At some point, usenet's purpose changed from "Discussion forums" to "distributing pirated content and porn".
While I can see the latter being useful, it was sad that we had to mostly lose the former when the latter took over.
These days there are a half million forums out there, each one requiring you to create a separate account, with many dozens of forums on each topic, so you can't reach a wide audience easily. Usenet was simultaneously distributed and centralized, and was the best of both worlds. Sadly it fell victim to the success of the web.
It feels like Apple has lost direction since Jobs passed. For example, look at iOS 7: It's a mishmash of awkward design language, with inconsistencies and a flat, boring look that likely never would have been approved by Steve. All that lovely texture that iOS had is gone. People are already complaining about it and I'm sure there will be an even bigger uproar once it goes public. They took inspiration from MICROSOFT for crying out loud!
Look at the rumored (but very likely) "low cost iPhone". It's made of cheap plastic, which Apple had been trying to get away from for years with Jobs at the helm. Steve would have likely insisted that they find a way to build the iPhone out of its current materials but less expensively, and I'm sure the engineers would have lived up to the challenge.
He was a perfectionist, and while I didn't agree with all his decisions, his absolute refusal to compromise and insist that everything be exactly right is what led to Apple becoming what it is. I already see things going downhill and it's not going to be pretty moving forward.
I think Valve should work with WINE/Cedega/etc. to built a Windows emulation engine into Steam so that most Windows games will work out of the box on OS X and Linux. Sure, this might discourage native ports, but having a much bigger library available would certainly benefit the platform.
Hell, Valve themselves built an Direct X -> Open GL API layer to get their own games working on OS X and Linux, so they know what they're doing in this regard. And since the games would be sold through Steam, developers would have a consistent emulation environment to target.
How exactly will they "pop up" anything? Unless they transparent proxy an outgoing web request and send back a page with a pop-up, which would (in my opinion) be a gross violation of just being an internet provider and not fucking around with my packets?
Sigh. Why can't internet providers just provide internet, and stay the fuck out of this sort of thing? I just want my packets to make it to their destination, uninspected and un-fucked with, and I want the same for the packets coming back to me.
At this rate, the Internet is eventually going to become a glorified version of what AOL was in the 90s. Shudder.
Why do we need such aggressive compression algorithms, algorithms that can make the data WRONG, in this day and age when storage and memory is so incredibly cheap?
This is not 1987 when every byte was precious and 1MB of RAM cost a hundred bucks. There is NO EXCUSE for this these days; just use PNG or JPG compression; at least those don't freaking CHANGE THE DATA!!
> I sometimes think that the big hotels wish they could get you to agree to an EULA to plug in your shaver to charge.
It is so refreshing when I join a Wi-Fi network somewhere and I'm immediately online, without any stupid web pages to click "agree" on.
Every time I find one of these networks in the wild it's like striking gold. Also they are almost invariably fast, since they're not laden with stupid filters and throttling.
Whatever flaw they are using to hack the phone is a possible jailbreak exploit that they are needlessly wasting.
At the very least they should let the jailbreak community at this first, THEN show off the malicious charger. At this rate we'll never see a JB for iOS 7!
Whenever I go to Starbucks I often find myself turning OFF my Wi-Fi because my (also AT&T, strangely) LTE cellular connection is several times faster than the Wi-Fi there. Sometimes I even have trouble sending something as low-bandwidth as a freaking tweet!
I think Starbucks uses slow consumer-grade DSL connections, because that's what it feels like. Upstream capacity is severely limited, and downstream is only slightly less so. I remember attempting a Facetime call and getting less than one frame per second in both directions and constant reconnecting...turned off Wi-Fi and it was smooth as silk.
Meanwhile, my experience in Starbucks in Canada (where they don't use AT&T) is far superior.
I've never actually seen one of these places. Where are they typically found? I live in the Miami area and the closest thing I've seen to an Internet Café was a place in a mall that had gaming PCs set up so you could play games, basically a pay-by-the-hour LAN party.
Older fixtures still use magnetic ballasts. No solid state switching circuitry. Big, heavy, tar-filled ballsts that hum and drive the lamps at a good ol' 60Hz.
Sure, they last 10-15 years or so, and the drop-in replacements can be solid-state... But the magnetic ballasts are pervasive, manufactured by the millions, and are still sitting new-in-box in supply closets all over the world.
The problem in this case is, the government wants to be able to excavate and study the remains. If that's the case, the government should have to pay for it. Requiring the homeowner to pay for it is absolutely absurd.
And yes, this will result in the next time someone finds something, it will remain unreported. All because the law was stupid enough to not provide funding for dealing with the finds.
$5000 is prohibitive for many people. I know if someone stuck me with a sudden $5000 bill I'd be in a world of hurt. If a law is going to require finds to be studied, the law should provide funding. Simple common sense.
Another issue is these routers are probably going to barf all over the spectrum, so as soon as you get a few of them operating in one area, performance will go to hell for everybody.
This has already happened on 2.4GHz in some areas, and is starting to happen on 5GHz too. Greater speeds require more spectrum.
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At some point, usenet's purpose changed from "Discussion forums" to "distributing pirated content and porn".
While I can see the latter being useful, it was sad that we had to mostly lose the former when the latter took over.
These days there are a half million forums out there, each one requiring you to create a separate account, with many dozens of forums on each topic, so you can't reach a wide audience easily. Usenet was simultaneously distributed and centralized, and was the best of both worlds. Sadly it fell victim to the success of the web.
It feels like Apple has lost direction since Jobs passed. For example, look at iOS 7: It's a mishmash of awkward design language, with inconsistencies and a flat, boring look that likely never would have been approved by Steve. All that lovely texture that iOS had is gone. People are already complaining about it and I'm sure there will be an even bigger uproar once it goes public. They took inspiration from MICROSOFT for crying out loud!
Look at the rumored (but very likely) "low cost iPhone". It's made of cheap plastic, which Apple had been trying to get away from for years with Jobs at the helm. Steve would have likely insisted that they find a way to build the iPhone out of its current materials but less expensively, and I'm sure the engineers would have lived up to the challenge.
He was a perfectionist, and while I didn't agree with all his decisions, his absolute refusal to compromise and insist that everything be exactly right is what led to Apple becoming what it is. I already see things going downhill and it's not going to be pretty moving forward.
I dunno, reading on an iPad 4 retina display with the brightness turned down, in dim ambient light is about as relaxing as it gets.
I actually prefer it to paper books. You can get into any position you like without worrying about where the light is hitting the page from.
I think Valve should work with WINE/Cedega/etc. to built a Windows emulation engine into Steam so that most Windows games will work out of the box on OS X and Linux. Sure, this might discourage native ports, but having a much bigger library available would certainly benefit the platform.
Hell, Valve themselves built an Direct X -> Open GL API layer to get their own games working on OS X and Linux, so they know what they're doing in this regard. And since the games would be sold through Steam, developers would have a consistent emulation environment to target.
How exactly will they "pop up" anything? Unless they transparent proxy an outgoing web request and send back a page with a pop-up, which would (in my opinion) be a gross violation of just being an internet provider and not fucking around with my packets?
Sigh. Why can't internet providers just provide internet, and stay the fuck out of this sort of thing? I just want my packets to make it to their destination, uninspected and un-fucked with, and I want the same for the packets coming back to me.
At this rate, the Internet is eventually going to become a glorified version of what AOL was in the 90s. Shudder.
They were full of mostly images, so corruption would be obvious.
We need a version that runs on a VAX 11/780.
"HOLY SHIT DUDE FIVE INCHES! That's awesome!! ...why is the floor cracking?"
*CRASH*
I have SD cards and USB thumb drives far older than 1-3 years and can still read the ancient data that was on them just fine.
Where did this "1-3 years for NAND flash" figure come from? It's a bit concerning.
Why do we need such aggressive compression algorithms, algorithms that can make the data WRONG, in this day and age when storage and memory is so incredibly cheap?
This is not 1987 when every byte was precious and 1MB of RAM cost a hundred bucks. There is NO EXCUSE for this these days; just use PNG or JPG compression; at least those don't freaking CHANGE THE DATA!!
> I sometimes think that the big hotels wish they could get you to agree to an EULA to plug in your shaver to charge.
It is so refreshing when I join a Wi-Fi network somewhere and I'm immediately online, without any stupid web pages to click "agree" on.
Every time I find one of these networks in the wild it's like striking gold. Also they are almost invariably fast, since they're not laden with stupid filters and throttling.
Whatever flaw they are using to hack the phone is a possible jailbreak exploit that they are needlessly wasting.
At the very least they should let the jailbreak community at this first, THEN show off the malicious charger. At this rate we'll never see a JB for iOS 7!
It's about freaking time!
Whenever I go to Starbucks I often find myself turning OFF my Wi-Fi because my (also AT&T, strangely) LTE cellular connection is several times faster than the Wi-Fi there. Sometimes I even have trouble sending something as low-bandwidth as a freaking tweet!
I think Starbucks uses slow consumer-grade DSL connections, because that's what it feels like. Upstream capacity is severely limited, and downstream is only slightly less so. I remember attempting a Facetime call and getting less than one frame per second in both directions and constant reconnecting...turned off Wi-Fi and it was smooth as silk.
Meanwhile, my experience in Starbucks in Canada (where they don't use AT&T) is far superior.
I've never actually seen one of these places. Where are they typically found? I live in the Miami area and the closest thing I've seen to an Internet Café was a place in a mall that had gaming PCs set up so you could play games, basically a pay-by-the-hour LAN party.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549
Airbus A320.
Both companies are AWESOME. I'm partial to Boeing because it's a US company and that's where I live, but dissing Airbus isn't called for either. :)
I don't even consider myself a brony anymore but I still nearly fell over LOLing at this. :)
...off with your head!
Seriously, China? WTF. Going back to medieval values here? Executing people for pollution?
They should be punished, but death is a bit much.
I was doing this in 1995. I think it's safe to say there's prior art. And it's mine. I'm such an artiste!
NEWER ballasts run in the 10-40kHz range.
Older fixtures still use magnetic ballasts. No solid state switching circuitry. Big, heavy, tar-filled ballsts that hum and drive the lamps at a good ol' 60Hz.
Sure, they last 10-15 years or so, and the drop-in replacements can be solid-state... But the magnetic ballasts are pervasive, manufactured by the millions, and are still sitting new-in-box in supply closets all over the world.
The problem in this case is, the government wants to be able to excavate and study the remains. If that's the case, the government should have to pay for it. Requiring the homeowner to pay for it is absolutely absurd.
And yes, this will result in the next time someone finds something, it will remain unreported. All because the law was stupid enough to not provide funding for dealing with the finds.
$5000 is prohibitive for many people. I know if someone stuck me with a sudden $5000 bill I'd be in a world of hurt. If a law is going to require finds to be studied, the law should provide funding. Simple common sense.
Another issue is these routers are probably going to barf all over the spectrum, so as soon as you get a few of them operating in one area, performance will go to hell for everybody.
This has already happened on 2.4GHz in some areas, and is starting to happen on 5GHz too. Greater speeds require more spectrum.
Step 1: Get a bicycle.
Step 2: GTFO.
Seriously, get out there. I've so enjoyed cycling, exploring new places, taking pictures, getting kicked out of places I shouldn't be, etc.
Even better if you can find someone to do it with.
100A service is actually 24kVA.
My home has 150A service, and this is typical for this area. This would only be considered excessive for a small apartment.
New construction is generally done with 200A service.
A more apt analogy would be "do you have a 120/208V, 200A 80kVA three-phase service to your home?" :)
Sure, but only if I can bring my cat. I adore my kitty!
Actually in this case, I hope Microsoft gets it free and clear.
I DESPISE "domain parking". If you're not using it, give it up and let someone else use it.
They should have known better than to use Apple Maps.