On our street with have a few retirees who generally seem to like gardening a lot, but we also have a house with two married doctors in, and one with two married police officers in who work shifts. We also have a few spouses who don't work, as well as families with kids who attend college and one family with a kid at uni both of which are pretty much part time affairs.
Even late at night the older kids are coming home from their nights at, night owls like me are sat on the computer. The doctors and police officers all work shifts, sometimes nights, sometimes days. Your personal anecdote has absolutely no mapping to the reality of our cul-de-sac, and undoubtedly many others across the country, and not even just cul-de-sacs- normal streets too. The fact is, by coming down our street to scout it out you're exponentially increasing the opportunity to scout out houses, now the fact our street does so frequently have eyes on it is an advantage in itself, but the point is that by only having to visit the street once- to actually commit the crime, they're grossly better off under street view in their chances otherwise. I'm not saying without street view we would be immune to crime, but the point is that crime is much easier in a street view world, it absolutely does decrease the risk.
"If what you claim is true, then what was the make/model/plate# of the google street view van? Was the driver a male or female? How many of your all-the-time-alert neighbors saw it? After all, those things aren't exactly inconspicuous!"
To answer your question, I wasn't actually aware we'd been streeviewed until Google announced 95% of the UK had been covered. I look and lo and behold our street was done. My car wasn't in the drive at the time so I must've been at work, but my girlfriend's was, and she'd not seen it, I didn't care too much, but when in conversation with a couple of our neighbours I mentioned it- they weren't aware we'd been streetviewed but both of them that I was speaking two (one retiree, one part-retiree but doing the odd contract work still) both said they'd seen the odd looking vehicle summer of last year, they actually assumed it was an election vehicle and the equipment on top were loud speakers but could still vividly remember it was a dark Vauxhall Corsa, with a young guy driving it. You see this perfectly demonstrates my point- your idea they needed to remember an exact registration plate is false, if there was a crime following the incident, even some months after the police will be happy with such a simple description because it's trivial for them to try and then track down such a vehicle described in other crimes, or on CCTV nearby.
Your theoretical scenario is wrong, because you talk about no one recognising an out of place car being there, but they do because it's out of place that any car other than those who live here come down our street it happens so infrequently, we live in a fairly rural area. I can remember when I was gardening just the weekend before last someone coming down, it was an older looking man - maybe 40s - 60s rough age range, with a younger looking girl- 20s, in a soft top car, roof down.
So this is really the point, some people do remember these small things as much as you might like to believe otherwise, I'm not saying crimes are impossible without street view, not at all, which seems to be somewhat what you're implying by your theories about planting covert cameras- fuck yes, if James Bond wanted to ninja down our street at night with his gadgets I'm sure he could still commit a crime, but most criminals aren't James Bond. If a criminal has to physically scout out a location before committing a crime then they drastically increase their chance of being seen and being caught, than if they use streetview.
I accept that not everyone's street is the same, I accept that removal of street view will not prevent crime, I'm merely making the point that streetview does at least make crime easier for the common criminal, and it doesn reduce their exposure to potentia
a) Burglars no longer need to visit an area to scout it to check for targets. The common argument from the pro-street view group against this is that well anyone could come down and take a picture for the same effect- that's true, but here's the difference, using my house an example. I live on a cul-de-sac, to get to my house and take pictures without someone noticing a guy with a camera would take some doing, everyone on our street knows everyone else, if someone came down, and turned around, someone would see them. If there was a subsequent burglary, then there would be witnesses who could point the police in the right direction in terms of a number plate, or a description of a person, or person(s) looking dodgy. With street view this is gone, people can now scout our street without ever knowing, they can perform a burglary without anyone have ever seen anyone suspicious looking coming down the street to scout it. They can spend as much time as they want examining the images on street view for best ways to rob the houses, or steal a car or similar. As much as the pro-street view grouping likes to suggest that because the images are taken from public places, it doesn't decrease security or make things any easier for criminals, they are wrong, it does. Which takes me to the second point:
b) The street view camera is quite high up, when browsing around on street view in the UK down by my girlfriends grand mothers house, I followed along a road, and was amazed to see how many walls I could see over that I'd never seen before. One image showed right over a wall you can't normally see over into a person's french windows that aren't normally visible showing a nice big 50"+ flat screen TV and a bunch of games consoles and games in full view, that no one passing by in the street would have otherwise ever known was there. The camera was most certainly too high on the street view vehicles and nullifies somewhat the argument that the images were taken from places where people could normally take pictures- could is perhaps true, but would? No, no one was going to walk around on stilts, or sat on someone elses shoulders or similar to take pictures in what would otherwise be random places. Again, if they were criminals, and if they did this it would raise further suspicion. People would remember seeing the culprits around.
I understand the theory that street view doesn't cause any issues in theory because they are just taking images from public places, but it's a theory that simply doesn't map to reality. Anyone scouting an area physically will be seen, there will be witnesses, if they take pictures of people's houses there will be a lot of suspicion from residents, if they hang around getting a good look into people's houses, there will be suspicion. Nothing lets criminals plan out a highly profitable crime spree and even map their best exit routes without ever having to be seen quite like street view does.
In the UK, I think what fucked me off most recently about it is that street view drove past the SAS HQ on a public road and photographed that too, yet a couple of MPs complained saying it put the SAS HQ's security at risk. Google accepted this and removed the images- I mean, wtf? So it's only a security risk for one of the most heavily defended army bases in the UK full of the best trained troops in the world, but it's not a security risk for say some unarmed old pensioner whose house has been filmed as a prime burglary target? Even if the approach was consistent it would be something, yet even that's not the case.
All this is not to say I'm totally against it, I think it's a cool piece of technology and I think a dataset of the world in images that large could prove vital to building new image recognition technologies and so forth (i.e. improving Google Goggles), I think my real concern is that it's not something that was well planned out, there wasn't enough public consultation, it does raise issues, and those issues have not been discussed and see
I wanted a new monitor to replace my old 1600x1200 19" CRT on my second PC.
I was quite amazed to find that if I wanted the same vertical resolution (it's widescreen equivalent- 1920x1200) I had to go all the way up to 24". I found it amazing that my ancient 19" CRT had a better resolution than all the 19", 20", 22" TFTs going at the time.
Of course I could've gone for a 1600x1050 or whatever it is smaller screen, but part the reason I wanted a higher resolution for that second PC was because I watch movies on it whilst using my main PC for other things, and if I was going to buy a new screen, I wanted one capable of doing 1080p. In the end I just bought a 24" Samsung screen. It's bigger than what I was looking for, but oh well.
So whilst I do agree that people who need more pixels are a fairly niche market, what fucked me off a bit is the fact that the amount of pixels you can get for smaller screen sizes has actually decreased- that's a step backwards. Why are we going backwards?
Regarding higher resolutions though, I now have 24" screens on both my PCs, and despite being sat back in my chair I can still see individual pixels on curves and so forth, you can solve this somewhat with various graphics techniques, but nothing beats simply having a higher resolution. Even on a 24" screen stuck at 1920x1200 things can get a little cramped with MathCAD + Word + Vista style Sidebar in Windows 7- it'd be nice to be able to fit a PDF document in there too- I need a few things running side by side for some of the stuff I do, even the likes of Visual Studio when in full swing with all it's windows up would benefit from extra pixels. I'd gladly still take higher resolution, and think he's right things should still be moving forward, it's sad that they've come to a standstill, or in some cases, outright gone backwards. You shouldn't be limited to larger monitors for 1200 vertical resolution- it's not like the technology doesn't exist, there are a few out there and my Dell which is years old did 1920x1200 on a 15" screen just fine, it's just not mainstream, and the few monitors that do support this resolution in a smaller size are usually from shitty manufacturers- although I admit I haven't looked in a while, so maybe the situation's better now. In general I can sympathise with the guy in TFA though.
The issue is, that there are (believe it or not!) games out there that have good gameplay, story AND good graphics and other technology. There are also games without fancy technology that suck.
So the issue isn't one of good gameplay and good story vs. fancy technology at all, it's simply about good games vs. bad games. The nostalgic view of all the games of old that were amazingly fun but didn't look great is forgetful of all the games of old that looked shit, and also played shit too.
Game quality and technology aren't mutually exclusive, it's just that it's easy to forget the crap bad looking games, and easy to remember the good crap looking games meaning people end up with this flawed viewpoint that they are mutually exclusive.
I'd take the games with good gameplay, storyline AND shiny graphics personally. For me games like Mass Effect 2 are fine recent examples of this.
"At least with PC there is steam, GOG, and plenty of other places willing to take my money without royally boning my machine, plus it makes a good media center when I'm not playing games. Ohh...and I get work done occasionally on it too;-)"
Really? you think the option that infests your system with DRM that can cause problems with other parts of your system, the option whereby you can lose access or be prevented playing games you legitimately paid for (Steam) is a good one? The system where cheating is rife, and there's no real come back against it is better?
All the platforms have problems, if you like the PC fair enough that's your choice, but it's hardly fault free, gaming on the PC has at least as many problems as the other systems. As an aside, most consoles make good media players too- the PS3 and 360 for example will play DivX/XviD movies, MP3s and so forth directly, or streamed from another system as well as playing music CDs, DVDs, and even Bluray in the case of the PS3. I suspect media player features will be standard on consoles from here on out, and 2 of the 3 current generation consoles make for solid media centres.
The PCs main advantage is as you say the fact you can do work on it, it makes a great web browser, a great development system, a great system for managing your life- banking, shopping, e-mail and so forth. As a games system though I see no reason why it's any better, or necessarily any worse than console gaming- but I've had far more problems with Steam and games bought via it than I have with my 360 for example.
Re:I wonder what the DOJ will have to say...
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Apple To Buy ARM?
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· Score: 1
"That's because it was two major database vendors merging, hence reducing competition in the database market. Apple is not in the same business as ARM, so the merger of the two companies does not reduce competition in either the phone or embedded processor market. There is potential for abuse, but it is not market consolidation."
Apple recently took over PA Semi and have influential holdings in other chip developers/manufacturers, so yes, it would be market consolidation, and yes, it would have a negative effect on competition.
Sounds like you're just trolling tbh, because Android phones certainly don't act like that in general, they usually perform better than most other handsets on the market, primarily because they're better specced. Certainly there's nothing wrong with the Android OS itself either in terms of performance.
You don't have to do anything to make them respond well, they work out the box. That's not to say you can't fuck them up by installing shitty apps of course, but that comes with the territory of having a largely open handset I guess.
Sounds like you have an issue with your handset. I have an HTC Magic in the UK too, I'm on Vodafone (afaik they're the only UK distributor of the Magic anyway?) and have neither found it sluggish nor buggy.
The only qualm I have with it is battery life- it only lasts 2 days, assuming I don't make more than a single phone call or two, but that seems par for the course for smart phones in general nowadays unfortunately. Even the likes of the Nexus One and the iPhone only have similar battery life and you really have to charge them each night if you can.
I thought we'd got past the "OMG ITS USING RAM!!!111111" whines after that completely wrong and setup article drama about Windows RAM usage where multiple people pointed out that applications using RAM is better than RAM going unused.
Yes you're right that Android phones generally have more RAM, but they also often tend to have faster processors, more pixels on their screen and so forth too, but it doesn't mean it's a requirement of Android, it's just the benefit of the rapid evolution of Android phones vs. the once per year refresh of the iPhone. The iPhone is always behind on hardware apart from right at the start of each refresh, it's just the way Apple tend to do things.
RAM usage is not a bad thing, it's a good thing when used properly, as it is with the JVM and Dalvik- RAM usage is optimised so that RAM isn't just sat there unused and is actually being used for what it's there for.
Can we finally put to bed this ancient idea that RAM usage is inherently bad and that developers should ensure their applications use as little RAM as possible which would in fact make things worse because it'd generally mean more work is being done to keep RAM usage down, such as higher levels of paging from disk or use of compression and so forth?
RAM is cheap now, we can afford plenty of it, and we can afford to use it, the idea that having less RAM and having as much of it as possible sat unused meaning there's more paging from disk and more CPU cycles being used on data compression is ludicrous. It's not like the bad developers argument holds much weight nowadays even, RAM is cheap, it's better to use as much of that as possible than it is to try and shrink your RAM footprint at the expense of more expensive processor cycles.
Re:I wonder what the DOJ will have to say...
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Apple To Buy ARM?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Look at the fuss the EU made over the Oracle/Sun deal because of MySQL and there's far more competition in the database market.
This deal wouldn't stand a chance of getting past the EU without at minimum severe restrictions on what Apple could do with ARM once they took it over.
Many other countries have different sized notes, so I wonder if it would really even be hard or relatively expensive to modify them? The technology is already out there and I'd imagine companies that produce US money counting machines probably also produce money counting machines internationally such that the work could probably be done with existing suppliers.
That's not to say it wouldn't cost more than your average Joe will earn in their entire life time of course, but I doubt the cost would be prohibitively expensive. It comes down the modifications required I suppose- it may be that the machines were built in such a way that there isn't room in the design for modification and they'd have to be completely replaced I guess and certainly at that point it could become an issue!
The issue with the FoIA in the UK is that there is a clause requiring bodies to only have to comply with the request if the cost of fulfilling it is not more than around £450.
I've seen first hand local government abuse this by claiming that collation of the data would take 18 hours and that their FoI officer is paid £25 an hour, and hence the cost of providing the data is too high. Quite why it requires someone paid £50k a year to collate some basic data that they should already have collated anyway I've no idea, but still, they use this excuse, and the information commissioner allows such abuse of it.
So although as you say it's a great theoretical win, I believe it'll make no difference in practice either way due to the ease of which public bodies are able to sidestep FoI requests.
Around £2/£3 for the majority of DVDs in someone's collection, so even mixing in say some new releases, and some are mid-age at say £5 then you're looking at:
50x £3 30x £5 20x £10
That's a pretty unrealistic breakdown, most people wont have 20 new releases per 100 CDs, and even 30 at £5 is a push with the speed at which DVDs drop in price, but even with this rather unrealistic mix that's biased towards your theory that DVD collections are more expensive it's still only £500. In contrast, a 64gb iPad is set to be at least £700. There's going to be a few hundred pound gap either way, the only way your argument would hold any sway is if every DVD in the collection was a new release, but I'm not sure there are even enough full priced new releases at any one time to fill a wallet, and it usually only takes a couple of weeks before the price of them drops to around the £5 mark, so even assuming you bought 100 new releases at full price and had them stolen that day, you'd only need a few weeks to be able to replace them at less than you paid originally, and still at far less than the cost of a 64gb iPad- even in the most hypothetical unrealistic scenario your argument doesn't hold any real weight largely because the iPads cost will remain high for a much longer period.
Of course, an iPad is a much more likely target than a dull looking wallet, and when you lose your iPad you could be losing more than just your movie collection- personal data and the likes, this even brings the possibility of being at risk of further crimes like identity fraud.
"I'm bashing MS for ignoring human rights complaints against them for many, many years. If they say they'll look into one incident because it got too much publicity, that sounds like spin rather than a real commitment. I certainly condemn all companies with this attitude and I try to avoid doing business with them as well, including HP and Dell. "
The issue is that you're doing it with extreme bias. In your original response to me you noted that in the 2006 investigation the issues were merely too much overtime- in other words you were simply parotting Apple's PR response. Look at the fucking dormitories they have to live in, and 80 FORCED hours extra per month? that's pretty fucking excessive:
You can bash Microsoft's record all you want, but don't try and suggest Apple's is better- if Apple are really doing regular audits since 2006 and really care, then how the fuck did they get away with using child labour and so forth in the first place? The audits obviously aren't very effective if knowing full well that it's a big deal they weren't able to deter it. What about the workers who were poisoned elsewhere by n-hexane, one of whom died as a result that Apple refused to comment on? Or does that not count as an issue because Apple didn't give you a nicely worded PR statement about it?
As I say, slag Microsoft off for it all you want, slag any company off for it, but when you try and defend Apple for it when they're very clearly at least as guilty, that just makes you a fanboy, period. You say you boycott HP and Dell, but tell me, do you do business with Apple? is this how you justify it by telling yourself it's not as bad, by simply swallowing their PR statements, rather than those of the 3rd party independent investigative journalists who broke the story?
If you consume Apple kit, at very least quit trying to pretend that you're not part of the problem.
"Ripping them all would be tedious, agreed. You could d/l them instead, but, I suppose that's another can of worms."
Actually I think it's a fair point, and as I said to someone else above, if we're starting from digital content in the first place I'd tend to agree it's a decent option, but I was merely pointing out in my above post that if you've got to rip them to start with then it's certainly not more effort than carrying around DVDs.
I think the digital route is the future, but your average consumer already has hundreds of DVDs, and I don't think ripping or even often downloading them is really an option for the average joe right now. Most people I know with DVD collections have one of those DVD wallets for their collection for when they travel, because it's quick, cheap, easy, and because portable DVD players cost nothing, and DVD players in general are commonplace- taking the wallet to a friends house to watch a movie is quick and easy, more so than ripping/downloading.
Hmm, that's not true, the Apple thing was uncovered by the press well over a year ago, with initial reports on Apple's suppliers using poor labour practices as far back as 2006. See this article for example:
It's only this year that they finally owned up to child labour abuses by factories used to develop their products, and they stated the children involved were 15 years old.
In contrast, the "children" in the Microsoft case were apparently 17 years old, but seeing as you can work full time at 16 in places like the UK I struggle to see that as child labour.
I'd argue that Apple case was in fact worse, simply because they knew about bad working practices for longer, and because the children in their child labour case, really were children.
That's not to absolve the others of blame, but the GP was right, Apple is at least as bad, if not more so, but realistically I'd argue ALL of these tech companies know full well the conditions the Chinese workers making their products have to work in, they just all only ever give a shit and "investigate" when the media decides it's time to milk that same tired old story for a few more sales again.
I'd argue the only real solution is for these companies home governments to start penalising companies over it. Ideally it's a problem China themselves would sort out, but the Chinese government doesn't exactly rate human rights as a high priority sadly. Let's face it though- this is why outsourcing is such a big fad amongst large companies nowadays, because it's just a legalised method of gaining access to sweatshop manufacturing, something that is often banned in their home countries because it tends to breach inconvniences like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
"Ripping to a quality that is sufficient for viewing on a 9" screen, would require just about no degradation in quality to fit 100 movies in 64GB. Especially if you're talking about kids movies which tend to have less complicated scenes than the typical effects heavy sci-fi movie,"
I suppose it depends what's acceptable, certainly I wouldn't be happy with roughly 600mb rips, when I'm used to the quality of the typical ~1.4gb DVD rips, or simply DVD quality itself.
"Yep- why destroy the quality with a rip when you can destroy the complete original disk by carrying it around in the car with you."
How do you plan to destroy the original disc exactly? by being careless with it? by going over bumps or general bad driving or similar? Is the iPad magically invulnerable to damage in similar circumstances? Is an iPad less prone to theft than a small dull looking wallet?
Most people's DVD collection can be replaced largely out of £2 bargain bins nowadays, I doubt people will have 100 brand new full price releases hanging around with them- I'm not sure there even are that many full price releases at any one time due to the fact that DVDs drop so quick in price now. Even if you did manage to break 1 or 2 discs through carelessness, it's a negligible replacement cost, especially considering the amount you'd save over buying a 64gb model of the iPad, even more so with the higher risk of theft of an iPad.
"64GB / 100 = 640MB. That's 10MB less than a standard CD, so the quality could be something like what we used to share before DVD-Rs were widespread. Using a more modern codec would get better quality. They'll be watched on a small screen anyway, it's probably not a problem."
I've not seen 650mb CDs in years, they were rare even a decade ago, 700mb has been standard for a long long time, and even then people would generally overburn or use 800mb discs. The quality issue isn't really one of amount of pixels, but amount of blurring away of detail that occurs with greater compression and that certainly is noticeable. A lot of rips nowadays are done as 2x 700mb or around that mark for the noticable quality increase, so around 1.4gb has been fairly standard for a while now.
"I wouldn't want to leave 100 DVDs in a wallet in a car anyway. They're susceptible to heat/sun damage, and could be stolen very easily."...unlike iPads?
If they're in a wallet under the seat, or in the glove compartment, they're less susceptible to either of those two things than an iPad or two.
Yes, bringing a collection of a hundred DVDs is far easier than storing those hundred on 64GB of flash memory.
Pray tell what kind of quality you'd have to rip down to to get 100 movies onto 64gb of flash memory, some of which is already used by the OS and apps.
I think most people would rather keep their cheap, rather small, perfectly portable DVD wallets and not end up with abysmal quality, and have to spend hours and hours and hours for the privalage I'm afraid.
I could understand your argument if anyone actually carried their DVDs around in their original standard DVD sized cases, or if anyone owned an automatic disc loading and ripping device, or had the will to literally spend days manually loading, unloading, and ripping their DVDs. But right now, it's far too time consuming and dull a job, for most, particularly when you can just buy a cheap DVD wallet to carry the lot around with you.
Your sarcasm was misplaced- carrying a hundred DVDs around really is easier than ripping them to flash memory, and you wont have to try and destroy the quality to squeeze them into 64gb of storage either.
It's possible that those stories are right and this is all part of Apple's marketing strategy which still seems feasible, seeing as Apple haven't brought the authorities in on this when they've sued over smaller things in the past.
It could just be that after realising this came across as perhaps the lamest attempt at faking a leak yet, they felt they had to jump to try and make it more feasible by getting Gizmodo to release even more details.
Personally I'm still quite suspect about it all- they had time to connect the phone to Facebook to find the guys name out before it was whiped, but find nothing else out about the phone's software whatsoever? What are the chances of the phone ending up in the hands of someone who knows how to use it, how to strip it down, and which pro-Apple sites are best to sell it to? Apple obviously knew about the issue to make the phone remotely erase it's entire contents, but why didn't they have procedures in place to just track it's whereabouts via GPS instead? Why have Gizmodo now publicly admitting not just handling stolen goods, but also purchasing what they must have known would be classed as stolen goods? Even the timing is convenient, last week or so we had details about the software, iPhone OS 4.0 and now we've conveniently got details about the hardware without any additional software details. It really does just seem like this whole "leak" is setup perfectly so that Apple could get the details of their hardware out there, without having to answer any more questions than necessary about it such as questions about the software.
Whatever the real truth about it all, the story is quite odd either way, and leaves a lot of questions, and stinks of much lameness throughout- either poor journalism practices on Gizmodos behalf, or the lamest advertising campaign ever on Apple's.
I suspect Apple's happy regardless, even if on the (IMHO highly unlikely) offchance it wasn't intentional it's still mission accomplished, the net is ablaze with discussion about Apple's next shiny new toy.
I don't know, I can see it as being useful for taking into the bathroom with you for porn to have a crafty wank, whilst you tell your wife you were actually using it to read the news whilst taking a shit.
The difference is most companies don't end up losing them in a place where they get found by someone who just happens to be technically literate and enough of a fanboy to rather than hand it over to the police- you know, suspecting it may be a trade secret and all, opens it up and dissects the living crap out of it including the weight of the device compared to the last one and the percentage of extra battery it just happens to have. This fanboy just happens to write it all up and pass it to an extremely pro-Apple gadget site.
Apple, when realising they've lost it, no, they don't report the fact they've lost what would otherwise be a major fucking trade secret to the police, they tell someone they'd "really like it back" who just happens to tell that to Gizmodo. This is a company that would run to their lawyers if someone so much as looked at Steve Jobs the wrong way. This is also a phone with GPS, and internet access, a phone that could report it's location back to base if it was an important secret that was lost such that Apple could trace it easily.
Really, you don't see anything else suspicious in the story other than the fact they didn't report some processor details?
Apple's marketing is getting sloppy, the leaks have always been suspicious in the past, but this time it's just so utterly blatant, the story is so utterly implausible that it's the poorest attempt at starting the rumour mill turning to generate hype that I've ever seen.
What about the Norwegian air ambulance helicopter, the Finnish airforce jets, and the MET office aircraft that did fly up there and did come back with measurable effects on their aircraft?
Or were they conveniently ignored because that doesn't fit well into an attempt to blame the met office?
Oh, and besides:
"During all those next days this first data-set never got adapted, updated with actual data or even checked again."
[citation needed]
I can't see any evidence anywhere whatsoever for the above quote, only evidence to the contrary- i.e. that continuous satellite data is being used (and not just by the met office), and also that the met office has as mentioned above sent aircraft up to test the effects too.
Slashdot Mirror
On our street with have a few retirees who generally seem to like gardening a lot, but we also have a house with two married doctors in, and one with two married police officers in who work shifts. We also have a few spouses who don't work, as well as families with kids who attend college and one family with a kid at uni both of which are pretty much part time affairs.
Even late at night the older kids are coming home from their nights at, night owls like me are sat on the computer. The doctors and police officers all work shifts, sometimes nights, sometimes days. Your personal anecdote has absolutely no mapping to the reality of our cul-de-sac, and undoubtedly many others across the country, and not even just cul-de-sacs- normal streets too. The fact is, by coming down our street to scout it out you're exponentially increasing the opportunity to scout out houses, now the fact our street does so frequently have eyes on it is an advantage in itself, but the point is that by only having to visit the street once- to actually commit the crime, they're grossly better off under street view in their chances otherwise. I'm not saying without street view we would be immune to crime, but the point is that crime is much easier in a street view world, it absolutely does decrease the risk.
"If what you claim is true, then what was the make/model/plate# of the google street view van? Was the driver a male or female? How many of your all-the-time-alert neighbors saw it? After all, those things aren't exactly inconspicuous!"
To answer your question, I wasn't actually aware we'd been streeviewed until Google announced 95% of the UK had been covered. I look and lo and behold our street was done. My car wasn't in the drive at the time so I must've been at work, but my girlfriend's was, and she'd not seen it, I didn't care too much, but when in conversation with a couple of our neighbours I mentioned it- they weren't aware we'd been streetviewed but both of them that I was speaking two (one retiree, one part-retiree but doing the odd contract work still) both said they'd seen the odd looking vehicle summer of last year, they actually assumed it was an election vehicle and the equipment on top were loud speakers but could still vividly remember it was a dark Vauxhall Corsa, with a young guy driving it. You see this perfectly demonstrates my point- your idea they needed to remember an exact registration plate is false, if there was a crime following the incident, even some months after the police will be happy with such a simple description because it's trivial for them to try and then track down such a vehicle described in other crimes, or on CCTV nearby.
Your theoretical scenario is wrong, because you talk about no one recognising an out of place car being there, but they do because it's out of place that any car other than those who live here come down our street it happens so infrequently, we live in a fairly rural area. I can remember when I was gardening just the weekend before last someone coming down, it was an older looking man - maybe 40s - 60s rough age range, with a younger looking girl- 20s, in a soft top car, roof down.
So this is really the point, some people do remember these small things as much as you might like to believe otherwise, I'm not saying crimes are impossible without street view, not at all, which seems to be somewhat what you're implying by your theories about planting covert cameras- fuck yes, if James Bond wanted to ninja down our street at night with his gadgets I'm sure he could still commit a crime, but most criminals aren't James Bond. If a criminal has to physically scout out a location before committing a crime then they drastically increase their chance of being seen and being caught, than if they use streetview.
I accept that not everyone's street is the same, I accept that removal of street view will not prevent crime, I'm merely making the point that streetview does at least make crime easier for the common criminal, and it doesn reduce their exposure to potentia
The biggest concern I have with street view is:
a) Burglars no longer need to visit an area to scout it to check for targets. The common argument from the pro-street view group against this is that well anyone could come down and take a picture for the same effect- that's true, but here's the difference, using my house an example. I live on a cul-de-sac, to get to my house and take pictures without someone noticing a guy with a camera would take some doing, everyone on our street knows everyone else, if someone came down, and turned around, someone would see them. If there was a subsequent burglary, then there would be witnesses who could point the police in the right direction in terms of a number plate, or a description of a person, or person(s) looking dodgy. With street view this is gone, people can now scout our street without ever knowing, they can perform a burglary without anyone have ever seen anyone suspicious looking coming down the street to scout it. They can spend as much time as they want examining the images on street view for best ways to rob the houses, or steal a car or similar. As much as the pro-street view grouping likes to suggest that because the images are taken from public places, it doesn't decrease security or make things any easier for criminals, they are wrong, it does. Which takes me to the second point:
b) The street view camera is quite high up, when browsing around on street view in the UK down by my girlfriends grand mothers house, I followed along a road, and was amazed to see how many walls I could see over that I'd never seen before. One image showed right over a wall you can't normally see over into a person's french windows that aren't normally visible showing a nice big 50"+ flat screen TV and a bunch of games consoles and games in full view, that no one passing by in the street would have otherwise ever known was there. The camera was most certainly too high on the street view vehicles and nullifies somewhat the argument that the images were taken from places where people could normally take pictures- could is perhaps true, but would? No, no one was going to walk around on stilts, or sat on someone elses shoulders or similar to take pictures in what would otherwise be random places. Again, if they were criminals, and if they did this it would raise further suspicion. People would remember seeing the culprits around.
I understand the theory that street view doesn't cause any issues in theory because they are just taking images from public places, but it's a theory that simply doesn't map to reality. Anyone scouting an area physically will be seen, there will be witnesses, if they take pictures of people's houses there will be a lot of suspicion from residents, if they hang around getting a good look into people's houses, there will be suspicion. Nothing lets criminals plan out a highly profitable crime spree and even map their best exit routes without ever having to be seen quite like street view does.
In the UK, I think what fucked me off most recently about it is that street view drove past the SAS HQ on a public road and photographed that too, yet a couple of MPs complained saying it put the SAS HQ's security at risk. Google accepted this and removed the images- I mean, wtf? So it's only a security risk for one of the most heavily defended army bases in the UK full of the best trained troops in the world, but it's not a security risk for say some unarmed old pensioner whose house has been filmed as a prime burglary target? Even if the approach was consistent it would be something, yet even that's not the case.
All this is not to say I'm totally against it, I think it's a cool piece of technology and I think a dataset of the world in images that large could prove vital to building new image recognition technologies and so forth (i.e. improving Google Goggles), I think my real concern is that it's not something that was well planned out, there wasn't enough public consultation, it does raise issues, and those issues have not been discussed and see
Out of interest, how old are your kids and at what age would you deem them old enough to go on the PSN?
I wanted a new monitor to replace my old 1600x1200 19" CRT on my second PC.
I was quite amazed to find that if I wanted the same vertical resolution (it's widescreen equivalent- 1920x1200) I had to go all the way up to 24". I found it amazing that my ancient 19" CRT had a better resolution than all the 19", 20", 22" TFTs going at the time.
Of course I could've gone for a 1600x1050 or whatever it is smaller screen, but part the reason I wanted a higher resolution for that second PC was because I watch movies on it whilst using my main PC for other things, and if I was going to buy a new screen, I wanted one capable of doing 1080p. In the end I just bought a 24" Samsung screen. It's bigger than what I was looking for, but oh well.
So whilst I do agree that people who need more pixels are a fairly niche market, what fucked me off a bit is the fact that the amount of pixels you can get for smaller screen sizes has actually decreased- that's a step backwards. Why are we going backwards?
Regarding higher resolutions though, I now have 24" screens on both my PCs, and despite being sat back in my chair I can still see individual pixels on curves and so forth, you can solve this somewhat with various graphics techniques, but nothing beats simply having a higher resolution. Even on a 24" screen stuck at 1920x1200 things can get a little cramped with MathCAD + Word + Vista style Sidebar in Windows 7- it'd be nice to be able to fit a PDF document in there too- I need a few things running side by side for some of the stuff I do, even the likes of Visual Studio when in full swing with all it's windows up would benefit from extra pixels. I'd gladly still take higher resolution, and think he's right things should still be moving forward, it's sad that they've come to a standstill, or in some cases, outright gone backwards. You shouldn't be limited to larger monitors for 1200 vertical resolution- it's not like the technology doesn't exist, there are a few out there and my Dell which is years old did 1920x1200 on a 15" screen just fine, it's just not mainstream, and the few monitors that do support this resolution in a smaller size are usually from shitty manufacturers- although I admit I haven't looked in a while, so maybe the situation's better now. In general I can sympathise with the guy in TFA though.
The issue is, that there are (believe it or not!) games out there that have good gameplay, story AND good graphics and other technology. There are also games without fancy technology that suck.
So the issue isn't one of good gameplay and good story vs. fancy technology at all, it's simply about good games vs. bad games. The nostalgic view of all the games of old that were amazingly fun but didn't look great is forgetful of all the games of old that looked shit, and also played shit too.
Game quality and technology aren't mutually exclusive, it's just that it's easy to forget the crap bad looking games, and easy to remember the good crap looking games meaning people end up with this flawed viewpoint that they are mutually exclusive.
I'd take the games with good gameplay, storyline AND shiny graphics personally. For me games like Mass Effect 2 are fine recent examples of this.
"At least with PC there is steam, GOG, and plenty of other places willing to take my money without royally boning my machine, plus it makes a good media center when I'm not playing games. Ohh...and I get work done occasionally on it too ;-)"
Really? you think the option that infests your system with DRM that can cause problems with other parts of your system, the option whereby you can lose access or be prevented playing games you legitimately paid for (Steam) is a good one? The system where cheating is rife, and there's no real come back against it is better?
All the platforms have problems, if you like the PC fair enough that's your choice, but it's hardly fault free, gaming on the PC has at least as many problems as the other systems. As an aside, most consoles make good media players too- the PS3 and 360 for example will play DivX/XviD movies, MP3s and so forth directly, or streamed from another system as well as playing music CDs, DVDs, and even Bluray in the case of the PS3. I suspect media player features will be standard on consoles from here on out, and 2 of the 3 current generation consoles make for solid media centres.
The PCs main advantage is as you say the fact you can do work on it, it makes a great web browser, a great development system, a great system for managing your life- banking, shopping, e-mail and so forth. As a games system though I see no reason why it's any better, or necessarily any worse than console gaming- but I've had far more problems with Steam and games bought via it than I have with my 360 for example.
"That's because it was two major database vendors merging, hence reducing competition in the database market. Apple is not in the same business as ARM, so the merger of the two companies does not reduce competition in either the phone or embedded processor market. There is potential for abuse, but it is not market consolidation."
Apple recently took over PA Semi and have influential holdings in other chip developers/manufacturers, so yes, it would be market consolidation, and yes, it would have a negative effect on competition.
Sounds like you're just trolling tbh, because Android phones certainly don't act like that in general, they usually perform better than most other handsets on the market, primarily because they're better specced. Certainly there's nothing wrong with the Android OS itself either in terms of performance.
You don't have to do anything to make them respond well, they work out the box. That's not to say you can't fuck them up by installing shitty apps of course, but that comes with the territory of having a largely open handset I guess.
Sounds like you have an issue with your handset. I have an HTC Magic in the UK too, I'm on Vodafone (afaik they're the only UK distributor of the Magic anyway?) and have neither found it sluggish nor buggy.
The only qualm I have with it is battery life- it only lasts 2 days, assuming I don't make more than a single phone call or two, but that seems par for the course for smart phones in general nowadays unfortunately. Even the likes of the Nexus One and the iPhone only have similar battery life and you really have to charge them each night if you can.
Oh god, are we still at this stage?
I thought we'd got past the "OMG ITS USING RAM!!!111111" whines after that completely wrong and setup article drama about Windows RAM usage where multiple people pointed out that applications using RAM is better than RAM going unused.
Yes you're right that Android phones generally have more RAM, but they also often tend to have faster processors, more pixels on their screen and so forth too, but it doesn't mean it's a requirement of Android, it's just the benefit of the rapid evolution of Android phones vs. the once per year refresh of the iPhone. The iPhone is always behind on hardware apart from right at the start of each refresh, it's just the way Apple tend to do things.
RAM usage is not a bad thing, it's a good thing when used properly, as it is with the JVM and Dalvik- RAM usage is optimised so that RAM isn't just sat there unused and is actually being used for what it's there for.
Can we finally put to bed this ancient idea that RAM usage is inherently bad and that developers should ensure their applications use as little RAM as possible which would in fact make things worse because it'd generally mean more work is being done to keep RAM usage down, such as higher levels of paging from disk or use of compression and so forth?
RAM is cheap now, we can afford plenty of it, and we can afford to use it, the idea that having less RAM and having as much of it as possible sat unused meaning there's more paging from disk and more CPU cycles being used on data compression is ludicrous. It's not like the bad developers argument holds much weight nowadays even, RAM is cheap, it's better to use as much of that as possible than it is to try and shrink your RAM footprint at the expense of more expensive processor cycles.
Look at the fuss the EU made over the Oracle/Sun deal because of MySQL and there's far more competition in the database market.
This deal wouldn't stand a chance of getting past the EU without at minimum severe restrictions on what Apple could do with ARM once they took it over.
Many other countries have different sized notes, so I wonder if it would really even be hard or relatively expensive to modify them? The technology is already out there and I'd imagine companies that produce US money counting machines probably also produce money counting machines internationally such that the work could probably be done with existing suppliers.
That's not to say it wouldn't cost more than your average Joe will earn in their entire life time of course, but I doubt the cost would be prohibitively expensive. It comes down the modifications required I suppose- it may be that the machines were built in such a way that there isn't room in the design for modification and they'd have to be completely replaced I guess and certainly at that point it could become an issue!
The issue with the FoIA in the UK is that there is a clause requiring bodies to only have to comply with the request if the cost of fulfilling it is not more than around £450.
I've seen first hand local government abuse this by claiming that collation of the data would take 18 hours and that their FoI officer is paid £25 an hour, and hence the cost of providing the data is too high. Quite why it requires someone paid £50k a year to collate some basic data that they should already have collated anyway I've no idea, but still, they use this excuse, and the information commissioner allows such abuse of it.
So although as you say it's a great theoretical win, I believe it'll make no difference in practice either way due to the ease of which public bodies are able to sidestep FoI requests.
Around £2/£3 for the majority of DVDs in someone's collection, so even mixing in say some new releases, and some are mid-age at say £5 then you're looking at:
50x £3
30x £5
20x £10
That's a pretty unrealistic breakdown, most people wont have 20 new releases per 100 CDs, and even 30 at £5 is a push with the speed at which DVDs drop in price, but even with this rather unrealistic mix that's biased towards your theory that DVD collections are more expensive it's still only £500. In contrast, a 64gb iPad is set to be at least £700. There's going to be a few hundred pound gap either way, the only way your argument would hold any sway is if every DVD in the collection was a new release, but I'm not sure there are even enough full priced new releases at any one time to fill a wallet, and it usually only takes a couple of weeks before the price of them drops to around the £5 mark, so even assuming you bought 100 new releases at full price and had them stolen that day, you'd only need a few weeks to be able to replace them at less than you paid originally, and still at far less than the cost of a 64gb iPad- even in the most hypothetical unrealistic scenario your argument doesn't hold any real weight largely because the iPads cost will remain high for a much longer period.
Of course, an iPad is a much more likely target than a dull looking wallet, and when you lose your iPad you could be losing more than just your movie collection- personal data and the likes, this even brings the possibility of being at risk of further crimes like identity fraud.
So no, it's really not the opposite.
"I'm bashing MS for ignoring human rights complaints against them for many, many years. If they say they'll look into one incident because it got too much publicity, that sounds like spin rather than a real commitment. I certainly condemn all companies with this attitude and I try to avoid doing business with them as well, including HP and Dell. "
The issue is that you're doing it with extreme bias. In your original response to me you noted that in the 2006 investigation the issues were merely too much overtime- in other words you were simply parotting Apple's PR response. Look at the fucking dormitories they have to live in, and 80 FORCED hours extra per month? that's pretty fucking excessive:
http://www.engadget.com/2006/06/26/ipod-city-admits-labor-law-violations/
You can bash Microsoft's record all you want, but don't try and suggest Apple's is better- if Apple are really doing regular audits since 2006 and really care, then how the fuck did they get away with using child labour and so forth in the first place? The audits obviously aren't very effective if knowing full well that it's a big deal they weren't able to deter it. What about the workers who were poisoned elsewhere by n-hexane, one of whom died as a result that Apple refused to comment on? Or does that not count as an issue because Apple didn't give you a nicely worded PR statement about it?
As I say, slag Microsoft off for it all you want, slag any company off for it, but when you try and defend Apple for it when they're very clearly at least as guilty, that just makes you a fanboy, period. You say you boycott HP and Dell, but tell me, do you do business with Apple? is this how you justify it by telling yourself it's not as bad, by simply swallowing their PR statements, rather than those of the 3rd party independent investigative journalists who broke the story?
If you consume Apple kit, at very least quit trying to pretend that you're not part of the problem.
No, probably slightly less concerned look than having an iPad stolen I would imagine though.
"Ripping them all would be tedious, agreed. You could d/l them instead, but, I suppose that's another can of worms."
Actually I think it's a fair point, and as I said to someone else above, if we're starting from digital content in the first place I'd tend to agree it's a decent option, but I was merely pointing out in my above post that if you've got to rip them to start with then it's certainly not more effort than carrying around DVDs.
I think the digital route is the future, but your average consumer already has hundreds of DVDs, and I don't think ripping or even often downloading them is really an option for the average joe right now. Most people I know with DVD collections have one of those DVD wallets for their collection for when they travel, because it's quick, cheap, easy, and because portable DVD players cost nothing, and DVD players in general are commonplace- taking the wallet to a friends house to watch a movie is quick and easy, more so than ripping/downloading.
Hmm, that's not true, the Apple thing was uncovered by the press well over a year ago, with initial reports on Apple's suppliers using poor labour practices as far back as 2006. See this article for example:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5312074.stm
It's only this year that they finally owned up to child labour abuses by factories used to develop their products, and they stated the children involved were 15 years old.
In contrast, the "children" in the Microsoft case were apparently 17 years old, but seeing as you can work full time at 16 in places like the UK I struggle to see that as child labour.
I'd argue that Apple case was in fact worse, simply because they knew about bad working practices for longer, and because the children in their child labour case, really were children.
That's not to absolve the others of blame, but the GP was right, Apple is at least as bad, if not more so, but realistically I'd argue ALL of these tech companies know full well the conditions the Chinese workers making their products have to work in, they just all only ever give a shit and "investigate" when the media decides it's time to milk that same tired old story for a few more sales again.
I'd argue the only real solution is for these companies home governments to start penalising companies over it. Ideally it's a problem China themselves would sort out, but the Chinese government doesn't exactly rate human rights as a high priority sadly. Let's face it though- this is why outsourcing is such a big fad amongst large companies nowadays, because it's just a legalised method of gaining access to sweatshop manufacturing, something that is often banned in their home countries because it tends to breach inconvniences like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
"Ripping to a quality that is sufficient for viewing on a 9" screen, would require just about no degradation in quality to fit 100 movies in 64GB. Especially if you're talking about kids movies which tend to have less complicated scenes than the typical effects heavy sci-fi movie,"
I suppose it depends what's acceptable, certainly I wouldn't be happy with roughly 600mb rips, when I'm used to the quality of the typical ~1.4gb DVD rips, or simply DVD quality itself.
"Yep- why destroy the quality with a rip when you can destroy the complete original disk by carrying it around in the car with you."
How do you plan to destroy the original disc exactly? by being careless with it? by going over bumps or general bad driving or similar? Is the iPad magically invulnerable to damage in similar circumstances? Is an iPad less prone to theft than a small dull looking wallet?
Most people's DVD collection can be replaced largely out of £2 bargain bins nowadays, I doubt people will have 100 brand new full price releases hanging around with them- I'm not sure there even are that many full price releases at any one time due to the fact that DVDs drop so quick in price now. Even if you did manage to break 1 or 2 discs through carelessness, it's a negligible replacement cost, especially considering the amount you'd save over buying a 64gb model of the iPad, even more so with the higher risk of theft of an iPad.
"64GB / 100 = 640MB. That's 10MB less than a standard CD, so the quality could be something like what we used to share before DVD-Rs were widespread. Using a more modern codec would get better quality. They'll be watched on a small screen anyway, it's probably not a problem."
I've not seen 650mb CDs in years, they were rare even a decade ago, 700mb has been standard for a long long time, and even then people would generally overburn or use 800mb discs. The quality issue isn't really one of amount of pixels, but amount of blurring away of detail that occurs with greater compression and that certainly is noticeable. A lot of rips nowadays are done as 2x 700mb or around that mark for the noticable quality increase, so around 1.4gb has been fairly standard for a while now.
"I wouldn't want to leave 100 DVDs in a wallet in a car anyway. They're susceptible to heat/sun damage, and could be stolen very easily." ...unlike iPads?
If they're in a wallet under the seat, or in the glove compartment, they're less susceptible to either of those two things than an iPad or two.
Yes, bringing a collection of a hundred DVDs is far easier than storing those hundred on 64GB of flash memory.
Pray tell what kind of quality you'd have to rip down to to get 100 movies onto 64gb of flash memory, some of which is already used by the OS and apps.
I think most people would rather keep their cheap, rather small, perfectly portable DVD wallets and not end up with abysmal quality, and have to spend hours and hours and hours for the privalage I'm afraid.
I could understand your argument if anyone actually carried their DVDs around in their original standard DVD sized cases, or if anyone owned an automatic disc loading and ripping device, or had the will to literally spend days manually loading, unloading, and ripping their DVDs. But right now, it's far too time consuming and dull a job, for most, particularly when you can just buy a cheap DVD wallet to carry the lot around with you.
Your sarcasm was misplaced- carrying a hundred DVDs around really is easier than ripping them to flash memory, and you wont have to try and destroy the quality to squeeze them into 64gb of storage either.
It's possible that those stories are right and this is all part of Apple's marketing strategy which still seems feasible, seeing as Apple haven't brought the authorities in on this when they've sued over smaller things in the past.
It could just be that after realising this came across as perhaps the lamest attempt at faking a leak yet, they felt they had to jump to try and make it more feasible by getting Gizmodo to release even more details.
Personally I'm still quite suspect about it all- they had time to connect the phone to Facebook to find the guys name out before it was whiped, but find nothing else out about the phone's software whatsoever? What are the chances of the phone ending up in the hands of someone who knows how to use it, how to strip it down, and which pro-Apple sites are best to sell it to? Apple obviously knew about the issue to make the phone remotely erase it's entire contents, but why didn't they have procedures in place to just track it's whereabouts via GPS instead? Why have Gizmodo now publicly admitting not just handling stolen goods, but also purchasing what they must have known would be classed as stolen goods? Even the timing is convenient, last week or so we had details about the software, iPhone OS 4.0 and now we've conveniently got details about the hardware without any additional software details. It really does just seem like this whole "leak" is setup perfectly so that Apple could get the details of their hardware out there, without having to answer any more questions than necessary about it such as questions about the software.
Whatever the real truth about it all, the story is quite odd either way, and leaves a lot of questions, and stinks of much lameness throughout- either poor journalism practices on Gizmodos behalf, or the lamest advertising campaign ever on Apple's.
I suspect Apple's happy regardless, even if on the (IMHO highly unlikely) offchance it wasn't intentional it's still mission accomplished, the net is ablaze with discussion about Apple's next shiny new toy.
I don't know, I can see it as being useful for taking into the bathroom with you for porn to have a crafty wank, whilst you tell your wife you were actually using it to read the news whilst taking a shit.
I'm not sure what else I'd use it for though.
The difference is most companies don't end up losing them in a place where they get found by someone who just happens to be technically literate and enough of a fanboy to rather than hand it over to the police- you know, suspecting it may be a trade secret and all, opens it up and dissects the living crap out of it including the weight of the device compared to the last one and the percentage of extra battery it just happens to have. This fanboy just happens to write it all up and pass it to an extremely pro-Apple gadget site.
Apple, when realising they've lost it, no, they don't report the fact they've lost what would otherwise be a major fucking trade secret to the police, they tell someone they'd "really like it back" who just happens to tell that to Gizmodo. This is a company that would run to their lawyers if someone so much as looked at Steve Jobs the wrong way. This is also a phone with GPS, and internet access, a phone that could report it's location back to base if it was an important secret that was lost such that Apple could trace it easily.
Really, you don't see anything else suspicious in the story other than the fact they didn't report some processor details?
Apple's marketing is getting sloppy, the leaks have always been suspicious in the past, but this time it's just so utterly blatant, the story is so utterly implausible that it's the poorest attempt at starting the rumour mill turning to generate hype that I've ever seen.
What about the Norwegian air ambulance helicopter, the Finnish airforce jets, and the MET office aircraft that did fly up there and did come back with measurable effects on their aircraft?
Or were they conveniently ignored because that doesn't fit well into an attempt to blame the met office?
Oh, and besides:
"During all those next days this first data-set never got adapted, updated with actual data or even checked again."
[citation needed]
I can't see any evidence anywhere whatsoever for the above quote, only evidence to the contrary- i.e. that continuous satellite data is being used (and not just by the met office), and also that the met office has as mentioned above sent aircraft up to test the effects too.