> For anything but the simplest all-in-one low power SoC (e.g.: small hand-held radio with a single embed chip with a hardware MP2 decoder), the upgrade is purely a software one (a media device that is able to play music in MP3/OGG/AAC formats from a USB stick has already the necessary capability to play AAC encoded audio and could use DAB+).

For cost reasons, any consumer electronic device will usually be implemented on the cheapest possible SoC with the bare minimum of unused resources (eMMC, RAM, MIPS etc.)

> Would an employer look at the fact that I've added some patches or wrote documentation to a small open-source project, or created a tiny project of my own, as something worthwhile?

Yes, that's a question I was asking from time to time when I interviewed others, and almost no one has ever contributed to open source or put some code up for the public to see. There's only that much code you could write and we can discuss in half an hour, but if I look at a sizeable repo I'll have a much better idea of your code organization, documentation, API design chops, obvious bugs etc.

JavaScript does have private methods: http://javascript.crockford.co...

> You should be able to tell me at least three ways to get to any one place -- without a map, without GPS, without tech aids. Can't? Then you have no experience as a driver and I should, by default, not trust you.

That describes most taxi drivers, who will happily punch the destination into the GPS and drive according to the instructions. The age of "the Knowledge" is gone.

JTAG is not a language, and I believe blowing eFuses is not a reversible process. This technology is commonly used for chip binning and testing to permanently disable parts of the chip's logic (say, one of 4 cores that didn't pass testing) or features that the client didn't pay for (that one more Mb of L2 cache that costs $50 extra).

Following the description (if it is accurate), it is more likely that if the ROM fails the check a bit is set somewhere in flash or nvram that instructs the bootloader to stop. This memory area is not being written to by stock firmware upgrade sofware used by Motorola, but can be deleted at the service center who have the necessary hardware/software to issue the correct commands.

However it is equally likely that the TFA screwed around with incorrect files, overwrote some part of the Flash he was not supposed to, and simply confounded the bootloader into not working.

The bandwidth is truly unlimited, however, so it's a good deal. Just use really small files.

The RTM was leaked about two months before launch, as I remember... I guess some users couldn't wait for an upgrade :)

Actually, if you look just a bit further down the energy chain, those high speed trains would run on coal, which would be burned to heat water - just like steam engines of yesteryear.

Do you know how most of the electricity in the US is produced? Or do you think it just magically appears on those catenaries?

> ... so I charged 13 hours instead of the usual 8. Fuck the bastards up the ass.

You really showed 'em! The bastards will be walking funny for _years_ :-)

You should read up on "formatted capacity". In summary, some space goes to maintenance of the file system and the drive. Thus, the difference between gB and GB is only partly responsible for the 10% disparity you're seeing.

Both you and GP are misleaded by an irrelevant point. When you have a 397GB file, you don't decide whether to put it on 400GB (SI) or a 400gB (by Apple and hardware manufacturers definition). You put it on an 1TB drive to cope with expansion and because storage is cheap.

Thus, the entire discussion is irrelevant because the difference is in the single percent and eventually does not matter.

I hear you... In some parks of the country, you can't even open a trash can with your bear hands, much less kill someone with them :)

A few months ago I've snapped a pic of a building in Venice, CA with a page of QR code pasted on the door. Turns out the code was the URL for the real estate company. So the usage is definitely there, it's just not as pervasive as it is in Japan (yet).

I still have a foldable keyboard for my Palm IIIc. The Blackberries' keys are reset-button-sized compared to that.

http://www.pdacortex.com/palm_portable_keyboard_review.htm

If you have a reasonably old piece of hardware (I have a Logitech trackball 9 years old), the XP drivers that came with it on a CD are about 2 MB, with the installer.

It's the new, currently available version that is 50MB.

By the way, some HP printer "drivers", with 700MB+ and coming on 2 CDs, are legendary in that regard.