For a country teeming with large marsupials which have a tenancy to cream - rather than be creamed by - the impacting vehicle, I find concern about a running over a little bunny somewhat ironic.
Spider man recently had a second "reboot". Superman has been somewhat rebooted. Batman has been rebooted countless times Star trek... many different series, and now a TOS reboot.
There are a lot of book or even game-based movies/series coming out. Nnot that it's bad, some are very good, but sometimes the networks seem to scrape fairly far down the barrel for original stuff. Why not reboot Firefly? Hell, they could probably make a killing by turning it into a kickstarter project or whatever.
There are limitations to how high your HA can be depending on the volume of data you process and the infrastructure available.
In this case an entire building was knocked out by an exceptional circumstance. You can plan for that by having buildings in multiple sites, but as you get farther apart the connecting infrastructure gets more difficult. In this Shaw is an ISP (one of the big-boys in that part of the country), so in that case you'd expect that access to fast connections should be their forte. One thing that 9-11 showed is that even huge skyscrapers - though unlikely - can be knocked out by a crazy set of circumstances (or just crazy people).
However, what happens if you're running through gigs of data on a constant basis? If you can't get a fibre connection between two sites, you might not be able to have a live redundant backup.
Now what if you connect to multiple outside entities. They'll need to have redundant connections to both your sites. You'll want two ISP's, in case one kicks etc, etc etc.
How about power? Both sites will need a big generator or something of the like, plus battery-backup to hold things until the generator kicks in. Preferably they'd both be fairly far apart on the grid so if one site doesn't.
Weather... they'd both better be outside of any major weather considerations (forest fires, floods, quakes, whatever).
I won't make excuses for Shaw (no I don't work for them, in fact I'm affected negatively by the outage), but for many companies 100% HA/redundancy isn't really possible.
Luckily for those using services, I believe that this was a case of connection/infrastructure loss rather than all the data, so I hope that Shaw is working their a**es off to get things back.
Do those sound familiar? Big names *do* sell software and electronics just like they sell shoes. There are plenty of people who buy Cisco because of brand-reputation. Maybe they'd do just as well with something from Juniper or CoyotePoint, but they trust the Cisco name. Of course, today's actions do determine tomorrow's reputation, but often enough tomorrow is quite far away.
Beyond that, there's an expectation of quality associated with a name (and often with the price). People expect their $$$ brand diamond jewelry to contain real diamonds. They may expect their high-end brand-name shoes/clothes to last longer than certain other brands.
Dell did really well on their name for awhile (Dude, you've got a Dell), even if inside it wasn't better than many competitors. Companies sell financial systems, operating systems based on brand as well.
Hell. People by snot and butt-wipe paper based on brand. They buy pickles, mustard, and ketchup based on brand.
Don't kid yourself, brand means a lot in *MANY* industries, including IT.
Ever hear of a lawyer taking a suit against another lawyer? All the time. Defendants and plaintiffs are both allowed lawyers, after all, and somebody defendants/plaintiff's *are* lawyers
lawyers stick together
So do geeks. How many people defended Hans Reiser as a near-saint purely on the basis of his geek-credentials? How often do we see convoluted-to-the-point-of-insanity arguments for geeks (or again "the man") in tech/geek related articles?
However, it seems to me that a judge is more likely to defend the institution than an individual. Higher up the political ladder this changes a bit, but overall the courts are fairly forgiving of behaviour that - while legal - would disgust most people. There are plenty of hard situations in court that still swing either way. We have cases where judges have thrown away odd solid but improperly-obtained evidence against a rapist or killer. Locally I read about a case where a father had molested his daughter, but as they were ESL and the cops took too long to get a proper translator etc, the case ended up being drop due to a violation of due process. Would you be able to let somebody walk after stabbing a grandma or molesting a child because of a police screw-up or court delays?
In situations like that, I'd imagine that many end up clinging to "the system" like a log on the ocean after a shipwreck. Obviously there's other stuff that happens as well (corruption, bribery, scandal, etc), so the system is far from perfect, in fact in many ways it is IMHO pretty screwed up (see patents).
Painting all judges or lawyers as buddies in a grand conspiracy is a bit disingenious. Many are players in a broken system that's jumped the rails and lost control. I won't paint them all as innocent, but painting them all as crooked isn't right either.
I wouldn't say that they target the leadership per-se, but it definitely affects them. The aforementioned narcissistic bastard may be able to ignore poor people on the street, drug use, abandoned/abused children, and whatever other ills are beneath him/her when living in some big mansion on the hill in a rich neighbourhood. However, when he (/she) has to live in some underground bunker because the world above is radioactive, his favorite mall is glowing, that bakery he frequented on second-street is a smoking hole, and there's nothing on television... then it's a lot harder to ignore. Obviously said narcissistic bastard wants to avoid that.
The big issue I see is when there's nothing left to lose. Perhaps he's about to be pulled from power and imprisoned, sentenced to death, or whatever. To a true psychotic narcissist, perhaps he's just going to die of cancer or even age soon anyhow. Then suddenly pushing the big red button and taking everyone out with him seems a lot more appealing.
Look at parents losing custody battles that end up killing themselves and their kids. Sometimes their neighbours and relations all account them as normal, nice people. What happens when one of those people is in charge of the launch button?
As long as it is always opt-in, I don't really see a big issue. TV's have parental controls that can be easily enabled/disabled by an adult with the appropriate password (how effective they are I dunno as I've not used them). If a customer wants to ring their ISP and say I'd like the "Christian standards web filtering package", it doesn't affect me or bother me. Heck, some people would probably pay for such a "service" (which is probably what the ISP will aim for)
The issue becomes when such filters become "opt-out", and are on by default. I believe the register coined it well when they asked how many people would be willing to check off the following box on their internet-service application
[X] Yes I am a dirty pervert
I don't really see why it's odd. For the law, it's about identifying the user.
An ISP has a record to identify a customer. Depending on how strictly they manage they network, they should be able to say with some confidence that "the account that accessed X belonged to Bob Smith of 123 Summer St" (notice I do say "account belonging to Bob", and not Bob himself)
Whereas Bob, who has open wifi, generally cannot say with confidence that "the access from my account at 12:30pm on July 9 was done by my neighbour Sam"
Unless Bob has some strong measures in place to define access: strong encryption, VPN, a well-configured login portal, etc, then the buck has still stopped at his network.
Heck, those guys "fixed" most of the games I already owned. Back in the days where DRM was mostly easily-lost CD-keys and/or disc swapping, they made PC gaming a hell of a lot less of a PITA. Nothing like finding a noCD crack so that you no longer have to keep a 200-CD wallet beside the PC and constantly swap discs between games (or hell, even for a single 5-disc game).
Actually, tablet or smart-device integration would be awesome. Have your tablet connect to your PC. Add all controls as a tablet-based GUI (which changes to befit the situation) rather than a bunch of weird "hotkeys" Put "console" type feedback on the tablet too
Make the screen purely for gameplay or FP view.
How about a space shooter or strategy game where you click/highlight something on the computer screen, and info + actions shows on the tablet? Click an enemy carrier, and its stats+health show on the tablet, plus options for locking on, launching missings, cycling subtargets, etc.
Unfortunately, they've fallen down in the corp environment too. Recent phones are less reliable than they were, BES's integration has become clunky (and don't get me started on running it under SUSE) and has a lot more competition, and the OS lacks the features/apps of the competitors.
However... that's not to say that they need to hit the general-consumer market along with everyone else. Despite great advances, there are still lots of gaps in corporate that Apple/Android haven't yet filled (and don't seem quite as interested in). Yes, there will be those that want them at work due to being "hip" devices, but the business class worldwide could still use a phone that is:
a) Reliable as a phone / communications device. Good audio. Strong signal. Phone-centric features etc b) Lasts more than a few days on battery c) Solid (and less breakable) d) Convenient and quick for message (I personally *hate* on-screen keyboards for fast typing compared to a BB. Even with Swype it's cumbersome and error-prone. The Droid's snap-out keyboard was nice but seems to have faded away). e) Secure (including safe from malware) f) Integrates "personal device" well with "corporate tool". I believe Android has taken steps in this direction already in terms of setting aside spaces for "secure" data g) Portable (doing away with carrier locks would be nice. Dual-SIM for those that do international business would be cool) h) More useful for stuff like presentations, etc. Pushing your powerpoint from a phone to a large display perhaps? Hardware addons for projectors?
Maybe not LTE per-se, but faster networks played at part. When Blackberry was a shining star, most of their core functionality centered around (comparatively) low-bandwidth textual data exchange. Email, BBIM. Sometimes they might pump a bigger chunk of data but overall nothing compared to media-laden webpages and youtube, etc. Apps generally weren't all that huge either.
Then you bring out Apple and Android. Web-browser, music store, media, and apps that can be 20+MB to download (plus a few hundred for "content" at times). If we had been stuck at 2G speeds then the best phone-browser would still have been a fairly irritating experience speed-wise. At 3G browsing is fine, but faster networks have enabled "smart" devices to become media hubs for video-conferencing, tethering, movies and live streaming.
There's a lot more than just "fast networks" at play, but it may have been a contributing factor. That said, it was also a predictable one that RIM should have been prepared for.
Indeed. When you look at a lot of the "other" gaming companies out there, Steam/Valve seems to generally be the most customer-centric. They make a lot of effort into providing useful services to their customers.
Other companies' foray in the world of DRM has met with broken CD-ROM drives, unplayable games, and a generally lousy customer experience. Steam is making inroads to embrace a wider market and is quite supportive of indie-style games. IMHO, others seem to have opted for a poor parody of the Steam platform, but nobody else really comes close.
My only real complain with steam is that all games are locked to a single account on a single PC (e.g. I can't have two games across one account active on two different systems). Well, that and I'd really like to see HL2e3 (or HL3) come out sometime soon:-)
But if they don't make some fancy GUI changes, then I'd be willing to bet that a *lot* of people are going to say "what's different about this? Why would I spend money on a new windows that looks the same as the old one"
Sadly, "it runs better" seems to be second-place compared to "fancy eye-candy" for many consumers, but the two are often mutually exclusive when you want it to run well on older machines.
While I personally don't care much for the idea of having a facebook app installed on my phone (I do use facebook, but the mobile interface works just fine and can't access my contacts etc), for some people the damn thing is installed stock on the phone. In some cases I've heard it can't even be removed without rooting, though that I can't confirm.
Ever had that moment in a parking lot where you couldn't remember exactly where you parked? Ever walked up to somebody else's car before you determined it was yours? Ever notice that it wasn't even the same make/model of car?
My car is quite similar looks-wise to a lot of others out there. If you took the logos off of 3 similar major vehicles, would you easily be able to tell if one was a Ford, another a Toyota, and the last a Volkswagon? I've wandered up the wrong vehicle (of a different make), and I've been driving my car for years.
Further to that, how about your car stereo? Or any number of other things out there are visibly similar?
But when you get behind the wheel and drive one, or look in the hood... things are different. It's not a huge difference, like comparing a V4 or a V8, but they're still significant.
Think of what the world will be like if automotives and everything else is suddenly subjected to somewhat obscure or intellectually obvious "design" patents? Should Ford will sue Toyota for producing a silver vehicle with 16" tires and black wipers? Do you buy your car because it's blue with a sloped hood, or is there perhaps something more to it than that? Especially when other manufacturers are now taking steps to further differentiate their products (to avoid being sued), which results in digging further into the obvious bin to find similarities to block competition... because real innovation is just too much damn work these days.
Well, facebook does provide a "social network" service which is valuable to some (YMMV on how valuable you consider it).
Google provides an OS for phones/tablets, map services, content-delivery services, an huge aggregate of search/etc knowledge, chat/communication, and many others that I'm probably not even aware of.
Both make their money by ad placement and data-mining. However it's not like the ads are what the public is intent on using.
Indeed. One of the big issues with the whiners is that they drown out legitimate complaints. The "RF headache" crowd is so vocal that legitimate complains like 300% + billings get lost in the noise.
I know several people who have been overbilled. In one case it was that maintenance person mis-recorded the previous meter's last count before replacing it, in others it was just overbilling. IIRC in the news there was a case where person X was getting charged for his own power plus a neighbour's.
The flow/regulator may also be different in the new meter, resulting in slightly less water usage. Where I live, many strata's added flow regulators (or just smaller pipes) to their water systems, which resulted in lowered usage and increased savings over time.
Paying more for a domestically built device (ok, same-continent, since I'm Canadian) is one thing. However, supported applications lists:
Google Play Music
Google Play Movies and TV
YouTube
Where's the Netflix etc?
A device that costs more and potentially does less than other devices currently on the market? Not likely to do so well unless Google has some new tricks coming soon.
I'm also wondering about some of the other specs:
32 RGB perimeter LEDs
What are those for? Rave simulation mode? Oh wait "The 32 LEDs that ring Nexus Q shift and change color in time to your music. Choose your favorite effect and put your Nexus Q where it can be seen, and touched." Uhhhhh OK
And the best part. There's apparently no remote. So you need an existing Android device to use that. Add a few hundred at least to the pricetag if you haven't got one of those already.
Good question. I've never really had a reason to put/boot on the RAID-5, so as you've said I always made it RAID-1. Since it doesn't get written (or even read, really) that often that should work for most people though.
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For a country teeming with large marsupials which have a tenancy to cream - rather than be creamed by - the impacting vehicle, I find concern about a running over a little bunny somewhat ironic.
Spider man recently had a second "reboot".
Superman has been somewhat rebooted.
Batman has been rebooted countless times
Star trek... many different series, and now a TOS reboot.
There are a lot of book or even game-based movies/series coming out. Nnot that it's bad, some are very good, but sometimes the networks seem to scrape fairly far down the barrel for original stuff. Why not reboot Firefly? Hell, they could probably make a killing by turning it into a kickstarter project or whatever.
There are limitations to how high your HA can be depending on the volume of data you process and the infrastructure available.
In this case an entire building was knocked out by an exceptional circumstance. You can plan for that by having buildings in multiple sites, but as you get farther apart the connecting infrastructure gets more difficult. In this Shaw is an ISP (one of the big-boys in that part of the country), so in that case you'd expect that access to fast connections should be their forte. One thing that 9-11 showed is that even huge skyscrapers - though unlikely - can be knocked out by a crazy set of circumstances (or just crazy people).
However, what happens if you're running through gigs of data on a constant basis? If you can't get a fibre connection between two sites, you might not be able to have a live redundant backup.
Now what if you connect to multiple outside entities. They'll need to have redundant connections to both your sites. You'll want two ISP's, in case one kicks etc, etc etc.
How about power? Both sites will need a big generator or something of the like, plus battery-backup to hold things until the generator kicks in. Preferably they'd both be fairly far apart on the grid so if one site doesn't.
Weather... they'd both better be outside of any major weather considerations (forest fires, floods, quakes, whatever).
I won't make excuses for Shaw (no I don't work for them, in fact I'm affected negatively by the outage), but for many companies 100% HA/redundancy isn't really possible.
Luckily for those using services, I believe that this was a case of connection/infrastructure loss rather than all the data, so I hope that Shaw is working their a**es off to get things back.
Cisco
HP
Dell
Sony
Amazon
Ebay
Asus
Alienware
or perhaps:
RedHat
Microsoft
Apple
IBM
or
Toyota
Honda
Ford
Kia
Mercedes
BMW
Do those sound familiar? Big names *do* sell software and electronics just like they sell shoes. There are plenty of people who buy Cisco because of brand-reputation. Maybe they'd do just as well with something from Juniper or CoyotePoint, but they trust the Cisco name. Of course, today's actions do determine tomorrow's reputation, but often enough tomorrow is quite far away.
Beyond that, there's an expectation of quality associated with a name (and often with the price). People expect their $$$ brand diamond jewelry to contain real diamonds. They may expect their high-end brand-name shoes/clothes to last longer than certain other brands.
Dell did really well on their name for awhile (Dude, you've got a Dell), even if inside it wasn't better than many competitors. Companies sell financial systems, operating systems based on brand as well.
Hell. People by snot and butt-wipe paper based on brand. They buy pickles, mustard, and ketchup based on brand.
Don't kid yourself, brand means a lot in *MANY* industries, including IT.
Ever hear of a lawyer taking a suit against another lawyer?
All the time. Defendants and plaintiffs are both allowed lawyers, after all, and somebody defendants/plaintiff's *are* lawyers
lawyers stick together
So do geeks.
How many people defended Hans Reiser as a near-saint purely on the basis of his geek-credentials?
How often do we see convoluted-to-the-point-of-insanity arguments for geeks (or again "the man") in tech/geek related articles?
However, it seems to me that a judge is more likely to defend the institution than an individual. Higher up the political ladder this changes a bit, but overall the courts are fairly forgiving of behaviour that - while legal - would disgust most people. There are plenty of hard situations in court that still swing either way.
We have cases where judges have thrown away odd solid but improperly-obtained evidence against a rapist or killer. Locally I read about a case where a father had molested his daughter, but as they were ESL and the cops took too long to get a proper translator etc, the case ended up being drop due to a violation of due process. Would you be able to let somebody walk after stabbing a grandma or molesting a child because of a police screw-up or court delays?
In situations like that, I'd imagine that many end up clinging to "the system" like a log on the ocean after a shipwreck. Obviously there's other stuff that happens as well (corruption, bribery, scandal, etc), so the system is far from perfect, in fact in many ways it is IMHO pretty screwed up (see patents).
Painting all judges or lawyers as buddies in a grand conspiracy is a bit disingenious. Many are players in a broken system that's jumped the rails and lost control. I won't paint them all as innocent, but painting them all as crooked isn't right either.
I wouldn't say that they target the leadership per-se, but it definitely affects them.
The aforementioned narcissistic bastard may be able to ignore poor people on the street, drug use, abandoned/abused children, and whatever other ills are beneath him/her when living in some big mansion on the hill in a rich neighbourhood.
However, when he (/she) has to live in some underground bunker because the world above is radioactive, his favorite mall is glowing, that bakery he frequented on second-street is a smoking hole, and there's nothing on television... then it's a lot harder to ignore. Obviously said narcissistic bastard wants to avoid that.
The big issue I see is when there's nothing left to lose. Perhaps he's about to be pulled from power and imprisoned, sentenced to death, or whatever. To a true psychotic narcissist, perhaps he's just going to die of cancer or even age soon anyhow. Then suddenly pushing the big red button and taking everyone out with him seems a lot more appealing.
Look at parents losing custody battles that end up killing themselves and their kids. Sometimes their neighbours and relations all account them as normal, nice people. What happens when one of those people is in charge of the launch button?
As long as it is always opt-in, I don't really see a big issue. TV's have parental controls that can be easily enabled/disabled by an adult with the appropriate password (how effective they are I dunno as I've not used them). If a customer wants to ring their ISP and say
I'd like the "Christian standards web filtering package", it doesn't affect me or bother me. Heck, some people would probably pay for such a "service" (which is probably what the ISP will aim for)
The issue becomes when such filters become "opt-out", and are on by default. I believe the register coined it well when they asked how many people would be willing to check off the following box on their internet-service application
[X] Yes I am a dirty pervert
I don't really see why it's odd. For the law, it's about identifying the user.
An ISP has a record to identify a customer. Depending on how strictly they manage they network, they should be able to say with some confidence that
"the account that accessed X belonged to Bob Smith of 123 Summer St" (notice I do say "account belonging to Bob", and not Bob himself)
Whereas Bob, who has open wifi, generally cannot say with confidence that
"the access from my account at 12:30pm on July 9 was done by my neighbour Sam"
Unless Bob has some strong measures in place to define access: strong encryption, VPN, a well-configured login portal, etc, then the buck has still stopped at his network.
Heck, those guys "fixed" most of the games I already owned.
Back in the days where DRM was mostly easily-lost CD-keys and/or disc swapping, they made PC gaming a hell of a lot less of a PITA.
Nothing like finding a noCD crack so that you no longer have to keep a 200-CD wallet beside the PC and constantly swap discs between games (or hell, even for a single 5-disc game).
Actually, tablet or smart-device integration would be awesome.
Have your tablet connect to your PC. Add all controls as a tablet-based GUI (which changes to befit the situation) rather than a bunch of weird "hotkeys"
Put "console" type feedback on the tablet too
Make the screen purely for gameplay or FP view.
How about a space shooter or strategy game where you click/highlight something on the computer screen, and info + actions shows on the tablet?
Click an enemy carrier, and its stats+health show on the tablet, plus options for locking on, launching missings, cycling subtargets, etc.
Unfortunately, they've fallen down in the corp environment too. Recent phones are less reliable than they were, BES's integration has become clunky (and don't get me started on running it under SUSE) and has a lot more competition, and the OS lacks the features/apps of the competitors.
However... that's not to say that they need to hit the general-consumer market along with everyone else. Despite great advances, there are still lots of gaps in corporate that Apple/Android haven't yet filled (and don't seem quite as interested in). Yes, there will be those that want them at work due to being "hip" devices, but the business class worldwide could still use a phone that is:
a) Reliable as a phone / communications device. Good audio. Strong signal. Phone-centric features etc
b) Lasts more than a few days on battery
c) Solid (and less breakable)
d) Convenient and quick for message (I personally *hate* on-screen keyboards for fast typing compared to a BB. Even with Swype it's cumbersome and error-prone. The Droid's snap-out keyboard was nice but seems to have faded away).
e) Secure (including safe from malware)
f) Integrates "personal device" well with "corporate tool". I believe Android has taken steps in this direction already in terms of setting aside spaces for "secure" data
g) Portable (doing away with carrier locks would be nice. Dual-SIM for those that do international business would be cool)
h) More useful for stuff like presentations, etc. Pushing your powerpoint from a phone to a large display perhaps? Hardware addons for projectors?
Maybe not LTE per-se, but faster networks played at part.
When Blackberry was a shining star, most of their core functionality centered around (comparatively) low-bandwidth textual data exchange. Email, BBIM. Sometimes they might pump a bigger chunk of data but overall nothing compared to media-laden webpages and youtube, etc. Apps generally weren't all that huge either.
Then you bring out Apple and Android. Web-browser, music store, media, and apps that can be 20+MB to download (plus a few hundred for "content" at times). If we had been stuck at 2G speeds then the best phone-browser would still have been a fairly irritating experience speed-wise. At 3G browsing is fine, but faster networks have enabled "smart" devices to become media hubs for video-conferencing, tethering, movies and live streaming.
There's a lot more than just "fast networks" at play, but it may have been a contributing factor. That said, it was also a predictable one that RIM should have been prepared for.
Indeed. When you look at a lot of the "other" gaming companies out there, Steam/Valve seems to generally be the most customer-centric. They make a lot of effort into providing useful services to their customers.
Other companies' foray in the world of DRM has met with broken CD-ROM drives, unplayable games, and a generally lousy customer experience.
Steam is making inroads to embrace a wider market and is quite supportive of indie-style games. IMHO, others seem to have opted for a poor parody of the Steam platform, but nobody else really comes close.
My only real complain with steam is that all games are locked to a single account on a single PC (e.g. I can't have two games across one account active on two different systems). Well, that and I'd really like to see HL2e3 (or HL3) come out sometime soon :-)
I usually get the "this is your captain speaking" cruise scam. Usually at least once a month or more on my work phone
Have they really?
Perhaps they just tend to make a different sort of mistake in the media these days, or maybe they're better at covering it up.
I suppose it's a lucky thing that other religious groups aren't causing problems.
Thankfully, they're tackling the problem at the source by ensuring people get a proper education around such issues, all around the world.
But if they don't make some fancy GUI changes, then I'd be willing to bet that a *lot* of people are going to say "what's different about this? Why would I spend money on a new windows that looks the same as the old one"
Sadly, "it runs better" seems to be second-place compared to "fancy eye-candy" for many consumers, but the two are often mutually exclusive when you want it to run well on older machines.
While I personally don't care much for the idea of having a facebook app installed on my phone (I do use facebook, but the mobile interface works just fine and can't access my contacts etc), for some people the damn thing is installed stock on the phone. In some cases I've heard it can't even be removed without rooting, though that I can't confirm.
Ever had that moment in a parking lot where you couldn't remember exactly where you parked? Ever walked up to somebody else's car before you determined it was yours?
Ever notice that it wasn't even the same make/model of car?
My car is quite similar looks-wise to a lot of others out there. If you took the logos off of 3 similar major vehicles, would you easily be able to tell if one was a Ford, another a Toyota, and the last a Volkswagon? I've wandered up the wrong vehicle (of a different make), and I've been driving my car for years.
Further to that, how about your car stereo? Or any number of other things out there are visibly similar?
But when you get behind the wheel and drive one, or look in the hood... things are different. It's not a huge difference, like comparing a V4 or a V8, but they're still significant.
Think of what the world will be like if automotives and everything else is suddenly subjected to somewhat obscure or intellectually obvious "design" patents? Should Ford will sue Toyota for producing a silver vehicle with 16" tires and black wipers?
Do you buy your car because it's blue with a sloped hood, or is there perhaps something more to it than that? Especially when other manufacturers are now taking steps to further differentiate their products (to avoid being sued), which results in digging further into the obvious bin to find similarities to block competition... because real innovation is just too much damn work these days.
Well, facebook does provide a "social network" service which is valuable to some (YMMV on how valuable you consider it).
Google provides an OS for phones/tablets, map services, content-delivery services, an huge aggregate of search/etc knowledge, chat/communication, and many others that I'm probably not even aware of.
Both make their money by ad placement and data-mining. However it's not like the ads are what the public is intent on using.
Indeed. One of the big issues with the whiners is that they drown out legitimate complaints. The "RF headache" crowd is so vocal that legitimate complains like 300% + billings get lost in the noise.
I know several people who have been overbilled. In one case it was that maintenance person mis-recorded the previous meter's last count before replacing it, in others it was just overbilling. IIRC in the news there was a case where person X was getting charged for his own power plus a neighbour's.
"I can only assume it's more accurate"
The flow/regulator may also be different in the new meter, resulting in slightly less water usage.
Where I live, many strata's added flow regulators (or just smaller pipes) to their water systems, which resulted in lowered usage and increased savings over time.
Maybe not emails, but non-smartphones did that prior to the iPhone (for text messages).
Did you miss something in the grandparent:
"So if you do something that is not a crime in your own country"
I'm pretty sure that firing a gun and killing somebody is just as much a crime in England as it is in Scotland.
Well, nowadays anyhow. In past history I'm fairly sure the English wouldn't have objected as much to firing against the Scots.
Paying more for a domestically built device (ok, same-continent, since I'm Canadian) is one thing.
However, supported applications lists:
Google Play Music
Google Play Movies and TV
YouTube
Where's the Netflix etc?
A device that costs more and potentially does less than other devices currently on the market? Not likely to do so well unless Google has some new tricks coming soon.
I'm also wondering about some of the other specs:
32 RGB perimeter LEDs
What are those for? Rave simulation mode? Oh wait "The 32 LEDs that ring Nexus Q shift and change color in time to your music. Choose your favorite effect and put your Nexus Q where it can be seen, and touched." Uhhhhh OK
And the best part. There's apparently no remote. So you need an existing Android device to use that. Add a few hundred at least to the pricetag if you haven't got one of those already.
Good question. I've never really had a reason to put /boot on the RAID-5, so as you've said I always made it RAID-1.
Since it doesn't get written (or even read, really) that often that should work for most people though.