Not just the marijuana aspect. All aspects. Legalization would bring the price down by a hefty percentage, which would make marijuana even more attractive compared to the other choices.
Legalization introduces one other aspect that can turn this around. TAXATION
Cigarettes and alcohol are taxed in special ways (sin taxes, essentially). Legalized marijuana can also be taxed, heavily if you want. Make it have a 100% tax if you wish. Or more. You can have the price of marijuana stay the same, except that former profits are now going to the government. And anyone selling untaxed goods can be charged with tax evasion (dealers *and* buyers).
Hell, in this day and age, if there are that many doped up people going around, the government ought to have a nice tidy little revenue stream.
Few months ago Apple changed the rules and they now allow in app purchasing from free apps. before you had to charge for an app to so in-app purchasing. This allows companies to give away stripped down demo type apps with limited functionality and charge for features, new levels, weapons or whatever. And from what i'm reading on the internet it's very easy to detect jailbroken iphones and not allow them to do in app purchasing. pretty much all the piracy that was out there was on jailbroken iphones because it was easy to rip out the app DRM. the solution is to not allow any jailbroken iphone to purchase in app content
The problem with that solution is that you exclude the people who jailbreak their phones for legitimate reasons as well - such as wanting a different provider, or wanting apps not in the app store. Theoretically there are more of those than the type of jailbreak strictly to pirate.
Does the iphone have anything like BlackBerry's PIN, which is a non-private unique number assigned to each blackberry? The software I'm developing for BB will be tied to a specific PIN (which the user can change an unlimited number of times on the web site) in order to access the features of the purchased version. The app will do a 'call home' at startup to check for updates and to confirm available features for the given PIN. If network isn't available but it previously authorized, it will continue to run in full-featured mode for a limited amount of time. Otherwise it will run in limited/trial mode. (Side note: if I ever cease support/updates, I'll push out a version that no longer dials home...)
Anyway, is there such a unique ID for iPhones?
Actually, due to the way the iPhone works, there is a guaranteed way to find out if your app has been pirated, and that's because the info.plist file must be modified in order to run the DRM-free app properly. The extra key you add tells the OS that the binary isn't signed. Without the key, the DRM-free app fails the sign check and doesn't run. There are other methods too, but aren't as foolproof (one involves seeing where you are installed, and another is to try poking around the filesystem - properly installed apps (DRM-free or not) can only access a couple of areas of the filesystem.).
Now, granted, there are lame apps out there that detect "jailbroken device == PIRATE!", but most have been replaced with the modified plist check so jailbroken devices aren't falsely accused, and the plist check is guaranteed to work unless Apple modifies the whole architecture, or the app is patched.
Finally, YES there is a device ID, called the UUID. (You can see yours - connect your device to iTunes, and shift or option (can't remember which) click "serial number". It'll change into UUID, so you can copy and paste that value. It's primarily used to authorize devices for beta testing (you send Apple a list of UUIDs, they'll send back a signed file those users can install that says "you can use these apps with these UUIDs".
There is also a jailbroken device app to change the UUID (naturally).
And there's an API to retrieve the UUID at the application level, so nasty drm-free apps can go and "phone home" to report the issue.
And I call it "DRM-free" because that's what the apps are - the Apple DRM was stripped. Whether you did this yourself out of some principle, or you pirated it, it has the same effect. Like how I can find iTunes+ music on P2P with the owner's full account info still in the files.
The only issue with blocking pirated apps that the developer may encounter are those who pirated the app, got banned, and bought it outright.
Wii has a large userbase of casual gamers. There wouldn't really be anything that new for then. HD sure, but I know many people who really aren't that interested in it. I am, sure, I would love a Wii HD with Motion Capture Plus. But thats probably not the case for majority of people, especially girls who usually don't understand why their boyfriends/husbands want a huge HDTV.
Or, who don't want to buy an HDTV for their kids so they can watch TV.
Kid's TVs are usually cast offs, that old tube TV in the living room that was replaced by an HDTV, well, it'll hook up to a Wii well enough and is still playable. PS3 and Xbox360 suffer from games that cannot handle SDTV - text/details get too blurry to be useful.
There exist many old tube TVs that are perfectly servicable, and unless the family is particularly rich, not many families have multiple HDTVs.
Also, you think Nintendo is going to say "there's a new Wii coming out that'll support HDTV!" and promptly stop all Wii sales (see Osborne effect). Stores had issues when the PS3 Slim came out and people wanted to return their "fat" PS3s - when the Slim came out, there were huge piles of returned PS3s.
A linux netbook with a random distro without many packages, and no big brand name behind it may not set the world on fire. But when Best Buy starts selling Chrome OS netbooks with a big Google brand on it, Microsoft will start shitting themselves.
Unless things change severely, I doubt much will really happen.
When netbooks first came out, salespeople were warning that they didn't run Windows and you can't expect your applications to run on it. (I got the whole diatribe trying to buy my Acer netbook with Linux). Heck, the market didn't really take off until Windows XP ("ultra-low-cost-PC") was introduced and everyone lock-stepped the Microsoft requirements.
Unless the ChromeOS netbook is insanely cheap (like, under $150), it'll be a case of "this one works for the Internet" vs. "This one for internet and your applications like Office and Outlook".
A single exception doesn't disprove the rule. Generally, for a game that implements both single player and multiplayer, one or the other of the experiences is going to be lacking.
Personally, I've seen way too many multiplayer games lately. Sometimes I just want to come home, plop down on my couche, and play by my self. I'm glad at least Dragon Age is seeming to stick to it's single-player mission.
Another complaint is the lack of bots for multiplayer. After finishing the single-player mission, I also want to plop on the couch and play single-player, but want to just play some bots instead of having to do the whole matchmaking thing. Sometimes I just feel I need to sit down and kill/blast something. Especially since I'm not that great a player and want to do a quick few minutes before getting on with life.
Or I have a friend over and we'd like to have someone to challenge with.
Yes, let's limit EVERYONE because a select few can't use a new technology.
The blind have always needed special teaching tools (Braille, audio books, or someone to read for them), so this isn't like a step backward or anything.
I feel for the blind, and they should definitely be accommodated, but not using eBook readers where they could be beneficial to others is not a good idea.
I think the point is, they *CAN* be accommodated - the Kindle UI can be speech enabled with a simple firmware update, allowing the blind to use ebooks as long as the publisher allows it. Or the legally blind might not be able to nagivate the UI, but read the Kindle books fine because of the ability to display the text in very large type.
And I'm sure there's probably some law saying all textbooks must be available in a Braille format, since it's fairly trivial to actually produce them in that format.
And the blind are perhaps the best to navigate this text-to-speech nonsense by butting heads with publishers. Remember when various libraries wanted to share audiobooks created for the blind, and how publishers were very much against it? And how text-to-speech isn't the same as an audiobook performance.
For GPS to work, you need a minimum of three working sats within LOS of the antenna; the position fix is determined from the downward intercept of three spheres centered on the sats. Anyone who is depending on this, and suddenly loses it, may be in serious trouble. And it's not all that easy to whip out a sextant in the cockpit of an aircraft, or in your SUV (I'm really not sure how many expeditions actually carry a sextant, for that matter. I don't own one, and I do know how to use one.)
Except, LORAN-C was only really good for miles along the coast (useless inland), and useless until you started approaching North America. It was probably most useful to the Coast Guard, and as a backup navigation for the ships crossing the oceans (which still use GPS as well as having sextants and chronometers to calculate lat/long).
Aircraft have other radionav as well - until ADS-B is fully deployed, GPS can be used to make approaches in certain cases (primarily the GPS being certified, *and* that there is sufficient satellites to make the approach - the minimum for GPS is 3, or 4 if you want vertical guidance, but aviation requires 5 or more to use it as part of the RAIM detection), but cannot be used as primary navigation. Hence the availability of alternate radio navigation (VORs, NDBs) and alternate navigation (inertial navigation). Modern commericial aviation avionics often combine the outputs to ensure that not one source is out of whack (e.g., uncalibrated INS, RNAV computer acting up (interference typically, onboard or external), GPS losing lock), so failure in one system doesn't lead the plane off course.
Joe in the SUV though, will have to pull out a map. Not a big deal. Though truckers and other industries (couriers, taxis, etc) often rely heavily on GPS to ensure timely delivery of goods and package tracking. This is where "turning off GPS" can harm the economy the most (just-in-time deliveries require goods to be delivered on time and coordination to ensure that).
Maybe this is a stupid question, so just tell me if so. Is there any chance of getting this running on my PS3 Linux partition? That would radically change things for me (I'm not quite willing to set up a dedicated a/v server). You'd think it would be a perfect target for it. Already in the media cabinet, already hooked up to internet and TV. I would probably cancel my cable TV if it worked well enough.
Unless things have changed lately, it'll probably be fine if you're happy with 480p output.
Last time I tried to play a DVD (ISO image) on the PS3, frames were being dropped something fierce because the PS3 wasn't fast enough to decode/scale/display on my 1080p HDTV. The framebuffer had nearly zilch for video accelleration. Plus the loadaverage was much above 1.
PS3 Linux was a joke and nothing more than a curiousity, really. Plus, at 256MB of RAM (maybe more if you could use the graphics RAM as swap)...
He just smashes the screen against the corner of the fish tank that he just failed to drown it in. Not being covered in rubber like the rest of the phone, it breaks like any normal screen. You could probably apply the same pressure by accidentally dropping it on a jagged rock.
A fairly big oversight when testing for destruction - after all, you want to concentrate on the unarmored areas because they'd be an obvious weak spot. And a huge planar surface like an LCD seems especially prone to breaking from accidental overpressure on a point.
Still, there are many ways to protect such things - the common ones I've seen is to space the LCD away from the touchscreen and use the extra gap to stick in some protection. Smashing the screen may destroy the touchpanel, but the screen stays protected. It was common joked we could use the things as hammers.
I imagine they probably decided that the 'neat' was more important than a couple of extra page changes (I think the battery lasts for more than 1,000 page changes).
Also as a quick screen lock - in case you're reading something someone else might find embarassing. One push, and poof, incriminating text is gone.
Of course, if the person you're hiding the text from pushes the power button...
But I suppose the other aspect is to pretend you "closed the book" by showing you a "cover"...
WTF? What about all those extensions that change Firefox UI, like Vimperator? Or those that use XPCOM to write files and launch apps? How can you do that in HTML and pure JS?
That's because much of the Firefox UI is done in XUL as well.
Some fancy tricks in Firefox, including a favorite, running a whole new Firefox in a tab! (which you can re-run to have yet *another* FirefOx in a tab running on a Firefox in a tab, running in a Firefox tab. With all extensions, too.
For the lazy - open the following in a new tab - chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
Worse than that, we'll continue to deal with the issues NAT causes, and I'm sure the various money grubbing ISP's will charge even more for additional IPs as we run out.
And what makes you think ISPs won't charge per IP address on IPv6? Just because there's a lot of it, doesn't mean that they're going to give up a lucrative revenue source. Hell, they'll probably end up wasting most of it by having most of the addresses dropped at the router.
Hell, they'll probably make sure it doesn't work the way it should with stateless autoconfiguration to make the routing rules simple.
There's a little more than just a firmware upgrade involved here. This is a computationally-intensive process, which means the PS3 might be able to handle this, but the $100 player you got at Wal-Mart most certainly won't. Moore's Law means that this will become practical in the future, but this tech is definitely ahead of it's time.
Maybe even the PS3 can't handle it. After all, most of heavy work in decoding the data is not done on the PS3's copious CPU, but on the drive's dinky little processor.
Now, most drives have updatable firmware, so maybe that processor is powerful enough. The next issue becomes who's going to want to support the old obsolete products? That $99 Wal-mart player has maybe a year of firmware updates before it's obsolete and no updates will be released for it ever, even bug fixes.
That's why I recommend the PS3 as a blu-ray player, because it's going to be supported for a long time and receive bug fixes. Early DVD players often had trouble playing DVDs that were to spec, but using fancy DVD features that weren't well tested. There are probably many blu-ray features that aren't well tested either. A supported player with firmware updates will get fixes to support discs that use those features, but obsolete players... won't.
And there are a number of players already effectively obsolete (e.g., the very first blu-ray players with profile 1.0). So now if this spec is approved, will we be left with a bunch of players unable to use the new discs, forcing everyone into another hardware upgrade? Blu-ray is doing OK on its own, but forcing everyone with players to buy new ones seems like a non-starter...
I've always noticed I've been quite picky about FPS in games. I once recruited a friend to help me to a blind test on myself with the help of quake3. He set the max framerate in game with com_maxfps and I had to say whether it was 90 or 120fps after playing for 30seconds or less.. I got it right 100% of the time.
Try it for yourself, you can do it with quakelive as well. I may have been taking in extra queues, the game mechanics are sort of tied to the frame rate, in fact on certain maps you could only make certain jumps within a certain FPS range. It also may have helped that I have a preference for 120hz CRT screens. I haven't repeated the test on my current 60FPS LCD.
I think it also depends quite a lot on the type of game or what's going on in the game at the time the frame rate dips*. If quick, precise reactions / controls are important, a dip in fps is just horrible
What's probably happening is that you don't notice the framerate, but you notice the change in input rate. In games, you typically have a game loop consisting of get_user_input, process_input, update_state, render_frame, update_screen, and repeat (waiting if framerate locked). Thus, the game's input "lag" varies with the framerate because the game only samples input once per frame.
Let's say the average framerate dips from 60fps to 30fps, that also means the input is sampled half as fast. For "twitch" games (like an FPS), sampling at half the frequency can make the whole thing feel a lot more sluggish, and human perception can note this.
Let's say our hypothetical game takes roughly 2 frames from the user hitting left, and the character moving left (because of double-buffering and other such things, including OS sampling of the input device). This means roughly that when the user hits a button and the user sees the reaction is around 1/30th of a second. Now the framerate drops by half to 30fps, which still has a 2 frame lag, but now the reaction is slowed to 1/15th of a second. Which is enough of a delay that users can notice.
A useful experiment to try is to create a program that reacts in an event-driven manner - the framerate is locked at 30fps or 60fps or other setting, but the input is sampled at a different, but constant rate. Then vary the display framerate and see if the user can tell any difference between 120, 90, 60 and 30fps, but keeping the input sampling rate at a constant. Then crank the framerate to 120fps, but halve the input sampling rate.
I'm just saying those claiming they need 120fps may not need 120Hz, just that games tend to sample at the display framerate because of the game loop, and framerate drops impact more than the displayed framerate - i.e., they impact input sample rate.
At least when Apple announces anything, you know you can order it from the Apple store the next day.
The iPhone was announced on January 9, 2007. It went on sale on June 29, 2007.
But hey, don't let a little thing like reality get in the way of your faith.
That's because the FCC was going to "leak" it first if it wasn't announced. It's part of FCC policy. And heck, the FCC bent to Apple in allowing the documents describing the iPhone (manuals, RF tests, photos inside and out, etc) be held confidential until after the announcement. Then everyone went nuts on the FCC's website downloading manuals and photos and all that.
Hell, there are people whose sole daily activity involve scanning the FCC database for new products and publishing the results - it's how we find out about new cellphones and gadgets way before they're announced.
But hey, never let a little government regulation get in the way of a good argument.
Back when I was a kid, I never understood why they could make a game like gameboy camera, but they couldn't trade out that camera for an antenna connected to a car with a camera on it.
I suppose we still don't have it thanks to privacy concerns, but it would be so badass.
Well, you can get RC vehicles with cameras - cars and planes are popular. The car ones are usually with a separate wireless camera/receiver combination. The airplane ones usually are part of sophisticated avionics so they can overlay instrumentation data on the video (heading, GPS coordinates, altitude, speed, etc).
But for real life... you've heard all the controversy over the Google Street View, right?
Honestly, the terrorists have won. They have successfully, again, forced everyone to endure even more stupid delays and procedures and will not stop the next incident, because the TSA is not smart enough to think out of the box to what that next incident might look like. While this bullshit is going on I'm just not going to fly - it's just not worth the hassle.
Very true.
Hell, if Al-Qaeda or whomever wants to cause "terror", these "failures" are the easy way to do it.
Just imagine the fun to be had by getting fireworks on an aircraft around July 4. Or another "failed explosive" event happening around Thanksgiving. (US holidays, for those wondering). All the new security restrictions being introduced right around peak travel season.
Heck, it may be a way to keep cellphones off airplanes, if they would put a "bomb" in a cellphone!
It seems that netbooks in the 7-9" range have started to disappear, instead they've grown slightly (both in size and specs) to essentially have become 10" cheap laptops. I know many people that use them as machines to take while traveling (especially internationally) and even more people that use them as their primary portable (typically with a larger laptop or desktop relegated to, well, the desk). $300 for a small, durable laptop with more than enough performance to do word-processing, web browsing and watch movies on, most which get 5+ hours of battery life (depending on usage) is still an amazing deal.
Probably because as the cost to manufacture comes down, you can cut margins and try to differentiate your netbook from everyone else's.
Microsoft has hog-tied netbook specs. That's why most netbooks have the exact same specs - similar processors, 1GB of RAM, 10" or smaller screens, 160GB hard drives, etc. Their OEM XP license states those (in order to get it for an ultra-low $12) requirements. The only way manufacturers can compete on more than price are the things that aren't controlled by license - wifi/bluetooth/screens/webcams/batteries/expansion capability.
I bought a Acer Aspire One last year for just over $300 running Linux. It's a nice machine and I use the Linux when I need it (rooted and drop to command prompt, etc). I just wish I could dump Linpus for Ubuntu, but the Ubuntu wiki implies lots of issues. Great with the semi-crappy SSD, but still a nice machine.
Now you can get a much better one for the same price - bigger screen, better keyboard, more disk space, etc.
The only real part of "dying" is the fear that the low-end will disappear - at $300, it's more of a race to the bottom, so manufacturers really don't want to build much there as the profit is slim.
Of course, the bigger scam is that sub-$1000 notebooks have barely better than netbook specs, but cost way more. (Ever try to find a decent laptop like Microsoft implies? Big screens, with 1024x768 resolution - netbooks are close, Pentium processors, bit more decent than an Atom, but yeech. GMA950 type graphics, like netbooks. About the only thing you get more than a netbook is an optical drive, 4GB RAM, and huge hard drives. All cheap stuff, for hundreds more.)
Especially when the 32-bit time_t overflows. The good news is that most 64-bit OSes already uses a 64-bit time_t, but there still is the issue of truncation to 32-bit.
I believe modern 32-bit OSes also have a 64-bit time_t. Especially glibc based ones.
64-bit integers isn't the exclusive realm of 64-bit OSes. It's just 32-bit processors are less efficient when calculating with 64-bit integers (takes multiple instructions). But most modern compilers for 32-bit processors understand 64-bit types natively, including Microsoft and GCC.
The problem is older programs which have been built in a time when time_t was 32-bit...
I'm not a developer, but even so, I have a hard time with this so called screen size problem. I'm typing this on a 19 inch 1440x900 screen, but Chrome would work just fine in 800x600, or 1024x768 or my 10.1 inch, 1368x768 netbook screen. Why is so hard develop for Android with regard to screen size? Nevertheless, it seems that all Android 2.0 have the same resolution, but different sizes. Or am I wrong?
It's not that it's hard, but it's impractical to test. Ever test high-DPI on Windows? And see how badly apps break? Because the screen sizes of most cellphones and PDAs is pretty standard, the high-res ones run in high DPI mode all the time so buttons don't get impossibly small to operate. Apps have to be coded to be DPI aware so they can scale their UI appropriately. This is easy on most apps using default widgets, but apps with custom widgets often have to be aware of resolution issues (games usually require this).
It's like websites that use Flash, and you move from a 1024x768 screen to a 1920x1200 screen. Suddenly that QVGA flash game you like suddenly becomes 10x harder to use because you can't see it well anymore. Or streaming video - that app that looked nice at HVGA (320x480) looks bad at VGA+ resolutions because the video was QVGA, and has borders and is now a quarter the size. You could scale, but if you're taxed for CPU time, it's even worse.
But mostly, it's high-DPI. And Windows apps already prove that most devs can't handle high DPI. Or flash apps.
In theory, the Apple devices stress the need to produce DPI-aware apps in the SDK, but it'll take a screen change to see it actually happen.
Some devices (old PalmOS, for starters) actually scaled apps on high-DPI mode if they weren't high-DPI aware. Looked ugly and pixellated, but worked for a large chunk of unaware apps...
It's all in the wording: "More Ebooks On Christmas Than Real Books", "sold more ebooks on one day than real books".
They aren't saying that people would suddenly rather buy/receive ebooks than regular books for christmas, they are saying that ebooks are an option for last-minute shoppers on christmas day. Basically ebooks are an alternative to buying gift cards, due to their instant delivery.
For last minute gifts, yes.
But... given few stores are open on Christmas, is it any wonder that these services have a bump on Christmas? Especially if you got a gift card - if you want to spend it right after getting it, the only stores open are online ones. And the only ones that can get you the goods NOW are ones offering downloadable content.
Sure you can wait a day, but man, who wants to wait a day? And with Amazon, you can choose between getting it now, or in a week after the holidays.
Who is so damn board that they have nothing better to do than "attack" a web site? What feeling of accomplishment do they really get and/or what point are they trying to make? They need to get out of their mothers basement and do something with there lives.
Money.
Online gambling sites are constantly attacked by DDoS, because they have money, and their continued revenue relies on people being able to connect reliably to their servers. Thus, you can threaten to shut down a site or ask they pay $5000 or so to avoid a protection fee.
I'm guessing in this economy, big sites like Amazon and the like are the next tempting targets. Imagine being able to shut them down during the critical shopping periods and how much money you could extort out of them.
And with EC2, many sites are probably running on it or relying on it for backup. Kill it and you've proved to many sites that their service could go down, and hey, would you like to pay $5000 to ensure it stays up? And heck, the sites that go down, you don't even have to know what they are. If it's a big site, the news will report it. If it's a small site, you'll hear about it through various forums. Boom, instant target list for extortion.
In some environments, that is frustrated by other (lazy) technical staff, who immediately start automatically blaming _every_ problem they find for the next few weeks, on that one change, without even doing any helpful troubleshooting, or finding any reason at all to suggest it might be the case.
The problem is unrelated and would happen anyways, but because they heard of a recent change, there is a cognitive bias towards immediately suspecting the new change, just because it's a change they know about.
"I didn't change anything, so if I just started getting a few problem reports it must be your change"
Which is why you announce the change will happen on X, but actually wait a week or two before actually committing the change. Then any bellyaching that happens, you can file as their problem. If any real issues happen, you can even hold off doing the change in case your change might aggravate the problem.
It's the same when new cell towers or other equipment are installed - people will complain of headaches and other crap caused by the tower right after it's "turned on", when in reality, it's been running months beforehand, or hasn't even been turned on yet.
OTOH if it's already attached to a good heat dissipator, (and sweat evaporation is very effective)
Sweat works when it can evaporate. In humid places, all sweat does is bead and make you wet and smelly without being effective at cooling you. So in the desert, it works great. On the coasts or places where hot and humid is the norm, not so much. It's why it can be 100F in Arizona in the shade and still feels cool, while New York is stifling and it's only in the 80s. It's also why air conditioned places feel so much better even if you don't set the temperature much lower than outside - the lack of humidity makes the place feel cooler.
It's the reason for the "humidex" readings. (Unfortunately, it also works in reverse - cold and humid places feel colder than drier places).
Yeah, I find it kind of scary that there's a headband that will sap your brain of heat. That can't be good for your brain, can it?
The brain is a huge consumer of energy, and it's very exothermic. In the winter, it might not be terribly good for your brain as cold causes blood vessels to shrink and the like, but in the heat of summer, anything that helps cool your head down will aid in alertness and improved mental capability. Heck, the simple act of cooling your forehead has been shown to relieve tiredness in the summer. So if you're nodding off at your desk, maybe apply a cold wet towel to your forehead and it'll help perk you up a bit.
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Legalization introduces one other aspect that can turn this around. TAXATION
Cigarettes and alcohol are taxed in special ways (sin taxes, essentially). Legalized marijuana can also be taxed, heavily if you want. Make it have a 100% tax if you wish. Or more. You can have the price of marijuana stay the same, except that former profits are now going to the government. And anyone selling untaxed goods can be charged with tax evasion (dealers *and* buyers).
Hell, in this day and age, if there are that many doped up people going around, the government ought to have a nice tidy little revenue stream.
Actually, due to the way the iPhone works, there is a guaranteed way to find out if your app has been pirated, and that's because the info.plist file must be modified in order to run the DRM-free app properly. The extra key you add tells the OS that the binary isn't signed. Without the key, the DRM-free app fails the sign check and doesn't run. There are other methods too, but aren't as foolproof (one involves seeing where you are installed, and another is to try poking around the filesystem - properly installed apps (DRM-free or not) can only access a couple of areas of the filesystem.).
Now, granted, there are lame apps out there that detect "jailbroken device == PIRATE!", but most have been replaced with the modified plist check so jailbroken devices aren't falsely accused, and the plist check is guaranteed to work unless Apple modifies the whole architecture, or the app is patched.
Finally, YES there is a device ID, called the UUID. (You can see yours - connect your device to iTunes, and shift or option (can't remember which) click "serial number". It'll change into UUID, so you can copy and paste that value. It's primarily used to authorize devices for beta testing (you send Apple a list of UUIDs, they'll send back a signed file those users can install that says "you can use these apps with these UUIDs".
There is also a jailbroken device app to change the UUID (naturally).
And there's an API to retrieve the UUID at the application level, so nasty drm-free apps can go and "phone home" to report the issue.
And I call it "DRM-free" because that's what the apps are - the Apple DRM was stripped. Whether you did this yourself out of some principle, or you pirated it, it has the same effect. Like how I can find iTunes+ music on P2P with the owner's full account info still in the files.
The only issue with blocking pirated apps that the developer may encounter are those who pirated the app, got banned, and bought it outright.
Or, who don't want to buy an HDTV for their kids so they can watch TV.
Kid's TVs are usually cast offs, that old tube TV in the living room that was replaced by an HDTV, well, it'll hook up to a Wii well enough and is still playable. PS3 and Xbox360 suffer from games that cannot handle SDTV - text/details get too blurry to be useful.
There exist many old tube TVs that are perfectly servicable, and unless the family is particularly rich, not many families have multiple HDTVs.
Also, you think Nintendo is going to say "there's a new Wii coming out that'll support HDTV!" and promptly stop all Wii sales (see Osborne effect). Stores had issues when the PS3 Slim came out and people wanted to return their "fat" PS3s - when the Slim came out, there were huge piles of returned PS3s.
Unless things change severely, I doubt much will really happen.
When netbooks first came out, salespeople were warning that they didn't run Windows and you can't expect your applications to run on it. (I got the whole diatribe trying to buy my Acer netbook with Linux). Heck, the market didn't really take off until Windows XP ("ultra-low-cost-PC") was introduced and everyone lock-stepped the Microsoft requirements.
Unless the ChromeOS netbook is insanely cheap (like, under $150), it'll be a case of "this one works for the Internet" vs. "This one for internet and your applications like Office and Outlook".
Another complaint is the lack of bots for multiplayer. After finishing the single-player mission, I also want to plop on the couch and play single-player, but want to just play some bots instead of having to do the whole matchmaking thing. Sometimes I just feel I need to sit down and kill/blast something. Especially since I'm not that great a player and want to do a quick few minutes before getting on with life.
Or I have a friend over and we'd like to have someone to challenge with.
I think the point is, they *CAN* be accommodated - the Kindle UI can be speech enabled with a simple firmware update, allowing the blind to use ebooks as long as the publisher allows it. Or the legally blind might not be able to nagivate the UI, but read the Kindle books fine because of the ability to display the text in very large type.
And I'm sure there's probably some law saying all textbooks must be available in a Braille format, since it's fairly trivial to actually produce them in that format.
And the blind are perhaps the best to navigate this text-to-speech nonsense by butting heads with publishers. Remember when various libraries wanted to share audiobooks created for the blind, and how publishers were very much against it? And how text-to-speech isn't the same as an audiobook performance.
Except, LORAN-C was only really good for miles along the coast (useless inland), and useless until you started approaching North America. It was probably most useful to the Coast Guard, and as a backup navigation for the ships crossing the oceans (which still use GPS as well as having sextants and chronometers to calculate lat/long).
Aircraft have other radionav as well - until ADS-B is fully deployed, GPS can be used to make approaches in certain cases (primarily the GPS being certified, *and* that there is sufficient satellites to make the approach - the minimum for GPS is 3, or 4 if you want vertical guidance, but aviation requires 5 or more to use it as part of the RAIM detection), but cannot be used as primary navigation. Hence the availability of alternate radio navigation (VORs, NDBs) and alternate navigation (inertial navigation). Modern commericial aviation avionics often combine the outputs to ensure that not one source is out of whack (e.g., uncalibrated INS, RNAV computer acting up (interference typically, onboard or external), GPS losing lock), so failure in one system doesn't lead the plane off course.
Joe in the SUV though, will have to pull out a map. Not a big deal. Though truckers and other industries (couriers, taxis, etc) often rely heavily on GPS to ensure timely delivery of goods and package tracking. This is where "turning off GPS" can harm the economy the most (just-in-time deliveries require goods to be delivered on time and coordination to ensure that).
Unless things have changed lately, it'll probably be fine if you're happy with 480p output.
Last time I tried to play a DVD (ISO image) on the PS3, frames were being dropped something fierce because the PS3 wasn't fast enough to decode/scale/display on my 1080p HDTV. The framebuffer had nearly zilch for video accelleration. Plus the loadaverage was much above 1.
PS3 Linux was a joke and nothing more than a curiousity, really. Plus, at 256MB of RAM (maybe more if you could use the graphics RAM as swap)...
A fairly big oversight when testing for destruction - after all, you want to concentrate on the unarmored areas because they'd be an obvious weak spot. And a huge planar surface like an LCD seems especially prone to breaking from accidental overpressure on a point.
Still, there are many ways to protect such things - the common ones I've seen is to space the LCD away from the touchscreen and use the extra gap to stick in some protection. Smashing the screen may destroy the touchpanel, but the screen stays protected. It was common joked we could use the things as hammers.
Also as a quick screen lock - in case you're reading something someone else might find embarassing. One push, and poof, incriminating text is gone.
Of course, if the person you're hiding the text from pushes the power button...
But I suppose the other aspect is to pretend you "closed the book" by showing you a "cover"...
That's because much of the Firefox UI is done in XUL as well.
Some fancy tricks in Firefox, including a favorite, running a whole new Firefox in a tab! (which you can re-run to have yet *another* FirefOx in a tab running on a Firefox in a tab, running in a Firefox tab. With all extensions, too.
For the lazy - open the following in a new tab - chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
And what makes you think ISPs won't charge per IP address on IPv6? Just because there's a lot of it, doesn't mean that they're going to give up a lucrative revenue source. Hell, they'll probably end up wasting most of it by having most of the addresses dropped at the router.
Hell, they'll probably make sure it doesn't work the way it should with stateless autoconfiguration to make the routing rules simple.
And we'll invent NATv6 to compensate.
What about how does this RSA-768 refer to the common RSA-128 "strong encryption" used in SSL/HTTPS?
Does the 128-bit mean a 128-bit key that can be trivially factored? Or is it something different?
Maybe even the PS3 can't handle it. After all, most of heavy work in decoding the data is not done on the PS3's copious CPU, but on the drive's dinky little processor.
Now, most drives have updatable firmware, so maybe that processor is powerful enough. The next issue becomes who's going to want to support the old obsolete products? That $99 Wal-mart player has maybe a year of firmware updates before it's obsolete and no updates will be released for it ever, even bug fixes.
That's why I recommend the PS3 as a blu-ray player, because it's going to be supported for a long time and receive bug fixes. Early DVD players often had trouble playing DVDs that were to spec, but using fancy DVD features that weren't well tested. There are probably many blu-ray features that aren't well tested either. A supported player with firmware updates will get fixes to support discs that use those features, but obsolete players... won't.
And there are a number of players already effectively obsolete (e.g., the very first blu-ray players with profile 1.0). So now if this spec is approved, will we be left with a bunch of players unable to use the new discs, forcing everyone into another hardware upgrade? Blu-ray is doing OK on its own, but forcing everyone with players to buy new ones seems like a non-starter...
What's probably happening is that you don't notice the framerate, but you notice the change in input rate. In games, you typically have a game loop consisting of get_user_input, process_input, update_state, render_frame, update_screen, and repeat (waiting if framerate locked). Thus, the game's input "lag" varies with the framerate because the game only samples input once per frame.
Let's say the average framerate dips from 60fps to 30fps, that also means the input is sampled half as fast. For "twitch" games (like an FPS), sampling at half the frequency can make the whole thing feel a lot more sluggish, and human perception can note this.
Let's say our hypothetical game takes roughly 2 frames from the user hitting left, and the character moving left (because of double-buffering and other such things, including OS sampling of the input device). This means roughly that when the user hits a button and the user sees the reaction is around 1/30th of a second. Now the framerate drops by half to 30fps, which still has a 2 frame lag, but now the reaction is slowed to 1/15th of a second. Which is enough of a delay that users can notice.
A useful experiment to try is to create a program that reacts in an event-driven manner - the framerate is locked at 30fps or 60fps or other setting, but the input is sampled at a different, but constant rate. Then vary the display framerate and see if the user can tell any difference between 120, 90, 60 and 30fps, but keeping the input sampling rate at a constant. Then crank the framerate to 120fps, but halve the input sampling rate.
I'm just saying those claiming they need 120fps may not need 120Hz, just that games tend to sample at the display framerate because of the game loop, and framerate drops impact more than the displayed framerate - i.e., they impact input sample rate.
That's because the FCC was going to "leak" it first if it wasn't announced. It's part of FCC policy. And heck, the FCC bent to Apple in allowing the documents describing the iPhone (manuals, RF tests, photos inside and out, etc) be held confidential until after the announcement. Then everyone went nuts on the FCC's website downloading manuals and photos and all that.
Hell, there are people whose sole daily activity involve scanning the FCC database for new products and publishing the results - it's how we find out about new cellphones and gadgets way before they're announced.
But hey, never let a little government regulation get in the way of a good argument.
Well, you can get RC vehicles with cameras - cars and planes are popular. The car ones are usually with a separate wireless camera/receiver combination. The airplane ones usually are part of sophisticated avionics so they can overlay instrumentation data on the video (heading, GPS coordinates, altitude, speed, etc).
But for real life... you've heard all the controversy over the Google Street View, right?
Probably because as the cost to manufacture comes down, you can cut margins and try to differentiate your netbook from everyone else's.
Microsoft has hog-tied netbook specs. That's why most netbooks have the exact same specs - similar processors, 1GB of RAM, 10" or smaller screens, 160GB hard drives, etc. Their OEM XP license states those (in order to get it for an ultra-low $12) requirements. The only way manufacturers can compete on more than price are the things that aren't controlled by license - wifi/bluetooth/screens/webcams/batteries/expansion capability.
I bought a Acer Aspire One last year for just over $300 running Linux. It's a nice machine and I use the Linux when I need it (rooted and drop to command prompt, etc). I just wish I could dump Linpus for Ubuntu, but the Ubuntu wiki implies lots of issues. Great with the semi-crappy SSD, but still a nice machine.
Now you can get a much better one for the same price - bigger screen, better keyboard, more disk space, etc.
The only real part of "dying" is the fear that the low-end will disappear - at $300, it's more of a race to the bottom, so manufacturers really don't want to build much there as the profit is slim.
Of course, the bigger scam is that sub-$1000 notebooks have barely better than netbook specs, but cost way more. (Ever try to find a decent laptop like Microsoft implies? Big screens, with 1024x768 resolution - netbooks are close, Pentium processors, bit more decent than an Atom, but yeech. GMA950 type graphics, like netbooks. About the only thing you get more than a netbook is an optical drive, 4GB RAM, and huge hard drives. All cheap stuff, for hundreds more.)
I believe modern 32-bit OSes also have a 64-bit time_t. Especially glibc based ones.
64-bit integers isn't the exclusive realm of 64-bit OSes. It's just 32-bit processors are less efficient when calculating with 64-bit integers (takes multiple instructions). But most modern compilers for 32-bit processors understand 64-bit types natively, including Microsoft and GCC.
The problem is older programs which have been built in a time when time_t was 32-bit...
It's not that it's hard, but it's impractical to test. Ever test high-DPI on Windows? And see how badly apps break? Because the screen sizes of most cellphones and PDAs is pretty standard, the high-res ones run in high DPI mode all the time so buttons don't get impossibly small to operate. Apps have to be coded to be DPI aware so they can scale their UI appropriately. This is easy on most apps using default widgets, but apps with custom widgets often have to be aware of resolution issues (games usually require this).
It's like websites that use Flash, and you move from a 1024x768 screen to a 1920x1200 screen. Suddenly that QVGA flash game you like suddenly becomes 10x harder to use because you can't see it well anymore. Or streaming video - that app that looked nice at HVGA (320x480) looks bad at VGA+ resolutions because the video was QVGA, and has borders and is now a quarter the size. You could scale, but if you're taxed for CPU time, it's even worse.
But mostly, it's high-DPI. And Windows apps already prove that most devs can't handle high DPI. Or flash apps.
In theory, the Apple devices stress the need to produce DPI-aware apps in the SDK, but it'll take a screen change to see it actually happen.
Some devices (old PalmOS, for starters) actually scaled apps on high-DPI mode if they weren't high-DPI aware. Looked ugly and pixellated, but worked for a large chunk of unaware apps...
For last minute gifts, yes.
But... given few stores are open on Christmas, is it any wonder that these services have a bump on Christmas? Especially if you got a gift card - if you want to spend it right after getting it, the only stores open are online ones. And the only ones that can get you the goods NOW are ones offering downloadable content.
Sure you can wait a day, but man, who wants to wait a day? And with Amazon, you can choose between getting it now, or in a week after the holidays.
Money.
Online gambling sites are constantly attacked by DDoS, because they have money, and their continued revenue relies on people being able to connect reliably to their servers. Thus, you can threaten to shut down a site or ask they pay $5000 or so to avoid a protection fee.
I'm guessing in this economy, big sites like Amazon and the like are the next tempting targets. Imagine being able to shut them down during the critical shopping periods and how much money you could extort out of them.
And with EC2, many sites are probably running on it or relying on it for backup. Kill it and you've proved to many sites that their service could go down, and hey, would you like to pay $5000 to ensure it stays up? And heck, the sites that go down, you don't even have to know what they are. If it's a big site, the news will report it. If it's a small site, you'll hear about it through various forums. Boom, instant target list for extortion.
Which is why you announce the change will happen on X, but actually wait a week or two before actually committing the change. Then any bellyaching that happens, you can file as their problem. If any real issues happen, you can even hold off doing the change in case your change might aggravate the problem.
It's the same when new cell towers or other equipment are installed - people will complain of headaches and other crap caused by the tower right after it's "turned on", when in reality, it's been running months beforehand, or hasn't even been turned on yet.
Sweat works when it can evaporate. In humid places, all sweat does is bead and make you wet and smelly without being effective at cooling you. So in the desert, it works great. On the coasts or places where hot and humid is the norm, not so much. It's why it can be 100F in Arizona in the shade and still feels cool, while New York is stifling and it's only in the 80s. It's also why air conditioned places feel so much better even if you don't set the temperature much lower than outside - the lack of humidity makes the place feel cooler.
It's the reason for the "humidex" readings. (Unfortunately, it also works in reverse - cold and humid places feel colder than drier places).
The brain is a huge consumer of energy, and it's very exothermic. In the winter, it might not be terribly good for your brain as cold causes blood vessels to shrink and the like, but in the heat of summer, anything that helps cool your head down will aid in alertness and improved mental capability. Heck, the simple act of cooling your forehead has been shown to relieve tiredness in the summer. So if you're nodding off at your desk, maybe apply a cold wet towel to your forehead and it'll help perk you up a bit.