Back in the real world, this is to stop banks reimbursing stupid people who keep on getting their computers compromised with keyloggers, or who keep on giving their log on details to phishing sites.
They'll still reimburse you the first time for something that they can trace to user incompetence. Maybe even the second time. After that they won't, sadly the only way to educate people about things is to hit them in the pocket, otherwise they're just too lazy to bother to learn how to fix things. Alternatively the bank should just turn off their online banking facility after the usual pin change (bet most users switch it back to the compromised pin!) and card change, etc.
However the terms and conditions should be amended, they're too wide ranging right now. Clarity as to how the bank will behave is what is needed.
However it must be really hard for a bank to determine if a fraudulent transaction was made from a cloned card. However for anything relating to online banking and criminals logging in with details from phishing or keylogging, then they can pinpoint the issue.
Maybe banks should move to proper two-factor authentication (Something you know, Something you have), not Twice One-factor (Two times something you know) first.
They'll be cooler this year from effects of La Nina. It won't reverse the general warming trend, globally.
It's called Global Climate Change because not everywhere will get warmer. Many places (Northern Europe) could get colder. Some places will get wetter, others dryer. The weather systems might get far more random in places as well.
However idiots who watched some oil funded programme on TV will now declare themselves experts on the subject and say it's bunkum. Right. Really. Your limited hours of funded popular science really make your opinion worth more than thousands of people who have spent years and decades working on this stuff?
Of course cleaning up emissions will do more than potentially slow down this global climate change (arguably man's effect is one of accelerating change, which may result in more momentum and thus higher highs ultimately), it will make the air nicer to breathe, day in, day out. This is a far better benefit. If it wasn't for this, I'd rather the money was spent on dealing with the inevitable, rather than delaying it.
If he wins his case, pretty much every online store is going to have to do an extremely thorough review of their data protection, because if you get hit for a few million each time this happens and it happens often, then you won't have a business.
And it is well overdue. So many businesses have poor data security past the initial SSL client-browser to web-server communications it isn't funny. I'm sure it's improved for many since 2004, when this happened, but being liable for the losses and damages caused by being the source of leaked data used for identity theft should get them to buck their ideas up.
Of course also to blame were the police, for grossly misusing the data they were provided. Performing arrests without any investigation is beyond reproach, and the people involve should have been fired. This situation shouldn't have happened if they had done even some basic data verification and intelligence.
As for the employer who fired him, I can understand the logic, but the guy was innocent then, so as far as I am concerned it was wrongful dismissal. This guy had done nothing wrong at any point in the proceedings. Suspension without pay would have been a reasonable alternative, with his job available if he was entirely innocent.
Cases like this are also why the legal system in the UK needs a "totally innocent" verdict, so that people's reputations don't get sullied. I bet this guy is still on all the criminal databases and comes up in job searches (hence the difficulty for someone who was clearly skilled at his job to earn £120,000 ($240,000) a year to get another job, until he settled on a £30,000 job).
In tech-savvy teams, yeah, let them manage their own computers, especially programmers and sysadmins. Otherwise they'll have every moment and to be honest their productivity will probably be reduced. Especially because many IT facilities are nazis on a power rush who take positive delight in being obtuse and difficult - especially to those more skilled with computers.
However other people? Noooooo! Not even with a course in basic computer management.
I'd still get the former group to take a course in acceptable computer use, of course. Too many universities don't have a proper ethics course on their CS courses these days - then again, too many CS courses are glorified "programming" courses.
Opera, on an internal build, got 100/100 (this isn't a percentage, there are two other aspects to Acid3 - pixel perfect placement and animation smoothness).
Safari got 100/100 a day later, but in the process discovered a flaw in the Acid3 test that had to be fixed, making Opera's score 99/100. Safari is at least available in a nightly version. Apparently it also got pixel perfect placement and the animation was arguably smooth.
I don't personally think it counts until it's a full non-beta release.
Yeah, I agree totally. Apple should release something between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro, but still a stand-alone box. Sadly I think we've all been wanting this for a few years. Apple had better be aware that we're not even compromising on a Mac Mini, we're buying Dell or building our own boxes instead.
They were thinking "low end consumer all-in-one computer, let's use the cheap, plentiful, TN LCD displays that everyone else uses in their equivalent systems". They might have gone a little too cheap it seems, on the other hand it's been out months without any loud complaints before now.
Mid-range LCD panels can only do 8-bits per component as well. 10-bit panels - they must exist, but they're rare and presumably quite high end.
There's no desire from the manufacturers to improve quality, they seem to love selling TN displays. They're good for gamers and fast video though - very fast response times.
It's a standard TN screen, as supplied with pretty much any computer under $1000. Indeed gamers prefer this type of display because they don't blur so much as slower response, but better image quality, alternatives.
TN screens are 6-bits per component, alongside a load of other things like poor viewing angles, etc.
They use temporal dithering to achieve 16.2m colours, because they can flick between close together colours very quickly, faster than the human eye can detect. There is another illusion used as well, spatial dithering of RGB subpixels to simulate a full spectrum of colour from 63 reds, greens and blues, and black (yes, TN screens can only display 190 different shades of colour if you discount all the illusions used to fool the eye into seeing all the colours of the rainbow).
The lowest-end iMac before the 20" became the low-end also used a TN screen. So in terms of iMac low-end displays, nothing has changed. However in terms of 20" iMacs, they did move from a decent quality S-IPS display to the worse TN display.
However it is clear that the TN screen used in all or some iMac 20"ers is possibly a rather poor display, even for being a TN screen. Presumably even after spending time calibrating the display. Maybe the backlight is rubbish and gives a poor colour gamut. Maybe for some reason the display doesn't do temporal dithering at all but tries some other type of spatial dithering over a set of pixels.
There is no way a professional graphics artist should be using basic consumer displays for their work. I don't even think Apple would have said that these machines were for that - maybe the 24" iMac, maybe the Mac Pro, but not the lowest of the low iMac.
The other lesson is that All-In-One computers can often have a single component make them entirely undesirable as a whole.
It seems odd to me that they are using MPEG-2 for encoding their HD channels, I imagine it is due to the equipment deployed on customer premises, but they've had years and years to sort this out and get prepared.
If they used H.264 for the encoding they would get twice the channels at the same quality in the same bandwidth. This goes for both the HD channels and the SD digital channels.
In addition, why are they keeping the analogue signals intact? Surely it's better to give out digital SD decoders to the analogue customers (yes, including RF output for grannies with 1960s TVs) and then remove all the analogue channels to free up masses of bandwidth?
The longer they keep on installing hardware that only does MPEG-2, the longer it will take to migrate away from that in the future. It is in their best interests to move to H.264 capable hardware now, so that 5 years down the line they can actually improve their service in the face of competition. However it is the "profits now" attitude that means that in 10 years time Comcast will probably lose all their customers to satellite alternatives sending 20mbps+ 1080p signals.
No one in Europe would buy a TV that didn't have at least one SCART socket today, and two would be desirable. It's not obsolete in any way, shape or form (although HDMI will replace it in about 5 years, so it doesn't have a future). Lots of people have extensive SCART switching equipment to get all their AV gear connected to the limited number of ports on their TV. I bet most people a few years ago would have said that about 5 SCART inputs on a TV would be ideal. The RGB support, even if limited to a single SCART socket on the TV, has meant that usually at least the satellite TV or DVD player had a really decent connection to the home TV, which along with PAL has probably explained the slower uptake of HDTV over here.
ADB is an example of an obsolete connector. Why is this article talking about active, popular ports as being obsolete, or did it travel backwards in time 10 years?
This is the only thing that needed to be posted in response to this article.
It clearly and concisely says that for your average user, background *network* applications (the vast majority of applications in a mobile device that might want to run in the background) drain battery horribly fast.
Even applications that poll periodically, and can thus control the radio to reduce power usage show large power consumption characteristics. Imagine an application that is always listening for incoming messages - your typical chat program for example - it will kill a connection if it is left on in the background unless the user is using the device at that time anyway.
I can see why you'd want to have IM running in the background whilst you are browsing the web, and I think this should be allowed, when Apple get around to working on this aspect of the device. Basically, whilst the screen is on, the user is using the device, then the user may wish to SSH into a machine and still get notifications (Growl-style, i.e., a nice unobtrusive pop-up message window on screen, rather that switching applications) from the IM app (or at least a small lightweight IM message listener that merely listens for incoming messages and notifies the Growl-like notification system, and sticks the data into the SQLite DB).
First and Foremost - an iPhone or iPod Touch is a mobile device, and one where you wish to preserve the battery life so that the primary purpose of the device can still happen even at the end of the day. Apple is right to approach this issue gently, although they could be more open about their reasons and future plans rather than letting speculation get presented as news.
I totally expect security issues from porting such a large wad of code from Mac OS X to Windows.
Safari must use APIs in Mac OS X that are roughly similar to APIs in Windows. However if the Mac OS X one is safe to use, and the Windows one requires a check to be programmed, then you are going to get issues as a result of this.
I don't know what Apple have done for Safari, but I imagine that they ported a large amount of Cocoa across to Windows, and Safari is running on top of that, and the Cocoa layer is hacked into Windows APIs beneath.
Any security bug that appears in Windows Safari but not in Mac Safari is most likely a result of API implementation differences, arguably you could say that the Windows APIs are less secure in their implementation. Apple still need to fix the security holes however, it's just something you need to deal with when having software running on Windows.
Well it has been several years of voting machine shenanigans, with each Slashdot topic resulting in posts saying that an open source solution is required.
So, has it been done yet?
Or is the problem one of it being rather impossible to create a completely secure voting application, however great the code is, however many security specialists have reviewed it?
Learning to improve your job chances? Then it's not so much about the languages that are important as the third party APIs available for languages you may already know.
For yourself, the current vogue is Verilog and playing around with FPGAs. Build/buy a minimig and see what you can do once you've stopped playing robocod.
Otherwise I tend to learn languages on demand, and never anything that'd a fad. It's not hard to learn a new language, although mastering the ins and outs takes a lot longer. Always good to know a popular well paid job language, like Java or C# or even PHP, inside out (i.e., the language and a good selection of APIs like Struts, Hibernate, JDBC, and so on).
Once you've done that, then learn a lower level language if you don't already know C, i.e., learn C. You don't need to master it, most people don't end up writing operating systems. It will help you understand what the computer is doing far better than not paying attention at university ever did (unless you wrote scene demos as a teenager!). Also you might want to write Gnome applications. You could learn assembler, or you could spend some time coding an 8-bit micro (via an emulator) in assembler to learn some cool stuff. WinApe is a CPC emulator with excellent development tools built in (Z80).
If you've got a Mac, learn Objective C, you have all the tools, you'd be a fool not to take advantage of it when you have the time.
Also you should know a scripting language or two. Perl is a good one. Learn shell scripting too.
If you have a job programming something esoteric, then it is very important that you keep up with a modern language in your spare time, in case the worst happens with your job.
Don't forget functional languages either. Nor don't discount selling your soul and learning some Microsoft systems stuff, although I haven't done that yet.
Oh, and as you get older, you'll be hoping to do more management type stuff too, so don't neglect those people skills.
Yeah, so what if we're all addicted to one of the greatest revolutions in social interaction? It's not the internet that's the issue, it is the social aspect it provides - chatting, forums, commenting on articles.
Would it be wrong to suggest that the people worst affected are also those that are worst at "real life" social interactions, or who were bullied in real life, or who were forced to be quiet in real life?
Then there is the learning/informational aspect of the internet. Internet addicts like that too, they're often quite bright people (again, these people are the type to be bullied a lot, be quieter (to avoid drawing attention to themselves), etc). So there is a double whammy.
Internet addiction is a real problem. It can suck up time horribly. Piles of washing up in the kitchen, but 10 tabs open in your browser, including a few "Comment Here" type pages? Yeah, you're addicted to some extent.
It's not new. People were/are addicted to telephoning other people as well, especially before the internet came along. I'm sure some alcoholism can in part be put down to an initial pub/bar/club addiction, for social reasons.
Doubt it was the government, just the creaky databases the credit agencies run. They have no particular desire to spend part of the hundreds of millions they earn each year correcting the data, they'll just assign a "quality rating" tag to suspect records to indicate to consuming entities that the data isn't that great.
The notice of correction is still a valid option, underwriters will check them. Does mean that you can't really take advantage of instant offers though.
Still, most companies don't care about anything on the credit record over 3 years ago, unless it was a massive CCJ against you.
Intel obtained an ARM implementation from Digital (StrongARM), tweaked it and rebranded it XScale, and then sold it to Marvell recently.
Most ARM chips sold aren't StrongARMs nor are they XScales. Most of the embedded ones are probably ARM7s to be honest, but ARM9s and ARM11s are numerous these days. I'd imagine that an ARM chip is sold (within another device) 50 times for each Intel CPU that is sold.
Thing is, ARM CPUs aren't microcontrollers, they're full CPUs in the modern sense of the word, they've got a lovely instruction set, and perform quite well per clock. And with multi-core implementations of the Cortex A8 the performance will grow make any performance advantage Atom has with its extra power consumption now redundant.
The next generation of Atom at 32nm will have the proper power envelope to run your cellphone BTW.
No it won't.
It won't be small enough, nor will it be integrated enough. Sure, Intel will move the GPU and Northbridge into the CPU, but that's still nowhere near as integrated as the ARM based competition.
Also it seems that people think that ARM will stay where they are now, and just happily let Intel slowly get to their power consumption over the next five years. What utter tosh. ARM have multi-core Cortex cores ready now, and on 65nm they'll make Atom and its successors irrelevant, never mind 45nm. Intel's 32nm may be what they need to get power consumption down, but that's 2011.
Intel may get into some bulky mobile phones in 2011 and 2012, but they won't be ready for slimline phones until 2015. Of course, with 20 billion ARM cores sold by then, and 20 years of extensive ARM experience and software... who'd want to use it.
The module is pressurised, so it can be used to carry people. I guess that means that ESA now has gained human launch capability. I don't know if the module can safely carry people back to Earth though, in an emergency situation, like Soyuz.
He should contact Equifax and Experian directly and submit a Notice Of Correction onto his credit records (which also contain CIFAS checks for fraud).
He should probably get a lawyer to write the letter, including the proof, and suggest that failure to correct their records entirely will result in court action.
You'll probably still be saying it when it's the only machine still working when all the PCs you've bought since are failing in a couple of years time. The issue with slow loading apps is the mobile hard drive.
512MB is enough to run Tiger with all the effects, but maybe not a lot of software. It's enough to run XP. Vista and Leopard? No way.
You said it yourself, it was a cheap easy upgrade, what's the computer like now? At the time you bought it, it wasn't so cheap. When was the last time you could pop into the Dell shop so that they could upgrade your RAM whilst you waited? And they charge a pretty penny for memory as well. For many people, it makes the entire possibility impossible, because they simply can't do that stuff, like some people can't change an oil filter or set the VCR.
Slashdot Mirror
Back in the real world, this is to stop banks reimbursing stupid people who keep on getting their computers compromised with keyloggers, or who keep on giving their log on details to phishing sites.
They'll still reimburse you the first time for something that they can trace to user incompetence. Maybe even the second time. After that they won't, sadly the only way to educate people about things is to hit them in the pocket, otherwise they're just too lazy to bother to learn how to fix things. Alternatively the bank should just turn off their online banking facility after the usual pin change (bet most users switch it back to the compromised pin!) and card change, etc.
However the terms and conditions should be amended, they're too wide ranging right now. Clarity as to how the bank will behave is what is needed.
However it must be really hard for a bank to determine if a fraudulent transaction was made from a cloned card. However for anything relating to online banking and criminals logging in with details from phishing or keylogging, then they can pinpoint the issue.
Maybe banks should move to proper two-factor authentication (Something you know, Something you have), not Twice One-factor (Two times something you know) first.
They'll be cooler this year from effects of La Nina. It won't reverse the general warming trend, globally.
It's called Global Climate Change because not everywhere will get warmer. Many places (Northern Europe) could get colder. Some places will get wetter, others dryer. The weather systems might get far more random in places as well.
However idiots who watched some oil funded programme on TV will now declare themselves experts on the subject and say it's bunkum. Right. Really. Your limited hours of funded popular science really make your opinion worth more than thousands of people who have spent years and decades working on this stuff?
Of course cleaning up emissions will do more than potentially slow down this global climate change (arguably man's effect is one of accelerating change, which may result in more momentum and thus higher highs ultimately), it will make the air nicer to breathe, day in, day out. This is a far better benefit. If it wasn't for this, I'd rather the money was spent on dealing with the inevitable, rather than delaying it.
If he wins his case, pretty much every online store is going to have to do an extremely thorough review of their data protection, because if you get hit for a few million each time this happens and it happens often, then you won't have a business.
And it is well overdue. So many businesses have poor data security past the initial SSL client-browser to web-server communications it isn't funny. I'm sure it's improved for many since 2004, when this happened, but being liable for the losses and damages caused by being the source of leaked data used for identity theft should get them to buck their ideas up.
Of course also to blame were the police, for grossly misusing the data they were provided. Performing arrests without any investigation is beyond reproach, and the people involve should have been fired. This situation shouldn't have happened if they had done even some basic data verification and intelligence.
As for the employer who fired him, I can understand the logic, but the guy was innocent then, so as far as I am concerned it was wrongful dismissal. This guy had done nothing wrong at any point in the proceedings. Suspension without pay would have been a reasonable alternative, with his job available if he was entirely innocent.
Cases like this are also why the legal system in the UK needs a "totally innocent" verdict, so that people's reputations don't get sullied. I bet this guy is still on all the criminal databases and comes up in job searches (hence the difficulty for someone who was clearly skilled at his job to earn £120,000 ($240,000) a year to get another job, until he settled on a £30,000 job).
In tech-savvy teams, yeah, let them manage their own computers, especially programmers and sysadmins. Otherwise they'll have every moment and to be honest their productivity will probably be reduced. Especially because many IT facilities are nazis on a power rush who take positive delight in being obtuse and difficult - especially to those more skilled with computers.
However other people? Noooooo! Not even with a course in basic computer management.
I'd still get the former group to take a course in acceptable computer use, of course. Too many universities don't have a proper ethics course on their CS courses these days - then again, too many CS courses are glorified "programming" courses.
Opera, on an internal build, got 100/100 (this isn't a percentage, there are two other aspects to Acid3 - pixel perfect placement and animation smoothness).
Safari got 100/100 a day later, but in the process discovered a flaw in the Acid3 test that had to be fixed, making Opera's score 99/100. Safari is at least available in a nightly version. Apparently it also got pixel perfect placement and the animation was arguably smooth.
I don't personally think it counts until it's a full non-beta release.
Yeah, I agree totally. Apple should release something between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro, but still a stand-alone box. Sadly I think we've all been wanting this for a few years. Apple had better be aware that we're not even compromising on a Mac Mini, we're buying Dell or building our own boxes instead.
They were thinking "low end consumer all-in-one computer, let's use the cheap, plentiful, TN LCD displays that everyone else uses in their equivalent systems". They might have gone a little too cheap it seems, on the other hand it's been out months without any loud complaints before now.
Mid-range LCD panels can only do 8-bits per component as well. 10-bit panels - they must exist, but they're rare and presumably quite high end.
There's no desire from the manufacturers to improve quality, they seem to love selling TN displays. They're good for gamers and fast video though - very fast response times.
It's a standard TN screen, as supplied with pretty much any computer under $1000. Indeed gamers prefer this type of display because they don't blur so much as slower response, but better image quality, alternatives.
TN screens are 6-bits per component, alongside a load of other things like poor viewing angles, etc.
They use temporal dithering to achieve 16.2m colours, because they can flick between close together colours very quickly, faster than the human eye can detect. There is another illusion used as well, spatial dithering of RGB subpixels to simulate a full spectrum of colour from 63 reds, greens and blues, and black (yes, TN screens can only display 190 different shades of colour if you discount all the illusions used to fool the eye into seeing all the colours of the rainbow).
The lowest-end iMac before the 20" became the low-end also used a TN screen. So in terms of iMac low-end displays, nothing has changed. However in terms of 20" iMacs, they did move from a decent quality S-IPS display to the worse TN display.
However it is clear that the TN screen used in all or some iMac 20"ers is possibly a rather poor display, even for being a TN screen. Presumably even after spending time calibrating the display. Maybe the backlight is rubbish and gives a poor colour gamut. Maybe for some reason the display doesn't do temporal dithering at all but tries some other type of spatial dithering over a set of pixels.
There is no way a professional graphics artist should be using basic consumer displays for their work. I don't even think Apple would have said that these machines were for that - maybe the 24" iMac, maybe the Mac Pro, but not the lowest of the low iMac.
The other lesson is that All-In-One computers can often have a single component make them entirely undesirable as a whole.
It seems odd to me that they are using MPEG-2 for encoding their HD channels, I imagine it is due to the equipment deployed on customer premises, but they've had years and years to sort this out and get prepared.
If they used H.264 for the encoding they would get twice the channels at the same quality in the same bandwidth. This goes for both the HD channels and the SD digital channels.
In addition, why are they keeping the analogue signals intact? Surely it's better to give out digital SD decoders to the analogue customers (yes, including RF output for grannies with 1960s TVs) and then remove all the analogue channels to free up masses of bandwidth?
The longer they keep on installing hardware that only does MPEG-2, the longer it will take to migrate away from that in the future. It is in their best interests to move to H.264 capable hardware now, so that 5 years down the line they can actually improve their service in the face of competition. However it is the "profits now" attitude that means that in 10 years time Comcast will probably lose all their customers to satellite alternatives sending 20mbps+ 1080p signals.
No one in Europe would buy a TV that didn't have at least one SCART socket today, and two would be desirable. It's not obsolete in any way, shape or form (although HDMI will replace it in about 5 years, so it doesn't have a future). Lots of people have extensive SCART switching equipment to get all their AV gear connected to the limited number of ports on their TV. I bet most people a few years ago would have said that about 5 SCART inputs on a TV would be ideal. The RGB support, even if limited to a single SCART socket on the TV, has meant that usually at least the satellite TV or DVD player had a really decent connection to the home TV, which along with PAL has probably explained the slower uptake of HDTV over here.
ADB is an example of an obsolete connector. Why is this article talking about active, popular ports as being obsolete, or did it travel backwards in time 10 years?
This is the only thing that needed to be posted in response to this article.
It clearly and concisely says that for your average user, background *network* applications (the vast majority of applications in a mobile device that might want to run in the background) drain battery horribly fast.
Even applications that poll periodically, and can thus control the radio to reduce power usage show large power consumption characteristics.
Imagine an application that is always listening for incoming messages - your typical chat program for example - it will kill a connection if it is left on in the background unless the user is using the device at that time anyway.
I can see why you'd want to have IM running in the background whilst you are browsing the web, and I think this should be allowed, when Apple get around to working on this aspect of the device. Basically, whilst the screen is on, the user is using the device, then the user may wish to SSH into a machine and still get notifications (Growl-style, i.e., a nice unobtrusive pop-up message window on screen, rather that switching applications) from the IM app (or at least a small lightweight IM message listener that merely listens for incoming messages and notifies the Growl-like notification system, and sticks the data into the SQLite DB).
First and Foremost - an iPhone or iPod Touch is a mobile device, and one where you wish to preserve the battery life so that the primary purpose of the device can still happen even at the end of the day. Apple is right to approach this issue gently, although they could be more open about their reasons and future plans rather than letting speculation get presented as news.
I totally expect security issues from porting such a large wad of code from Mac OS X to Windows.
Safari must use APIs in Mac OS X that are roughly similar to APIs in Windows. However if the Mac OS X one is safe to use, and the Windows one requires a check to be programmed, then you are going to get issues as a result of this.
I don't know what Apple have done for Safari, but I imagine that they ported a large amount of Cocoa across to Windows, and Safari is running on top of that, and the Cocoa layer is hacked into Windows APIs beneath.
Any security bug that appears in Windows Safari but not in Mac Safari is most likely a result of API implementation differences, arguably you could say that the Windows APIs are less secure in their implementation. Apple still need to fix the security holes however, it's just something you need to deal with when having software running on Windows.
Well it has been several years of voting machine shenanigans, with each Slashdot topic resulting in posts saying that an open source solution is required.
So, has it been done yet?
Or is the problem one of it being rather impossible to create a completely secure voting application, however great the code is, however many security specialists have reviewed it?
Learning to improve your job chances? Then it's not so much about the languages that are important as the third party APIs available for languages you may already know.
For yourself, the current vogue is Verilog and playing around with FPGAs. Build/buy a minimig and see what you can do once you've stopped playing robocod.
Otherwise I tend to learn languages on demand, and never anything that'd a fad. It's not hard to learn a new language, although mastering the ins and outs takes a lot longer. Always good to know a popular well paid job language, like Java or C# or even PHP, inside out (i.e., the language and a good selection of APIs like Struts, Hibernate, JDBC, and so on).
Once you've done that, then learn a lower level language if you don't already know C, i.e., learn C. You don't need to master it, most people don't end up writing operating systems. It will help you understand what the computer is doing far better than not paying attention at university ever did (unless you wrote scene demos as a teenager!). Also you might want to write Gnome applications. You could learn assembler, or you could spend some time coding an 8-bit micro (via an emulator) in assembler to learn some cool stuff. WinApe is a CPC emulator with excellent development tools built in (Z80).
If you've got a Mac, learn Objective C, you have all the tools, you'd be a fool not to take advantage of it when you have the time.
Also you should know a scripting language or two. Perl is a good one. Learn shell scripting too.
If you have a job programming something esoteric, then it is very important that you keep up with a modern language in your spare time, in case the worst happens with your job.
Don't forget functional languages either. Nor don't discount selling your soul and learning some Microsoft systems stuff, although I haven't done that yet.
Oh, and as you get older, you'll be hoping to do more management type stuff too, so don't neglect those people skills.
Yeah, so what if we're all addicted to one of the greatest revolutions in social interaction? It's not the internet that's the issue, it is the social aspect it provides - chatting, forums, commenting on articles.
Would it be wrong to suggest that the people worst affected are also those that are worst at "real life" social interactions, or who were bullied in real life, or who were forced to be quiet in real life?
Then there is the learning/informational aspect of the internet. Internet addicts like that too, they're often quite bright people (again, these people are the type to be bullied a lot, be quieter (to avoid drawing attention to themselves), etc). So there is a double whammy.
Internet addiction is a real problem. It can suck up time horribly. Piles of washing up in the kitchen, but 10 tabs open in your browser, including a few "Comment Here" type pages? Yeah, you're addicted to some extent.
It's not new. People were/are addicted to telephoning other people as well, especially before the internet came along. I'm sure some alcoholism can in part be put down to an initial pub/bar/club addiction, for social reasons.
Doubt it was the government, just the creaky databases the credit agencies run. They have no particular desire to spend part of the hundreds of millions they earn each year correcting the data, they'll just assign a "quality rating" tag to suspect records to indicate to consuming entities that the data isn't that great.
The notice of correction is still a valid option, underwriters will check them. Does mean that you can't really take advantage of instant offers though.
Still, most companies don't care about anything on the credit record over 3 years ago, unless it was a massive CCJ against you.
Intel obtained an ARM implementation from Digital (StrongARM), tweaked it and rebranded it XScale, and then sold it to Marvell recently.
Most ARM chips sold aren't StrongARMs nor are they XScales. Most of the embedded ones are probably ARM7s to be honest, but ARM9s and ARM11s are numerous these days. I'd imagine that an ARM chip is sold (within another device) 50 times for each Intel CPU that is sold.
Thing is, ARM CPUs aren't microcontrollers, they're full CPUs in the modern sense of the word, they've got a lovely instruction set, and perform quite well per clock. And with multi-core implementations of the Cortex A8 the performance will grow make any performance advantage Atom has with its extra power consumption now redundant.
The next generation of Atom at 32nm will have the proper power envelope to run your cellphone BTW.
... who'd want to use it.
No it won't.
It won't be small enough, nor will it be integrated enough. Sure, Intel will move the GPU and Northbridge into the CPU, but that's still nowhere near as integrated as the ARM based competition.
Also it seems that people think that ARM will stay where they are now, and just happily let Intel slowly get to their power consumption over the next five years. What utter tosh. ARM have multi-core Cortex cores ready now, and on 65nm they'll make Atom and its successors irrelevant, never mind 45nm. Intel's 32nm may be what they need to get power consumption down, but that's 2011.
Intel may get into some bulky mobile phones in 2011 and 2012, but they won't be ready for slimline phones until 2015. Of course, with 20 billion ARM cores sold by then, and 20 years of extensive ARM experience and software
"ARM's small but tenacious market share"
Ten billion ARM cpus deployed to date.
Intel is a minnow in this area.
The module is pressurised, so it can be used to carry people. I guess that means that ESA now has gained human launch capability. I don't know if the module can safely carry people back to Earth though, in an emergency situation, like Soyuz.
He should contact Equifax and Experian directly and submit a Notice Of Correction onto his credit records (which also contain CIFAS checks for fraud).
He should probably get a lawyer to write the letter, including the proof, and suggest that failure to correct their records entirely will result in court action.
You'll probably still be saying it when it's the only machine still working when all the PCs you've bought since are failing in a couple of years time. The issue with slow loading apps is the mobile hard drive.
512MB is enough to run Tiger with all the effects, but maybe not a lot of software. It's enough to run XP. Vista and Leopard? No way.
You said it yourself, it was a cheap easy upgrade, what's the computer like now? At the time you bought it, it wasn't so cheap. When was the last time you could pop into the Dell shop so that they could upgrade your RAM whilst you waited? And they charge a pretty penny for memory as well. For many people, it makes the entire possibility impossible, because they simply can't do that stuff, like some people can't change an oil filter or set the VCR.
If someone else hires him, that's their problem.
... :)
Especially if they're a competitor
I guess this is why many "business development" roles have most of the wage in commission.
It's hardly hosting it in China then!
They should call it "The Olympics, hosted in Cleansed Land within the borders of China".
Wonder how much the Chinese will ever know about their country hosting the Olympics, apart from it being great.
He sent email like that from his work account?
Wow, what a dumb fuck. Except he got paid loads until he was caught.
Hope the email is quoted in references for future potential employers.