This is about Hollywood studios lining up with a product more friendly with what they want. [snip] Grats to Sony on the win, too bad for the consumer as I while both have overpriced movies the BluRay players are not competitive. If anything it may slow down real High Definition roll outs.
That's what I've been saying the past few months. The problem with HD-DVD is it's too consumer friendly.
Studios want region coding. They want all the fancy DRM. They want the ability to find who makes pirated Blu-Rays (ROM-Mark makes this easy).
Heck, Blu-Ray offering 1.0 (Grace Period, expired 31-Oct-2007), 1.1, and 2.0 profiles, offers Blu-Ray studios to re-sell the movie 3 more times. First, they release the movie, no extras, 1.0 only. Then they release a 1.1 "special edition" with PIP and all that good stuff. They'll then release another "collector's edition" for 1.1 that has even more stuff. Oh, and they'll release a 2.0 "super ultimate collector's edition director's cut" for those with 2.0 players. And there'll be plenty of "Director's cut", "super colelctor's edition" in varying Blu-Ray profiles so those with players who can't do the newer profiles can still play them.
The lack of region coding hurt HD-DVD badly, because it often meant that HD-DVDs of movies took much longer to come out as studios waited until it wasn't shown in theatres. After all, if you could import the HD-DVD from the US, why bother seeing it in the theatre? It's a two-edge sword. The DVD Forum learned that region coding didn't work, angered consumers, and even had countries enacting laws making it legal to break region coding. So they didn't bother with HD-DVD. Now the source material decided that artificial separation of markets was good for them, and decided that releasing HD-DVDs with the DVD releases meant those countries which are still showing the movie would hurt, badly. (Nevermind how much it costs to import/ship to said country...).
Blu-Ray's region coding is "better" in that sense - after all, they can release a Blu-Ray in the Americas and be confident that people in Asia can't watch. (Yeah, you could import a region A PS3...).
Either you appease the content creators, or you appease the content consumers. Unfortunately, appeasing the latter tends to make the content sparse. Blu-Ray appeases the creators, screws the consumers.
If anything, this high-def war has made it possible for consumers to enjoy high-def affordably. If it was Blu-Ray only, would Blu-Ray and HD-DVD be as popular now? Or maybe as affordable? We'd probably still be paying $1000 for a Blu-Ray player had it not been the fact that the HD-DVD player launched a few months earlier was half that price. It took several years for DVD players to drop from their $1000 price tags to $100, and that was only because there was a definite upgrade path from VHS to DVD. Heck, the PS3 will probably have "won" as the console of choice simply because it was the only affordable Blu-Ray player that worked well (except given its annoying lack of consumer IR, and thus integration with many universal remotes).
I have both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. The last high-def disc I bought was Transformers (have DVD as well). My HD-DVD collection consists of maybe 7 movies, Blu-Ray, probably 4. I bought many DVDs in the meantime, many, many, DVDs. The last thing I purchased (Simpsons Movie) came in both DVD and Blu-Ray, and I bought the DVD. The war might have dissuaded consumers, but if you can't even get people who own high-def to even BUY high-def... then maybe "DVD is good enough". Yes, I've spurned both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray versions for the DVD (though I do like HD-DVD more, it's just not worth its cost more).
Honestly, Blu-Ray discs have gotten a lot better since the beginning, partly because of competition. You spend $30 and often got less than the DVD ($20) would've got you, especially in extras. At least now Blu-Ray tends to approach the content of the DV
As I know, most 3rd party motherboards offer "anti-virus" or the "write protect MBR" options. Even if available I doubt they will work when using onboard RAID features.
Basically, you leaves these options off when installing the OS. Once you're finished, you can safely turn them on. I'm not sure how often NTFS needs access to the MBR, but I know I've never had trouble leaving these features enabled with FAT32.
Ah, but these things only work in two ways:
1) The write protect only works if the OS makes a BIOS call to the MBR. The BIOS then traps this request and asks if you mean to write to the MBR. This works pretty well as most boot sector virii exist in DOS, which uses the BIOS, rather than Windows.
2) The BIOS makes a copy of the MBR and saves it in the CMOS. On boot, it loads the boot sector as normal, and does a quick comparison (it's only 512 bytes). If it differs (because someone overwrote the MBR code, or someone changed the partition table), it asks what you want to do - restore from backup, or accept the modifications.
No good filesystem should need the MBR once the system is booted. Other than reading the partition table. (The MBR, being 446 bytes in size, is also pretty standardized, which is why any utility that rewrites the MBR code can get your system booting again. Linux rewrites MBR can boot Windows, Windows fdisk can make Linux bootable again, etc. Basically, the MBR code just examines the partition table (in RAM - the BIOS doesn't care or know about the last 66 bytes being partition table. It loads the entire 512 byte sector into RAM), finds an entry marked with an "active" flag, and copies the first sector out of that partition into RAM and jumps into that code.
Extended partitions are the devil, which is why most MBRs can't boot from an extended partition.
Yeah right. Do you think the virus idiots know how to program a virus into 512 bytes these days? I've seen self-styled viruses that are carrying around msvcrt.dll. Those guys should be embarrassed.
Actually, it's a bit less. The first sector of a hard disk contains the MBR code and the partition table.
The partition table takes 64 bytes (16 bytes x 4 entries), and there's a two-byte signature that the BIOS checks to ensure the MBR is valid.
That gives you roughly 446 bytes of code that you can actually run. Most MBR code basically reads the partition table, finds a partition with the "active" flag set, then loads the first sector of that partition into memory. The partition loader then copies more sectors from disk so it can load the OS.
That's why you can install GRUB and LILO into either the partition or MBR. The MBR version basically overwrites the existing MBR to always load LILO or GRUB regardless of what the partition table says. The partition version relies on the MBR code passing it control.
Of course, having the first cylinder of a disk unused makes it convenient to stash away the extra code you need.
Apple knew the firmware would brick the phones - they made a press release saying it would _before_ they released the firmware, yet they did nothing to correct the problem (they could at least have prevented people uploading the new firmware to hacked phones). Read into it what you will, but it looked to me very much like the bricking of the phones was an accidentally-on-purpose thing.
Sure Apple could fix it, but that would be expending software development effort on something they don't want to acknowledge exists.
Apple doesn't force the upgrade on you, either. Plug the iPhone into iTunes, and iTunes prompts if you want to download, download and install, or cancel (with "Do not prompt again" checkbox). People who don't read the very prominent notices that unauthorized mods may damage the phone, deserve what they got.
Funny enough, not everyone bricked their iPhones when 1.1.1 came out! Because they saw the warnings, and ignored the call to upgrade their phone. It's only a notification in iTunes that you can ignore and even tell iTunes to not bother you again. A few weeks later, the same hackers released a way to upgrade to 1.1.1 without bricking. (Which also happened to fix bricked phones, as well).
Probably the worst crime Apple committed was releasing a product that people wanted with some features they didn't want.
What does it mean, Apple's become too powerful, so Sony needs another distribution channel? Is Apple driving the prices up? Is Apple restricting Sony to only sell DRM'd music? Is Apple incapable of supporting non-DRM formats? Does Apple not reach sufficiently worldwide.
More like, "Apple won't bend over and cede to our demands!"
Everyone knows that Apple has a standard iTunes contract. Now that iTunes has proven to be the #1 place to get music legally, and is something like #3 in marketshare for music, the labels are worried because Apple has this store that sells to the #1 music player, and no other store has that potential. Apple could very well dictate the terms, basically by saying "This is our offer. Take it or leave it." (whether that includes iTunesPlus or not... I don't know).
Amazon opens up a store that's DRM free, and backed by a relatively large and well-known company.
Labels have a choice - bend over and accept Apple's terms, and keep DRM, and be usable on the #1 music player. Option 2 - make their own terms with Napster/Zune/etc, keep DRM, but be usable on the small subset of players. Now with Amazon, option 3 is, negotiate with Amazon (they need music), drop DRM, and be usable on the #1 music player.
Labels have decided that temporarily, dropping DRM is better than Apple's terms, and hope to make it such that instead of Apple dictating the terms to the labels, the labels will be in the power to dictate terms to Apple ("We have Amazon. We don't need iTunes") and hope that Apple rolls over.
It's really a power play. The labels are afraid of having terms dictated to them, and see if they can make Amazon a powerful music store, that hopefully they can leverage Amazon against iTunes. If Amazon is too powerful, they can ditch Amazon for iTunes. But in the meantime, they know that by weakening iTunes, Apple won't be able to standard-contract them.
And if Apple closes the iTunes store, they can ditch Amazon as well, and we'll be back at square 1. So closing shop isn't a real option, but having iTunes and Amazon compete for labels is.
For the consumer, it's "ain't competition grand?" for now. Once Amazon saps some of iTunes' strength, they'll put back in their demands of "demand pricing" or whatever other crap they want, knowing Apple will want to compete with Amazon.
Interesting play, interesting times. I say, enjoy it while it lasts...
If I read the GP question right, the question is what are _SETI_ scientists hoping to learn there. Since, you know, SETI = Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Those rocks probably didn't have much intelligent populations in the first place, since that tends to mean large multi-cellular organisms, not at most a few frozen bacteria in the cracks of a rock.
Well, you never know, some of the meteors may be aliens in search of something...
$500k seems a little low for an entire load of Apple products.
Ah, but the OP didn't tell us *when* he drove trucks. For all we know, that could've been 20 years ago. Or maybe even 10.
In the past 3 or 4 years has Apple actually dramatically reduced the size of packaging. A PowerBook would consume the same space as a PS3 box these days. An iMac was a fairly large box - think 2'x2'x2' at the minimum, as we're only going back 10 years. I can feasibly see that it it could potentially consume the entire trailer. Even today, some boxes are plain HUGE. My Mac Pro came in a humongous box.
Also, there's a chance that the trailer wasn't 100% full - companies like to fully use the space, but sometimes a short load is necessary to keep stocks at warehouses up.
Or it doesn't have to be some super-complex data set, either.
I recall doing some calculations using MATLAB, and MATLAB would do it (out of memory errors). When I hand-calculated how big the dataset would be, it turned out it needed around 4.5GB of memory. And given this was 7 years ago and a university-level assignment...
I reduced the dataset (basically, lowered the sampling rate) and managed to do the calculations in a more agreeable 400-500MB dataset. Still excessive, but hey, it worked.
Sometimes it doesn't take a very complex dataset to suddenly consume gobs of memory.
Archos HW == Low Quality, Software Equally So
on
Archos 605 WiFi Hacked
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Archos have made some very nice PMPs, but all their PMPs from the AV500 & AV700 onwards have been locked in regards to replacing the harddrive, if you try to replace the harddrive with a different or identical size (even model/make) it refuses to use it.
They are a bunch of wankers. The harddrive in my AV500 has developed a few errors, the only way I can use the unit is to leave 'dead' files covering the bad blocks and never delete or read them, I've contacted Archos about getting a new drive but they don't want to seem to know - they're too busy peddling their newer units with the same harddrive locking shit.
I'm glad someone managed to hack the 605, please can someone write an app that can allow anyone to upgrade/replace the harddrive so people can give the middle finger to Archos (and save themselves a fortune for an over-priced harddrive).
Ditto.
I have an AV420, which I bought after work bought the AV300. That was a really nice unit.
I bought a 704Wifi, which is nice because of its large screen, but I had to take it back twice because the LCD screen had dead pixels on it. Irritating ones, at that. Good thing I bought the damn thing on sale - when they were at their original price, a defect like that would be inexcusable. Spend half a grand, get a screen with dots all over it. And Archos RMA won't touch it because you need at least *4* pixels. 2 sub-pixels don't count, they have to be 4 discrete pixels. Granted, it's an 800x480 screen, but still.
I bought a 605, and that thing has been a disaster. The first unit was Dead on Arrival, and because local stores didn't have it, I bought it online. It took a month to arrive! (Dead). It took two more months to get it exchanged. And the replacement unit died after two days (I sorta expected it - the replacement unit's hard drive buzzed ever so horribly). I did the RMA and its replacement arrived just before Christmas, when I placed the order... September 3rd. In November, I bought one at the local store because I was fed up with the whole thing. Funny thing, the first replacement and the one I got from the store had dead pixels. Luckily, its replacement and the exchange I did in store were dead pixel free.
Awful, just awful quality. And it looks like you have to "baby" the unit just to avoid breaking the hard disk. And the LCD isn't as vibrant or rich as even the iPod. Or Zune. The touchscreen doesn't help but as we see from the iPod Touch, iPhone, Samsung's touchscreen ones, it's possible to have a nice display with a touchscreen. And yes, you still need 4 pixels nonfunctional to get an RMA based on the screen.
Archos also managed to put in a bunch of ads in the 605. First time you plug in USB, if you click "Charge only", it prompts you to buy the DVR Dock where it can charge faster. If you access the Web icon, it says you need to buy the Web plug-in. Ditto with videos or audio encoded with MPEG2, H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC), AAC, or AC-3. It'll bug you to buy another plug in. (Total cost for plugins - $70). Click "Recorder", and you get another ad for either the DVR dock, or portable dock (with necessary "buy" links). To their credit, they include a "Never bug me about this again". But still... rather than disable the functionality, they just use to to eke a few more dollars from you.
And yes, I have two of those things. The one I bought retail, and the RMA'd one. Only thing I can say, is the RMA was a brand new unit. Maybe I'll have some fun with this hack.
Also, the hard drive is locked by the bootloader - unless you can JTAG it, there's no way to fix it.
Recommendations - buy it retail - not online. Or you'll regret it as there's a very good chance your expensive purchase has defects that you can't exchange or RMA. Also, buy the extended warranty - if you so much as move it when it's spinning, it may start clicking and die spontaneously. Treating it like an iPod, you won't - jerk it around and your hard disk will die from bad sectors. (Unlike
That's $0.73/GB for this Netgear product. Almost a year ago I built a 2.5 TB OpenSolaris fileserver using ZFS for $950, that's twice cheaper: $0.38/GB.
I understand Netgear market this product for endusers without the time or the ability to build and configure a NAS themselves, but this reminds me that some of us are privileged people, because we don't have to be victims of such horribly expensive proprietary gear... We have the choice to build it ourselves and save real, big bucks.
No kidding.
I picked up the Linux based Buffalo TeraStation Live 2TB (4x500GB) for $600 earlier this year. Sure it's not as powerful as a regular Linux server, and probably not as cheap, but it's small, compact ans low power, with a nifty little display telling me all I need to know (IP address, disk usage, etc), and has the disks configured in a nice RAID5 configuration.
Yeah, I could build my own linux box for $600 with 4 SATA disks, but the money I'd save wouldn't be worth it. Also, the web interface is nice, and people have hacked the firmware already for all sorts of fun.
For nearly half the price of this Netgear, I have the same storage (plus redundancy). And it's still an appliance. I wouldn't save much more building it myself when I bought it.
Most modern architectures blur the distinction by allowing data and code to reside in the same storage, and even allowing you to treat a section of memory as data at one moment and code at the next (which in theory allows for some neat self-modifying code (but that hasn't proven useful in the consumer market at least) but in practice is the root cause of every email virus ever).
Actually, you're referring to Von Neumann architecture. The other architecture is Harvard. Harvard has separate code and data memory (mostly - you still get the convenience of immediate mode addressing in Harvard). But code can only work on data memory - it cannot work on code memory. However, it's only really useful for speciailized computers running the same code on different data (e.g., signal processing - the data is transformed the same way all the time, so the code can reside in ROM, while the data comes in from whatever source is providing it).
The Von Neumann architecture (code and data are intermingled, and one and the same) is your standard computer architecture. However, the behavior is used very often. Think every time you call exec() or CreateProcess() - the OS has to allocate memory, copy the code to memory (i.e., to the OS, your executable program is data), then tell the processor to run the code (now the data is code). Or even consider the bootstrap program - it has to find the OS loader program, which it copies off some storage to memory (data), then runs it (code). It's this architecture that makes modern computing possible...
If you're thinking about kicking boulders around, you're not thinking about the problem at hand. If the meeting isn't engaging you, how about alt-tabbing over to a different window and getting some real work done while you listen with half an ear to the meeting in the background? I have to wonder how much of this is geared toward recruiting members of the Shortest-Attention-Span Generation. If your competitor is letting people attend meetings in v-space, maybe you'd better too. Actually, that's just one of several ways this could be valuable.
It's hard to "alt-tab" around when they want your physical presence. Like I said, for telecons, you can alt-tab away and ignore the rest of the crap that goes on (often a lot of internal discussions take place that really don't concern you - like the customer might be discussing among themselves why their deliverable is late...).
It seems the goal as one climbs the corporate ladder is to have as many meetings as possible, no matter how pointless they are. And with no ability to do productive work, if all I can do is kick a boulder on the provided screen, that's what I'll do. (It also seems that the social pressure is to attend the meetings rather than try to avoid them - I personally avoid as many meetings as possible since they are a total drain. See, the good meetings I've had are normally around a half-hour or less. Anything longer tends to mean it's not engaging the majority of the time (plus a sure sign of a poorly run meeting)).
It's not really about the interface, it's about them doing stupid crap like kicking boulders around or swimming around underwater when they should be paying attention to what's being said in the meeting.
I have no problems with using virtual worlds as a venue for some sort of team building exercise or something, but I don't see how being in this environment would be useful for a meeting where actual information is expected to be absorbed. For meetings at a distance, you need something like the web conferencing tools that already exist, that allow you to present information without unnecessary distraction. If you give your attendees something else to do other than pay attention to the meeting, they'll do it.
For such meetings (they happen?) that the meeting would be engaging enough that there wouldn't be time to kick boulders around. However, in a number of meetings I've been in, I had to participate for maybe 5 minutes then do something the rest of the time. Kicking boulders around might as well be more interesting.
Funny enough, the useful meetings are all relatively short (5-30 minutes). The boring drawn out ones are longer (1+ hours). If my physical presence isn't actually required, I'd do something else. The good ones are telecons where I call in. At least I can put it on speaker and go away doing more productive work.
Of course, if your meetings are such that a majority of people are kicking boulders around, then it's time to rethink the meeting - either break it into smaller groups of people and shorter meetings (with a quick "all hands" as necessary), or find a more disciplined way of running the meeting.
If they really want to protect trade secrets, maybe they could try to make sure they don't get leaked in the first place?
When did speculation and reporting on rumors get deemed as private information? All I know is CNN is screwed.
It isn't. Which is how sites like AppleInsider, MacRumors and others get their information, legally.
However, ThinkSecret has been known to "entice" Apple employees into breaking their NDAs with Apple and give it certain priviledged information. Apple sued ThinkSecret in an attempt to find out who at Apple was breaking their NDA. They lost, mostly because it was proven that Apple did not do a sufficiently good job at their internal investigation, and thus, ThinkSecret shouldn't be forced to give up their source. (This makes sense, when you think about whistleblowers). From all we can speculate, said source is probably still working at Apple, since we've not heard of any lawsuit filed for disclosure of priviledged information.
If Apple did find the source, ThinkSecret could find itself under another lawsuit if it can be proven people were paid for espionage. But I suspect the terms of the settlement involve immunity for ThinkSecret from further lawsuits related to this matter.
ThinkSecret isn't exactly innocent in the whole affair. After all, Apple went after them, and none of the other sites like say, Gizmodo, Engadget, MacRumors, AppleInsider who report on rumors obtained through the grapevine and are often wrong. ThinkSecret's "rumors" often turned out uncannily accurate.
Furthermore these criminals are increasingly targeting debit card and banking credentials rather than credit cards, because the fraud protection mechanisms there are far weaker, according to a study done at The University of California at Berkeley
But don't the criminals still get the money, regardless of which type of account from which they steal it? Why do they care either way about better consumer fraud protection (which I read as "responsibility for unknown charges")? Or is it that credit cards have better preventative measures? I RTFA, but couldn't find where Berkeley talks about why credit cards have better fraud protection.
Also, as an anecdote, my bank/debit card company did very well to prevent an instance of fraud with my account. I'd like to know what credit card companies do so much better, other than the fact that they're not able to hold you personally liable in cases of fraud and thievery for amounts over $50 (?).
The reason credit cards are better is because the protections they have are enshrined in law. Debit card fraud protection isn't - it's only between you and your bank. That's where the $50 protection comes in - if your credit card is stolen, you're only responsible for the first $50 used while it was stolen (even if you didn't realize until later). Now, some banks actually make it "no liability" and eat the $50 as well, but like debit cards, that's between you and your bank.
Now, imagine your debit card is stolen (or more commonly, duplicated with information stored from illicit debit machines). As far as your bank is concerned, you've been withdrawing the money as normal.
Finally, consider the illicit charge that happens. With a credit card, the money is the bank's (or Visa/Mastercard/Amex/etc) money. They will lean on the merchant to offer proof that you made the transaction (hence the little credit card slip you sign), since that's a contract. If not, they take the money from the merchant and reimburse you.
Now try a debit card. The bank can't tell that it wasn't you that made the trasaction. In fact, it could be you trying to scam free money off the bank. All the bank has is a record that your card was used to withdraw cash from your account (your money) that you claim you never withdrew.
This should be a call for better debit card security, but until then, proving you didn't take your money is a lot harder than having the merchant prove you did make the purchase. Since it's not the bank's money, they can investigate as long as they like, while you're out of the money for the duration. Now some banks may offer cardholder services that make it similar to credit card in protection, but they don't have to. (A more practical aspect - if your credit card was used illicitly, you're not out the money immediately, so you can sustain yourself. If your debit card was used illicitly, you're out the cash until your bank refunds it. This can mean not having money for food and shelter...)
Just FYI - the signature on the back of your credit card is used to indicate that you agree to the cardholder's agreement. It is not, and should not, be used as a signature reference. That slip you sign is a contract saying you will pay the amount shown as per the cardholder's agreement (which your signature on the card verifies). Thus, "Check ID" is not a valid signature on the card, and the store is right in refusing your card since you technically did not agree to the terms of your cardholder agreement (which naturally includes stuff like paying back the money you borrowed!). The cashier, unless they are trained in handwriting analysis, can't really compare signatures (and shouldn't). They can do a quick verification to make sure that you're not playing games, but that's about it.
Stores that tend to attract a lot of fraudulent activity may request ID, though.
It's also why e-commerce is slightly more vulnerable to credit card
The "exaflood hypothesis" is not based on solid fact. It is a ploy, a PR stunt, as the article intimates, by our friends at the Discovery Institute, who are keen on floods and other prophecies of mass destruction.
What? No mention of their other great theory they put forth? (Yes, the same Discovery Institute of Creationism... err... sorry, I think it's "Intelligent Design")
See? The Internet wasn't Intelligently Designed! It won't stand the exaflood! There's no way mere random evolution would make the Internet withstand the exaflood!
(Whoa... that worked a bit better than I thought it would...)
YOu missed another one... Wikipedia frequently changes the scope of the articles it carries.
Once it may carry a certain obscure topic, then decide it's too obscure and delete the page. If you're lucky, it may get pushed to a third party "more suited" to carrying such content. Problem is, if the page is deleted, then the link to the third party hosting the information can get lost. Even such things like trivia that might be fun to know get expunged as irrelevant in a "serious reference site". Other such things stay in Wikipedia. (c.f. StrategyWiki inheriting game stuff from Wikibooks, and the webcomic stuff of late).
I like Wikipedia, and it's generally my go-to site for anything I might want to know, but the attempts to enhance some topics while expunging others may mean that there are better sites out there and maybe one's first stop shouldn't be Wikipedia, but Google, in case Wikipedia has removed what you were looking for...
F-16 top speed at altitude: Mach 2+ F-22 top speed at altitude: Mach 2.42 (officially...it's reported it can exceed Mach 4) F-18 top speed at altitude: Mach 1.8+
I actually couldn't find a modern jet fighter that COULDN'T exceed 1.6 (at least within my aforementioned 2 seconds of research)
Don't forget the aging F-15, which can do apparently Mach 2.5. Of course, the F-22 has the advantage that it can cruise at supersonic speeds without engaging afterburners (supercruise) like the others you mention do (and the F-15 is a gas guzzler supersonic).
But yeah, Mach 1.6 is low. Maybe in the '50s?
(ObTF - Of course, if your jets happen to actually use Energon, who knows how fast they can really go...)
ISTR that one of the crackers that found an exploit in Firefox ages ago worked at SixApart. Since the original article (down now) mentioned that they had no intention of letting Mozilla know about the exploits (so they can make their own "darknet" using the exploit), who knows what's in MovableType now?
I suppose that one incident would cast serious doubt as to whether SixApart's software or websites (including LiveJournal) should even be considered. SixApart's management is obviously OK with this kind of thing, too.
I suppose the bugs and exploits have been long fixed, but who really knows how many exploited Firefox browsers are out there? After all, LiveJournal and other SixApart (ex-)properties could easily be spreading it. Or people using MOvableType and other software from SixApart may be unknowingly spreading it.
(Nevermind that the Pingback protocol first conceived by SixApart practically allows spamming by design, almost intentionally!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fab_(semiconductors) Wiki says over 1 billion, probably close, given the relative rarity of them even amongst commercial companies.
A billion is low-end fabs. High end cutting edge or even near-cutting edge technology costs much more. Maybe a billion for "old-school" tech like 130nm.
No, your best bet is to just pay the few million to have someone fab it for you - there are very few companies that have their own fabs and can do it inhouse (e.g., Intel, IBM, AMD, Freescale (Motorola), Samsung, Toshiba), at least, cutting edge fabs. Low end fabs can be had for cheap (1um and larger), which is great if you don't particularly care about density (e.g., Gemplus - those smartcards have HUGE silicon for 32k memory and not much more).
Most companies are fabless. They contract out the fab work to places like TSMC (amongst others - they're all well known). These include even heavyweight giants like nVidia, Altera, Xilinx and such. The only real downside is that delays can happen if machinery breaks down, or everyone submits a fab order simultaneously that causes backups at the fab and thus delays shipments. The turnaround time (from tapeout to getting chips back) can be 3 months or more. Luckily, most people test their designs out on FPGAs first to work out their bugs before committing them to silicon. Even places like Intel use computer simulation, discrete circuits, FPGAs, and such before they fab it out to their own fabs just because of the turnaround time.
Of course, what I want to know is what's the smallest FPGA one can put this on and still have something workable. (Where things like bus timings and memory clocks still in the realm of "practical" and "in spec").
While that is bad, my first experience in Canada with a flashing green light. My first encounter with that had a lot of honking horns behind me, and my 'navigator' saying "why are they honking at you?"
A flashing green light is a traffic light that's pedestrian controlled (rather than timer or traffic, which is the usual case). NOrmally, it's just across a crosswalk (there's no cross-street), but if there is a cross-street, it normally has a stop sign (or a flashing red - same thing). The rule is that if it's flashing green or green, it's a regular green.
Now, when a pedestrian (or a driver trapped on the cross street due to heavy traffic) pushes the button, the light will change (if it already did a cycle due to another pedestrian, it may delay a little bit). It's supposed to go from flashing green to regular green, then yellow and red. Other lights I've seen go from flashing green to yellow. Unless a pedestrian already trigged the light recently, the light will change immediately (if a pedestrian recently pushed the button, the light will wait about a minute before changing).
So yeah, you'd get honked if you stopped on a flashing green.
I assume they mean those with a roaming agreement, right and even then there might only be one roaming slot open for data services in any given area. Plenty of times I've been geocaching with a friend in some Cingular/AT&T area and one of us would have GPRS data on our T-mobile Sidekick and the other would not. I'd have to disable/enable the radio in one unit at a time to gain GPRS.
So yeah, guaranteeing the performance of the device might entail not having data at all.
Actually, what happens is carriers "certify" phones to work on their network. YOu may wonder why you can buy Model X of a phone, and find that it doesn't have features while other Model X's do. Some of these features include things like call timers (carriers disable them since they like to charge from the moment you hit Send, rather than the moment the call is actually connected), byte timers (carriers can charge for every byte, including OTA packet headers and such), button color (the Send and End keys *MUST* be of a certain shade of green and red...), and so on.
But what they mean is that since it isn't tested by them, if you call customer service saying your phone doesn't work, they'll say "too bad, so sad". By its nature, GSM carriers cannot test every phone that appears on its network, and in any complex spec, there's bound to be areas where things don't work. Like taking a tri-band phone into a place only serviced by 850MHz GSM.
As for roaming - carriers are stupid if they don't allow people to roam. Roaming is a huge profit center for a carrier. (What, you think it really costs them 5 cents to transfer 1000 bytes of data?).
HD-DVD's DRM is about as onerous as DVDs. Less so, in fact, since they dropped the pesky region codes out of HD-DVD. (This fact alone often delays HD-DVD releases of movies - after all, one could import an HD-DVD while the movie is just coming into the theatres). HD-DVD even makes AACS optional (like how CSS is optional on DVD). Blu-Ray mandates CSS as mandatory, region codes are present still (no doubt engineered to bypass the current DVD region-free laws), and now everyone's moving to BD+ (broken, but it'll be the next cat-and-mouse).
Funny enough, too, that DVDs are still managing to find new ways to protect without disobeying the spec too harshly.
Player price? Almost the same
If you insist on falling for the "1080p is better" Sony marketing material, yeah, the player costs are the same. But if 1080i is "good enough", you can find cheap HD-DVD players that are fully compliant with the spec. The closest you get with Blu-Ray is maybe 50% more for closeout "grace period" models.
(Note: Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray store the video in full 1080p format. It's only how the players decide to output to the TV that's at issue. Technically, HD-DVD uses 1080p60, while Blu-Ray uses 1080p at native frame rate. HD-DVD pads to 60fps using a "repeat frame" token, so if a player drops those tokens, it can output 1080p at the native frame rate.)
Sure, there are some differences, but an average consumer isn't going to be worried about the Blu-ray spec not being finalized or the media storage space. Functionality and price are the same.
Actually, the Blu-Ray spec is finalized, according to the Blu-Ray folk. It's just no one bothered implementing full Blu-Ray or BD Live because it would make players too expensive. So they saved costs by implementing the Blu-Ray (Grace Period) spec. HD-DVD mandated that everyone implement all features immediately.
Strangely enough, Blu-Ray players cost nearly twice as much as HD-DVD players did on release, while the HD-DVD players implemented the equivalent of BD Live, while Blu-Ray only implemented the Grace Period spec. The reasoning behind this I don't know - the hardware's practically identical (video codecs are identical, for example), and certainly Blu-Ray is a new physical format, but so was DVD (and other than physical differences and triple-laser (CD, DVD, HD-DVD/Blu-Ray), the drives should be more or less the same).
Though, I suppose it might be annoying as a Blu-Ray user to buy a disc that has some fantastic extras (PIP, "web extras") only to find it doesn't work in their player... Stranger still that while DVD Forum approved the new 17GB/layer HD-DVD format, they're still compatible with Gen 1 players.
Personally, I hope HD-DVD wins - it's a far more consumer friendly format. But I doubt that's the case, since the studios want the DRM crap in Blu-Ray. Heck, they probably salivate over the fact that region coding is still in it, despite its unpopularity with consumers.
Actually, I was thinking that would be perfect for turning those televisions off in public areas where they have removed the power button (because people keep turning them off) or ones that are behind glass or too high to reach.
Imagine doing it at your local Circuit City, Best Buy, Future Shop, or other electronics superstore - oh all the chaos. Especially if the signal is strong enough to bounce off of walls, so you get TVs pointed away from you as well!
Or, for more fun, do so to the TVs in bars (especially during a big game). Instant riot, so make sure you're inconspicuous.
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That's what I've been saying the past few months. The problem with HD-DVD is it's too consumer friendly.
Studios want region coding. They want all the fancy DRM. They want the ability to find who makes pirated Blu-Rays (ROM-Mark makes this easy).
Heck, Blu-Ray offering 1.0 (Grace Period, expired 31-Oct-2007), 1.1, and 2.0 profiles, offers Blu-Ray studios to re-sell the movie 3 more times. First, they release the movie, no extras, 1.0 only. Then they release a 1.1 "special edition" with PIP and all that good stuff. They'll then release another "collector's edition" for 1.1 that has even more stuff. Oh, and they'll release a 2.0 "super ultimate collector's edition director's cut" for those with 2.0 players. And there'll be plenty of "Director's cut", "super colelctor's edition" in varying Blu-Ray profiles so those with players who can't do the newer profiles can still play them.
The lack of region coding hurt HD-DVD badly, because it often meant that HD-DVDs of movies took much longer to come out as studios waited until it wasn't shown in theatres. After all, if you could import the HD-DVD from the US, why bother seeing it in the theatre? It's a two-edge sword. The DVD Forum learned that region coding didn't work, angered consumers, and even had countries enacting laws making it legal to break region coding. So they didn't bother with HD-DVD. Now the source material decided that artificial separation of markets was good for them, and decided that releasing HD-DVDs with the DVD releases meant those countries which are still showing the movie would hurt, badly. (Nevermind how much it costs to import/ship to said country...).
Blu-Ray's region coding is "better" in that sense - after all, they can release a Blu-Ray in the Americas and be confident that people in Asia can't watch. (Yeah, you could import a region A PS3...).
Either you appease the content creators, or you appease the content consumers. Unfortunately, appeasing the latter tends to make the content sparse. Blu-Ray appeases the creators, screws the consumers.
If anything, this high-def war has made it possible for consumers to enjoy high-def affordably. If it was Blu-Ray only, would Blu-Ray and HD-DVD be as popular now? Or maybe as affordable? We'd probably still be paying $1000 for a Blu-Ray player had it not been the fact that the HD-DVD player launched a few months earlier was half that price. It took several years for DVD players to drop from their $1000 price tags to $100, and that was only because there was a definite upgrade path from VHS to DVD. Heck, the PS3 will probably have "won" as the console of choice simply because it was the only affordable Blu-Ray player that worked well (except given its annoying lack of consumer IR, and thus integration with many universal remotes).
I have both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. The last high-def disc I bought was Transformers (have DVD as well). My HD-DVD collection consists of maybe 7 movies, Blu-Ray, probably 4. I bought many DVDs in the meantime, many, many, DVDs. The last thing I purchased (Simpsons Movie) came in both DVD and Blu-Ray, and I bought the DVD. The war might have dissuaded consumers, but if you can't even get people who own high-def to even BUY high-def... then maybe "DVD is good enough". Yes, I've spurned both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray versions for the DVD (though I do like HD-DVD more, it's just not worth its cost more).
Honestly, Blu-Ray discs have gotten a lot better since the beginning, partly because of competition. You spend $30 and often got less than the DVD ($20) would've got you, especially in extras. At least now Blu-Ray tends to approach the content of the DV
Ah, but these things only work in two ways:
1) The write protect only works if the OS makes a BIOS call to the MBR. The BIOS then traps this request and asks if you mean to write to the MBR. This works pretty well as most boot sector virii exist in DOS, which uses the BIOS, rather than Windows.
2) The BIOS makes a copy of the MBR and saves it in the CMOS. On boot, it loads the boot sector as normal, and does a quick comparison (it's only 512 bytes). If it differs (because someone overwrote the MBR code, or someone changed the partition table), it asks what you want to do - restore from backup, or accept the modifications.
No good filesystem should need the MBR once the system is booted. Other than reading the partition table. (The MBR, being 446 bytes in size, is also pretty standardized, which is why any utility that rewrites the MBR code can get your system booting again. Linux rewrites MBR can boot Windows, Windows fdisk can make Linux bootable again, etc. Basically, the MBR code just examines the partition table (in RAM - the BIOS doesn't care or know about the last 66 bytes being partition table. It loads the entire 512 byte sector into RAM), finds an entry marked with an "active" flag, and copies the first sector out of that partition into RAM and jumps into that code.
Extended partitions are the devil, which is why most MBRs can't boot from an extended partition.
Actually, it's a bit less. The first sector of a hard disk contains the MBR code and the partition table.
The partition table takes 64 bytes (16 bytes x 4 entries), and there's a two-byte signature that the BIOS checks to ensure the MBR is valid.
That gives you roughly 446 bytes of code that you can actually run. Most MBR code basically reads the partition table, finds a partition with the "active" flag set, then loads the first sector of that partition into memory. The partition loader then copies more sectors from disk so it can load the OS.
That's why you can install GRUB and LILO into either the partition or MBR. The MBR version basically overwrites the existing MBR to always load LILO or GRUB regardless of what the partition table says. The partition version relies on the MBR code passing it control.
Of course, having the first cylinder of a disk unused makes it convenient to stash away the extra code you need.
Actually, it turns out the "brick" was a corruption of the baseband firmware. In fact, there's a nice detailed analysis of why unlocked iPhones were bricked.
Sure Apple could fix it, but that would be expending software development effort on something they don't want to acknowledge exists.
Apple doesn't force the upgrade on you, either. Plug the iPhone into iTunes, and iTunes prompts if you want to download, download and install, or cancel (with "Do not prompt again" checkbox). People who don't read the very prominent notices that unauthorized mods may damage the phone, deserve what they got.
Funny enough, not everyone bricked their iPhones when 1.1.1 came out! Because they saw the warnings, and ignored the call to upgrade their phone. It's only a notification in iTunes that you can ignore and even tell iTunes to not bother you again. A few weeks later, the same hackers released a way to upgrade to 1.1.1 without bricking. (Which also happened to fix bricked phones, as well).
Probably the worst crime Apple committed was releasing a product that people wanted with some features they didn't want.
More like, "Apple won't bend over and cede to our demands!"
Everyone knows that Apple has a standard iTunes contract. Now that iTunes has proven to be the #1 place to get music legally, and is something like #3 in marketshare for music, the labels are worried because Apple has this store that sells to the #1 music player, and no other store has that potential. Apple could very well dictate the terms, basically by saying "This is our offer. Take it or leave it." (whether that includes iTunesPlus or not... I don't know).
Amazon opens up a store that's DRM free, and backed by a relatively large and well-known company.
Labels have a choice - bend over and accept Apple's terms, and keep DRM, and be usable on the #1 music player. Option 2 - make their own terms with Napster/Zune/etc, keep DRM, but be usable on the small subset of players. Now with Amazon, option 3 is, negotiate with Amazon (they need music), drop DRM, and be usable on the #1 music player.
Labels have decided that temporarily, dropping DRM is better than Apple's terms, and hope to make it such that instead of Apple dictating the terms to the labels, the labels will be in the power to dictate terms to Apple ("We have Amazon. We don't need iTunes") and hope that Apple rolls over.
It's really a power play. The labels are afraid of having terms dictated to them, and see if they can make Amazon a powerful music store, that hopefully they can leverage Amazon against iTunes. If Amazon is too powerful, they can ditch Amazon for iTunes. But in the meantime, they know that by weakening iTunes, Apple won't be able to standard-contract them.
And if Apple closes the iTunes store, they can ditch Amazon as well, and we'll be back at square 1. So closing shop isn't a real option, but having iTunes and Amazon compete for labels is.
For the consumer, it's "ain't competition grand?" for now. Once Amazon saps some of iTunes' strength, they'll put back in their demands of "demand pricing" or whatever other crap they want, knowing Apple will want to compete with Amazon.
Interesting play, interesting times. I say, enjoy it while it lasts...
Well, you never know, some of the meteors may be aliens in search of something...
(C'mon, it was a gimme!)
Ah, but the OP didn't tell us *when* he drove trucks. For all we know, that could've been 20 years ago. Or maybe even 10.
In the past 3 or 4 years has Apple actually dramatically reduced the size of packaging. A PowerBook would consume the same space as a PS3 box these days. An iMac was a fairly large box - think 2'x2'x2' at the minimum, as we're only going back 10 years. I can feasibly see that it it could potentially consume the entire trailer. Even today, some boxes are plain HUGE. My Mac Pro came in a humongous box.
Also, there's a chance that the trailer wasn't 100% full - companies like to fully use the space, but sometimes a short load is necessary to keep stocks at warehouses up.
There's a site that hosts Wikis called Wikia as well. (Yes, it's owned by Jimmy Wales, as well).
So what's going to happen to those Wikis now that Wikia is turning from a MediaWiki host site to a search site?
Or it doesn't have to be some super-complex data set, either.
I recall doing some calculations using MATLAB, and MATLAB would do it (out of memory errors). When I hand-calculated how big the dataset would be, it turned out it needed around 4.5GB of memory. And given this was 7 years ago and a university-level assignment...
I reduced the dataset (basically, lowered the sampling rate) and managed to do the calculations in a more agreeable 400-500MB dataset. Still excessive, but hey, it worked.
Sometimes it doesn't take a very complex dataset to suddenly consume gobs of memory.
Ditto.
... September 3rd. In November, I bought one at the local store because I was fed up with the whole thing. Funny thing, the first replacement and the one I got from the store had dead pixels. Luckily, its replacement and the exchange I did in store were dead pixel free.
I have an AV420, which I bought after work bought the AV300. That was a really nice unit.
I bought a 704Wifi, which is nice because of its large screen, but I had to take it back twice because the LCD screen had dead pixels on it. Irritating ones, at that. Good thing I bought the damn thing on sale - when they were at their original price, a defect like that would be inexcusable. Spend half a grand, get a screen with dots all over it. And Archos RMA won't touch it because you need at least *4* pixels. 2 sub-pixels don't count, they have to be 4 discrete pixels. Granted, it's an 800x480 screen, but still.
I bought a 605, and that thing has been a disaster. The first unit was Dead on Arrival, and because local stores didn't have it, I bought it online. It took a month to arrive! (Dead). It took two more months to get it exchanged. And the replacement unit died after two days (I sorta expected it - the replacement unit's hard drive buzzed ever so horribly). I did the RMA and its replacement arrived just before Christmas, when I placed the order
Awful, just awful quality. And it looks like you have to "baby" the unit just to avoid breaking the hard disk. And the LCD isn't as vibrant or rich as even the iPod. Or Zune. The touchscreen doesn't help but as we see from the iPod Touch, iPhone, Samsung's touchscreen ones, it's possible to have a nice display with a touchscreen. And yes, you still need 4 pixels nonfunctional to get an RMA based on the screen.
Archos also managed to put in a bunch of ads in the 605. First time you plug in USB, if you click "Charge only", it prompts you to buy the DVR Dock where it can charge faster. If you access the Web icon, it says you need to buy the Web plug-in. Ditto with videos or audio encoded with MPEG2, H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC), AAC, or AC-3. It'll bug you to buy another plug in. (Total cost for plugins - $70). Click "Recorder", and you get another ad for either the DVR dock, or portable dock (with necessary "buy" links). To their credit, they include a "Never bug me about this again". But still... rather than disable the functionality, they just use to to eke a few more dollars from you.
And yes, I have two of those things. The one I bought retail, and the RMA'd one. Only thing I can say, is the RMA was a brand new unit. Maybe I'll have some fun with this hack.
Also, the hard drive is locked by the bootloader - unless you can JTAG it, there's no way to fix it.
Recommendations - buy it retail - not online. Or you'll regret it as there's a very good chance your expensive purchase has defects that you can't exchange or RMA. Also, buy the extended warranty - if you so much as move it when it's spinning, it may start clicking and die spontaneously. Treating it like an iPod, you won't - jerk it around and your hard disk will die from bad sectors. (Unlike
No kidding.
I picked up the Linux based Buffalo TeraStation Live 2TB (4x500GB) for $600 earlier this year. Sure it's not as powerful as a regular Linux server, and probably not as cheap, but it's small, compact ans low power, with a nifty little display telling me all I need to know (IP address, disk usage, etc), and has the disks configured in a nice RAID5 configuration.
Yeah, I could build my own linux box for $600 with 4 SATA disks, but the money I'd save wouldn't be worth it. Also, the web interface is nice, and people have hacked the firmware already for all sorts of fun.
For nearly half the price of this Netgear, I have the same storage (plus redundancy). And it's still an appliance. I wouldn't save much more building it myself when I bought it.
Actually, you're referring to Von Neumann architecture. The other architecture is Harvard. Harvard has separate code and data memory (mostly - you still get the convenience of immediate mode addressing in Harvard). But code can only work on data memory - it cannot work on code memory. However, it's only really useful for speciailized computers running the same code on different data (e.g., signal processing - the data is transformed the same way all the time, so the code can reside in ROM, while the data comes in from whatever source is providing it).
The Von Neumann architecture (code and data are intermingled, and one and the same) is your standard computer architecture. However, the behavior is used very often. Think every time you call exec() or CreateProcess() - the OS has to allocate memory, copy the code to memory (i.e., to the OS, your executable program is data), then tell the processor to run the code (now the data is code). Or even consider the bootstrap program - it has to find the OS loader program, which it copies off some storage to memory (data), then runs it (code). It's this architecture that makes modern computing possible...
It's hard to "alt-tab" around when they want your physical presence. Like I said, for telecons, you can alt-tab away and ignore the rest of the crap that goes on (often a lot of internal discussions take place that really don't concern you - like the customer might be discussing among themselves why their deliverable is late...).
It seems the goal as one climbs the corporate ladder is to have as many meetings as possible, no matter how pointless they are. And with no ability to do productive work, if all I can do is kick a boulder on the provided screen, that's what I'll do. (It also seems that the social pressure is to attend the meetings rather than try to avoid them - I personally avoid as many meetings as possible since they are a total drain. See, the good meetings I've had are normally around a half-hour or less. Anything longer tends to mean it's not engaging the majority of the time (plus a sure sign of a poorly run meeting)).
For such meetings (they happen?) that the meeting would be engaging enough that there wouldn't be time to kick boulders around. However, in a number of meetings I've been in, I had to participate for maybe 5 minutes then do something the rest of the time. Kicking boulders around might as well be more interesting.
Funny enough, the useful meetings are all relatively short (5-30 minutes). The boring drawn out ones are longer (1+ hours). If my physical presence isn't actually required, I'd do something else. The good ones are telecons where I call in. At least I can put it on speaker and go away doing more productive work.
Of course, if your meetings are such that a majority of people are kicking boulders around, then it's time to rethink the meeting - either break it into smaller groups of people and shorter meetings (with a quick "all hands" as necessary), or find a more disciplined way of running the meeting.
It isn't. Which is how sites like AppleInsider, MacRumors and others get their information, legally.
However, ThinkSecret has been known to "entice" Apple employees into breaking their NDAs with Apple and give it certain priviledged information. Apple sued ThinkSecret in an attempt to find out who at Apple was breaking their NDA. They lost, mostly because it was proven that Apple did not do a sufficiently good job at their internal investigation, and thus, ThinkSecret shouldn't be forced to give up their source. (This makes sense, when you think about whistleblowers). From all we can speculate, said source is probably still working at Apple, since we've not heard of any lawsuit filed for disclosure of priviledged information.
If Apple did find the source, ThinkSecret could find itself under another lawsuit if it can be proven people were paid for espionage. But I suspect the terms of the settlement involve immunity for ThinkSecret from further lawsuits related to this matter.
ThinkSecret isn't exactly innocent in the whole affair. After all, Apple went after them, and none of the other sites like say, Gizmodo, Engadget, MacRumors, AppleInsider who report on rumors obtained through the grapevine and are often wrong. ThinkSecret's "rumors" often turned out uncannily accurate.
The reason credit cards are better is because the protections they have are enshrined in law. Debit card fraud protection isn't - it's only between you and your bank. That's where the $50 protection comes in - if your credit card is stolen, you're only responsible for the first $50 used while it was stolen (even if you didn't realize until later). Now, some banks actually make it "no liability" and eat the $50 as well, but like debit cards, that's between you and your bank.
Now, imagine your debit card is stolen (or more commonly, duplicated with information stored from illicit debit machines). As far as your bank is concerned, you've been withdrawing the money as normal.
Finally, consider the illicit charge that happens. With a credit card, the money is the bank's (or Visa/Mastercard/Amex/etc) money. They will lean on the merchant to offer proof that you made the transaction (hence the little credit card slip you sign), since that's a contract. If not, they take the money from the merchant and reimburse you.
Now try a debit card. The bank can't tell that it wasn't you that made the trasaction. In fact, it could be you trying to scam free money off the bank. All the bank has is a record that your card was used to withdraw cash from your account (your money) that you claim you never withdrew.
This should be a call for better debit card security, but until then, proving you didn't take your money is a lot harder than having the merchant prove you did make the purchase. Since it's not the bank's money, they can investigate as long as they like, while you're out of the money for the duration. Now some banks may offer cardholder services that make it similar to credit card in protection, but they don't have to. (A more practical aspect - if your credit card was used illicitly, you're not out the money immediately, so you can sustain yourself. If your debit card was used illicitly, you're out the cash until your bank refunds it. This can mean not having money for food and shelter...)
Just FYI - the signature on the back of your credit card is used to indicate that you agree to the cardholder's agreement. It is not, and should not, be used as a signature reference. That slip you sign is a contract saying you will pay the amount shown as per the cardholder's agreement (which your signature on the card verifies). Thus, "Check ID" is not a valid signature on the card, and the store is right in refusing your card since you technically did not agree to the terms of your cardholder agreement (which naturally includes stuff like paying back the money you borrowed!). The cashier, unless they are trained in handwriting analysis, can't really compare signatures (and shouldn't). They can do a quick verification to make sure that you're not playing games, but that's about it.
Stores that tend to attract a lot of fraudulent activity may request ID, though.
It's also why e-commerce is slightly more vulnerable to credit card
What? No mention of their other great theory they put forth? (Yes, the same Discovery Institute of Creationism... err... sorry, I think it's "Intelligent Design")
See? The Internet wasn't Intelligently Designed! It won't stand the exaflood! There's no way mere random evolution would make the Internet withstand the exaflood!
(Whoa... that worked a bit better than I thought it would...)
YOu missed another one... Wikipedia frequently changes the scope of the articles it carries.
Once it may carry a certain obscure topic, then decide it's too obscure and delete the page. If you're lucky, it may get pushed to a third party "more suited" to carrying such content. Problem is, if the page is deleted, then the link to the third party hosting the information can get lost. Even such things like trivia that might be fun to know get expunged as irrelevant in a "serious reference site". Other such things stay in Wikipedia. (c.f. StrategyWiki inheriting game stuff from Wikibooks, and the webcomic stuff of late).
I like Wikipedia, and it's generally my go-to site for anything I might want to know, but the attempts to enhance some topics while expunging others may mean that there are better sites out there and maybe one's first stop shouldn't be Wikipedia, but Google, in case Wikipedia has removed what you were looking for...
Don't forget the aging F-15, which can do apparently Mach 2.5. Of course, the F-22 has the advantage that it can cruise at supersonic speeds without engaging afterburners (supercruise) like the others you mention do (and the F-15 is a gas guzzler supersonic).
But yeah, Mach 1.6 is low. Maybe in the '50s?
(ObTF - Of course, if your jets happen to actually use Energon, who knows how fast they can really go...)
ISTR that one of the crackers that found an exploit in Firefox ages ago worked at SixApart. Since the original article (down now) mentioned that they had no intention of letting Mozilla know about the exploits (so they can make their own "darknet" using the exploit), who knows what's in MovableType now?
I suppose that one incident would cast serious doubt as to whether SixApart's software or websites (including LiveJournal) should even be considered. SixApart's management is obviously OK with this kind of thing, too.
I suppose the bugs and exploits have been long fixed, but who really knows how many exploited Firefox browsers are out there? After all, LiveJournal and other SixApart (ex-)properties could easily be spreading it. Or people using MOvableType and other software from SixApart may be unknowingly spreading it.
(Nevermind that the Pingback protocol first conceived by SixApart practically allows spamming by design, almost intentionally!)
A billion is low-end fabs. High end cutting edge or even near-cutting edge technology costs much more. Maybe a billion for "old-school" tech like 130nm.
No, your best bet is to just pay the few million to have someone fab it for you - there are very few companies that have their own fabs and can do it inhouse (e.g., Intel, IBM, AMD, Freescale (Motorola), Samsung, Toshiba), at least, cutting edge fabs. Low end fabs can be had for cheap (1um and larger), which is great if you don't particularly care about density (e.g., Gemplus - those smartcards have HUGE silicon for 32k memory and not much more).
Most companies are fabless. They contract out the fab work to places like TSMC (amongst others - they're all well known). These include even heavyweight giants like nVidia, Altera, Xilinx and such. The only real downside is that delays can happen if machinery breaks down, or everyone submits a fab order simultaneously that causes backups at the fab and thus delays shipments. The turnaround time (from tapeout to getting chips back) can be 3 months or more. Luckily, most people test their designs out on FPGAs first to work out their bugs before committing them to silicon. Even places like Intel use computer simulation, discrete circuits, FPGAs, and such before they fab it out to their own fabs just because of the turnaround time.
Of course, what I want to know is what's the smallest FPGA one can put this on and still have something workable. (Where things like bus timings and memory clocks still in the realm of "practical" and "in spec").
A flashing green light is a traffic light that's pedestrian controlled (rather than timer or traffic, which is the usual case). NOrmally, it's just across a crosswalk (there's no cross-street), but if there is a cross-street, it normally has a stop sign (or a flashing red - same thing). The rule is that if it's flashing green or green, it's a regular green.
Now, when a pedestrian (or a driver trapped on the cross street due to heavy traffic) pushes the button, the light will change (if it already did a cycle due to another pedestrian, it may delay a little bit). It's supposed to go from flashing green to regular green, then yellow and red. Other lights I've seen go from flashing green to yellow. Unless a pedestrian already trigged the light recently, the light will change immediately (if a pedestrian recently pushed the button, the light will wait about a minute before changing).
So yeah, you'd get honked if you stopped on a flashing green.
Actually, what happens is carriers "certify" phones to work on their network. YOu may wonder why you can buy Model X of a phone, and find that it doesn't have features while other Model X's do. Some of these features include things like call timers (carriers disable them since they like to charge from the moment you hit Send, rather than the moment the call is actually connected), byte timers (carriers can charge for every byte, including OTA packet headers and such), button color (the Send and End keys *MUST* be of a certain shade of green and red...), and so on.
But what they mean is that since it isn't tested by them, if you call customer service saying your phone doesn't work, they'll say "too bad, so sad". By its nature, GSM carriers cannot test every phone that appears on its network, and in any complex spec, there's bound to be areas where things don't work. Like taking a tri-band phone into a place only serviced by 850MHz GSM.
As for roaming - carriers are stupid if they don't allow people to roam. Roaming is a huge profit center for a carrier. (What, you think it really costs them 5 cents to transfer 1000 bytes of data?).
HD-DVD's DRM is about as onerous as DVDs. Less so, in fact, since they dropped the pesky region codes out of HD-DVD. (This fact alone often delays HD-DVD releases of movies - after all, one could import an HD-DVD while the movie is just coming into the theatres). HD-DVD even makes AACS optional (like how CSS is optional on DVD). Blu-Ray mandates CSS as mandatory, region codes are present still (no doubt engineered to bypass the current DVD region-free laws), and now everyone's moving to BD+ (broken, but it'll be the next cat-and-mouse).
Funny enough, too, that DVDs are still managing to find new ways to protect without disobeying the spec too harshly.
If you insist on falling for the "1080p is better" Sony marketing material, yeah, the player costs are the same. But if 1080i is "good enough", you can find cheap HD-DVD players that are fully compliant with the spec. The closest you get with Blu-Ray is maybe 50% more for closeout "grace period" models.
(Note: Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray store the video in full 1080p format. It's only how the players decide to output to the TV that's at issue. Technically, HD-DVD uses 1080p60, while Blu-Ray uses 1080p at native frame rate. HD-DVD pads to 60fps using a "repeat frame" token, so if a player drops those tokens, it can output 1080p at the native frame rate.)
Actually, the Blu-Ray spec is finalized, according to the Blu-Ray folk. It's just no one bothered implementing full Blu-Ray or BD Live because it would make players too expensive. So they saved costs by implementing the Blu-Ray (Grace Period) spec. HD-DVD mandated that everyone implement all features immediately.
Strangely enough, Blu-Ray players cost nearly twice as much as HD-DVD players did on release, while the HD-DVD players implemented the equivalent of BD Live, while Blu-Ray only implemented the Grace Period spec. The reasoning behind this I don't know - the hardware's practically identical (video codecs are identical, for example), and certainly Blu-Ray is a new physical format, but so was DVD (and other than physical differences and triple-laser (CD, DVD, HD-DVD/Blu-Ray), the drives should be more or less the same).
Though, I suppose it might be annoying as a Blu-Ray user to buy a disc that has some fantastic extras (PIP, "web extras") only to find it doesn't work in their player... Stranger still that while DVD Forum approved the new 17GB/layer HD-DVD format, they're still compatible with Gen 1 players.
Personally, I hope HD-DVD wins - it's a far more consumer friendly format. But I doubt that's the case, since the studios want the DRM crap in Blu-Ray. Heck, they probably salivate over the fact that region coding is still in it, despite its unpopularity with consumers.
Imagine doing it at your local Circuit City, Best Buy, Future Shop, or other electronics superstore - oh all the chaos. Especially if the signal is strong enough to bounce off of walls, so you get TVs pointed away from you as well!
Or, for more fun, do so to the TVs in bars (especially during a big game). Instant riot, so make sure you're inconspicuous.