Posts by GavinC 83 publicly visible posts • joined 31 May 2010
Here's my take on what was said - Microsoft is committed to all the technologies in Win8 for the life of Win8. i.e they make no promises they will survive in Win9.
In fairness though, while Microsoft may have went through many database access methods (to use your example), all of them continue to work in Win7.
Your example is flawed - prices for umbrellas increase when it rains because demand for umbrellas increases. Everyone is still paying the same (inflated) price for them.
A better analogy would be charging someone without a coat more for an umbrella, as they are more likely to need it than someone wearing a raincoat.
The key here is that google are offering different prices to each user, not increasing price based on demand. I'm pretty sure there is plenty of prior art, but this example is not one of them and misses the point of the patent application.
@AC: this patent is different to what airlines are doing. In the example of an airline, they will increase the fare based on demand for that flight. As more people book, the fare increases. (well, it's a bit more complicated than that) . the Whitney album pricing is the same - it is based on demand for the item.
What Google has patented, is adjusting the price based on how likely the current visitor is to buy it.
The difference being if you and me both go to book a flight, we will both see the same price, as it is based on demand for the flight. But if we both go to buy something through google, we will see two different prices based on how more likely you are to buy it compared to me. (being based in Scotland you can guarantee I am considered less likely to part with my cash!). therefore they are adjusting the price based on likelyhood of you buying, not based on (overall) demand for the item.
For a while Easyjet used to store a cookie on your machine which saved the details of any flights that you had looked at, and inflated the price if you looked at the same thing twice. This may be considered prior art I guess, but I'm sure the lawyers will word in such a way to make it sound different. I believe this practice is no longer in operation though, at least with easyjet.
Thank god they have brought back colour to the UI - it's already looking orders of magnitude better than before, just with a few coloured icons.
BUT WHY IS THE MENU BAR SHOUTING AT ME???
UI Design 101 - Lower case letters are easier to read, and colour makes interfaces easier to navigate. Obviously the Microsoft designers missed the first day of UI class...
"So those publications are already available to anybody and everybody for free - you just need an internet connection."
North Korean's do not have internet access, but rather their own internal internet. As such, they will need a locally cached version of the database.
You cant have them accessing the full internet... they might find out that everything they've been told is all lies!
The great circle route involves flying over the north poles, which not all aircraft are capable of doing. Only aircraft fitted with a self contained navigation system can fly polar routes, all other forms of navigation system are reliant on magnetism for navigation, which becomes unreliable once you approach the north/south poles.
Searching the Air Canada website, it looks like they use a 777-300ER on the direct flight, but 767-300's from Toronto. The 777 should have no problems, but the 767 cannot fly a polar route. It may be the case that the flight was operated by a 767 when this incident took place.
From the Boeing website:
If an active route takes an airplane over a pole, the preferred mode is lateral navigation with the autopilot engaged. The flight management system (FMS) on the 747 and the 777 are operational in the polar areas with no restrictions. The 757 and 767 flight management computer (FMC) and the 757 and 767 Pegasus FMC are operational to 87 deg north latitude and 87 deg south latitude because of airplane certification restrictions. The MD-11 FMS is considered to be in the polar region when the airplane is above 85 deg north or south latitude. (See “Polar Route Navigation by Airplane Model.”)
http://boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/aero_16/polar_story.html#4
As others have mentioned, winds may also have affected the flights route.
yea, I did. On the back of advertisements promising native email coming soon, and the ability to use android apps. With 2.0 scheduled for February, It will be almost a year since I bought it before these things are finally added.
I used to be a blackberry fan, but this coupled with the recent outages of their servers, has really made me consider switching to android...
Further to AC's answer -
bear in mind the control systems themselves are not actually windows based PC's, but rather PLC's. These PLC's are programmed using a PC. The virus infects the PC's that are used to program these devices, then modifies the PLC project file stored on that PC so that the PLC does not run as intended and damages the equipment. This incorrect project code is then later downloaded to the PLC by the engineer unknowingly.
The PLC does not need to be connected to the internet, and often will not be (although sadly not often enough). This unfortunately does not stop infection - instead the PC's used to program the device must never be connected to the internet, in fact the project file must never be stored on a PC that is connected to the internet. Short of providing every employee with two machines, one for email/web access and one for programming, and a server kept on a separate closed network for storing the code, this is difficult and costly to achieve. Besides, up until last year there was never thought to be a risk and therefore a need to do just this.
it's beginning to look more and more like the end of silverlight. I believe Win8 will ship with two versions of IE, one for "desktop mode" and one for Metro - with Metro being the preferred operating mode. The Metro version of IE will not support plugins, therefore either silverlight will be built in as standard, or silverlight is dead.
I suspect it may be the latter...
HTML5 is the future, whether you like it or not...
Nobody is asking for, or even expecting parity with city dwellers. What is being done is ensuring that those in the country have access to a semi-decent broadband connection. More and more services are moving online, and having a decent connection is becoming essential. If it was left up to market economics, those in the sticks would be stuck using dialup, which is simply not going to be economic in future years. Instead, government funding is being used to upgrade the networks and ensure a decent level of service is available, this will still be a lot slower than what is available in cities.
How do you think they got phone lines, sewerage and on-grid gas in the sticks in the first place? It wasn't due to it being economically viable, that's for sure!
There is lots of hidden intrinsic value in facebook - it is starting to become the only www page. When is the last time you saw a commercial for a product on TV that displayed a URL for the product? Every one of them now is "find us on Facebook".
For products or manufacturing companies, the days of having a website to market your products and services is over. Its now all about having a facebook page. As soon as someone "likes" your page, not only do all of their friends see the name of your company, but you now have the user signed up to a mailing list and can advise them on every development or new product you release.
Facebook has long grown beyond being a social network site, it is now one of the biggest gaming platforms on the net, and is becoming a global marketplace for products and services. Just wait till that "Like" button on each product page is joined by a "Buy" button, and that $100bn valuation will look like a bargain.
"and not many serious web sites require flash"
iPlayer, TVCatchup, YouTube, Hulu... to name just a few. All of which have had to create apps or alternative mobile sites just to work with iPads. PlayBooks support the site by default, without forcing the developers to create a workaround site.
Personally I'd take a machine that supports flash over one that doesnt, so you have the option if you need it. If flash proves to be too big a drain on the battery, simply dont visit flash enabled sites, or disable it via the menu!
Oh, and as for the email client - it is due to be released soon, dont worry.
The Playbook runs on QNX - which is a unix compatible system. Android apps are written in java. Therefore all that is needed to run an android app is java support, which QNX supports,s o getting the apps to work is trivial. However, getting them to the device requires some way of accessing an app store - google at present does not allow the playbook to access the Google App Store (which could easily be fixed via a Playbook client), so instead you need to get them from the Blackberry store. This requires that any developer re-submits their app to Blackberry for inclusion in the store.
I did spend my summer holidays in Pripyat back in 2008... ok it was only a day, but the only thing stopping me from going back for a two week break is the lack of bars, rather than the radiation levels.
You think Pripyat is unsafe? Tell that to the workers at the Chernobyl power plant, which was still operational until 2000, and to this day is still manned 24/7 by crews decomissioning the plant.
The article mentions the cause of crash - they took off in the middle of summer without flaps and slats set. As aa result they could not achieve enough lift to get off the ground, and quickly ran out of runway, when they did try and lift off, they veered off to the side and crashed.
I believe from reading elsewhere that the horn which should alert pilots to an incorrect takeoff config had been disabled, therefore they were not alerted to the fact they had not lowered the flaps + slats. Having said that, their own checks should have picked this up, but in this case they didnt, and the backup system was disabled.
"NCAR researchers warn that the simulated dye in the water has the same viscosity of water, unlike the oil that is actually spreading through the Gulf of Mexico.
Oil can clump up and moves in different ways"
I just ran a simulation of Gordon Brown competing in the 100m at the 2012 olympics, only to discover he won gold. Of course I used Usain Bolt rather than Gordon in the simulation, and we know they both move in different ways, but still........
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