Re:That's one heck of a "long goodbye"
on
Goodbye, VGA
·
· Score: 1
Also keep in mind that a lot of laptops only have VGA. As far as I know there are no VGA-DVI adapters (DVI-VGA does exist). Since these days 5 year old computers and older fullfil the need of most computer users, don't expect VGA monitors to disappear soon. Companies will cater the needs of those "left behind".
As long as the DVI port is DVI-A or DVI-I (and not DVI-D) any VGA-DVI adapter will work. That's because the DVI spec puts the analog signals on separate pins (IIRC, it's the ones to the side with the metal slot for a common ground). DVI-D only has the slot, and the pins are filled in so they won't accept VGA through an adapter.
HDMI-DVI adapters require a DVI-D or DVI-I port - you'll find only the metal bar is present and nothing else.
DVI-I ports are "universal" and some TVs use them instead of a separate DVI and VGA port. You just need an adapter.
HDMI only supports digital signalling so VGA cannot be carried over that. (HDMI signalling is different than DVI actually. It is the responsibility of the HDMI source or sink or actually identify a DVI connection and switch the signalling to DVI mode to allow for passive HDMI-DVI adapters.)
>And Java, while nifty, had no way of turning a profit.
Sure it did. Most java vms are of the embedded variety which, unlike desktop/server vms, are not free.
Hell every single blue-ray player has a, IIRC, fairly pricey jvm included (BD+)
Actually, Java was making millions before Blu-Ray as well. Why do you think Sun only gave patent licenses for J2SE? The number of J2ME devices shipping is far more lucrative, and those don't get patent licenses. Instead, Sun licensed out the patents for J2ME implementers, who were putting the JVM on featurephones and shipping millions of licenses. It's also the root of the Oracle-Google patent lawsuit because Sun/Oracle definitely do not want to give up that lucrative Java J2ME license fees.
Blu-Ray doesn't just use the JVM for BD+ protection - the whole interaction experience is via Java. DVDs used a brain-dead simple VM system to handle interactivity. HD-DVD used JavaScript. Blu-Ray used Java. Either way, they all separated out Authoring and Mastering - Authoring is what the general public gets to do and gets you basic access to interactivity, while the Mastering gets you full access to everything the platform offers. It's just a way to segregate out the markets.
This I believe is talking about stacking multiple chips on one of the sides, probably in the same packaging as a single chip.
Not a new technique, either. It's just another stacked die - where you have multiple chips stacked on atop the other. Stacked dies have been commercially available for at least 5 years now (usually they're used in flash chips).
Some form of packing together multiple dies has been around. We've had multi-chip packaging (like the Pentium Pro), package-on-package (where you put two ICs one atop the other, the 80's had it with DIP sockets on chips for EPROMs and the like, and modern ones where you can't even tell, like the Apple A4), and stacked dies. In fact, the A4 has both a stacked die and package on package (there are two memory chips in the memory chip that's soldered on top of the A4 SoC chip). You can get stacked dies with both flash and RAM on it as well, and they can often use package-on-package as well, so you end up with a chip that's basically "apply power, apply clock, watch chip run" (there's no gap with package-on-package).
Samsung's just put that technology to use on its generic memory parts now.
As to Apple's unwillingness to put porn in the app store itself, that's simply distasteful -- Jobs imposing his limited, socially crippled idea of what an app store should be... on his (Apple's) app store. He's not preventing any content from reaching you -- any content you imagine can be put on a web site, and Safari will deliver it (and very well, too.) He's just pretending to be socially acceptable to the mentally challenged, that's all.
Two reasons for that actually.
1) The PTC, an activist organization set out to censor the world, organized a mass complaint against porn apps. It came after the FCC decided to start ignoring them. Why do you think that the "wardrobe malfunction", Family GUy and other shows easily drew 200,000+ complaints on that event? (average is in the hundreds). It's not overall, it's just the one episode or one event.
2) Jobs gave the reason out - parents don't do a good job parenting, and they probably won't ever set the parental controls on their children's iPhone and iPod Touch, so 17+ apps are essentially open to all. They can't do anything about the browser, so all the power they have is to simply tell parents there's a web browser and hey, it's like the browser on their PC. Instead they'll let groups like the PTC to censor the web themselves.
Anyhow, it gives a good selling point for Android, and Jobs even said it himself. And until Apple makes a big dent worldwide, they're not likely to stop applying US-centric views, either.
And I think the PSP is doing poorly in the United States but is dominating the DS in Japan -- I'm guessing this report's demographic was USA centric?
Given the DS has sold out consistently for years after its relase date in Japan, I would expect that there is maybe 10 per capita or something by now. PSP sales may simply be there after salse of the DS line dropped off since so many have sold that there are probably buildings where the DS is used as bricks.
1. Wireless-N 2. Built-in Bluetooth (think external controller used for emulators and games.)
To be more correct, you want a/b/g/n, and not just b/g/n. a/b/g/n gets you N on both 2.4 and 5GHz, while b/g/n is just N on 2.4GHz. (the iPad has a/b/g/n - 2.4 and 5, iPhone 4 only b/g/n - 2.4 only). Saying N doesn't guarantee a 5GHz radio, and it's nice to use the less-crowded 5GHz spectrum and spare the 2.4GHz for everything else.
Bluetooth is good too, but you need standardized OS support so apps have a unified API. Bluetooth and USB, perferably with PS3 and Xbox360 (via USB - either wired or the receiver) controller support. Crappy controllers seem to rule and using the fairly nice Xbox360 controller (though some prefer the PS3 controller) would be a godsend.
The hardware of latest iPhone is pretty similar to many high end android devices, in fact some Android devices actually have slightly higher specs in terms of horsepower.
To be absolutely correct, the iPhones have worse hardware than the Androids. Original iPhone, iPhone 3G - 400MHz CPU. G1 - 525MHz CPU. iPhone 3GS - 600MHz CPU, everyone else running 800+MHz CPUs. iPhone4 - 800MHz CPU, high-end Androids - 1GHz. iPhones have lower end hardware compared to the high-end Android devices. Sure there are architectural differences (ARM11 on iPhone/iPhone 3G, Cortex A8 on iPhone 3GS/4, Snapdragon/Cortex A8 on Android phones), but it's minimal compared to the reality that iPhone hardware is just lower spec.
I own a Nook, but I am a bit curious as to what this move means for Amazon. Up until now they've been the only ones using.mobi as a file format on their Kindle, and haven't added any support for epub at all, as far as I can tell.
It would be nice to be able to buy ebooks at amazon that have DRM, but not be stuck using a Kindle. Not that I think DRM is a great thing.
If you own the nook Color, you could root it and install the Kindle for Android app... get the best of both ebook worlds.
So why does the price of a 3G megabyte vary based on the device used to send or receive it?
Because you keep paying it. Next question?
Close, but the real reason is you're paying for varying levels of access. Think of it this way - you could buy a raw Internet connection at some high price. Or you can buy cut down versions at cheaper prices.
Let's take some simple plan categories - dumbphone, blackberry, smartphone, laptop, VPN. Does ao dumbphone which offers facebook, basic email, twitter and the like need full internet access? Probably not, and the "data" plan you get is pretty limited - it's proxied all the way - after all, the facebook app just connects to the carrier's proxy to facebook, email to their email gateway, etc. All on their private network and probably no way to get on the 'net. If you have a web browser, it'll use a proxy that gets downscaled images.
A blackberry is similar, except it funnels the data through to BES or RIM's servers and heads onto the 'net from there. Again, proxied, but there's access to the 'net. Probably some downscaling of images occur there as well. It certainly does look like a full connection, but it really isn't.
A smartphone plan is nearly full access - probably firewalled and NAT'ed, and maybe some transparent caching procies as well.
Laptop plans (USB sticks), depending on the carrier, may be the same as a VPN plan, in that they get you onto the raw internet - with a fully accessible IP, no firewalling, etc. The cheapskate carriers may just NAT you, and sell a VPN plan with a real live IP.
Carriers can control it all - it's how the B&N Nook, despite having 3G, only gets you to the B&N servers - the 3G is locked down to B&N only. Any other requests are simply blocked by the carrier.
I don't know who or why they would push the launch to Dec 17. First of all, the Shuttle is not tested across a year boundary, and the last flight is not the time to be testing to see if this works. (Dates are complex enough, and handling all possible date transitions is even harder. Thus it's easier to not fly the Shuttle across a New Year transition rather than have to test everything to ensure it can handle it).
I believe it was supposed to be a 10 day mission, so if it launches Dec 17, it means it returns Dec 27. Which gives you 4 days before you're in test-pilot mode (the missions may get extended unexpectedly due to launch delays or weather on return). While I doubt the shuttle would just explode when the clock ticks over, 4 days doesn't seem like a lot of leeway.
All they had to do was push it another couple of weeks and they'd have a whole year to schedule and launch. At least it seems saner heads have prevailed.
Majed didn't go to jail for jailbreaking his iPhone, or even a handful of them for friends. The jailbreaking exemption (http://www.copyright.gov/1201/) states that the exemption exists for the owner of the device in order for the owner to use an alternate cellular network. This guy was essentially running a business buying heavily subsidized Tracfones, unlocking them, and selling them by the thousands. One could argue that between the purchase and the resale that he was the owner of the device and thus was covered, but let's keep perspective - Majed wasn't convicted for rooting his Droid, he was running a business on a technicality, and a stretched one at that.
He's also accused of funnelling his profits from selling the phones to terrorist organizations, which is the real charge. They're throwing every possible crime he's doing as well in the hopes that maybe one charge will stick. Selling unlocked phones en masse is one charge he can do, but the real reason is the funding terrorist organizations.
It's the sort of link you wish people wouldn't make, because it means unlocked phones can get tainted with the "supporting Al Qaeda" and "causing 9/11" crap. "Only terrorists need unlocked phones".
Problem is, anonymous, quiet leaks tend to fly under the radar.
In fact, what happened with WikiLeaks is exactly what WikiLeaks wants to happen. The absolute worst possible outcome for a leak is to have it published but no one notices. With WikiLeaks making a big stink about stuff, it forces reactions from those involved.
Those leaked cables? They didn't carry anything new or surprising, but the way the government reacted though, gives it an element of truth. Make a big stink, and they suddenly gained popularity and the story grows from there. All you needed to do was say "there is no new information revealed in these documents that weren't public before". Instead, you have people trying to get WikiLeaks classified as a terrorist organization and other things, which naturally gets people interested in seeing the forbidden fruit in the hopes of finding something juicy.
People whose information is being leaked are best served by being quiet and discreet. If someone posted some leak on some server somewhere few know about, all you have to do is get a way to take it down before it gets mirrored. However, start making a big stink about it or public, and soon everyone knows about it. It's the Streisand effect.
If a leak gets ignored by the public, is it still a leak?
They do have a "Report Phishing" option though. Sad thing is that most people don't know what phishing is or even realize they've been victims of it until it's too late, at which point they rarely go back to gmail to report the phishing attempt.
Problem is, the button isn't available in list view. Most of the phish attempts I get are plainly obvious from the preview line, and the only way to report is to open it and click Report Phishing, an annoying extra step.
And that's an advantage to having multiple addresses - Paypal telling me I need to fix my account from my non-Paypal email is pretty obvious. As are ones for banks I don't use or never even heard of.
Still, having to click through is an extra annoyance, just like the loss of the "Unread" select (hidden underneath a menu now) which was a click away. It's a way for me to handle mailing lists - read the interesting posts, then click unread and delete to delete the rest. Would be nice if they had a Google Labs thing that added both back.
Then there are people who work at home and do the school run for their kids, because their kids are lazy and don't want to sit in a bus. They do this at the busiest time and have to do the trip twice, adding to the traffic.
It gets better.
A school sits at an intersection (with traffic lights and pedestrian-activated crosswalks).
People constantly circle the carpark and make U-turns on the adjoining road because the pickup/dropoff area is full of people waiting. Meanwhile, across the street, there's plenty of parking areas to wait. You can even park, cross the street, and wait at the school entrance. Or have your kid get some life skills on how to cross at a traffic light with a pedestrian switch.
I've also seen (different school, near me) pull out, make a right into the next intersection. The strange thing is, that ends up being a row of houses behind the school, where there's a nice path behind the school and between two houses (paved and everything, it's an official walking path) so people can walk. It was probably 10 times farther by car than by foot.
Maybe that's why we're so fat, if we refuse to walk the few extra steps and instead want to endlessly circle around parking lots guzzling gas.
Doesn't this thing have 3G with no monthly charge?
It's actually locked down something fierce. Unlike Amazon, where you get free 3G, the nook's 3G is limited to B&N only. You cannot go anywhere else unless you can bounce it through B&N's servers. Access to anything else (via the web browser) is WiFi-only.
(Yes, you can do that - it's how carriers can differentiate between a featurephone dataplan, a blackberry dataplan, a smartphone dataplan, tethering plan, and full VPN dataplans. All overring various levels or proxies, image deresolution, NAT, firewalling, and the like. Full VPN is most expensive, but it gets you a real life IP address, while the tethers usually just get you some NAT'd thing. Featurephone plans are limited to certain sites only and images are rescaled for the tiny screen, etc.
In the same vein, carriers can limit your access to certain sites, like the nook is restricted to B&N only.
Yeah, work in retail myself, in the past have been asked by a boss to go to a competitor and buy all their stock of one item, because they were selling it cheaper than our wholesaler.
This happens far more often than you think, actually. And it doesn't have to be a loss-leader, even! If you're a small store, you're a bother to the distributor. You don't move enough product, yet they have to stock some for you. If it's a hot item, you'll find you're the first to go on "allocation" and the last to get one or two of them.
I've talked to many people, and they often buy from Costco and Amazon because they can get their product way cheaper that way than their distirbutor is willing to sell them. And everyone's still making a profit along the way. One store owner even told people to buy a product online because he refuses to stock them (the terms for selling were quite onerous, and in the end, he'll pay MORE for the product than their online store).
Have you actually *read* the iPhone contract? I'm surprised they didn't require blood.
You mean the AT&T contract, right? Hell, that contract is probably the same across every phone you buy on contract, and you'll find similar clauses everywhere else.
The only contract I found when I had an iPhone4 was the EULA. And nothing about having to pay out the rest of my term (non-contract).
You kidding? That has absolutely everything to do with the hash function used!
SHA1 is highly vulnerable to brute force through optimized attacks. That's why NIST (among others) are recommending moving away from SHA1. Ditto for MD5.
That's if you want to intelligently brute force a SHA1 hash. If however the test material is short (e.g., passwords), then it doesn't matter if you use SHA1, SHA2, whatever. Just do a simple dictionary attack first to see if you can get easy passwords.
Only the first link is similar to the kid's "invention" because it is the only one that is a replacement wall plate. The kid did improve on the invention by placing the shelf "above" the outlets instead of below so you can actually stack things on the shelf without blocking the outlets. Of course IANAPL but the kid's idea is probably sufficiently different from the first link that neither infringe on each other's "IP". I mean he didn't patent "wall plate shelves" (overly broad) but only his "design" of the wall plate shelf (specific)...
Last I checked, most outlets were pretty symmetrical, so that "below the plug" shelf can be turned 180 degrees around and made into an "above the plug" shelf. It may not look nice (if it was designed to below the plug), but anyone with a screwdriver could trivially turn it around if twas that useful.
Hell, there's enough bad handymen out there that at least several people would've installed it upside down. Other than looking funny, they probably don't know better.
No, there's got to be more to this patent than simply turning it around...
That's probably the reason. Sure the PS4, Wii2, Xbox720 can have more processors and faster graphics, but what does that really give you? Prettier graphics? More complex physics?
No, right now, there's no big "thing" to throw at a console other than more power. Useful, but is it really worth all that monetary investment?
Microsoft, Zony and Nintendo are really watching the market. Nintendo is looking at HDTV adoption (remember, when the Wii came out, multiple HDTVs in a household is a rare thing, and kids aren't allowed to play when daddy wants to watch TV, so they have to play on the old SDTV that HDTV replaced). These days households having HDTVs and even kids having HDTVs aren't out of the question - you can pick up a nice HDTV for the kids for a few hundred bucks now.
Microsoft and Sony are seeing how the 3DTV thing is going. PS3 can barely do 3DTV (720p @ 30fps max, which is fine if your game has spare cycles, but if your game ALREADY runs at 720p30, there's no more to give), and 3D blu-rays suffer (no lossless audio output when doing 3DTV Blu-Ray - no PCM, DD-TrueHD or DTS-HD MA). It's still too early to determine if 3DTV is just a fad, or if 3DTV adoption will be strong to justify putting in more powerful graphics. And it can take a year to design the hardware to prototype, so investing all that energy in 3DTV only see it flop is a waste of effort, or if only 1% of your market can use it.
In the meantime, Move and Kinect will help see the direction people want to go, so when the next-gen hardware comes out, the market would have decided. Are Move and Kinect popular or a fad? Is 3DTV an important thing to concentrate on? Or is there something else that people would want?
The PS4 and Xbox720, if released tomorrow, probably will have most people go "meh" if all it did was add power and 3DTV, while all the content could still run on the PS3 and Xbox360 with slightly less nice graphics.
Or is it merely long standing policy? Haven't apps promoting/offering certain competing products and services been banned from day 1 of app store development? Whether this policy is right or wrong is a different question, but this app rejection does not seem to be any sort of reaction to Android's recent successes.
Indeed it's longstanding policy.
App rejected for menioning Android in the description (it was an Android Developer Contest finalist). Once that was removed the app got posted.
"Apps with metadata that mentions the name of any other mobile platform will be rejected." We're guessing this means you can't advertise your app in the App Store by saying it's also available on Android, or has been ported from BlackBerry, or whatever.
So the question is, how was it approved in the first place?
Official Wine support would certainly be a step in the right direction. I played WoW under Wine long ago and I got the impression that while it wasn't officially supported, it wasn't such an unsavory configuration that Blizzard would tell you to bugger off if you asked for support for it. I have no evidence to back this up but, I also got the impression that the desire to play WoW on linux gave the Wine project a very tangible flagship kind of "This Must Work" application. So, while I would love to see native linux clients, official Wine support would still be amazing and, possibly more beneficial to the linux community because of the side effects of having a better Wine.
So support the WINE project and purchase a subscription for Crossover - pro or games, either supports a lot of the Blizzard games. I think a week after StarCraft II came out, Codeweavers came out with a release that officially supported it.
WoW, Eve Online, Steam games, etc are officially supported. And the patches they do to get it to work are rolled back into WINE. It's the easiest and best way to get official support.
And don't confuse CodeWeavers and Crossover with Transgaming and the like. CodeWeavers officially supports the WINE project, rolls patches into WINE, and offers support, like all the other good open-source companies out there. The WINE project recommends them if you want paid support, too.
I'm amazed anyone uses it unless they are forced to by eBay because not only are the fees very high but the amount of fraud that takes places is too.
The fees aren't that high - they're in line with a lot of other merchant accounts. And Paypal's so far the ONLY way for a small time seller to accept a credit card, which is the universal online payment mechanism. It's why Paypal and eBay are so closely tied together - they need each other. If you're selling some old junk you found in your attic, getting a merchant account is next to impossible unless you're planning on doing at least a certain amount of business every month. And yet, having to have the buyer go out and get a cheque or money order, mail it out, having to wait for it to arrive, then you going to deposit it and waiting for it to clear, then shipping... it can easily take a month.
The funny thing is, how come there's no alternative to Paypal? If I want to sell my one item online, I'd like to accept credit cards, yet no one is offering me a small-use merchant account other than Paypal. Because if you can't accept a credit card online, you can't really be an online store. Gift cards maybe, but unless you're big enough to have people stocking them, same issue. Google Checkout's just a glorified merchant account, too - unless you're a business, you can't really have a checkout account.
Also, some people use Paypal because we're fed up of having to change our cards annually because some processor or another had their data stolen. Happened to me last year (bank called about a fraudulent charge) and this year (a store's credit card processor got broken into). It's why you should be VERY cautious if you see any iTunes charges on your card as people test credit card numbers. (iTunes is a very popular way to test credit cards because you can easily make a new account and charge something cheap to it).
It depends on your personality. Some people (my wife is one, a guy I work with is another) just seem to let the stress take over. My wife has this client who was pushing her to deliver work on an impossible schedule so she is up to 3 AM working on CAD drawings and wrecking herself in the process. I keep saying its not worth killing yourself over it. Life will go on without that client. But she keeps trying to deliver.
Have you let her know that she can't possibly be doing a good job at 3AM? If it's important CAD drawings that she's betting her profession on it, wouldn't the professional thing be to step away, take a rest, rather than risk her future career?
Even as programmers there's negative productivity after so long - she might be regressing her drawings or having unsafe components in it (load-bearing structure too weak, for example). I just hope whoever checks her drawings goes over them really carefully with a fresh eye.
One mistake that leads to an accident or the structure failing and killing people not only will ruin her professional career, but her life too - she'll have to live with knowing she killed people. All that to meet some client's demands are purely not worth it.
It will be interesting to see if Apple respond to this and how. My feeling is that they might try and protect their assets and restrict developers' options. I haven't really thught this through but I just can't see Apple letting people develop apps for iPads and then recycling ostensibly the same code for some Sony gadget. It is not in their nature.
Why should Apple be worried? It enhances both ecosystems. People who want to develop for Sony's platform exclusively still need Objective-C developers, and those developers can turn around and write MacOS X and iOS apps as well, enhancing Apple's platforms on the market.
Apple knows they need developers, which is why they threw in the developer tools for free with every Mac. Sony also validates Obj-C as a useful language and that can easily bring in more developers, who after writing apps for the Sony device may decide to re-use their skills on MacOS X and iOS, enhance both ecosystems. In the short term it'll hurt a bit as Obj-C devs get poached by Sony but that'll just bring new entrants into the field.
Right now, other than iOS and MacOS X, development with Obj-C is very minimal. But having two major players in it can entire others to use Obj-C, and hey, they too can develop for MacOS X or iOS. Provided Sony doesn't screw it up too badly.
Slashdot Mirror
As long as the DVI port is DVI-A or DVI-I (and not DVI-D) any VGA-DVI adapter will work. That's because the DVI spec puts the analog signals on separate pins (IIRC, it's the ones to the side with the metal slot for a common ground). DVI-D only has the slot, and the pins are filled in so they won't accept VGA through an adapter.
HDMI-DVI adapters require a DVI-D or DVI-I port - you'll find only the metal bar is present and nothing else.
DVI-I ports are "universal" and some TVs use them instead of a separate DVI and VGA port. You just need an adapter.
HDMI only supports digital signalling so VGA cannot be carried over that. (HDMI signalling is different than DVI actually. It is the responsibility of the HDMI source or sink or actually identify a DVI connection and switch the signalling to DVI mode to allow for passive HDMI-DVI adapters.)
Actually, Java was making millions before Blu-Ray as well. Why do you think Sun only gave patent licenses for J2SE? The number of J2ME devices shipping is far more lucrative, and those don't get patent licenses. Instead, Sun licensed out the patents for J2ME implementers, who were putting the JVM on featurephones and shipping millions of licenses. It's also the root of the Oracle-Google patent lawsuit because Sun/Oracle definitely do not want to give up that lucrative Java J2ME license fees.
Blu-Ray doesn't just use the JVM for BD+ protection - the whole interaction experience is via Java. DVDs used a brain-dead simple VM system to handle interactivity. HD-DVD used JavaScript. Blu-Ray used Java. Either way, they all separated out Authoring and Mastering - Authoring is what the general public gets to do and gets you basic access to interactivity, while the Mastering gets you full access to everything the platform offers. It's just a way to segregate out the markets.
Not a new technique, either. It's just another stacked die - where you have multiple chips stacked on atop the other. Stacked dies have been commercially available for at least 5 years now (usually they're used in flash chips).
Some form of packing together multiple dies has been around. We've had multi-chip packaging (like the Pentium Pro), package-on-package (where you put two ICs one atop the other, the 80's had it with DIP sockets on chips for EPROMs and the like, and modern ones where you can't even tell, like the Apple A4), and stacked dies. In fact, the A4 has both a stacked die and package on package (there are two memory chips in the memory chip that's soldered on top of the A4 SoC chip). You can get stacked dies with both flash and RAM on it as well, and they can often use package-on-package as well, so you end up with a chip that's basically "apply power, apply clock, watch chip run" (there's no gap with package-on-package).
Samsung's just put that technology to use on its generic memory parts now.
Two reasons for that actually.
1) The PTC, an activist organization set out to censor the world, organized a mass complaint against porn apps. It came after the FCC decided to start ignoring them. Why do you think that the "wardrobe malfunction", Family GUy and other shows easily drew 200,000+ complaints on that event? (average is in the hundreds). It's not overall, it's just the one episode or one event.
2) Jobs gave the reason out - parents don't do a good job parenting, and they probably won't ever set the parental controls on their children's iPhone and iPod Touch, so 17+ apps are essentially open to all. They can't do anything about the browser, so all the power they have is to simply tell parents there's a web browser and hey, it's like the browser on their PC. Instead they'll let groups like the PTC to censor the web themselves.
Anyhow, it gives a good selling point for Android, and Jobs even said it himself. And until Apple makes a big dent worldwide, they're not likely to stop applying US-centric views, either.
Given the DS has sold out consistently for years after its relase date in Japan, I would expect that there is maybe 10 per capita or something by now. PSP sales may simply be there after salse of the DS line dropped off since so many have sold that there are probably buildings where the DS is used as bricks.
To be more correct, you want a/b/g/n, and not just b/g/n. a/b/g/n gets you N on both 2.4 and 5GHz, while b/g/n is just N on 2.4GHz. (the iPad has a/b/g/n - 2.4 and 5, iPhone 4 only b/g/n - 2.4 only). Saying N doesn't guarantee a 5GHz radio, and it's nice to use the less-crowded 5GHz spectrum and spare the 2.4GHz for everything else.
Bluetooth is good too, but you need standardized OS support so apps have a unified API. Bluetooth and USB, perferably with PS3 and Xbox360 (via USB - either wired or the receiver) controller support. Crappy controllers seem to rule and using the fairly nice Xbox360 controller (though some prefer the PS3 controller) would be a godsend.
To be absolutely correct, the iPhones have worse hardware than the Androids. Original iPhone, iPhone 3G - 400MHz CPU. G1 - 525MHz CPU. iPhone 3GS - 600MHz CPU, everyone else running 800+MHz CPUs. iPhone4 - 800MHz CPU, high-end Androids - 1GHz. iPhones have lower end hardware compared to the high-end Android devices. Sure there are architectural differences (ARM11 on iPhone/iPhone 3G, Cortex A8 on iPhone 3GS/4, Snapdragon/Cortex A8 on Android phones), but it's minimal compared to the reality that iPhone hardware is just lower spec.
If you own the nook Color, you could root it and install the Kindle for Android app... get the best of both ebook worlds.
Close, but the real reason is you're paying for varying levels of access. Think of it this way - you could buy a raw Internet connection at some high price. Or you can buy cut down versions at cheaper prices.
Let's take some simple plan categories - dumbphone, blackberry, smartphone, laptop, VPN. Does ao dumbphone which offers facebook, basic email, twitter and the like need full internet access? Probably not, and the "data" plan you get is pretty limited - it's proxied all the way - after all, the facebook app just connects to the carrier's proxy to facebook, email to their email gateway, etc. All on their private network and probably no way to get on the 'net. If you have a web browser, it'll use a proxy that gets downscaled images.
A blackberry is similar, except it funnels the data through to BES or RIM's servers and heads onto the 'net from there. Again, proxied, but there's access to the 'net. Probably some downscaling of images occur there as well. It certainly does look like a full connection, but it really isn't.
A smartphone plan is nearly full access - probably firewalled and NAT'ed, and maybe some transparent caching procies as well.
Laptop plans (USB sticks), depending on the carrier, may be the same as a VPN plan, in that they get you onto the raw internet - with a fully accessible IP, no firewalling, etc. The cheapskate carriers may just NAT you, and sell a VPN plan with a real live IP.
Carriers can control it all - it's how the B&N Nook, despite having 3G, only gets you to the B&N servers - the 3G is locked down to B&N only. Any other requests are simply blocked by the carrier.
I don't know who or why they would push the launch to Dec 17. First of all, the Shuttle is not tested across a year boundary, and the last flight is not the time to be testing to see if this works. (Dates are complex enough, and handling all possible date transitions is even harder. Thus it's easier to not fly the Shuttle across a New Year transition rather than have to test everything to ensure it can handle it).
I believe it was supposed to be a 10 day mission, so if it launches Dec 17, it means it returns Dec 27. Which gives you 4 days before you're in test-pilot mode (the missions may get extended unexpectedly due to launch delays or weather on return). While I doubt the shuttle would just explode when the clock ticks over, 4 days doesn't seem like a lot of leeway.
All they had to do was push it another couple of weeks and they'd have a whole year to schedule and launch. At least it seems saner heads have prevailed.
He's also accused of funnelling his profits from selling the phones to terrorist organizations, which is the real charge. They're throwing every possible crime he's doing as well in the hopes that maybe one charge will stick. Selling unlocked phones en masse is one charge he can do, but the real reason is the funding terrorist organizations.
It's the sort of link you wish people wouldn't make, because it means unlocked phones can get tainted with the "supporting Al Qaeda" and "causing 9/11" crap. "Only terrorists need unlocked phones".
Problem is, anonymous, quiet leaks tend to fly under the radar.
In fact, what happened with WikiLeaks is exactly what WikiLeaks wants to happen. The absolute worst possible outcome for a leak is to have it published but no one notices. With WikiLeaks making a big stink about stuff, it forces reactions from those involved.
Those leaked cables? They didn't carry anything new or surprising, but the way the government reacted though, gives it an element of truth. Make a big stink, and they suddenly gained popularity and the story grows from there. All you needed to do was say "there is no new information revealed in these documents that weren't public before". Instead, you have people trying to get WikiLeaks classified as a terrorist organization and other things, which naturally gets people interested in seeing the forbidden fruit in the hopes of finding something juicy.
People whose information is being leaked are best served by being quiet and discreet. If someone posted some leak on some server somewhere few know about, all you have to do is get a way to take it down before it gets mirrored. However, start making a big stink about it or public, and soon everyone knows about it. It's the Streisand effect.
If a leak gets ignored by the public, is it still a leak?
Problem is, the button isn't available in list view. Most of the phish attempts I get are plainly obvious from the preview line, and the only way to report is to open it and click Report Phishing, an annoying extra step.
And that's an advantage to having multiple addresses - Paypal telling me I need to fix my account from my non-Paypal email is pretty obvious. As are ones for banks I don't use or never even heard of.
Still, having to click through is an extra annoyance, just like the loss of the "Unread" select (hidden underneath a menu now) which was a click away. It's a way for me to handle mailing lists - read the interesting posts, then click unread and delete to delete the rest. Would be nice if they had a Google Labs thing that added both back.
It gets better.
A school sits at an intersection (with traffic lights and pedestrian-activated crosswalks).
People constantly circle the carpark and make U-turns on the adjoining road because the pickup/dropoff area is full of people waiting. Meanwhile, across the street, there's plenty of parking areas to wait. You can even park, cross the street, and wait at the school entrance. Or have your kid get some life skills on how to cross at a traffic light with a pedestrian switch.
I've also seen (different school, near me) pull out, make a right into the next intersection. The strange thing is, that ends up being a row of houses behind the school, where there's a nice path behind the school and between two houses (paved and everything, it's an official walking path) so people can walk. It was probably 10 times farther by car than by foot.
Maybe that's why we're so fat, if we refuse to walk the few extra steps and instead want to endlessly circle around parking lots guzzling gas.
It's actually locked down something fierce. Unlike Amazon, where you get free 3G, the nook's 3G is limited to B&N only. You cannot go anywhere else unless you can bounce it through B&N's servers. Access to anything else (via the web browser) is WiFi-only.
(Yes, you can do that - it's how carriers can differentiate between a featurephone dataplan, a blackberry dataplan, a smartphone dataplan, tethering plan, and full VPN dataplans. All overring various levels or proxies, image deresolution, NAT, firewalling, and the like. Full VPN is most expensive, but it gets you a real life IP address, while the tethers usually just get you some NAT'd thing. Featurephone plans are limited to certain sites only and images are rescaled for the tiny screen, etc.
In the same vein, carriers can limit your access to certain sites, like the nook is restricted to B&N only.
This happens far more often than you think, actually. And it doesn't have to be a loss-leader, even! If you're a small store, you're a bother to the distributor. You don't move enough product, yet they have to stock some for you. If it's a hot item, you'll find you're the first to go on "allocation" and the last to get one or two of them.
I've talked to many people, and they often buy from Costco and Amazon because they can get their product way cheaper that way than their distirbutor is willing to sell them. And everyone's still making a profit along the way. One store owner even told people to buy a product online because he refuses to stock them (the terms for selling were quite onerous, and in the end, he'll pay MORE for the product than their online store).
That's if you want to intelligently brute force a SHA1 hash. If however the test material is short (e.g., passwords), then it doesn't matter if you use SHA1, SHA2, whatever. Just do a simple dictionary attack first to see if you can get easy passwords.
Last I checked, most outlets were pretty symmetrical, so that "below the plug" shelf can be turned 180 degrees around and made into an "above the plug" shelf. It may not look nice (if it was designed to below the plug), but anyone with a screwdriver could trivially turn it around if twas that useful.
Hell, there's enough bad handymen out there that at least several people would've installed it upside down. Other than looking funny, they probably don't know better.
No, there's got to be more to this patent than simply turning it around...
That's probably the reason. Sure the PS4, Wii2, Xbox720 can have more processors and faster graphics, but what does that really give you? Prettier graphics? More complex physics?
No, right now, there's no big "thing" to throw at a console other than more power. Useful, but is it really worth all that monetary investment?
Microsoft, Zony and Nintendo are really watching the market. Nintendo is looking at HDTV adoption (remember, when the Wii came out, multiple HDTVs in a household is a rare thing, and kids aren't allowed to play when daddy wants to watch TV, so they have to play on the old SDTV that HDTV replaced). These days households having HDTVs and even kids having HDTVs aren't out of the question - you can pick up a nice HDTV for the kids for a few hundred bucks now.
Microsoft and Sony are seeing how the 3DTV thing is going. PS3 can barely do 3DTV (720p @ 30fps max, which is fine if your game has spare cycles, but if your game ALREADY runs at 720p30, there's no more to give), and 3D blu-rays suffer (no lossless audio output when doing 3DTV Blu-Ray - no PCM, DD-TrueHD or DTS-HD MA). It's still too early to determine if 3DTV is just a fad, or if 3DTV adoption will be strong to justify putting in more powerful graphics. And it can take a year to design the hardware to prototype, so investing all that energy in 3DTV only see it flop is a waste of effort, or if only 1% of your market can use it.
In the meantime, Move and Kinect will help see the direction people want to go, so when the next-gen hardware comes out, the market would have decided. Are Move and Kinect popular or a fad? Is 3DTV an important thing to concentrate on? Or is there something else that people would want?
The PS4 and Xbox720, if released tomorrow, probably will have most people go "meh" if all it did was add power and 3DTV, while all the content could still run on the PS3 and Xbox360 with slightly less nice graphics.
Indeed it's longstanding policy.
App rejected for menioning Android in the description (it was an Android Developer Contest finalist). Once that was removed the app got posted.
Even on the app store guidelines it mentions:
"Apps with metadata that mentions the name of any other mobile platform will be rejected." We're guessing this means you can't advertise your app in the App Store by saying it's also available on Android, or has been ported from BlackBerry, or whatever.
So the question is, how was it approved in the first place?
So support the WINE project and purchase a subscription for Crossover - pro or games, either supports a lot of the Blizzard games. I think a week after StarCraft II came out, Codeweavers came out with a release that officially supported it.
WoW, Eve Online, Steam games, etc are officially supported. And the patches they do to get it to work are rolled back into WINE. It's the easiest and best way to get official support.
And don't confuse CodeWeavers and Crossover with Transgaming and the like. CodeWeavers officially supports the WINE project, rolls patches into WINE, and offers support, like all the other good open-source companies out there. The WINE project recommends them if you want paid support, too.
The fees aren't that high - they're in line with a lot of other merchant accounts. And Paypal's so far the ONLY way for a small time seller to accept a credit card, which is the universal online payment mechanism. It's why Paypal and eBay are so closely tied together - they need each other. If you're selling some old junk you found in your attic, getting a merchant account is next to impossible unless you're planning on doing at least a certain amount of business every month. And yet, having to have the buyer go out and get a cheque or money order, mail it out, having to wait for it to arrive, then you going to deposit it and waiting for it to clear, then shipping... it can easily take a month.
The funny thing is, how come there's no alternative to Paypal? If I want to sell my one item online, I'd like to accept credit cards, yet no one is offering me a small-use merchant account other than Paypal. Because if you can't accept a credit card online, you can't really be an online store. Gift cards maybe, but unless you're big enough to have people stocking them, same issue. Google Checkout's just a glorified merchant account, too - unless you're a business, you can't really have a checkout account.
Also, some people use Paypal because we're fed up of having to change our cards annually because some processor or another had their data stolen. Happened to me last year (bank called about a fraudulent charge) and this year (a store's credit card processor got broken into). It's why you should be VERY cautious if you see any iTunes charges on your card as people test credit card numbers. (iTunes is a very popular way to test credit cards because you can easily make a new account and charge something cheap to it).
Have you let her know that she can't possibly be doing a good job at 3AM? If it's important CAD drawings that she's betting her profession on it, wouldn't the professional thing be to step away, take a rest, rather than risk her future career?
Even as programmers there's negative productivity after so long - she might be regressing her drawings or having unsafe components in it (load-bearing structure too weak, for example). I just hope whoever checks her drawings goes over them really carefully with a fresh eye.
One mistake that leads to an accident or the structure failing and killing people not only will ruin her professional career, but her life too - she'll have to live with knowing she killed people. All that to meet some client's demands are purely not worth it.
Why should Apple be worried? It enhances both ecosystems. People who want to develop for Sony's platform exclusively still need Objective-C developers, and those developers can turn around and write MacOS X and iOS apps as well, enhancing Apple's platforms on the market.
Apple knows they need developers, which is why they threw in the developer tools for free with every Mac. Sony also validates Obj-C as a useful language and that can easily bring in more developers, who after writing apps for the Sony device may decide to re-use their skills on MacOS X and iOS, enhance both ecosystems. In the short term it'll hurt a bit as Obj-C devs get poached by Sony but that'll just bring new entrants into the field.
Right now, other than iOS and MacOS X, development with Obj-C is very minimal. But having two major players in it can entire others to use Obj-C, and hey, they too can develop for MacOS X or iOS. Provided Sony doesn't screw it up too badly.