>While the SSID's are public information, the signal strength relative to me isn't. That's something you have to be me to know or at least be standing next to me. I hardly call that public information.
What? The signal strength of your SSID broadcast is as public as anything. If my ability to see your SSID and how strong it is offends you so much, please unplug your WAP.
Not to mention the summary is a troll. What google did wrong with its earlier program was actually capture unencrypted packets. These location services (google is not the only one) simply create a database of wifi names and correlate them to GPS. I don't see the problem here. If you dont want me to write down your hotspot's ssid then I suggest you stop broadcasting it.
>...for those trying to defend the scientific method saying that a pseudoscience "cannot possibly work" because "there aren't any known methods through which it could operate".
What? Skepticism isn't based on your little strawman. Its based on evidence. So, here's one study that was well thought out and well executed that might point to some kind of effect that isn't placebo. Great. Without this level of proof skepticism is 100% warranted, and is still warranted until we can see some replication of results. Studies from Chinese homeopathic researchers with no controls or that have been unreproducible are still junk science.
What? The Treo at that time was the most popular smartphone. Not all cell phone companies are alike. AT&T and Apple are just one of the biggest anti-consumer companies in the world.
>but cmon, its just that crappy network...nothing to do with the iPhone itself.
Pardon me, but when the handset maker REFUSES to sell to other carriers in my country, then yes, it is very much a problem with the handset itself. Stifling competition for a gain in profits while pissing on your customers should never be tolerated. That's what Apple is doing with its exclusive AT&T deal.
Right, in the sane world there would be no difference. I was doing Skype over 3G EVDO like 3 or 4 years ago, but then again my Treo wasn't controlled by Apple and the network it ran over was Sprint.
In the AT&T/Apple world, you the consumer don't make choices. You don't run software willy-nilly. They allow you to run software, and if that software is seen as taking away profits from either entity then it won't get approved. Or in this case gets approved after 2 years of complaints, threatened lawsuits, and the FTC breathing down AT&Ts neck.
>. Unfortunately the old guard of DNS (Vixie, et al) are not supporting it because they fear it raises insurmountable privacy concerns.
Old guard? You'll find end users are also very much concerned with privacy. Rewriting the DNS spec solely for CDNs is ridiculous. Want location services in web broswer? Add it to http. Let the browser makers figure out the implemention.
Not to mention, there's nothing open about your service. Its simply free. There's nothing open source about it and you openly violate the DNS spec with your typo domain crap. Sorry, the internet doesnt need "open" dns to ruin dns. You've done enough already. Thankfully, google offers free dns at 8.8.8.8.
XP has been a borderline mess since day one. We simply learned to work around its problems. Default admin user, no UAC, fisher price colors, a security nightmare that requires several types of anti-virus strategies, and lack of some basic features like native DVD burning or large file support for its zip handler. I avoid XP like the plague. Vista post SP1 is so much better of an OS its not even funny. Win7 vanilla is just as responsive on old hardware.
Sorry, but this revisionist love-affair people have with XP is ridiculous. The sooner we get rid of it, the better for everyone.
Well, Adobe could release plugins for the new version of WSUS and admins can simply approve them like they do MS patches in WSUS. Or at least change their updaters so they make some sense. I just installed Acrobat 8.0. The updated proceeded to install:
8.0.1 8.0.2 8.0.3 8.1.0 8.1.1 etc Almost each asking for a reboot.
Instead it should have downloaded the update straight to 8.2 or whatever the current version is and then done the incremental to 8.2.3.
Lastly, they need to disable javascript by default in reader. Users can just press the "run scripting" button if they trust the publisher. Adobe is pretty much where MS was in 1998 or so. It really needs to grow up and smarten up regarding security.
I guess everyone has their favorite scripting language and I'm sure Powershell is awesome, but it came 10 years too late. I'm personally fond of Autohotkey. Its a decent scripting language, has lots of handy built in functions, and is easy to pick up, especially for those of us who don't code everyday. I'm always a little surprised at how much it can do. I've used it to manipulate installers with no command line options by using the built in functions to grab the GUI window, press buttons, etc. Most everything it can't do I can do in Windows by putting the unixutils on a share and just calling them via the script. Granted, its a work-around but it works for me.
I thought it was, and I dont blame the production or the actors. The source material, frankly, is more fantasy than sci-fi. Gibson weaves a good tale, but with a lot of silliness and his stories have as much to do with fashion and hipster attitudes than technology. Generally, people think Neuromancer is unfilmable. Not me. I just think a sincere attempt to make it a film would produce something closer to "Hackers" than "Schindler's List."
>I just want them to work, and stay the hell out of my way when they do so.
I just want flash to work. I just want apps that have been rejected for adult content. I just want tethering.
See how that works? Its not working for me. In fact, Apple is going of its way to make it not work for me. I'm so sick of the "it just works" marketing speak. Its simply not true.
Without multi-core, Moore's law would have ended recently. Seagate has taken that design philosophy to heart and will soon be releasing 7" and 10.5" drives to meet demand.
>Apple has all the cards and has no need to cut any deals
Apple had that attitude not too long ago and they almost folded.
Exactly what do you have a problem with here? Its reporting. The media is reporting on an issue iphone owners are concerned about. Jobs is very much concerned right now, especially with Flash on the desktop soon supporting hardware acceleration (works in beta right now) and the same on mobile platforms. HTML5 is interesting but its not here. Heck, there's no standard codec and it certainly will not replace all the vector/animation/games stuff in Flash.
Iphone owners like myself are getting sick of this treatment and might migrate to other platforms. The iphone is losing its status of "cool" when Jane Homemaker has one and Apple censors any app that might be politically challenging or involve any nudity. Apple's brand is hurting as its becoming associated with big corporate thuggery and DRM and not the liberal California image is has spent decades promoting.
There is a story here and the media should continue with it. Apple can take its ball and run home, but that's a pretty poor policy. Corporations aren't magical. They live and die by their image and actions.
I'd go as far as saying that most people don't even know what a netbook is. They just buy the smallest laptop at the store because of their size. The idea of leaving Windows and all their apps for what is essentially a giant ipod touch probably doesn't cross their minds. These are two different markets.
>The Russians simply chose to build a reactor based on an inherently unsafe design.
Not only that, but the accident happened during an experiment where the physicists were doing some incredibly stupid things and unplugging safety systems. It blew when it was short of about 100 or 200 rods, which were the minimum for that kind of reactor.
Its just an example of Soviet-style recklessness and corruption. I'm sure whoever ordered this experiment was high up in the party hierarchy.
Several procedural irregularities also helped to make the accident possible. One was insufficient communication between the safety officers and the operators in charge of the experiment being run that night. The reactor operators disabled safety systems down to the generators, which the test was really about. The main process computer, SKALA, was running in such a way that the main control computer could not shut down the reactor or even reduce power. Normally the reactor would have started to insert all of the control rods.
They're not free, but you already paid for them when you bought the OS. Granted, you'll need to set up the firewall rule beforehand, but they do everything you need. Control UAC, print, fast over slow connections, etc.
In a pinch, I use crossloop, which is nothing but hamachi+VNC in a neat little package.
Imagine for a moment that powerpoint didn't exist, but instead an OSS tool similar to it did. Geeks would sing its praises. Geeks would be using it and the output would fall within what most geeks are capable of doing (better than average).
Powerpoint, on the other hand, is used by business types. Pretty much anyone with an office job. So the output would be typical of what these people were capable of.
Its the users, not the tool.
This reminds of me an article I read about how so many people have a positive emotional association with UPS, as compared to Fedex or the Post office. Turns out that important things like legal papers, bills, etc come via fedex and USPS. Things like packages from Amazon typically come from UPS. So people associate UPS with the bringing of toys and fedex/usps as the bringing of grownup things. In the end they're all package delivery.
Do you really need XP? Is it such an improvement over 2000 or even NT4.0?
I dislike this arbitrary line drawn in the sand. Its like you're my grandpa saying something like "and thats how we liked it." I would easily argue that the UAC, improved UI, and dozen or so needed features make Win7 a larger jump from XP than XP ever was from 2000.
Where's all this XP love even coming from? Its a mess of an OS that got by on dumb luck and MS finally getting the second service pack right. Admin by default, fisher price colors, insecure as anything, long boot times, shitty installer (floppy drive need for RAID/SCSI, really?), IE6 nightmare for several years, etc.
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The abandoment of those tunnels as well a poor maps led directly to the great chicago flood of 1992:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Flood
>While the SSID's are public information, the signal strength relative to me isn't. That's something you have to be me to know or at least be standing next to me. I hardly call that public information.
What? The signal strength of your SSID broadcast is as public as anything. If my ability to see your SSID and how strong it is offends you so much, please unplug your WAP.
Not to mention the summary is a troll. What google did wrong with its earlier program was actually capture unencrypted packets. These location services (google is not the only one) simply create a database of wifi names and correlate them to GPS. I don't see the problem here. If you dont want me to write down your hotspot's ssid then I suggest you stop broadcasting it.
>...for those trying to defend the scientific method saying that a pseudoscience "cannot possibly work" because "there aren't any known methods through which it could operate".
What? Skepticism isn't based on your little strawman. Its based on evidence. So, here's one study that was well thought out and well executed that might point to some kind of effect that isn't placebo. Great. Without this level of proof skepticism is 100% warranted, and is still warranted until we can see some replication of results. Studies from Chinese homeopathic researchers with no controls or that have been unreproducible are still junk science.
What? The Treo at that time was the most popular smartphone. Not all cell phone companies are alike. AT&T and Apple are just one of the biggest anti-consumer companies in the world.
>but cmon, its just that crappy network...nothing to do with the iPhone itself.
Pardon me, but when the handset maker REFUSES to sell to other carriers in my country, then yes, it is very much a problem with the handset itself. Stifling competition for a gain in profits while pissing on your customers should never be tolerated. That's what Apple is doing with its exclusive AT&T deal.
Right, in the sane world there would be no difference. I was doing Skype over 3G EVDO like 3 or 4 years ago, but then again my Treo wasn't controlled by Apple and the network it ran over was Sprint.
In the AT&T/Apple world, you the consumer don't make choices. You don't run software willy-nilly. They allow you to run software, and if that software is seen as taking away profits from either entity then it won't get approved. Or in this case gets approved after 2 years of complaints, threatened lawsuits, and the FTC breathing down AT&Ts neck.
>. Unfortunately the old guard of DNS (Vixie, et al) are not supporting it because they fear it raises insurmountable privacy concerns.
Old guard? You'll find end users are also very much concerned with privacy. Rewriting the DNS spec solely for CDNs is ridiculous. Want location services in web broswer? Add it to http. Let the browser makers figure out the implemention.
Not to mention, there's nothing open about your service. Its simply free. There's nothing open source about it and you openly violate the DNS spec with your typo domain crap. Sorry, the internet doesnt need "open" dns to ruin dns. You've done enough already. Thankfully, google offers free dns at 8.8.8.8.
XP has been a borderline mess since day one. We simply learned to work around its problems. Default admin user, no UAC, fisher price colors, a security nightmare that requires several types of anti-virus strategies, and lack of some basic features like native DVD burning or large file support for its zip handler. I avoid XP like the plague. Vista post SP1 is so much better of an OS its not even funny. Win7 vanilla is just as responsive on old hardware.
Sorry, but this revisionist love-affair people have with XP is ridiculous. The sooner we get rid of it, the better for everyone.
Well, Adobe could release plugins for the new version of WSUS and admins can simply approve them like they do MS patches in WSUS. Or at least change their updaters so they make some sense. I just installed Acrobat 8.0. The updated proceeded to install:
8.0.1
8.0.2
8.0.3
8.1.0
8.1.1
etc
Almost each asking for a reboot.
Instead it should have downloaded the update straight to 8.2 or whatever the current version is and then done the incremental to 8.2.3.
Lastly, they need to disable javascript by default in reader. Users can just press the "run scripting" button if they trust the publisher. Adobe is pretty much where MS was in 1998 or so. It really needs to grow up and smarten up regarding security.
I guess everyone has their favorite scripting language and I'm sure Powershell is awesome, but it came 10 years too late. I'm personally fond of Autohotkey. Its a decent scripting language, has lots of handy built in functions, and is easy to pick up, especially for those of us who don't code everyday. I'm always a little surprised at how much it can do. I've used it to manipulate installers with no command line options by using the built in functions to grab the GUI window, press buttons, etc. Most everything it can't do I can do in Windows by putting the unixutils on a share and just calling them via the script. Granted, its a work-around but it works for me.
>And Johnny Mnemonic really wasn't all that bad.
I thought it was, and I dont blame the production or the actors. The source material, frankly, is more fantasy than sci-fi. Gibson weaves a good tale, but with a lot of silliness and his stories have as much to do with fashion and hipster attitudes than technology. Generally, people think Neuromancer is unfilmable. Not me. I just think a sincere attempt to make it a film would produce something closer to "Hackers" than "Schindler's List."
>I just want them to work, and stay the hell out of my way when they do so.
I just want flash to work. I just want apps that have been rejected for adult content. I just want tethering.
See how that works? Its not working for me. In fact, Apple is going of its way to make it not work for me. I'm so sick of the "it just works" marketing speak. Its simply not true.
Whoosh!
Without multi-core, Moore's law would have ended recently. Seagate has taken that design philosophy to heart and will soon be releasing 7" and 10.5" drives to meet demand.
I certainly don't mind things like polls on websites and op-eds. YMMV.
>Apple has all the cards and has no need to cut any deals
Apple had that attitude not too long ago and they almost folded.
Exactly what do you have a problem with here? Its reporting. The media is reporting on an issue iphone owners are concerned about. Jobs is very much concerned right now, especially with Flash on the desktop soon supporting hardware acceleration (works in beta right now) and the same on mobile platforms. HTML5 is interesting but its not here. Heck, there's no standard codec and it certainly will not replace all the vector/animation/games stuff in Flash.
Iphone owners like myself are getting sick of this treatment and might migrate to other platforms. The iphone is losing its status of "cool" when Jane Homemaker has one and Apple censors any app that might be politically challenging or involve any nudity. Apple's brand is hurting as its becoming associated with big corporate thuggery and DRM and not the liberal California image is has spent decades promoting.
There is a story here and the media should continue with it. Apple can take its ball and run home, but that's a pretty poor policy. Corporations aren't magical. They live and die by their image and actions.
I'd go as far as saying that most people don't even know what a netbook is. They just buy the smallest laptop at the store because of their size. The idea of leaving Windows and all their apps for what is essentially a giant ipod touch probably doesn't cross their minds. These are two different markets.
>as long as Outlook continues to encourage top-posting and HTML formatted content
1996 called. Its looking for its outrage.
Really? I stop by the technet forums all the time and have never seen spam.
>The Russians simply chose to build a reactor based on an inherently unsafe design.
Not only that, but the accident happened during an experiment where the physicists were doing some incredibly stupid things and unplugging safety systems. It blew when it was short of about 100 or 200 rods, which were the minimum for that kind of reactor.
Its just an example of Soviet-style recklessness and corruption. I'm sure whoever ordered this experiment was high up in the party hierarchy.
SKALA is like a real life HAL.
>As someone who got hooked on ciggies about six years ago and actually enjoys the habit
Of course you enjoy it. You're addicted to a chemical that affects mood. Your brain is forced to enjoy it. Enjoy!
They're not free, but you already paid for them when you bought the OS. Granted, you'll need to set up the firewall rule beforehand, but they do everything you need. Control UAC, print, fast over slow connections, etc.
In a pinch, I use crossloop, which is nothing but hamachi+VNC in a neat little package.
>PowerPoint exposes how stupid we already are.
Imagine for a moment that powerpoint didn't exist, but instead an OSS tool similar to it did. Geeks would sing its praises. Geeks would be using it and the output would fall within what most geeks are capable of doing (better than average).
Powerpoint, on the other hand, is used by business types. Pretty much anyone with an office job. So the output would be typical of what these people were capable of.
Its the users, not the tool.
This reminds of me an article I read about how so many people have a positive emotional association with UPS, as compared to Fedex or the Post office. Turns out that important things like legal papers, bills, etc come via fedex and USPS. Things like packages from Amazon typically come from UPS. So people associate UPS with the bringing of toys and fedex/usps as the bringing of grownup things. In the end they're all package delivery.
Do you really need XP? Is it such an improvement over 2000 or even NT4.0?
I dislike this arbitrary line drawn in the sand. Its like you're my grandpa saying something like "and thats how we liked it." I would easily argue that the UAC, improved UI, and dozen or so needed features make Win7 a larger jump from XP than XP ever was from 2000.
Where's all this XP love even coming from? Its a mess of an OS that got by on dumb luck and MS finally getting the second service pack right. Admin by default, fisher price colors, insecure as anything, long boot times, shitty installer (floppy drive need for RAID/SCSI, really?), IE6 nightmare for several years, etc.