Posts by Michael C

Apple Digital AV Adapter

same can be said for almost ANY product

First and foremost,

A)Apple develops these new parts internally, so the design can be a secret until release (no leaks). At that point, they could care less about the adapter, they want to encourage the accessory market in general, so they price high as to not piss off partners. Buy an accessory from Dell or HP it;s the same game.

B) if you paid MSRP, who's the dumb ass?

Your laptop may have an HDMI connector, but I'm sure it also has a GPU capable of more than 1080p too, and that's completely useless without a DP connector (which requires a measly $3 adapter to output to HDMI if you shop around).

SD card? Go Eye-Fi or use the cloud or a file sharing app, cards are so last decade. Also, what can you actually use one for? Not much when you have an encrypted file system, and nothing the cloud or apps can't do. The card slot and it's ability to mount some USB thumb drives (with an adapter) on your android is one of the thing preventing it from passing security muster and thus is keeping Android banned from banking, medical, government, and more uses. lol. You're most requested feature might kill android just how MS booted apple from Gov't and nearly killed them. Since 90% of people don;t need it, and because including it incurrs a royalty, creates a weak point in the chassis, and since SD is not a hermetically sealed port, it is left as an option for the few who insist they need it. BFD.

Laptop cases are free? other tablets come with one? I've seen clear screen protectors for tablets that are $20, and you're complaining about $30 for a magnetic locking, folding, good looking, cover/stand/cleaner?

that's cheap for a leather cover, most full leather cases a quite a bit more (if they're real leather and have good build quality).

The charger is $10 if you go to Target or Amazon, not $40 and it comes wWITH one of those, and a cable that charges every apple device since the first iPod with that connector 10 years ago. It also charges off most USB ports which even some new smartphones and no tablet other than Apple's can do. That said, what do you pay for other phone chargers, car adapters, etc? Every one on BBY.com apple.com, and target.com aside from a few no-name knock-offs is $30. that's the normal price, and why the EU finally insisted on a universal system going forward (which apple signed on to and promises no adapter required, not that they didn't already have a system universal across their entire line for the last 10 years)

I got a BT keyboard for $19 last year. Where do you shop??? Don't go there again...

WTF?

how is needing a miniHDMI -> HDMI adapter any f*ing different than needing a 30-pin connector -> HDMI adapter? Either way you have to carry it with you. In the iPhone's case, with AirPlay, it should rarely be needed. Can your nokia wirelessly play 720p or better to a TV with one click and no manual setup? Oh, right...

Your nokia phone is a rare breed having come with that adapter. I've had 9 different phones in my hand, and several laptops, all with mini HDMI ports, and not a single one came with the adapter.

As for laptops, i DO NOT WANT HDMI ON IT, I buy laptops with GPUs, and GPS do 1200 or better output and support more than 1 screen at that resolution. WFT would I want to be limited to a single 1080p external display when i can have up to 2 and 1600 or 4 at 1200? especially when a $3 adapter gives me HDMI but nothing can convert HDMI to higher resolution DP...

HDMI is a living room only tech. DP is a DISPLAY tech. The latter is superior in every way and is easily converted, IT shoudl be the defacto standard on anything that might every be connected to something Ootehr than a TV.

MythBusters: Savage and Hyneman detonate truthiness

Seen CD's do that...

at 52x, a CD has amazing force in it. I've seen the glass shrapnel (later called "sand" a few micro seconds later), blow out the internals and metal casing far enough that it impacted the case supports itself and made it impossible to remove the drive physically from the PC. Essentially, you could see where a shard of CD dented the sides out from within, and it dented it so far out that it also dented the rails, embedding the CD drive permanently in it's own notch in the case. We also had one explode and a shard blew off the front door, flew about 6 feet across the space between 2 work benches, and hit the back of the monitor on the desk behind it hard enough to enbed in the plastic and crack the LCD on the other side of it. Luckily, no one was there at the time (found it that way one morning, and thus an immediate corporate ban on leaving CDs in a drive at all period unless they were in use installing software or being written).

There's a reason they stopped making 60x drives, and even 52s are hard to find now.

Judge flips $625.5m Apple patent payout

jury of "peers"

Exactly. This was a case of a software designer vs a software designer, both of whom had a patent team at their disposal. find me 12 people that fall into that class who I'll stand trial before... Or at least 12 people i could considder peers who could, within the time span permitted in court, be brough up to speed on the appropriate laws affecting such a decision.

This isn;t a case of Joe murdered Jim with a knife, and a simple explanation of what DNA is, and some video footage. This is an extremely technical argument, and I doubt the judge himself has a clue what was being discussed, let alone 12 random texans with not an important enough life to get out of jury duty.

and you missedf the point too

You're right about the history, but the fact remains, a patent is not an idea (that's a copyright or trademark, potentially, and not in all cases either). A patent is either a method, or a design. in this case they were method patents, and appel DI NOT USE THAT METHOD. This was in fact, accidentally the case, since they had no knowledge of the prior art (it was not known or readily available), so their design was truthfully based on their own ideas (this guy who made a plug-in), and it just happened that the method he used to make coverflow look the way it does was radically different from what they were asking a license for.

Essentially, Mirror won a case against a car maker for having an engine in the front of the car, but on appeal, it came to light that the patent is not for an engine in a car, but for a steam engine in a car, and the "infringing" car was a petrol ICE... its like AM and FM, both are separately patented radio technologies, with to the layman the same results (turn a dial, hear stuff on a channel), but they make that happen in vastly different ways and thus can co exist in the patent world. Same for incandescent vs florescent light. Coverflow does not work like Mirror's software, though when you flip a switch, you got light either way, and a poorly instructed jury could not have made that distingction properly, thus it was overtunred on appeal.

yes and no

A greater penalty, perhaps, but not triple. Hell, even when you kill 3 people you are rarely sentenced to 3 full penalties (unless they're 3 truly separate events). Killing 3 people at one scene is different from killing 3 people on separate occasions. Apple was initially accused of making a product (coverflow, which was used in multiple systems and software packages, but is a single tech that would have been singularly licensed across apple's products if they had done so) that infringed on 3 patents, which led to a perceived 220m licensing revenue loss (a very suspect figure, few things is this world, especially one as trivial as cover flow, get licensed at more than the net worth of Block Buster corporation in it's entirety!). Whether it infringed on one or 3 patents, it was a $220m loss.

Encouraging multiplied damages will only in encourage firms to patent much more generically, putting only a single step or two of a method in each patent, maximizing the number of patents that could be applied to a single product, and making them each much more general. We wish to discourage that. I agree, if apple was found guilty, the penalty should have been a bit higher, but only in so much as 3 patents shuold have been easier to dig up in a due diligence phase (or would have had more weight in a license negotiation), which merely means the "willful" infringement is more clear, not the damage caused by it. A 10 or 20% increase for each other effected patent would be sufficient (and is commonly held true).

in this case though, a judge correctly ruled, the patents ARE valid, but the methods they describe are not actually how cover flow works in the first place, thus no infringement...

bad author....

No, he actually ruled on 2 things:

1) patents were valid

2) Apple did NOT actually use the methods described in the patents in the first place, and is thus not infringing on that patent portfolio.

A patent is not an idea or product, a patent is a "method patent" or a "design patent" (in this case the former). You patent the PROCESS for doing something, not the thing itself (that's a trademark or copyright, depending on the thing). Since Apple's methods for producing the cover flow effect is radically different from what is expressly described in Mirror's patents, Apple in fact did not infringe.

The initial jury was not properly instructed in what a patent was and how to determine infringement, and the jury in essence rules that is product A and B look alike, B infringes on A, but this is NOT the truth. You can easily build 2 different cars using 2 completely different sets of patented technologies, and in the end have the result of a 4 wheel vehicle that takes you from A to B, and neither are alike in so much more than they have an engine, doors, a method to steer, and a method to stop. Once could be steam and another petrol, and they're nto the same patented thing.

misleading staement

What they meant is they have 3 patents applying to a single product. Normally, the punishment is based on the infringing product, not each patent that product infringes on individually, as patent awards are intended to be based on financial loss and/or perceived profit. The calculation used to determine cover flow's damage value is not to be multipled by each patent is infriged on.

We're not saying they murdered 3 people, but that's just murder so they get only one punishment, it;s like saying they killed one person, but used 3 different weapons to do it, yet they got 20 years for each weapon used?

missed the big statement

Article got it right about the overturned verdict, but it makes it sound like it was on a technicality. This is not the case. The judge explicitly stated that although the 3 patents would not be thrown out, and he found them valid, the real issue was that Apple di not in fact infringe on them, as the methods used in Apples implementation different radically enough from the methods outlined in the patent as to be considered unique beyond shadow of a doubt. aka, apple did it a completely different way (quite by accident as well), and is not at fault at all.

The difference: the judge did not knock this back to a lower court for consideration, or rule the penalty unfit, this is an outright dismissal of charges, that can only be further appealed if it is found that this judge is in error. This is a dead end for mirror mirror.

Stop sexing up IT and give Civil Servants Macs, says gov tech boss

AD easier to secure?

Well, no actually. LDAPS is easier to secure, and especialyl in government where there are both legacy novel systems, RACF on mainframes, and a littany of Linux and UNIX servers, AD is rarely the top level authentication system.

All you Windows trolls always assume that just because the PCs use AD that means everything else does too.

macs are in fact AD native. they have few OU and GPO settings, but that's because they don;t need many. They natively talk to Exchange 2007/2010, connect to SMB shares, use MS Office, and are very easy to centrally manage and secure through Apple's enterprise tools and super cheap server OS.

The TCO of individual workstations is also less for Mac than Windows, even counting as much as a $400 premium for the hardware (which is much less in corporate circles since companies don;t buy $400 laptops and desktops, macs are typically within $100 of business system cost for the same performance and size class, and in some cases are cheaper). Winn Schwartzau (probably spelled that wrong) did a great TCO analysis a few years ago for a large firm, and Macs were clear across the board cheaper, mostly because of greatly reduced IT and helpdeks hands-on support time with each machine. They also resell well vs the $50 you can sometimes get for a 4 year old Dell ,and that factors into IT finance too.

Microsoft, Nokia, and RIM's wasted R&D billions

Kinect

Kinect was also an acquisition (of talent not a company). it was not internally developed initially, but was a base idea already developed by others that MS acquired and finalized in house through added development. Yes, Kinect was developed primarily internally (contributed to most heavily by Geiss), but the initial momentum was through bringing in people who had an existing idea developed at another firm. I do not know if they presented it to MS, or is MS caught wind and made an offer that could not be refused. What I do know is that the brainchild behind most of the root code, including the skelatal tracking system, took his pay and left as soon as it was productized, and as of October 2010 is no longer with the company, so good lick seeing any significant enhancements to Natal down the line....

Official: PS3 has more fanboys than the Xbox 360 does

ummm no.

The failure rate on XBox 360 is higher. This has been known fact for a very long time. BD drive failure rate is on par with DVD, and system failure rates are also exceedingly low. Firmware flash replacements have been especially rare on PS3, and those don't count as sales since Sony will replace one, even out of warranty, if a flash update killed it. X-Box systems have had RROD issues across multiple versions, Power supply failures and recalls, cooked systems, HDD failures, network troubles, and more.

I am good friends with a local BestBuy manager, and out of the 7 local stores, X-Box sells about 2:1 vs PS3, but has 4:1 the PRP replacements. (and PRP warranty sales are about even across them). The 360's remotes also tend to be failure prone.

The x-box failure rates are way out of what with industry norms. Sony is a bit below average, having built a pretty hard core box, the most common failures are HDD, and they're user replaceable with common drives (not special proprietary disks).

not happening

Kinect had an initial boom, but Move is gaining speed and PS3 is still outselling the 360 either way.

We have the majority of friends we circle with owning 360s, with 5 of them owning both that and a PS3 and only 2 of us having a PS3 and no 360 (and we added ourselves to that pool just this past Monday, had only a beat up PS2 previously we had not powered on in about a year). After playing hours upon hours of both Kinect and move, it is readily clear move is the far superior platform. Lack of buttons to push is a big issue for expanding into other game genres, and the system 6-9% overherd of full body motion tracking vs the PS3's 2% impact, on a processor that's less powerful to begin with, does translate into a noticable lag. plus, move support is being added to retro games, but Kinect can not be.

In every house that has X-Box and PS3, the PS3 is the main system, 360 only powered on for exclusive titles. Every house that got kinect stopped playing it after 45 days tops, 2 returned it after a few weeks, but those using move are actively playing and buying more games for it.

having just got a PS3, my only disappointment with it is that it lacks native streaming support not only for iTunes (which was expected), but it doesn't talk to WMC either, just DLNA alone run by WMP, not WMC. BluRay was an afterthought, little more than a bonus feature, we bought it for the Sony native content, the streaming apps that don't require membership in Live, and move.

Asus Eee Pad Transformer

read those specs again

a) extra battery; if you're somewhere you'll be typing long enough you need a keyboard, and 10 hours isn;t enough juice, I'm sure you can borrow 30 minutes on an outlet to add 4-6 hours to that charge real easy, if not you;re already sitty at a desk with an outlet handy...

b) "extra" usbs? the only usb is on the keyboard. And, USB isn't really al that useful on android (have you tried it?), and beyond that, in a coming update you won;t have it anymore (because if you can connect USB and access the internal file system, then it is not secure, and can;t be used in business... An encrypted file system requires an app to move data to-from USB, and once Android has it, those USBs wont be very valuable, and it's not like it runs peripherals anyway since there's no USB driver stack in android either with the exception of storage and HIDs.

c) the ONLY SD port is on the dock, and its microSD. Max 32GB card and the class 6+ that can handle 1080p video cost a lot more than the 64GB tablet version upgrade cost itself. (and it won't support 64 + 32, just a max 64GB).

d) never had an issue with that, BT keyboard runs about 30-40 hours of use time and a month of standby. Have an array of BT chargers next to the phone charger at home already. Have to charge my headset, keyboard, etc periodically, not hard to forget...

e) $30 for a cover is overpriced? most cases are $40-50 (the ones that actually protect tablets), and the cover is not the only Case Apple offers (i'm assuming you;re contrasting Apple here). And this is only the first party pricing, Apple published the magnet locations and anyone can make a cover, they're just a bit slow coming to market no one having known they existed until recently...

f) stands that fold away are MUCH preferred to those you have to carry separately, for when you DO have a table...

g) that's your opinion. Most people are more concerned about the thickness and weight. My argument is this is 3lbs with the keyboard, and an iPad is less than 2 including a simple, folding BT deal (that costs less too).

DARPA: Send limbless troops back to war with robo-arms

Nice, April 1...

Damn good attempt!

April Fools Day's Finest

ThinkGeek wins

Simply on the level of effort they went through to build what many a fanboi might ACTUALLY buy. I have a few apple gadgets, but I'm no fanboi and this would not make it past the threshold of my home, but I know people who would buy this for their kids in a heart beat if it was real. The design (real or rendered?) is awesome, and if it wasn't April 1 I would have assumed this was real. (though, each year, some April 1 gag does usually turn into a product...)

Human heart could power an iPod

meh

Compared to the joules the body generates in a day, this is chump change. You spend more energy than you iPod uses by-nervously shaking a leg under your desk for a few hours. Also, the heart grows to accommodate the demand. A tiny extra effort required might actually prevent some forms of heart disease. Keep in mind the common uses for this might also be keeping something like a pacemaker running, insulin balancers, micro-dose medication systems, etc, health conditions much more critical and guaranteed life threatening vs a minor workout for a muscle that would grow to accommodate the strain.

not 100% accurate

though you are right about the shocks, you are wrong about it being the ONLY place on the car this works.

Aerodynamic generators cause drag and are not an option, nor is anything in-line with the drive train. However, recuperative braking is a good plan already in wide use.

As for the tires, there IS a potential here. As tires hit the road, due to the road surface and the weight of the car, they flex. Look at a tire, it is a bit flatter and the side walls flex out at the bottom than the top. As it rotates, the rubber is under constant movement between 2 modes of shape, top and bottom of the tire. Part of this is for comfort in the ride, part of it is limitations in materials that apply grip. the tire must flex, and this flex is generally a given in determining fuel economy. Removing the flex is possible, but only at a negligible difference in fuel savings and a great sacrifice in ride quality (or a necessary high expense in shocks/spring augmentation to counterbalance the rougher ride).

The flexing is not caused by forward momentum, it is caused by gravity, and the resistance of the pavement. these are forces the engine is immune to, the exact reason shocks could generate power with equally limited impact. Taking advantage of that flexing inside the material of the tire using these sensors shuold impart near-zero fuel impact (only in so much as the added few pounds of mass). No part of the fuel system would be impacted by using this flex property, and it is highly likely that this flexing could generate more energy tha the fuel expense in moving the small extra weight. it is simply an engineering challenge to figure out how to design the tire to include the micro-generators in a durable fashion, and subsequent systems to deliver tire power to the car's batteries or electric motor.

Like shock power generation, this is no perpetual motion machine. It might generate 10% of what the car needs in energy to move forward at best (and that's a big guess!). The question is, would the cost of this system (which would be naturally a part of the tire that would be replaced with it, dramatically increasing tire cost) outweigh the cost and efficincy losses of simply having more battery installed to go the same additional range? If we're planning on generating the power cleanly either way 30-40 years from now, does it matter if it;s generated while driving or in a power planty if 90% of the cars power will still come from a plant? this would only make sense if it would pretty much be guaranteed to be cheaper than more batteries.

iOS 5 falls back to autumn, say moles

It's a phone, not a PC

a 2 year lifespan is generous to still be getting updates AT ALL. the 3G has been getting them until almost it's 3rd year. Some Droids hit the market and say a single update after 3-4 months and NEVER another one, some were released and told they would get an update, then 6 months later were told "sorry."

Apple added every feature it could to the 3GS, given it's CPU is less than half as powerful, and battery life was far inferior to the 2G/3G. You should be lucky they added any features at all beyond simple patches, and that you got what you did free which was completely unheard of 4 years ago, and many phone makers DO still charge for updates.

No surprise at all

When it was just the phone (and iTouch), a major Os update anally was somewhat (though not even totally if you ask most devs) reasonable. Now with the tablet, 2 disparate phone performance tiers and chipsets still supported, and ATV2, not to mention that the OS has a LTO more features than it used to, development hours per release are climbing. 12 months between major releases, especially when the core products are released in 3 seperate events spread 6-7 months apart end to end, it just isn't reasonable to keep up with. Merging mobile.me and a new streaming platform in would add more heartache.

By postponing this release (likely to be the biggest and most platform evolving yet anyway) a few months gives them a few chances. 1: major iPhone release can coincide with mobile.me and ATV3. 2) Pad 2 Pro could concurrently be released, with the better screen, SD, etc people were clammoring for. 3) a 15 month release cycle is more reasonable. 4) it lets Os X Lion get more attention. 5) iPhone and ipad might start getting a more frequent hardware update du to the shift as opposed to once a year.

Synology DS411slim Nas box

The point?

at 2.5", it's not much of a nas. For a fraction of the price you can get a 4TB dual disk simple NAS and trump this thing's storage, or for roughly the same price (chassis and drives) a 4 bay expandability 3.5" model with all the bells and whistles. I really don't see the point of this unit, as slight noise increase of a 3.5" unit shoudl be irrelevant considering a NAS likely would not be in the same room anyway (network cables can go anywhere... I have my NAS in a closet).

Also, I gravitate to the QNAP line. They have significantly more software features beyond what Synology offers, and i actually use several of them... For a price within a few bucks on a $500-900 setup, I'll take the QNAP.

Wi-Fi body wants hotspots to override 3G

Easy to avoid

Since at the moment, your phone can bot see the hotspot and also see the 3G data network, and assuming a hotspot registration of some kind or distributed managed hotspot network, 3rd party validation of the hotspot your connecting to is completely possible.

Granted, this protocol does not yet exist, and needs to be created, but I think that's the intent here:

1) phone is using data already

2) phone sees a valid hotspot advertising auto-connect feature

3) Phine notes HotSpot ID and sends it to the carrier, confirming that hotspot is online, and at the GPS aproximate coordinate.

4) Carrier sends your phone a code to connect to the hotspot and it enters a pre-authentication state (NAC configuration mode of a sort)

5) Carrier sends registered hotspot same code.

6) phone connects to hotspot authentication system and requests code

7) hot spot give code to phone, phone confirms codes match, phone sends login information to hotspot.

8) on connect, phone contacts carrier through hotspot

9) carrier hands off data connectivity to hotspot invisibly to user.

10) if process fails, codes are not received or do not match, phone alerts you and carrier to rogue hotspot, and you are not connected and never send your user credentials to the hotspot.

Again, this process/protocol does not exist yet, and would require cooperation between both your phone carrier and the wireless hotspot provider, but for a seamless transfer of active data connections that essentially has to happen anyway...

Conditions

1) there needs to be a DAMNED good system for ensuring my phone does not automatically connect to and hand my credentials over to a rogue hotspot, and this will certainly require an as yet undeployed additional 802.11x-like protocol, and could still be abused, so I;d insist on it ONLY connecting to hotspots I have pre-authorized.

2) Upon connecting, it should validate the throughput of the AP is in fact better than the 3/4G connection before switching or NOT automatically swing me to the *(slower) connection.

3) it better work equally in reverse, and also inclusive of not disrupting encryption tunnels in the process. If I'm VPN'd in from the back seat of a car, the driver stops at a traffic light near a favored coffee shop, i do NOT want to lose that VPN when it changes networks.

4) I assume, since they're essentially natted, that tethered connections would be unaffected by the switch too.

5) when leaving the area of the hot-spot, if I'm also on a call, and if for some reason it can't do voice/data concurrency, i want it to either (preferably) convert the call to VoIP and move it over to data, also seamlessly to me, and maintain any active data conenction, or instead (les soptimal) beep in my ear and let me know i need to loose one or the other connection and let me CHOOSE which one...

While off topic a touch, when I'm using a mobile hot-spot in my phone, and can't do concurrent voice data for some reason, instead of cutting off my data connection to take the call, PUT IT THOUGH VOIP!

Extended Lord of the Rings Blu-rays to hit Blighty

but there IS a discount

For MANY of the current releases, if I own the DVD I can send it in for a discount on the BR version. Usually $5, sometimes more, depending on the version.

closer to 11 hours...

The extended editions added more than 2 hours of integrated footage, not just a few tiny deleted scenes. they actually went back and re-shot additional content for the first 2 films while working on the latter. the extended directors cuts actually change the plot and story (enhance it anyway), quite dramatically, and bring forward fan favorites characters and scenes not seen in theaters at all.

Also, though i rarely enjoy commentary tracks, as they're typically limited to anecdotes and BS, the 3-4 DIFFERENT tracks for each movie were actually quite revealing, and they talked in depth about the books, the story, and deep details of the production process. They were (mostly) worth watching. That's some 35+ hours of commentary. Though someone who simply enjoyed the movie just being a movie might not see that, anyone who is a fan of tolkein, or of the origins of fantasy writing in general, got a LOT out of it. I was surprised that even my wife enjoyed it immensely.

not just the film

besides the fact they would have had to increase the compression a bit to get the near 4 hour extended version on a single 50GB disk, there are also 3 or 4 directors commentary tracks for each movie, which can not be separated to other disks.

The DVD was 2 disks each because even a dual layer DVD 18 could not hold the super-bit version of the movie, meaning an 18GB disk was not enough, and HD is 4x the data for video and more than double for audio (near 4x for lossless there too). 50GB simply isn't enough. If it was HD DVD you would need 3 disks for each film, be glad it didn't win...

Apple 'gay-cure' app severely slapped

never through I'de see it

...a day when Apple gets chastised for NOT censoring an app arbitrarily.

Look, it may not be moral, it may not be right, but Apple has a list of rules, every app rejected his violated them, and this one does not, so it got approved.

Does the phrase "the content you are about to see has no relation to the views of this company, its executors, or its staff" have no meaning anymore? Are you really asking Apple to become your moral compass? Is it even their job?

this app breaks no laws (that I'm aware of in the USA), and it breaks non of apple's code rules (one iof which, SOUNDS moral, no porn, but that's actually based on TAX and local/state regulations covering the distribution of pornography and is NOT a moral standing).

Apple iMovie 1.2

last years machines

The 3GS is near 2 years old. It still got the 4.3 update... the 3G, well in excess of 2 years old, got multiple updates in the latter half of 2010. Show me ANY phone from ANY other manufacturer that after 2 years gets updates. show me any android that got an update after just 14 months for that matter.

Go crawl back under your rock troll. NO other phone manufacturer has apples record for back hardware support with new features. they're the shining example of how it shoudl be done thus far.

RTFM.

It only trolls thumbnails when it detects new video files, and only scans those new files for thumbnails. It looks in the iPhoto library because there is video in there too.

2hr movies are BIG, and the IO for handling that is typically done on high performance arrays, not local HDDs. Its even worse if you're not working in a RAW mode, where the CPU/GPU is decoding, editing, and recoding the data on the fly.

If you were using iMovie right, or on the right hardware for the load, you would not be having these issues. If you're doing 2 hour features, you're already doing it wrong, iMovie is designed for shorts, not features (go buy FimMaker Pro).

iMovie on iPad is great for 10-25 minute clips. it;s not doing advanced editing oreffects, just simlpe audio balancing, transitions, and clipping. Even the iPhone 4 handles it just fine. My wife's 2 year old Macbook (and for that matter mom's 4 year old one) handles Hd editing in clips under 20-30 minutes just fine on laptop hard drives (clunky, but I/O, not CPU limited).

yes

in both directions.

Windows 7 customers hit by service pack 1 install 'fatal error' flaws

might not be true anymore

Windows 7 recovery process actually works now. I've had great success with the Windows media in recovery mode, or the restore disk made via the backup app being able to automatically repair windows installations. Its fixed things that under Vista or XP would have required multiple 3rd party tools or a complete restore. Not perfect (and still required FAR more often than reasonable), but it actually works. Comparing that process to Linux recovery, and the knowledge required, toss up on complexity and effort... Apple still has the best recovery process...

not an issue

With Win 7, even without access to the original media, you can burn a recovery DVD from the backup control panel that allows you to boot and diagnose just the same as having the real OS DVD.

Also, failure to have enabled backups, snapshots, etc to be able to recover from a service pack failure is no excuse. Anyone "rebuilding" due to a package failure is simply doing it wrong, unless the disk itself got currupt of failed in the process (unlikely coincidence not typically related to the patching process itself, but a bad disk to start with).

The 64-bit question

Video

With the prevalence of 720p and higher camcorders, the need for more than 3GB of RAM for a single app is upon us. Even photo-shop can peg a 32bit system pretty easy. I have scans that are over 1GB, I;ve seen a 2GB PDF for crying outnloud... PST files can easily climb above 4GB.

Memory utilization is misleading, as it does not take into account system processes to guarantee free memory. Give a 2Gb system that was 30% free ream another 2GB of RAM and it usually still will have 30% free, having used the other 2GB it had. Win7 especially will attempt to use all you can throw at it, and the performance improvement is notable from 2-4GB, and even to 6 on most systems (especially is slower HDDs are in use). going past 8GB has little impact, but going past 4Gb does.

Also, under win 7, ANYTHING compatible with any Win7 version has to be certified for ALL of them, 32 and 64bit, so the only 32bit only drivers you shoudl be finding are legacy systems. (and SOME of them still work, typically any that were at least Vista compatible).

PAE is no tthe same

It still keeps a single app/process limited to 4GB, and the OS limited inside 3GB. For a server, heavy app like Photoshop, video editing, etc, it's no good. For a home user who simply keeps a ton of crap open, but little of which uses 2GB or more each, it's passable. PAE was designed for workstation folk to be able to handle multitasking while still waiting for the hardware to become 64bit, and it got used in things like small office servers that ran lots of tasks on a single box, but it;s no substitute for native 64bit support, and it is a resource drain (small, but notable) as well.

well, maybe

If they're like most of the Dell and Lenovo systems floating around here, they might have 64 bit CPUs, but they cap out at 4GB RAM. If you;re not using over 4GB, there's very little point to a 64bit OS. (in some computationally impressive tasks, it can make a difference, even with limited RAM, but i can probably count the scenarios for such being done on a laptop on one hand).

Network mapping: you know it makes sense

lol, dead right!

...but, I've been a consultant for more than 15 years, have worked with a hundred major clients, and been inside over a thousand networks. I've seen ONE, well designed and well documented network in that time. (and it only was because it basically "fell apart" and IT lost control, and then they later got hacked, so they built, from scratch, at great expense, a parallel network and moved everything into it).

I can say the same thing about DR plans: the only people who have really good ones (not only planned, but tested) are those either required by law to do it, or who have suffered a costly loss because the didn't used to do it.

networks have to be managed, very carefully, and by people who know what they're doing, and even more importantly, who can plan for things that don't exist yet and leave room for dramatic changes without impacting the core design. Things like that are as rare as well organized data centers.

Google splits Google Apps suite in two

Now do this for Android

Give consumers direct access to the latest patches and code immediately for their chipset platform and provider. It may work, it may not. Give manufacturers advanced access to that same code so they "might" be able to release their own ROM pack including those changes in a timely manner following the commercial open release.

Let users get patches to ROM direct, if they choose to, allowing them to bypass both carrier and manufacturer specific code to gain access to and test new features, keep the existing model in place for custom ROMs. Ensure every device, of a given supported chipset, can use the default ROM without manufacturer modifications (accepting some limited optional features might not work).

iPhone and BlackBerry brought down in hacker competition

What's in a hack?

Really, getting a message past a spam filter to trick a user into going to a custom crafted website just to gain access the contact list? it can't gain admin access, it can't install remote code, it can't be remotely controlled to do anything, it can't access e-mail or the user local file system where data of VALUE is; these hacks are just pointing out exploits but even these top hackers and teams of hackers can't use an automated tool to remotely breach actual device security.

Who cares if my contact list gets siphoned off... It;s e-mail addresses, physical addresses, names and numbers. 99% of that is already floating around out there anyway (much of it and more in PUBLIC record). If you;re storing account numbers and password and such in your contacts, or sending them through unsecured SMS, you;re already a moron.

When they can have a bot install remote code and key-log the iPhone's virtual keyboard, or access the files in local storage, we'll call them winners.

I applaud the effort for finding these vulnerabilities, even more so that it's done with specific intent to provide the manufacturer's time to fix them, and with this contest and ones like it to continue, but lets not let the press blow things out of proportion here... Its far easier to get a virus into an android device simply by uploading it through the marketplace than it is to steal some names and numbers here through actual hacking and trickery... The encrypted parts of the iPhone have NEVER ONCE been breached, permission escalation has never been achieved, and remote code installation equally so. The only real "hacK' of these things ever shown was either given PHYSICAL access to it, or used a loophole in a jailbreak that left SSH Server running with a default published root password (oops).

iPhone 5 design drawings spied on web

highly suspect

Tim Cook already said, on stage, at the VZW launch event, that the next iPhone was a "radical shift" and had "significant engineering differences" and was "really exciting." A new model looking almost exactly like the current does not jive with those public statements. I call BS.

Apple bans iPhone 3G patch omission talk from forum

Utter fail, by the poster

Just because it's not getting 4.3 does NOT mean it's not getting patches. After 4.x, Apple did promise to maintain security only patches for the 3.x line for at least some time. No additional security exploits have been known to be exploited for the 3.x line, so there have been no additional patches. However, 4.2 has several known exploits (just demonstrated this week), and it WILL be patched, but it will not move to 4.3. Apple won't simply add security patches "just because," but if an exploit is DEMONSTRATED, they have promised to close those holes.

The 3GS is also nearing 2 years old, name another phone released near 2 years ago that saw patches after 1 year on the market and I'll give you 5 released in the last 12 months that have already been publicly cut off from all future updates...

IPv6 intro creates spam-filtering nightmare

Challenge response messaging

No traffic without return traffic. Want to send an e-mail, the relay server and/or receiving mail server issues a challenge, your PC computes an answer, it accepts the answer and passes the message. No messages can be sent that can;t be reverse verified. Messaged that don;t support this system get sent a return message the user has to manually reply to, and the original message is held in quarantine until that process is completed, or never delivered at all.

its a simple system, and validates both sender and receiver e-mail address and IP routing. In order for a home PC to send spam, your router will have to allow incoming SMTP traffic to your PC on a port the virus opened... not likely to happen...

This was proposed more than a decade ago, but the legitimate spam companies and businesses who send tons and tons of e-mail objected that is would cost too much server power to compute those automated answers and replies. Guess what folks, still would have cost less than stamps and snail-mail marketing or telemarketing. We let them control the industry, and now we suffer for it. Impose challenge response e-mail and other messaging systems, and we can end most spam.

Complete FUD

Just because there's a ridiculous pool of addresses has no impact on the fact that they're still being DOLLED OUT, in blocks. It will be easy to simply block all traffic from unassigned IPv6 blocks, international routers won't carry the traffic, they can;t just pick any-old IP address, they have to pick one that's been ENABLED.

Each home/residence/ small business/whatever will get a block, device manufacturers will also likely get blocks, setting the default IP of devices (think mobile phones, where all VZW phones of a certain make all use a predictable (though random enough) range of IPs, no different then we assign phone number or SIM IDs in series today).

hackers can't simply snag an IP and spam away, something has to know of that IP block and allow it to communicate, otherwise it's just a local address in a local network no router will pass traffic for... No matter how many IPs they make up behind your IPv6 home router, the ISP sees a single address range, and can quickly block the entire thing. You can;t just go grab any random public IP from your ISP, it has to be provisioned, from an available address block. IPv6 is no different. The number of addresses in use won't dramatically change (in terms of routable endpoints).

Feeling heat from Macs, Microsoft sells PCs sans crapware

...and they you'll put flash on it...

Face it, the "crapware" isn't what it used to be. Its not tons of toolbars and helper apps anymore, itl;s just a bunch of generic apps that nag at you to pay for them later if you use them. The real bloatware is flash, java, Acrobat, and all the otehr crap most peolpe are going to install anyway. great, you get a system that in a few days will be just as slow as the one with the crapware, and you could have just uninstalled the crapware anyway and saved the money...

Steve Jobs bends iPad price reality

Trolls don;t wanna give up

We used to hear "Apple costs twice as much." Then it was "they're more expensive." Now the MSRP is actually less, so they feel it's necessary to point out that if you sell your soul to a carrier, on a 3G equipped model you might not even need, and pay a monthly rate for 2 years, you MIGHT make out cheaper, vs an iPad on the same plan that you actually pay a month-by-month rate for all 2 years as well.

Guess what, I can get an iPad for a discount too... MSRP is not the only price in town.

Samsung admits iPad 2 will be tough to beat

nope

Apple developed that for the phone and iPod, and that was just a derivative of OS X to begin with. they spread that cost over 100+m units before the ipad launched, and what little cost there was in re-engineering it for the iPad got spread over 15m more pads and 40m more phones.

And samsung DOES pay for Android. they license the google apps, and they also have significant internnal code development to do for each unique device. Android does not run stock on their platform, and they have a dozen devices (not 3) to support, and their total sales are but about 10m units, and they only had 18 months to compact all that cost into, not to mention throwing out a dozen other products that were intended to compete with a $1K tablet, not a $499 one...

Worse for Samsung, they not only have to supprot the OS, they don;t get to SEE the OS until google is done with it. THEN they get to see what Google broke, re-engineer their own apps, re-code the Os to work with AMOLED and their chosen chips, and get it out before the competition, then continue to supprot doing that on a dozen devices every few months. Their mobile OS costs probably double Apples, and they're selling 1/10th the devices.

Not really

the app store only cleared a few percent in profit. it;s income is almost entirely spent in staff, hosting, bandwidth, and more.

the Ipad however does rake in about $200 in profit per unit. unlike Samsung and moto, who sunk millions into development of the tablet, let alone OS customizations, marketing, etc, with zero fallback, in less than a year, and after throwing out several predecessors targeted at Apple's expected $1K iPad 1 pricetag, they have no wiggle room. Apple on the other hand simply leveraged existing iOS, and took 5+ years of slow effort to design their tablet, and a minor revision of it, not to mention spreading that cost over 15m units, not Samsung's 1.5m or moto's few hundred thousand (of which Google gave thousands away free).

Apple has amazing manufacturing effectiveness, low R&D cost, and economy of scale giving them great price leverage at wholesale. they'll accelerate that with their $3.7 investment to get cheap screens in mass later this near no one else will have access to at all, and when they do, make a profit on every one Samsung or moto later include...

Apple made 1 sinle move that guaranteed them this market for a long time. they completely broke tradition, and all expectations with $499. NO ONE expected that. A tablet with iOS, newer better parts, and costing $100 LESS than the base cost of the iPhone 3GS off contract? no one even guessed that was possible... Apple did it, and it worked, and no no one competes, they had almost a whole year unopposed while the competiti0n now has to trow loss leaders at them just to chip away...

Apple vanishes Java from Mac OS X Lion

We KNOW why Java got dropped

They TOLD us a year ago it was coming. It;s because, simply put, if it;s not included, SUN can patch it faster.... That's it. Apple has been systematically removing ALL code that is not their own in the favor of letting the owner of that app be responsible for its maintenance instead of Apple (and thus also take the anger when they patch it and break your java apps).

As for Rosetta, If you still need PPC code on your intel mac, and the dev has yet to provide it, apply blame where it's due... If there is Intel native code, and you simply are complaining about being "forced" to upgrade to it (and pay for it) ad prefer to "keep your existing version", well nobody's making you buy 10.7 either... You choose to upgrade some, all, or none depending on your requirements. If you bought a $500 or $1K app, and didn't plan ahead for needing to eventually upgrade it, again, not Apple's fault. We knew Rosetta was a "temporary" solution for 4 years now.

Amazon confirms the terms of its declaration of war on Netflix

no comparrison

1) it's unlimited at $8 unless you still have access to the $5 plan which did have limited a streaming.

2) Amazon's storefront for streaming sucks, their recommendation engine sucks, they have no queue system, etc. This needs a MAJOR interface overhaul to be worth it.

3) Amazon uses lower bit per second aka lower quality (enough to be easily noticeable per other review sites).

4) Selection selection selection

5) I happily pay $2 extra to be able to get those DVDs in the mail, for a large number of reasons.

6) no consoles, no phones, etc. Netflix is entrenched here, Amazon is barely plugging along with some simply support forthcoming for some TVs and set tops.

For people already paying for prime, this was a nice bonus. Personally, i could care less about the 2 day free shipping for $80 a year vs just waiting 2 more days for free...

nice to see competition enter the game, but its going to be a few years before Amazon can compete, and netflix has the market and the capitol to put of a hell of a fight.

MobileMe packages disappear from Apple's shelves

What I'm hoping for

iDisk goes free for up to 10GB.

Find My Phone is already free

back-to-my-mac goes free

Photo, video, iWeb, etc go free (up to the same 10GB)

e-mail goes free

Additional users, $20/year, 10GB each

more disk space @ reasonable prices.

monthly access, not annual

online backup for $5/month, unlimited online storage (PLEASE!?!?!?!)

Existing subscribers keep the space they have now, without paying more, (as a thank you for paying for it all those years), and get refunded their prorated account balance.

add:

- music sharing service (your tunes in the cloud, video too).

no worries

because it;s a subscription service, if they lower the price or radically change the service, you will be automatically refunded. They've done that once before already (not to mention they have to by law, not that anyone forced them to).