I'm surprised that google is going the partner route. One thing that means is that the initiative is almost guaranteed to fail.
Why?
Because partners have their own agenda as to why they're partnering with Google.
Most carriers have long, and somewhat decent working relationships with their platform vendors. Apple comes out, and whacks all those relationships with a stick by producing a device that's arguably far superior to any US phone.
What are the other carriers to do? The phone OS's functionality is basically specified by the carrier, who picks and chooses various features depending on the phone's price point, how the phone will fit into the carrier's current phone mix, and the competition (not necessarily in that order). Google comes out with something that's "open" , and while it may be interesting, from a carrier point of view, that interest doesn't necessarily mean that it's going anywhere. Given how big Google is, the carriers may be on board just to sink the gPhone ship (welcome to corporate america).
Only time will tell. Will the gPhone be substantially better than Symbian etc?
Actually, it sounds like the user is prompted to install it. There's no local priv escalation vulnerability, unless you count the local user installing the plugin a privilege escalation vulnerability (which, in essence, they are).
It's amusing, because installing a codec for some bizarre video format is something that people would do. Soon, there'll be a "Flesh Player8.0" that you'll need to install, made by "Micromedia"!
Your analysis seems valid, for situations that are relatively stable. For system which are in flux (such as in a combat area), reality is substantially more fluid than, say, the traffic patterns in Queens.
It takes events like 9/11, or the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, to adjust the normal state of affairs. In a flux situation, small actions (and individual actors) can cause tremendous instability...or crystalization, depending.
It's interesting that the problem eventually was a hardware problem. I suppose military designers, used to working in tight spaces and different environments, might have anticipated the problem (a submarine and a space station are probably more simlar that we'd think). For 'normal' designers, humidity isn't something that's considered an issue.
This'll get worse and worse as exploration goes farther and farther afield. Even little things like mold, dust, and the black gunk that piles up on the bottom of a mouse can become catastrophic when you're trapped in a box a couple of thousand miles away.
Using anti-bacterial (or anti-fungal) solutions in this situation may make the problem worse, because everything that survives will be even tougher to kill. Combine that with a higher level of background radiation (which should cause more mutations) and you might end up with a long mission who's crew has expired due to superbugs.
Another theory is that the "spontaneous brain activity" is normally suppressed, and it exists because it allows for a faster reaction time if necessary.
A 5 dimensional sphere is easy to visualize. The other two dimensions could be color and size, with the other three being the normal x y z coordinates.
People always assume that the extra dimensions are obscure and bizarre extension of space-time. They don't have to be. A dimension can be used for any variable you want. A dimension could be reflectivity of light, smell, fluffyness, firmness. hardness, etc.
Diamonds, for instance, are priced on a four-dimensional scale (carat, color, clarity, cut). Those dimensions have no relationship to space-time.
People always assume that dimension #4 is time and the other dimensions are, well, unknowable. That definitely is not the case.
The reasons were discussed before the iBricking event, but in summary:
1. Stability. Whenever third party apps are on your device, instability develops. Of course, sometimes the OS is unstable with no third-party apps running at all. Before the 1.1.1 firmware, Safari used to crash all the time. There haven't been a lot of reports about third party iApps being any worse behaved than the built-ins.
2. Support. Support issues are a perennial nightmare for any platform. It was speculated that lots of Apple and AT&T's support time was for applications that weren't native. Anyone have any numbers for this?
3. Development. It could be that the APIs are still in motion. The iBricking may be due to some bad updating; Mac OS X does have problem occasionally.
4. Developer support. Let's face it, lots of apps on other mobile platforms are ugly as all get-out. Apple's only now released human interface guidelines for the iPhone. If it's been this long for the HIG, the real developer docs'll take even more time.
So...there are lots of possible reasons for Apple's stance...before getting to the negatively-tinged personification excuses (control, vindictiveness, etc).
If you re-chip your car, you probably void your warranty across the board - for obvious reasons.
That's the car equivalent of reflashing your iPhone firmware.
Does it do anything bad? Well, probably not, but you never now. For car firmware, there may be a corner case that the chippers didn't think about...like pulling a controlled skid at 85 mph (oops).
Not sure what the equivalent would be for iPhone firmware, accidentally boosting the transmit power so it fries the users' brain?
You know, before TiVo people used to skip ads by (1) going to the bathroom, (2) getting a snack, (3) changing the channel, or (4) talking. Does that make OTA tv-watchers freeloaders too?
This attitude is irritating. Over the air content is provided for free. There is nothing that says "to watch this TV show you must watch the commercials." Same with radio. Radio content is provided for free. There is no implied contract that I must listen to advertisements to enjoy the content.
It is my choice whether to watch/listen to the ads or not. This isn't a question of morality at all. It's also my choice whether I buy a product or not. Does not buying mean I'm being immoral?
If a car dealer says "If you don't buy this car, I'll starve and you'll kill my family," would you still buy the car?
The experiment: if one letter appears on the screen, hit a key. If another letter appears on the screen, don't hit a key. The result: self-identified liberals accurately press or don't press the correct key. Self-identified conservatives do not accurately press the key. The conclusion: liberals are more open-minded.
Wait...what?
Alternate conclusions:
* Liberals are more likely to continue to do boring things for praise (more likely: how many PhD and Masters' candidates are left-leaning?) * Conservatives have a short attention span (also likely: watch Fox News)
Extrapolating brain function from keypresses (or lack thereof) is a stretch.
Thus the decision not to include 3G in the initial iPhone. Imagine what would happen if added 1m 3g customers who actually used the service. Meltdown...
There are a couple of issues with this proposal. The most basic one would be: how would it work?
All bridge & tunnel commuters would be exempt, because they already paid their toll to get in. How do you track that? How can they tell you crossed a toll bridge instead of the free bridge (there's on on the east side on 121st or so)? Is the mayor assuming that congestion isn't caused by the bridge and tunnel crowd?
Is NYC going to put a barrier across 86th street? How does that affect fire and emergency vehicles? How are the barriers going to go away during the day?
What if you have to drive across the 86th street line every day, for multiple deliveries? Is there a multiple-entry fee?
If you get below 86th before the cutoff time, then leave, can you go back in?
It's an interesting proposal, but I've never seen any data on the components of "congestion." If everybody is below 86th street when fee time starts, the fee won't do much to prevent congestion.
Your tools and techniques are probably bad, especially if you learned them in school. Do you know how to:
* use source control? * analyze someone else's code (multiple people's code), figure out what it's doing, and map that to what it's supposed to be doing? * can you understand the bug at all (what is is supposed to be doing)? * can you figure out how to verify that your fix actually worked? * do you understand how to configure and use the product you're working on? * explain what you're about to do, and justify why it should be done like that? * be focused enough to fix one (1) bug, and not go off and rewrite a whole lot of stuff that looks like cr*p? * not break the build?
In real life, doing architecture and writing stuff from scratch rarely happens...but that's all they teach you in school. In real life, you're working on some big pile of code that you're stuck with, can't change, and don't understand. You can fix #3, but usually #1 and #2 are immutable...until the magical day when they need a new feature (hey, we need to redo a whole chunk of that thing to get the new feature to work).
Do you need experience? Write something. Nothing sells your coding skills like code. The downside is that people will be able to see how your code is. If the programmers in your target company are good, they'll be able tell the difference between someone who's new and someone who just sucks. If they aren't so great, then your code is still a plus, because they won't know how bad it is.
You're missing the point. Buttons are intuitive, until you have 85 of them, all of which do something obscure.
The problem with buttons is they take up space - physical space and cognitive space. Watch a 65 year old try and use a modern A/V system remote, and they're totally lost. It's like looking at the cockpit of a 707.
It's a problem, because while 90% of the people only use 10% of the features, you have to be able to access the other 90% of the features. How many times do you change the surround sound mode of your home stereo? I did it once per input, then never did it again. So why do those buttons still take up space on my remote?
The harmony remote is one attempt at reducing the complexity - you trade complexity up front (you need to program the remote with your devices) for simplicity later. The above mentioned 65 year old had no problem watching TV with the harmony remote - on a system an order of magnitude more complicated than his.
The higher-end models have almost no buttons; they have screens that overload. In fact, you really only need four or five for a TV remote: volume up, volume down, channel up, channel down, power, change input. Sure, the number keys are nice, but they aren't necessary.
However, a more sophisticated remote costs more money. Simplicity always costs more up front, but pays off every day because there's less aggravation. Buttons are cheap. Removing buttons is expensive.
They're not using the right terminology. It sounds like the iPhones are doing an ARP request for an IP address that isn't on the Duke network. Maybe it's trying to update its ARP tables?
Anyhow, the ARP standard is unclear enough that it's undefined what the response should be for an ARP request to an unknown destination should be (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/std/std37.html). Theoretically, every packet that you send needs an ARP entry, which means that every packet sent to something that isn't in your machine's ARP table would generate an ARP request. In reality, it seems that your router tends to substitute its own MAC address for non-local ARP entries (since all non-local packets go through the router, you really don't have to know what the real MAC address is)
It sounds like the Duke Cisco routers are misconfigured somehow, and are generating an ARP storm. Some Cisco routers has a bug where a packet sent to an IP address for which the router doesn't have an ARP entry causes the router to broadcast all subsequent packets across all of the router's ports. It happens in the cable industry when someone swaps out a GigE card and forgets to update the ARP tables on the Ciscos. Solution: use dynamic ARP tables, which can be a security hole.
When it comes to "SAAAD" (spooky action at a distance), it's real. The question is why/how.
Since it's impossible for SAAAD to occur and yet it does, it should be obvious that there's a problem with the theory that says that it's impossible for it to occur.
An discussion of why will be difficult, becaues of language problems. As someone once said, if the only way to evaulate a claim is to use the reasoning that the claim is attempting to invaldiate, evaluation will be difficult.
More power to him. The only problem will be making sure "interference/noise" isn't really communication from the future. Maybe he'll come up with some other exciting piece of information.
Cable encryption is done per channel, not per title. The problem is that Comcast's infrastructure is built on SeaChange, which is running Windows NT 4 (if I remember correctly). They just can't handle the load.
The other architectures (non-SeaChange) can handle encrypted VOD streams, but tend not to because the operator hasn't thought about it.
And lastly, encryption of VOD content is done by fiat from corporate - that's how the cable industry works. And that's exactly the kind of thing that corporate is for - to set systemwide policies like that.
There was a full-blown TCP stack on the Mac Plus. And it's not like they run in the background, either. Not sure what the original poster is trying to express.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm surprised that google is going the partner route. One thing that means is that the initiative is almost guaranteed to fail.
Why?
Because partners have their own agenda as to why they're partnering with Google.
Most carriers have long, and somewhat decent working relationships with their platform vendors. Apple comes out, and whacks all those relationships with a stick by producing a device that's arguably far superior to any US phone.
What are the other carriers to do? The phone OS's functionality is basically specified by the carrier, who picks and chooses various features depending on the phone's price point, how the phone will fit into the carrier's current phone mix, and the competition (not necessarily in that order). Google comes out with something that's "open" , and while it may be interesting, from a carrier point of view, that interest doesn't necessarily mean that it's going anywhere. Given how big Google is, the carriers may be on board just to sink the gPhone ship (welcome to corporate america).
Only time will tell. Will the gPhone be substantially better than Symbian etc?
Actually, it sounds like the user is prompted to install it. There's no local priv escalation vulnerability, unless you count the local user installing the plugin a privilege escalation vulnerability (which, in essence, they are).
It's amusing, because installing a codec for some bizarre video format is something that people would do. Soon, there'll be a "Flesh Player8.0" that you'll need to install, made by "Micromedia"!
Your analysis seems valid, for situations that are relatively stable. For system which are in flux (such as in a combat area), reality is substantially more fluid than, say, the traffic patterns in Queens.
It takes events like 9/11, or the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, to adjust the normal state of affairs. In a flux situation, small actions (and individual actors) can cause tremendous instability...or crystalization, depending.
It's interesting that the problem eventually was a hardware problem. I suppose military designers, used to working in tight spaces and different environments, might have anticipated the problem (a submarine and a space station are probably more simlar that we'd think). For 'normal' designers, humidity isn't something that's considered an issue.
This'll get worse and worse as exploration goes farther and farther afield. Even little things like mold, dust, and the black gunk that piles up on the bottom of a mouse can become catastrophic when you're trapped in a box a couple of thousand miles away.
Using anti-bacterial (or anti-fungal) solutions in this situation may make the problem worse, because everything that survives will be even tougher to kill. Combine that with a higher level of background radiation (which should cause more mutations) and you might end up with a long mission who's crew has expired due to superbugs.
Another theory is that the "spontaneous brain activity" is normally suppressed, and it exists because it allows for a faster reaction time if necessary.
Read the freaking comment. Yutz.
A 5 dimensional sphere is easy to visualize. The other two dimensions could be color and size, with the other three being the normal x y z coordinates.
People always assume that the extra dimensions are obscure and bizarre extension of space-time. They don't have to be. A dimension can be used for any variable you want. A dimension could be reflectivity of light, smell, fluffyness, firmness. hardness, etc.
Diamonds, for instance, are priced on a four-dimensional scale (carat, color, clarity, cut). Those dimensions have no relationship to space-time.
People always assume that dimension #4 is time and the other dimensions are, well, unknowable. That definitely is not the case.
The reasons were discussed before the iBricking event, but in summary:
1. Stability. Whenever third party apps are on your device, instability develops. Of course, sometimes the OS is unstable with no third-party apps running at all. Before the 1.1.1 firmware, Safari used to crash all the time. There haven't been a lot of reports about third party iApps being any worse behaved than the built-ins.
2. Support. Support issues are a perennial nightmare for any platform. It was speculated that lots of Apple and AT&T's support time was for applications that weren't native. Anyone have any numbers for this?
3. Development. It could be that the APIs are still in motion. The iBricking may be due to some bad updating; Mac OS X does have problem occasionally.
4. Developer support. Let's face it, lots of apps on other mobile platforms are ugly as all get-out. Apple's only now released human interface guidelines for the iPhone. If it's been this long for the HIG, the real developer docs'll take even more time.
So...there are lots of possible reasons for Apple's stance...before getting to the negatively-tinged personification excuses (control, vindictiveness, etc).
If you re-chip your car, you probably void your warranty across the board - for obvious reasons.
That's the car equivalent of reflashing your iPhone firmware.
Does it do anything bad? Well, probably not, but you never now. For car firmware, there may be a corner case that the chippers didn't think about...like pulling a controlled skid at 85 mph (oops).
Not sure what the equivalent would be for iPhone firmware, accidentally boosting the transmit power so it fries the users' brain?
Wait, they were irrelevant before they went behind the wall!
How are humans and bees/ants/swarms different?
When you put lots of humans together, they get dumber.
You know, before TiVo people used to skip ads by (1) going to the bathroom, (2) getting a snack, (3) changing the channel, or (4) talking. Does that make OTA tv-watchers freeloaders too?
This attitude is irritating. Over the air content is provided for free. There is nothing that says "to watch this TV show you must watch the commercials." Same with radio. Radio content is provided for free. There is no implied contract that I must listen to advertisements to enjoy the content.
It is my choice whether to watch/listen to the ads or not. This isn't a question of morality at all. It's also my choice whether I buy a product or not. Does not buying mean I'm being immoral?
If a car dealer says "If you don't buy this car, I'll starve and you'll kill my family," would you still buy the car?
The experiment: if one letter appears on the screen, hit a key. If another letter appears on the screen, don't hit a key.
The result: self-identified liberals accurately press or don't press the correct key. Self-identified conservatives do not accurately press the key.
The conclusion: liberals are more open-minded.
Wait...what?
Alternate conclusions:
* Liberals are more likely to continue to do boring things for praise (more likely: how many PhD and Masters' candidates are left-leaning?)
* Conservatives have a short attention span (also likely: watch Fox News)
Extrapolating brain function from keypresses (or lack thereof) is a stretch.
Thus the decision not to include 3G in the initial iPhone. Imagine what would happen if added 1m 3g customers who actually used the service. Meltdown...
Oh, no, another factor!
Lucky for us we haven't committed any funds to the global warming cleanup fund yet.
There are a couple of issues with this proposal. The most basic one would be: how would it work?
All bridge & tunnel commuters would be exempt, because they already paid their toll to get in. How do you track that? How can they tell you crossed a toll bridge instead of the free bridge (there's on on the east side on 121st or so)? Is the mayor assuming that congestion isn't caused by the bridge and tunnel crowd?
Is NYC going to put a barrier across 86th street? How does that affect fire and emergency vehicles? How are the barriers going to go away during the day?
What if you have to drive across the 86th street line every day, for multiple deliveries? Is there a multiple-entry fee?
If you get below 86th before the cutoff time, then leave, can you go back in?
It's an interesting proposal, but I've never seen any data on the components of "congestion." If everybody is below 86th street when fee time starts, the fee won't do much to prevent congestion.
Your tools and techniques are probably bad, especially if you learned them in school. Do you know how to:
* use source control?
* analyze someone else's code (multiple people's code), figure out what it's doing, and map that to what it's supposed to be doing?
* can you understand the bug at all (what is is supposed to be doing)?
* can you figure out how to verify that your fix actually worked?
* do you understand how to configure and use the product you're working on?
* explain what you're about to do, and justify why it should be done like that?
* be focused enough to fix one (1) bug, and not go off and rewrite a whole lot of stuff that looks like cr*p?
* not break the build?
In real life, doing architecture and writing stuff from scratch rarely happens...but that's all they teach you in school. In real life, you're working on some big pile of code that you're stuck with, can't change, and don't understand. You can fix #3, but usually #1 and #2 are immutable...until the magical day when they need a new feature (hey, we need to redo a whole chunk of that thing to get the new feature to work).
Do you need experience? Write something. Nothing sells your coding skills like code. The downside is that people will be able to see how your code is. If the programmers in your target company are good, they'll be able tell the difference between someone who's new and someone who just sucks. If they aren't so great, then your code is still a plus, because they won't know how bad it is.
You're missing the point. Buttons are intuitive, until you have 85 of them, all of which do something obscure.
The problem with buttons is they take up space - physical space and cognitive space. Watch a 65 year old try and use a modern A/V system remote, and they're totally lost. It's like looking at the cockpit of a 707.
It's a problem, because while 90% of the people only use 10% of the features, you have to be able to access the other 90% of the features. How many times do you change the surround sound mode of your home stereo? I did it once per input, then never did it again. So why do those buttons still take up space on my remote?
The harmony remote is one attempt at reducing the complexity - you trade complexity up front (you need to program the remote with your devices) for simplicity later. The above mentioned 65 year old had no problem watching TV with the harmony remote - on a system an order of magnitude more complicated than his.
The higher-end models have almost no buttons; they have screens that overload. In fact, you really only need four or five for a TV remote: volume up, volume down, channel up, channel down, power, change input. Sure, the number keys are nice, but they aren't necessary.
However, a more sophisticated remote costs more money. Simplicity always costs more up front, but pays off every day because there's less aggravation. Buttons are cheap. Removing buttons is expensive.
Zune 2.0 is like Services for Unix 2.0. Why do they bother?
Sometimes Microsoft just competes because they don't have anything better to do with a couple of billion dollars.
They're not using the right terminology. It sounds like the iPhones are doing an ARP request for an IP address that isn't on the Duke network. Maybe it's trying to update its ARP tables?
Anyhow, the ARP standard is unclear enough that it's undefined what the response should be for an ARP request to an unknown destination should be (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/std/std37.html). Theoretically, every packet that you send needs an ARP entry, which means that every packet sent to something that isn't in your machine's ARP table would generate an ARP request. In reality, it seems that your router tends to substitute its own MAC address for non-local ARP entries (since all non-local packets go through the router, you really don't have to know what the real MAC address is)
It sounds like the Duke Cisco routers are misconfigured somehow, and are generating an ARP storm. Some Cisco routers has a bug where a packet sent to an IP address for which the router doesn't have an ARP entry causes the router to broadcast all subsequent packets across all of the router's ports. It happens in the cable industry when someone swaps out a GigE card and forgets to update the ARP tables on the Ciscos. Solution: use dynamic ARP tables, which can be a security hole.
FWIW.
Google is paying for the customer base, not the tech. Getting customers is the hard part, not the engineering.
This attitude shows why you will always be single.
When it comes to "SAAAD" (spooky action at a distance), it's real. The question is why/how.
Since it's impossible for SAAAD to occur and yet it does, it should be obvious that there's a problem with the theory that says that it's impossible for it to occur.
An discussion of why will be difficult, becaues of language problems. As someone once said, if the only way to evaulate a claim is to use the reasoning that the claim is attempting to invaldiate, evaluation will be difficult.
More power to him. The only problem will be making sure "interference/noise" isn't really communication from the future. Maybe he'll come up with some other exciting piece of information.
Funny how the comcast spokesperson lies:
Cable encryption is done per channel, not per title. The problem is that Comcast's infrastructure is built on SeaChange, which is running Windows NT 4 (if I remember correctly). They just can't handle the load.
The other architectures (non-SeaChange) can handle encrypted VOD streams, but tend not to because the operator hasn't thought about it.
And lastly, encryption of VOD content is done by fiat from corporate - that's how the cable industry works. And that's exactly the kind of thing that corporate is for - to set systemwide policies like that.
There was a full-blown TCP stack on the Mac Plus. And it's not like they run in the background, either. Not sure what the original poster is trying to express.