That kind of virus protection was present in older BIOS implementations, while win9x/ME was still present. With Win2K/XP, no such protections work (for MBR booting) because other drivers are accessing the HW directly (and you cannot enforce on HW because that would prevent repartitioning). For UEFI-booting, the UEFI firmware has a complete path to a partition+file. There is no way to protect a single file with a compromised OS.
My experice comes from Lenovo with Win8 consumer preview. Used win7 (from lenovo) and debian, both through UEFI. Installed win8 CP over win7. 1st problem: i could no longer change the boot order. I could boot both OSes, but I could not boot linux without boot menu. So I used the UEFI tool from debian to change the order.....debian booted by default...but win8 refused to boot. No option to disable secure boot.
So my opinion, MS is to blame only for forcing secure-boot, leading to OEM delivering incomplete implementations.
Yeah....but those HUDs are certified by the same lawmakers. And they are implemented by car makers that risk the entire car being delayed because of "too much info" in the HUD. As for after-market HUDs, they also should be certified, as laws don't allow anything uncertified between head and windshiled. But these uncertified devices are easier to control (like fines for using them uncertified) because once installed, they are not easily removed (like Google Glasses).
I wonder who selected the test music? Like many already commented, some music sounds better than other at same rate of lossy compression. Not to mention the encoder itself. Just make sure you listen to one tune from your original CD is a quiet room and then switch to it's mp3. Difference comes from comparison, and if you can't accurately remember one sample while playing the other, you can't make a comparison. Oh...and you can test them with you 2$ earbuds. If there is something to be found, you will find it.
Do remember that any statistics can be skewed to show one result or the other, when infact the truth is right in the middle.
PS: the article you point to has only a few paragraphs for lossy compression, with no conclusion. Nice read (I already agree that CD-quality is enough)...but....
Please stop comparing analog reproduction with digital artifacts. Lossy compression brings artifacts. For example take a single note on an instrument which produces a range of frequencies, something like a gauss curve. The lossy compression in this case would just cut the ends of the range. This is related to low-amplitude (low-volume) frequencies. This can be heard even on cheap gear provided the ambient noise is low enough. But the question is: do you actually know how the instrument has to sound?
If you listen to just mp3s, then ok...you say mp3s are as good as the original. But did you listen to the original as much as the mp3? Did you listen to it in a low-noise ambient (something like goind-to-sleep enviroment)? Even the cheapest gear can show you the artifacts. And once you found them, you will always hear them. Ok...maybe I sound like I say that cheap vs. quality equipment makes no difference. That is not true. Reproduction quality does make a difference of how you spot the artifacts, but the idea is that the difference is not that big. I think most artifacts can be spotted in low-ambient noise enviroment, which is usually not associated with cheap equipment. Compact PC speakers? Gaming/office computers (where focus is on the screen, not audio). Earbuds? Portable on the (noisy) street (to exchange enviroment noise with music). Hi-fi gear? Dark, silent HT room.
As a side note, while many people cannot differentiate lossy vs lossless (or did not have the right enviroment), I noticed very annoing artifacts on recompression: I made a local-network radio station (because I got tired with 3 devices with it's own playlist) with 320Kbps MP3 streaming, and when I got to hear a 128Kbps song, I had to stop it after 10 seconds (I'm talking about rock which some say it's hardest to spot). The original 128Kb song was good enough, but recompressed (even to higher bitrate) was terrible. Now I have 2 streams, one flac for devices that support it, and one 320Kbps mp3 for those that don't or when I want to listen away from home (well, Logitech insists on checking my private streams, so I had to make them available outside). And I avoid mp3 files as much as I can.
I work in automotive non-UI enviroment. And I can tell you that the OS is very minimal. It hooks to a timer interrupt and executes predefined tasks based on timer. It has no memory sharing, no drivers, no filesystems. It just handles context switches. So me knowing about it, I can tell you that yes, you can make a working OS in one afternoon.
The tablet he describes may appeal to several hundred to several thousand people worldwide [given the current tablet market largely filled by iPad's, Kindle's, and Samsungs].
For it to be worthwhile [as it takes time, money and effort to pack all those electronics into a reasonably sized package], it'll probably need to cost several thousand dollars to break even for the manufacturer.
And at that price, the market for the device is right about ZERO.
Actually no...the features he's requesting, except for the offline maps (which is entirely SW solution and I remember the WM5 prices) would not raise the price, let's say of the nexus 7, by more than 100$. So that would be 250 raised to 350....much lower than 1000$(were you start). Remember, the HW design phase is long and costly, but starting with those added goals will not increase the cost per unit very much. The HW cost of components is much larger (especially in todays global economy) than the development.
I personally love the N7 construction except for the missing card reader and HDMI output. Those were my deal-breakers. But just because someone bought it and never complained, does not mean he/she would not have paid 50$+ to get those features. And if you say they'd never use them, you'd be surprised of the difference between requirement and usefullness (what was that quote: better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have). I'm sure N7's sales would not have been affected by +50$ for those 2 features, since it had virtualy no competition at it's price (maybe Galaxy Tab 2, but that require you to carry proprietary adapters).
Now that I searched for it, it seems I used dd. But anyway, here it is: #!/bin/sh hdparm -i $1 smartctl -a $1 date time dd if=$1 of=/dev/null bs=1M date smartctl -a $1 time dd if=/dev/zero of=$1 bs=1M date smartctl -a $1 time dd if=$1 of=/dev/null bs=1M smartctl -a $1
I run the script followed by "| tee result.txt". In case you want to change to dd_rescue, bear in mind that it outputs a lot of data (progress) which should not be redirected.
I actually do read-write-read tests (dd_rescue because it can keep going after an error), with smartctl in between each and judge by myself what changed. I did it so often that I bothered to make a bash script to do everything and run overnight (I think it takes 3 hours for each step on my 2TB drives). The idea for the 1st read is to update the "pending" list (if it needed), followed by writing to rectify it. A final read to see everything is ok (no pending increase). Although I has several HDDs, I only had 1 pending on a new HDD, and that was on a 2TB 4KB/sector WD green drive when I played with the 63-sectors compatibility jumper. I still have that after 1 year.
After all the dual-booting to play games (and mostly remaining in Windows after playing), last year (10th nov 2011 actually) I managed to play my first hours on a virtual machine. And I'm talking Deus Ex HR at 1920x1080. I managed to use my i5-2500 (non-K) to virtualize (VT-d) my Radeon 5850 and a USB controller, thus having native GPU and input (audio took half a year of trial and error, and now my Hercules Fortission IV is working flawless). I've scored all my 80 hours of Skyrim, around 40 of DXHR and already 35 hours of Dishonored. Also a log of iRacing (which just released a 64-bit binary). The downsides: - obviously Windows is still present - extra step to start VM (but I've got SSD....so not that bad) - extra HW (IGP and GPU, 2 sound cards, 2 NICs) - !!! hard to make it work
I'm looking now to upgrade to 7950 and 2 additional monitors for eyefinity.
I know I'm a little off-topic, but I just wanted to say I found a workaround.
Me too. Slackware, Redhat 6.? to 9.0, debian, ubuntu 8.?? +.... , Now debian+xubuntu (as in many systems with one of them). Also I have experimented with LFS+gentoo (the 1st versions...including cross-compiling fo my Pentium with MMX laptop).
You want a standard for controlling, so that everyone can control their aid, but that also opens the door to those that want to control OTHERS aid, without their permission. Sometimes the standards have holes in design, other times the implementation can have bugs. Either way, it's a risk no medical company will take. They prefer a closed protocol, that can not go through external scrutiny (security by obscurity). Another such example (in my line of work) is usage of ethernet in cars. While ethernet by itself would be ok, they also want internet in cars, which means there will be at least 1 device with both connections (internet and in-car ethernet) which will be vulnerable to external attacks (think about someone locking your brakes at 100mph, after disabling ABS+ESP). I even think they will try controller updating over internet which will be even worse.
Actually the problem is real. And I'm not talking about MS, but BIOS (should I say firmware) vendors. I played with my Thinkpad Edge E120, and I found a problem: after installing Windows 8 (consumer preview...as I remember), I could no longer change the boot order from the setup screen. One-time boot choice does work, but I could not change the order for permanent usage. Also, as soon as I changed the order from linux, Win8 refused to load (even after returning the order to the original one). My thinkpad has no mention of disabling secure-boot. I don't even know if returning to BIOS-style booting would allow me to change the order.
I've got nothing against secure-boot, but easy methods of self-signing need to be provided. The secure-boot should be "binaries that I trust", not "binaries that MS trusts". The latter is fine for most end-users, but those who do know what they do....should not be locked by vendors.
So I would say boicott vendors to support secure-boot better.
PS: no I don't know the API details. I did see articles stating bad reference implementation of UEFI. And I mean really bad (as in inability to follow the specification 100% to boot something). PPS: while this post may seem to be defending MS, I can guarantee that I want to dispose of it in my daily use. I even went so far as to virtualize a Win7 enviroment specifically for gaming (with AMD 5850 that is...... thank you Xen comunity + Intel VT-d).
I second this line. x120e, x130e etc....although the x130e also goes as Edge E120 (europe/non-US maybe??? couldn't find a pattern). I bough the Edge E120 i3 version (the AMD version is E125....but apart from MB they're the same) after many years of a 14" T61. Linux is my main use, although I still have the shipped 7 Pro as backup. I'm a computer obsessed biker (motorcycle, not bicycle), and I wanted a nice small laptop for carrying along the minimal packing. Thinkpad was a great choice because of another feature: conditional battery charging....will never charge the battery if below 96% (percentage can be changed/customized easily). Even if you plug it in while it's powered off. I don't know about the "cheaper" lines from Lenovo, but this is one of the reasons I remained a fan (saw it in T61 first). It's great when you use it mainly on AC.
Too bad they changed the chasis of the x120e...I liked the hinges of that one.
Please expand your knowledge to non-exact science....call info are recorded/sampled exactly because they are human-created. DNA and fingerprints are sampled with a small error, so searches are done with ranges. Add the error on 2 axis...and the search itself is more than you can comprehend. Trust me, there are scientists working on optimizing these.
Oh...forgot to say...all those monitorings are not really personal. For example cable modem: they cannot say which member of the family watched which shows. With ID chips...that is just one small step away.
I'm sorry, but no everyone has a facebook account. Today, if you want to be "anonymous" (not the anti-piracy group), you still can, provided you have some knowledge at aviodance.
But my problem is (apart from watching a lot of movies up to 2-3 years ago) that a powerful person can do evil by shutting up those who oppose (like knowing always where they are and taking actions constantly against them). How was it in Enemy of the State ? "Who will be monitoring those who are monitoring?" (or something like that)
I would posit that evidence that infringement happened at all, whether it was willful or not should be enough to warrant corrective action
From my understanding, copyright is about distributing (uploading), not getting and using. So under current laws, if you torrent a copyrighted file, you cannot control the upload. So you start your file (which should not be infringing), but you let it overnight. Now in the morning, you see that you have uploaded 3x the data. So that 3x means you DID distribute it. Even if you did not intended to do it. I saw in Vuze (ex Azureus) that you cannot set an "ignore" rule with share ratio under 1:1. Other clients may use same tactics.
The RIAA also warns that the need to hire an attorney to navigate the ITC's arcane legal process will 'put justice out of reach for small business American victims of IP theft.'
So they have humor! I really cannot see this statement in any other way, since many indie developers say that they got more income through piracy.
The number itself is not so important as to it beign small. And acutally I work in a multi-national company which does use encryption, but supported by IT department. So I have "access" to "click-to-encrypt" feature, which even most non-technical personel knows how to use it. It's just that at development level, nobody uses it. Maybe HR and financial do use it often.
I have not tried Ubuntu 11.10, but 11.04 (which is supposed to ship with Unity) is unworkable with a touchscreen. I have tried it with Asus T101MT, and after the (small) hassle (which should work in 11.10) of making it recognise the touchscreen, usability was worse than old gnome. This is because the left application bar (or whatever else it's used for) relies on mouse hover, especially if you have little screen space (10" screen??) or many apps/bookmarks (whatever they are). Because of this, I only tried once 11.10, but I don't remember the result (so I suppose it was not an improvement).
Another problem is lack of a good virtual keyboard (this is to all distributions, not just unity-based). Although I have not tried it in over 3 months, I never liked the onscreen keyboards I could find. I'm afraid in this area MS rules (I'm talking about PC-based OS, and I have no idea about iOS). I have used the provided Win7 ever since that trial. Although buying a 7" Android tablet really dropped the usage rate of the T101MT.
Overscan is mostly visible on the inputs (from PC), but it is present also on cable and air broadcasts. 1. 2. 3. Broken: FullHD 1920x1080 screen, FullHD 1920x1080 signal, and still the TV's SW will "zoom in" (to remove 5-10% of the margins). WHY???? Why 1 pixel from source signal is different than TV pixel? I understand that on 480i and 576i "offscreen" space was used for syncronisation (deployed in early 1900s), but 720p and 1080p were deployed when TV's and HD sources (even converters) had enough processing power to eliminate it. For 1$/unit? You will never see a FullHD movie as crisp as it can be until overscan is eliminated.
4. Oh...and why do we have 1360x768 (or 1366x768) panels instead of 1280x720.....and whoever says "Windows", I'll shoot them (in reference to 2nd XP standard resolution: 1024x768).
5. Advertising is gone too far: when a 1h30m movie is scheduled for 2h30m. 1 minute of advertising is probably acceptable by anyone. Maybe even 2 (the money really comes from somewhere)....but having 10 minutes of advertising after 20-30mins of the "content" (movie or show).....I wonder why I even watch it.....but now we have DVRs, so I do have around 30s of advertising at high speeds....if I don't watch live.
What the fuck does that have to do with anything? A kid in a basement could develop a new hardware design as well. Or invent a new mousetrap, which would be patentable. But in the end, the cost and complexity of the equipment used to manufacture an invention have absolutely jack shit to do with the patentability of that invention.
Sure it does. Patents provide you with control over your idea and offer a monopoly to it's implementation. If you don't license your idea (which is legal), you can only obtain money if you sell end products. Those end products have high margins for SW, where you can have 90% profit easy (note: not the research and development, only manufacturing=copying), whereas a HW product will probably not have more than 50%. Also, for SW you can sell at least 10x the number of units compared to HW, since the replication of HW will take you a lot of time (let's face it, a basement kid will not have a production line). So this rough computation means you get at least 18x money in the same period. Also, the investment (R&D) is much lower in SW because testing is done much faster and cheaper than a HW product. Why do you think almost everything goes into SW?
As for the process comparison, many SW patents are actually too small modules. Companies are not interested in quality patents, just in numbers. They throw patents hoping that 10% are approved. For instance Apple's "slide to unlock" patent I would compare it to "low-pass filter". Surely nobody used it until iPhone, but they were not many touchscreens at that time (PDAs and tablets were limited to business users). So while Apple did show the idea, it was approved too late (because of the delay in millions of other SW patents pending) and now is common because of their marketshare in the category they created.
In summary, you have much bigger profit and faster time to delivery, but you still get the HW's exclusiveness period. This is just milking the system and NOT supporting innovation. Supporting innovation is allowing your competitor to improve your idea if you cannot or, just the fact that he can improve, to offer you an incentive to improve it first. If your idea does not catch immediately, then you are in the wrong time and deal with it: innovate more. If it does, then learn to profit in the shortest time but still innovate while in peak, don't turn into a potato-couch for the rest of your life.
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That's just it: fat32 is known & used. Haven't you seen those 100-500mb boot partitions that win vista & newer create? Those are because of uefi.
That kind of virus protection was present in older BIOS implementations, while win9x/ME was still present. With Win2K/XP, no such protections work (for MBR booting) because other drivers are accessing the HW directly (and you cannot enforce on HW because that would prevent repartitioning).
For UEFI-booting, the UEFI firmware has a complete path to a partition+file. There is no way to protect a single file with a compromised OS.
My experice comes from Lenovo with Win8 consumer preview.
Used win7 (from lenovo) and debian, both through UEFI.
Installed win8 CP over win7. 1st problem: i could no longer change the boot order. I could boot both OSes, but I could not boot linux without boot menu.
So I used the UEFI tool from debian to change the order.....debian booted by default...but win8 refused to boot.
No option to disable secure boot.
So my opinion, MS is to blame only for forcing secure-boot, leading to OEM delivering incomplete implementations.
Yeah....but those HUDs are certified by the same lawmakers. And they are implemented by car makers that risk the entire car being delayed because of "too much info" in the HUD.
As for after-market HUDs, they also should be certified, as laws don't allow anything uncertified between head and windshiled. But these uncertified devices are easier to control (like fines for using them uncertified) because once installed, they are not easily removed (like Google Glasses).
I wonder who selected the test music? Like many already commented, some music sounds better than other at same rate of lossy compression. Not to mention the encoder itself.
Just make sure you listen to one tune from your original CD is a quiet room and then switch to it's mp3. Difference comes from comparison, and if you can't accurately remember one sample while playing the other, you can't make a comparison. Oh...and you can test them with you 2$ earbuds. If there is something to be found, you will find it.
Do remember that any statistics can be skewed to show one result or the other, when infact the truth is right in the middle.
PS: the article you point to has only a few paragraphs for lossy compression, with no conclusion. Nice read (I already agree that CD-quality is enough)...but....
Please stop comparing analog reproduction with digital artifacts. Lossy compression brings artifacts. For example take a single note on an instrument which produces a range of frequencies, something like a gauss curve. The lossy compression in this case would just cut the ends of the range. This is related to low-amplitude (low-volume) frequencies. This can be heard even on cheap gear provided the ambient noise is low enough. But the question is: do you actually know how the instrument has to sound?
If you listen to just mp3s, then ok...you say mp3s are as good as the original. But did you listen to the original as much as the mp3? Did you listen to it in a low-noise ambient (something like goind-to-sleep enviroment)? Even the cheapest gear can show you the artifacts. And once you found them, you will always hear them.
Ok...maybe I sound like I say that cheap vs. quality equipment makes no difference. That is not true. Reproduction quality does make a difference of how you spot the artifacts, but the idea is that the difference is not that big. I think most artifacts can be spotted in low-ambient noise enviroment, which is usually not associated with cheap equipment. Compact PC speakers? Gaming/office computers (where focus is on the screen, not audio). Earbuds? Portable on the (noisy) street (to exchange enviroment noise with music). Hi-fi gear? Dark, silent HT room.
As a side note, while many people cannot differentiate lossy vs lossless (or did not have the right enviroment), I noticed very annoing artifacts on recompression: I made a local-network radio station (because I got tired with 3 devices with it's own playlist) with 320Kbps MP3 streaming, and when I got to hear a 128Kbps song, I had to stop it after 10 seconds (I'm talking about rock which some say it's hardest to spot). The original 128Kb song was good enough, but recompressed (even to higher bitrate) was terrible. Now I have 2 streams, one flac for devices that support it, and one 320Kbps mp3 for those that don't or when I want to listen away from home (well, Logitech insists on checking my private streams, so I had to make them available outside). And I avoid mp3 files as much as I can.
I work in automotive non-UI enviroment. And I can tell you that the OS is very minimal. It hooks to a timer interrupt and executes predefined tasks based on timer. It has no memory sharing, no drivers, no filesystems. It just handles context switches.
So me knowing about it, I can tell you that yes, you can make a working OS in one afternoon.
Fine.
The tablet he describes may appeal to several hundred to several thousand people worldwide [given the current tablet market largely filled by iPad's, Kindle's, and Samsungs].
For it to be worthwhile [as it takes time, money and effort to pack all those electronics into a reasonably sized package], it'll probably need to cost several thousand dollars to break even for the manufacturer.
And at that price, the market for the device is right about ZERO.
Actually no...the features he's requesting, except for the offline maps (which is entirely SW solution and I remember the WM5 prices) would not raise the price, let's say of the nexus 7, by more than 100$. So that would be 250 raised to 350....much lower than 1000$(were you start). Remember, the HW design phase is long and costly, but starting with those added goals will not increase the cost per unit very much. The HW cost of components is much larger (especially in todays global economy) than the development.
I personally love the N7 construction except for the missing card reader and HDMI output. Those were my deal-breakers. But just because someone bought it and never complained, does not mean he/she would not have paid 50$+ to get those features. And if you say they'd never use them, you'd be surprised of the difference between requirement and usefullness (what was that quote: better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have). I'm sure N7's sales would not have been affected by +50$ for those 2 features, since it had virtualy no competition at it's price (maybe Galaxy Tab 2, but that require you to carry proprietary adapters).
Now that I searched for it, it seems I used dd. But anyway, here it is:
#!/bin/sh
hdparm -i $1
smartctl -a $1
date
time dd if=$1 of=/dev/null bs=1M
date
smartctl -a $1
time dd if=/dev/zero of=$1 bs=1M
date
smartctl -a $1
time dd if=$1 of=/dev/null bs=1M
smartctl -a $1
I run the script followed by "| tee result.txt". In case you want to change to dd_rescue, bear in mind that it outputs a lot of data (progress) which should not be redirected.
I actually do read-write-read tests (dd_rescue because it can keep going after an error), with smartctl in between each and judge by myself what changed. I did it so often that I bothered to make a bash script to do everything and run overnight (I think it takes 3 hours for each step on my 2TB drives).
The idea for the 1st read is to update the "pending" list (if it needed), followed by writing to rectify it. A final read to see everything is ok (no pending increase).
Although I has several HDDs, I only had 1 pending on a new HDD, and that was on a 2TB 4KB/sector WD green drive when I played with the 63-sectors compatibility jumper. I still have that after 1 year.
After all the dual-booting to play games (and mostly remaining in Windows after playing), last year (10th nov 2011 actually) I managed to play my first hours on a virtual machine. And I'm talking Deus Ex HR at 1920x1080.
I managed to use my i5-2500 (non-K) to virtualize (VT-d) my Radeon 5850 and a USB controller, thus having native GPU and input (audio took half a year of trial and error, and now my Hercules Fortission IV is working flawless). I've scored all my 80 hours of Skyrim, around 40 of DXHR and already 35 hours of Dishonored. Also a log of iRacing (which just released a 64-bit binary).
The downsides:
- obviously Windows is still present
- extra step to start VM (but I've got SSD....so not that bad)
- extra HW (IGP and GPU, 2 sound cards, 2 NICs)
- !!! hard to make it work
I'm looking now to upgrade to 7950 and 2 additional monitors for eyefinity.
I know I'm a little off-topic, but I just wanted to say I found a workaround.
Me too. .... , Now debian+xubuntu (as in many systems with one of them).
Slackware, Redhat 6.? to 9.0, debian, ubuntu 8.?? +
Also I have experimented with LFS+gentoo (the 1st versions...including cross-compiling fo my Pentium with MMX laptop).
You want a standard for controlling, so that everyone can control their aid, but that also opens the door to those that want to control OTHERS aid, without their permission. Sometimes the standards have holes in design, other times the implementation can have bugs. Either way, it's a risk no medical company will take. They prefer a closed protocol, that can not go through external scrutiny (security by obscurity).
Another such example (in my line of work) is usage of ethernet in cars. While ethernet by itself would be ok, they also want internet in cars, which means there will be at least 1 device with both connections (internet and in-car ethernet) which will be vulnerable to external attacks (think about someone locking your brakes at 100mph, after disabling ABS+ESP). I even think they will try controller updating over internet which will be even worse.
Actually the problem is real. And I'm not talking about MS, but BIOS (should I say firmware) vendors. I played with my Thinkpad Edge E120, and I found a problem: after installing Windows 8 (consumer preview...as I remember), I could no longer change the boot order from the setup screen. One-time boot choice does work, but I could not change the order for permanent usage.
Also, as soon as I changed the order from linux, Win8 refused to load (even after returning the order to the original one).
My thinkpad has no mention of disabling secure-boot. I don't even know if returning to BIOS-style booting would allow me to change the order.
I've got nothing against secure-boot, but easy methods of self-signing need to be provided. The secure-boot should be "binaries that I trust", not "binaries that MS trusts". The latter is fine for most end-users, but those who do know what they do....should not be locked by vendors.
So I would say boicott vendors to support secure-boot better.
PS: no I don't know the API details. I did see articles stating bad reference implementation of UEFI. And I mean really bad (as in inability to follow the specification 100% to boot something).
PPS: while this post may seem to be defending MS, I can guarantee that I want to dispose of it in my daily use. I even went so far as to virtualize a Win7 enviroment specifically for gaming (with AMD 5850 that is...... thank you Xen comunity + Intel VT-d).
I second this line. x120e, x130e etc....although the x130e also goes as Edge E120 (europe/non-US maybe??? couldn't find a pattern). I bough the Edge E120 i3 version (the AMD version is E125....but apart from MB they're the same) after many years of a 14" T61. Linux is my main use, although I still have the shipped 7 Pro as backup. I'm a computer obsessed biker (motorcycle, not bicycle), and I wanted a nice small laptop for carrying along the minimal packing. Thinkpad was a great choice because of another feature: conditional battery charging....will never charge the battery if below 96% (percentage can be changed/customized easily). Even if you plug it in while it's powered off. I don't know about the "cheaper" lines from Lenovo, but this is one of the reasons I remained a fan (saw it in T61 first). It's great when you use it mainly on AC.
Too bad they changed the chasis of the x120e...I liked the hinges of that one.
Please expand your knowledge to non-exact science....call info are recorded/sampled exactly because they are human-created. DNA and fingerprints are sampled with a small error, so searches are done with ranges. Add the error on 2 axis...and the search itself is more than you can comprehend. Trust me, there are scientists working on optimizing these.
Oh...forgot to say...all those monitorings are not really personal. For example cable modem: they cannot say which member of the family watched which shows. With ID chips...that is just one small step away.
I'm sorry, but no everyone has a facebook account.
Today, if you want to be "anonymous" (not the anti-piracy group), you still can, provided you have some knowledge at aviodance.
But my problem is (apart from watching a lot of movies up to 2-3 years ago) that a powerful person can do evil by shutting up those who oppose (like knowing always where they are and taking actions constantly against them). How was it in Enemy of the State ? "Who will be monitoring those who are monitoring?" (or something like that)
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/04/28/1549251/microsoft-backs-away-from-cispa-support-citing-privacy
So I don't get how Mozilla is the 1st tech company to drop it? Modern journalism is terrible.
I would posit that evidence that infringement happened at all, whether it was willful or not should be enough to warrant corrective action
From my understanding, copyright is about distributing (uploading), not getting and using. So under current laws, if you torrent a copyrighted file, you cannot control the upload. So you start your file (which should not be infringing), but you let it overnight. Now in the morning, you see that you have uploaded 3x the data. So that 3x means you DID distribute it. Even if you did not intended to do it.
I saw in Vuze (ex Azureus) that you cannot set an "ignore" rule with share ratio under 1:1. Other clients may use same tactics.
The RIAA also warns that the need to hire an attorney to navigate the ITC's arcane legal process will 'put justice out of reach for small business American victims of IP theft.'
So they have humor! I really cannot see this statement in any other way, since many indie developers say that they got more income through piracy.
The number itself is not so important as to it beign small. And acutally I work in a multi-national company which does use encryption, but supported by IT department. So I have "access" to "click-to-encrypt" feature, which even most non-technical personel knows how to use it. It's just that at development level, nobody uses it. Maybe HR and financial do use it often.
This and the fact that maybe 10% of your mail recipients actually would know how to use it.
I have not tried Ubuntu 11.10, but 11.04 (which is supposed to ship with Unity) is unworkable with a touchscreen.
I have tried it with Asus T101MT, and after the (small) hassle (which should work in 11.10) of making it recognise the touchscreen, usability was worse than old gnome. This is because the left application bar (or whatever else it's used for) relies on mouse hover, especially if you have little screen space (10" screen??) or many apps/bookmarks (whatever they are).
Because of this, I only tried once 11.10, but I don't remember the result (so I suppose it was not an improvement).
Another problem is lack of a good virtual keyboard (this is to all distributions, not just unity-based). Although I have not tried it in over 3 months, I never liked the onscreen keyboards I could find. I'm afraid in this area MS rules (I'm talking about PC-based OS, and I have no idea about iOS). I have used the provided Win7 ever since that trial. Although buying a 7" Android tablet really dropped the usage rate of the T101MT.
Overscan is mostly visible on the inputs (from PC), but it is present also on cable and air broadcasts.
1. 2. 3. Broken: FullHD 1920x1080 screen, FullHD 1920x1080 signal, and still the TV's SW will "zoom in" (to remove 5-10% of the margins). WHY???? Why 1 pixel from source signal is different than TV pixel? I understand that on 480i and 576i "offscreen" space was used for syncronisation (deployed in early 1900s), but 720p and 1080p were deployed when TV's and HD sources (even converters) had enough processing power to eliminate it. For 1$/unit?
You will never see a FullHD movie as crisp as it can be until overscan is eliminated.
4. Oh...and why do we have 1360x768 (or 1366x768) panels instead of 1280x720.....and whoever says "Windows", I'll shoot them (in reference to 2nd XP standard resolution: 1024x768).
5. Advertising is gone too far: when a 1h30m movie is scheduled for 2h30m. 1 minute of advertising is probably acceptable by anyone. Maybe even 2 (the money really comes from somewhere)....but having 10 minutes of advertising after 20-30mins of the "content" (movie or show).....I wonder why I even watch it.....but now we have DVRs, so I do have around 30s of advertising at high speeds....if I don't watch live.
What the fuck does that have to do with anything? A kid in a basement could develop a new hardware design as well. Or invent a new mousetrap, which would be patentable. But in the end, the cost and complexity of the equipment used to manufacture an invention have absolutely jack shit to do with the patentability of that invention.
Sure it does. Patents provide you with control over your idea and offer a monopoly to it's implementation. If you don't license your idea (which is legal), you can only obtain money if you sell end products. Those end products have high margins for SW, where you can have 90% profit easy (note: not the research and development, only manufacturing=copying), whereas a HW product will probably not have more than 50%. Also, for SW you can sell at least 10x the number of units compared to HW, since the replication of HW will take you a lot of time (let's face it, a basement kid will not have a production line). So this rough computation means you get at least 18x money in the same period. Also, the investment (R&D) is much lower in SW because testing is done much faster and cheaper than a HW product. Why do you think almost everything goes into SW?
As for the process comparison, many SW patents are actually too small modules. Companies are not interested in quality patents, just in numbers. They throw patents hoping that 10% are approved. For instance Apple's "slide to unlock" patent I would compare it to "low-pass filter". Surely nobody used it until iPhone, but they were not many touchscreens at that time (PDAs and tablets were limited to business users). So while Apple did show the idea, it was approved too late (because of the delay in millions of other SW patents pending) and now is common because of their marketshare in the category they created.
In summary, you have much bigger profit and faster time to delivery, but you still get the HW's exclusiveness period. This is just milking the system and NOT supporting innovation. Supporting innovation is allowing your competitor to improve your idea if you cannot or, just the fact that he can improve, to offer you an incentive to improve it first. If your idea does not catch immediately, then you are in the wrong time and deal with it: innovate more. If it does, then learn to profit in the shortest time but still innovate while in peak, don't turn into a potato-couch for the rest of your life.