I believe the iPod Touch requires the client app of iTunes to sync, backup, and update the device, but it does not require an Apple ID or connection to the iTunes online store. You won't be able to buy music or apps without that, but if you're ok with that, I believe you can use the iPod Touch without sending any personal info to Apple.
You have to associate the iPod Touch with an iTunes account, actually. But there's nothing to say you can't create a fake account with fake information. And you can buy apps and music still if you buy iTunes cards with cash (they're going for 20% off at times - I'm seeing $10 off $50 card offers retail!), again, though a fake iTunes account.
Which one will be able to be upgraded to Honeycomb? I wouldn't buy an Android tablet before their tablet version of software became available, regardless of the hardware. Are there any upgrade paths that *either* vendor (Dell or Samsung) has specified? I feel some early adopters will be left out in the cold.
The best answer is "if it didn't come with Honeycomb, don't assume it will".
Buy it for what it has now, not what it might have. After all, there are tons of people who were promised upgrades only to be left stranded, so it's best to assume that what you buy now is what you're stuck with.
Most likely you'll be able to get Honeycomb through hacks at the very least, but buying now to get a future upgrade is a losing proposition. Best to wait for the Honeycomb tablets to come first.
This is especially so when you buy Android devices that come with 1.6 firmware, too.
I'm starting to think I should try modifying an Ubuntu live DVD so it's preconfigured to ignore HDD and block out everything but my bank. I'd still have to save files to USB though.
Anyone have experience with Rapport? Is it some lightweight thing you just run when you want to access internet banking or is it some nuisance running all the time?
Or, why not just get a netbook, completely erase the hard drive and install your favorite Linux? Lock it down, image it and use it only for banking.
Banking only needs a little CPU power, and netbooks are cheap and disposable so you can use it just for banking only. Shut it down when you're done and that's it. That way your main PC doesn't have to be rebooted continually (it gets old, fast!). You just boot up the netbook, do your banking, then shut it down and put it back on the shelf.
But the moment you let your investor know about your invention, he can go and patent it.
This is where the US patent system is also odd in that it gives a year to file after public disclosure.
In everywhere else in the world, if you show it to the public (either via sale, or to investors or other means like publishing it) it's considered unpatentable at that point. You have to apply for your patent prior to showing it off.
So if it's first-to-file without the year grace, your investors can't go and patent it because it's become public at that point. So usually what happens is the investor is held to to NDAs which mean they can't make it public (patenting is considered making it public - it's the whole point of patents over just keeping a trade secret).
And technically, only the inventors (the ones who reduced it to practice) owns the patent - if the investor merely contributed the resources, they aren't the inventor and their name can't go on the patent. So the inventor owns the patent, and usually the investor gets a license to use that patent as a condition for the investment.
Yeah. If Egypt had turned off all their overseas connections, mass 'net disruptions would've occurred (remember when those undersea cables kept getting severed?).
Instead, Egypt just killed routing for packets destined to Egypt - packets transiting through Egypt were unmolested and send on their merry way. Otherwise significant amounts of connectivity would be lost and there would be far more political pressure on Egypt to restore connectivity.
If the US did the same, it'll be easier since a good chunk of traffic terminates in the US, so the difference between cutting off all outside links versus just blackholing all packets destined for the US is far smaller. And while Canadian/Mexican/Central and South America traffic would be heavily disrupted, I'd guess an overwhelming majority of packets terminate in the US so the difference would be minimal. Though, someone will have to explain to me how the kill switch for the US won't impact US businesses - VoIP/email/etc. are fairly important business uses of the Internet and I'm sure a number of companies would practically shut down...
Yeah, I seem to get a bunch of random addresses as well - the best one yet was a bunch of russian-sounding usernames with russian emails.
The oddest ones I've gotten are emails with letters truncated off - that I don't know. E.g., I used to have afpcclog @ mydomain, and I started getting emails of fpcclog, with the missing 'a'.
haha, but in all seriousness, it actually reads "Tim Cook".
I would agree. It's no secret that the last time Tim took over while Steve was having his operation. I would no doubt believe Steve has groomed Tim to actually take over.
And then there's the other Steve who while not officially on the Apple payroll (I don't think - maybe he gets a token amount?), is also as much a part of Apple as Jobs is. I'm talking about Wozniak, and while I'm sure the two Steves disagree on a lot of things, Woz would probably be hired as the public figurehead (Tim is a bit more private and reserved) to replace Jobs at keynotes and such.
Tim has handled a lot of products already, and may not be as explosive as Jobs or as public, but I'm sure Woz would fit right in.
I'm surprised that the shareholders are demanding it when the next in line is so plainly obvious. And I'm sure Jobs has also been grooming others for marketing purposes - a lot of keynotes feature more than just Jobs, especially during the demos.
Thanks you! It is good to see a comment that is more sophisticated then the "all UBB are bad" comments I'm seeing in much of the Canadian activism.
It is a serious problem that the current, very low, usage caps were put in place to prevent services such as Netflix from effectively competing with the incumbents TV services, but that doesn't mean we should get rid of UBB entirely.
We need either (a) real competition, which is not going to happen in Canadian telecom as the current alignment is too entrenched, or (b) government mandated caps that are much higher then the current ones.
If the ISPs were in it because the networks have issues, they should have no issues, and by default, with a hard cap. Once you reach it, you're disconnected.
The problem is, the UBB policies are like cellphone policies - you don't know the true damage until the bill comes, and by then, instead of the $200 cable bill, it's suddenly $500. Or more. (Remember all those people with $18,000+ phone bills?).
Make it a hard cap and less people would complain because if they go over, they go over and have to seek out alternatives (like upgrade their plans and be careful).
And also, why am I capped on speed? I'm paying by the byte, I should get the maximum speed that the network can give me due to technical limitations. I pay for power and water, and I can use as much as the breaker box and water pipes can give me. If you want to charge me by the byte, give me the 25Mbps+ the hardware can give me.
Also, I want a standalone meter - not one that I have to load up on my web browser (using my cap, and to which you'll load up with megabytes of ads and other crap, which also use up quota). Give me a standalone box, sealed, certified, and tested by NIST (US) or Industry Canada/Measurement Canada, like my water and electric meters and anything else I pay for by quantity. That way I can monitor my usage by looking at its screen, like I do with my water, electric and gas meters.
Right now it's a fox guarding the henhouse thing - they say you used 200GB this month? Well, their numbers are the value that counts. Oh, you're going to count the PHY headers in the byte counts as well (not just Ethernet headers - but DOCSIS and ADSL packet headers...).
UBB is a good idea, no doubt, but profit seeking shouldn't be its primary goal.
That's exactly the problem. The vast majority of home users just want the Internet to "just work" - and if you want to transition them to IPv6, you need to basically offer a box they can replace their existing Linksys with.
IPv6 is a pain to deal with because it changes a lot. Now try telling your mom how to differentiate between the 2 IPv6 addresses she'll have on her PC (link-local and the routable one), when before she just handled that 192.168.1.xxx one and everything worked.
And when my ISP decides to give me a new prefix, the IPv6 devices on my network also have their IPs changed - which is a severe PITA - what, we expect everyone to set up a DNS server? Or I assign them a THIRD IPv6 address (FC00::/64 is the private range) so I can always refer to my router as FC00::1, my NAS appliance as FC00::0101, etc?
Management headaches - you shouldn't need to be a network engineer just so you can share your internet with everyone else in your family.
Easy deployment of IPv6 comes with transparency. Offer a box they can replace their existing firewall/NAT router and most enterprises, businesses and home users can continue using the Internet the way they always have and they'll stop caring and we'd have moved to IPv6 years ago.
If we estimate 220 working days a year this means he makes more than 132,000 a year. Seems like either he makes quite a bit or he needs to think bigger. Get 10 people all doing this and have him take 50% of the profits.
That's if you do it consistently and always.
Fact is, most lotto dealers only have one, maybe two of those cards on display, and they will be highly pissed off if you asked to look at their roll and cherry picked the right cards, especially since this can take many minutes.
So in reality, you'll be hitting many lotto dealers daily in an attempt to find a few cards that have potential winners, and if you become predictable, the retailers may begin to recognize you.
So now you're driving all over town hitting every lotto retailer trying to find a good ticket, all that legwork and driving (gas, parking, etc) will start adding up. Plus, retailers might not like it should you go to their counter, spend a minute looking at their cards and leaving, especially if they're particularly busy (and imagine you're behind that guy in line who spends a minute with the cashier and doesn't buy anything).
It's a lot of work for rather low returns after all the extra expenses you've just incurred plus the whole a**hole factor of holding the line up while you see if there's a potential winner and leave empty handed.
And then, when the game is over (the campaigns only last a few months), it's all over. The trick only works on one specific game - you can't apply it to any lotto game in the case - only that game and maybe similar ones.
I can see why it isn't worth it. Hell, the lottery corporation probably will let the campaign finish off since the vulnerable game will be gone soon as all the tickets get bought out by people applying the trick.
The only interesting thing, is he found a way to break the game that the company producing the games has to now work around.
As opposed to the patent unknown of WebM. Yeah, I'm sure people will jump right on that bandwagon!
A major worry actually given how the patent system is. Right now we think WebM is patent free (and it would be nice if it was - c'mon Google, don't you trust your engineers?), but you can bet everyone is quietly sitting on their patents and seeing where this WebM thing is leading. If it proves successful, you strike. But never before - let it be established and essential, then you strike so everyone has no choice but license your patent (or fight you).
That's a problem, these submarine patents.
And those of you claiming that you're in a software-patent free-zone, well, then you're technically in the clear about using h.264 as well since its patents wouldn't be valid, either.
Damned if you do (h.264 patents are recognized and that means WebM is also vulnerable), and damned if you don't (if h.264 patents aren't recognized, then yes, WebM is free, but so is h.264).
It's also a reason why WebM's spec is really source code - because it's close to h.264, alternative implementations may infringe on h.264 (or you use your already-paid-for h.264 licenses...).
It's private if you aren't my friend and I only allow friends to see.
And what is it if your friends decide to let the world see?
That's why Facebook privacy is non-existent - even if you make your profile friends only, news and other things can spread quite easily as people re-post news and photos and such. Post something big like getting married or having a baby and you'll find your news has spread to people 3 connections away simply as people spread the news far and wide.
Even innocent news like going on vacation gets spread inadvertently - "Can't wait for spring break - Hawaii here I come!" turns into "OMG, I can't believe Xxxxx is going to Hawaii for spring break! He's so lucky!" by one of your friend's wall posts (which may not be private).
And photos too - all it takes is a friend of a friend asking to see some photos you posted...
Ugh, you're not kidding. Amusingly the worst spammers in my area are the derelicts selling VW parts nobody wants at prices nobody can afford or will pay even if they can. They repost all their same shit twice a week and it clogs my google reader.
Twice a week isn't bad. Some of the worst ones do it daily or more often, enough to flood the useful postings off and make it impossible to find without having to dredge through the crap.
I believe it's done because it's really hard to filter out - it is a classified site, after all, so people do go through expecting to buy or sell stuff. Your wheat is my chaff and vice-versa. And there's no real solution to it either - there'll be people who are legitimately affected by any policies (e.g., post limits per day), and comparing by similarity just makes it harder to sell for everyone.
And that doesn't include those who post too all the surrounding areas that are an hour away...
Happened here in Canada as well with a program called BarWatch.
It was, interestingly enough, quite successful that bars in the surrounding areas started picking it up (and the privacy commissioner had to be involved). It was started by a small group of bars in downtown Vancouver and spread out.
Turns out all the seedier characters simply left for bars not in the program, and those in the program saw their business improve as people who were too scared to enter said bars (due to said characters) started coming in droves and improving business.
There's still a few not in the program (it's not mandatory and a bar can choose if they want it or not) - probably making a good buck because they can charge those who can't get into the other bars a nice cover charge and having higher prices.
What I find interesting is that despite essentially doubling their iPhone sales since the middle of 2010, Apple is now already a distant second to Android in terms of sales and smartphone market share. This situation is especially remarkable when you consider where Android was 2 or even 1 year ago.
Which is where Apple wants to be - in the low-volume high-profit arena. They're letting LG, Samsung, ZTE, etc. cut each other's throats while they ride the profit wave.
See that little Apple slice in the marketshare segment? Then see that HUGE Apple slice in the profit segment? And the moderate slice in the sales?
Apple doesn't care about selling "most" - it's profit they're after, and it seems that sure, Androids ship more than iPhones, but they're really eating away at each other profit-wise.
This just in - people still make vinyl records, and people buy them because (they think) vinyl records sound better than any other recording medium.
You may scoff, but while it was highly debatable in the 80s and mid-90s, these days it's likely to be on the truer side than it was ever before. It's not that CDs are "clinical" or "sterile", but that CDs enable a whole range of audio abuse, the most common one being, well, LOUDER IS BETTER!!!! In no medium until the CD has it been possible to store a dynamic range compressed audio without giving up something. On vinyl, a loud mix means less audio can be stored, while it doesn't matter on a CD.
The other effect is what makes tube amps "better" as well - what happens when you overdrive them. A vinyl record when clipped doesn't hit a hard stop - it hits a soft stop and ends up distorted. Ditto a tube amp - overdrive them and the waveform distorts. However, do that to a CD or transistor amp, and you get clipping. The harmonics induced by clipping the audio are far more harsh to most people's ears than the soft-clip distortion you get with vinyl/tube.
Also why some of the best guitar FX pedals use tubes in their final stages - you want that nice distortion, tubes are really the only way. The alternative is to waste a lot of ADC/DAC and DSP processing power by not using the full dynamic range so there's no possible way to clip, and then process the signal to add soft-clip effects.
Anyhow, there may be some truth to it - because vinyl is still around, yet it's been replaced twice, and still sticks around. The first time was the compact cassette where a full record could be contained in a pocket-sized album. The second time is the CD, which killed tapes, but never really killed vinyl. There's probably a reason for that.
Android is about to take over. This is just the very beginning. I believe Android will continue to dominate the global market for some time to come. The iPhone and App store is regulated too harshly and Apple just isn't cost effective. While Apple does have great style and innovative designs, people that don't have the money to shell out on their relatively expensive products will nab up Android phones.
Only for smartphones, though. You forget that everyone has Android, while the iPhone is carried on few carriers. You can bet a LOT of people are buying iPod Touches because they don't want the carrier that the iPhone is on (it's one of the top reasons to get an iPod Touch, actually), and it does all that VoIP stuff just fine.
Not that it really matters to Apple - they're going to let Android dominate while they go after the juiciest bits of the market - the high-profit segment. Apple dropped to #5 in phones shipped, with relatively unknown ZTE (in North America) pushing Apple down below LG/Samsung/Nokia. Thing is, those 4 are really competing against a small pot of money, while Apple commands the high-profit part of the market (like they have for the Mac). They don't care if they're relegated to 10% of the smartphone market, as long as they're getting the most profitable 10% of it, while the 90% are fighting for whatever few dollars are left. There was a graph showing how thin a slice of the market Apple has (compared to all phones), yet they can still command nearly 50% of all profits in the sector.
Apple's playing it smart - they're letting LG/Samsung/Nokia/etc bring out the legions of cheap low-profit phones, just like Apple doesn't care that Dell ships way more PCs. All those who won't want to pay for an expensive iPhone, Apple really doesn't want.
As for platform, you can't discount iOS because the market for iOS is bigger in the non-phone market than the phone market. Top reasons for getting an iPod Touch include not wanting AT&T (or a phone contract), they have a phone that works and don't need another one, and kids (whose parents don't want to buy then an expensive phone). Which also means Apple's also now into the VoIP only playing field...
What about a simple IPv6 router that works just like our IPv4 home gateway NAT routers today?
I mean, so far playing with IPv6, to have an all-IPv6 network, each PC gets 3 IPv6 addresses. They get a link-local address (which stays on the local network and won't cross a router). Then if I want to enter their IP addresses, I really should use something in the FC00::/64 range (which makes for easy typing), to avoid having to type in the cryptic strings instead. Finally, to get on the 'net, they have a random/64 prefix assigned by my ISP so it can pass through the routers properly.
What. A. Mess. And should your ISP decide to renumber their network, boom, every machine on the network gets a new IP address.
Where's our NAT64 devices - port forwarding works fine for me, and I can use it to ignore the link-local addresses (assigning FC00::/64 addresses as I do 192.168.x.x ones). I don't care what address my ISP gives me, and if they renumber my network, big whoop. Worst I have to do is reboot my router, not have to go and make sure every machine (PC, consoles, amps, tivos, etc - you can bet the number of embedded devices will climb rapidly) latched onto the fact that my network got renumbered.
Want quick and easy IPv6 deployment? Get us a box that we can drop in for our existing IPv4 routers and where I don't have to learn or explain all the frakking IPv6 crap to my mom who just wants her iPad, iPhone, and PC to work.
And IPv6 isn't the panacea of endpoint connectivity that everyone has been hoping for - ignoring NAT64 stuff, we've got firewalls and the like that'll break endpoint connectivity like it has for IPv4.
It's not a question of redundancy, its a question of if you can trust a company like Sony not to use innovation for evil. The possibility that you cannot save your game unless you are connected to the internet suddenly means that useful tool is actually just another form of legitimate owner punishing DRM.
Actually, this is back to the old Ubisoft DRM mechanism where you had to be online in order to save.
Remember how we all villified Ubisoft for doing this and wanting it to be cracked, blah blah blah. And we reported all the people cracking it and such?
Sony's doing the same thing - you'll have to be online (running the latest firmware) in order to save your games. The only difference is somehow PC owners gets aghast at having to do this, while it seems Sony console owners go "meh, bring it".
I guess it's really the only way now - those who don't want it have a modded console, connect to a PSN equivalent, or wait for hacked copies of the game to come out so they can save locally.
And who can't envision Sony in the future mandating things like if you don't play it for 6 months, it'll be auto-deleted, you'll only get 10 save slots you'll have to juggle between games. And also kills any sort of the hopeless and stuck to download a game save and see the other endings of a game they can't get (because they require playing on ultrahard or superdedicated 10th time through game modes)?
Yup, device equipped with touch screens are rather different beasts than desktops.
And touching a screen on a typical desktop/laptop would get tiring after a few minutes, even Jobs knows that when all the rumors of a touch-screen Mac were flying around. At best, a touchscreen will augment the existing mouse, but won't replace it on anything other than tablet PCs.
Expect Sony to do likewise. Basically anyone who signs onto PSN, (or perhaps even has their PS3 connected to the internet) could find themselves getting a nasty surprise. I fully expect the PSN sign on will start challenging firmware with crafted tests such as checksums etc. and audits will be surreptitiously embedded in far flung places in the Game OS and even in games. Users with modded firmware will find their PSN account suspended in no time which means no DLC, no access to purchased content, no patches, no multiplayer etc.
The nice thing about modded firmware is that the trust model is completely broken. Sure, PSN can do that, but all that happens is the modded firmware will remap things to a copy of the genuine article.
The master key is out, the PS3 security model is completely broken. GameOS is no longer trustworthy to respond. It's like trying to detect if your OS is infected with a rootkit from within the OS itself - the only real way is to do it from an external box.
It's like why Apple removed the jailbroken API - it's trivial to modify the response to say "No, I'm not jailbroken" because you have full access.
This is in contrast with the Microsoft model which isn't broken for whatever reason, in which case the trust model is still valid enough that Microsoft can trust its responses. And Microsoft closed off the JTAG hack in an update, too. The only valid hack that remains is the drive firmware attack, which is detectable by Microsoft, and only allows piracy (you can't load unsigned binaries with it).
The PS3 key is out and the PS3 is broken open. The only way Sony can fix it is to rely on external hardware (e.g., dongles) or serial keys or such. And only Sony and firmware moddres own the PS3 OS, so game publishers can't even do things like install DRM systems and the like (no StarForce for PS3...).
Only way for Sony to fix it is to release the PS4. They may buy some time by doing stuff like releasing OtherOS back with full GPU support (which will drain off a lot of talent from the pool and make it just a bit harder for pirates to get timely hacked firmware).
I don't think there's actually that many games that fill an entire single-layer BD disc - off the top of my head, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Final Fantasy XIII come to mind, but I'm fairly certain the rest of the games would fit on a DVD if the PS3 allowed it.
At least the publishers haven't caught onto the ability to stuff the BD full of demos and other crap like the early CD-ROM days (they can't on the other consoles because there's little space free).
So it will be less powerful than the PS3, and with resolution barely better than a PS2 (720x480). That would make it better than the Nintendo DS (comparable to a high-res N64).
And smaller than a big competitor too, the DVGA (double VGA) iPhone4, which sports a 640x960 screen. In landscape mode, the iPhone 4 has the same width, but has just under 20% more pixels vertically.
What about the most important thing - does it have a UMD slot or are we forced to pay full price for stuff off of PSN? (Get these amazing games for $9.99! Nevermind iTunes has it for $4.99!) (like Angry Birds on PSP - neutered and more expensive). Or is this thing going to be like the PSP Go?
That's because most of the Unix-compatible environments honestly... stink. Whether it's because of X or other reasons, I'm not sure.
Which is also why OS X is not just Unix with a pretty face, but is Unix with a pretty well integrated environment. it's a flavor of Unix with some pretty unique attributes
If you want OS X without the UI, get Darwin - it's all the open-source bits. It works and it gets you to the console alright, and without all the Aqua stuff you hate. It also runs on any PC, too. But then again, you're looking at just another Unix, and might as well just go to Linux or BSD to ge the same thing in the end. It's the whole UI integration that makes OS X what it is, and not just a Unix-with-a-pretty-UI-environment. And despite OS X being only 10 years old, the plumbing behind the UI's over 20 years old. If anything, it's probably closer to say it's NeXTStep with a different theme.
Considering that Android users use more data, it's a safe bet that Verizon's network can handle the load.
Actually, AT&T's network isn't suffering from bandwidth issues on the data channels. It's the control channel where they're having a bandwidth crunch! (That's how come AT&T can actually have the fastest network when tested).
The iPhone (all of them) have extremely aggressive power management, and they're well known to tear down the data connection the moment the last byte flows through it, then re-establish it when another byte needs it. This aggressiveness is what drives control channel bandwidth utilization through the roof, where it competes with all the other uses (other users doing the same thing, SMS, call setup, call handoffs, etc). Maintaining multiple data channels open but idle consumes power, and the iPhone wants to minimize that wastage.
Most Android devices don't do it that aggressively (though some do as T-mobile found out when an IM client nearly took down their network). PC WWAN adapters ('internet sticks') also aren't aggressive, since a PC (even a laptop) has tons more juice available.
Only time will tell if Verizon's got enough spare control channel capacity - lack thereof leads to lack of service in general even though you can otherwise get crystal clear calls and loads of speed.
It's also why a lot of the issues never materialized in other countries - Europe and Asia where texting has been king for nearly two decades have long adopted various measures to ensure control channel capacity. It's also why the Infineon chipsets aren't well-liked in North America because they're designed for the Europe/Asia networks where the control channel has tons of capacity.
Only time will tell to see how the CDMA iPhone handles it. It could just as easily happen to Verizon as well if Apple makes it especially aggressive in an effort to extend battery life. Though it could be less likely to happen simply because Verizon's network is more built out so there's less subscribers per tower so less control channel utilization in the first place.
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You have to associate the iPod Touch with an iTunes account, actually. But there's nothing to say you can't create a fake account with fake information. And you can buy apps and music still if you buy iTunes cards with cash (they're going for 20% off at times - I'm seeing $10 off $50 card offers retail!), again, though a fake iTunes account.
The best answer is "if it didn't come with Honeycomb, don't assume it will".
Buy it for what it has now, not what it might have. After all, there are tons of people who were promised upgrades only to be left stranded, so it's best to assume that what you buy now is what you're stuck with.
Most likely you'll be able to get Honeycomb through hacks at the very least, but buying now to get a future upgrade is a losing proposition. Best to wait for the Honeycomb tablets to come first.
This is especially so when you buy Android devices that come with 1.6 firmware, too.
Or, why not just get a netbook, completely erase the hard drive and install your favorite Linux? Lock it down, image it and use it only for banking.
Banking only needs a little CPU power, and netbooks are cheap and disposable so you can use it just for banking only. Shut it down when you're done and that's it. That way your main PC doesn't have to be rebooted continually (it gets old, fast!). You just boot up the netbook, do your banking, then shut it down and put it back on the shelf.
This is where the US patent system is also odd in that it gives a year to file after public disclosure.
In everywhere else in the world, if you show it to the public (either via sale, or to investors or other means like publishing it) it's considered unpatentable at that point. You have to apply for your patent prior to showing it off.
So if it's first-to-file without the year grace, your investors can't go and patent it because it's become public at that point. So usually what happens is the investor is held to to NDAs which mean they can't make it public (patenting is considered making it public - it's the whole point of patents over just keeping a trade secret).
And technically, only the inventors (the ones who reduced it to practice) owns the patent - if the investor merely contributed the resources, they aren't the inventor and their name can't go on the patent. So the inventor owns the patent, and usually the investor gets a license to use that patent as a condition for the investment.
Yeah. If Egypt had turned off all their overseas connections, mass 'net disruptions would've occurred (remember when those undersea cables kept getting severed?).
Instead, Egypt just killed routing for packets destined to Egypt - packets transiting through Egypt were unmolested and send on their merry way. Otherwise significant amounts of connectivity would be lost and there would be far more political pressure on Egypt to restore connectivity.
If the US did the same, it'll be easier since a good chunk of traffic terminates in the US, so the difference between cutting off all outside links versus just blackholing all packets destined for the US is far smaller. And while Canadian/Mexican/Central and South America traffic would be heavily disrupted, I'd guess an overwhelming majority of packets terminate in the US so the difference would be minimal. Though, someone will have to explain to me how the kill switch for the US won't impact US businesses - VoIP/email/etc. are fairly important business uses of the Internet and I'm sure a number of companies would practically shut down...
Yeah, I seem to get a bunch of random addresses as well - the best one yet was a bunch of russian-sounding usernames with russian emails.
The oddest ones I've gotten are emails with letters truncated off - that I don't know. E.g., I used to have afpcclog @ mydomain, and I started getting emails of fpcclog, with the missing 'a'.
Quite wierd, really.
I would agree. It's no secret that the last time Tim took over while Steve was having his operation. I would no doubt believe Steve has groomed Tim to actually take over.
And then there's the other Steve who while not officially on the Apple payroll (I don't think - maybe he gets a token amount?), is also as much a part of Apple as Jobs is. I'm talking about Wozniak, and while I'm sure the two Steves disagree on a lot of things, Woz would probably be hired as the public figurehead (Tim is a bit more private and reserved) to replace Jobs at keynotes and such.
Tim has handled a lot of products already, and may not be as explosive as Jobs or as public, but I'm sure Woz would fit right in.
I'm surprised that the shareholders are demanding it when the next in line is so plainly obvious. And I'm sure Jobs has also been grooming others for marketing purposes - a lot of keynotes feature more than just Jobs, especially during the demos.
If the ISPs were in it because the networks have issues, they should have no issues, and by default, with a hard cap. Once you reach it, you're disconnected.
The problem is, the UBB policies are like cellphone policies - you don't know the true damage until the bill comes, and by then, instead of the $200 cable bill, it's suddenly $500. Or more. (Remember all those people with $18,000+ phone bills?).
Make it a hard cap and less people would complain because if they go over, they go over and have to seek out alternatives (like upgrade their plans and be careful).
And also, why am I capped on speed? I'm paying by the byte, I should get the maximum speed that the network can give me due to technical limitations. I pay for power and water, and I can use as much as the breaker box and water pipes can give me. If you want to charge me by the byte, give me the 25Mbps+ the hardware can give me.
Also, I want a standalone meter - not one that I have to load up on my web browser (using my cap, and to which you'll load up with megabytes of ads and other crap, which also use up quota). Give me a standalone box, sealed, certified, and tested by NIST (US) or Industry Canada/Measurement Canada, like my water and electric meters and anything else I pay for by quantity. That way I can monitor my usage by looking at its screen, like I do with my water, electric and gas meters.
Right now it's a fox guarding the henhouse thing - they say you used 200GB this month? Well, their numbers are the value that counts. Oh, you're going to count the PHY headers in the byte counts as well (not just Ethernet headers - but DOCSIS and ADSL packet headers...).
UBB is a good idea, no doubt, but profit seeking shouldn't be its primary goal.
That's exactly the problem. The vast majority of home users just want the Internet to "just work" - and if you want to transition them to IPv6, you need to basically offer a box they can replace their existing Linksys with.
IPv6 is a pain to deal with because it changes a lot. Now try telling your mom how to differentiate between the 2 IPv6 addresses she'll have on her PC (link-local and the routable one), when before she just handled that 192.168.1.xxx one and everything worked.
And when my ISP decides to give me a new prefix, the IPv6 devices on my network also have their IPs changed - which is a severe PITA - what, we expect everyone to set up a DNS server? Or I assign them a THIRD IPv6 address (FC00::/64 is the private range) so I can always refer to my router as FC00::1, my NAS appliance as FC00::0101, etc?
Management headaches - you shouldn't need to be a network engineer just so you can share your internet with everyone else in your family.
Easy deployment of IPv6 comes with transparency. Offer a box they can replace their existing firewall/NAT router and most enterprises, businesses and home users can continue using the Internet the way they always have and they'll stop caring and we'd have moved to IPv6 years ago.
That's if you do it consistently and always.
Fact is, most lotto dealers only have one, maybe two of those cards on display, and they will be highly pissed off if you asked to look at their roll and cherry picked the right cards, especially since this can take many minutes.
So in reality, you'll be hitting many lotto dealers daily in an attempt to find a few cards that have potential winners, and if you become predictable, the retailers may begin to recognize you.
So now you're driving all over town hitting every lotto retailer trying to find a good ticket, all that legwork and driving (gas, parking, etc) will start adding up. Plus, retailers might not like it should you go to their counter, spend a minute looking at their cards and leaving, especially if they're particularly busy (and imagine you're behind that guy in line who spends a minute with the cashier and doesn't buy anything).
It's a lot of work for rather low returns after all the extra expenses you've just incurred plus the whole a**hole factor of holding the line up while you see if there's a potential winner and leave empty handed.
And then, when the game is over (the campaigns only last a few months), it's all over. The trick only works on one specific game - you can't apply it to any lotto game in the case - only that game and maybe similar ones.
I can see why it isn't worth it. Hell, the lottery corporation probably will let the campaign finish off since the vulnerable game will be gone soon as all the tickets get bought out by people applying the trick.
The only interesting thing, is he found a way to break the game that the company producing the games has to now work around.
A major worry actually given how the patent system is. Right now we think WebM is patent free (and it would be nice if it was - c'mon Google, don't you trust your engineers?), but you can bet everyone is quietly sitting on their patents and seeing where this WebM thing is leading. If it proves successful, you strike. But never before - let it be established and essential, then you strike so everyone has no choice but license your patent (or fight you).
That's a problem, these submarine patents.
And those of you claiming that you're in a software-patent free-zone, well, then you're technically in the clear about using h.264 as well since its patents wouldn't be valid, either.
Damned if you do (h.264 patents are recognized and that means WebM is also vulnerable), and damned if you don't (if h.264 patents aren't recognized, then yes, WebM is free, but so is h.264).
It's also a reason why WebM's spec is really source code - because it's close to h.264, alternative implementations may infringe on h.264 (or you use your already-paid-for h.264 licenses...).
And what is it if your friends decide to let the world see?
That's why Facebook privacy is non-existent - even if you make your profile friends only, news and other things can spread quite easily as people re-post news and photos and such. Post something big like getting married or having a baby and you'll find your news has spread to people 3 connections away simply as people spread the news far and wide.
Even innocent news like going on vacation gets spread inadvertently - "Can't wait for spring break - Hawaii here I come!" turns into "OMG, I can't believe Xxxxx is going to Hawaii for spring break! He's so lucky!" by one of your friend's wall posts (which may not be private).
And photos too - all it takes is a friend of a friend asking to see some photos you posted...
Twice a week isn't bad. Some of the worst ones do it daily or more often, enough to flood the useful postings off and make it impossible to find without having to dredge through the crap.
I believe it's done because it's really hard to filter out - it is a classified site, after all, so people do go through expecting to buy or sell stuff. Your wheat is my chaff and vice-versa. And there's no real solution to it either - there'll be people who are legitimately affected by any policies (e.g., post limits per day), and comparing by similarity just makes it harder to sell for everyone.
And that doesn't include those who post too all the surrounding areas that are an hour away...
Happened here in Canada as well with a program called BarWatch.
It was, interestingly enough, quite successful that bars in the surrounding areas started picking it up (and the privacy commissioner had to be involved). It was started by a small group of bars in downtown Vancouver and spread out.
Turns out all the seedier characters simply left for bars not in the program, and those in the program saw their business improve as people who were too scared to enter said bars (due to said characters) started coming in droves and improving business.
There's still a few not in the program (it's not mandatory and a bar can choose if they want it or not) - probably making a good buck because they can charge those who can't get into the other bars a nice cover charge and having higher prices.
Which is where Apple wants to be - in the low-volume high-profit arena. They're letting LG, Samsung, ZTE, etc. cut each other's throats while they ride the profit wave.
Some charts through Q4 2010 show this to great effect - http://www.asymco.com/2011/01/31/fourth-quarter-mobile-phone-industry-overview/
See that little Apple slice in the marketshare segment? Then see that HUGE Apple slice in the profit segment? And the moderate slice in the sales?
Apple doesn't care about selling "most" - it's profit they're after, and it seems that sure, Androids ship more than iPhones, but they're really eating away at each other profit-wise.
You may scoff, but while it was highly debatable in the 80s and mid-90s, these days it's likely to be on the truer side than it was ever before. It's not that CDs are "clinical" or "sterile", but that CDs enable a whole range of audio abuse, the most common one being, well, LOUDER IS BETTER!!!! In no medium until the CD has it been possible to store a dynamic range compressed audio without giving up something. On vinyl, a loud mix means less audio can be stored, while it doesn't matter on a CD.
The other effect is what makes tube amps "better" as well - what happens when you overdrive them. A vinyl record when clipped doesn't hit a hard stop - it hits a soft stop and ends up distorted. Ditto a tube amp - overdrive them and the waveform distorts. However, do that to a CD or transistor amp, and you get clipping. The harmonics induced by clipping the audio are far more harsh to most people's ears than the soft-clip distortion you get with vinyl/tube.
Also why some of the best guitar FX pedals use tubes in their final stages - you want that nice distortion, tubes are really the only way. The alternative is to waste a lot of ADC/DAC and DSP processing power by not using the full dynamic range so there's no possible way to clip, and then process the signal to add soft-clip effects.
Anyhow, there may be some truth to it - because vinyl is still around, yet it's been replaced twice, and still sticks around. The first time was the compact cassette where a full record could be contained in a pocket-sized album. The second time is the CD, which killed tapes, but never really killed vinyl. There's probably a reason for that.
Only for smartphones, though. You forget that everyone has Android, while the iPhone is carried on few carriers. You can bet a LOT of people are buying iPod Touches because they don't want the carrier that the iPhone is on (it's one of the top reasons to get an iPod Touch, actually), and it does all that VoIP stuff just fine.
Not that it really matters to Apple - they're going to let Android dominate while they go after the juiciest bits of the market - the high-profit segment. Apple dropped to #5 in phones shipped, with relatively unknown ZTE (in North America) pushing Apple down below LG/Samsung/Nokia. Thing is, those 4 are really competing against a small pot of money, while Apple commands the high-profit part of the market (like they have for the Mac). They don't care if they're relegated to 10% of the smartphone market, as long as they're getting the most profitable 10% of it, while the 90% are fighting for whatever few dollars are left. There was a graph showing how thin a slice of the market Apple has (compared to all phones), yet they can still command nearly 50% of all profits in the sector.
Apple's playing it smart - they're letting LG/Samsung/Nokia/etc bring out the legions of cheap low-profit phones, just like Apple doesn't care that Dell ships way more PCs. All those who won't want to pay for an expensive iPhone, Apple really doesn't want.
As for platform, you can't discount iOS because the market for iOS is bigger in the non-phone market than the phone market. Top reasons for getting an iPod Touch include not wanting AT&T (or a phone contract), they have a phone that works and don't need another one, and kids (whose parents don't want to buy then an expensive phone). Which also means Apple's also now into the VoIP only playing field...
What about a simple IPv6 router that works just like our IPv4 home gateway NAT routers today?
I mean, so far playing with IPv6, to have an all-IPv6 network, each PC gets 3 IPv6 addresses. They get a link-local address (which stays on the local network and won't cross a router). Then if I want to enter their IP addresses, I really should use something in the FC00::/64 range (which makes for easy typing), to avoid having to type in the cryptic strings instead. Finally, to get on the 'net, they have a random /64 prefix assigned by my ISP so it can pass through the routers properly.
What. A. Mess. And should your ISP decide to renumber their network, boom, every machine on the network gets a new IP address.
Where's our NAT64 devices - port forwarding works fine for me, and I can use it to ignore the link-local addresses (assigning FC00::/64 addresses as I do 192.168.x.x ones). I don't care what address my ISP gives me, and if they renumber my network, big whoop. Worst I have to do is reboot my router, not have to go and make sure every machine (PC, consoles, amps, tivos, etc - you can bet the number of embedded devices will climb rapidly) latched onto the fact that my network got renumbered.
Want quick and easy IPv6 deployment? Get us a box that we can drop in for our existing IPv4 routers and where I don't have to learn or explain all the frakking IPv6 crap to my mom who just wants her iPad, iPhone, and PC to work.
And IPv6 isn't the panacea of endpoint connectivity that everyone has been hoping for - ignoring NAT64 stuff, we've got firewalls and the like that'll break endpoint connectivity like it has for IPv4.
Actually, this is back to the old Ubisoft DRM mechanism where you had to be online in order to save.
Remember how we all villified Ubisoft for doing this and wanting it to be cracked, blah blah blah. And we reported all the people cracking it and such?
Sony's doing the same thing - you'll have to be online (running the latest firmware) in order to save your games. The only difference is somehow PC owners gets aghast at having to do this, while it seems Sony console owners go "meh, bring it".
I guess it's really the only way now - those who don't want it have a modded console, connect to a PSN equivalent, or wait for hacked copies of the game to come out so they can save locally.
And who can't envision Sony in the future mandating things like if you don't play it for 6 months, it'll be auto-deleted, you'll only get 10 save slots you'll have to juggle between games. And also kills any sort of the hopeless and stuck to download a game save and see the other endings of a game they can't get (because they require playing on ultrahard or superdedicated 10th time through game modes)?
And touching a screen on a typical desktop/laptop would get tiring after a few minutes, even Jobs knows that when all the rumors of a touch-screen Mac were flying around. At best, a touchscreen will augment the existing mouse, but won't replace it on anything other than tablet PCs.
The nice thing about modded firmware is that the trust model is completely broken. Sure, PSN can do that, but all that happens is the modded firmware will remap things to a copy of the genuine article.
The master key is out, the PS3 security model is completely broken. GameOS is no longer trustworthy to respond. It's like trying to detect if your OS is infected with a rootkit from within the OS itself - the only real way is to do it from an external box.
It's like why Apple removed the jailbroken API - it's trivial to modify the response to say "No, I'm not jailbroken" because you have full access.
This is in contrast with the Microsoft model which isn't broken for whatever reason, in which case the trust model is still valid enough that Microsoft can trust its responses. And Microsoft closed off the JTAG hack in an update, too. The only valid hack that remains is the drive firmware attack, which is detectable by Microsoft, and only allows piracy (you can't load unsigned binaries with it).
The PS3 key is out and the PS3 is broken open. The only way Sony can fix it is to rely on external hardware (e.g., dongles) or serial keys or such. And only Sony and firmware moddres own the PS3 OS, so game publishers can't even do things like install DRM systems and the like (no StarForce for PS3...).
Only way for Sony to fix it is to release the PS4. They may buy some time by doing stuff like releasing OtherOS back with full GPU support (which will drain off a lot of talent from the pool and make it just a bit harder for pirates to get timely hacked firmware).
I don't think there's actually that many games that fill an entire single-layer BD disc - off the top of my head, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Final Fantasy XIII come to mind, but I'm fairly certain the rest of the games would fit on a DVD if the PS3 allowed it.
At least the publishers haven't caught onto the ability to stuff the BD full of demos and other crap like the early CD-ROM days (they can't on the other consoles because there's little space free).
And smaller than a big competitor too, the DVGA (double VGA) iPhone4, which sports a 640x960 screen. In landscape mode, the iPhone 4 has the same width, but has just under 20% more pixels vertically.
What about the most important thing - does it have a UMD slot or are we forced to pay full price for stuff off of PSN? (Get these amazing games for $9.99! Nevermind iTunes has it for $4.99!) (like Angry Birds on PSP - neutered and more expensive). Or is this thing going to be like the PSP Go?
That's because most of the Unix-compatible environments honestly... stink. Whether it's because of X or other reasons, I'm not sure.
Which is also why OS X is not just Unix with a pretty face, but is Unix with a pretty well integrated environment. it's a flavor of Unix with some pretty unique attributes
If you want OS X without the UI, get Darwin - it's all the open-source bits. It works and it gets you to the console alright, and without all the Aqua stuff you hate. It also runs on any PC, too. But then again, you're looking at just another Unix, and might as well just go to Linux or BSD to ge the same thing in the end. It's the whole UI integration that makes OS X what it is, and not just a Unix-with-a-pretty-UI-environment. And despite OS X being only 10 years old, the plumbing behind the UI's over 20 years old. If anything, it's probably closer to say it's NeXTStep with a different theme.
Actually, AT&T's network isn't suffering from bandwidth issues on the data channels. It's the control channel where they're having a bandwidth crunch! (That's how come AT&T can actually have the fastest network when tested).
The iPhone (all of them) have extremely aggressive power management, and they're well known to tear down the data connection the moment the last byte flows through it, then re-establish it when another byte needs it. This aggressiveness is what drives control channel bandwidth utilization through the roof, where it competes with all the other uses (other users doing the same thing, SMS, call setup, call handoffs, etc). Maintaining multiple data channels open but idle consumes power, and the iPhone wants to minimize that wastage.
Most Android devices don't do it that aggressively (though some do as T-mobile found out when an IM client nearly took down their network). PC WWAN adapters ('internet sticks') also aren't aggressive, since a PC (even a laptop) has tons more juice available.
Only time will tell if Verizon's got enough spare control channel capacity - lack thereof leads to lack of service in general even though you can otherwise get crystal clear calls and loads of speed.
It's also why a lot of the issues never materialized in other countries - Europe and Asia where texting has been king for nearly two decades have long adopted various measures to ensure control channel capacity. It's also why the Infineon chipsets aren't well-liked in North America because they're designed for the Europe/Asia networks where the control channel has tons of capacity.
Only time will tell to see how the CDMA iPhone handles it. It could just as easily happen to Verizon as well if Apple makes it especially aggressive in an effort to extend battery life. Though it could be less likely to happen simply because Verizon's network is more built out so there's less subscribers per tower so less control channel utilization in the first place.