Probably someone who's used to working around bad word filters. A lot of the lolspeak you find in online games these days makes a lot more sense when you realise it partly grew out of a desire to dodge autobans and the like.
What the fuck does iPhone have to do with this? Absolutely nothing.
I think his point was that if you can sneak something like that into the iPhone's app store, surely it's easy to get it in the android app store. Don't think he realised the android app store is basically free to get into.
You don't have to sneak anything into Android Market. The apps aren't audited, and apps can be installed from other sources as well. And since there is so little money in it, the incentive to put on a black hat is large. This is all 180 degrees opposite to iPhone. Completely different.
IIRC, it's basically a 100$ to get an app into the itunes app store. It's harder to get a proof of concept in there, but I'm pretty sure anyone motivated to put some real malware in there stands to make a bit more than that. Even if I follow your assumption that there's more legit money to be made there than in the android app store (perhaps likely, given the android app store doesn't even operate for pay in many of the countries android phones are available), I still don't see how that is supposed to make any difference with criminals. All they care about is installed base and (relatedly) ROI, which is probably higher for iPhones (easier to target, monoculture OS etc.). If you have trouble getting past the review process, just make another fart app, or rip off somebody else's app. Unlikely reviewers will notice.
Admittedly this is all a bit off topic, but the situation is not totally different. Unless you mean "even more scary".
All those are just dialects of Dutch. The official language of Flanders is Dutch (Algemeen Nederlands) and the version that is used in official communication (i.e. law texts) is not sufficiently different from the Dutch spoken in The Netherlands to call it a different language (which is the point the GP was making). The dialects you're talking about are never spoken between people from different cities (i.e. if someone from Ghent tries to communicate with someone from Antwerp, they'll use the Dutch they were taught in school).
If you go to England and you speak to people living in different counties, their local dialects might be very different (and you might have a lot of trouble understanding some), but that doesn't mean that the language of England isn't English. We name a country's language from what is the common language, not the individual dialects of that language. The fact that this is even coming up here is one of the deplorable side-effects of having strong nationalistic and xenofobic forces running through Flemish politics. You know the country is pretty cool on its own, you don't have to keep trying to invent new ones in which we're somehow different, let alone better.
The language is Flemish (in English) or Vlaams (in Dutch) btw. The term makes sense if you want to distinguish between the different pronunciations or the nationality of the speaker, but in all other cases there's no reason not to use Dutch.
You're using a very restrictive definition of linking together. FWIW that's not the position the FSF take (a bit too far the other way, actually) and your point won't fly in a court of law because it's disingenuous. I could create an interpreter that interprets instead of compiles C code. Does that automatically make all non-GPL C code built on GPL libraries non-infringing? Of course not. The only thing I changed is the practical way of running the code, but in the end I still have one software component that depends on another component (exclusively, even, making this an open and shut case) and thus should be considered a derivative work.
The technical details of how that dependence has been established are completely besides the point, which I hope any developer worth his salt would recognize.
Not to mention you're technically wrong about compiled code.
A worthy patent is one that leads to an invention that would otherwise not have been made. I see no reason to believe any software patent fits that description.
Thing is, before they made them, they didn't know it'd work. Probably not as much with Dragon Age, but definitely with Mass Effect. SWKOTOR wasn't a blockbuster, but you could see the direction BioWare was going.
They've been going the same direction ever since Baldur's Gate. Don't get me wrong, I love their games, but Mass Effect was pretty much the same formula as the games before it. You can clearly see them releasing a game, thinking about what worked and what not, then incorporating that into the next game. Iterative improvement, not leaps of faith. Execution matters of course, and you never quite know whether a game will work. But Bioware as major risk takers? Nah.
There exists a mental technique called 'patience'. The huge downside to instant communication, and instant gratification from it, is that we fail to realize that half of our thoughts aren't important enough to actually send. If/when you have to wait 20-30 minutes to communicate it, you tend to condense things down. Your brain chews on them a while. Try it. Even with the digital tech, you may find the practice to be enlightening. This is what people used to do before cell phones, because, believe it or not those situations did pop up within their lifestyles.
You would think longer and spend more time thinking about what to say. But quite regularly you wouldn't say anything at all because it would be so much harder to reach people. The easiest way was to call them and even then you need to do it at an opportune time, and it can't be just checking in: you took the time to call, paid the fee, it better be important. This isolated you and made you less in touch with what was going on in your friends' lives.
Humans are social animals. Communication, even of the inane variety, is good for the social fabric. Cocooning is a far bigger problem of modern culture than is incessant texting.
If you consent, Firefox gathers information about nearby wireless access points and your computer’s IP address. Then Firefox sends this information to the default geolocation service provider, Google Location Services, to get an estimate of your location. That location estimate is then shared with the requesting website.
There's tons of ways they could have gathered that information. Most coarse is knowing which ISP your address block belongs to and seeing where that ISP is located. If your desktop computer has a wireless interface and your neighbours are running a wireless network, that might be why as well (this is why google maps wireless networks, after all). For me, it is only accurate to the city level.
Twitter is a lot of things to a lot of people. A lot of the commenters here seem to want it to be something it's not. It is not a replacement for e-mail or rss feeds, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have merit. You clearly don't use it, and it may well be a waste of time _for you_. Clearly many people did find a use for it though, if only for entertainment. A year or so ago you might have gotten away with declaring it a mere fad. Right now, actually claiming with a straight face that Twitter doesn't have any use case whatsoever is akin to claiming NNTP is all anyone will ever need.
See the thing is, when it comes to my friends, I do care about a lot of those things. So do a lot of other people. If you're an asocial asshole so be it, just don't assume the rest of the world will follow suit.
I even care about what ignorant homophobes like you say on/. so, I guess some people care more than others.
The stated reason VA-API doesn't work for them is that they can't get at the decoded data (from here). I don't know if that is at all accurate (I have my doubts) but it's pretty clear they don't have the manpower to do anything about it anyway.
They live on in places where gas and/or oil is spilled regularly like in the water close to marinas, on the water in ports, and around oil rigs.
Breaking down carcinogenic spills all around the world? Sounds good.
They get into the suboceanic and other oil supplies and deplete them.
This is a strain of P. aeruginosa, generally an aerobic organism. They can probably not live in anoxic conditions, never mind the pressure they'd be subjected to (do oil drillers use sterile equipment? I think not).
They find one or more hospitable environments where they live off of something other than oil causing possible harm to any number of ecosystems.
You sure they can even survive in seawater? This is a household strain, not some sort of superbug.
Now if those little firms did not hold patents would the large companies just copy the little guy?
They might. But they are usually not very good at copying them, and even if they are it's almost always cheaper to buy out the little guy (unless his idea is trivial, in which case it shouldn't be patentable in the first place).
Not to mention that, as pointed out by others, big companies generally don't have to worry about little guy patents. Those little guys either violate one of their patents (pretty likely unless they are a patent troll) or need the big companies in one way or another (i.e. as distributor). The "patents protect the little guy" line isn't supported by the actual data.
I guess I might understand the desire to "go Pro" as a gamer, but the problem is that there isn't anything for a "pro" gamer to do as a career.
South Korea has actual gaming leagues. It might not be as profitable as american football, but the "pro" moniker does mean something. Some of them actually do game for a living (although, AIUI, not a whole lot).
I assume that the persistent data can be saved via HTML5's local saving capability. But the user would have to initiate the save, I think. That's a little different from how ebooks save their place now. If I turn my Kindle off, it'll turn back on in the same place without me having to do anything to save my place.
Yes, and if you click a link in firefox in the middle of a page, then press back, it brings you back to the point where you were reading the page at that point. That's a really simplistic bookmark, an e-reader has the same mechanism plus a real bookmark system where you can bookmark any position in the document, not just the last you were reading. You seem to think storing bookmarks is a feature of the books you read; it's actually a feature of the device/browser you're reading them with.
I'm in the US, in a somewhat outlying suburb but certainly not in the "country," and still waiting for 3G at home. Verizon seems to have 3G coverage here (I will not use them), AT&T's 3G is very spotty, while T-Mobile and Sprint have no 3G coverage here. How about bringing the networks up to date before hyping the crap out of the next technology?
Can't they do both? I mean, the rural areas will always be at least one generation behind. Upgrade the cities first, then upgrade the rest so you can get rid of all that older and increasingly expensive to maintain technology.
I think the patent shouldn't be/have been granted, but what you're talking about is clearly not what the patent describes. One is about a means to turn engines off in already stopped cars when they're idling at an intersection for the purpose of fuel economy, the other about emergency brakes for trains. Once you break them down into their respective systems they pretty much look the same, but the goal and the details matter.
But how likely is it that the engineers at IBM didn't? I imagine they envision a system that starts up automatically the minute you do anything to manually override it (like press the gas) and that potentially even works by asking you to press a button or whatever to turn off the car. I know there's a lot of stupid people out there, but I imagine they had at least one brainstorming session before filing the patent.
After doing it for a while, I figured out that I would need to replace my starter every six months to a year. This is a *very* bad idea - think of how many stoplights the average commuter stops at during their commute home.
That depends. Modern hybrids are already designed to be able to turn on and off the gasoline engine frequently. I assume they've thought through the effects this has on the starter. Considering they turn on a lot more quietly than your average 10 year old diesel, I imagine technology has progressed somewhat.
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That's probably this bug in the flash plugin:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/flashplugin-nonfree/+bug/410407
Probably someone who's used to working around bad word filters. A lot of the lolspeak you find in online games these days makes a lot more sense when you realise it partly grew out of a desire to dodge autobans and the like.
What the fuck does iPhone have to do with this? Absolutely nothing.
I think his point was that if you can sneak something like that into the iPhone's app store, surely it's easy to get it in the android app store. Don't think he realised the android app store is basically free to get into.
You don't have to sneak anything into Android Market. The apps aren't audited, and apps can be installed from other sources as well. And since there is so little money in it, the incentive to put on a black hat is large. This is all 180 degrees opposite to iPhone. Completely different.
IIRC, it's basically a 100$ to get an app into the itunes app store. It's harder to get a proof of concept in there, but I'm pretty sure anyone motivated to put some real malware in there stands to make a bit more than that. Even if I follow your assumption that there's more legit money to be made there than in the android app store (perhaps likely, given the android app store doesn't even operate for pay in many of the countries android phones are available), I still don't see how that is supposed to make any difference with criminals. All they care about is installed base and (relatedly) ROI, which is probably higher for iPhones (easier to target, monoculture OS etc.). If you have trouble getting past the review process, just make another fart app, or rip off somebody else's app. Unlikely reviewers will notice.
Admittedly this is all a bit off topic, but the situation is not totally different. Unless you mean "even more scary".
All those are just dialects of Dutch. The official language of Flanders is Dutch (Algemeen Nederlands) and the version that is used in official communication (i.e. law texts) is not sufficiently different from the Dutch spoken in The Netherlands to call it a different language (which is the point the GP was making). The dialects you're talking about are never spoken between people from different cities (i.e. if someone from Ghent tries to communicate with someone from Antwerp, they'll use the Dutch they were taught in school).
If you go to England and you speak to people living in different counties, their local dialects might be very different (and you might have a lot of trouble understanding some), but that doesn't mean that the language of England isn't English. We name a country's language from what is the common language, not the individual dialects of that language. The fact that this is even coming up here is one of the deplorable side-effects of having strong nationalistic and xenofobic forces running through Flemish politics. You know the country is pretty cool on its own, you don't have to keep trying to invent new ones in which we're somehow different, let alone better.
The language is Flemish (in English) or Vlaams (in Dutch) btw. The term makes sense if you want to distinguish between the different pronunciations or the nationality of the speaker, but in all other cases there's no reason not to use Dutch.
You're using a very restrictive definition of linking together. FWIW that's not the position the FSF take (a bit too far the other way, actually) and your point won't fly in a court of law because it's disingenuous. I could create an interpreter that interprets instead of compiles C code. Does that automatically make all non-GPL C code built on GPL libraries non-infringing? Of course not. The only thing I changed is the practical way of running the code, but in the end I still have one software component that depends on another component (exclusively, even, making this an open and shut case) and thus should be considered a derivative work.
The technical details of how that dependence has been established are completely besides the point, which I hope any developer worth his salt would recognize.
Not to mention you're technically wrong about compiled code.
A worthy patent is one that leads to an invention that would otherwise not have been made. I see no reason to believe any software patent fits that description.
Thing is, before they made them, they didn't know it'd work. Probably not as much with Dragon Age, but definitely with Mass Effect. SWKOTOR wasn't a blockbuster, but you could see the direction BioWare was going.
They've been going the same direction ever since Baldur's Gate. Don't get me wrong, I love their games, but Mass Effect was pretty much the same formula as the games before it. You can clearly see them releasing a game, thinking about what worked and what not, then incorporating that into the next game. Iterative improvement, not leaps of faith. Execution matters of course, and you never quite know whether a game will work. But Bioware as major risk takers? Nah.
There exists a mental technique called 'patience'. The huge downside to instant communication, and instant gratification from it, is that we fail to realize that half of our thoughts aren't important enough to actually send. If/when you have to wait 20-30 minutes to communicate it, you tend to condense things down. Your brain chews on them a while. Try it. Even with the digital tech, you may find the practice to be enlightening. This is what people used to do before cell phones, because, believe it or not those situations did pop up within their lifestyles.
You would think longer and spend more time thinking about what to say. But quite regularly you wouldn't say anything at all because it would be so much harder to reach people. The easiest way was to call them and even then you need to do it at an opportune time, and it can't be just checking in: you took the time to call, paid the fee, it better be important. This isolated you and made you less in touch with what was going on in your friends' lives.
Humans are social animals. Communication, even of the inane variety, is good for the social fabric. Cocooning is a far bigger problem of modern culture than is incessant texting.
In firefox (Chrome will be the same):
If you consent, Firefox gathers information about nearby wireless access points and your computer’s IP address. Then Firefox sends this information to the default geolocation service provider, Google Location Services, to get an estimate of your location. That location estimate is then shared with the requesting website.
There's tons of ways they could have gathered that information. Most coarse is knowing which ISP your address block belongs to and seeing where that ISP is located. If your desktop computer has a wireless interface and your neighbours are running a wireless network, that might be why as well (this is why google maps wireless networks, after all). For me, it is only accurate to the city level.
Twitter is a lot of things to a lot of people. A lot of the commenters here seem to want it to be something it's not. It is not a replacement for e-mail or rss feeds, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have merit. You clearly don't use it, and it may well be a waste of time _for you_. Clearly many people did find a use for it though, if only for entertainment. A year or so ago you might have gotten away with declaring it a mere fad. Right now, actually claiming with a straight face that Twitter doesn't have any use case whatsoever is akin to claiming NNTP is all anyone will ever need.
ln -s /boot/vmlinuz ~/.plan
See the thing is, when it comes to my friends, I do care about a lot of those things. So do a lot of other people. If you're an asocial asshole so be it, just don't assume the rest of the world will follow suit.
I even care about what ignorant homophobes like you say on /. so, I guess some people care more than others.
If they want 1 million people to pay 10$, I don't think they can skip the marketing step.
That' s not being a hypocrite. A hypocrite would be someone who says "I would never break the law" yet constantly runs a red light.
It's quite possible to do stuff wrong, know it is wrong and advise other people against it without being a hypocrite.
The stated reason VA-API doesn't work for them is that they can't get at the decoded data (from here). I don't know if that is at all accurate (I have my doubts) but it's pretty clear they don't have the manpower to do anything about it anyway.
They live on in places where gas and/or oil is spilled regularly like in the water close to marinas, on the water in ports, and around oil rigs.
Breaking down carcinogenic spills all around the world? Sounds good.
They get into the suboceanic and other oil supplies and deplete them.
This is a strain of P. aeruginosa, generally an aerobic organism. They can probably not live in anoxic conditions, never mind the pressure they'd be subjected to (do oil drillers use sterile equipment? I think not).
They find one or more hospitable environments where they live off of something other than oil causing possible harm to any number of ecosystems.
You sure they can even survive in seawater? This is a household strain, not some sort of superbug.
Now if those little firms did not hold patents would the large companies just copy the little guy?
They might. But they are usually not very good at copying them, and even if they are it's almost always cheaper to buy out the little guy (unless his idea is trivial, in which case it shouldn't be patentable in the first place).
Not to mention that, as pointed out by others, big companies generally don't have to worry about little guy patents. Those little guys either violate one of their patents (pretty likely unless they are a patent troll) or need the big companies in one way or another (i.e. as distributor). The "patents protect the little guy" line isn't supported by the actual data.
The stl has overhead, plain and simple. I've tested it and seen the difference. Have you? It's why the first thing I do with stl code is replace it.
Why the hell would you replace STL code except for absolutely performance critical sections (and even then... 4x? pocket change).
But without the crippling injuries. [...]
Uhm, RSI?
I guess I might understand the desire to "go Pro" as a gamer, but the problem is that there isn't anything for a "pro" gamer to do as a career.
South Korea has actual gaming leagues. It might not be as profitable as american football, but the "pro" moniker does mean something. Some of them actually do game for a living (although, AIUI, not a whole lot).
I assume that the persistent data can be saved via HTML5's local saving capability. But the user would have to initiate the save, I think. That's a little different from how ebooks save their place now. If I turn my Kindle off, it'll turn back on in the same place without me having to do anything to save my place.
Yes, and if you click a link in firefox in the middle of a page, then press back, it brings you back to the point where you were reading the page at that point. That's a really simplistic bookmark, an e-reader has the same mechanism plus a real bookmark system where you can bookmark any position in the document, not just the last you were reading. You seem to think storing bookmarks is a feature of the books you read; it's actually a feature of the device/browser you're reading them with.
I'm in the US, in a somewhat outlying suburb but certainly not in the "country," and still waiting for 3G at home. Verizon seems to have 3G coverage here (I will not use them), AT&T's 3G is very spotty, while T-Mobile and Sprint have no 3G coverage here. How about bringing the networks up to date before hyping the crap out of the next technology?
Can't they do both? I mean, the rural areas will always be at least one generation behind. Upgrade the cities first, then upgrade the rest so you can get rid of all that older and increasingly expensive to maintain technology.
I think the plan would be to fit this on new cars. Doesn't sound too far fetched to me, but I doubt it would be cost effective.
I think the patent shouldn't be/have been granted, but what you're talking about is clearly not what the patent describes. One is about a means to turn engines off in already stopped cars when they're idling at an intersection for the purpose of fuel economy, the other about emergency brakes for trains. Once you break them down into their respective systems they pretty much look the same, but the goal and the details matter.
But how likely is it that the engineers at IBM didn't? I imagine they envision a system that starts up automatically the minute you do anything to manually override it (like press the gas) and that potentially even works by asking you to press a button or whatever to turn off the car. I know there's a lot of stupid people out there, but I imagine they had at least one brainstorming session before filing the patent.
After doing it for a while, I figured out that I would need to replace my starter every six months to a year. This is a *very* bad idea - think of how many stoplights the average commuter stops at during their commute home.
That depends. Modern hybrids are already designed to be able to turn on and off the gasoline engine frequently. I assume they've thought through the effects this has on the starter. Considering they turn on a lot more quietly than your average 10 year old diesel, I imagine technology has progressed somewhat.