Also of interest is how Apple handles unauthorized leaks from its employees. Apparently, they lock down buildings and inspect employees' personal communication devices to hunt down the perpetrator.
Japan can produce homegrown technology because their education system produces enough homegrown students who are actually competent at science and mathematics.
I updated a Symbian phone once. As the release notes clearly stated, you have to back up your contacts, photos, calendar and applications (each manually) and restore them after reflashing. Compare that with the iPhone, which does all that with one click, even when upgrading across major versions. The Symbian updates just aren't worth the hassle. Who wants to sysadmin their phone like that?
To top it all off, Nokia seems to be abandoning Symbian in favor of Maemo, or at least splitting their efforts.
Having lived in Switzerland for a while and experienced the cheque-free banking system there, I can say that cheques suck on so many levels. Handing or mailing someone an IOU in the form of a cheque is stupid when you consider the alternative.
In Switzerland, and I believe in most of Europe, payments are pushed rather than pulled. The receiving party sends the paying party a standard slip with the receiver's account information and amount being billed (or the payer could fill out a blank slip manually). The payer feeds the slip to his own bank's ATM and authorizes the payment. Or, he keys in the information to his bank's e-banking website. Alternatively, they payer can take the slip to any post office and pay with cash. The transaction clears the same day.
Compare that with a cheque-based system:
The receiver's bank has to demand money from the payer's bank, and typically imposes a hold period on that money.
The payer doesn't know when the receiver will deposit the cheque; the possible delay makes reconciling accounts a bit messy.
The receiver doesn't know whether the cheque will bounce -- he's just getting an IOU.
The payer can easily overdraw his account, through carelessness or maliciousness, and be penalized by both his bank and the receiver.
The receiver can claim that the payment wasn't received on time, due to mail delays, hold periods, etc.
The payer can claim that the "cheque is in the mail", when of course it hasn't been sent yet.
The payer has to worry about whether the receiver has tampered with the cheque (e.g. altering the amount).
The bank has to authenticate the cheque by verifying the signature, which probably doesn't happen properly in most cases.
Because the authentication system is basically based on trust, the payer is exposed to massive cheque fraud! Sending a cheque means giving out your account information, which is just as bad as giving out your credit card number. A receiver-pull system is inherently less secure than sender-push. If everyone agrees to do sender-push only, there is no risk involved in revealing your account information.
There are only two advantages of cheques that I can think of:
Giving someone a casual gift. You can easily write a cheque as a birthday or wedding gift, knowing just the recipient's name. In those situations, it could be socially awkward to ask for the recipient's account information.
Paying someone who doesn't have a bank account. I understand that many poor people (illegal immigrants?) in the U.S. don't have bank accounts. They end up taking their paychecks to some check-cashing place that charges a hefty fee. This is a rather weak "advantage", since checks are a sub-optimal solution anyway -- possible sane solutions would be to stop hiring illegal immigrants, or let them have bank accounts, or pay them in cash.
In summary, a cheque-based banking system is so completely backwards and broken, it's amazing that such a system could exist in the modern world.
I recently bought a dishwasher at Sears Canada, and was offered an extended warranty. If you end up making no claims within the five-year term, you can call them and get your money back as store credit. Seems reasonable to me, so I went for it. Now I have to remember to call them after five years.
I'm not sure that the Apple Magic Mouse would be suitable for use in Linux. From what I've heard, there is no middle-click support. I don't know whether that is a limitation of the hardware or of the Mac OS X driver.
On Symbian 60, you actually have to manually reinstall all your third-party apps after an OS update, even a minor one. The Nokia PC software doesn't help one bit with the process. It just reflashes the whole phone. You could say that it's the more developer-hostile than Android or iPhone, since that basically limits your market to hobbyists.
If only it were as simple as getting one adapter cable. John Graham-Cumming explains the situation -- with the recent proliferation of standards, you need a bundle of adapters to handle all the combinations.
Even in Canada, health care is the exclusive domain of the provinces, not the federal government. There is no reason that health care reform has to be done at the federal level.
The problem we are discussing today is CVE-2009-3547. The root cause of the vulnerability is a null pointer dereference in pipe.c. The proper fix is to patch the kernel. It just so happens that if vm.mmap_min_addr != 0 then the bug cannot be exploited to gain root access. Therefore, mmap_min_addr can be used as a stopgap measure until you are able to patch the kernel. It also happens to be a good idea to leave mmap_min_addr set to a non-zero value to guard against other null-pointer dereference bugs that may be discovered in the future.
So the only place for the profits to go is to bonuses or shareholder profits.
How about put it in the friggin' bank so we don't have to use taxpayer money to bail you out when there's a bust in the market that you're gambling in?
And where is the bank going to put the money? That doesn't solve anything, it just passes the problem around.
I agree, the// does serve a purpose. Having a marker for the start of the hostname makes it possible to construct a scheme-agnostic URL.
Suppose you had a web page that might be served via either HTTP or HTTPS. You need to ensure that any resources (images and stylesheets) it references use the same protocol, else the browser will warn of a secure/insecure mix. Suppose also that the resources are hosted on a separate server (a common performance-enhancing technique).
The solution: <img src="//host/path/to/image.png">
Voilà -- same-protocol URLs without conditionals in the HTML. It works in all common browsers. It is possible thanks to the double slash!
This contradicts the results published by Dr. Daniele Piomelli at UC Irvine, who found that eating fatty foods can improve long-term memory. Perhaps there is a difference between short-term and long-term memory formation, or a difference in methodology. In any case, the results of medical studies are rarely as simple as they initially appear. (First they said that cholesterol was bad for you, then they said that some cholesterol is good. First they said that being overweight is bad, but now they realize that losing weight isn't necessarily better for your overall health.)
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. I don't think Bing is biased, it's just dumb. If you simply consider word frequency and ignore the meaning derived from the proximity and word order, it's not surprising that searching for Why is Microsoft Windows so expensive leads to pages entitled "Why are Macs so expensive".
There really are more web pages out there complaining about Macs being expensive (Why are Macs so expensive has 13.3 million Google hits) than complaining about Microsoft Windows being expensive (Why is Microsoft Windows so expensive has 3.3 million Google hits). Furthermore, almost every single Mac article mentions Windows somewhere. If you wrote a naive search engine, you would probably get the same results as Bing.
As for why Bing yields "Why is commercial OSS so expensive", consider it a compliment that Bing holds Slashdot in such high regard.
The real story here is that Bing isn't evil, it's just lame.
Having the ability to delete books remotely is a huge problem. Amazon may apologize this time and promise never to do it again, but unfortunately they have already demonstrated that remote deletion is possible. It's only a matter of time before a court orders Amazon to delete a book remotely en masse. If digital books with DRM and remote deletion capability become the norm in the future, it's entirely possible to eradicate an entire work from existence. While books have been banned in the 20th century, they could never be enforced with 100% efficacy. Farhad Manjoo has made this case in an article on slate.com.
Therefore the content (the book) is not defined as software, and therefore the content, in their own words, is OWNED not licensed.
For those who had this book removed, you have been stolen from and should press charges. If someone breaks into your house, takes your PS3, and leaves $400 cash where it was, does that mean they are not stealing?
On the other hand, if you bought a PS3 from someone who didn't legally own it in the first place, it's not a valid sale, and you don't really own the PS3 either. You're not even entitled to automatic compensation if the rightful owner takes back the stolen property.
You have just reminded me of a stupid design problem: PC parallel ports and Mac SCSI ports used the same DB25 connector. My friend once plugged a PC printer into a Mac, and immediately fried the motherboard.
The funny thing is, several years after the incident, I happened to run into this friend while he was working as a salesman at CompUSA. A couple looking to buy a computer was concerned that they wouldn't be able to figure out how to put it together, to which he replied, "Don't worry, every cable can only be plugged into one place. It will be obvious."
Okay, I have to set something straight. It doesn't look for the string "Apple." It looks for a 2 byte code which MEANS apple.
Even if it did look for the string "Apple", it would have been looking for a 5 bytes of ASCII code which means Apple. To a computer, everything is just numbers.
Slashdot Mirror
Also of interest is how Apple handles unauthorized leaks from its employees. Apparently, they lock down buildings and inspect employees' personal communication devices to hunt down the perpetrator.
Japan can produce homegrown technology because their education system produces enough homegrown students who are actually competent at science and mathematics.
I updated a Symbian phone once. As the release notes clearly stated, you have to back up your contacts, photos, calendar and applications (each manually) and restore them after reflashing. Compare that with the iPhone, which does all that with one click, even when upgrading across major versions. The Symbian updates just aren't worth the hassle. Who wants to sysadmin their phone like that?
To top it all off, Nokia seems to be abandoning Symbian in favor of Maemo, or at least splitting their efforts.
Having lived in Switzerland for a while and experienced the cheque-free banking system there, I can say that cheques suck on so many levels. Handing or mailing someone an IOU in the form of a cheque is stupid when you consider the alternative.
In Switzerland, and I believe in most of Europe, payments are pushed rather than pulled. The receiving party sends the paying party a standard slip with the receiver's account information and amount being billed (or the payer could fill out a blank slip manually). The payer feeds the slip to his own bank's ATM and authorizes the payment. Or, he keys in the information to his bank's e-banking website. Alternatively, they payer can take the slip to any post office and pay with cash. The transaction clears the same day.
Compare that with a cheque-based system:
There are only two advantages of cheques that I can think of:
In summary, a cheque-based banking system is so completely backwards and broken, it's amazing that such a system could exist in the modern world.
I recently bought a dishwasher at Sears Canada, and was offered an extended warranty. If you end up making no claims within the five-year term, you can call them and get your money back as store credit. Seems reasonable to me, so I went for it. Now I have to remember to call them after five years.
Remember, PETA has offered a $1 million prize for commercially viable artificial meat.
For all geek travel questions, consult The Geek Atlas for suggestions for places to visit. Bonus: while in London, get your copy autographed.
I'm not sure that the Apple Magic Mouse would be suitable for use in Linux. From what I've heard, there is no middle-click support. I don't know whether that is a limitation of the hardware or of the Mac OS X driver.
On Symbian 60, you actually have to manually reinstall all your third-party apps after an OS update, even a minor one. The Nokia PC software doesn't help one bit with the process. It just reflashes the whole phone. You could say that it's the more developer-hostile than Android or iPhone, since that basically limits your market to hobbyists.
I'm holding out for the Micro DisplayPort standard. I'll bet that Apple will announce such a thing within a year.
If only it were as simple as getting one adapter cable. John Graham-Cumming explains the situation -- with the recent proliferation of standards, you need a bundle of adapters to handle all the combinations.
It needs to be noted, however, that the Federal Reserve is a private, not a public institution.
Even in Canada, health care is the exclusive domain of the provinces, not the federal government. There is no reason that health care reform has to be done at the federal level.
The problem we are discussing today is CVE-2009-3547. The root cause of the vulnerability is a null pointer dereference in pipe.c. The proper fix is to patch the kernel. It just so happens that if vm.mmap_min_addr != 0 then the bug cannot be exploited to gain root access. Therefore, mmap_min_addr can be used as a stopgap measure until you are able to patch the kernel. It also happens to be a good idea to leave mmap_min_addr set to a non-zero value to guard against other null-pointer dereference bugs that may be discovered in the future.
No, this article is about CVE-2009-3547.
How about put it in the friggin' bank so we don't have to use taxpayer money to bail you out when there's a bust in the market that you're gambling in?
And where is the bank going to put the money? That doesn't solve anything, it just passes the problem around.
I agree, the // does serve a purpose. Having a marker for the start of the hostname makes it possible to construct a scheme-agnostic URL.
Suppose you had a web page that might be served via either HTTP or HTTPS. You need to ensure that any resources (images and stylesheets) it references use the same protocol, else the browser will warn of a secure/insecure mix. Suppose also that the resources are hosted on a separate server (a common performance-enhancing technique).
The solution: <img src="//host/path/to/image.png">
Voilà -- same-protocol URLs without conditionals in the HTML. It works in all common browsers. It is possible thanks to the double slash!
This contradicts the results published by Dr. Daniele Piomelli at UC Irvine, who found that eating fatty foods can improve long-term memory. Perhaps there is a difference between short-term and long-term memory formation, or a difference in methodology. In any case, the results of medical studies are rarely as simple as they initially appear. (First they said that cholesterol was bad for you, then they said that some cholesterol is good. First they said that being overweight is bad, but now they realize that losing weight isn't necessarily better for your overall health.)
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. I don't think Bing is biased, it's just dumb. If you simply consider word frequency and ignore the meaning derived from the proximity and word order, it's not surprising that searching for Why is Microsoft Windows so expensive leads to pages entitled "Why are Macs so expensive".
There really are more web pages out there complaining about Macs being expensive (Why are Macs so expensive has 13.3 million Google hits) than complaining about Microsoft Windows being expensive (Why is Microsoft Windows so expensive has 3.3 million Google hits). Furthermore, almost every single Mac article mentions Windows somewhere. If you wrote a naive search engine, you would probably get the same results as Bing.
As for why Bing yields "Why is commercial OSS so expensive", consider it a compliment that Bing holds Slashdot in such high regard.
The real story here is that Bing isn't evil, it's just lame.
Having the ability to delete books remotely is a huge problem. Amazon may apologize this time and promise never to do it again, but unfortunately they have already demonstrated that remote deletion is possible. It's only a matter of time before a court orders Amazon to delete a book remotely en masse. If digital books with DRM and remote deletion capability become the norm in the future, it's entirely possible to eradicate an entire work from existence. While books have been banned in the 20th century, they could never be enforced with 100% efficacy. Farhad Manjoo has made this case in an article on slate.com.
Therefore the content (the book) is not defined as software, and therefore the content, in their own words, is OWNED not licensed. For those who had this book removed, you have been stolen from and should press charges. If someone breaks into your house, takes your PS3, and leaves $400 cash where it was, does that mean they are not stealing?
On the other hand, if you bought a PS3 from someone who didn't legally own it in the first place, it's not a valid sale, and you don't really own the PS3 either. You're not even entitled to automatic compensation if the rightful owner takes back the stolen property.
No, she's Maggie Simpson.
The problem, as you point out, is with the Department of Agriculture's policies, not the FDA.
You have just reminded me of a stupid design problem: PC parallel ports and Mac SCSI ports used the same DB25 connector. My friend once plugged a PC printer into a Mac, and immediately fried the motherboard.
The funny thing is, several years after the incident, I happened to run into this friend while he was working as a salesman at CompUSA. A couple looking to buy a computer was concerned that they wouldn't be able to figure out how to put it together, to which he replied, "Don't worry, every cable can only be plugged into one place. It will be obvious."
Okay, I have to set something straight. It doesn't look for the string "Apple." It looks for a 2 byte code which MEANS apple.
Even if it did look for the string "Apple", it would have been looking for a 5 bytes of ASCII code which means Apple. To a computer, everything is just numbers.