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http://i.gizmodo.com/5164841/robot-programmed-to-love-traps-woman-in-lab-hugs-her-repeatedly

As everybody else has said... why bother rebooting it? My XP-based laptop is effectively instant-on and instant-off with sleep mode, and it really only gets rebooted after I've been playing video games all day, or after a system update.

And don't gripe about battery life... sleep mode uses *very* little power. I have, quite literally, put my laptop in sleep mode, gone on vacation, and come back 3 weeks later to a laptop with a battery that still had enough juice to run for 3.5h before it needed to be plugged in. (The laptop in question has a Core 2 Duo T5450 @ 1.66GHz, 2GB of RAM, 120GB 7200rpm HDD, DVD, 15.4" LCD @ 1680x1050).

Even with netbooks, battery life in sleep mode is very long. I have a Dell Mini 9 (64GB SSD, 2GB RAM) running OS/X (thanks to http://gizmodo.com/5156903/how-to-hackintosh-a-dell-mini-9-into-the-ultimate-os-x-netbook), and that one is also pretty much instant-on and instant-off with sleep mode, and hasn't needed to be plugged in in 3 days.

So... why are you actually bothering to power-down and reboot from cold your acer-one?

Just thought I'd add to this discussion:
http://gizmodo.com/363985/air-force-buys-300-playstation-3-for-research
This came out about a year or so ago.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=air+force+research+laboratory+ps3&aq=0&oq=
They did this because the comparative price was a bargain.
http://militarytimes.com/forums/showthread.php?p=88652
http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2008/03/airforce_playstation_031308/

I have to get back to work now.

Here is a decent comparison of mobile phone broswers. But the conclusion they reach is basically that everything out there has some critical issues. It's understandable considering the problems: constrained inputs (and different means of input depending on the device), trying to render pages designed for 19" monitors at 800x600 resolution on 4" screens at 320x320 resolution on hardware and operating systems that are primitive by modern standards.

Things will get better of course (anything is better than Mobile IE), but in the meantime, it means the Web in your pocket isn't quite the same as it is at your desk.

Unless you think a lack of (or maybe instead shady) business creds automatically gives you geek creds... But please do tell what geeky things they have done? Is building a cheap PC (with "good" old BIOS), putting EFI on it, pretending they made it, and selling it for far more than cost geeky?

The only problem is that color e-ink is only at the research stages yet. Maybe something like this in the meanwhile ?

Gizmodo has a much better overview with a video of the device in action, detailed specs, etc. http://i.gizmodo.com/5162584/always-innovating-touch-book-is-a-part+netbook-part+tablet-open-source-frankenstein?skyline=true&s=x

That's what I thought. According to this , the display with keyboard sells for $399.

Additionally, the only storage is an 8GB SD card, so adding more extras such as a hard drive will further jack up the cost.

Or this radio made and sold in Japan (its a bit older, but it illustrates the point):

http://japan-auto-sound.com/images/206-0606_IMG.jpg

Checkout some of these radios sold in the west.

http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Products/CarAudioVideo/Source/CD-Players/Pioneer/FH-P8000BT
http://www.alpine-usa.com/US-en/products/product.php?model=IVA-W505
http://www.alpine-usa.com/US-en/products/product.php?model=IVA-D106

Check out the dash of the Nissan GT-R:

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/cars/nissans-gt+r-data+dense-dashboard-explained-324672.php

Compare the GT-R dash with the dash of the Corvette ZR-1:

http://www.automobilemag.com/reviews/chevrolet/0802_2009_chevrolet_corvette_zr1/photo_03.html

Here - check out some western dashboards

http://www.seriouswheels.com/pics-2008/a/2008-Audi-R8-V12-TDI-Dashboard-1280x960.jpg

http://supercarspecs.com/images/porsche/2008porsche911gt2/images/2008-Porsche-911-GT2-Dashboard-1280x960.jpg
http://z.about.com/d/cars/1/0/y/5/1/bw_08reventon_dash2.jpg
http://www.seriouswheels.com/pics-2008/klm/2008-Lamborghini-Gallardo-LP560-4-Dashboard-1920x1440.jpg
http://i.pbase.com/g4/68/763068/2/91636989.LEA7wlE4.jpg

Other than the cellphone thing, can you give any examples?
Otherwise, I would it consider the above explanation to be an Apple Apologist's explanation.

How about this? http://gizmodo.com/5069366/why-zen-software-design-does-not-come-from-japan

It's a photo of a Japanese cellphone, complete with a ton of photos showing the UI. I think the homescreen says it all - 20 icons (and more if that thing on the edge is a scroll bar), but nothing other than an icon showing what function that icon will invoke.

Check out the dash of the Nissan GT-R:

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/cars/nissans-gt+r-data+dense-dashboard-explained-324672.php

Compare the GT-R dash with the dash of the Corvette ZR-1:

http://www.automobilemag.com/reviews/chevrolet/0802_2009_chevrolet_corvette_zr1/photo_03.html

Or this radio made and sold in Japan (its a bit older, but it illustrates the point):

http://japan-auto-sound.com/images/206-0606_IMG.jpg

I was not apologizing for Apple - I was faulting them for their lack of understanding Japanese culture and what the Japanese value in usability and functionality. They may need to design different phones for different markets if they wish to succeed in those markets.

-ted

I find it very delightful that a company that Embraced, Enhanced, Extinguished, might be brought down by a tiny, cheap machine called EEE.

Asus's EEE has been running Windows for a while.

Falcon

A not-insignificant chunk is running OS X, as well.

How To: Hackintosh a Dell Mini 9 Into the Ultimate OS X Netbook

Yes, it works well, it's fast, and all hardware is supported. Installation is done with a retail Leopard disk, so it's a lot cleaner than most hackintoshes, and it's safely updateable.

How To: Hackintosh a Dell Mini 9 Into the Ultimate OS X Netbook

That was you?

My favorite Google Street View story: Google Maps Car Hits Deer.

Just like the settlement it reached with book authors, Google could give $66 to each homeowner photographed by StreetView. We could call that agreement the Google stimulus package :-)

There is a serious discussion to be had about privacy rights and Google's objective to picture, reference and catalog everything. Some inside Google take the "do no evil" to heart. Street View blurs faces and license plates.

Good, but I wish it didn't have to be voluntary. We know what voluntary compliance by various industries lead to. That's why privacy laws have to set clear boundaries. In the dismissed lawsuit, note that the Google driver did enter a private road by mistake. Mistakes in sensitive privacy situations can be very damaging.

--
Join a FairSoftware Project: share the revenue, be part of important decisions

"Then why isn't there an SSH client shown in the screenshot instead of that persistent SGV clock?"

That is the most stupid question I have been asked in a very long time.

There are two things that people jailbreak their phones for: Running software that Apple doesn't want on the phones (backgrounder, some emulators, tethering)

At least from this article about some jailbreak apps, there are other reasons why people want jailbreak apps (replacing Springboard to get a different main screen - they're about to run out of new names, though :-) - dealing in one app with settings/files/etc. from multiple apps, video capture, cut-and-paste, etc.).

As to the former: Fine, have your slowed down devices,

"Slowed down" by what? Nothing requires all background apps to spin in a loop chewing up CPU when they're not in the foreground, just as nothing requires them to do so when they are in the foreground. iPhone OS isn't some old single-tasking OS where you have to be in a spin loop while waiting for input.

And even when they are using CPU, the scheduler should usually be able to give the foreground process(es) enough CPU to get its job done.

The main concern I'd have for background jobs that consume CPU would be having them run the battery down. I don't know whether the OS could take that into account, e.g. limiting the amount of "battery time" a background app can get.

Tabasco. If it's good enough for the CIA it's good enough for your network cables.

Dead Drop:

The reasoning was that people don't go around picking up dead rats to see what's inside. As for animals who might be looking for a tasty snack, the rats were painted with Tabasco sauce, repellent to every critter but humans. Fun fact: The CIA used white rats for this, so that they could dye them to match the indigenous coloration of local rats.

He most likely has both, as Obama has been seen using a blackberry while president: http://i.gizmodo.com/5144129/the-secrets-of-obamas-email

Wrong.

He carries both. And he is carrying a "real" blackberry.

Hardly. Your announcement concerns getting them into 30 cinema and their longer term plans are only to put them into 75 out of 110 of their cinemas.

According to this link on Gizmodo.

They make a lot of it having only three actuators, but anybody with a LEGO Mindstorm knows that's the minimum you need. Two to provide propulsion and differential steering (or one for propulsion and one to turn the wheels) plus a third to actually do something when you get there. This applies even for robots without wheels: http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2007/12/mindstormsnxtspike.jpg

Uncensored version here: http://i.gizmodo.com/5144199/prank-of-the-year-comcast-tucson-airs-graphic-porn-during-super-bowl-nsfw

Well, actually no one so far disputed the case Microsoft makes. Mullar does:

In response to numerous requests for comments regarding a lawsuit filed against me in Washington, I would like to make the following comments.

I am the inventor of U.S. Patent No. 6,411,941 relating to software anti-piracy technology, and Ancora is my company.

I applied for my patent in 1998. In 2002, the patent issued from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. In 2003, I approached Microsoft and had several discussions with a Microsoft lawyer and employees of Microsoftâ(TM)s Anti Piracy group about my invention and the benefits Microsoft could realize by using it. Microsoft declined and said they had no interest in my invention.

After 3 years of working at a start up without salary and benefits, and with a first child about to be born, it was time for me to move on and look for a job to support my family. We ceased business operations at Ancora in 2005, and Microsoft was the first company to extend me an employment offer. I accepted. In early 2006, I moved my family to Seattle from Los Angeles, bought a house and focused on my new career at Microsoft. I enjoyed my job very much, and Microsoft commended my work and even promoted me.
When I joined Microsoft, I notified them in writing of Ancora and my patent in both my resume and in my employment agreement. In its complaint against me, Microsoft withheld the portions of these key documents that show this.

At the same time I was employed at Microsoft, but unknown to me, Microsoft was developing what is now known as âoeOEM Activation.â OEM Activation is installed on computers made by HP, Dell, Toshiba and others (called OEMs) to prevent piracy of Microsoftâ(TM)s Windows Vista software installed on those computers. This work was being done in a different department at Microsoft.

Now, I personally find there should not be patents at all. It is a shame to see the defamation campaign of Microsoft. The case shows that the patent system does not have any benefit at all for software. Small inventors cannot enforce them against ruthless big companies:

OEM Activation is a blatant copy of my invention. In fact, the same Microsoft person that I explained my invention to back in 2003 was involved in the development of OEM Activation.

Right now, you can either develop for the web, which will work everywhere, or write one app in Win32/.Net, one in Objective C for Mac, one in Java with Blackberry specific apis, one in Objective C for iPhone, one in [whatever palm is up to], one in .net for winmobile, etc, etc etc.

You're not free from platform issues with a web app either. Just of the top of my head:

• You have to deal with browser variances (or use a framework that abstracts that away at the expense of performance). Even though JavaScript implementations have improved, some browsers still do things "differently."
• Mobile device hardware and input methods are too varied. On the desktop, you have to deal with different APIs, sure, but the input devices are pretty much standard (keyboard, mouse, etc.) On a mobile device, your input devices are different from the desktop, as well as being different from another mobile device. There's no way that the same UI is going to be usable, let alone easy to use, on both a touch-only device at 320x480 and a QWERTY thumbboard device with a D-pad at 320x240.
• Mobile devices are still far more hardware constrained than the desktop. The iPhone and the Nokia E71 have two relatively fast processors, two WebKit-based renderers, and two relatively fast JavaScript implementations -- and they still choke on some traditional web apps. All that JavaScript that performs just great in Firefox or IE may well slow to a crawl when executed on a mobile device. "No problem", I hear you say, "we'll just write an alternate 'low-JS' version for the mobile devices". Sure, you can do that -- but isn't that kinda what you were trying to avoid in the first place?
• Mobile browsers suck. This is getting better, but progress is kinda slow. The iPhone, Android, and S60 phones use WebKit -- but (most) Blackberries and (almost all) Palm devices have pretty poor browsers. Windows Mobile, with its version of IE, has a downright comical rendering engine. (Seriously. To quote Gizmodo: "Jesus Christ. This is a joke, right Microsoft? Hahaha. No really, this is the worst smartphone browser on the planet. It couldn't render its way out of an ASCII-art paper bag.") Good luck writing CSS and JavaScript that delivers a desktop experience across all those different browsers.

Pretty much each of those issues can be solved (and indeed, often is solved) by doing browser detection and delivering a different mix of CSS/JS. But if you're going to do that, why bother writing a web app in the first place?
Note: If you want some excellent examples of why web apps are completely unfeasible for mobile use, check out Gizmodo's mobile browser comparison.

I'm sure the robots will find them delicious as well.

I have no doubt they will...

It can be argued that OLPC started the netbook category, when ASUS and Intel saw the outpouring of support.

This is the only article I could find cited by Wikipedia supporting the widely-repeated claim that OLPC inspired the "netbook" market, and this is just speculation by one UK blogger. Yet it's cited as a source for a factual statement in Wikipedia article about the XO-1 filled with "citation needed" tags.

I'm not saying it isn't true, but it's kind of a broad and evangelistic claim and requires a little more research.

Thankfully, Gizmodo did an excellent series on the trials and triumphs of OLPC, including the "who invented the netbook" question. There's no clear answer, but it definitely appears that the OLPC woke up computer manufacturers to the fact that there was a large, untapped market out there for cheap "netbooks."

Actually, we have 1gbps service to our houses here in Japan for approximately $60 a month.

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/27/1757211&from=rss

http://gizmodo.com/5055965/1gbps-fiber+optic-service-arrives-in-japan-on-october-1

Yes, I thought it was earlier too, and maybe it is, but I just found this source before posting that. *shrug*

After going through all the usual suspects like yourself, it turned out that that particular line of Dell laptops was just badly designed. It simply couldn't cope with the heat build up and slowed down the CPU instead.

I wonder if you are talking about a certain earlier range of Dell laptops? If so, then you might be glad that it is slowing down and not doing something else.

PS - I couldn't resist the joke and have nothing against Dell.

"I saw a MIPS based netbook for about US $150" I guess you mean this: http://gizmodo.com/5105146/170-alpha-400-mips-netbook-is-as-expensive-as-it-is-desirable

That's the one. I love how the site you found poo-poos the specs though. $expletive-string-here, this thing has hundreds of times the ram of machines that only a few decades ago were being used by dozens of scientific users doing real work concurrently, and a processor to easily match that, and it's not considered sufficient to read a news article and check your email on?

I expect sloppy programming and bloat on windows, it's quite disappointing how thoroughly it's taken over the linux world as well though.

But nevertheless, if you use your competitor's product to do your sales presentation, it doesn't look very good.

Oh, it looks damn good... to me...

The real one seems lame. Now the Lego one though was what should have made slashdot.

Lego Obama Presidential Inauguration Brings Hope to Bricks Too
http://i.gizmodo.com/photogallery/legoobamainauguration/1006247332

> For what? Hiring paid actors to say good things about a product?

False and misleading advertising. They deliberately concealed the fact that these "reviews" were paid ads with the intent that the public be misled into believing that the imaginary reviewers were real people who actually used and liked the product.

Considering it's not the first time someone used Amazon's Mechanican Turk to buy a review, and probably only one of a mountain of other "bought reviews", Belkin would be long out of business by the time they got around to it. (It's an incredibly common event, and happens everywhere. Usually the payment's indirect, though, but not always.)

Heck, you want EA to go sue everyone who gave Spore a negative review because of the DRM? (I'm sure a good portion of them didn't buy the game, and thus others were probably "misled into believing that the imaginary reviewers were real people who used and" hated it.)

I would go back and look at who own Alienware....I think it starts with D and ends with ELL.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/pcs/dell-buys-alienware-162317.php

can anybody imagine Steve Jobs with long hair and a serious beard? I can't.

You don't need to imagine that at all.

It's not about the 'archival' of data. The Blackberry taps into YOUR traditional mail infrastructure. If you back it up, then your messages are archived.

The point is, Obama wants to have conversations that are NOT archived. So much for "change". The Obamasiah is just another politician.

No, it's more about the fact that an external company is granted access (usually via VPN) to your internal network (or at least part of it) and, more specifically, they get to keep a copy of your authentication credentials (so they can watch your new mail arrive, copy it, and delivery it to your device). Allowing a 3rd party company VPN access to a US government network with the Whitehouse mail server and, oh by the way, a copy of the president's username and password... well NOW maybe you can understand why they're nervous about security.

Not at all. You really don't understand the blackberry platform (neither do the people who modded you insightful). Start by looking at blackberry security certifications: http://na.blackberry.com/eng/ataglance/security/certifications.jsp

With a blackberry enterprise server (BES), no outsider connects to your email system, has access to the encryption keys, access to your email or access to your password.

The BES software is installed on YOUR windows (2000, 2003, 2008) server. A regular user account on this server connects to YOUR email server (exchange, notes, groupwise), and gets your email. This user account has permission to read/send YOUR email.

When new email arrives on YOUR server, the BES account grabs the message, the email is compressed and encrypted with the handheld's encryption key using AES-128. Only then is the message sent outside your network to RIM. This connection is outbound on tcp port 3101 to srp.na.blackberry.net. No other external internet access needed. RIM only receives the encrypted message (RIM can't decrypt it, since RIM doesn't have the keys). RIM then forwards the message to the cell phone carrier, who sends it to the handheld. The handheld receives it and uses its decryption key to read the message.

For additional paranoia you can use PGP or S/MIME in addition to the native AES-128 encryption. The BES is made up of 8 or so services. These can be installed on different computers, and only the blackberry router service connects to the internet.

Frankly it would be better if he were addicted to an iPhone

You gotta be kidding. Apple knows nothing about mobile security. Tapping an iphone in a certain way will unlock it. The content is not stored encrypted. There is no remote wipe. Apple retains full control of your iphone and can remove applications whenever Apple feels like it.

This is a very intriguing treatment. The "games" aren't exactly Counter-Strike or WoW, though. In fact, they're very similar to this toy. The presentation I saw had kids with electrodes on their heads looking at a monitor that had a dude hanging on a red balloon. The object was to keep the balloon at a specified altitude based on input from the electrodes. Supposedly, after a few months of these types of exercises, someone in this program will be able to keep the balloon steady at will. This is supposed to build concentration skills that can be transferred over to help on things like studying and professional work. The doctor giving the presentation said that only about 60% of people who enter the program are able to successfully develop these skills.

I have moderate ADD (no H) myself and have had great success using the drug Adderall. I went from getting C's and D's in school to getting nearly straight A's as a result of using the medication. However, the drugs make me feel a bit subdued and this is not always desirable. There's also a psychological factor in that I'm somewhat bothered by the idea of having to rely on a chemical stimulant to be able to sit and do the things that other people can do without drugs. I was highly interested by this treatment, but it's quite costly and time-consuming (several thousand USD over about 2 years). My insurance company would not cover any of it and I doubt most companies would since it's largely experimental at this point. This coupled with a low-ish success rate have deterred me thus far. Are there any 'dotters out there that have tried this? The idea seems sound, in theory, but I never actually have spoken with someone who underwent the treatment.

It's been shown on a number of occasions that creating airborne surveillance devices which look like animals simply invites predators to catch and destroy them.

http://gizmodo.com/359417/hawks-agree-wowwees-dragonfly-tastes-delicious

Can be seen here

You can dual-boot windows 7.

http://i.gizmodo.com/5120606/how-to-run-windows-7-and-your-old-os-on-the-same-computer

Oh, they're working on it. Takeoff is a little rough though.

And no one ever was wrong about the next product that would knock Apple out of the lead in a niche:

http://gizmodo.com/384440/rim-engineers-call-touchscreen-blackberry-apple-killer
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/08/songbird-the-open-so.html
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20081215/amazons-mp3-store-one-year-in-no-itunes-killer-probably-wont-be/
http://www.allfacebook.com/2007/10/facebook-to-launch-itunes-competitor/
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/business/appleaday/blog/2008/07/dells_ipod_killer_revealed_pro.html
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1027_3-5183692.html

Here in Denmark they have (at least on one of the national channels, don't watch the other) switched the blue/green screen with a huge plasma/LCD TV, it works just as well without the hassle of additional processing.

Speaking of TV processing, CNN is using a really cool technology for "3D" interviews: http://gizmodo.com/5076663/how-the-cnn-holographic-interview-system-works . (Note, they call it hologram, but it is by no means holographic, it's just a very cool way of presenting interviews, the guy in the studio can't actually see the person he is interviewing). technology wise it's a pretty amazing feat, having to build and image based on active camera angle real time is by no means trivial.

http://gizmodo.com/340027/westinghouse-goes-wireless-with-ultrawideband-pulse+link-hdtv

The link refers to an HDTV with built in wireless ultrawideband also being introduced at CES. This would seem to be an ideal companion to one of these sitting on the wall in your livingroom.

Frankly, I'd prefer cheaper with no battery. I generally use my notebook at home plugged in. If it came with a classy looking charger stand to sit with the other av gear remotes and offered 3+ hours of on-battery use, that would be cool too.

Fact is a lot of people aren't affected by the switch (me included) but I think it's only fair for those who can't get the help transitioning, to be able to have extra time to switch over.

http://i.gizmodo.com/5125905/star-wars-force-trainer-uses-mind-bullets-to-move-ball-through-chute this seems a little more newsworthy to me... consider this the ATARI joystick of brain wave control...

To be honest, this is exactly the sort of thing that the OLPC project needs to remain relevant. OLPC has been failing not because it isn't an worthwile project, but because people are already producing $200 commodity laptops that are good enough.

Touchscreens allows for arbitrary keyboard layouts without retooling factories, reducing manufacturing costs. Also, it reduces the raw number of components significantly. Negroponte even said that the reason why they announced so early is because they're hoping other people will copy their lead, thus driving costs down. Dumping Sugar meant they don't have the daunting burden of developing an OS themselves.

This seems pretty shrewed to me.