22407642
submission
Nyder writes:
Like most of us, I get harddrive problems. The problem? Hard to find info on what exactly is wrong, is if fixable, how to fix it and when to give up.
I have 4 harddrives that can be seen by the bios, seen inside windows (cept they can't be initialzed), but I can't get any old info off of them, or new info onto them.
Forums of various harddrive companies tend to have people complaining about it happening, but never any real solutions.
And these aren't the dead harddrives of yesteryear. Usually when harddrives died, they died. You knew they were dead, you moved on. Today? They don't seem dead, in fact, it seems more like a scam to sell more harddrives then anything else.
Hoping someone has some good ideas on how to fix these yourself, or what the problem is. I don't mind losing the occasional harddrive, but i've lost about as many harddrives in the last year or so, then I've ever lost in my 20+ years computing. I got 40mb IDE harddrives (and scsi of course) that are still going strong.
20614110
submission
Nyder writes:
Apple filed for a patent in September of 2009 titled "Location Histories for Location Aware Devices" with the intent to develop services based around the company's ability to locate and track mobile devices running the iOS operating system.
The abstract of the patent reads as follows:
"A location aware mobile device can include a baseband processor for communicating with one or more communication networks, such as a cellular network or WiFi network. In some implementations, the baseband processor can collect network information (e.g., transmitter IDs) over time. Upon request by a user or application, the network information can be translated to estimated position coordinates (e.g., latitude, longitude, altitude) of the location aware device for display on a map view or for other purposes. A user or application can query the location history database with a timestamp or other query to retrieve all or part of the location history for display in a map view."
The patent text goes on to outline how the tracking data could be accessed by applications, indicating Apple intends to build salable services around the collected data and allow third parties the ability to access it:
"A user or application can query the location history database with a timestamp or other query to retrieve all or part of the location history for display in a map view. In some implementations, the size and "freshness" of the location history database can be managed by eliminating duplicate entries in the database and/or removing older entries. The location history can be used to construct a travel timeline for the location aware device. The travel timeline can be displayed in a map view or used by location aware applications running on the location aware device or on a network. In some implementations, an Application Programming Interface (API) can be used by an application to query the location history database."
The patent application then goes on to describe how the location tracking data can include transmitter identifiers that correlate the data to a specific phone — which means a specific user — and how the data can be transmitted to network servers for processing:
"In some implementations, the network information can include transmitter identifiers (IDs). For example, Cell IDs can be tracked and recorded. The Cell IDs can be mapped to corresponding cell tower locations which can be used to provide estimated position coordinates of the location aware device. When a location history is requested by a user or application (e.g., through an API), the transmitter IDs can be translated to position coordinates of the location aware device which can be reverse geocoded to map locations for display on a map view or for other purposes. In other implementations, the network information can include WiFi scan data (e.g., access point IDs) which can be used to determine position coordinates of the location aware device, which can be reverse geocoded for display on a map view. In some implementations, the network information can be sent to a network server, which can translate the network information into position coordinates, which can be returned to the location aware device for processing by a location aware application."
Revelations of the patent application now confirm suspicions that Apple was quite aware of the storage of geolocation tracking data, that it was not merely a database of Wi-Fi locations, and the building of location histories on their customers was not due to a software glitch.
