What is the success rate for breaking "question captchas"? For example, "half of six times one". Are natural language processing techniques good enough to parse the meaning of such text?
(and if not, as VoodooTrucker pointed out, I'm sure the academics would appreciate some help from the spammers)
I'm sorry, but do you honestly believe that SSL cannot protect against a man-in-the-middle attack!? It's one of its main aims!
Your scenario fails because the ISP server cannot authenticate as my computer with the gmail server, nor as the gmail server with my computer. In other words, both my computer and the gmail server will know that someone has tampered with the communication.
For your own sake, please do some reading on the theory behind security protocols.
Google want to improve the experience with "cloud" apps, thereby increasing the time people spend online, or using Google apps. As always, they want to get more eyeballs on more adverts for longer.
The first patent (filed in 1996) describes using the same memory for unprocessed and processed images (i.e. raw sensor data, and jpegs). This is as opposed to having separate dedicated memory (usually as part of the sensor chip) to store the unprocessed images. The main thrust of the claim was that the unified system could better support features such as burst-mode, since it did not have a limited space for unprocessed image data. Additionally, the system could process images at the same time as taking new ones.
The second patent (also filed in 1996) describes a way to process images in a linear fashion using multiple image processors that can be controlled by the user. The fact the claim specifies two or more means that doing this for a single image processor had probably already been patented.
Now, both of these things are quite obvious to "someone skilled in the art"**, so I suspect that the patent applies to the "how", not the "what".
**for example, if we were still using negative spools, it would be like trying to patent the idea of having a camera with two (or more) spools to increase burst-shot speed.
But yes, Eastman Kodak have been trying to make digital cameras for a lot longer than Apple.
Interestingly, when Kodak sued Sony, they ended up with a cross-licensing agreement, so Kodak haven't patented everything to do with digital cameras!
"Apple has no financial interest in helping out these [Web] apps..."
How many Web apps require users to pay for them? Answer: very few. Therefore, if the developers turned those Web apps into native iOS Apps, they would almost certainly be sold for free. And Apple loses money on free Apps.
Ergo, it would appear to be in Apple's best interests to make Web apps as good as possible.
Now, I agree that it is odd that there are now two HTML(etc) rendering back-ends, but I suspect that it was easier to plumb in Nitro et al to Safari, than the more general UIWebView part of iOS (since that probably has to deal with varying app permissions, etc). If there is still a discrepancy come iOS 5.0, then we can start to complain.
There is this little thing called "Grand Central Dispatch" which was introduced to iOS in version 4.0 (and OS X 10.6 prior to that). Many of the API functions were modified to make use of it. At the same time, developers were encouraged to begin using "blocks" to encapsulate code that can be run in the background.
As such, even old applications that don't use "blocks" may still see a benefit simply because of the updated API code. This is in addition to any apps that will have been explicitly multi-threaded (i.e., most, if not all, games).
Everyone's initial premiums will start at some fixed flat rate. People who have accidents will see their premiums go up. People who don't will see their premiums go down.
I don't have a PhD. Nor am I a Trekkie. I simply couldn't think of a better name when signing up. (aren't the intarwebs great!)
However, after implying that my reasoning was flawed, you then state that it is impossible to determine the outcome of a fair coin toss - that was exactly my point!
Yes, it makes economic sense for the insurers to charge men more, but that doesn't mean that _every_ man will cost them more. For the sake of being concrete, consider the following example:
There a 1m men and 1m women insured by company X. 0.5m men and 1m women have a risk factor of 0.2 and the remaining 0.5m men have a risk factor of 0.6. This means that men have a risk factor of 0.4 and women have a risk factor of 0.2. Statistically, men's premiums should be double that of women's. However, the reality is that the 0.5m high-risk men should have premiums three times that of everyone else.
I understand that insurers use a lot of metrics to try and determine an individual's risk factor, but the set of metrics they do use fall far short of what is required to give a "reasonably fair" insurance premium.
Just to be clear, I have no problem with insurers using gender as a metric to determine risk, but it should not be weighted as strongly as is currently the case.
"If I do a SELECT on my claims database, and group the output to show total payments, broken by age ranges, and split by gender, then the output, from a history of actual claims, is obvious. Younger males are a greater risk than older females. This is a fact."
Statistically, across the entire population of insured persons, that is true. However, pick a male at random and a female at random from your database. Can you guarantee that specific female will be less risky to ensure than that specific male? It should be obvious that the answer is "no".
This is the crux of the problem - applying broad statistics to individuals doesn't always work.
Matt, you are obviously a smart bloke, but it sure as hell doesn't come across in your articles due to that very large anti-Apple axe you seem wanton to grind.
Firstly, you make the same mistake that countless commenters have made in the past: you think Apple has a monopoly. I expect that from them, not from the article writers.
Apple has, at best, 10% of the desktop market (which I'm including laptops in). They have, at best, 30% of the worldwide smartphone market, and 5% of the worldwide mobile phone market. iOS is not a market. Microsoft, on the other hand, do have a monopoly in the desktop market, which is why they got into hot water.
Now, given that Apple don't have a monopoly, they can't be done for abuse of a monopoly. So please stop trying to suggest it's a certainty.
Regarding the Sony eReader app, Apple are well within their rights to reject it from the App Store. I may not agree with it, but I accept that they can do that. Why? Read on, dear chap.
To continue your line of argument, customers want the Sony app. By rejecting it from the App Store, Apple makes their product less desirable in the eyes of those customers. There is nothing illegal about a company making its own product less desirable. Furthermore, those customers have a choice: they can get a Sony eReader device, or get a different smartphone for which the app is available.
If I wanted to get all riled up about something, I'd complain to the EU that McDonalds doesn't sell Burger King chips. Of course, that would be just as silly.
By all means, revisit this topic when Apple have over 90% of the mobile device market. But I'm sure there are a few Android folk who will happily tell you that day is never coming...
So, the original work done by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamirh and Len Adleman (and independently by Clifford Cocks) to develop the theory and algorithms behind public key cryptography was easy was it?
As for the easy vs hard argument, cryptographers (the builders) and cryptanalysts (the breakers) have an equally difficult job. However, I would argue that the invention aspect of creating a new cipher makes the cryptographers job that little bit harder.
For punters on the 30Mb/sec package, you can download up to 10GB between 10am and 3pm, before you get throttled to 22.5Mb/sec for 5 hours (i.e., still faster than the 20Mb/sec people upgraded from). Between 4pm and 9pm, you can download 5GB before being throttled to 22.5Mb/sec for 5 hours. Outside of those times you can download as much as you want (local bandwidth capacity permitting, of course). Upstream restrictions also apply.
On the 50Mb/sec package, you only get your upstream throttled if you upload more than 6GB between 3pm and 8pm, at which point your upload speed drops from 5Mb/sec to just over 3Mb/sec.
Everyone *may* have P2P and newsgroup traffic throttled between 5pm and midnight during the week, and midday and midnight at weekends if there is insufficient bandwidth on the local network (these are the only restrictions that apply to people on the 100Mb/sec package).
"Other than being part of the MPEG LA Patent Pool, which licences H.264, I can't see any logical reason to object to Flash without objecting to H.264"
It's very simple really. Anyone can obtain the complete h.264 spec and build a fully compliant encoder and decoder (e.g., the x264 guys). This is not possible with Flash. The OpenScreen project is only a partial spec - it does not cover any of the DRM aspects of Flash.
Consequently, the only company that can build a fully compliant Flash player is Adobe. If this were not true, Gnash would be a lot better and would be used by a lot more people. If you believe anyone can create a fully compliant Flash player, please answer the following question: why is it the case that, even after so many years, has not a single person or group in the worldwide open source community has produced such a product yet (remember, Gnash does not support Adobe's DRM).
Let me get this straight. Apple, who eschewed the closed and proprietary Flash in favour of the open and W3C-backed HTML5 suite of technologies is somehow worse than Google, who are removing support for the open (albeit not free for everyone) h.264 standard backed by TWO international standards bodies for the aforementioned closed and proprietary Flash?
Web users have been bent over a barrel by Adobe for the last decade in their reliance on Flash. Apple have done more than any other major company to try and break Adobe's stranglehold. Google are simply undermining the recent progress in order to push their own agenda.
Ask Google (or any of their supporters) about the licensing fees that content creators must pay to Adobe for producing Flash content? (via Adobe software) Google only cares about distribution fees so they have no problem using Flash. What I don't get though is, given the same quality, WebM produces slightly bigger files. This results in more storage space required, and higher bandwidth costs for anyone storing/distributing WebM video. My only conclusion therefore is that Google is using WebM as a tool to leverage additional concessions out of MPEG-LA, or trying to undermine Apple in the iOS vs Android battle.
That's what happens when one of the hacks gets a BlendTec blender for a present - everything becomes instant coffee! (and it probably tastes no worse than the shit that us Brits accept in jars labeled "Coffee"...)
"Now, for a piece of software that has just started up, how does it know that a plug-in has been installed sneakily by another app acting as admin, rather than the user choosing to install it?"
Password-protection.
If the user wishes, they can lock their current plugins with a password. As you stated, this won't prevent admin-level installers adding new plugins. However, if the list of plugins is digitally signed using a key based upon the user's password, then the program can detect changes: upon launch, the signature is re-checked (or hash re-calculated) and if there is a difference, a warning appears (the old list can be determined by the subset of plugins which produce a valid signature/hash).
Since the user's password is not stored on the machine, there is no way for any program (even an admin-level installer) from providing a valid signature/hash for the updated plugin list.
As a few of the commenters have already pointed out, it is ultimately Firefox's fault in allowing newly installed plugins to be loaded without first informing the user. It should be no different to how Firefox handles updates to existing plugins - i.e., allow the user to enable/disable/remove them before continuing. Plugins installed via Firefox itself would have tacit permission to be loaded, obviously.
I find it interesting that UK users of the live football data are legally allowed to access it. Contrast this with the view taken against copyright infringers who download material from foreign servers.
Is the difference simply that copyright legalese has been slapped on the original movie/song/etc?
Is it therefore possible for Football Dataco et al to attach a copyright notice to the fixture lists and get the same protection?
I know it's a bit of a grey area as regards the point of whether fixture lists are a statement of fact or not (I would guess there is some originality to them and thus may be given some protection, however, once a fixture has actually been played, it becomes a non-copyrightable fact).
I just realised that I mis-understood your post. The actual URL can only be obtained by me, a facebook friend, or someone with a packet-sniffer if the video is viewed on an unsecured network. And yes, there is typically no pattern to the URL.
My privacy concern is more aligned to the packet-sniffer scenario - not too unlikely in this world of coffee shop free wi-fi.
(Before I get really off-topic, I have similar concerns about other sites which only secure the log-in process - e.g., hotmail until quite recently)
"But if I'm not much mistaken, only the owner of the video/picture/album can access that URL"
Did you try the URL? I can access it from any computer without being logged into facebook, therefore anyone should be able to view the video.
The point I was trying to make is that many of facebook's privacy controls are only applicable when you are in facebook world (i.e., going through the site). Outside of facebook world, their privacy controls are meaningless.
Ideally, the above URL should require you to log in (and be a friend of mine) before allowing access to the video. Of course, that wouldn't stop my friends from downloading the video, but that's not something which facebook (or anyone else for that matter) can prevent.
"Each person owns her friends list, but not her friends' information. A person has no more right to mass export all of her friends' private email addresses than she does to mass export all of her friends' private photo albums"
Ignoring the fact that photo albums, etc are not private if you make them available to others, this is an easy fix. Just add a privacy setting along the lines of "allow x to export y" (where x is a person/group/etc and y is e-mail/phone no/photos/all info/etc). In other words, let _the_user_ decide which of their friends get to do more than just view their data.
Of course, one could argue that "friending" someone is implicitly providing said person with unlimited access to the data you make available to them on facebook (this still allows for segregation of friends based upon groups/etc).
Personally, I go with this latter line of reasoning.
Of course, I still find it funny that facebook thinks I believe that marking my videos "for friends only" stops other people for accessing them. The following video is marked as such:
This is what I like about science: its modus operandi is to attempt to explain how things work within the limits of our current knowledge, and to expand that knowledge. The mistake that anti-science people make is that they think science is about determining set-in-stone-forever-more facts. It's not. Any existing hypothesis (commonly referred to as "scientific fact") may be invalidated upon the discovery of conflicting evidence. Now, for a lot of hypotheses, there is a huge body of experimental evidence backing up the idea (e.g., the Earth going round the Sun) and the likelihood of such hypotheses being invalidated are extremely small. However, science will not attempt to avoid or cover-up any rigourous evidence which would invalidate such ideas.
Now consider religion (Christianity in this example).
Everything was set in stone just over 2000 years ago (if you ignore the many re-writes of the Bible and the fact it was generally created from second- or third-hand accounts of events at best, and fanciful stories at worst). Then, if something in the Bible is potentially contradicted by scientific experiment, "believers" stick their fingers in their ears, run round in circles and continually sing "la la la la" until it's time to go to church.
Now, my issue is not that I think science is the greatest thing ever, or that religion is stupid, but that science continually evolves and adapts and is not afraid to modify the current set of "accepted facts" whereas religion is all about resolutely sticking to the beliefs and writings of a few blokes two millennia ago.
How many Web servers are running Web browsers? How many VPN gateways are running Web browsers? How many e-mail relays are running Web browsers? How many kerberos/SSL key servers are running Web browsers?
I could go on, but four examples of high-profile targets should suffice.
"The Marketplace application returns a "1" if the application isn't allowed to run, so on receiving a "1" the application displays some information to that effect and quits. But that decision tree can be changed so an application receiving a "1" decides instead to go ahead and run"
Why is it the app's decision as to whether or not it is allowed to run? Surely, that decision should be taken by the OS? For example, the OS calculates a hash of the compiled app (i.e., the bytecode), then checks with the Marketplace as to whether or not the app can run. As long as the hash doesn't change, there is no need to consult the Marketplace for subsequent launches.
When you order food in many pubs these days, you are given a wooden spoon with a number on it which you place on your table to identify yourself to the bar staff (instead of each table being individually numbered). Hence, if you take such a spoon in with you, you may be given food that someone else ordered, for free.
Not the best joke on the list. My favourite was no. 7, although it has been around for ages in the form of: "What do you call a dog with no legs? Anything you want because it can't chase you" (or something to that effect).
Couldn't agree more. However, 800kbit/sec may sound low, but it's not unbearable. Of course, it's still well below what you get from those quaint plastic circles that arrive in paper envelopes (800kb/sec h.264 vs 9.8Mb/sec mpeg2 DVD vs 40Mb/sec h.264 Blu-ray). Yes, that's a whopping 50 times less than the maximum possible with Blu-ray! As such, I refuse to stream any films from their site.
However, the biggest annoyance I have with their streaming service is that the streams cannot be buffered. If you pause the film, the streaming stops. Consequently, you'd better pray to $YOUR_GOD that no-one else in your local loop decides to use up a lot of the available bandwidth. If they do, you get a better experience watching analogue Channel 5 with a narrow-band aerial.
"The way that they did this is they're getting developers to put their software in their apps and their software is sending out information about the device and about its geolocation and other things back to Flurry. No customer is ever asked about this. It's violating every rule in our privacy policy with our developers, and we went through the roof about this," Jobs said.
Sorry, but this is an OS fail: if the OS does not have the capability to prevent running code from accessing sensitive information like device ID and location then the privacy failings are the fault of the OS.
"Facebook changed its robot.txt file to prevent the search engine from indexing the relevant "opt out of emails from Facebook" page so that email address data can no longer be harvested by spammers or other miscreants."
What's to stop the spammers, etc from writing their own web-crawler which simply ignores the robots.txt file? Such a move is hardly beyond the scope of most semi-organised gangs.
I can buy the thesis that Jobs is trying to mitigate any antitrust complaints and also to piss in Adobe's cornflakes, but there's one thing that doesn't sit right:
Microsoft are about to release their own shiny new phone OS, and desperately need as many developers as possible to write software for it. Why would they want to make it easier for such developers - many of whom presumably use MS Visual Studio - to write software for their main rival in the smartphone space?
On the other hand, maybe Ballmer realises that getting existing iPhone developers to use Visual Studio instead of XCode makes it more likely that they will write W7Phone apps too?
I believe it has something to do with the brain being able to parse lower-case words more quickly than upper-case words (i.e. helps the ref/commentators/etc). It is for this reason that all UK road signs were changed from all upper-case to leading-capital only way back in the 60s (search for "Transport Font").
Of course, this could be pure coincidence.
Back on topic: Old W is better, but besmirched by Wikipedia. New w is crap, and will provide much fodder for ne'er-do-wells to draw nipples on.
Multiple companies working together on a common standard is fine provided that the standard is available in RAND terms to any and all competing companies not involved in the development process. In other words, two companies cannot collude to produce a technical framework that helps their respective products inter-operate, whilst blocking competitors from inter-operating as easily.
For example, it would be bad if Apple worked with Griffin to develop a protocol which gave Griffin accessories extra capabilities or better connectivity with iPhones/iPods/iPads, etc and that protocol was withheld from Griffin's competitors.
That's an excellent idea, except for one small thing (and I'm _not_ being sarcastic here):
The DVLA/Police/Government want to know who owns each car on the road, where they live, etc., etc. - information which is not obtained when you buy fuel. I agree that the "tax" bit is redundant and it would be better if it was incorporated into fuel duty, but there is still a legitimate need for the other information provided with a Road Tax Certificate.
Disclaimer: I do not own a car, nor do I work for the DVLA/Police/Government
"We averaged 85 therms a month from December '09 through march 10 ... The "zero energy" refers to electrical use only ... 85 therms is the same as 2491 kilowatt-hours"
Bloody hell!
For the four month period Nov '09 - Feb '10 inclusive (the UK "heating season") my energy usage was:
Electricity: 120 kWh per month
Gas: 794 kWh per month
So - ignoring gas usage, obviously - my house is over 20 times "greener". Even counting gas, it is two and a half times better. And lest you think it's some new-fangled modern building, it's a tenement block built in 1896. Amazing what a combi boiler, central heating (sorry, hydronic heating) and double glazing can do, isn't it!
And I'll bet it got a lot colder where I live that it did in California....
Running 10.10 on 10.5.8, I chose "Check for Updates..." from the Opera menu only to be told that I was fully up to date! A trip to Opera's website soon fixed that though...
I believe the question refers to the physical size of the sensor, not the resolution. The importance being that a larger physical size is better, for a fixed resolution.
For example, see http://www.dpreview.com/news/0210/02100402sensorsizes.asp
The answer to this question seems to be 1/1.9" which, according to the following page, is quite impressive:
"what I don't understand is this, Flash can run online applications (which might be the reason it was rejected). But doesn't HTML5 do the same thing? Isn't one of the things that HTML5 suppose to do is make web-applications possible? If I understand it correctly, you should be able to develop applications (including games) using HTML5, so why allow one and reject the other?"
The reason is quite simple. Apple control the code which interprets HTML5+CSS+Javascript. They do not control the code which interprets Flash. Consequently, the user experience on their mobile platforms would not be fully under their control. They took one look at Flash on OS X and decided giving Adobe that kind of control over the user experience was a very bad thing.
Same argument goes for other runtimes, by the way. Furthermore, if Adobe opened the Flash spec (i.e. allowed Apple to write their own Flash interpreter), then the iPhone/iPad/etc may get Flash support.
Of course, there is also the argument about Apple protecting their App Store revenue stream. However, the App Store didn't materialise until nearly 1 year after the original iPhone launch, so if it was just about protecting revenue, why wasn't Flash available from the start?
So yes, in my view, it is all about Apple having control. But it's about control of the user experience, not about control of the content (although the two are somewhat related).
Us Brits can get throttled Internet access via Virgin Media. My 10Mbit connection gets throttled to 2.5Mbit for 5 hours if I download too much in a given time-frame (see link below). Then, there's no limits on what can be downloaded at 2.5Mbit speeds. Of course, at peak times, speeds can drop further due to "excessive demand" in VM speak - otherwise known as insufficient bandwidth in their local infrastructure.
In the same way that electronics require BSi / CE / FCC certification before they can legally be sold (to ensure a number of things, including suitability for use in a heterogeneous environment), is it too much to ask that word processors MUST adhere to the current ISO document standard (i.e. the strict version of ISO 29500) to be sold legally?
This would prevent anyone, not just MS, from releasing word processing software that is not inter-operable with all other modern word processor packages.**
Please tell me this is not just some utopian pipe-dream?
**of course, were the market truly open and competitive, this would happen as a result of natural market forces (i.e., the only way to compete is to be inter-operable with existing products, not just inter-operable with whatever half-baked draft spec MS are using in Office this time around),
"Bookmarks can also be placed in folders in the bookmarks bar, as they can be in Safari for the Mac and PC."
Given the preceding bad-mouthing of Safari on the iPhone, this reads as if suggesting that Safari on the iPhone does not have this capability. It does. For as long as I can remember.
And to everyone who is bemoaning the "average" or "boring" feature set: like the iPhone, the iPad is about _useability_. In other words, you may well be able to do more with a netbook/tablet PC/N900, but the comparable features will be significantly easier (for most people) on the iPad.
What would prevent people from just noting the code and using it without buying the paper? Anyway, subscribers to the paper get free access to the web site.
I would accept the following:
- free summaries of all articles (e.g., 2 paragraphs)
- first two or three articles each day free
- £2 a week for unlimited access (no daily charge, but monthly/yearly deals)
- articles over a week old free
- no adverts on paid-for content
- access controlled by username/password combo
(of course, the above is for _decent_ news sites - I wouldn't pay for Murdoch's stuff)
I was under the impression that Gross Negligence also covered cases where you failed to carry out a procedure that you were properly trained in? (e.g. the surgeon example above). In other words, had the employee been trained (and signed off on the training), and then done something which should not have occurred had the correct procedures been followed (i.e. those outlined in the training), he would be grossly negligent.
Unless register.com do not train their employees in the skillful art of processing confirmation codes, or their internal processes do not involve "double-entry" or the codes do not include "check-digits" or the codes can be easily faked, then this seems like a pretty clear case of gross negligence.
And if any of the get-outs I just listed exist, then register.com have much bigger problems, of which their customers should be very worried.
Register
126 posts • joined Friday 3rd July 2009 12:08 GMT
Page:
Captchas
What is the success rate for breaking "question captchas"? For example, "half of six times one". Are natural language processing techniques good enough to parse the meaning of such text?
(and if not, as VoodooTrucker pointed out, I'm sure the academics would appreciate some help from the spammers)
@Tom Chiverton 1
I'm sorry, but do you honestly believe that SSL cannot protect against a man-in-the-middle attack!? It's one of its main aims!
Your scenario fails because the ISP server cannot authenticate as my computer with the gmail server, nor as the gmail server with my computer. In other words, both my computer and the gmail server will know that someone has tampered with the communication.
For your own sake, please do some reading on the theory behind security protocols.
Re What are Google really up to?
Google want to improve the experience with "cloud" apps, thereby increasing the time people spend online, or using Google apps. As always, they want to get more eyeballs on more adverts for longer.
Ocado
What do Ocado have to say about the logo? Or is it OK because their markets are different?
www.ocado.com
Fun and Games
The first patent (filed in 1996) describes using the same memory for unprocessed and processed images (i.e. raw sensor data, and jpegs). This is as opposed to having separate dedicated memory (usually as part of the sensor chip) to store the unprocessed images. The main thrust of the claim was that the unified system could better support features such as burst-mode, since it did not have a limited space for unprocessed image data. Additionally, the system could process images at the same time as taking new ones.
The second patent (also filed in 1996) describes a way to process images in a linear fashion using multiple image processors that can be controlled by the user. The fact the claim specifies two or more means that doing this for a single image processor had probably already been patented.
Now, both of these things are quite obvious to "someone skilled in the art"**, so I suspect that the patent applies to the "how", not the "what".
**for example, if we were still using negative spools, it would be like trying to patent the idea of having a camera with two (or more) spools to increase burst-shot speed.
But yes, Eastman Kodak have been trying to make digital cameras for a lot longer than Apple.
Interestingly, when Kodak sued Sony, they ended up with a cross-licensing agreement, so Kodak haven't patented everything to do with digital cameras!
Genius!
flapcopter ... whirlycraft ... whirlybirds ... flaprotor ... morphcopters
Can we get an El Reg (or Lewis Page) Thesaurus?
I'll propose "spin-wing" as an additional term.
@Jeff 11
"Apple has no financial interest in helping out these [Web] apps..."
How many Web apps require users to pay for them? Answer: very few. Therefore, if the developers turned those Web apps into native iOS Apps, they would almost certainly be sold for free. And Apple loses money on free Apps.
Ergo, it would appear to be in Apple's best interests to make Web apps as good as possible.
Now, I agree that it is odd that there are now two HTML(etc) rendering back-ends, but I suspect that it was easier to plumb in Nitro et al to Safari, than the more general UIWebView part of iOS (since that probably has to deal with varying app permissions, etc). If there is still a discrepancy come iOS 5.0, then we can start to complain.
Re: Multicore...
There is this little thing called "Grand Central Dispatch" which was introduced to iOS in version 4.0 (and OS X 10.6 prior to that). Many of the API functions were modified to make use of it. At the same time, developers were encouraged to begin using "blocks" to encapsulate code that can be run in the background.
As such, even old applications that don't use "blocks" may still see a benefit simply because of the updated API code. This is in addition to any apps that will have been explicitly multi-threaded (i.e., most, if not all, games).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Central_Dispatch
@DavCrav
Not quite.
Everyone's initial premiums will start at some fixed flat rate. People who have accidents will see their premiums go up. People who don't will see their premiums go down.
Seems perfect, no?
@Chris Miller
I don't have a PhD. Nor am I a Trekkie. I simply couldn't think of a better name when signing up. (aren't the intarwebs great!)
However, after implying that my reasoning was flawed, you then state that it is impossible to determine the outcome of a fair coin toss - that was exactly my point!
Yes, it makes economic sense for the insurers to charge men more, but that doesn't mean that _every_ man will cost them more. For the sake of being concrete, consider the following example:
There a 1m men and 1m women insured by company X. 0.5m men and 1m women have a risk factor of 0.2 and the remaining 0.5m men have a risk factor of 0.6. This means that men have a risk factor of 0.4 and women have a risk factor of 0.2. Statistically, men's premiums should be double that of women's. However, the reality is that the 0.5m high-risk men should have premiums three times that of everyone else.
I understand that insurers use a lot of metrics to try and determine an individual's risk factor, but the set of metrics they do use fall far short of what is required to give a "reasonably fair" insurance premium.
Just to be clear, I have no problem with insurers using gender as a metric to determine risk, but it should not be weighted as strongly as is currently the case.
Statistics vs Individuals
"If I do a SELECT on my claims database, and group the output to show total payments, broken by age ranges, and split by gender, then the output, from a history of actual claims, is obvious. Younger males are a greater risk than older females. This is a fact."
Statistically, across the entire population of insured persons, that is true. However, pick a male at random and a female at random from your database. Can you guarantee that specific female will be less risky to ensure than that specific male? It should be obvious that the answer is "no".
This is the crux of the problem - applying broad statistics to individuals doesn't always work.
Re: Look at the Statistics
Statistically, I have a 50% chance of being female (give or take), therefore half my premium should be priced as if I were.
In the same way that individuals do not make statistics, statistics do not make individuals.
Enough Already!
Matt, you are obviously a smart bloke, but it sure as hell doesn't come across in your articles due to that very large anti-Apple axe you seem wanton to grind.
Firstly, you make the same mistake that countless commenters have made in the past: you think Apple has a monopoly. I expect that from them, not from the article writers.
Apple has, at best, 10% of the desktop market (which I'm including laptops in). They have, at best, 30% of the worldwide smartphone market, and 5% of the worldwide mobile phone market. iOS is not a market. Microsoft, on the other hand, do have a monopoly in the desktop market, which is why they got into hot water.
Now, given that Apple don't have a monopoly, they can't be done for abuse of a monopoly. So please stop trying to suggest it's a certainty.
Regarding the Sony eReader app, Apple are well within their rights to reject it from the App Store. I may not agree with it, but I accept that they can do that. Why? Read on, dear chap.
To continue your line of argument, customers want the Sony app. By rejecting it from the App Store, Apple makes their product less desirable in the eyes of those customers. There is nothing illegal about a company making its own product less desirable. Furthermore, those customers have a choice: they can get a Sony eReader device, or get a different smartphone for which the app is available.
If I wanted to get all riled up about something, I'd complain to the EU that McDonalds doesn't sell Burger King chips. Of course, that would be just as silly.
By all means, revisit this topic when Apple have over 90% of the mobile device market. But I'm sure there are a few Android folk who will happily tell you that day is never coming...
PS - you did want people to rage, didn't you?!
@Loyal Commenter
So, the original work done by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamirh and Len Adleman (and independently by Clifford Cocks) to develop the theory and algorithms behind public key cryptography was easy was it?
As for the easy vs hard argument, cryptographers (the builders) and cryptanalysts (the breakers) have an equally difficult job. However, I would argue that the invention aspect of creating a new cipher makes the cryptographers job that little bit harder.
@Neonin
Good catch - I hadn't realised that!
Re: Throttling
Take a look for yourself:
http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management/traffic-management-policy.html
For punters on the 30Mb/sec package, you can download up to 10GB between 10am and 3pm, before you get throttled to 22.5Mb/sec for 5 hours (i.e., still faster than the 20Mb/sec people upgraded from). Between 4pm and 9pm, you can download 5GB before being throttled to 22.5Mb/sec for 5 hours. Outside of those times you can download as much as you want (local bandwidth capacity permitting, of course). Upstream restrictions also apply.
On the 50Mb/sec package, you only get your upstream throttled if you upload more than 6GB between 3pm and 8pm, at which point your upload speed drops from 5Mb/sec to just over 3Mb/sec.
Everyone *may* have P2P and newsgroup traffic throttled between 5pm and midnight during the week, and midday and midnight at weekends if there is insufficient bandwidth on the local network (these are the only restrictions that apply to people on the 100Mb/sec package).
Phorm
As far as I recall, it was BT who trialled Phorm, not Virgin Media.
Flash vs h.264
"Other than being part of the MPEG LA Patent Pool, which licences H.264, I can't see any logical reason to object to Flash without objecting to H.264"
It's very simple really. Anyone can obtain the complete h.264 spec and build a fully compliant encoder and decoder (e.g., the x264 guys). This is not possible with Flash. The OpenScreen project is only a partial spec - it does not cover any of the DRM aspects of Flash.
Consequently, the only company that can build a fully compliant Flash player is Adobe. If this were not true, Gnash would be a lot better and would be used by a lot more people. If you believe anyone can create a fully compliant Flash player, please answer the following question: why is it the case that, even after so many years, has not a single person or group in the worldwide open source community has produced such a product yet (remember, Gnash does not support Adobe's DRM).
@Anon 16
Let me get this straight. Apple, who eschewed the closed and proprietary Flash in favour of the open and W3C-backed HTML5 suite of technologies is somehow worse than Google, who are removing support for the open (albeit not free for everyone) h.264 standard backed by TWO international standards bodies for the aforementioned closed and proprietary Flash?
Web users have been bent over a barrel by Adobe for the last decade in their reliance on Flash. Apple have done more than any other major company to try and break Adobe's stranglehold. Google are simply undermining the recent progress in order to push their own agenda.
Ask Google (or any of their supporters) about the licensing fees that content creators must pay to Adobe for producing Flash content? (via Adobe software) Google only cares about distribution fees so they have no problem using Flash. What I don't get though is, given the same quality, WebM produces slightly bigger files. This results in more storage space required, and higher bandwidth costs for anyone storing/distributing WebM video. My only conclusion therefore is that Google is using WebM as a tool to leverage additional concessions out of MPEG-LA, or trying to undermine Apple in the iOS vs Android battle.
Will It Blend?
That's what happens when one of the hacks gets a BlendTec blender for a present - everything becomes instant coffee! (and it probably tastes no worse than the shit that us Brits accept in jars labeled "Coffee"...)
Non-Admin Users
"Now, for a piece of software that has just started up, how does it know that a plug-in has been installed sneakily by another app acting as admin, rather than the user choosing to install it?"
Password-protection.
If the user wishes, they can lock their current plugins with a password. As you stated, this won't prevent admin-level installers adding new plugins. However, if the list of plugins is digitally signed using a key based upon the user's password, then the program can detect changes: upon launch, the signature is re-checked (or hash re-calculated) and if there is a difference, a warning appears (the old list can be determined by the subset of plugins which produce a valid signature/hash).
Since the user's password is not stored on the machine, there is no way for any program (even an admin-level installer) from providing a valid signature/hash for the updated plugin list.
Buck Stops with Firefox
As a few of the commenters have already pointed out, it is ultimately Firefox's fault in allowing newly installed plugins to be loaded without first informing the user. It should be no different to how Firefox handles updates to existing plugins - i.e., allow the user to enable/disable/remove them before continuing. Plugins installed via Firefox itself would have tacit permission to be loaded, obviously.
Ethernet Connectivity
From the article:
"The Eee 1215PEM happens to have Gigabit Ethernet, but most netbooks and 11.6-inchers only go up to 100Mb/s, but the Air doesn't even have that."
Out of the box this is true, but for a piffling £19, you can get a 100Mb/s ethernet adapter which plugs into one of the USB ports:
http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MB442Z/A
And since an extra USB port is probably more useful to more people, it seems like a sensible trade-off.
Hmmm
I find it interesting that UK users of the live football data are legally allowed to access it. Contrast this with the view taken against copyright infringers who download material from foreign servers.
Is the difference simply that copyright legalese has been slapped on the original movie/song/etc?
Is it therefore possible for Football Dataco et al to attach a copyright notice to the fixture lists and get the same protection?
I know it's a bit of a grey area as regards the point of whether fixture lists are a statement of fact or not (I would guess there is some originality to them and thus may be given some protection, however, once a fixture has actually been played, it becomes a non-copyrightable fact).
Of course, I am not a lawyer...
@theodore
The band is Orbital. The track is "Know Where to Run" (probably best known for being on the Wipeout3 soundtrack)
Oops
I just realised that I mis-understood your post. The actual URL can only be obtained by me, a facebook friend, or someone with a packet-sniffer if the video is viewed on an unsecured network. And yes, there is typically no pattern to the URL.
My privacy concern is more aligned to the packet-sniffer scenario - not too unlikely in this world of coffee shop free wi-fi.
(Before I get really off-topic, I have similar concerns about other sites which only secure the log-in process - e.g., hotmail until quite recently)
Going Slightly Off-Topic
"But if I'm not much mistaken, only the owner of the video/picture/album can access that URL"
Did you try the URL? I can access it from any computer without being logged into facebook, therefore anyone should be able to view the video.
The point I was trying to make is that many of facebook's privacy controls are only applicable when you are in facebook world (i.e., going through the site). Outside of facebook world, their privacy controls are meaningless.
Ideally, the above URL should require you to log in (and be a friend of mine) before allowing access to the video. Of course, that wouldn't stop my friends from downloading the video, but that's not something which facebook (or anyone else for that matter) can prevent.
Calm Down Dear
"Each person owns her friends list, but not her friends' information. A person has no more right to mass export all of her friends' private email addresses than she does to mass export all of her friends' private photo albums"
Ignoring the fact that photo albums, etc are not private if you make them available to others, this is an easy fix. Just add a privacy setting along the lines of "allow x to export y" (where x is a person/group/etc and y is e-mail/phone no/photos/all info/etc). In other words, let _the_user_ decide which of their friends get to do more than just view their data.
Of course, one could argue that "friending" someone is implicitly providing said person with unlimited access to the data you make available to them on facebook (this still allows for segregation of friends based upon groups/etc).
Personally, I go with this latter line of reasoning.
Of course, I still find it funny that facebook thinks I believe that marking my videos "for friends only" stops other people for accessing them. The following video is marked as such:
http://video.ak.facebook.com/video-ak-sf2p/v6812/133/30/118220332422_31321.mp4
Science vs Religion
This is what I like about science: its modus operandi is to attempt to explain how things work within the limits of our current knowledge, and to expand that knowledge. The mistake that anti-science people make is that they think science is about determining set-in-stone-forever-more facts. It's not. Any existing hypothesis (commonly referred to as "scientific fact") may be invalidated upon the discovery of conflicting evidence. Now, for a lot of hypotheses, there is a huge body of experimental evidence backing up the idea (e.g., the Earth going round the Sun) and the likelihood of such hypotheses being invalidated are extremely small. However, science will not attempt to avoid or cover-up any rigourous evidence which would invalidate such ideas.
Now consider religion (Christianity in this example).
Everything was set in stone just over 2000 years ago (if you ignore the many re-writes of the Bible and the fact it was generally created from second- or third-hand accounts of events at best, and fanciful stories at worst). Then, if something in the Bible is potentially contradicted by scientific experiment, "believers" stick their fingers in their ears, run round in circles and continually sing "la la la la" until it's time to go to church.
Now, my issue is not that I think science is the greatest thing ever, or that religion is stupid, but that science continually evolves and adapts and is not afraid to modify the current set of "accepted facts" whereas religion is all about resolutely sticking to the beliefs and writings of a few blokes two millennia ago.
No, no, no, no
Web != Internet.
How many Web servers are running Web browsers? How many VPN gateways are running Web browsers? How many e-mail relays are running Web browsers? How many kerberos/SSL key servers are running Web browsers?
I could go on, but four examples of high-profile targets should suffice.
99% of ALL malware
That's 99% of ALL malware, not Personal Computer malware (i.e. malware targeting Windows, OS X, Linux, etc.).
Windows runs on much less than 90% of Internet-connected hardware.
The App Decides....!?
"The Marketplace application returns a "1" if the application isn't allowed to run, so on receiving a "1" the application displays some information to that effect and quits. But that decision tree can be changed so an application receiving a "1" decides instead to go ahead and run"
Why is it the app's decision as to whether or not it is allowed to run? Surely, that decision should be taken by the OS? For example, the OS calculates a hash of the compiled app (i.e., the bytecode), then checks with the Marketplace as to whether or not the app can run. As long as the hash doesn't change, there is no need to consult the Marketplace for subsequent launches.
Fail because, well, they're doing it wrong...
Wooden Spoons
When you order food in many pubs these days, you are given a wooden spoon with a number on it which you place on your table to identify yourself to the bar staff (instead of each table being individually numbered). Hence, if you take such a spoon in with you, you may be given food that someone else ordered, for free.
Not the best joke on the list. My favourite was no. 7, although it has been around for ages in the form of: "What do you call a dog with no legs? Anything you want because it can't chase you" (or something to that effect).
The Logic Goes as Follows...
1. Sky have the money to get first-run films before other operators
2. Sky's film channels are cheaper with Sky than with Virgin (£16pcm vs £20-30pcm)
3. Consumers that want early access to the latest films are forced to get Sky or pay up to double the price
4. Sky profits increase due to non-free-market forces (step 3)
5. Go to step 1, lather, rinse, repeat.
Ofcom will consider ways to mitigate either step 1, or step 2.
Prices taken from:
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/tv/sky-movies-channels.html
http://www.sky.com/shop/tv/movies/
...and Buffering
Couldn't agree more. However, 800kbit/sec may sound low, but it's not unbearable. Of course, it's still well below what you get from those quaint plastic circles that arrive in paper envelopes (800kb/sec h.264 vs 9.8Mb/sec mpeg2 DVD vs 40Mb/sec h.264 Blu-ray). Yes, that's a whopping 50 times less than the maximum possible with Blu-ray! As such, I refuse to stream any films from their site.
However, the biggest annoyance I have with their streaming service is that the streams cannot be buffered. If you pause the film, the streaming stops. Consequently, you'd better pray to $YOUR_GOD that no-one else in your local loop decides to use up a lot of the available bandwidth. If they do, you get a better experience watching analogue Channel 5 with a narrow-band aerial.
Fix the OS. No big deal.
"The way that they did this is they're getting developers to put their software in their apps and their software is sending out information about the device and about its geolocation and other things back to Flurry. No customer is ever asked about this. It's violating every rule in our privacy policy with our developers, and we went through the roof about this," Jobs said.
Sorry, but this is an OS fail: if the OS does not have the capability to prevent running code from accessing sensitive information like device ID and location then the privacy failings are the fault of the OS.
Dear Steve: Fix the OS. No big deal.
Umm...
"Facebook changed its robot.txt file to prevent the search engine from indexing the relevant "opt out of emails from Facebook" page so that email address data can no longer be harvested by spammers or other miscreants."
What's to stop the spammers, etc from writing their own web-crawler which simply ignores the robots.txt file? Such a move is hardly beyond the scope of most semi-organised gangs.
OK, but...
I can buy the thesis that Jobs is trying to mitigate any antitrust complaints and also to piss in Adobe's cornflakes, but there's one thing that doesn't sit right:
Microsoft are about to release their own shiny new phone OS, and desperately need as many developers as possible to write software for it. Why would they want to make it easier for such developers - many of whom presumably use MS Visual Studio - to write software for their main rival in the smartphone space?
On the other hand, maybe Ballmer realises that getting existing iPhone developers to use Visual Studio instead of XCode makes it more likely that they will write W7Phone apps too?
Either way, I hope the rumour is true.
Re: footballers names
I believe it has something to do with the brain being able to parse lower-case words more quickly than upper-case words (i.e. helps the ref/commentators/etc). It is for this reason that all UK road signs were changed from all upper-case to leading-capital only way back in the 60s (search for "Transport Font").
Of course, this could be pure coincidence.
Back on topic: Old W is better, but besmirched by Wikipedia. New w is crap, and will provide much fodder for ne'er-do-wells to draw nipples on.
The Caveat
Multiple companies working together on a common standard is fine provided that the standard is available in RAND terms to any and all competing companies not involved in the development process. In other words, two companies cannot collude to produce a technical framework that helps their respective products inter-operate, whilst blocking competitors from inter-operating as easily.
For example, it would be bad if Apple worked with Griffin to develop a protocol which gave Griffin accessories extra capabilities or better connectivity with iPhones/iPods/iPads, etc and that protocol was withheld from Griffin's competitors.
RAND = Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory
@Rogerborg
That's an excellent idea, except for one small thing (and I'm _not_ being sarcastic here):
The DVLA/Police/Government want to know who owns each car on the road, where they live, etc., etc. - information which is not obtained when you buy fuel. I agree that the "tax" bit is redundant and it would be better if it was incorporated into fuel duty, but there is still a legitimate need for the other information provided with a Road Tax Certificate.
Disclaimer: I do not own a car, nor do I work for the DVLA/Police/Government
85 therms per month!!
"We averaged 85 therms a month from December '09 through march 10 ... The "zero energy" refers to electrical use only ... 85 therms is the same as 2491 kilowatt-hours"
Bloody hell!
For the four month period Nov '09 - Feb '10 inclusive (the UK "heating season") my energy usage was:
Electricity: 120 kWh per month
Gas: 794 kWh per month
So - ignoring gas usage, obviously - my house is over 20 times "greener". Even counting gas, it is two and a half times better. And lest you think it's some new-fangled modern building, it's a tenement block built in 1896. Amazing what a combi boiler, central heating (sorry, hydronic heating) and double glazing can do, isn't it!
And I'll bet it got a lot colder where I live that it did in California....
Opposite for me...
Running 10.10 on 10.5.8, I chose "Check for Updates..." from the Opera menu only to be told that I was fully up to date! A trip to Opera's website soon fixed that though...
Re: Sensor Size
I believe the question refers to the physical size of the sensor, not the resolution. The importance being that a larger physical size is better, for a fixed resolution.
For example, see http://www.dpreview.com/news/0210/02100402sensorsizes.asp
The answer to this question seems to be 1/1.9" which, according to the following page, is quite impressive:
http://blog.gsmarena.com/how-large-is-the-nokia-n8-12-megapixel-large-image-sensor/
Flash vs HTML5
"what I don't understand is this, Flash can run online applications (which might be the reason it was rejected). But doesn't HTML5 do the same thing? Isn't one of the things that HTML5 suppose to do is make web-applications possible? If I understand it correctly, you should be able to develop applications (including games) using HTML5, so why allow one and reject the other?"
The reason is quite simple. Apple control the code which interprets HTML5+CSS+Javascript. They do not control the code which interprets Flash. Consequently, the user experience on their mobile platforms would not be fully under their control. They took one look at Flash on OS X and decided giving Adobe that kind of control over the user experience was a very bad thing.
Same argument goes for other runtimes, by the way. Furthermore, if Adobe opened the Flash spec (i.e. allowed Apple to write their own Flash interpreter), then the iPhone/iPad/etc may get Flash support.
Of course, there is also the argument about Apple protecting their App Store revenue stream. However, the App Store didn't materialise until nearly 1 year after the original iPhone launch, so if it was just about protecting revenue, why wasn't Flash available from the start?
So yes, in my view, it is all about Apple having control. But it's about control of the user experience, not about control of the content (although the two are somewhat related).
Throttling
Us Brits can get throttled Internet access via Virgin Media. My 10Mbit connection gets throttled to 2.5Mbit for 5 hours if I download too much in a given time-frame (see link below). Then, there's no limits on what can be downloaded at 2.5Mbit speeds. Of course, at peak times, speeds can drop further due to "excessive demand" in VM speak - otherwise known as insufficient bandwidth in their local infrastructure.
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html
ISO Certification
In the same way that electronics require BSi / CE / FCC certification before they can legally be sold (to ensure a number of things, including suitability for use in a heterogeneous environment), is it too much to ask that word processors MUST adhere to the current ISO document standard (i.e. the strict version of ISO 29500) to be sold legally?
This would prevent anyone, not just MS, from releasing word processing software that is not inter-operable with all other modern word processor packages.**
Please tell me this is not just some utopian pipe-dream?
**of course, were the market truly open and competitive, this would happen as a result of natural market forces (i.e., the only way to compete is to be inter-operable with existing products, not just inter-operable with whatever half-baked draft spec MS are using in Office this time around),
Something, Something, Dark Side
From the article:
"Bookmarks can also be placed in folders in the bookmarks bar, as they can be in Safari for the Mac and PC."
Given the preceding bad-mouthing of Safari on the iPhone, this reads as if suggesting that Safari on the iPhone does not have this capability. It does. For as long as I can remember.
And to everyone who is bemoaning the "average" or "boring" feature set: like the iPhone, the iPad is about _useability_. In other words, you may well be able to do more with a netbook/tablet PC/N900, but the comparable features will be significantly easier (for most people) on the iPad.
P.S. I'm still not getting one though!
Re: Unique Codes
What would prevent people from just noting the code and using it without buying the paper? Anyway, subscribers to the paper get free access to the web site.
I would accept the following:
- free summaries of all articles (e.g., 2 paragraphs)
- first two or three articles each day free
- £2 a week for unlimited access (no daily charge, but monthly/yearly deals)
- articles over a week old free
- no adverts on paid-for content
- access controlled by username/password combo
(of course, the above is for _decent_ news sites - I wouldn't pay for Murdoch's stuff)
Not Buying It...
I was under the impression that Gross Negligence also covered cases where you failed to carry out a procedure that you were properly trained in? (e.g. the surgeon example above). In other words, had the employee been trained (and signed off on the training), and then done something which should not have occurred had the correct procedures been followed (i.e. those outlined in the training), he would be grossly negligent.
Unless register.com do not train their employees in the skillful art of processing confirmation codes, or their internal processes do not involve "double-entry" or the codes do not include "check-digits" or the codes can be easily faked, then this seems like a pretty clear case of gross negligence.
And if any of the get-outs I just listed exist, then register.com have much bigger problems, of which their customers should be very worried.
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