Unambiguous? Every server displays different text, I'm not even sure the prompts are the same
Every HTTP server displays different text as well. Hell, every 404 page is different, yet all HTTP clients seem to know it's a 404.
Deal is, FTP has numeric response codes. The FTP client looks at those to figure out the responses, and displays the text portion for the user so they don't have to know the FTP numeric responses.
Maybe there's people who already have Visual Studio for other work purposes and also do python stuff?
It seems unlikely they'd make it if there was nobody using python on Windows.
Honestly, it's probably Microsoft themselves using it. You may not realize it, but Perl is actually very big inside Microsoft. A ton of their scripts and other tools are done in Perl.
I'm guessing they also have a growing collection of stuff done in Python as well, so being able to maintain their toolset in Visual Studio would be a definite plus for them.
And heck, even if all you're doing is a Windows app, sometimes you need to be able to script things - build scripts, build tools, etc., so rather than try to munge together something from batchfiles, or an unholy merger of batch/PowerShell, they can also do it in Python.
It's just like Apple adding OpenScript support to their Python, Perl and Ruby runtimes, so you can control applications that respond to AppleScript from within those languages too.
That's the first thing I thought when reading the story Ã" to track unlicensed copies they would have to be able to communicate with V.i. Labs' servers. Surely even in China most enterprise networks are behind firewalls (the voluntary ones), so only the most careless companies would be caught.
If the "phone home" stuff does a simple HTTP request, it's a bit hard to block, no? Also, you're overestimating the competency of IT staff - the "firewall" they install may just be a simple Linksys special-of-the-week, if even. (It would probably be an even cheaper and crappier yumcha brand router that cost $5, and of which they really paid $2 for after negotiations and the vendor still making a profit).
Heck, the biggest reason this won't work is it makes a fundamental assumption that the computer in use is connected to the internet! The hoi polloi workers are networked, but it's just ye olde LAN, with a PC connected in the common area for internet. Executives may get a second network card so they can connect to said router and onto the internet.
Android? Costs nothing, seems to be doing pretty well in the market, backed by a company that's throwing money at it. Sounds possible.
Costs an OHA membership if you want Honeycomb on your tablet, as well as whatever terms and conditions Google imposes on your licensing of Honeycomb. Such terms include minimum hardware, compatibility requirements, and support requirements (you must promise to be able to run Ice Cream Sandwich and whatever the next revision that comes out is - 18 months of support minimum).
Of course, you can always go AOSP and release a 2.3 device (costs nothing), but we've seen how the original Galaxy Tab did. The benefit on this is well, you can release-and-forget. Just dump the source code somewhere, and if it's half-decent, the CM guys will support your tablet "for free". Maybe kick a few tablets their way and some hardware info, so for the price of a few thousand dollars, you have a community support system while you work on the next generation of tablets.
So? Does your computer suffer from that? Do other programs crash or run out of memory?
Free RAM is useless, Firefox is just addressing it and leaving it addressed for future uses. If the computer needs more RAM for other applications, it just releases it THEN, instead of leaving RAM unused.
Yeah, I really do love how Firefox is so slow, when I alt-tab to it, it looks lik enothing happens for 2 minutes or so, then pops up.
Or it can pop up instantly, but the moment I do anything like scroll or switch tabs, it stalls and even Windows gives me the "Not responding" signal.
Free RAM is useless yes, but mis-using system resources and relying on swapfiles just makes the experience painful. An SSD helps, but until it's standard in every PC so it can mask poor application behavior, it's not desirable to waste RAM.
Use as much as you need, but don't gobble more and waste it. A small working set and enough memory to do common tasks without having to swap in 500+MB of data makes firefox far speedier than it is now. It's what makes Firefox painful to use when it gets swapped out and what people complain about when they say "don't use so much RAM".
Especially when Firefox swaps in its entire address space, you use it for a few seconds then use another app that swaps stuff in (but is otherwise responsive), forcing Firefox to swap out again and take another couple of minutes to "wake up".
An attacker could cool the RAM, remove it from the running machine, place it in a second machine and boot from that instead.
This is the biggest bunch of bullshit I've ever read. This guy needs slapped.
Obviously you don't know modern RAM. DRAM needs to be refreshed a lot, but it is surprisingly stable. The longer data is held static in DRAM, the more likely it'll last between boot sessions.
I've done it to debug an OS - the OS logged to RAM, and when it crashed, I merely powercycled the board and could access the memory buffer in the bootloader. It was plain text, but it wasn't until I powered it off for 10-20 seconds did I start noticing corruption. Cooling the RAM preserves the contents longer, and if you're all prepared, it should only take a few seconds to remove all power, pop the memory out, and pop it into another computer.
It's actually a bit of a problem if you have a RAM disk as sometimes the superblocks would be valid, but the data was corrupted enough that things hung and crashed because they assumed that since the RAM disk mounted, the files are still OK. We had to wipe the RAM to fix it - it happened so damn much.
b/g/n is for weaksauces and cheap low power wireless networking (it.s 2.4GHz only). Modern laptops that aren't low end come with dual band a/b/g/n.
I don't think even the dual band cards and antennas are THAT expensive. Especially for a laptop that costs as much as Apple's.
I wonder if the Macbook Pro 17" compares. It won't on graphics (MBP has a 5750 or something), but the MBP has a nicer 1920x1200 screen... and quad core too, i think?
Also, I've never seen a 7200 RPM laptop drive before. But 320GB isn't too bad, you'd want an external for mass storage anyways.
Really? 7200RPM drives have been around forever - heck my old PowerBook has one and it dates to 2003.
And given it's a 17" laptop, it should have plenty of space for a dual-drive configuration, of which you can fit an SSD + 750GB HD quite easily. Heck, some 17" laptops are large enough to hold those fancy 12mm drives so you can do 1.5TB+1.5GB with RAID if you wanted.
It's typical for operators to run stateful TCP proxies to overcome the bandwidth-delay problem with TCP/IP. Without these proxies a lot of TCP/IP stacks have very poor performance. As far as I remember, we used 20 mins. timeout to conserve translation slots (which were limited by hardware).
Second, a lot of providers do NAT. Which should be self-explanatory.
It depends on the plan and provider, but you're absolutely right. It's what differentiates a featurephone "social networking" plan from a "blackberry data plan" from a "smartphone data plan" and a "laptop/vpn plan".
After all, if a "social networking" plan gets you on facebook, why not pay $5/month for that and tether your PC to it? Why do you have to pay the $50/month for 1GB on a "laptop" plan when your smartphone gets 5GB for $20?
It's all in the differentiation of services - the mobile network LOOKS like IP, but it isn't. Using proxies, firewalls, NAT, NATx2, etc.
If you want the freest possible Internet connectoin, you've gotta pay for it (the "VPN" tier should get you a real exposed IP, while the "laptop" tier gets you NAT+firewall typically, etc).
Someone needs to do a comprehensive study of all the tiers available and what they provide - are they NATed (and how many times)? Firewalled? Proxied (transparent or not) (transparent proxies are extremely common on smartphones - small screens don't need full-res images)? etc. What ports allow traffic (80, 443 only are common and most users won't notice).
So you just fracture the games into "gamepad" and "mouse" games, otherwise it's absurd.
No, you do it the easy way. If there's a keyboard and mouse attached to the console - the game is restricted to people playing with same. If you're using a gamepad, you're playing against people with gamepads by default, but have the option of going against people with keyboards and mice.
It's trivial to set up matchmaking like this.
And the Xbox360 does support a keyboard at least - you can use it to enter in messages and other stuff quickly, and even nagivate the UI.
My biggest issue is the whole cross-platform gaming thing. All it takes would be for some graphical or other glitch to affect one platform and not the other, and you'd have people exploiting it within a day. Sure you can patch it (PS3 users are well used to getting things patched every other day it seems), but it's still an advantage. And those are the glitches people report - cross-platform gamers may very well just keep them to themselves for pwnage.
Carrying parcels for people on aeroplanes is not the same as sharing your spare computer capacity with anyone who needs some at the time. You are not carrying anything for anyone.
Slight difference. If you're an ISP, you're like FedEx, UPS or the mail. You're carrying packages ON BEHALF of someone. The packages don't belong to the carrier any more than the ISP claims ownership of the traffic.
With TOR, you're taking a package and claiming it's yours while in transit. I.e., you are the sender or recipient. It doesn't matter if the thing inside the package contrains instructions that says to mail it to someone else - as far as anyone is concerned, that package is yours (and you received it). Short of a warrant to actually inspect the contents of the package.
That's the primary difference. Carrying a package on behalf of someone is fine. But claiming (temporary) ownership of the package is quite different.
Don't forget too that unlike the 1980s, Jobs voluntarily stepped down. In the 1980s, he was fired by Sculley (which Jobs brought on because the Apple board refused to name Jobs as CEO as Jobs was "too young to be CEO".).
Basically the executives at Apple back in the 1980s couldn't deal with Jobs' unconventional non-corporate style of management, so they fired him.
Unfortunately, Apple's basic premise is unconventional, so the mismatch between management and Apple's corporate style basically drove it into the ground.
In the meantime, Jobs was doing stuff in his style, and getting lots of management experience also, so when he returned back in 1997, he was older, wiser, and still unconventional. He also installed executives that matched the Apple style.
When Jobs was fired - it was because he was unconventional and the executives couldn't handle that. When Jobs stepped down, the executives were replaced with those he personally felt matched with the Apple.
Will Apple fail again? Depends on how the executives work out. If they replace Jobs' execs with more traditional corporate ones, definitely. If they look for the rare ones willing to savagely jettison product lines, it should continue to be strong.
The reason Apple is unconventional? First, Jobs is a control freak and if he doesn't like something, he makes it well known (while Bill Gates wouldn't quite berate an employee like Jobs, Gates does let his disappointment show). Next, Jobs isn't afraid if something will impact existing product lines - knowing that full well, if Apple doesn't do it, somebody else will (the bread and butter products have to change and evolve). E.g., iPods are nearly dead because of cellphones - it means Apple just has to invent something new, like a better smartphone. The iPad has impacted their Mac sales as well.
That's what ideologically-driven governments do. All of them. In the name of "social equality", God, or "global warming", it's the same.
This is wise. And I appreciate that you showed that all sides of the political spectrum act the same if they get too much power. More Americans need to realize this.
It all boils down to the same old saying, "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely".
Governments are power. Ideological ones (i.e., all of them - at a minimum, a view on how they believe they should govern) will get corrupted striving for their ideologies.
There is no way to prevent it - other than having a mechanism to recognize corruption and replace it. Sort of how the US is supposed to be set up before all the checks and balances got messed up by the corrupting influence of money (which unfortunately, corrupted it all).
No, that $150M Microsoft invested in Apple was purely a confidence move. It basically told investors "Apple is here to stay".
Apple didn't the money ($150M? They still had at least $10B in the bank). But the public needed to see that Microsoft was investing in a "dying platform". They tossed money in (and got double back a few years later when they cashed out), but more importantly, they committed development resources.
Investors saw the cash as "Apple can't be dying if Microsoft was willing to put up money", and developers saw the Office and IE commitment as "the two biggest apps on the planet - for Mac!".
Really a brilliant business maneuver - the money was a lot to most people, but for Apple it barely even registered on the stockholder's reports and was barely needed.
Business is a confidence game, and Apple wasn't inspiring any. By getting Microsoft to make a trivial investment, the confidence in Apple skyrocketed.
Hrm, and didn't this start out as simply because Linux needed a way to dial in and get his usenet fix? It started out as a terminal emulator (multithreaded for performance), then when he accidentally "dialed" his hard drive, added permissions and other stuff.
A bit more spit and polish led to Linux 0.1. All because Linux wanted to read his usenet.
The default Android Photo Gallery application does not do this, but Samsung customized the version included on its phones with TouchWiz (hence the Nexus S does not infringe and is not part of the ban or the Tab 10.1 that uses stock Android too) to replicate this functionality of iOS.
In other words, Apple got Samsung to do what Android users could not. Get rid of TouchWiz.
There would be much rejoicing in the Android world when things liek TouchWiz, MOTOBLUR, HTC Sense and other crap disappear.
Perhaps Apple can sue to keep carriers from preloading crap on the phones too?
They already have that. It's called the PlayStation Store(tm).
Of course, to develop for the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Store requires a fair bit more work and more money and more restrictions than the Apple App Store. (You think the Apple App Store is bad and controlling? Try developing for consoles...).
However, right now only Microsoft has something a bit more open than the Apple App Store in the Xbox Live Indie arcade.
It seems Facebook has realized that Google has dropped the ball on privacy with that real name fiasco. Which seems to be getting even worse. Today when logging into Google+ I got this:
It's not a new requirement. It's actually a Google Account requirement. It's so if your account gets locked out, there are alternate ways to contact you to unlock your account.
Here, Google wants your cellphone number so they can text you a password to recover your account.
It applies to all Google accounts - Gmail, Apps, Android Market, YouTube, and G+.
The biggest problem I have with G+ is well, Google is aggregating a bit TOO much information. At least Facebook's walled garden means the information they sell is whatever you put on Facebook and whatever you use your Facebook login for.
With Google, the information they have is far more - your gmail, your apps, your docs, your google accoutn logins, youtube videos, web searches, etc. Plus Google owns doubleclick and has their text ads, so really, Google knows far more about you than what you've willingly given it. And don't forget apps - Android and some iPhone apps use AdMob - owned by Google.
Facebook knows what I voluntarily gave it. Google knows what I voluntarily gate it on G+, and what I involulntarily gave it on everything else.
Overkill slightly? Power dynamic range from single photon starlight to laser eye damage is only about 100 dB... You can't buy 64 bit A/D converters, unless you're talking about some kind of marketing thing where you have 4 16 bit A/D in the same box. LCD monitors are very low contrast, just barely above 20 dB, paper and ink's only about 10 dB.
There does not seem to be a practical input or output technology that can use more than 16 bits. 8 bits is probably too low. I would advocate for 16 bit, but 32 is as pointless as using scientific notation for each channel.
There exists 32-bit DSPs, even though they operate on 16-bit information (e.g., audio).
The reason is not dynamic range, it's to prevent early saturation and large error accumulation during processing. The 2D equivalent is all the image manipulation. Basically you're keeping extra significant figures during the calculations that you throw out when you're done. The purpose is to ensure the errors don't accumulate as there are many operations where you can lose 1 or 2 bits of operation, and if you repeatedly do it, you can rapidly lose dynamic range as the effective bits left gets smaller and smaller.
If you want, you can think of it as currency - you often keep track of fractions of a cent while doing calculations, even though the final output has to be rounded to a penny. By keeping track of fractions, you're less likely to end up accumulating huge errors that can lead to many pennies in the end.
Is there any good reason why one would want to use HTML5 at all? I mean, as a user? So far it all seems to be negative - a load of giving away user control and sovereignty over your own system, packaged as "Wow, cool new feature".
As opposed to now, where the user doesn't have control over Flash? Sure Adobe's FINALLY added the ability to clear Flash cookies - after how many years of every browser supporting it?
If you're a geek, HTML5 lets you have fine control over everything - if you don't want to run Javascript from a specific domain, you don't have to. If you want to block a site from leaving a cookie, you can (Flash is particularly bad here, as it's either "all cookies", "no cookies" or ask.).
WIth Flash, you're ceding control to a third party plugin which can do anything it wants - browser settings be damned. With HTML5, the browser is the ultimate authority of what can and cannot be done. If you're a control freak, it's a good option to have.
And heck, a browser can clear cookies and offline cached data after quitting. Can't really say the same for Flash (and I believe to clear cookies requires visiting Adobe's page for some reason).
believe it's 14 years for a design and 20 years for functionality
5 for design, actually - so yes, in 2006 you could make an MP3 player that looked like the original iPod (but only in looks - functionality is covered by a different set of patents). Heck, it was speculated back then if the iPod competitors would look like the original iPod.
And patent law's really strange enough - it's 20 years after filing, or 17 years after approval, depending on when the patent was actually filed. We're coming to the end of that odd period (it happened around 1993 or so...).
Android falls on it's face with tablet specific apps simply because it has been around a short time compared to the iPad. Maybe in 2 years when the application base builds up I'll look at what android tablets are doing once more, but then I'll have to abandon all the software I bought for the iPad and re-buy all my software again.
That's not an excuse. I think the iPad *shipped* with more ipad-specific (and iphone/ipad "universal") apps than Honeycomb has now. And that was basically 5 months - from January 2010 (iPad announced) to April/May (iPad released). And for the majority of these 1000 apps or so, the developers had NO access to iPad beta hardware to test their apps. They only saw their apps running on iPad for the first time on release day.
Now, Android had an advantage that due to diversity, apps have to be scalable (no "2x" mode), but apps that took advantage of the extra space are still few and far between.
And that's what I don't get. All Jobs did in January 2010 was release the damn SDK. Surely Google knows this - and yet Honeycomb gets put out with such pitiful offerings. Given how enthusiastic the Android community is (especially at trying to out-do Apple), you'd think they'd take any opportunity to try to outshine Apple and do specific apps, rather than relying on "oh it'll be OK and run like a really large phone app".
Large developers I can undrestand - they get most of their money (usually) from iOS app sales. But given the majority of Android apps are free, is the "it's not Apple" and "open app store" values such a minority to not bother taking up the bit of extra work required to make it truly tablet-sized?
The client thing, meh. If people are mucking around in command line FTP programs they're savvy enough to download one; if they're using a GUI an awful lot of them have SFTP support these days, including FileZilla (free/Free). I guess I could see an argument if they're just entering an FTP URL into their Explorer window.
Depending on the reason for FTP, they could just as well use Internet Explorer for FTP (or Firefox or whatever), because it comes standard. Or map the FTP to a drive on their PC (Windows supports mapping WebDAV and FTP sites to drives) so accessing files is the same as accessing a normal disk.
And yeah, there's tons of FTP clients, but try to explain how to use one of those SFTP things to a secretary who just wants to upload the nightly data to the server before she leaves. (A lot of routine things aren't scripted - and some people get pretty damn angry if you try to help them out by automating part of their jobs).
FTP is sweet and simple and works out of the box - just click a link and you're done. Plus a lot of corporate firewalls may only allow 21, 80 and 443 through (FTP, HTTP, HTTPS) - all other ports are blocked. It's why VPN software that works over HTTPS is fairly popular - it'll work where HTTPS works.
I'm not sure abusively litigious behavior is tied to failure. Apple, for example.
Funny thing is, Apple is doing it wrong, literally. No patent troll sues to keep a product off the market - you have to wait until the product is wildly successful, perhaps close to the end of the patent term, THEN you sue for massive damages. Plus, Apple is filing everywhere but East Texas, sheesh. Everyone knows you use East Texas to make life easy.
Suing to keep a product off the market means you give up whatever profits you could've made had that product been successful.
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Every HTTP server displays different text as well. Hell, every 404 page is different, yet all HTTP clients seem to know it's a 404.
Deal is, FTP has numeric response codes. The FTP client looks at those to figure out the responses, and displays the text portion for the user so they don't have to know the FTP numeric responses.
Honestly, it's probably Microsoft themselves using it. You may not realize it, but Perl is actually very big inside Microsoft. A ton of their scripts and other tools are done in Perl.
I'm guessing they also have a growing collection of stuff done in Python as well, so being able to maintain their toolset in Visual Studio would be a definite plus for them.
And heck, even if all you're doing is a Windows app, sometimes you need to be able to script things - build scripts, build tools, etc., so rather than try to munge together something from batchfiles, or an unholy merger of batch/PowerShell, they can also do it in Python.
It's just like Apple adding OpenScript support to their Python, Perl and Ruby runtimes, so you can control applications that respond to AppleScript from within those languages too.
If the "phone home" stuff does a simple HTTP request, it's a bit hard to block, no? Also, you're overestimating the competency of IT staff - the "firewall" they install may just be a simple Linksys special-of-the-week, if even. (It would probably be an even cheaper and crappier yumcha brand router that cost $5, and of which they really paid $2 for after negotiations and the vendor still making a profit).
Heck, the biggest reason this won't work is it makes a fundamental assumption that the computer in use is connected to the internet! The hoi polloi workers are networked, but it's just ye olde LAN, with a PC connected in the common area for internet. Executives may get a second network card so they can connect to said router and onto the internet.
Costs an OHA membership if you want Honeycomb on your tablet, as well as whatever terms and conditions Google imposes on your licensing of Honeycomb. Such terms include minimum hardware, compatibility requirements, and support requirements (you must promise to be able to run Ice Cream Sandwich and whatever the next revision that comes out is - 18 months of support minimum).
Of course, you can always go AOSP and release a 2.3 device (costs nothing), but we've seen how the original Galaxy Tab did. The benefit on this is well, you can release-and-forget. Just dump the source code somewhere, and if it's half-decent, the CM guys will support your tablet "for free". Maybe kick a few tablets their way and some hardware info, so for the price of a few thousand dollars, you have a community support system while you work on the next generation of tablets.
Yeah, I really do love how Firefox is so slow, when I alt-tab to it, it looks lik enothing happens for 2 minutes or so, then pops up.
Or it can pop up instantly, but the moment I do anything like scroll or switch tabs, it stalls and even Windows gives me the "Not responding" signal.
Free RAM is useless yes, but mis-using system resources and relying on swapfiles just makes the experience painful. An SSD helps, but until it's standard in every PC so it can mask poor application behavior, it's not desirable to waste RAM.
Use as much as you need, but don't gobble more and waste it. A small working set and enough memory to do common tasks without having to swap in 500+MB of data makes firefox far speedier than it is now. It's what makes Firefox painful to use when it gets swapped out and what people complain about when they say "don't use so much RAM".
Especially when Firefox swaps in its entire address space, you use it for a few seconds then use another app that swaps stuff in (but is otherwise responsive), forcing Firefox to swap out again and take another couple of minutes to "wake up".
Obviously you don't know modern RAM. DRAM needs to be refreshed a lot, but it is surprisingly stable. The longer data is held static in DRAM, the more likely it'll last between boot sessions.
I've done it to debug an OS - the OS logged to RAM, and when it crashed, I merely powercycled the board and could access the memory buffer in the bootloader. It was plain text, but it wasn't until I powered it off for 10-20 seconds did I start noticing corruption. Cooling the RAM preserves the contents longer, and if you're all prepared, it should only take a few seconds to remove all power, pop the memory out, and pop it into another computer.
It's actually a bit of a problem if you have a RAM disk as sometimes the superblocks would be valid, but the data was corrupted enough that things hung and crashed because they assumed that since the RAM disk mounted, the files are still OK. We had to wipe the RAM to fix it - it happened so damn much.
You missed one. 802.11 b/g/n. WTF?
b/g/n is for weaksauces and cheap low power wireless networking (it.s 2.4GHz only). Modern laptops that aren't low end come with dual band a/b/g/n.
I don't think even the dual band cards and antennas are THAT expensive. Especially for a laptop that costs as much as Apple's.
I wonder if the Macbook Pro 17" compares. It won't on graphics (MBP has a 5750 or something), but the MBP has a nicer 1920x1200 screen... and quad core too, i think?
Really? 7200RPM drives have been around forever - heck my old PowerBook has one and it dates to 2003.
And given it's a 17" laptop, it should have plenty of space for a dual-drive configuration, of which you can fit an SSD + 750GB HD quite easily. Heck, some 17" laptops are large enough to hold those fancy 12mm drives so you can do 1.5TB+1.5GB with RAID if you wanted.
It depends on the plan and provider, but you're absolutely right. It's what differentiates a featurephone "social networking" plan from a "blackberry data plan" from a "smartphone data plan" and a "laptop/vpn plan".
After all, if a "social networking" plan gets you on facebook, why not pay $5/month for that and tether your PC to it? Why do you have to pay the $50/month for 1GB on a "laptop" plan when your smartphone gets 5GB for $20?
It's all in the differentiation of services - the mobile network LOOKS like IP, but it isn't. Using proxies, firewalls, NAT, NATx2, etc.
If you want the freest possible Internet connectoin, you've gotta pay for it (the "VPN" tier should get you a real exposed IP, while the "laptop" tier gets you NAT+firewall typically, etc).
Someone needs to do a comprehensive study of all the tiers available and what they provide - are they NATed (and how many times)? Firewalled? Proxied (transparent or not) (transparent proxies are extremely common on smartphones - small screens don't need full-res images)? etc. What ports allow traffic (80, 443 only are common and most users won't notice).
No, you do it the easy way. If there's a keyboard and mouse attached to the console - the game is restricted to people playing with same. If you're using a gamepad, you're playing against people with gamepads by default, but have the option of going against people with keyboards and mice.
It's trivial to set up matchmaking like this.
And the Xbox360 does support a keyboard at least - you can use it to enter in messages and other stuff quickly, and even nagivate the UI.
My biggest issue is the whole cross-platform gaming thing. All it takes would be for some graphical or other glitch to affect one platform and not the other, and you'd have people exploiting it within a day. Sure you can patch it (PS3 users are well used to getting things patched every other day it seems), but it's still an advantage. And those are the glitches people report - cross-platform gamers may very well just keep them to themselves for pwnage.
Slight difference. If you're an ISP, you're like FedEx, UPS or the mail. You're carrying packages ON BEHALF of someone. The packages don't belong to the carrier any more than the ISP claims ownership of the traffic.
With TOR, you're taking a package and claiming it's yours while in transit. I.e., you are the sender or recipient. It doesn't matter if the thing inside the package contrains instructions that says to mail it to someone else - as far as anyone is concerned, that package is yours (and you received it). Short of a warrant to actually inspect the contents of the package.
That's the primary difference. Carrying a package on behalf of someone is fine. But claiming (temporary) ownership of the package is quite different.
Don't forget too that unlike the 1980s, Jobs voluntarily stepped down. In the 1980s, he was fired by Sculley (which Jobs brought on because the Apple board refused to name Jobs as CEO as Jobs was "too young to be CEO".).
Basically the executives at Apple back in the 1980s couldn't deal with Jobs' unconventional non-corporate style of management, so they fired him.
Unfortunately, Apple's basic premise is unconventional, so the mismatch between management and Apple's corporate style basically drove it into the ground.
In the meantime, Jobs was doing stuff in his style, and getting lots of management experience also, so when he returned back in 1997, he was older, wiser, and still unconventional. He also installed executives that matched the Apple style.
When Jobs was fired - it was because he was unconventional and the executives couldn't handle that. When Jobs stepped down, the executives were replaced with those he personally felt matched with the Apple.
Will Apple fail again? Depends on how the executives work out. If they replace Jobs' execs with more traditional corporate ones, definitely. If they look for the rare ones willing to savagely jettison product lines, it should continue to be strong.
The reason Apple is unconventional? First, Jobs is a control freak and if he doesn't like something, he makes it well known (while Bill Gates wouldn't quite berate an employee like Jobs, Gates does let his disappointment show). Next, Jobs isn't afraid if something will impact existing product lines - knowing that full well, if Apple doesn't do it, somebody else will (the bread and butter products have to change and evolve). E.g., iPods are nearly dead because of cellphones - it means Apple just has to invent something new, like a better smartphone. The iPad has impacted their Mac sales as well.
It all boils down to the same old saying, "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely".
Governments are power. Ideological ones (i.e., all of them - at a minimum, a view on how they believe they should govern) will get corrupted striving for their ideologies.
There is no way to prevent it - other than having a mechanism to recognize corruption and replace it. Sort of how the US is supposed to be set up before all the checks and balances got messed up by the corrupting influence of money (which unfortunately, corrupted it all).
No, that $150M Microsoft invested in Apple was purely a confidence move. It basically told investors "Apple is here to stay".
Apple didn't the money ($150M? They still had at least $10B in the bank). But the public needed to see that Microsoft was investing in a "dying platform". They tossed money in (and got double back a few years later when they cashed out), but more importantly, they committed development resources.
Investors saw the cash as "Apple can't be dying if Microsoft was willing to put up money", and developers saw the Office and IE commitment as "the two biggest apps on the planet - for Mac!".
Really a brilliant business maneuver - the money was a lot to most people, but for Apple it barely even registered on the stockholder's reports and was barely needed.
Business is a confidence game, and Apple wasn't inspiring any. By getting Microsoft to make a trivial investment, the confidence in Apple skyrocketed.
Hrm, and didn't this start out as simply because Linux needed a way to dial in and get his usenet fix? It started out as a terminal emulator (multithreaded for performance), then when he accidentally "dialed" his hard drive, added permissions and other stuff.
A bit more spit and polish led to Linux 0.1. All because Linux wanted to read his usenet.
In other words, Apple got Samsung to do what Android users could not. Get rid of TouchWiz.
There would be much rejoicing in the Android world when things liek TouchWiz, MOTOBLUR, HTC Sense and other crap disappear.
Perhaps Apple can sue to keep carriers from preloading crap on the phones too?
They already have that. It's called the PlayStation Store(tm).
Of course, to develop for the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Store requires a fair bit more work and more money and more restrictions than the Apple App Store. (You think the Apple App Store is bad and controlling? Try developing for consoles...).
However, right now only Microsoft has something a bit more open than the Apple App Store in the Xbox Live Indie arcade.
It's not a new requirement. It's actually a Google Account requirement. It's so if your account gets locked out, there are alternate ways to contact you to unlock your account.
Here, Google wants your cellphone number so they can text you a password to recover your account.
It applies to all Google accounts - Gmail, Apps, Android Market, YouTube, and G+.
The biggest problem I have with G+ is well, Google is aggregating a bit TOO much information. At least Facebook's walled garden means the information they sell is whatever you put on Facebook and whatever you use your Facebook login for.
With Google, the information they have is far more - your gmail, your apps, your docs, your google accoutn logins, youtube videos, web searches, etc. Plus Google owns doubleclick and has their text ads, so really, Google knows far more about you than what you've willingly given it. And don't forget apps - Android and some iPhone apps use AdMob - owned by Google.
Facebook knows what I voluntarily gave it. Google knows what I voluntarily gate it on G+, and what I involulntarily gave it on everything else.
There exists 32-bit DSPs, even though they operate on 16-bit information (e.g., audio).
The reason is not dynamic range, it's to prevent early saturation and large error accumulation during processing. The 2D equivalent is all the image manipulation. Basically you're keeping extra significant figures during the calculations that you throw out when you're done. The purpose is to ensure the errors don't accumulate as there are many operations where you can lose 1 or 2 bits of operation, and if you repeatedly do it, you can rapidly lose dynamic range as the effective bits left gets smaller and smaller.
If you want, you can think of it as currency - you often keep track of fractions of a cent while doing calculations, even though the final output has to be rounded to a penny. By keeping track of fractions, you're less likely to end up accumulating huge errors that can lead to many pennies in the end.
As opposed to now, where the user doesn't have control over Flash? Sure Adobe's FINALLY added the ability to clear Flash cookies - after how many years of every browser supporting it?
If you're a geek, HTML5 lets you have fine control over everything - if you don't want to run Javascript from a specific domain, you don't have to. If you want to block a site from leaving a cookie, you can (Flash is particularly bad here, as it's either "all cookies", "no cookies" or ask.).
WIth Flash, you're ceding control to a third party plugin which can do anything it wants - browser settings be damned. With HTML5, the browser is the ultimate authority of what can and cannot be done. If you're a control freak, it's a good option to have.
And heck, a browser can clear cookies and offline cached data after quitting. Can't really say the same for Flash (and I believe to clear cookies requires visiting Adobe's page for some reason).
5 for design, actually - so yes, in 2006 you could make an MP3 player that looked like the original iPod (but only in looks - functionality is covered by a different set of patents). Heck, it was speculated back then if the iPod competitors would look like the original iPod.
And patent law's really strange enough - it's 20 years after filing, or 17 years after approval, depending on when the patent was actually filed. We're coming to the end of that odd period (it happened around 1993 or so...).
That's not an excuse. I think the iPad *shipped* with more ipad-specific (and iphone/ipad "universal") apps than Honeycomb has now. And that was basically 5 months - from January 2010 (iPad announced) to April/May (iPad released). And for the majority of these 1000 apps or so, the developers had NO access to iPad beta hardware to test their apps. They only saw their apps running on iPad for the first time on release day.
Now, Android had an advantage that due to diversity, apps have to be scalable (no "2x" mode), but apps that took advantage of the extra space are still few and far between.
And that's what I don't get. All Jobs did in January 2010 was release the damn SDK. Surely Google knows this - and yet Honeycomb gets put out with such pitiful offerings. Given how enthusiastic the Android community is (especially at trying to out-do Apple), you'd think they'd take any opportunity to try to outshine Apple and do specific apps, rather than relying on "oh it'll be OK and run like a really large phone app".
Large developers I can undrestand - they get most of their money (usually) from iOS app sales. But given the majority of Android apps are free, is the "it's not Apple" and "open app store" values such a minority to not bother taking up the bit of extra work required to make it truly tablet-sized?
Depending on the reason for FTP, they could just as well use Internet Explorer for FTP (or Firefox or whatever), because it comes standard. Or map the FTP to a drive on their PC (Windows supports mapping WebDAV and FTP sites to drives) so accessing files is the same as accessing a normal disk.
And yeah, there's tons of FTP clients, but try to explain how to use one of those SFTP things to a secretary who just wants to upload the nightly data to the server before she leaves. (A lot of routine things aren't scripted - and some people get pretty damn angry if you try to help them out by automating part of their jobs).
FTP is sweet and simple and works out of the box - just click a link and you're done. Plus a lot of corporate firewalls may only allow 21, 80 and 443 through (FTP, HTTP, HTTPS) - all other ports are blocked. It's why VPN software that works over HTTPS is fairly popular - it'll work where HTTPS works.
Funny thing is, Apple is doing it wrong, literally. No patent troll sues to keep a product off the market - you have to wait until the product is wildly successful, perhaps close to the end of the patent term, THEN you sue for massive damages. Plus, Apple is filing everywhere but East Texas, sheesh. Everyone knows you use East Texas to make life easy.
Suing to keep a product off the market means you give up whatever profits you could've made had that product been successful.