Definitely a patent troll, just a patent troll started by practising entities. The only reason they started this troll is to be able to use the common troll modus operandi: sue with bullshit patents without the risk of being sued because, troll as they are, they have nothing to sue over. This 'company' and its ilk is to the stated purpose of patent law as what high frequency traders are to the stated goal of the stock market: they are parasites.
Pity it is not legal to use a jumbo-sized fly swat on this vermin.
*Splat* another one bites the dust... It would be so... rewarding.
Actually that is not what I do when I set up an Android phone. I skip the Google account creation, root the phone, disable the Google services and re-enable them on demand. That way I only get to tell Google about my activities with the phone when I'm using the 'play store' (horrible name, that). As soon as I'm done playing with the store I press the 'disable' button and 'poof', there goes my Google login. The only disadvantage to this is that I have to enter my account details whenever I want to use the 'play store'. Since that does not happen all to often I don't feel this is a serious problem.
If you have a rooted Android phone (or if you have any Android phone but have not gotten around to rooting the thing yet) you might want to look into the possibilities of the 'pm' command. Use 'pm disable package_name' to disable packages, 'pm enable package_name' to re-enable them. This, by the way, is often called 'freezing' and 'thawing' packages since those terms are used by the 'Titanium Backup' program. It should be clear that there is no need for such programs if you have a little bit of command line/scripting savvy, Android is a (rather odd) Linux distribution after all...
Whoa there, you seem to have gotten your cheese colours mixed up. There's plenty of real green cheeses which are fully capable of developing cracks in their crust. Take for instance Schabziger, a Swiss green cheese which is as hard as a rock and therefore usually eaten grated.
Ah, another naysayer who knows best, typing away from the comfy confines of his home/basement/cubicle.
Tell me, oh know-it-all, have you considered the possibility of using software to *gasp* filter out those anomalies? After all, given a dense-enough sensor network it becomes easy to sort out the outliers since air pressure does not vary that much in a given area.
As to the different heights, this is also rather easy. The location of the sensor is known within a few hundred meters. The height can be correlated from map data. Yes, in some areas people tend to climb tall buildings, but those areas are well-known and rather concentrated. Also, there is that software filter you can use to normalize the data.
To conclude this rant, maybe you should think a bit before starting to spout criticism. You might find out that, in fact, you did *not* know better than all those other people who have spent time and energy to rig up an interesting project.
Please tell me where I can obtain the source for Photoshop and MS Office so that I can recompile them.
At Adobe of course. Given their reputation when it comes to securing their wares, I guess it should suffice to send them an email telling them that their webmail account is about to be blocked and would they please enter all their passwords on this form so it can be sent to http://123.122.121.120/cgi-bin/adobehack.pl.
Or if you think that is to much work, just login to ftp.adobe.com, username 'admin' and password 's3cr3t' or 'p4ssw0rd'...
Funny, that. I'd swear that this PC I'm composing this message on is loaded with software. As is the server which it connects to, as well as all the other machines in this house. And I did not pay a single cent for that software. Where did it come from? Why was it made?
Hint: financial profit is not the only motivator. If it were the world would be full of your beloved iOS.
Uhhh... I have a Defy as well (Defy+ actually but the difference is negligible). It runs Jelly Bean (4.1.2). There is now an early demo of Jelly Bean 4.2, the version just launched with the new Nexus 4 and Nexus 10.
You don't need to replace your Defy. Just root it if you haven't already, and install one of the many available roms on it - everything from Gingerbread through ICS and JB 4.1.2. The Defy is actually a good example of how futile those locked boot loaders and restricted systems really are: the latest Jelly Bean versions run a custom kernel.
I don't want "the cloud" and I sure as hell don't want desktop / application level social media integration. Like many computer users, I want a reliable OS that stays the fuck out of my way while I work.
No, I don't want 'the cloud' as imagined by profit-hungry starry-eyed Web 3.141592653 prophets.
I don't want social media. If I want to be social, I'll socialize. If I want to contact someone, I'll contact them. The key word here is 'I' - as in the person who is in control.
But... I do want my software to be as network-transparent as possible. I want to be able to access my data from whatever device I happen to be using, from a PC to a phone to a tablet to whatever. That data happens to reside on my own server, which is parked under my own stairs in my own home (with encrypted backups of important stuff seeded here and there and everywhere) so it does not fit the cloud-moniker as envisioned by those who hope to profit from mining my data - sorry folks. So I just run my own 'cloud' services as I've been doing for about 20 years now. I wonder what name I have to use in 5 years time...
It is 15 years in prison - who cares about the headline?
Say that this person has sold for a grand total of $100,000.- (street value) merchandise. For that he'll go to prison for 15 years.
Now look at how much money the mafiaa has withheld and continues to withhold from those who actually create the product they peddle. Are they going to prison as well? If not, why not? If you want to talk about copyright violation on industrial scale I'd say it does not get bigger than what the mafiaa does.
Look at that Archimedes palimpsest. There we have a book made of parchment, in which Archimedes philosophised himself towards calculus. Scraped out at a later stage and reused... to write a prayer book. From the conquest of knowledge to the submission of free thought, on one piece of parchment.
It puts in mind that lizard, sitting in the sun on top of the remains of a launch platform built by a civilisation now long gone, thinking (or at least doing the lizard-equivalent of it) 'what a nice basking spot someone made me here'.
and no she could never run a Linux distro - she's a teacher, schools use Microsoft Office, and I don't want to cause added stress by making extra work for her
A teacher. Who can not learn new things.
Cognitive disconnect?
My wife is a vet (as in 'animal doctor'). She has tons of patience - for animals (horses, to be specific). When it comes to technology she has no patience whatsoever, and seems to have a complete lack of the urge to explore. You can guide her to press the button which says 'click' ten times, and will need to do the same the eleventh because she'll have forgotten how to do it. At her work they use Windows since all that crappy vet-software is built on the ramshackle house of cards called Microsoft - parts of it still need VB6...
At home we have no Windows so she uses Linux. In her case it is Ubuntu, but if she happens to use one of my computers she's confronted with Debian running Xmonad. She grumbles, but then she always grumbles when it comes to computers. I don't notice her grumbling any more using Linux than she does using Windows. If she can, so can your wife - and as it seems to be her job to teach children about new things I hope she has the aptitude and open mind to pick up a new thing or two herself. If not, I pity the children under her care.
Well, yes... and no. Yes, there are people - both older people as well as younger ones with visual problems - who are better off with BIG buttons and links and such. On the other hand, there are people - both younger people as well as older ones with good vision - who want to cram as much as possible into the pixels offered by their screens. I'm an example of the latter case, being middle-aged but using a 240 dpi phone at 160 dpi so I can get 50% more (text, links, buttons, etc) on screen. I read books on a 3.7" device (Motorola Defy+ running Jelly Bean, 480*854), one screen contains more text than one normal printed page.
In other words, the GUI is not really broken as long as it can adapt to these use cases. Android is actually quite capable in this respect. The same can not be said for iOS which is totally resolution-dependent and can not adapt at all - it is their way or the highway. I don't know about Windows Phone, never having come across anyone using one of those things...
I am Dutch, I live in Sweden. Before 9/11 I used to frequent the US - as in came there at least once a year. Often for business, sometimes for pleasure (eg. walked the Appalachian trail, climbed Mt. Washington, went hiking in the San Andreas mountains, ditto in the Catskills, ditto Yosemite, paddled the Yukon, etc). The day after 9/11 I was scheduled to fly to the Netherlands from Vancouver, after making my way from Vancouver via Whitehorse and the Yukon through Eagle (US/Canadian border on the Yukon) to Emmonak/Alakanuk (at the Bering strait), Anchorage, the Alaska Marine highway (that's a ferry service for those who don't know, one I highly recommend even though the ship I was on (the Queen of the North) sunk a few years later...) via Prince Rupert and Vancouver Island back to where I waited for my plane. That fateful morning we had a surprise with out breakfast: some idiots had flow airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As you know all flights were grounded so I got to spend another week in Vancouver.
Why this long story? To make clear that I have no problems with visiting Northern America (although I do prefer Canada over the US - more space, fewer people) nor with North Americans. I came, I spent, I went. Many times over.
After 9/11 I've been in the US just one more time, in 2003. I went to the IETF meeting in San Francisco. That was the last time I was there, and it will remain so until I feel welcome again. Not so much welcome by 'the average North American but welcome by those who set up the goon squad to harass visitors.
I had a look at your comments and noticed you have an awful lot to say about Windows 8. All more or less positive, I might add. Informative, often, but... what shall I say... you seem to wear rose-coloured glasses when writing about Microsoft products.
You would not happen to be paid to do that, now would you?
but as a "just works" freeware replacement for Windows, it's been a bust.
What does Windows have to do with Linux? For that matter, what does Windows have to do with 'just works'? Why do you think Linus' influence over the kernel - and nothing but the kernel - has stopped Linux distributions from 'replacing' Windows for 'average people'?
Hint: it is not Linus which kept Linux distributions from 'replacing' Windows for 'average people'. It is money and corporate politics.
And Linux is not 'freeware'. It is free software. Look up the difference if you want, these things are not the same.
Nonsense. Apart from dissolving some (generally older) gaskets/seals/paints and the varnish left by previously used petrol, ethanol is no worse for engines than fossil hydrocarbon distillate fuels (eg. petrol). In some ways it is actually better as it burns cleaner and is less likely to clog up the engine with carbon deposits.
Ethanol can also be used in two-stroke engines as long as a suitable lubricant is provided (either pre-mix or post-mix). The exhaust fumes from ethanol are less noxious than those of petrol, which makes it a good alternative for eg. chainsaws and weed cutters.
Unfortunately there is an incredible amount of disinformation on this subject on the 'net, your post is just one example of such. There seems to something close to religious fervour when it comes to debating the pros and cons of biofuels vs. fossil fuels (imagine the discussions which would erupt over fossil-fueled iProducts vs. biofueled Androids... now that would be something to behold...).
Microsoft patented GIS? Colour me surprised, I thought that started somewhere around the second half of the 18th century... on paper maps back then, but still... data, from multiple sources, overlayed on maps.
Better not to link to 'that site' (f.o.s.s.patents) as it is run by the notorious you_pay_for_what_I_say F.Mueller.
Here is the story on inverse inference on Groklaw. While some may claim that site is biased as well (against software patents in this case) there is no money involved, just personal and professional conviction - and common sense of course.
Why in the name of Oppenheimer did they fire the one guy who actually did his job, when everyone above and around him appeared to fail pretty seriously at theirs?
Because they could not kick the blame any lower, of course. CEO suit kicks it to second in command who kicks it to section head who kicks it to department head who kicks it to location manager who kicks it to team leader who kicks it to guard. Guard is one of those who do the actual work all the suits reap their salaries from so he has nobody to kick to. He keeps it, gets all those suits angry stares and a pink slip.
Once you're over the wall, you have free reign over everything inside? This compared to the permission-based model used in eg. Android, where applications need explicit permission to access certain devices, services and data. Of course a 'root' user on both systems can do whatever they please. And, as can be seen from the paper, some of those permissions are to coarse-grained to be effective in stopping
This is not a matter of 'Apple' vs 'Android' vs the rest. They chose Android 'for practical reasons' ('We implemented on Android for practical reasons, but we expect such malware to generalize to other platforms such as iOS and Windows Phone.'), most likely because it is an easy and flexible platform to develop and implement for - just download the SDK, allow external sources and away you go.
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Definitely a patent troll, just a patent troll started by practising entities. The only reason they started this troll is to be able to use the common troll modus operandi: sue with bullshit patents without the risk of being sued because, troll as they are, they have nothing to sue over. This 'company' and its ilk is to the stated purpose of patent law as what high frequency traders are to the stated goal of the stock market: they are parasites.
Pity it is not legal to use a jumbo-sized fly swat on this vermin.
*Splat* another one bites the dust... It would be so... rewarding.
Actually that is not what I do when I set up an Android phone. I skip the Google account creation, root the phone, disable the Google services and re-enable them on demand. That way I only get to tell Google about my activities with the phone when I'm using the 'play store' (horrible name, that). As soon as I'm done playing with the store I press the 'disable' button and 'poof', there goes my Google login. The only disadvantage to this is that I have to enter my account details whenever I want to use the 'play store'. Since that does not happen all to often I don't feel this is a serious problem.
If you have a rooted Android phone (or if you have any Android phone but have not gotten around to rooting the thing yet) you might want to look into the possibilities of the 'pm' command. Use 'pm disable package_name' to disable packages, 'pm enable package_name' to re-enable them. This, by the way, is often called 'freezing' and 'thawing' packages since those terms are used by the 'Titanium Backup' program. It should be clear that there is no need for such programs if you have a little bit of command line/scripting savvy, Android is a (rather odd) Linux distribution after all...
Whoa there, you seem to have gotten your cheese colours mixed up. There's plenty of real green cheeses which are fully capable of developing cracks in their crust. Take for instance Schabziger, a Swiss green cheese which is as hard as a rock and therefore usually eaten grated.
Ah, another naysayer who knows best, typing away from the comfy confines of his home/basement/cubicle.
Tell me, oh know-it-all, have you considered the possibility of using software to *gasp* filter out those anomalies? After all, given a dense-enough sensor network it becomes easy to sort out the outliers since air pressure does not vary that much in a given area.
As to the different heights, this is also rather easy. The location of the sensor is known within a few hundred meters. The height can be correlated from map data. Yes, in some areas people tend to climb tall buildings, but those areas are well-known and rather concentrated. Also, there is that software filter you can use to normalize the data.
To conclude this rant, maybe you should think a bit before starting to spout criticism. You might find out that, in fact, you did *not* know better than all those other people who have spent time and energy to rig up an interesting project.
At Adobe of course. Given their reputation when it comes to securing their wares, I guess it should suffice to send them an email telling them that their webmail account is about to be blocked and would they please enter all their passwords on this form so it can be sent to http://123.122.121.120/cgi-bin/adobehack.pl.
Or if you think that is to much work, just login to ftp.adobe.com, username 'admin' and password 's3cr3t' or 'p4ssw0rd'...
Ah, the well-known and rather worn fanboi excuse.
Funny, that. I'd swear that this PC I'm composing this message on is loaded with software. As is the server which it connects to, as well as all the other machines in this house. And I did not pay a single cent for that software. Where did it come from? Why was it made?
Hint: financial profit is not the only motivator. If it were the world would be full of your beloved iOS.
Uhhh... I have a Defy as well (Defy+ actually but the difference is negligible). It runs Jelly Bean (4.1.2). There is now an early demo of Jelly Bean 4.2, the version just launched with the new Nexus 4 and Nexus 10.
You don't need to replace your Defy. Just root it if you haven't already, and install one of the many available roms on it - everything from Gingerbread through ICS and JB 4.1.2. The Defy is actually a good example of how futile those locked boot loaders and restricted systems really are: the latest Jelly Bean versions run a custom kernel.
No, I don't want 'the cloud' as imagined by profit-hungry starry-eyed Web 3.141592653 prophets.
I don't want social media. If I want to be social, I'll socialize. If I want to contact someone, I'll contact them. The key word here is 'I' - as in the person who is in control.
But... I do want my software to be as network-transparent as possible. I want to be able to access my data from whatever device I happen to be using, from a PC to a phone to a tablet to whatever. That data happens to reside on my own server, which is parked under my own stairs in my own home (with encrypted backups of important stuff seeded here and there and everywhere) so it does not fit the cloud-moniker as envisioned by those who hope to profit from mining my data - sorry folks. So I just run my own 'cloud' services as I've been doing for about 20 years now. I wonder what name I have to use in 5 years time...
It is 15 years in prison - who cares about the headline?
Say that this person has sold for a grand total of $100,000.- (street value) merchandise. For that he'll go to prison for 15 years.
Now look at how much money the mafiaa has withheld and continues to withhold from those who actually create the product they peddle. Are they going to prison as well? If not, why not? If you want to talk about copyright violation on industrial scale I'd say it does not get bigger than what the mafiaa does.
Look at that Archimedes palimpsest. There we have a book made of parchment, in which Archimedes philosophised himself towards calculus. Scraped out at a later stage and reused... to write a prayer book. From the conquest of knowledge to the submission of free thought, on one piece of parchment.
It puts in mind that lizard, sitting in the sun on top of the remains of a launch platform built by a civilisation now long gone, thinking (or at least doing the lizard-equivalent of it) 'what a nice basking spot someone made me here'.
Of course that should read 'November 2001', not 'November 2011'...
Those 8 TFLOPS would have landed it somewhere at the top of the #500 supercomputer performance list in November, 2011. ASCI White used 8192 375MHz Power3 cores to achieve this performance. It took up a fair bit of space and used 3 MW to run the machine with a further 3 MW needed for cooling. It had a theoretical processing speed of 12.3 teraflops.
A teacher. Who can not learn new things.
Cognitive disconnect?
My wife is a vet (as in 'animal doctor'). She has tons of patience - for animals (horses, to be specific). When it comes to technology she has no patience whatsoever, and seems to have a complete lack of the urge to explore. You can guide her to press the button which says 'click' ten times, and will need to do the same the eleventh because she'll have forgotten how to do it. At her work they use Windows since all that crappy vet-software is built on the ramshackle house of cards called Microsoft - parts of it still need VB6...
At home we have no Windows so she uses Linux. In her case it is Ubuntu, but if she happens to use one of my computers she's confronted with Debian running Xmonad. She grumbles, but then she always grumbles when it comes to computers. I don't notice her grumbling any more using Linux than she does using Windows. If she can, so can your wife - and as it seems to be her job to teach children about new things I hope she has the aptitude and open mind to pick up a new thing or two herself. If not, I pity the children under her care.
That's not a fuel truck. This is a fuel truck.
Well, yes... and no. Yes, there are people - both older people as well as younger ones with visual problems - who are better off with BIG buttons and links and such. On the other hand, there are people - both younger people as well as older ones with good vision - who want to cram as much as possible into the pixels offered by their screens. I'm an example of the latter case, being middle-aged but using a 240 dpi phone at 160 dpi so I can get 50% more (text, links, buttons, etc) on screen. I read books on a 3.7" device (Motorola Defy+ running Jelly Bean, 480*854), one screen contains more text than one normal printed page.
In other words, the GUI is not really broken as long as it can adapt to these use cases. Android is actually quite capable in this respect. The same can not be said for iOS which is totally resolution-dependent and can not adapt at all - it is their way or the highway. I don't know about Windows Phone, never having come across anyone using one of those things...
"Hook, Line and Sinker". Look it up.
The real reason for the lack of an SD slot is this: "Pricing starts at $399 with 16GB of storage and tops out at $499 for the 32GB model"
When was it again that 16 GB of flash cost $100?
I am Dutch, I live in Sweden. Before 9/11 I used to frequent the US - as in came there at least once a year. Often for business, sometimes for pleasure (eg. walked the Appalachian trail, climbed Mt. Washington, went hiking in the San Andreas mountains, ditto in the Catskills, ditto Yosemite, paddled the Yukon, etc). The day after 9/11 I was scheduled to fly to the Netherlands from Vancouver, after making my way from Vancouver via Whitehorse and the Yukon through Eagle (US/Canadian border on the Yukon) to Emmonak/Alakanuk (at the Bering strait), Anchorage, the Alaska Marine highway (that's a ferry service for those who don't know, one I highly recommend even though the ship I was on (the Queen of the North) sunk a few years later...) via Prince Rupert and Vancouver Island back to where I waited for my plane. That fateful morning we had a surprise with out breakfast: some idiots had flow airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As you know all flights were grounded so I got to spend another week in Vancouver.
Why this long story? To make clear that I have no problems with visiting Northern America (although I do prefer Canada over the US - more space, fewer people) nor with North Americans. I came, I spent, I went. Many times over.
After 9/11 I've been in the US just one more time, in 2003. I went to the IETF meeting in San Francisco. That was the last time I was there, and it will remain so until I feel welcome again. Not so much welcome by 'the average North American but welcome by those who set up the goon squad to harass visitors.
I had a look at your comments and noticed you have an awful lot to say about Windows 8. All more or less positive, I might add. Informative, often, but... what shall I say... you seem to wear rose-coloured glasses when writing about Microsoft products.
You would not happen to be paid to do that, now would you?
What does Windows have to do with Linux? For that matter, what does Windows have to do with 'just works'? Why do you think Linus' influence over the kernel - and nothing but the kernel - has stopped Linux distributions from 'replacing' Windows for 'average people'?
Hint: it is not Linus which kept Linux distributions from 'replacing' Windows for 'average people'. It is money and corporate politics.
And Linux is not 'freeware'. It is free software. Look up the difference if you want, these things are not the same.
Nonsense. Apart from dissolving some (generally older) gaskets/seals/paints and the varnish left by previously used petrol, ethanol is no worse for engines than fossil hydrocarbon distillate fuels (eg. petrol). In some ways it is actually better as it burns cleaner and is less likely to clog up the engine with carbon deposits.
Ethanol can also be used in two-stroke engines as long as a suitable lubricant is provided (either pre-mix or post-mix). The exhaust fumes from ethanol are less noxious than those of petrol, which makes it a good alternative for eg. chainsaws and weed cutters.
Unfortunately there is an incredible amount of disinformation on this subject on the 'net, your post is just one example of such. There seems to something close to religious fervour when it comes to debating the pros and cons of biofuels vs. fossil fuels (imagine the discussions which would erupt over fossil-fueled iProducts vs. biofueled Androids... now that would be something to behold...).
FYI, apps on iOS are more crash prone than Android apps.
Microsoft patented GIS? Colour me surprised, I thought that started somewhere around the second half of the 18th century... on paper maps back then, but still... data, from multiple sources, overlayed on maps.
Better not to link to 'that site' (f.o.s.s.patents) as it is run by the notorious you_pay_for_what_I_say F.Mueller.
Here is the story on inverse inference on Groklaw. While some may claim that site is biased as well (against software patents in this case) there is no money involved, just personal and professional conviction - and common sense of course.
Because they could not kick the blame any lower, of course. CEO suit kicks it to second in command who kicks it to section head who kicks it to department head who kicks it to location manager who kicks it to team leader who kicks it to guard. Guard is one of those who do the actual work all the suits reap their salaries from so he has nobody to kick to. He keeps it, gets all those suits angry stares and a pink slip.
Simple, really.
Once you're over the wall, you have free reign over everything inside? This compared to the permission-based model used in eg. Android, where applications need explicit permission to access certain devices, services and data. Of course a 'root' user on both systems can do whatever they please. And, as can be seen from the paper, some of those permissions are to coarse-grained to be effective in stopping
This is not a matter of 'Apple' vs 'Android' vs the rest. They chose Android 'for practical reasons' ('We implemented on Android for practical reasons, but we expect such malware to generalize to other platforms such as iOS and Windows Phone.'), most likely because it is an easy and flexible platform to develop and implement for - just download the SDK, allow external sources and away you go.