If Microsoft is anything like the big record labels, they'll go after the individuals for huge sums of money claiming loss of profit.
Surely all these people who 'stole' several thousand dollars worth of MS Points would have purchased them, had they not been able to obtain them by generating codes, therefore Microsoft suffered financial damages.
I used to be part of a HAM club that provided communications to coordinate an annual community event. The club had it's place back in the day, but realistically with the widespread use of FRS/GMRS there's really no reason to have a HAM club do it anymore. Maybe it made sense back in 1960 when the average Joe couldn't get his hands on a radio.
There are several other large companies in the same region as Google who provide similar benefits to their employees. Normally I'd be concerned of the potential doomsday scenario which you speak of, however these employees could jump ship to another company which offers the same benefits.
I'm not super-old, but I really am amazed about the difference in generational attitudes about privacy.
I'd have to agree with you there. I'm not super old either; I've been out of college for about 10 years now. I recently had a discussion with some current college students about privacy and they casually said, "this is 2010, just accept the fact that you don't have any online privacy or any other privacy for that matter." These "kids" just don't seem to care anymore - as long as they get their energy drinks, marijuana, video games, and social media, life is good and there's nothing to worry about.
On the otherhand the handsets present a new playing filed where it looks like lockdown platforms are going to be the norm for a variety of reasons.
I'm just not seeing the benefit of watching movies on a sub-4" screen. Movies on a "handset." Am I just an outlier, or is this the 'in' thing right now?
I have one of these fancy android handsets with a big (4.3") screen and I don't use it to watch movies yet. Mine even has an HDMI output. The only problem for me is that I'd be lucky to be able to watch an entire movie without the battery running out. I could always plug the charger in, but then what would I do if I was watching a movie and I got an incoming phone call? There is a benefit to not have all you devices bundled into one.
LibreOffice/Lucha Libre -> "Libre" is the common demoninator, that's why LibreOffice made me think of Lucha Libre, and it's not nearly as stupid as WWE
That is why even diesel locomotives run a generator and use electric motors to haul a train.
It's certainly *a* reason, but not the only reason. Electric motors are easier to control (think traction management) and they also eliminate the need for a complex transmission.
Though it's nice to have and good for the environment, we don't even need 'renewable' energy. Safe and clean nuclear energy technology that produces very little waste already exists and has been proven. Any waste can be safely managed, but for some reason clean and safe nuclear power generation does not seem to be much of a priority.
"We don't want new sources of energy that are going to make the greenhouse gas problem even worse," House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said in a recent interview.
Despite CA getting tons of attention by being 'clean' and having stringent air quality laws, Big Oil still has a huge presence there and operates several refineries.
Why do politics always have to get in the way of real progress?
I just want something that works, is NOT from MS, and is dirt cheap or FREE (even better!). When it comes to Word Processing and reading/editing.doc files which everyone still seems to use, I found OO to be cumbersome and not always 100% compatible with.doc/.docx files created in MS Word. I found Abiword and never looked back.
I ran into all these timezone issues when I installed OS X, Ubuntu, and Windows 7 on the same machine. If I remember correctly, OS X treats the BIOS clock as UTC and displays the OS's local time as an offset of that baseline according to timezone and other silly daylight rules. Windows 7 (and all other Windows versions) treats the BIOS clock as the local time. Ubuntu would normally treat the BIOS clock as UTC, however tries to make dual-booting Windows simpler and therefore assumes the BIOS clock is local time (a friendly 'work-around' to play nice with Windows).
My clock kept changing nearly every time I'd boot into a different OS, and I finally figured out that to fix it, I had to change the Windows registry to treat the BIOS clock as UTC, and then make the same change in Ubuntu.
I thought it was common knowledge that a bolt of lightning provides 1.21 Gigawatts.
All you need to do is capture that lightning and instantaneously use it to charge the battery bank. You'll have plenty of power to charge, and all you need is a large liquid cooled resistor bank to take care of the excess energy. Simple, right? Why hasn't anyone else thought of this?
I'll echo what everyone else said in their replies - bypassing the security is a fun thing to do.
I went to a private high school (where 90% of the students go on to be lawyers or doctors, NOT engineers) right around the time when *real* computers were starting to be widely used in classrooms. A few geeky friends and I had so much fun playing all sorts of innocent pranks, staying three steps ahead of the faculty responsible for fixing them.
I haven't ever played FarmVille, but did try CafeWorld on a friend's account and couldn't figure out what the objective of the game was. I also recently experimented with a social/interactive game on Android/iPhone called World War by Storm8.
It was interesting at first - do missions, collect money, buy equipment to fight (ships/aircraft/vehicles/troops), then battle others, all gaining skill points and advancing to the next level. Then after a week or two of casually playing (more like button pressing) I realized it's a giant waste of time. There's no real action or skill involved and no specific strategy.
When I feel the need to play games, I either pull out the NES/SNES/MAME emulator or bust out original Half-Life/CS from 12 years ago.
The light leakage on the HTC EVO appears in two separate places. In some of the early models and even some current models, the adhesive holding the glass to the rest of the phone fails and the screen lifts up, causing light to bleed through around the edge that lifted. A simple fix would be to lift the screen and reapply some new adhesive, but on a brand new phone covered under warranty, this isn't something a user should have to do.
The other issue persists on all HTC EVOs, even the newest HW revision. There are LED backlights for the four buttons on the bottom of the phone and if tip the top of the phone toward you, you can see the individual LEDs shining brightly. I've seen other manufacturers handle this by placing a thin strip of adhesive foam across the glass, but for some reason HTC didn't bother.
Aside from these issues, it's a pretty good phone that I'm happy with. I love the design, especially the fact that there are no physical buttons other than power and volume up/down. The screen is perhaps a bit massive for a phone, but it does make it easier to view web pages and read email.
I'd rather a manufacturer delay a product launch until they get things absolutely right.
HTC rushed the EVO out the door to meet demand, and their early releases had some serious hardware quality problems (light leakage around screen, screen separation, broken housing near power button, display problems, etc.) I'm not making this stuff up. I had to return THREE of my handsets before I got one that was good, and all three of those were Hardware Revision 003. I can't imagine what 001 and 002 were like.
That's the price you pay for being an early adopter.
I never gave Verizon wireless a dime of my money precisely for that reason. Most carriers are bad enough, but Verizon had some very tight lock-in with no reasonable alternatives, and in some cases even charging extra for features that were a standard part of the phones.
I may not be 100% correct here, but I recall phone shopping about three years ago for a Blackberry and I believe Verizon was charging and extra fee for use of the GPS receiver. I went with Sprint because just about every feature of the phone was available without any extra charges.
Sprint had it's own limitations, specifically not supporting MMS on the Blackberry Curve, however there was a system update not long after I got it that enabled MMS functionality (instead of their silly "picture mail" service that utilized a web server and simply SMSed a link to the website).
I agree with your assessment. Once carriers develop a firmware/platform for a specific phone and it works reasonably well, there's really no reason to fix it unless there are a bunch of complaints about usability, or a bunch of gaping security holes that need to be fixed (which is common on desktop platforms, but isn't discussed much when it comes to mobile platforms).
As a nerd, I like to have the latest and greatest software/firmware, especially if it adds new functionality and runs faster, but most people won't care if they're updated or not as long as their shit "just works."
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If Microsoft is anything like the big record labels, they'll go after the individuals for huge sums of money claiming loss of profit.
Surely all these people who 'stole' several thousand dollars worth of MS Points would have purchased them, had they not been able to obtain them by generating codes, therefore Microsoft suffered financial damages.
I used to be part of a HAM club that provided communications to coordinate an annual community event. The club had it's place back in the day, but realistically with the widespread use of FRS/GMRS there's really no reason to have a HAM club do it anymore. Maybe it made sense back in 1960 when the average Joe couldn't get his hands on a radio.
Don't forget the minimum 3.7 GPA requirement.
There are several other large companies in the same region as Google who provide similar benefits to their employees. Normally I'd be concerned of the potential doomsday scenario which you speak of, however these employees could jump ship to another company which offers the same benefits.
I'd have to agree with you there. I'm not super old either; I've been out of college for about 10 years now. I recently had a discussion with some current college students about privacy and they casually said, "this is 2010, just accept the fact that you don't have any online privacy or any other privacy for that matter." These "kids" just don't seem to care anymore - as long as they get their energy drinks, marijuana, video games, and social media, life is good and there's nothing to worry about.
I'm just not seeing the benefit of watching movies on a sub-4" screen. Movies on a "handset." Am I just an outlier, or is this the 'in' thing right now?
I have one of these fancy android handsets with a big (4.3") screen and I don't use it to watch movies yet. Mine even has an HDMI output. The only problem for me is that I'd be lucky to be able to watch an entire movie without the battery running out. I could always plug the charger in, but then what would I do if I was watching a movie and I got an incoming phone call? There is a benefit to not have all you devices bundled into one.
Yes, I know that, I made a typing error
LibreOffice/Lucha Libre -> "Libre" is the common demoninator, that's why LibreOffice made me think of Lucha Libre, and it's not nearly as stupid as WWE
It's certainly *a* reason, but not the only reason. Electric motors are easier to control (think traction management) and they also eliminate the need for a complex transmission.
Though it's nice to have and good for the environment, we don't even need 'renewable' energy. Safe and clean nuclear energy technology that produces very little waste already exists and has been proven. Any waste can be safely managed, but for some reason clean and safe nuclear power generation does not seem to be much of a priority.
The only problem is that electrical energy can't be stored with the same convenience and density as petroleum.
Or maybe an oil company will purchase the efficient engine manufacturer and disallow it's use by anyone, citing it's intellectual property rights.
Despite CA getting tons of attention by being 'clean' and having stringent air quality laws, Big Oil still has a huge presence there and operates several refineries.
Why do politics always have to get in the way of real progress?
I just want something that works, is NOT from MS, and is dirt cheap or FREE (even better!). When it comes to Word Processing and reading/editing .doc files which everyone still seems to use, I found OO to be cumbersome and not always 100% compatible with .doc/.docx files created in MS Word. I found Abiword and never looked back.
Oddly enough, when I read "LibreOffice" the first thing that comes to mind are a bunch of leather masks (Lucha Libra for those who don't get it).
I ran into all these timezone issues when I installed OS X, Ubuntu, and Windows 7 on the same machine. If I remember correctly, OS X treats the BIOS clock as UTC and displays the OS's local time as an offset of that baseline according to timezone and other silly daylight rules. Windows 7 (and all other Windows versions) treats the BIOS clock as the local time. Ubuntu would normally treat the BIOS clock as UTC, however tries to make dual-booting Windows simpler and therefore assumes the BIOS clock is local time (a friendly 'work-around' to play nice with Windows).
My clock kept changing nearly every time I'd boot into a different OS, and I finally figured out that to fix it, I had to change the Windows registry to treat the BIOS clock as UTC, and then make the same change in Ubuntu.
Are they still available at that price, and is it possible to get them in the USA? I just checked ebay and they're around USD $300.
Nah, it's not so much "handwriting" - more like graffiti.
I thought it was common knowledge that a bolt of lightning provides 1.21 Gigawatts.
All you need to do is capture that lightning and instantaneously use it to charge the battery bank. You'll have plenty of power to charge, and all you need is a large liquid cooled resistor bank to take care of the excess energy. Simple, right? Why hasn't anyone else thought of this?
I'll echo what everyone else said in their replies - bypassing the security is a fun thing to do.
I went to a private high school (where 90% of the students go on to be lawyers or doctors, NOT engineers) right around the time when *real* computers were starting to be widely used in classrooms. A few geeky friends and I had so much fun playing all sorts of innocent pranks, staying three steps ahead of the faculty responsible for fixing them.
I haven't ever played FarmVille, but did try CafeWorld on a friend's account and couldn't figure out what the objective of the game was. I also recently experimented with a social/interactive game on Android/iPhone called World War by Storm8.
It was interesting at first - do missions, collect money, buy equipment to fight (ships/aircraft/vehicles/troops), then battle others, all gaining skill points and advancing to the next level. Then after a week or two of casually playing (more like button pressing) I realized it's a giant waste of time. There's no real action or skill involved and no specific strategy.
When I feel the need to play games, I either pull out the NES/SNES/MAME emulator or bust out original Half-Life/CS from 12 years ago.
The light leakage on the HTC EVO appears in two separate places. In some of the early models and even some current models, the adhesive holding the glass to the rest of the phone fails and the screen lifts up, causing light to bleed through around the edge that lifted. A simple fix would be to lift the screen and reapply some new adhesive, but on a brand new phone covered under warranty, this isn't something a user should have to do.
The other issue persists on all HTC EVOs, even the newest HW revision. There are LED backlights for the four buttons on the bottom of the phone and if tip the top of the phone toward you, you can see the individual LEDs shining brightly. I've seen other manufacturers handle this by placing a thin strip of adhesive foam across the glass, but for some reason HTC didn't bother.
Aside from these issues, it's a pretty good phone that I'm happy with. I love the design, especially the fact that there are no physical buttons other than power and volume up/down. The screen is perhaps a bit massive for a phone, but it does make it easier to view web pages and read email.
I'd rather a manufacturer delay a product launch until they get things absolutely right.
HTC rushed the EVO out the door to meet demand, and their early releases had some serious hardware quality problems (light leakage around screen, screen separation, broken housing near power button, display problems, etc.) I'm not making this stuff up. I had to return THREE of my handsets before I got one that was good, and all three of those were Hardware Revision 003. I can't imagine what 001 and 002 were like.
That's the price you pay for being an early adopter.
That's all fine and dandy until some *real* illegal content gets distributed through your node.
I never gave Verizon wireless a dime of my money precisely for that reason. Most carriers are bad enough, but Verizon had some very tight lock-in with no reasonable alternatives, and in some cases even charging extra for features that were a standard part of the phones.
I may not be 100% correct here, but I recall phone shopping about three years ago for a Blackberry and I believe Verizon was charging and extra fee for use of the GPS receiver. I went with Sprint because just about every feature of the phone was available without any extra charges.
Sprint had it's own limitations, specifically not supporting MMS on the Blackberry Curve, however there was a system update not long after I got it that enabled MMS functionality (instead of their silly "picture mail" service that utilized a web server and simply SMSed a link to the website).
I agree with your assessment. Once carriers develop a firmware/platform for a specific phone and it works reasonably well, there's really no reason to fix it unless there are a bunch of complaints about usability, or a bunch of gaping security holes that need to be fixed (which is common on desktop platforms, but isn't discussed much when it comes to mobile platforms).
As a nerd, I like to have the latest and greatest software/firmware, especially if it adds new functionality and runs faster, but most people won't care if they're updated or not as long as their shit "just works."