If you're using Chrome, you've already proven you don't care about the app phoning home.
No, you've shown that you are willing to accept an app phoning home to Google for what Chrome gives you. That doesn't mean that you are willing to accept an app phoning home to Microsoft for what the H.264-in-HTML5-video-tag-plugin gives you.
Microsoft has interesting priorities... "Lets release a plug-in for a third party browser to fix a perceived short coming..." as opposed to "Lets fix the problems and short comings in our products". Slow clap for Microsoft.
They also missed the obvious test: Two or more *identical* phones with everything tuned off except the basic interface, each on a different network.
Since currently testing iPhones that are publicly available in the US on two different networks is impossible, its not surprising that this test was "missed"; even when the Verizon iPhone is available in a couple of days, testing identical models on different networks will still be impossible.
Unless the court lets them get away with certifying the wrong class, this shouldn't be relevant to all AT&T iPhone users, only those that have had at some point in time covered by the suit a data plan that is not unlimited. AT&T overreporting usage on unlimited plans doesn't have any effect on the people with those plans except to serve as a disincentive to switch to the limited-usage plans that AT&T really wants people to switch to (but not bad enough to drive off people with existing unlimited plans by not letting them renew them.)
Instead of trying so hard to optimize JavaScript to do things like that, why can't we just get a wider language choice? Like, a properly sandboxed language with static typing could be handy, and the standard could mandate its presence.
Its not going to happen in the HTML standard the way that standard process works -- which essentially gives a veto to any browser maker with a measurable usage share -- Mozilla & Opera probably wouldn't want to implement anything along those lines, Microsoft would insist on.NET, and Google would probably propose something like Portable Native Client.
What occurred was the Bing Toolbar peeked at client user Google search results and sent them back to Redmond.
Which certainly seems to be within the scope of the Bing Toolbar TOS, even if using it to shape Bing results the way they do may not be what most people would expect them to do.
Is it cheating if Toyota watches what type of car styles Ford drivers prefer and then makes more cars of that style?
That's not what is happening here. If you need things in the form of a car analogy, its as if Toyota manufactured spark plugs that were installed in cars, some of which were Fords, and the spark plugs had sensors which could be used to detect information about the engine that they were installed in, and transmit that information back to Toyota, and Toyota used that information to feed into their own engine designs.
It seems like this is publicly available information.
They are capturing user's search results on Google from users using Internet Explorer with the Bing Toolbar and/or Suggested Sites, and using that to drive Bing rankings. It's not "publicly available information". It does appear to be information within the scope of the privacy policy associated with those features, though.
The answer i all the tablet, netbooks and other gizmos churned out en masse from China, that run Android (because it's easy to implement being so open, and pretty much free.)
Except that its not. While TFA uses the word "mobile", the source it cites is a market report from Canalys, which actually found that Android has displaced Symbian as the #1 smartphone OS. So none of those tablets, netbooks, and "other gizmos" that aren't smartphones had any effect.
If you look at the actual marketplace, this should come as no surprise. Carriers are basically giving away android phones. My boss just picked up a Samsung Vibrant for $30.
An AT&T sells new 8GB iPhone 3GS's for $49. So, yeah, the cheapest new Android phone is cheaper than the cheapest new iOS-based phone, and the most expensive new Android phone is probably more expensive than the most expensive new iOS based phone, and there are orders of magnitude more options -- and more meaningful choices between them -- between the low and the high.
But what you point to isn't an example of "giving away" Android phones.
The comment about Wikipedia seems out of left field. Wikipedia is a site, not a search engine.
Wikipedia has site-specific search built in. You can certainly compare how often you get a result of any particular quality you are looking for from Wikipedia's search as from Google's main search engine. Obviously, the universe over which Google's search engine operates includes Wikipedia, but this kind of comparison isn't a comparison of the universe over which the engine searches but the combination of that universe with the utility of the algorithms in identifying relevant answers to particular kinds of queries, and a broader universe might not be an advantage with equally good algoritms (because, depending on how information is curated -- or not -- a broader search space with similar algorithms could mean more irrelevant results, not better highly-placed results.)
Under the same law, how about we ask for visibility of ALL public government officials emails starting with Boehner and Pelosi.
Because the "same law" would be an Alaska state law that only applies to agencies and officials of the State of Alaska, and neither Boehner nor Pelosi (at least not the Boehner and Pelosi I would think you are referring to) are employed by any agency of the State of Alaska.
As far as I'm concerned, on day 11 they should have gotten a court warrant and just taken all the records, there is no reason to give anyone any extension of a legal obligation
State "sunshine" laws usually have a very short "normal" response time (the 10 days indicated for Alasks is fairly typical of the one's I've seen), they also fairly usually allow the response given within that 10 days to be either the requested documents or an explanation of the justification of the delay in releasing the documentation, along with an expected date of release. Some (as Alaska's apparently do, from TFA) require some official to approve extensions, others make the extensions essentially automatic within certain limits, but allow them to be challenged in court by the requester.
I think the days are numbered for dedicated game machines when you can get Phones and tablets that will do games "good enough" for most and do much more besides.
I think Sony recognizes that the general-purpose mobile device market is becoming key to mobile gaming, which is they announced the Playstation Suite framework (initially for Android 2.3+, apparently with cross-platform mobile plans) at the same time that they announced the NGP.
OK, I can see how the prosecution might want to use this kind of information in a criminal case. . Makes sense, and all that. But the Defense?
First, this isn't mostly about criminal cases, its about civil cases (where there is also a defense.)
Second, even in a criminal case, Facebook material could be useful to the defense. (In fact, any kind of evidence that could be useful to the prosecution could be useful to the defense, because any class of evidence that the prosecution could use to support the idea that the defendant committed a crime could be used by the defense to raise reasonable doubt, if nothing else by using the same kind of evidence pertaining to a different person to show that that other person could have committed the crime.)
Of course with the four that are seemingly in charge, the mob that's been left out can say "fark it" and go their own way saying that they don't need to kowtow to Google, Apple, Mozilla and Opera, (the last of which has such a small audience that they are within the margin of error).
There is no "mob that's been left out". WHATWG has been clear that any browser vendor with measurable marketshare has veto power over inclusion of features. (essentially, they want the standard to represent what all browser vendors are willing to commit to work toward.) The only people who are left out are those who choose not to participate.
But the bigger problem is that HTML has effectively been abandoned to four companies: Apple, Google, Opera, and Mozilla. They are deciding the actual fate of HTML, not a truly independent standards process
Every real standards process is driven by the industry, usually primarily by the biggest players in the industry. Even when people other than those shipping implementations, such as users, are involved, there involvement is always secondary in practice even if not in theory, because a standard is meaningful only to the extent that it is actually implemented.
I don't know why anyone would want a "standards process" that was "truly independent" of the implementors; what value would that have?
All web sites that allow logins should REQUIRE or at least STRONGLY ENCOURGE HTTPS from unencrypted WiFi hotspots such as those "found at coffee shops, airports, libraries or schools."
No, all websites that allow logins should require at least HTTPS (and preferably HTTPS with certificate verification in both directions rather than just one, though getting to the point where that is practical is still a ways off) from any logon not on the servers local network. Otherwise, credentials are travelling unencrypted over the public internet -- which means a bunch of computers that aren't controlled by either the owner of the account or the owner of the system they are logging in to, any of whom can capture that information and misuse it.
You do realize that publicly traded companies aren't "public" like the government, right?
All corporations (publicly traded are not) are public just like the government, because they are creatures of government created through law, not natural entities like private individuals.
So, now ISPs all have to buy terabytes of hard disk space to store all of those log files just in case some nosy prosecutor comes a callin'?
Don't worry. I'm sure the big ISPs will lobby for a tax credit to support that operations (whose amount will probably exceed their actual retention related costs) so that that the information retention isn't a burden on them.
Business majors need to recite this every morning without fail: synergy never happens, synergy never happens, synergy never happens...
I dunno, it seems to have happened a lot with Google's acquisitions. OTOH, rather than just mouth some platitudes about synergy and expecting it to magically happen as they downsize, when Google buys someone with a product service where they expect to acheive some kind of synergies, they seem to throw a bunch of technical resources into integrating the product or service with Google's existing offerings to acheive synergies.
Synergies happen only if you take the step beyond recognizing the potential for synergy and actually put some resources into making the synergies happen.
It works in that it fools your brain into believing that there is a 3D scene in front of it. It does not work in providing an enjoyable, entertaining experience for 2 hours
Yeah, actually, it does, for quite a lot of people.
because it causes headaches due to the focus/convergence disparity with real 3D and also is blurred.
I've watched quite a number of 3D films, and never had a headache from 3D effects.
Yes, it causes headaches and nausea for some people. So does having a moving camera, because just as the body expects focus and convergence to line up, it also expects visual and kinesthetic motion cues to line up, and people have varying degrees of difficulty when they do not.
The net result is that I hate paying extra to see 3D films.
Then don't. Current 3D technology doesn't work for you, doesn't provide extra value to you, and you shouldn't choose to pay extra for it (3D releases are usually also released in 2D, and its your choice what you pay to see.)
But "3D doesn't work for me" is quite a bit different from "3D doesn't work".
Pointless? Yet another trickster?? Most tricks don't make you vomit. 3-D does.
No, actually, it doesn't do that to me.
It may make some people do that. So does camera motion for some people (a not-insignificant fraction of the population is sensitive to visual motion cues that are out of sync with kinesthetic motion cues, particularly when the visual cues indicate rapidly-changing motion; I've known lots of people with problem with lots of video games and lots of movies for this reason -- more, in fact, than I've known to have problems with 3D, though the groups overlap considerably -- and yet somehow movies don't restrict themselves to stationary or very gently moving camera positions.)
Saying stereoscopic 3D can't work because it confuses things that are body is evolved to expect to coincide and that people have problems of varying intensity dealing with when they don't is about as sensible as saying that moving cameras can't work for the same reason.
By "works" he means "replace 2D as the primary way movies are made".
Nothing in the actual article supports that interpretation.
3D Cinema is a gimmick with novelty appeal.
Yes, clearly that's his claim.
It will die when the novelty wears off just like it did the last n times it was tried.
It never died off, its been fairly regularly used, though not on everything. Its become more popular as new techniques have reduced the increased cost associated with producing and showing 3D films. Will it completely displace 2D? Probably not, any more than CGI will completely displace live action. Heck, color -- while dominant -- hasn't completely displaced black and white.
But I suspect that it will continue, over time, to become more common, rather than burning out.
TFA suggests this will always be the case: that 3D Cinema can't be made into more than a novelty gimmick, unless we get something like holography instead of funny goggles.
3D cinema that doesn't work exactly like normal 3D vision won't ever be comfortable for everyone, sure, but that's true of every trick of the eye used in filming movies that doesn't let your eyes do exactly what they would naturally be able to do -- which there are plenty of used in 2D movies. And yet movies "work".
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If you're using Chrome, you've already proven you don't care about the app phoning home.
No, you've shown that you are willing to accept an app phoning home to Google for what Chrome gives you. That doesn't mean that you are willing to accept an app phoning home to Microsoft for what the H.264-in-HTML5-video-tag-plugin gives you.
Microsoft has interesting priorities... "Lets release a plug-in for a third party browser to fix a perceived short coming..." as opposed to "Lets fix the problems and short comings in our products". Slow clap for Microsoft.
To be fair, Google has done that (in a much bigger way) for IE.
They also missed the obvious test: Two or more *identical* phones with everything tuned off except the basic interface, each on a different network.
Since currently testing iPhones that are publicly available in the US on two different networks is impossible, its not surprising that this test was "missed"; even when the Verizon iPhone is available in a couple of days, testing identical models on different networks will still be impossible.
Unless the court lets them get away with certifying the wrong class, this shouldn't be relevant to all AT&T iPhone users, only those that have had at some point in time covered by the suit a data plan that is not unlimited. AT&T overreporting usage on unlimited plans doesn't have any effect on the people with those plans except to serve as a disincentive to switch to the limited-usage plans that AT&T really wants people to switch to (but not bad enough to drive off people with existing unlimited plans by not letting them renew them.)
Instead of trying so hard to optimize JavaScript to do things like that, why can't we just get a wider language choice? Like, a properly sandboxed language with static typing could be handy, and the standard could mandate its presence.
Its not going to happen in the HTML standard the way that standard process works -- which essentially gives a veto to any browser maker with a measurable usage share -- Mozilla & Opera probably wouldn't want to implement anything along those lines, Microsoft would insist on .NET, and Google would probably propose something like Portable Native Client.
What occurred was the Bing Toolbar peeked at client user Google search results and sent them back to Redmond.
Which certainly seems to be within the scope of the Bing Toolbar TOS, even if using it to shape Bing results the way they do may not be what most people would expect them to do.
Is it cheating if Toyota watches what type of car styles Ford drivers prefer and then makes more cars of that style?
That's not what is happening here. If you need things in the form of a car analogy, its as if Toyota manufactured spark plugs that were installed in cars, some of which were Fords, and the spark plugs had sensors which could be used to detect information about the engine that they were installed in, and transmit that information back to Toyota, and Toyota used that information to feed into their own engine designs.
It seems like this is publicly available information.
They are capturing user's search results on Google from users using Internet Explorer with the Bing Toolbar and/or Suggested Sites, and using that to drive Bing rankings. It's not "publicly available information". It does appear to be information within the scope of the privacy policy associated with those features, though.
The answer i all the tablet, netbooks and other gizmos churned out en masse from China, that run Android (because it's easy to implement being so open, and pretty much free.)
Except that its not. While TFA uses the word "mobile", the source it cites is a market report from Canalys, which actually found that Android has displaced Symbian as the #1 smartphone OS. So none of those tablets, netbooks, and "other gizmos" that aren't smartphones had any effect.
If you look at the actual marketplace, this should come as no surprise. Carriers are basically giving away android phones. My boss just picked up a Samsung Vibrant for $30.
An AT&T sells new 8GB iPhone 3GS's for $49. So, yeah, the cheapest new Android phone is cheaper than the cheapest new iOS-based phone, and the most expensive new Android phone is probably more expensive than the most expensive new iOS based phone, and there are orders of magnitude more options -- and more meaningful choices between them -- between the low and the high.
But what you point to isn't an example of "giving away" Android phones.
The comment about Wikipedia seems out of left field. Wikipedia is a site, not a search engine.
Wikipedia has site-specific search built in. You can certainly compare how often you get a result of any particular quality you are looking for from Wikipedia's search as from Google's main search engine. Obviously, the universe over which Google's search engine operates includes Wikipedia, but this kind of comparison isn't a comparison of the universe over which the engine searches but the combination of that universe with the utility of the algorithms in identifying relevant answers to particular kinds of queries, and a broader universe might not be an advantage with equally good algoritms (because, depending on how information is curated -- or not -- a broader search space with similar algorithms could mean more irrelevant results, not better highly-placed results.)
Under the same law, how about we ask for visibility of ALL public government officials emails starting with Boehner and Pelosi.
Because the "same law" would be an Alaska state law that only applies to agencies and officials of the State of Alaska, and neither Boehner nor Pelosi (at least not the Boehner and Pelosi I would think you are referring to) are employed by any agency of the State of Alaska.
As far as I'm concerned, on day 11 they should have gotten a court warrant and just taken all the records, there is no reason to give anyone any extension of a legal obligation
State "sunshine" laws usually have a very short "normal" response time (the 10 days indicated for Alasks is fairly typical of the one's I've seen), they also fairly usually allow the response given within that 10 days to be either the requested documents or an explanation of the justification of the delay in releasing the documentation, along with an expected date of release. Some (as Alaska's apparently do, from TFA) require some official to approve extensions, others make the extensions essentially automatic within certain limits, but allow them to be challenged in court by the requester.
What can really happen if she doesn't release the emails?
Using the pronoun "she" to refer to the State of Alaska is somewhat unusual.
I think the days are numbered for dedicated game machines when you can get Phones and tablets that will do games "good enough" for most and do much more besides.
I think Sony recognizes that the general-purpose mobile device market is becoming key to mobile gaming, which is they announced the Playstation Suite framework (initially for Android 2.3+, apparently with cross-platform mobile plans) at the same time that they announced the NGP.
OK, I can see how the prosecution might want to use this kind of information in a criminal case. . Makes sense, and all that. But the Defense?
First, this isn't mostly about criminal cases, its about civil cases (where there is also a defense.)
Second, even in a criminal case, Facebook material could be useful to the defense. (In fact, any kind of evidence that could be useful to the prosecution could be useful to the defense, because any class of evidence that the prosecution could use to support the idea that the defendant committed a crime could be used by the defense to raise reasonable doubt, if nothing else by using the same kind of evidence pertaining to a different person to show that that other person could have committed the crime.)
Of course with the four that are seemingly in charge, the mob that's been left out can say "fark it" and go their own way saying that they don't need to kowtow to Google, Apple, Mozilla and Opera, (the last of which has such a small audience that they are within the margin of error).
There is no "mob that's been left out". WHATWG has been clear that any browser vendor with measurable marketshare has veto power over inclusion of features. (essentially, they want the standard to represent what all browser vendors are willing to commit to work toward.) The only people who are left out are those who choose not to participate.
But the bigger problem is that HTML has effectively been abandoned to four companies: Apple, Google, Opera, and Mozilla. They are deciding the actual fate of HTML, not a truly independent standards process
Every real standards process is driven by the industry, usually primarily by the biggest players in the industry. Even when people other than those shipping implementations, such as users, are involved, there involvement is always secondary in practice even if not in theory, because a standard is meaningful only to the extent that it is actually implemented.
I don't know why anyone would want a "standards process" that was "truly independent" of the implementors; what value would that have?
All web sites that allow logins should REQUIRE or at least STRONGLY ENCOURGE HTTPS from unencrypted WiFi hotspots such as those "found at coffee shops, airports, libraries or schools."
No, all websites that allow logins should require at least HTTPS (and preferably HTTPS with certificate verification in both directions rather than just one, though getting to the point where that is practical is still a ways off) from any logon not on the servers local network. Otherwise, credentials are travelling unencrypted over the public internet -- which means a bunch of computers that aren't controlled by either the owner of the account or the owner of the system they are logging in to, any of whom can capture that information and misuse it.
You do realize that publicly traded companies aren't "public" like the government, right?
All corporations (publicly traded are not) are public just like the government, because they are creatures of government created through law, not natural entities like private individuals.
So, now ISPs all have to buy terabytes of hard disk space to store all of those log files just in case some nosy prosecutor comes a callin'?
Don't worry. I'm sure the big ISPs will lobby for a tax credit to support that operations (whose amount will probably exceed their actual retention related costs) so that that the information retention isn't a burden on them.
Business majors need to recite this every morning without fail: synergy never happens, synergy never happens, synergy never happens...
I dunno, it seems to have happened a lot with Google's acquisitions. OTOH, rather than just mouth some platitudes about synergy and expecting it to magically happen as they downsize, when Google buys someone with a product service where they expect to acheive some kind of synergies, they seem to throw a bunch of technical resources into integrating the product or service with Google's existing offerings to acheive synergies.
Synergies happen only if you take the step beyond recognizing the potential for synergy and actually put some resources into making the synergies happen.
It works in that it fools your brain into believing that there is a 3D scene in front of it. It does not work in providing an enjoyable, entertaining experience for 2 hours
Yeah, actually, it does, for quite a lot of people.
because it causes headaches due to the focus/convergence disparity with real 3D and also is blurred.
I've watched quite a number of 3D films, and never had a headache from 3D effects.
Yes, it causes headaches and nausea for some people. So does having a moving camera, because just as the body expects focus and convergence to line up, it also expects visual and kinesthetic motion cues to line up, and people have varying degrees of difficulty when they do not.
The net result is that I hate paying extra to see 3D films.
Then don't. Current 3D technology doesn't work for you, doesn't provide extra value to you, and you shouldn't choose to pay extra for it (3D releases are usually also released in 2D, and its your choice what you pay to see.)
But "3D doesn't work for me" is quite a bit different from "3D doesn't work".
Pointless? Yet another trickster?? Most tricks don't make you vomit. 3-D does.
No, actually, it doesn't do that to me.
It may make some people do that. So does camera motion for some people (a not-insignificant fraction of the population is sensitive to visual motion cues that are out of sync with kinesthetic motion cues, particularly when the visual cues indicate rapidly-changing motion; I've known lots of people with problem with lots of video games and lots of movies for this reason -- more, in fact, than I've known to have problems with 3D, though the groups overlap considerably -- and yet somehow movies don't restrict themselves to stationary or very gently moving camera positions.)
Saying stereoscopic 3D can't work because it confuses things that are body is evolved to expect to coincide and that people have problems of varying intensity dealing with when they don't is about as sensible as saying that moving cameras can't work for the same reason.
By "works" he means "replace 2D as the primary way movies are made".
Nothing in the actual article supports that interpretation.
3D Cinema is a gimmick with novelty appeal.
Yes, clearly that's his claim.
It will die when the novelty wears off just like it did the last n times it was tried.
It never died off, its been fairly regularly used, though not on everything. Its become more popular as new techniques have reduced the increased cost associated with producing and showing 3D films. Will it completely displace 2D? Probably not, any more than CGI will completely displace live action. Heck, color -- while dominant -- hasn't completely displaced black and white.
But I suspect that it will continue, over time, to become more common, rather than burning out.
TFA suggests this will always be the case: that 3D Cinema can't be made into more than a novelty gimmick, unless we get something like holography instead of funny goggles.
3D cinema that doesn't work exactly like normal 3D vision won't ever be comfortable for everyone, sure, but that's true of every trick of the eye used in filming movies that doesn't let your eyes do exactly what they would naturally be able to do -- which there are plenty of used in 2D movies. And yet movies "work".