It's just the media companies desperately holding on to old sources of revenue instead of trying out new licensing models.
Or it's because exclusivity pays.
I mean, I'm sure they'd love to have worldwide distribution - it's less people to deal with and less people means less middlemen taking profits.
The problem is, the old distributorship model pays quite well - they know if they get exclusivity they can get a lot of money from it, so they pay a lot to the studios.
The problem is if you want to break exclusivity, then the amount they're going to pay you for the content is a lot lower. And that difference is not made up by the additional providers you bring in.
The problem is exclusivity pays a lot more, and the exclusive partners are willing to fight for it.
Take Bell (Canada) for example - the CRTC ruled they can no longer "simsub" (a practice that's really only desirable during US election season) - basically if a Canadian channel is showing the same content as a US channel, then providers (satellite, cable) are required to substitute the Canadian's channel content over the US channel.
Well, as an experiment, the CRTC ruled that simsubbing the superbowl was not going to happen starting in 2017. Bell was upset, being the exclusive distributor for it in Canada (because 95% of Canadians have cable or satellite) and the simsub rules meant anyone turning to NBC would get Bell's version (with Canadian ads).
Personally, I think simsub is just bad policy - it was designed to help CanCon, but I think it really goes against it because it's more profitable for a channel to simsub by airing the same programming as the US than to air Canadian content instead which results in the Canadian content being quite marginalized (until the US picks it up).
Bell is spending millions in lawsuits to overturn this one experiment. Bell spent 20 years in court getting people to not install US satellite dishes in Canada, too (Dish and DirecTV are *illegal* in Canada, even if you pay for them and not use hacked cards or anything!).
Oh yeah, and the Bell CEO speaks out against VPNs, calling them "thieves" for using it to watch US Netflix. She even called her daughter a thief for doing that.
That's the kind of money on the line - and the studios and networks go along with it because there is so much money being thrown around that non-exclusive distributorship would simply make a lot less money.
unless someone winds up in court charged with a crime.
Which is probably what's going to happen. I mean there's only so many times you can do it before some lawyer wises up and will try for "tampered evidence" defense.
At which point the phone will come up and the FBI will have to describe how they cracked the phone. If it ends up with a third party they'd get at those details to make sure there was no chain of custody issues and that the methods used were kosher and won't tamper with evidence.
At which point the method of cracking WILL be public.
Otherwise it might be argued the evidence was tampered with, or chain of custody lost, and thus any subsequent warrants issued with that information were no longer valid and associated evidence.
Heck, a judge found a defendant not guilty despite evidence to the contrary - it's just the evidence was obtained using a Stingray without a valid warrant (there was a warrant issued, but the judge felt it was issued improperly and thus invalid - making the evidence collected without a warrant) and the judge threw out that illegally obtained evidence. The judge certainly *felt* the defendant was guilty, but could not rule that way because there was insufficient leftover evidence.
If any evidence was obtained from cracking a phone that lead to additional searches, tossing the phone's evidence will suddenly mean those warrants were invalid and that evidence gathered is not allowed as well.
The current set, though, goes way too far beyond that and needs to be mercilessly pruned back. Unicode is not supposed to be a way to incorporate every single image anyone could want as a single character.
And it's not. The reason we have emoji in Unicode should be obvious from the name. The origin of emoji was in Japan, and one of Unicode's goals is to be able to encode all text. So they're incorporating various languages alphabets, then they come across Japanese and put in Kanji. Then they discover that their phones have been sending pictures and had to incorporate those into Unicode. Then they discovered every carrier started having a similar thing but different and had to incorporate those as well. And they've been in Unicode for a while.
Then a silly fruit company had to release a phone, initially in the US, but then also in Japan. But because they were in Japan, they had to add support for this as well. Then a non-Japanese user discovered with a hack they could type poops and such as well, and started sending their friends poops. And their friends wondered how it was done, installed those hacks, and now what was a Japan-only feature was now world-accessible.
And now everyone decided they want their own set of what we now called emojis.
Which meant Unicode now had to incorporate them in order to fulfill its mission to be able to encode every text in it.
Yup, you'll be paying $1.00 a month to store your music in the cloud. You'll be paying $10 a month to listen to music. And whatever other services that Apple can think of (or copy, in order to monetize).
Actually, that's what the CEO was arguing.
He's saying Apple is outdated because the whole "device in your hand that does everything" model is outdated. Network speeds are up, so why not use the cloud to do your processing?
That's his argument - that Apple is bad because they do everything on the phone, and they are good because they are doing everything in the Cloud where there are powerful servers and all that, and sharing data is much easier on the cloud.
Of course, he completely ignores the fact that governments love the cloud. Or that Apple is intentionally trying to move stuff off the cloud to avoid being unwitting parties for the government. He never answers what he would do about San Bernadino - his model would have all the data stored on the esrver, and being a Chinese company, will probably hand it over willingly to the Chinese government...
People don't use services like GMail or Google Docs or Office 365 or Dropbox or Facebook because of the web UIs.
Actually, Office365 isn't a web UI. Microsoft gives users native Office - you can install full Office on up to I think 2 PCs at the basic level (Windows or Mac), one tablet and one smartphone. These are native office apps running locally. You can also use the web UI if you want to quickly edit something without syncing it, opening Word/Excel/etc and then syncing it back.
And the office that is a part of Office 386 is the same as the regular version, just it doesn't expire. (This has caused a few issues with users of Office 365 who install the regular version of Office.)
The mobile apps are read-only and require an Office 365 subscription to enable writing.
But couldn't a big part of the problem be that car companies were allowed to do their own fuel economy tests in the first place? Wouldn't it have been smarted to require use of a third-party testing organization, you know, the same way EVERYTHING ELSE is regulated? For example, RF interference, we don't just do the test ourselves, we have to take the equipment out to a certified testing lab. (They do take our word for it that the equipment we give them is essentially the same thing we will ship to customers.)
Actually, they did. The EPA did test those vehicles. It's just that for the sake of scientific repeatability, the test is conducted in a VERY specific way with VERY specific parameters observed. This way test runs can be repeated, variables controlled for and comparisons with other vehicles can be made. It is proper that we do this so that every vehicle is tested in the exact same way.
People complain about the tests - about how structured they are, and how unrealistic they are. They are right about that too, but you can't change the test without invalidating all the other results .
So because of this, what the manufacturers did was detect when they were being tested for emissions, again by detecting the test conditions were being met. If so, they ran in a special economy mode. Because the tests are carefully controlled, and somewhat unrealistic (they were adjusted to have as few variables as possible) accidentally triggering this mode during regular driving is extremely unlikely.
VW was only outed because someone took an emissions analyzer and analyzed the exhaust during real world testing and noticed that there was no way they could correlate with the requirements - they were much too high to simply be accounted for by emissions testing versus real world driving. Then they re-tested with the EPA tests and discovered the other mode. (The EPA re-runs tests on vehicles to ensure later runs haven't lapsed).
It's not unlike those phones that detected benchmark apps and locked the CPUs at 100% speed during the run to ensure they would score high on benchmarks.
Most advanced airports have a similar system called RWSL for planes. I wish this system would be adopted for all road markers and stopngolights by every city. That way when it snows out four lane roads donÃ(TM)t turn it one lane getoutofmywayfests.
At least for airplanes and airports, this is genuinely useful. Runway incursions are a huge safety risk and while you're supposed to contact ATC when entering a runway, as well as looking, it can be difficult since a runway can be a couple of miles long or longer, and it can be hard seeing other aircraft, cars, trucks and other vehicles who may be using the runway at the time, especially in weather. (The system is radar driven). And once installed, it also sounds off an alarm in the tower if someone accidentally enters when it's busy.
This is just the latest example of the erosion of situational awareness: the ability to monitor what is happening in the immediate environment. Smartphones, earbuds, and texting all displace attention from the "here and now" by redirecting mental focus to a non-local environment. Note that this is beyond what happens with reading a book or listening to music without headphones because of the immersive/interactive nature of the experience. The loss of situational awareness makes people more susceptible to bad outcomes because the warning cues don't get through. Hence walking into traffic while looking at a screen. Obviously reading and walking can have the same result, but before the advent of current smartphones there were far fewer people who acted that irresponsibly. Also it was not social acceptable because most people realized the potential hazard. Now that smartphones are ubiquitous social norms have changed and people just don't care about what's going on around them.
A more direct way to say it is that people now act very stupidly in public. They inhabit a personal bubble and blindly assume that reality will never intrude. There will never be enough padding in the world to protect them from a lack of attention. To quote Forrest Gump, "Stupid is as stupid does".
You know, it's a wonder why crime rates for pickpocketing haven't skyrocketed in the past few years. You'd think people who are completely distracted by their phones would make excellent marks, especially if they travel in a pack of like minded smartphone users.
I mean, they're not paying attention to anything but their phone, so liberating them of everything other than their phones seems much easier (and you don't want a phone anyways - why steal a tracking device?). Especially the younger folks who are probably carrying pricey stuff like tablets and laptops, and from the older folks, wallets and purses.
And because everyone else is doing the same, a "Stop thief!" shout would probably get them to look up and not see anything because they'd have to re-acquaint themselves with their surroundings, giving said thief a good 10-15 seconds to get away (and even more time if they want to go give chase).
You'd think they'd be easy pickings everywhere.
Of course, if I was wiring these lights in I might have the sidewalk lights stay red for several cycles so those who actually are paying attention can get around them and cross. I wonder how long they'll wait before they wonder if they missed a light.
Isn't everyone here a tech worker? Does anyone here actually make under 50k?
I'm sure the people at EA and the like are happy - they work at sub-poverty levels (supply and demand - there's still 40 people willing to take your job) and regularly push 50-60 hours a week NON-crunch.
It's been said if their hourly pay is less than McDonalds, or minimum wage.
So those game programmers, QA testers and other jobs might actually see a pay boost. (Things have improved since EA Spouse, but they've apparently deteriorated again, and studio heads believe they have a right to mistreat workers).
No, it's like pre-ordering from Oculus and having Oculus ship to others first because they can get more sales that way. And your theory about selling to PC retailers is complete bullshit.
Well, perhaps they're just selling to those who pre-ordered first... the retailers. You think you were the first to pre-order? Hell no, retailers often get first dibs long before the pre-orders were opened to everyone. The order lead times can be quite long and retailers often get their orders in long before production is even started so they can estimate how many to build.
If you ever wondered why Costco sells Christmas stuff in July, that's how long the lead times are.
Anytime you have an organization that is truly disruptive to industry, you'll end up with problems like this. Uber and all similar companies that are disrupting their respective industries are having to fight an uphill battle with established industries, regulators and a whole host of organizations that have a vested interest in the way things currently work, such as insurance providers and licensing agencies. It's going to be messy with laws and organization eventually adapting until they become part of the establishment; usually with a compromise between the business models of the establishment and the disruptive group.
No, it's not disruptive. It's just cheating. The taxi industry went through the same things Uber is going through, except it was over decades ago It's why those regulations exist - because in the past, taxi companies cheated the heck out of people.
The "sharing economy" is really more of a wage slave economy. The only thing they figured out how to do was to get people to ignore all the improvements to working conditions that were achieved and put into law and claim it as a new and innovative.
You disrupt industry by doing things in new and innovative ways, not by finding loopholes in law that let you bypass existing regulations.
Even things like banning drivers who turn down too many rides? That's not an independent contractor - an independent contractor has the right to determine which rides they will take without repercussion (other than not making money off it). Hell, all Uber had to do was send an alert to nearby drivers and ask them to "bid" on the job and give it to the lowest bidder - just like how contractors bid on projects, Uber would be revolutionary by having drivers bid on taking rides. If the person wanting the ride had the option of picking the ride they wanted (not necessarily the lowest, but include stuff like the car and driver's ratings) then Uber would've been a marketplace for selling rides. That would be innovative.
I think the main reason is Amazon may be getting allocations of product - i.e., they order 1000 copies of some game, and they are only given 200.
Now, if you have 200 copies, what are you going to do? You could make it first come first serve, or you could try to benefit those in your custom "club" plan get first shot as your most "loyal" of customers.
After all, the goal is to have everything in stock if you have Prime, and for slow-moving stuff (Amazon has metrics on how fast stuff sells and how fast it'll be replenished, etc) fine, sell it to anyone and let it go out of stock. But for popular stuff, it may be a better idea to keep it in stock for Prime members and everyone else can use a zShop.
So, in short, I agree with everything you said, and you know a lot more about hearing loss than I do. I also know that there's a degree of sophistication in modern hearing aids that simply can't be had really cheaply, both because of manufacturing costs, and because of a significant amount of original research - even in materials science.
Actually, not really. Thanks to modern electronics, and smartphones in particular, the pieces you need are stupidly cheap. At the most basic level, you need a microphone, an ADC, a DSP, a DAC, and a speaker. the ADC and DAC are often one unit and cost only around $2 or so, while the DSP might cost $10 or less. The microphone and speaker themselves are fairly cheap parts too (couple bucks each) . They're basically the same set of components you find in a smartphone, and audio level ADCs and DACs are so mass produced that they're small cheap and plentiful. And low power.
The DSP software also uses pretty standard algorithms created for mobile and other industries. Even the packaging technology of flat flex PCBs is cheap. Sure there's some 3D envelope designing required to fit the form factor, but yeah, modern EDA tools support 3D designs as well.
The reality is, a modern hearing aid, and the "not a hearing aid" devices are likely quite similar inside, if not identical. The raw electronics themselves are fairly cheap which is why the "not a hearing aid" devices can be hand for $100 or so. Real hearing aids are probably manufactured identically, with the difference being insurance, certification, etc.
AMD has had a console monopoly for the past three or so years anyway (their chips power the current versions of the Wii, Xbox and Playstation), and I haven't exactly seen an uptick of games being optimised on the PC for AMD graphics hardware...
So if AMD have had a full monopoly in the console arena for the past 3 years or so, and had most of the console arena for the previous generation as well (Xbox 360 and Wii - PS3 had an Nvidia chip), why are they still struggling today, when apparently the console monopoly should be doing grand things for them?
If it was a big deal, you may consider why Intel skipped out on it.
No, the reason AMD has the "monopoly" is because Intel got screwed by Microsoft on the original Xbox, and more than likely Intel intentionally directed Sony/Microsoft to AMD as a way for them to get some cashflow.
Remember, Intel doesn't want AMD to die, so they're passing customers to AMD when they can, and I'm sure Microsoft/Sony are giving AMD a steady source of operational income while Intel probably has tons of plans on how to rescue AMD without visibly rescuing AMD.
Yes, they are. Because the electronics part is pretty damn cheap thanks to modern electronics - an ADC, DSP and DAC combination is stupidly cheap. Hell, people are surprised when they spend $2000 on an "audiophile DAC" that the actual chip itself... cost under $5.They're mass produced because every sound emitting device has one, and even stupidly high end ones that do 24bit/192kHz are cheap. Nevermind the "basic" 16bit/48kHz units (which really are all you need for practical purposes since there's few environments a normal person will be in that has more than 50-60 dB of dynamic range, and 16 bits gets you 96dB)
The DSP itself is fairly cheap because audio is fairly undemanding - with clock rates in the hundreds of MHz and audio output rates around 48kHz, trivial. DSP algorithms are fairly standard.
It's why those "not a hearing aid" devices sell for under $100 easily.
One of the other reasons they're popular is well, you get a lot of people who won't admit to having hearing problems, so they won't want to see a doctor about it, but they can go and buy these things so cheaply that are so tiny and are practically invisible. (Face it - when we see hearing aid, we remember the big clunky things that you needed Dumbo-sized ears to hide, while the "not-a-hearing-aid" ads all tout how you might accidentally swallow them thinking they're pills.
Assuming these guys are really, really good, and worth a billable rate of $250/hr - if they pulled off the job in under 90 days, were there 10+ of them on the job, or did the FBI just pay a super premium for a high profile case to make a political statement?
Or they paid the going rate.
iOS vulnerabilities and zero-days really are that expensive, because there's so few of them. I mean, there was one last year - 3 prizes of $1M each to break iOS, and only one of the three available was claimed.
It's why Apple doesn't bother with bug bounties - if people are willing to pay $1M for it, even a $100,000 bug bounty is too little.
It's not that iOS is bug-free, far from it. It's really because Apple has hardened the entry points that results in breaking in requiring an elaborate set of steps and timing to get in. And the perceived value of the data.
The FBI didn't overpay, they just paid the going rate.
No thanks. Most "free" VPNs are well-publicized to data farm you in exchange for being free (a la Windows 10). If you actually want quality and privacy, you have to pay for it. My preference is AirVPN but there's other good ones out there.
Not to mention - wasn't SurfEasy one of those where yes, they were free, but they did it by using their user's connection? So in effect, yes, you were getting "VPN for free", but you were also providing VPN services for them as well as payment.
Canadians will like becoming one of the world's largest providers of agriculture. So, there.
Not likely. The growing season is lengthening only because it's warmer longer. You still have the same amount of sun, so that's the upper limit to how much you can grow. While the sunbelt states can grow almost year-round, even the longest of growing seasons would be half a year or less. The growing season has extended by a few weeks - not enough to have two full crops as you do in the US, and unlikely to extended longer because well, less sun.
The problem is, the agricultural areas of the US are drying up and becoming less productive because of the warming and new agricultural areas opening up aren't going to be as productive.
I would expect most people who work on a PC for great lengths of time, to be able to afford $1.5K.
Which isn't all that bad - a decent desk can easily be several hundred bucks, and if it's a motorized sit/stand desk, easily $1K. Yes, you can buy super dirt cheap ones for $400 easily, but you can opt for better quality ones as well.
All in all, it may be expensive for the/.'er who uses a $10 garage sale card table as their desk, but office furniture, especially decent ones, can cost a fair bit of money. And not too long ago a sit/stand desk was $1.5K.
Without cookies being sent back to the server, the server doesn't know what you were doing a moment ago. The design does not maintain the state of the system between transactions. There are other ways of doing this, but this is how http was designed. Yes, cookies are being used to track things that are not involved in the state of the transaction. But, it is hard to eliminate something that is key to the way that http works.
A large amount of activity over HTTP doesn't require the server to know what you were doing moments ago. I'm browsing/.. I'm reading articles and comments. None of which require the server to know more than the URL of the page I want to read.
Now, to comment, I have to log in, and yes, you need cookies for that state. But browsing web pages and such (e.g., downloading files, reading support documents, getting product information)? No cookies required, no state required.
Problem two is where a vendor accidentally or deliberately double taps the card. (so never let it out of your sight).
????
I thought the tap cards you're supposed to be the one tapping the reader, not handing it over to the vendor. (This was the biggest change when Canada moved from swipe to chip - everyone handed their card over, the cashier swiped it, and then had to insert it into the chip reader in front of you).
I always thought that was one of the things with the new EMV system - the only person to touch the card is the card holder - if it's chip, they insert it in the reader (if you can find the bloody slot), if it's tap, you tap it yourself. You don't hand over the card at all.
Even in restaurants now they bring the terminal to you rather than you stick the card in for them to swipe it for you.
I don't agree... if Microsoft is smart, they will leave the 360 servers on until the XBox Two (or whatever it is called) comes out.
There is value in appearing to support your products for longer than when you just sell them. It gives assurance to people buying an XBox One today that it will get support until the XBox Three comes out.
Well, the only reason Microsoft killed Live for the original Xbox was limitations that were causing issues for the Xbox360 Live users (limited Friends list, etc). So Microsoft discontinued Live on the original Xbox because those limitations were holding back the Xbox360.
Plus, at the time, the number of people using original Xbox games numbered around 1000 or so (900 of them for Halo 2, the rest were recording single or double digit participants). Compared to over a million people playing Xbox360 games online.
So it was an easy decision - let 1000 users hold back a million plus users or end support. I think of those 1000, most of them were Xbox360 using backwards compatibility to play Xbox games, and not actual Xbox consoles.
So it depends how many play online Xbone vs. Xbos360 and when they dwindle then Microsoft will end support.
What I don't get is BT sends me emails all the time about one of their customers. They apparently run a business and bought a business line and ADSL service, and I get notifications when it's in for service, invoices, etc.
What I don't get is how I can stop it - I tried the links and they don't work, and I even tried logging into the guy's BT account, but it always claims the email is invalid (I'm sitting on all the guy's details - phone numbers, addresses, etc).
The other thing I don't get is how these kind of emails make it to my personal domain (which isn't a.com as that was taken, so I have a.net). Did they purposely use my domain to send their notifications of service installs and such to me? Or what?
They used to sell tablets not preloaded with Google apps. No one bought them. Fortunately it was trivial to install them, but users prefer to have a consistent ecosystem.
They should sue Apple for not allowing you to remove and replace the App store. This is a choice for android.
Actually, the problem with Google is not the search engine. It's the Play store. Like you said, Android devices without it don't sell. But if you want it, then you have to obey some rather onerous terms. Like you must include ALL the Google apps. And they must be default - doesn't matter if you want to use HERE maps or other map service - the Google Maps must be the default. Also, all Google apps must be one click away from the home screen by default (that's why there's a Google Apps folder on the home screen).
Samsung is probably closest to being able to get rid of Google's apps because they've developed alternatives to every application Google has. But because they still license Google Play, they must include all of Google's apps by default. It's why Samsung phones seem to have duplicates.
That's the real problem - iOS is pretty safe since it's Apple-only, and it's hard to argue that Apple's in a monopoly position when 4 Androids with Google are sold for every iOS.
It's the fact that you can't unbundle the Google apps, or phone developers can't replace it with their own by default, if you want Play, you have to agree to those terms.
Have to admit the Jack/Rose plot kinda ruined the movie in my opinion. But I think James Cameron & his crew did a pretty good job with the SFX on that one. Appeared pretty realistic especially on the big screen. Certainly better visuals than A Night to Remember, although that was a better movie
Actually, Cameron has admitted now that he knows more about the Titanic (as part of the 100th anniversary a few years ago) he seriously screwed up the sinking effects. Of course, given the movie was filmed nearly 15 years prior, I suppose it was excusable (Titanic came out in 1999 I believe). In one of those documentaries, Cameron wishes he could re-do that part of his movie now that he knows more.
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Or it's because exclusivity pays.
I mean, I'm sure they'd love to have worldwide distribution - it's less people to deal with and less people means less middlemen taking profits.
The problem is, the old distributorship model pays quite well - they know if they get exclusivity they can get a lot of money from it, so they pay a lot to the studios.
The problem is if you want to break exclusivity, then the amount they're going to pay you for the content is a lot lower. And that difference is not made up by the additional providers you bring in.
The problem is exclusivity pays a lot more, and the exclusive partners are willing to fight for it.
Take Bell (Canada) for example - the CRTC ruled they can no longer "simsub" (a practice that's really only desirable during US election season) - basically if a Canadian channel is showing the same content as a US channel, then providers (satellite, cable) are required to substitute the Canadian's channel content over the US channel.
Well, as an experiment, the CRTC ruled that simsubbing the superbowl was not going to happen starting in 2017. Bell was upset, being the exclusive distributor for it in Canada (because 95% of Canadians have cable or satellite) and the simsub rules meant anyone turning to NBC would get Bell's version (with Canadian ads).
Personally, I think simsub is just bad policy - it was designed to help CanCon, but I think it really goes against it because it's more profitable for a channel to simsub by airing the same programming as the US than to air Canadian content instead which results in the Canadian content being quite marginalized (until the US picks it up).
Bell is spending millions in lawsuits to overturn this one experiment. Bell spent 20 years in court getting people to not install US satellite dishes in Canada, too (Dish and DirecTV are *illegal* in Canada, even if you pay for them and not use hacked cards or anything!).
Oh yeah, and the Bell CEO speaks out against VPNs, calling them "thieves" for using it to watch US Netflix. She even called her daughter a thief for doing that.
That's the kind of money on the line - and the studios and networks go along with it because there is so much money being thrown around that non-exclusive distributorship would simply make a lot less money.
Which is probably what's going to happen. I mean there's only so many times you can do it before some lawyer wises up and will try for "tampered evidence" defense.
At which point the phone will come up and the FBI will have to describe how they cracked the phone. If it ends up with a third party they'd get at those details to make sure there was no chain of custody issues and that the methods used were kosher and won't tamper with evidence.
At which point the method of cracking WILL be public.
Otherwise it might be argued the evidence was tampered with, or chain of custody lost, and thus any subsequent warrants issued with that information were no longer valid and associated evidence.
Heck, a judge found a defendant not guilty despite evidence to the contrary - it's just the evidence was obtained using a Stingray without a valid warrant (there was a warrant issued, but the judge felt it was issued improperly and thus invalid - making the evidence collected without a warrant) and the judge threw out that illegally obtained evidence. The judge certainly *felt* the defendant was guilty, but could not rule that way because there was insufficient leftover evidence.
If any evidence was obtained from cracking a phone that lead to additional searches, tossing the phone's evidence will suddenly mean those warrants were invalid and that evidence gathered is not allowed as well.
And it's not. The reason we have emoji in Unicode should be obvious from the name. The origin of emoji was in Japan, and one of Unicode's goals is to be able to encode all text. So they're incorporating various languages alphabets, then they come across Japanese and put in Kanji. Then they discover that their phones have been sending pictures and had to incorporate those into Unicode. Then they discovered every carrier started having a similar thing but different and had to incorporate those as well. And they've been in Unicode for a while.
Then a silly fruit company had to release a phone, initially in the US, but then also in Japan. But because they were in Japan, they had to add support for this as well. Then a non-Japanese user discovered with a hack they could type poops and such as well, and started sending their friends poops. And their friends wondered how it was done, installed those hacks, and now what was a Japan-only feature was now world-accessible.
And now everyone decided they want their own set of what we now called emojis.
Which meant Unicode now had to incorporate them in order to fulfill its mission to be able to encode every text in it.
Actually, that's what the CEO was arguing.
He's saying Apple is outdated because the whole "device in your hand that does everything" model is outdated. Network speeds are up, so why not use the cloud to do your processing?
That's his argument - that Apple is bad because they do everything on the phone, and they are good because they are doing everything in the Cloud where there are powerful servers and all that, and sharing data is much easier on the cloud.
Of course, he completely ignores the fact that governments love the cloud. Or that Apple is intentionally trying to move stuff off the cloud to avoid being unwitting parties for the government. He never answers what he would do about San Bernadino - his model would have all the data stored on the esrver, and being a Chinese company, will probably hand it over willingly to the Chinese government...
Actually, Office365 isn't a web UI. Microsoft gives users native Office - you can install full Office on up to I think 2 PCs at the basic level (Windows or Mac), one tablet and one smartphone. These are native office apps running locally. You can also use the web UI if you want to quickly edit something without syncing it, opening Word/Excel/etc and then syncing it back.
And the office that is a part of Office 386 is the same as the regular version, just it doesn't expire. (This has caused a few issues with users of Office 365 who install the regular version of Office.)
The mobile apps are read-only and require an Office 365 subscription to enable writing.
Actually, they did. The EPA did test those vehicles. It's just that for the sake of scientific repeatability, the test is conducted in a VERY specific way with VERY specific parameters observed. This way test runs can be repeated, variables controlled for and comparisons with other vehicles can be made. It is proper that we do this so that every vehicle is tested in the exact same way.
People complain about the tests - about how structured they are, and how unrealistic they are. They are right about that too, but you can't change the test without invalidating all the other results .
So because of this, what the manufacturers did was detect when they were being tested for emissions, again by detecting the test conditions were being met. If so, they ran in a special economy mode. Because the tests are carefully controlled, and somewhat unrealistic (they were adjusted to have as few variables as possible) accidentally triggering this mode during regular driving is extremely unlikely.
VW was only outed because someone took an emissions analyzer and analyzed the exhaust during real world testing and noticed that there was no way they could correlate with the requirements - they were much too high to simply be accounted for by emissions testing versus real world driving. Then they re-tested with the EPA tests and discovered the other mode. (The EPA re-runs tests on vehicles to ensure later runs haven't lapsed).
It's not unlike those phones that detected benchmark apps and locked the CPUs at 100% speed during the run to ensure they would score high on benchmarks.
At least for airplanes and airports, this is genuinely useful. Runway incursions are a huge safety risk and while you're supposed to contact ATC when entering a runway, as well as looking, it can be difficult since a runway can be a couple of miles long or longer, and it can be hard seeing other aircraft, cars, trucks and other vehicles who may be using the runway at the time, especially in weather. (The system is radar driven). And once installed, it also sounds off an alarm in the tower if someone accidentally enters when it's busy.
You know, it's a wonder why crime rates for pickpocketing haven't skyrocketed in the past few years. You'd think people who are completely distracted by their phones would make excellent marks, especially if they travel in a pack of like minded smartphone users.
I mean, they're not paying attention to anything but their phone, so liberating them of everything other than their phones seems much easier (and you don't want a phone anyways - why steal a tracking device?). Especially the younger folks who are probably carrying pricey stuff like tablets and laptops, and from the older folks, wallets and purses.
And because everyone else is doing the same, a "Stop thief!" shout would probably get them to look up and not see anything because they'd have to re-acquaint themselves with their surroundings, giving said thief a good 10-15 seconds to get away (and even more time if they want to go give chase).
You'd think they'd be easy pickings everywhere.
Of course, if I was wiring these lights in I might have the sidewalk lights stay red for several cycles so those who actually are paying attention can get around them and cross. I wonder how long they'll wait before they wonder if they missed a light.
I'm sure the people at EA and the like are happy - they work at sub-poverty levels (supply and demand - there's still 40 people willing to take your job) and regularly push 50-60 hours a week NON-crunch.
It's been said if their hourly pay is less than McDonalds, or minimum wage.
So those game programmers, QA testers and other jobs might actually see a pay boost. (Things have improved since EA Spouse, but they've apparently deteriorated again, and studio heads believe they have a right to mistreat workers).
Well, perhaps they're just selling to those who pre-ordered first... the retailers. You think you were the first to pre-order? Hell no, retailers often get first dibs long before the pre-orders were opened to everyone. The order lead times can be quite long and retailers often get their orders in long before production is even started so they can estimate how many to build.
If you ever wondered why Costco sells Christmas stuff in July, that's how long the lead times are.
No, it's not disruptive. It's just cheating. The taxi industry went through the same things Uber is going through, except it was over decades ago It's why those regulations exist - because in the past, taxi companies cheated the heck out of people.
The "sharing economy" is really more of a wage slave economy. The only thing they figured out how to do was to get people to ignore all the improvements to working conditions that were achieved and put into law and claim it as a new and innovative.
You disrupt industry by doing things in new and innovative ways, not by finding loopholes in law that let you bypass existing regulations.
Even things like banning drivers who turn down too many rides? That's not an independent contractor - an independent contractor has the right to determine which rides they will take without repercussion (other than not making money off it). Hell, all Uber had to do was send an alert to nearby drivers and ask them to "bid" on the job and give it to the lowest bidder - just like how contractors bid on projects, Uber would be revolutionary by having drivers bid on taking rides. If the person wanting the ride had the option of picking the ride they wanted (not necessarily the lowest, but include stuff like the car and driver's ratings) then Uber would've been a marketplace for selling rides. That would be innovative.
I think the main reason is Amazon may be getting allocations of product - i.e., they order 1000 copies of some game, and they are only given 200.
Now, if you have 200 copies, what are you going to do? You could make it first come first serve, or you could try to benefit those in your custom "club" plan get first shot as your most "loyal" of customers.
After all, the goal is to have everything in stock if you have Prime, and for slow-moving stuff (Amazon has metrics on how fast stuff sells and how fast it'll be replenished, etc) fine, sell it to anyone and let it go out of stock. But for popular stuff, it may be a better idea to keep it in stock for Prime members and everyone else can use a zShop.
Actually, not really. Thanks to modern electronics, and smartphones in particular, the pieces you need are stupidly cheap. At the most basic level, you need a microphone, an ADC, a DSP, a DAC, and a speaker. the ADC and DAC are often one unit and cost only around $2 or so, while the DSP might cost $10 or less. The microphone and speaker themselves are fairly cheap parts too (couple bucks each) . They're basically the same set of components you find in a smartphone, and audio level ADCs and DACs are so mass produced that they're small cheap and plentiful. And low power.
The DSP software also uses pretty standard algorithms created for mobile and other industries. Even the packaging technology of flat flex PCBs is cheap. Sure there's some 3D envelope designing required to fit the form factor, but yeah, modern EDA tools support 3D designs as well.
The reality is, a modern hearing aid, and the "not a hearing aid" devices are likely quite similar inside, if not identical. The raw electronics themselves are fairly cheap which is why the "not a hearing aid" devices can be hand for $100 or so. Real hearing aids are probably manufactured identically, with the difference being insurance, certification, etc.
If it was a big deal, you may consider why Intel skipped out on it.
No, the reason AMD has the "monopoly" is because Intel got screwed by Microsoft on the original Xbox, and more than likely Intel intentionally directed Sony/Microsoft to AMD as a way for them to get some cashflow.
Remember, Intel doesn't want AMD to die, so they're passing customers to AMD when they can, and I'm sure Microsoft/Sony are giving AMD a steady source of operational income while Intel probably has tons of plans on how to rescue AMD without visibly rescuing AMD.
Yes, they are. Because the electronics part is pretty damn cheap thanks to modern electronics - an ADC, DSP and DAC combination is stupidly cheap. Hell, people are surprised when they spend $2000 on an "audiophile DAC" that the actual chip itself... cost under $5.They're mass produced because every sound emitting device has one, and even stupidly high end ones that do 24bit/192kHz are cheap. Nevermind the "basic" 16bit/48kHz units (which really are all you need for practical purposes since there's few environments a normal person will be in that has more than 50-60 dB of dynamic range, and 16 bits gets you 96dB)
The DSP itself is fairly cheap because audio is fairly undemanding - with clock rates in the hundreds of MHz and audio output rates around 48kHz, trivial. DSP algorithms are fairly standard.
It's why those "not a hearing aid" devices sell for under $100 easily.
One of the other reasons they're popular is well, you get a lot of people who won't admit to having hearing problems, so they won't want to see a doctor about it, but they can go and buy these things so cheaply that are so tiny and are practically invisible. (Face it - when we see hearing aid, we remember the big clunky things that you needed Dumbo-sized ears to hide, while the "not-a-hearing-aid" ads all tout how you might accidentally swallow them thinking they're pills.
Or they paid the going rate.
iOS vulnerabilities and zero-days really are that expensive, because there's so few of them. I mean, there was one last year - 3 prizes of $1M each to break iOS, and only one of the three available was claimed.
It's why Apple doesn't bother with bug bounties - if people are willing to pay $1M for it, even a $100,000 bug bounty is too little.
It's not that iOS is bug-free, far from it. It's really because Apple has hardened the entry points that results in breaking in requiring an elaborate set of steps and timing to get in. And the perceived value of the data.
The FBI didn't overpay, they just paid the going rate.
Not to mention - wasn't SurfEasy one of those where yes, they were free, but they did it by using their user's connection? So in effect, yes, you were getting "VPN for free", but you were also providing VPN services for them as well as payment.
Not likely. The growing season is lengthening only because it's warmer longer. You still have the same amount of sun, so that's the upper limit to how much you can grow. While the sunbelt states can grow almost year-round, even the longest of growing seasons would be half a year or less. The growing season has extended by a few weeks - not enough to have two full crops as you do in the US, and unlikely to extended longer because well, less sun.
The problem is, the agricultural areas of the US are drying up and becoming less productive because of the warming and new agricultural areas opening up aren't going to be as productive.
Which isn't all that bad - a decent desk can easily be several hundred bucks, and if it's a motorized sit/stand desk, easily $1K. Yes, you can buy super dirt cheap ones for $400 easily, but you can opt for better quality ones as well.
All in all, it may be expensive for the /.'er who uses a $10 garage sale card table as their desk, but office furniture, especially decent ones, can cost a fair bit of money. And not too long ago a sit/stand desk was $1.5K.
A large amount of activity over HTTP doesn't require the server to know what you were doing moments ago. I'm browsing /.. I'm reading articles and comments. None of which require the server to know more than the URL of the page I want to read.
Now, to comment, I have to log in, and yes, you need cookies for that state. But browsing web pages and such (e.g., downloading files, reading support documents, getting product information)? No cookies required, no state required.
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I thought the tap cards you're supposed to be the one tapping the reader, not handing it over to the vendor. (This was the biggest change when Canada moved from swipe to chip - everyone handed their card over, the cashier swiped it, and then had to insert it into the chip reader in front of you).
I always thought that was one of the things with the new EMV system - the only person to touch the card is the card holder - if it's chip, they insert it in the reader (if you can find the bloody slot), if it's tap, you tap it yourself. You don't hand over the card at all.
Even in restaurants now they bring the terminal to you rather than you stick the card in for them to swipe it for you.
Well, the only reason Microsoft killed Live for the original Xbox was limitations that were causing issues for the Xbox360 Live users (limited Friends list, etc). So Microsoft discontinued Live on the original Xbox because those limitations were holding back the Xbox360.
Plus, at the time, the number of people using original Xbox games numbered around 1000 or so (900 of them for Halo 2, the rest were recording single or double digit participants). Compared to over a million people playing Xbox360 games online.
So it was an easy decision - let 1000 users hold back a million plus users or end support. I think of those 1000, most of them were Xbox360 using backwards compatibility to play Xbox games, and not actual Xbox consoles.
So it depends how many play online Xbone vs. Xbos360 and when they dwindle then Microsoft will end support.
What I don't get is BT sends me emails all the time about one of their customers. They apparently run a business and bought a business line and ADSL service, and I get notifications when it's in for service, invoices, etc.
What I don't get is how I can stop it - I tried the links and they don't work, and I even tried logging into the guy's BT account, but it always claims the email is invalid (I'm sitting on all the guy's details - phone numbers, addresses, etc).
The other thing I don't get is how these kind of emails make it to my personal domain (which isn't a .com as that was taken, so I have a .net). Did they purposely use my domain to send their notifications of service installs and such to me? Or what?
Actually, the problem with Google is not the search engine. It's the Play store. Like you said, Android devices without it don't sell. But if you want it, then you have to obey some rather onerous terms. Like you must include ALL the Google apps. And they must be default - doesn't matter if you want to use HERE maps or other map service - the Google Maps must be the default. Also, all Google apps must be one click away from the home screen by default (that's why there's a Google Apps folder on the home screen).
Samsung is probably closest to being able to get rid of Google's apps because they've developed alternatives to every application Google has. But because they still license Google Play, they must include all of Google's apps by default. It's why Samsung phones seem to have duplicates.
That's the real problem - iOS is pretty safe since it's Apple-only, and it's hard to argue that Apple's in a monopoly position when 4 Androids with Google are sold for every iOS.
It's the fact that you can't unbundle the Google apps, or phone developers can't replace it with their own by default, if you want Play, you have to agree to those terms.
Actually, Cameron has admitted now that he knows more about the Titanic (as part of the 100th anniversary a few years ago) he seriously screwed up the sinking effects. Of course, given the movie was filmed nearly 15 years prior, I suppose it was excusable (Titanic came out in 1999 I believe). In one of those documentaries, Cameron wishes he could re-do that part of his movie now that he knows more.