Gizmodo piece was shady as hell... but probably just poorly researched, like many other pieces these days. Straight press release to article.
Sure, some audiophiles might not like the format, there are some more advanced standards in the market right now, and some companies (like Apple) don't use it anymore for their stores. It's old, other formats compress better, preserve more information, blah blah.
But mp3 quality is perfectly fine for most people, it really doesn't make that much of a difference. If you really need to know where you stand at, just get some piece of music of the sort you like, convert it into multiple codecs and bitrates you wanna evaluate and more importantly: get a friend and tell him to make a blind test for you. Because there's a whole truckload of people who think they can hear better when they actually have no clue. Oh, also do it with the equipment you personally use for listening to music... chances are, those will have a bigger influence then the codec itself. It's no use listening to raw music if your DAC, headphones, speakers, wiring and whatnot is pure crap that will lose quality along the way anyways.
Thing is, the same institute (Fraunhofer) who made the press release and announced the end of the format licensing is also involved with development of new formats like AAC. Of course they'd like mp3 to just end out of nowhere because then businesses would be forced to switch to formats like AAC which still require paying royalties to use.
It's a bit like the iPhone 7 justification for not putting a headphone jack there because it's "outdated". Vast majority of the market is plenty fine with regular headphone jacks, the real problem is not being able to charge other businesses to use a proprietary connector, and charging costumers more to get stuff like headphones and whatnot.
Oh yeah, le old complaint about Chrome using too much ram...
I mean, go ahead, use Opera and tell us what you think of it. I don't think people should be trapped into using certain browsers only because everyone uses it, seriously.
But the CHROME USES TOO MUCH RAM complaint is pretty stupid and it was several times explained why it behaves this way at this point. Put simply, resources of your computer that are not used are just that... not used. Having a browser that leaves a whole metric ton of free RAM around benefits no one. Chrome was a browser developed to take as much advantage of your machine as possible. It's definitely not lightweight, so alternative browsers can be a good thing if your computer is crappy, but how much free ram it leaves behind is a very stupid reason for switching.
Chrome uses separate processes for each and every tab to solve problems with one tab crashing the entire browser. It dynamically allocates as much ram as possible to pre-load stuff and speed up things. Just make a test yourself. Open Chrome, run as many tabs you like, saturate the ram... with a reasonable machine. Then open some other software that chews up ram... like, I dunno, something from Adobe CC. You'll see that even though Chrome was using all the ram, you are still able to open another sofware and use it without problems. That's because Chrome will set the limit of ram usage to a lower threshold.
It's by no means perfect or anything like that, but if you are gonna criticize it, it's better to look a bit more into your complaints before spouting nonsense.
Let's hope that there's a sliver of sanity left in an insane world and they win this. It'd at least be a very small victory in times people all over supposedly democratic free countries have already lost, they just don't know it yet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Excerpt: "The country was listed among the "Enemies of the Internet" in 2014 by Reporters Without Borders,[6] a category of countries with the highest level of internet censorship and surveillance that "mark themselves out not just for their capacity to censor news and information online but also for their almost systematic repression of Internet users".[7] Other major economies listed in this category include China, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and Saudi Arabia."
It ends basically with internet related companies fleeing the country, a great firewall blocking external country access, and government level persecution of businesses and companies.
On the other hand, this goes directly against: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Excerpt: "It also enhanced existing defences, by introducing a defence for website operators hosting user-generated content (provided they comply with a procedure to enable the complainant to resolve disputes directly with the author of the material concerned or otherwise remove it), and introducing new statutory defences of truth, honest opinion, and "publication on a matter of public interest" or privileged publications (including peer reviewed scientific journals), to replace the common law defences of justification, fair comment, and the Reynolds defence respectively. However, it did not quite codify defamation law into a single statute.[4][5]"
It goes one way or the other. Political speeches have no effect in matters that are already estabilished. The whole thing sounds reactionary and not well thought through. As if this was a new thing... but I guess congratulations for Theresa May's party for realizing something that has been going on over 20 years now.
Businesses should not switch to biometric passwords. They could use biometry for convenience paired with password for security, but biometry isn't enough for one main reason: if someone figures a way of replicating even a single biometric identification, the whole system is defeated. It's a difference between replacing a single user password versus possibly having to recall and replace all hardware, and the entire system behind it.
You can easily replace passwords. Biometrics cannot be replaced. It uniquely identifies people and is uniquely tied to each one, which also creates a problem regarding privacy. It's always a bad idea to use something that is uniquely identifiable as a password, because you end up running in scenarios where anonymity becomes impossible.
And in the end, the problem with security systems is that they are prone to failure due to a bunch of different factors. Smartphone fingerprint readers were easily defeated just recently because they were implemented to work faster. http://www.computerworld.com/a... Technology catches on. We'll always be one step from a scanner with high enough resolution and a printer of some sort with high enough definition and usage of the right materials.
You know what people said about fingerprint readers in the past? That it would be close to impossible to replicate because of how complex our fingerprints are. That argument being made by Harvard Business Review in the end of the quote is just the same. We can't assume how hard it's gonna be to replicate even if you are tying a bunch of biometrics together because it hasn't been out yet, nor there's any incentive for people to break it just yet. If someone haphazardly implements it through a wide range of businesses, then all bets are off.
Also, companies behind such systems will always fail to recognize the problem because recalling and replacing devices will always be impossibly expensive, and in several instances we're basically relying on security through obscurity. https://www.forbes.com/sites/e...
Now, with things as they stand, imagine this scenario: as we all know, several companies nowadays are basically building entire dossiers about each and every costumer with all sorts of information about them to sell for advertisers and whatnot. Imagine if biometrics got into that, and then innevitably one of those companies gets hacked or leaks their entire databases. Instead of people scrambling to reset and change their passwords, we'd get people who could do nothing about it, biometrics in the wild, just waiting for someone to come up with a way to use/replicate them. This happens to enough businesses and enough databases, biometric data becomes something as easy to find out as an address or name.
Well, it's their festival, so it's their choice I guess. As it's our own to pay attention to it.
But surely they must be aware that they are reducing the festival from a competition to promote the art, to a shrill for the cinema business.
I mean, look at parts of the full quote: "The Festival de Cannes is aware of the anxiety aroused by the absence of the release in theaters of those films in France". What anxiety? Does anyone care these days if a movie isn't released in theaters? Is this the 80s or something?
"The Festival de Cannes asked Netflix in vain to accept that these two films could reach the audience of French movie theaters and not only its subscribers. Hence the Festival regrets that no agreement has been reached". Why is a film festival taking active part in negotiating film releases in theaters? This only shows bias, which is extremely bad for any sort of competition.
"Any film that wishes to compete in Competition at Cannes will have to commit itself to being distributed in French movie theaters. This new measure will apply from the 2018 edition of the Festival International du Film de Cannes onwards". This is where it becomes irrelevant then. I don't fucking care whether a movie is being shown in French movie theaters or not, and I bet a whole ton of french people also don't.
But it's great that they let us know. Because if someone asks why a great movie he/she watched on Netflix didn't show up on the festival at all, there's the answer: a biased approach of selection. We're gonna select the best films around the world, as long as they paid their due to the french movie theater industry.
No trade body or associations like MPAA or RIAA, software developers and game developers, among all sorts of targets of piracy will ever acknowledge the marketing or spreading effect that piracy had over digital history, ever. It's a given.
Sony will never say Playstation 2 piracy helped a whole bunch to make the console spread out over the world, Microsoft will never acknowledge how much piracy had a hand in spreading out products like Office or Windows, Adobe will never say how much pirated copies of Photoshop and whatnot helped make it a standard, production studios will never say that series like Game of Thrones only had a reach in several parts of the world because of piracy, the industry in general will never admit that piracy had a huge role in making content be known in entire countries where the vast majority of people cannot afford to pay for content.
I'm not saying everyone should pirate stuff, I'm not saying it's a fair practice, and I'm not saying anyone is entitled to use/watch stuff without paying for it. But honestly? I constantly use YouTube to find information and check for content that I fully intend to pay for, including music, but also movies, software and games. Including music that is not available in my country, so I had to import, and I gladly did. This would not be possible without websites like YouTube.
It's incredibly easy to see how much this whinning makes no sense at all. Since the beginning of major piracy distribution systems these trade bodies and associations have been crying, whinning and being general assholes about how piracy was going to destroy x industry and whatnot. This has been completely disproven. We had very steady and substantial growth in ALL industries "victim" or piracy. ALL. Movies have been selling more than ever, tv series have been selling more than ever, softwares, games, music. Is it because piracy ceased to exist or somehow got eliminated? Nope. Is it because the industry stopped with it's backwards way of thinking by themselves? Nope. It's because piracy helped lauch several of those in countries that would not have access otherwiser, and because piracy forced stale, greedy and backwards thinking industries to come up with ways of matching the most attractive thing piracy has to offer: convenience.
So yeah, IFPI can go suck a cock. Keep thinking you can go back to the days of selling CD market up 2000% production costs and putting music on TV and Radio only, I'll gladly skip your crap and pay for content from musicians who knows those times have ended.
Just incredible how this administration is basically trying to re-write history...
Whether or not it was a DDoS attack, the thing is, this already happened in the past, for the exact same reason. So regardless if there was a DDoS attack or not, the website would've come down the same way: http://www.latimes.com/busines...
That link there? It's from 2014, despite looking exactly like past weekend. That was the moment when this matter should've been settled. No need for clowns with extremely punchable faces like Ajit Pai to try to reverse it in any way, if public comment even mattered. The public opinion has been heard on this, they are already ignoring whatever comments were made in the past. People don't need to be doubtful whether public comment is being heard or not... it clearly isn't.
Question is exactly the same, the fears are exactly the same of 2014, net neutrality did not change since then nor it's reasons to exist. The companies along their greed to make more money on costumers also didn't change... if anything, it only grew. Now they also have a whole lot more politicians in their pockets, people who are willing to go against public comments because they have their heads stuck in their asses. Remember people, it was only 3 years ago that the public outcry for net neutrality happened. All this administration is doing is reversing what people conquered. This would be unacceptable in any decent democracy, but here we are held prisioners by an administration that refuses to listen.
Fight for the Future has all the reasons to be suspicious about this, because pretty much anyone can claim that a website crash was not because of unpredicted access numbers but rather some coordinated attack of some form. But ultimately, the violation has already happened. When you have an administration that is this willing to bend over for corporations wishes, it doesn't matter if they revert something or not, they'll find a way to bend laws and turn a blind eye to violations. Net neutrality has ended as soon as Ajit Pai got the chair. Whether net neutrality crashes or not, I guarantee we'll be seeing problematic behaviours arising plenty soon. It's not so much what's on paper, but rather the signals politicians send with stuff like these.
This is pure unadulterated bullshit. Should want you to shut your trap and stop writting such blatant ads for scummy strategies like this.
There are advantages to having a good Microsoft app store - which has been almost half a decade in development and never happened btw - but there are definite huge disadvantages with a fundamental philosophy gap in between.
If anything, Windows 10 S should fail hard because it's just copying the walled garden proprietary and highly profitable model to the detriment of competition and consumer choice. Windows 10 S means less alternatives to everyone, in a less open future.
Here are good reasons for Windows 10 S to succeed: - it'll create more competition in the Chromebook and possibly smartphone category, highly doubtful because of things listed in disadvantages; - it's an arguably more secure and curated environment for software and applications versus regular Windows 10. On this I'll agree, but not worth the sacrifices; - it'd make it easier for Microsoft to control certain aspects of quality standards, security and whatnot over all it's ecosystem. Again, incredibly arguable given the downsides.
Here are good reasons for Windows 10 S to fail: - we don't need another iOS/Android model as an OS. Microsoft is only copying this because they saw it's profitable, but they are losing sight fast on why people use Windows in the first place. If you want this shit to work, just use an Android tablet or an iPad to work, see how it goes; - this allows for Windows to go even further in the whole telemetry/forced ads/shady upgrade tactics and whatnot. They've been going forward aggressively with this kind of exploitive tactic since Windows 10 came out, and they'll definitely do it even more if they can lock people into a highly controled and proprietary ecosystem. Want some proof? Look up for articles saying how Microsoft is going to lock up people on Windows 10 S with Edge and Bing as defaults that cannot be changed. Look up on how much you can opt-out of telemetry on Windows 10. Remember how Microsoft got sued because of Internet Explorer and MSN? Yep; - the Windows app store, which began back half a decade ago in Windows Mobile, never caught up, and despite repetitive reassurances from Microsoft that it would work one day, it still doesn't and that isn't a great sign. Just take a look at it now if you are on Windows 10. The promisses that it would work and would be a better experience than regular software has been around since the release of Windows Phone 7, and it's been all bullshit. Don't look only what apps are in the store - install them and compare with regular software counterparts. You will quickly realize that most of them are lacking in features, filled with bugs, rarely updated if not outright abandoned, and ultimately an incomparable experience when put up against regular software or even web app/plugin counterparts; - Microsoft already tried this, again, with Windows Phone which failed, and with Surface RT which also failed. The complaints that users had with those will just transfer to Windows 10 S. It wasn't a lack of investment, that the OS wasn't solid enough, or some other technical reason - devs don't like the whole deal for very good reasons, and it's been plenty obvious since then that having Windows as is works better; - this whole thing only helps obscuring even further what Microsoft does behind the scenes, not only with their own stuff, but also what they'll demand from devs that want to put their apps into the store. No matter how much of an Apple or Android fanboy you are, I'm pretty sure that everyone will admit that the app store is not a great model for finding great apps, and the Windows store is no different in that aspect. People have no voice on what will be elected to be put in the front of the store, small devs have no opportunity to rise to prominence, discoverability goes down the gutter, and big businesses are more able to leverage their power to shut down useful applications and cheaper alternatives. Dev
I'm not sure if the excuse works as the connector is going for almost every new smartphone/tablet/laptop released these days, but I have to agree with Microsoft (even though I think the Windows 10 S is an incredibly stupid idea) on this one.
USB Implementers Forum not only failed all my expectations, they managed to make me see USB Type C as worse than regular USB. It had the potential to fix all the problems of USB and make it even better, but somehow they managed to make it worse.
Ok, the connector is smaller, more robust and reversible. Which is something, I guess. But they didn't address almost anything worthwhile other than those. Compatibility standards are still loose (stuff like MHL, USB OtG and others are still obscured when not outright hidden from costumers), then came all the problems with defective cables, the mix up with yet another interface (Thunderbolt 3) using the same connector, more confusion for the average user... it's such a shame.
The worst part is that the increase in power on this flabby standard has real potential to cause circuit damages and fires, which is pretty much unacceptable. Hard to imagine how a forum like that with so much money invested could get things so wrong.
Let me guess... promisses of buying new equipment infrastructure is a great incentive to sell out, right? F*ck Cisco. And I don't even have to say anything about Oracle, the litigious troll company. Oracle has to die in a pool of fire for the stuff they've been doing lately.
Yeah. Not a single review or article about this new Blackberry phone ever mentioned the case. This is why we privacy keeps eroding and why security practices went down the gutter. Stop promoting the company.
A petty if not justifiable or desperate move from EU. It's basically on the brink of collapse, and that's not exactly a good thing. If France elects Marine Le Pen and goes for Frexit, EU is basically over. I didn't think they'd make it this obvious, but of course the only move EU has right now is to the ego of the richest countries left.
Nothing mysterious about it. Percentages means nothing when you are basically digging into a crowd that is almost on a cult like level of devotion to a brand. Not only they are heavily invested into the ecossystem, they have to justify paying so much for something that adds little value. That satisfaction was decided pre-purchase. It only means that people who had any doubts decided not to buy it. Ask for satisfaction rates on Prada bags or Ferraris.
It really depends on what period of time you are talking about. I've always been a Microsoft Windows user through and through since MS-DOS days too. I've toyed with several different Linux distros, and Mac OS.
On the mobile side, I used everything from Symbian to Windows Mobile to iOS and Android. iOS was just an iPad, but still.
Early days of iOS I'd have to say it was probably innovation. Most of the innovation that came to mobile in early days of smartphone was on iPhones. Apps still arguably comes first on iOS too. It's still a more solid, secure and robust platform for both devs and users. And then there's the paralysis of choice argument... you don't have to think about much when buying or upgrading your iPhone.
Ok, now as a desktop/laptop platform. Apple has positioned itself pretty well in the creative/artistic market overall offering a platform which yes, you pay more, but you have a more focused OS that's both stable and better supported than Windows. It's the market of people who needs to use a computer as a tool, but cannot be bothered with all the unnecessary complexities around computers for their job. It certainly has ups and downs, but they managed to build an entire ecosystem around a number of products that attends the needs of big parts of the creative/artistic market. The aim is to be invisible while being useful as a tool to accomplish their jobs, something that Windows was never great at.
With a more solid foundation regarding security and privacy, plus the fact that their market is still niche when compared to Windows that goes for all and everything, it not only became something of an exclusivity/luxury club, but also a more focused platform for the target audience. Paralysis of choice also plays it's role here. Instead of a multitude of brands and configurations, you have a handful of very spread out updates and upgrades overtime. The only thing Apple is kinda failing right now is in not keeping up with times, specially in the pro sector. Apple has switched a whole lot to a more mainstream market instead of attending first the needs of the professional market.
Macs and iPhones might have stumbled these days to keep up with the most recent tech like the newest nVidia graphics card generation, touchscreen on laptops, or high end pro specs in pro labeled gear... but you know what bullshit MacOS don't have? Ads on the file manager, scummy strategies to force people to upgrade, a whole ton of scummy telemetry strategies to harvest information from every user, and a failed app store that Microsoft keeps trying to force on people knowing that no one uses it.
This is quite a sad shift in direction... since the whole Windows 10 crap started, I've been considering to switch to any other OS that doesn't go that route. I've kept and old PC with Windows 7, I have an old laptop running Ubuntu, and if I ever start working with video editing again, I might just go for a Mac.
I never heard from Mac users complaining of problems remotely similar with the Windows in Windows out problem (the cycle of having one extremely buggy and crappy Windows version followed by a good one), or of new OS versions sucking balls 'till the first or second service pack comes out. Yes, trouble happens every now and then, but it's passable bugs when compared to the stuff Microsoft used to pull.
It's also not about being better or worse, it's just a different philosophy. Apple charges more and limits design decisions and overall direction internally. Microsoft puts things out, lets a whole ton of different brands and companies to do their own stuff, and handles it as much as it can.
There's definitely a comfort on simplifying things, limiting the OS for the purpose of usability, and hiding a whole lot of complexity under the hood just to have a functional computer or device. For lots of people it's just worth paying more for a simplified tool that does what they need it to do and only that, period.
We're still talking about a niche market worldwide, but it's t
Using Feedly, but I'd still be using it regardless... it's just the one I got used to after Google Reader kicked the bucket.
I also don't consider neither Facebook nor Twitter as sources for information... they are social media, and basically the worst places to get information from, apart from photos and updates from family and friends.
RSS is not only a good way to keep track of stuff being published on favorite blogs and websites... it's the best current way, period. It's too bad Google was blind enough not to understand that, but it's their loss.
But really, to the people complaining about this, ALL of your publicly accessible photos are entirely subject and probably already into "massive photo scrape". Tinder is saying they'll do "something" about it just because you know, PR speak, but they can't do much other than banning accounts which did it... which pretty much ammounts to nothing. This also could easily be done with any social network profile photos. Any service which you can easily create a profile and go searching for people in a programmable manner is subject to this.
Which do you think is more like a religious belief? The proposal of a potential danger that might come with evolution of a particular branch of technology, or the complete dismissal of the possibility based on a very limited view regarding only 5 points of that very proposal?
I don't disagree that human-like AI is far from happening if it ever does, or that some of those particular points might be misguided in some way particularly if there is some sort of paranoia related to them... but I wouldn't outright dismiss the possibility of AI taking over huge swaths of jobs drastically changing the future of jobs for humans in the future. It's not only about superhuman AIs, general purpose intelligence, limitless expansion and whatever theoretical crap he's listing there - we're talking about stuff like Uber and car automation, robots with AIs being able to do all jobs in a factory floor more efficiently than human counterparts, and stuff like that. It's far closer than most people think.
Why? Because industrialization and automatization already happened. And while the changes weren't so drastic, they certainly happened and tons of people were definitely affected by it. A whole lot of people were caught off guard, and a whole lot of them suffered for that.
Add that to how blind the vast majority of the population is to growing concerns regarding technology and it's usage for incredibly invasive strategies, plus the unpredictability of some types of AI that already generated some degrees of discomfort. I'm talking about IoT, always listening and dialing back connected devices, that racist and sexist Microsoft chatbot - TAY, military always jumping the gun when some potential tactical advantage is to be gained, among several other things.
I still think people should not be completely paranoid about a quick and swift AI takeover of jobs in particular. Economics works in a different way worth considering. But a complete dismissal is extremely dangerous, and sounds way more like a religious belief to me than otherwise.
This is exactly why I didn't get neither a PS4 or an XBox One. They already require a subscription for full functionality. The only reason I'm considering a Switch is because it sounds like it'll still be reasonably functional without having to pay for subscription too, even though Nintendo finally caved in and decided to join this crappy trend.
Also, Spencer must have his head under a rock or something if he's just now realizing this crap . Playstation Now already exists, nVidia has Gamestream/GRID, Gaikai has been out there for quite a while now (the core of Playstation Now), and there are several other services and attempted services like these out there - GameFly, G-cluster, Kalydo, Playcast Media Systems, etc etc.
I dunno about market reception on these, but I don't think many people are buying into this trend. I won't.
What's with Slashdot and the recent unbalanced biased snippets that are being posted all the time? If you are going to publish a story about something, why not post both sides?
From the article: Leading the the (sic) critics was Professor Alun Hughes, associate director of the Medical Research Council Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at University College London.
He said: "This editorial is muddled and adds to confusion on a contentious topic. The authors present no really new evidence, misrepresent some existing evidence, and fail to adequately acknowledge the limitations in the evidence that they use to support their point of view." Dr Mike Knapton, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said the claims about saturated fat were "unhelpful and misleading".
He added: "Decades of research have proved that a diet rich in saturated fat increases 'bad' LDL cholesterol in your blood, which puts you at greater risk of a heart attack or stroke." Dr Amitava Banerjee, honorary consultant cardiologist at University College London, said: "Unfortunately, the authors have reported evidence simplistically and selectively".
His view was echoed by cardiologist Dr Gavin Sandercock, director of research at the University of Essex, who said: "This editorial is not founded on good evidence. There is no such thing as 'real food' - the authors don't define what it is so it's meaningless."
Slashdot Mirror
Here, I found some for people to try:
http://www.npr.org/sections/th...
http://www.noiseaddicts.com/20...
http://www.mp3ornot.com/
Gizmodo piece was shady as hell... but probably just poorly researched, like many other pieces these days. Straight press release to article.
Sure, some audiophiles might not like the format, there are some more advanced standards in the market right now, and some companies (like Apple) don't use it anymore for their stores. It's old, other formats compress better, preserve more information, blah blah.
But mp3 quality is perfectly fine for most people, it really doesn't make that much of a difference. If you really need to know where you stand at, just get some piece of music of the sort you like, convert it into multiple codecs and bitrates you wanna evaluate and more importantly: get a friend and tell him to make a blind test for you. Because there's a whole truckload of people who think they can hear better when they actually have no clue. Oh, also do it with the equipment you personally use for listening to music... chances are, those will have a bigger influence then the codec itself. It's no use listening to raw music if your DAC, headphones, speakers, wiring and whatnot is pure crap that will lose quality along the way anyways.
Thing is, the same institute (Fraunhofer) who made the press release and announced the end of the format licensing is also involved with development of new formats like AAC. Of course they'd like mp3 to just end out of nowhere because then businesses would be forced to switch to formats like AAC which still require paying royalties to use.
It's a bit like the iPhone 7 justification for not putting a headphone jack there because it's "outdated". Vast majority of the market is plenty fine with regular headphone jacks, the real problem is not being able to charge other businesses to use a proprietary connector, and charging costumers more to get stuff like headphones and whatnot.
I know Oculus lost the legal battle with Zenimax, but I thought Carmack was ultimately absolved of any wrongdoing.
Too bad for VR I guess.
Oh yeah, le old complaint about Chrome using too much ram...
I mean, go ahead, use Opera and tell us what you think of it. I don't think people should be trapped into using certain browsers only because everyone uses it, seriously.
But the CHROME USES TOO MUCH RAM complaint is pretty stupid and it was several times explained why it behaves this way at this point.
Put simply, resources of your computer that are not used are just that... not used. Having a browser that leaves a whole metric ton of free RAM around benefits no one.
Chrome was a browser developed to take as much advantage of your machine as possible. It's definitely not lightweight, so alternative browsers can be a good thing if your computer is crappy, but how much free ram it leaves behind is a very stupid reason for switching.
Chrome uses separate processes for each and every tab to solve problems with one tab crashing the entire browser. It dynamically allocates as much ram as possible to pre-load stuff and speed up things. Just make a test yourself. Open Chrome, run as many tabs you like, saturate the ram... with a reasonable machine. Then open some other software that chews up ram... like, I dunno, something from Adobe CC. You'll see that even though Chrome was using all the ram, you are still able to open another sofware and use it without problems. That's because Chrome will set the limit of ram usage to a lower threshold.
It's by no means perfect or anything like that, but if you are gonna criticize it, it's better to look a bit more into your complaints before spouting nonsense.
Let's hope that there's a sliver of sanity left in an insane world and they win this. It'd at least be a very small victory in times people all over supposedly democratic free countries have already lost, they just don't know it yet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Excerpt: "The country was listed among the "Enemies of the Internet" in 2014 by Reporters Without Borders,[6] a category of countries with the highest level of internet censorship and surveillance that "mark themselves out not just for their capacity to censor news and information online but also for their almost systematic repression of Internet users".[7] Other major economies listed in this category include China, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and Saudi Arabia."
It ends basically with internet related companies fleeing the country, a great firewall blocking external country access, and government level persecution of businesses and companies.
On the other hand, this goes directly against:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Excerpt: "It also enhanced existing defences, by introducing a defence for website operators hosting user-generated content (provided they comply with a procedure to enable the complainant to resolve disputes directly with the author of the material concerned or otherwise remove it), and introducing new statutory defences of truth, honest opinion, and "publication on a matter of public interest" or privileged publications (including peer reviewed scientific journals), to replace the common law defences of justification, fair comment, and the Reynolds defence respectively. However, it did not quite codify defamation law into a single statute.[4][5]"
It goes one way or the other. Political speeches have no effect in matters that are already estabilished. The whole thing sounds reactionary and not well thought through. As if this was a new thing... but I guess congratulations for Theresa May's party for realizing something that has been going on over 20 years now.
Businesses should not switch to biometric passwords. They could use biometry for convenience paired with password for security, but biometry isn't enough for one main reason: if someone figures a way of replicating even a single biometric identification, the whole system is defeated.
It's a difference between replacing a single user password versus possibly having to recall and replace all hardware, and the entire system behind it.
You can easily replace passwords. Biometrics cannot be replaced.
It uniquely identifies people and is uniquely tied to each one, which also creates a problem regarding privacy.
It's always a bad idea to use something that is uniquely identifiable as a password, because you end up running in scenarios where anonymity becomes impossible.
And in the end, the problem with security systems is that they are prone to failure due to a bunch of different factors.
Smartphone fingerprint readers were easily defeated just recently because they were implemented to work faster.
http://www.computerworld.com/a...
Technology catches on. We'll always be one step from a scanner with high enough resolution and a printer of some sort with high enough definition and usage of the right materials.
You know what people said about fingerprint readers in the past? That it would be close to impossible to replicate because of how complex our fingerprints are. That argument being made by Harvard Business Review in the end of the quote is just the same. We can't assume how hard it's gonna be to replicate even if you are tying a bunch of biometrics together because it hasn't been out yet, nor there's any incentive for people to break it just yet. If someone haphazardly implements it through a wide range of businesses, then all bets are off.
Also, companies behind such systems will always fail to recognize the problem because recalling and replacing devices will always be impossibly expensive, and in several instances we're basically relying on security through obscurity.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/e...
https://hackaday.com/2015/11/1...
Now, with things as they stand, imagine this scenario: as we all know, several companies nowadays are basically building entire dossiers about each and every costumer with all sorts of information about them to sell for advertisers and whatnot. Imagine if biometrics got into that, and then innevitably one of those companies gets hacked or leaks their entire databases. Instead of people scrambling to reset and change their passwords, we'd get people who could do nothing about it, biometrics in the wild, just waiting for someone to come up with a way to use/replicate them. This happens to enough businesses and enough databases, biometric data becomes something as easy to find out as an address or name.
Well, it's their festival, so it's their choice I guess. As it's our own to pay attention to it.
But surely they must be aware that they are reducing the festival from a competition to promote the art, to a shrill for the cinema business.
I mean, look at parts of the full quote:
"The Festival de Cannes is aware of the anxiety aroused by the absence of the release in theaters of those films in France".
What anxiety? Does anyone care these days if a movie isn't released in theaters? Is this the 80s or something?
"The Festival de Cannes asked Netflix in vain to accept that these two films could reach the audience of French movie theaters and not only its subscribers. Hence the Festival regrets that no agreement has been reached".
Why is a film festival taking active part in negotiating film releases in theaters? This only shows bias, which is extremely bad for any sort of competition.
"Any film that wishes to compete in Competition at Cannes will have to commit itself to being distributed in French movie theaters. This new measure will apply from the 2018 edition of the Festival International du Film de Cannes onwards".
This is where it becomes irrelevant then. I don't fucking care whether a movie is being shown in French movie theaters or not, and I bet a whole ton of french people also don't.
But it's great that they let us know. Because if someone asks why a great movie he/she watched on Netflix didn't show up on the festival at all, there's the answer: a biased approach of selection. We're gonna select the best films around the world, as long as they paid their due to the french movie theater industry.
So they can fight for THEIR net neutrality, but when it comes to OUR net neutrality, fuck us, right?
No trade body or associations like MPAA or RIAA, software developers and game developers, among all sorts of targets of piracy will ever acknowledge the marketing or spreading effect that piracy had over digital history, ever. It's a given.
Sony will never say Playstation 2 piracy helped a whole bunch to make the console spread out over the world, Microsoft will never acknowledge how much piracy had a hand in spreading out products like Office or Windows, Adobe will never say how much pirated copies of Photoshop and whatnot helped make it a standard, production studios will never say that series like Game of Thrones only had a reach in several parts of the world because of piracy, the industry in general will never admit that piracy had a huge role in making content be known in entire countries where the vast majority of people cannot afford to pay for content.
I'm not saying everyone should pirate stuff, I'm not saying it's a fair practice, and I'm not saying anyone is entitled to use/watch stuff without paying for it. But honestly? I constantly use YouTube to find information and check for content that I fully intend to pay for, including music, but also movies, software and games. Including music that is not available in my country, so I had to import, and I gladly did. This would not be possible without websites like YouTube.
It's incredibly easy to see how much this whinning makes no sense at all. Since the beginning of major piracy distribution systems these trade bodies and associations have been crying, whinning and being general assholes about how piracy was going to destroy x industry and whatnot. This has been completely disproven. We had very steady and substantial growth in ALL industries "victim" or piracy. ALL. Movies have been selling more than ever, tv series have been selling more than ever, softwares, games, music. Is it because piracy ceased to exist or somehow got eliminated? Nope. Is it because the industry stopped with it's backwards way of thinking by themselves? Nope. It's because piracy helped lauch several of those in countries that would not have access otherwiser, and because piracy forced stale, greedy and backwards thinking industries to come up with ways of matching the most attractive thing piracy has to offer: convenience.
So yeah, IFPI can go suck a cock. Keep thinking you can go back to the days of selling CD market up 2000% production costs and putting music on TV and Radio only, I'll gladly skip your crap and pay for content from musicians who knows those times have ended.
Precog system came earlier than I expected...
Just incredible how this administration is basically trying to re-write history...
Whether or not it was a DDoS attack, the thing is, this already happened in the past, for the exact same reason. So regardless if there was a DDoS attack or not, the website would've come down the same way:
http://www.latimes.com/busines...
That link there? It's from 2014, despite looking exactly like past weekend. That was the moment when this matter should've been settled. No need for clowns with extremely punchable faces like Ajit Pai to try to reverse it in any way, if public comment even mattered. The public opinion has been heard on this, they are already ignoring whatever comments were made in the past. People don't need to be doubtful whether public comment is being heard or not... it clearly isn't.
Question is exactly the same, the fears are exactly the same of 2014, net neutrality did not change since then nor it's reasons to exist.
The companies along their greed to make more money on costumers also didn't change... if anything, it only grew.
Now they also have a whole lot more politicians in their pockets, people who are willing to go against public comments because they have their heads stuck in their asses. Remember people, it was only 3 years ago that the public outcry for net neutrality happened. All this administration is doing is reversing what people conquered. This would be unacceptable in any decent democracy, but here we are held prisioners by an administration that refuses to listen.
Fight for the Future has all the reasons to be suspicious about this, because pretty much anyone can claim that a website crash was not because of unpredicted access numbers but rather some coordinated attack of some form. But ultimately, the violation has already happened. When you have an administration that is this willing to bend over for corporations wishes, it doesn't matter if they revert something or not, they'll find a way to bend laws and turn a blind eye to violations. Net neutrality has ended as soon as Ajit Pai got the chair. Whether net neutrality crashes or not, I guarantee we'll be seeing problematic behaviours arising plenty soon.
It's not so much what's on paper, but rather the signals politicians send with stuff like these.
This is pure unadulterated bullshit. Should want you to shut your trap and stop writting such blatant ads for scummy strategies like this.
There are advantages to having a good Microsoft app store - which has been almost half a decade in development and never happened btw - but there are definite huge disadvantages with a fundamental philosophy gap in between.
If anything, Windows 10 S should fail hard because it's just copying the walled garden proprietary and highly profitable model to the detriment of competition and consumer choice. Windows 10 S means less alternatives to everyone, in a less open future.
Here are good reasons for Windows 10 S to succeed:
- it'll create more competition in the Chromebook and possibly smartphone category, highly doubtful because of things listed in disadvantages;
- it's an arguably more secure and curated environment for software and applications versus regular Windows 10. On this I'll agree, but not worth the sacrifices;
- it'd make it easier for Microsoft to control certain aspects of quality standards, security and whatnot over all it's ecosystem. Again, incredibly arguable given the downsides.
Here are good reasons for Windows 10 S to fail:
- we don't need another iOS/Android model as an OS. Microsoft is only copying this because they saw it's profitable, but they are losing sight fast on why people use Windows in the first place. If you want this shit to work, just use an Android tablet or an iPad to work, see how it goes;
- this allows for Windows to go even further in the whole telemetry/forced ads/shady upgrade tactics and whatnot. They've been going forward aggressively with this kind of exploitive tactic since Windows 10 came out, and they'll definitely do it even more if they can lock people into a highly controled and proprietary ecosystem. Want some proof? Look up for articles saying how Microsoft is going to lock up people on Windows 10 S with Edge and Bing as defaults that cannot be changed. Look up on how much you can opt-out of telemetry on Windows 10. Remember how Microsoft got sued because of Internet Explorer and MSN? Yep;
- the Windows app store, which began back half a decade ago in Windows Mobile, never caught up, and despite repetitive reassurances from Microsoft that it would work one day, it still doesn't and that isn't a great sign. Just take a look at it now if you are on Windows 10. The promisses that it would work and would be a better experience than regular software has been around since the release of Windows Phone 7, and it's been all bullshit. Don't look only what apps are in the store - install them and compare with regular software counterparts. You will quickly realize that most of them are lacking in features, filled with bugs, rarely updated if not outright abandoned, and ultimately an incomparable experience when put up against regular software or even web app/plugin counterparts;
- Microsoft already tried this, again, with Windows Phone which failed, and with Surface RT which also failed. The complaints that users had with those will just transfer to Windows 10 S. It wasn't a lack of investment, that the OS wasn't solid enough, or some other technical reason - devs don't like the whole deal for very good reasons, and it's been plenty obvious since then that having Windows as is works better;
- this whole thing only helps obscuring even further what Microsoft does behind the scenes, not only with their own stuff, but also what they'll demand from devs that want to put their apps into the store. No matter how much of an Apple or Android fanboy you are, I'm pretty sure that everyone will admit that the app store is not a great model for finding great apps, and the Windows store is no different in that aspect. People have no voice on what will be elected to be put in the front of the store, small devs have no opportunity to rise to prominence, discoverability goes down the gutter, and big businesses are more able to leverage their power to shut down useful applications and cheaper alternatives. Dev
I'm not sure if the excuse works as the connector is going for almost every new smartphone/tablet/laptop released these days, but I have to agree with Microsoft (even though I think the Windows 10 S is an incredibly stupid idea) on this one.
USB Implementers Forum not only failed all my expectations, they managed to make me see USB Type C as worse than regular USB. It had the potential to fix all the problems of USB and make it even better, but somehow they managed to make it worse.
Ok, the connector is smaller, more robust and reversible. Which is something, I guess. But they didn't address almost anything worthwhile other than those. Compatibility standards are still loose (stuff like MHL, USB OtG and others are still obscured when not outright hidden from costumers), then came all the problems with defective cables, the mix up with yet another interface (Thunderbolt 3) using the same connector, more confusion for the average user... it's such a shame.
The worst part is that the increase in power on this flabby standard has real potential to cause circuit damages and fires, which is pretty much unacceptable. Hard to imagine how a forum like that with so much money invested could get things so wrong.
Let me guess... promisses of buying new equipment infrastructure is a great incentive to sell out, right?
F*ck Cisco. And I don't even have to say anything about Oracle, the litigious troll company. Oracle has to die in a pool of fire for the stuff they've been doing lately.
How quick people are to forget and forgive these days... remember this?
https://news.vice.com/article/...
https://www.digitaltrends.com/...
https://www.theverge.com/2016/...
http://www.computerworld.com/a...
Yeah. Not a single review or article about this new Blackberry phone ever mentioned the case. This is why we privacy keeps eroding and why security practices went down the gutter. Stop promoting the company.
A petty if not justifiable or desperate move from EU.
It's basically on the brink of collapse, and that's not exactly a good thing. If France elects Marine Le Pen and goes for Frexit, EU is basically over. I didn't think they'd make it this obvious, but of course the only move EU has right now is to the ego of the richest countries left.
Nothing mysterious about it.
Percentages means nothing when you are basically digging into a crowd that is almost on a cult like level of devotion to a brand.
Not only they are heavily invested into the ecossystem, they have to justify paying so much for something that adds little value.
That satisfaction was decided pre-purchase. It only means that people who had any doubts decided not to buy it.
Ask for satisfaction rates on Prada bags or Ferraris.
It really depends on what period of time you are talking about.
I've always been a Microsoft Windows user through and through since MS-DOS days too.
I've toyed with several different Linux distros, and Mac OS.
On the mobile side, I used everything from Symbian to Windows Mobile to iOS and Android. iOS was just an iPad, but still.
Early days of iOS I'd have to say it was probably innovation. Most of the innovation that came to mobile in early days of smartphone was on iPhones. Apps still arguably comes first on iOS too. It's still a more solid, secure and robust platform for both devs and users. And then there's the paralysis of choice argument... you don't have to think about much when buying or upgrading your iPhone.
Ok, now as a desktop/laptop platform. Apple has positioned itself pretty well in the creative/artistic market overall offering a platform which yes, you pay more, but you have a more focused OS that's both stable and better supported than Windows.
It's the market of people who needs to use a computer as a tool, but cannot be bothered with all the unnecessary complexities around computers for their job.
It certainly has ups and downs, but they managed to build an entire ecosystem around a number of products that attends the needs of big parts of the creative/artistic market. The aim is to be invisible while being useful as a tool to accomplish their jobs, something that Windows was never great at.
With a more solid foundation regarding security and privacy, plus the fact that their market is still niche when compared to Windows that goes for all and everything, it not only became something of an exclusivity/luxury club, but also a more focused platform for the target audience.
Paralysis of choice also plays it's role here. Instead of a multitude of brands and configurations, you have a handful of very spread out updates and upgrades overtime. The only thing Apple is kinda failing right now is in not keeping up with times, specially in the pro sector. Apple has switched a whole lot to a more mainstream market instead of attending first the needs of the professional market.
Macs and iPhones might have stumbled these days to keep up with the most recent tech like the newest nVidia graphics card generation, touchscreen on laptops, or high end pro specs in pro labeled gear... but you know what bullshit MacOS don't have? Ads on the file manager, scummy strategies to force people to upgrade, a whole ton of scummy telemetry strategies to harvest information from every user, and a failed app store that Microsoft keeps trying to force on people knowing that no one uses it.
This is quite a sad shift in direction... since the whole Windows 10 crap started, I've been considering to switch to any other OS that doesn't go that route. I've kept and old PC with Windows 7, I have an old laptop running Ubuntu, and if I ever start working with video editing again, I might just go for a Mac.
I never heard from Mac users complaining of problems remotely similar with the Windows in Windows out problem (the cycle of having one extremely buggy and crappy Windows version followed by a good one), or of new OS versions sucking balls 'till the first or second service pack comes out. Yes, trouble happens every now and then, but it's passable bugs when compared to the stuff Microsoft used to pull.
It's also not about being better or worse, it's just a different philosophy. Apple charges more and limits design decisions and overall direction internally. Microsoft puts things out, lets a whole ton of different brands and companies to do their own stuff, and handles it as much as it can.
There's definitely a comfort on simplifying things, limiting the OS for the purpose of usability, and hiding a whole lot of complexity under the hood just to have a functional computer or device. For lots of people it's just worth paying more for a simplified tool that does what they need it to do and only that, period.
We're still talking about a niche market worldwide, but it's t
RAM? Discrete graphics? Oh wait, it comes with Windows 10S... the rebranding of RT. Nevermind. It's worthless.
Using Feedly, but I'd still be using it regardless... it's just the one I got used to after Google Reader kicked the bucket.
I also don't consider neither Facebook nor Twitter as sources for information... they are social media, and basically the worst places to get information from, apart from photos and updates from family and friends.
RSS is not only a good way to keep track of stuff being published on favorite blogs and websites... it's the best current way, period. It's too bad Google was blind enough not to understand that, but it's their loss.
:P Sorry for the title.
But really, to the people complaining about this, ALL of your publicly accessible photos are entirely subject and probably already into "massive photo scrape". Tinder is saying they'll do "something" about it just because you know, PR speak, but they can't do much other than banning accounts which did it... which pretty much ammounts to nothing.
This also could easily be done with any social network profile photos. Any service which you can easily create a profile and go searching for people in a programmable manner is subject to this.
Which do you think is more like a religious belief? The proposal of a potential danger that might come with evolution of a particular branch of technology, or the complete dismissal of the possibility based on a very limited view regarding only 5 points of that very proposal?
I don't disagree that human-like AI is far from happening if it ever does, or that some of those particular points might be misguided in some way particularly if there is some sort of paranoia related to them... but I wouldn't outright dismiss the possibility of AI taking over huge swaths of jobs drastically changing the future of jobs for humans in the future. It's not only about superhuman AIs, general purpose intelligence, limitless expansion and whatever theoretical crap he's listing there - we're talking about stuff like Uber and car automation, robots with AIs being able to do all jobs in a factory floor more efficiently than human counterparts, and stuff like that. It's far closer than most people think.
Why? Because industrialization and automatization already happened. And while the changes weren't so drastic, they certainly happened and tons of people were definitely affected by it. A whole lot of people were caught off guard, and a whole lot of them suffered for that.
Add that to how blind the vast majority of the population is to growing concerns regarding technology and it's usage for incredibly invasive strategies, plus the unpredictability of some types of AI that already generated some degrees of discomfort. I'm talking about IoT, always listening and dialing back connected devices, that racist and sexist Microsoft chatbot - TAY, military always jumping the gun when some potential tactical advantage is to be gained, among several other things.
I still think people should not be completely paranoid about a quick and swift AI takeover of jobs in particular. Economics works in a different way worth considering. But a complete dismissal is extremely dangerous, and sounds way more like a religious belief to me than otherwise.
This is exactly why I didn't get neither a PS4 or an XBox One. They already require a subscription for full functionality. The only reason I'm considering a Switch is because it sounds like it'll still be reasonably functional without having to pay for subscription too, even though Nintendo finally caved in and decided to join this crappy trend.
Also, Spencer must have his head under a rock or something if he's just now realizing this crap . Playstation Now already exists, nVidia has Gamestream/GRID, Gaikai has been out there for quite a while now (the core of Playstation Now), and there are several other services and attempted services like these out there - GameFly, G-cluster, Kalydo, Playcast Media Systems, etc etc.
I dunno about market reception on these, but I don't think many people are buying into this trend. I won't.
What's with Slashdot and the recent unbalanced biased snippets that are being posted all the time?
If you are going to publish a story about something, why not post both sides?
From the article:
Leading the the (sic) critics was Professor Alun Hughes, associate director of the Medical Research Council Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at University College London.
He said: "This editorial is muddled and adds to confusion on a contentious topic. The authors present no really new evidence, misrepresent some existing evidence, and fail to adequately acknowledge the limitations in the evidence that they use to support their point of view."
Dr Mike Knapton, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said the claims about saturated fat were "unhelpful and misleading".
He added: "Decades of research have proved that a diet rich in saturated fat increases 'bad' LDL cholesterol in your blood, which puts you at greater risk of a heart attack or stroke."
Dr Amitava Banerjee, honorary consultant cardiologist at University College London, said: "Unfortunately, the authors have reported evidence simplistically and selectively".
His view was echoed by cardiologist Dr Gavin Sandercock, director of research at the University of Essex, who said: "This editorial is not founded on good evidence. There is no such thing as 'real food' - the authors don't define what it is so it's meaningless."
Here's another take:
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04...