It's a blog post by a company trying to sell a cloud document editing and management product. What did you expect them to do when Apple started giving away the 10% of their product that 90% of their potential customers would actually use, for free?
You've assumed "civilians" to mean "Joe Public on land". Believe it or not there are other civilians - the emergency services, scientists and engineers, whatever - in land, sea, and air for who GPS availability is significantly more than "a toy".
Specifically, they've now got two cellular antennas, which allows them to swap to whatever one gets the clearest signal. If you're holding it in your hand, you're covering one antenna (which runs around the base of the phone) but not the other (which runs across the top).
I'll note with some irony that one of Apple's "death grip" comparison videos showed them death-gripping a Droid handset which itself had two antennas. Apple was apparently unaware of this because produced an eyebrow-raisingly implausible demonstration in which they were able to kill the phone's cellular signal by covering just one of them.
It doesn't move "almost every single existing feature" onto iCloud. Literally every single iCloud feature is optional. Here's the breakdown:
* Option to do backups to iCloud server. * Apps have access to a Dropbox-style storage space for syncing info across devices. * Rebranding Apple's webmail, contacts, and calendar services to iCloud. * Option to redownload previously purchased iTunes content on the device.
So if iCloud goes down:
* Have to do backups locally * Angry Birds saves don't sync any more * Can't check iCloud email, have to edit contacts and calendar entries manually on each device. (If you use iCloud for those.) * Have to plug into computer to copy purchases
Whoop-de-fucking-do. It's exactly the same situation I was in if my Nokia stopped talking to Google Sync.
You don't have to have "the best security and tracking team on the planet" to notice that someone's trying tens of thousands of usernames and passwords and failing. And it doesn't exactly scream competence when it turns out that user details your company failed to protect are now being actively used by fraudsters. It just compounds the original failure.
Britain noticed, it's just that Britain's political options make the US two-party system look like a buffet of wonder. The last election came down to a choice between two identical groups of socially conservative douchebags with indistinguishable policies, and a liberal party that hadn't won an election in decades. And then at the deciding, decisive moment, the liberal party decided to throw in with the capital-c Conservatives without consulting its voters or setting out any ground-rules. Great job, guys! I really feel represented!
If you were part of a club which gave you a huge wage and expenses account in exchange for arguing all day, you'd spend all morning high fiving the other members too.
No, last time they kept quiet about the scale, nature, and results of the attack, while this time they've announced the scale (90,000+ users), nature (user/password attempts), and results (some accounts are compromised) of the attack. It would appear that they have learned at least a little.
I had a quick look around, it seems that the European JIME mission is still on, Japan and Russia are interested in joining to provide magnetospheric study and a Europa lander, respectively. So it's not a total loss. I'd still rather see the US research community contributing though, saying that as a European myself. There's some serious expertise there.
During the hacking fiasco, the press was reporting that there were 100m PlayStation Network accounts, which covers both the PS3 and the PSP. That gives us a total of around 75m units. While many of the remaining 25m will be dummy accounts used to download items from the regional PSN stores (which was quite popular in the early days), I'm sure that the majority are simply friends, family members etc.
Starting a program for Mars is an easy job for a President. He didn't make any promise that he'd ensure it was completed, either by himself or his successors. That's the beauty of the political system: science and medicine operate on such timescales that you can pretty much do whatever you like, knowing the practical consequences are distant.
You make an important point. I don't want to suggest for a moment that Slashdot has a homogeneous audience. However I really doubt you'll see any of the manned flight proponents people coming forward in this thread and saying "well, this is a good thing on balance". It always seems that there's plenty of people around to argue down the alternative, but never somebody with a strong positive attitude to their own preference.
Even on Slashdot, which you'd think would have a more enlighted audience, you have people going on and on about how it's shameful that we don't have an Apollo-style program, and the ISS isn't getting used as much as it should, and robotic probes don't really compare. It's tragic. I had no idea they'd shit-canned the Europa mission, that was potentially world-changing stuff.
And if the flares blow away or are buried, or there's a leak and the fuel tanks explode, who's going to take responsibility? If the plane does get stranded leaves the base is inaccessible until it's pushed off the runway, what then?
It's actually good news for NASA. Understanding how to anticipate and cope with these sorts of events is going to be important in interplanetary exploration, and the Antarctic outpost is one of the few opportunities they have to learn from similar situations in a living, breathing research environment instead of a laboratory model.
Slashdot Mirror
Skype isn't a competitor. If they did what you're describing they'd just be throwing $8bn into a huge fire for no advantage to themselves.
Since when was Skype a standard?
I think Duradin was being rhetorical.
That's because iCloud is a superset of MobileMe. MobileMe is being phased out.
It's a blog post by a company trying to sell a cloud document editing and management product. What did you expect them to do when Apple started giving away the 10% of their product that 90% of their potential customers would actually use, for free?
You've assumed "civilians" to mean "Joe Public on land". Believe it or not there are other civilians - the emergency services, scientists and engineers, whatever - in land, sea, and air for who GPS availability is significantly more than "a toy".
Specifically, they've now got two cellular antennas, which allows them to swap to whatever one gets the clearest signal. If you're holding it in your hand, you're covering one antenna (which runs around the base of the phone) but not the other (which runs across the top).
I'll note with some irony that one of Apple's "death grip" comparison videos showed them death-gripping a Droid handset which itself had two antennas. Apple was apparently unaware of this because produced an eyebrow-raisingly implausible demonstration in which they were able to kill the phone's cellular signal by covering just one of them.
They have issued several statements. I'm not going to do your work for you, here's a BBC News search. They're quoted on several occasions.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/?q=blackberry
It doesn't move "almost every single existing feature" onto iCloud. Literally every single iCloud feature is optional. Here's the breakdown:
* Option to do backups to iCloud server.
* Apps have access to a Dropbox-style storage space for syncing info across devices.
* Rebranding Apple's webmail, contacts, and calendar services to iCloud.
* Option to redownload previously purchased iTunes content on the device.
So if iCloud goes down:
* Have to do backups locally
* Angry Birds saves don't sync any more
* Can't check iCloud email, have to edit contacts and calendar entries manually on each device. (If you use iCloud for those.)
* Have to plug into computer to copy purchases
Whoop-de-fucking-do. It's exactly the same situation I was in if my Nokia stopped talking to Google Sync.
You don't have to have "the best security and tracking team on the planet" to notice that someone's trying tens of thousands of usernames and passwords and failing. And it doesn't exactly scream competence when it turns out that user details your company failed to protect are now being actively used by fraudsters. It just compounds the original failure.
The DA's already decided that they're not pursuing criminal charges against Gizmodo, but that doesn't preclude a civil action.
Britain noticed, it's just that Britain's political options make the US two-party system look like a buffet of wonder. The last election came down to a choice between two identical groups of socially conservative douchebags with indistinguishable policies, and a liberal party that hadn't won an election in decades. And then at the deciding, decisive moment, the liberal party decided to throw in with the capital-c Conservatives without consulting its voters or setting out any ground-rules. Great job, guys! I really feel represented!
No, I'm not bitter.
If you were part of a club which gave you a huge wage and expenses account in exchange for arguing all day, you'd spend all morning high fiving the other members too.
No, last time they kept quiet about the scale, nature, and results of the attack, while this time they've announced the scale (90,000+ users), nature (user/password attempts), and results (some accounts are compromised) of the attack. It would appear that they have learned at least a little.
I had a quick look around, it seems that the European JIME mission is still on, Japan and Russia are interested in joining to provide magnetospheric study and a Europa lander, respectively. So it's not a total loss. I'd still rather see the US research community contributing though, saying that as a European myself. There's some serious expertise there.
During the hacking fiasco, the press was reporting that there were 100m PlayStation Network accounts, which covers both the PS3 and the PSP. That gives us a total of around 75m units. While many of the remaining 25m will be dummy accounts used to download items from the regional PSN stores (which was quite popular in the early days), I'm sure that the majority are simply friends, family members etc.
Starting a program for Mars is an easy job for a President. He didn't make any promise that he'd ensure it was completed, either by himself or his successors. That's the beauty of the political system: science and medicine operate on such timescales that you can pretty much do whatever you like, knowing the practical consequences are distant.
You make an important point. I don't want to suggest for a moment that Slashdot has a homogeneous audience. However I really doubt you'll see any of the manned flight proponents people coming forward in this thread and saying "well, this is a good thing on balance". It always seems that there's plenty of people around to argue down the alternative, but never somebody with a strong positive attitude to their own preference.
Even on Slashdot, which you'd think would have a more enlighted audience, you have people going on and on about how it's shameful that we don't have an Apollo-style program, and the ISS isn't getting used as much as it should, and robotic probes don't really compare. It's tragic. I had no idea they'd shit-canned the Europa mission, that was potentially world-changing stuff.
ballistic transport pods
While I can see the appeal for getting supplies in and non-fragile supplies out, are you suggesting they fire a stroke victim out of a cannon?
The Kraken of Keg End sounds like a long-lost Discworld novel.
And if the flares blow away or are buried, or there's a leak and the fuel tanks explode, who's going to take responsibility? If the plane does get stranded leaves the base is inaccessible until it's pushed off the runway, what then?
Right, the Ivins thing is the reason you've been labelled a crackpot. Sure.
It's actually good news for NASA. Understanding how to anticipate and cope with these sorts of events is going to be important in interplanetary exploration, and the Antarctic outpost is one of the few opportunities they have to learn from similar situations in a living, breathing research environment instead of a laboratory model.
Ah, the Riemann zeta function, old migrainey, tenure's folly, paperbane, the widowmaker...