I still think they are not as bad as some countries we consider allies
And who would that be? I can only think of North Korea, who are worse than Cuba...
Countries worse then Cuba? Most Arab allies is a good start. Cuba is a far better place to live than Saudi Arabia humans rights wise, to give one obvious example. The US has had close ties to countries and dictators far worse or equal to Cuba - historically, the US has supported some pretty bad dictators in Latin America.
Unprocessed foods are not more expensive. They can't be. It's simple math and economics. Anything that is more ready made has more labor put into it. Like any outsourcing, it increases your costs. The middle man and all his little minions need to be paid.
People are just lazy and like to make up excuses.
Of course processed foods can be cheaper than processed foods. Processed foods can last longer, so you have less waste. More importantly, you add cheap fillers and don't need to use the best quality cuts. Companies can add 40-60% of cereals, fats, sugars, soy proteins, injected water etc. This decreases the cost of the finished product significantly.
That said, of course it's also part laziness. But price can also be factor for some.
Real were not circumventing DRM. They ADDED iPod compatible DRM to the music they were selling, to keep the record labels happy. Apple didn't want Real to be able to sell iPod compatible DRM infested music.
It has nothing to do with circumventing DRM. Anyone with an audio cable could already do that.
Being able to do that without being licensed and thus having the proper keys and procedures would be a defect in the iPod software. If Real just wanted to put the music on the iPod, the iPod always support non-DRMed formats (mp3, AAC).
There's your initial, modern way to do some ROM programming.
Bear in mind, these tools were not available back then. It was pure ASM and Hex Editing.
And ASM is anything BUT simple, sir.
Hacking a cartridge binary is not the same as developing the SW in the first place. E.g. testing "Super Mario" on an early Nintendo system is orders of magnitude simpler than testing an open world game like GTA V or Assasins Creed: Unity across all the supported platforms, especially PC.
"Yeah, there are some technical problems, but that happens with any launch."
I don't recall that happening very often at all back in the days of cartridge-based games. You know, when the silicon was too expensive to waste with buggy code.
Too bad things aren't similarly expensive, now. The big game companies would be forced to do serious QA for once.
The complexity was orders of magnitude less as well. And PC games in the 90s, with a much larger variety of sound and graphics hardware, were definitely not bug free on all hardware.
The things that I can currently think of that I'd use a smartwatch for - 1) GPS / pedometer for running 2) music (without the need for a phone) while working out 3) discreetly checking notifications during meetings 4) navigation when riding a bike / motorcycle. I realize not everyone would value these and will say "JUST USE YOUR PHONE!", but for a $200 - $250 smart watch, I'd definitely drop down the money for these apps.
For running, the Apple Watch seems to add a heart rate sensor. Heart rate zone, timing for intervals etc could be very useful. I've already got a Polar V800 for this, but for many others this would be a great feature.
I was hoping the Apple Watch would include Ant+, but it looks like they expect fitness centers to switch to bluetooth, so it's going to be a pass from here.
Polar has already switched from their W.I.N.D. to bluetooth - and the rest will follow.
. It's a good question if they'll put it in the cloud backup -- I don't use the Cloud backup features.
Passwords are only part of the backup if the backup is local and encrypted with a password - iCloud does not back up that part. You can, however, enable the iCloud keychain.
If a 15 minute open refund period produced "obvious and intuitive consumer benefits" just think about what an hour could do. You know, like enough to actually test out the app for REAL. Especially apps that are more complicated than flappy bird and, oh yeah, more expensive.
Mea Culpa: though I will acknowledge that a "free" app with in-app purchase, that works well enough to test it out before spending money, is indeed one way to get around the limited 15 minutes to test the app.
But of course those apps are not the problem. The problem the government (you know, the supposedly by the people FOR the people) is trying to prevent predatory sharks from bilking people of money through shady practices like kids games that make it very easy to just click click spend a shed load of money.
"Open purchase window" here does not mean "open refund". It means "you don't have to enter your password again to buy something". Go smurfberries!
If you cycle, then I suggest doing your BMI maths to find out how obse you are, BMI FUCKING SUCKS! Muscle is heavier than fat, bmi is your weight in relation to you high. therefore if you have a maximum about of muscle then you come in at Obse on this stupid fucking scale.
Fuck all fat on me, mostly skinny build, have some nice leg muscles, no real arm or back muscles, no fat gut, im 183cms and 95KGs..
Overweight to the point that if I put on more weight i'm Obese!
BMI is not perfect. However, unless you are a weightlifter or outrageously fit (not just "skinny fit", but bulging muscles) it's a pretty good indicator. And it's pretty easy to know if you are in the extremely fit part - if you're thinking about it, you aren't.
A: Legacy code, and because Fortran 2003+ is a very good modern language for scientific computation and maps very naturally to problems
See.... Fortran 2003 is more modern than ISO 1999 C.... Now that that's settled...
How come people are still programming in languages like C/C++/Java, when Fortran2003 is available?
The GP did write for scientific computation. Fortran maps naturally to scientific calculcation, and doing linear algebra in Fortran rather than C is faster to develop, easier to read and faster to run. That doesn't meant that Fortran is a good fit for everything, I pity the developer trying to implement an SQL database or an operating system in Fortran. But for scientific computation, it's often extremely competetive.
Pure capitalism is letting the market decide which leads to the monopolization of industries.
Nope.
Nobody's ever succeeded in establishing a coercive monopoly without government backing. In a free market, monopoly is a non-issue. For example, when Alcoa was the only vendor of Aluminum in the United States, the pricing of aluminum fell continuously.
The first one is just a matter of "are you big enough, ruthless enough and no rules stop you, you can get rid of competition that way".
The second one - Bell - is interesting. For some services, like telephony, if you don't have government regulation you will get a natural monopoly. The phone companies would earn more money if they merged - no need to ever compete on price, or duplicate infrastructure. The price would be based on the value to consumers, not on the marginal cost of providing it as in a perfect market. And competition would be hard to come by - refuse to receive and make calls to this network. Knowing this, a competetive network would never appear in the first place.
There is no need for a new format. The idea that LPs are better is hogwash. The only time LPs sound better is when they are mastered with more dynamic range than whatever you are comparing them to is.
That statement requires you to define "better". An LP, with all its limitations (a CD can contain all the information on the LP, and more), can still sound better to someone who likes that particular distortion. Or has a deeper experience because of the entire ritual of listening to an LP, caused by other limitations - cleaning it before playing, listening to the entire record in the sequence the artist/producer wanted it, look at the cover etc.
Most of the point would be to go from MP3 or AAC to lossless. While a 320 kbps mp3 made today will sound far better than a 128 kbps mp3 made fifteen years ago, it still a lossy algorithm that tries to remove sound most people will miss the least. That doesn't mean it's not gone.
Going from CD quality to 24/96 would be another matter, and not likely to bring much, if any, benefit.
Sci-fi novel aside, I really wonder what are the risk that a 30k years old virus would be able to survive in our environment. I'm no microbiologist, but am I wrong to think the virus is not equipped to infect any "modern" living organism?
not only does apple control everything about the phones we buy, but they think they can tell the owners to fuck off?
One more reason that I wont ever buy another apple product
Android: Tell me again why you think your platform is more secure when the vast majority of the user base cannot access software updates?
BlackBerry: Anyone at BlackBerry can easily intercept everything your phone does, so don't even try.
iOS: No, your fingerprint scanner does not make your phone more secure. Get over it.
What about Windows Phone? Just because you haven't seen one, it doesn't mean they don't exist. People who thought the same about unicorns have been proven wrong.
iOS: No, your fingerprint scanner does not make your phone more secure. Get over it.
Apple doesn't say its safer. In fact, Apple considers LESS safe than the PIN, because you can always enter the PIN. Or if the reader fails to get a valid fingerprint, you need the PIN to unlock. Or if you reboot. PIN trumps reader every time
The only way it's "safer" is that it encourages you to use a PIN where you might not have used one before because it's less annoying to unlock.
Another big advantage: Since you don't have to enter it as often, you can use a password rather than a pin. I exchanged my 4 digit pin code for an alphanumeric password of length 9 after I got a 5s. Thus, it has increased safety for my phone.
Microsoft is going to hold on to that thing for as long as they can. It's not going away for several different reasons.
The first and largest is that the Kinect is a product differentiater. It makes the XBone different from the PS4.
Indeed. The "price of Kinect" now is probably around 200$. Without the Kinect, the consoles are very similar - except for the XBox One being slower. Thus, if there was no Kinect they'd have to set the price be quite a bit lower than the PS4.
That said, the Motorola purchase seems particularly insane, the only logical reason for Google to make that purchase was to build their own phone which is something they didn't even try.
Cars are registered and insured in the US at the state level, the federal government isn't party to it. Frankly, even at the state level, insurance is not filed with the state unless you have prior convictions of lacking required insurance (then you have to file a SR-22, at least in Texas).
My auto insurance is between me and my insurance company, I have a card to show a police officer if pulled over that I carry at least the minimum required coverage, but the government doesn't know how much, only that I have "enough".
As for a "wealth tax", are you serious? Blah... if it is taxed when I earn it, then you can't have another go at it, that is the whole idea of no double taxation. We fought a war of independence to rid ourselves of such nonsense. Of course, we have the death tax, which is clearly unconstitutional, but seems to be ignored anyway, so perhaps I shouldn't talk. Stupid government not following its own rules.
As far as insurance goes - you only need to have liability insurance. If you want to insure your car for theft and damages, that's voluntary - but being able to pay for damages caused by you isn't. And as Norway is a rather small country, rather than a federation of states, expect it to have information and powers that you'd usually think would would be separated by "federal" and "state". You get a sticker every year showing that the yearly road fee is paid, and that liability insurance is OK.
Wealth tax has some bad side effects - like most taxes - and fortunately, the new government is working towards removing it. However, the Norwegian tax system is in general more sane than the US system - lower rates and less loop holes - so it isn't all bad. And more importantly, Norway has a healthy budget surplus - the key to any sane tax cut.
When the time comes that you can easily buy a Ferrari for bitcoins they will also have a chance of noticing, and will ask you how you could afford that Ferrari.
How or why would they ever know I bought a Ferrari? Are such purchases reportable in Norway? (they aren't in the US)
The car must be registered and insured. Also, Norway has a wealth tax and you'd have to list it there. Of course, you could try to find a way around all of these but the harder you try, the more likely they'd get for money laundering etc. instead if they actually caught you.
If you include the encryption key with the backup, it doesnt matter either way. If you dont, its not a terribly useful backup.
Apple's Time Machine can use full disk encryption. You need a password/passphrase to be able to read from the disk later, which is rather useful. If someone steals my iMac and my onsite backup, they can not access any data - the system, as well as the backup, are both encrypted.
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And who would that be? I can only think of North Korea, who are worse than Cuba...
Countries worse then Cuba? Most Arab allies is a good start. Cuba is a far better place to live than Saudi Arabia humans rights wise, to give one obvious example. The US has had close ties to countries and dictators far worse or equal to Cuba - historically, the US has supported some pretty bad dictators in Latin America.
Nonsense.
Unprocessed foods are not more expensive. They can't be. It's simple math and economics. Anything that is more ready made has more labor put into it. Like any outsourcing, it increases your costs. The middle man and all his little minions need to be paid.
People are just lazy and like to make up excuses.
Of course processed foods can be cheaper than processed foods. Processed foods can last longer, so you have less waste. More importantly, you add cheap fillers and don't need to use the best quality cuts. Companies can add 40-60% of cereals, fats, sugars, soy proteins, injected water etc. This decreases the cost of the finished product significantly.
That said, of course it's also part laziness. But price can also be factor for some.
Worse in the winter cause you're blasting heat? Why not just put a coat on?
Because cold adversely affects batteries, also on electric vehicles.
Real were not circumventing DRM. They ADDED iPod compatible DRM to the music they were selling, to keep the record labels happy. Apple didn't want Real to be able to sell iPod compatible DRM infested music.
It has nothing to do with circumventing DRM. Anyone with an audio cable could already do that.
Being able to do that without being licensed and thus having the proper keys and procedures would be a defect in the iPod software. If Real just wanted to put the music on the iPod, the iPod always support non-DRMed formats (mp3, AAC).
'intended to block 100% of non-iTunes clients' [...] to improve iTunes, not curb competition.
In what universe does this statement make sense?
In the universe where you have DRM, being able to circumvent it is a defect and/or security hole. So why is someone fixing it a surprise?
"The complexity was orders of magnitude less as well."
That is absolutely wrong.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/nes/91...
There's your initial, modern way to do some ROM programming.
Bear in mind, these tools were not available back then. It was pure ASM and Hex Editing.
And ASM is anything BUT simple, sir.
Hacking a cartridge binary is not the same as developing the SW in the first place. E.g. testing "Super Mario" on an early Nintendo system is orders of magnitude simpler than testing an open world game like GTA V or Assasins Creed: Unity across all the supported platforms, especially PC.
"Yeah, there are some technical problems, but that happens with any launch."
I don't recall that happening very often at all back in the days of cartridge-based games. You know, when the silicon was too expensive to waste with buggy code.
Too bad things aren't similarly expensive, now. The big game companies would be forced to do serious QA for once.
The complexity was orders of magnitude less as well. And PC games in the 90s, with a much larger variety of sound and graphics hardware, were definitely not bug free on all hardware.
The things that I can currently think of that I'd use a smartwatch for - 1) GPS / pedometer for running 2) music (without the need for a phone) while working out 3) discreetly checking notifications during meetings 4) navigation when riding a bike / motorcycle. I realize not everyone would value these and will say "JUST USE YOUR PHONE!", but for a $200 - $250 smart watch, I'd definitely drop down the money for these apps.
For running, the Apple Watch seems to add a heart rate sensor. Heart rate zone, timing for intervals etc could be very useful. I've already got a Polar V800 for this, but for many others this would be a great feature.
Yeah.
I was hoping the Apple Watch would include Ant+, but it looks like they expect fitness centers to switch to bluetooth, so it's going to be a pass from here.
Polar has already switched from their W.I.N.D. to bluetooth - and the rest will follow.
. It's a good question if they'll put it in the cloud backup -- I don't use the Cloud backup features.
Passwords are only part of the backup if the backup is local and encrypted with a password - iCloud does not back up that part. You can, however, enable the iCloud keychain.
If a 15 minute open refund period produced "obvious and intuitive consumer benefits" just think about what an hour could do. You know, like enough to actually test out the app for REAL. Especially apps that are more complicated than flappy bird and, oh yeah, more expensive.
Mea Culpa: though I will acknowledge that a "free" app with in-app purchase, that works well enough to test it out before spending money, is indeed one way to get around the limited 15 minutes to test the app.
But of course those apps are not the problem. The problem the government (you know, the supposedly by the people FOR the people) is trying to prevent predatory sharks from bilking people of money through shady practices like kids games that make it very easy to just click click spend a shed load of money.
"Open purchase window" here does not mean "open refund". It means "you don't have to enter your password again to buy something". Go smurfberries!
If you cycle, then I suggest doing your BMI maths to find out how obse you are, BMI FUCKING SUCKS! Muscle is heavier than fat, bmi is your weight in relation to you high. therefore if you have a maximum about of muscle then you come in at Obse on this stupid fucking scale. Fuck all fat on me, mostly skinny build, have some nice leg muscles, no real arm or back muscles, no fat gut, im 183cms and 95KGs.. Overweight to the point that if I put on more weight i'm Obese!
BMI is not perfect. However, unless you are a weightlifter or outrageously fit (not just "skinny fit", but bulging muscles) it's a pretty good indicator. And it's pretty easy to know if you are in the extremely fit part - if you're thinking about it, you aren't.
A: Legacy code, and because Fortran 2003+ is a very good modern language for scientific computation and maps very naturally to problems
See.... Fortran 2003 is more modern than ISO 1999 C.... Now that that's settled... How come people are still programming in languages like C/C++/Java, when Fortran2003 is available?
The GP did write for scientific computation. Fortran maps naturally to scientific calculcation, and doing linear algebra in Fortran rather than C is faster to develop, easier to read and faster to run. That doesn't meant that Fortran is a good fit for everything, I pity the developer trying to implement an SQL database or an operating system in Fortran. But for scientific computation, it's often extremely competetive.
Pure capitalism is letting the market decide which leads to the monopolization of industries.
Nope.
Nobody's ever succeeded in establishing a coercive monopoly without government backing. In a free market, monopoly is a non-issue. For example, when Alcoa was the only vendor of Aluminum in the United States, the pricing of aluminum fell continuously.
-jcr
Standard Oil and Bell says otherwise, in different ways.
The first one is just a matter of "are you big enough, ruthless enough and no rules stop you, you can get rid of competition that way".
The second one - Bell - is interesting. For some services, like telephony, if you don't have government regulation you will get a natural monopoly. The phone companies would earn more money if they merged - no need to ever compete on price, or duplicate infrastructure. The price would be based on the value to consumers, not on the marginal cost of providing it as in a perfect market. And competition would be hard to come by - refuse to receive and make calls to this network. Knowing this, a competetive network would never appear in the first place.
There is no need for a new format. The idea that LPs are better is hogwash. The only time LPs sound better is when they are mastered with more dynamic range than whatever you are comparing them to is.
That statement requires you to define "better". An LP, with all its limitations (a CD can contain all the information on the LP, and more), can still sound better to someone who likes that particular distortion. Or has a deeper experience because of the entire ritual of listening to an LP, caused by other limitations - cleaning it before playing, listening to the entire record in the sequence the artist/producer wanted it, look at the cover etc.
Monty (of Ogg and Vorbis fame) on 24/192 Music Downloads, and why they make no sense.
Most of the point would be to go from MP3 or AAC to lossless. While a 320 kbps mp3 made today will sound far better than a 128 kbps mp3 made fifteen years ago, it still a lossy algorithm that tries to remove sound most people will miss the least. That doesn't mean it's not gone.
Going from CD quality to 24/96 would be another matter, and not likely to bring much, if any, benefit.
Sci-fi novel aside, I really wonder what are the risk that a 30k years old virus would be able to survive in our environment. I'm no microbiologist, but am I wrong to think the virus is not equipped to infect any "modern" living organism?
A virus isn't living in the first place.
not only does apple control everything about the phones we buy, but they think they can tell the owners to fuck off? One more reason that I wont ever buy another apple product
The owners agreed with Cook - the right wing loonie didn't get support from the rest of the shareholders. Which makes sense, as Apple needs not only to have the current premium products associated with its brand, but align with its potential customers - and above all, avoid really bad associations. Or just being boring.
Image is very important for premium brands - and that's what the majority of the shareholders wants Tim Cook to continue to cultivate, alongside its innovation focus.
Android: Tell me again why you think your platform is more secure when the vast majority of the user base cannot access software updates?
BlackBerry: Anyone at BlackBerry can easily intercept everything your phone does, so don't even try.
iOS: No, your fingerprint scanner does not make your phone more secure. Get over it.
What about Windows Phone? Just because you haven't seen one, it doesn't mean they don't exist. People who thought the same about unicorns have been proven wrong.
Apple doesn't say its safer. In fact, Apple considers LESS safe than the PIN, because you can always enter the PIN. Or if the reader fails to get a valid fingerprint, you need the PIN to unlock. Or if you reboot. PIN trumps reader every time
The only way it's "safer" is that it encourages you to use a PIN where you might not have used one before because it's less annoying to unlock.
Another big advantage: Since you don't have to enter it as often, you can use a password rather than a pin. I exchanged my 4 digit pin code for an alphanumeric password of length 9 after I got a 5s. Thus, it has increased safety for my phone.
Microsoft is going to hold on to that thing for as long as they can. It's not going away for several different reasons.
The first and largest is that the Kinect is a product differentiater. It makes the XBone different from the PS4.
Indeed. The "price of Kinect" now is probably around 200$. Without the Kinect, the consoles are very similar - except for the XBox One being slower. Thus, if there was no Kinect they'd have to set the price be quite a bit lower than the PS4.
That said, the Motorola purchase seems particularly insane, the only logical reason for Google to make that purchase was to build their own phone which is something they didn't even try.
"Patents"..
The car must be registered and insured.
I'm actually starting to like the USA again...
Cars are registered and insured in the US at the state level, the federal government isn't party to it. Frankly, even at the state level, insurance is not filed with the state unless you have prior convictions of lacking required insurance (then you have to file a SR-22, at least in Texas).
My auto insurance is between me and my insurance company, I have a card to show a police officer if pulled over that I carry at least the minimum required coverage, but the government doesn't know how much, only that I have "enough".
As for a "wealth tax", are you serious? Blah... if it is taxed when I earn it, then you can't have another go at it, that is the whole idea of no double taxation. We fought a war of independence to rid ourselves of such nonsense. Of course, we have the death tax, which is clearly unconstitutional, but seems to be ignored anyway, so perhaps I shouldn't talk. Stupid government not following its own rules.
As far as insurance goes - you only need to have liability insurance. If you want to insure your car for theft and damages, that's voluntary - but being able to pay for damages caused by you isn't. And as Norway is a rather small country, rather than a federation of states, expect it to have information and powers that you'd usually think would would be separated by "federal" and "state". You get a sticker every year showing that the yearly road fee is paid, and that liability insurance is OK.
Wealth tax has some bad side effects - like most taxes - and fortunately, the new government is working towards removing it. However, the Norwegian tax system is in general more sane than the US system - lower rates and less loop holes - so it isn't all bad. And more importantly, Norway has a healthy budget surplus - the key to any sane tax cut.
When the time comes that you can easily buy a Ferrari for bitcoins they will also have a chance of noticing, and will ask you how you could afford that Ferrari.
How or why would they ever know I bought a Ferrari? Are such purchases reportable in Norway? (they aren't in the US)
The car must be registered and insured. Also, Norway has a wealth tax and you'd have to list it there. Of course, you could try to find a way around all of these but the harder you try, the more likely they'd get for money laundering etc. instead if they actually caught you.
If you include the encryption key with the backup, it doesnt matter either way. If you dont, its not a terribly useful backup.
Apple's Time Machine can use full disk encryption. You need a password/passphrase to be able to read from the disk later, which is rather useful. If someone steals my iMac and my onsite backup, they can not access any data - the system, as well as the backup, are both encrypted.