Twilight

It's been mentioned a few times already, mostly by men dragged into watching them by their girlfriends or wives. Probably not a candidate under the "cult hit" rule--men may hate it, but it seems a hit with women (given the source material, it isn't surprising).

Re: Ok, but...

I was unfamiliar with the format of that clue (now I'll know in future what the numbers mean). That was the main reason I was tripped up. Just as Dr. Fill was likely tripped up by the nonstandard words (the backwards and diagonal words--your average crossword only runs the words to the right (across) and down.

Now, granted most US crosswords aren't that hard--they're not meant to be. They're meant to kill a half-hour or so on the kitchen table or on the train. Most papers typically publish their toughies on Sunday when people have more time to work on it (I know this is true for the New York Times crosswords--well-known for being particularly challenging among mass-printed crosswords).

The toughest crosswords (as well as their relatives like diagramless) are usually reserved for puzzle books so that hardcore solvers know where to look and casual solvers don't get frustrated.

Terrestrial vs. Aerial

When a terrestrial vehicle suffers a glitch and breaks down, what's likely to happen? The vehicle comes to a stop and (barring a rear-ender) you just sit there. Gravity has no play on you because you're already on the ground.

When an aerial vehicle (like an airplane) suffers a glitch and breaks down, there's a chance the engines will stop running. As aircraft need those engines to fight gravity, you now have a problem. It certainly doesn't help when 200-plus other people are also along for the ride.

No workarounds possible.

It had always been a sheer matter of noise, and it's hard to work around physics. Just as it's deucedly hard to hear your tinny cell phone speaker in the middle of a death metal concert. As for finding other frequencies, good luck. Last I check, every other viable frequency's already been taken.

Interesting thought, but I hear it still has some teething issues (especially around the camera). Plus my phone's still insured, so I'm not so inclined to root it, in case it breaks (again, I'm on my first insured replacement).

Re: Hmm

A problem that can probably be relieved by attaching the home router and the VoIP box to a small UPS (because neither device will be drawing too much power compared to a PC, a small one should be able to buy you enough time to make necessary phone calls).

Now I'LL reiterate.

You may be familiar with the area. They *weren't*. And like I said, causeways are possible, as are low-tide roads as others have noted (another thing: they may not be familiar with local tidal patterns which differ from place to place). They didn't know the condition of the roads there, probably figured the path to be a low-tide road, miscalculated, and got stuck. Crap happens.

Re: I've said it before, and I'll say it again ...

A) The GPS wasn't just a toy. It was their equivalent of a map, and in this case even a map could've made a mistake and put a road where there shouldn't be.

B) These people were tourists, unfamiliar with the area, and it's not unheard of to get from a mainland to a nearby island by way of a bridge or causeway.

Re: Recycling currency

Most Treasury-approved bill acceptors have a few more smarts in them. They'll use the basic optical test only to check for singles. For fives and up, they'll start looking for harder-to-casually-fake things like the fluorescent security strips which are in different locations for each bill (and singles don't have any). The acceptors used in points of sale (or other first-line areas where currency is handled before being routed to banks) are made to higher standards, have more detectors to check for things like bleaching, and can generally sniff out any fake short of a supernote.

Interesting points, indeed. The old "bleached document" trick taken to another level. I suspect the way the laser works will leave traces (since they DO mention the fact that it CAN be overused). So it's probably not going to be practical for the "will switcheroo" but in terms of common document confidentiality it could save some use of the shredder service. Blank the "just secret" documents and reuse them so that casual inspection can't determine what it was. After a few runs, THEN send them to the shredder.

Re: Happy Days, huh?

Then what about Dallas? That was definitely a CBS prime-timer in the 80's.

I don't think so.

At least in terms of the original series, I believe Paramount acquired the rights back from CBS to allow for distribution. They produced the series and own most of the other franchise rights, so they had leverage. In any event, all the series from The Next Generation onward definitely belong to Paramount (and thus Viacom) since they were either syndicated or aired on the UPN network Paramount ran in the 90s.

Perspective.

And you're talking the tiny little UK. When it comes to data lines, size matters--at least in terms of cost. Here in the US, I imagine trunk lines running from New York to Los Angeles can get mighty steep in the price.

I had low expectations and had a feeling it wouldn't make the cut. I have the T-Mobile USA version, the G2, and while it eventually was upgraded to Gingerbread, I had a feeling that ICS would be a stretch. Most ICS-capable devices are less than a year old, and this one's somewhat over the mark. Even in Froyo and Gingerbread, things get a bit clunky over time unless you get one of those memory optimizers (even without root-level access, it helps).

Re: eh?

Might not resistance become an issue at longer lengths, though?

Re: So here is a guy openly teaching people how to write and debug more trojans

Or maybe because the police or higher authorities in the hacker's home state are tacitly allowing this to happen since, after all, it's not a crime against their own people, and it IS a form of asymmetric warfare (that's why hackers and such have "safe haven" countries). They're savvy enough to know that this level of cybercrime isn't the kind of thing that would draw true international wrath. After all, they can just play dumb and claim they lack the resources while everyone else lacks the jurisdiction.

Re: Post-TV (broadcast) world

But HDTV content tends to strain bandwidth caps. ISPs (especially Mobile ones) aren't ready for HD streaming yet. In any event, CBS is in a position where recording isn't as big a problem. Remember, they're a broadcast network as well as a producer. Their content literally goes out for free over terrestrial airwaves, and most people with a ClearQAM or ATSC tuner card (and a good-enough signal) can draw the raw MPEG-2 timestreams out of the copper/air. As long as the ads remain in them, they're not in a position to care.

How about a "no-root" solution?

Most people don't want to root their phones. Not only does it void most warranties and service agreements, but rooting cuts both ways: more flexible, but also more vulnerable.

Re: I'm pretty sure..

Considering Carmageddon Reincarcation is being done by the developers of the original Carmageddon (the best of the lot) with an attention to the original's sense of style, and given that gaming tastes have matured somewhat and are more tolerant of Carmageddon's type of violence, there's hope.

AFAICT, the screenshots all come from the Glide version of the first game (which offered 640x480 hardware-accelerated graphics in an age when getting good performance at 320x240 took some serious computing), which had a decent variety of scenes to race in. Each of the races then took the scenes and altered them a bit to make the actual "tracks". You had a basic urban scape complete with a football stadium (watch out for the water--they left mines in the canals), a park that for some reason featured both cows and a vertical loop, an oil rig, and even a pseudo-meso-American ruin setting.

Re: Oh well

I only used an Android tracer because I have an Android phone and because it was handier than resorting to the hardware GPS logger I used three years ago--no fiddling with bluetooth or USB serial connections hooked up to third-party Java programs. It spat out GPX, KML, whatever you wanted in realtime, which I could then pass on to my computer easily.

Re: GIGO

They ORIGINALLY got their mapping data from elsewhere. Then came their Street View project, which saw fleets of Google cars literally travel the country with scanners and cameras on full. Now they have their own homegrown pool of street data to draw on. That's why they dropped the third party around 2 1/2 years ago and used their own data instead.

You've hit one of the grey areas.

Valve would probably argue to Google that it's just a storefront, like a website, and that none of the products being offered are directly for Android (AFAIK, all of Steam's offerings are for computers--mostly PC, some Mac). Since none of the commerce is Android-related, like the article's SMS scenario, Google doesn't get a cut, supposedly.

Re: Making a new game

I like.

As for the offer, thanks but no thanks. My retro rig has a Voodoo 3 so can do Glide natively. It also have Windows ME...for those late 90s game that just can't play nice in today's systems.

Bouncy bouncy.

Ooh, hated that one, especially when it made you bounce just as you were coming to a bend. You'd end up flying into a wall...or worse, off an edge. Also hated Jelly Suspension since it tended to make you roll over at any significant turn. My personal 2nd favorite powerup, besides the pedestrian zapper, was the Solid Granite Car. Boy, the fun I could have on the cops once I got one of these powerups. Not to mention it made getting a "Kill All Opponents" win much easier, too.

Re: Oh well

Depends on the crowd doing the sourcing.

Here's a concrete example. In my city, two years ago, a road was extended to connect to another road, creating a significant shortcut. It took Google a good six months to put it on their maps. Then, just last month, a new motorway interchange was completed and opened: another significant shortcut. It's not on Google's maps yet, but thanks to an Android GPS tracer, i was able to add it to OSM the day after it opened (I was working the day it opened).

Re: Law changes aim at the wrong target

Trouble is, as a work ages, the consumers become natural enemies of the creators because works get locked away in a free society. Copyright is supposed to be limited. It's just that no one can ever come to a binding agreement on those limits because at least one side of the arguments finds these kinds of limits practically an existential threat. They go into "cliff's edge" mode and won't budge an inch since that inch will take them over the edge in their view, and the lawmakers have an interest in all the parties involves since they contribute one or more of votes, money, or other "goods" such as jobs in a tense economic climate. So basically, it becomes an irrational argument, and you can't have a proper compromise with an irrational argument: compromise isn't possible. Barring some miraculous change of stance (unlikely) or some edict of the state (also unlikely), copyright is only going to get worse and worse.

Questionable.

After all, both Garmin and TomTom have their own internal resources and so don't have to rely on Google, then there's OpenStreetMap, which is crowdsourced. Google could fire back that since there is more than one mapping repository, competition does exist, and since you don't have to use Google Maps on Android (just download an alternate mapper), consumers still have choice.

Re: Plug-in

Most chips, especially on portable hardware, have to be soldered on to prevent them jostling loose. The only things that are not are the pieces that are necessarily loose such as the SIM slot. Plus, if what I read is correct, tuning to certain LTE frequencies requires a delicate coordination of tuner, antenna, and other things that make a one-size-fits-all solution difficult.

Re: in general

There's also the fact some nefarious organizations are aware of HumInt and the possibility of moles. Some of the worst won't let you into the inner circle until you cross a moral event horizon, some act no mole would ever be allowed to do (think personally killing an American soldier with witnesses--that's clear-cut treason in the US books).

Re: How about an e-ink screen

Now there's a rarity. Most Hoovers I see die inside of 15 years (personally witnessed two of them die--motor failure both times). About 25 years ago, the series "The Secret Life of Machines" made a note of that change in design, particularly with vacuum cleaners.

Re: When will R.S. understand what "free" actually means?

I think we're starting to get a bit "meta" here. In the most fundamental sense, nothing's ever truly "free" because there are constraints of some kind: usually physical ones since they depend on either matter or energy: both of which are (AFAWK) finite.

Continuing with the "meta" argument, in order to free the user to be able to modify the code freely, it becomes necessary to "restrict the restrictions" a developer can impose on the end-user/code-hacker. So the onus is on the developer rather than the end-user. That's different from your average EULA. Then again, any user who hacks the code him/herself becomes a developer, thus "switching shoes".

Speaking of resolutions...

I recall that Carmageddon was actually a bit ahead of its time when it came to 3D support. It was one of the few DOS games to support Glide (the 3dfx API) for hardware acceleration. I still recall the time when I plugged the game back into my retro rig (which houses a Voodoo 3 for these occasions) and still being able to enjoy the carnage at a respectable 640x480 (I believe those are the screens you see in the article).

Re: How about an e-ink screen

"Or is it really compulsory to have a completely new turing machine with every 'new' idea?"

Businesses got wise to the fact that the real moneymaker is REPEAT business. That's why nothing lasts forever, why they try to force things to become obsolete every few years; otherwise, they get no more business from you. Take vacuum cleaners. Old Kirby and Electrolux vacuums still exist over 50 years later. But try to find a 30-year-old Hoover still in working condition.

I'll go you one better.

Offer $1M or more to do the same thing, only on a Linux distro while at the same time offering the ability to run most windows programs out of the box (cutting out the most common excuse not to switch--my program doesn't run on Linux). Offer a bonus (say another $1M) if that list of workables includes the latest games at their highest settings (this is one of the holdouts right now--DX11 games). This would REALLY hit Microsoft hard since with this there would be no practical reason to pay for their OS--ANY of their OS's--again.

Re: Not just from Google

Which is why I mentioned that Replicant and CyanogenMod are tackling the "non-free" problem from two different angles. Replicant is tackling the Google part of the problem while CyanogenMod is tackling the chipset vendor part of the problem. Both are trying to break veils of secrecy; it's just that each is tackling a different wall.

Re: GIMMICK ALERT!

It's not groceries I was thinking about (and even then you have environmental arguments for brown sacks--not to mention I've seen the corners of 6-packs rip through TRIPLES). Look at the picture in the article. A woman coming from a slew of clothing stores (where paper bags--WITH handles--are still common; this is because they tend to be more spacious, easier on boxes and less likely to mess up folded clothing). If the ground's wet, she doesn't want to put her bags down and soak her new clothes. And if she's coming from a clothing store, odds are good there aren't any trolleys to use (especially in a mall environment). And as for carrying so much at one time, that's how people want to shop: "get it before it's gone" and all that.

Two projects, two angles.

As I understand it, they're going at it from different angles.

Replicant is meant to address the "Free = No strings attached" argument. Replicant wants to replace the proprietary foundation apps that Google inserted into Android to tie it into its ecosystem. They're working on things like contact lists, dialers, collaboration, and other programs using systems not tied to Google or any particular method. Their primary antagonist in their struggle is Google itself.

The CyanogenMod team are more interested under the bonnet, in opening access to the internal hardware of the phone, giving you freedom over your phone. In their case, "Free = Full Access". Their focuses on firmware, hardware drivers, and enabling programs meant to open up and extend the functionality of your Android device.

Re: GIMMICK ALERT!

Ever carried an unstable bag that resettled when you picked it up? I don't want to set it down again unless it's in the boot, because the moment it's put down again, it's likely to spill. Better by far it spills in the boot than on the street or parking lot where a passing car runs it over. Furthermore, ever tried putting down your bags IN THE RAIN? The last thing you want is to get typically PAPER bags WET. Can you say, "Bottom falling out?" And what about amputees? How can a one-handed man open the boot when his lone hand is full of stuff?