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Don't forget, there's is no such thing as unbiased reporting. We're really looking more for distortions and agendas; something that's almost impossible to define, but we know when we see it.

And sometimes we don't. NPR is often incorrectly perceived as 'left' due to their story selection - broadcasting from Istanbul just sounds unusual to US ears. And often, they are correctly perceived as coming from the left, but they usually do OK in their more in depth stories. Separately, the bias toward sensationalism that you noted is very common in the broadcast world. That's one where we as audiences share some of the blame; the ratings from stuff like that ensure that we'll get more if it.

Fox News is still in a league of their own. Executives send out memos directing their people to adopt terminology to mirror Republican talking points. They'll have their commentary programs say something, and then the straight new segments will report that "some people are saying" that something. Their commentary shows will let Steve Doocy deliberately distort facts to try and make points (yes, opinion shows get more leeway than straight news, but there are limits).

Having said all this, one of the more troubling bits of bias shows up almost everywhere. We can call it 'pro-status-quo', or 'pro-institutionalism', or any of a number of things. One of the better chroniclers of this is Glenn Greenwald, currently with Salon, soon to be with the Guardian.

Greenwald's work is valuable not becuase it is 'unbiased' (as noted, there's no such thing), but because he always states his case thoroughly, and he shows his work. Here's a recent example.

So yeah, still waaaaaay more complicated than the same process on FaceBook.

Either you never tried it, didn't bother to read the link I posted, or you need someone to help you use a computer. Maybe your just an anonymous Facebook shill?

Google screwed up by linking these things together in the way they did.

No, you screwed things up by linking these things together the way you did. You used your Gmail e-mail address for your Google+ account. While you cannot change your Gmail username. You can certainly update the e-mail linked to your Google+ account.

To change notification settings and destinations:

1. Log into your account.
2. Go to your Google+ account settings.
3. Scroll to "Notification Delivery".
4. Click "Add e-mail address"
5. Enter new e-mail address and submit form.
6. Click verification link in your e-mail.
7. Return to your account settings and choose which e-mail you wish to use for notifications.

To add another e-mail to your account, which may be used to log in.

1. Go to your Google account settings
2. Scroll to "E-mail addresses and usernames"
3. Click "edit"
4. Click on "Add new alternate e-mail address".
5. Enter the e-mail address and submit.
6. Click verification link in your e-mail.

Your welcome.

So yeah, still waaaaaay more complicated than the same process on FaceBook.

Either you never tried it, didn't bother to read the link I posted, or you need someone to help you use a computer. Maybe your just an anonymous Facebook shill?

Google screwed up by linking these things together in the way they did.

No, you screwed things up by linking these things together the way you did. You used your Gmail e-mail address for your Google+ account. While you cannot change your Gmail username. You can certainly update the e-mail linked to your Google+ account.

To change notification settings and destinations:

1. Log into your account.
2. Go to your Google+ account settings.
3. Scroll to "Notification Delivery".
4. Click "Add e-mail address"
5. Enter new e-mail address and submit form.
6. Click verification link in your e-mail.
7. Return to your account settings and choose which e-mail you wish to use for notifications.

To add another e-mail to your account, which may be used to log in.

1. Go to your Google account settings
2. Scroll to "E-mail addresses and usernames"
3. Click "edit"
4. Click on "Add new alternate e-mail address".
5. Enter the e-mail address and submit.
6. Click verification link in your e-mail.

Your welcome.

There's also a bunch of thing that annoy people who are on it. For example, try to change your email address. Oh that's right, it's permanently tied to a Google Account which is permanently tied to the one unchangeable Gmail address.

Don't use a Gmail account as your username and this problem doesn't exist. You do not need a Gmail account to create a Google account. If you use another e-mail address, you can change the e-mail address associated with your account at any time. If you already have a Gmail account registered as your username, you can still create another Gmail account and link this one to the account. Source: Google > Help Home > Editing your Account

They're working on it. Of course, you can use one of the URL shortening sites, like gplsu.to for a simple URL to link them to your GPlus page.

Actually there's a lot of people on it. I'm not particularly special and I have over 1000 followers myself, with many of my posts generating two or three comments and plusses. That's quite good considering none of these people know me at all.

When I tell people how to use G+, I tell them to use the search bar. People aren't accustomed to being able to Google social interactions, but you can on G+ (so long as they're not private).

So if you're into cars https://plus.google.com/s/cars or funny hats https://plus.google.com/s/funny%20hat or many things in between https://plus.google.com/s/needlepoint ... you can find discussions about those topics, join in, and add the people who are interesting *to you* to your circles for those topics. If they find you interesting back, they may even circle you in return.

You can build great relationships with complete strangers (a lot like on isolated subject forums) and choose what to share with each group, or share publicly for everyone to enjoy.

If I want tor each the average person I went to highschool with, there's still Facebook.

Actually there's a lot of people on it. I'm not particularly special and I have over 1000 followers myself, with many of my posts generating two or three comments and plusses. That's quite good considering none of these people know me at all.

When I tell people how to use G+, I tell them to use the search bar. People aren't accustomed to being able to Google social interactions, but you can on G+ (so long as they're not private).

So if you're into cars https://plus.google.com/s/cars or funny hats https://plus.google.com/s/funny%20hat or many things in between https://plus.google.com/s/needlepoint ... you can find discussions about those topics, join in, and add the people who are interesting *to you* to your circles for those topics. If they find you interesting back, they may even circle you in return.

You can build great relationships with complete strangers (a lot like on isolated subject forums) and choose what to share with each group, or share publicly for everyone to enjoy.

If I want tor each the average person I went to highschool with, there's still Facebook.

Actually there's a lot of people on it. I'm not particularly special and I have over 1000 followers myself, with many of my posts generating two or three comments and plusses. That's quite good considering none of these people know me at all.

When I tell people how to use G+, I tell them to use the search bar. People aren't accustomed to being able to Google social interactions, but you can on G+ (so long as they're not private).

So if you're into cars https://plus.google.com/s/cars or funny hats https://plus.google.com/s/funny%20hat or many things in between https://plus.google.com/s/needlepoint ... you can find discussions about those topics, join in, and add the people who are interesting *to you* to your circles for those topics. If they find you interesting back, they may even circle you in return.

You can build great relationships with complete strangers (a lot like on isolated subject forums) and choose what to share with each group, or share publicly for everyone to enjoy.

If I want tor each the average person I went to highschool with, there's still Facebook.

Basically, a webcomic called The Oatmeal made fun of G+, claiming that it was impossible to make short URLs on G+, and they cited the aforementioned http://plus.google.com/blergasdf1234thimbleturdorgasm99meatpoopypoopxv9donkeypie as a fictional example of this problem. Google, feeling particularly clever, decided to redirect the up-until-then fictional URL to point directly to The Oatmeal's G+ page.

This is allegedly humorous enough that it warranted being posted here. I beg to differ.

http://www.google.com/press/ita/

Couple of years ago Google bought ITA software which makes online travel booking software.

Buying a company for travel content seems to be along those lines.

Could be an extention of Google Map someday that you basically point out where you are, and where you would like to be, and google will handle the rest for you.

My consort and I went through the "where do we ultimately want to live" question a couple years ago, mostly focused on the US (being from the US meant no paperwork problems). We found a few websites to be awesomely useful:

• City Data does a lot of statistics on the demographics of major US metro regions. Income, religious mix, crime, education, cost of living, etc... Unfortunately, I think it just covers US and Canada.
• Google Trends helps you see which cities have people interested in the same topics as you. The best way I found to use this was to search on technical or scene terms from various interests to see which cities show up as top 10 contenders.
• Most weather sites will show you annual averages on sunshine, rainfall, snow, humidity, hours of light, and temperatures... Also note that some metro regions have emerging structures/behaviors to deal with weather... Some Canadian cities have huge indoor networks and good public transit to help offset snow issues. Pacific Northwest cities are espresso nirvana as a way to cope with dark, cloudy days 3/4 of the year.

Searching this way will probably yield a few candidates who have the mix of demographics you care about, zeitgeist hits, weather you're happy with, etc... Subscribe to RSS feeds of their newspapers, local music scene forums, etc... to get a better feel for each, and ultimately, visit your top candidate(s) for a vacation. We visited our top candidate after all of the above, and we were astounded that it felt perfect on top of being a specification match.

I'm Brazilian and I started working from home recently. Since my wife and I don't like they city we're currently living in, we decided to do some research and find a city where we would like to move to (still inside Brazil). If you can read portuguese, you might find our announcement and the criteria we've used useful: https://plus.google.com/112051803418632798341/posts/BTDpsC9Enta

I have plenty of friends who moved from Europe to Brazil. If you're single, you'll probably enjoy it for quite some time, and you'll probably have fun no matter which part of the country you move to. If you have wife and/or kids, you should be extra extra careful when selecting a city or region to move to. Brazil is huge and the difference in quality of living vary a lot between the different regions. And pay attention: the poorest areas usually have the best offers in the tech field (mostly due to tax incentivies for the tech companies).

Good luck.

Wouldn't a smartphone with Google Sky Map be enough?

I got a good laugh out of that...

It turns out McDonald's runs at "only" 17 Big Macs per second. I'm sure they're thrilled to hear the fuel consumption rate of the X-51A... http://www.google.com/search?q=big+Macs+per+second

The banks bought treasury bonds with tarp money. So they lent the government money so the government could lend them money. They paid the government back with interest, the government paid the banks back with interest. Everybody made money and the economy rebounded and money is real I tell you.

I thought you glued sandpaper to its belly while it was flying through the air, and then used the sandpaper to light a match, which in turn lights a fuse leading to a big explosive, which covers the bull in soot and removes tufts of its fur.

Adding more info about the application, the client is OSS so anyone can port it to Windows/Linux/Mac/Browser extension/you name it, there is nothing in Google solution that requires an smartphone nor data connection

Mod up. From TFA that's all Google is offering -- more pressure to grap your phone number.

And it's worth noting that Bruce Schneider has pointed out the problems of two-factor authentication for years.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/02/the_failure_of_2.html

http://www.google.com/search?domains=www.schneier.com&sitesearch=www.schneier.com&q=Two-Factor+Authentication&hq=inurl%3Awww.schneier.com%2Fblog

No it doesn't. You can use the Google authenticator app.

I had this phone. It was called the LG enV3. It was awesome for everything you described, except the keyboard didn't slide out it folded out. The battery would readily last 3-4 days. It had good calendar features, chargeable by micro-USB, Bluetooth, etc. This thing was easily made 3 years ago.

Now, I have an iPhone and I am not looking back. Being able to VPN back into work and run SSH from my phone is like magic. It is called progress, brother!

I use mine mainly to read comic book scans.

I first read that as "Comic Book Sans" and thought there'd be a riot of pitchforks coming your way.

quite a LOT
http://news.google.com/search?q=eminent+domain+2012

sample:
http://www2.wsls.com/news/2012/aug/09/pulaski-landowner-reacts-after-winning-eminent-dom-ar-2120671/

pissed off customers

Actually, Apple is consistently one of the highest rated companies (very often the highest) in terms of customer satisfaction.

Apple's following seems to have a disproportionate number of irrational, fanatical disciples who truly "believe". I hold them in the same regard as scientologists or indeed, members of any cult. That they're "satisfied" is no big surprise.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Valerie+Aurora&hl=en&tbm=isch&sa=X
Given her more than slight appearance deficit, I find this article hard to believe.

pissed off customers

Actually, Apple is consistently one of the highest rated companies (very often the highest) in terms of customer satisfaction.

There is also http://code.google.com/p/rtgui/, which is what I use.

Rtorrent can be controlled by XMLRPC, so people have written web front ends to it. So if you like a clicky GUI, you can use your browser. RUTorrent is probably the best one going.

Win 8 actually 'cheatboots' in that a reboot merely dumps userland while keeping the kernel and drivers which frankly will just make it flakier as it goes along, just another dumb idea brought to you by Ballmer's MSFT.

If you are not a programmer Linux sucks big hairy balls crutchy, sorry but its true. Hell even one of the Red hat Developers says the desktop is suckage and will only continue to get worse, why? because the whole system was designed when the kernel and drivers could fit on a floppy and all the available software could fit on a mini-CD. Now you are looking at billions of lines of code just for the base OS and tens of thousands of packages and drivers...its a mess dude.

Things that work in foo get broken in foo+1 and may not get fixed until Foo+5 if it gets fixed at all, drivers shitting themselves when the system is updated, something windows hasn't done since Win9X, hell I could list all the fail but this page with over a hundred links to obviously show stopping broken bullshit should be proof enough for those that are honest.

In the end MSFT could put out "The Steve Ballmer Goatse Edition" of Windows and it'd sell more than Linux would ever gain. Not because of OEMs, but simply because Linux is a fucking mess and Linus and the other ubernerds LIKE IT that way. Hell did you know that Dell has to run their own damned highly outdated repo, just because they couldn't get enough QA from Canonical to keep ubuntu from shitting itself on update even though they only had less than a dozen units and all with bog standard hardware? Normal folks aren't gonna put up with horseshit like that crutchy, they'll stick with Win 7 or get an Apple before they'll mess with the forum hunts, CLI fixes, and assorted horseshit that it takes just to keep Linux running.

You get plenty of security by simply breaking the machine crutchy, something Torvalds and co are pretty damned good at. Heck if anything starts getting stable Linux devs rip it out and start over, see the DEs or PukeAudio, I used to think that Linux would be ready within 3 years, its now obvious they will ALWAYS be 5 or more years behind, simply because nobody will fix the messes. Makes sense, easier to get programmers to put out new buggy shit than it is to get them to work on buxfixes for free, its the classic "busted shitter" problem in a nutshell. Ask someone to paint you a picture or write you a song for free? Plenty of takers. Ask them to come fix your busted shitter for free? yeah good luck with that. The guts of Linux are the busted shitter, with the only money being spent on the server parts and the desktop just stinking up the joint.

I'll recommend ruTorrent, a web frontend for rTorrent. I've been using it as the main interface for my seedbox. No database, no bullshit, just a nice, clean, user interface with great plugins available.

I was going to say slouching, but then I noticed that all the articles I found appear to be by the same guy, and he's a chiropractor!

google scholar link

Wow that's a thoughtful, complex post. Let's deal with these issues one at a time.

Para 1: Bill is gone. Bill Gates remains the chairman of the board at Microsoft, and hand-picked all the other board members - who pick the CEO and evaluate his performance, give him goals and guidance, set his pay, bonuses and options, and set policy. Bill is still very much responsible for what goes on there, and weighs in on every big decision.

Para 2: Steve Ballmer. You neglected to mention the sea of red ink that is Microsoft's Online Services Division. I happen to like the direction Steve Ballmer is taking Microsoft. Clearly this is a man with vision and purpose who is ready and able to take the company where I want it to go. It takes Marvel Comics level superpowers to get rid of this much cash flow, to destroy a 42 percent success in mobile market share from 2007 given their advantages and high hopes, to so capably destroy the morale and productivity of the world's best developers, to put a company with this much income in $55B of debt. So let's lay off of Steve-o, mmkay? I like him where he is, sweaty shirt and all.

Para 3: No more Big, Bad MS. With the OOXML debacle that nearly ruined ISO, their recent rape of Nokia, their current ongoing rape of OEMs, retail vendors of both their products and Windows PCs, their planned rape of software distributor partners, developers and competing independent software vendors and much much more they prove every day that they have not changed. Last week they confirmed they're going to murder the advertisers they bought relationships with in an acquisition by making "Do Not Track" the default in IE. Just yesterday it came out that the new replacement for Hotmail, Outlook.com is incompatible with Android. The "new kinder, gentler Microsoft" is a myth. They have now declared war on absolutely everybody on Earth, including the people who pay for their products and excepting only the Women's Temperance Union and media executives. Naturally this means I expect them to announce an embedded bittorent feature for IE that involves a drinking game next.

Para 4. Ballmer outbound. Steve Ballmer is not retiring for another seven years at least, when his last kid goes off to college.

Para 5. Immortal desktop victory. It's not enough to take ground. Once you take ground, you have to hold it. MS won mobile with 40% share too [link above], once upon a time. And now they'r

Google Mail? It might be good, but companies better check their contracts. Since the small companies usually don't have public stock, Sarbanes-Oxley may not be an issue, but with clients is may be. To boot, not all mail providers be able to furnish documentation of SOX compliance. Come audit time, you really want that stuff ready to go when the auditor is present and requesting documentation.

You would think that a company like Genentech with 11,000 employees would know a thing or two about whether or not their Google Apps email solution meets all of the regulatory requirements they are subject to.

Finally, who is the customer with Google Apps, the people using it... or the advertisers? Google might have a conflict of interest in that department. I'd rather stick with a mail provider paid for completely by the end user.

You seem to be confusing the free version of Google mail with the paid Google Apps for Business which defaults to not serving ads.

Zimbra may be good enough for a college student to get their latest Facebook confirmation E-mail, but in a professional environment, it is not up to the task. This isn't to say OWA is perfect, but there are a lot of business functions that are Exchange-only:

Zimbra has Outlook and mobile device integration, all secured by TLS/SSL

Connectors. Yes, these are nothing more than just TLS connections with known certificates, but a lot of companies feel better when their clients are able to have a dedicated, encrypted connection.

I don't even know what that means in the context of an email server? Are you talking about a persistant connection between Outlook and the email backend or a VPN?

In any case, Zimbra can do more than deliver Facebook status messages, they have a pretty broad customer list

Policies. Almost all devices work with Exchange, and fewer and fewer lie to it about capabilities. If a device went missing, triggering a remote erase will work regardless of which maker or OS is on the device. No other E-mail system has this in place.

Data at rest encryption. Exchange can pretty much guarantee that any device touching it either lies convincingly about encryption (like earlier Android versions), or actually implements it.

Zimbra has had remote wipe for years. Even Google Apps has remote wipe capability. And they can also enforce encryption and other ActiveSync security policies.

If one wants to play GSA contracts, this might be a major factor for state or Federal business.

Maybe Google doesn't know anything about the government sector.

Believe it or not, there is competition in the email server market, but most companies don't bother because once they buy the CALs and build a server infrastructure to run their other Microsoft applications, Exchange doesn't add much more to their Microsoft cost. But some companies are still finding it cost effective.

Google Mail? It might be good, but companies better check their contracts. Since the small companies usually don't have public stock, Sarbanes-Oxley may not be an issue, but with clients is may be. To boot, not all mail providers be able to furnish documentation of SOX compliance. Come audit time, you really want that stuff ready to go when the auditor is present and requesting documentation.

You would think that a company like Genentech with 11,000 employees would know a thing or two about whether or not their Google Apps email solution meets all of the regulatory requirements they are subject to.

Finally, who is the customer with Google Apps, the people using it... or the advertisers? Google might have a conflict of interest in that department. I'd rather stick with a mail provider paid for completely by the end user.

You seem to be confusing the free version of Google mail with the paid Google Apps for Business which defaults to not serving ads.

Zimbra may be good enough for a college student to get their latest Facebook confirmation E-mail, but in a professional environment, it is not up to the task. This isn't to say OWA is perfect, but there are a lot of business functions that are Exchange-only:

Zimbra has Outlook and mobile device integration, all secured by TLS/SSL

Connectors. Yes, these are nothing more than just TLS connections with known certificates, but a lot of companies feel better when their clients are able to have a dedicated, encrypted connection.

I don't even know what that means in the context of an email server? Are you talking about a persistant connection between Outlook and the email backend or a VPN?

In any case, Zimbra can do more than deliver Facebook status messages, they have a pretty broad customer list

Policies. Almost all devices work with Exchange, and fewer and fewer lie to it about capabilities. If a device went missing, triggering a remote erase will work regardless of which maker or OS is on the device. No other E-mail system has this in place.

Data at rest encryption. Exchange can pretty much guarantee that any device touching it either lies convincingly about encryption (like earlier Android versions), or actually implements it.

Zimbra has had remote wipe for years. Even Google Apps has remote wipe capability. And they can also enforce encryption and other ActiveSync security policies.

If one wants to play GSA contracts, this might be a major factor for state or Federal business.

Maybe Google doesn't know anything about the government sector.

Believe it or not, there is competition in the email server market, but most companies don't bother because once they buy the CALs and build a server infrastructure to run their other Microsoft applications, Exchange doesn't add much more to their Microsoft cost. But some companies are still finding it cost effective.

Google Mail? It might be good, but companies better check their contracts. Since the small companies usually don't have public stock, Sarbanes-Oxley may not be an issue, but with clients is may be. To boot, not all mail providers be able to furnish documentation of SOX compliance. Come audit time, you really want that stuff ready to go when the auditor is present and requesting documentation.

You would think that a company like Genentech with 11,000 employees would know a thing or two about whether or not their Google Apps email solution meets all of the regulatory requirements they are subject to.

Finally, who is the customer with Google Apps, the people using it... or the advertisers? Google might have a conflict of interest in that department. I'd rather stick with a mail provider paid for completely by the end user.

You seem to be confusing the free version of Google mail with the paid Google Apps for Business which defaults to not serving ads.

Zimbra may be good enough for a college student to get their latest Facebook confirmation E-mail, but in a professional environment, it is not up to the task. This isn't to say OWA is perfect, but there are a lot of business functions that are Exchange-only:

Zimbra has Outlook and mobile device integration, all secured by TLS/SSL

Connectors. Yes, these are nothing more than just TLS connections with known certificates, but a lot of companies feel better when their clients are able to have a dedicated, encrypted connection.

I don't even know what that means in the context of an email server? Are you talking about a persistant connection between Outlook and the email backend or a VPN?

In any case, Zimbra can do more than deliver Facebook status messages, they have a pretty broad customer list

Policies. Almost all devices work with Exchange, and fewer and fewer lie to it about capabilities. If a device went missing, triggering a remote erase will work regardless of which maker or OS is on the device. No other E-mail system has this in place.

Data at rest encryption. Exchange can pretty much guarantee that any device touching it either lies convincingly about encryption (like earlier Android versions), or actually implements it.

Zimbra has had remote wipe for years. Even Google Apps has remote wipe capability. And they can also enforce encryption and other ActiveSync security policies.

If one wants to play GSA contracts, this might be a major factor for state or Federal business.

Maybe Google doesn't know anything about the government sector.

Believe it or not, there is competition in the email server market, but most companies don't bother because once they buy the CALs and build a server infrastructure to run their other Microsoft applications, Exchange doesn't add much more to their Microsoft cost. But some companies are still finding it cost effective.

Well, car thefts are quite frequent in some Brazilian cities, so it's not surprise that most people won't see anything wrong on that apart from paying 5 bucks for the thing themselves. Some people will even see this as a good thing; well, it's an extremely cheap car tracking service!

There were really few contrary opinions to the resolution. Mr. Raul Jungmann, national representative, filed a request for its suspension, alluding to privacy concerns, but no final solution was given to the matter since 2007. It had no big repercussion on media, too. That's how things work in Brazil: these stuff get approved with enough antecedence, but become news just over the deadline. I can't say if it's intentional, but it really seems so.

https://www.google.com/search?q=widespread+thyroid+cysts+in+children

Photos of wireless link

http://www.google.com/videohp

This. This is the post I was going to make when I first read this article. What happens when some zombienet decides it doesn't like a site? Say I've got a phishing site and I blast the real site into oblivion while my site goes up. I saw let's beat them to it and just spam the fuck out if *AA sites. Here's the link. Let's have at it: http://support.google.com/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1114905&page=ts.cs

Add "-hulu" to your query http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=136861&rd=2

It is still available, just hidden. You can click on "more" in the top bar, and select videos. Or directly go to http://www.google.com/videohp

ok, it's funny, because i've just been reviewing WebRTC. i was extremely excited to hear about it. i've been setting up videoconferencing systems on and off for some time. they've *always* had to be flash-based. if you've ever set up red5, you'll know it's a dog. now there's crtmpserver and there's even rtmplite and siprtmp: http://code.google.com/p/siprtmp/ - i just managed to get this to work a couple of days ago, with yate, thanks to the help of the people on freenode, in #yate

the problem with flash is this: back in 2008, flash was reasonably stable. but now, it's an absolute dog. flash under macosx on google chrome runs audio in "dalek" fashion. flash under gnu/linux, if ever you enable the webcam you *will* end up with an instant crash, because the video is read into a buffer that's the wrong size (you can see the picture jumping all over the place before the crash occurs).

and webex? i'd never heard of it until a couple of weeks ago: that crashes, too: at least once every 30 minutes. and you have to pay for it. also, it's a plugin that's only available for macosx and windows.

the bottom line is that the state of videoconferencing - ubiquitous videoconferencing that's easy to use - is in pretty deep shit. so i was *delighted* to hear of WebRTC.

unfortunately... *sigh* this was only about an hour ago... i spoke to the implementors on #webrtc about the standard, after finding that there's no way to select the microphone or the output. their response: we're not interested in listening to you. we are going to make this "secure". we have no interest in doing what everyone else in the industry has done. security is the absolute top priority.

so what that means is: if you create a phone call application, and you want the sound of the call to go out over speakers, and the call to come in on headphones - tough shit. why? because they want to make the *browser* UI (not a javascript API) select the audio output device - singular. likewise, if you wish to select different microphones - tough shit. why? because they want the *browser* UI to select one and *only* one mic source.

the reason stated (only about an hour ago)? "security". it's "not secure" to give information to web browsers, because people *might* write applications that abuse that information.

the fact that people *already* abuse cookies to track people very very accurately, and the fact that a UI popup could be made which says "do you wish to give this web site access to the list of audio devices?" then "do you wish to give this web site access to audio device N" were completely ignored.

so the opportunity to level the playing field - to take over the monopoly that flash has had for decades, and that skype has had for almost a decade - is being lost *not* by the WebRTC technology but by the people *implementing* that technology.

if the people implementing WebRTC in google chrome and firefox are the same people behind the WebRTC standard, then i am really not surprised to hear that microsoft is going ahead with an alternative standard.

much as i don't actually like microsoft's abusive dominance which we've all witnessed over the past two decades, i've spoken to the IE team a couple of times and i know that they really really do a hell of a good job, under difficult high-pressured circumstances: their HTML5 compliance is now second to none, for example, and they *still* get flak for it! :)

so the opportunity is being lost - by the people behind WebRTC - and i truly hope that microsoft's initiative will give them a good kick up the backside and get them to sort themselves out. sort yourselves out, damnit!

*raising hand* I now use my phone's web browser to catch up on http://news.google.com/ and facebook... guity as charged.

But I do remember I used to have a paperback book I'd take to school or work, yeow.

HOW THINGS WORK is the subject of Utility Patents, not copyright.

I agree; hence U.S. Patent 5,265,888 (now believed expired) on the game of Dr. Mario. But as for Tetris, why didn't the judge consider the shapes that the player is allowed to use, and how the player is allowed to move them around, to be part of "HOW THINGS WORK"?

I suppose this one is more miniaturized, but "virtual reality" and "haptics" people have been trying this sort of thing for a while, without having yet really come up with a compelling win. Here is a 1995 Popular Science article about a device that takes basically the same approach to characterizing what constitutes texture perceived by fingertips (by simulating sliding/bumpiness/resistance/stickiness). Available for only $20,000! And a 1996 textbook devoted large sections to the topic as well.

If you follow "Scott Maxwell" in google plus, there are some great snippets about the landing and software. See: https://plus.google.com/u/0/112648317373638762082/posts

No; as I said, Google Docs offline doesn't save all documents: http://support.google.com/docs/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1628467

The algorithm was trying to optimize a model (i.e. find the maximum value attainable). The binomial or bisection method works well for linear and binomial equations but with polynomial equations, there can be multiple local min/max apexes in the curve. Using a binomial solver may work some of the time but often it will give a false positive by becoming "trapped" into a localized root and ignoring the larger, more optimal solution.

Click on "More Search Terms" on the left-hand side, then click "Verbatim".

You're welcome.

Google Drive?