OUR FAVORITE KOREAN CORPORATION and Windows Update
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There's been an update to this, by the way:
Turns out that the "Disable_Windowsupdate.exe" doesn't actually disable Windows Update but sets it to the mode where you have to select all updates manually. Which for most users will result in the same thing.
However, when they were asked WHY on Earth they insisted on pulling such a moronic stunt they didn't really have an answer.
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In a world where the text of a law doesn't matter any more if you want it not to matter badly enough?
Ah, someone else who's a touch pissed off about today's USSC decision...
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The solution here is to not buy shit in the first place.
Only one mobile phone maker doesn't put bloatware on their phones...
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In a world where laws or contracts written in the 80s treat devices differently based on irrelevant details like that.
Why do you think mobile YouTube refuses to let you play some videos, even though you can easily do it in the browser by setting desktop mode?
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A comment on one of the news sites mentioned that one likely reason for such an f-up is that they have a bug in their USB chip (assuming the USB driver is the reason that they disabled updates). Either they made their own chips and have an error, or they bought cheap knock-offs that don't work quite right.
Knowing a cheap-o company, their fix was to change the driver to deal with the hardware bug rather than throw out the chips. Okay... maybe...
But if they can't change the hardware, then the broken chips will continue to identify themselves as something that is compatible with the generic drivers. As a result, it may not be possible to fix the situation to allow any driver updates through Windows Update as the generic driver will always take over. (Depending on how bad they messed up it may be possible to have a driver load for a specific vender/product ID, but that would be the sane solution.)
And as always, cutting corners makes everyone else suffer in the long run. But they still sold thousands/millions of devices and made their profit!
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the outcome was essentially "all new phones have to have an FM radio in them"
How do I get FM radio on my Nexus 4? I carry around an ancient MP3 player just for its FM radio abilities!
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(Depending on how bad they messed up it may be possible to have a driver load for a specific vender/product ID, but that would be the sane solution.)
The chips might be identifying as the wrong class of device, or there might even be multiple classes of device identifying as the same class with what they really are as a non-standard field. That would be the sort of clbuttic screw up that a custom driver would be needed to paper over. Bonus points if the USB hardware is identifying as the same as something made by another manufacturer. Because that sort of wrong would really irritate a lot of people…
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Everyone always links to this comic, but I don't think it's true.
In vast majority of cases, yes, it is.
someone finally releases the "15nth standard" that actually works
… which is absolutely irrelevant, because a working implementation beats any new standard that needs to be implemented no matter how easy to implement it is unless the existing implementation has a fatal limitation that can't be fixed without a major rework. That is not the case most of the time.
It's one of the simplest things in the world: connect to another machine and send text strings
Networking is hard.
we indeed have a good (enough) standard for it: XMPP
XMPP is abysmally bad and broken by design. It can't guarantee message delivery.
what's missing?
FREAKING PROTOCOL LEVEL ACKNOWLEDGE! A fundamental thing which makes a protocol mostly useless when it's missing. And yes, it does have practical impact. Loosing messages can be readily observed under poor network conditions. And since DSLs became reasonably reliable, mobile came with new batch of network unreliability, so we do care.
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I think the "i-hate-samsung" category is starting to shape up. Poor Oracle.
Hahaha.... the "galaxy-hate-samsung" category would be a better fit :imsofunny:
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It can't guarantee message delivery.
Nothing can actually guarantee that (in a finite amount time). Even the database-backed reliable transport stuff can't; that just operates on the principle of keeping on trying until it gets a message back saying that the original message has got through. (Other information is probably in that return message as well; there isn't a blizzard of ACKn messages being sent back and forth.) A fundamental principle of networking is that shit can always go wrong even when you make sure that nothing can go wrong.
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Pendantry, pendantry.
Proper protocol can ensure message is delivered provided both parties still exist and the network between them does come up eventually. Any other case basically means the system is torn down and nobody expects a destroyed system to keep working.
XMPP can't ensure message is delivered after any fault. You type a message, ride into a tunnel and the message is lost without indication. People generally expect more than that.
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XMPP can't ensure message is delivered after any fault. You type a message, ride into a tunnel and the message is lost without indication. People generally expect more than that.
I think you're misunderstanding what it does, and so are applying some sort of unreasonable standard to it.
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For me, the "p".
hmm?
oh, yeah. i earned the first part of my long name.....
/me stomps off to crroect another swyop
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I think you're misunderstanding what it does, and so are applying some sort of unreasonable standard to it.
I understand it perfectly. I used the thing as user and I used it as programmer and I know exactly why and how it does not work:
When the connection breaks, the communicating parties have no way of knowing which messages made it to the other end and which did not. At the moment it breaks obviously, but there is no way to find out after establishing the connection. So when you send a message and the connection does not work at that moment (you lost signal, bad gateway ran out of memory and dropped it or something), the underlying transmission will fail, the TCP stack will find out (it has acknowledge and it times out), but the XMPP peer still assumes the message got sent because it does not know any better. And the message is lost. Observed in the wild (behind crappy gateway), effing annoying.
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And of course because the protocol is hop-by-hop, if one client kinda-sorta works it around by sending a ping after each message, it still can't trust the rest of the chain.
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How do I get FM radio on my Nexus 4? I carry around an ancient MP3 player just for its FM radio abilities!
A quick Google suggests it doesn't have one.
This wouldn't apply, probably, to a Nexus device, but the US carriers are really bad about enabling them. For no good reason I've ever heard, they have the ability to keep the chip off. AT&T is really bad about that, and 2013-era devices didn't always have them anyway. (I had a Galaxy Note II--the international versions mostly had it, but the US versions all didn't.)
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/me stomps off to crroect another swyop
Swype doesn't have any[1] typos built into it, so for THAT you must've either typed it manually, or at some point typed it wrong and then added it to the dictionary.
[1] that I know of.
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Swype doesn't have any[1] typos built into it, so for THAT you must've either typed it manually, or at some point typed it wrong and then added it to the dictionary.
fun fact, i'm rarely on mobile because the mobile browsing experience is so terrible on my bargain bin sellout of a phone... I mean how could i possibly expect good performance on a Nexus 5‽
i really just like saying swing more.
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A quick Google suggests [Nexus 4] doesn't have [FM radio].
I know, but you said that the broadcasters forced all new mobile devices to have one. Most of my Nokia phones have had FM radio and it is useful to listen to me music without using data.
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Oh hey look, someone watched Network. Ripped-off its primary joke, made it a comic, then expected all his readers to be too stupid to have watched Network.
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...the only conceivable reason for not having watched Network is stupidity?
What an odd little world you occupy.
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I know, but you said that the broadcasters forced all new mobile devices to have one.
Apparently after the Nexus 4 came out.
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Oh hey look, someone watched Network. Ripped-off its primary joke, made it a comic, then expected all his readers to be too stupid to have watched Network.
Are you mad as hell? Are you going to take it any more?
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Always.
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Nexus 4 came out in 2012 so it's not that old. Almost every article I've found regarding mandating FM receivers is dated 2010.
However, one article from two months ago was saying that too many mobile phones still have FM radio receiver chips but have deactivated them. So I don't think there is any such law/agreement/whatever?
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More likely, it was mandated that the phone had to have the chip but too expensive to write the software to use it, or something like that, meaning that it has the chip and thus technically has the capability, just it doesn't work.
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Samsung promises to stop disabling Windows Update
Company will issue an update in the next few days.
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Damn, I was really hoping for that packet sniffer solution.
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Best-selling phone in Bangledesh!!!!!
We reviewed the Samsung Z1 a few months ago, and we can say that those million users are getting a terrible smartphone experience.
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One of the comments links to https://what.thedailywtf.com/t/enlightened/8795. I wonder which of us is "JonimusPrime" on Ars.
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That'd be you. Blakey would never use that as a pseudonym, and it's unrelated to his real name.
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Not me; I don't have an Ars account. It could be anyone here. By "us," I meant "TDWTF participants," not "Blakey and me."
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This is what we internally call a "Samsung success". In contrast to a plain "success", a Samsung success is a state when the project is total shit, which should be burned and the ashes buried deep within the bowels of Earth. But it is proclaimed a success because, officially, there are no failures in Samsung.
In other words - Tizen is a typical Samsung success and will remain a success each year.
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Fuck, today I learnt that compatibility mode is going away from Tizen next year... And all I could think of was your wise, frightening words.
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Unlimited data!
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do you also have universal signal?
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I tend to have a couple of albums in my Google Play Music cached, but most places I listen to music I do have decent signal.
If I was living in London and getting the Tube to work, it would be different but my workflow works for me
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Jaloopa used outhipster
It's super effective
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@An old bath towel I used to own said:
Warning: Your new sony walkman may cause serious sunburn. Please turn around at the end of the tape.
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