I think the problem isn't the kindle, it's what the kindle provides.

When you read a book, you pretty much read A book, because you generally only carried one instead of dozens as physical carrying capacity was a limited resource.

But with kindle, you can carry dozens of ebooks, and be in the middle of many of them at the same time. If anything, that leads to mass confusion from trying to keep all the plots straight.

If I kept reading one book at a time (I read on my iPad using iBooks, btw) I get the story just fine. But when I jump around a half dozen books, it gets confusing quick.

Ah. I could have sworn that when I set up proper locking mechanisms on the phone that there wasn't any option to call. I just tried it again, though, and there is an "Emergency Call" text. For a test, I tried using my cell phone to call my work number and it said that this number wasn't an emergency number. My next question would be how would I specify certain emergency numbers? (This way, if my child has my phone and needs to call a relative that they know the number of, they can without having to know my unlock code and thus having full access to the phone.)

You can't.

The emergency call is for calling emergency numbers. It's a small list - 911, 999, 111, 122, etc. In fact, I think on modern cellphones, you can call ANY emergency number and it'll connect you to emergency services. So in North America, if you dial 999 (Europe emergency) you will connect with 911 automatically - the phone interprets the number as emergency and basically does a emergency dial (it's a special control code so the tower will kick someone off if it needs to in order to connect you).

It's not a huge list of numbers, and it's coded into the software as it has to recognize if you're calling emergency services and to place it as a high-priority call on the network.

And no, it doesn't include your relatives number - that's not the intent. The intent is to be able to make a call to emergency services regardless of lock screen status, service status, etc. (It's how those used cellphone charities work - they collect deactivated cellphones for people so they have a way to get to emergency services).

Fixed that for you.

"Patent trolls" is a propaganda term. It implies that there's a right and wrong way to own patents. In reality it's just that: Owning patents. Patents are a monopoly on ideas. That's the problem.

Except there is nothing new. History repeats itself - we've been through these patent litigation storms for hundreds of years now. Probably amongst the earliest was the sewing machine where there were so many patents, and plenty of overlapping ones that it was impossible to make a sewing machine at all because there were just too many patents.

So Singer basically bought up all the patents - through force if necessary. And then they started licensing it to maufacturers to make sewing machines. If you had a patent, the consortium would basically crush you. (Effectively one of the first patent pools).

It repeats again for the automobile as well - so many innovations in such a short period of time that patent lawsuits were being filed all over the place.

And sure, it's computers this time around, but the tune's been the same for hundreds of years. And I'm certain there's been plenty of other patent wars.

And I won't say it stifles innovation - patents enhance innovations by getting people to be creative and work around them. I mean, if Apple's rounded corner patent didn't exist, Android would just be another iOS clone in the end. Instead, Google saw what they need to avoid it (it's a design patent, so ALL aspects must be copied) and realized as long as they don't have a grid of icons with a static bottom part, they're golden. Hence the app launcher and home screen (with widgets, getting rid of the grid of icons).

And stuff like patent pools also arose, because if you can't have something, people will actually try to find ways around that. Patents blocking the manufacture of sewing machines? Well, demand's there for the things, so there has to be a way around the current problem. Innovation!

If we didn't have it, we'd rapidly converge on uniformity as everyone just copies everyone else so in the end it's all identical in the end (because copying is faster cheaper easier than innovating).

Perhaps empowering people to enforce for themselves: "to interfere with or damage a drone operating over your property or engaged in warrantless surveillence of your propertry, shall be a violation punishable by up to $1 for each occurence". Make it legal by making it illegal. Sort of a cheap drone-hunting license.

Except most creeper drones won't fly over your property - they'll really be "cameras on really really really tall ladders looking down". So your law wouldn't work because they'd fly around your property.

Unfortunately, you're assuming they will adhere directly to the spec. I happen to have first hand experience at dealing with HP's horrible firmware and can say this will be among the most locked down PCs you can possibly own. Like putting in your own network card, 3G modem, or anything else? Not without HP's blessing you can't. Good at modifying a BIOS? Hope you can break their RSA 2048 bit lock they put in place...

it's not the spec, actually. Manufacturers are free to not give you the option of allowing non-secure boot or storing your own keys.

However, if you want to put a Designed for Microsoft Windows sticker on your laptop to show it's well, capable of running Windows, you MUST have the option. It's a requirement to have the Windows certification.

...using c. Although I do like to comment thusly, and so prefer a compiler that understands at least basic c++: // comment

I like to stay as close to the metal as I can get. I'd use assembler, but many of my projects are cross platform, so c it is.

End of Line terminated comments ("//") actually are in the C spec as part of C99. And while it did take GCC a little while for that to be accepted in C mode, most other commercial compilers accepted them just fine. (C++ is not completely compatible with C, mind you, unlike Obj-C which is fully C compatible. This can cause issues if you try to compile C code using a C++ compiler rather than a C/C++ compiler)

Now, one interesting thing in C++14 is binary literals (using "0b" a la "0x" for hex). That seems handy, though it would be more appropriate to be in C than C++ as C generally needs that sort of specification. Though, annoyingly, they didn't seem to allow use of something like _ to break long literals up into human-readable groups. I mean, a 32-bit string of bits is already hard enough to visually see, allowing the use of something like "_" in the string to help arbitrarily break up and group long constants would be helpful. (Even in hex it would be useful when doing 64-bit values).

E.g., would you rather try to see which bit is set in a string like "0b001011010011011101011100" or have it broken up like "0b0010_1101_0011_0111_0101_1100" or "0b00101101_00110111_01011100". If it's a bit field, you may even want "0b001011_010011011_01_0_111_0_0" if breaking it into fields has meaning.

Such a small change to help readability...

In fact, by the end of the last event, I believe it has been established that those ash clouds do not harm the air planes, and you can just fly through them without worry (Airplane companies' CEOs got together to do a fly-through to inspire confidence). Anyone got more detail on that?

Actually, more to the point, that the ash cloud has dissipated so there's less of a threat. Because this was at the end of it and air traffic had been shut down for over a week and a half, so people were skeptical that things have changed so much that you couldn't fly yesterday, but you can today. (Plus, airline finances are such that if you're not flying them, you're losing money, so the CEOs were really desperate to get moving again and stem the losses).

Volcanic ash is still nasty stuff - it erodes surfaces and glasses up in engines, which causes them to fail. In fact we didn't know about ash clouds until the late 1970s when a 747 was barely able to land in Indonesia after all of its engines failed and won't restart (until the engines cooled to the point the glassed ash broke off AND they were below the ash cloud and could restore limited power). And on landing, they realized they couldn't see out the front windshield because the ash was like sandpaper to it.

The CEO show was basically to say that there wasn't enough ash to down your plane anymore and that it was safe to travel again. (Though I'm sure they probably called for extra inspections because of buildup could cause a failure later on down the line).

There is worldwide monitoring of ash clouds and all that because of that accident because it's still harmful. It doesn't happen TOO often that air travel has be diverted because of volcanic activity, but it's still something pilots avoid.

Yes, the summary's idea that one could get a heart transplant with faked records is baloney. But there are a lot of simpler health care interactions which are easier to get with faked records, such as basic prescriptions. And it's not much harder to monetize, you do it the same way you do credit cards. Those marketplaces are well established for both CC info and health info, in many cases they are the same place.

It only works for so long - insurance has dealt with this fraud for ages now too - they get curious as to why you're taking two conflicting drugs, or why your prescription has suddenly doubled instead of getting a double-strength version, etc.

Yeah, you're not likely to get caught if you're just charging one bottle of antibiotics to it, but at $50, you'd be repeatedly using it and insurance would start making inquiries.

Doubly so if some drugs suddenly show up without a corresponding medical record - e.g., heart medication even though your doctor hasn't found a heart condition or explicitly mentioned treatment. (And really, the only reason would be to charge expensive drugs to it that often have corresponding medical conditions).

As for insurance companies buying the data up for data collection purposes - they really don't have to. First, it's not exactly legal, and second, they have far more legal ways to get all that information and more and can be had far easier too.

I might be ok with this for certain books if ebooks were substantially cheaper. Currently even for books I don't want to keep
it's cheaper to buy the book, read it, and resell it on amazon. If a $20 paper book gives the author $7 of royalties then at
a maximum an ebook should be priced at about $7.50 but because you can't turn around and resell that ebook it should
probably be priced closer to $3 or less. If ebooks actually started being priced at a rental price then it would make alot more
sense to buy ebooks. I still prefer paper books and most of the times the paperback and used copies are cheaper than
the ebooks even before you include resell value and alot of that goes to shipping. I would love to see 30 day rental fees for
ebooks be priced at or below the paperback/used book price instead of ebooks being priced at 70% of the hardback price.
It makes no sense that I can get a NEW physical paperback book SHIPPED to me cheaper than I can buy the electronic version.

What makes you think a traditional author deserves that much money off an ebook? Neverminding the 30% cut Amazon takes in self-publishing?

In the traditional print model (the one most authors do with publishers), the ONLY THING the author delivers the publisher is a block of text. That's all they're contracted to provide.

From there, a gaggle of other people work to transform that block of text into a book. Someone needs to do the cover art, another needs to go through and at least try to fix the most egregious errors (this back-and-forth with the author takes the longest as the editor will catch an error, and they need to confirm with the author that it's really an error and not deliberate), then revise, edit, consult, etc. Once that's done, Other things is that the publisher needs ISBNs, someone to do a table of contents, an index (if necessary), rework illustrations (with the illustrator - or the author because they have no qualms about submitting a 160x160 pixel image for a full page illustration) as well as securing rights to use third party images (photos, illustrations, etc) that the author may have included. And all the other stuff in a book including author bio and other front and back matter.

And then, someone has to go and take that final work, and lay it out on the page (real or electronic) - ensuring graphics, text, photos, etc are all properly laid out together, scaled properly, and that it looks good - that dark image you included may end up as a black square on e-readers, for example as they have a limited palette. And make sure chapter headings and all that other stuff are properly inserted, and linked and everything is in its place.

And somehow, you think the author who gets $7 out of a $30 book deserves to get it all when the ebook is priced $7.50? After Amazon's cut, that's $5 and the author would probably get $3 tops because those other guys behind the work don't work for free.

In fact, the editing process is such that the cost of printing, shipping, warehousing, distribution is really only around 10% of the retail cost.

So of a $30 hardcover, the publisher gets $20. And they probably need to price it at $27 to make up for the 30% cut at the electronic store (Amazon, Apple, Google, Kobo, whatever, and 30% is on the LOW side! Amazon "makes deals" at 30%, showing their real take is often far higher (30% being forced by Apple's flat-rate plan)).

Maybe $25 to make it a nice number since there's $3 in savings due to not having to actually print/ship/distribute/warehouse/handle returns.

I fail to see how this proposed behavior solves anything. Most software out there was written to assume that if you get back an address DNS resolution worked, if there was a problem you get back something like NXDOMAIN. Lots of apps are not going to report any problems if they get back 127.0.53.53, there are going to sit and wait for the connection to time out or depending on how the system is configured report connection refused. Leaving the user with no way to know the name was wrong.

It should be connection refused for most client systems. Because 127.0.53.53 is smack dab in 127/8 space - aka localhost space where all connections inside of 127/8 are supposed to resolve to itself, despite the actual IP used. For the few that have actual services in use (FTP, HTTP, etc), it's going to lead to a confusing mess.

The demand for this technology is there, as demonstrated by the popularity of 3D films. The availability of the technology to the consumer audience at the price point that will spark widespread adoption is not.

  The technology was developed and released at a time when consumers have little extra money to adopt the technology. Alongside that, the distribution model for 3DTV is flawed, demanding a clear chain of the 3DTV capable devices all be purchased in order to enable the functionality. Finally, there's not a single implementation of 3DTV, but rather several including side-by-side, interlace, every-other-frame, which has led to some interesting bugs affecting specific makes and models that fail to support these methods correctly.

  I believe my first point is ultimately what has delayed widespread adoption of 3DTV tech and caused some to call it a "fad".

Having actually done 3D work, you're partially right.

Though, the major issue with 3DTV is the damn glasses. While the percentage of spectacle wearers is fairly high, there's a good chunk of the population who don't, and wearing 3D glasses is goofy. Even among spectacle wearers 3D glasses are often ill-fitting and ill-wearing.

Especially since multitasking is the norm these days where people may look at the screen, then look elsewhere (smartphone, tablet, laptop) to tweet or other stuff, and dealing with the glasses in this case is even more annoying.

If 3DTV is to take off, you're going to need a glasses free display - which is still in the early R&D phase. And no, it's not like the 3DS screen (which is mediocre). I've seen real demos of it and it's actually very impressive (it was multi-view technology so the view shifts as you move about, creating a HUGE 120 degree viewing angle).

The signal formats are interesting since there are 4 primary formats - 3 of them halve a resolution, the aast is full res - side-by-side (quite common for existing implementations), top-and-bottom and line-interleaved (usually when converting interleaved input to progressive), with the last being frame-packed (a full-res version of top-and-bottom). Line interleaved is annoying to deal with, Frame packed is probably most common as that's what Blu-Ray uses (you want the quality, right? Well it's the only full-resolution format). Game consoles normally use side-by-side for 3D as it requires no change in hardware.

As the blog in EE Times ("The Case for Free, Open Instruction Sets") argues, an ARM license costs $1M to $10M and takes 6 to 24 months to negotiate and then they take a small royalty per chip.
http://www.eetimes.com/author....

The proprietary instruction sets (ARM, IBM, Intel) have indeed evolved; that is not the problem. The problem is that you're not allowed to share implementations of the proprietary instruction sets with others. Thus, the lowRISC project is using a design from UC Berkeley for free without having to take the time or money to negotiate a contract, and they can modify it as much as they desire. Can't do that with ARM.

A more hidden advantage is that a lower complexity chip is easier to fab.

A modern ARM core that you get spending $1M would be easily a 6-7 Metal process, and masks aren't cheap ($100K each. And a 6-7 Metal would easily need 15-20 masks, so $2M outlay before the first chip is made).

If the low complexity design can get away with a 4Metal design, that can easily halve the cost of just starting up. Plus if you use lower end technologies that they're about to retire instead of the latest and greatest, that'll cut fab costs down even more.

And Unity 5 is supposed to support multi-threaded physics as well. That should translate into a huge performance boost.

KSP, a game created by people who have never made a game before, that pushes both Unity and the best processors to their max. A game actually written to take advantage of a premium system instead of being written to a console level and ported.

I find it amusing that an Xbox One and PS4 would rank as low end computers for this game.

So much for Next-Gen.

Well, given the purpose of the game is educational, porting to consoles would be pointless. It's also an indie title hence its relatively low cost.

As for high end gaming PCs, well, yeah, the consoles have never matched what you could throw money at. But compared to the average Windows machine which doesn't have such advanced graphics and such, it probably is next-gen.

You have to remember a console is optimized for cost over its entire life - sure Sony and Microsoft could put the guts of a $2000 gaming PC in their consoles, but they'd either cost a lot of money, or never make back their cost.

It's also why Steam Machines are going to be pretty interesting in what you can stuff inside a box for $500 and how long they last - I don't see them lasting more than maybe 2-3 years before people in general give up on them. Either they'd be forced to upgrade something, or spend way more money in the end. I dare anyone to be able to take a $500 steam machine today and use it to the bitter end when the Xbox Two or PS5 are released.

Is there a list of guaranteed to never be used names? .local is not really that usefull for anything but the most simple LANs

Not to mention .local is used by IETF's ZeroConf (aka Bonjour) protocol to resolve using mDNS.

(It comes in handy on networks where the internal DNS servers don't accept registrations so your Linux machines can still be referenced using mDNS as if it was done regularly).

And well, on home networks that don't typically run DNS, well, mDNS makes it easy to find where that )(@*&%@)( printer is you just connected.

You're just miffed because I have a hotel on Park Place and three houses on Boardwalk.

Personal experience has it that the low rent district is the best - purely because no one wants it, and you can go to hotels readily. So you're pretty much dinging everyone early on in the game and getting tons of money out of it.

ANyhow, if the mere existence of alternative coins already devalues bitcoin, then bitcoin has already lost. Because now the value of your currency is dependent on the mere existence of another currency and how they choose to act.

That's like saying the value of the US Dollar can depend on how many zeroes Zimbabwe decided to put on their money today - while there is an influence (thanks to currency conversion) it doesn't influence the end user THAT much. Bread doesn't go up but USD$1 a loaf because Zimbabwe added three zeroes today instead two.

I think article poster is bitter that everyone realizes just how easy it is to do something like Bitcoin and that's undermining the value of those with significant holdings because any idiot can make their own currency and when it does, they lose 10% of their virtual holdings.

Heck, Ars Technica created their own currency to give everyone experience with doing a cryptocurrency. It could be used to buy pointless things to decorate your posts with (hats!), and that's it. No value otherwise since there's nothing else you could do with them on purpose. I suppose the interesting thing was is how many people went crazy with it and used high end rigs. Even though a couple of months later, they killed it all, wiped all wallets and even got rid of all the hats so everyone was back to the way they were. (And no, they actually said this at the beginning that it would happen in a few months so no point getting huge hauls).