It's the backlight necessary for the color screen. They probably could have done a reflective display, but that's almost self-defeating from a color standpoint.
As far as calculator technologies go, you're going to be hard pressed to beat a monochrome LCD. Which is also why all of the complaining about the TI calculator line still being monochrome is silly. Sure it's outdated, but it's a calculator, not a phone. The intended purpose and operational requirements are entirely different.
More to the point, VP8 doesn't make any sense here. All modern hardware comes with H.264 hardware decode capabilities, and it has for some time.
For that matter, virtually every piece of new hardware comes with a real-time H.264 hardware encoder too, specifically designed for recording video and real-time teleconferencing.
I like the open ideals of VP8, but just like WebM, this ship has long since sailed. Using VP8 means no one has hardware support for it at a time when the quality-equivalent H.264 codec can be done in hardware at both ends.
It doesn't deprive the carrier of their investment, which is why these days your carrier would unlock it for you anyhow. Unlocking is no longer a DMCA exception because carriers now regularly unlock phones that are paid off.
Mega doesn't know what you're uploading... but they definitely care. Ad impressions will pay regardless of whether content is legitimate or not, but just like Megaupload their paid subscriptions (starting at 10EUR/month) will only sell if there's illegal content on the service.
I don't even see anything to discuss. Seriously, how the hell is this acceptable?
Ultimately it comes down to money (and I don't mean that in a snide conspiracy way). It costs a fair bit of money to create and operate a system as expansive as JSTOR, not to mention the high cost of acquiring the journals themselves. Academia never completely got its act together, so the final solution was for a private entity to operate it, the non-profit Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Since then they've been rolled into the equally non-profit ITHAKA, which operates JSTOR to this day.
It should come as no surprise of course that even as a non-profit, JSTOR has to charge for access to journals for two reasons. First, they need to provide access control as per any content licensing agreements with journal publishers - most of whom are non-profits themselves and need to pull in enough revenue to publish their journals - as otherwise everyone would read JSTOR for free and not purchase journal subscriptions (and since JSTOR would not be bringing in any revenue, they could not pay the journals either). Second of course is that operating the JSTOR system costs money, and if journals could be freely copied out, everyone would take the good stuff (and admittedly probably take good care of it) but then cancel their JSTOR subscriptions. This would leave behind a number of smaller journals that are suddenly not getting digitized and archived. The whole academic journal system is one big case study in the tragedy of the commons: everyone wants it for free, but no one wants to pay to operate the journals or the storage systems.
Consequently, whether journal access is free or not is really up to Congress, as only government can solve the tragedy of the commons. If Congress were to task the LoC with creating an equivalent system and funded that mandate (i.e. made everyone pay for it) then an open system could be built or JSTOR acquired. Congress already provides a bit of funding for JSTOR in a roundabout way, as ITHAKA has received some small grants from various government departments over the years, including the Library of Congress. So this pretty much comes down to Congress increasing their funding for these projects.
Until then however, JSTOR will remain behind a paywall. Someone has to pay the costs of the journals and the systems, and if it isn't the public then it will be a private system.
TL;DR: JSTOR would be free if Congress would pay for it rather than leaving this up to private industry
19nm/20nm has proven to be no worse than the existing 2Xnm processes as far as durability is concerned. So you're still looking at a 3,000-5,000 program/erase cycles before NAND cells start giving out.
There is evidence though. This entire system is based around catching people using BitTorrent to pirate copyrighted works. That means the copyright owner (or their enforcement agent) has an IP record of the perpetrator participating in the swarm, and because this is a two-way data transfer that IP address cannot be forged or otherwise faked. Consequently the only way your IP address is going to show up in a swarm as transferring data is if your connection is being used to participate in that swarm; that's very good evidence and there's not much of a defense you can mount against it.
On that note, while an IP address doesn't provide details on the individual that committed the offense, it does narrow it down to a single Internet connection. Which in this case is fine since these strikes are levied against the connection anyhow. The "open router" defense will work once, but after that it's expected that a connection's owner will have learned how to secure their network. Ultimately residential customers are responsible for their connections, so repeated strikes indicates either willful infringement or willfully operating an insecure endpoint. Otherwise there's no reason anyone should have more than 1 strike.
To be fair, that's not DRM so much as it is a completely server-side gama (ala Diablo 3). To be sure it makes for an effective DRM scheme, but the seamless MP direction they are going for with SC required a server-side game anyhow.
And we'd be all the more miserable for it. Meat is delicious. And it doesn't hurt that it's an excellent source of protein, too (even well-trained vegans still find this bit challenging at times).
Indeed. We use a similar blacklist on our systems and it eliminated a massive chunk of spam from bots trying to reach out and touch you directly.
There just isn't any good reason to be operating a SMTP server on a residential connection; the user either needs to go through their ISP or they need to move to proper hosting in a datacenter (more uptime, static IPs, clearly not an end-user system).
This is fundamentally a FRAND issue. Samsung submitted their patents as FRAND, Apple did not. FRAND places limitations on what Samsung can do with their patents in exchange for a simplified licensing system that gives them long term royalties from virtually every mobile device manufacturer.
Anyhow, going after Apple with FRAND patents was always a risky strategy, and the EU charges are exactly why.
One thing TFA touches on but doesn't answer is what battery life is like. Those old Z80 monochome beasts could easily last for a whole semester on a single set of batteries; in terms of hours of runtime that works out to dozens and dozens of hours (the similar Gameboy got 30+ hours, and that's with it working at full tilt every second it's turned on!).
So what's the impact on battery life by using a color screen? A Z80 + RAM uses so little power these days that surely the bulk of the unit's power supply is going to the screen. And as much as I do agree a color screen is handy, is giving up battery life for it a good tradeoff?
Unfortunately FreedomPop is building their service on top of Clearwire's WiMax service, which doesn't bode well for the performance or the reliability of the resulting service.
Clearwire ceased their buildout more than a year ago, and assuming they survive the next few years will be trying to roll out an LTE network on their spectrum. In the meantime their WiMax network is already oversubscribed both on a per-tower basis and a backhaul basis; as a result the actual speed of the service isn't much better than CDMA 3G, never mind HSPA+ or LTE. Adding a bunch of users is only going to make this worse, especially since FreedomPop isn't the only service taking advantage of Clearwire's cutthroat rates.
Clearwire's 2.6GHz spectrum may also be a minor concern here. Based on the results of Clearwire's own efforts, their spectrum works well for mobile use but has a lot of trouble penetrating homes, which is where a service like FreedomPop is most likely to be used.
Ultimately like any other wireless service this is going to be entirely area-dependent. But for most users they're effectively buying into a cheap 3G-ish service with no quality of service standards. It's cheap, but that's about all FreedomPop has going for it.
And everything since Vista/Server2K8 supports SMB 2.x. Unless you're still running XP machines (in which case your time is quickly approaching) then your systems are probably already using SMB 2.x.
A wrapper wouldn't make a ton of sense. But just writing your own implementation of the Gamespy master server would be relatively easy. For most games it's implemented as a simple heartbeat system, with servers periodically reporting to the master, and clients then querying the master for a list of servers.
The major ISPs are generally ready, but they can't do anything until Cisco actually rolls out IPv6 capable head-end gear. Among other things, Cisco has already all but missed their 2012 deadline for having IPv6 working on their CMTSes.
In short, syllables and words. The fewer the syllables the easier it is to say (and usually easier to write out too). Meanwhile if you can get it down to one word you have something you can base a brand on that will show up well in searches.
PS3: 3 syllables, 1 word, and unique WiiU: 2 syllables, 1 word, and unique Xbox: 2 syllables, 1 word, and unique Xbox 360: 5 syllables, 2 words, and unique 360: 3 syllables, 1 word, but not unique.
The problem with "Xbox 360" is that its two words (bad for searching), and more syllables. If it was just called the "360" then the syllable and word count is down, but now it's an extremely generic term that does nothing for the brand or for searching. So we're left with just "Xbox". If MS had named it something more concatenation-friendly like the "Xbox 2" then we wouldn't be having this problem since everyone would just write it as XB2 or Xbox2 and call it a day.
As of now we know that Win8 is vulnerable to a huge chunk of malware designed for older versions of Windows.
Secure Boot was designed to block malware from successfully inserting itself into the boot chain to bypass OS security measures, and that's it. Beyond that it's up to the OS to block malware from running in ring 0 or ring 3, which comes down to AV scanning, code signing, and any privilege escalation exploits abused by malware. Secure Boot closes off one important vector for malware, not all of them.
Bug is probably the wrong term here. I think "hilariously bad design decision" is a more apt description. Clearly someone didn't think this all the way through.
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It's the backlight necessary for the color screen. They probably could have done a reflective display, but that's almost self-defeating from a color standpoint.
As far as calculator technologies go, you're going to be hard pressed to beat a monochrome LCD. Which is also why all of the complaining about the TI calculator line still being monochrome is silly. Sure it's outdated, but it's a calculator, not a phone. The intended purpose and operational requirements are entirely different.
More to the point, VP8 doesn't make any sense here. All modern hardware comes with H.264 hardware decode capabilities, and it has for some time.
For that matter, virtually every piece of new hardware comes with a real-time H.264 hardware encoder too, specifically designed for recording video and real-time teleconferencing.
I like the open ideals of VP8, but just like WebM, this ship has long since sailed. Using VP8 means no one has hardware support for it at a time when the quality-equivalent H.264 codec can be done in hardware at both ends.
It doesn't deprive the carrier of their investment, which is why these days your carrier would unlock it for you anyhow. Unlocking is no longer a DMCA exception because carriers now regularly unlock phones that are paid off.
Nothing more than H.264 had. DRM is implemented at the container level, not the bitstream level.
Mega doesn't know what you're uploading... but they definitely care. Ad impressions will pay regardless of whether content is legitimate or not, but just like Megaupload their paid subscriptions (starting at 10EUR/month) will only sell if there's illegal content on the service.
Ultimately it comes down to money (and I don't mean that in a snide conspiracy way). It costs a fair bit of money to create and operate a system as expansive as JSTOR, not to mention the high cost of acquiring the journals themselves. Academia never completely got its act together, so the final solution was for a private entity to operate it, the non-profit Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Since then they've been rolled into the equally non-profit ITHAKA, which operates JSTOR to this day.
It should come as no surprise of course that even as a non-profit, JSTOR has to charge for access to journals for two reasons. First, they need to provide access control as per any content licensing agreements with journal publishers - most of whom are non-profits themselves and need to pull in enough revenue to publish their journals - as otherwise everyone would read JSTOR for free and not purchase journal subscriptions (and since JSTOR would not be bringing in any revenue, they could not pay the journals either). Second of course is that operating the JSTOR system costs money, and if journals could be freely copied out, everyone would take the good stuff (and admittedly probably take good care of it) but then cancel their JSTOR subscriptions. This would leave behind a number of smaller journals that are suddenly not getting digitized and archived. The whole academic journal system is one big case study in the tragedy of the commons: everyone wants it for free, but no one wants to pay to operate the journals or the storage systems.
Consequently, whether journal access is free or not is really up to Congress, as only government can solve the tragedy of the commons. If Congress were to task the LoC with creating an equivalent system and funded that mandate (i.e. made everyone pay for it) then an open system could be built or JSTOR acquired. Congress already provides a bit of funding for JSTOR in a roundabout way, as ITHAKA has received some small grants from various government departments over the years, including the Library of Congress. So this pretty much comes down to Congress increasing their funding for these projects.
Until then however, JSTOR will remain behind a paywall. Someone has to pay the costs of the journals and the systems, and if it isn't the public then it will be a private system.
TL;DR: JSTOR would be free if Congress would pay for it rather than leaving this up to private industry
19nm/20nm has proven to be no worse than the existing 2Xnm processes as far as durability is concerned. So you're still looking at a 3,000-5,000 program/erase cycles before NAND cells start giving out.
There is evidence though. This entire system is based around catching people using BitTorrent to pirate copyrighted works. That means the copyright owner (or their enforcement agent) has an IP record of the perpetrator participating in the swarm, and because this is a two-way data transfer that IP address cannot be forged or otherwise faked. Consequently the only way your IP address is going to show up in a swarm as transferring data is if your connection is being used to participate in that swarm; that's very good evidence and there's not much of a defense you can mount against it.
On that note, while an IP address doesn't provide details on the individual that committed the offense, it does narrow it down to a single Internet connection. Which in this case is fine since these strikes are levied against the connection anyhow. The "open router" defense will work once, but after that it's expected that a connection's owner will have learned how to secure their network. Ultimately residential customers are responsible for their connections, so repeated strikes indicates either willful infringement or willfully operating an insecure endpoint. Otherwise there's no reason anyone should have more than 1 strike.
Aww crap. I don't suppose anyone has a Tel'tak lying around?
To be fair, that's not DRM so much as it is a completely server-side gama (ala Diablo 3). To be sure it makes for an effective DRM scheme, but the seamless MP direction they are going for with SC required a server-side game anyhow.
And we'd be all the more miserable for it. Meat is delicious. And it doesn't hurt that it's an excellent source of protein, too (even well-trained vegans still find this bit challenging at times).
Indeed. We use a similar blacklist on our systems and it eliminated a massive chunk of spam from bots trying to reach out and touch you directly.
There just isn't any good reason to be operating a SMTP server on a residential connection; the user either needs to go through their ISP or they need to move to proper hosting in a datacenter (more uptime, static IPs, clearly not an end-user system).
This is fundamentally a FRAND issue. Samsung submitted their patents as FRAND, Apple did not. FRAND places limitations on what Samsung can do with their patents in exchange for a simplified licensing system that gives them long term royalties from virtually every mobile device manufacturer.
Anyhow, going after Apple with FRAND patents was always a risky strategy, and the EU charges are exactly why.
One thing TFA touches on but doesn't answer is what battery life is like. Those old Z80 monochome beasts could easily last for a whole semester on a single set of batteries; in terms of hours of runtime that works out to dozens and dozens of hours (the similar Gameboy got 30+ hours, and that's with it working at full tilt every second it's turned on!).
So what's the impact on battery life by using a color screen? A Z80 + RAM uses so little power these days that surely the bulk of the unit's power supply is going to the screen. And as much as I do agree a color screen is handy, is giving up battery life for it a good tradeoff?
A real dork would know that the saying is Rotating Rust, not Spinning Rust. Mind your alliteration, people!
Unfortunately FreedomPop is building their service on top of Clearwire's WiMax service, which doesn't bode well for the performance or the reliability of the resulting service.
Clearwire ceased their buildout more than a year ago, and assuming they survive the next few years will be trying to roll out an LTE network on their spectrum. In the meantime their WiMax network is already oversubscribed both on a per-tower basis and a backhaul basis; as a result the actual speed of the service isn't much better than CDMA 3G, never mind HSPA+ or LTE. Adding a bunch of users is only going to make this worse, especially since FreedomPop isn't the only service taking advantage of Clearwire's cutthroat rates.
Clearwire's 2.6GHz spectrum may also be a minor concern here. Based on the results of Clearwire's own efforts, their spectrum works well for mobile use but has a lot of trouble penetrating homes, which is where a service like FreedomPop is most likely to be used.
Ultimately like any other wireless service this is going to be entirely area-dependent. But for most users they're effectively buying into a cheap 3G-ish service with no quality of service standards. It's cheap, but that's about all FreedomPop has going for it.
Dice was doing some DB server maintenance. They also took down Sourceforge for the same reason (since it shares some of the hardware).
And everything since Vista/Server2K8 supports SMB 2.x. Unless you're still running XP machines (in which case your time is quickly approaching) then your systems are probably already using SMB 2.x.
A wrapper wouldn't make a ton of sense. But just writing your own implementation of the Gamespy master server would be relatively easy. For most games it's implemented as a simple heartbeat system, with servers periodically reporting to the master, and clients then querying the master for a list of servers.
Blame Cisco.
The major ISPs are generally ready, but they can't do anything until Cisco actually rolls out IPv6 capable head-end gear. Among other things, Cisco has already all but missed their 2012 deadline for having IPv6 working on their CMTSes.
Am I the only one that finds this list somewhat questionable?
Of the 50 items, most of it definitely fits the definition of crapware: McAfee® Internet Security Suite, WeatherBug, Wild Tangent, etc
But then there are some other items in here that have me scratching my head. When was Solitaire or Minesweeper crapware?
They seem to just be listing all non-stock software (since MS doesn't include their Metro games in the box), which is not the same as crapware.
In short, syllables and words. The fewer the syllables the easier it is to say (and usually easier to write out too). Meanwhile if you can get it down to one word you have something you can base a brand on that will show up well in searches.
PS3: 3 syllables, 1 word, and unique
WiiU: 2 syllables, 1 word, and unique
Xbox: 2 syllables, 1 word, and unique
Xbox 360: 5 syllables, 2 words, and unique
360: 3 syllables, 1 word, but not unique.
The problem with "Xbox 360" is that its two words (bad for searching), and more syllables. If it was just called the "360" then the syllable and word count is down, but now it's an extremely generic term that does nothing for the brand or for searching. So we're left with just "Xbox". If MS had named it something more concatenation-friendly like the "Xbox 2" then we wouldn't be having this problem since everyone would just write it as XB2 or Xbox2 and call it a day.
Secure Boot was designed to block malware from successfully inserting itself into the boot chain to bypass OS security measures, and that's it. Beyond that it's up to the OS to block malware from running in ring 0 or ring 3, which comes down to AV scanning, code signing, and any privilege escalation exploits abused by malware. Secure Boot closes off one important vector for malware, not all of them.
They tried something like that. It was called the 4th season of Torchwood (Miracle Day).
Everyone agreed it was god-awful, and that it was never to be spoken of again.
Bug is probably the wrong term here. I think "hilariously bad design decision" is a more apt description. Clearly someone didn't think this all the way through.