PAVE-PAWS uses 435Mhz. In fact, there are regulations regarding ham use, power output, and directionality of transmissions in that frequency range by ham radio operators within 150 miles of those installations.
No. They will not auction that off. Peter King will sit down and STFU.
A train wreck in 3D is still a train wreck... it just looks more like you're going to get hit by the caboose.
Loved Ep. 4, 5, 6. Deeply despised 1. Still haven't seen 2 and 3, as by all indications Lucas still hasn't learned that clowns do not belong on the battlefield (and, in fact, trivialize any sense of heriosm or sacrifice or tragedy present in the non-clowns), Western audiences don't like the idea that galactic domination is genetic, a bad movie with eye candy is still a bad movie, and that sullen teenaged angst is only entertaining to sullen teenagers.
You can't discount licensing completely though. In any system where it's worth it, you'll likely be paying $50-$100k in licenses alone. That's a huge savings when you can do the same job with FOSS.
That's true only up to the point where you have to hire one more guy to administer/maintain/customize the FOSS solution than you would need for the commercial solution, or when downtime on the FOSS solution is greater by enough of a margin. I'm no Microsoft fan, but I will admit this: at a company I worked for recently, we had nothing but trouble with Zimbra, but all the problems that were generating downtime, support calls etc. which resulted in there being a dedicated "Zimbra admin" just went away when we went to Exchange + Active Directory (which didn't require an additional hire; we already had a good Windows admin). Sure, we could have also paid the Zimbra folks for a support contract, but that's still money out the door.
It's not always going to be that way, of course (why would anyone run IIS when they can run Apache + Linux?), but in THIS case, FOSS was demonstrably the wrong answer. Sometimes Windows + MSSQL is, in fact, a cheaper solution than Linux + MySQL/Postgres. You have to do your homework, every time, and rely upon fact not philosophy. Philosophy only matters when it's by-the-numbers a tie, and when you're authoritative to make that decision. Under those constraints, if the total cost of of FOSS is provably less, or if it's equal AND you're the one who has the authority/responsibility, by all means go for the FOSS solution. When it's other people's money you're spending (or in the case of government, everybody's money), you have a duty to be dry-eyed and completely objective in your decisions.
You have to add up all the money (including any advantages in uptime, speed of implementation, retraining end users if needed, support/personnel costs AND oh yeah, licenses), as well as taking into account interoperability with existing systems and planned systems. Commercial software has to prove it is better than FOSS by at least the cost of the license, and that it meets functional and interoperability needs.
Are open-source advocates somehow NOT "lobbyists"?
Let's not pretend there's not money to be made by open source supporters. Windows admins might be replaced by Linux admins, but the money would still be spent. It's just going to someone else, and I'm not going to accept for one second that Linux admins somehow "deserve" to have a job more than Windows admins. As for licensing... just about any IT department can tell you that the license cost of a major software system is by no means the biggest cost of deploying and maintaining that software, particularly when scaled to the levels being discussed.
I'm not saying open source is "better" or "worse"... there are completely valid philosophical arguments in both directions, as well as completely valid financial arguments. What I am saying is that the automatic knee-jerk demonizing of any and all proprietary commercial software has no place in policy-making, particularly when the money you're trying to tell people how to spend is taken by threat of force from everyone around you. You do what works best, not what feels fuzziest.
So with the ability to directly convey hostility, anger, fear, and an overwhelming desire for upskirt shots, the concept of "thought crime" will become reality. "Mental assault" will be criminalized since your WOULD be able to cause distress in others with just a thought. People who were truly upset with a government would be easily detected and "dealt with".
Personally, I doubt that the tech would work as described. But if it did... consider what a surveillance-based government would do with it.
By amendment to the Constitution, any use of the aforesaid "telempathy" should be limited to online pornography.
If this development came from an Android music store, this would be praised is "why Android is better than Apple - they sell better-quality music!". But because it's Apple doing it, it's "evil".
If someone is convinced that evil is defined by the source rather than by the effect, that person should quit tech and become a preacher. What the heck, there's more money in it and you have a better chance of getting laid.
Microsoft fanboys/marketing people are at it again. The link you shown counts SALES of operating systems. I am sure, in some other comment you foam at the mouth about "not being able to sell software" if it is free.
The rest of your comment is a mix of trolling and recommending things that would be between stupid and suicidal.
I am sure that in "some other comment" you advocate drowning puppies. And anything you disagree with me on proves your genetic inferiority, that you are stupid, and that the world would be better off if you are suicidal.
See? Others can use that tactic too. Your low UID doesn't make you less of a troll. It just makes you someone who should have known better by now.
My point is that I do not believe for one second that the functionality described is what will actually be implemented. This is a data-mining opportunity, and Facebook has demonstrated enough unethical behavior with regard to data handling and silent collection/distribution of user information that regardless of what they say they will do, I believe Facebook will have both the capability and intent to collect information on all aspects of the phone's usage... whether the user wants that or not.
If you're fine with that, well, enjoy your phone. You obviously trust Facebook much more than I do. Just don't tell me that I should believe everything Facebook says about what will actually be integrated into your phone or what they will do with it. There is a difference between "quick post to Facebook" and "dump your call log and browser history to Facebook"... but hey, both come under "share data with Facebook", right? They'd never collect more data than they said they would, right?
What I do not want is for every smartphone to have this integrated, or to have it integrated without telling me. What I do not want is for participation in Facebook or directly proving it user-data to be required of a smartphone user. I'm not saying that low-level Facebook integration shouldn't exist; people have the right to be monitored if they like that. What I'm saying is that I won't buy a phone with this integration, and I will get really upset and litigious if I find out that there is low-level Facebook integration present in a phone that does not clearly warn of its presence.
I know the difference between "I don't like something" and "it shouldn't exist at all". I also know the difference between what Facebook's privacy policy claims and what Facebook has actually done.
So the proposal is to embed into my phone functionality that can report to Facebook every number I dial, every contact I have, every app I have installed, every text message or email I send or receive, everywhere I go via the GPS receiver, every web page I visit, every photo I take. Tracking is full and absolute. Add that info would then be sold to any advertiser with enough cash and given free to any government with a desire to monitor its citizenry, or to any app developer that pinkie-swears to be ethical.
All this without permission, or in stark contrast to denial of permission, automatically and silently. Assuming there is an opt-out (via the most arcane possible method), what is the likelihood that opt-out would even be honored?
"But that's paranoid! Facebook would never do that!"
Facebook's record on matters of privacy and security strongly suggests otherwise.
Under no circumstances will I buy a smartphone with hardware-level or operating-system-level integration, regardless of anything Facebook or the phone vendor has to say. I would rather do without a smartphone altogether than trust Facebook with... well, anything, really.
There is a tendency in the software industry to think that anyone not in the software industry is stupid. On any security-related topic you will see hordes of Slashdotters describing anyone who can't configure and compile their own Linux kernel and set their own iptables rules as "idiots". I, on the other hand, describe engineers incapable of writing inherently secure software with a decent user interface (or, at the least, acknowledging that the UI is as important as the core functionality) as "incompetent".
I think the marketing people at Mozilla are doing the general public a disservice. If they were right, Opera and Chrome would be WAY ahead of MSIE and FireFox already; Opera, at least, has been around for many years, but its big numbers haven't paved the way to dominance. Why, then, would that be true of FireFox?
A little respect and sympathy for end users will go a long way towards making a good product that is widely used. Revolutionary, I know...
It's "big version number envy". Nothing more. The Mozilla folks have given in to the idea that "3.6 is less than 8.0 and is less than 12, therefore FireFox 3.6 is less than MSIE 8.0 and Chrome 12". Is this a sign that marketing people are now running Mozilla? Will the budget go to engineers or Superbowl ads?
Eh. Let 'em teach whatever. Nobody has to hire New Mexico or Kansas "graduates" with phantom diplomas, as state-of-origin is not a criteria that can be forced on non-New Mexico or non-Kansas firms. We can view any applicant who is the product of an education system that teaches psuedoscience as equal to science with the same skepticism as someone listing a diploma purchased from an email spammer. If you're from Topeka or Albuquerque, you have a lot to prove, and you have the unibrows YOU elected to the school boards to thank for that. Since the grunting banging-rocks-together fuel-steam-turbines-with-burning-heretics-and-homosexuals crowd knows it all, let 'em build their own high tech industry without outside help. Let 'em pray a CPU into existence. Let 'em deal with influenza with exorcisms. Let 'em substitute carbon fiber and silicon substrates with sackcloth and ashes. After all, according to their education system, it's just as valid and functional.
Disclaimer: I do not speak for my employer, which thankfully is not in New Mexico or Kansas.
Incorrect. All works which are copyrightable, ARE copyrighted the moment they are created, including photography. No exceptions. You do not need to register or claim copyright in any way; it is yours exclusively by default. You hold all rights unless you have explicitly granted those rights to others. You need do nothing to reserve all rights to yourself. Public display does not grant public license. (It never ceases to amaze me that people still claim "you put it on the Internet so it's public domain"... those people either also probably still believe the Earth is flat or are shooting off their mouths to try to justify illegal and unethical behavior.)
That being said, when you upload info or a photo to Facebook, you are granting Facebook many rights (it's part of the terms of service). Facebook doesn't outright own your photos, but you have granted them a perpetual nonexclusive license to use those photos.
However, that doesn't allow sites not affiliated with Facebook to use the photos on their own site (though deep linking kinda-sorta skirts that). You haven't given Facebook the right to sublicense your copyrighted materials to unaffiliated third parties. Additionally, if a third-party site implies that the "scraped" users are in any way voluntarily endorsing or participating in the third-party site, or are attaching false statements to the taken profiles (i.e. "I'm looking for a date"), that's a textbook case of fraud as defined by the law (a false statement of a material fact, knowledge on the part of the fraudster that the statement is untrue, intent on the part of the fraudster to deceive the alleged victim, justifiable reliance by the defrauded person on the statement, and injury to the alleged defrauded person as a result. Definition paraphrased from http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/fraud)
All that being said, it's funny as hell that Facebook, the number one mass purveyor of exploitative privacy-compromises, is suddenly up in arms about getting as good as it gives. Karma's a bitch, ain't it, Zucky ol' bean?
In at approx. 75. Currently 340-ish. Yeah, they're treating me like garbage. I need more people to treat me like garbage like that.
He has a serious illness. That's all the info I need on his health. Seriously, does anyone on Planet Earth NOT know he's living on borrowed time (and livers)?
Succession plan? Tim Cook. Done. Again, does anyone with any interest in who leads Apple not know this?
First: disclosure. I worked at OnLive as an engineer for two years; I do not currently work there; I do not have any financial stake or equity in the company. I have a very active Steam account, a Netflix account which I use almost exclusively through streaming to an AppleTV, as well as an OnLive account. I do most of my gaming through a dedicated gaming rig running Windows.
Does OnLive "work"? Yes, very well, IF you have a high-quality broadband connection (you really need at least 5mbps for the best experience, though it will autoscale to deal with somewhat lower bandwidths). Video quality can be very good; though it is not quite the same as a direct video connection to a high-end gaming rig, for a large number of people it's good enough. The capture-encode part of the cycle is very fast, as is the decode-display part, typically in single-digits-of-milliseconds. All other latency is network latency, which brings up to geography and last-mile. You need to be within a few hundred miles of one of OnLive's data centers for the best experience. Your ISP has to not suck. The technology is certainly there, with the caveat of the geographical limitations. To be a mass-market success, OnLive will need many data centers. They aren't at that point yet; getting to that point will be a major part of whether OnLive truly succeeds, and major extended high-density metro areas will always come before rural. The idea of being able to play games that normally require a kilobuck computer, i.e. Crysis, on a cheapass computer with integrated video, is compelling for people who aren't willing or able to maintain and continually upgrade a dedicated gaming rig. Recall the recent announcement of Visio building an OnLive client natively into a TV. And if you need a demo of how little horsepower is actually needed... you can download an OnLive viewer for the iPad for free, and spectate on folks who are playing their games. (obviously, the latter is something best done over WiFi, for latency and bandwidth reasons, but the point is that a single-core ARM has all the oomph needed to get the job done. The client is truly lightweight.)
Do you "own" the games? No. Neither do you "own" an MMO; it's the MMO subscription model rather than the retail physical-goods model. Whether that's good or bad depends upon your outlook, which is not a basis of factual discussion; it's perspective. There are excellent arguments for and against, and I ask that people with a strongly-held opinion one way or another recognize that people with different opinions have different needs than themselves. For some people, the subscription model is ideal. For others, it just doesn't work. This isn't intended to be one size fits all.
Is it relevant to gamers with dedicated gaming PCs? To an extent. For some, the ability to play high-end games through legacy, entry-level computers (Shader model 2.0 or better and you're in!) is critical; there are far more people with such computers than dedicated gaming rigs. For others who own and maintain high-end gaming rigs, it's not a factor from a "what games can be played here" perspective. However, you just can't beat OnLive as an instant demo platform. Even if you have a liquid-cooled dual-580GTX SLI rig with an Intel Core i7 overclocked to 4.5GHz, there is value in the absolute immediacy of demos without downloads, install procedures, dealing with Starforce or SecuRom copy protection, pirated games coming with a "little extra software", and games of variable quality taking a dump all over your registry.
Can OnLive succeed? I think so, though they (OnLive) need to recognize that OnLive is no longer a technological play. The tech is there, and though OnLive has a substantial lead, it is inevitable that there will be competitors trying to solve the same problem which will eventually become "good enough". OnLive will sink or swim on non-technical factors: whether they can get the game publishers to commit
The military IS in charge right now. Egypt's presidency has been held by people with strong military ties since Nasser back in 1956. Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak, all were highly-placed military officers who remained close to the military after assuming the presidency.
The fight in Egypt is over succession. Mubarak wants his son to take over, but Mubarak Jr., though he has military experience, does not have the deep political ties to the military which Mubarak Sr. does, and is therefore not acceptable to the military. The real contest is between the military and the national police... and the national police have a poor record themselves for being corrupt, head-busting power-brokers, and are heavily infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood (the Islamist organization that gave birth to Hamas in the wake of the wars with Israel). The Egyptian police also have several times attempted coups of their own, but have never succeeded (the most recent such attempt was in 2008).
The Egyptian army is much like the Turkish army, in that they are somewhat secular and do not want to see their country become Islamist (i.e. run by Wahabiists). Yes, the army rules Egypt with an iron fist. But the alternatives (the national police and the Islamist revolutionaries) also would rule Egypt with an iron fist, and come with an agenda that is much more aggressive and repressive. There are no options that do not end with a dictator; at least the current dictatorship has honored its peace treaties and kept the Suez Canal open. And the military in Egypt is certainly more respected and "trusted" (if that word can realistically be used) by the general populace than the internal security forces and police.
In any revolution there has to be something you are heading towards as well as something you are heading away from. Where is the non-jackbooted "other"? In Egypt, there is none, nor will the major power-players allow there to be one. Therefore, the most likely outcome (particularly given that the national police and their political handlers made the critical mistake of abandoning their jobs on January 29th to try to provoke the army into firing on civilians in the ensuing chaos... which the army refused to do) is that there will be a non-Mubarak president which is nonetheless beholden to the army. The newly-appointed vice president Suleiman is just such a person. It is worth noting that the office of vice president, which if the president resigns is the one to take over per the Egyptian constitution, has been empty for the entire duration of the Mubarak rule up til a couple of days ago. Of course, the extent to which the Egyptian constitution matters in a situation like this is a roll of the dice. But there is also a new prime minister named Shafiq who at one point was the highest officer within the Egyptian air force, which further strengthens the military's hand. The chief question is whether Suleiman is "not-Mubarak" enough to satisfy all the major stakeholders and the majority of the public.
I think the real problem with Android might be that the users are not as likely to open their wallets, and so developers don't see as much reason to make Android apps. If nothing else Apple is really good at making it easy and seductive to throw down a couple bucks on an app.
Exactly.
When you say you "support" a platform, it's more than just buying the phone. You have to also support the app developers. If Android users don't pay for apps, but iOS users do, it's an easy choice for someone who wants to pay their mortgage from their app development efforts.
Next time someone says "Why isn't [an iOS app] also available for my Android device?", ask them how many apps on their Android device they've paid for, how many they have which are app supported, and how many are pirated. Then tell them they've just answered their own question.
Two things that I think would be huge would be support for gifting apps and gift cards, because they both make it easy for people to buy apps for friends and they just build the market in general. The fact that they were missing those two items during the most recent Christmas season seems like a huge oversight to me.
This is one area in which Google is completely out of its area of competency: retail. Apple understands retail (both storefront and online) extremely well; Google does not. Things like iTunes Music Store gift cards being purchasable at the checkout lane of a supermarket are second nature to Apple, but foreign to Google. There is far more to being successful in a wide market than "write code". You need the code, but that's just the beginning... and understanding that fact is something that Google simply fails to do.
Remove those, and everyone can benefit from research and increased competition
Everyone except for the people paying for the research, that is. All they get are the bills and the lawsuits.
Patents exist to encourage research spending. If there's no expectation of being able to recoup your research costs, why research at all? Why not just wait for other companies to pay for the research, then swoop in and take all the profit yourself? Except there won't be "other companies" doing the research, as they won't be interested in footing the bill without compensation either.
Might as well pass a law saying "the private sector is forbidden to do R&D, all research will be publicly funded in accordance with the personal and political whims of bureaucrats who control the budget allocations deciding what will, and won't, be researched". Same result: no private sector research, and public research strangled by the Christian Reich.
One other thing that sets off the bullshit-alarm: the 1985 Honda CRX HF (1.3L 4-cylinder normally aspirated, 2-seater) weighs the same ~1700 pounds dry, and got a combined fuel economy rating of 45mpg. That's 17% of what is being claimed here. 600% more efficient for the same mass and mission? Really? The best you can do with an internal combustion engine in theory is 37% (measured by turning the available BTUs in gasoline into kinetic energy of the reciprocating mass, i.e. the piston/crankshaft subsystem). To get a CRX to 265mpg, you have to seriously violate physics. Yes, frontal area has been reduced and the coefficient of drag improved and the engine system brought closer to theoretical compared to a CRX, but... 600%?
Slashdot Mirror
PAVE-PAWS uses 435Mhz. In fact, there are regulations regarding ham use, power output, and directionality of transmissions in that frequency range by ham radio operators within 150 miles of those installations.
No. They will not auction that off. Peter King will sit down and STFU.
A train wreck in 3D is still a train wreck... it just looks more like you're going to get hit by the caboose.
Loved Ep. 4, 5, 6. Deeply despised 1. Still haven't seen 2 and 3, as by all indications Lucas still hasn't learned that clowns do not belong on the battlefield (and, in fact, trivialize any sense of heriosm or sacrifice or tragedy present in the non-clowns), Western audiences don't like the idea that galactic domination is genetic, a bad movie with eye candy is still a bad movie, and that sullen teenaged angst is only entertaining to sullen teenagers.
Will not buy or download.
You can't discount licensing completely though. In any system where it's worth it, you'll likely be paying $50-$100k in licenses alone. That's a huge savings when you can do the same job with FOSS.
That's true only up to the point where you have to hire one more guy to administer/maintain/customize the FOSS solution than you would need for the commercial solution, or when downtime on the FOSS solution is greater by enough of a margin. I'm no Microsoft fan, but I will admit this: at a company I worked for recently, we had nothing but trouble with Zimbra, but all the problems that were generating downtime, support calls etc. which resulted in there being a dedicated "Zimbra admin" just went away when we went to Exchange + Active Directory (which didn't require an additional hire; we already had a good Windows admin). Sure, we could have also paid the Zimbra folks for a support contract, but that's still money out the door.
It's not always going to be that way, of course (why would anyone run IIS when they can run Apache + Linux?), but in THIS case, FOSS was demonstrably the wrong answer. Sometimes Windows + MSSQL is, in fact, a cheaper solution than Linux + MySQL/Postgres. You have to do your homework, every time, and rely upon fact not philosophy. Philosophy only matters when it's by-the-numbers a tie, and when you're authoritative to make that decision. Under those constraints, if the total cost of of FOSS is provably less, or if it's equal AND you're the one who has the authority/responsibility, by all means go for the FOSS solution. When it's other people's money you're spending (or in the case of government, everybody's money), you have a duty to be dry-eyed and completely objective in your decisions.
You have to add up all the money (including any advantages in uptime, speed of implementation, retraining end users if needed, support/personnel costs AND oh yeah, licenses), as well as taking into account interoperability with existing systems and planned systems. Commercial software has to prove it is better than FOSS by at least the cost of the license, and that it meets functional and interoperability needs.
And sometimes... it is.
Are open-source advocates somehow NOT "lobbyists"?
Let's not pretend there's not money to be made by open source supporters. Windows admins might be replaced by Linux admins, but the money would still be spent. It's just going to someone else, and I'm not going to accept for one second that Linux admins somehow "deserve" to have a job more than Windows admins. As for licensing... just about any IT department can tell you that the license cost of a major software system is by no means the biggest cost of deploying and maintaining that software, particularly when scaled to the levels being discussed.
I'm not saying open source is "better" or "worse"... there are completely valid philosophical arguments in both directions, as well as completely valid financial arguments. What I am saying is that the automatic knee-jerk demonizing of any and all proprietary commercial software has no place in policy-making, particularly when the money you're trying to tell people how to spend is taken by threat of force from everyone around you. You do what works best, not what feels fuzziest.
So with the ability to directly convey hostility, anger, fear, and an overwhelming desire for upskirt shots, the concept of "thought crime" will become reality. "Mental assault" will be criminalized since your WOULD be able to cause distress in others with just a thought. People who were truly upset with a government would be easily detected and "dealt with".
Personally, I doubt that the tech would work as described. But if it did... consider what a surveillance-based government would do with it.
By amendment to the Constitution, any use of the aforesaid "telempathy" should be limited to online pornography.
If this development came from an Android music store, this would be praised is "why Android is better than Apple - they sell better-quality music!". But because it's Apple doing it, it's "evil".
If someone is convinced that evil is defined by the source rather than by the effect, that person should quit tech and become a preacher. What the heck, there's more money in it and you have a better chance of getting laid.
Microsoft fanboys/marketing people are at it again. The link you shown counts SALES of operating systems. I am sure, in some other comment you foam at the mouth about "not being able to sell software" if it is free.
The rest of your comment is a mix of trolling and recommending things that would be between stupid and suicidal.
I am sure that in "some other comment" you advocate drowning puppies. And anything you disagree with me on proves your genetic inferiority, that you are stupid, and that the world would be better off if you are suicidal.
See? Others can use that tactic too. Your low UID doesn't make you less of a troll. It just makes you someone who should have known better by now.
Those that ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
My point is that I do not believe for one second that the functionality described is what will actually be implemented. This is a data-mining opportunity, and Facebook has demonstrated enough unethical behavior with regard to data handling and silent collection/distribution of user information that regardless of what they say they will do, I believe Facebook will have both the capability and intent to collect information on all aspects of the phone's usage... whether the user wants that or not.
If you're fine with that, well, enjoy your phone. You obviously trust Facebook much more than I do. Just don't tell me that I should believe everything Facebook says about what will actually be integrated into your phone or what they will do with it. There is a difference between "quick post to Facebook" and "dump your call log and browser history to Facebook"... but hey, both come under "share data with Facebook", right? They'd never collect more data than they said they would, right?
What I do not want is for every smartphone to have this integrated, or to have it integrated without telling me. What I do not want is for participation in Facebook or directly proving it user-data to be required of a smartphone user. I'm not saying that low-level Facebook integration shouldn't exist; people have the right to be monitored if they like that. What I'm saying is that I won't buy a phone with this integration, and I will get really upset and litigious if I find out that there is low-level Facebook integration present in a phone that does not clearly warn of its presence.
I know the difference between "I don't like something" and "it shouldn't exist at all". I also know the difference between what Facebook's privacy policy claims and what Facebook has actually done.
So the proposal is to embed into my phone functionality that can report to Facebook every number I dial, every contact I have, every app I have installed, every text message or email I send or receive, everywhere I go via the GPS receiver, every web page I visit, every photo I take. Tracking is full and absolute. Add that info would then be sold to any advertiser with enough cash and given free to any government with a desire to monitor its citizenry, or to any app developer that pinkie-swears to be ethical.
All this without permission, or in stark contrast to denial of permission, automatically and silently. Assuming there is an opt-out (via the most arcane possible method), what is the likelihood that opt-out would even be honored?
"But that's paranoid! Facebook would never do that!"
Facebook's record on matters of privacy and security strongly suggests otherwise.
Under no circumstances will I buy a smartphone with hardware-level or operating-system-level integration, regardless of anything Facebook or the phone vendor has to say. I would rather do without a smartphone altogether than trust Facebook with... well, anything, really.
There is a tendency in the software industry to think that anyone not in the software industry is stupid. On any security-related topic you will see hordes of Slashdotters describing anyone who can't configure and compile their own Linux kernel and set their own iptables rules as "idiots". I, on the other hand, describe engineers incapable of writing inherently secure software with a decent user interface (or, at the least, acknowledging that the UI is as important as the core functionality) as "incompetent".
I think the marketing people at Mozilla are doing the general public a disservice. If they were right, Opera and Chrome would be WAY ahead of MSIE and FireFox already; Opera, at least, has been around for many years, but its big numbers haven't paved the way to dominance. Why, then, would that be true of FireFox?
A little respect and sympathy for end users will go a long way towards making a good product that is widely used. Revolutionary, I know...
3.6 --> 4.0 --> 5.0 --> 6.0 --> 7.0 = 3.6 --> 4.0 --> 4.1 --> 4.2 --> 4.3
It's "big version number envy". Nothing more. The Mozilla folks have given in to the idea that "3.6 is less than 8.0 and is less than 12, therefore FireFox 3.6 is less than MSIE 8.0 and Chrome 12". Is this a sign that marketing people are now running Mozilla? Will the budget go to engineers or Superbowl ads?
Eh. Let 'em teach whatever. Nobody has to hire New Mexico or Kansas "graduates" with phantom diplomas, as state-of-origin is not a criteria that can be forced on non-New Mexico or non-Kansas firms. We can view any applicant who is the product of an education system that teaches psuedoscience as equal to science with the same skepticism as someone listing a diploma purchased from an email spammer. If you're from Topeka or Albuquerque, you have a lot to prove, and you have the unibrows YOU elected to the school boards to thank for that. Since the grunting banging-rocks-together fuel-steam-turbines-with-burning-heretics-and-homosexuals crowd knows it all, let 'em build their own high tech industry without outside help. Let 'em pray a CPU into existence. Let 'em deal with influenza with exorcisms. Let 'em substitute carbon fiber and silicon substrates with sackcloth and ashes. After all, according to their education system, it's just as valid and functional.
Disclaimer: I do not speak for my employer, which thankfully is not in New Mexico or Kansas.
Aren't photos copyrighted?
Not necessarily.
Incorrect. All works which are copyrightable, ARE copyrighted the moment they are created, including photography. No exceptions. You do not need to register or claim copyright in any way; it is yours exclusively by default. You hold all rights unless you have explicitly granted those rights to others. You need do nothing to reserve all rights to yourself. Public display does not grant public license. (It never ceases to amaze me that people still claim "you put it on the Internet so it's public domain"... those people either also probably still believe the Earth is flat or are shooting off their mouths to try to justify illegal and unethical behavior.)
That being said, when you upload info or a photo to Facebook, you are granting Facebook many rights (it's part of the terms of service). Facebook doesn't outright own your photos, but you have granted them a perpetual nonexclusive license to use those photos.
However, that doesn't allow sites not affiliated with Facebook to use the photos on their own site (though deep linking kinda-sorta skirts that). You haven't given Facebook the right to sublicense your copyrighted materials to unaffiliated third parties. Additionally, if a third-party site implies that the "scraped" users are in any way voluntarily endorsing or participating in the third-party site, or are attaching false statements to the taken profiles (i.e. "I'm looking for a date"), that's a textbook case of fraud as defined by the law (a false statement of a material fact, knowledge on the part of the fraudster that the statement is untrue, intent on the part of the fraudster to deceive the alleged victim, justifiable reliance by the defrauded person on the statement, and injury to the alleged defrauded person as a result. Definition paraphrased from http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/fraud)
All that being said, it's funny as hell that Facebook, the number one mass purveyor of exploitative privacy-compromises, is suddenly up in arms about getting as good as it gives. Karma's a bitch, ain't it, Zucky ol' bean?
And may they bury you, AC, face-down so you can see where you're going. You fail at humanity.
In at approx. 75. Currently 340-ish. Yeah, they're treating me like garbage. I need more people to treat me like garbage like that.
He has a serious illness. That's all the info I need on his health. Seriously, does anyone on Planet Earth NOT know he's living on borrowed time (and livers)?
Succession plan? Tim Cook. Done. Again, does anyone with any interest in who leads Apple not know this?
First: disclosure. I worked at OnLive as an engineer for two years; I do not currently work there; I do not have any financial stake or equity in the company. I have a very active Steam account, a Netflix account which I use almost exclusively through streaming to an AppleTV, as well as an OnLive account. I do most of my gaming through a dedicated gaming rig running Windows.
Does OnLive "work"? Yes, very well, IF you have a high-quality broadband connection (you really need at least 5mbps for the best experience, though it will autoscale to deal with somewhat lower bandwidths). Video quality can be very good; though it is not quite the same as a direct video connection to a high-end gaming rig, for a large number of people it's good enough. The capture-encode part of the cycle is very fast, as is the decode-display part, typically in single-digits-of-milliseconds. All other latency is network latency, which brings up to geography and last-mile. You need to be within a few hundred miles of one of OnLive's data centers for the best experience. Your ISP has to not suck. The technology is certainly there, with the caveat of the geographical limitations. To be a mass-market success, OnLive will need many data centers. They aren't at that point yet; getting to that point will be a major part of whether OnLive truly succeeds, and major extended high-density metro areas will always come before rural. The idea of being able to play games that normally require a kilobuck computer, i.e. Crysis, on a cheapass computer with integrated video, is compelling for people who aren't willing or able to maintain and continually upgrade a dedicated gaming rig. Recall the recent announcement of Visio building an OnLive client natively into a TV. And if you need a demo of how little horsepower is actually needed... you can download an OnLive viewer for the iPad for free, and spectate on folks who are playing their games. (obviously, the latter is something best done over WiFi, for latency and bandwidth reasons, but the point is that a single-core ARM has all the oomph needed to get the job done. The client is truly lightweight.)
Do you "own" the games? No. Neither do you "own" an MMO; it's the MMO subscription model rather than the retail physical-goods model. Whether that's good or bad depends upon your outlook, which is not a basis of factual discussion; it's perspective. There are excellent arguments for and against, and I ask that people with a strongly-held opinion one way or another recognize that people with different opinions have different needs than themselves. For some people, the subscription model is ideal. For others, it just doesn't work. This isn't intended to be one size fits all.
Is it relevant to gamers with dedicated gaming PCs? To an extent. For some, the ability to play high-end games through legacy, entry-level computers (Shader model 2.0 or better and you're in!) is critical; there are far more people with such computers than dedicated gaming rigs. For others who own and maintain high-end gaming rigs, it's not a factor from a "what games can be played here" perspective. However, you just can't beat OnLive as an instant demo platform. Even if you have a liquid-cooled dual-580GTX SLI rig with an Intel Core i7 overclocked to 4.5GHz, there is value in the absolute immediacy of demos without downloads, install procedures, dealing with Starforce or SecuRom copy protection, pirated games coming with a "little extra software", and games of variable quality taking a dump all over your registry.
Can OnLive succeed? I think so, though they (OnLive) need to recognize that OnLive is no longer a technological play. The tech is there, and though OnLive has a substantial lead, it is inevitable that there will be competitors trying to solve the same problem which will eventually become "good enough". OnLive will sink or swim on non-technical factors: whether they can get the game publishers to commit
The military IS in charge right now. Egypt's presidency has been held by people with strong military ties since Nasser back in 1956. Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak, all were highly-placed military officers who remained close to the military after assuming the presidency.
The fight in Egypt is over succession. Mubarak wants his son to take over, but Mubarak Jr., though he has military experience, does not have the deep political ties to the military which Mubarak Sr. does, and is therefore not acceptable to the military. The real contest is between the military and the national police... and the national police have a poor record themselves for being corrupt, head-busting power-brokers, and are heavily infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood (the Islamist organization that gave birth to Hamas in the wake of the wars with Israel). The Egyptian police also have several times attempted coups of their own, but have never succeeded (the most recent such attempt was in 2008).
The Egyptian army is much like the Turkish army, in that they are somewhat secular and do not want to see their country become Islamist (i.e. run by Wahabiists). Yes, the army rules Egypt with an iron fist. But the alternatives (the national police and the Islamist revolutionaries) also would rule Egypt with an iron fist, and come with an agenda that is much more aggressive and repressive. There are no options that do not end with a dictator; at least the current dictatorship has honored its peace treaties and kept the Suez Canal open. And the military in Egypt is certainly more respected and "trusted" (if that word can realistically be used) by the general populace than the internal security forces and police.
In any revolution there has to be something you are heading towards as well as something you are heading away from. Where is the non-jackbooted "other"? In Egypt, there is none, nor will the major power-players allow there to be one. Therefore, the most likely outcome (particularly given that the national police and their political handlers made the critical mistake of abandoning their jobs on January 29th to try to provoke the army into firing on civilians in the ensuing chaos... which the army refused to do) is that there will be a non-Mubarak president which is nonetheless beholden to the army. The newly-appointed vice president Suleiman is just such a person. It is worth noting that the office of vice president, which if the president resigns is the one to take over per the Egyptian constitution, has been empty for the entire duration of the Mubarak rule up til a couple of days ago. Of course, the extent to which the Egyptian constitution matters in a situation like this is a roll of the dice. But there is also a new prime minister named Shafiq who at one point was the highest officer within the Egyptian air force, which further strengthens the military's hand. The chief question is whether Suleiman is "not-Mubarak" enough to satisfy all the major stakeholders and the majority of the public.
Interesting. And when did you first know that you could tell the future?
On the day we learned to study the past.
I think the real problem with Android might be that the users are not as likely to open their wallets, and so developers don't see as much reason to make Android apps. If nothing else Apple is really good at making it easy and seductive to throw down a couple bucks on an app.
Exactly.
When you say you "support" a platform, it's more than just buying the phone. You have to also support the app developers. If Android users don't pay for apps, but iOS users do, it's an easy choice for someone who wants to pay their mortgage from their app development efforts.
Next time someone says "Why isn't [an iOS app] also available for my Android device?", ask them how many apps on their Android device they've paid for, how many they have which are app supported, and how many are pirated. Then tell them they've just answered their own question.
Two things that I think would be huge would be support for gifting apps and gift cards, because they both make it easy for people to buy apps for friends and they just build the market in general. The fact that they were missing those two items during the most recent Christmas season seems like a huge oversight to me.
This is one area in which Google is completely out of its area of competency: retail. Apple understands retail (both storefront and online) extremely well; Google does not. Things like iTunes Music Store gift cards being purchasable at the checkout lane of a supermarket are second nature to Apple, but foreign to Google. There is far more to being successful in a wide market than "write code". You need the code, but that's just the beginning... and understanding that fact is something that Google simply fails to do.
In the days of Kenneth Starr and the Monika Lewinski "The Skank Kept The Nasty Dress" Investigation, people were livid and up-in-arms when Lewinsky's book-purchasing records were sought.
Now all you need to do is give Amazon a few pennies and call yourself an "advertiser".
How times have changed.
And how much of that are Facebook passing along to the actual victims?
The same amount that Facebook's victims er, users are paid for the use of their personal data and materials uploaded to Facebook.
Remove those, and everyone can benefit from research and increased competition
Everyone except for the people paying for the research, that is. All they get are the bills and the lawsuits.
Patents exist to encourage research spending. If there's no expectation of being able to recoup your research costs, why research at all? Why not just wait for other companies to pay for the research, then swoop in and take all the profit yourself? Except there won't be "other companies" doing the research, as they won't be interested in footing the bill without compensation either.
Might as well pass a law saying "the private sector is forbidden to do R&D, all research will be publicly funded in accordance with the personal and political whims of bureaucrats who control the budget allocations deciding what will, and won't, be researched". Same result: no private sector research, and public research strangled by the Christian Reich.
Great, now my salad will be working for the TSA and giving me attitude.
One other thing that sets off the bullshit-alarm: the 1985 Honda CRX HF (1.3L 4-cylinder normally aspirated, 2-seater) weighs the same ~1700 pounds dry, and got a combined fuel economy rating of 45mpg. That's 17% of what is being claimed here. 600% more efficient for the same mass and mission? Really? The best you can do with an internal combustion engine in theory is 37% (measured by turning the available BTUs in gasoline into kinetic energy of the reciprocating mass, i.e. the piston/crankshaft subsystem). To get a CRX to 265mpg, you have to seriously violate physics. Yes, frontal area has been reduced and the coefficient of drag improved and the engine system brought closer to theoretical compared to a CRX, but... 600%?
I want it to be true. I don't believe it is.