The PDK does address an issue that Google shouldn't have made an issue to begin with - manufacturers actually getting some lead time. But it doesn't address the issue of why Gingerbread itself is still such a big chunk of the market.
ICS simply can't run on budget Android devices. The Android makers that are making money (Samsung) are targeting a much wider market then just the high end subsidized North American market. Samsung is able to turn a profit because they're spreading their costs over a much wider net with both mid range phones like the Ace line and a lot of super-low end ones (Y, Mini, Pocket) that compete directly with feature phones and in emerging markets. ICS is never going to run on those and Samsung and others won't try - they're still releasing brand new phones, 8 months later, running Gingerbread with no hope for an upgrade.
Android will continue to be 'fragmented' between Gingerbread and whatever the latest and greatest is for a long time, at least as long as the gulf exists between heavily carrier subsized phones in a few countries (allowing iPhones, Samsung Galaxy Ss and HTC One Xs to sell in any quantity) and full cost phones in other countries where (Gingerbread) Android's price point is the biggest selling point against more expensive smart phones and increasingly identically priced feature phones.
Googles thinks Microsoft is sending proxies to do its legal work, or at the least is trying to convince someone of that fantasy?
Microsoft hasn't shown any problems going after Android makers openly and directly. Sure it doesn't always make the front page but that's because Microsoft wants to licence the technology, not use the patents to block companies from the market entirely like Apple. This has always been Microsoft's business stategy from all the back in the days when it was Bill writing BASIC interpreters - find a place in the middle of the supply or technology chain so that no matter what company or product consumers are wild about this day of the week, Microsoft is getting paid somehow. A 'horizontal' instead of vertical market integration. That Android phone in your hand? Microsoft got paid a cut of it. I believe the slashdotter term is 'the Microsoft tax'.
Either Google is on a conspiracy bent to try and explain why so many companies have dirt on them without considering that maybe it's because they copied from all of them to assemble Android, or they're just cooking up so they can get Microsoft beat up by the EU bigwigs the way Opera did.
"The root cause of this problem is an email server compromise. The email server belongs to one of our team members."
A poorly secured email server is not the failure in this statement.
The failure is what was a non-essential piece of software, what sounds like someone's personal software, doing on this server or even on the same firewalled subnet?
4.9GB games (a few PS2 games where even dual layer disks) pose another major problem - unlike the 1MB SNES games, where are you going to store them? The cost of the PS3 is already huge, do they really have the budget to include a 200GB harddrive? (and at that size they can't even use the cost cutting measure Microsoft used - to provide 10GB harddrives, they'd just bought already cheap 20GB units where one platter was uncertified, essentially B grade units that could be salvaged for the required storage space at a fraction of the cost)
Why is trusted computing a problem for OSS? The cries of software being locked out where simply FUD made up in the early days with no basis in fact (they where slippery slope arguments using the "well you can argue it's possible that such and such could be done, so we'll decide that's exactly what is going to be done)". If you need proof, why don't you look at the *nix based operating system that runs exclusively on the Intel "trusted computing" platform - Apple OS X x86.
The iPod line, up to and including the Nano, are powered by various versions of PortalPlayer's system on a chip technology. However the iPod Shuffle, released only a few months after Steve Jobs declared flash based players where useless, marks the single deviantion for the iPod line.
Instead of the PortalPlayer chipset, it switches to the SigmaTel 3500 series, the chipset that powers many no-brand "memory stick" style flash mp3 players (most end up getting stamped with a generic brand name by whatever company buys them in bulk, so you may have a "mercury" player that is 100% identical except for the paintjob to a "powermp3" player).
A few names of SigmaTel based player include models from Xelo, Curtis and Lenco. Note that most of these players are not 100% identical to the Shuffle. In the name of making something so fast, most features the chipset supports where ignored: it can support a basic 1/2 line LCD screens, it can use a microphone, it can support an FM tuner, it can work with FAT filesystems on memory cards, it can even play wma files, and ogg files with the right firmware version. The main difference between the Shuffle and the players that choose to throw out even a screen in the pursuit of a low retail price, is that the Shuffle is one of the few that uses the 3500's abiliy to regulate li-ion battery charging (the chipset can be run off a AAA battery or a li-ion pack, most generic players use a AAA battery)
Thank you thank you thank you (sorry ot no mod points, but you're already up to 5 anyway).
I browse with a lot of tabs in FireFox, and with FireFox 1.5 the performance when a lot of those tabs are loading has been beyond horrible. Like several seconds just to switch tabs, and then actually trying to scroll...
If you are feeling generous, perhaps you also know how to shutoff the new tab thumbnail "feature" when you've got images. 16x16 thumbnails of 4000x4000 images are nothing but a waste of CPU time and a visual distraction.
IMO Blue Ray will go the way of Laserdisc, unless they encode one side in blue-ray and the other in regular DVD.
You can't do that, and it's one of the reason's Blue Ray disks are so much more expensive.
Simply put, Blue Ray disks aren't the same "disks" as CDs and DVDs. They are physically bigger, making them impossible to produce on current CD/DVD production lines and requiring completely redesigned players (you can't just stick a new laser in an old player, and you require even more complex and expensive components if you want to play regular DVDs and CDs, since the player has to adjust to different thicknesses).
By comparison, HD-DVD disks are physically compatible with CDs and DVDs. They can be produced on the existing production lines with minor changes to the punch (meaning you can ramp up HD-DVD production overnight instead of having the build an entire manufacturing base from scratch). Another benefit is that, as you suggested incorrectly for Blue Ray, HD-DVDs can be dual type disks - DVD edition on one side, HD-DVD edition on the other. Basically HD-DVD will be able to offer movies for about the same price as DVDs, in the same quantities, and the movie will be backwards compatible, so stores won't be giving up shelf space to a expensive new format - they can simply drop the DVDs overnight and replace them with hybrid [HD]-DVDs.
Oh, and there is that little part where even Microsoft thought Sony's DRM on Blue Ray was insanely over restrictive and anti-consumer, leading them to drop support and back HD-DVD exclusively. So Blue Ray supporters can enjoy paying double to buy from a limited selection of movies that only play on your expensive new player when Sony feels like it.
SP Old (frontlit screen) SP New (backlit screen) Micro
-Both SPs can play Gameboy and Gameboy Color games, the Micro can't.
-The Micro has a smaller screen, but this is not a problem unless you are blind. The screen is very sharp making text easy to read. If you've got a high resolution Palm handheld, compare with that. The Micro screen is practically a 240x160 cutout.
-Cables for the SP won't work with the Micro (including the link cable and gamecube cable)
-The SP requires a seperately purchased adapter to plug in ear phones, and the adapter uses up the port used for the recharging cable.
-All models have a user replaceable battery that is cheaply available.
-The SP New and Micro have backlit screens, making them much brighter.
-The Micro has 5 brightness levels, the SP New has 2, and the SP Old lets you turn the light off completely. The lowest brightness on the SP New and Micro is still brighter then the SP Old (the brightest setting is used for signally ships)
-The SP old technically has the longest battery life, since the light can be turned off. Under normal conditions they all have about the same battery life, though cranking up the brightness will shorten the Micro and SP New's life.
-The SP New and Micro's backlit screen is great indoors, however in direct sunlight the backlit screen is washed out (like most laptops). The SP Old's frontlit screen however works just fine in sunlight (you can even turn off the backlight, with enough natural light you can't even tell if it is on or not). This is perhaps the one reason to get the older SP, as it makes a huge difference for outdoor play.
-The SP New screen runs at 50hz instead of 60hz. It has been reported that already bright colors, especially red, create a slight blur when moving quickly across the screen. This is not a major hangup (like LCD refresh rates, it depends on the person if they even notice it)
-The SP shoulder buttons work simply by pressing in. The Micro's shoulder buttons are a bit of a shock, because they only work if you press down on the inside (more like a SNES controller)
-The Micro's D-Pad and A/B buttons are more squishy, like a NES or SNES controller, while the SP has a springy digitial "click" response (you can clearly feel and even hear them making contact, and they push back up)
-All three are pocketable, however the Micro, due to being smaller both volume wise and in form factor, is better at this. The SP feels like carrying around a fat wallet, while the Micro feels like a small candybar cellphone.
Overall:
If you want to play GB or GBC games, get an SP New
If you want to play outdoors a lot, get an SP Old
If you want the best system to just pull out of your pocket and play (and put it back in and forget it's there), get a Micro
In many ways it seems like Sony is becoming the new Microsoft, just as Microsoft replaced IBM as the Big Bad. With the shift in software distribution (internet making it easy to distribute and collaborate on free and open software like Linux) Microsoft's role of "evil" has become nearly moot, much like IBM's hold fell with open commodity architecture.
At the same time, a new issue has emerged, digital rights, an arena where Sony (a giant corporation representing the MPAA *and* RIAA) is the devil figure (rootkit CDs, locked out storage formats, and the upcoming Blu-ray ultra restrictive DRM).
Much as IBM, for it's own financial convience, became a "good guy" by supporting Linux and open source, Microsoft may make a similar transformation: They split with Sony over Blu-ray because they demanded that the next DVD format allow consumers to use media they had purchased the way they wanted to (i.e. store on a Microsoft powered media center). Microsoft's position of having no interest in content (Sony) or hardware (Apple) makes it to their financial benefit to demand both sides provide a positive experience for consumers (since Microsoft will have Windows something running in the middle).
Even Microsoft's own DRM lends to this: It isn't tied to a single music store or mp3 player, and it isn't fixed in what it controls - companies protecting content can choose how restrictive it should be, resulting in open competition for consumers without fractured standards - if consumers don't like the restrictions placed on them by music store A, they can just go to music store B and get the same music, that will play on the same mp3 player, but with less restrictions. Instead of consumers being held hostage to a set of DRM demands, it's the content sellers that have to compete for the sweet spot between protecting the content and giving the user fare use of what they've purchased.
On Jan 10 (2006), Apple, after having 2 and 3 months respectively to fix them, finally released a patch (7.0.4) that closed major holes in QuickTime, that allows.MOV,.GIF and QTIF (an Apple specific image format, like Microsoft's WMF) files to execute arbitrary code on both Mac OS X and Windows (assuming Windows has QuickTime installed) just by viewing them (such as through a webpage with an embedded QuickTime video).
However as with many Apple patches and updates, it hadn't been properly tested, resulting in the forums being flooded with complaints about lost functionality (DVDs stopped playing and such). Apple quickly withdrew the patch, with little notice - as if the patch never existed.
Of course eEye, the security firm that had reported the vulnerabilities to Apple months before, had now already posted rather detailed advisories which included precise exploit details.
So ask yourself: Are you a Mac user (and thus have QuickTime because it's an integrated part of the OS used for OS 9 legacy emulation [long story]) or a Windows user that has installed Apple QuickTime by choice? Have you checked for patches for QuickTime in the last 2 weeks, or seen any kind of public advisory, like you normally do when Microsoft or just about any other large software maker releases a patch? If you answered yes to number one, but no to number two, congratulations. You a giant target for a zero-day exploit thanks to Apple and the Jobs reality distortion field.
Yeah, count me in as another person wondering why there was such a big rift:
Google gets Sun, Lenovo (IBM), WebWatch (Consumer Reports), the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Oxford University together to form a group called "Stop Badware" that sends money to a bunch of students, who in turn setup a little website that "names and shames" spyware software. The website is to be visited by people that already understand what spyware is and how not to get it. Spyware makers to totally ignore the students strongly worded opinions.
Microsoft leads a group containing Lavasoft (Adaware), Trend Micro, Symantec, Grisoft (AVG), McAfee, Websense, Panda Software, Yahoo, AOL, Dell, HP, Aluria (Earthlink), the National Center for Victims of Crime, the National Cyber Security Alliance, the Samuelson Law Technology & Public Policy Clinic (UC Berkeley School of Law) along with another 2 dozen major security, general internet, public advocacy and legal organizations called the "Anti-Spyware Coalition". Microsoft directs this organization in a three pronged attack on spyware:
- Clearly defining what spyware is and what is does, in order to improve understanding among normal users, providing common standards for anti-spyware software, and helping to make spyware a concept that can be used effectively and accurately in legislation.
- Directly confronting spyware makers in the courts, hitting them where it hurts, their wallet. For example this week Microsoft is pulling in Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna to file a lawsuit against the makers of "Spyware Cleaner", a product that actually infects computers with its own spyware, and is advertised through misleading email and messenger spam. Microsoft has already had numerous court room victories against the spyware makers and spammers.
- Using the rigorous terminology defined in point 1, with the court precedent created in point 2, the ASC lobbies Congress to pass tough anti-spyware laws, closing the loopholes and grey areas that make spyware non-trivial to legally stop.
So to compare, one camp has declared war on spyware, and has assembled the best generals in the industry and the largest groups of regular troops, and launched a major assault on the spyware mainland, already capturing several cities. The other camp has gotten together at the local university to sit around writing beatnik poetry about how bad spyware is.
Mercedes (Itanium) was Intel's kneejerk reaction the Powerpc which was a threat in the early to mid 1990's.
Mercedes was supposed to be here by 1997
Back when I was in school I remember doing a little presentation on future methods of increasing computer power (like dual and quad setups [with the "new" Pentium Pro). The 64bit "Itanium" was in the presentation. As I said that was back when I was still in school. Still in high school.
Transmeta had something interesting and the new PentiumM's are rumored to be designed by a small Isreali firm bought by Intel with similiar technology
At least by name the team that designed the Pentium M (which is in Israel and was created by Intel about 30 years ago) is in house Intel, however I have no idea if the actual employees who did it where brought in from a bought out company. Judging solely by the chips coming out of Intels other facilities (slow, expensive, hot, very inefficent [both power and cycle wise]) it would seem to make sense that the Pentium M was designed by anyone besides the brain trust at Intel.
Well consider this:
6 days ago Apple released patches for critical problems in Quicktime (make sure you update to Quicktime 7.0.4). All of them lead to reliable arbitrary code execution, as a result of Quicktime/Quicktime browser plugin/iTunes reading GIF, QTIF (An Apple image format, like Windows WMF) or MOV files. The vulnerabilities affect all operating systems using Quicktime - Windows and Mac OS X.
The QTIF vulnerability was quickly patched in 12 days (a few days slower then the WMF vulnerability that everyone jumped on Microsoft about). The GIF vulnerability (the least likely to be exploited since GIF files are not usually read by Quicktime) took the longest at 71 days to patch.
However the showstopper was the MOV vulnerability. It allowed for reliable code execution just by playing a MOV file - easily embedded in a webpage, almost always played by Quicktime, and usable on many free "funny video" upload services, allowing for anonymous attacks. This extremely dangerous vulnerability was reported to Apple in November but a patch wasn't released for 54 days, providing a large window for hackers to strike with a 0-day exploit.
Of course when Apple released the patch, as with all of Apple's many regular security fixes, there was little fanfare. In fact sites like Slashdot.org actually rejected submissions alerting people to the need to update and protect their systems from Apples security problem. That was a good thing for Apple, since the patch (which also fixed 4 other vulnerabilities) quickly proved to be unstable, and was withdrawn. Now anyone visiting the detailed description of the vulnerability can begin constructing and deploying infected video files designed to attack users machines as soon as Safari, FireFox, IE or any other browser, on Mac or Windows, plays them with Apple's Quicktime plugin.
Of course with a zero-day exploit that can attack almost any non-Linux computer on the planet just by visiting a webpage now in the wild for 6 days, we haven't seen many if any attempts to use it. Maybe having legions of cult members chanting "Apple is perfect" really do protect the Mac
I thought those warning labels where required by law. Someone could accidently burn themselves, take down their local power grid, or pay big money for a slow turd.
Of course it's old. If you advance the article id by 1, the next story is about redefining the kilograms (which is months old). The only story here is some guy using easily exploitable Slashdot "editors" to get a link to his blog posted on the front page in order to get lots of hits from which he gets money.
Frankly there is one problem with bounties - the vast majority of them are very, very low when compared to what even an entry level programmer could earn putting in the same number of hours as would be needed to complete most of them.
By comparison, the bounties can have a habbit of pushing off the normal volunteers from those areas - some don't like the idea of getting paid for a free project (in much the same way people helping out a charity will often reject any attempt at compensation), while others don't want the pressure of a "paid" project; they just want to have fun and help out an open source project.
That leaves you with only one big audiance for bounties - high school kids and bums in college who are riding on their parents money (actual paying students need to work real jobs to get enough money to pay tuition). Neither of these groups are all that great for accomplishing the goals of bounties - they tend to lack the drive and responsibility of more mature coders, and can easily turn in garbage that just fills the requirement list in order to get the money.
To work bounties need to either be bigger and/or offer some of kind of other incentive, or they need to be tailored to that 14 year old high school student crowd - smaller, easier to evaluate, harder to screw up. Basically farm out the low level tasks with bounties, and have the core team work on the real features.
- Microsoft hired Mr Lee, with a generous salary and bonus, to be in charge of developing a specific, and very valuable, asset. Namely the improvement of interface technologies/web interfaces for Asian customers, something that has become very important to global companies with China moving into the IT age. As a condition of his handsome salary, Mr Lee signed a contract saying he would not work in that specific area for a certain amount of time after leaving Microsoft, so that he could not sell Microsoft technology to someone else.
- Mr Lee and Google began to communicate on Microsoft time. In those communications Mr Lee sent Google information on specific people Google should hire in order to create a shadow version of Microsoft's own Asian UI division, with the understanding that he would be in charge of it.
- In those same communications, Google identified the fact that Mr Lee's contract made such a venture a very big violation. Knowing this, Google communicated various loopholes and ways to hide what he was doing, suggesting things like Google putting him on a fake paid "vacation" (in which he would actually be working, but done of the record in order to deceive any court that investigated the matter) for a number of months so that he could violate his contract while avoiding the penalties.
Your reading comprehension is rather low (though the fact that you can't even capitalize is a hint). If you could read, you'd realize that it is free to download for 1 year. If you download it for free, you keep it for free, for as long as you like. After 1 year, Microsoft (may) start charging a small amount for it, about the cost of 1 game.
Um, yes they did. It's this thing called the Borland VCL, used by both C++ Builder and Delphi. The VCL set the standard for a large, well integrated, well designed API for doing everything. By comparison the Java API looks like it was designed by 20 different people working in different buildings, then slapped together 20 hours before the ship date (and lets not even start on how much worse it got as successive versions got tacked on).
As for C#/.NET - C# gets it's wide API, and a lot of it's features from the work of chief architect Anders Hejlsberg - oh, he is also the same guy that designed the VCL and Object Pascal aka Delphi..NET did learn a few things from Java, but mostly of the "whatever you do don't do this" variety. Like designing your bytecode language with runtime interpretation performance in mind first, making JIT a secondary addon. That's why Java apps take forever to start while.NET feels like a native executable - the.NET bytecode is optimized for use as raw input for a JIT compiler.
Exactly. IE is a free product, but costs Microsoft money to develop (it's not just a port of Windows IE). Office for Mac makes money, but IE only exists to try and "enrich" whatever platform it's on. Back in the day IE was actively developed for the Mac (along with some major cash from Microsoft being pumped into Apple's stock) it was because Apple was down on it's luck.
There was no way Microsoft was going to let it's main "competitor" die off. If Apple disappeared, it would allow enough space in the desktop market for a new, real competitor to enter (like Linux - at the moment Linux has to compete with both Windows *and* OS X, making it much harder to be accepted as a mainstream consumer desktop OS).
A long as Apple is in the picture taking up the number 2 position, Microsoft has a safety against real competition on the desktop, simply because of how certain brand markets tend to operate (Coke vs. Pepsi, Intel vs. AMD, etc). Now that Apple is doing well, there is no reason for Microsoft to pay extra money to keep Apple in the game. They can just sit back and watch Apple act as an albatros in the plans of Linux and any other potential desktop competitor, safe in the knowledge that Apple itself will never actually grow beyond a certain percentage of the market.
Slashdot Mirror
The PDK does address an issue that Google shouldn't have made an issue to begin with - manufacturers actually getting some lead time. But it doesn't address the issue of why Gingerbread itself is still such a big chunk of the market.
ICS simply can't run on budget Android devices. The Android makers that are making money (Samsung) are targeting a much wider market then just the high end subsidized North American market. Samsung is able to turn a profit because they're spreading their costs over a much wider net with both mid range phones like the Ace line and a lot of super-low end ones (Y, Mini, Pocket) that compete directly with feature phones and in emerging markets. ICS is never going to run on those and Samsung and others won't try - they're still releasing brand new phones, 8 months later, running Gingerbread with no hope for an upgrade.
Android will continue to be 'fragmented' between Gingerbread and whatever the latest and greatest is for a long time, at least as long as the gulf exists between heavily carrier subsized phones in a few countries (allowing iPhones, Samsung Galaxy Ss and HTC One Xs to sell in any quantity) and full cost phones in other countries where (Gingerbread) Android's price point is the biggest selling point against more expensive smart phones and increasingly identically priced feature phones.
Googles thinks Microsoft is sending proxies to do its legal work, or at the least is trying to convince someone of that fantasy?
Microsoft hasn't shown any problems going after Android makers openly and directly. Sure it doesn't always make the front page but that's because Microsoft wants to licence the technology, not use the patents to block companies from the market entirely like Apple. This has always been Microsoft's business stategy from all the back in the days when it was Bill writing BASIC interpreters - find a place in the middle of the supply or technology chain so that no matter what company or product consumers are wild about this day of the week, Microsoft is getting paid somehow. A 'horizontal' instead of vertical market integration. That Android phone in your hand? Microsoft got paid a cut of it. I believe the slashdotter term is 'the Microsoft tax'.
Either Google is on a conspiracy bent to try and explain why so many companies have dirt on them without considering that maybe it's because they copied from all of them to assemble Android, or they're just cooking up so they can get Microsoft beat up by the EU bigwigs the way Opera did.
"The root cause of this problem is an email server compromise. The email server belongs to one of our team members."
A poorly secured email server is not the failure in this statement.
The failure is what was a non-essential piece of software, what sounds like someone's personal software, doing on this server or even on the same firewalled subnet?
4.9GB games (a few PS2 games where even dual layer disks) pose another major problem - unlike the 1MB SNES games, where are you going to store them? The cost of the PS3 is already huge, do they really have the budget to include a 200GB harddrive? (and at that size they can't even use the cost cutting measure Microsoft used - to provide 10GB harddrives, they'd just bought already cheap 20GB units where one platter was uncertified, essentially B grade units that could be salvaged for the required storage space at a fraction of the cost)
Why is trusted computing a problem for OSS? The cries of software being locked out where simply FUD made up in the early days with no basis in fact (they where slippery slope arguments using the "well you can argue it's possible that such and such could be done, so we'll decide that's exactly what is going to be done)". If you need proof, why don't you look at the *nix based operating system that runs exclusively on the Intel "trusted computing" platform - Apple OS X x86.
The iPod line, up to and including the Nano, are powered by various versions of PortalPlayer's system on a chip technology. However the iPod Shuffle, released only a few months after Steve Jobs declared flash based players where useless, marks the single deviantion for the iPod line.
Instead of the PortalPlayer chipset, it switches to the SigmaTel 3500 series, the chipset that powers many no-brand "memory stick" style flash mp3 players (most end up getting stamped with a generic brand name by whatever company buys them in bulk, so you may have a "mercury" player that is 100% identical except for the paintjob to a "powermp3" player).
A few names of SigmaTel based player include models from Xelo, Curtis and Lenco. Note that most of these players are not 100% identical to the Shuffle. In the name of making something so fast, most features the chipset supports where ignored: it can support a basic 1/2 line LCD screens, it can use a microphone, it can support an FM tuner, it can work with FAT filesystems on memory cards, it can even play wma files, and ogg files with the right firmware version. The main difference between the Shuffle and the players that choose to throw out even a screen in the pursuit of a low retail price, is that the Shuffle is one of the few that uses the 3500's abiliy to regulate li-ion battery charging (the chipset can be run off a AAA battery or a li-ion pack, most generic players use a AAA battery)
You mean to tell me that advertising a screenless MP3 player with random mode as a life changing revolution could be a bit over the top?
/Doesn't own a Shuffle
//But already owned another cheap generic brand no-feature MP3 player with the same chipset
Like a web browser, or a media player?
That the service is going to be a Beta?
Thank you thank you thank you (sorry ot no mod points, but you're already up to 5 anyway).
I browse with a lot of tabs in FireFox, and with FireFox 1.5 the performance when a lot of those tabs are loading has been beyond horrible. Like several seconds just to switch tabs, and then actually trying to scroll...
If you are feeling generous, perhaps you also know how to shutoff the new tab thumbnail "feature" when you've got images. 16x16 thumbnails of 4000x4000 images are nothing but a waste of CPU time and a visual distraction.
IMO Blue Ray will go the way of Laserdisc, unless they encode one side in blue-ray and the other in regular DVD.
You can't do that, and it's one of the reason's Blue Ray disks are so much more expensive.
Simply put, Blue Ray disks aren't the same "disks" as CDs and DVDs. They are physically bigger, making them impossible to produce on current CD/DVD production lines and requiring completely redesigned players (you can't just stick a new laser in an old player, and you require even more complex and expensive components if you want to play regular DVDs and CDs, since the player has to adjust to different thicknesses).
By comparison, HD-DVD disks are physically compatible with CDs and DVDs. They can be produced on the existing production lines with minor changes to the punch (meaning you can ramp up HD-DVD production overnight instead of having the build an entire manufacturing base from scratch). Another benefit is that, as you suggested incorrectly for Blue Ray, HD-DVDs can be dual type disks - DVD edition on one side, HD-DVD edition on the other. Basically HD-DVD will be able to offer movies for about the same price as DVDs, in the same quantities, and the movie will be backwards compatible, so stores won't be giving up shelf space to a expensive new format - they can simply drop the DVDs overnight and replace them with hybrid [HD]-DVDs.
Oh, and there is that little part where even Microsoft thought Sony's DRM on Blue Ray was insanely over restrictive and anti-consumer, leading them to drop support and back HD-DVD exclusively. So Blue Ray supporters can enjoy paying double to buy from a limited selection of movies that only play on your expensive new player when Sony feels like it.
Comparison of the three GBA systems being sold:
SP Old (frontlit screen)
SP New (backlit screen)
Micro
-Both SPs can play Gameboy and Gameboy Color games, the Micro can't.
-The Micro has a smaller screen, but this is not a problem unless you are blind. The screen is very sharp making text easy to read. If you've got a high resolution Palm handheld, compare with that. The Micro screen is practically a 240x160 cutout.
-Cables for the SP won't work with the Micro (including the link cable and gamecube cable)
-The SP requires a seperately purchased adapter to plug in ear phones, and the adapter uses up the port used for the recharging cable.
-All models have a user replaceable battery that is cheaply available.
-The SP New and Micro have backlit screens, making them much brighter.
-The Micro has 5 brightness levels, the SP New has 2, and the SP Old lets you turn the light off completely. The lowest brightness on the SP New and Micro is still brighter then the SP Old (the brightest setting is used for signally ships)
-The SP old technically has the longest battery life, since the light can be turned off. Under normal conditions they all have about the same battery life, though cranking up the brightness will shorten the Micro and SP New's life.
-The SP New and Micro's backlit screen is great indoors, however in direct sunlight the backlit screen is washed out (like most laptops). The SP Old's frontlit screen however works just fine in sunlight (you can even turn off the backlight, with enough natural light you can't even tell if it is on or not). This is perhaps the one reason to get the older SP, as it makes a huge difference for outdoor play.
-The SP New screen runs at 50hz instead of 60hz. It has been reported that already bright colors, especially red, create a slight blur when moving quickly across the screen. This is not a major hangup (like LCD refresh rates, it depends on the person if they even notice it)
-The SP shoulder buttons work simply by pressing in. The Micro's shoulder buttons are a bit of a shock, because they only work if you press down on the inside (more like a SNES controller)
-The Micro's D-Pad and A/B buttons are more squishy, like a NES or SNES controller, while the SP has a springy digitial "click" response (you can clearly feel and even hear them making contact, and they push back up)
-All three are pocketable, however the Micro, due to being smaller both volume wise and in form factor, is better at this. The SP feels like carrying around a fat wallet, while the Micro feels like a small candybar cellphone.
Overall:
If you want to play GB or GBC games, get an SP New
If you want to play outdoors a lot, get an SP Old
If you want the best system to just pull out of your pocket and play (and put it back in and forget it's there), get a Micro
In many ways it seems like Sony is becoming the new Microsoft, just as Microsoft replaced IBM as the Big Bad. With the shift in software distribution (internet making it easy to distribute and collaborate on free and open software like Linux) Microsoft's role of "evil" has become nearly moot, much like IBM's hold fell with open commodity architecture.
At the same time, a new issue has emerged, digital rights, an arena where Sony (a giant corporation representing the MPAA *and* RIAA) is the devil figure (rootkit CDs, locked out storage formats, and the upcoming Blu-ray ultra restrictive DRM).
Much as IBM, for it's own financial convience, became a "good guy" by supporting Linux and open source, Microsoft may make a similar transformation: They split with Sony over Blu-ray because they demanded that the next DVD format allow consumers to use media they had purchased the way they wanted to (i.e. store on a Microsoft powered media center). Microsoft's position of having no interest in content (Sony) or hardware (Apple) makes it to their financial benefit to demand both sides provide a positive experience for consumers (since Microsoft will have Windows something running in the middle).
Even Microsoft's own DRM lends to this: It isn't tied to a single music store or mp3 player, and it isn't fixed in what it controls - companies protecting content can choose how restrictive it should be, resulting in open competition for consumers without fractured standards - if consumers don't like the restrictions placed on them by music store A, they can just go to music store B and get the same music, that will play on the same mp3 player, but with less restrictions. Instead of consumers being held hostage to a set of DRM demands, it's the content sellers that have to compete for the sweet spot between protecting the content and giving the user fare use of what they've purchased.
Ok, here is one.
.MOV, .GIF and QTIF (an Apple specific image format, like Microsoft's WMF) files to execute arbitrary code on both Mac OS X and Windows (assuming Windows has QuickTime installed) just by viewing them (such as through a webpage with an embedded QuickTime video).
On Jan 10 (2006), Apple, after having 2 and 3 months respectively to fix them, finally released a patch (7.0.4) that closed major holes in QuickTime, that allows
However as with many Apple patches and updates, it hadn't been properly tested, resulting in the forums being flooded with complaints about lost functionality (DVDs stopped playing and such). Apple quickly withdrew the patch, with little notice - as if the patch never existed.
Of course eEye, the security firm that had reported the vulnerabilities to Apple months before, had now already posted rather detailed advisories which included precise exploit details.
So ask yourself: Are you a Mac user (and thus have QuickTime because it's an integrated part of the OS used for OS 9 legacy emulation [long story]) or a Windows user that has installed Apple QuickTime by choice? Have you checked for patches for QuickTime in the last 2 weeks, or seen any kind of public advisory, like you normally do when Microsoft or just about any other large software maker releases a patch? If you answered yes to number one, but no to number two, congratulations. You a giant target for a zero-day exploit thanks to Apple and the Jobs reality distortion field.
Yeah, count me in as another person wondering why there was such a big rift:
Google gets Sun, Lenovo (IBM), WebWatch (Consumer Reports), the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Oxford University together to form a group called "Stop Badware" that sends money to a bunch of students, who in turn setup a little website that "names and shames" spyware software. The website is to be visited by people that already understand what spyware is and how not to get it. Spyware makers to totally ignore the students strongly worded opinions.
Microsoft leads a group containing Lavasoft (Adaware), Trend Micro, Symantec, Grisoft (AVG), McAfee, Websense, Panda Software, Yahoo, AOL, Dell, HP, Aluria (Earthlink), the National Center for Victims of Crime, the National Cyber Security Alliance, the Samuelson Law Technology & Public Policy Clinic (UC Berkeley School of Law) along with another 2 dozen major security, general internet, public advocacy and legal organizations called the "Anti-Spyware Coalition". Microsoft directs this organization in a three pronged attack on spyware:
- Clearly defining what spyware is and what is does, in order to improve understanding among normal users, providing common standards for anti-spyware software, and helping to make spyware a concept that can be used effectively and accurately in legislation.
- Directly confronting spyware makers in the courts, hitting them where it hurts, their wallet. For example this week Microsoft is pulling in Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna to file a lawsuit against the makers of "Spyware Cleaner", a product that actually infects computers with its own spyware, and is advertised through misleading email and messenger spam. Microsoft has already had numerous court room victories against the spyware makers and spammers.
- Using the rigorous terminology defined in point 1, with the court precedent created in point 2, the ASC lobbies Congress to pass tough anti-spyware laws, closing the loopholes and grey areas that make spyware non-trivial to legally stop.
So to compare, one camp has declared war on spyware, and has assembled the best generals in the industry and the largest groups of regular troops, and launched a major assault on the spyware mainland, already capturing several cities. The other camp has gotten together at the local university to sit around writing beatnik poetry about how bad spyware is.
Mercedes (Itanium) was Intel's kneejerk reaction the Powerpc which was a threat in the early to mid 1990's.
Mercedes was supposed to be here by 1997
Back when I was in school I remember doing a little presentation on future methods of increasing computer power (like dual and quad setups [with the "new" Pentium Pro). The 64bit "Itanium" was in the presentation. As I said that was back when I was still in school. Still in high school.
Transmeta had something interesting and the new PentiumM's are rumored to be designed by a small Isreali firm bought by Intel with similiar technology
At least by name the team that designed the Pentium M (which is in Israel and was created by Intel about 30 years ago) is in house Intel, however I have no idea if the actual employees who did it where brought in from a bought out company. Judging solely by the chips coming out of Intels other facilities (slow, expensive, hot, very inefficent [both power and cycle wise]) it would seem to make sense that the Pentium M was designed by anyone besides the brain trust at Intel.
Well consider this: 6 days ago Apple released patches for critical problems in Quicktime (make sure you update to Quicktime 7.0.4). All of them lead to reliable arbitrary code execution, as a result of Quicktime/Quicktime browser plugin/iTunes reading GIF, QTIF (An Apple image format, like Windows WMF) or MOV files. The vulnerabilities affect all operating systems using Quicktime - Windows and Mac OS X. The QTIF vulnerability was quickly patched in 12 days (a few days slower then the WMF vulnerability that everyone jumped on Microsoft about). The GIF vulnerability (the least likely to be exploited since GIF files are not usually read by Quicktime) took the longest at 71 days to patch. However the showstopper was the MOV vulnerability. It allowed for reliable code execution just by playing a MOV file - easily embedded in a webpage, almost always played by Quicktime, and usable on many free "funny video" upload services, allowing for anonymous attacks. This extremely dangerous vulnerability was reported to Apple in November but a patch wasn't released for 54 days, providing a large window for hackers to strike with a 0-day exploit. Of course when Apple released the patch, as with all of Apple's many regular security fixes, there was little fanfare. In fact sites like Slashdot.org actually rejected submissions alerting people to the need to update and protect their systems from Apples security problem. That was a good thing for Apple, since the patch (which also fixed 4 other vulnerabilities) quickly proved to be unstable, and was withdrawn. Now anyone visiting the detailed description of the vulnerability can begin constructing and deploying infected video files designed to attack users machines as soon as Safari, FireFox, IE or any other browser, on Mac or Windows, plays them with Apple's Quicktime plugin. Of course with a zero-day exploit that can attack almost any non-Linux computer on the planet just by visiting a webpage now in the wild for 6 days, we haven't seen many if any attempts to use it. Maybe having legions of cult members chanting "Apple is perfect" really do protect the Mac
I thought those warning labels where required by law. Someone could accidently burn themselves, take down their local power grid, or pay big money for a slow turd.
Of course it's old. If you advance the article id by 1, the next story is about redefining the kilograms (which is months old). The only story here is some guy using easily exploitable Slashdot "editors" to get a link to his blog posted on the front page in order to get lots of hits from which he gets money.
And at one point all the Grace Park(s) all NAKED!
(oh, and if you haven't seen the new BSG, you can download that very episode [Last episode of season 1] from the SciFi channel website)
Frankly there is one problem with bounties - the vast majority of them are very, very low when compared to what even an entry level programmer could earn putting in the same number of hours as would be needed to complete most of them.
By comparison, the bounties can have a habbit of pushing off the normal volunteers from those areas - some don't like the idea of getting paid for a free project (in much the same way people helping out a charity will often reject any attempt at compensation), while others don't want the pressure of a "paid" project; they just want to have fun and help out an open source project.
That leaves you with only one big audiance for bounties - high school kids and bums in college who are riding on their parents money (actual paying students need to work real jobs to get enough money to pay tuition). Neither of these groups are all that great for accomplishing the goals of bounties - they tend to lack the drive and responsibility of more mature coders, and can easily turn in garbage that just fills the requirement list in order to get the money.
To work bounties need to either be bigger and/or offer some of kind of other incentive, or they need to be tailored to that 14 year old high school student crowd - smaller, easier to evaluate, harder to screw up. Basically farm out the low level tasks with bounties, and have the core team work on the real features.
You don't know all the facts concerning the case.
- Microsoft hired Mr Lee, with a generous salary and bonus, to be in charge of developing a specific, and very valuable, asset. Namely the improvement of interface technologies/web interfaces for Asian customers, something that has become very important to global companies with China moving into the IT age. As a condition of his handsome salary, Mr Lee signed a contract saying he would not work in that specific area for a certain amount of time after leaving Microsoft, so that he could not sell Microsoft technology to someone else.
- Mr Lee and Google began to communicate on Microsoft time. In those communications Mr Lee sent Google information on specific people Google should hire in order to create a shadow version of Microsoft's own Asian UI division, with the understanding that he would be in charge of it.
- In those same communications, Google identified the fact that Mr Lee's contract made such a venture a very big violation. Knowing this, Google communicated various loopholes and ways to hide what he was doing, suggesting things like Google putting him on a fake paid "vacation" (in which he would actually be working, but done of the record in order to deceive any court that investigated the matter) for a number of months so that he could violate his contract while avoiding the penalties.
Your reading comprehension is rather low (though the fact that you can't even capitalize is a hint). If you could read, you'd realize that it is free to download for 1 year. If you download it for free, you keep it for free, for as long as you like. After 1 year, Microsoft (may) start charging a small amount for it, about the cost of 1 game.
Um, yes they did. It's this thing called the Borland VCL, used by both C++ Builder and Delphi. The VCL set the standard for a large, well integrated, well designed API for doing everything. By comparison the Java API looks like it was designed by 20 different people working in different buildings, then slapped together 20 hours before the ship date (and lets not even start on how much worse it got as successive versions got tacked on).
.NET did learn a few things from Java, but mostly of the "whatever you do don't do this" variety. Like designing your bytecode language with runtime interpretation performance in mind first, making JIT a secondary addon. That's why Java apps take forever to start while .NET feels like a native executable - the .NET bytecode is optimized for use as raw input for a JIT compiler.
As for C#/.NET - C# gets it's wide API, and a lot of it's features from the work of chief architect Anders Hejlsberg - oh, he is also the same guy that designed the VCL and Object Pascal aka Delphi.
Exactly. IE is a free product, but costs Microsoft money to develop (it's not just a port of Windows IE). Office for Mac makes money, but IE only exists to try and "enrich" whatever platform it's on. Back in the day IE was actively developed for the Mac (along with some major cash from Microsoft being pumped into Apple's stock) it was because Apple was down on it's luck.
There was no way Microsoft was going to let it's main "competitor" die off. If Apple disappeared, it would allow enough space in the desktop market for a new, real competitor to enter (like Linux - at the moment Linux has to compete with both Windows *and* OS X, making it much harder to be accepted as a mainstream consumer desktop OS).
A long as Apple is in the picture taking up the number 2 position, Microsoft has a safety against real competition on the desktop, simply because of how certain brand markets tend to operate (Coke vs. Pepsi, Intel vs. AMD, etc). Now that Apple is doing well, there is no reason for Microsoft to pay extra money to keep Apple in the game. They can just sit back and watch Apple act as an albatros in the plans of Linux and any other potential desktop competitor, safe in the knowledge that Apple itself will never actually grow beyond a certain percentage of the market.