There may not be much mobile love between Google and Apple, but I'm quite sure that neither one wants Microsoft to win anything in such a market.
After all, if Microsoft wins this one, what's to stop them from contriving other overly-broad patents against Apple's iPhone at the first convenient moment?
When it comes to the mobile market, Microsoft doesn't have time for subtlety... their mobile reputation has been circling the drain for years now, hype be damned.
Thing is, unless there's an immediate injunction granted, Microsoft may not have time for the lawsuit to work its magic either... maybe they're just hoping to make off of forced royalties what they suspect they won't be making in voluntary licensing and/or sales? 'course, if that's their strategic move in mobile, their "technologies" are liable to become about as relevant as an LZW-compressed.gif file is to pictures online.
Patent threats (no matter how subtle) are pretty much all they have left. They've already indicated that their product won't be able to compete on merit. Sure, they've got gimmicks and branding (Zune and XBox), but there's nothing backing those up anytime soon (Zune is just a fancy name for media player, and I sincerely doubt that XBox Live has nearly as many playable-on-the-phone games as Android and iPhone has at this time).
Long story short, Microsoft is in the hole insofar as mobile goes, it's their own damned fault (they've had at least 7 frickin' years of lead time), and they're desperately casting about for anything and everything to remain relevant.
I'm asking because their terms aren't likely to attract too many top-end developers. Seriously, would you want Amazon to set prices for your product, and tack in DRM?
That last bit is uglier than the rest - even if you're a big fan of DRM, the fact that Amazon can literally modify your binaries at will (read: potentially break something) is enough by itself to drive off any developer with more than two working neurons.
Now if Amazon drops those two parts, they'd stand half a chance, IMHO.
Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can
We have only ONE place that we know life flourishes.
...and at least one more (relatively) nearby where we can test the theory (Europa), plus one other place where there is speculation based on (admittedly circumstantial) evidence that life once existed (Mars).
Also, the star is a red dwarf. Besides being plentiful fodder for jokes involving the word "smeghead", it also means that the star burns a lot cooler than the one we're currently parked next to. I'm also fairly sure that the folks eyeballing this thing would have taken the whole "it has an atmosphere but doesn't rotate" thing into account as well.
No idea if tidal locking always means no plate tectonics, though. I'd be wondering how life would get along w/o a magnetic field to shield it from UV and hard radiation (though that would depend on the spectrum put out by the star in question...)
And while 20 light years might be small by astronomical standards, human beings haven't even been two light *seconds* away from the earth.
FWIW, Voyager 1 is about 14-15 light-hours away now.
Something to consider, though - not all radiation is the evil, hazardous, cancer-causing flesh-melting variety. Light is radiation, which is, well what they'd been using to study this thing. The shallow end of the details pool can be had here(pdf).
Also, they're not just blindly poking around at random bits of cubic space - they're starting with stars, eh?
The submitter should have included this bad boy (PDF) in his linkage. Expecting to see methodology on a discovery.com website? You'll have an easier time getting Steve Ballmer to cough up the source code for MS Office.
PS: As an EE, you should know the specific type of magic: It's most commonly referred to as FM.
Thing is, you already mentioned why it's not as big of a deal on the iPhone... jailbreaking isn't something you see a whole lot of (tech media notwithstanding).
Most folks either don't know how to jailbreak an iPhone, or don't want to risk bricking the thing (and therefore blowing the $$$ they have tied up in phone and contract). Sure - you and I know it's fairly easy and safe to do, but Joe PhoneUser doesn't know that, and they have actual money tied up in the beastie before they even get it out of the box it came in.
Given this, the majority will buy the apps from the store. Now if jailbreaking were uber-common, then yeah - pirating apps would be just as common. Otherwise, overall? It's pretty self-evident that piracy is going to be an Android (and WinMo, and Symbian) thing.
From a developer's POV, yeah - the piracy rate w/ iPhones is going to be a lot lower, and therefore more lucrative for the dev. OTOH, the dev will miss out on folks trying the product out, and on any of the marketing bennies that piracy can give his products.
... millions of people willing to throw money away at frivilous toys in this "tough" economy.
A bit of research on The Great Depression will invariably turn up some related neat little facts as well - one of them being that movies (back then a similar luxury) were amazingly popular during a time when folks could barely keep food on the table.
Escapism from shit times isn't exactly a new phenomenon, you know.
The only reason China is cranking out solar panels like there's no tomorrow? The answer is two-fold: 1) there was a HUGE and growing global market for them starting in 2007-2008 (when many of these solar companies were founded/bolstered) and 2) the Chinese government is subsidizing the unholy hell out of these companies at the same time, so as to under-cut international pricing.
Taken together, the overall plan (and reason for the subsidies) involves cornering the market on mass-produced 'green energy' goods. Notice that they're also pushing like mad to become the top wind-turbine manufacturer as well.
Long-term, its a smart strategy - when the industrialized world finds oil too pricey, guess who will be around selling them cheap and plentiful solar panels, wind turbines, etc? Meanwhile, the company owners are still making money like mad thanks to the subsidies.
Depends on local conditions, and at which time of year... US deserts aren't as well-known for having big dust storms (and not much sand), so it's pretty easy to see why the particulate counts are going to be low there. Same with the Altiplano (South America), where the desert floor is mostly hardpan or literal hard rock. You can't blow around what's (in many cases) literally cemented to the floor.
I suspect that deserts with naturally constant winds are going to have more particulate matter hanging around in the air (dust storms, etc) during certain times of the year. Take a peek in the WSJ link/image at the Sahara... it's practically empty of industry, yet, well, there's the particulates. Same story over Saudi Arabia's well-named "Empty Quarter".
Not sure what Europe's story is, though - it looks like it has a bigger dust/particulate problem overall than the US, and surprisingly, more than what we can see of Russia (!?). Also, Australia is either missing data for its interior (the white areas), or was too damned dusty to bother (which would make sense).
...only if there are SLA agreements. That, and most business customers of a (generally) consumer ISP are going to be fairly small, and without a war chest for litigation. There are exceptions (Verizon stands out as one), but mostly this is the case.
Most of your bigger businesses (and therefore those more able to litigate) will have providers who also provide SLAs, and have contracts that can actually be negotiated, given the money involved (ISPs such as Integra, AT&T, et al). The smaller guys with the "Comcast Business DSL" connections will be presented with a ToS, and are told to take it or leave it.
In nearly all cases, the company only needs to have the headhunter replace you with someone else for the remainder of that contract.
I know this because that's how I got my current position - my employer set up a 6-month contract, the first guy was a dumbass (I spent three weeks cleaning up his mess). The company nearly threw the guy out literally, and the headhunter asked if I'd fill out the rest of the contract term. I was getting nowhere with the contract-to-hire gig I was doing at the time, so I said 'yes'...
...that contract ended 4 months later, and became a permanent and very well-paying position for me.
The DoD owns those... NIPR is mostly bureaucratic military stuff, while SIPR is the secure one. Good luck with the Pentagon letting folks like HHS, DOI, DOE, congress-critters, or (heh) your local utility co-op getting latched onto to those.
Speaking of "realistic security policies", just to even think of hooking into NIPR, you have to harden your boxes to the these specs (ever had to put all of/usr onto its own partition and lock the whole thing read-only? I guess it all depends on your definition of "realistic"). SIPR's requirements are only 'slightly' more anal.
Seriously? There's a reason we have this thing called defense in depth. Sure - you may have a reasonably secure network, hardware firewall, policies, etc... but that doesn't mean you start removing other bits to make up for it.
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There may not be much mobile love between Google and Apple, but I'm quite sure that neither one wants Microsoft to win anything in such a market.
After all, if Microsoft wins this one, what's to stop them from contriving other overly-broad patents against Apple's iPhone at the first convenient moment?
When it comes to the mobile market, Microsoft doesn't have time for subtlety... their mobile reputation has been circling the drain for years now, hype be damned.
Thing is, unless there's an immediate injunction granted, Microsoft may not have time for the lawsuit to work its magic either... maybe they're just hoping to make off of forced royalties what they suspect they won't be making in voluntary licensing and/or sales? 'course, if that's their strategic move in mobile, their "technologies" are liable to become about as relevant as an LZW-compressed .gif file is to pictures online.
Plus it puts today's earlier story into some rather sharp perspective...
Patent threats (no matter how subtle) are pretty much all they have left. They've already indicated that their product won't be able to compete on merit. Sure, they've got gimmicks and branding (Zune and XBox), but there's nothing backing those up anytime soon (Zune is just a fancy name for media player, and I sincerely doubt that XBox Live has nearly as many playable-on-the-phone games as Android and iPhone has at this time).
Long story short, Microsoft is in the hole insofar as mobile goes, it's their own damned fault (they've had at least 7 frickin' years of lead time), and they're desperately casting about for anything and everything to remain relevant.
I'm asking because their terms aren't likely to attract too many top-end developers. Seriously, would you want Amazon to set prices for your product, and tack in DRM?
That last bit is uglier than the rest - even if you're a big fan of DRM, the fact that Amazon can literally modify your binaries at will (read: potentially break something) is enough by itself to drive off any developer with more than two working neurons.
Now if Amazon drops those two parts, they'd stand half a chance, IMHO.
It's from an old electronics inside joke, actually... spoiler: the "F" stands for "Fucking" ;)
We have only ONE place that we know life flourishes.
Also, the star is a red dwarf. Besides being plentiful fodder for jokes involving the word "smeghead", it also means that the star burns a lot cooler than the one we're currently parked next to. I'm also fairly sure that the folks eyeballing this thing would have taken the whole "it has an atmosphere but doesn't rotate" thing into account as well.
No idea if tidal locking always means no plate tectonics, though. I'd be wondering how life would get along w/o a magnetic field to shield it from UV and hard radiation (though that would depend on the spectrum put out by the star in question...)
And while 20 light years might be small by astronomical standards, human beings haven't even been two light *seconds* away from the earth.
FWIW, Voyager 1 is about 14-15 light-hours away now.
Something to consider, though - not all radiation is the evil, hazardous, cancer-causing flesh-melting variety. Light is radiation, which is, well what they'd been using to study this thing. The shallow end of the details pool can be had here(pdf).
Also, they're not just blindly poking around at random bits of cubic space - they're starting with stars, eh?
The submitter should have included this bad boy (PDF) in his linkage. Expecting to see methodology on a discovery.com website? You'll have an easier time getting Steve Ballmer to cough up the source code for MS Office.
PS: As an EE, you should know the specific type of magic: It's most commonly referred to as FM.
Thing is, you already mentioned why it's not as big of a deal on the iPhone... jailbreaking isn't something you see a whole lot of (tech media notwithstanding).
Most folks either don't know how to jailbreak an iPhone, or don't want to risk bricking the thing (and therefore blowing the $$$ they have tied up in phone and contract). Sure - you and I know it's fairly easy and safe to do, but Joe PhoneUser doesn't know that, and they have actual money tied up in the beastie before they even get it out of the box it came in.
Given this, the majority will buy the apps from the store. Now if jailbreaking were uber-common, then yeah - pirating apps would be just as common. Otherwise, overall? It's pretty self-evident that piracy is going to be an Android (and WinMo, and Symbian) thing.
From a developer's POV, yeah - the piracy rate w/ iPhones is going to be a lot lower, and therefore more lucrative for the dev. OTOH, the dev will miss out on folks trying the product out, and on any of the marketing bennies that piracy can give his products.
Chrome asked me if I wanted it translated automatically - did a fairly decent job of it.
Nota Bene - Journos have had the luxury of Lexis-Nexis long, long before Google ever existed. :)
... millions of people willing to throw money away at frivilous toys in this "tough" economy.
A bit of research on The Great Depression will invariably turn up some related neat little facts as well - one of them being that movies (back then a similar luxury) were amazingly popular during a time when folks could barely keep food on the table.
Escapism from shit times isn't exactly a new phenomenon, you know.
The only reason China is cranking out solar panels like there's no tomorrow? The answer is two-fold:
1) there was a HUGE and growing global market for them starting in 2007-2008 (when many of these solar companies were founded/bolstered) and
2) the Chinese government is subsidizing the unholy hell out of these companies at the same time, so as to under-cut international pricing.
Taken together, the overall plan (and reason for the subsidies) involves cornering the market on mass-produced 'green energy' goods. Notice that they're also pushing like mad to become the top wind-turbine manufacturer as well.
Long-term, its a smart strategy - when the industrialized world finds oil too pricey, guess who will be around selling them cheap and plentiful solar panels, wind turbines, etc? Meanwhile, the company owners are still making money like mad thanks to the subsidies.
Depends on local conditions, and at which time of year... US deserts aren't as well-known for having big dust storms (and not much sand), so it's pretty easy to see why the particulate counts are going to be low there. Same with the Altiplano (South America), where the desert floor is mostly hardpan or literal hard rock. You can't blow around what's (in many cases) literally cemented to the floor.
I suspect that deserts with naturally constant winds are going to have more particulate matter hanging around in the air (dust storms, etc) during certain times of the year. Take a peek in the WSJ link/image at the Sahara... it's practically empty of industry, yet, well, there's the particulates. Same story over Saudi Arabia's well-named "Empty Quarter".
Not sure what Europe's story is, though - it looks like it has a bigger dust/particulate problem overall than the US, and surprisingly, more than what we can see of Russia (!?). Also, Australia is either missing data for its interior (the white areas), or was too damned dusty to bother (which would make sense).
D'oh!
Fair cop... my bad. :)
Please look up the definition of irony before posting anything with that particular word in it.
(This especially includes all Sheryl Crow fans)
Thanks in advance.
...only if there are SLA agreements. That, and most business customers of a (generally) consumer ISP are going to be fairly small, and without a war chest for litigation. There are exceptions (Verizon stands out as one), but mostly this is the case.
Most of your bigger businesses (and therefore those more able to litigate) will have providers who also provide SLAs, and have contracts that can actually be negotiated, given the money involved (ISPs such as Integra, AT&T, et al). The smaller guys with the "Comcast Business DSL" connections will be presented with a ToS, and are told to take it or leave it.
Given that the 10% usually results in a uber-massive payday, and that the company being litigated against usually settles anyway?
Not sure of the odds, but it likely adds up to a HUGE reason as to why patent troll 'companies' are realizing a lot of investment money, ne?
In nearly all cases, the company only needs to have the headhunter replace you with someone else for the remainder of that contract.
I know this because that's how I got my current position - my employer set up a 6-month contract, the first guy was a dumbass (I spent three weeks cleaning up his mess). The company nearly threw the guy out literally, and the headhunter asked if I'd fill out the rest of the contract term. I was getting nowhere with the contract-to-hire gig I was doing at the time, so I said 'yes'...
They are for the Military - Google for NIPR and SIPR as a good start...
Hey! That's MY IP address! No wonder I can't connect anywhere - damned IP addy conflict!
The DoD owns those... NIPR is mostly bureaucratic military stuff, while SIPR is the secure one. Good luck with the Pentagon letting folks like HHS, DOI, DOE, congress-critters, or (heh) your local utility co-op getting latched onto to those.
Speaking of "realistic security policies", just to even think of hooking into NIPR, you have to harden your boxes to the these specs (ever had to put all of /usr onto its own partition and lock the whole thing read-only? I guess it all depends on your definition of "realistic"). SIPR's requirements are only 'slightly' more anal.
Seriously? There's a reason we have this thing called defense in depth. Sure - you may have a reasonably secure network, hardware firewall, policies, etc... but that doesn't mean you start removing other bits to make up for it.