Dbug
Joined 17 years ago
Karma
79
Submissions
46
Member since
Jan 26
Recent submissions
Comment · 16 years ago
Comment · 16 years ago
Perhaps they could offer a small separate sort of "Flash Guard" utility for the blocking function. We consider the possibility of rogue Flash code opening the camera and/or microphone to be a security vulnerability.
Being able to block those globally is a "feature" some need.
Of control of hardware access should be by user choice only, not a side effect of an app. Counting on stored Flash settings isn't an option since many use Better Privacy (Firefox extension) or other utilities to delete Flash storage, including the settings, due to the stalking features.
Comment · 16 years ago
Yesterday they had a brief mention claiming that there was information posted to Wikileaks showing that the U.S. was behind the protesters, but none of their earlier reporting had made any suggestion of a connection. Most reporting is solid. Once in a while they'll say something that's a bit out there, and some might have issue with their use of "reconstruction" (shown in tiny font on screen) for video simulating the negotiations. There were cases were actors spoke dialog, yet the reporter later said the actual text of that particular conversation wasn't known.
Their release of information from the Palestine Papers initially was accurate but unbalanced by omission. They showed concessions without showing what the Palestinians would get. They later had an interview with Martin Indyk, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel during the Clinton administration, who protested that they didn't show the information in perspective by failing to mention that Palestine was to get the sought after separate state status, along with some territory from the Israel side to compensate for loss of some developed areas. When added to access corridor area, the amount gained equaled what was lost. It was pretty clear they'd had him on just to validate the papers, and hurried / talked over him some when he raised these issues, but they deserve credit for still airing it. They do a lot of good reporting, but as always it's wise to compare reports from a number of sources. I'm curious how that interview came across when translated for their Arab-language coverage or if it was included.
In addition to Aljazeera English, MHz Worldview carries broadcasts from Japan, Israel, France, Germany, Russia, Taiwan and some others. The Russian one comes across as the most propaganda oriented with them going out of their way to emphasize things, often misleadingly, that cast the U.S. in a negative light. They say things like NBC won't report stories because G.E. is a defense contractor and G.E. leaked massive amounts of PCBs into the Hudson river (Which they did, but in 1977 and earlier, long before they bought RCA/NBC) They find plenty of quotes from people that give the wrong impression (They used one of John McCain in 2008 to make it look like the U.S. supported those that make have attacked their airport. That tone was gone later, but they quick to throw out negative comments)
The combination of most of the international sources on MHz WorldView, the BBC, and PBS Newshour seems to cover most things pretty well. The two that seem to work to twist things fairly often are Fox and RT (the Russian service), with the remainder of the U.S. networks just not giving much time/depth to a great many issues that matter.
If one gets past the negative tone, the Russian service does point out things other media skips, like the lock down due to the missing nerve agent at the Dugway miltary testing grounds in Utah a few days ago. (the place that released an airborne toxin years ago killing thousands of animals 30 miles away) They also immediately covered the release of the U.S. Financial Crisis Investigative Report a few days ago. They make quite a fuss over U.S. human rights issues, pointing out the the U.S. and Sudan are the only U.N. members failing to sign on with never giving children life sentences or execution for serious crimes. The eerie part is that facts generally check out. It's too bad they make so many poorly founded negative conclusions and report few positive developments.
Comment · 16 years ago
Not being for-profit doesn't mean there's a lack of budget concerns. BBC World Service will be cutting around 650 people over the next few years. Let's hope they can still provide high quality service.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12283356
PBS stations have been having a tougher time than in the past. Costs are rising, they've lost some of their audience to the greater variety of things people view on cable and the net, and many viewers are being tighter with their money.
Even when all sources are truthful, perspectives and emphasis differ. It's good to have a variety of sources available.
A number of international news networks including Aljazeera English are carried on MHz WorldView. It's seen on some cable systems, carried by some public tv stations over the air (often as an added digital sub-channel that many not be on their cable line up) and on direct tv. They can also be seen streamed on demand to those with ROKU.
Comment · 16 years ago
iPads certainly perform well. With hardware acceleration for h.264, the ARM chip may not be seeing the toughest loads it would otherwise. I believe there's an ARM build of VLC.
I've been meaning to check it out to see how video playback is with other codecs. (It's easy to use a USB tuner to record HDTV on a laptop or desktop, but the MPEG2 used in the U.S. is a bit of a chore to transcode to 720P h.264 which is the Apple default for iPad/iPhone/iPod-touch/ and the current Apple-TV (all on ARM now).
I'm not sure how far towards the high end ARM will go, but it sure makes sense to have things like Apple TV on ARM. It uses less than 6 watts.
Comment · 16 years ago
A few things to remember for those with uncertain wireless support
1) Don't forget you can easily try Ubuntu and wireless devices on most x86 laptops in the Live CD mode before you install. If driving somewhere to buy a USB device, bring the laptop along. You might also be able to run a Live CD and try a USB wireless device on another machine in the store (ask for permission first!)
2) If there's a Mac laptop handy, OS X doesn't need any extra software installed to share the laptops wireless access out the ethernet port, allowing simple DHCP connections. Just go to the Sharing prefs panel. (add a hub or switch to share with several machines)
3) Instead of using a Mac, some routers with free open-source DD-WRT firmware installed can also act as WiFi clients giving access to machines plugged into the ethernet port(s). Older WRT-54Gs often turn up cheap at thrift stores etc. and are ideal. (some versions have more RAM than others, check the DD-WRT site www.dd-wrt.com/ for more info) It's a good way to add wireless to desktops.
4) ... and of course Ubuntu runs well in a Virtual Box virtual machine, an easy way to use it under OS X or Windows hosts with whatever net access those already have. virtualbox.org It's a particularly simple/clean free solution for Mac users, not disturbing OS X at all.
Comment · 16 years ago
'I almost did run down to Walgreens to buy one when I heard about it. I thought, "Android is open source, it should be fun to hack right? How bad can it be?" It seems the answer is really really bad.'
If Android using the Apache license means that vendors only have to provide the (Google) source they started from and not for the final result, you basically can't hack what you got, but have to deal with code that was never customized for the device you've got. In effect the source was open for the vendor, but it isn't for you. So much for fixing bugs in what you get...
Comment · 16 years ago
USPS has been fast and cheap. The only real complaint I've had is that they leave pickup tags for some of the heaviest packages, packages that other carriers would have delivered. But it's understandable... I feel sorry for what some of the mailmen have to lift. Most are far less muscular than the UPS guys. My area has had problems with mail theft... I think some meth use among employees, but tracked items show up. It's not safe to get mail with handwritten addresses, things like birthday cards with a little cash in the middle always vanish. And the DMV license plate tags vanish in the mail too... California no doubt has a black market for those with so many illegals from Mexico around.
Their flat rate boxes are extremely competitive for shipping, especially heavier items and/or to distant zones. Mail service has been reliable since one local thief was caught. Many good people don't deserve a bad rap for the actions of a small number.
UPS gives generally great service, but they throw the packages around. Some electronic gear with glass meters on the side arrived with the glass broken. Taking the unit apart revealed it was more than just a bump to the side of the thick box. The power transformer had the brackets stretched up and it was leaning a great deal. For that to happen the package wasn't just bumped or even dropped. It was clearly thrown horizontally and down with considerable force and crash landed... like onto a dock or truck. UPS seems to have become much more costly than in years past.
Fedex is much more gentle with packages, but it's alarming how many from neighbors blocks away show up. They're not very careful reading addresses, or smart enough interpolating from neighbors addresses when they don't see one.
Comment · 16 years ago
Yes... apps are just a subset of software. Apple has used the term Applications since the early days of the Mac. The OS X dictionary defines them this way:
"a program or piece of software designed and written to fulfill a particular purpose of the user"
There was a time when desktop applications were small too. The first version of Photoshop I ever saw, when compressed, fit on an 800K floppy. Apple released the source to MacPaint 1.3, an early Mac application. It's only 67.8K
http://www.computerhistory.org/highlights/macpaint/
iOS apps may have simple interfaces, but the hardware is powerful enough to do many things with. I think VLC is a good example of a non-trivial app. It's much bigger than MacPaint!
Comment · 16 years ago
It seems you've forgotten Visual Voicemail. Prior to the iPhone, every phone I ever saw required playing through messages sequentially instead of jumping to what I wanted to hear. That's a huge improvement in usability.
I guess entering a new market with a higher priced product and many established competitors doesn't count as risky if the product is really good? That's hardly a failing.
I guess when man first used fire to cook, you might argue that eating something warm wasn't a new concept. After all, some animals had eaten fresh kill or each others droppings before they cooled off.
The idea of Apple having retail stores wasn't a new concept. Risk there?
http://www.pcworld.com/article/115507/gateway_to_close_all_r...
Comment · 16 years ago
Apple has been far from low risk. Their ditching the floppy, changing ports, switching processor families (more than once), all those iMac form-factors, moving to LCD while they were still quite costly, replacing the operating system... are all examples of them being willing to make major transitions to move forward. Some say dumping Flash is risky. There was risk getting into phones, a market that already had many very well established players, and starting with a product that cost MORE than what was out there. It's kinda funny how now people act like Apple had some early entry advantage. Apple took a risk offering a tablet that DID NOT have binary compatibility with their desktops.
After the 9/11 attacks, Apple was still working hard on development while others cut back. Many thought Apple was crazy to build fancy retail stores at very costly locations. Many said that targeting the high-end of the market was doomed to fail in a weak economy, but Apple kept expanding.
Maybe the choices Apple has made just don't seem so risky after seeing them being so wildly successful? The Gateway stores are long gone. I haven't seen details of the revenue per square foot at Microsoft stores.
Comment · 16 years ago
Above CD quality? With 60's material done with vacuum tubes and magnetic tape, CD sampling rates and bit depth won't limit the distribution quality. Of course there are often cases where there's room for noticeable improvement over earlier CD releases, but that's due to better hardware and differences in mastering and other processing.
Comment · 16 years ago
Microsoft is less secretive about new products than a company like Apple, and with such large fairly constant revenue from things like Windows and Office, the shipment or degree of success of their other products doesn't seem likely to be that big a factor in near future price of the stock. External market conditions, like the state of the economy and trends with competitors seem to matter much more.
The short term impact of Win phone 7 will be more one of mood than the bottom line. They're competing with a free smartphone OS limiting licensing revenue and it would take a substantial market share for search/ad revenue to matter much. Without a huge pool of touch apps and trained users, any non-desktop-binary running tablets would see a much slower adoption rate than the iPad is experiencing and even then what they could get would only capture a small slice of the selling price.
And not really being something new, it's hard to see much in the way of surprises from licensing revenue for tablets that are Windows-desktop binary compatible. It seems the innovation there won't be from MS, but primarily from lower power Intel chips making them more viable. And even then, to be hugely popular with consumers, they'd have to be at a not so profitable price point. They'd also be mostly cannibalizing netbook/laptop sales to users bonded to Windows.
The sales don't seem likely to be tied to insider info, but may be viewed as an admission of agreement with the ho-hum view of most outsiders.
Comment · 16 years ago
If the author wants to rant, I would think digging into the motives for Apple backing away from Java support might be more fertile territory. At least it'd have more substance to it that what amount to PR positions on numbers.
Things to ponder... Could Apple be trying to throw a wet towel on doing Java development for other platforms (Android in particular)?
Of course if they're wanting more of a closed system, they're probably also aware that some of the more popular peer to peer apps use Java too. (Limewire / Frostwire, Vuze / Azureus). Between not being allowed on the store, Java probably not being installed by default soon, and questionable robustness of future Java options, they've thrown a wet towel on the sharing apps too.
It's not like the cost of paying developers to work on Java is a burden for Apple, and it doesn't have the reputation Flash does for crashing/slowing the system.
Vulnerabilities could be an excuse to stay clear of Java, but like Flash, if users have it installed and have to get updates outside of the (semi) automatic software updates, users are less likely to be up to date, not more.
If the author wants a little speculation for his rant, he ought to ask questions like will Steve kill X11?
The Mac with OS X has had a lot of respect as a stable very interoperable do-everything platform. If Apple wants to change that, some of us will be kicking and screaming. Apple has been able to give users an extra nudge towards new hardware by limiting the length of time old hardware sees major OS updates. (The 1985 Mac Plus was still supported under System 7.5, well past the five year period seen now). Killing support for something without the justification of certain hardware being inadequate is a tougher pill to swallow. If Apple goes too far, they'll certainly lose more science/engineering types to Linux.
Comment · 16 years ago
>...as JVM is no longer seen as a viable and open platform.
With Apple dropping work on future major updates to the JVM for OS X, Oracle would be wise to speak up promptly indicating what support/development they'll provide for the platform. Apple has done a pretty good job integrating the JVM with OS X. If Oracle is able to continue from the code-base Apple has been using (and perhaps hire some from that Apple team?), announcing those things would certainly add to the believability of robust support actually coming. Apple isn't very likely to want to part with skilled developers though.
If Oracle doesn't get or (still?) have developers with heavy OS X experience, and perhaps some code to build on, one has to wonder if/when they could ever deliver a quality release for the platform.
http://www.neoseeker.com/news/15151-netflix-popularity-excee...
A factor that adds to the impact of the streaming services is their use being more concentrated around the already high traffic peak viewing periods.
It is more than a little absurd that ISPs complain about users actually using what they're paying for. The days of people paying for broadband and using little more than email, chat, and simple web pages are over. And many of those that have consumed video online for some time are now understandably needing more bandwidth for higher quality now.
The situation with mobile is where many will be getting upset. Networks are being billed as fast and offering all sorts of video, but many consumers face plans limiting them to no more data in a month than most could get with low-end home broadband plans in a day. Of course there are good reasons why massive numbers of people can't be heavily consuming video at once on mobile networks, but the providers are not very up front about it.