Generally speaking, you don't need to wait for a TV with minimal features. It's not like a TV without those extras would likely reduce the cost much anyhow. Just buy the TV with the display you want, and ignore everything else (and don't give it your wi-fi passcode). Third-party media set-top devices appear to be more popular than ever, so it seems unlikely that you'll be forced to using any of those "smarts" anytime soon.
I'm quite pleased with my current Visio (a normal HD model), and will certainly consider buying another. Like you, I really only need the TV's display capabilities and a single HDMI port. My receiver is my HDMI switching hub, and I use my Xbox One as my primary media interface, with various apps that stream media from paid services or from my local media server.
This is something that giant killer lasers can totally fix. We should also deploy them in space, and create an advanced AI to autonomously control them, so it can clean up the skies for us.
I know the instinct to jump to CLI's defense is strong, but you should really pick your qualifiers more carefully. CLIs have many advantages, such as power, flexibility, extensibility, etc, but "intuitive" is certainly not one of those qualities. Requiring a reference or having to memorize commands before you can do anything pretty much rules out "intuitive" by definition.
I wouldn't claim 3D touch is intuitive either, incidentally. It's pretty much something that needs to be explicitly taught, but it's a single, simple lesson that has to be learned once - not exactly a high bar.
Mobile interfaces are severely constrained in many ways that desktop applications are not: small amount of real-estate, a relatively imprecise stylus (your finger), no keyboard shortcuts, no context-sensitive information on hover, and so on.
As such, I think it's worthwhile to at least experiment with another dimension of interaction, given all these inherent limitations of the platform UI. The trick with these sorts of "interfaceless interfaces" as you put it is to ensure that there's always a visually defined, more obvious method to perform the action, even if it requires another tap or two. In short, you need to treat it the same way as a keyboard shortcut. Don't rely on the user *having* to use it, but make it available for discovery after they get comfortable with the basics.
The danger, it seems, that it could potentially be confusing to users who aren't expecting touch-sensitivity, but I can't imagine that confusion would last long - and of course, there's no doubt an option to disable the feature or adjust the sensitivity.
I have a friend that just returned from a trip to Asia. He visited both Koreas. His take, same thing with different propaganda.
My God, one Korea is a healthy liberal democracy with successful global tech and cultural exports, and the other Korea is a totalitarian dictatorship that can't feed its people, can't provide them with electricity, and is threatening and provoking it's neighbors on a regular basis both with rhetoric and military exercises.
Your friend is... okay, I'm not even sure how else to describe that sort of sheer, utter, willful ignorance. I've heard the same refrain from utterly naïve sympathizers my entire life, about how it wasn't as bad as we were led to believe, that it was just western propaganda, and so on. Every time one of those countries fell and became free, and the people living there were free to tell their story, we learned that it was, in fact, just as bad or even worse than we suspected. When will people learn?
I guess I'd consider gaming or development work as "exceptionally demanding requirements", although given that the typical slashdot reader is likely a developer and/or gamer, I probably should have phrased that better. PC gaming in particular tends to demand cutting-edge hardware, so a four-year old machine probably won't be able to play today's cutting-edge titles. And developers are often running multiple VMs, driving multiple monitors, compiling lots of code, and that means money spent on fast processors, big SSDs, and lots of RAM pays off.
To be fair, your four year old machine sounds sort of mediocre even for when it was new. In particular, I'd bet the SSD is a huge factor in the massive performance boost you're now seeing. My four year old machine is an i7 960 (quad core) @ 3.2GHz, 12GB RAM, and has a 250GB primary SSD with a 2TB bulk storage drive. It was a good machine when new, but wasn't top of the line either. So, sure, if you buy a less powerful machine, you'll certainly have to replace it sooner.
It's not all stories. Don't forget the psalms (the least entertaining part of the Bible), plus some history, letters, and even some prophecies. The stories have a surprising amount of sex, violence, action, and intrigue, which I think is what makes them so memorable.
I agree that one of the worst thing that happened to Christianity was that someone decided that many of those allegorical stories were meant to be interpreted as literal, factual events - except for the ones obviously told as parables, I suppose. I think Christianity does much better when viewed as a prescription for a way of life, in which its tenants are generally quite positive: be charitable, be kind to others as you'd like to be treated (golden rule), forgive those who have wronged you, etc. I just wish more Christians practiced the philosophy instead of adhering to the dogma.
This may have made sense in previous years, when there were a lot of new and innovative features being added each year, security was dramatically improving, and hardware speeds were climbing rapidly. That's no longer happening. Year to year, there's very little difference between phones except for modest, incremental improvements, and new styles and colors.
You see this happening *right now* with the PC. The market is "stagnating" (I say it's just stabilized) in part because there's absolutely no point to replacing a four year old PC unless you've got some exceptionally demanding requirements. It's probably only reached mid-life, assuming it was half-way decent when you bought it.
I'm pretty sure the trend of replacing phones rapidly will continue for a few years, but I think as people realize the big innovations have already occurred, they'll be less enamored with the notion of paying $400-800 for a smartphone that's only marginally better than the one they currently have. Sure, there will always be the die-hards who trade in their phone each year or two, but I really believe they'll soon be a vanishing minority.
You're aware they're counting OpenStack deployments and Amazon EC2 VM instances, right? Those are not systems or services typically used by those "relatively new to computing." And that you seem to be dismissing Ubuntu as a toy OS speaks more to your ignorance of their full product lineup than anything else.
I think Linux makes much more sense as a general cloud OS run in VMs, especially if your applications are written in portable C, C++, or Java. Microsoft's advantage on the desktop has always been its strong ecosystem. Their servers work well for corporate environments, largely because they interop with and manage their desktop systems pretty well.
However, for the cloud, that legacy ecosystem doesn't really exist yet, so everyone is starting more or less on equal footing. And most of the major services allow you to manage your instances the same way, regardless of the OS running in the VM. So, why not use the zero-cost open source solution, all other factors being equal? So, yeah, the numbers don't really surprise me.
Before you gloat too much, however, remember that which OS is being used for cloud services is no longer of any strategic importance to Microsoft. They're making money with their cloud services regardless of whether people are running Windows or Linux. This also explains why they're suddenly keen to embrace cross-platform and Linux development, which seems to have a lot of Linux devotees confused/suspicious - but it makes perfect sense if you look at it from this perspective.
Given that so many people apparently thought this was a terrible idea, it's pretty clear that texting in theaters is not yet a "social norm". And the reason I call it "narcissistic" is because the people that currently do this are either unaware or simply don't care that it annoys others. That sounds pretty self-centered to me. So, I suspect the idea of catering to those people tends to rub those who have been annoyed by them in the past the wrong way.
Also, to clarify, I'm not personally making this argument. I give it as a possible explanation as to why other people might care. I go to movie theaters very rarely, so honestly, this doesn't really affect me. I actually don't care much one way or the other.
What then? We already went through this a few decades ago when we declared strong encryption as a munition, subject to export restrictions. We're just now getting over the negative repercussions of that little debacle, so naturally, it's time to do the same thing all over again... except its even worse. This time we're denying ourselves strong encryption.
Third party security software not subject to US laws will, of course, proliferate, and the only ones who will be harmed by this are those who actually deign to obey the stupid law. Anyone who has something to hide will just encrypt data at the application level, and there's *nothing* that can be done about that.
Bogus industrial espionage cases? Oh, please. There have been dozens of fairly high-profile Chinese industrial espionage cases over the last few decades, and the notion that these are all trumped up charges seems pretty damned unlikely. I mean, what exactly would the point of that be? What's the motive? It gains the US nothing to make false charges against Chinese nationals.
We certainly do have a schizophrenic relationship with China. It's not hard to figure out, though. Culturally and politically, they're certainly not our friends, if not exactly outright enemies. However, we're so invested with them economically that they can pretty much get away with anything, so long as the damage is only economic in nature and it doesn't actually outweigh the benefits of that economic relationship.
The economic ties we have are probably a good thing, as it prevents political tensions from ever really escalating too far, but it's a bit infuriating to see how much they can also get away with with few repercussions.
I love how the sympathy oozes for the poor Chinese, while at the same time our intrepid AC launches a counter-attack against the investigator. And throwing in a reference to global warming was a nice touch. Gosh, if we really cared about the planet, maybe we should share all our nuclear technology with them. Oh, and yes, *not sharing* our nuclear tech obviously means we want all the Chinese to die of cancer. CANCER, I tell you!
This is really some first-class shilling here. *golf clap*
Someone who never bothered removing it from their browser perhaps? I actually had it installed on my music workstation because so many music-related sites used it for their antiquated music sample players, etc, but that was years ago. I just now went and purged it all from my system.
Whether or not it's legal for a private citizen to install a wiretap is completely beside the point, which is that it's a law-enforcement agency that's doing this with a properly obtained warrant. These are NOT crimes for the government - only for private citizens. It would be absurd for official investigators to be bound by exactly the same rules as citizens, as citizens are obviously not charged with investigating and uncovering evidence to be used in a court of law. The warrant system is there in order to safeguard against abuses and provide oversight of this exceptional and dangerous power. And yes, obviously the government writes the rules and can change the rules at will. That's what our government does - it's called the legislative process. At the same time, there are checks and balances against writing any rule or law - the court system and ultimately the US Constitution.
Obviously, there are many cases of abuse and over-reach by law enforcement, and we need to call it out when we see it. I just don't see an issue here - to me, this is exactly how the system should be working. Law enforcement need investigate and collect evidence against suspected individuals within the framework of the rules and laws we've established that help to protect individual liberties, while at the same time still allowing law enforcement to do their job, which is to go after individuals and organizations that break the law of the land. It's not a perfect system, because we're dealing with humans and human nature here, but in general, the process seems to work reasonably well. Or at least, we presumably haven't figured out a better system yet.
IMO, the best managers or execs are the ones who do two things:
* Set a clear direction for the company, so that everyone in the organization understands exactly where they need to go and what they need to do to get there. * Enable workers to do their job without them having to overly worry about money, politics, regulations, or other distractions.
I know it's popular to hate on execs, but without good leadership and a smart strategy, a company is ultimately doomed, regardless of the quality of its work force. There have been many notable examples when a single executive has been able to turn an entire company around.
I'm an independent videogame developer. Unfortunately, I'm still at least a year from finishing up my title, but thanks for the sentiment. To be honest, I was inspired by Brad Wardell, president and CEO of StarDock, who espoused a similar view years ago:
I'm hoping someday I can also prove the naysayers wrong by offering fun, affordable, DRM-free titles and making a good living doing it. The way I figure it, the industry isn't going to change itself.
I don't believe that terrorism is such a threat to US citizens that it's worth the cost of our government spying on us or eroding our personal liberties. I'm also highly skeptical of those in government who keep beating the drumbeat of the terrorism threat in an effort to acquire more power for unilateral action. Such a position doesn't mean that I'm endorsing terrorism.
Likewise, do you understand that one might not hold a great deal of sympathy for the MPAA or their claims of how much piracy is hurting them while still being opposed to copyright infringement in general?
I'm a content producer myself, so copyright infringement theoretically hurts my bottom line as well, but my position is a bit more pragmatic. I believe that given proper incentives, many people will choose to purchase your product even if pirating it for free is an option. People generally want to do the right thing, and many people understand that if a project isn't supported financially, development for that product will likely cease.
The trick is to make the legitimate version of the product better, and more convenient than the pirated version while still keeping the price reasonable, and the traditional media has thus far done an absolutely horrid job of this. For those who choose to "pirate" my goods anyhow... well, they're not my customers then, and so as long as they don't actively impede my work, we'll agree to live and let live. Maybe one day they'll change their ways and become paying customers if they enjoyed my product.
Exactly. Congrats, designers, your emoji have now crossed into the uncanny valley, with all the negative ramifications thereof. Some of them still retain the traditional yellow color but now have noses, hair, clothes, etc, and it just looks creepy, like watered-down Simpsons characters designed not to cause any offense. Others are colored more "realistically", and now look like drawings from a child's picture book, and rather bland ones at that.
Not that this is worth getting irritated or worried about... I just think it's amusing that this is actually a "feature" that's being touted. The addition of the Vulkan rendering API seems a hell of a lot more interesting.
I replaced my first gen Kindle, as the Paperwhite's screen is so much better, especially for reading in areas without sufficient light (which I tend to do a lot). I'm ecstatic with my Paperwhite as well, and am having a really hard time seeing why someone would choose a new, rather more expensive device unless they're the type that has to have the latest shiny, or has enough money that they don't have to worry about spending that much extra on a reader.
The new one looks nice enough, but... honestly, I'd say it's nowhere near $310-380 nice (I refuse to buy one with ads, and I'm glad they give us the choice to opt out). My gut reaction is that they're moving the wrong direction with these. They should be looking for ways to make Kindles less expensive, which in turn makes the device more accessible, which will help them sell more books. I don't understand why they'd look to sell a premium Kindle device - are people really clamoring to spend *more* on their e-reader? I suppose they have the existing Paperwhites to cover the lower costs market, at least - nothing wrong with those devices yet.
It should be interesting to see how these sell. It's sort of hard to predict, but my guess would be "decently, but not spectacularly".
Well, no need for that, as you can just kill the processes directly. This is amateur hour stuff if it can be decrypted locally with a simple utility, and apparently doesn't take any steps to prevent its own process from being viewed and killed.
Sadly, it doesn't take a genius programmer to grab an existing exploit kit and throw together some half-assed shit like this that still does some real harm to people. As always, it's far easier to destroy than to create.
Unless I'm misunderstanding something here, the "thud" mean "who would open a SMB service to the internet anyway?" That's why some security people were confused why they were making such a big deal over a SMB vulnerability. Needs to be fixed, yes, but not a huge deal, since that's typically a service only exposed to your own intranet.
Slashdot Mirror
Where's your "can do" attitude? Obviously, this is where genetics engineering steps in.
I'm a big-picture guy. I'll leave it to others to figure out all the trivial details. My work here is done.
Generally speaking, you don't need to wait for a TV with minimal features. It's not like a TV without those extras would likely reduce the cost much anyhow. Just buy the TV with the display you want, and ignore everything else (and don't give it your wi-fi passcode). Third-party media set-top devices appear to be more popular than ever, so it seems unlikely that you'll be forced to using any of those "smarts" anytime soon.
I'm quite pleased with my current Visio (a normal HD model), and will certainly consider buying another. Like you, I really only need the TV's display capabilities and a single HDMI port. My receiver is my HDMI switching hub, and I use my Xbox One as my primary media interface, with various apps that stream media from paid services or from my local media server.
This is something that giant killer lasers can totally fix. We should also deploy them in space, and create an advanced AI to autonomously control them, so it can clean up the skies for us.
What could possibly go wrong?
I know the instinct to jump to CLI's defense is strong, but you should really pick your qualifiers more carefully. CLIs have many advantages, such as power, flexibility, extensibility, etc, but "intuitive" is certainly not one of those qualities. Requiring a reference or having to memorize commands before you can do anything pretty much rules out "intuitive" by definition.
I wouldn't claim 3D touch is intuitive either, incidentally. It's pretty much something that needs to be explicitly taught, but it's a single, simple lesson that has to be learned once - not exactly a high bar.
Mobile interfaces are severely constrained in many ways that desktop applications are not: small amount of real-estate, a relatively imprecise stylus (your finger), no keyboard shortcuts, no context-sensitive information on hover, and so on.
As such, I think it's worthwhile to at least experiment with another dimension of interaction, given all these inherent limitations of the platform UI. The trick with these sorts of "interfaceless interfaces" as you put it is to ensure that there's always a visually defined, more obvious method to perform the action, even if it requires another tap or two. In short, you need to treat it the same way as a keyboard shortcut. Don't rely on the user *having* to use it, but make it available for discovery after they get comfortable with the basics.
The danger, it seems, that it could potentially be confusing to users who aren't expecting touch-sensitivity, but I can't imagine that confusion would last long - and of course, there's no doubt an option to disable the feature or adjust the sensitivity.
I have a friend that just returned from a trip to Asia. He visited both Koreas. His take, same thing with different propaganda.
My God, one Korea is a healthy liberal democracy with successful global tech and cultural exports, and the other Korea is a totalitarian dictatorship that can't feed its people, can't provide them with electricity, and is threatening and provoking it's neighbors on a regular basis both with rhetoric and military exercises.
Your friend is... okay, I'm not even sure how else to describe that sort of sheer, utter, willful ignorance. I've heard the same refrain from utterly naïve sympathizers my entire life, about how it wasn't as bad as we were led to believe, that it was just western propaganda, and so on. Every time one of those countries fell and became free, and the people living there were free to tell their story, we learned that it was, in fact, just as bad or even worse than we suspected. When will people learn?
I guess I'd consider gaming or development work as "exceptionally demanding requirements", although given that the typical slashdot reader is likely a developer and/or gamer, I probably should have phrased that better. PC gaming in particular tends to demand cutting-edge hardware, so a four-year old machine probably won't be able to play today's cutting-edge titles. And developers are often running multiple VMs, driving multiple monitors, compiling lots of code, and that means money spent on fast processors, big SSDs, and lots of RAM pays off.
To be fair, your four year old machine sounds sort of mediocre even for when it was new. In particular, I'd bet the SSD is a huge factor in the massive performance boost you're now seeing. My four year old machine is an i7 960 (quad core) @ 3.2GHz, 12GB RAM, and has a 250GB primary SSD with a 2TB bulk storage drive. It was a good machine when new, but wasn't top of the line either. So, sure, if you buy a less powerful machine, you'll certainly have to replace it sooner.
It's not all stories. Don't forget the psalms (the least entertaining part of the Bible), plus some history, letters, and even some prophecies. The stories have a surprising amount of sex, violence, action, and intrigue, which I think is what makes them so memorable.
I agree that one of the worst thing that happened to Christianity was that someone decided that many of those allegorical stories were meant to be interpreted as literal, factual events - except for the ones obviously told as parables, I suppose. I think Christianity does much better when viewed as a prescription for a way of life, in which its tenants are generally quite positive: be charitable, be kind to others as you'd like to be treated (golden rule), forgive those who have wronged you, etc. I just wish more Christians practiced the philosophy instead of adhering to the dogma.
This may have made sense in previous years, when there were a lot of new and innovative features being added each year, security was dramatically improving, and hardware speeds were climbing rapidly. That's no longer happening. Year to year, there's very little difference between phones except for modest, incremental improvements, and new styles and colors.
You see this happening *right now* with the PC. The market is "stagnating" (I say it's just stabilized) in part because there's absolutely no point to replacing a four year old PC unless you've got some exceptionally demanding requirements. It's probably only reached mid-life, assuming it was half-way decent when you bought it.
I'm pretty sure the trend of replacing phones rapidly will continue for a few years, but I think as people realize the big innovations have already occurred, they'll be less enamored with the notion of paying $400-800 for a smartphone that's only marginally better than the one they currently have. Sure, there will always be the die-hards who trade in their phone each year or two, but I really believe they'll soon be a vanishing minority.
You're aware they're counting OpenStack deployments and Amazon EC2 VM instances, right? Those are not systems or services typically used by those "relatively new to computing." And that you seem to be dismissing Ubuntu as a toy OS speaks more to your ignorance of their full product lineup than anything else.
I think Linux makes much more sense as a general cloud OS run in VMs, especially if your applications are written in portable C, C++, or Java. Microsoft's advantage on the desktop has always been its strong ecosystem. Their servers work well for corporate environments, largely because they interop with and manage their desktop systems pretty well.
However, for the cloud, that legacy ecosystem doesn't really exist yet, so everyone is starting more or less on equal footing. And most of the major services allow you to manage your instances the same way, regardless of the OS running in the VM. So, why not use the zero-cost open source solution, all other factors being equal? So, yeah, the numbers don't really surprise me.
Before you gloat too much, however, remember that which OS is being used for cloud services is no longer of any strategic importance to Microsoft. They're making money with their cloud services regardless of whether people are running Windows or Linux. This also explains why they're suddenly keen to embrace cross-platform and Linux development, which seems to have a lot of Linux devotees confused/suspicious - but it makes perfect sense if you look at it from this perspective.
Given that so many people apparently thought this was a terrible idea, it's pretty clear that texting in theaters is not yet a "social norm". And the reason I call it "narcissistic" is because the people that currently do this are either unaware or simply don't care that it annoys others. That sounds pretty self-centered to me. So, I suspect the idea of catering to those people tends to rub those who have been annoyed by them in the past the wrong way.
Also, to clarify, I'm not personally making this argument. I give it as a possible explanation as to why other people might care. I go to movie theaters very rarely, so honestly, this doesn't really affect me. I actually don't care much one way or the other.
What then? We already went through this a few decades ago when we declared strong encryption as a munition, subject to export restrictions. We're just now getting over the negative repercussions of that little debacle, so naturally, it's time to do the same thing all over again... except its even worse. This time we're denying ourselves strong encryption.
Third party security software not subject to US laws will, of course, proliferate, and the only ones who will be harmed by this are those who actually deign to obey the stupid law. Anyone who has something to hide will just encrypt data at the application level, and there's *nothing* that can be done about that.
I'd guess perhaps because it validates this sort of rude, narcissistic behavior rather than shames it?
Bogus industrial espionage cases? Oh, please. There have been dozens of fairly high-profile Chinese industrial espionage cases over the last few decades, and the notion that these are all trumped up charges seems pretty damned unlikely. I mean, what exactly would the point of that be? What's the motive? It gains the US nothing to make false charges against Chinese nationals.
We certainly do have a schizophrenic relationship with China. It's not hard to figure out, though. Culturally and politically, they're certainly not our friends, if not exactly outright enemies. However, we're so invested with them economically that they can pretty much get away with anything, so long as the damage is only economic in nature and it doesn't actually outweigh the benefits of that economic relationship.
The economic ties we have are probably a good thing, as it prevents political tensions from ever really escalating too far, but it's a bit infuriating to see how much they can also get away with with few repercussions.
I love how the sympathy oozes for the poor Chinese, while at the same time our intrepid AC launches a counter-attack against the investigator. And throwing in a reference to global warming was a nice touch. Gosh, if we really cared about the planet, maybe we should share all our nuclear technology with them. Oh, and yes, *not sharing* our nuclear tech obviously means we want all the Chinese to die of cancer. CANCER, I tell you!
This is really some first-class shilling here. *golf clap*
Someone who never bothered removing it from their browser perhaps? I actually had it installed on my music workstation because so many music-related sites used it for their antiquated music sample players, etc, but that was years ago. I just now went and purged it all from my system.
Whether or not it's legal for a private citizen to install a wiretap is completely beside the point, which is that it's a law-enforcement agency that's doing this with a properly obtained warrant. These are NOT crimes for the government - only for private citizens. It would be absurd for official investigators to be bound by exactly the same rules as citizens, as citizens are obviously not charged with investigating and uncovering evidence to be used in a court of law. The warrant system is there in order to safeguard against abuses and provide oversight of this exceptional and dangerous power. And yes, obviously the government writes the rules and can change the rules at will. That's what our government does - it's called the legislative process. At the same time, there are checks and balances against writing any rule or law - the court system and ultimately the US Constitution.
Obviously, there are many cases of abuse and over-reach by law enforcement, and we need to call it out when we see it. I just don't see an issue here - to me, this is exactly how the system should be working. Law enforcement need investigate and collect evidence against suspected individuals within the framework of the rules and laws we've established that help to protect individual liberties, while at the same time still allowing law enforcement to do their job, which is to go after individuals and organizations that break the law of the land. It's not a perfect system, because we're dealing with humans and human nature here, but in general, the process seems to work reasonably well. Or at least, we presumably haven't figured out a better system yet.
IMO, the best managers or execs are the ones who do two things:
* Set a clear direction for the company, so that everyone in the organization understands exactly where they need to go and what they need to do to get there.
* Enable workers to do their job without them having to overly worry about money, politics, regulations, or other distractions.
I know it's popular to hate on execs, but without good leadership and a smart strategy, a company is ultimately doomed, regardless of the quality of its work force. There have been many notable examples when a single executive has been able to turn an entire company around.
I'm an independent videogame developer. Unfortunately, I'm still at least a year from finishing up my title, but thanks for the sentiment. To be honest, I was inspired by Brad Wardell, president and CEO of StarDock, who espoused a similar view years ago:
http://www.ign.com/articles/20...
I'm hoping someday I can also prove the naysayers wrong by offering fun, affordable, DRM-free titles and making a good living doing it. The way I figure it, the industry isn't going to change itself.
I don't believe that terrorism is such a threat to US citizens that it's worth the cost of our government spying on us or eroding our personal liberties. I'm also highly skeptical of those in government who keep beating the drumbeat of the terrorism threat in an effort to acquire more power for unilateral action. Such a position doesn't mean that I'm endorsing terrorism.
Likewise, do you understand that one might not hold a great deal of sympathy for the MPAA or their claims of how much piracy is hurting them while still being opposed to copyright infringement in general?
I'm a content producer myself, so copyright infringement theoretically hurts my bottom line as well, but my position is a bit more pragmatic. I believe that given proper incentives, many people will choose to purchase your product even if pirating it for free is an option. People generally want to do the right thing, and many people understand that if a project isn't supported financially, development for that product will likely cease.
The trick is to make the legitimate version of the product better, and more convenient than the pirated version while still keeping the price reasonable, and the traditional media has thus far done an absolutely horrid job of this. For those who choose to "pirate" my goods anyhow... well, they're not my customers then, and so as long as they don't actively impede my work, we'll agree to live and let live. Maybe one day they'll change their ways and become paying customers if they enjoyed my product.
Exactly. Congrats, designers, your emoji have now crossed into the uncanny valley, with all the negative ramifications thereof. Some of them still retain the traditional yellow color but now have noses, hair, clothes, etc, and it just looks creepy, like watered-down Simpsons characters designed not to cause any offense. Others are colored more "realistically", and now look like drawings from a child's picture book, and rather bland ones at that.
Not that this is worth getting irritated or worried about... I just think it's amusing that this is actually a "feature" that's being touted. The addition of the Vulkan rendering API seems a hell of a lot more interesting.
I replaced my first gen Kindle, as the Paperwhite's screen is so much better, especially for reading in areas without sufficient light (which I tend to do a lot). I'm ecstatic with my Paperwhite as well, and am having a really hard time seeing why someone would choose a new, rather more expensive device unless they're the type that has to have the latest shiny, or has enough money that they don't have to worry about spending that much extra on a reader.
The new one looks nice enough, but... honestly, I'd say it's nowhere near $310-380 nice (I refuse to buy one with ads, and I'm glad they give us the choice to opt out). My gut reaction is that they're moving the wrong direction with these. They should be looking for ways to make Kindles less expensive, which in turn makes the device more accessible, which will help them sell more books. I don't understand why they'd look to sell a premium Kindle device - are people really clamoring to spend *more* on their e-reader? I suppose they have the existing Paperwhites to cover the lower costs market, at least - nothing wrong with those devices yet.
It should be interesting to see how these sell. It's sort of hard to predict, but my guess would be "decently, but not spectacularly".
Well, no need for that, as you can just kill the processes directly. This is amateur hour stuff if it can be decrypted locally with a simple utility, and apparently doesn't take any steps to prevent its own process from being viewed and killed.
Sadly, it doesn't take a genius programmer to grab an existing exploit kit and throw together some half-assed shit like this that still does some real harm to people. As always, it's far easier to destroy than to create.
Unless I'm misunderstanding something here, the "thud" mean "who would open a SMB service to the internet anyway?" That's why some security people were confused why they were making such a big deal over a SMB vulnerability. Needs to be fixed, yes, but not a huge deal, since that's typically a service only exposed to your own intranet.