Minidisc and ATRAC pre-date MP3 as a format (1992 v 1995), so of course they didn't use the MP3 standard. Sony released MP3 players in the 90s, and while the software did indeed suck, it wasn't because of DRM. It didn't allow you to copy from MP3 player to computer, but that's not really a thing people want to do.

Anyway, the idea that they could leverage their movie holdings counters the idea that using an established standard as a format would have helped them. If they have large holdings, the only way to leverage that would be to restrict these large holdings to a Sony-only format. Similarly, Sony owns the company that makes Uncharted, they makes games in a Sony-exclusive format. If they owned the company that made Uncharted, and then had them design games in some open gaming format that would work on any gaming system, that would not help Sony's hardware division.

It's de facto exactly the same. In the case of a war, any sort of informal treaty with Russia would have been forgotten and we would have taken out the other's space based assets. Of course. It's not like "they're raining death down on us from above...but we're powerless to stop them! We have an informal treaty!"

And certainly China doesn't believe it could "win" a conflict with the US. And the US military procedures and military systems are designed with the idea that GPS may become unavailable (anyway, GPS signal can simply be jammed).

Well of course people already don't take Windows Phone seriously.

Well if programming for OpenGL is more difficult and requires elite skills just to be passably decent, that's a huge knock against OpenGL.

You're approaching this like a college student rather than like an engineer.

Maybe you ran into a guy who did that, but TMobile promotes it pretty well on their stores and their web page, and before they had iphones they had radio ads encouraging people to just use an unlocked iphone.

I looked into prices for my wife and I, and even without the subsidized phone (and using expensive phones paid off per the month) TMobile was substantially cheaper than AT&T or Verizon. For a family of four, AT&T becomes cheapest, with its family plans.

You could say that all the different prices and contracts and deals makes comparison between companies more difficult than it should be, but that doesn't make TMobile more expensive.

It's de facto been the same in the US...you just ask your company for a code and they give it to you for free (even if the phone has previously been under contract). Additionally, you've always been able to buy unlocked phones.

From RT:
http://rt.com/politics/177248-...

Such authors will now have to register with the state watchdog Roskomnadzor, disclose their real identity and follow the same rules as journalists working in conventional state-registered mass media.

  The restrictions include the demand to verify information before publishing it and abstain from releasing reports containing slander, hate speech, extremist calls or other banned information such as, for example, advice on suicide. Also, the law bans popular bloggers from using obscene language, drawing heavy criticism and mockery from the online crowd.

So.., now you're not legally allowed to lie to a large number of people or incite violence based on those lies. Gee. That's bad how? Might be nice to have something like that in the West, because right now it's perfectly legal for FOX News to outright lie to their viewers.

Russia, like any large nation the US hates, (see Venezuela) must defend against the standard CIA tactics used to de-stabilize governments and population bases through grass roots propaganda tactics. Forcing creeps and liars out of the game seems like a pretty good way to do this. You don't want to be forced out? Then follow the law and back up your claims with fact checking verification of what you are writing, don't use hate speech and don't incite violence. How hard is that?

There's a reason you're not allowed to yell "Fire" in a crowded theater, and this falls neatly beneath the same rubric.

Honestly, think of the gossips and cruel kids in school spreading lies in deliberate attempts to undermine healthy energies. Putin has the guts to whip the carpet out from under such types.

So now, once you reach 3000 readers, the Russian government says you are a news source with real pull and must start acting in a manner befitting such responsibility. Is 3000 the right magic number to have picked? I don't know, but it makes perfect sense to draw a line somewhere.

Of course, any law can be abused, but right now I don't see this as an abuse. I see it as a sensible measure as Russia is under increasing media attack by a truly psychopathic nation whose leadership is completely disconnected from objective reality, has a tail-spinning economy and seemingly bottomless war lust. Of course you have to take measures to protect your populace from that kind of sickness.

But naturally, this proactive move is being spun with wicked and/or childish glee in the West (depending on whether you are CIA or just ignorant and easily led).

Huh? Most of the people who bought Wiis put it in the back of their closet after a few months. It has to be the least-used console ever made.

He joined the Nazis when he didn't have to, and then later lied under oath about when he joined, saying he didn't join until years later when he did have to.

Right, the parliamentary system, where the far-right and far-left parties form a single government that really makes no logical sense except as a political counter to the centrist government that is the most popular and by most senses of logic should win. Or the recent spate of far-right xenophobic parties that still manage to get the #3 position and end up with governing responsibilities.

Europe (for instance) has both a long and modern history of committing genocide and falling into fascism after a marginal political party slowly comes into power. It should encourage a political system that brings politics towards a more centrist position, rather than a political system that rewards appealing to the extremes and driving people in the center to these extremes.

Unless *all* datafiles on your client's system are encrypted, also, and I don't think even that's enough.

ObDisclosure: I worked for about 4 months on a contract at Trustwave, a root CA.

Leaving that huge hole in your defenses... I suggest you look, if you don't already know, at .

From the 1.2 std: "Firewalls are a key protection mechanism for any computer network. Other system components may provide Firewall functionality, provided they meet the minimum requirements for Firewalls as provided in Requirement"

Even all data between two systems *MUST* be encrypted, for full compliance, if you're doing your own.

So, what this vendor is doing... I'd say you and your client need to reread the contract *VERY* closely, and if they say they're adhering to stds, they're in violation of the contract.

                        mark

Read a book. Pick up a new hobby. Go to the beach. Learn a language!

I just skimmed half of the 300 or so comments, and have yet to see anyone consider the point of the article, rather than whether they said "Red Bull is a gateway drug".

Y'know, the real point: upper managers, under the heel of venture capital who want 1000% ROI next week, giving people insanely impossible deadlines, and then getting them (under threat of being fired) to work far beyond any reason when it's not a disaster zone (say, a flood) or the middle of a war zone.

And if you work like that, with not a trace of a life, and think you're Important, there's another word for you: sucker. I'd even add stupid sucker.

                mark, who swore he'd never do that again after breaking 70 hours in one week in the mid-nineties
                                              (and did I mention the pagers?)*

* Admittedly, not crazy enough to do what one of the young what-was-then-Anderson Consulting guys did: 1 week, 119 hours....

The robot barely moves, you could pretty much just put a cell phone on a stand and run a Jibo app and it would be the same thing. Make a $100 stand that's capable of being articulated about by cell phone software, and you could do everything that's in this video.

So while the youtube video is fun, what the company is really promising is a version of Siri that's far & away better than what Apple is capable of, delivered in less than a year and a half, on a budget far smaller than Apple's. I wish them the best but I'm sorry, I have to be a knee-jerk cynic.

Not a troll. I actually do use Libreoffice, both on Mac and on a Linux. However even for my very simple jobs, I often find Libreoffice has some bug I can't work around and I have to load up my pirated copy of MS Office, which actually works.

I keep using the open sores software based on some weird principle. It's fine (but not quite as good) for editing basic text documents.