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That document is hilarious, especially this part:
"We have over 250,000 apps in the App Store. We don't need any more Fart apps. If your app doesn't do something useful or provide some form of lasting entertainment, it may not be accepted."
The App Store director himself has fart apps on the App Store: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/08/apple-fart-apps/all/1

Secondly, certain developers submit 100's of spam apps every day and while Apple has banned some of them, it's still happening: http://www.iphonedevsdk.com/forum/business-legal-app-store/40766-worst-app-store-offenders-graaple-hotix-studios-add-yours-here.html

The fact that hacks keep coming out and left reasonably open for local user leads me to believe that Apple in reality don't care so much, but have an obligation to the big content producers to give "best effort" to keep the device secure.

No, Apple would like to sue jailbreakers for their last penny if they could:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/feds-ok-iphone-jailbreaking/

It's only after a protracted legal fight and sheer judicial coincidence that users are legally allowed to jailbreak their own devices. For the future, you can bet on two things:
1) Apple will put in a big effort to make jailbreaking more difficult even if it further undermines the usefulness of their devices for normal users
2) The courts will rule jailbreaking illegal in the long run. It escapes me how the recent ruling was even possible with the DMCA and all, rest assured they will "fix" this again.

Also, the distinction between Apple and big content producers is invalid. Apple has impossibly close ties to Disney, a content company famous for its hardcore litigation practices, shameless lobbying efforts, and unique in the way it seeks to infuse our culture with conservative religious "values".

Oh, and yeah, on a related note: I finally bought an iPad last week. I searched very hard for a real open alternative that had just the right features, there was none.

Please see my other comments to this article on the need for fundamental paradigm change. Better learning materials (while a nice thing) won't fix the overall problems that people like John Taylor Gatto or John Holt have written about. Schools as they are seem very good at subverting good content (see the history of Lego/Logo), which is part of why they so naturally take potentially liberating computers and turn them into surveillance systems...
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/webcam-spy-scandal-broadens/

Still, I agree with you that more open source text books and other materials would be a good thing.

But see also:
"Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling" by John Taylor Gatto
http://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Mass-Instruction-Schoolteachers-Compulsory/dp/0865716315

Or "The War on Kids":
http://www.thewaronkids.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlnwm11d6II

Until schools lose the compulsion and become more a mix of all-age learning community (more like public libraries and craft centers) they will have deep, deep problems as far as what we need to have a healthy democracy...

Mr. Richard Gaywood sends his regards. They've done this sort of thing before.

Some stories about GoDaddy on Slashdot, in order by date:
Go Daddy Usurps Network Solutions (2005-05-04)
GoDaddy Serves Blank Pages to Safari & Opera (2005-12-08)
GoDaddy.com Dumps Linux for Microsoft (2006-03-23)
GoDaddy Holds Domains Hostage (2006-06-17)
GoDaddy Caves To Irish Legal Threat (2006-09-16)
MySpace and GoDaddy Shut Down Security Site (2007-01-26) That incident prompted this web site:
Exposing the Many Reasons Not to Trust GoDaddy with Your Domain Names.
Alternative Registrars to GoDaddy? (2007-02-03)
GoDaddy Bobbles DST Changeover? (2007-03-11)
850K RegisterFly Domains Moved To GoDaddy (2007-05-29)
According to this March 11, 2008 story in Wired, GoDaddy shut down an entire web site of 250,000 pages because of one archived mailing list comment: GoDaddy Silences Police-Watchdog Site RateMyCop.com. See below for Slashdot's story about RateMyCop.com.
GoDaddy Silences RateMyCop.com (2008-03-12)
ICANN Moves Against GoDaddy Domain Lockdowns (2008-04-08)
GoDaddy VP Caught Bidding Against Customers (2008-06-29)

Those are just the stories until July of 2008.

Do you really think that the government couldn't get the providers to shut down the lines that carry the internet already? Willingly? In an emergency? They didn't have a problem with illegal wiretaps after all.

Except not everyone cooperated. Just to name 2 examples, Google and Qwest told the Bush admin to get lost. Then those who did, like ATT, got eggs on their face. Obama gave then immunity for their cooperation. Google, Microsoft, Sun, and Yahoo! all spoke out in opposition to the granting of immunity.

Falcon

The Righthaven/Stephens Media copyright trolling was covered by a lot of the conservative blogosphere a few weeks ago. Righthaven (the trolls) has a deal for all of Stephen Media's 70-odd newpaper properties (including the Las Vegas Review-Journal). Wired had a story about their business plan.

A trademark lawyer blogged about why their business plan isn't a good one (hint: most bloggers don't have deep pockets).

Finally, Clayton Cramer posted a blacklist plus some links to BlockSite and SiteBlock to block all Stephens Media properties from Firefox/Chrome.

It was a bit of a cause célèbre for about a week, but I'm sure this will kick it up again...

To run an Onion node is prohibited in several countries (e.g. in Germany).
just two examples:
German police raid home of man who operated Tor server
German Cops Raid Home of Wikileaks and Tor Volunteer
I heard of others in forums, where the police put down whole server farms -.-
welcome to the real world...

Unfounded libel much?

Actually, TFA says that it's their business model. You can read about it in Wired: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/copyright-trolling-for-dollars/

Its copyright trolling at its best. There are several amusing parts to this story. The smug smile on the Righthaven CEOs Steve Gibsons (new Darl?) face as he openly brags about his business plan being all about extorting settlement money which the victims generally would rather pay then spend more on legal fees and not being interested in ending infringements, on the contrary, the more infringements the better. The legally dubious tactic of not sending takedown notices or but going straight to the lawsuit, demanding $150,000 and then settling for a much smaller amount. Also, the fact that the Review Journal is generally seen as a newspaper with conservative/libertarian bias and it strongly endorsed Sharron Angle, and now (through Righthaven) is suing her for posting two articles which praised her on her website.

The "Death Wears Bunny Slippers" patch comes from the notion that the people who are supposed to start WWIII and end the world might just be wearing fuzzy pink bunny slippers when they do it. That’s because once you are underground and locked in your 15×10 ft capsule for 24 hours with another officer the uniforms come off pretty darn quick. It’s all sweats, PJs and anything else in the comfy clothes category after that, at least until your relief crew arrives the next day.

If you want to talk about evidence, you could provide some.

You really need proof that iTunes has been the dominant digital music store since basically Day 1?

With DRM Apple had 80% of the digital music download market as of 2008.

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2008/01/rip_drm

Yes, they have to be rooted to make some changes -- possibly including removing crapware. They do not have to be rooted simply to install applications of your choice.

But they do have to be rooted (pre 2.2) to do something as simple as actually installing an app on the SD card and since most Android devices come with limited internal memory don't you think that's kind of silly?

Well, with George Broussard off the project this thing finally has a chance. The Wired piece on him was pretty damning -- every time he saw a shiny object he demanded that it be added to DNF. The failure of Duke Nukem Forever lies squarely at his feet.

Apple claims that hundreds of thousands of iPhones are being used by corporations and government agencies. What it won't tell you is that the supposedly enterprise-friendly encryption included with the iPhone 3GS is so weak it can be cracked in two minutes with a few pieces of readily available freeware.

As for WebOS ... don't know, does anyone else?

I am part of the FLYHT, AeroMechanical Services Ltd. team and we have a data streaming product called FLYHTStream. This product is provided to our customers who use our combined airborne and ground systems to improve efficiencies, save money, track assets and reduce lost time due to maintenance or operational items requiring attention. FLYHTStream transmits the Flight Data Recorder (“FDR”) data in near-real time over the Iridium satellite network and can be triggered from the ground, by the pilot or automatically by our system installed on the aircraft. Our system works in conjunction with the black box. It is our hope that FLYHTStream will be used by airlines to analyze data during incidents by opening the lines of communication with the ground and giving the crew extra support to identify the problem as it is happening and help solve it. There have been concerns about the cost of the streaming and bandwidth, but the FLYHT solution makes that a non-issue as our system starts streaming based on a pre-identified set of triggers, it does not run through the whole flight. So the streaming only runs as the incident is happening and if it is a bonafied emergency situation and the customer is using our other cost saving tools, we do not charge for this service. We have demonstrated FLYHTStream as part of the BEA working group, Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses, the group that is investigating the AF 447 crash. There have been a number of articles about data streaming in the media recently and I have included one such link if you are interested. September 1, 2010: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/09/aviation-thinks-outside-black-box/

or maybe this time around at least they can cover up better

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/07/show-bp-how-to-use-photoshop/

Enchantments? iOS doesn't have that. Android rules.

Doesn't matter if iOS isn't enchanting because the devices themselves are magical.

One day, kids will be in awe reading fantasy novels about our golden age of computer junk.

I have absolutely no problem with using this technology at our borders, scanning cars parked on the departures curb at the airport, etc.

The issue, of course, is they extended the 'border' to include a strip of land 100 miles from the border, all around the US.

So you really can crash the internet?

Maybe, yes. BGP has been identified as vulnerable for a long time, and this is further proof. On the other hand, this research is probably motivated by fixing the problem. But the Internet is no longer something you can just shut down or reboot to upgrade; you must operate on a live patient. It does make you wonder, though, if well-intentioned people can do this trying to help, what somebody malicious could do. Hopefully governments will decline to use this as a weapon - like poisoning the ocean.

I thought all the democrats were being issued Blackberries.

Looking at history. you might find out that the so called intellectual property rarely stimulated innovation, it might even hinder it. See, for instance, the case of the steam engine, or the comparison how many books where published in the 19th century with copyright (England) or without it (Germany).

(The implications on industrial development laid out in the latter article may not be correct, but at least it can be said that the absence of a strong copyright did not hinder industrial development and it also seems that this absence was actually better for the authors.)

Colonel Tufte certainly agrees.

Before you imagine driving any dual-purpose design through a typical urban area, take a look at what the typical traffic would be.

Seems a little far-fetch to get any kind of flying car design through such an area.

"The Amish community say they reject technology as it degrades their culture, but that is not true. They have simply 'frozen' the evolution of technology at one point."

Amish don't say that, and they don't do that. What they do is have a critical, community-based discussion about new technology and its effects before allowing it, rather than a laissez-faire permissiveness. From Wired:

Amish settlements have become a cliché for refusing technology. Tens of thousands of people wear identical, plain, homemade clothing, cultivate their rich fields with horse-drawn machinery, and live in houses lacking that basic modern spirit called electricity. But the Amish do use such 20th-century consumer technologies as disposable diapers, in-line skates, and gas barbecue grills. Some might call this combination paradoxical, even contradictory. But it could also be called sophisticated, because the Amish have an elaborate system by which they evaluate the tools they use; their tentative, at times reluctant use of technology is more complex than a simple rejection or a whole-hearted embrace. What if modern Americans could possibly agree upon criteria for acceptance, as the Amish have? Might we find better ways to wield technological power, other than simply unleashing it and seeing what happens? What can we learn from a culture that habitually negotiates the rules for new tools?

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.01/amish.html

Don't know about written stories, but a man has been jailed for 6 months for owning comic books with a deemed-unacceptable drawing. He was a comic book collector, and he went to jail for seven of his tens of thousands of comic books. A comic book, not photographs. The 2003 "Protect" act is real obscenity.

Source, one among many: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/02/obscene-us-manga-collector-jailed-6-months/

I don't think this is the first instance of this technology. I remember hearing about it last year. It was CBS and Pepsi.

It was discussed last August.

This is now a year after the first people did this. I suspect Slashdot covered it then too.

4 years ago today we lost her... anniversarys are hard.

Uhm ... er ... just why does the RIAA think it can write laws? Merely because they've had success in the past influencing legislation does not mean they have a right to such influence continuing.

Because the paid damn good money to get their guys into office!

• Gershengorn, left, a partner with RIAA-firm Jenner & Block, represented the labels against Grokster (.pdf) and will be in charge of the DOJ Federal Programs Branch. That’s the unit that just told a federal judge the Obama administration supports monetary damages as high as $150,000 per purloined music track on a peer-to-peer file sharing program.
• Donald Verrilli, associate deputy attorney general — the No. 3 in the DOJ, who unsuccessfully urged a federal judge to uphold the $222,000 file sharing verdict against Jammie Thomas.
• Tom Perrilli, as Verrilli’s former boss, the Justice Department’s No. 2 argued in 2002 that internet service providers should release customer information to the RIAA even without a court subpoena.
• Brian Hauck, counsel to associate attorney general, worked on the Grokster case on behalf of the record labels.
• Ginger Anders, assistant to the solicitor general, litigated on the Cablevision case.

Source Obama Taps 5th RIAA Lawyer to Justice Dept.

Microsoft Windows 95 was released on August 24th, 1995.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/173161-48-windows-release-date

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/microsoft/stories/1995/debut082495.htm

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/08/dayintech_0824

So, either all of those places (and a good chunk more) have been "fixed", or you're the one trying to change reality.

According to this Wired article, it takes 113 million BTUs to make a Prius: http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-06/ff_heresies_09usedcars

They claim that is about 1000 gallons of gasoline (not really willing to do the math myself, I'll accept it). They also argue that the smelting of the 30 lbs of nickel used for the batteries is very bad for the environment. Also, don't know one way or another, but it wouldn't surprise me.

For some reason you chose to compare a 1992 Honda wagon to a Prius. Well, when I say "for some reason" I meant, because it makes your argument look good. Since the parent just said 1992 Honda, I'll go with the Civic hatchback with manual transmission that gets 33/42 mpg for similar reasons.

So now the Honda is using 2790 gallons of fuel and the Prius (taking into consideration production costs) is using 3800.

Buying a used car (and not being stupid about it) *is* more energy efficient than buying a new car.

I think this is the test you were talking about:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/08/orion-test-para/

The picture in that test is a bit ugly too, and I'd be glad that my life didn't depend upon the parachutes working. For those posters on this story that assert this was a "useless" test that didn't really prove anything, I hope that at least some of those would be pointed to this story to see what happens when a test of this nature goes wrong. I certainly wouldn't want to be in a capsule if the kind of damage in the photograph happened to me. Landing in the water at those speeds has nearly the same kind of impact damage as hitting land too, but you get to drown if you somehow survive.

And the advocates for Ares/Orion continue to assert theirs is a better program... with "the best minds on the planet" helping to design that vehicle? The best lobbyists in Washington D.C. perhaps...

Graphic image warning!

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/08/graphic-evidenc/

Recently I read a story that featured an idiot judge. The judge actually allowed a lawsuit go through that claimed negligence for making a product too good. So my question is, how does a normal citizen go about getting a federal judge permanently removed from the bench?

Perhaps you should do some googling, before claiming that RIAA can't raid your house, or put you in jail.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070117/163531.shtml

http://www.allbusiness.com/retail-trade/miscellaneous-retail-retail-stores-not/4385453-1.html

http://www.wired.com/listening_post/2007/11/albumbase-down/

http://features.rr.com/article/0bAa6maaGCexM?q=North+Carolina

http://www.riaa.net/newsitem.php?news_month_filter=5&news_year_filter=2004&resultpage=&id=482BFD6A-C0C6-71B2-F544-6E181B92A80A

Personally, I would just LOVE to have RIAA invade my home, my place of business, or even to just shake me down at a flea market or some such thing. I'm armed. SOMEONE will die. Hey, it could be me. But, the day that a RIAA rent-a-cop kills a US citizen over a civil matter, all hell will break loose.

Come on, RIAA - try to take me down. I can't lose.

Lou Gehrig May Not Have Had Lou Gehrig’s Disease

My head just exploded

--
  Windows Media Codec Pack

Lou Gehrig May Not Have Had Lou Gehrig’s Disease

Marker on the rim from the 1990s was bogus, but marker on the second session was for real.

Didn't you hear, the web is dead now, because there are iPhone apps.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/

CmdrTaco, I am stunned to see such a biased and ridiculously slanted summary coming from your desk. Come on... “both combine...strong client support”? Are you kidding? Silverlight only runs fully featured enabled on Windows. Mac users suffer sub-par SilverLight performance due to issues with hardware acceleration, Linux users are left in the cold, and even the Windows technology has an awful track record. Let's take two large rollouts of SilverLight for example: Major League Baseball and Netflix Instant Play.

MLB: It does not take long to see that MLB had such an uproar of customer complaints about SilverLight that the MS player was quickly “benched”: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10212843-93.html

Netflix: The Netflix subsidized SilverLight player has resulted in an absolute flood of complains and a continual stream of glitches: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10199350-56.html http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/03/netflix-updates/

Of course, being that this is /., I would think the fact that SilverLight does not play on any open players or Linux distributions would be enough to reject this summary's premise alone. Flash, in spite of all the horrendous attributes inherent in that technology, at least actually plays on most platforms and mobile devices. Thus, I respectfully disagree with your primary assertion that these two technologies are even on the same playing field.

David Brin beat you by a decade

Here's his 1996 wired column, which he later expanded into a book:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/fftransparent.html

Here's the Wikipedia page on his book "The Transparent Society", which was published in 1998.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society

-- Terry

Computers have had the ability to display to braille pads, and make use of other devices, that allow it's user to make use of what senses and abilities they have. New devices are locking everything out, hiding behind the DMCA and 'OMG, piracy, think of the children' to prevent the owner of the device from making use of it if their needs are different.

The iPhone (and presumably the iPad, although it might need to wait for the iOS 4 upgrade later this year) does support braille output, and has a rather good screen reader built in too!

To have context you not only have to RTFA you have to RTFA that the FA is referencing. Then you need to RTFA that is referenced by the FA that the FA is referencing. Kurzweil is almost certainly saying that the information needed to create a real brain can be compressed to a given size, so it is not unreasonable to think that a simulation of a brain can be compressed to similar size.

He might be wrong, but PZ Myers's argument isn't proof of that. It's a tangent. Like any good(bad) argument, it attacks Kurzweil's major by by talking about something completely different.

HP's board used a technique usually only employed by private dicks, called "pretexting", to round up all the private cell numbers of board numbers, so they could figure out who leaked a HP story to CNET. This was in '06:

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2006/09/71730

This company makes Intel look like shangra-la. Working for HP, even at the top levels, is akin to working for Uncle Joe Stalin in '43. They're gonna know who you are and where you live, who you talk to and if you like giving it hookers up the butt. Everything and more, for the HP paycheck.


Remind yourself of the company history and tactics when deciding on that new printer.

There needs to be a book on HP like Jackson' book on Intel:
http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Intel-Andrew-Powerful-Company/dp/052594141X

HP, Cisco, Intel - all of these are cultures of paranoia and spying. Much of it has been documented in books like the one above. Caveat emptor.

Second step: jail everyone!

Actually: second step, make the law so goddamn fucking obtuse that you can find some reason, at any time, to jail someone - the age-old phrase "they're always guilty of something."

Then you use the threat of "the law" as a method to make people live in fear. And they do. Most people's first thought after "hey that would be cool" is "nahh, it'd probably break some law." And small wonder huh?

You can ship 500 lbs of potassium nitrate across state lines if you call it fertilizer, but you can't mail 1 small ounce of it in a chemistry kit lest you be charged with "terrorism."

Can you believe the unmitigated nerve of those crappy little backwards countries and their oppressive Big Brother-ish monitoring of their citizens!!? Thank god nothing like this could ever happen in the United States, where we actually give a rat's ass about protecting our privacy from the government!

Oh, wait... Well, shit.

Of course, there are only a billion or so trivial ways to privately communicate using a public network, from one-time pads, to stenography [in text, images, video, or other binary files], to using ssh, or https.

And for all you higher and mightier Americans using IMAP, I'm sure you know the police can request any email, without a warrant, for any email stored on a server for more than 180 days (and now believes that they can also get any email stored on the server for less than 180 days if you've read it) http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/04/emailprivacy/ I wonder if GMail has a portal that lets the police do this or if they just forward all email to the FBI as it passes 180 days...

Now they are just suing the crap out of anyone who, well anyone. Dead gramdma's, 7 yr old kids you're all a target.

How unfortunate for you that you are wrong:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/05/riaa-bump/

I think I saw this posted in a commnet on /., but for those who missed it you can read all about undersea cable as a travelogue kind of story and it's actually pretty interesting.

Posting anonymously because I don't need to karma-whore.

Chad Ochocinco

Sunshine Megatron

I had some major digestive issues that I was about to go to the doctor for. My girlfriends grandmother took out some oils for me, i took two drops with a glass of water every night...never felt better. No doctor, no HMO, no government healthcare, no co-pay and I didn't even have to pay for my oil. Just one smart resourceful grandmother.

I have a couple of thoughts about this. Not sure which reply to post so I'll post both of them (with links, of course):

(1) Placebos are effective. Or, more precisely, the placebo effect is real and measurable and billions (with a b) of dollars are spent in studies trying to demonstrate not just that new treatments are effective, but that they are more effective than the placebo effect. What's really fascinating is that in the last couple of decades, the effect is increasing (Wired Magazine Article on the phenomenon here...)

(2) Correlation does not equal causation. Just because you took the oils and then felt better does not mean that the oils were what made you feel better. (Helpful illustration here...)