Yeah, changing passwords frequently just makes for lower-quality passwords.
Eventually people fall into a sequence that's even more detrimental to security than a really good, long password.
Here's some "strong" passwords - capital letters and numbers: Jan2010, Feb2010, Mar2010,... Let's make it harder, add symbols! Jan!2010, Feb@2010, Mar#2010,... Nov2010 Can't repeat numbers in same spot? Jan!2010, 2010Feb@, Mar#2010,... Want longer? January2010, February2010,... Hell, they may just simplify and do 1!January, 2@Feburary, 3#March,... etc.
Plus, it really depends on what you're trying to protect. My password for a blog site would be relatively weak because if it's compromised, so what? My password for my bank though is something much stronger for obvious reasons. Sites that claim that 80% of the people use "password" as their password isn't revealing - it depends on the site itself. If it's some news site or otherwise unimportant with no consequences, it'll have a weak password. If it's a password to your bank account, then you'll have something much stronger on it. Ditto sites with same password - if it's a blog, so what if I use the same password on all the blog sites I visit? Big whoop, you compromized by NYT login and now have access to some other blog sites.
I recently started playing Counter Strike Source and was amazed to see there were achievments. I didn't realise until a message popped up at the end of the game and was pleasantly surprised. The CS:S achievments are worded light heartedly and unlike Xbox360, you can't see the list of achievments and what you have yet to achieve so it's fun when you get awarded.
That's actually up to the developer - they can have visible achievements (ones you know how to get) and invisible ones (ones you don't know how to get). Steam games have both as well, and the Xbox360 invisible ones just show up as "???" on the list. Not that they remain hidden long - gamefaqs quickly has achievement lists up that detail all the hidden ones.
Sometimes the hidden ones are hidden because they're spoilers or react to things that you maybe shouldn't have done (or should have), that could change the story.
Used for this, RequestPolicy is vastly superior than NoScript. I used to use it with Firefox. When I moved to Chrome, I could no longer use it of course -- and that's when I realized how much of a control freak I was. It's liberating moving away from all the fine-grained WWW manipulation schemes... it is too easy to become unnecessarily immersed in. Now? Let JavaScript and CSS do its thing. Flash, PDF, Silverlight? They can all go to hell.
Well, it's quite useful to have fine-grained control. For example, I could view a page on Gizmodo and have just Giz's comments load (allow gizmodo.com) but block ad tracking networks (deny doubleclick.com, quantserve.com, etc). Nevermind the dozens of other sites for social media (fbcdn.com, facebook.com, twitter.com, digg.com, etc.). And the rest (google-analytics.com, chartbeat.com, sitemeter.com...).
And there's probably 3 dozen more sites all pulled in by that one tech blog. All of which it takes one lousy javascript coder to bring your browser to a crawl. I just wish Firefox/Chrome/etc had a task-manager so I could see which tabs are consuming all the CPU time.
Thats how Navtaq got their data. Google used to use Navteq, which for where I lived provided very accurate and up to date data. Ever since they switched to Teleatlas, it was a step backwards. The maps are outdated (changes from 2-3 years ago aren't present), and there are glaring errors everywhere. Mind you, I live in an area that hasn't changed much in the past 20 years, these errors shouldn't be there to begin with.
Google used to use Navteq, but they switched to TeleAtlas because Nokia was cheaper (Nokia owns TeleAtlas, I can't remember who owns NavTeq - TomTom?).
Then Google realized that it can kill about 10 birds with one stone while doing its street View stuff. Google's been generating its own map data (it uses its own for much of North America) while its on Street View patrol. At the same time, it captures access point MACs so you can do WiFi based location. And it captures Street View imagery.
There was a switchover last year that caused no end of hilarity as all of a sudden, Google's maps were just... awful and full of errors. Turns out the Street View folks managed to make a few typos and such when doing the mapping. It was so bad people were temporarily using Bing maps (which was using Navteq data) in order to get around.
e.g. The use/implementation of "profiles", which are a work-around to the problem of running on a system that does not support multiple user accounts (well), or where it is expected that multiple users use the same user account. Last I used Mozilla and Firefox on Windows, these were still pretty prominent. They're also included in Unix-based builds, where they're mostly pointless, instead of being IFDEFed out by default on those platforms.
Profiles are incredibly useful on any platform. I have three profiles in my configuration (Windows, yeah, but it's not specific to Windows). First is my generic profile I use for all day-to-day surfing. Second is a profile for certain websites (like eBay) whose coders are so inept that leaving an ebay tab open is a surefire way to require restarting Firefox daily. Or to separate out the myriad of eBay bookmarks for various searches (because the UI keeps getting worse and worse and worse to be unusable) so they don't clutter my bookmark bar or bookmark list.
Then I have a third profile that I use for testing stuff, mostly moving profiles around (I wish I could share a profile among several computers, or the like).
Sure I can make new users, but that seems like a really awkward way of having effectively multiple sets of configurations for programs. And besides, by default Firefox doesn't bring up the profile manager, so most people don't see it. I'm also sure web developers use it extensively so if it crashes, it crashes that one profile, not take down their entire browsing session.
See also the automatic updater. This is required on Windows, which does not have a centralised update system for 3rd party apps, and assumes each user will install their own copy of the software, or will have write privs to system software locations, or will have the Administrator password. It's redundant and useless on most Unices/Linux distros, but the code is still included by default.
True, but if your distro includes an older version or is slow at providing updates or just doesn't provide it at all, it's certainly a handy way of keeping Firefox updated even if your distribution doesn't.
It also prefers to bundle its own copies of 3rd party libraries, common practice on Windows where dependency handling doesn't exist, and 3rd parties generally do not bother to try to maintain backwards ABI compatibility between DLLs. Again this is contrary to the Unix way of doing things, where dependencies are well defined, and library authors take pains to ensure backwards-compatible ABIs. But still Mozilla software ships private copies of 3rd party libraries by default on Unix.
True, but for any large software project, this tends to happen as differing versions of various dependencies start getting in the way of development. Try building Android on Ubuntu 10.04, for example - it requires a bit of hacking in order to get the requisite JDK 1.5 installed (EOL'd - but 1.6 doesn't work if you go by the documentation). Sure you can get OpenJDK (which does work) but if you come across a bug, it means more time spent seeing if it's a JDK bug or an Android bug.
This is especially true on Linux, where your package manager may not provide the requisite software for whatever reason, which then gets you into compiling code just to satisfy the dependency and all the hassles that entails. (Remember RPM dependency hell? Now imagine it where half the RPMs are missing and you have to compile the missing bits yourself, which have other dependencies...).
If you stick with Ubuntu, Debian or Fedora, sure, no problem, it's easy. But Linux is more than the big distros, and getting specific versions of libraries that may not be present gets annoying, quick.
I suggest this will give a definitive answer to the investigations they have made into the antenna problem. En estimate of how many/few people are affected. And statement on what they are going to do about it, including a restatement of money back if dissatisfied, possible manufacturing changes, and a free bumper/case for existing owners.
What I don't get is for all those people complaining, why they don't return the damn thing. Honestly, given the iPhone 4 is out less than 30 days (well within most return periods) and the antenna problem surfaced the next day and was fleshed out the next week, it seems stupid that people would willingly hold onto it.
So what if there's a 3-week waiting period for it? You expect some fix? With a lawsuit silencing Apple, there's not much you can do and not much you can expect them to do without jeopardizing their case. And it certainly won't come in the 8 days left you have to return it (most offer 30 day return policies).
I have plenty of iPods, Macs, iPhones and an iPad. Even I don't see the point in waiting for a fix that may never come - just return it already and get on with life. Your old phone still works, so use it until Apple either fixes it or when the iPhone 5 comes out next year.
I know complaining is fun, but is being stuck in a 2-year contract with a phone that doesn't meet your basic needs fun? I think that's stupid. Also stupid are those who buy an iPhone 4 knowing this problem (I'll be generous and say since this week, when CR's non-recommendation hit the news everywhere (and if you didn't hear it, you probably don't know about the iPhone 4 either) and then complain about it.
Gizmodo has a nice writeup of return policies for the iPhone - http://gizmodo.com/5574502/remember-you-can-always-return-your-new-iphone - maybe the ones who can complain would be those who bought at Best Buy and RadioShack for they get screwed with the restocking fee. But AT&T and Apple don't.
Fake (or real) Steve Jobs said it right - "It's just a phone. Not worth it." If it's dropping calls as bad as the complaints are, return it. If you're happy, great. If you're complaining because it's cool and trendy, I've got better things to do in life. Given that, I'm guessing it can't be that big a problem at all with the 3-week wait for it, which would imply that there won't be a recall. Unless people are really that stupid and will fork out nearly $2000 over 2 years for something they could've just avoided. It's not a life or death situation nor a necessity (a phone might, but what were you using before?).
Vote with your wallet and return it. Apple probably won't fix it in time so you can return it. I suggest returning it while you still can rather than waiting for a recall that may or may not happen at all.
I guess I'm tired of complainers who don't see the most obvious solution to their problem. Sure it's nice if Apple fixes it, but why rely on that?
They say it's so that you cannot buy multiple phones
I remember that whopper. It's got to be up there with the most transparent lies ever told by a major corporation.
"You can't buy an iPhone with cash because we're worried that we'll sell too many of them".
Well, given the iPhone 4, despite its antenna problems, has a 3 week waiting list, and the iPad probably has around 1-2 weeks, I'd say Apple's just not making enough of them. And you want to aggravate the issue by having people pick up 10 at a time?
Sprint's having the same issue with their HTC Evo 4G phone as well. Imagine you want to buy one, but the guy ahead of you bought the last 10 units, only to see it on Craigslist or eBay for 3x retail price later.
Apple's just trying to make sure those who want it can get it, and scalpers have to resort to elaborate tricks in order to get some quantity to make some serious cash. Sure it's nice you can sell an iPhone 4 or HTC Evo for $1000, but people are greedy and you can't stop at just one device to earn quick cash. You want to pick up more of them and try again. And it's really risk-free, too. If you can't sell it in a couple of weeks, return 'em.
With Apple, you have to go visiting multiple Apple stores, and it's not like you can return your cache of 5 iPads or iPhones in one store, no, you'll have to visit multiple stores.
And you can buy iPads with cash - you just need to let them set it up for you. Or buy it from Best Buy. Once quantities are available, you'll find the 2-units-per-person rule get lifted. I'm sure you can walk out with 10 iPhone 3GS if you wanted - they're not moving that fast.
If the iPhone 4 is seeing such huge problems why is there a 3-week backlog for new orders?
I've wondered that myself.
After all, if you're getting dropped calls with your new shiny iPhone 4 that you didn't with your old phone, why haven't you returned it? Are you waiting for a fix that Apple may or may not provide? News of this hit the internet about a day after it went on sale, and there was at least a 14 day return policy (that even cancelled any contract you signed and reset your upgrade eligibility). And your old phone worked for you, and it still can.
As for those complaining about the issue after a couple of weeks, or to be more generous, after end of last week, I have no sympathy since the issue is widely reported and even Consumer Reports has put out a statement that's broadcasted everywhere. If you still buy it despite this, well, you knew what you were getting into.
Seriously, I'm now undecided. I've still got an original iPhone (imported and unlocked), and a 3G that comes off contract next year. I'm tempted by the iPhone 4 (unlocked!), but I'll probably wait and see what Apple does before committing. If I end up waiting for the iPhone 5 (next year, and yes, you know it's coming), so be it. (And with those antenna issue class actions, you know Apple can't do anything until those are resolved - lawsuits are a great way to shut someone up since a wrong move can open a can of worms. So even anything Apple might do to fix it has to be carefully considered to avoid giving the lawsuit more ammo.)
Fake (or real?) Jobs did say, after all, "It's just a phone. Not worth it." Return it, move on with life. If Apple fixes it, great, buy it then, else, wait for the new model. Or live with it, if you must have it, knowing full well it has the issue now.
And yes, I own lots of Apple stuff - iPods, iPhones, Macs and even an iPad. Apple's released duds in the past (like the Apple 3, the Lisa, the G4 Cube, the puck mouse, etc. etc. etc.).
I haven't applied the patch for this exact reason. So far, the only issue has been using the PSN. I haven't yet hit any games or movies that have had problems. I know it's only a matter of time of course but I'm still hoping that they get pressured into reversing the stance before that happens. I'm holding out on nuking my Linux partition until there is something that I really want that I can't get. Luckily, I don't use the Linux partition much, just to play some old emulators that I can do nearly as easily on my PC so it won't affect me much when the inevitable happens.
Ditto. Except well, I treat it as a sign from Sony - Don't spend money on PSN or PS3!. I was cautious before about spending money on PSN (I never did - who would've figured that $20 PSN cards would always cost $20. Even $20 Xbox Live point cards (1600 points) go on sale - easily $15 and under). So, $0 spent on PSN, I won't bother with PSN Plus (no $50 for you, and I might've found those cards on discount, too - no reason to pay full price).
And now, Sony's also telling me to not buy PS3 games. Which is fine as I do have an Xbox360 so I'll just buy games for it.
The real thing Sony would do to get me to buy a PS3 exclusive would just result in me getting another PS3, which does nothing but lower the attachment rate for PS3s. (I have three PS3s, but only one Xbox. Buying another PS3 means I'll have 4. Yay Sony, you sold 4 PS3s and 1'll buy one game, so you'll sell.25 games per PS3. Wonderful! And I paid for two Xbox360s (I wanted one with HDMI) and gave my old one to my friend...).
Sony - you don't have to play tricks if you don't want me to spend money in your walled garden. Just say so and I won't have to keep pinching PS3 money to pay for Apple and Microsoft stuff.
Couldn't they simply authorize a transaction for, say, 2x the amount on the bill? Then you specify how much you want to tip, the the transaction actually goes through. It's my understanding that pre-authorization of certain amounts is a routine part of the credit card system.
Even for those of us with chip-less credit cards, the European system is more secure, though. No waitstaff takes your card for 10 minutes and does whatever they want with it.
That's how it's done right now. If it wasn't possible, the whole e-commerce thing would collapse because the authorization hold is extremely fundamental to how e-commerce works.
Restaurants typically have machines do a hold for about 20% more than charged to allow for the tip. The actual amount charged is when the bill is settled.
Gas stations typically pre-authorize hold $100 when you swipe the card. This caused a bit of a problem with someone who was near their credit limit and needed to put $20 of gas in the tank. Also when gas prices shot up and people found that they could only fill their SUVs $100 at a time. When you're done pumping, the final bill ($100 or under) is then charged and the hold removed.
Online shopping do holds when you click "Place Order", and the actual amount is only charged when the item ships.
The mechanism basically temporarily reduces your credit limit to ensure your card can be charged the proper amount later (at which point the hold is released).
Funny thing about restaurant tips - it turns out unless you make the total come out an even number, the restaurants can do funny things with the value. They never exceed the total you marked, but they don't always charge what you marked, either (i.e., they shortchange the tip). The experiment conducted was simple - since the dollar amount represents the tip, you have the cents column to use as a (geeky) 6 bit bitfield (nearly 7 bits if you allow the top two bits to only take the values 00, 01, and 10, while the other 5 can be anything) which you can code various things. The goal was simple - encode a quick review (00 - bad, 01 - OK, 10 - coming back), whether they do alcohol, and other parameters. Problem was, it didn't work because the cents column varied from what he encoded (the values didn't make sense, for example).
To be fair, the version of Flash that people are installing on their iPads is a hacked version of the Flash Player 10.1 for Android that was just barely released a couple weeks ago. It still has a lot of issues with Flash that requires hover actions, and playing back video at a decent framerate. Most of the complaints I've seen are that it is impossible to scrub video because the controls are too tiny to actually tap on with a finger.
Personally, I don't blame Apple for not including it with the iPad - It wasn't even available when the iPad was released, and it doesn't have the user experience Apple products are known for - trying to watch Flash video that is so small you can't even click on the play or pause button is going to be an exercise in frustration for anyone.
Once Adobe fixes these bugs, I have a feeling we might see something change from Apple, and they may include it with a future release of iOS or Safari.
More fundamentally, only the iPad meets the requirements for Flash. Adobe's Flash Player for Android requires a minimum 1GHz processor. Only the iPad has it (the iPhone 4 is rumored to be a 600-800MHz processor). Not a problem for Android since all the good ones all have 1GHz processors (pretty much out of necessity to get a really nice and smooth running phone). But Apple's not ramping up the CPU speed (they don't need to - even the 3GS with its 600MHz CPU is really speedy).
Jobs' next challenge for Adobe would be to get Flash running "great" on an iPhone 4 or something, which would be about 20% slower than the Android phones it already runs on, or this Blackberry device.
(And Jobs could easily force Adobe's hand by requiring third-party platforms support new features by new OS release date. App store apps using said platform will be removed until updated runtimes are available. Thus, native developers have advantages in having apps ready all the time, while those reliant on 3rd party platforms get locked out until the platform is updated. And everyone saves face, except Adobe has to work harder in getting their Flash updates in time with iOS updates...).
Toilets did and still do need to be flushed multiple times to work, wasting more water than a properly designed toilet that uses a properly engineered (rather than bureaucratically or legislatively selected) low-consumption design. Progressivism is a failure wherever it is tried.
The new low-flow toilets don't, actually. The ones that did were the cheapass ones where they simply cut the tank in half and expected it to work just fine.
Modern low-flows are just as good, if not better at clearing the bowl. If you still clog one up regularly, you might need to see a doctor about it.
(Toilet manufacturers understand it's all about pressure now when flushing, and the old style ones needed a lot of water as they released the water in a pretty limpid fashion. Some of the higher-end low-flows use a little nozzle powered by the water supply line to help flush rather than gravity.)
And people didn't demand low-flows until the law was put in place. It's just human nature - it works, so why fix it? The initial ones sucked so horribly since they were half-sized tanks bolted onto regular bowls, but then manufacturers got around to engineering new ones. Heck, if it wasn't legislated, low-flow toilets would still be a niche hippie-tree-hugger item that requires 4 flushes.
Heck, seatbelts, catalytic converters and the like were also heavily adopted because of laws. You only need to go back 30 years or so where seatbelts were still optional...
If you live in West Virginia where nearly all the power comes from coal, ICE engines are probably better. If you live in France, where most of the power comes from nuclear, EVs are far better for the environment, even when you include battery production/disposal.
Though, it's likely the coal power plant is also way more efficient than the ICE (average ICE efficiency is 20-25% at best), while a coal power plant can probably get pretty close to 80-90% via combined cycle. That, and it's much easier to scrub the exhaust of a coal power plant than the 1000-10000 cars. Basically, to do that you heave to legislate yet another thing in the exhaust system, just like catalytic converters.
I assume Microsoft is calling these new products "slates" -- while everybody else still calls them tablets -- to distance them from the last time Microsoft tried to create a market for tablets and failed?
It would be the third OS and probably fourth time Microsoft has tried. Not counting the OSes that Microsoft didn't push for tablet devices (Vista supported tablets, but there was no big tablet push).
First, in the 90's, was PenWindows. (Windows 3.1 modified for pen input) Next, came Windows XP Tablet Edition. This had two rounds of hardware - first were Tablet PCs, that cost too much and did too little. Next round had them try the UMPC market (there were devices made by Samsung and the like featuring sub-GHz Celerons and the like). This time though Microsoft had a special SDK for that and released some sample apps. Now it's Windows 7 and these slates.
Which... have pretty much been flopping around. Archos has the Archos 9 PCtablet. HP Slate was cancelled due to poor performance. Windows 7 just doesn't fly very well on Atom processors. And while the iPad form factor has lots of volume, even Apple had to make it 90% battery to get decent life out of it. These slates need more space and have less battery volume...
The funny thing is, PayPal is mostly just relevant in the US and other western countries. Other countries have better online systems with full encyption, added security and several ways to use their system, and people happily use these to pay their phone and tv bills and everything else. You can also top up your account by buying one of the several coupons from the kiosk near you.
It's actually quite funny how US people put up with PayPal and their shitty and insecure system.
That's because Paypal solves a problem that well, no one else solves, whether it be Amazon Payments, Google Checkout, Visa, or other provider. It lets people pay via credit cards to people who otherwise don't qualify for merchant accounts. If you're Joe Average and you're getting money for selling some widget online that you found in the attic, no one would let you set up a merchant account - your volume is too small.
Which then leaves you to accept Western Union payments as a form of "instant" payment (where the buyer can send you money and have it arrive quick), or they drop a cheque/money order in the mail which means the seller has to wait maybe a couple of weeks for a possibly non-existent letter, then another week or two for it to clear. And the buyer has to go through the hassle of mailing a payment. Which makes no sense in this era where everyone pays for online goods by credit card (or bank transfer, or other electronic mechanism).
Hell, I've had people tell me to pay them via Paypal instead of their merchant account - they got much better rates. And it seems, Paypal's processor hasn't been breached yet. I've had to replace my card about once a year because some credit card processor suffers a breach. Sure I'm not liable, but it's sure a PITA when you have payments due or want to get that widget on sale.
Maybe someone can make something that combines the functionality of AdBlock, BetterPrivacy, and DroidWall. The resulting app (likely available from Cydia) would drop a list of DENY ACLs into ipfw, as well as zero out cookies, shared objects, and other personally identifying data. Ideally maybe even block use of the GPS to apps that don't need it either don't get access to it, or get dummy values to throw off trackers.
Already exists - at least at the network level. It's called IP Firewall and it's a Cydia paid app that pops up a dialog whenever an app wants to make a network connection. It's been used to spy on a number of apps that "phone home" way too often (apparently Fox's Top Gun game was one of the worst offenders).
The nice thing with iAd though is that a jailbroken app can probably disable the iAd framework completely. After all, it's built into the OS, so the library exists inside the OS and OS libraries can be replaced (jailbroken apps only).
As for GPS, CoreLocation already pops up that popup asking if you want to give the app permission to use your location when it's initialized. And CoreLocation is where the "Remote Kill Switch" lives for apps (which means only apps that use CoreLocation can be remotedly killed). Probably the most annoying thing would be it doesn't remember the setting...
What restricts a developer from including iAds in their paid-for application?
Simple - negative feedback.
Apple had to remove the star rating thing when you removed an app because it led to rating depression of apps. A user who paid for an app only to get ads in it could easily suffer the wrath of users who rate it 1 star with "it has ads, save your money".
I understand ads in apps, especially on platforms like Android where it seems users don't like paying for apps (or in some countries, they can't buy paid apps). So free apps makes a lot of sense. Also helps develop apps that keeps users coming back - those novelty apps don't generate much ad revenue as users play with them for 5 minutes then delete them.
Kind of like how night vision goggles usually just slide the infrared spectrum into light spectrum, (though I've never understood why green).
Well, there are two possible reasons. First is it might not spoil your night vision. Second is that the eye has a much better sensitivity to green than red or blue, so sliding the spectrum to green lets the eye pick up more details than it otherwise would. Maybe a combination of the two.
Just guesses, though, no evidence to back it up either way (other than the eye is more sensitive to green, which is why the Bayer pattern is RGBG and the pentile displays have a half-pixel of green beside each solid red or green pixel (one pixel will be RG, other is BG, almost like a Bayer).
We should restrict copyright for software to require publication of the source code. You could still sell custom software without releasing the source code for everybody, but you'd be required to release the source code to your customers if you wanted copyright protections.
Copyright is designed to prevent that. I think you really meant patents, in which case every patent should come with the full (buildable) source of the product containing said patented item. After all, a patent has to describe how something is done, and nothing describes "how" better than the source code. The use of that code is restricted by the patent anyways, and copyright covers the use of the binaries.
Do the same for business patents (i.e., business employing said patent is literally open for inspection and observation by anyone) and you'll probably cut down the amount of silly patents filed (want to patent a silly feature? Release the source code to your entire app. Want to patent a stupid business plan? Well now your business is inspectable by anyone and everyone - open books for all, including your competitors).
I'd love to get a reliable source on that. I always imagine Apple as being evil as sin (ha!); it would do a lot for my impression of the company to believe that they were willing to work on something for nothing (OS X + PostScript GUI on a 433mhz Geode?).
Steve Jobs, Apple Computer Inc.'s chief executive, offered to provide free copies of the company's operating system, OS X, for the machine, according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative's founders. "We declined because it's not open source," says Dr. Papert, noting the designers want an operating system that can be tinkered with. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
As for OS X on a 433MHz X86 compatible - "OS X" seems to run just fine on an iPhone/iPod Touch which have 400MHz ARM processors. Sure it's not the full OS, but it can be cut down to run decently. I think OLPC could've cut out the fat and made it run decently...
so we should be exploring a range of solutions, understand the benefits and disadvantages of each possible solution, and expect to use a complicated range of them. GM may well form part of that portfolio. Expecting a single "magic" solution such as the whole world reverting to subsistence farming or turning vegetarian seems quite unrealistic to me.
The problem of the hungry is not one of growing enough food. We actually have sufficient food to feed everyone (and then some). The problem is, and has been, politics and distribution.
Politics in that farm subsidies actually hurt poorer nations because they can't sell the food they grow, and are forced to convert their farms from food they need to food they can sell to make money. Crops like corn are so heavily subsidized that effectively, everyone in North America eats corn (directly or indirectly) - from corn-fed animals to processed corn products.
The likes of Monsanto actually would worsen the problem, not alleviate it.
Hard drives tend to use the momentum stored in the spindle itself to at least park heads after a power failure (especially for laptop drives that park away from the media). This presumably works by powering the drive's rails through the motor controller's protection diodes. I'm not sure if they also use it for last-gasp writing of write-cached data, though. i guess it depends on whether the write controller can handle media that is losing speed.
No, they don't do the last-gasp writing. It simply takes too long to do it and it's too risky as the speed is uncontrolled and there's always a danger of overwriting critical areas by accident (servo tracks, firmware regions, control data, etc) which would render the drive unusuable.
In fact, this sort of power down is designated as "emergency stop" - the momentum is used to turn the spindle motor into a generator, and the power is dumped into the voice coils directly. It's quite a violent procedure and most drives are severely derated. I've seen one rated to 50,000 load-unload cycles, but only 10,000 "emergency unloads". It's just that all those pieces slamming into each other start wearing out the mechanical bits.
I know someone who works in the fraud prevention business and they allege that iTunes purchases and credit card fraud are strongly correlated. Their story goes like this: an iTunes purchase is made for an unknown app, and within minutes a very high value (basically max-out) charge is placed on the same card. The catch is that the max-out charge is placed with an *actual* card (presumably a cloned card) and since it is incredibly unlikely that every case is fraud abuse (a made up 'theft' story by the cardholder) there is something that iTunes is either doing directly or indirectly that is enabling this activity.
Now the question for the armchair detectives is: is the iTunes purchase the moment of the leak of the card info (through some sort of hacked app), or is the iTunes purchase a test mechanism for the already stolen card info? Not being a big Apple person I haven't spent much time buying from the App store; is it possible to buy an app for someone elses' device, or for a device that doesn't exist yet?
The iTunes thing is a credit card test.
If you think about it, if you steal a bunch of credit cards (e.g., hack a payment processor), the easiest way to test them is to run up a charage against something that has most people thinking is a normal charge.
E.g., a lot of people have iTunes accounts, so get iTunes to do run a charge and see if it goes through - you'll see this as a $0.99 billing mostly. The goal is to hide that 99 cent charge amongst hopefully other iTunes charges.
Earlier this year, a payment processor was hacked (one used by one of my favorite stores) - it's unusual because the store itself doesn't store credit card data (they can't), but a bunch of people who used that store noticed the iTunes charges, while others noticed and saw the strange charges as well (too late).
I don't think there's any credit card information being stolen from Apple (no app can get at it unless it key logs - at worst they'll get your iTunes account information as your credit card isn't transmitted to Apple at all - Apple looks up your stored credit card info).
As for enabling the activity, I think it's because iTunes is quite popular - a good chunk of those doing online shopping have probably bought something from iTunes, thus the change of burying a charge is greater, and there's probably some API that was hacked in order to rapidly test credit cards. Also, Apple delays charging for a week or so (to avoid multiple 99 cent charges, they'd rather do a batch charge) but iTunes does do a reservation for each charge to ensure credit is available.
Tell that to everyone running Windows 7 on their netbooks.
You probably meant Moorestown which doesn't have a PCI bus. The next version, Oaktrail will be able to run regular Windows however.
Ah you caught me, thanks. Yes, Moorestown was what I was thinking. And less so because of PCI, more so because if you want a phone, going through the BIOS and ACPI startup routines means you can lose the call before your OS can resume. (It may take "seconds" to come out of sleep, but on a low-power low-frequency platform, it can easily be 30+ seconds, and by then, you lost the call. The modem wakes you up, and you have to run through the BIOS, which calls the OS resume, which then has to run through the ACPI resume stuff and wait for I/O to be ready before userspace is ready to be able to handle the call - you can delay things like WiFi startup, but you must have things like PCI and USB bus ready )to talk to modem), audio (to play ringtone and map the audio path to the modem), display, and you have to do this so the user can decide if they want to take the call or not).
Treating the x86 as a SoC can enable the 1-2 second wakeup times required for a phone, and eliminates all the legacy crap that really slows you down. At the expense of well, now you have to build your Linux kernel specially and you can't just install Ubuntu and the latest kernel - you need the patches brought forward.
I'm sure you can do that on more PC-like platforms, but it's going to be a lot more work since you'll have to re-do the BIOS to literally be non-existent and hard code a lot of things handled by ACPI, etc. At which point, you might as well start over, and just get rid of all the junk you don't need, adding in the stuff (controllers) you do, and avoiding the whole overhead of things like PCI when the devices are at specific I/O or memory addresses.
Is there any particular reason why there isn't a standard way of doing things?
I mean, is there a competitive advantage to the chip makers who license the ARM tech if they decide on their own addresses for various components? Or is it just that it hasn't been as big an issue with embedded systems in the past, and nobody large enough has stood up and said "here's the standard way of doing things"?
Becvause it's embedded, so each manufacturer has a different way of doing things that they feel is "better". It's why there's no standard for network cards - Intel, Broadcom, Marvell and the like all have differing ideas on how to do things that they feel will give them the edge.
Compatibility itself was never a consideration for embedded - at best you had source code compatibility, and some SoCs maintained memory maps for next-gen chips (so developers of previous-gen chips can reuse stuff like drivers). Intel's StrongARM and PXA25x chips come to mind (and Marvell has continued, which results in oddball placement of registers in the memory map these days, and things like "compatible small memory" and "large memory" maps when things have to be moved around).
And in embedded systems, since the OS and applications (even if they run Linux) tend to be heavily customized anyways, the real need for cross-SoC compatibility is pretty minimal. The customer says they want an Samsung processor in their device (because they have a good deal with Samsung, for example), you use a Samsung processor. Next guy wants a Marvell one, you use Marvell. Third guy wants Freescale, etc.
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Yeah, changing passwords frequently just makes for lower-quality passwords.
Eventually people fall into a sequence that's even more detrimental to security than a really good, long password.
Here's some "strong" passwords - capital letters and numbers: Jan2010, Feb2010, Mar2010, ... ... Nov2010 ... ... ...
Let's make it harder, add symbols! Jan!2010, Feb@2010, Mar#2010,
Can't repeat numbers in same spot? Jan!2010, 2010Feb@, Mar#2010,
Want longer? January2010, February2010,
Hell, they may just simplify and do 1!January, 2@Feburary, 3#March,
etc.
Plus, it really depends on what you're trying to protect. My password for a blog site would be relatively weak because if it's compromised, so what? My password for my bank though is something much stronger for obvious reasons. Sites that claim that 80% of the people use "password" as their password isn't revealing - it depends on the site itself. If it's some news site or otherwise unimportant with no consequences, it'll have a weak password. If it's a password to your bank account, then you'll have something much stronger on it. Ditto sites with same password - if it's a blog, so what if I use the same password on all the blog sites I visit? Big whoop, you compromized by NYT login and now have access to some other blog sites.
That's actually up to the developer - they can have visible achievements (ones you know how to get) and invisible ones (ones you don't know how to get). Steam games have both as well, and the Xbox360 invisible ones just show up as "???" on the list. Not that they remain hidden long - gamefaqs quickly has achievement lists up that detail all the hidden ones.
Sometimes the hidden ones are hidden because they're spoilers or react to things that you maybe shouldn't have done (or should have), that could change the story.
Well, it's quite useful to have fine-grained control. For example, I could view a page on Gizmodo and have just Giz's comments load (allow gizmodo.com) but block ad tracking networks (deny doubleclick.com, quantserve.com, etc). Nevermind the dozens of other sites for social media (fbcdn.com, facebook.com, twitter.com, digg.com, etc.). And the rest (google-analytics.com, chartbeat.com, sitemeter.com...).
And there's probably 3 dozen more sites all pulled in by that one tech blog. All of which it takes one lousy javascript coder to bring your browser to a crawl. I just wish Firefox/Chrome/etc had a task-manager so I could see which tabs are consuming all the CPU time.
Google used to use Navteq, but they switched to TeleAtlas because Nokia was cheaper (Nokia owns TeleAtlas, I can't remember who owns NavTeq - TomTom?).
Then Google realized that it can kill about 10 birds with one stone while doing its street View stuff. Google's been generating its own map data (it uses its own for much of North America) while its on Street View patrol. At the same time, it captures access point MACs so you can do WiFi based location. And it captures Street View imagery.
There was a switchover last year that caused no end of hilarity as all of a sudden, Google's maps were just... awful and full of errors. Turns out the Street View folks managed to make a few typos and such when doing the mapping. It was so bad people were temporarily using Bing maps (which was using Navteq data) in order to get around.
Profiles are incredibly useful on any platform. I have three profiles in my configuration (Windows, yeah, but it's not specific to Windows). First is my generic profile I use for all day-to-day surfing. Second is a profile for certain websites (like eBay) whose coders are so inept that leaving an ebay tab open is a surefire way to require restarting Firefox daily. Or to separate out the myriad of eBay bookmarks for various searches (because the UI keeps getting worse and worse and worse to be unusable) so they don't clutter my bookmark bar or bookmark list.
Then I have a third profile that I use for testing stuff, mostly moving profiles around (I wish I could share a profile among several computers, or the like).
Sure I can make new users, but that seems like a really awkward way of having effectively multiple sets of configurations for programs. And besides, by default Firefox doesn't bring up the profile manager, so most people don't see it. I'm also sure web developers use it extensively so if it crashes, it crashes that one profile, not take down their entire browsing session.
True, but if your distro includes an older version or is slow at providing updates or just doesn't provide it at all, it's certainly a handy way of keeping Firefox updated even if your distribution doesn't.
True, but for any large software project, this tends to happen as differing versions of various dependencies start getting in the way of development. Try building Android on Ubuntu 10.04, for example - it requires a bit of hacking in order to get the requisite JDK 1.5 installed (EOL'd - but 1.6 doesn't work if you go by the documentation). Sure you can get OpenJDK (which does work) but if you come across a bug, it means more time spent seeing if it's a JDK bug or an Android bug.
This is especially true on Linux, where your package manager may not provide the requisite software for whatever reason, which then gets you into compiling code just to satisfy the dependency and all the hassles that entails. (Remember RPM dependency hell? Now imagine it where half the RPMs are missing and you have to compile the missing bits yourself, which have other dependencies...).
If you stick with Ubuntu, Debian or Fedora, sure, no problem, it's easy. But Linux is more than the big distros, and getting specific versions of libraries that may not be present gets annoying, quick.
What I don't get is for all those people complaining, why they don't return the damn thing. Honestly, given the iPhone 4 is out less than 30 days (well within most return periods) and the antenna problem surfaced the next day and was fleshed out the next week, it seems stupid that people would willingly hold onto it.
So what if there's a 3-week waiting period for it? You expect some fix? With a lawsuit silencing Apple, there's not much you can do and not much you can expect them to do without jeopardizing their case. And it certainly won't come in the 8 days left you have to return it (most offer 30 day return policies).
I have plenty of iPods, Macs, iPhones and an iPad. Even I don't see the point in waiting for a fix that may never come - just return it already and get on with life. Your old phone still works, so use it until Apple either fixes it or when the iPhone 5 comes out next year.
I know complaining is fun, but is being stuck in a 2-year contract with a phone that doesn't meet your basic needs fun? I think that's stupid. Also stupid are those who buy an iPhone 4 knowing this problem (I'll be generous and say since this week, when CR's non-recommendation hit the news everywhere (and if you didn't hear it, you probably don't know about the iPhone 4 either) and then complain about it.
Gizmodo has a nice writeup of return policies for the iPhone - http://gizmodo.com/5574502/remember-you-can-always-return-your-new-iphone - maybe the ones who can complain would be those who bought at Best Buy and RadioShack for they get screwed with the restocking fee. But AT&T and Apple don't.
Fake (or real) Steve Jobs said it right - "It's just a phone. Not worth it." If it's dropping calls as bad as the complaints are, return it. If you're happy, great. If you're complaining because it's cool and trendy, I've got better things to do in life. Given that, I'm guessing it can't be that big a problem at all with the 3-week wait for it, which would imply that there won't be a recall. Unless people are really that stupid and will fork out nearly $2000 over 2 years for something they could've just avoided. It's not a life or death situation nor a necessity (a phone might, but what were you using before?).
Vote with your wallet and return it. Apple probably won't fix it in time so you can return it. I suggest returning it while you still can rather than waiting for a recall that may or may not happen at all.
I guess I'm tired of complainers who don't see the most obvious solution to their problem. Sure it's nice if Apple fixes it, but why rely on that?
Well, given the iPhone 4, despite its antenna problems, has a 3 week waiting list, and the iPad probably has around 1-2 weeks, I'd say Apple's just not making enough of them. And you want to aggravate the issue by having people pick up 10 at a time?
Sprint's having the same issue with their HTC Evo 4G phone as well. Imagine you want to buy one, but the guy ahead of you bought the last 10 units, only to see it on Craigslist or eBay for 3x retail price later.
Apple's just trying to make sure those who want it can get it, and scalpers have to resort to elaborate tricks in order to get some quantity to make some serious cash. Sure it's nice you can sell an iPhone 4 or HTC Evo for $1000, but people are greedy and you can't stop at just one device to earn quick cash. You want to pick up more of them and try again. And it's really risk-free, too. If you can't sell it in a couple of weeks, return 'em.
With Apple, you have to go visiting multiple Apple stores, and it's not like you can return your cache of 5 iPads or iPhones in one store, no, you'll have to visit multiple stores.
And you can buy iPads with cash - you just need to let them set it up for you. Or buy it from Best Buy. Once quantities are available, you'll find the 2-units-per-person rule get lifted. I'm sure you can walk out with 10 iPhone 3GS if you wanted - they're not moving that fast.
I've wondered that myself.
After all, if you're getting dropped calls with your new shiny iPhone 4 that you didn't with your old phone, why haven't you returned it? Are you waiting for a fix that Apple may or may not provide? News of this hit the internet about a day after it went on sale, and there was at least a 14 day return policy (that even cancelled any contract you signed and reset your upgrade eligibility). And your old phone worked for you, and it still can.
As for those complaining about the issue after a couple of weeks, or to be more generous, after end of last week, I have no sympathy since the issue is widely reported and even Consumer Reports has put out a statement that's broadcasted everywhere. If you still buy it despite this, well, you knew what you were getting into.
Seriously, I'm now undecided. I've still got an original iPhone (imported and unlocked), and a 3G that comes off contract next year. I'm tempted by the iPhone 4 (unlocked!), but I'll probably wait and see what Apple does before committing. If I end up waiting for the iPhone 5 (next year, and yes, you know it's coming), so be it. (And with those antenna issue class actions, you know Apple can't do anything until those are resolved - lawsuits are a great way to shut someone up since a wrong move can open a can of worms. So even anything Apple might do to fix it has to be carefully considered to avoid giving the lawsuit more ammo.)
Fake (or real?) Jobs did say, after all, "It's just a phone. Not worth it." Return it, move on with life. If Apple fixes it, great, buy it then, else, wait for the new model. Or live with it, if you must have it, knowing full well it has the issue now.
And yes, I own lots of Apple stuff - iPods, iPhones, Macs and even an iPad. Apple's released duds in the past (like the Apple 3, the Lisa, the G4 Cube, the puck mouse, etc. etc. etc.).
Ditto. Except well, I treat it as a sign from Sony - Don't spend money on PSN or PS3!. I was cautious before about spending money on PSN (I never did - who would've figured that $20 PSN cards would always cost $20. Even $20 Xbox Live point cards (1600 points) go on sale - easily $15 and under). So, $0 spent on PSN, I won't bother with PSN Plus (no $50 for you, and I might've found those cards on discount, too - no reason to pay full price).
And now, Sony's also telling me to not buy PS3 games. Which is fine as I do have an Xbox360 so I'll just buy games for it.
The real thing Sony would do to get me to buy a PS3 exclusive would just result in me getting another PS3, which does nothing but lower the attachment rate for PS3s. (I have three PS3s, but only one Xbox. Buying another PS3 means I'll have 4. Yay Sony, you sold 4 PS3s and 1'll buy one game, so you'll sell .25 games per PS3. Wonderful! And I paid for two Xbox360s (I wanted one with HDMI) and gave my old one to my friend...).
Sony - you don't have to play tricks if you don't want me to spend money in your walled garden. Just say so and I won't have to keep pinching PS3 money to pay for Apple and Microsoft stuff.
That's how it's done right now. If it wasn't possible, the whole e-commerce thing would collapse because the authorization hold is extremely fundamental to how e-commerce works.
Restaurants typically have machines do a hold for about 20% more than charged to allow for the tip. The actual amount charged is when the bill is settled.
Gas stations typically pre-authorize hold $100 when you swipe the card. This caused a bit of a problem with someone who was near their credit limit and needed to put $20 of gas in the tank. Also when gas prices shot up and people found that they could only fill their SUVs $100 at a time. When you're done pumping, the final bill ($100 or under) is then charged and the hold removed.
Online shopping do holds when you click "Place Order", and the actual amount is only charged when the item ships.
The mechanism basically temporarily reduces your credit limit to ensure your card can be charged the proper amount later (at which point the hold is released).
Funny thing about restaurant tips - it turns out unless you make the total come out an even number, the restaurants can do funny things with the value. They never exceed the total you marked, but they don't always charge what you marked, either (i.e., they shortchange the tip). The experiment conducted was simple - since the dollar amount represents the tip, you have the cents column to use as a (geeky) 6 bit bitfield (nearly 7 bits if you allow the top two bits to only take the values 00, 01, and 10, while the other 5 can be anything) which you can code various things. The goal was simple - encode a quick review (00 - bad, 01 - OK, 10 - coming back), whether they do alcohol, and other parameters. Problem was, it didn't work because the cents column varied from what he encoded (the values didn't make sense, for example).
More fundamentally, only the iPad meets the requirements for Flash. Adobe's Flash Player for Android requires a minimum 1GHz processor. Only the iPad has it (the iPhone 4 is rumored to be a 600-800MHz processor). Not a problem for Android since all the good ones all have 1GHz processors (pretty much out of necessity to get a really nice and smooth running phone). But Apple's not ramping up the CPU speed (they don't need to - even the 3GS with its 600MHz CPU is really speedy).
Jobs' next challenge for Adobe would be to get Flash running "great" on an iPhone 4 or something, which would be about 20% slower than the Android phones it already runs on, or this Blackberry device.
(And Jobs could easily force Adobe's hand by requiring third-party platforms support new features by new OS release date. App store apps using said platform will be removed until updated runtimes are available. Thus, native developers have advantages in having apps ready all the time, while those reliant on 3rd party platforms get locked out until the platform is updated. And everyone saves face, except Adobe has to work harder in getting their Flash updates in time with iOS updates...).
The new low-flow toilets don't, actually. The ones that did were the cheapass ones where they simply cut the tank in half and expected it to work just fine.
Modern low-flows are just as good, if not better at clearing the bowl. If you still clog one up regularly, you might need to see a doctor about it.
(Toilet manufacturers understand it's all about pressure now when flushing, and the old style ones needed a lot of water as they released the water in a pretty limpid fashion. Some of the higher-end low-flows use a little nozzle powered by the water supply line to help flush rather than gravity.)
And people didn't demand low-flows until the law was put in place. It's just human nature - it works, so why fix it? The initial ones sucked so horribly since they were half-sized tanks bolted onto regular bowls, but then manufacturers got around to engineering new ones. Heck, if it wasn't legislated, low-flow toilets would still be a niche hippie-tree-hugger item that requires 4 flushes.
Heck, seatbelts, catalytic converters and the like were also heavily adopted because of laws. You only need to go back 30 years or so where seatbelts were still optional...
Though, it's likely the coal power plant is also way more efficient than the ICE (average ICE efficiency is 20-25% at best), while a coal power plant can probably get pretty close to 80-90% via combined cycle. That, and it's much easier to scrub the exhaust of a coal power plant than the 1000-10000 cars. Basically, to do that you heave to legislate yet another thing in the exhaust system, just like catalytic converters.
It would be the third OS and probably fourth time Microsoft has tried. Not counting the OSes that Microsoft didn't push for tablet devices (Vista supported tablets, but there was no big tablet push).
First, in the 90's, was PenWindows. (Windows 3.1 modified for pen input)
Next, came Windows XP Tablet Edition. This had two rounds of hardware - first were Tablet PCs, that cost too much and did too little. Next round had them try the UMPC market (there were devices made by Samsung and the like featuring sub-GHz Celerons and the like). This time though Microsoft had a special SDK for that and released some sample apps.
Now it's Windows 7 and these slates.
Which... have pretty much been flopping around. Archos has the Archos 9 PCtablet. HP Slate was cancelled due to poor performance. Windows 7 just doesn't fly very well on Atom processors. And while the iPad form factor has lots of volume, even Apple had to make it 90% battery to get decent life out of it. These slates need more space and have less battery volume...
That's because Paypal solves a problem that well, no one else solves, whether it be Amazon Payments, Google Checkout, Visa, or other provider. It lets people pay via credit cards to people who otherwise don't qualify for merchant accounts. If you're Joe Average and you're getting money for selling some widget online that you found in the attic, no one would let you set up a merchant account - your volume is too small.
Which then leaves you to accept Western Union payments as a form of "instant" payment (where the buyer can send you money and have it arrive quick), or they drop a cheque/money order in the mail which means the seller has to wait maybe a couple of weeks for a possibly non-existent letter, then another week or two for it to clear. And the buyer has to go through the hassle of mailing a payment. Which makes no sense in this era where everyone pays for online goods by credit card (or bank transfer, or other electronic mechanism).
Hell, I've had people tell me to pay them via Paypal instead of their merchant account - they got much better rates. And it seems, Paypal's processor hasn't been breached yet. I've had to replace my card about once a year because some credit card processor suffers a breach. Sure I'm not liable, but it's sure a PITA when you have payments due or want to get that widget on sale.
Already exists - at least at the network level. It's called IP Firewall and it's a Cydia paid app that pops up a dialog whenever an app wants to make a network connection. It's been used to spy on a number of apps that "phone home" way too often (apparently Fox's Top Gun game was one of the worst offenders).
The nice thing with iAd though is that a jailbroken app can probably disable the iAd framework completely. After all, it's built into the OS, so the library exists inside the OS and OS libraries can be replaced (jailbroken apps only).
As for GPS, CoreLocation already pops up that popup asking if you want to give the app permission to use your location when it's initialized. And CoreLocation is where the "Remote Kill Switch" lives for apps (which means only apps that use CoreLocation can be remotedly killed). Probably the most annoying thing would be it doesn't remember the setting...
Simple - negative feedback.
Apple had to remove the star rating thing when you removed an app because it led to rating depression of apps. A user who paid for an app only to get ads in it could easily suffer the wrath of users who rate it 1 star with "it has ads, save your money".
I understand ads in apps, especially on platforms like Android where it seems users don't like paying for apps (or in some countries, they can't buy paid apps). So free apps makes a lot of sense. Also helps develop apps that keeps users coming back - those novelty apps don't generate much ad revenue as users play with them for 5 minutes then delete them.
Well, there are two possible reasons. First is it might not spoil your night vision. Second is that the eye has a much better sensitivity to green than red or blue, so sliding the spectrum to green lets the eye pick up more details than it otherwise would. Maybe a combination of the two.
Just guesses, though, no evidence to back it up either way (other than the eye is more sensitive to green, which is why the Bayer pattern is RGBG and the pentile displays have a half-pixel of green beside each solid red or green pixel (one pixel will be RG, other is BG, almost like a Bayer).
Copyright is designed to prevent that. I think you really meant patents, in which case every patent should come with the full (buildable) source of the product containing said patented item. After all, a patent has to describe how something is done, and nothing describes "how" better than the source code. The use of that code is restricted by the patent anyways, and copyright covers the use of the binaries.
Do the same for business patents (i.e., business employing said patent is literally open for inspection and observation by anyone) and you'll probably cut down the amount of silly patents filed (want to patent a silly feature? Release the source code to your entire app. Want to patent a stupid business plan? Well now your business is inspectable by anyone and everyone - open books for all, including your competitors).
This might be the best source WSJ
Quote:
As for OS X on a 433MHz X86 compatible - "OS X" seems to run just fine on an iPhone/iPod Touch which have 400MHz ARM processors. Sure it's not the full OS, but it can be cut down to run decently. I think OLPC could've cut out the fat and made it run decently...
The problem of the hungry is not one of growing enough food. We actually have sufficient food to feed everyone (and then some). The problem is, and has been, politics and distribution.
Politics in that farm subsidies actually hurt poorer nations because they can't sell the food they grow, and are forced to convert their farms from food they need to food they can sell to make money. Crops like corn are so heavily subsidized that effectively, everyone in North America eats corn (directly or indirectly) - from corn-fed animals to processed corn products.
The likes of Monsanto actually would worsen the problem, not alleviate it.
No, they don't do the last-gasp writing. It simply takes too long to do it and it's too risky as the speed is uncontrolled and there's always a danger of overwriting critical areas by accident (servo tracks, firmware regions, control data, etc) which would render the drive unusuable.
In fact, this sort of power down is designated as "emergency stop" - the momentum is used to turn the spindle motor into a generator, and the power is dumped into the voice coils directly. It's quite a violent procedure and most drives are severely derated. I've seen one rated to 50,000 load-unload cycles, but only 10,000 "emergency unloads". It's just that all those pieces slamming into each other start wearing out the mechanical bits.
The iTunes thing is a credit card test.
If you think about it, if you steal a bunch of credit cards (e.g., hack a payment processor), the easiest way to test them is to run up a charage against something that has most people thinking is a normal charge.
E.g., a lot of people have iTunes accounts, so get iTunes to do run a charge and see if it goes through - you'll see this as a $0.99 billing mostly. The goal is to hide that 99 cent charge amongst hopefully other iTunes charges.
Earlier this year, a payment processor was hacked (one used by one of my favorite stores) - it's unusual because the store itself doesn't store credit card data (they can't), but a bunch of people who used that store noticed the iTunes charges, while others noticed and saw the strange charges as well (too late).
I don't think there's any credit card information being stolen from Apple (no app can get at it unless it key logs - at worst they'll get your iTunes account information as your credit card isn't transmitted to Apple at all - Apple looks up your stored credit card info).
As for enabling the activity, I think it's because iTunes is quite popular - a good chunk of those doing online shopping have probably bought something from iTunes, thus the change of burying a charge is greater, and there's probably some API that was hacked in order to rapidly test credit cards. Also, Apple delays charging for a week or so (to avoid multiple 99 cent charges, they'd rather do a batch charge) but iTunes does do a reservation for each charge to ensure credit is available.
Ah you caught me, thanks. Yes, Moorestown was what I was thinking. And less so because of PCI, more so because if you want a phone, going through the BIOS and ACPI startup routines means you can lose the call before your OS can resume. (It may take "seconds" to come out of sleep, but on a low-power low-frequency platform, it can easily be 30+ seconds, and by then, you lost the call. The modem wakes you up, and you have to run through the BIOS, which calls the OS resume, which then has to run through the ACPI resume stuff and wait for I/O to be ready before userspace is ready to be able to handle the call - you can delay things like WiFi startup, but you must have things like PCI and USB bus ready )to talk to modem), audio (to play ringtone and map the audio path to the modem), display, and you have to do this so the user can decide if they want to take the call or not).
Treating the x86 as a SoC can enable the 1-2 second wakeup times required for a phone, and eliminates all the legacy crap that really slows you down. At the expense of well, now you have to build your Linux kernel specially and you can't just install Ubuntu and the latest kernel - you need the patches brought forward.
I'm sure you can do that on more PC-like platforms, but it's going to be a lot more work since you'll have to re-do the BIOS to literally be non-existent and hard code a lot of things handled by ACPI, etc. At which point, you might as well start over, and just get rid of all the junk you don't need, adding in the stuff (controllers) you do, and avoiding the whole overhead of things like PCI when the devices are at specific I/O or memory addresses.
Becvause it's embedded, so each manufacturer has a different way of doing things that they feel is "better". It's why there's no standard for network cards - Intel, Broadcom, Marvell and the like all have differing ideas on how to do things that they feel will give them the edge.
Compatibility itself was never a consideration for embedded - at best you had source code compatibility, and some SoCs maintained memory maps for next-gen chips (so developers of previous-gen chips can reuse stuff like drivers). Intel's StrongARM and PXA25x chips come to mind (and Marvell has continued, which results in oddball placement of registers in the memory map these days, and things like "compatible small memory" and "large memory" maps when things have to be moved around).
And in embedded systems, since the OS and applications (even if they run Linux) tend to be heavily customized anyways, the real need for cross-SoC compatibility is pretty minimal. The customer says they want an Samsung processor in their device (because they have a good deal with Samsung, for example), you use a Samsung processor. Next guy wants a Marvell one, you use Marvell. Third guy wants Freescale, etc.