Posts by Michael Thibault 927 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Nov 2008
Yeah, not that impressive. What's the point of shooting that calibre of gun to esplode* some bit of tech in super-slo-mo if it isn't frame-filling and from multiple angles? And who's to say it was only two bullets? Meh.
Anyway, I wonder what the effect of the views stats will be on public mind-share for the iPhone?
* It's in *my* dictionary!
>This isn't a black / white ... shroud of mystery ... that with open source you have all the tools available to take that shroud down. For free. But would an ordinary end user go all the way for that?
Probably would not. The 'openness' is theoretical, therefore, and almost every user of FOSS is acting--in this respect, at least--as a free-rider (free-loader), hoping/expecting that, in addition to writing the code and updating it from time to time, the programmers and others--with far too much free time and/or OCD--are also vetting the code from a security standpoint. Is there oversight to ensure that a fresh-eyed someone, somewhere is, in fact, pawing through this particular steaming pile of code to ensure that there's nothing untoward hidden inside it? IOW, who's ensuring that the watchmen are clocking in? There's a risk being taken when you use FOSS: you're hoping that the difference between the theoretically-possible vetting of the code and the actual vetting of it approaches 0. If that were the goal, or target, you'd see FOSS packaged in such a way that you'd know almost immediately something of its security audit history...
"your fingerprint is pretty useless to most criminals (at present at anyrate). Yes, law enforcement would love it but are law enforcement going to break the law to get it (I guess only if they think they can get away with it)?
It will become increasingly interesting to everyone. However, it must be remembered that what isn't going to be recorded/stored using one of these scanners--at least for the foreseeable future--is your mDNA. The evidentiary standard, once biometric scanners come increasingly into play, will likely evolve to require '2-factor authentication' i.e. given that biometrics are necessarily digital in nature, the records produced are necessarily also (seen to be) copiable/transmittable/etc., so any evidence of a 'fingerprint' will have to be backed up by the presence of mitochondrial DNA from the same location, to prevent abuse of gummie-bear- or 3D-printer-produced 'prints'. Things will evolve, IOW.
p.s. On the subject of hashes: I'm supposing it safe to surmise that the fingerprint being scanned is--at least temporarily--instantiated in digital form, in memory, in order for a hash to be produced from it? If that is so, the security concerns about fingerprints, per se, would come to a sharp focus on that particular point in the entire scanning process, and that's where the security largely belongs.
Agree. It seems a noble idea, but also doomed to be terminally frustrating--as tech may well move faster than development of a (useful, non-niche) FOSSilised version of Android can. To say nothing of what caltrops der Google can throw in the way of such a project. In a way, the near-manic general drive to have linux (or similar) run on everything with a processor is a potential gotcha for linux: it spreads apparently limited resources ever-thinner on the ground. Choose your battles well.
>99.9% of ... users didn't ... know what to use them for anyway.
Much the same can be said for the middle button of a three-button mouse. Sure, 100 linux monkeys will tell you that you're holding it wrong, and that there's a shit-ton of different things you can do with it (most depending on your use of the terminal... sigh!). But anyway, there's no standard use for the middle button. So, YTF?!
Similarly, the right button (on non-antipodean mice) is nothing special. At all. It does one thing: contextual menus. Wooot! Hot Damn! Like you couldn't engage the other half of your brain to pull on a finger, then another finger, and then press one of the modifier keys concentrated in the lower left and right corners of your keyboard to--well--modify the click you're making with the left button? Oh, that hand is too busy keeping time. Why didn't you say so? But, WTF...
The decomposability of a mouse click (mousedown+mouseup, as in HyperTalk) and consideration of time (duration and sequence, in particular, of the two sub-events) makes the second/right (contextual menu) button unnecessary--or, at least, not strictly necessary. Nice to have n buttons (if n<π) but you can get the same functionality out of a single-button mouse; a little software gives me a third way to invoke the contextual menu i.e. get the same result as using the button at the other end.
Love the trackball of the Mighty Mouse, BTW, but the side buttons ... definitely a puzzlement.
>ahem married...
Well, yes, we can say "married". Some members of the design team might well be. Currently, we can talk about almost any pair of adults living in California as, potentially, being married... Next month? Depends on what the SCOTUS has to say on the challenge of the constitutionality of Proposition
Wait, wait... Oh, I geddit: you're making an allusion to ... y'know ... sexuality and associated stereotypes--semi-obliquely, by way of reference to marriage, and the apparently unmentionable fact that these things are "Designed... in California". Tsk tsk!
"This [chart] works best on a wide screen, but if you have to scroll horizontally, the left column with the app names will stay hovered on screen. Hover over an app’s title in the table to see additional features which might not be part of the main chart, and click to scroll to its full data block. Holding down command while hovering over the body of the chart will highlight the current row. Clicking a row will outline it. Clicking a feature header at the top will dim apps which don’t have that feature."
Smacked my gob, that did! But I then realised "Oh! Well, of course! The author 'get's it'".
>I think AAPLs demise was prematurely announced
Who is it who keeps DOING that? Must be the umpteeninth time AAPL've been having their going-out-of-business sale.
Anyway, a point related to the overall chatter here: if there's a bubble, it's in the artificial world of investors, analysts, stockholders, 'players', etc.. They're NOT connected to reality.
of course, those articles aren't to be found: 'ya can't make no money from them'. Besides, it's widely known, and accepted, that Ms jumped the shark YEARS ago. If any company deserves encouragement in its earthward spiral, it's Ms. Don't see much of that, though--most everyone loves a free ride, I guess.
Books--an admittedly much, much older technology than tablets or smart-phones--might also benefit (and might also have benefitted) from such radial thinking, but I haven't seen any books sporting such rounded corners. Why didn't someone think of rounding those corners--oh, I don't know--centuries ago? Shirley Ann Obviosity?
Loaded+rhetorical question. Do you mind if I call "Bullshit!"on that?
What was the plaintiff after in this instance i.e. what, for her, did 'justice' mean? Compensation? Formal recognition by, and in, the court that harassment had occurred? Both simultaneously? That the company made an offer part-way through proceedings could be taken by many, if not most, that they'd acknowledged that she had some basis for bringing the suit. Those a little closer to legal matters would recognize that the offer did not necessarily carry with it an admission of guilt or culpability. That she continued beyond that offer--which, if I read things correctly, brought her up level with respect to her costs to that point in time--suggests strongly that she wanted above all the court's official word on whether or not harassment had occured. She got that.
However, there's no free lunch, and the rules of the game are known, or knowable. The particular filip here is one she could, and should, have seen coming. It seems the plaintiff got what she wanted; her own actions suggest that that is so. Should she be entitled to more? Apparently no(ugh)t.
Every six months turn off Siri, wait x minutes, then turn it back on... what happens?
Why would anyone ask a machine for information relative to some questionable, unethical, immoral, and/or illegal activity--past, current, or planned--of their own? Is there anyone that stupid? If so, and you're one of those people, here's a tip: Do shut up!
I gave you a finger... er, thumb. Do with it what you will.
"To not have kids". Hmmm, yes, very easy to do, but very difficult to undo. Most will err on the side of having kids, as not having them and later discovering that things didn't go down/come up the drain--as had been suggested would happen--while not having any grey hair attributable to the raising of children would be a major downer. Better to err on the side of caution and drop a couple than be left with only one pair of hands to hold. Or wring.
Birth control is simple, yes, but runs up hard *cough* against some rather deeply-entrenched dogmas on what though shalt and thou shalt not do. And there's the sticky *cough* problem of "Who's first? Anyone? Anyone?"
Ultimately, though, if humans are on their penultimate (or near-ultimate) legs, the problem will solve itself, and, if that's the case, its all about the race to arrange for front-row seats to watch it all go down. If only the reel had a shuttle - we could speed things up, slow it down, go backwards...
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