Most new Fon users will be attracted to the "Make money with Fon!" option, and WiFi WON'T be free to the masses, but only to other Fon users.
Depends.
Last I checked, you had two options, a "Bill", and a "Linus" (you can guess who they're named after). Bills get paid a portion of the paid-wifi fees from people using their access. Linuses don't. However, if a Bill uses another AP on the fon network, they have to pay. Linuses don't. So it's gets paid and pay, or free and free, and you can only change your choice once, to prevent those from going on vacation switching their status from Bill to Linus, then back to Bill upon return to get free wifi.
Fon is basically a way to offer wifi access at the user level - want to run an hotspot, but not worry about the billing crap, and get the benefits of being able to use other Fon hotspots. All this without having to be a big company nor complex legal agreements to negotiate and sign over.
But it will do exactly the same thing, 0.5 Watts now, 100K transistors now, 300 MHz now... it wont stay that way though, it's just a slimmer base to build upon, like using aluminum instead of steal. People will still keep reaching for the sky, and with a lighter structure, means they can reach even higher, even more MHz, more transistors, etc...
You do realize that the Cortex series of ARM cores can get to around 1GHz, and that the Marvell (formerly Intel) XScale chips can scale to 1.25GHz easily. And that's when they're drawing a quarter to a half a watt. At worse, you're getting 1GHz/watt.
ARM is used everywhere, it scales handily from fleapower devices, to the GHz range used in the latest smartphones. For every x86 CPU sold, the PC containing it probably contains several ARM processors (Bluetooth and WiFi being extremely common peripherals with ARM processors). A cellphone usually has 2 - one driving the UI, and one in the radio, and maybe two more (again, Bluetooth and WiFi).
400-667MHz seems to be the "sweet spot" right now for a cellphone's ARM processor... (iPhone has it at 400-416MHz, the Palm Pre has a Cortex A8 at 667MHz). And the whole cellphone power management has to be able to drop power consumption to a mere 3 milliamps or so, including the power spikes to maintain a link to the cell towers.
Atom tries, but it's still an order of magnitude too much power for an entire system...
If it's a three strikes law, use it to your advantage. Keep reporting all the incidents everywehere - Sarkozy hums a copyrighted tune? Report it. Flood the government or whatever bodies with reports on all potential copyright infringement by the members. After all, don't we already have proof that they do this? It should be trivial to just report that their children have broken the law as well. Keep reporting them and get their internet connections cut off.
Sort of like "work to rule" campaigns - you make the rulemakers suffer under their own rules as well.
Heck, bonus points for those who can get the Internet cut off at no only their personal residences, but also to government buildings also.
Are you kidding, right? Information from IDC WW Quarterly Server Tracker - CY2008 total Unix Servers factory revenue: IBM: $6 387 mln. HP: $4 561 mln. Apple: $99 mln.
Sorry, but Apple can't be classified as "major unix competitor".
Except they ship a lot more Unix machines? Especially in the portable arena? Sure they don't have as much cash as the big guys, but they certainly move a lot of product, especially since that product seems to be going into the hands of those who traditionally don't use Unix at all.
I remember an article somewhere that stated the while Apple isn't a big company compared to other Unix vendors, they move way more Unix machines that makes OS X one of the most used Unix around.
You might be thinking a data-only plan with a Skype client would save you money, but you'd be wrong: Apple doesn't want you to do that. AT&T doesn't either.
I'm not sure Apple has much reason to keep you from doing that except for maintaining their relationship with AT&T, but in general you're right. But besides them not wanting you to do it, it's not clear to me that any mobile carrier's network is good enough to support it even if they were willing to allow it. Even current 3G networks pretty well stink.
The problem with mobile broadband data is the latency stinks. At the worst case, your latency is closer to (or beyond) satellite, and at best, it's a few hundred milliseconds. It's extremely difficult to carry on a real-time conversation with such latency. Most people can tolerate 100-200msec of latency, but any more and the conversation starts getting really stilted quickly. And the latency varies dramatically - you may be getting a good 200-400msec latency at the beginning, but then it'll spike to 2000+msec briefly, hover at 1000msec, drop back down to 200msec, then rise and stay steady at 500msec.
Well, the "Audio CD-R"s are more expensive, maybe due to better materials, but also they pay a royalty to the music companies, a compulsory license, basically. That's why they cost more - the licensing fees were paid on them.
SCSI disks may have been manufactured at better factories, but they also tend to work on the assumption that they're in a RAID array, while consumer level drives are often used singly. Thus, if there's a read failure, a SCSI disk will want to "fail fast" so the RAID controller can flag it, recover using the other disks, activate a spare drive (and begin rebuild), and slert a sysadmin of a possibly dying drive. Consumer drives will try their mightiest to get at the data, hence the click-click-click as they retract heads (trying to clean them), flinging the heads around trying to get lucky, etc.
Of course, they're different yes, but whether or not the price difference justifies it, I don't know.
Sweet, a link in a summary to the summary itself. Just what I've always wanted!
Makes sense. The video's in the summary! So the video clip is in the summary about a video clip, thus, the link points to the summary since the video referenced in the summary is in the summary.
I own both a PS3 and an Xbox360 (lucky me). I do not live in the USA and US$50 is a lot of my local money just for online content. So I have never paid for Live Gold membership - bad luck for any developers marketing there wares for Xbox360. As for Sony charging the game developers for marketing - better them than the poor end user.
You do realize that every Xbox360 console comes with Xbox Live Silver, right? That gives you access to the Xbox Live Marketplace, most of the game trailers and demos, and other stuff that Microsoft sells in your region, right?
It costs zip (you do get a free one month gold trial if you sign up via your Xbox360), but gets you most of the demos and whatnot. The only problem is if Microsoft doesn't have rights to do that in your area.
All Gold gets you (for your $50) is online multiplayer, and access to various "gold only" content (there's not that much there - early access to game demos and various "premium" themes and videos). Microsoft isn't that stupid to lock out a good chunk of those unwilling to pay for a chance to make some money. Xbox Live Arcade is an obvious place to make money, but game demos may help sell games and earn Microsoft money in licensing fees.
NAT is the only reason we still have ipv4 - if we hadn't had that nasty hack, we'd have had to move to ipv6 out of necessity some time ago. I'm really looking forward to going back to having every PC with a globally routable IP address, it will make application communication work so much easier, and firewalls can stick to being allow/deny/drop firewalls instead of all this stateful masquerade hack-job stuff on top.
A nice pipe dream.
People are used to having 1 or 2 IP addresses handed to them. Most probably only use one - they stick their cablemodem into their NAT router and be done with that. ISPs know this, and you can bet good money that when residential people get IPv6, they may give them a large range of valid IPs, but really, only route 1 or 2 to them, because they know users will only use 1 or 2. And pay for more, if they need it. And the majority of users will do that - they'll take their IPv6 pipe, and stick on a router, and probably do IPv6 NAT.
No, the era of direct-connected machines is long gone - even if the user had a regular normal firewall and a 1:1 mapping of devices to IPs, you're going to have to tell them how to open a port on it so they can play their game again. And it'll probably be more confusing, since they want only one machine to get that traffic.
And yes, going around NAT is annoying, and breaks some applications. However, the interesting thing is how many applications aren't broken. Or have implemented functionality to work around firewalls and NAT. If you go back to just over a decade ago, playing an online game may easily require 10-15 ports open (TCP/UDP) on your firewall. Nowadays, it's down to one, or in some cases, do nothing. The ports I opened on my NAT router were for HTTP, ssh, and BitTorrent, and I still do online gaming (Xbox Live, Playstation Network) fine without UPnP (disabled on router). And yes, people invented STUN to help get through NAT, as well.
About the real benefit of IPv6 is to make viruses and trojans spread slower as they now have to send packets to more hosts, and there will be more holes in the address space, so chances of success will be limited. But the chance of two people plugging in 2 VoIP phones into a random network and have them work always is gone (unless they're Skype phones, which use STUN and a bunch of dirty tricks to get around NAT and firewalls...).
Dumbphone Data - Typically a "walled garden" with minimal full internet access, proxy usage often required, basically built for streaming applications on phones and minimal web access/email with a WAP browser
Smartphone Data - No more walled garden, but officially limited by policy.
Tethering Data - Same as above, but no policy limits on use. Often bandwidth capped around 5GB.
The latter two are provisioned identically on the network side, any differences are in billing. They may also monitor for usage that isn't likely to have come from a phone on the smartphone plan (bittorrent, downloading gigabytes upon gigabytes, etc.).
ACtually, depending on your plan, the results can be quite different. On the phone side, it doesn't care which plan you're on - it just accesses data. However, on the network side, they can tell the difference between the three plans quite easily. Also the smartphone and full access plans can often be implemented differently.
First, the dumbphone plan, or a Blackberry plan use special proxy servers that those plans provision for. This much we agree on.
A smartphone plan can be "unlimited" or high limits, with often a little note saying it won't work on a laptop. It's true that the network can't tell the difference between the phone accessing the network and the laptop, but it may go through things like transparent proxies, NATs, and other network fun. If they're really nasty, they'll actually limit data rates and streaming quality (e.g., why allow YouTube high-def? No smartphone has high-def screen, and people don't usually want to wait for the easily 100-200+MB of data to buffer sufficiently). Also connections may be limited to well known ports with other ports monitored.
A full tethered plan can effectively give you open access to the internet - many will give you a full routable IP as well, no firewalls or anything (so you can VPN over them quite easily). You can also bittorrent, but you'll probably bump your limit really quickly.
And carriers know which plan you go for, and if you access the wrong APN, boom, 5 cents per kilobyte (real kilobyte, not a kibibyte) or more.
I have an iPhone, and an unlimited tethering plan I got years ago before the splits. Technically, the smartphones they have won't work with my tethering plan - I would be dinged horribly. Jailbroke my iPhone, and modified by carrier bundles so I can reset my APN to the one I'm supposed ot use (they lock it down... nasty). And boom, my "incompatible plan" is compatible again! Heck, my plan only calls for GPRS data, but works fine with EDGE and 3G. (The carrier can technically limit my 3G to GPRS or EDGE speeds...).
Firstly, they have to decide if they want to push the PS3 as a Blu-Ray player or a games console. The issue is that the PS3 is effectively a "price ceiling" for blu-ray players - the market for players more expensive than a PS3 is very tiny, and thus the majority of Blu-Ray players on the market must be under the price of a PS3 (otherwise, people will buy PS3s as Blu-Ray players).
Secondly, third party Blu-Ray manufacturers aren't dropping their prices fast enough - while you can get a good Blu-Ray 2.0 player for $250 these days, the prices aren't dropping any further. The problem comes in should Sony wish to sell a PS3 for $300 (a meaningful price cut, since even the $400 Xbox360 can be had $350 on sale!). Suddenly, do you want to pay $250 for a Blu-Ray player, or $300 for a Blu-Ray player *AND* the added features of a PS3 (WiFi, games,...). I omit the downsides of a PS3 (proprietary Bluetooth remote - no consumer IR, remote extra cost) since most users will live with them (I do, even though a PS3 integrates poorly (not-at-all) with my remote...).
The issue is, third-party manufacturers will be forced into a lower price range (probably sub-$200), a price point they may decide it's not worth expending the R&D for to make a Blu-Ray player, and leave the market. This is bad, for consumers will believe Sharp, Panasonic, Pioneer, etc., think that Blu-Ray is not worth investing in, and content providers see consumer demand. Blu-Ray is still in the early stages - DVD is a very big competitor to Blu-Ray (cheaper, and even after upscaling, a good majority of DVDs don't look much worse to justify the benefit and cost), and content providers are exploring and investing heavily in streaming technologies (not as good as Blu-Ray, but "good enough" for the consumer). And content providers may be wary of investing more in a format that only Sony makes and others have pulled out of.
So Sony may want to cut the price of the PS3 down, but doing so can jeopardize Blu-Ray.
On the gaming side, while a PS3 has possibly a more powerful processor and GPU than an Xbox360, it has less system memory, and is harder to develop for. And with Sony unwilling to help developers take full advantage of the hardware (contrary to Microsoft), it has the potential for non-exclusives to run/look better on an Xbox360 than a PS3 (already happened several times), so until developers get their act together on a PS3, people may prefer the Xbox360 version of a game (providing they have both consoles). And the PS3 exclusive list has gotten shorter.
Perhaps Sony's best option is to release a "PSThree", a "lite" console that plays PS3 games only. No Blu-Ray playback. No fancy media center stuff. Just play games. Release it with the smallest/cheapest hard drive possible, and sell it for $200 and eat Microsoft's lunch. The lack of Blu-Ray playback means it won't compete with Blu-Ray players, and the low price means Microsoft and Nintendo have to worry.
PS - I have both an Xbox360 and PS3. My PS3 players Blu-Ray movies, because other than a few PS3 exclusives, I tend to buy games for my Xbox360, waiting for PS3 developers to "get it".
I havent looked at it yet (I will) but what I'd like to see is the ability to *upload* files to the card. The application would be putting it in a digital picture frame (which would be in a different room than where the computers were) and be able to add photos to it without having to physically go get the SD card and apply sneakernet.
Problem is, read-only is all you can get. What the Eye-Fi is doing is accessing a raw block device (while the camera/device is also accessing a raw-block device). Now, the Eye-Fi is coded to know that the underlying storage may be updated rudely underneath it, but most other devices don't expect someone else to start scribbling over an already-mounted disk. (Try zeroing a disk on Linux while it's mounted. Interesting things happen).
The Eye-Fi knows that the underlying disk will be modified underneath it, and thus would have code written to compensate for it. The devices probably not...
I can't confirm his claim that the total number of accidents increases, but studies have noted that rear end accidents go up even as the t-bone accidents go down with the cameras.
OTOH, don't accidents that take place with the front/back of one car meeting the front/back of another car tend to be far less dangerous than a T-bone? Mostly because of the extra crumple zone protection that is available. Before side airbags was common a number of injuries were caused by people banging their heads sideways against pillars and doors and windows. A lot of research has gone into making cars safer against the T-bone, but there's still less room for metal to give sideways...
I still disagree. It was marked private by the owner, it should remain as such. Any thing less borderlines on self-incrimination which is prohibited here in this country.
Now, if its public facing pages, by all means use it in court.
Quite possibly true, except it's a civil case, and the guy who marked the page private is the prosecution. Self-incrimination applies to the defense, in that the defendant doesn't have to give testimony that might indict him. A lot of fun can happen if anyone can sue anyone else for anything, and any evidence for the defense that the prosecution may have and is relevant is "private".
In this case, if the prosecution doesn't wish to have his life examined (or his Facebook page revealed), the simple solution is to not expose it in a court of law, i.e., not file a lawsuit.
While that's cool I find the "alarm" function on my phone a bit easier...
Probably more reliable too - SMS is like email - there's no guarantee in how long it'll take to get to the destination (or if it even gets there at all). The day you need your SMS-alarm to wake you up, is probably the day the SMS network gets slightly overloaded. (I've seen SMS' take days to arrive, and have heard of the oddball SMS duplication - where the same SMS was stuck in the system, and the recipient kept getting it twice an hour for 3 days straight).
some online games make your ability to play competitively a question of how much time and money you've invested in a game, rather than the skill you possess
...just like Magic the Gathering, or any other collectible card game, where the amount of money you have spent on your deck directly influences the options available to you in-game.
Which is why I don't ever get the rule against proxy cards - proxy cards level the playing field because those who can't afford the best, can still use the best. The rare expensive cards are still rare and expensive, but now they're only worth it for the collectible part, not the fact you can use it ot decimate your opponent in the first couple of hands. Takes money out of the equation and puts it back into skill...
It makes for an interesting thing into Eye of Judgement, for the "online deck" is based on using the camera to scan all the same cards at once. People have found out that you can easily copy a good card, and "prove" to the game that you have multiples and thus turn a proxy into a "real" card. The other thing is I haven't found a torrent where all the cards have been scanned so you could make an online deck from every card in the game. (It's using a webcam so the parts the camera is interested in is effectively a low-res barcode).
I am still trying to figure out what that means. I figured one of the pages linked to would define it, but no. Does it just mean software that is for sale, or is it more nuanced than that?
Fuckin' newspeak.:(
It's an app that costs money. You see, unlike Apple' App Store, until recently, the Android App Store only had free apps. Recently, Google started allowing people to charge money for their apps.
The interesting thing about the Android App Store is that it allows people 24 hours to "return" an app. This could be fun on a developer phone since a user can always copy the app off, return it, then copy it back onto the phone. Also, copy protected apps aren't really protected on the dev phone either, since you can always su and do it as root. Even if Google closed that hole, there's always the ability to run your own code on the phone with that hole in it.
And you won't have to imagine someone without their clothes. You can just turn on the mode which shows everyone like they would sans theirs clothes. And if you get caught doing that, you also risk getting killed, in which case you will not only be able to see dead people, you'll become one with them. Yippie.
Wasn't there a Sony camcorder over a decade ago that could do this?
ISTR that it was recalled due to its "night vision" mode turning into more like "x-ray vision", except stopping at just under the clothes... I wonder how many cameras were actually returned, and how many were re-sold to others who wanted that particular feature.
but it remains a console RTS. Yawn. I want my RTS to be complex, and far more open with more micro-management, I havn't seen an RTS I've liked since Empire Earth 2, since then, everything has been dumbed down again and again. I've got, played, and liked Halo Wars. I like the Halo franchise, it's got a good storyline, and the games have been well made. This, true to form, is not a bad game. It's just not revolutionary. That said, I am tired of people slagging off Halo continuously. Sure, I prefer the Half-Life PC games to Halo, but the Halo games remain excellent - and the game type and map customisation have yet to be beaten for a simplicity vs power balence.
Actually, it's quite interesting.
Personally, I hate micromanagement in RTS games - it's good during the first stages, but then I feel like I really want to delegate some task or another so I can concentrate on the big picture.
I suppose it's also because Halo Wars is less "base management" and more "just get you to the combat, stat" style of RTS game. Effectively, it's a sorta mix between a first/third person shooter (attack the bad guys already!), and an RTS (OK, now what forces will help you attack the bad guys the easiest?).
I would argue that nothing in the Halo series is revolutionary. The Halo series is popular because it's one of the first FPS games designed for the console, with controls designed for a console controller. Pretty much until Halo, console FPSes sucked, horribly, and many a PC gamer said to take their keyboards and mice over their dead bodies. Halo Wars is similar - trying to take a traditional keyboard/mouse game and adapt it to a controller. The games themselves aren't revolutionary (RTS and FPS games have been around for over a decade, nearly two, and been on consoles as well), just the ability to not require a keyboard and mouse to play.
That said, I enjoy Halo, and turned into quite the Halo fan. (I enjoy the Half-Life series as well, on the PC). I certainly do like Halo Wars. I'm not a hardcore gamer, and I find "normal" quite difficult, but I still enjoy the games. And yes, I get pwned in about 5 seconds, but doesn't mean I can't enjoy the game.
Now, what I really want is a good recording of the "Spartan is down" alert. I've got a few good uses for that sound.
Anyone know if/how this version can play iTMS-encrypted music and/or videos?
No, it won't decrypt/break DRM for you.
For music - I suggest you just pay the upgrade fee already to get it into iTunes+ format (higher quality, DRM free). All tracks should be DRM-free soon enough. Else, see below.
For video - you'll have to find a program called "requiem" - the official distirbution site is on Freenet though, so I suggest you grab a copy off a torrent and grab the freenet link contained in the readme file. Just to avoid a malware infested download.
Once defanged, it's standard AAC and h.264 video easily playable in any compatible player (e.g., mplayer, vlc).
Is this for Wine or for CrossOver? Because CrossOver isn't free, is it?
You're confusing CrossOver/CodeWeavers with Cedega/Cider/TransGaming.
Transgaming took the old WINE codebase (before it went LGPL) and ran with that, releasing Cedega (run games), and Cider (porting library). They're closed source, and neither Free nor free.
CodeWeavers is basically an implementation of the Open Source business plan. They sell a user-friendly easy-to-install WINE distribution (for a price). In return, they hire people to work on WINE, and who contribute code back into WINE. Those who don't want to pay, can grab a copy of WINE from WINE repositories. Those who pay get support, ability to help fund new areas of development, and a very easy to install and configure version of WINE.
It's quite confusing because of TransGaming, but do remember that the WINE guys recommend CodeWeavers for those who want support. And purchasing CrossOver licenses is a good way to help WINE, too.
Remember that 800 trillion "stimulus"? Everyone agreed to make it available online for 48 hours before the final vote. The 48 hours thing didn't happen. And I hope you like PDFs that consist entirely of scanned images.
At least it's one PDF containing all the scanned images. They could've just as easily put up scanned images, one per page on a web site.
And also, scanned images in a PDF are quite useful - you don't get the searchability, but if the publisher screws up or adds stuff to the document they're printing, it's far better to see the actual thing everyone else is seeing, rather than the electronic copy that they think everyone else is seeing (people make mistakes, machines may put a blob of ink over a word that may change it, etc.) Sometimes the final output that is cleaned up by the printer isn't available before it hits the paper, so any alterations done (usually layout, but may inadvertently chop off words and sentences) can be seen. Imagine if the word "NOT" was accidentally misplaced or lost between the submission to the printer and the final printed book?
People who buy a Mac and run Windows exclusively I don't get. But I personally feel comfortable in both Windows and OS X, prefer OS X for most of my non-professional activities, yet am more or less forced to use Windows for the majority of my work-related activities (what can I say? SAP's Java client lacks several important features...). It's sad that you find it laugh-worthy that people like me enjoy having a choice.
I did just this. At the time, Apple's Mac Pro was cheaper than an equivalently configured Dell (about $1000 more!), and building it yourself was also out of the question. My number one requirement was it be quiet. The Mac Pro is quiet (I cna hear the hard disks), the Dell I'm not sure, and the DIY solution was not going to save me a significant amount of money for all the extra effort it took to find a quiet (but cool) case, a quiet power supply, quiet fans, etc.
Sure, I couild boot into OS X, but I don't, because I have other Macs in the house that run quite well.
As a hardware manufacturer, Apple's products are quite nice (design wise), so I can undetstand people who are Windows users wanting to buy a Mac and running Windows on it.
The real meat in these new machines is the significantly upgraded graphics chips. If you are a gamer, these machines are now acceptable for all but the most extreme requirements.
So how does the Mini figure in this equation? It's positioned for a media center type of machine. The upgraded graphics will probably not be used, so I don't understand why it should be considered an upgrade.
If you're doing media-center type tasks, the updated graphics will be very helpful, actually. Having hardware decode support for high-def video is extremely useful. Especially if Blu-Ray support comes around to the Mac, where you need hardware decode support.
So unless your video requirements for a media center PC center around SDTV and lower res video, the enhanced graphics offer great possibilities for high-def playback.
Slashdot Mirror
Depends.
Last I checked, you had two options, a "Bill", and a "Linus" (you can guess who they're named after). Bills get paid a portion of the paid-wifi fees from people using their access. Linuses don't. However, if a Bill uses another AP on the fon network, they have to pay. Linuses don't. So it's gets paid and pay, or free and free, and you can only change your choice once, to prevent those from going on vacation switching their status from Bill to Linus, then back to Bill upon return to get free wifi.
Fon is basically a way to offer wifi access at the user level - want to run an hotspot, but not worry about the billing crap, and get the benefits of being able to use other Fon hotspots. All this without having to be a big company nor complex legal agreements to negotiate and sign over.
You do realize that the Cortex series of ARM cores can get to around 1GHz, and that the Marvell (formerly Intel) XScale chips can scale to 1.25GHz easily. And that's when they're drawing a quarter to a half a watt. At worse, you're getting 1GHz/watt.
ARM is used everywhere, it scales handily from fleapower devices, to the GHz range used in the latest smartphones. For every x86 CPU sold, the PC containing it probably contains several ARM processors (Bluetooth and WiFi being extremely common peripherals with ARM processors). A cellphone usually has 2 - one driving the UI, and one in the radio, and maybe two more (again, Bluetooth and WiFi).
400-667MHz seems to be the "sweet spot" right now for a cellphone's ARM processor... (iPhone has it at 400-416MHz, the Palm Pre has a Cortex A8 at 667MHz). And the whole cellphone power management has to be able to drop power consumption to a mere 3 milliamps or so, including the power spikes to maintain a link to the cell towers.
Atom tries, but it's still an order of magnitude too much power for an entire system...
If it's a three strikes law, use it to your advantage. Keep reporting all the incidents everywehere - Sarkozy hums a copyrighted tune? Report it. Flood the government or whatever bodies with reports on all potential copyright infringement by the members. After all, don't we already have proof that they do this? It should be trivial to just report that their children have broken the law as well. Keep reporting them and get their internet connections cut off.
Sort of like "work to rule" campaigns - you make the rulemakers suffer under their own rules as well.
Heck, bonus points for those who can get the Internet cut off at no only their personal residences, but also to government buildings also.
Except they ship a lot more Unix machines? Especially in the portable arena? Sure they don't have as much cash as the big guys, but they certainly move a lot of product, especially since that product seems to be going into the hands of those who traditionally don't use Unix at all.
I remember an article somewhere that stated the while Apple isn't a big company compared to other Unix vendors, they move way more Unix machines that makes OS X one of the most used Unix around.
eh?
(Might as well get a free bleep bloop!)
The problem with mobile broadband data is the latency stinks. At the worst case, your latency is closer to (or beyond) satellite, and at best, it's a few hundred milliseconds. It's extremely difficult to carry on a real-time conversation with such latency. Most people can tolerate 100-200msec of latency, but any more and the conversation starts getting really stilted quickly. And the latency varies dramatically - you may be getting a good 200-400msec latency at the beginning, but then it'll spike to 2000+msec briefly, hover at 1000msec, drop back down to 200msec, then rise and stay steady at 500msec.
Well, the "Audio CD-R"s are more expensive, maybe due to better materials, but also they pay a royalty to the music companies, a compulsory license, basically. That's why they cost more - the licensing fees were paid on them.
SCSI disks may have been manufactured at better factories, but they also tend to work on the assumption that they're in a RAID array, while consumer level drives are often used singly. Thus, if there's a read failure, a SCSI disk will want to "fail fast" so the RAID controller can flag it, recover using the other disks, activate a spare drive (and begin rebuild), and slert a sysadmin of a possibly dying drive. Consumer drives will try their mightiest to get at the data, hence the click-click-click as they retract heads (trying to clean them), flinging the heads around trying to get lucky, etc.
Of course, they're different yes, but whether or not the price difference justifies it, I don't know.
Makes sense. The video's in the summary! So the video clip is in the summary about a video clip, thus, the link points to the summary since the video referenced in the summary is in the summary.
You do realize that every Xbox360 console comes with Xbox Live Silver, right? That gives you access to the Xbox Live Marketplace, most of the game trailers and demos, and other stuff that Microsoft sells in your region, right?
It costs zip (you do get a free one month gold trial if you sign up via your Xbox360), but gets you most of the demos and whatnot. The only problem is if Microsoft doesn't have rights to do that in your area.
All Gold gets you (for your $50) is online multiplayer, and access to various "gold only" content (there's not that much there - early access to game demos and various "premium" themes and videos). Microsoft isn't that stupid to lock out a good chunk of those unwilling to pay for a chance to make some money. Xbox Live Arcade is an obvious place to make money, but game demos may help sell games and earn Microsoft money in licensing fees.
A nice pipe dream.
People are used to having 1 or 2 IP addresses handed to them. Most probably only use one - they stick their cablemodem into their NAT router and be done with that. ISPs know this, and you can bet good money that when residential people get IPv6, they may give them a large range of valid IPs, but really, only route 1 or 2 to them, because they know users will only use 1 or 2. And pay for more, if they need it. And the majority of users will do that - they'll take their IPv6 pipe, and stick on a router, and probably do IPv6 NAT.
No, the era of direct-connected machines is long gone - even if the user had a regular normal firewall and a 1:1 mapping of devices to IPs, you're going to have to tell them how to open a port on it so they can play their game again. And it'll probably be more confusing, since they want only one machine to get that traffic.
And yes, going around NAT is annoying, and breaks some applications. However, the interesting thing is how many applications aren't broken. Or have implemented functionality to work around firewalls and NAT. If you go back to just over a decade ago, playing an online game may easily require 10-15 ports open (TCP/UDP) on your firewall. Nowadays, it's down to one, or in some cases, do nothing. The ports I opened on my NAT router were for HTTP, ssh, and BitTorrent, and I still do online gaming (Xbox Live, Playstation Network) fine without UPnP (disabled on router). And yes, people invented STUN to help get through NAT, as well.
About the real benefit of IPv6 is to make viruses and trojans spread slower as they now have to send packets to more hosts, and there will be more holes in the address space, so chances of success will be limited. But the chance of two people plugging in 2 VoIP phones into a random network and have them work always is gone (unless they're Skype phones, which use STUN and a bunch of dirty tricks to get around NAT and firewalls...).
ACtually, depending on your plan, the results can be quite different. On the phone side, it doesn't care which plan you're on - it just accesses data. However, on the network side, they can tell the difference between the three plans quite easily. Also the smartphone and full access plans can often be implemented differently.
First, the dumbphone plan, or a Blackberry plan use special proxy servers that those plans provision for. This much we agree on.
A smartphone plan can be "unlimited" or high limits, with often a little note saying it won't work on a laptop. It's true that the network can't tell the difference between the phone accessing the network and the laptop, but it may go through things like transparent proxies, NATs, and other network fun. If they're really nasty, they'll actually limit data rates and streaming quality (e.g., why allow YouTube high-def? No smartphone has high-def screen, and people don't usually want to wait for the easily 100-200+MB of data to buffer sufficiently). Also connections may be limited to well known ports with other ports monitored.
A full tethered plan can effectively give you open access to the internet - many will give you a full routable IP as well, no firewalls or anything (so you can VPN over them quite easily). You can also bittorrent, but you'll probably bump your limit really quickly.
And carriers know which plan you go for, and if you access the wrong APN, boom, 5 cents per kilobyte (real kilobyte, not a kibibyte) or more.
I have an iPhone, and an unlimited tethering plan I got years ago before the splits. Technically, the smartphones they have won't work with my tethering plan - I would be dinged horribly. Jailbroke my iPhone, and modified by carrier bundles so I can reset my APN to the one I'm supposed ot use (they lock it down... nasty). And boom, my "incompatible plan" is compatible again! Heck, my plan only calls for GPRS data, but works fine with EDGE and 3G. (The carrier can technically limit my 3G to GPRS or EDGE speeds...).
Sony's between a rock and a hard place.
Firstly, they have to decide if they want to push the PS3 as a Blu-Ray player or a games console. The issue is that the PS3 is effectively a "price ceiling" for blu-ray players - the market for players more expensive than a PS3 is very tiny, and thus the majority of Blu-Ray players on the market must be under the price of a PS3 (otherwise, people will buy PS3s as Blu-Ray players).
Secondly, third party Blu-Ray manufacturers aren't dropping their prices fast enough - while you can get a good Blu-Ray 2.0 player for $250 these days, the prices aren't dropping any further. The problem comes in should Sony wish to sell a PS3 for $300 (a meaningful price cut, since even the $400 Xbox360 can be had $350 on sale!). Suddenly, do you want to pay $250 for a Blu-Ray player, or $300 for a Blu-Ray player *AND* the added features of a PS3 (WiFi, games, ...). I omit the downsides of a PS3 (proprietary Bluetooth remote - no consumer IR, remote extra cost) since most users will live with them (I do, even though a PS3 integrates poorly (not-at-all) with my remote...).
The issue is, third-party manufacturers will be forced into a lower price range (probably sub-$200), a price point they may decide it's not worth expending the R&D for to make a Blu-Ray player, and leave the market. This is bad, for consumers will believe Sharp, Panasonic, Pioneer, etc., think that Blu-Ray is not worth investing in, and content providers see consumer demand. Blu-Ray is still in the early stages - DVD is a very big competitor to Blu-Ray (cheaper, and even after upscaling, a good majority of DVDs don't look much worse to justify the benefit and cost), and content providers are exploring and investing heavily in streaming technologies (not as good as Blu-Ray, but "good enough" for the consumer). And content providers may be wary of investing more in a format that only Sony makes and others have pulled out of.
So Sony may want to cut the price of the PS3 down, but doing so can jeopardize Blu-Ray.
On the gaming side, while a PS3 has possibly a more powerful processor and GPU than an Xbox360, it has less system memory, and is harder to develop for. And with Sony unwilling to help developers take full advantage of the hardware (contrary to Microsoft), it has the potential for non-exclusives to run/look better on an Xbox360 than a PS3 (already happened several times), so until developers get their act together on a PS3, people may prefer the Xbox360 version of a game (providing they have both consoles). And the PS3 exclusive list has gotten shorter.
Perhaps Sony's best option is to release a "PSThree", a "lite" console that plays PS3 games only. No Blu-Ray playback. No fancy media center stuff. Just play games. Release it with the smallest/cheapest hard drive possible, and sell it for $200 and eat Microsoft's lunch. The lack of Blu-Ray playback means it won't compete with Blu-Ray players, and the low price means Microsoft and Nintendo have to worry.
PS - I have both an Xbox360 and PS3. My PS3 players Blu-Ray movies, because other than a few PS3 exclusives, I tend to buy games for my Xbox360, waiting for PS3 developers to "get it".
Problem is, read-only is all you can get. What the Eye-Fi is doing is accessing a raw block device (while the camera/device is also accessing a raw-block device). Now, the Eye-Fi is coded to know that the underlying storage may be updated rudely underneath it, but most other devices don't expect someone else to start scribbling over an already-mounted disk. (Try zeroing a disk on Linux while it's mounted. Interesting things happen).
The Eye-Fi knows that the underlying disk will be modified underneath it, and thus would have code written to compensate for it. The devices probably not...
OTOH, don't accidents that take place with the front/back of one car meeting the front/back of another car tend to be far less dangerous than a T-bone? Mostly because of the extra crumple zone protection that is available. Before side airbags was common a number of injuries were caused by people banging their heads sideways against pillars and doors and windows. A lot of research has gone into making cars safer against the T-bone, but there's still less room for metal to give sideways...
Quite possibly true, except it's a civil case, and the guy who marked the page private is the prosecution. Self-incrimination applies to the defense, in that the defendant doesn't have to give testimony that might indict him. A lot of fun can happen if anyone can sue anyone else for anything, and any evidence for the defense that the prosecution may have and is relevant is "private".
In this case, if the prosecution doesn't wish to have his life examined (or his Facebook page revealed), the simple solution is to not expose it in a court of law, i.e., not file a lawsuit.
Probably more reliable too - SMS is like email - there's no guarantee in how long it'll take to get to the destination (or if it even gets there at all). The day you need your SMS-alarm to wake you up, is probably the day the SMS network gets slightly overloaded. (I've seen SMS' take days to arrive, and have heard of the oddball SMS duplication - where the same SMS was stuck in the system, and the recipient kept getting it twice an hour for 3 days straight).
Which is why I don't ever get the rule against proxy cards - proxy cards level the playing field because those who can't afford the best, can still use the best. The rare expensive cards are still rare and expensive, but now they're only worth it for the collectible part, not the fact you can use it ot decimate your opponent in the first couple of hands. Takes money out of the equation and puts it back into skill...
It makes for an interesting thing into Eye of Judgement, for the "online deck" is based on using the camera to scan all the same cards at once. People have found out that you can easily copy a good card, and "prove" to the game that you have multiples and thus turn a proxy into a "real" card. The other thing is I haven't found a torrent where all the cards have been scanned so you could make an online deck from every card in the game. (It's using a webcam so the parts the camera is interested in is effectively a low-res barcode).
It's an app that costs money. You see, unlike Apple' App Store, until recently, the Android App Store only had free apps. Recently, Google started allowing people to charge money for their apps.
The interesting thing about the Android App Store is that it allows people 24 hours to "return" an app. This could be fun on a developer phone since a user can always copy the app off, return it, then copy it back onto the phone. Also, copy protected apps aren't really protected on the dev phone either, since you can always su and do it as root. Even if Google closed that hole, there's always the ability to run your own code on the phone with that hole in it.
Wasn't there a Sony camcorder over a decade ago that could do this?
ISTR that it was recalled due to its "night vision" mode turning into more like "x-ray vision", except stopping at just under the clothes... I wonder how many cameras were actually returned, and how many were re-sold to others who wanted that particular feature.
Actually, it's quite interesting.
Personally, I hate micromanagement in RTS games - it's good during the first stages, but then I feel like I really want to delegate some task or another so I can concentrate on the big picture.
I suppose it's also because Halo Wars is less "base management" and more "just get you to the combat, stat" style of RTS game. Effectively, it's a sorta mix between a first/third person shooter (attack the bad guys already!), and an RTS (OK, now what forces will help you attack the bad guys the easiest?).
I would argue that nothing in the Halo series is revolutionary. The Halo series is popular because it's one of the first FPS games designed for the console, with controls designed for a console controller. Pretty much until Halo, console FPSes sucked, horribly, and many a PC gamer said to take their keyboards and mice over their dead bodies. Halo Wars is similar - trying to take a traditional keyboard/mouse game and adapt it to a controller. The games themselves aren't revolutionary (RTS and FPS games have been around for over a decade, nearly two, and been on consoles as well), just the ability to not require a keyboard and mouse to play.
That said, I enjoy Halo, and turned into quite the Halo fan. (I enjoy the Half-Life series as well, on the PC). I certainly do like Halo Wars. I'm not a hardcore gamer, and I find "normal" quite difficult, but I still enjoy the games. And yes, I get pwned in about 5 seconds, but doesn't mean I can't enjoy the game.
Now, what I really want is a good recording of the "Spartan is down" alert. I've got a few good uses for that sound.
No, it won't decrypt/break DRM for you.
For music - I suggest you just pay the upgrade fee already to get it into iTunes+ format (higher quality, DRM free). All tracks should be DRM-free soon enough. Else, see below.
For video - you'll have to find a program called "requiem" - the official distirbution site is on Freenet though, so I suggest you grab a copy off a torrent and grab the freenet link contained in the readme file. Just to avoid a malware infested download.
Once defanged, it's standard AAC and h.264 video easily playable in any compatible player (e.g., mplayer, vlc).
You're confusing CrossOver/CodeWeavers with Cedega/Cider/TransGaming.
Transgaming took the old WINE codebase (before it went LGPL) and ran with that, releasing Cedega (run games), and Cider (porting library). They're closed source, and neither Free nor free.
CodeWeavers is basically an implementation of the Open Source business plan. They sell a user-friendly easy-to-install WINE distribution (for a price). In return, they hire people to work on WINE, and who contribute code back into WINE. Those who don't want to pay, can grab a copy of WINE from WINE repositories. Those who pay get support, ability to help fund new areas of development, and a very easy to install and configure version of WINE.
It's quite confusing because of TransGaming, but do remember that the WINE guys recommend CodeWeavers for those who want support. And purchasing CrossOver licenses is a good way to help WINE, too.
At least it's one PDF containing all the scanned images. They could've just as easily put up scanned images, one per page on a web site.
And also, scanned images in a PDF are quite useful - you don't get the searchability, but if the publisher screws up or adds stuff to the document they're printing, it's far better to see the actual thing everyone else is seeing, rather than the electronic copy that they think everyone else is seeing (people make mistakes, machines may put a blob of ink over a word that may change it, etc.) Sometimes the final output that is cleaned up by the printer isn't available before it hits the paper, so any alterations done (usually layout, but may inadvertently chop off words and sentences) can be seen. Imagine if the word "NOT" was accidentally misplaced or lost between the submission to the printer and the final printed book?
I did just this. At the time, Apple's Mac Pro was cheaper than an equivalently configured Dell (about $1000 more!), and building it yourself was also out of the question. My number one requirement was it be quiet. The Mac Pro is quiet (I cna hear the hard disks), the Dell I'm not sure, and the DIY solution was not going to save me a significant amount of money for all the extra effort it took to find a quiet (but cool) case, a quiet power supply, quiet fans, etc.
Sure, I couild boot into OS X, but I don't, because I have other Macs in the house that run quite well.
As a hardware manufacturer, Apple's products are quite nice (design wise), so I can undetstand people who are Windows users wanting to buy a Mac and running Windows on it.
If you're doing media-center type tasks, the updated graphics will be very helpful, actually. Having hardware decode support for high-def video is extremely useful. Especially if Blu-Ray support comes around to the Mac, where you need hardware decode support.
So unless your video requirements for a media center PC center around SDTV and lower res video, the enhanced graphics offer great possibilities for high-def playback.