I'm not trying to be facetious, but how does a phone with Exchange produce the same amount of load on a network as a device that's constantly making voice calls? I realize that the phone will be signaling to a server to keep data synced, but how does it produce that much load?
Quite easily, actually. It's also the reason why the iPhone is so horrible on the AT&T network.
Basically, when your phone is "attached" to the cell network, it's communicating with the base station on a control channel. Similar to ISDN control channels, it's use for call setup/termination, management and other things. To optimize for power, the mobile station "pings" the base station with presence information (basically saying "i'm here"). This keeps the power-hungry transmitter off and only turns it on for the briefest of times. The receiver is also kept off, but it consumes less power so it can be turned on more frequently to listen for network messages, perform signal analysis (is it getting weak? Does the phone need to find another tower?). This is why if you're in a marginal signal area, your phone will consume more power - the transmitter will have ot use higher power to talk to the tower, and worst case is if you're in a marginal area between cells where the phone has to be constantly doing the handoff between cells (consuming lots more transmitter time).
Now, back to the topic at hand. Making a data "call" is exactly the same way - the phone uses the control channel to set up the call (find an uplink and downlink frequency) as well as any other network parameters, like maybe where in the frame it can transmit and receive its data on. Of course, this keeps the receiver on and the transmitter has to be active, so it consumes more power than idle. So when you want to maximize endurance, you want to tear down the data connection ASAP, which requires another control message. Depending on the application, this can mean setting up and tearing down hundreds of times, which consumes valuable control channel bandwidth.
So now your phone is making hundreds of "calls" continually as it sets up and tears down the data connection, which consumes the control channel bandwidth leaving less for SMS, other call setup/teardowns, handoffs, and the like.
Most North American carriers have the problem because the control channel bandwidth is fixed. Most rest-of-world carriers don't because texting is hugely popular, and SMS ends up consuming a rather significant chunk of control channel bandwidth. So those carriers long ago upgraded to dynamic control channel sizing to ensure that there's enough spare bandwidth for calls, voice or data. Texting is only really taken off in North America the past few years, and the iPhone was really also the first phone that was extremely aggressive on power savings by practically tearing down the data connection during pauses. End result, control channel overload leading to dropped calls (hard to be handed off the target cell can't handle the handoff request), missed calls, delayed text messages, and slow data.
I'm guessing Exchange may use a protocol that allows for frequent bringups and teardowns, especially amongst the more aggressively power saving phones.
This is a problem with all the carriers, especially since iPhones and Android phones are popular. If the Verizon iPhone is as popular as everyone makes it out to be, VZ could be in for a world of hurt if they don't already have the ability to dynamically adjust control channel bandwidth. It's also why early AT&T phone bills were more like phone books - because every time the data "call" is made, it's logged for billing purposes. This could result in pages of log entries just over the course of a browsing session as the data connection is brought up and down each time.
Switch to old-style comments viewing system... I just get a dump of comments, nested appropriately. Makes for much nicer reading on a non-mobile device, albeit being a bit more bandwidth intensive initially.
My trick is to load up the/. front page, then open the articles in a new tab. This hides the bandwidth usage enough that when I'm done scanning, the first article should've finished loading and I can read that while the rest of the tabs load.
I do dislike the javascript comment system for that reason - too much clicking and it's sloooooow. I'm glad/. didn't decide to do the eBay and force everyone over to the new interface with no option to switch back. About the only thing missing is a good way to quote - I think the javascript one does a nice job that embeds links and everything that the old style one doesn't.
OK. Maybe I've said this a little bit backwards. To put your app in the app store, you have to agree not to release your source code. That's not GPL violation, but iTunes Developer Agreement violation. As far as I know, Applidium haven't actually released the source code for this modification under GPL yet. Apple might be violating the GPL if they distributed it without providing the source code themselves, to. Apple rejected Gnu GO likely for this reason, and the FSF also say that Apple's app store is incompatible with the GPL, though I don't remember why.
No, open-source apps have been in the App Store for a long while now. I think it was a yeaf after the App Store opened up that Apple relaxed the policies regarding licensing. Thus, open source apps are allowed, provided:
1) You are allowed to distribute it 2) You follow all the requirements of the original license 3) You do not use it in any way that would force Apple's software to be open-sourced.
Most of the open-source stuff I see is that there's a link in the app description to the web site of the developer, and there is the source code for the app. In a more ideal world, there would be a way for the tools to bundle in the source code into the IPA file, so downloading the app downloads the source code as well. (An IPA file is just a regular ZIP file). Knowing the format, iTunes can actually strip out the source code so you're not stuck transfering useless stuff to your device.
GNU Go was a different problem. Someone ported it to iOS, but didn't release source. FSF alerted Apple to the license violation, and Apple removed the app for violating the license and developer agreement.
The App Store is a tricky place. The FSF holds the position it's GPL incompatible because it's Apple that's distributing the software, not the developer. Apple is maintaining their position on the App Store is it's a marketplace, i.e., a store, and while it's facilitating transactions between customer and developer, and it's hosting the content on behalf of the developer. (The difference is subtle - say you provide a binary of a GPL program. You upload the binary onto your webhost. Is your webhost now distributing the binary (which means they need to do the distribution of source and 3 year requirement), or just hosting hte binary (and you the developer are responsible for pointing to the source).
Apple has a lot less to fear now that Flash has proven to be a miserable failure on Android. Honestly, though, they should have just let Flash fail on its own
Or do the EEE - Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
Embrace - there are many open-source Flash players out there. All Apple has to do is hire the devs and bring them inhouse to make it work great on iOS. The benefit here is no plugins or other crap to download - iOS just runs most Flash apps.
Extend - new iOS features are put into the Flash runtime. Developers are encouraged to use those features for their code, and an Apple version of the tools (because Adobe's tools won't do it) and runtimes will be released as browser plugins and everything. Imagine opening up a webpage and seeing "You need to install the Apple Flash player to continue", for example. (E.g., location services, accellerometer, gyro, multi-touch - all these things I don't think are in Flash, yet could be added by Apple).
Extinguish - Adobe's a slow moving company. A mobile flash player has been available since Flash 7 many years ago, and yet it still runs like crap on anything but a PC. Mobile flash seems ot have hit it big this year, because it's taken Adobe that long to actually have it ready, even though you could get Flash on your N800/N810 tablets, Archos had mobile flash, etc. The open-source version could actually beocme the Flash player of the future, after Apple pretty much wrestles it away from Adobe to make it Apple's platform. And it'll be Adobe playing catch up on their platform.
And Android and WebOS devices will be onboard, because well, it's open-source and you can be sure developers would want the same features as well. Hell, imagine Apple selling apps for Android this way (Apple can do it because they can sell anywhere they have an iTunes store, while the Android Marketplace has limited the countries which can pay for paid apps).
Flight of fancy, I suppose. But one of Apple's main objections ot Flash was the dependence on a very unreliable third party that moves very slowly. By wrestling control of Flash from Adobe, they not only control it, but they could go and try to make it run well.
Whenever we have a credible PDF exploit story, the slashdot fine summary always links to a reliable PDF document that explains the exploit in detail. Sorry, not buying this one.
Funny, the only PDF I can find is a link from the FA which demonstrates the attack. The article itself is a regular web page, and I can't seem to find a PDF of the full disclosure.
There are still interesting problems in not allowing to download or update any code. With the rise of jailbreaking iPhones and them running unsigned and modified applications (cracked and/or otherwise), there is no way for an anticheat system to update itself. All anticheat systems like Valve's VAC, PunkBuster and Blizzard's Warden rely on downloading updated code from the internet.
What this means for online iPhone games is that when someone releases a hack for the jailbroken iPhones, their users can completely ruin the games and legit players cannot do anything. And since Apple is a control freak, they check every update to your application slowly and ineffectely. All while the hacking is rampant and ruins everyones game.
There certainly are need for updating code and Apple needs to remove that clause too. We don't want walled gardens controlled by mega corporations, we want systems we can use the way we want.
Jailbroken and/or pirated apps are easily detected. So easily detected, that Apple doesn't really bother, because apps can do it themselves.
Firstly, an app downloaded from the App Store has DRM on it, which consists mostly of encrypted portions of the binary. That binary is then signed. On running the app, the kernel loads the app, validates the signature, then in-memory decrypts the binary, and finally runs it.
A cracked app can't be re-encrypted for a specific device, so they're shipped decrypted. The kernel, however, cannot load unsigned binaries unless a special flag is set to indicate that it's a decrypted binary that's OK.
An app just needs to check for that flag which exists in its info.plist file. It can do several checks - first, is info.plist in text format (it should be binary XML)? Second, do those keys exist in the file?
The apps that do the obvious checks are quickly re-patched to disable those checks, but there's nothing to say that an app has to pop up an "I'm pirated!" notice - it can silently report its pirated status to the server, for example, but otherwise run normally. Most crackers don't check, and most pirates won't bother. Even the ones running Firewall IP (a really nice firewall alert). You need someone to actually go and sniff the WiFi transmissions to ensure it's sending the same data to the server. Use SSL and you're golden. (Sure the pirate could disable all network access, but then who cares about single-player cheating?).
Also, assets are signed as well, so replacing all the textures with transparent ones also have the exact same issue - you have to go and decrypt the binary, make your mods and set the flag. There are also tests for jailbroken phones as well.
Online multiplayer is not a huge thing on iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches - at least, the ones where you can't do server-side validation of inputs (which you should do anyways). Local multiplayer may be a bigger deal, but there are probably social pressures against that behavior as well.
1. If it really becomes a problem for steve, he will block it at the hardware level in the next major version, or even in the next minor version. 2. I cannot rely on the fact that there will always be a jailbreak available if I lose my phone, due to 1. 3. It is only semi-legal. Apple will not like me. 4. I loose support. 5. Companies cannot be based on these kind of hacks due to 1,2,3,4, so there will never be a large user-base (or it will grow very slowly)
The same applies to Android phones as well, so the point being?
1) Motorola's already issued the first salvo. Considering earlier iOS devices could load on special pre-jailbroken firmware ("hacked ROM"), while later ones are vulnerability exploits ("rooting"), the end result is the same. Yet people don't seem to consider this a problem on Android, and instead the ability to load hacked ROMs and root is considered a Good Thing.
2) Ditto Android phones. Carriers have been known to force updates on people, and those updates can be unrootable. See Rogers forcing the G1 updates that remove root, for example. The irony here is Apple doesn't force updates (see my iPhone running 2.x still - it can run 3, I just never bothered updating).
3) Big whoop. HTC already hates people hacking their ROMs. Motorola's done it too. Apple's the same.
4) Again, the same on Android. But on both Android and Apple devices, unless the hardware's dead to the point where a software restore won't work, you can restore with the blessed firmware and no one would be the wiser. And if the hardware's too far gone for that, well, Apple nor anyone else really would go and snoop and see if it was jailbroken/rooted/customized. They stick it in a pile, and repair it as a batch. Part of the repair is a complete software reinstall to remove any possible corruption that may happen from hardware.
5) Seems to be working fine for the Android folks, as well as the Apple folks (Cydia supports paid apps, so obviously some people must be making money).
The only thing Android has over the iPhone is it's more open from the beginning as there's no walled garden. iOS devices need to be jailbroken to do the same. Which lets Android have more apps that Apple will never approve of. Also, it gives Android a slight advantage in that you don't need to root or anything fancy if all you want is pirated apps, which gives Android an overall advantage for most folks. (iOS devices must be jailbroken as a first stage in order to install pirated apps).
If you don't like Facebook then fine, just ignore it. In what way is it preventing you from getting on with your life?
Because there are people who think Facebook is the center of their universe, and thus if you're friends with them, the only way they do things is via facebook this, facebook that and thus forcing everyone else to not only have a facebook account, but force all interaction through it. And worse yet, practically everyone's got a friend like that.
Facebook's as optional to use as the Internet these days. Short of being a social outcast, it's practically mandatory to use facebook for something or other.
"Why didn't you reply?" "Reply to what?" "My question!" "I didn't see a question" "I posted it on your wall",... etc.
All it would need is someone to port it to Linux (USB Gadget). An Android phone would serve as a suitable USB client.
Even better, this dongle disconnects itself from the USB bus when it's done - the only thing Sony can do is recognize unauthorized packages. Which becomes a problem because package managers will start using popular game IDs that Sony can't ban or block because it would block legitimate customers. Or download demos off PSN and use those IDs.
I actually blame the company. Packaging should have an expiry date built-in at a minimum. It's not like this is difficult to do: there are expiry dates on all dairy foods, and for good reason. Society benefits when people don't eat or drink food that's past expiry on a regular basis. Similarly, society benefits when the expiry date of a patent monopoly is clearly marked.
Companies still using an old mold which doesn't have an expiry date is just greedy. They should have put the date in when they went to the trouble of putting the patent number in, or they should bear the cost of a new mold if they're still selling new products from it.
A very simple solution is a sticker with all the patents. Since a bunch of stickers are usually applied to some product anyways, it's trivial to apply another sticker with the current patents that are still valid. Those that aren't valid anymore are either inked out, or a new set of stickers are commissioned (cheap).
The question is, though, at what point does it it count to be invalid? If I made a product, and it sits on a shelf for 5 years before it sells, at which point the patent expired, am I infringing? The patents in question were valid when it was manufactured, just it sat in some warehouse for an extended period of time (my warehouse, retailer warehouse, etc). Or what happens if it's the day before the patent expires? Technically it's still patented, but it won't be tomorrow...
Also a tester here. I agree completely. It's marginally better than the existing d-pads, but it does not solve any of the fundamental problems with the d-pad. I'll stick with my PC and PS3 for fighters still.
You're fighting with a gamepad? Ick. Invest ina good quality fightstick already (there are several, some with arcade parts). That d-pad's only been used as a way to get another 4 extra buttons to control stuff for other games, I didn't thing games used it as a primary control input. I never played SF4, but I would've thought they would've made the analog stick "digital" for those without fightsticks, but that's like playing Guitar Hero/Rock Band without the plastic instrument - yeah you can do it, but why would you.
I just wish Sony would stop being idiots, and make a nice ergonomic controller. After using the 360 controller, I can't use the PS3 one without cramping up, and games using the left analog get painful since they use the d-pad as 4 extra buttons. (I ended up getting a Cross Battle Adapter 2.0 - lets you use the Xbox360 wired controller with the PS3, supports rumble, button remaps, and sixaxis if you give up one of the analogs).
So we'll all be depending on multiple carriers' good patching practices, to make sure the patch for foolib-1.2.3-r4 gets pushed to all their Frobnitz Model 200 phones that they released two years ago and have since deprecated and replaced with Model 201, 220, 240, and 250, now with more shiny (but everyone still gets them because they're free with a new contract.) And by the way, it's going to be on your data bill. Call me pessimistic, but I don't think it'll happen in a timely fashion when someone discovers a vulnerability.
It's already happened on Android. Manufacturers are out making their latest rev and they ignore the bugfiles to their current line of phones. Or they do and pass it onto the carriers who may or may not force an update. Of course, if said update will remove things like root and custom ROMs, they'll probably push it.
But phones getting abandoned at whatever Android version they shipped with are already happening - I think the early Samsung phones were promised 2.0, but ended up with 1.6 only with an official letter. And others are stuck with 2.1 with no upgrade to 2.2. The only good part is these phones often are early models and easy to root and recover, so unofficial ROMs exist. But later ones may not be so lucky.
Really, the only Android phone that's not under carrier control is the Nexus One, which gets updates straight from Google. The wierd thing is, why can't Google pull an Apple? The iPhone gets updates from Apple, leaving out the carrier middleman, even if the user is paying a contract on the iPhone.
Google's big enough, let's see it happen and end all this Android loaded with crapware stuff.
Re:Seymour Cray and Steve Jobs
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Homebrew Cray-1
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· Score: 3, Informative
Seems Steve Jobs, upon the success of the first Macs, was getting ready for the next step and he went to Cray Computer to buy one (probably to help design the PowerPC?). Anyway, Cray Computers were not just sitting on the shelf waiting to be sold, so it seems Jobs created an altercation and demanded to see the manager about getting one, so they called Seymour down to the lobby. Steve introduced himself and said words to the effect of "I'd like to use a Cray to design the next Apple Computer". Seymour replied "Thats great. I used an Apple Computer to design my Cray".
Not sure about your quote, but Apple did have a Cray. That's why they're address is "1 Infinite Loop" - the joke was the Cray was so fast, it ran an infinite loop in seconds.
well, it's the same as with spam. When spam filters became standard, people invented chain letters. Now they'll just turn up the kitty cuteness to 11. but seriously now, they just realized that a lot of people have no idea they can sort their e-mail in any way, or that they can use folders; so they're just doing that for them, with a filter that learns.
Actually, chain letters have existed long before spam filters - I think the rise of the bayesian filters killed the last off because I remember getting maybe one or two a month in the mid 90's. (I just forwarded them to every From: address I saw - there was usually enough addresses down the forward chain of those gullible).
As for folders or labels - that relies on people being dilligent and using them. Labels are great because you can tag emails multiple times, but I personally don't use them beyond an initial sort of "mailing list" "interesting notes to myself" "registration codes" and the like. I'm not disciplined enough to keep my life sorted into neat little boxes, so most of my email is in the inbox. I do have a nice index memory so I can generally recall if something sounds familiar and approximately when, to which I can just search and find it. It's only good for maybe the past month or so, but that usually suffices since I rarely have to search archives.
Am I missing something here? Keep the existing black box tech, you don't have to remove it, but *simultaneously* transmit the info where possible. That way you have the best of both worlds.
And you run into politics very quickly.
Why do you think cockpit voice recorders are so limited, when we can stuff in enough flash and/or RAID-1 a pile of SSDs for hours of CD-quality audio storage? Literally - you can take a many SSDs together, mirror them all, and have hundreds of hours of audio at CD-quality. A bit less if you want to go all high-def 96kHz/24bit, uncompressed. Either way, you can get more than the half-hour to an hour you currently get. The simple reason is the aircrew objects - the half-hour limit being a compromise since the interesting bits pretty much happen only at the end.
As for the transmission - it won't ever fly - where will you store the data? Where are the servers located? If you say the US, you can bet the US government will take advantage of this and demand full passenger manifests and details for all flights, not just the ones that overfly US airspace. Which I suppose is great if you want to catch a terrorist, but not so much as now there's a central worldwide repository for travel information.
OK, so you don't store it in the US. You store it with the carrier, so if you don't want the US getting your information, you don't fly a US airline. You really want to outsource this storage expense to the airlines? Not gonna fly unless you want to see a "black box flight safety" fee added to your ticket.
And you can't store it pretty much anywhere else because some country would object - US would probably object if you tried to store the flight data not on US soil and force it to make requests to get that data.
It's a political problem, not a technical one. Heck, if you could find a way to do it, having the black boxes jettison themselves to freedom is a possibility where they can float (if over water) and use a 406MHz emergency beacon to locate. Or emergency batteries that continue to power the recorders for hours/minutes after power loss (data has been known to be lost when the black boxes lost power) - recording to special backup areas. And adding in accelerometers, gyros and magnetometers inside the black boxes so loss of aircraft sensor data doesn't mean a loss of all information - the attitude information can be valuable.
Windows 7 have basic support for playing mov files, without having to install Quicktime (and yay! for that). If you think upgrading to Win7 just for that is a bit overkill (it is of course:), your concern was security and Windows 7 is significantly better than XP overall in that regard.
Any proper MPEG-4 player should do, actually. After all, besides h.264 and AAC in MPEG-4, the MP4 file format is also part of the spec. And the MP4 container is a pretty substantial subset of the QuickTime MOV container. (the 3GP container is a subset of the MP4 container). The end result is getting your MP4 parser to understand MOV is a pretty trivial affair.
The downside is, well, it only works for h.264 encoded MOVs, the Sorenson codec ones won't be supported. And most h.264 videos already use the MP4 container.
Other than QuickTime serving as the Apple-native media playback framework, there is no need for it. Modern videos are h.264 containered in MP4, playable by anything that understands h.264/MP4. Of course, the Mac had the same thing as well - there was Windows Media Player ported to MacOS that was just as bad (so bad, Microsoft ended up telling Mac users to use a third-party product to play WMV). Probably because it also had to port the Windows DirectShow framework to Mac.
The only real reason to have QuickTime is for the oddball MOV encoded in the pre-h.264 days.
Don't forget they phased out Xbox originals support on XBL. So they slashed features and now they're charging more? PSN is looking more appetizing to me now.
They slashed support for maybe a couple of thousand users (the vast majority of whom were playing Halo 2) so they could supply the millions more users with features people have wanted. If you want, Halo 2 PC still plays via Games for Windows Live - the same Live network and linked to your Xbox Live account. But the Xbox was holding back Xbox Live and features. Apparently some people wanted more than 100 friends and the like, which is not supportable on the old Xbox.
And Sony's not much better - they phased out OtherOS, something they've criticized their competitors as lacking and advertised heavily at E3 and online. And with Playstation Plus, who knows what else they're gonna restrict.
Of course, though, who's idiotic enough to pay full price? I buy Xbox Live membership cards on sale, as with points cards on sale. You can find them 10% off easily enough (Dell probably has them on a weekly special). But what I do is wait for those 25%+ off deals which happen a few times a year and buy it then. Save money and all that jazz. And the points cards tend to go on sale frequently enough - hell, the Sony ones never go on sale because retailers aren't idiotic enough to mark down a $50 gift card (like they don't mark down iTunes and other gift cards). But Microsoft ones tend to, especially with the vague exchange rate used.
I think I still have 2 or 3 year's worth of xbox live membership cards yet to be redeemed. And lots of points. Get 'em on sale - you don't hav eto use them immediately, or if you do, it activates at the end of the current membership so it's not like you can't buy 10 for the next 10 year's worth.
Hamlet in Klingon was published about 10 years ago. ISBN-13 - 978-0671035785 (Amazon
Much Ado about Nothing was published in 2003 ISBN-13: 978-1587155017 (Amazon).
There's also Gilgamesh, also published in 2003. ISBN-13: 978-1587153389 (Amazon).
As for why - well, why not? It's an activity they're interested in, and if people can communicate meaningful information, is it less a language than the artificial ones we use to program our computers with? C/C++/Java/PHP/Perl/Python/Ruby/Assembly/Machine Code/etc are all just artificial languages as well
2 billion dollars for a bunch of chips and antenna components? I guess we know the true value of an ARM and a leg.
They'll make it back in the next Apple order for chips for the iPhone 5 and iPhone 6. You can be sure of it. (iPhones use Infineon parts). Or maybe just in iPhone 4 sales, too, if Apple could keep it in stock... how many of those have they freaking sold?
No, the big problem is pretty much forcing people to use custom firmware because it offers so many more features, not realizing why and just releasing updates to counter CFW and not add those features.
First - the UMD sucked. It's a great way to hold 2GB of data back in the day, but these days, solid state storage means 2GB of storage is cheap (and most games were under 2GB). CFW fixed this by having games load off much faster memory sticks (which started getting cheap). Hell, there was a funny video of a game taking 7 minutes to go from loading to actually in the game.
Second - the video restrictions were lame - you couldn't get full screen video at 30fps off memory stick - only UMD. CFW fixed this as well.
Microsoft realized games loaded faster off the hard disk than DVD on their Xbox and let people copy games from DVD to hard drive (it also was a great way to ensure your used game purchase was readable). They DRM protected the games by requiring the disc (holding the decryption key) be in the drive before launching the game.
Sony could've supported this in a similar way - dump a UMD to memory stick and either grab the key from the UMD, or use a machine-specific key. Games load faster, battery lasts longer, etc. CFW supported this why didn't Sony?
Second - well, eventually Sony relented when they realized people wouldn't pay $20 for a DVD and $20 for a UMD copy of the same DVD, but it took long enough.
Finally, the PSP Go - that's a laugh. It may work for a new PSP gamer, but old ones have UMD libraries and no way to play those games on the PSP Go, without purchasing them all over ago. There was a lame exchange program, but that's it - in exchange for a more expensive machine, and losing the ability to buy/sell used games. The PSP Go would've worked better as an iPod Touch competitor that happened to play PSP games, not as a PSP. And a large reason the App Store works is because of the free apps and cheap apps.
Those ads saying "Look what you get for $9.99" make me laugh - and show how out of touch Sony is. Sure you can sell a few games at $9.99, but I'm sure the App Store and the like have titles from big publishers at that price with equivalent quality. Though I think EA went and dropped the price to compete better...
Now that they can make pixels so small that they can only be singled out from distances closer than my eyes can focus, they can finally put some effort into making.. i got nothing, i don't see the point of this.
Well, for a display on its own, it's not terribly useful. After all, increase the pixel density beyond the iPhone 4 and you'll be adding useless pixels that take memory (framebuffer), power (all those pixels require controllers behind them, plus your 2D and 3D accellerators have to push that many more pixels) and size (enlarged bitmaps and the like take more space). They say an iPad with the PPI of the iPhone 4 would become something like 3000x5000 pixels-ish, which we're talking is latest graphics card style power to render all those pixels.
HOwever, the use is mentioned in the summary - those pico projectors. A small, light, bright, 1080p+ capable projector is probably doable, rather than the WVGA or less resolutions you get now typically.
Unless of course if 'they want' to log into the PSN or play on Sony's servers. Just saying, there's plenty that Sony can do, especially since this is the only hack available and it can apparently be detected server side.
Which isn't much different from the Xbox360 side of things, really. It's harder for Microsoft to detect you, but do something stupid like play a game before the release date means Microsoft knows your Xbox360 isn't completely kosher. Some lame DVD hacks are also detectable by Xbox Live. Not too sure about the latest JTAG hacks, but I guess a multilayered checksum might also detect it.
But considering most of my PS3 games are single player, and the multiplayer ones I tend to get for Xbox360, seems a perfect way to get repaid for the loss of OtherOS. I finally have a reason to update my PS3.
Do you really think that Microsoft has a team of people searching through these reports and actively fixing bugs based on them? It's more a metric of how bad a known bug is, that is, how many people are reporting crashes from known bug A as opposed to known bug B.
Are there places out there where knowing you have a virus, know you're spreading it, and don't do anything is illegal?
You could sue for negligence, as they have technically failed in their duty of care upon your telling them. Won't get much, but it could be enough to pay for a PC repair service with backup option - few hundred bucks at least.
>blockquote>For AM range it's different, you can pump around 10W and it won't go anywhere further than your house (I guess)
Even worse, actually. Considering HAMs can often talk around the world on 5W ("QRP"), and the HAM bands extend below and above the AM broadcast band, your 10W could have global reach to anyone with a decent antenna.
It's why AM stations often have to reduce power during nights and possibly during periods of solar activity that can carry their signal really far - you can get some impressive interference. Or why AM stations often don't transmit as powerfully as FM stations with their hundreds of kilowatts.
Though, AM interference usually just ends up as an annoying squeal, while FM doesn't really interfere but you end up with the capture effect - an FM radio "captures" the signal of the strongest FM transmitter it can detect. So your friend's 10W FM transmitter, if you're right beside the station transmitting at hundreds of kW, you're probably only gonna get a few inches radius. 1W can cover a lot if you're on an empty band, or maybe a block to the neighbourhood, depending on how far away the station is. It's also why the aviation band only uses AM - the squeal is far safer than having the capture effect - a malicious person could hook up an FM transmitter to override the control tower for a particular aircraft.
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Quite easily, actually. It's also the reason why the iPhone is so horrible on the AT&T network.
Basically, when your phone is "attached" to the cell network, it's communicating with the base station on a control channel. Similar to ISDN control channels, it's use for call setup/termination, management and other things. To optimize for power, the mobile station "pings" the base station with presence information (basically saying "i'm here"). This keeps the power-hungry transmitter off and only turns it on for the briefest of times. The receiver is also kept off, but it consumes less power so it can be turned on more frequently to listen for network messages, perform signal analysis (is it getting weak? Does the phone need to find another tower?). This is why if you're in a marginal signal area, your phone will consume more power - the transmitter will have ot use higher power to talk to the tower, and worst case is if you're in a marginal area between cells where the phone has to be constantly doing the handoff between cells (consuming lots more transmitter time).
Now, back to the topic at hand. Making a data "call" is exactly the same way - the phone uses the control channel to set up the call (find an uplink and downlink frequency) as well as any other network parameters, like maybe where in the frame it can transmit and receive its data on. Of course, this keeps the receiver on and the transmitter has to be active, so it consumes more power than idle. So when you want to maximize endurance, you want to tear down the data connection ASAP, which requires another control message. Depending on the application, this can mean setting up and tearing down hundreds of times, which consumes valuable control channel bandwidth.
So now your phone is making hundreds of "calls" continually as it sets up and tears down the data connection, which consumes the control channel bandwidth leaving less for SMS, other call setup/teardowns, handoffs, and the like.
Most North American carriers have the problem because the control channel bandwidth is fixed. Most rest-of-world carriers don't because texting is hugely popular, and SMS ends up consuming a rather significant chunk of control channel bandwidth. So those carriers long ago upgraded to dynamic control channel sizing to ensure that there's enough spare bandwidth for calls, voice or data. Texting is only really taken off in North America the past few years, and the iPhone was really also the first phone that was extremely aggressive on power savings by practically tearing down the data connection during pauses. End result, control channel overload leading to dropped calls (hard to be handed off the target cell can't handle the handoff request), missed calls, delayed text messages, and slow data.
I'm guessing Exchange may use a protocol that allows for frequent bringups and teardowns, especially amongst the more aggressively power saving phones.
This is a problem with all the carriers, especially since iPhones and Android phones are popular. If the Verizon iPhone is as popular as everyone makes it out to be, VZ could be in for a world of hurt if they don't already have the ability to dynamically adjust control channel bandwidth. It's also why early AT&T phone bills were more like phone books - because every time the data "call" is made, it's logged for billing purposes. This could result in pages of log entries just over the course of a browsing session as the data connection is brought up and down each time.
My trick is to load up the /. front page, then open the articles in a new tab. This hides the bandwidth usage enough that when I'm done scanning, the first article should've finished loading and I can read that while the rest of the tabs load.
I do dislike the javascript comment system for that reason - too much clicking and it's sloooooow. I'm glad /. didn't decide to do the eBay and force everyone over to the new interface with no option to switch back. About the only thing missing is a good way to quote - I think the javascript one does a nice job that embeds links and everything that the old style one doesn't.
No, open-source apps have been in the App Store for a long while now. I think it was a yeaf after the App Store opened up that Apple relaxed the policies regarding licensing. Thus, open source apps are allowed, provided:
1) You are allowed to distribute it
2) You follow all the requirements of the original license
3) You do not use it in any way that would force Apple's software to be open-sourced.
Most of the open-source stuff I see is that there's a link in the app description to the web site of the developer, and there is the source code for the app. In a more ideal world, there would be a way for the tools to bundle in the source code into the IPA file, so downloading the app downloads the source code as well. (An IPA file is just a regular ZIP file). Knowing the format, iTunes can actually strip out the source code so you're not stuck transfering useless stuff to your device.
GNU Go was a different problem. Someone ported it to iOS, but didn't release source. FSF alerted Apple to the license violation, and Apple removed the app for violating the license and developer agreement.
The App Store is a tricky place. The FSF holds the position it's GPL incompatible because it's Apple that's distributing the software, not the developer. Apple is maintaining their position on the App Store is it's a marketplace, i.e., a store, and while it's facilitating transactions between customer and developer, and it's hosting the content on behalf of the developer. (The difference is subtle - say you provide a binary of a GPL program. You upload the binary onto your webhost. Is your webhost now distributing the binary (which means they need to do the distribution of source and 3 year requirement), or just hosting hte binary (and you the developer are responsible for pointing to the source).
Or do the EEE - Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
Embrace - there are many open-source Flash players out there. All Apple has to do is hire the devs and bring them inhouse to make it work great on iOS. The benefit here is no plugins or other crap to download - iOS just runs most Flash apps.
Extend - new iOS features are put into the Flash runtime. Developers are encouraged to use those features for their code, and an Apple version of the tools (because Adobe's tools won't do it) and runtimes will be released as browser plugins and everything. Imagine opening up a webpage and seeing "You need to install the Apple Flash player to continue", for example. (E.g., location services, accellerometer, gyro, multi-touch - all these things I don't think are in Flash, yet could be added by Apple).
Extinguish - Adobe's a slow moving company. A mobile flash player has been available since Flash 7 many years ago, and yet it still runs like crap on anything but a PC. Mobile flash seems ot have hit it big this year, because it's taken Adobe that long to actually have it ready, even though you could get Flash on your N800/N810 tablets, Archos had mobile flash, etc. The open-source version could actually beocme the Flash player of the future, after Apple pretty much wrestles it away from Adobe to make it Apple's platform. And it'll be Adobe playing catch up on their platform.
And Android and WebOS devices will be onboard, because well, it's open-source and you can be sure developers would want the same features as well. Hell, imagine Apple selling apps for Android this way (Apple can do it because they can sell anywhere they have an iTunes store, while the Android Marketplace has limited the countries which can pay for paid apps).
Flight of fancy, I suppose. But one of Apple's main objections ot Flash was the dependence on a very unreliable third party that moves very slowly. By wrestling control of Flash from Adobe, they not only control it, but they could go and try to make it run well.
Funny, the only PDF I can find is a link from the FA which demonstrates the attack. The article itself is a regular web page, and I can't seem to find a PDF of the full disclosure.
Jailbroken and/or pirated apps are easily detected. So easily detected, that Apple doesn't really bother, because apps can do it themselves.
Firstly, an app downloaded from the App Store has DRM on it, which consists mostly of encrypted portions of the binary. That binary is then signed. On running the app, the kernel loads the app, validates the signature, then in-memory decrypts the binary, and finally runs it.
A cracked app can't be re-encrypted for a specific device, so they're shipped decrypted. The kernel, however, cannot load unsigned binaries unless a special flag is set to indicate that it's a decrypted binary that's OK.
An app just needs to check for that flag which exists in its info.plist file. It can do several checks - first, is info.plist in text format (it should be binary XML)? Second, do those keys exist in the file?
The apps that do the obvious checks are quickly re-patched to disable those checks, but there's nothing to say that an app has to pop up an "I'm pirated!" notice - it can silently report its pirated status to the server, for example, but otherwise run normally. Most crackers don't check, and most pirates won't bother. Even the ones running Firewall IP (a really nice firewall alert). You need someone to actually go and sniff the WiFi transmissions to ensure it's sending the same data to the server. Use SSL and you're golden. (Sure the pirate could disable all network access, but then who cares about single-player cheating?).
Also, assets are signed as well, so replacing all the textures with transparent ones also have the exact same issue - you have to go and decrypt the binary, make your mods and set the flag. There are also tests for jailbroken phones as well.
Online multiplayer is not a huge thing on iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches - at least, the ones where you can't do server-side validation of inputs (which you should do anyways). Local multiplayer may be a bigger deal, but there are probably social pressures against that behavior as well.
The same applies to Android phones as well, so the point being?
1) Motorola's already issued the first salvo. Considering earlier iOS devices could load on special pre-jailbroken firmware ("hacked ROM"), while later ones are vulnerability exploits ("rooting"), the end result is the same. Yet people don't seem to consider this a problem on Android, and instead the ability to load hacked ROMs and root is considered a Good Thing.
2) Ditto Android phones. Carriers have been known to force updates on people, and those updates can be unrootable. See Rogers forcing the G1 updates that remove root, for example. The irony here is Apple doesn't force updates (see my iPhone running 2.x still - it can run 3, I just never bothered updating).
3) Big whoop. HTC already hates people hacking their ROMs. Motorola's done it too. Apple's the same.
4) Again, the same on Android. But on both Android and Apple devices, unless the hardware's dead to the point where a software restore won't work, you can restore with the blessed firmware and no one would be the wiser. And if the hardware's too far gone for that, well, Apple nor anyone else really would go and snoop and see if it was jailbroken/rooted/customized. They stick it in a pile, and repair it as a batch. Part of the repair is a complete software reinstall to remove any possible corruption that may happen from hardware.
5) Seems to be working fine for the Android folks, as well as the Apple folks (Cydia supports paid apps, so obviously some people must be making money).
The only thing Android has over the iPhone is it's more open from the beginning as there's no walled garden. iOS devices need to be jailbroken to do the same. Which lets Android have more apps that Apple will never approve of. Also, it gives Android a slight advantage in that you don't need to root or anything fancy if all you want is pirated apps, which gives Android an overall advantage for most folks. (iOS devices must be jailbroken as a first stage in order to install pirated apps).
Because there are people who think Facebook is the center of their universe, and thus if you're friends with them, the only way they do things is via facebook this, facebook that and thus forcing everyone else to not only have a facebook account, but force all interaction through it. And worse yet, practically everyone's got a friend like that.
Facebook's as optional to use as the Internet these days. Short of being a social outcast, it's practically mandatory to use facebook for something or other.
"Why didn't you reply?" "Reply to what?" "My question!" "I didn't see a question" "I posted it on your wall", ... etc.
From my Firehose submission, there's an open source version available using a cheap and easily obtained development kit (~$40 US).
News article
Source code plus patch which you need to enable backup functionality.
All it would need is someone to port it to Linux (USB Gadget). An Android phone would serve as a suitable USB client.
Even better, this dongle disconnects itself from the USB bus when it's done - the only thing Sony can do is recognize unauthorized packages. Which becomes a problem because package managers will start using popular game IDs that Sony can't ban or block because it would block legitimate customers. Or download demos off PSN and use those IDs.
A very simple solution is a sticker with all the patents. Since a bunch of stickers are usually applied to some product anyways, it's trivial to apply another sticker with the current patents that are still valid. Those that aren't valid anymore are either inked out, or a new set of stickers are commissioned (cheap).
The question is, though, at what point does it it count to be invalid? If I made a product, and it sits on a shelf for 5 years before it sells, at which point the patent expired, am I infringing? The patents in question were valid when it was manufactured, just it sat in some warehouse for an extended period of time (my warehouse, retailer warehouse, etc). Or what happens if it's the day before the patent expires? Technically it's still patented, but it won't be tomorrow...
You're fighting with a gamepad? Ick. Invest ina good quality fightstick already (there are several, some with arcade parts). That d-pad's only been used as a way to get another 4 extra buttons to control stuff for other games, I didn't thing games used it as a primary control input. I never played SF4, but I would've thought they would've made the analog stick "digital" for those without fightsticks, but that's like playing Guitar Hero/Rock Band without the plastic instrument - yeah you can do it, but why would you.
I just wish Sony would stop being idiots, and make a nice ergonomic controller. After using the 360 controller, I can't use the PS3 one without cramping up, and games using the left analog get painful since they use the d-pad as 4 extra buttons. (I ended up getting a Cross Battle Adapter 2.0 - lets you use the Xbox360 wired controller with the PS3, supports rumble, button remaps, and sixaxis if you give up one of the analogs).
It's already happened on Android. Manufacturers are out making their latest rev and they ignore the bugfiles to their current line of phones. Or they do and pass it onto the carriers who may or may not force an update. Of course, if said update will remove things like root and custom ROMs, they'll probably push it.
But phones getting abandoned at whatever Android version they shipped with are already happening - I think the early Samsung phones were promised 2.0, but ended up with 1.6 only with an official letter. And others are stuck with 2.1 with no upgrade to 2.2. The only good part is these phones often are early models and easy to root and recover, so unofficial ROMs exist. But later ones may not be so lucky.
Really, the only Android phone that's not under carrier control is the Nexus One, which gets updates straight from Google. The wierd thing is, why can't Google pull an Apple? The iPhone gets updates from Apple, leaving out the carrier middleman, even if the user is paying a contract on the iPhone.
Google's big enough, let's see it happen and end all this Android loaded with crapware stuff.
Not sure about your quote, but Apple did have a Cray. That's why they're address is "1 Infinite Loop" - the joke was the Cray was so fast, it ran an infinite loop in seconds.
Then again, a quick Google came up with these links
http://www.clock.org/~fair/computers/sgi-cray.html (it was used for a supercomputing project, and it was Sculley)
http://www.thocp.net/biographies/cray_seymour.htm claims the quote is "When told that Steve Jobs bought a CRAY to help design the next Apple, Seymour Cray said, "Funny, I am using an Apple to simulate the CRAY-3." http://www.spikynorman.dsl.pipex.com/CrayWWWStuff/Cfaqp3.html#TOC23 seems to have a more detailed version of the Apple-Cray connection.
I guess the next question is - why didn't Microsoft have one?
Actually, chain letters have existed long before spam filters - I think the rise of the bayesian filters killed the last off because I remember getting maybe one or two a month in the mid 90's. (I just forwarded them to every From: address I saw - there was usually enough addresses down the forward chain of those gullible).
As for folders or labels - that relies on people being dilligent and using them. Labels are great because you can tag emails multiple times, but I personally don't use them beyond an initial sort of "mailing list" "interesting notes to myself" "registration codes" and the like. I'm not disciplined enough to keep my life sorted into neat little boxes, so most of my email is in the inbox. I do have a nice index memory so I can generally recall if something sounds familiar and approximately when, to which I can just search and find it. It's only good for maybe the past month or so, but that usually suffices since I rarely have to search archives.
And you run into politics very quickly.
Why do you think cockpit voice recorders are so limited, when we can stuff in enough flash and/or RAID-1 a pile of SSDs for hours of CD-quality audio storage? Literally - you can take a many SSDs together, mirror them all, and have hundreds of hours of audio at CD-quality. A bit less if you want to go all high-def 96kHz/24bit, uncompressed. Either way, you can get more than the half-hour to an hour you currently get. The simple reason is the aircrew objects - the half-hour limit being a compromise since the interesting bits pretty much happen only at the end.
As for the transmission - it won't ever fly - where will you store the data? Where are the servers located? If you say the US, you can bet the US government will take advantage of this and demand full passenger manifests and details for all flights, not just the ones that overfly US airspace. Which I suppose is great if you want to catch a terrorist, but not so much as now there's a central worldwide repository for travel information.
OK, so you don't store it in the US. You store it with the carrier, so if you don't want the US getting your information, you don't fly a US airline. You really want to outsource this storage expense to the airlines? Not gonna fly unless you want to see a "black box flight safety" fee added to your ticket.
And you can't store it pretty much anywhere else because some country would object - US would probably object if you tried to store the flight data not on US soil and force it to make requests to get that data.
It's a political problem, not a technical one. Heck, if you could find a way to do it, having the black boxes jettison themselves to freedom is a possibility where they can float (if over water) and use a 406MHz emergency beacon to locate. Or emergency batteries that continue to power the recorders for hours/minutes after power loss (data has been known to be lost when the black boxes lost power) - recording to special backup areas. And adding in accelerometers, gyros and magnetometers inside the black boxes so loss of aircraft sensor data doesn't mean a loss of all information - the attitude information can be valuable.
Any proper MPEG-4 player should do, actually. After all, besides h.264 and AAC in MPEG-4, the MP4 file format is also part of the spec. And the MP4 container is a pretty substantial subset of the QuickTime MOV container. (the 3GP container is a subset of the MP4 container). The end result is getting your MP4 parser to understand MOV is a pretty trivial affair.
The downside is, well, it only works for h.264 encoded MOVs, the Sorenson codec ones won't be supported. And most h.264 videos already use the MP4 container.
Other than QuickTime serving as the Apple-native media playback framework, there is no need for it. Modern videos are h.264 containered in MP4, playable by anything that understands h.264/MP4. Of course, the Mac had the same thing as well - there was Windows Media Player ported to MacOS that was just as bad (so bad, Microsoft ended up telling Mac users to use a third-party product to play WMV). Probably because it also had to port the Windows DirectShow framework to Mac.
The only real reason to have QuickTime is for the oddball MOV encoded in the pre-h.264 days.
They slashed support for maybe a couple of thousand users (the vast majority of whom were playing Halo 2) so they could supply the millions more users with features people have wanted. If you want, Halo 2 PC still plays via Games for Windows Live - the same Live network and linked to your Xbox Live account. But the Xbox was holding back Xbox Live and features. Apparently some people wanted more than 100 friends and the like, which is not supportable on the old Xbox.
And Sony's not much better - they phased out OtherOS, something they've criticized their competitors as lacking and advertised heavily at E3 and online. And with Playstation Plus, who knows what else they're gonna restrict.
Of course, though, who's idiotic enough to pay full price? I buy Xbox Live membership cards on sale, as with points cards on sale. You can find them 10% off easily enough (Dell probably has them on a weekly special). But what I do is wait for those 25%+ off deals which happen a few times a year and buy it then. Save money and all that jazz. And the points cards tend to go on sale frequently enough - hell, the Sony ones never go on sale because retailers aren't idiotic enough to mark down a $50 gift card (like they don't mark down iTunes and other gift cards). But Microsoft ones tend to, especially with the vague exchange rate used.
I think I still have 2 or 3 year's worth of xbox live membership cards yet to be redeemed. And lots of points. Get 'em on sale - you don't hav eto use them immediately, or if you do, it activates at the end of the current membership so it's not like you can't buy 10 for the next 10 year's worth.
Hamlet in Klingon was published about 10 years ago.
ISBN-13 - 978-0671035785 (Amazon
Much Ado about Nothing was published in 2003
ISBN-13: 978-1587155017 (Amazon).
There's also Gilgamesh, also published in 2003.
ISBN-13: 978-1587153389 (Amazon).
As for why - well, why not? It's an activity they're interested in, and if people can communicate meaningful information, is it less a language than the artificial ones we use to program our computers with? C/C++/Java/PHP/Perl/Python/Ruby/Assembly/Machine Code/etc are all just artificial languages as well
They'll make it back in the next Apple order for chips for the iPhone 5 and iPhone 6. You can be sure of it. (iPhones use Infineon parts). Or maybe just in iPhone 4 sales, too, if Apple could keep it in stock... how many of those have they freaking sold?
No, the big problem is pretty much forcing people to use custom firmware because it offers so many more features, not realizing why and just releasing updates to counter CFW and not add those features.
First - the UMD sucked. It's a great way to hold 2GB of data back in the day, but these days, solid state storage means 2GB of storage is cheap (and most games were under 2GB). CFW fixed this by having games load off much faster memory sticks (which started getting cheap). Hell, there was a funny video of a game taking 7 minutes to go from loading to actually in the game.
Second - the video restrictions were lame - you couldn't get full screen video at 30fps off memory stick - only UMD. CFW fixed this as well.
Microsoft realized games loaded faster off the hard disk than DVD on their Xbox and let people copy games from DVD to hard drive (it also was a great way to ensure your used game purchase was readable). They DRM protected the games by requiring the disc (holding the decryption key) be in the drive before launching the game.
Sony could've supported this in a similar way - dump a UMD to memory stick and either grab the key from the UMD, or use a machine-specific key. Games load faster, battery lasts longer, etc. CFW supported this why didn't Sony?
Second - well, eventually Sony relented when they realized people wouldn't pay $20 for a DVD and $20 for a UMD copy of the same DVD, but it took long enough.
Finally, the PSP Go - that's a laugh. It may work for a new PSP gamer, but old ones have UMD libraries and no way to play those games on the PSP Go, without purchasing them all over ago. There was a lame exchange program, but that's it - in exchange for a more expensive machine, and losing the ability to buy/sell used games. The PSP Go would've worked better as an iPod Touch competitor that happened to play PSP games, not as a PSP. And a large reason the App Store works is because of the free apps and cheap apps.
Those ads saying "Look what you get for $9.99" make me laugh - and show how out of touch Sony is. Sure you can sell a few games at $9.99, but I'm sure the App Store and the like have titles from big publishers at that price with equivalent quality. Though I think EA went and dropped the price to compete better...
Well, for a display on its own, it's not terribly useful. After all, increase the pixel density beyond the iPhone 4 and you'll be adding useless pixels that take memory (framebuffer), power (all those pixels require controllers behind them, plus your 2D and 3D accellerators have to push that many more pixels) and size (enlarged bitmaps and the like take more space). They say an iPad with the PPI of the iPhone 4 would become something like 3000x5000 pixels-ish, which we're talking is latest graphics card style power to render all those pixels.
HOwever, the use is mentioned in the summary - those pico projectors. A small, light, bright, 1080p+ capable projector is probably doable, rather than the WVGA or less resolutions you get now typically.
Which isn't much different from the Xbox360 side of things, really. It's harder for Microsoft to detect you, but do something stupid like play a game before the release date means Microsoft knows your Xbox360 isn't completely kosher. Some lame DVD hacks are also detectable by Xbox Live. Not too sure about the latest JTAG hacks, but I guess a multilayered checksum might also detect it.
But considering most of my PS3 games are single player, and the multiplayer ones I tend to get for Xbox360, seems a perfect way to get repaid for the loss of OtherOS. I finally have a reason to update my PS3.
That Windows Error Reporting actually has an unexpected side effect - spikes in crash reports often indicate a new virus is on the loose...
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2008/05/21/8525411.aspx
You could sue for negligence, as they have technically failed in their duty of care upon your telling them. Won't get much, but it could be enough to pay for a PC repair service with backup option - few hundred bucks at least.
>blockquote>For AM range it's different, you can pump around 10W and it won't go anywhere further than your house (I guess)
Even worse, actually. Considering HAMs can often talk around the world on 5W ("QRP"), and the HAM bands extend below and above the AM broadcast band, your 10W could have global reach to anyone with a decent antenna.
It's why AM stations often have to reduce power during nights and possibly during periods of solar activity that can carry their signal really far - you can get some impressive interference. Or why AM stations often don't transmit as powerfully as FM stations with their hundreds of kilowatts.
Though, AM interference usually just ends up as an annoying squeal, while FM doesn't really interfere but you end up with the capture effect - an FM radio "captures" the signal of the strongest FM transmitter it can detect. So your friend's 10W FM transmitter, if you're right beside the station transmitting at hundreds of kW, you're probably only gonna get a few inches radius. 1W can cover a lot if you're on an empty band, or maybe a block to the neighbourhood, depending on how far away the station is. It's also why the aviation band only uses AM - the squeal is far safer than having the capture effect - a malicious person could hook up an FM transmitter to override the control tower for a particular aircraft.