Posts by Henry Wertz 1 3141 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2009
"I use GIMP and Photoshop extensively, predominantly GIMP. And the only thing I really need Photoshop for is CMYK image support. If GIMP had that then my entire design workflow could be completed with GIMP/Inkscape."
AFAIK, Gimp has CMYK now. I was as surprised as anyone to see it (and, I personally don't have a need for it.) It went from no color support to supporting normal, CMYK, s-RGB, and several other color spaces.
$499? Feh. Just put like $800 of hardware into it and mark it up to an even $2000. Look at THAT margin! But seriously, Microsoft has lost their mind; blaming OEMs for Windows 8's failure is a fail in and of itself. The fact is, the makers know what is selling, and it is the lower end machines. Why? They have enough power to do what most people want, and they'd rather keep those extra $100s in their pocket (or, to spend on food, electricity, and rent.) I got a netbook, and since I kept Windows far from it (it has Ubuntu 12.04), even the 1.3ghz one is fast enough.
"What do the Apples and Samsungs say about this?"
I don't care what Apple has to say; surprisingly I found my (CDMA/EVDO/LTE) Samsung Stratosphere actually has no Qualcomm hardware in it (the LTE chip is Samsung, and the CDMA/EVDO chip is Via Technologies.). But, Qualcomm in fact makes loads of chips, if they support TDD in 900/1800/2100 (Europe) and 700/850/1900/AWS (US) then so many phone makers just drop in a Qualcomm solution that phone makers could naturally follow, it'd be essentially a zero-cost option to support both FDD and TDD compared to now.
Anyway, any take off of TDD would necessitate changes of regulations on these bands so the cell co can use the band how they wish, as opposed to the current situation of having particular uplink and downlink bands. If that happens, indeed TDD should help use upstream spectrum that is likely rather wasted at present. At that point, the big question is, will carriers (outside China) actually decide to use TDD instead of FDD? That I do not know.
Well, I wouldn't be caught dead in one. To me this comes off either as
a) somebody who is uptight as all hell thinking if they put some pants with that business clothing they are "casual". I'll tell you right now, you're not pulling it off and to me you just look like a suit.
b) Someone like me who was told they MUST "dress up" or "wear a suit" for something or other and actually believed it. I feel bad for you for having to wear that stuff. Also, joke's on you! If I saw you to begin with, you are probably there to meet with me, and you could have worn normal clothes.
I have a few nice gray or black (and a black with white stripe) button down shirt as needed, for meeting someone who might not like Hawaiiain prints and bright colors. But I impress people by discussing what problem they need solved and being able to actually solve it, not by dressing up.
What can I say? Apple has not made it a habit to pay dividends, and no matter how much money they have I would not buy their stock in the expectation of dividends. They aren't required to pay them, and you aren't required to buy their stock. You're certainly allowed to complain about lack of dividends, but here I am playing the world's smallest violin as you do so.
I've seen this app on television. I like Bjork but the app frankly looked rather silly -- she was using it to play the song, and it looked like there was just a lot of animation on screen and you'd prod various bits to play notes and sounds. The art and music are already in the app, 375,000 pounds sounds like a VERY high bill to port this.
"Given that Itanium roundly trounced PA-8K in benchmarks from the beginning, I have a hard time qualifying the move from the PA-8K design as a bad idea. That being said, IPF is pretty obviously dead as a doornail at this point."
It didn't. I spoke with someone locally who was using PA-RISCs. They got a Itanium, and the Superdome they had ***SPANKED*** it. After a good year or so, the compiler improved enough so the Itanium was at least competitive. They basically got one, got all ready to return it, and ended up getting it for almost nothing so whoever at the company could show a successful Itanium sale.
Anyway... I think the Itanium met it's goal for Intel. It seems to me the goal was largely to get more vendors buying from Intel instead of using their own chips. In terms of UNIX systems? MIPS -- gone. PA-RISC -- gone. Alpha -- Gone. Sun didn't abandon SPARC, but got sidetracked enough to delay the SPARC by quite a while. IBM seems to be the only one who was unaffected and still making POWER systems for those who want them. Don't get me wrong, some of these chips were "on the ropes" anyway, but I think Intel may have more than made up for the huge cash investments into Itanium in additional Xeon sales.
One sentence quote from this fine US'ian, and the entire sentence is wrong:
1) The Consitution doesn't explicitly list a right to privacy. That is simply a human right.
2) Yes, it does follow that since people have a right to privacy, they have rights regarding data about themselves.
I find the idea of the split supercomputer interesting. Although this seems silly at first glance, I think it is actually sensible. The much lower bandwidth between the two halves* would absoultely cripple certain workloads (a weather model, for instance, traditionally each node would end up walking through a pretty large portion of system memory as it calculated, meaning a shared memory supercomputer is a must.) But, the reality is this type of system doesn't tend to run one giant workload anyway, the tendency is to have a number of jobs running on it at any given time, and also a lot of jobs would not walk through system memory the way a weather model would. Either one of these, this lets each university have a local resource with (presumably) automatic use of excess on the other university's system, which is great.
*I don't know what the speed will be, but certainly below the 56GB/sec infiniband local to each half!
It really doesn't sound like the contract is a problem (although I must agree, I would have done it in writing.) It sounds like the estate is not disputing the 6%, but rather the cost of the yacht (which to me seems odd, I would think design would be flat rate, not based on what the tub ends up costing to make.)
"Microsoft got its "monopoly" just because PC clones were (and are) cheap. I couldn't afford a Macintosh or something like that when I was a student - I could buy a PC clone and thereby MS software. Blame expensive proprietary hardware/software - like Apple - for that, not MS."
Nope, Microsoft is not a multiply convicted monopolist just because PCs are popular; it's because of the nearly continuous anti-competitive behaviors they have shown, forcing their competitors (or marginalizing them at least) in one market after another. Illegal bundling. Contracts requiring an OEM to pay for Windows on ALL computers, whether they want to put it on all of them or not. Lowering prices when there is competition (to undercut them on price) then jacking the price back up afterwards. Making changes to intentionally break competitor's products. Using undocumented features to give themsleves an advantage over their competitors (see Windows 8 -- they allow their own Office and IE to use features that are not just undocumented like in the past, but that NOBODY ELSE IS PERMITTED TO USE.) The list goes on and on.
As for Apple stores -- FSF *did* show up at Apple stores in both 2006 and 2010. They are continously filing complaints against Apple for policies such as disallowing GPLed code in app store apps. I think you'll find FSF will not be showing up at Microsoft stores months from now either, it doesn't mean they are giving them a free pass.
"A TV is not a computer":
A modern TV *is* a computer. The LG my prents got (NOT a smart TV) has pages of GPL notices, Linux kernel, ffmpeg, libavcodec, busybox. I think it uses the Linux framebuffer driver. (The one my grandparents got listed NanoX as well so apparently it didn't.) SmartTVs *are* a computer, with more storage space and additional software installed.
"therefore the way it works is going to be different to a computer. People want to turn on a TV and maybe install a few apps, using a *remote control*, not a keyboard, mouse or messing with SSH, VNC or Samba."
But, VNC, SSH, and Samba would install and run fine on it, so long as it's not artificially locked down.
Would I install vnc, SSH, and samba on my TV*? Hell no. But it's the TV owner's right to do this if they want (possibly voiding the warranty. Although it should be possible to flash it back to "factory default".)
*(If I owned a TV... I use MythTV and just watch stuff on the computer.)
On the one hand, it is 100% none of Vodafone's business what people are doing off working hours. If they want to control their employee's 24/7, they can pay them for 168 hours a week.
On the other hand -- DON'T USE YOUR PHONE WHILE DRIVING! It's seriously stupid.
Seatbelt? It's stupid not to wear it but it doesn't affect anybody else. Speeding? From what I've seen of India traffic speeding is generally not possible. I would not be happy with my employer worrying about me speeding off-hours here in the states because many many roads have arbitrarily slow speed limits and arbitrarily bored cops (on the other hand, I have a radar detector so I don't get speeding tickets.)
Thank goodness for unlimited texting, I guess? US cell cos technically offer text packages, but make the pricing intentionally unattractive so people will get unlimited texting. I feel for those who have no texting and get charged the ridiculous 20 cents a text for spams. No I have not gotten this on my phone 8-)
As for network impact -- I recall someone doing research on this like 5 or 10 years ago, they rigged up a phone to a PC send texts as fast as possible, and at least one other phone to send and receive a few texts at a sane rate and measure if there was any slowdowns. AT&T, they aborted the test almost immediately as they found VOICE service failed (the control channel filled so thoroughly that call setups were failing.) T-Mobile did the best, they were limiting devices to about 1 text per 1.5 seconds so the phone was simply disallowed from spewing out dozens of texts a second. VZW and Sprint both had a small (couple second) slowdown. Ths all ignores the SMSCs (SMS centers) themselves bogging down of course, which is also a possibility.
"Why all the love for soul-less money grubbing, Apple copying Samsung?"
If you looked at the trial coverage, Samsung made SERIOUS mistakes at trial. 1) They fumbled some evidence filings so the fact that Samsung made a phone with rounded corners and etc. BEFORE the Iphone came out. If you claim copying just on what came out first, Apple actually copied Samsung, then patented those features and sued Samsung over it. (Or, the reality, neither copied the other, certain features were indepdently developed by both.) 2) They went for a JURY trial. So of course, jury people are susceptible to Apple's Reality Distortion Field (tm) and sided with Apple.
Personally, I wouldn't buy an IPhone for free, the interface on them is lousy (I know people like it and it's not inherently flawed but it's the exact opposite of what I want out of a phone interface), they are overprcied and pretentious. They tend to be between subpar and average as an actual phone. I'm not specifically a Samsung fan (I've had over the years Nokia, Siemens, Samsung, LG, Motorola, and now another Samsung.) I ended up with a Samsung becasue I wanted a phone with LTE *and* a keyboard, and the Samsung Stratosphere was the only one Verizon was selling. I may have gotten a newer LTE-supporting Droid but they switched it to a non-removeable battery which is REALLY stupid.
Anyway... they way people write off Nokia as dead, I was surprised they were number 2... I would have assumed LG and HTC moved more kit.
@asdf, I find that EXTREMELY unlikely. I see Apple buyers say that a lot, generally there's at least a dozen similar machines on the market. I won't hate on you for buying an Apple, the good news is you don't have to deal with Windows (or install a better-than-Windows OS on your own.)
"A good reason that Google might want to consider paying Microsoft actual money to use Exchange Active Sync is that their users want them to."
If users want it they can pay for it. You can't really fault Google for not wanting to provide a servcei -- for free -- that they then have to pay Microsoft to use (and get nothing for it.)
" Also, it works. Whereas Google's implementation of IMAP doesn't (at least not properly or consistently). Also iOS uses the same protocol to connect to GMail doesn't it?"
Exchange ActiveSync protocol... well, I won't comment on functionality. But as a protocol, it sounds absolutely horrible. First, to clarify, ActiveSync is/was used to sync via USB or serial between a (Windows) PC and local (Windows) phone, and Exchange Activesync is using the Microsoft technique of placing a similar name on a completely unrelated protocol. It was a horrible design. The new protocol, if you can call it that, is XML-based but other than that, appears to just be defined as whatever Exchange feels like putting over the wire as opposed to having any proper definition -- and they just keep adding extra complexities with every release. Even when companies license it, they just get a patent license, no protocol documentation (because I think there isn't any.)
So, you expect Google to pay Microsoft in order to increase compatibility with Microsoft products, while every other product on the market supports industry standards? Sorry but Microsoft can piss off.
Re: "if they are capable of developing nuclear power and (alleged) a nuclear weapons program; surely they can knock up an OS of their own."
I'm pretty sure Seiemens developed their nuclear power. That said, as bad as running Windows for anything important is, hardy anybody likes to reinvent the wheel. Very few people start an OS and few of those reach a useful state.
Re: comments about FAT and such... first, FAT doesn't mean "Windows 95 or older", NT3.5, 4, 2000, XP all supported NTFS but also FAT installs. I've seen FAT installs of Windows 2000 (I don't know why). Secondly, though,from the description in the article this virus was deleting THE USER'S OWN FILES. So, NTFS, ACLs, and proper filesystem permissions, won't do dick against this particular type of attack.
Well... I feel smug now for using Linux... DEL *.* does nothing, I tells ya. Nothing!! Wait, rm -R *? I have no idea what you're talking about 8-). (But seriously, a .sh file won't run without the execute bit turned on. But, if I were running random executables under Linux something naughty could wipe my home directory if it wanted.)
"These statements always make me laugh. I have come across neither issue with Firefox and neither has anybody else I know who uses Firefox."
What a numpty. Theres bug reports -- lots of them, with los of posts apeice -- and lots and lots and lots of other complaints about Firefox memory usage all over the internet. There's 3 issues really *and a solution*:
1) some Firefox versions did have memory use bugs (leaks or excessive usage), since they've gone thorugh like 13 major versions the last couple years. This isn't actually the main prolem.
2) People expect more out of their browser now. Opening pages with huge graphics and javascript, lots of tabs, etc., is going to use more RAM than "back in the day".
3) TUNING. To make benchmarks look good, Firefox has ridiculous memory use defaults now! image.mem.max_decoded_image_kb is set to 512000KB, so Firefox will keep all these decoded (huge!!) images for other tabs and such in memory; javascript.options.mem.high_water_mark is set to 128MB. It turns out when Firefox is set to cache 640MB of crap in memory, it uses lots of memory 8-). I turned these WAAAAAY down (1024KB and 8MB), it DRASTICALLY reduced memory use and the only side effect is it takes a fraction of a second to re-decode the images when you switch tabs on my slowest system (and not even a noticeable delay on the others.)
"It's more likely that your computer is a pile of shite."
Spoken like a true Windows user -- the UNIX way is not "Oh, this app will just barely run on a high-end system so it's fine", but rather to keep improving efficiency since, you know, computers can be run multi-user and at that point it's better to not have a single app hog the whole computer.
"If you can't be unplugged long enough for a plan to get into the air then you really need to be unplugged for purely therapeutic reasons."
Oh I sure can be. But,
a) If the rule is pointless then it shouldn't be there.
b) Some flights they load up, then they wait and wait and wait and wait (like an hour or more) on the ground and they will claim no electronics that entire time. It's not like this is necessarily some 5 minute wait.
Is there really an iphone grey market expanding in China? The other article said how the iphone5 is not really selling in China (probably since there's numerous better phones on the market, and for those who DO want an iphone there's like a dozen iphone clones that are much cheaper and generally have more features than an iphone.)
"Whilst I think the idea of non-lethal weapons is a good one, the problem is training - surely the issue here is that the guy went over the top - using a taser to shut a woman up because she's hysterical and a bit difficult to get handcuffs on sounds like a 1950's solution..."
He spent 10 minutes trying to get her to leave, another 5 (with backup!) trying to get cuffs on. That's not "a bit" difficult. Tasers ARE abused in the US but I don't think so in this case.
"Said browser would (I'm pretty sure) try and use the same network interface for all of those multiple connections. The connectify program seems to just make those connections happen over a range of NICs so you effectively get more bandwidth."
Yup, and in Linux at least (see the AC's comment above), the browser WILL see a single interface. bond0 in the case of this example the AC has. bond0 just happens to spread out connections among multiple physical interfaces. I'm sure the OpenBSD solution (per Ru) also presents a single interface.
Anyway... AFAIK Windows *doesn't* do this on it's own, so good on them for having a 3rd-party app to do something like this.
"The only reason google got in the carrier space, isp/cell, was so that users didn't have an option to have their data collected and mined by google. Pffft, pretty easy to profile an advert target when you have ALL their data from the wire. Google has long passed do no evil."
Nope, it's because the asshats at AT&T wanted to double dip, they already charge their own customers for internet access, but thought that Google should ALSO pay AT&T because some amount of traffic was going between their customers and Google (especially Youtube.) Completely ignoring that Google already pays the standard fees at whatever peering points they are at, just as AT&T does. They were pushing congress to eliminate any semblance of net neutrality. So Google told them to piss off, and said if AT&T kept pursuing this Google would just start their own ISP, make sure to build out in all AT&T's wireline markets and take all their customers. After Google started building out, AT&T realized Google was serious and backed off.
As for these speeds.. the image incorrectly shows megabytes per scond, the one on netflix's blog now shows megabits. But, Netflix CAPS at 4mbps, so it's natural that these ISPs all show below 4mbps... it'll be a mix of 4mbps ratings and those times when the ISP is too crapped out to get that speed (or the user has other stuff going on on the connection). I.e. as they say the relative ratings should be useful (to tell which ISPs are either quite slow or overload a lot) but the absolute numbers are not real useful. The US broadband market is pretty bad (especially pricing), but no we don't order 20mbps service and get 2.2mbps or whatever.
(Well three comments -- first, good article).
Firstly, Intel won't have long to make headway with this Atom -- ARMv8 supports 64-bit, this spec was finalized in late 2011 and vendors announced silicon around October 2012 or so. Linux has gained 64-bit ARM support for v3.7 kernel (in the Linux tradition, I think it gained support before any silicon actually has shipped...) The info I read on these specifically said these'll run 32-bit apps under a 64-bit OS (if there's any closed-source ARM apps you can still run them; since Linux distros have supports mixed 32-bit and 64-bit on x86 I'm guessing it would not be a big deal on ARM) and supports virtualization. I don't know if it's out yet, but it should be out "Real Soon Now" if it's not already out.
Second, what is it with Intel and randomly adding and removing features? Why would they ship a 64-bit Atom without VT-X? My Atom Z520 *has* VT-X, so it's not like there's no Atoms with it. Weird.
So... yes, C# is a ripoff of Java, and .NET a ripoff of the Java Runtime Environment. Sorry if you don't like it but it's true. Microsoft found Java a threat (seeing as how it was truly cross-platform) and after they were sued for J++ (a Java version with non-standard extensions added on, violating the Java platform rules...) they worked on C# and .NET. This was SPECIFICALLY so they could make a Java-clone, take the wind out of Java's sails, and claim cross-platformness while in reality tying the .NET user tightly to Windows. NOTE THIS IS NOT A QUALITY JUDGEMENT. I did a little C#/.NET programming, and I found the truly portable parts to be well designed and clean.... (the non-portable parts exposed Win32, which is IMHO an unholy mess. I didn't use them.)
@Ian Yates, "So you also believe that Java rips off UCSD Pascal, since that uses a VM for each process? Or that C++ rips off C?"
Yes and yes. When Java was coming out, it was common knowledge it was using techniques gleaned from UCSD Pascal. And C++ is obviously directly based on C. Microsoft had specific motives to take down Java when they released C# and .NET though.
Regarding C#... well, if you look realistically, Silverlight is abandoned, .NET development is halted. Microsoft originally did not include C# support at all in WinRT, assuming people would use HTML5, and only added it due to developer outcry. I think it's safe to say C# is in "legacy' status now. Sorry if you don't like it, but that's the facts. Just to say it again -- not a quality judgement, I really get the impression it's Microsoft internal politics doing this and I think it's a poor decision. But I guess we'll see a few years down the road if new stuff comes out, or if .NET is just allowed to fade. Desktop? Well, you can still use technologies from like the Windows 3.1 days if you want, I'm sure (non-Metro mode) you'll be able to keep making stuff indefinitely if you want.
Nostalgia aside... I did run Linux originally on a 386. But, that said, the hard memory limit on the 386 was 16MB (you could still have 4GB virtual memory...). So, shoving a 386 full of RAM to watch a newer distro crawl to a start is realistically not an option. Even most small distros (puppylinux, damn small linux) are not small enough to run in 16MB. Also most distros have been built for 486+ for years, the few new instructions 486 added over 386 ended up improving performance so significantly that distros dropped 386 years ago (and some are built i686 -- Pentium Pro -- on up.) So I'm not going to cry out over this.
I think cmpxchg (atomic compare and exchange) is probably why the kernel guys are jonesing to drop 386, not having this instruction would make spinlocks and mutexes much harder (these are used on SMP systems to make sure a given resource is only accessed by one CPU at a time).
"however, your point is sound, that people confuse paediatrician with a paedophile are pretty stupid, but to be honest, perhaps we shouldn't have chosen words which sound very similar to describe very different things, I blame latin.....or at least, somebody down that road..."
They're VERY VERY stupid. Anyway, nobody choose words which sound similar to describe very different things... paed/ped means "child", so the words for child doctors and child diddlers both have "ped" in the name.
I wonder how this works out for other rare earth metals. I've read about how for indium, neodymium, niobium, etc. are in short supply to the point that researchers are already looking into how to make LCDs work without them. I honestly don't know, but the supply of these is much tighter than platinum, and yet they are not recycled like platinum (the quantity that goes into an LCD for instance is small but it is not recycled anywhere as far as I know.)
Also, somewhat off topic... re the article quote: "(why, says Mr Apple, “how nice to see you here Mr Samsung!”)", really it's more like "(why, says Mr Apple, "that's a nice phone you already have there on the market Mr. Samsung, I suppose I'll claim I made it first and sue you")." Keep in mind Samsung had a phone on the market BEFORE the iphone that had the features Apple claimed were copied from the iphone; they just managed to persuade the judge to disallow that evidence from being presented.
"The suggestion that the devices check locally for transmissions seems sensible."
It's not. I am picking up TV stations from 70 miles away or more daily, because there are only a couple local channels. The little "rubber duck" on a access point would not see anything, let alone some wifi-device-sized client, and would gleefully blast signals right over my channels given a "device checks by itself" scenario.
I just hope that any database used is very conservative in determining what is freespace, not just assuming people will use the nearest stations and forget the rest. (I admit, I think this is different in the UK than here in the US, where there aren't just almost the same stations at each TV transmission site.)
You didn't read the whole article. They said 1) By buying an ad for "NHS Direct", the regulators decided some looking up NHS DIrect would in fact need health care, and so be impaired. Premium number regulations prohibit trying to profit from impaired people. 2) Using the wayback machine, it was found that these sites DID NOT always have that disclaimer (I don't think they were fined because of this, but probably should have been.)
I just looked at www.phonenumber.co.uk, and on the front page there's no mention of any cost, and the search box says "Use the search box below to locate the phone number of the company or organisation you are looking for.", NOT "Use the search box below to get some 900 number that'll read you the phone number you are looking for.") Without the fine print (which is only on the final page....) it'd seem clear based on the web site design that if you type "Sony" into the search box, then pick Sony off the second page (because they list both Sony and Sony Erricson), that the third page has Sony's phone number.
First off, 100% correct, there's no tax evasion here, having free trade within the EU does have it's consequences, and one is that companies can operate out of whatever country has the best tax code.
The problems I see with this elimination of corporate taxes here in the US are:
1) You have here these investment firms, that rather than doing legitimate investment will use high frequency trading to put themselves between the legitimate seller and buyer and take a cut that they aren't really owed. The least they can do is keep paying taxes on this ill-gotten gain. They also must be within a matter of miles of the trading floor since they require very low latency. There's private equity firms, too, which buy companies not to rehabilitate and streamline them, but to max out the purchased company's credit lines, pay themselves loads of money while they brankrupt the company and screw over all those who loaned the company money. They should at least pay tax on this too. Businesses here get all kinds of services (FDIC; dairy, beef, and pork companies getting tax-paid advertisements, the list goes on and on), they can bloody well pay for them.
2) These same companies who don't want to pay taxes, have had no problems accepting bailouts and asking for various credits. I feel like, at least here in the states, if corporate taxes were eliminated they would "forget" to eliminate the credits and various payouts to corporations, rather than leaving the value at 0.
I also LOLed at the iPod claims (they really have rubbish wifi, and I took "there's no Android device at this price point" to mean none are that expensive). But, it's hard to argue with results if they had 1300 of them running on opening night and didn't have it all fall apart. I'm not even into art, but if this museum wasn't so far away I'd go to it.
UNIX mbox all the way. I don't have some fancy archiving system, but I do have mbox files going back to ~1994 and I can grep them all I want.
That said, even avoiding the rather terrible .pst file formats, if I were interested in proper indexing and such this sounds like a good presentation to see.
I think it is true that the comic market is not what it's used to be. But, I also think you are probably cherry-picking --- I've seen ample evidence of large quantities of 1970s-era comics that ranged from "meh" to absolute rubbish. I think you would find at least one or two current comics that would meet your every expectation, they are just buried by all the zombie and vampire comics.
In a similar vein, I could make similar complaints about the current state of science fiction, reminisce on the great books of the past* and how I can go to Barnes and Noble and find nothing good, the so-called scifi section just has rubbish fantasy novels with zombies and vampires and maybe some Star Wars books. But, the fact of the matter is, although what I say about the bookstore is true (the books are generally rubbish), there's plenty of great new science fiction being produced, waiting to be mail ordered.
*There's a truly amazing used book store in Madison, Wisconsin, Frugal Muse, which last time I was there sold their used books at original cover price... so I could pick up amazing sci-fi for like 50 cents a book or less.
My favorite is Mediacom -- they (without telling customers) switched to a 3 strikes system. (They shut off internet on 1 and 2, then on 3 expect people to come in and sign some contract.) The nice part is, the IP<->customer database is SCRAMBLED. So... a few years ago....
My internet gets shut off. I called in, and they say it got shut off over some file or other. I did torrent it, so I said fair enough, I won't torrent and it was turned back on.
Few weeks later, Internet gets shut off again. I called in, they didn't claim what file it was shut off for. But I said, well, OK, maybe something "crossed in the mail" from earlier. They turned it back on.
Third time, I get a piece of mail (misaddressed -- supposedly I was supposed to get something in the mail the first two times too.) It claimed I tried to distribute wrestling (nope) and the IP address listed was wrong (I have a log of the public IP addresses I had, and it matched none of them.) In fact, the address they listed was for the Des Moines market, over 150 miles away. Hmm...
I came in. They wanted me to sign something. I read it and found it only applied as long as I maintained internet service (otherwise i would never agreed to the ridiculous terms listed). So i signed it, let them waste their time faxing it to their central office, then handed over the cable modem and cancelled on the spot (so the contract only applied for about 45 seconds.) They looked flabbergasted! At my friend's advice (who at that point had an ISP and so directly competed w/ Mediacom) I *didn't* tell them their database is all screwed up -- I figure a company that cooperates with MPAA/RIAA when they don't have to DESERVES to lose customers if they can't even make sure they are doing it right. Sure enough, at my workplace (about 30 people) I started hearing 2, 3, complaints a month from people who were not torrenting a thing getting their service randomly shut off, and several did cancel their service (they never got to "strike 3" they just got sick of the internet randomly failing for false reasons.)
There's a reason this only covers bittorrent, and not streaming services -- it has been solidly decided in the US, that it is the sender making a copy (and so comitting copyright infringement). Viewing streams, the streaming server infringes copyright (if they aren't licensed, or it's not a short fair use clip...) but the viewer does not. Plenty of streaming services have been shut down, so it's not like M.P. Ass. Of America is doing nothing about this, it's just as much as they and the R.I. Ass. Of America are jonseing to go after more of their own customers, they cannot in this case.
Bittorrent? I've never seen a torrent setup that wasn't set to at least 1:1 ratio (to aviod being a leech). So, with a copyrighted torrent, as soon as your torrent client starts retransmitting it's infringing.
If Microsoft (or perhaps just some people there) didn't have such a massive ego, they could make one singular change that'd help sales -- give the end-user a choice between booting into Metro or booting into a more traditional interface. Even people who don't know anything about computers, have been advised by friends of theirs that Windows 8 is change for the sake of change, confusing, and different (not by me, I advise against Windows, period.) Those people who are buying a new computer now are seeking out ones with Windows 7 (or god forbid XP) for that very reason. If Microsoft gave a choice of bootup UI, a lot of them would get Windows 8 machines instead of actively avoiding them.
Can't say I'm surprised. This isn't a Microsoft-bash, but if you've seen the ads, the keyboard looks like a floppy piece of rubber with solid bits shoved into it. I mean, I thought it'd last more than a week but it really doesn't look durable.
On an unrelated matter, the ads look dumb (the one people are just repeatedly trading keyboards and slapping them onto each others tablets). The other ones show people a) web surfing b) watching movies/tv and c) using an (actually somewhat fun looking) paint program. That's cool but I'm not going to buy a new windows machine just to web surf and watch movies, thanks.
First, I do have two Android apps that do this. Wifi Web Login costs a couple bucks, but makes it so if you connect to an access point with a "captive portal" click-through page, you click through it once and wifi web login records the keystrokes, clicks, etc. you performed. Next time you connect, it auto-replays them. The system used by Star Bucks, McDonalds, Sams Club, etc., doesn't work reliably with Wifi Web Login (I don't remember what wifi "network" these all are); but sbautologin (which is free) works with these.
Second... although I don't take click-through licenses very seriously, wouldn't this solution mean these windows 8 phone users are theoretically being agreed to all sorts of use agreements they have not even had a chance to read? That seems potentially problematic.
Sorry, but although I won't diss OSX too heavily. But.... 1) It's kind of function over form. I just don't like the appearance of almost every aspect of it, and people are allowed to not like the same things you do. I'm thinking Cody doesn't either. 2) It's not UNIX-based, it's a BSD-Mach hybrid, which actually has pretty strong performance consequences.
Apple's no monopolist (unlike Microsoft) so I'm not going to be all "Oh, Apple should be required to ship a blank system". Unlike the PC market, where... all I can say is I'm glad the State of Iowa kept their lawsuit against Microsoft up so I could get a $200 check from them for forced bundling and price fixing!
But I am. The purpose is lockdown. Jobs is gone now, but he made a point -- all the way back to the original Macs -- of keeping them locked down. People nearly got fired when he found out the PDS slot was NOT just some kind of debug slot but was for potential expansion. He chose to use unusual type screws SPECIFICALLY because he wanted people to treat machines as a sealed appliance, not an expandable computer. Note, the Mac II had loads of slots (like 8 or so Nubus and tons of RAM slots), but it was originally designed for a joint venture with Apollo Computers so they were dictating it being expandable. During the years of fairly generic beige PCI-bus systems, Jobs was not at Apple. When he came back it was all sealed up Imacs and such again as much as possible (some got used to shoving extra hard disks, memory, and expansion cards into their systems so I must admit some towers continued to be built).
Why did Jobs want non-expandability so much? I have no idea, it's just one of those things. I *DON'T* think it was something cynical like "Oh, if they can't work on their own Mac they'll buy more service from Apple and replace that Mac earlier".
Straight-up, the purpose is lockdown. Small machines can be hard to work on, but Apple at worst makes it intentionally hard to work on, and at best just doesn't make maintainability or upgradeability enter their mind when they design a system.
Will this change in the future? Hopefully. I don't know how long Apple works on chassis designs before they are released, so the current models could still be heavily Jobs-influenced.
So first off, I don't really use Facebook -- I have an account JUST for single sign-in on a few sites, but never use the rest of it. If you value your privacy you will do the same (or not put anything on there you don't want everyone on the planet to know.)
But, anyway.... this seems silly to me. Having people pay to have BETTER visibility of their post (like maybe pushing it to the top?) Sure. Changing it so the people who "Like" you (and haven't blocked your posts...) don't actually receive your posts, unless you pay for them to get them? Ugh, it seems to me that breaks a whole tenet of Facebook, just like having Twitter only send tweets to SOME of your followers would break the whole point of Twitter.
As for stock... well, I figured (before the IPO) that fair market value for Facebook was approximately $9 a share based on a reasonable P/E (price to earnings) ratio of approximately 15 (meaning basically that the overall value of stocks is 15 times the current years earnings.). The IPO used a P/E of over 60, which is VERY VERY high -- over 20 (or 30 for a risky investor) is considered overvalued and a likely bubble unless there's some unusual reason P/E doesn't apply*. There's still hype so it won't surprise me if it still sits at $18-20 for a while, but Facebook WILL sooner or later have to bring in more money (or hype it better) to stop a slide down to $9 or so. As for the investors, sorry, but those of you who bought this at $40+ did not follow BASIC economic principles, so I feel for ya and all but it's really your own fault for buying stock based on hype.
*I'm no investor, but off the top of my head P/E could be inaccurate if 1) A company chose to invest profit in some one-off expense like a new factory, rather than taking out a loan for the factory... this would save the company interest and such in the longer term, but make earnings look terrible in the short term. 2) Tax games with deferred earnings and shell companies and such.
The number of competing users is key. If your throughput is dropping to like 1mbps, and you are the only user, then you have all this other bandwidth sitting there unused. If there's loads of others uers on the wifi, then this technique may just give you a higher share of the wifi compared to everyone else.
Still, though, some improvement would be great. I can assure you that throughput truly turns to hell once packet loss gets above 1%. If something like this can fix that, that is fabulous.
Well...
a) rolling a bunch of seperate patches into a single service pack SHOULD NOT take away loads of time Microsoft wants to use on Windows 8. The patches are already there.
b) I don't use Windows anyway so I don't give a toss. You shouldn't either.
b.5) This isn't going to push anybody into using Windows 8, if Microsoft actually thinks it is going to they are delusional.
c) WSUS may work for patching EXISTING systems, but this doesn't make up for the lack of a service pack's ability to install a bunch of updates at once to a "fresh" install. Autopatcher, however, does... stick all the patches and autopatcher into some directory (usually on a USB stick) and it'll install them for you, problem solved.
There are certainly vulnerabilities where the blackhats simply know about a vulnerability WELL before anyone else. But, this is also the best reason NOT to follow the so-called "responsible" disclosure -- companies will SIT on a vulnerability, sometimes for years. In other words (other than the whitehat and someone or other at the company), the hackers know about the vuln while world+dog does not.
I do hope I can get a blank ARM system. WinRT looks like a real steaming pile, I do not want Windows, Windows 8 looks even worse and Windows RT looks yet worse than that. An ARM computer, on the other hand, would be lovely.
I actually shoehorned a Debian install onto my Droid 2 Global (which is now out of commission with a cracked screen). Obviously, the screen was too small, but I ran some apps remotely to see how they'd run, and even OpenOffice was quite snappy; not only was it snappy but the CPU usage was single-digit percent even whipping through menus and such to try to drive the load up (and 0 otherwise, blinking the cursor in a word processor shouldn't use noticeable CPU time and it doesn't). The newer ARM designs are even faster per mhz, and have dual and quad cores available to accomodate additional workload.
For that matter, I've read that ARM virtualization has even been sorted out, so you'll be able to have a VirtualBox-like or VMWare-like setup that runs ARM VMs at near-native speed like is available on x86. (Of course, x86 VMs would have to be run under CPU emulation.)
Just saying, the ARM doesn't require some stripped and crippled environment like Microsoft feels like providing; it can run a FULL desktop, and I think this is what a lot of people would prefer. If I want a stripped environment I can get an Android tablet.
I think Microsoft is playing a dangerous game here, trying to market a stripped and crippled tablet OS as a portable PC replacement. And trying to claim equivalence to the desktop by ALSO tacking on a stripped and crippled desktop environment? Madness. Perhaps when people decide these are pants, I'll pick up a used one (after making sure the OS can be wiped and replaced.)
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