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I have a hard time believing that just because the SU-27 is a 4th generation, non-stealth fighter, a rough equivalent to the F-15. And both F-22 and F-35 have a ridiculously high kill ratio against our own 4th generation fighters in war games. I could believe the Sukov was better than other 4th generation fighters but...

Oh, I see. It was a computer simulation. And it was SU-35 vs F-35, with no F-22s involved. And there's a political battle going on in the background over whether or not the F-35 is sufficient. Yeah.

Maybe it's like the other Gee-we-really-need-the-F-22 computer-simulated "war game" cooked up by a think tank I read about, where they had woefully underestimated the F-35's flight performance. They'd made it seem as if an F-16 would fly circles around it and only the new technologies could hope to make a difference. Whereas the actual chief test pilot for the F-35s, who had also flown F-22s and F-16s, said the F-35 had amazing flight characteristics -- equal to the F-16 in most respects, slightly behind in some and ahead in others. Unlike the F-16, it kept those characteristics with a combat loadout.

Looked up the source for this quote. A deeply depressing interview, which gives me a real insight into what went wrong with Jobs. Also a bit more understanding for him.

what the cheap chinese knockoffs never manage.

As opposed to the original cheap* Chinese devices? http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/02/ff_joelinchina/all/1
And please, the fact that Apple charges you, the consumer, 0.6-2.5 times more for the device does make the device cheap.

They didn't simulate zero-g. A zero-gravity environment results in an average 1% loss of Bone Mineral Density per month (PDF) and muscle atrophy; however, these detrimental effects on the body might be countered by putting astronauts in a centrifuge for some time each day. We have seen plenty of astronauts experience extended periods of time in zero-g and in isolation though. The record for the longest space flight is held by Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 days traveling 300,765,000 km orbiting the Earth on the Mir space station and who said his experience showed that “it is possible to preserve your physical and psychological health throughout a mission similar in length to a flight to Mars and back.”

Hasn't this been done to death?

It's not up to the U.S. market to decide whether all pc's should be running SecureBoot. Would China go along with Secure Boot, or would they just design and build their own PC's?

You decide.

Are you reading from an old data sheet?

http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#featuredarticles/FA_Exchange_ActiveSync_and_iOS4_Devices/Introduction/Introduction.html

Actually, ActiveSync isn't the issue. iPhone encryption is the issue. If you can bypass the screen lock, IOS will transparently decrypt any encrypted data on your iPhone, including your ActiveSync/Exchange email.

I see your link and raise you this one

6. You know it's encrypted because you googled iPhones and know that the any iPhone 3GS or above has encrypted memory that can be hacked quite easily

FTFY

Really.

Really.

Easily.

100%? Remember the Etisalat incident. The fact is we don't have full remote attestation for any phone on the market (the NSA might have one or two that do this but I mean on the mass market).

Is anyone else disappointed that it is the BBC that has to cover this rather than an American source? I'm not saying that they aren't great reporters, just that it is disappointing that there is so little interest in America.

MSNBC, Forbes, and Wired have it and, er, that's it. On the one hand it is disappointing to see such a lack of interest, however on the other hand I fear that more mainstream sources would pay more attention to the cost while conveniently overlooking the benefits or feasibility, so maybe the less they say about it the better. This is the kind of thing that congressional Republicans get up in arms about because it sounds nice and vague, something pie-in-the-sky that they can spin as "more government waste" rather than an invaluable contribution to human development.

Here you go:

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-Repeatedly-Helped-FBI-Break-Communications-Law-106553
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/03/fbi_confirms_co
http://www.itworld.com/security/216565/google-admits-it-would-give-your-data-feds-93-times-out-100
http://www.pcworld.com/article/190438/microsoft_stool_pigeon_for_the_cops_and_fbi.html

There are also plenty of creationists who will firmly state that individual species don't change and adapt: God created all animals to be the way that they are, forever. Inconveniently for them, we have observed speciation happening.

WASHINGTON -- Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126102247889095011.html

Predator drones use less encryption than your TV, DVDs

Cybersecurity Issues with Predators, Reapers, and Unmanned Aerial Systems

Not Just Drones: Militants Can Snoop on Most U.S. Warplanes

U.S. was Warned of Predator Drone Hacking contains information indicating that the US knew their UAVs had insufficient security as early as 1996.

On the bright side, the command and control systems are not the same as the video output stream... but I still wouldn't rule out some enterprising hacker deciding to fling a few Predators south of the border and see what happens.

They're just pissed off that a company doesn't operate the way they want it to

Infinitely unimpressed by the Mickey Mouse copyright act, pissed off at the pretense that this is patriotic capitalism as it ought to work.

There are several Lessig videos on YouTube about his new rootstriker campaign. As much as I admire his content, he always sounds like a man wearing little round glasses--standard issue for taking down a whomping willow, but I'm not sure it will fly in Washington.

Lessig loves pointing out that Milton Friedman would only sign on if the brief contained the phrase "no brainer" that retroactive copyright extension will not cause George Gershwin to write another GD note. Logic and founding fathers and patriotism aside, they lost to the giant Mickey Mouse billfold.

You must be new here because this is how it works: if you don't shriek at the outrage, some cosmic lamer soon writes "Apple does this and no-one seems to complain so it must be OK". And the idiot fish swim happily ever after. Negative inference from silence makes silence a non-viable strategy.

You'll note that when Steve Jobs needed to pull the wool, he pulled early and often. It's been brilliant over the past weeks learning how the man really operated: one part asshole, one part genius.

Dave Winer: The Jobs Book â" Personal, Painful, Repetitive I'm personally no huge fan of Winer, but I think he hit the nail with this one.

Unfortunately, authentic outrage is often mimicked by geeks-with-squeaky-training-wheels who mostly just like the noise. If they suffer and remember, some day they too can assume the clucking greybeard mantle.

I must have missed the part where the PlayBook was incomplete. It had everything they indented and promised at the time it was released.

What part of it was promised to have email and BBM and contacts by summer 2011 is not clear?

If you don’t have a BlackBerry phone, you’re out of luck until summer, when RIM says a future software update will bring native clients to the PlayBook.

And then summer 2011 came and went. Now the functionality will be delayed all the way back to 2012. And BBM will not be part of that update. So RIM promised features that are supposed to be part of the tablet. But has not delivered and one feature will not be delivered nearly 9 months if it is ever delivered.

RIM promoted the PlayBook as "Your BlackBerry, Amplified". A BB phone is, consequently, a key part of the PlayBook experience.

So a PlayBook is useless without a BB phone? Please. How can RIMM position the PlayBook as the competitor to Android and iPad and then say it has to be tethered. You are in serious denial.

Wired had a great write up about Stuxnet (soon to be a book), in which this was written:

The sophistication of the code, plus the fraudulent certificates, and now Iran at the center of the fallout made it look like Stuxnet could be the work of a government cyberarmy -- maybe even a United States cyberarmy.

This made Symantec's sinkhole an audacious move. In intercepting data the attackers were expecting to receive, the researchers risked tampering with a covert U.S. government operation. Asked recently if they were concerned about this, Chien replied, "For us there's no good guys or bad guys." Then he paused to reconsider. "Well, bad guys are people who are writing malicious code that infects systems that can cause unintended consequences or intended consequences."

Whether the "bad guy" was the United States or one of its allies, the attack was causing collateral damage to thousands of systems, and Symantec felt no patriotic duty to preserve its activity. "We're not beholden to a nation," Chien said. "We're a multinational, private company protecting customers."

It earned a fair bit of respect for Symantec from me...

Here is an interview with the soldier in question, Ethan McCord. I continue to be amazed at the bad journalism and outright lies surrounding this incident. There has been an active disinformation campaign surrounding this entire issue, of which Fox News is only the most blatant participant.

It's really not that hard to imagine how game-inspired software could tremendously help learning in every field.

The only problem is very few people are actually sitting down and doing it properly. There are precious little good exemples for the time being but it will come, eventually. One such good exemple is Chaim Gingold's upcoming interactive primer on geology. I also read that Khan's academy is developing a sort of leveling structure on top of its courses and I would not be surprised if that turned out to be tremendously effective.

I'm not arguing that computers will completely replace a teacher anytime soon (especially for good, one on one teaching) - but in many, many less than ideal cases it seems obvious good software would be very useful.

A number of very thorough studies have been done. Neither "inertia" or "centrifugal effect" from either front wheel or rear contribute anything significant to the stability of a bicycle. The fact is that even today, we do not fully understand the phenomenon. The only thing we are sure of is that it does not work the way most people think it does.

There will be 5,500 mercenaries and 17,000 "individuals," working for the embassy. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/5500-mercs-to-protect-u-s-fortresses-in-iraq/

My new sig is relevant.

(copied to body for future reading: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/10/alt-text-ultraviolet/)

Could anyone think of a better way to defeat an omnipotent enemy than causing it to go Stasi on itself?

See http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/16-02/ff_stasi

As we say, Stasi "is TSA." Anagram-wise.

I'm pretty sure I saw this absolutely ages ago. It was an open source project so you could do it yourself and it was just a projector and a camera on a thing around your neck. The video had them playing a racing game on a piece of paper, they turned the car by tilting the paper.
In fact, I'm going to find an article.
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/02/ted-digital-six/

There, already done by MIT.

I've never even heard of this project by MIT, let alone made use of it (or own one). As far as I'm concerned MIT didn't do "it", which is making one of these I can own and use.

640K of RAM is enough for everyone... -- William Gates.

well... little offtopic, but Bill Gates never said such thing, about 640K ram, enough for everyone. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/01/1484

Spoilsport.

640K of RAM is enough for everyone... -- William Gates.

well... little offtopic, but Bill Gates never said such thing, about 640K ram, enough for everyone. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/01/1484

I'm pretty sure I saw this absolutely ages ago. It was an open source project so you could do it yourself and it was just a projector and a camera on a thing around your neck. The video had them playing a racing game on a piece of paper, they turned the car by tilting the paper. In fact, I'm going to find an article. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/02/ted-digital-six/ There, already done by MIT.

And their defense is that the data is anonymous. It's not a privacy violation if no one knows that it's *you* who was looking up the medical stuff.

And of course you can easily opt out.

As to the back door to allow the government to analyze the data without warrants. . Erm. . You know that's already been going on for years, secretly, right?

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/06/att-whistleblow/

HP Slate is easily distinguishable from the iPad.

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/01/01-06-10hpslate.jpg
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/2010/03/hp-slate.jpg

And the pictured JooJoo is the one that came out 6 months after the iPad. In it's pre-iPad form as the Crunchpad concept, it looked like this:
http://news.cnet.com/i/bto/20090410/crunchpad_600x415.jpg
Even more different from the iPad.

You would certainly be able to distinguish either of them from an iPad if a judge held them up 10 feet away from you. Well I could anyway, I can't vouch for other people's eyesight.

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2008/07/shimano?currentPage=1

Yeah, brakes are a different class, since they're a safety requirement rather than a nicety. It's especially nice in shifters, because it takes some of the tedious adjustment out of the picture.

Mostly, I think it's about clean aerodynamic profiles and simplicity: no wires means nothing to adjust. They've had batteries on bikes for a while, so this isn't novel on that score.

It's definitely for high-end road bikes only, real top-of-the-line stuff. I don't know if it will make a difference at that grade or not (it's way out of my league) but it sounds as if the doomsayers don't really know what it is high-end cyclists want and why. Yes, there are issues to be worked out, but I'm pretty sure they're aware of that.

Speaking of which, I wonder how US-based network providers like Cisco feel about this? They make a lot of money in China, helping them build the Great Firewall and all that. If there is one sure outcome of this action, it's that China will want to reciprocate in kind. There is no way an insult like this will go unanswered. So I think we have to see this as part of a larger trade war that may be brewing. Stock up on iPhones, everybody!

Sure is a lot cheaper than a rack of Nauri.
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/04/70619

Its a bit of Apples mid 1980's Knowledge Navigator, DARPA "Perceptive Assistant that Learns" and Stanford's CALO Cognitive Agent that Learns and Organizes for todays young people.
Wired talked about a Mac related "digital communications" vision in 1994 http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.04/general.magic.html
Some related details, vids at http://cryptogon.com/?p=25289

Don't they have jammers on fighter planes? It seems to have worked well in actual combat, so I'd guess it would behave well in an exercise, too.

You might consider InQtel http://www.iqt.org/ and Visible Technologies http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/10/exclusive-us-spies-buy-stake-in-twitter-blog-monitoring-firm/, both which fit this article's description, and have had tons of CIA seed money put into them. We know the pentagon has a sock-puppet program, and whatever law prevent them from operating in the US can be bypassed through private contractors hence (perhaps) Fusion Centers. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fusion_center Both the FBI and DHS are quite busy here too. I frequently observe FBI, .mil, dhs.gov, DoD, and other government IPs visiting my website and subscribing to comments. Do a whois on my latest visitor: 153.31.113.26 ~~ And yeah, go right ahead and mod this as "troll" too. Bloody snobs!

Airgapped? Seriously? Did you see the cockpit photo? There are at least 8 different unique monitors there! They have to integrate weather, targetting, mapping, navigation, flight control, weapons, and probably other systems. It's really hard to airgap systems that need to talk to each other.

Or maybe you just think that somebody should be manually typing the target coordinates into the mapping system and hope they get it right every time.

dom

So apparently Wired had the story in the first place, and now they have a second story reporting that the Air Force never knew about the problem until reading about it in their first story? There are two serious problems here.

Not if you bothered to read the article. Here is the first paragraph:

Officials at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada knew for two weeks about a virus infecting the drone “cockpits” there. But they kept the information about the infection to themselves — leaving the unit that’s supposed to serve as the Air Force’s cybersecurity specialists in the dark. The network defenders at the 24th Air Force learned of the virus by reading about it in Danger Room.

Some people in the Air Force knew, but they did not notify their own network security organization. If true, then that is irresponsible behavior by Air Force personnel, and something we should thank Wired for reporting.

Having said that, I also have to admit that I'm confused about who knew what, and who was denied information. The original Wired story speaks of efforts to eradicate the malware:

“We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back,” says a source familiar with the network infection, one of three that told Danger Room about the virus. “We think it’s benign. But we just don’t know.”

One can only hope that the new bunch of security people who just found out about the malware via the Wired article are more competent than the first ones, who leaked the information to Wired. Was the leak itself irresponsible? I truly can't tell: when incompetence in handling such deadly weapons reaches such empyrean altitudes ...my mind boggles. Clearly, no one connected with this weapons system knows what they are doing, nor do they seem overly concerned.

Perhaps a bit of mental clouding is to be expected among individuals who run a weapon system "allowing U.S. forces to attack targets and spy on its foes without risking American lives"—apparently by killing them. Doublethink and duckspeak aren't conducive to organizational efficiency...but that's the price you have to pay to keep the terrorists from winning.

Some other, rather more reliable indications that this guy may indeed be full of crap:

Brian Switek's commentary on the story on his Laelaps palaeontology blog

P. Z. Myers' view of the story on his Pharyngula blog

Discussion of the story on an archive of geologists' conversations on Twitter

The professor's own profile page, which shows he has quite a history of making far-reaching claims.

There's an article on Wired on why this kraken "science" is complete bullshit and an indication of the sad state of scientific "reporting".

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/the-giant-prehistoric-squid-that-ate-common-sense/

Yes, because protecting the devices from malware and bad apps...

Or apps that point out the exploitative basis from which all cell phones are produced.

Or comic adaptations of James Joyce's Ulysses because of some extremely minor incidental nudity.

But don't worry, there are still plenty of Bible apps chock full of rape, sodomy, incest, murder...

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/04/apple-scratch-app/

The school fingerprint system is almost certainly accessible to police officers actually working in the school.

So they may be able to see the data. That does not mean they can run a fingerprint against it or copy the database.

You previously wrote: "The school hashes would have to be accessible by the police. They are not and it would be illegal for the police to access them." The point is, that assertion is ridiculous. Police are actually quite likely able to access the fingerprint data in some way and even the most egregious abuse of the data wouldn't be considered "illegal" by anyone in a position to actually press criminal charges.

Also, the contractor for the fingerprint service could quite also service the local police as well.

Just like the same telephone technicians who work on your phones work on the police phones. Does that mean that you conversations are being listened to by the police? No.

Do you live in a cave? Try reading about this, where the senate essentially said that the telcos were completely guilty in the warrantless wiretapping scandal, but unconstitutionally granted them amnesty (it's clearly unconstitutional because if the legislative branch can grant ex post facto amnesty to constitutional violations without amending the constitution, then the constitution means nothing). You are aware that all telecoms have rooms in them full of equipment that belongs to the government that all traffic gets routed through? Seriously, what planet do you live on?

It's actually possible that the data sets are even already stored together.

Highly doubtful. The police databases are very strictly controlled to ensure that correct information is stored. There is no way they would allow data collected by a high school administrator to be in their database. It would taint all subsequent searches. Even if a "sketch" could be created the accuracy of the data would be in question. What is good enough for a school to identify a student is probably not good enough to stand up in a court of law.

How can you possibly be serious? Do you have any idea how many cases there are out there where fingerprints improperly ended up in the police databases or were supposed to be removed and weren't? They certainly would allow data collected by a high school administrator into their database. It wouldn't taint all subsequent searches. Judges seldom allow the fruit of the poison tree doctrine to apply to "accidents". They certainly wouldn't apply it to all fingerprint searches just because some prints in the database were improperly gathered. In the specific case where a match comes up with an improperly gathered print, they just print the person again when they arrest them and then the original print isn't an issue any more. Then they have a print that will stand up in a court of law.

I think it is illegal for the police to access them, but from the point of view of the police and the school, it would probably be a gray area at best, and the only recourse anyone whose fingerprints are shared has is a civil suit. Arrests and subsequent searches based on a match from a school database _might_ be thrown out in court. There have been plenty of judges in similar cases who have basically decided that they'll allow unconstitutional searches as honest mistakes, as long as the police swear it won't happen again. Or they'll just find a pretext for another search.

You don't think that the ACLU wouldn't take up the issue and have all such data removed from national databases? It would be very hard to plead that copying a school's fingerprint database was an "accident". Remember that to run a search on a school database one has to use the only interface which is a finger scanner. That means that the poli

As the news of pre-crime detection projects are coming out, the other news about US government operations came out, showing just how good US government is at technology and this is a proof that nothing will go wrong with the pre-crime stuff, especially nothing will go wrong with it, if it's connected to some automatic killer drones, to kill you, before you commit a crime

Virus Hits Drone Fleet.

A computer virus has infected the cockpits of Americaâ(TM)s Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilotsâ(TM) every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other warzones.

The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the militaryâ(TM)s Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions overseas. Nor have there been any confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source. But the virus has resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creechâ(TM)s computers, network security specialists say. And the infection underscores the ongoing security risks in what has become the U.S. militaryâ(TM)s most important weapons system.

âoeWe keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back,â says a source familiar with the network infection, one of three that told Danger Room about the virus. âoeWe think itâ(TM)s benign. But we just donâ(TM)t know.â. ........

Wired was kind enough to post an article today listing a bunch of ways that military spending in the cold war has contributed to your civilian lifestyle.

Makes it feel a little less like Bush America

http://articles.cnn.com/2006-07-19/politics/stemcells.veto_1_embryonic-stem-cell-destruction-of-human-embryos-moral-boundary?_s=PM:POLITICS
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/obamastemcells2/
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/24906.php

I for one believe that this along with nano technology can bring about a whole new age of medicine.

Funny thing, people generally prefer bigger windows on the sunny sides of their houses...what with the natural 'light' thing and all :)

While they won't be angled outside of vertical in most cases, it is an interesting use of an existing space to produce power. Much like the solar shingles that already exist.

Enough of these things that make existing space dual use and pretty soon it becomes a significant input to the power supply with little effect compared to installing solar panels on top of the roof or in the yard. Google's solar trees are another example of making something dual use to provide power. (Parking plus solar panels and the cars are cooler due to shade further reducing energy usage to cool them when people drive away.

There's been plenty of discussion about the tablet over the last year and a half. Much conjecture about whether it would happen ( http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/india-35-tablet/ ). But what struck me most when all the jabber started was the enthusiasm of one minister: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10740817 .

FTA: An electric car designed and built by BYU engineering students set a world land speed record for its weight class.
That qualifier makes a world of difference.

Here's an article about students setting a EV speed record of 307.7 mph last year.

It's not so much the sites you KNOW are done well/as secured as can be in code/db engines etc. (plus OS + Serverware patch levels. et al), but... It's ALSO the possibilities, of this occurring:

---

Ad networks owned by Google, Microsoft serve malware:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/13/doubleclick_msn_malware_attacks/

---

Attacks Targeting Classified Ad Sites Surge:

http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/02/02/1433210/Attacks-Targeting-Classified-Ad-Sites-Surge

---

Hackers Respond To Help Wanted Ads With Malware:

http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/01/20/0228258/Hackers-Respond-To-Help-Wanted-Ads-With-Malware

---

Hackers Use Banner Ads on Major Sites to Hijack Your PC:

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/11/doubleclick

---

Ruskie gang hijacks Microsoft network to push penis pills:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/12/microsoft_ips_hijacked/

---

Major ISPs Injecting Ads, Vulnerabilities Into Web:

http://it.slashdot.org/it/08/04/19/2148215.shtml

---

Two Major Ad Networks Found Serving Malware:

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/12/13/0128249/Two-Major-Ad-Networks-Found-Serving-Malware

---

THE NEXT AD YOU CLICK MAY BE A VIRUS:

http://it.slashdot.org/story/09/06/15/2056219/The-Next-Ad-You-Click-May-Be-a-Virus

---

NY TIMES INFECTED WITH MALWARE ADBANNER:

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/09/13/2346229

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MICROSOFT HIT BY MALWARES IN ADBANNERS:

http://apcmag.com/microsoft_apologises_for_serving_malware.htm

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ISP's INJECTING ADS AND ERRORS INTO THE WEB: -> http://it.slashdot.org/it/08/04/19/2148215.shtml

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ADOBE FLASH ADS INJECTING MALWARE INTO THE NET: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/20/0029220&from=rss

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London Stock Exchange Web Site Serving Malware:

http://www.securityweek.com/london-stock-exchange-web-site-serving-malware

---

Spotify splattered with malware-tainted ads:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/25/spotify_malvertisement_attack/

---

* As my list "multiple evidences thereof" as to adbanners & viruses + the fact they slow you down & cost you more (from reputable & reliable sources no less)).

APK

P.S.=> Now, "top that off" with the possibility of "DNS-Poisoned" (redirected really) DNS Servers too? It goes up yet again, as to "absolutely trusting" sites you're actually seeing (& disabling javascript GLOBALLY but only using it where you absolutely NEED it (think 'e-commerce' type sites for example), & only enabling it for TRUSTED favs. & yes, there's way to check OS patch & WebServerWare OS patch levels online (or in Opera's dev

Variable, customer-specific pricing has been around for quite a while. Amazon has been doing it for a long, long time given that the linked article is from 2000...

He seems to have missed the Pyramid Tablet.