine is $40 for 6000.
Didn't think postscript printers had hit the cheap and disposable category yet, mine are business workstation types.
Depending on workload, 5000 sheets for $75 may be perfectly reasonable. I don't print a lot, yet the 2500 sheets for $75 Brother unit is perfectly fine. $40 for 6000 sheets is good, but if the machine costs me $2000 more, I may never make it back in supplies.
If you print a lot, yes it makes sense to consider consumables. If not, the extra cost may take years to recoup.
And there are plenty of printers with postscript-like functionality. Brother calls theirs "BR-Script3" to avoid paying Adobe the licensing fees. It's basically an implementation of PostScript3 though, and Brother has the PPD files available.
Now that said, Intel may well have decided to hold Ivy Bridge if AMD can't deliver Bulldozer because they don't need to. Sandy Bridge CPUs are just amazing performers, they don't need anything better on the market right now. However I can't imagine AMD colluding with Intel on this. They are not in a good situation.
Perhaps it's Intel wanting to keep AMD alive for anti-trust reasons. They could very well continue to slaughter AMD, but is it in the best interests of Intel? If AMD dies, then Intel's going to get some serious government scrutiny. By keeping AMD (barely) alive, they ensure there's "serious competition" and can escape anti-trust scrutiny. I suppose if need be, Intel has a bunch of people who will go around and buy quantities of AMD chips in order to keep them alive - still cheaper than undergoing anti-trust investigations.
AMD's got no fabs, and their cash situation is dicey. They would love an Apple contract, but they have no capacity to fulfill it - at least without screwing themselves because there's no fab capacity for the few chips Apple buys without sacrificing the entire product line. (Intel's got plenty of spare capacity so Apple can demand special chips for them without sacrificing all the other orders).
Just goes to show, ya gotta back up your software locally (In this case, the.apks); can't trust a vendor to store it for you.
Probably one of my biggest beefs with Android is just that. The "cloud backup" crap doesn't work (the apps I have on my Market account is missing a bunch of apps).
It's one of the things I really do like about iTunes - you connect your phone to iTunes, iTunes backs up app data and apps themselves to your hard drive.
And no, I won't trust iCloud either - as long as iTunes doesn't lose the backup capability, I'll continue to use it as a way to do local backups. (And being able to download huge apps is far better to do it on a PC and sync it over rather than try to do it on the device over WiFi... never got that bit of Android - are you expected to keep your phone on to download 1GB+ apps?)
Yeah, I know on Android I can use Titanium Backup, but geez, this is a basic function Android should have already out of the bat. My experience has shown the place where phones die is at the worst possible time.
Apple pretending that they had no intention to allow apps on the early iPhone was obviously misdirection in retrospect. At the time they were having enough trouble making the software work at all without crashing, and they didn't want developers/users to avoid it while waiting for the bright app future. Sort of a counter to the Osborne Effect.
Funny, but back in the iOS 1.x days (when rhe only apps were webapps), the jailbreakers had apps, by the dozen. Installer.app was the way (it died out and Cydia came in on iOS 2.x with the Apple App Store). They were pretty good apps, too, and things were fairly stable and robust.
The APIs did change horribly so the jailbroken apps had to be rewritten for 2.x, but 1.x was pretty solid.
It's generally considered that the popularity of native apps demonstrated by jailbreakers and Installer.app pretty much convinced Jobs that there really was a market for native apps.
Yeah. Those pirates totally kill all the platforms (by making game developers potentially lose potential profit). Also, we know exactly how many pirates there are (we don't, but we do).
I'm just going to go ahead and say that consoles should never be hacked because people might be able to pirate because of the hacks (which is bad because is causes a potential loss of potential profit).
Funny that.
The Xbox360 was hacked early on, but the hack only allowed you to run pirated games. All the JTAG and Loader hacks do that - you couldn't run an unsigned binary. So the only reason to have a hacked 360 was basically piracy.
There were a few hacks to allow unsigned binaries to run but those were quickly patched.
This is probably the first real unhackable hardware mod to allow unsigned binaries.
The PS3 was the opposite situation - it allowed unsigned binaries to run in a special mode (something the Xbox360 has as well now), but no piracy... and then it got blown completely open.
But when you are carrying a prototype device that has already once been lost in a bar once before, just last year, you'd think it could be done responsibly or without incident. And is a bar the best place for "real world" tests? I think "real world" tests implies that tests should be done all over the "real world". Seems these testers they are giving these prototypes to have a penchant for going to the bar and forgetting they have a prototype device in their pocket that CAN'T GET LEFT IN THE BAR.
Well, one of the best ways to do real-world testing is to use that phone as your primary phone - make all your calls/texts/etc on it as things can crop up during that testing that you may not see by simply carrying your own phone around, using that for your daily activities and only glancing at the phone you're supposed to be testing from time to time.
And unless Apple hires a bunch of teetotallers to do their testing, part of real life involves going to bars after work. And other social places.
Plus, carriers often do their own testing as well, so they'd need a few prototypes, and chances are one of those could lose it as well.
Seriously. I've heard all of this stuff that never ever sees the light of day. Stretchable OLEDs? What ever happened to the regular ones that never appeared on the market? What about SEDs?
We've had OLED TVs. Hell, Sony ended up killing it due to poor sales. Cellphones have OLED screens (though I really wonder - do they really have such poor viewing angles? Every OLED demo one I've seen goes awfully tinted (blue or red) when viewed from the side).
MP3 players have had OLED screens for years as well.
Problem is, well, large OLED screens are expensive. LG was supposed to demo a 37" one at CES a few years ago (cost - over $10K - when a 37"-odd LCD was going under $1K). And Sony's qHD OLED TV was clearanced at $1K, for a 10" screen.
I'm not sure what's going on. The ones on cellphone screens are nice head-on (I've used a coworker's Nexus S), but tilt it to the side a bit and it went all blue-tinted. Some of the in-store demos I've seen are pink or red tint (but nice head on). The Sony TV was really nice (bright and wide viewing angles), so it's not the technology, I don't think...
Of course, the Sony OLED TV also flickered like an old CRT TV (even worse I think) when it displayed white. Bleh.
Running arbitrary code on a device designed to not let you run arbitrary code is, to a geek, a worthy goal in and of itself.
Correction - running arbitrary code on a locked-down device without using the official means.
After all, the Xbox360 (and iOS devices) let you run unsigned code - it just costs $99. Then you can write your code and run it on those things "officially".
Of course, the SDKs have limitations (otherwise Microsoft can't sell dev 360s for $15k each with all the necessary maintenance fees and such), so it's still fun to see if you can do more...
I don't get why so many other people don't seem to mind giving up control over their own systems. It's a war only one side is fighting.
Depends on which "many" we're talking about. A lot of/. folks and geeks love their Android devices and can properly secure them and examine every permission bit.
The other "many" are folk who the/. folk have to fix computers for (either as a job or "family pricing'). You know, the ones whose PCs have so much crapware running that reinstalling is necessary and the like. These folks are the ones you'll get them a console for so they don't come calling just to play every game that crosses their desk. Or they'll get one themselves so they can play games without all the technical hassles of drivers, or why their Intel Graphics won't let them play at 1920x1080 silky smooth, etc.
Basically, people want their machines to Just Work(tm). Stick disc in, start playing. Not stick disc in, oh, I need and Nviati 8829x04 with 1024TBs and 2085Googles? Well, doesn't my Intel beat all that? Or why they can't play the latest and greatest on their $200 laptop.
Bullshit, if that were the case then why did they build it with an intentionally obfuscated file system, and why did they develop proprietary software to act as the only means of getting data on or off of it? Why develop a proprietary cable instead if using USB, or even their own Firewire? For a "side project" they sure went through a lot of extra effort to lock it down and keep it proprietary, especially considering that MP3 players were already common devices with established standards when it came out.blockquote>
Wow... that's a load.
First, many MP3 players of the era had PARALLEL PORT connectors. I know, I had a Rio. Later they went with USB, but with the dominant OS of the time (Windows 98) there wasn't a Mass Storage Class USB driver in it, which meant you still had to install a driver, even though Windows 2000 and onwards started coming with them. Even so, the largest device of the day, the Creative Nomad with its USB 1.1 connection was proprietary. Sure it had a standard USB port, but it didn't use standard USB classes for its interface.
Hell, the Rio and the Nomad had their itnerfaces probed to discover the protocol so third party apps could be used with it.
The iPod used a standard Firewire port on the original and second gen iPods. Then Apple wanted to have accessories that did more than hack into the headphone port, like Line-Out, so they introduced the dock connector on the 3rd gen iPod (which was when they sold the 1 millionth iPod - the best selling MP3 player). Heck, people used iPods as emergency boot drives for their Macs - you just install OS X on it.
Even then an iPod used standard Mass Storage USB drivers, it was just their "database" and music filesystem was obfuscated. But nothing that a competent media player couldn't make out and extract easily based on the id3 tags. And if you've used a Nomad, it too uses a database and non-standard filesystem formats (slightly worse - if you had a bunch of similar-but-no-exact ID3 tags, it would bog down the Nomad horrendously). The database and filename obfuscation just made playback simpler for the software on the iPod.
Oh, and I've used "standard" media players that used mass storage and accessible FAT drives. They worked, but they needed to index the media files if you wanted access other than by folders, and were often a huge PITA if you wanted a song from one album, a song from another, etc because they never did do their file explorers right.
If you own a smart phone, then, yes, Jobs has made your life better. Regardless of your choice in phone, Jobs has directly or indirectly made your phone smarter, cheaper, and easier to use.
Jobs actually inspired the current Android UI. If you look at the state of Android in 2007 (before the iPhone was released - I think it was CES 2007) Android was more like a Blackberry - it had a chicklet keyboard, you used the "ball" or navigator to slide through apps on the non-touchscreen, etc. It basically looked like a Blackberry UI or a keyboard featurephone.
Then the G1 comes out in 2008, with touch screen, apps and everything. Indirectly, Jobs had a hand in defining Android.
Google too. Like Apple they realised that if you make a good product then people will gladly become part of your revenue stream. The difference is that Apple tries hard to lock people in and doesn't shy away from making moral judgements, where as Google mostly tries to stay neutral.
That's because Google's revenue comes from selling YOU. Google has to be neutral in order to get more "you" to sell. If they alienate 10% of the internet population, that's 10% less people they can sell to advertisers.
Apple doesn't need to sell information about you - they just need to sell stuff people will buy. If more people will buy stuff where porn isn't so easy to get, that's what Apple will do.
Two different business models. One relies on people giving Google information to sell and thus having more information and more people in the tracking database means more ad sales, while the other seeks to find a market of people who can afford the latest iGadget.
And yes, it's what makes Google even worse than Facebook - at least the only information Facebook has is stuff I put up. With Google, they have web sites I visit (not just through Google Search, but through Analytics as well as Google Ads, nevermind their 1e100.net CDN), the apps I use on my Android device (AdMob powers most "free" apps), my location (if I want to use GPS), email (GMail), documents (Google Apps), videos (YouTube), etc.
Even worse - you can extricate yourself from Facebook relatively easy and all Facebook would have is the data you left behind. I think Google's got their hands pretty much entangled everywhere - heck, I don't think it's possible to browse the web without hitting a Google something or other - enough sites also rely on googleapis javascript and such.
Perhaps Jobs just prefers to donate anonymously, as many of us do.
This.
Steve Jobs has a publicity problem. It's basically at the point where the news goes wild everytime he breathes. His every action is scrutinized and criticized and commented and such 10 times over.
Now imagine how it applies should he not give anonymously. If he gave to a pro-gay-rights group, he'd have half the US population cheering him, half the population jeering him (and death threats). Ditto if it was a religious organization. Or minority group. Or whatever he honestly believes in. The act of donation would basically bring on such a wrath of coverage and commentary that really, I doubt even the charity itself would want that sort of scrutiny (especially since it often takes away from whatever goal they want to accomplish).
He gives anonymously, the charities respect that (and thankful the media doesn't go over their charity) and life goes on.
Hell, given his Spartan lifestyle (does he have a couch yet?), he may be giving a ton away - he certainly doesn't have a need for money.
True, but it wasn't a standard firewire connection. It's was firewire with a unique connector, meaning you couldn't use a standard firewire cable without an adapter.
It was a standard firewire port. It was one of those 6-pin standard jobs that can supply 12W of power (up to 48V,.25A. And yes, Macs have been known to fry Firewire hubs that way. 12V was more typical though).
Only on the 3rd gen did Apple switch to the Dock connector which enabled USB as well, but through a proprietary cable.
Hell, many Firewire PC cards were 6-pins (though 12V max). Many laptops came with the more common 4-pin variety which didn't supply any power. Enough that Apple supplied a 4-to-6 pin adapter.
Slashdot Mirror
Why should they give up .COM? They can just redirect the .COM to their .XXX domain, and no one would be the wiser.
Anyhow, the problem isn't the reputable sites - they want to only show to those interested and definitely don't want to show it to those who don't (the parents and their "think about the children" crowd are politically powerful - so not showing up is a Good Thing(tm)), it's the disreputable ones that want to show you something every click and popup and popunder and hide in a sea of legit Google results that are the problem.
Heck, some sites can do it one better. The .COM version is the legit site, while the .XXX has the more risque photos. Sites like Playboy, for example. The .COM can show legit content, whil the .XXX version can be more free spirited on the photos.
Uh, why? Native compilation works just fine. 256MB of RAM was a luxury in a PC 10 years ago, and we seemed to be able to compile all sorts of stuff that way.
Perhaps the issue is fitting the entire development environment in storage - it can be an issue (The kernel is over 200+ MB unpacked, after all), but you should be able to do modest amounts of compiling with 4GB of storage as well, with full gdb/gcc/etc and everything.
Irritating, but practical from not just your security standpoint, but from a "who owns the data" standpoint.
Going back to the personal VM on company phone - who owns that VM? You? Or the company, who paid for the phone? If you send a text message from the personal VM to your personal SIM, using the company phone, does the company get the right to see it?
If you want, the first situation is sending a personal email from your work PC. The second, it's like plugging your own laptop into the company network (some companies aren't locked down, or provide a public VLAN) and using their network resources but your equipment.
It's great that it keeps the user from screwing up the secure corporate part, but it doesn't appear to resolve the issue of data ownership. Which... brings us back to carrying two phones around so the company has no right to your personal phone and its data.
Great, so you send your recipient an email with 20 different JPG files in it, and you know they're all going to get scrambled in order. So the first image may be the third page, the second the 19th page, etc. That's a lot more convenient for the recipient over a fax (which comes in a bundle in order).
Sure, PDF it. But that's just a set of scanned pages, and oh wait, it bounced because the PDF was too big. (What? You don't know how big an email you can send?).
Whereas fax... you dump the paper in the machine, dial the number, and hit start. None of this "scan to PC" then "new email" and "attach document" crap. Honestly, it's far simpler for most people to send a fax than to have them do the 10 steps necessary to scan in a document, futz with the quality settings, attach the document to an email and hope the attachment was small enough.
Ditto the "send back the signed portion" issue, which involves a round-trip to the printer, signing, scanning, emailing. Last time I did it I just wrote the number on a sheet, printed the page, walked to the printer, signed it, then fed it into the fax machine. To email it would involve me standing at the same machine, entering my email address, going to my desk, finding the email, saving the attachment, then replying to the original and finding the scan.
More steps, more hassle.
Faxes are easier and more convenient to use for most people. Hell, I'm surprised no machines exist to simplify the process - dump the paper in, type the email address and the machine figures it all out for you - scans it and emails it direct. Splitting the email if it's too big, etc. Something Apple-esque in simplicity. Drop it in, type the email/fax, and hit start.
Well, it's harder to tap alright. For email it's trivial - if you have access to a server at the receiving end, game's over. Or if you can fake an MX record so your server gets to be the intermediary... (emails pass through at least two servers - your email server, and their email server. Not counting spam firewalls or third party spam filters who may also retain a copy of the email).
Also, email scanning is trivial - it's all digital. Scanning all the faxes sent and received is a lot harder since you're sending images around which have to be OCR'd and then recognized. (There was a period where spammers emailed images of spam to bypass filters...).
Finally, a fax is trivial to use. If someone needs a signature on a document, you get the document, whatever it may originate (if it's electronic, you print, if it's deadtress, you're already done), sign it, then stick it in the fax machine and send it.
If you were doing it by email, you'd stick it in the scanner like you do with a fax machine, scan it, save it to disk, make a new email to the person who needs the signatures, attach the document, send, hope it's small enough, blah blah blah. Really.
Some places got it right with scanners that can email the document anywhere - if only the UI didn't suck. And you didn't have to worry that your scans were too big. And if there was a way to get positive confirmation of reception...
That's all it is. The email equivalent is too damn messy and hard compared to fax. Look at an Apple-ish way of doing it where in the end it's just drop the paper in, type the email address, and away it goes, with the unit figuring out if the email is too big and splitting it automatically and all that.
One thing about being a regular is, especially for small businesses, the owners or employees know you. Even if they're harried they'd stop and say hello, or even a simple "sorry, we're really busy tonight."
Hell, some businesses go out of the way to apologize.
The customer shouldn't need to demand attention and service - they should be getting it all the time. A regular shouldn't need to talk to the owners at all - they should've come over and apologized directly.
This is especially true in the restaurant business where patrons may literally go next door.
And a successful business depends a lot on repeat customers who can provide a base level of income consistently. It costs way more money to recruit a new customer than to keep an existing one, and existing ones often serve as unofficial marketing agents.
Sites like Groupon don't promote that, often devalue the product, and in general, if a business is so desparate for business that they're willing to take a 50% cut in revenue in order to get a bunch of customers who they'll never see again (Groupon customers are the worst kind of customers a business can get - people in it for the deal), things aren't boding well.
And yet you miss BSG - another 4 seasons right there.
Add in Fringe for another 3 seasons (so far), maybe X-Files, etc.
Nevermind if you went and got Blu-Ray versions. I think the Blu-Ray of BSG ran around 24 discs for just the miniseries+standard shows (not counting the Plan or Caprica).
If I could have 100+TB to hold 1:1 images of my DVDs and Blu-Rays, I would (I want quality - I hate rerips or downrezzed 720p crap).
It'll be a huge bureaucracy of amalgamated entities. The TSA will be there if you want to sign into PSN (take off your shoes, all electronics are subject to scanning, please use the full body scanner provided with your PS3, and all liquids must fit in a plastic baggie and contained in 1oz or smaller containers). Oh, and you may be randomly selected for an enhanced screening where your PS3 will now scan your computers and hard drives for anything possibly related to hacking. Linux, vi, emacs counts.
There's a CIA division who will use your EyeToy to spy on any possible deviancy you may show with regards to the the PS3. Anything other than "Insert Money", "Insert Blu-ray" or "Sony Approved Accessories Only" counts.
Then there's the FBI division who'll monitor everything done on PSN - anyone who possibly cheats or sends/speaks of anything related to security, you're on the watchlist.
Don't worry, your credit card numbers are *safe*! See all the pain we make customers go through?
Yeah, it's a really good idea to blind the search-and-rescue crew with your laser.
And blind it does. During daylight, your best bet is a signal mirror that catches the sun and presents a bright, but relatively harmless flickering light at the crew. At night, the lasers can blind crew (unlike cars, aircrew dim the lights - and that nightvision is destroyed pretty quickly by a bright light suddenly appearing - hence pointing lasers at aircraft is a really bad idea - even the crappy 5mW lasers can light up a cockpit and ruin the night vision). And that's without using NVGs.
yeah, it's also a great way to ensure you don't ship international.
UPS - charges anywhere between 30% to 200%+ for a package (those are the rates I've been charged). They wanted $20 for a $10 item (TOTAL, including shipping) - I rejected it. The tax owing was $1. USPS/Canada Post would've just ignored it (because it'll cost them that much to collect $1). They also wanted $140 for a $300 item as well. The least I've been charged was $21 for $50 items. And there was the time they wanted $40 for a $50 item. Bleh. Useless, and an instant skip if I can. Hell, just a couple of those pays for a US mailing address for a year.
FedEx - OK, we're more reasonable here, as FedEx charges just $25 brokerage plus taxes. Not useful for anything under $500, but hey.
DHL - Probably the most reasonable - $8, same as expedited (express) mail.
USPS - $5 for priority and slower, $8 for express.
The US address we have is mostly for the "free shipping US" deals most places have - where you can save $20 over shipping to Canada. It only takes two UPS packages to pay it off - the Canadian shipping ($30+) plus UPS' ourtrageous brokerage charges. Hell, even *one* moderately sized order ($300) could pay it off for two years!
The problem is, most people ship UPS. FedEx/USPS are rarer. DHL is practically non-existent.
Depending on workload, 5000 sheets for $75 may be perfectly reasonable. I don't print a lot, yet the 2500 sheets for $75 Brother unit is perfectly fine. $40 for 6000 sheets is good, but if the machine costs me $2000 more, I may never make it back in supplies.
If you print a lot, yes it makes sense to consider consumables. If not, the extra cost may take years to recoup.
And there are plenty of printers with postscript-like functionality. Brother calls theirs "BR-Script3" to avoid paying Adobe the licensing fees. It's basically an implementation of PostScript3 though, and Brother has the PPD files available.
Perhaps it's Intel wanting to keep AMD alive for anti-trust reasons. They could very well continue to slaughter AMD, but is it in the best interests of Intel? If AMD dies, then Intel's going to get some serious government scrutiny. By keeping AMD (barely) alive, they ensure there's "serious competition" and can escape anti-trust scrutiny. I suppose if need be, Intel has a bunch of people who will go around and buy quantities of AMD chips in order to keep them alive - still cheaper than undergoing anti-trust investigations.
AMD's got no fabs, and their cash situation is dicey. They would love an Apple contract, but they have no capacity to fulfill it - at least without screwing themselves because there's no fab capacity for the few chips Apple buys without sacrificing the entire product line. (Intel's got plenty of spare capacity so Apple can demand special chips for them without sacrificing all the other orders).
Probably one of my biggest beefs with Android is just that. The "cloud backup" crap doesn't work (the apps I have on my Market account is missing a bunch of apps).
It's one of the things I really do like about iTunes - you connect your phone to iTunes, iTunes backs up app data and apps themselves to your hard drive.
And no, I won't trust iCloud either - as long as iTunes doesn't lose the backup capability, I'll continue to use it as a way to do local backups. (And being able to download huge apps is far better to do it on a PC and sync it over rather than try to do it on the device over WiFi... never got that bit of Android - are you expected to keep your phone on to download 1GB+ apps?)
Yeah, I know on Android I can use Titanium Backup, but geez, this is a basic function Android should have already out of the bat. My experience has shown the place where phones die is at the worst possible time.
Funny, but back in the iOS 1.x days (when rhe only apps were webapps), the jailbreakers had apps, by the dozen. Installer.app was the way (it died out and Cydia came in on iOS 2.x with the Apple App Store). They were pretty good apps, too, and things were fairly stable and robust.
The APIs did change horribly so the jailbroken apps had to be rewritten for 2.x, but 1.x was pretty solid.
It's generally considered that the popularity of native apps demonstrated by jailbreakers and Installer.app pretty much convinced Jobs that there really was a market for native apps.
Funny that.
The Xbox360 was hacked early on, but the hack only allowed you to run pirated games. All the JTAG and Loader hacks do that - you couldn't run an unsigned binary. So the only reason to have a hacked 360 was basically piracy.
There were a few hacks to allow unsigned binaries to run but those were quickly patched.
This is probably the first real unhackable hardware mod to allow unsigned binaries.
The PS3 was the opposite situation - it allowed unsigned binaries to run in a special mode (something the Xbox360 has as well now), but no piracy... and then it got blown completely open.
Well, one of the best ways to do real-world testing is to use that phone as your primary phone - make all your calls/texts/etc on it as things can crop up during that testing that you may not see by simply carrying your own phone around, using that for your daily activities and only glancing at the phone you're supposed to be testing from time to time.
And unless Apple hires a bunch of teetotallers to do their testing, part of real life involves going to bars after work. And other social places.
Plus, carriers often do their own testing as well, so they'd need a few prototypes, and chances are one of those could lose it as well.
We've had OLED TVs. Hell, Sony ended up killing it due to poor sales. Cellphones have OLED screens (though I really wonder - do they really have such poor viewing angles? Every OLED demo one I've seen goes awfully tinted (blue or red) when viewed from the side).
MP3 players have had OLED screens for years as well.
Problem is, well, large OLED screens are expensive. LG was supposed to demo a 37" one at CES a few years ago (cost - over $10K - when a 37"-odd LCD was going under $1K). And Sony's qHD OLED TV was clearanced at $1K, for a 10" screen.
I'm not sure what's going on. The ones on cellphone screens are nice head-on (I've used a coworker's Nexus S), but tilt it to the side a bit and it went all blue-tinted. Some of the in-store demos I've seen are pink or red tint (but nice head on). The Sony TV was really nice (bright and wide viewing angles), so it's not the technology, I don't think...
Of course, the Sony OLED TV also flickered like an old CRT TV (even worse I think) when it displayed white. Bleh.
Correction - running arbitrary code on a locked-down device without using the official means.
After all, the Xbox360 (and iOS devices) let you run unsigned code - it just costs $99. Then you can write your code and run it on those things "officially".
Of course, the SDKs have limitations (otherwise Microsoft can't sell dev 360s for $15k each with all the necessary maintenance fees and such), so it's still fun to see if you can do more...
Depends on which "many" we're talking about. A lot of /. folks and geeks love their Android devices and can properly secure them and examine every permission bit.
The other "many" are folk who the /. folk have to fix computers for (either as a job or "family pricing'). You know, the ones whose PCs have so much crapware running that reinstalling is necessary and the like. These folks are the ones you'll get them a console for so they don't come calling just to play every game that crosses their desk. Or they'll get one themselves so they can play games without all the technical hassles of drivers, or why their Intel Graphics won't let them play at 1920x1080 silky smooth, etc.
Basically, people want their machines to Just Work(tm). Stick disc in, start playing. Not stick disc in, oh, I need and Nviati 8829x04 with 1024TBs and 2085Googles? Well, doesn't my Intel beat all that? Or why they can't play the latest and greatest on their $200 laptop.
Jobs actually inspired the current Android UI. If you look at the state of Android in 2007 (before the iPhone was released - I think it was CES 2007) Android was more like a Blackberry - it had a chicklet keyboard, you used the "ball" or navigator to slide through apps on the non-touchscreen, etc. It basically looked like a Blackberry UI or a keyboard featurephone.
Then the G1 comes out in 2008, with touch screen, apps and everything. Indirectly, Jobs had a hand in defining Android.
That's because Google's revenue comes from selling YOU. Google has to be neutral in order to get more "you" to sell. If they alienate 10% of the internet population, that's 10% less people they can sell to advertisers.
Apple doesn't need to sell information about you - they just need to sell stuff people will buy. If more people will buy stuff where porn isn't so easy to get, that's what Apple will do.
Two different business models. One relies on people giving Google information to sell and thus having more information and more people in the tracking database means more ad sales, while the other seeks to find a market of people who can afford the latest iGadget.
And yes, it's what makes Google even worse than Facebook - at least the only information Facebook has is stuff I put up. With Google, they have web sites I visit (not just through Google Search, but through Analytics as well as Google Ads, nevermind their 1e100.net CDN), the apps I use on my Android device (AdMob powers most "free" apps), my location (if I want to use GPS), email (GMail), documents (Google Apps), videos (YouTube), etc.
Even worse - you can extricate yourself from Facebook relatively easy and all Facebook would have is the data you left behind. I think Google's got their hands pretty much entangled everywhere - heck, I don't think it's possible to browse the web without hitting a Google something or other - enough sites also rely on googleapis javascript and such.
This.
Steve Jobs has a publicity problem. It's basically at the point where the news goes wild everytime he breathes. His every action is scrutinized and criticized and commented and such 10 times over.
Now imagine how it applies should he not give anonymously. If he gave to a pro-gay-rights group, he'd have half the US population cheering him, half the population jeering him (and death threats). Ditto if it was a religious organization. Or minority group. Or whatever he honestly believes in. The act of donation would basically bring on such a wrath of coverage and commentary that really, I doubt even the charity itself would want that sort of scrutiny (especially since it often takes away from whatever goal they want to accomplish).
He gives anonymously, the charities respect that (and thankful the media doesn't go over their charity) and life goes on.
Hell, given his Spartan lifestyle (does he have a couch yet?), he may be giving a ton away - he certainly doesn't have a need for money.
It was a standard firewire port. It was one of those 6-pin standard jobs that can supply 12W of power (up to 48V, .25A. And yes, Macs have been known to fry Firewire hubs that way. 12V was more typical though).
Only on the 3rd gen did Apple switch to the Dock connector which enabled USB as well, but through a proprietary cable.
Hell, many Firewire PC cards were 6-pins (though 12V max). Many laptops came with the more common 4-pin variety which didn't supply any power. Enough that Apple supplied a 4-to-6 pin adapter.
What? The USB 3.0 spec isn't finalized yet? So what's with all those USB 3.0 devices out there?
Such a pity. The USB IF guys certainly are good at teasing us though. Harumpth. USB 3.0 Spec available for download. Especially since this group of "USB 3.0" devices doesn't exist (dated January 2010. Yes, 2010).
Yup, they're still waiting nearly 2 years after the spec's been available to show off their 2TB flash drive.