RTFA, they have upped their security since the letter was sent to them. and since no one knows how exactly the records were stolen, i think you're just talking out of your ass claiming it as "complete stupidity on their part."
at least the company is smart enough to realize that there's no such thing as perfect security (which apparently is more than can be said about you). however, having found themselves in a situation in which their customer records have been stolen, they are taking all precautionary measures the minimize the damage.
they were honest about the breach and came out publicly about it rather than trying to suppress the information. they contacted the FBI, who have launched an ongoing criminal investigation. the company has also hired data security & computer forensics experts to launch their own independent investigation into the matter. additionally, they have contracted a risk-consulting firm to provide free identity restoration services to affected customers in order to mitigate potential damages. they seem to have done everything in their power to redress the situation. what else were they supposed to do? give in to the extortionists' demands and try to sweep this under the rug?
well, there were two separate transactions made on two consecutive days--one for ~$90 and one for ~$30. so i don't think it could have been a surcharge. but thanks the tip anyway.
isn't there a way to track the bank account that the payment is transferred to? how do those DDoS extortion rings collect the money that they demand from online businesses? i mean, if the criminals are asking that the money be wired to a specific account, couldn't the bank determine what bank that account belongs to (how else would they wire the money)? if the bank is located in a country that has an extradition treaty with the U.S. then they could just wire the money and catch the crooks when they try to access the account.
on a separate note, my father recently had some inexplicable PayPayl "instant transfers" show up on his checking account statement. however, he hasn't used PayPal or purchased anything from PayPal merchants in over 2-3 years. does anyone know if there is a common identify-theft or banking fraud technique involving the use of PayPal and checking accounts? or could this perhaps just be a computer error? i'm just wondering because if this is a sign of identity-theft then i need to have my dad cancel his checks and credit cards. and so far Washington Mutual has been very unhelpful regarding this situation.
exactly. the gp's question is just silly (or poorly thought out).
if people want to call America a free and democratic nation, then we need to start acting like one. stop thinking of the government as this separate ruling entity that you have no power or influence over. yes, it's convenient to disassociate yourself from the policy makers of our nation as that makes it easier to wash your hands of the government's actions and their consequences (like war, encroachment of civil liberties, corruption, etc.). but if that's the attitude you're gonna take then what is the point of having a democratic republic?
if you don't trust a small group of political elite to regulate the internet and other public infrastructure, then why would you trust a small group of corporate elite to do so. at least the public has a say in government policies, thus we have the right to demand changes to the government regulates the internet if we're unhappy with it. however, the public has no say in corporate policies and have no right to dictate how a private corporation operates.
being a natural monopoly and a vital service with inelastic demand, communications networks like telecoms/ISPs cannot be boycotted effectively by consumers. so even if you believe in having the invisible hand of the Free Market make everything alright, that will not work in this case. but the social apparatus constituting a democratic government exists precisely for situations like these where it provides the only mechanism for carrying out the will of the people in protecting public interest.
well, hopefully as low-power netbooks catch on we'll start seeing more purpose-based rather than marketing-based designs in both netbooks as well as traditional laptop/desktop systems. and it's good that Intel and other chip makers are starting to focus on more efficient processors rather than just adding cores and increasing clock speeds.
if consumers start seeing that they can get better results with cheaper, more modestly powered systems, maybe the general public will start to question why they have to keep upgrading their computers every year just so that the applications that they use on daily basis (word processing, spreadsheets, e-mail, web browsing, etc.) run just as slowly as before.
there's nothing wrong with spending money on a good system, but you have to spend that money in the right places. like you said, a good screen resolution, decent peripherals support, etc. will improve the overall computing experience of most casual users much more than a power-sucking quad core CPU. additionally, using low-power processors also extends battery life, which adds a lot more value for the average user than excessive processing power.
the difference between netbooks and conventional desktops/laptops is analogous to the difference between the Lotus design philosophy and Ford & GM's. whereas conventional automakers focus singularly on increasing horsepower and building bigger & heavier engines powering bigger & heavier cars, Lotus understands that by stripping out unnecessary glut & excess, you can produce a leaner more agile vehicle using minimal power from a very modest-sized engine. and by trying to decrease the curb weight of a vehicle rather than mindlessly stacking on more horse power, you increase the speed & acceleration of the car without compromising its handling characteristics, resulting in superior overall performance. likewise, even though netbooks use more modest processors they're still more responsive than conventional systems because they're optimized in the right places.
just because you don't understand what objectivity is doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. and just because people are inherently biased doesn't mean that we are incapable of being objective, or that everyone is equally biased. that's like saying that just because people aren't 100% rational all the time that logic doesn't exist, or that a creationist is as rational/irrational as an evolutionary biologist.
some things subjective, but not everything is. and it's certainly possible to be objective when it matters. adherence to sound scientific principles helps one to be objective in the search for truth. after all, objectivity is the fundamental measure of scientific & intellectual integrity. if objectivity doesn't exist, then all you have is useless rationalization/sophistry.
for instance, if i want to determine the effectiveness of a particular drug treatment, i can choose to conduct controlled experiments in a fair and aboveboard manner, or i can choose to accept bribes from pharmaceutical companies and fudge the data to fit predetermined results. similarly, if i'm conducting an experiment in which i know that my personal biases could affect the results, i can design double-blind tests to negate such biases whether they are conscious or subconscious.
the whole "everything is relative/subjective" played out cliche is just intellectual laziness.
or how about this: keep the factories, keep the workers, keep the engineers, and keep the rest of the manufacturing infrastructure, but get rid of the CEOs, VPs & board members and their multi-million-dollar-per-year pensions & severance packages. you can also do away with most of the upper management along with the marketing, advertising, and sales departments.
just because the manufacturing infrastructure is useful doesn't mean the corporate baggage is. they're the reason why the domestic auto industry even needs a bailout right now. they're also the ones who've got to keep their lush salaries and corporate benefits while factories are shut down and workers laid off.
just because a business dies doesn't mean the skilled labor and infrastructure suddenly evaporates. you could nationalize the companies and just keep the factories and main workforce, or you could just let other (perhaps smaller) companies buy up bits and pieces of the defunct company. there are many alternatives to a government bailout, which basically removes all accountability for poor business practices, decisions, and corporate policies.
if they fuck up so badly that they need a bail out, just let someone else have a shot at running the domestic auto industry, preferably some newcomers who will break up the current oligopoly and lower the barriers to entry. this way you have greater diversity of car manufacturers, which means greater selection of choices for consumers. and an industry comprised of lots of smaller companies competing equally instead of being dominated by 3-4 big companies is also more conducive of technological innovation and original thinking.
it would serve the interest of the public much more if, rather than handing the Big Three free money, the federal government instead gave the money to smaller more technologically innovative companies like Tesla Motors and let them take over the manufacturing infrastructure not being used by Ford, Chrysler, and GM. if anything, government subsidies should be given to the new underdogs that are bringing innovation and reviving the domestic auto industry, not the monolithic reactionary Big Three auto makers that have been dragging the industry down.
well, the "sharks with friggin-lasers on their heads" joke is already mentioned in the article (at the very end). so repeating a joke that's in the article can be considered redundant to some people. besides, it's a pretty old/tired joke that gets mentioned pretty much every day here.
um, the images may have been cleaned up in Photoshop (just as most publicity/PR/ad photos and are), but they certainly aren't rendered. you need to get your eyes checked.
yea, i think phone-based applications are much more suited to voice recognition than most desktop apps. unless you're physically disabled and thus cannot use a keyboard/mouse, it would be much easier to use conventional input devices on a desktop computer. whereas on a phone it's more convenient to speak your commands rather than having to remove the phone from you ear, type on it, and then replace the phone every time input is required.
another interesting application for a robust voice recognition system would be real-time translation. for instance, if you need to communicate with someone who speaks a language you aren't familiar with, you could just call a translation service that acts as a proxy between you and the other person. the other person speaks in their language and hears your words translated to their language, and you speak in your own language and hear their words translated to your native language.
it might not be feasible yet with the massive shortcomings in current computer-automated translation applications, but it might be feasible in a few years--at least for basic communication within a limited problem-domain, like booking a hotel or calling a taxi in a foreign country.
well, i guess that isn't pure "voice recognition," but it seems like a smart cheat. this isn't a sports competition where abiding by the rules is paramount or even means anything. technologies should be judged by their usefulness, which means measuring them by the results they give, not by how those results were achieved.
and if you think about it, people often use the same trick when interpreting speech. gestalt theory states that human perception is a cognitive process as much as it is a sensory process. i'd be very surprised if this was only limited to visual perception. so when you are interpreting speech you aren't just identifying phonemes in the auditory stimuli, you're also referencing your past experiences in high level cognitive processes.
for example, if you're in a noisy setting, and someone is trying to speak to you, you may not be able to hear or accurately identify all of the words they are saying. but by drawing on non-auditory information--like contextual cues, body language, and personal habits & speech patterns--it is still possible to infer what they are trying to communicate. these subconscious processes allow you to "hear" what your ears can't detect.
i've used a few voice input systems for paying cellphone bills over the phone, and they've always worked decently in my experience. however, my dad, who has a pretty heavy accent, doesn't get the same results as i do, which is why i have to pay his phone bills for him.
i guess it just depends on the implementation. i find voice inputs to be far more convenient than touch tone systems for over the phone payment systems. they're easier to navigate, feel more natural, and definitely work much better than T-Mobile's online payment system--which is always down or incredibly slow.
i'd be interested in seeing how Google does with this system. perhaps they'll eventually deploy it for Android phones as well.
it wasn't just the Mithras that was copied from--and it wasn't just Christianity that copied from other religions for that matter. the story of Noah's Ark found in Judeo-Christian & Muslim literature seems to have been adapted from the Epic of Gilgamesh from Sumerian legends dating back to the 17th century BC.
yea, it's kinda sad that they developed such a cool tech, and the first thing they thought to do with it is to plaster everyone's home videos with Coca-Cola logos. i mean, how much are you really going to be paid by Coca-Cola to add their logo to your home videos? does video documentation of your child's first steps or first words really need corporate sponsorship?
some things don't need to be monetized. now, covering up the playboy posters in videos of your dorm room to send to your parents--that's a useful application.
i would tend to agree with you. i have a friend from high school, who although is a nice guy in person and as a friend, is involved in a lot of shady business dealings. he's always been good at making money--it runs in his family i suppose--but he does so by less than honorable means. in high school he used to build list makers (for collecting e-mail addresses) and mass mailers (to send spam) for porn site owners. and he would get paid $10k+ for each application too.
after high school, he moved on to SEO. which was a pretty natural progression for him. and from what i gather, he makes a lot more money doing SEO now than he did with spam. in the past he's also been involved with credit card fraud, so i think he's always gravitated towards these types of online cons/scams.
what really upsets me is that he comes from a very rich family, and he has no real need to do these types of underhanded things for money. it's not like he didn't have the opportunity to go to college, and this is the only way he can make a living. i mean, he's a pretty intelligent person and i'm sure he'd be successful no matter what he does. but i guess for some people it's just hard to resist such easy and lucrative revenue streams like that, even if it means being a douchebag for a living.
i don't talk to him much anymore, so i don't know what kind of people his clients are. but i wouldn't be surprised if some of his clients didn't fully understand what they were getting into. an online presence is a basic necessity for businesses of all types and sizes these days. and SEO is a popular enough buzzword/industry that, it not only has a facade of legitimacy, but a lot of non-technical business owners probably see it as a requirement for all online businesses. so it's understandable that mom-and-pop businesses can be deceived into paying thousands of dollars for shady SEO services.
and to be honest, the attitude that SEO companies have is not too different from marketing & advertising firms. it's all about manipulating consumers to maximize profits by any means possible--whatever gives you an edge over your competitors. we live in a capitalist society, and these are the type of attitudes and people that our culture fosters/promotes. in a laissez-faire economy without any kind of government regulation you're naturally going to have people doing dishonorable or unethical things for profit.
clearly he means that auto mechanics will be able to fix your car remotely from 35~250 million miles away regardless of where it breaks down. they can even get your car unstuck remotely if you ever get stuck in a ditch.
suck on that OnStar! all they can do is unlock your car.
i'm a graphic designer so run Windows. i haven't touched Linux or Unix in over half a decade. but i'm not a selfish jackass who thinks that only my needs are important, and as long as they are met everyone should just go to hell.
there's nothing arrogant about expecting hardware manufacturers to support the 3 most popular OSes: Windows, OS X, and Linux. and it's precisely because people understand that hardware manufacturers can't be expected to support every single OS out there (even well-known ones like Solaris, FreeBSD, BeOS, etc.) that people are pushing for open source drivers.
your mom may not have told you this, but businesses depend on their customers to make money. so listening to consumers and meeting consumer demands is generally a good idea (ever heard of market research?). by allowing their hardware to be used on a wider range of platforms they are broadening the market for their products.
AMD isn't in the business of selling video card drivers, just the video cards. that is why they have open sourced their Radeon drivers in the past. and if we were all as simple-minded as your mom, then no one would ever speak up for themselves. and hardware manufacturers aren't run by mind readers.
don't you need both? if you have a router that supports IPv6 but your OS isn't configured to use IPv6 then you're still not going to be able to access IPv6 hosts. Windows XP still doesn't have IPv6 enabled by default--you need to go to network connection properties and add the protocol "Microsoft TCP/IP version 6" in order to enable IPv6 support.
so it's not a matter of it being IPv6 pushed in the wrong place, but a matter of networking hardware manufacturers being too slow to adopt IPv6. that's not really up to OS developers.
most existing networking equipment can probably already support IPv6 with a firmware update. but a lot of consumer networking equipment vendors are probably waiting for IPv6 to gain more traction so that they can a separate line of "new and improved" IPv6-enabled routers/switches/etc. to cash in on unnecessary equipment upgrades.
what agenda are they advancing? the agenda of being able to use this feature on the platform they are running?
sure, if all hardware manufacturers were in the habit or releasing Unix & Linux drivers then closed-source binaries and a decent API would be fine. but the reality is that many manufacturers do not have good Linux/Unix support. that is fine. but if they want to leave it to the community to develop the Linux/Unix drivers themselves then it would be really helpful to have open source Windows drivers to use as a template.
it's not useless to you since you're running Windows, but not everyone uses a Windows platform for their research. for those people it would be useless without either, open source drivers or a set of Linux/Unix drivers. i mean, if you're already running a Beowulf cluster of Linux/BSD/Solaris machines then it might not be practical to convert them to a Windows cluster (can you even run a Beowulf cluster of Windows machines?), not to mention the cost of buying 64 new Windows licenses and porting all of your existing applications to Windows.
it's probably an exaggeration to say that closed-source drivers are useless. and perhaps AMD will release Linux/Solaris/Unix drivers. but if they're not going to then open sourcing the Windows drivers and the hardware specs would be the next best thing. and the outcry for open source drivers isn't without some merit since past Linux support by AMD/ATI with proprietary drivers have left much to be desired, with Linux drivers only receiving updates half as a often as the Windows drivers and consistently underperforming against comparable graphics cards.
what percentage of high-end professional-grade DSLRs are above 12 Megapixel? a consumer is just someone who consumes goods or services. even a professional photographer who purchases a high-end camera is still a consumer--as opposed to the producer/manufacturer/retailer.
and even with a 2540p frame you can still pan & scan and have a reasonable level of freedom to crop your image at HDTV quality. i also never said that no one needs picture resolution above 2540p. obviously there are going to be useful applications for Super Hi-Vision, not to mention existing astronomical cameras with non-standard sensor resolutions. but for the average person to complain about 2540p as not good enough (especially in the context of playback resolution at a regular movie theater) is pretty banal.
i think the point is that if you want to use GPGPU for cluster computing it's ideal to have open source drivers, especially if you're not going to release Linux/Unix drivers yourself.
that's true. XmlHttpRequest is indeed something that Microsoft has done right and that we should thank them for. and i think it's one of the rare examples showing that Microsoft can be a positive contributor to the web community. so it might actually be a good thing that Microsoft is trying to get into mobile web services. since they do not control the mobile browser market and can't just make everyone switch to IE, this will force MS to keep cross-browser compatibility in mind when developing these advanced web apps.
and as most web developers know, cross browser compatibility is probably one of the most difficult/laborious aspects of web design/development. and the reason for this is largely due to MS's intransigent habit of flouting established open web standards in developing IE. most web browsers are fairly reasonable when it comes to W3C compliance, and it doesn't take much to get a complex layout or application to work across Opera, Firefox, Konquerer, and the majority of common browsers. but IE is always the single browser that requires endless tweaking and inconvenient CSS hacks to get a cross-browser compatible web page.
now that Microsoft has to deal with cross-browser compatibility issues themselves, perhaps they will finally realize the insanity that is caused by their inconsiderate development philosophy. instead of disregarding open web standards and then wasting thousands of man-hours to work around the inconsistencies in browser implementations that they themselves introduce, maybe--just maybe--they will stop being a poor corporate netizen and work with the W3C rather than against it.
that's a rather dumb analogy. RAM usage increases because as computers become more advanced, so too does software, so naturally more memory resources need to be made available. unless people start getting bionic eye implants, there's no practical benefit to be gained from pixel resolution increases that are imperceptible to the human eye.
i think that's an interesting idea, but it seems to be different from what Google wants to accomplish with Android. it seems to me like they're just trying to make an iPhone competitor that isn't locked into the manufacturer's software distribution model. but that still means only working within the confines of a Java sandbox.
but perhaps they could develop an alternate version (or fork) of the Android platform tailored for the tech-savvy/hackers. this way the lock the standard Android distro down enough that the average consumer won't accidentally fubar their phones, but there's also a hacker-friendly distro for power users on which they can host the programming competitions you described. the unlocked Android distro could also be a test bed for new features (introduced by the community), which after some time can be integrated into the standard distro.
doesn't beat it for what? unless you're shooting a movie that's going to be displayed in an IMAX theater why would you need more than 8 Megapixel? pixel resolution means nothing unless you have something capable of displaying the pixel data. and there are few applications in which you would observe any noticeable benefit by going beyond 1080p.
here is a comparison of digital video formats. even if you have a 150" plasma screen TV capable of displaying 4096x2160 resolution, you're not going to notice any difference in video quality above Digital Cinema 2K (2048x1080) or HDTV 1080p unless you're sitting less than 2' away from the TV.
saying that it's only 4096x2160 is like dick-sizing about having a still-camera capable of more than 10 Megapixel resolution. sure, there are people out there that need a 36 Megapixel camera, but for 99.9% of the consumer market it'd be a monumental waste of money. even if you were creating a billboard you could just upscale a 6 Megapixel image at, at most, 72 dpi (and often as low as 9 dpi).
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RTFA, they have upped their security since the letter was sent to them. and since no one knows how exactly the records were stolen, i think you're just talking out of your ass claiming it as "complete stupidity on their part."
at least the company is smart enough to realize that there's no such thing as perfect security (which apparently is more than can be said about you). however, having found themselves in a situation in which their customer records have been stolen, they are taking all precautionary measures the minimize the damage.
they were honest about the breach and came out publicly about it rather than trying to suppress the information. they contacted the FBI, who have launched an ongoing criminal investigation. the company has also hired data security & computer forensics experts to launch their own independent investigation into the matter. additionally, they have contracted a risk-consulting firm to provide free identity restoration services to affected customers in order to mitigate potential damages. they seem to have done everything in their power to redress the situation. what else were they supposed to do? give in to the extortionists' demands and try to sweep this under the rug?
well, there were two separate transactions made on two consecutive days--one for ~$90 and one for ~$30. so i don't think it could have been a surcharge. but thanks the tip anyway.
isn't there a way to track the bank account that the payment is transferred to? how do those DDoS extortion rings collect the money that they demand from online businesses? i mean, if the criminals are asking that the money be wired to a specific account, couldn't the bank determine what bank that account belongs to (how else would they wire the money)? if the bank is located in a country that has an extradition treaty with the U.S. then they could just wire the money and catch the crooks when they try to access the account.
on a separate note, my father recently had some inexplicable PayPayl "instant transfers" show up on his checking account statement. however, he hasn't used PayPal or purchased anything from PayPal merchants in over 2-3 years. does anyone know if there is a common identify-theft or banking fraud technique involving the use of PayPal and checking accounts? or could this perhaps just be a computer error? i'm just wondering because if this is a sign of identity-theft then i need to have my dad cancel his checks and credit cards. and so far Washington Mutual has been very unhelpful regarding this situation.
exactly. the gp's question is just silly (or poorly thought out).
if people want to call America a free and democratic nation, then we need to start acting like one. stop thinking of the government as this separate ruling entity that you have no power or influence over. yes, it's convenient to disassociate yourself from the policy makers of our nation as that makes it easier to wash your hands of the government's actions and their consequences (like war, encroachment of civil liberties, corruption, etc.). but if that's the attitude you're gonna take then what is the point of having a democratic republic?
if you don't trust a small group of political elite to regulate the internet and other public infrastructure, then why would you trust a small group of corporate elite to do so. at least the public has a say in government policies, thus we have the right to demand changes to the government regulates the internet if we're unhappy with it. however, the public has no say in corporate policies and have no right to dictate how a private corporation operates.
being a natural monopoly and a vital service with inelastic demand, communications networks like telecoms/ISPs cannot be boycotted effectively by consumers. so even if you believe in having the invisible hand of the Free Market make everything alright, that will not work in this case. but the social apparatus constituting a democratic government exists precisely for situations like these where it provides the only mechanism for carrying out the will of the people in protecting public interest.
well, hopefully as low-power netbooks catch on we'll start seeing more purpose-based rather than marketing-based designs in both netbooks as well as traditional laptop/desktop systems. and it's good that Intel and other chip makers are starting to focus on more efficient processors rather than just adding cores and increasing clock speeds.
if consumers start seeing that they can get better results with cheaper, more modestly powered systems, maybe the general public will start to question why they have to keep upgrading their computers every year just so that the applications that they use on daily basis (word processing, spreadsheets, e-mail, web browsing, etc.) run just as slowly as before.
there's nothing wrong with spending money on a good system, but you have to spend that money in the right places. like you said, a good screen resolution, decent peripherals support, etc. will improve the overall computing experience of most casual users much more than a power-sucking quad core CPU. additionally, using low-power processors also extends battery life, which adds a lot more value for the average user than excessive processing power.
the difference between netbooks and conventional desktops/laptops is analogous to the difference between the Lotus design philosophy and Ford & GM's. whereas conventional automakers focus singularly on increasing horsepower and building bigger & heavier engines powering bigger & heavier cars, Lotus understands that by stripping out unnecessary glut & excess, you can produce a leaner more agile vehicle using minimal power from a very modest-sized engine. and by trying to decrease the curb weight of a vehicle rather than mindlessly stacking on more horse power, you increase the speed & acceleration of the car without compromising its handling characteristics, resulting in superior overall performance. likewise, even though netbooks use more modest processors they're still more responsive than conventional systems because they're optimized in the right places.
just because you don't understand what objectivity is doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. and just because people are inherently biased doesn't mean that we are incapable of being objective, or that everyone is equally biased. that's like saying that just because people aren't 100% rational all the time that logic doesn't exist, or that a creationist is as rational/irrational as an evolutionary biologist.
some things subjective, but not everything is. and it's certainly possible to be objective when it matters. adherence to sound scientific principles helps one to be objective in the search for truth. after all, objectivity is the fundamental measure of scientific & intellectual integrity. if objectivity doesn't exist, then all you have is useless rationalization/sophistry.
for instance, if i want to determine the effectiveness of a particular drug treatment, i can choose to conduct controlled experiments in a fair and aboveboard manner, or i can choose to accept bribes from pharmaceutical companies and fudge the data to fit predetermined results. similarly, if i'm conducting an experiment in which i know that my personal biases could affect the results, i can design double-blind tests to negate such biases whether they are conscious or subconscious.
the whole "everything is relative/subjective" played out cliche is just intellectual laziness.
or how about this: keep the factories, keep the workers, keep the engineers, and keep the rest of the manufacturing infrastructure, but get rid of the CEOs, VPs & board members and their multi-million-dollar-per-year pensions & severance packages. you can also do away with most of the upper management along with the marketing, advertising, and sales departments.
just because the manufacturing infrastructure is useful doesn't mean the corporate baggage is. they're the reason why the domestic auto industry even needs a bailout right now. they're also the ones who've got to keep their lush salaries and corporate benefits while factories are shut down and workers laid off.
just because a business dies doesn't mean the skilled labor and infrastructure suddenly evaporates. you could nationalize the companies and just keep the factories and main workforce, or you could just let other (perhaps smaller) companies buy up bits and pieces of the defunct company. there are many alternatives to a government bailout, which basically removes all accountability for poor business practices, decisions, and corporate policies.
if they fuck up so badly that they need a bail out, just let someone else have a shot at running the domestic auto industry, preferably some newcomers who will break up the current oligopoly and lower the barriers to entry. this way you have greater diversity of car manufacturers, which means greater selection of choices for consumers. and an industry comprised of lots of smaller companies competing equally instead of being dominated by 3-4 big companies is also more conducive of technological innovation and original thinking.
it would serve the interest of the public much more if, rather than handing the Big Three free money, the federal government instead gave the money to smaller more technologically innovative companies like Tesla Motors and let them take over the manufacturing infrastructure not being used by Ford, Chrysler, and GM. if anything, government subsidies should be given to the new underdogs that are bringing innovation and reviving the domestic auto industry, not the monolithic reactionary Big Three auto makers that have been dragging the industry down.
well, the "sharks with friggin-lasers on their heads" joke is already mentioned in the article (at the very end). so repeating a joke that's in the article can be considered redundant to some people. besides, it's a pretty old/tired joke that gets mentioned pretty much every day here.
um, the images may have been cleaned up in Photoshop (just as most publicity/PR/ad photos and are), but they certainly aren't rendered. you need to get your eyes checked.
yea, i think phone-based applications are much more suited to voice recognition than most desktop apps. unless you're physically disabled and thus cannot use a keyboard/mouse, it would be much easier to use conventional input devices on a desktop computer. whereas on a phone it's more convenient to speak your commands rather than having to remove the phone from you ear, type on it, and then replace the phone every time input is required.
another interesting application for a robust voice recognition system would be real-time translation. for instance, if you need to communicate with someone who speaks a language you aren't familiar with, you could just call a translation service that acts as a proxy between you and the other person. the other person speaks in their language and hears your words translated to their language, and you speak in your own language and hear their words translated to your native language.
it might not be feasible yet with the massive shortcomings in current computer-automated translation applications, but it might be feasible in a few years--at least for basic communication within a limited problem-domain, like booking a hotel or calling a taxi in a foreign country.
well, i guess that isn't pure "voice recognition," but it seems like a smart cheat. this isn't a sports competition where abiding by the rules is paramount or even means anything. technologies should be judged by their usefulness, which means measuring them by the results they give, not by how those results were achieved.
and if you think about it, people often use the same trick when interpreting speech. gestalt theory states that human perception is a cognitive process as much as it is a sensory process. i'd be very surprised if this was only limited to visual perception. so when you are interpreting speech you aren't just identifying phonemes in the auditory stimuli, you're also referencing your past experiences in high level cognitive processes.
for example, if you're in a noisy setting, and someone is trying to speak to you, you may not be able to hear or accurately identify all of the words they are saying. but by drawing on non-auditory information--like contextual cues, body language, and personal habits & speech patterns--it is still possible to infer what they are trying to communicate. these subconscious processes allow you to "hear" what your ears can't detect.
i've used a few voice input systems for paying cellphone bills over the phone, and they've always worked decently in my experience. however, my dad, who has a pretty heavy accent, doesn't get the same results as i do, which is why i have to pay his phone bills for him.
i guess it just depends on the implementation. i find voice inputs to be far more convenient than touch tone systems for over the phone payment systems. they're easier to navigate, feel more natural, and definitely work much better than T-Mobile's online payment system--which is always down or incredibly slow.
i'd be interested in seeing how Google does with this system. perhaps they'll eventually deploy it for Android phones as well.
it wasn't just the Mithras that was copied from--and it wasn't just Christianity that copied from other religions for that matter. the story of Noah's Ark found in Judeo-Christian & Muslim literature seems to have been adapted from the Epic of Gilgamesh from Sumerian legends dating back to the 17th century BC.
yea, it's kinda sad that they developed such a cool tech, and the first thing they thought to do with it is to plaster everyone's home videos with Coca-Cola logos. i mean, how much are you really going to be paid by Coca-Cola to add their logo to your home videos? does video documentation of your child's first steps or first words really need corporate sponsorship?
some things don't need to be monetized. now, covering up the playboy posters in videos of your dorm room to send to your parents--that's a useful application.
i would tend to agree with you. i have a friend from high school, who although is a nice guy in person and as a friend, is involved in a lot of shady business dealings. he's always been good at making money--it runs in his family i suppose--but he does so by less than honorable means. in high school he used to build list makers (for collecting e-mail addresses) and mass mailers (to send spam) for porn site owners. and he would get paid $10k+ for each application too.
after high school, he moved on to SEO. which was a pretty natural progression for him. and from what i gather, he makes a lot more money doing SEO now than he did with spam. in the past he's also been involved with credit card fraud, so i think he's always gravitated towards these types of online cons/scams.
what really upsets me is that he comes from a very rich family, and he has no real need to do these types of underhanded things for money. it's not like he didn't have the opportunity to go to college, and this is the only way he can make a living. i mean, he's a pretty intelligent person and i'm sure he'd be successful no matter what he does. but i guess for some people it's just hard to resist such easy and lucrative revenue streams like that, even if it means being a douchebag for a living.
i don't talk to him much anymore, so i don't know what kind of people his clients are. but i wouldn't be surprised if some of his clients didn't fully understand what they were getting into. an online presence is a basic necessity for businesses of all types and sizes these days. and SEO is a popular enough buzzword/industry that, it not only has a facade of legitimacy, but a lot of non-technical business owners probably see it as a requirement for all online businesses. so it's understandable that mom-and-pop businesses can be deceived into paying thousands of dollars for shady SEO services.
and to be honest, the attitude that SEO companies have is not too different from marketing & advertising firms. it's all about manipulating consumers to maximize profits by any means possible--whatever gives you an edge over your competitors. we live in a capitalist society, and these are the type of attitudes and people that our culture fosters/promotes. in a laissez-faire economy without any kind of government regulation you're naturally going to have people doing dishonorable or unethical things for profit.
clearly he means that auto mechanics will be able to fix your car remotely from 35~250 million miles away regardless of where it breaks down. they can even get your car unstuck remotely if you ever get stuck in a ditch.
suck on that OnStar! all they can do is unlock your car.
i'm a graphic designer so run Windows. i haven't touched Linux or Unix in over half a decade. but i'm not a selfish jackass who thinks that only my needs are important, and as long as they are met everyone should just go to hell.
there's nothing arrogant about expecting hardware manufacturers to support the 3 most popular OSes: Windows, OS X, and Linux. and it's precisely because people understand that hardware manufacturers can't be expected to support every single OS out there (even well-known ones like Solaris, FreeBSD, BeOS, etc.) that people are pushing for open source drivers.
your mom may not have told you this, but businesses depend on their customers to make money. so listening to consumers and meeting consumer demands is generally a good idea (ever heard of market research?). by allowing their hardware to be used on a wider range of platforms they are broadening the market for their products.
AMD isn't in the business of selling video card drivers, just the video cards. that is why they have open sourced their Radeon drivers in the past. and if we were all as simple-minded as your mom, then no one would ever speak up for themselves. and hardware manufacturers aren't run by mind readers.
don't you need both? if you have a router that supports IPv6 but your OS isn't configured to use IPv6 then you're still not going to be able to access IPv6 hosts. Windows XP still doesn't have IPv6 enabled by default--you need to go to network connection properties and add the protocol "Microsoft TCP/IP version 6" in order to enable IPv6 support.
so it's not a matter of it being IPv6 pushed in the wrong place, but a matter of networking hardware manufacturers being too slow to adopt IPv6. that's not really up to OS developers.
most existing networking equipment can probably already support IPv6 with a firmware update. but a lot of consumer networking equipment vendors are probably waiting for IPv6 to gain more traction so that they can a separate line of "new and improved" IPv6-enabled routers/switches/etc. to cash in on unnecessary equipment upgrades.
what agenda are they advancing? the agenda of being able to use this feature on the platform they are running?
sure, if all hardware manufacturers were in the habit or releasing Unix & Linux drivers then closed-source binaries and a decent API would be fine. but the reality is that many manufacturers do not have good Linux/Unix support. that is fine. but if they want to leave it to the community to develop the Linux/Unix drivers themselves then it would be really helpful to have open source Windows drivers to use as a template.
it's not useless to you since you're running Windows, but not everyone uses a Windows platform for their research. for those people it would be useless without either, open source drivers or a set of Linux/Unix drivers. i mean, if you're already running a Beowulf cluster of Linux/BSD/Solaris machines then it might not be practical to convert them to a Windows cluster (can you even run a Beowulf cluster of Windows machines?), not to mention the cost of buying 64 new Windows licenses and porting all of your existing applications to Windows.
it's probably an exaggeration to say that closed-source drivers are useless. and perhaps AMD will release Linux/Solaris/Unix drivers. but if they're not going to then open sourcing the Windows drivers and the hardware specs would be the next best thing. and the outcry for open source drivers isn't without some merit since past Linux support by AMD/ATI with proprietary drivers have left much to be desired, with Linux drivers only receiving updates half as a often as the Windows drivers and consistently underperforming against comparable graphics cards.
what percentage of high-end professional-grade DSLRs are above 12 Megapixel? a consumer is just someone who consumes goods or services. even a professional photographer who purchases a high-end camera is still a consumer--as opposed to the producer/manufacturer/retailer.
and even with a 2540p frame you can still pan & scan and have a reasonable level of freedom to crop your image at HDTV quality. i also never said that no one needs picture resolution above 2540p. obviously there are going to be useful applications for Super Hi-Vision, not to mention existing astronomical cameras with non-standard sensor resolutions. but for the average person to complain about 2540p as not good enough (especially in the context of playback resolution at a regular movie theater) is pretty banal.
i think the point is that if you want to use GPGPU for cluster computing it's ideal to have open source drivers, especially if you're not going to release Linux/Unix drivers yourself.
that's true. XmlHttpRequest is indeed something that Microsoft has done right and that we should thank them for. and i think it's one of the rare examples showing that Microsoft can be a positive contributor to the web community. so it might actually be a good thing that Microsoft is trying to get into mobile web services. since they do not control the mobile browser market and can't just make everyone switch to IE, this will force MS to keep cross-browser compatibility in mind when developing these advanced web apps.
and as most web developers know, cross browser compatibility is probably one of the most difficult/laborious aspects of web design/development. and the reason for this is largely due to MS's intransigent habit of flouting established open web standards in developing IE. most web browsers are fairly reasonable when it comes to W3C compliance, and it doesn't take much to get a complex layout or application to work across Opera, Firefox, Konquerer, and the majority of common browsers. but IE is always the single browser that requires endless tweaking and inconvenient CSS hacks to get a cross-browser compatible web page.
now that Microsoft has to deal with cross-browser compatibility issues themselves, perhaps they will finally realize the insanity that is caused by their inconsiderate development philosophy. instead of disregarding open web standards and then wasting thousands of man-hours to work around the inconsistencies in browser implementations that they themselves introduce, maybe--just maybe--they will stop being a poor corporate netizen and work with the W3C rather than against it.
that's a rather dumb analogy. RAM usage increases because as computers become more advanced, so too does software, so naturally more memory resources need to be made available. unless people start getting bionic eye implants, there's no practical benefit to be gained from pixel resolution increases that are imperceptible to the human eye.
i think that's an interesting idea, but it seems to be different from what Google wants to accomplish with Android. it seems to me like they're just trying to make an iPhone competitor that isn't locked into the manufacturer's software distribution model. but that still means only working within the confines of a Java sandbox.
but perhaps they could develop an alternate version (or fork) of the Android platform tailored for the tech-savvy/hackers. this way the lock the standard Android distro down enough that the average consumer won't accidentally fubar their phones, but there's also a hacker-friendly distro for power users on which they can host the programming competitions you described. the unlocked Android distro could also be a test bed for new features (introduced by the community), which after some time can be integrated into the standard distro.
doesn't beat it for what? unless you're shooting a movie that's going to be displayed in an IMAX theater why would you need more than 8 Megapixel? pixel resolution means nothing unless you have something capable of displaying the pixel data. and there are few applications in which you would observe any noticeable benefit by going beyond 1080p.
here is a comparison of digital video formats. even if you have a 150" plasma screen TV capable of displaying 4096x2160 resolution, you're not going to notice any difference in video quality above Digital Cinema 2K (2048x1080) or HDTV 1080p unless you're sitting less than 2' away from the TV.
saying that it's only 4096x2160 is like dick-sizing about having a still-camera capable of more than 10 Megapixel resolution. sure, there are people out there that need a 36 Megapixel camera, but for 99.9% of the consumer market it'd be a monumental waste of money. even if you were creating a billboard you could just upscale a 6 Megapixel image at, at most, 72 dpi (and often as low as 9 dpi).