At this weight, it's almost like a snow machine. If it gets stuck in a snow bank, just pick it up, and get back to driving. If you're really serious about how it handles in ice and snow, just throw some blizzaks on there. It will probably handle fine. I wonder if they would change the law to let you use studded tires. With such a light car, you wouldn't cause much damage to the roads.
A laptop is considered portable. But it's much bigger than this device. I see people with laptops all the time on the bus. This thing is at least as portable as an iPad or Kindle, if not more so. To me, portable means I can put it in backpack and it doesn't hurt my shoulders when I carry it around. By specifically not limiting it to the size of a pocket, they are able to get a lot more out of it.
Well, to be a little more precise, FTP, SMTP, POP and IMAP don't give you command line (root) access to the computer you happen to get access too. If you break into an FTP Server, you only have access to the files that are put up on the FTP directories of that server. And possibly the right to upload new files. Which is a little less problem then having root access to the entire server. Same goes for all the other services you mention. I will have to give you this. I don't think Telnet is really that bad of a thing overall. If it has a properly secure password on it that is changed often enough, it really isn't that much less secure than SSH. Sure there's the whole MITM attack vector, but that's way too complicated considering the number of easy to attack machines there are out there.
This is the problem with PayPal. They actually do send real emails to customers about their account. Because this is the only way they can contact their customers. Everybody knows (or should know) that your bank will never send you an email and ask you to verify account information. And and disregard any email that is apparently coming from your bank. However, many people will trust an email that appears to be from PayPal, because paypal regularly corresponds with customers via email. Paypal is basically a bank that only works via email. Which makes it a prime target for phishers.
I remember an article about 2 months back where the government said they were going to change the definition of broadband to 5 Mb Down and 1 Mb up. So currently I would be without broadband. I could have 50 Mbit internet, but I really don't want to pay for it. I'm happy with 3M/256K internet, because there isn't anything out there that requires higher speeds. Netflix streams fine at 3Mbit (is SD). And so what it it takes a bit longer to download a Linux ISO. It's not like they have a new release every 3 days. Maybe the issue is that most people don't care to have 10 Mbit interner, because the added cost doesn't actually get them anything they wouldn't have already. What's the point of having 50 Mbit internet when even a HD movie from netflix will stream on 5 Mbit connection.
I think the only way to resolve this is for the manufacturers to ship some kind of general hardware testing software that works regardless of which OS you are using. That way they could do some better analysis on what's wrong with your computer, even if you installed Linux on it. They they could offer software support for the preinstalled operating system, and if you installed something else, it's up to you to support. Only thing they have to ensure is that the hardware is working.
You could go get a laptop from System76. Just priced one out. It would cost me about $900 US for a computer with similar specs to what I recently paid $400 CDN for in an HP Windows 7 Laptop. The only difference is that my screen is not quite as high resolution. But the machine I bought has a much cleaner style and doesn't look like it was designed by a geek. The basic problem is that computers with Linux do not get the advantage of economies of scale. So it ends up costing you more if you want a computer with Linux on it. Personally I think everyone should stop whining and just take advantage of the cheap laptop, format it, and be done. No point in crying because they make you buy a Windows licence. If you are that much against it, you could have just bought the Linux laptop in the first place. It's not like you weren't aware that the computer was going to come with Windows when you bought it.
I've always thought it would be an easy fix for cell phones to detect that there are too many towers, or use the GPS functionality to determine altitude, and do some adjustments so that they didn't connect to so many towers when being used at high altitudes such as on airplanes. I'm not a cell phone network engineer, but I imagine it wouldn't take too much work to get phones to act in a sane manner when calling from a plane.
I've always thought the biggest problem is that every movie at the theatre (and mostly on DVD) still costs the same price, regardless or the production budget or the amount of effort that went into making the film. I think you'd see a lot of people ditching blockbusters if they had the alternative to see movies that cost less to make, at a much cheaper price. Does it make sense to charge $13 for Children of Men, and also charge $13 for Trailer Park Boys at the same theatre? If you were the people making Trailer Park Boys, then you might say yes, but I think that just about everyone else would disagree.
In China, eight of the top nine political posts are held by engineers.
Maybe it's better not to have the people vote. To be more serious, I always thought it was weird that in the US, they elected everyone. From politicians, to judges, to dog catchers. I think elections are important, but that most people lack the interest in figuring out what to do in every single situation. It seems to work better in countries where people only vote for their member of parliament, and let the millions of little decisions be handled by someone else, so they can spend more time figuring out who to vote for in the first place, rather than obsessing over a million questions on the ballot.
I was just thinking of this the other day. We put so much importance on children to excel in sports, hoping that one dey they will make it into the NFL/NBA/NHL/MLB that we neglect to realize how minuscule that chance is. The problem with trying to excel at sports is that if you aren't good enough to be in the top league, you are basically just a point where you don't make any money at all, or at best have to have a second job even to make ends meet. Even if you are good enough at football to make it to the CFL, you still have to have a second job because you don't make enough doing your sport. On the other hand, if we pushed kids to excel in school and intelligence, even if they didn't make it into the elite, for instance being a world class heart surgeon, they would still have plenty of good jobs to fall back on if it turned out they couldn't achieve being one of the best in the world. They could be a family practitioner, a nurse, or do many other things in the same field, and still make quite a decent living. There's only a market for 400+ (432 currently based on quick google) professional basketball players. The market for most other professions is quite higher. There's probably 400 doctors in my city.
You have a laptop but you can't afford an iPod? Sounds like you need to just go to walmart and pick up an MP3 Player. You can even get something that plays video for pretty cheap.
But not everybody has the luxury of owning 2 cars. For people who don't have families, cars like that can work. However, if you have a family, neither of those cars seem to be that useful. The second car at least has 4 seats. But with the seats up only has 130 litres of cargo space. Which is about enough for 2 hiking backpacks. Not even enough for a week's groceries. So you are left buying 2 cars. I've always said the SMART car makes a great third vehicle. Meaning it only solves a very small part of your transportation needs, and as such you have to have other cars to make up for it. The other option is to own a mini van and you can do everything with it. The problem is that you waste gas in a lot of occasions. Of course, you could just be like me and not own a car at all. Take public transit and ride your bike. Works well for my family. However, once you have decided to spend the money to buy a car, which means pay for insurance regardless of whether you drive it, you are better off (economically) driving your car for everything then taking public transportation.
This has always been my view of why automated cars haven't, and will never, become a reality. Look at all the losses from recalls that Toyota has had to face. If the person doesn't even have to be looking at the road or have their hands on the wheel, then it will be entirely the manufacturer's fault (or whoever is in control of the technology) when something inevitably goes wrong. If someone gets in a crash, you can always blame it on human error. But if humans are no longer driving, then even if accidents are 1/1000 of what they used to be, there will be major problems for whoever owns the technology. Just think of what will happen the first time some drunk driver plows into the lead vehicle of one of these car trains. Everyone will see just how bad of an idea it is.
I think the only problem with H.264 is that I even though I can access the open spec, I can't go and write my own encoder/decoder and sell it without paying royalties to someone. The same can't be said for HTML, C++ and all the other examples mentioned in the comments. Sure, there are some open source implementation of H.264, but they are either illegal (in some jurisdictions), or in a legal grey area, depending on who you talk to. I personally would prefer to be using H.264, because it is a superior format. Two things could happen. A better (completely) open source video format comes out which will replace H.264, and I as well as everyone else will gladly switch. Or, a better format never arises (because nobody finds a better algorithm), and we are still using H.264 when the patents run out, in which case it's completely open anyway.
Or they could just use a password saving program on their computer, and generate unique, secure passwords for each site they visit, as well as random answers to the "security" questions. They're safe as long as they don't have a virus/keylogger on their computer. In which case they are hosed anyway. I think most people should just run their browser from a virtual machine which resets itself every time they use it, save for a few key files like bookmarks. I wonder if an easy to use product like this exists. It's too much work for most people to setup up VMWare/VirtualBox. Maybe a simple self contained program could be a good option.
They probably don't check for meta tags in your post. Probably just script tags. Personally, I don't think comments should allow posting of any HTML whatsoever (make everything escaped, so tags show up as regular text), simply because there's too many ways to make things happen on a browser, even without javascript enabled. As this example clearly illustrates. Just imagine if it had been and image tag of one of the images from the article. Or if the the redirected page contained the content. We'd all have CP in our browser caches, and be guilty of downloading.
It could be easily done to get rid of 98% of the traffic from pirated files. But they don't want to do that, because it would kill their business model.
Carbon neutral for sure. That doesn't say anything about the other chemicals released into the environment from the manufacture of the equipment they use, or from the day to day operations of their facilities.
Exactly. I've been a long time user of trackballs. The article specifically says "the device is clinically proven to reduce muscle strain by letting users move the onscreen pointer without overusing their wrists". Which is basically what I realized a long time ago with trackballs. They let you control the pointer with very good accuracy, while allowing you to leave your wrist in, and entire arm, in a single position. Only your fingers (or thumb depending on the trackball) have to move, and you leave the mouse in one spot, ensuring that you don't put your arm in some weird position.
Look it up on Wikipedia. Hacking refers to the re-configuring or re-programming of a system to function in ways not facilitated by the owner.
MS never provided functionality for the device to operate on the PC, but somebody programmed their own drivers for it to do so. You don't have to actually change the hardware or firmware of a device to "hack" it. All you have to do is be able to write code that interfaces with whatever you are hacking to provide new functionality.
I don't imagine that they've redone their research since digital sales came into being. When they are selling digital copies for the same price as physical copies, they obviously haven't rethought the numbers. I think what they are really worried about is, if they don't charge a premium on their stuff, then the public won't see a reason to buy from the large publishing houses (or large recording studios) over independent artists. That is, if you charge more for something, then people will assume it is better, and thus you will have more buyers. If you lower your price, and therefore admit it isn't worth much, or is only worth as much as an independent artist, then people will compare your product with that of the independent.
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At this weight, it's almost like a snow machine. If it gets stuck in a snow bank, just pick it up, and get back to driving. If you're really serious about how it handles in ice and snow, just throw some blizzaks on there. It will probably handle fine. I wonder if they would change the law to let you use studded tires. With such a light car, you wouldn't cause much damage to the roads.
A laptop is considered portable. But it's much bigger than this device. I see people with laptops all the time on the bus. This thing is at least as portable as an iPad or Kindle, if not more so. To me, portable means I can put it in backpack and it doesn't hurt my shoulders when I carry it around. By specifically not limiting it to the size of a pocket, they are able to get a lot more out of it.
3D is a gimmick, and doesn't really enhance gameplay that much.
Well, to be a little more precise, FTP, SMTP, POP and IMAP don't give you command line (root) access to the computer you happen to get access too. If you break into an FTP Server, you only have access to the files that are put up on the FTP directories of that server. And possibly the right to upload new files. Which is a little less problem then having root access to the entire server. Same goes for all the other services you mention. I will have to give you this. I don't think Telnet is really that bad of a thing overall. If it has a properly secure password on it that is changed often enough, it really isn't that much less secure than SSH. Sure there's the whole MITM attack vector, but that's way too complicated considering the number of easy to attack machines there are out there.
This is the problem with PayPal. They actually do send real emails to customers about their account. Because this is the only way they can contact their customers. Everybody knows (or should know) that your bank will never send you an email and ask you to verify account information. And and disregard any email that is apparently coming from your bank. However, many people will trust an email that appears to be from PayPal, because paypal regularly corresponds with customers via email. Paypal is basically a bank that only works via email. Which makes it a prime target for phishers.
I remember an article about 2 months back where the government said they were going to change the definition of broadband to 5 Mb Down and 1 Mb up. So currently I would be without broadband. I could have 50 Mbit internet, but I really don't want to pay for it. I'm happy with 3M/256K internet, because there isn't anything out there that requires higher speeds. Netflix streams fine at 3Mbit (is SD). And so what it it takes a bit longer to download a Linux ISO. It's not like they have a new release every 3 days. Maybe the issue is that most people don't care to have 10 Mbit interner, because the added cost doesn't actually get them anything they wouldn't have already. What's the point of having 50 Mbit internet when even a HD movie from netflix will stream on 5 Mbit connection.
I think the only way to resolve this is for the manufacturers to ship some kind of general hardware testing software that works regardless of which OS you are using. That way they could do some better analysis on what's wrong with your computer, even if you installed Linux on it. They they could offer software support for the preinstalled operating system, and if you installed something else, it's up to you to support. Only thing they have to ensure is that the hardware is working.
You could go get a laptop from System76. Just priced one out. It would cost me about $900 US for a computer with similar specs to what I recently paid $400 CDN for in an HP Windows 7 Laptop. The only difference is that my screen is not quite as high resolution. But the machine I bought has a much cleaner style and doesn't look like it was designed by a geek. The basic problem is that computers with Linux do not get the advantage of economies of scale. So it ends up costing you more if you want a computer with Linux on it. Personally I think everyone should stop whining and just take advantage of the cheap laptop, format it, and be done. No point in crying because they make you buy a Windows licence. If you are that much against it, you could have just bought the Linux laptop in the first place. It's not like you weren't aware that the computer was going to come with Windows when you bought it.
I've always thought it would be an easy fix for cell phones to detect that there are too many towers, or use the GPS functionality to determine altitude, and do some adjustments so that they didn't connect to so many towers when being used at high altitudes such as on airplanes. I'm not a cell phone network engineer, but I imagine it wouldn't take too much work to get phones to act in a sane manner when calling from a plane.
I've always thought the biggest problem is that every movie at the theatre (and mostly on DVD) still costs the same price, regardless or the production budget or the amount of effort that went into making the film. I think you'd see a lot of people ditching blockbusters if they had the alternative to see movies that cost less to make, at a much cheaper price. Does it make sense to charge $13 for Children of Men, and also charge $13 for Trailer Park Boys at the same theatre? If you were the people making Trailer Park Boys, then you might say yes, but I think that just about everyone else would disagree.
Maybe it's better not to have the people vote. To be more serious, I always thought it was weird that in the US, they elected everyone. From politicians, to judges, to dog catchers. I think elections are important, but that most people lack the interest in figuring out what to do in every single situation. It seems to work better in countries where people only vote for their member of parliament, and let the millions of little decisions be handled by someone else, so they can spend more time figuring out who to vote for in the first place, rather than obsessing over a million questions on the ballot.
I was just thinking of this the other day. We put so much importance on children to excel in sports, hoping that one dey they will make it into the NFL/NBA/NHL/MLB that we neglect to realize how minuscule that chance is. The problem with trying to excel at sports is that if you aren't good enough to be in the top league, you are basically just a point where you don't make any money at all, or at best have to have a second job even to make ends meet. Even if you are good enough at football to make it to the CFL, you still have to have a second job because you don't make enough doing your sport. On the other hand, if we pushed kids to excel in school and intelligence, even if they didn't make it into the elite, for instance being a world class heart surgeon, they would still have plenty of good jobs to fall back on if it turned out they couldn't achieve being one of the best in the world. They could be a family practitioner, a nurse, or do many other things in the same field, and still make quite a decent living. There's only a market for 400+ (432 currently based on quick google) professional basketball players. The market for most other professions is quite higher. There's probably 400 doctors in my city.
Skype installing a toolbar isn't half as annoying as the JRE (Java Runtime) or my Logitech Mouse Software installing the Yahoo! toolbar.
You have a laptop but you can't afford an iPod? Sounds like you need to just go to walmart and pick up an MP3 Player. You can even get something that plays video for pretty cheap.
But not everybody has the luxury of owning 2 cars. For people who don't have families, cars like that can work. However, if you have a family, neither of those cars seem to be that useful. The second car at least has 4 seats. But with the seats up only has 130 litres of cargo space. Which is about enough for 2 hiking backpacks. Not even enough for a week's groceries. So you are left buying 2 cars. I've always said the SMART car makes a great third vehicle. Meaning it only solves a very small part of your transportation needs, and as such you have to have other cars to make up for it. The other option is to own a mini van and you can do everything with it. The problem is that you waste gas in a lot of occasions. Of course, you could just be like me and not own a car at all. Take public transit and ride your bike. Works well for my family. However, once you have decided to spend the money to buy a car, which means pay for insurance regardless of whether you drive it, you are better off (economically) driving your car for everything then taking public transportation.
This has always been my view of why automated cars haven't, and will never, become a reality. Look at all the losses from recalls that Toyota has had to face. If the person doesn't even have to be looking at the road or have their hands on the wheel, then it will be entirely the manufacturer's fault (or whoever is in control of the technology) when something inevitably goes wrong. If someone gets in a crash, you can always blame it on human error. But if humans are no longer driving, then even if accidents are 1/1000 of what they used to be, there will be major problems for whoever owns the technology. Just think of what will happen the first time some drunk driver plows into the lead vehicle of one of these car trains. Everyone will see just how bad of an idea it is.
I think the only problem with H.264 is that I even though I can access the open spec, I can't go and write my own encoder/decoder and sell it without paying royalties to someone. The same can't be said for HTML, C++ and all the other examples mentioned in the comments. Sure, there are some open source implementation of H.264, but they are either illegal (in some jurisdictions), or in a legal grey area, depending on who you talk to. I personally would prefer to be using H.264, because it is a superior format. Two things could happen. A better (completely) open source video format comes out which will replace H.264, and I as well as everyone else will gladly switch. Or, a better format never arises (because nobody finds a better algorithm), and we are still using H.264 when the patents run out, in which case it's completely open anyway.
Or they could just use a password saving program on their computer, and generate unique, secure passwords for each site they visit, as well as random answers to the "security" questions. They're safe as long as they don't have a virus/keylogger on their computer. In which case they are hosed anyway. I think most people should just run their browser from a virtual machine which resets itself every time they use it, save for a few key files like bookmarks. I wonder if an easy to use product like this exists. It's too much work for most people to setup up VMWare/VirtualBox. Maybe a simple self contained program could be a good option.
They probably don't check for meta tags in your post. Probably just script tags. Personally, I don't think comments should allow posting of any HTML whatsoever (make everything escaped, so tags show up as regular text), simply because there's too many ways to make things happen on a browser, even without javascript enabled. As this example clearly illustrates. Just imagine if it had been and image tag of one of the images from the article. Or if the the redirected page contained the content. We'd all have CP in our browser caches, and be guilty of downloading.
It could be easily done to get rid of 98% of the traffic from pirated files. But they don't want to do that, because it would kill their business model.
Carbon neutral for sure. That doesn't say anything about the other chemicals released into the environment from the manufacture of the equipment they use, or from the day to day operations of their facilities.
Exactly. I've been a long time user of trackballs. The article specifically says "the device is clinically proven to reduce muscle strain by letting users move the onscreen pointer without overusing their wrists". Which is basically what I realized a long time ago with trackballs. They let you control the pointer with very good accuracy, while allowing you to leave your wrist in, and entire arm, in a single position. Only your fingers (or thumb depending on the trackball) have to move, and you leave the mouse in one spot, ensuring that you don't put your arm in some weird position.
Sounds to me like you got a little case of Humpty Dumpty syndrome.
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
Look it up on Wikipedia. Hacking refers to the re-configuring or re-programming of a system to function in ways not facilitated by the owner.
MS never provided functionality for the device to operate on the PC, but somebody programmed their own drivers for it to do so. You don't have to actually change the hardware or firmware of a device to "hack" it. All you have to do is be able to write code that interfaces with whatever you are hacking to provide new functionality.
I don't imagine that they've redone their research since digital sales came into being. When they are selling digital copies for the same price as physical copies, they obviously haven't rethought the numbers. I think what they are really worried about is, if they don't charge a premium on their stuff, then the public won't see a reason to buy from the large publishing houses (or large recording studios) over independent artists. That is, if you charge more for something, then people will assume it is better, and thus you will have more buyers. If you lower your price, and therefore admit it isn't worth much, or is only worth as much as an independent artist, then people will compare your product with that of the independent.