most users aren't aware of how much google knows..
on
Less Than Free
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
...It's bad enough that they crawl though emails to find advertising targets, but the OS is one of their biggest plays yet to analyse every piece of seemingly benign and anonymous user data and assemble a specific user profile. Think about that: one company; the single biggest commercial data-miner knowing many of your details and habits and inferring others. Would they try to extract every possible profit out of that? Personally the last data-mining straw from google was them wanting my mobile number to create an email account. For verification? Yeah right... Wouldn't they just love to add that to the profile.
Is it still same config nightmare?
on
MythTV 0.22 Released
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Do I still have to f**k around with 100 combinations/restarts of Qt, ffmpeg, XVideo, XvMC, libmpeg2, xv-blit, opengl, xlib, xshm, directfb, directx...all whilst not being able to see the f**king mouse cursor and having to hit 'next' five times just to change one setting?
SATA 2 is already a bottleneck for many SSDs as this chart shows them hitting a wall at approximately 260MB/s. SATA 3 should release the proverbial floodgates for sequential reads.
On a tangent, Samsung just started mass production of a 64MB, 60nm phase-change RAM in September. Initially they are going to use them in mobile phones. The chips read, write and erase approximately 7 times faster than Flash memory, and also use less power. Sooner rather than later Samsung or the other PRAM producer Numonyx will put the chips in SSDs that can read and write at around 1GB per second.
We're not supposed to drop 'legal' connections but we still don't want the high traffic users. We'll filter all high traffic connections. Configure the sandvine filters to increase latency 50% on P2P connections and website x. When the high traffic users complain say 'we're entitled to filter to remove 'illegal' connections. When they cry 'net neutrality' politely inform them that we comply with the rules because we aren't 'preventing users from sending or receiving lawful content', just hindering aka throttling.
I guess some marketing type figured 'Public.Resource.Org' was trendy and would appeal to the 'internet generation'. I wouldn't take it seriously going by that name. Similar to 'OO.o', pay the trademark owner or get a different name. They both posses a sense of levity.
I think that having an apple peel as a logo isn't all that great: do they sell food scraps?. Further shaping the apple peel as an apple is a bit absurd, and it could be an intentional subconscious reference to Apple Inc.. I don't like the logo because those three points.
IMO the logo is in a grey area -- it has similarities and differences. I wouldn't mistake one logo for another and I don't think a reasonable person would.
Ultimately I think that an apple is commonplace and no-one should be able to register it as a trademark. However if the apple is differentiated then that's ok: Apple Inc. has a grey glossy apple with a bite in it: that's unique. The Woolworths apple is a a green apple peel: that's unique, and not in the same way as the first. As long as in a split second glimpse a reasonable person isn't able to confuse one unique apple trademark with another then they should be able to co-exist.
Indeed the rules of grammar can be seem obscure and almost arbitrary. However the rules of grammar8 actually grew naturally (i.e. not via committee, despite appearances) from a need of educated people to greatly clarify their communication. Unfortunately more and more people consider it of little relevance to them as they can communicate what they need to without much consideration of grammar.
I've learnt that as ones handle of grammar improves and ones vocabulary grows that their range and clarity of communication also grows. Unfortunately in this day-and-age it does take two to effectively use grammar and vocabulary.
*Not that great with grammar, but appreciates it's function.
[This statement is currently in the public domain - 18 September 2009]
Further to your recent correspondence with our PR agency and parent
company, I am writing to respond to your queries in connection with the
edition of Watchdog that is scheduled for broadcast on Thursday 17
September 2009. I should state at the outset that we are, of course,
disappointed if a small number of our consumers appear to have
experienced problems with their PlayStation 3 units outside the
manufacturer's warranty period and we take our customer care
obligations very seriously. It is for this reason that SCEUK operates a
service of out of warranty repair or replacement (replacement with a
refurbished unit within 48 hours at the consumer's convenience by
courier). To be clear, this service is subsidised by SCEUK, there is no
profit made by SCEUK on this service.
You have informed us that this broadcast will include a report
concerning faults alleged to affect PlayStation®3 consoles, and SCEUK's
policy on out-of-warranty (OOW) repairs. Most importantly, we entirely
refute the suggestion that PS3 consoles have an inherent defect or
other design issue which is akin to any warranty issue experienced by
another console manufacturer. SCEUK has sold 2.5 million consoles in
the UK since March 2007 and stands by the quality of its products.
Clearly the allegations you propose to air in your program might have
the potential to adversely effect Sony Computer Entertainment's
reputation for supplying high quality products and customer service and
we take very seriously any issues that can impact the public's or our
customers' confidence in those products.
From the correspondence to date, I have serious concerns as to the
accuracy of these allegations and the likely tone of the Watchdog
report. The information that you have provided suggests a fundamental
misunderstanding of the technical issues and a mis-characterisation of
SCEUK's OOW repairs policy. It is in all parties' interests that your
reporting does not contain inaccurate or distorted information and the
facts are presented in a manner which is not misleading or exaggerated.
I trust the detailed information in this letter will enable the BBC to
adopt a more balanced and sober approach to this issue than we have
experienced to date.
1. You have indicated that a number of viewers had contacted you to
complain about a fault affecting their PS3 systems, whereby "a yellow
light appears and their console then stops working - anecdotally called
the 'yellow light of death'" (your email of 18 August 2009).
2. You clarified in your letter of 25 August 2009 that the majority
of those viewers had experienced problems with the 60GB launch model of
the PS3. In that letter, you went on to say that, after examining three
PS3 systems that had "displayed symptoms" of this fault, the
consultancy Electronics Yorkshire noted the presence of higher levels
of voids in soldering than would have been expected, in the case of two
of those units. Your letter continued: "These voids can be problematic
in some cases, but by no means in all cases. In some instances,... these
voids can fracture at the inter-metallic interface... If this fracture
was to occur on a vital connection, it would stop the console from
working. [Electronics Yorkshire] is of the opinion that this problem
[presumably: excessive voiding] has occurred during the manufacturing
process and not as a result of consumer use or a thermal effect during
use."
3. Your letter went on to say that, in the opinion of three
commercial repairers of PS3 systems, the supposed "'yellow light of
death' fault is caused by a soldering issue".
4. With respect, neither your letter of 25 August nor any other
information you have provided (including the Electronics Yorkshire
report) establishes that there is such a thing as a "'yellow light of
death' fault". In this regard:
The phrase "yellow light of death" has been adopted by certain
members of the online community to describe the s
So from reading the title and skimming the summary I thought 'ooh, lots of faulty ps3's. Must be the new slim version. Guess I won't touch that then.'. But only 0.5% failure rate? And nothing to do with the slim? It seems to be a subtle slander piece. I wonder why the program producers would make it?
I'm not a fanboy for the Xbox360 or the PS3 but the simple fact is that a high failure rate is so-far a feature exclusive to the Xbox360.
P.S. There's a long 18 point reply in the comments from the Sony Computer Entertainment's UK Managing Director Ray Maguire.
iPhone really took off because it offered an interface that few had ever experienced.
The iPhone took off because it was shiny, minimalist and made by a company renowned for minimalist. So many people buy them because so many people are attracted to that, however naive that attraction may be.
The interface is natural, easy to master, and effective. All truly revolutionary technologies have these aspects.
I disagree. I can't immediatley think of a real-life example, but many people will select form over function, Mr. Garrisons gyroscope-powered monowheel comes to mind.
SSD circuitry dictates the creation of pages and blocks.
A page is the minimum amount you can write, say 4KB
A block is the minimum you can delete, and it is made up of multiple pages, say 5.
If a block contains pages to keep and pages to delete, the circuitry has to delete the whole block, then rewrite the valid pages just to clear the deletable pages. This takes more time.
Current SDDs when told to delete a file just update the file table and leave the time-consuming delete task to when something needs to be written to a deleted but non-empty page.
The TRIM command deletes blocks as the file is deleted from the file table, so the write operation doesn't have to wait around for the sequence of: cache-valid-pages>delete-block>rewrite-valid-pages>write-new-pages.
So no, it wont make drive forensics easier, in fact it will remove any trace of a deleted file.
My summation. It might be off the mark. See the great AnandTech SDD explanation, where I got the information from.
So the volume of shuttle exhaust material is enough to fill a significant portion of the upper atmosphere of the North Pole?
Why don't we see people rolling around choking at shuttle launches as the huge volume of exhaust displaces the breathable atmosphere from sea-level to stratosphere?
That's some subjective BS right there. HD-DVD came out earlier anyway and I think with better marketing. The support of the film studios and electronics companies played roles also.
...or is this just the media cynically cheering-on a 'peoples revolution' so that they can fill out their news cycles. So far I haven't heard of any widespread election tamporing, some anecdotal stories, unlike in some other elections. I could have missed it though.
Honestly so far I just see this as a knee-jerk reaction in the west sympathising with the disgruntled minority voters because clearly 'Iranians would never vote for that evil, west-hating dictator, so it must have been rigged'.
One thing I DID hear through some media analyses is that up until a few months ago, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the favourite to get elected, then he made some fumbles, made some comments, and his standing in THE ELECTION POLLS significantly reduced, and the opposition got giddy. Well that can either be a realistic reflection of the voters intentions, or it could just be a backlash that gets put to the side when it comes to making the final and long-term decision in the voting box.
So, is there any evidence of election rigging yet?
PS, I'm not apologising for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, just that suggesting that, maybe, he is popularly supported. I know that when I watched a recent doco about Iran I was surprised that their society was much more modern and free than I felt that I had been led to believe. PPS I'm not saying it wasn't rigged either, just that in the large amount of media I have seen on it, it is all about rallys and protest, not of massive vote rigging, feel free to point out something concrete on the contrary.
It uses an AMD Turion X2 35W TDP CPU, not quite CULV, but it's pretty much the best value tablet around, and nice and portable at 12.1", only complaint is the somewhat washed-out screen, but that's a given for tablets with both a touchscreen and active digitizer.
Anyway, if CULV is the new 'battleground', I think on one hand Intel would have an advantage because of their typically lower TDPs (thermal design power, heat that needs to be removed) for a given performance level, however on the other hand, AMD usually has the avantage of costing less coin for a given performance level (eg the tablet above would cost about 35~40% if it was on an Intel platform), so who knows really who's going to lead.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3679
...It's bad enough that they crawl though emails to find advertising targets, but the OS is one of their biggest plays yet to analyse every piece of seemingly benign and anonymous user data and assemble a specific user profile. Think about that: one company; the single biggest commercial data-miner knowing many of your details and habits and inferring others. Would they try to extract every possible profit out of that? Personally the last data-mining straw from google was them wanting my mobile number to create an email account. For verification? Yeah right... Wouldn't they just love to add that to the profile.
And that's just the front-end!
Do I still have to f**k around with 100 combinations/restarts of Qt, ffmpeg, XVideo, XvMC, libmpeg2, xv-blit, opengl, xlib, xshm, directfb, directx ...all whilst not being able to see the f**king mouse cursor and having to hit 'next' five times just to change one setting?
SATA 2 is already a bottleneck for many SSDs as this chart shows them hitting a wall at approximately 260MB/s. SATA 3 should release the proverbial floodgates for sequential reads.
On a tangent, Samsung just started mass production of a 64MB, 60nm phase-change RAM in September. Initially they are going to use them in mobile phones. The chips read, write and erase approximately 7 times faster than Flash memory, and also use less power. Sooner rather than later Samsung or the other PRAM producer Numonyx will put the chips in SSDs that can read and write at around 1GB per second.
Hmmm, if Xerox gets its way with a monopoly razor-blade like business in printable solder, ink won't be cheap.
...I wonder if it could get blown off course :0
...concidering the ISP legal-slime logic:
We're not supposed to drop 'legal' connections but we still don't want the high traffic users. We'll filter all high traffic connections. Configure the sandvine filters to increase latency 50% on P2P connections and website x. When the high traffic users complain say 'we're entitled to filter to remove 'illegal' connections. When they cry 'net neutrality' politely inform them that we comply with the rules because we aren't 'preventing users from sending or receiving lawful content', just hindering aka throttling.
I guess some marketing type figured 'Public.Resource.Org' was trendy and would appeal to the 'internet generation'. I wouldn't take it seriously going by that name. Similar to 'OO.o', pay the trademark owner or get a different name. They both posses a sense of levity.
I think that having an apple peel as a logo isn't all that great: do they sell food scraps?. Further shaping the apple peel as an apple is a bit absurd, and it could be an intentional subconscious reference to Apple Inc.. I don't like the logo because those three points.
IMO the logo is in a grey area -- it has similarities and differences. I wouldn't mistake one logo for another and I don't think a reasonable person would.
Ultimately I think that an apple is commonplace and no-one should be able to register it as a trademark. However if the apple is differentiated then that's ok: Apple Inc. has a grey glossy apple with a bite in it: that's unique. The Woolworths apple is a a green apple peel: that's unique, and not in the same way as the first. As long as in a split second glimpse a reasonable person isn't able to confuse one unique apple trademark with another then they should be able to co-exist.
Indeed the rules of grammar can be seem obscure and almost arbitrary. However the rules of grammar8 actually grew naturally (i.e. not via committee, despite appearances) from a need of educated people to greatly clarify their communication. Unfortunately more and more people consider it of little relevance to them as they can communicate what they need to without much consideration of grammar.
I've learnt that as ones handle of grammar improves and ones vocabulary grows that their range and clarity of communication also grows. Unfortunately in this day-and-age it does take two to effectively use grammar and vocabulary.
*Not that great with grammar, but appreciates it's function.
Never really thought about it 'til now but -- why isn't there a consumer-level optical PHY already??.
The only thing close to a technological limitation that I can imagine would have to be the modem silicon
[This statement is currently in the public domain - 18 September 2009]
Further to your recent correspondence with our PR agency and parent company, I am writing to respond to your queries in connection with the edition of Watchdog that is scheduled for broadcast on Thursday 17 September 2009. I should state at the outset that we are, of course, disappointed if a small number of our consumers appear to have experienced problems with their PlayStation 3 units outside the manufacturer's warranty period and we take our customer care obligations very seriously. It is for this reason that SCEUK operates a service of out of warranty repair or replacement (replacement with a refurbished unit within 48 hours at the consumer's convenience by courier). To be clear, this service is subsidised by SCEUK, there is no profit made by SCEUK on this service.
You have informed us that this broadcast will include a report concerning faults alleged to affect PlayStation®3 consoles, and SCEUK's policy on out-of-warranty (OOW) repairs. Most importantly, we entirely refute the suggestion that PS3 consoles have an inherent defect or other design issue which is akin to any warranty issue experienced by another console manufacturer. SCEUK has sold 2.5 million consoles in the UK since March 2007 and stands by the quality of its products. Clearly the allegations you propose to air in your program might have the potential to adversely effect Sony Computer Entertainment's reputation for supplying high quality products and customer service and we take very seriously any issues that can impact the public's or our customers' confidence in those products.
From the correspondence to date, I have serious concerns as to the accuracy of these allegations and the likely tone of the Watchdog report. The information that you have provided suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the technical issues and a mis-characterisation of SCEUK's OOW repairs policy. It is in all parties' interests that your reporting does not contain inaccurate or distorted information and the facts are presented in a manner which is not misleading or exaggerated. I trust the detailed information in this letter will enable the BBC to adopt a more balanced and sober approach to this issue than we have experienced to date.
1. You have indicated that a number of viewers had contacted you to complain about a fault affecting their PS3 systems, whereby "a yellow light appears and their console then stops working - anecdotally called the 'yellow light of death'" (your email of 18 August 2009).
2. You clarified in your letter of 25 August 2009 that the majority of those viewers had experienced problems with the 60GB launch model of the PS3. In that letter, you went on to say that, after examining three PS3 systems that had "displayed symptoms" of this fault, the consultancy Electronics Yorkshire noted the presence of higher levels of voids in soldering than would have been expected, in the case of two of those units. Your letter continued: "These voids can be problematic in some cases, but by no means in all cases. In some instances,... these voids can fracture at the inter-metallic interface... If this fracture was to occur on a vital connection, it would stop the console from working. [Electronics Yorkshire] is of the opinion that this problem [presumably: excessive voiding] has occurred during the manufacturing process and not as a result of consumer use or a thermal effect during use."
3. Your letter went on to say that, in the opinion of three commercial repairers of PS3 systems, the supposed "'yellow light of death' fault is caused by a soldering issue".
4. With respect, neither your letter of 25 August nor any other information you have provided (including the Electronics Yorkshire report) establishes that there is such a thing as a "'yellow light of death' fault". In this regard:
The phrase "yellow light of death" has been adopted by certain members of the online community to describe the s
So from reading the title and skimming the summary I thought 'ooh, lots of faulty ps3's. Must be the new slim version. Guess I won't touch that then.'. But only 0.5% failure rate? And nothing to do with the slim? It seems to be a subtle slander piece. I wonder why the program producers would make it?
I'm not a fanboy for the Xbox360 or the PS3 but the simple fact is that a high failure rate is so-far a feature exclusive to the Xbox360.
P.S. There's a long 18 point reply in the comments from the Sony Computer Entertainment's UK Managing Director Ray Maguire.
The iPhone took off because it was shiny, minimalist and made by a company renowned for minimalist. So many people buy them because so many people are attracted to that, however naive that attraction may be.
I disagree. I can't immediatley think of a real-life example, but many people will select form over function, Mr. Garrisons gyroscope-powered monowheel comes to mind.
Are they advocating a hands-on approach to rocketry?
To NUKE the place from orbit!!!
SSD circuitry dictates the creation of pages and blocks.
A page is the minimum amount you can write, say 4KB
A block is the minimum you can delete, and it is made up of multiple pages, say 5.
If a block contains pages to keep and pages to delete, the circuitry has to delete the whole block, then rewrite the valid pages just to clear the deletable pages. This takes more time.
Current SDDs when told to delete a file just update the file table and leave the time-consuming delete task to when something needs to be written to a deleted but non-empty page.
The TRIM command deletes blocks as the file is deleted from the file table, so the write operation doesn't have to wait around for the sequence of: cache-valid-pages>delete-block>rewrite-valid-pages>write-new-pages.
So no, it wont make drive forensics easier, in fact it will remove any trace of a deleted file.
My summation. It might be off the mark. See the great AnandTech SDD explanation, where I got the information from.
...Just so much dumb shit happening in that place, accepting bribes to hurt the organic food industry are easy to imagine.
So the volume of shuttle exhaust material is enough to fill a significant portion of the upper atmosphere of the North Pole?
Why don't we see people rolling around choking at shuttle launches as the huge volume of exhaust displaces the breathable atmosphere from sea-level to stratosphere?
Now that we know of their retreat to the moon, make no mistake, they are building their numbers rapidly. The space rabbit invasion will come.
That's some subjective BS right there. HD-DVD came out earlier anyway and I think with better marketing. The support of the film studios and electronics companies played roles also.
...or is this just the media cynically cheering-on a 'peoples revolution' so that they can fill out their news cycles. So far I haven't heard of any widespread election tamporing, some anecdotal stories, unlike in some other elections. I could have missed it though.
Honestly so far I just see this as a knee-jerk reaction in the west sympathising with the disgruntled minority voters because clearly 'Iranians would never vote for that evil, west-hating dictator, so it must have been rigged'.
One thing I DID hear through some media analyses is that up until a few months ago, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the favourite to get elected, then he made some fumbles, made some comments, and his standing in THE ELECTION POLLS significantly reduced, and the opposition got giddy. Well that can either be a realistic reflection of the voters intentions, or it could just be a backlash that gets put to the side when it comes to making the final and long-term decision in the voting box.
So, is there any evidence of election rigging yet?
PS, I'm not apologising for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, just that suggesting that, maybe, he is popularly supported. I know that when I watched a recent doco about Iran I was surprised that their society was much more modern and free than I felt that I had been led to believe.
PPS I'm not saying it wasn't rigged either, just that in the large amount of media I have seen on it, it is all about rallys and protest, not of massive vote rigging, feel free to point out something concrete on the contrary.
It uses an AMD Turion X2 35W TDP CPU, not quite CULV, but it's pretty much the best value tablet around, and nice and portable at 12.1", only complaint is the somewhat washed-out screen, but that's a given for tablets with both a touchscreen and active digitizer.
Anyway, if CULV is the new 'battleground', I think on one hand Intel would have an advantage because of their typically lower TDPs (thermal design power, heat that needs to be removed) for a given performance level, however on the other hand, AMD usually has the avantage of costing less coin for a given performance level (eg the tablet above would cost about 35~40% if it was on an Intel platform), so who knows really who's going to lead.
...They submitted a patent application for something like this in January 2006 see here. Personally I would prefer to use a discreet webcam.