Or you could buy one for cash some place, and then return the stolen one in its place. It's not like Best Buy looks at anything but the SKU.
Actually, for cellphones, I believe Best Buy and other retailers track serial numbers - when they get a shipment of new phones, they enter every serial number into their inventory system. If any get stolen, they can look it up in the system and know exactly what serial numbers were stolen.
It also goes that when you buy a cellphone, they scan the serial number as well - if you check your receipt, the serial number is on it. This is for two reasons - first, it's used to indicate that the phone was sold, but secondly, it's used to activate the warranty If you return something, they check the serial numbers now to make sure you're not returning a piece of wood.
The point of the anecdote? Physical is dead, no matter how much we try to cling to it. And entire generations are being suckered into believing this and trusting it! Ugh!
They're suckered into it by the whole "convenience" aspect. Physical means having to find it, then stick it in the slot. "Digital" means just picking it off a list and watching it instantly.
Applies to anything - books, music, movies, etc. The physical version is always less convenient, requiring searching and finding and physical manipulation to use. There's also the whole DRM thing - piles of people refuse to buy movies on physical media because of the DRM put on Blu-Rays and such.
Of course, the other thing is, they're all hoping the backup of last resort will be around (torrents/piracy)...
Face it, the days of replacing the Tubes in your TV set are GONE. Hell, with this complex of a device, the days of Component-Level replacement by even most Service Techs are GONE.
Ain't just Apple.
And the reason that Apple opposes this kind of legislation is that it will be TOTALLY unworkable in a practical sense. Even when laptops were 3 inches thick, replacing anything that wasn't on the bottom-layer (top when turned upside-down) was COMPLETELY outside of 99.99998% of average owners, and even outside of the comfort-zone of many experienced Service Techs.
First off, electronics are cheap. Replacing tubes in your TV was essential back in the day - your tube TV (the one with lots of tubes, not just a CRT) would break down every few dozen hours or so as a tube burned out. Thankfully, there wasn't that much programming on so it wasn't a major issue. Also, that tube TV cost a year's salary or more. Imagine the uproar you'd have today if people bought $30,000 devices that lasted a mere 24 hours of use before it needed service! So yeah, you replaced the tubes because you had to. These were also the days where you were rich to have a TV, nevermind more than one.
Nowadays, a TV's a week's worth of wages or so. We'd be up in arms if they broke down within 24 hours, but they're so cheap, repair is like Linux - it's cheap only if your time is worthless. Sending out a technician to diagnose it at $200/hr means the cheapest of TVs will be replaced before the technician gets to your door. For a reasonably sized TV, that really gives you a few hours before it's "not economically viable" (i.e., replacing is cheaper).
And electronics are filled with lots of fiddly small parts that Joe Average will lack the tools, skill and knowledge to fix. Don't have a fine screwdriver? A knife works, right? I mean, the knife slipped and sliced a bit of the cable off, but it's all good, right? There's nothing worse than having to fix someone else's "repair".
iFixit can bleat all they want, but I want them to offer a REAL WARRANTY service. As in if you buy the part, find you can't install it, ship it all back to them and they'll install it for you. Or if you break it, they can fix it. It Ain't Gonna Happen. Why? Because iFixit knows just as well they'd go out of business if they were forced to service what they sell. Third party repair is just fine, if you know what you're doing. Problem is, the vast majority don't, and it's too easy to hang a shingle out and say "we can fix it".
So yeah, warranty fraud. Big thing - ask any manufacturer or retailer around - you'll have customers bring in sopping wet stuff dropping water all over your return counter and they'll straight up say "it was never in water". And no, it was sunny outside. You're going to find anti-tamper stuff all over things today just because people do rip stuff open - either to see how it works or something and then fail to put it back together again and claim it came like that. Despite the fragments of the "warranty void if broken" sticker scattered everywhere. Another reason why iFixit will only SELL parts and NOT sell repair services - because they know they're going to deal with this issue sooner or later, and it will kill them. They're too small to be able to absorb much warranty fraud, and yet they will be the big target for they are advocating people fix stuff that they may not be capable of doing, and if it iwas iFixit instead of Apple, iFixit would shut their doors in a nanosecond.
Oh, and where are all the tube TVs today? Vast majority are at the landfill, replaced with much less serviceable but far more reliable solid-state electronics powering the CRTs. Sure there are a few in collector's hands, but that's it.
Firefly was cancelled because the network wanted a "Joss Whedon show" because of him being popular, but they didn't want an actual Joss Whedon show. For example, they rejected the pilot and wanted something with action and whiz-bang. Joss provided them with the second episode which they then aired as the first. This dislike of the show they were paying for only intensified as the season progressed. By refusing to play the episodes in order they made the show confusing to any viewer. The cancellation was inevitable. The sad footnote to this is that Dark Angel's third and final season (which had already been green lit) was *cancelled* in order to give the slot to Firefly. So the Dark Angel story just cut off 2/3 of the way through and Firefly has a barely salvaged almost ending (not aired, but part of the DVD release).
Stargate was cancelled because they had run it into the ground. I'm not a fan of the show myself, but I understand that it was popular with some. But ten years for the main show and then considering spin offs it had been beaten to death.
In neither case was piracy even a consideration.
I think it was the other way around - Buffy the Vampire Slayer was super popular, and Joss Whedon made it a condition that if Fox wanted Buffy, they had to take on Firefly as well. Of course, Fox wanted Buffy, but Fox did not want the new show, while Joss was not willing to sell Fox just Buffy alone.
So Fox did everything they could to run it into the ground and purposefully get low ratings so they could cancel.
Anyhow, the networks don't care about piracy at all. What keeps a show on the air is the eyeball numbers for the ads - the networks sell ad spots and Neilsen records the eyeball sduring the ads - a good episode usually carries more eyeballs into the ads. If you pirate it, you count as 0 viewers to them, and thus if the show is getting low ratings, you're directly contributing to the network cancelling it.
So pirate away - all that matters to the networks is the ads.
The Kodi developers hate those plugins, because they only work for a few months then break. And then the users come and flood the Kodi forums complaining about it.
It's apparently getting so bad the Kodi dev team is considering quitting completely - they don't want to support this crap (especially since the pirate box sellers don't support them) and are forced to (i.e., Kodi is crap). So they're using legal avenues to do so - basically they've acquired a trademark so they can file trademark takedowns.
"Most" smartphone users run Android. Mostly because "most" smartphones out there are Android. Been that way for a long time - Android's outsold iOS 4:1 or so for a few years now. So I wouldn't be surprised that "most" smartphone users download zero apps - they got a smartphone because that's pretty much what is available.
So I'd guess most smartphone users don't bother with apps not because they are scared of permissions or whatever, but because they don't care - their smartphone already came laden with the apps they care about - Facebook, Pandora, Spotify, etc. They don't know, nor care about anything else. They got a smartphone, and damned if they were going to pay more than $0 for it.
Of course, that excludes a certain other mobile OS where developers do make money. Granted,t he gold rush is over, and there's tons of crap, but whose users do keep getting apps and all that. Of course, since they are a tiny minority of smartphone users (under 20%), well, they don't count.
Then of course, Android app users generally don't pay for apps as a whole so if a developer wants to eat, ads are pretty much the only way.
The difference being that when left unattended, the photocopiers, printers, and people's fingers don't walk around under the command of someone halfway around the world, find secret documents, copy them, and mail them off to the person controlling them.
It sounds like they're going to do what the bank which holds my mortgage has done - eliminated all direct Internet access. Essential communications is maintained via email conducted through a relay, which strips out all suspicious attachments like zip files, Word docs, etc. PDFs are allowed, but based on what my loan officer told me, it sounds like any PDF sent to them is viewable only through a special app which lets them view it, but only sends the image to their computer not the actual PDF.
Well, this is Singapore, who like a lot of countries, has a nice Great Firewall as well. (I still remember when internet was free and unfettered but there was talk of setting up the firewall... I think it was set up a year or two after I left).
Considering they want to keep contraband out of the country, I'd be surprised if they didn't already have some sort of gateway and all that - can't have illicit access to porn, for example. (Tor, they probably allow - given the penalty for drug use is death (firing squad, IIRC), well...)
Anyhow, it probably doesn't affect people as much as you think - Singapore is a very modern city-island-state and thus cellular data access is common everywhere.
I'm sure most of us will live to see Facebook be the next myspace. By that time we'll all be onto something else.
And yet, myspace is still around, having found a pretty good niche for itself as a place musicians go and promote themselves.
Hell, remember when Second Life was supposed to be the be-all and end-all of social media, with everyone falling over themselves to establish presences on Second LIfe? (Heck, Donald Trump is on Second Life and apparently has a campaign there).
No one can "Spy On You" using this method on any stock production phone. The vibration motor is connected to an *output* of the chip that drives it, not an *input*. Additionally, that output is likely to be digital rather than analog, so even its direction could be magically reversed, the likelihood of the chip being able to process whatever signal the motor would produce in response to ambient sounds would be just about zero. And if someone was modifying your phone in order to hear your conversations, there are *much* easier, faster, more reliable, less convoluted ways of doing it - like piggybacking on the microphone that's already there.
I was wondering about that, since the output is hooked to a digital PWM output (PWM gets you the ability to alter the vibrate intensity). Usually through a FET as the current drive of the PWM output is too low to adequately drive the motor (or actuator - some vibration motors are a motor attached to an offset weight, others are actuators that shake).
I couldn't figure out a way to detect audio using the coils that results in a way that gets converted back into a signal that software can process. The FET would isolate the PWM output from any potential changes in the current draw caused by picking up the vibrations, and the PWM registers are really just a counter and match, which are governed by the system clock.
Another option is for all the stakeholders to complain to "content creators" and "netflix" via social media hoping to change the economic interest of those companies with whining.
Sorry, money talks.
The reason why we have geoblocking is easy - money. People pay for exclusive distribution rights. They'd pay a LOT LESS if they didn't have exclusivity. You know, geographic monopoly and all.
So if you want Netflix to have worldwide rights, they can get them, just they'll basically have to pay at least what the distributors are paying, or at least the difference.
E.g., if a distributor is paying $100M for exclusive rights to say, Game of Thones in a region, how much would they pay if they knew they're going to have to share distributorship? It's going to be a lot less because who knows how much of your business your competitor is going to take?
Now let's extend it to two regions, same price to keep things simple. And let's assume that the distributor assumes his business will be cut in half. So the content creator was getting $200M out of two exclusive deals that are geographically separate. Now, because it's no longer exclusive, they're only willing 50 pay $50M each, assuming their income is halved. Now the content creator gets $100M plus whatever the worldwide distributor will pay. If they pay less than $100M, then the content creator makes less money and the deal isn't worth it - having to deal with a third entity, plus making less money.
And that's the pure economic play - geolocking exists because distributors are paying good money for exclusivity.
Yeah, I don't really trust flexible screens, after seeing them in action. They seem way too fragile and after a few hundred open/close cycles a lot start losing rows or columns of pixels as their driver line detaches from the screen from the repeated folding/unfolding.
Sure with a high-res display it may not be noticeable, but probably after a year it will be quite easy to see there's missing elements.
One more disadvantage - the need to temporarily store your data, or risk user frustration. A lot of mobile web browsers don't cache web pages, and the only page actually loaded in memory is the currently active one. Switch to another tab or page or whatever, and that tab loads up fresh, while the old tab is usually discarded.
This can be problematic if you have a multi-stage form because as the user fills it in, they may need to reference other data. But when they do, they lose the current page and all the data they've entered!
So a way of saving that data temporarily is required as well.
I can't believe that changing the client to use HTTPS URLs when checking for and downloading updates would disrupt the rest of the Web site that badly. And as far as users using HTTPS to browse the site, that shouldn't affect ads unless the ad networks are incapable of serving content via HTTPS. In this day and age, that should be an issue for only the most incompetent of ad networks.
Apparently the Keepass website has ads, and if he switched the update check over to https, the website would be visitable over https as well, and if https was used on the website, the ads wouldn't be displayed. Or something like that:
Actually, the problem is HTTPS browsing involves a "privacy" mode in the browser. It's not true privacy mode, but it's one ad networks kinda-sorta want.
Basically if you're browsing over HTTPS, Referer headers are not sent by the browser. The headers basically tell the servers where the request is coming from.
Google went all HTTPS for searches for this reason - it denies the destination website information like what Google search was used to land on their website.
Ad networks have no problems operating on HTTPS, given a lot of sites (e.g.,/.) use HTTPS and serve up ads.
Of course, the payout is far lower for sites without Referer headers.
There are ways around it - given most advertisers give you a unique URL for the ad network to identify your website, it's trivial to encode the document URL using javascript and appending that to the ad request URL (thus putting a Referer like header in the request). Another way is to just do it like how Google does - force every request through their server that redirects you to the right page - E.g., website-->Google-->website everytime you click a link. (the link you click through Google contains the destination page).
We have a couple of these places in my city and EVERY SINGLE "business" that is based in them is typically a single person that is trying to make the clients think he/she is bigger than he really is. Once the address is realized as to what it is, the effect wears off and then all the businesses in town starts dogging on it.
Sorry but if all your business exists in a 13 inch laptop you carry in your backpack and you go and rent a random desk, I'm not going to trust you to be able to do the job.
And yet, you probably do a lot of business with people like that all over the internet. It's just that you don't know that they're small one-person businesses. A lot hide out behind sites like Amazon and eBay, and take credit cards direct or through Paypal as well.
So you won't trust a single person in person, but you will trust them sight unseen? '
The only reason they use these places is because if they didn't, they'd have to meet inside a residential house. Are you going to be happier in that case?
The internet is more often than one one-person operations done out of someone's home. Co-working spaces simply allow people to do face-to-face meetings if for some reason the client won't let the other person onto their premises (perhaps they TOO are a one-man business working inside their house).
And yeah, maybe you won't trust them with a $1,000,000 contract, fair enough, but if you're asking them to do a $10,000 website design, well, perhaps at this point the only people you can hire are one-man businesses for that price.
And if they're smart, the laptop is just so they can work on stuff while waiting for you, the real backups and servers are hosted elsewhere so even if the laptop is stolen, the work isn't lost.
Except it isn't a Fresnel lens. A Fresnel lens is basically slices of a lens with the bulk removed. This is good for making flat lenses but they suffer from diffraction and are rarely any good for optics as the fringing of the rings affects image quality. That's why you don't see Fresnel lenses used anywhere other than overhead projectors and stage lights where fringing is minimal. After all, if it worked well, then cameras would already be using them.
It really is a plane of little pillars arranged in strange patterns. Supposedly these are image quality
Is there a PIN that you need to use with this ring? Or is it literally single-factor authentication, and as soon as someone divests you of it, they can go nuts with it until it gets deactivated?
On a less serious note, are sex workers in Rio going to have payment terminals compatible with this by the time the athletes arrive? That'll be the most common use for athlete's dollars, I'd think. XD
On a tin-foil-hat conspiratorial note, anyone else wonder if someone has weaponized Zika and seeded the world with carrier mosquitos, to create an extinction-level event for the human race? Thought's occurred to me..
The ring's just a fancy version of your credit card's tap system. Instead of tapping your card, you tap your ring. Presumably everything that you can tap you can use the ring with, and with similar protections.
If you can do tap payment terminals, you can accept the ring. Given you can get terminals that work over 3G, any enterprising sex worker will get one.
Zika carrier mosquitoes can't stand cooler climates - which is why they're not a concern in countries like Canada because the mosquitos won't breed here. We have mosquitos, but Zika can't be carried by them.
Anyhow, it's not mosquitos that's the real way of spreading Zika. It's sex. Zika's a unique disease in that it can be carried by mosquitos AND as a sexually transmitted disease, and so far that's the biggest transmission vector that would happen - a few people get bitten, they then go on little flings and infect other people, who go on their own flings and pretty soon most of the crowd gets it.
Transmission by sex is considered to be a far bigger reason why people are infected than mosquitos.
Funny enough, this was proven about 10 years ago, too. Back during the High-Def format wars, there was a format called HD-DVD, which in the end featured NO region coding. None at all.
It completely screwed up the movie industry because when the HD-DVDs came out, people around the world started importing them because they would often be released in North America BEFORE it even hit theatres in other countries!
And being region free meant you just bought an HD-DVD player locally and bought your discs from Amazon and others.
The movie studios eventually wised up and delayed the HD-DVD releases in North America relative to the DVD releaes, and it was no doubt one of the big things that led to its demise. You can bet the studios really wanted region coding and all those things that weren't in the HD-DVD spec.
Be fair, the concept of a self driving car as being made by most companies (tends to follow the rules of the road, stays in lane, does some semblance of the speed limit, avoids accidents, etc.) is generally a poor fit for Rome at least. Haven't been to the other two, but I'm moderately certain that in Rome at least, attempting to avoid accidents and staying in ones lane is considered a sign of weakness and should be avoided at all cost. Or at least the lane markers are really just a suggestion and not a real rule.
In general, though, Europe has an excellent public transportation system, which means driving is completely unnecessary to get around. So those who don't want to drive, don't. Those who do, can, resulting in some... interesting driving, and rather impressive parking as you weed out the crap and leave the cream.
In North America, you have to drive, barring a few cities that have OK to decent public transportation systems. Thus, drivers are often not wanting to drive, but forced to do so, making it a chore. It's why distracted driving has overtaken drunk driving as the #1 cause of accidents - the drivers want to do anything BUT drive.
Nowadays Apple seems to have taken on the "entusiast" segment instead of focusing on their core "wants a PC that works" market.
Have you seen how much a Mac costs? Apple can't simply take a $500 PC and sell it for $1000 verbatim. Apple has to push the edge because that's the only way to command premium prices. Things like super fast SSDs (Apple was among the first to put PCIe SSDs into consumer PCs), 5K displays (which there is no standard for driving, yet, except using some awful "near lossless" compression), etc. etc. etc. Hell, USB was lagging around until Apple forced it on the iMac (I remember wondering why people would bother with USB - all the USB peripherals were 2x the cost of their legacy counterparts - a cheap $20 keyboard was $50 if you wanted USB, a $20 mouse was starting at $50 if you wanted a USB version, etc).
They can't wait around for the PC to catch up because then prices will tumble quickly. Heck, PCs of 2016 are starting to feature PCIe SSD support (NVMe), years after Apple regularly started doing it, everyone clanking around with SATA3 that's been maxed out for years.
Except... there's no standard for a 5K display. There are proposed standards, and ones coming down the pipeline, but... no standards now. Which is why it is impossible to connect (easily) a 5K display. Sure, you CAN buy 5K displays now, but they're dual display port displays (basically two monitors that your OS mashes together as multi-monitor), but that's.. inelegant - you need two DP cables, you need to configure your OS correctly, twiddle any cables and your monitor layout may reconfigure itself, etc. etc.
Right now, DP 1.2 doesn't support 5K. Apple's twiddled the TCON to allow 5K over eDP using heavily modified timings (you can play with the blankings a bit to get extra active pixels).
That's the only reason why Apple has to go this route - there's simply no standard available to meet their needs.
It's happened before - Apple did it with their SSDs - NVMe wasn't quite done yet (nevermind M.2) so Apple had to go it alone with PCIe SSDs.
I think this may be a little different though. The economies of "splitting the cost" don't favor the pilot if they weren't intending on making the flight anyway. If an Uber driver was forced to pay for half the cost of the trip you would see a drastic reduction in the number of "ride sharing" (fake taxi company) drivers.
It depends.
If the pilot is a private pilot, they are not allowed to fly for money, period. The FAA has allowed a small exception to that, in that it is possible to split the immediate incidental costs (fuel, other consumables) for the flight with other passengers in the plane, provided everyone is paying their share.
So yes, you get less than half the trip cost - because you're only allowed to ask for effectively gas money (and oil - some engines chew through a quart an hour). You're not allowed to split costs like maintenance or other per-flight hour costs (e.g., if you rent the plane). So maintenance and other costs are borne completely by the pilot.
Where it gets tricky is the intent of the flight. Did the pilot make the flight plans and then asked if anyone wanted to come? Or did someone ask him to fly there and the pilot made up an excuse.
E.g., if the pilot was flying from LA to Las Vegas to spend the weekend gambling, and then a friend asked if he could come along as he has to attend a wedding there, that is OK. It is not OK if the friend asks if he could go to Vegas to attend the wedding, then the pilot makes plans to play some slots (excepting of course, if the pilot was to accept no remuneration - perhaps they just wanted to fly for fun and gave their friend a free ride).
The other part is that the person asking to come along must be known to the pilot in advance - i.e., a friend, associate already known. It can't be two random strangers who were matched up on a website, for example. This is the "tortured" part of the interpretation, but it's been around long enough and interpreted that way for years.
Note that all of this flies out of the window if no money changes hands - without remuneration, the pilot is free to do anything he wishes. This is how charities like Hope Air and the like work - they at most offer the pilot a tax credit for the portion of the flight, but most pilots will instead just fly the patient or animal for free.
Effectively, private pilots are not supposed to do it for money - it's just the FAA has allowed a very narrow exception to accommodate some common requests. The "Uber for the sky" companies are trying to take that exception and turn it into a commercial license alternate.
The FAA can just as well close the exception because it was created as a privilege for private pilots.
And of course, if you're a commercial pilot, then you won't be as cheap because you went through the extra training and want to make some money back as real income
I wouldn't be surprised if Apple went with Skylake. They have stepped back before. The Mac Minis which were quad cores, but are duo cores is one good example of that.
Apple is limited to what Intel can provide.
In this case, Apple can buy an i5 in a certain formfactor. However, the only i7 in the same formfactor is a dual core only, as Intel decided to use a different pinout for their i7 quad cores.
Sure, Apple COULD redesign the motherboard for that one configuration, but the Mac Mini is not a popular Mac (it, with the Mac Pro, are the two worst-selling Macs in Apple's lineup). Of course, this gives you nothing but SKU issues, so Apple decided it was easier to just use the same motherboard on both i5 and i7 configurations. Apple can't control if Intel wants to change the package...
Similarly, one of the reasons why Apple doesn't have a Skylake Mac yet is apparently Intel's only recently made a configuration that Apple requires for their Macs.
The important thing for researchers is getting credit, giving code to someone else to use is not stealing, *but claiming you made it is*. Having said that the case could have been either, we wont be able to tell for a while it is still to soon.
Even better, there could've been a good reason for the "code sharing" - perhaps he was asking the other student to verify the code, or verify the results, or something.
You know, as part of the whole "reproducible results" thing - where people are asking that data and the software processing it be made open for inspection and for reproducing the results.
Or maybe the professor was continuing the research by giving it to another student to extend the research - the data and code exists, so start from that rather than reinventing the wheel.
The problem is, both the professor and the shooter are dead, which means finding out the whole truth is going to be a lot harder.
There's lot of valid reasons for "sharing" the code, which may very well have happened. Then again, stress might've cracked the shooter (finals were starting next week, apparently).;l
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Actually, for cellphones, I believe Best Buy and other retailers track serial numbers - when they get a shipment of new phones, they enter every serial number into their inventory system. If any get stolen, they can look it up in the system and know exactly what serial numbers were stolen.
It also goes that when you buy a cellphone, they scan the serial number as well - if you check your receipt, the serial number is on it. This is for two reasons - first, it's used to indicate that the phone was sold, but secondly, it's used to activate the warranty If you return something, they check the serial numbers now to make sure you're not returning a piece of wood.
They're suckered into it by the whole "convenience" aspect. Physical means having to find it, then stick it in the slot. "Digital" means just picking it off a list and watching it instantly.
Applies to anything - books, music, movies, etc. The physical version is always less convenient, requiring searching and finding and physical manipulation to use. There's also the whole DRM thing - piles of people refuse to buy movies on physical media because of the DRM put on Blu-Rays and such.
Of course, the other thing is, they're all hoping the backup of last resort will be around (torrents/piracy)...
First off, electronics are cheap. Replacing tubes in your TV was essential back in the day - your tube TV (the one with lots of tubes, not just a CRT) would break down every few dozen hours or so as a tube burned out. Thankfully, there wasn't that much programming on so it wasn't a major issue. Also, that tube TV cost a year's salary or more. Imagine the uproar you'd have today if people bought $30,000 devices that lasted a mere 24 hours of use before it needed service! So yeah, you replaced the tubes because you had to. These were also the days where you were rich to have a TV, nevermind more than one.
Nowadays, a TV's a week's worth of wages or so. We'd be up in arms if they broke down within 24 hours, but they're so cheap, repair is like Linux - it's cheap only if your time is worthless. Sending out a technician to diagnose it at $200/hr means the cheapest of TVs will be replaced before the technician gets to your door. For a reasonably sized TV, that really gives you a few hours before it's "not economically viable" (i.e., replacing is cheaper).
And electronics are filled with lots of fiddly small parts that Joe Average will lack the tools, skill and knowledge to fix. Don't have a fine screwdriver? A knife works, right? I mean, the knife slipped and sliced a bit of the cable off, but it's all good, right? There's nothing worse than having to fix someone else's "repair".
iFixit can bleat all they want, but I want them to offer a REAL WARRANTY service. As in if you buy the part, find you can't install it, ship it all back to them and they'll install it for you. Or if you break it, they can fix it. It Ain't Gonna Happen. Why? Because iFixit knows just as well they'd go out of business if they were forced to service what they sell. Third party repair is just fine, if you know what you're doing. Problem is, the vast majority don't, and it's too easy to hang a shingle out and say "we can fix it".
So yeah, warranty fraud. Big thing - ask any manufacturer or retailer around - you'll have customers bring in sopping wet stuff dropping water all over your return counter and they'll straight up say "it was never in water". And no, it was sunny outside. You're going to find anti-tamper stuff all over things today just because people do rip stuff open - either to see how it works or something and then fail to put it back together again and claim it came like that. Despite the fragments of the "warranty void if broken" sticker scattered everywhere. Another reason why iFixit will only SELL parts and NOT sell repair services - because they know they're going to deal with this issue sooner or later, and it will kill them. They're too small to be able to absorb much warranty fraud, and yet they will be the big target for they are advocating people fix stuff that they may not be capable of doing, and if it iwas iFixit instead of Apple, iFixit would shut their doors in a nanosecond.
Oh, and where are all the tube TVs today? Vast majority are at the landfill, replaced with much less serviceable but far more reliable solid-state electronics powering the CRTs. Sure there are a few in collector's hands, but that's it.
I think it was the other way around - Buffy the Vampire Slayer was super popular, and Joss Whedon made it a condition that if Fox wanted Buffy, they had to take on Firefly as well. Of course, Fox wanted Buffy, but Fox did not want the new show, while Joss was not willing to sell Fox just Buffy alone.
So Fox did everything they could to run it into the ground and purposefully get low ratings so they could cancel.
Anyhow, the networks don't care about piracy at all. What keeps a show on the air is the eyeball numbers for the ads - the networks sell ad spots and Neilsen records the eyeball sduring the ads - a good episode usually carries more eyeballs into the ads. If you pirate it, you count as 0 viewers to them, and thus if the show is getting low ratings, you're directly contributing to the network cancelling it.
So pirate away - all that matters to the networks is the ads.
The Kodi developers hate those plugins, because they only work for a few months then break. And then the users come and flood the Kodi forums complaining about it.
The Pirate Boxes are killing Kodi.
It's apparently getting so bad the Kodi dev team is considering quitting completely - they don't want to support this crap (especially since the pirate box sellers don't support them) and are forced to (i.e., Kodi is crap). So they're using legal avenues to do so - basically they've acquired a trademark so they can file trademark takedowns.
"Most" smartphone users run Android. Mostly because "most" smartphones out there are Android. Been that way for a long time - Android's outsold iOS 4:1 or so for a few years now. So I wouldn't be surprised that "most" smartphone users download zero apps - they got a smartphone because that's pretty much what is available.
So I'd guess most smartphone users don't bother with apps not because they are scared of permissions or whatever, but because they don't care - their smartphone already came laden with the apps they care about - Facebook, Pandora, Spotify, etc. They don't know, nor care about anything else. They got a smartphone, and damned if they were going to pay more than $0 for it.
Of course, that excludes a certain other mobile OS where developers do make money. Granted,t he gold rush is over, and there's tons of crap, but whose users do keep getting apps and all that. Of course, since they are a tiny minority of smartphone users (under 20%), well, they don't count.
Then of course, Android app users generally don't pay for apps as a whole so if a developer wants to eat, ads are pretty much the only way.
Well, this is Singapore, who like a lot of countries, has a nice Great Firewall as well. (I still remember when internet was free and unfettered but there was talk of setting up the firewall... I think it was set up a year or two after I left).
Considering they want to keep contraband out of the country, I'd be surprised if they didn't already have some sort of gateway and all that - can't have illicit access to porn, for example. (Tor, they probably allow - given the penalty for drug use is death (firing squad, IIRC), well...)
Anyhow, it probably doesn't affect people as much as you think - Singapore is a very modern city-island-state and thus cellular data access is common everywhere.
And yet, myspace is still around, having found a pretty good niche for itself as a place musicians go and promote themselves.
Hell, remember when Second Life was supposed to be the be-all and end-all of social media, with everyone falling over themselves to establish presences on Second LIfe? (Heck, Donald Trump is on Second Life and apparently has a campaign there).
I was wondering about that, since the output is hooked to a digital PWM output (PWM gets you the ability to alter the vibrate intensity). Usually through a FET as the current drive of the PWM output is too low to adequately drive the motor (or actuator - some vibration motors are a motor attached to an offset weight, others are actuators that shake).
I couldn't figure out a way to detect audio using the coils that results in a way that gets converted back into a signal that software can process. The FET would isolate the PWM output from any potential changes in the current draw caused by picking up the vibrations, and the PWM registers are really just a counter and match, which are governed by the system clock.
Sorry, money talks.
The reason why we have geoblocking is easy - money. People pay for exclusive distribution rights. They'd pay a LOT LESS if they didn't have exclusivity. You know, geographic monopoly and all.
So if you want Netflix to have worldwide rights, they can get them, just they'll basically have to pay at least what the distributors are paying, or at least the difference.
E.g., if a distributor is paying $100M for exclusive rights to say, Game of Thones in a region, how much would they pay if they knew they're going to have to share distributorship? It's going to be a lot less because who knows how much of your business your competitor is going to take?
Now let's extend it to two regions, same price to keep things simple. And let's assume that the distributor assumes his business will be cut in half. So the content creator was getting $200M out of two exclusive deals that are geographically separate. Now, because it's no longer exclusive, they're only willing 50 pay $50M each, assuming their income is halved. Now the content creator gets $100M plus whatever the worldwide distributor will pay. If they pay less than $100M, then the content creator makes less money and the deal isn't worth it - having to deal with a third entity, plus making less money.
And that's the pure economic play - geolocking exists because distributors are paying good money for exclusivity.
Yeah, I don't really trust flexible screens, after seeing them in action. They seem way too fragile and after a few hundred open/close cycles a lot start losing rows or columns of pixels as their driver line detaches from the screen from the repeated folding/unfolding.
Sure with a high-res display it may not be noticeable, but probably after a year it will be quite easy to see there's missing elements.
One more disadvantage - the need to temporarily store your data, or risk user frustration. A lot of mobile web browsers don't cache web pages, and the only page actually loaded in memory is the currently active one. Switch to another tab or page or whatever, and that tab loads up fresh, while the old tab is usually discarded.
This can be problematic if you have a multi-stage form because as the user fills it in, they may need to reference other data. But when they do, they lose the current page and all the data they've entered!
So a way of saving that data temporarily is required as well.
Actually, the problem is HTTPS browsing involves a "privacy" mode in the browser. It's not true privacy mode, but it's one ad networks kinda-sorta want.
Basically if you're browsing over HTTPS, Referer headers are not sent by the browser. The headers basically tell the servers where the request is coming from.
Google went all HTTPS for searches for this reason - it denies the destination website information like what Google search was used to land on their website.
Ad networks have no problems operating on HTTPS, given a lot of sites (e.g., /.) use HTTPS and serve up ads.
Of course, the payout is far lower for sites without Referer headers.
There are ways around it - given most advertisers give you a unique URL for the ad network to identify your website, it's trivial to encode the document URL using javascript and appending that to the ad request URL (thus putting a Referer like header in the request). Another way is to just do it like how Google does - force every request through their server that redirects you to the right page - E.g., website-->Google-->website everytime you click a link. (the link you click through Google contains the destination page).
And yet, you probably do a lot of business with people like that all over the internet. It's just that you don't know that they're small one-person businesses. A lot hide out behind sites like Amazon and eBay, and take credit cards direct or through Paypal as well.
So you won't trust a single person in person, but you will trust them sight unseen? '
The only reason they use these places is because if they didn't, they'd have to meet inside a residential house. Are you going to be happier in that case?
The internet is more often than one one-person operations done out of someone's home. Co-working spaces simply allow people to do face-to-face meetings if for some reason the client won't let the other person onto their premises (perhaps they TOO are a one-man business working inside their house).
And yeah, maybe you won't trust them with a $1,000,000 contract, fair enough, but if you're asking them to do a $10,000 website design, well, perhaps at this point the only people you can hire are one-man businesses for that price.
And if they're smart, the laptop is just so they can work on stuff while waiting for you, the real backups and servers are hosted elsewhere so even if the laptop is stolen, the work isn't lost.
Except it isn't a Fresnel lens. A Fresnel lens is basically slices of a lens with the bulk removed. This is good for making flat lenses but they suffer from diffraction and are rarely any good for optics as the fringing of the rings affects image quality. That's why you don't see Fresnel lenses used anywhere other than overhead projectors and stage lights where fringing is minimal. After all, if it worked well, then cameras would already be using them.
It really is a plane of little pillars arranged in strange patterns. Supposedly these are image quality
The ring's just a fancy version of your credit card's tap system. Instead of tapping your card, you tap your ring. Presumably everything that you can tap you can use the ring with, and with similar protections.
If you can do tap payment terminals, you can accept the ring. Given you can get terminals that work over 3G, any enterprising sex worker will get one.
Zika carrier mosquitoes can't stand cooler climates - which is why they're not a concern in countries like Canada because the mosquitos won't breed here. We have mosquitos, but Zika can't be carried by them.
Anyhow, it's not mosquitos that's the real way of spreading Zika. It's sex. Zika's a unique disease in that it can be carried by mosquitos AND as a sexually transmitted disease, and so far that's the biggest transmission vector that would happen - a few people get bitten, they then go on little flings and infect other people, who go on their own flings and pretty soon most of the crowd gets it.
Transmission by sex is considered to be a far bigger reason why people are infected than mosquitos.
Funny enough, this was proven about 10 years ago, too. Back during the High-Def format wars, there was a format called HD-DVD, which in the end featured NO region coding. None at all.
It completely screwed up the movie industry because when the HD-DVDs came out, people around the world started importing them because they would often be released in North America BEFORE it even hit theatres in other countries!
And being region free meant you just bought an HD-DVD player locally and bought your discs from Amazon and others.
The movie studios eventually wised up and delayed the HD-DVD releases in North America relative to the DVD releaes, and it was no doubt one of the big things that led to its demise. You can bet the studios really wanted region coding and all those things that weren't in the HD-DVD spec.
In general, though, Europe has an excellent public transportation system, which means driving is completely unnecessary to get around. So those who don't want to drive, don't. Those who do, can, resulting in some... interesting driving, and rather impressive parking as you weed out the crap and leave the cream.
In North America, you have to drive, barring a few cities that have OK to decent public transportation systems. Thus, drivers are often not wanting to drive, but forced to do so, making it a chore. It's why distracted driving has overtaken drunk driving as the #1 cause of accidents - the drivers want to do anything BUT drive.
Have you seen how much a Mac costs? Apple can't simply take a $500 PC and sell it for $1000 verbatim. Apple has to push the edge because that's the only way to command premium prices. Things like super fast SSDs (Apple was among the first to put PCIe SSDs into consumer PCs), 5K displays (which there is no standard for driving, yet, except using some awful "near lossless" compression), etc. etc. etc. Hell, USB was lagging around until Apple forced it on the iMac (I remember wondering why people would bother with USB - all the USB peripherals were 2x the cost of their legacy counterparts - a cheap $20 keyboard was $50 if you wanted USB, a $20 mouse was starting at $50 if you wanted a USB version, etc).
They can't wait around for the PC to catch up because then prices will tumble quickly. Heck, PCs of 2016 are starting to feature PCIe SSD support (NVMe), years after Apple regularly started doing it, everyone clanking around with SATA3 that's been maxed out for years.
Except... there's no standard for a 5K display. There are proposed standards, and ones coming down the pipeline, but ... no standards now. Which is why it is impossible to connect (easily) a 5K display. Sure, you CAN buy 5K displays now, but they're dual display port displays (basically two monitors that your OS mashes together as multi-monitor), but that's.. inelegant - you need two DP cables, you need to configure your OS correctly, twiddle any cables and your monitor layout may reconfigure itself, etc. etc.
Right now, DP 1.2 doesn't support 5K. Apple's twiddled the TCON to allow 5K over eDP using heavily modified timings (you can play with the blankings a bit to get extra active pixels).
That's the only reason why Apple has to go this route - there's simply no standard available to meet their needs.
It's happened before - Apple did it with their SSDs - NVMe wasn't quite done yet (nevermind M.2) so Apple had to go it alone with PCIe SSDs.
It depends.
If the pilot is a private pilot, they are not allowed to fly for money, period. The FAA has allowed a small exception to that, in that it is possible to split the immediate incidental costs (fuel, other consumables) for the flight with other passengers in the plane, provided everyone is paying their share.
So yes, you get less than half the trip cost - because you're only allowed to ask for effectively gas money (and oil - some engines chew through a quart an hour). You're not allowed to split costs like maintenance or other per-flight hour costs (e.g., if you rent the plane). So maintenance and other costs are borne completely by the pilot.
Where it gets tricky is the intent of the flight. Did the pilot make the flight plans and then asked if anyone wanted to come? Or did someone ask him to fly there and the pilot made up an excuse.
E.g., if the pilot was flying from LA to Las Vegas to spend the weekend gambling, and then a friend asked if he could come along as he has to attend a wedding there, that is OK. It is not OK if the friend asks if he could go to Vegas to attend the wedding, then the pilot makes plans to play some slots (excepting of course, if the pilot was to accept no remuneration - perhaps they just wanted to fly for fun and gave their friend a free ride).
The other part is that the person asking to come along must be known to the pilot in advance - i.e., a friend, associate already known. It can't be two random strangers who were matched up on a website, for example. This is the "tortured" part of the interpretation, but it's been around long enough and interpreted that way for years.
Note that all of this flies out of the window if no money changes hands - without remuneration, the pilot is free to do anything he wishes. This is how charities like Hope Air and the like work - they at most offer the pilot a tax credit for the portion of the flight, but most pilots will instead just fly the patient or animal for free.
Effectively, private pilots are not supposed to do it for money - it's just the FAA has allowed a very narrow exception to accommodate some common requests. The "Uber for the sky" companies are trying to take that exception and turn it into a commercial license alternate.
The FAA can just as well close the exception because it was created as a privilege for private pilots.
And of course, if you're a commercial pilot, then you won't be as cheap because you went through the extra training and want to make some money back as real income
All you need to know about jargon Weird Al sums up nicely in this music video.
Apple is limited to what Intel can provide.
In this case, Apple can buy an i5 in a certain formfactor. However, the only i7 in the same formfactor is a dual core only, as Intel decided to use a different pinout for their i7 quad cores.
Sure, Apple COULD redesign the motherboard for that one configuration, but the Mac Mini is not a popular Mac (it, with the Mac Pro, are the two worst-selling Macs in Apple's lineup). Of course, this gives you nothing but SKU issues, so Apple decided it was easier to just use the same motherboard on both i5 and i7 configurations. Apple can't control if Intel wants to change the package ...
Similarly, one of the reasons why Apple doesn't have a Skylake Mac yet is apparently Intel's only recently made a configuration that Apple requires for their Macs.
Even better, there could've been a good reason for the "code sharing" - perhaps he was asking the other student to verify the code, or verify the results, or something.
You know, as part of the whole "reproducible results" thing - where people are asking that data and the software processing it be made open for inspection and for reproducing the results.
Or maybe the professor was continuing the research by giving it to another student to extend the research - the data and code exists, so start from that rather than reinventing the wheel.
The problem is, both the professor and the shooter are dead, which means finding out the whole truth is going to be a lot harder.
There's lot of valid reasons for "sharing" the code, which may very well have happened. Then again, stress might've cracked the shooter (finals were starting next week, apparently). ;l
Not only a totally different story, but a reference to an earlier post as well.. almost as if the "You may also like to read" section doesn't exist.
So I guess it's "related" in that the stories appeared on /.?