They might want to just take a poke at the act because it makes it hard to conduct business.
This is actually a real problem. If you sell a product that has upgradable firmware then you need to only recognise revenue as you provide the service. For example let's say you sell a device for $1000 and provide free firmware upgrades for 1 year. You might structure this that the base product is worth $900 and the 12 months tech support is worth $100. You then recognise the revenue as $900 at time of sale and $100/12 per month.
For a product that has free firmware upgrades "forever", you might introduce some reasonable lifetime (like 3 years), perhaps the typical depreciation period for the product.
Now Apple beancounters fucked up. They recognised all revenue immediately. They should have really defered some of the revenue recognition but they wanted to look all shiny for Wall Street (Enron, on a smaller scale). By chraging for this upgrade they're probably hoping to create a loop hole.
Needless to say, MS most likely just moons the act and does not care any more than they care about the DOJ nailing them with anti-trust.
I always turn my computers off after use. I have three desktops here as well as one laptop. I have only lost 1 hard disk in the last 15 years. Some of the computers I'm using are over 7 years old. We don't run central heating and in winter the computers will go to a few degrees above freezing overnight and get powered up while cold.
I don't see that thermal stress is a practical consideration in most domestic environments.
People who actively go out searching & snooping are being vigilantes (rather than "concerned citizens" who just happen to notice something and report it).
Most people have very little reason to be connected to the internet all the time, or have their computer on all the time. Save the environment: turn off that computer!
TFA says a bit over a half gallon. Assuming US gallons thats approx 2 litres. Not an excessive amount really. I've often glugged that in a one hour period though that was while doing a lot of hard physical work).
Perhaps this is linked to what this woman typically drank. If she normally drank Coke, coffee etc, then I guess drinking a large amount of striaght water could come as a shock to the system.
I used fortran quite a lot around 25 years ago. Sure it had some oddball limitations and wierdness, but it is damn fast and quite efficient for some coding purposes.
I wrote a Fortran program that printed out a calendar with the year in a banner font at the top. It took 57 cards (no library calls etc, beyound PRINT). Try do anything useful in 57 lines with today's languages.
The real problem I see is that there is no real string. Most physics so far has been based on real things: mass, electrons,... Strings are just a modelling tool.
As physics progresses we seek for something that was hidden from the previous generation of physics. For example we start with observing gravity happen. 100k years ago (or 6k years ago - depending on your worldview) Ogg drops rock, ogg gets sore toe. Then more recently someone figured out it is because of mass/proximity of objects. Then someone figures out a characterising equation. Then someone else figures it is because space is bent. Then strings. No longer are we improving our observations. Now we're coming out with mathematical models of things that don't really exist.
As much as one might bitch and moan about Windows, the freedom in *nix does make for anarchy and does not make for ease of use. In my experience this is a real issue with system configuration (firewalls, hotplug, etc). Howto's don't just say "do this"; they are shopping lists of "on RH8 do this, on Ubuntu do that,..." which does not make for ease of use.
Freedom is not always a good thing. Would you like freedom of choice as to which side of the road you drive on?
As well as being old news, HP cartridge driving have been reverse engineered by many for many years. Heck I was involved in a company that used HP cartridges in a wide-bed plotter we developed in the late 1980s/early 1990s (before HP did a wide bed printer plotter). There was not much secrecy back then. HP published almost all the details in the HP Journal somewhere around 1988.
Back then we drank beer. wtf with the geeks of today?
TFA says "... similar to ball lightning...". TFH (TF headline) gets it wrong and says this is ball lightning. Yet another case of a hyping headling. I'm getting pretty tired of these lame hypes which make claims in excess of what the people in the lab are. We crap on stupid printed media journalists, why should we tolerate the same from/.?
Just because someone in a lab makes a ball of feathers that quacks does not mean that they have made a duck!
Of course the USPTO have a vested interest. If the applications reduced by 80% (all the crap patents) then the USPTO would need less staff and bring in less $$$ to US coffers. Do you think the director (or whatever) would get ego-buzz down at the counbry club if his staff was cut by 80% and they processed less applications.
I really do think there's an industry-centric scam here. I have approx 10 or 12 patents (many of them crap) and in every case the examiners have kicked back with some stupid queries (nothing to do with the crapness in the patents). This makes more work ($$$) for everyone.
Why not? You only have to change a small amount of low-level HAL stuff to port an OS to a different core. In fact the "porting distance" distance between a RISC like PPC and ARM is very small.
MS ported WinCE to many CPU cores. Is Apple so lame they can't do the same?
There is a difference. In some primitive countries you can get busted for soliciting to buy/sell sex with/as a prostitute. You don't actually have to have sex for it to be a crime, soliciting is in itself a crime. That is why the cops can bust you just for asking.
Many crimes however require that you actually do something. I beleive that copyright infringement is like that.
From the people actually driving the patent system (ie. US govt and the patent lawyers) there is nothing broken with this. Lots of applications (dumb or good, who cares) == lots of profits. Lots of litigation because of patent systems (dumb or good, who cares) == lots of profits.
Any system will work the way that its owners intend. While the patent system is owned by the patent lawyers etc, you won't see any changes.
If the patent holders (inventors) controlled the patent system then you'd see things work differently. There would be a feedback cycle that improved the quality of the patents. Right now, the patent system is a nice money spinner for Uncle Sam and there is no external quality check. Imagine though if you could sue for bad patents. eg. USPTO issues you with a patent so you start a business based on it, but the patent gets revoked so you had to close your busiuness. Imagine if you could chase USPTO for your losses. Likewise, imagine if USPTO had to cover your expenses when you have to take a stupid troll patent to court and they were wrong to give out the patent.
If you think that the patent system is there for the interests of the inventors then you are wrong. It is they way it is for the interests of the people in the patent industry. The patent machine is a nice little money maker for Uncle Sam and the patent lawyers. If you spoil the players' fun then they won't want patents. Much better to make it really hard to revoke a patent. That needs lots of lawyer hours and money.
It's the same for the tax system. That could be really simple, but no it's really complex so you need tax accountants/experts. It is a system set up to maximise benefit to the practitioners.
In a desktop app you can (generally) hit some sort of assert or exception or whatever and halt the software. The user might get annoyed but nobody gets killed etc.
In a realtime control system, a fault is a system failure. If there is no backup/recovery procedure then there is no such thing as a "safe mode".
Determened, motivated hackers will do better testing than internal testers and cost less too! For each $8k prize issued there'd probably be a few hundred people each spending many hours. Cheap, very cheap!
Slashdot Mirror
This is actually a real problem. If you sell a product that has upgradable firmware then you need to only recognise revenue as you provide the service. For example let's say you sell a device for $1000 and provide free firmware upgrades for 1 year. You might structure this that the base product is worth $900 and the 12 months tech support is worth $100. You then recognise the revenue as $900 at time of sale and $100/12 per month.
For a product that has free firmware upgrades "forever", you might introduce some reasonable lifetime (like 3 years), perhaps the typical depreciation period for the product.
Now Apple beancounters fucked up. They recognised all revenue immediately. They should have really defered some of the revenue recognition but they wanted to look all shiny for Wall Street (Enron, on a smaller scale). By chraging for this upgrade they're probably hoping to create a loop hole.
Needless to say, MS most likely just moons the act and does not care any more than they care about the DOJ nailing them with anti-trust.
I don't see that thermal stress is a practical consideration in most domestic environments.
People who actively go out searching & snooping are being vigilantes (rather than "concerned citizens" who just happen to notice something and report it).
I thought this was a joke! CNN et al ahve had there noses so far up Republican tailpipes for the last few years.
Most people have very little reason to be connected to the internet all the time, or have their computer on all the time. Save the environment: turn off that computer!
... priceless
Perhaps this is linked to what this woman typically drank. If she normally drank Coke, coffee etc, then I guess drinking a large amount of striaght water could come as a shock to the system.
Hey Armericans: You have a supposedly democratic society. Write your senator etc.
I wrote a Fortran program that printed out a calendar with the year in a banner font at the top. It took 57 cards (no library calls etc, beyound PRINT). Try do anything useful in 57 lines with today's languages.
As physics progresses we seek for something that was hidden from the previous generation of physics. For example we start with observing gravity happen. 100k years ago (or 6k years ago - depending on your worldview) Ogg drops rock, ogg gets sore toe. Then more recently someone figured out it is because of mass/proximity of objects. Then someone figures out a characterising equation. Then someone else figures it is because space is bent. Then strings. No longer are we improving our observations. Now we're coming out with mathematical models of things that don't really exist.
Freedom is not always a good thing. Would you like freedom of choice as to which side of the road you drive on?
You are correct that Apple has no obligations to release the code.
Back then we drank beer. wtf with the geeks of today?
Just because someone in a lab makes a ball of feathers that quacks does not mean that they have made a duck!
I really do think there's an industry-centric scam here. I have approx 10 or 12 patents (many of them crap) and in every case the examiners have kicked back with some stupid queries (nothing to do with the crapness in the patents). This makes more work ($$$) for everyone.
The dogs will have to evolve and get bigger to be able to kill the rabbits. That way they get bigger dogs too!
MS ported WinCE to many CPU cores. Is Apple so lame they can't do the same?
Many crimes however require that you actually do something. I beleive that copyright infringement is like that.
Any system will work the way that its owners intend. While the patent system is owned by the patent lawyers etc, you won't see any changes.
If the patent holders (inventors) controlled the patent system then you'd see things work differently. There would be a feedback cycle that improved the quality of the patents. Right now, the patent system is a nice money spinner for Uncle Sam and there is no external quality check. Imagine though if you could sue for bad patents. eg. USPTO issues you with a patent so you start a business based on it, but the patent gets revoked so you had to close your busiuness. Imagine if you could chase USPTO for your losses. Likewise, imagine if USPTO had to cover your expenses when you have to take a stupid troll patent to court and they were wrong to give out the patent.
It's the same for the tax system. That could be really simple, but no it's really complex so you need tax accountants/experts. It is a system set up to maximise benefit to the practitioners.
In a realtime control system, a fault is a system failure. If there is no backup/recovery procedure then there is no such thing as a "safe mode".
One TOp 40 song does not mean anything.
If I read correctly, the money is not for the family but is for care packages for the people in the unit he was in.
If someone asks for constructive input, then give it. However it is not your moral right to give advice if it is not asked for.
Determened, motivated hackers will do better testing than internal testers and cost less too! For each $8k prize issued there'd probably be a few hundred people each spending many hours. Cheap, very cheap!