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If you bought into any of these, you're a sucker. They don't work any more.

• Divx (1998-2001). "Disposable" DVDs tied to a remote authorization system. Promoted by Circuit City and Thompson. Content now unplayable.
• WalMart Music (2007-2008) Downloadable music tied to an authorization server. Content now unplayable.
• PlaysForSure (2004-2008) Microsoft system. Downloadable music tied to an authorization server. Content from AOL MusicNow (closed), Musicmatch Jukebox (closed), Yahoo! Music Unlimited (closed), Spiralfrog (closed), MTV URGE (closed), MSN Music (closed), Musicmatch Jukebox (closed), Ruckus Network (closed) now generally unplayable, although exit strategies exist. Authorization servers were to be shut down August 31, 2008, but were kept up after that date.

Next, Disney.

Pretty soon, Google will BE the Internet.

They already are:

Credit Suisse made headlines this summer when it estimated that YouTube was binging on bandwidth, losing Google a half a billion dollars in 2009 as it streams 75 billion videos. But a new report from Arbor Networks suggests that Google's traffic is approaching 10 percent of the net's traffic, and that it's got so much fiber optic cable, it is simply trading traffic, with no payment involved, with the net's largest ISPs

With android, google has created Apple/RIM/Microsoft's worst nightmare. They make a robust, feature rich phone OS that easily competes with Apple's iPhone OS or Blackberry and seriously destroys anything Windows Phone related and essentially giving it away for free to all the generic phone manufacturers of the world like LG, Samsung, Motorola, HTC. By doing this, they totally eliminate said generic phone companies' strongest disadvantage -- i.e lack of software and services expertise -- and they do not even have to spend any effort or R&D money on it! Besides, companies like HTC that make excellent phone hardware and was previously crippled by the sad state of windows mobile* or symbian can now offer a very competitive software-hardware package by choosing android.

Little wonder that apple asked google to not include multitouch in the first version of their OS. But why is google doing this? I find it hard to believe that their only reason is to increase the adoption of google services (not that they aren't doing a good job at it) Nevertheless, it is interesting to consider the disruption android has caused. Google killed the market for licensed phone OS, gave Motorola a reason to live, seriously dented Apple/RIM's chances to compete against generic manufacturers, and provided a good OS for geeks to play with, and to put on various random devices .

* I realize windows CE/mobile was a decent OS around 10 years ago, but there's no denying that microsoft let it stagnate for too long. Now it's just slow, bloated, not user friendly and ancient-looking.

This technology is only a subset of the prosthetic arm - 'Luke' - developed by Dean Kamen's company. The prosthetic arm is controlled directly by the user's brain as well and allows a lot more complexity compared to the hand shown here. Also, Luke is being built as a modular system where you only use the parts of the arm that you need - if you don't need the upper arm, you can use just the hand and lower arm, and so forth.
More details below:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/05/dean-kamens-rob/
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/bionics/dean-kamens-luke-arm-prosthesis-readies-for-clinical-trials/2
http://blog.ted.com/2008/02/dean_kamens_arm.php

PS: For those who can't place the name, Dean Kamen is the inventor of Segway, among other things.

Yes, today's placebo is almost twice as powerful as those used as little as 5 years ago.

You joke, but there's actually quite a bit of truth to that statement.

But wait, you're producing helium? Think about the environmental impact! Millions of adults walking around talking like chipmunks all the time! Won't someone think of the children!?!

:-D

I'd guess a lot of people will be talking like the children, this may help them to think of them. ;) That said, though, the first thing I thought when I saw that helium was a byproduct was "oh good, we need more of that".

Are software developers naturally weird? No, just the good ones. And yes, there is a link with autism. In Silicon Valley, there is a disproportionate occurence of children with autism (Aspergers is a disorder in the Autistic Spectrum). Autistic Spectrum Disorders are genetic, although some studies suggest environment (vaccinations) 'pulls the trigger'. Originally thimerosal (containing mercury) was blamed; current theories suggest however that people with ASDs simply have a weak immune system (the stereotypical geek has asthma, allergies...) and the blow dealt by the vaccine is the last straw to 'activate' the autism. A saying goes around that for each autistic child, there's a techie at most 2 generations back.

I'm married and have 2 kids. Although I've never been officially diagnosed with autism, my oldest has, and in retrospective that was an eye opener. I've had treatment for a few things that nowadays are considered 'typically autistic' and have been on some supplements (magnesium, cod liver oil) that are recommended to help relieve some of the issues of autism (though I didn't know at the time).

I don't agree "women just aren't strong enough to be able to handle [people with autism]"- I think it depends on the lady and on the severity of the autism. Even having a kid with autism can put severe strain on a relationship though; 85% of couples with an autistic child get divorced. (To put things in a bit more positive light- in this time and age though, about 2/3 of couples *without* autistic children get divorced).

Now, I've been making some claims here... I know, [citation needed]. I'm too tired to link to all of them right now, but you people know how to use Google, right?

By the way, 26? That's early.

I am imagining a future where parts are very cheap, and then someone crosses these with these D:

> It's all speculation propagated by the AT&T Artificial Turf(TM) fanclub.

You're absolutely right, but you didn't give any citations. So I'll dig up a few of them for you. It seems like getting people to call something "racist" or to claim that it will "harm the disabled" are some of the most popular current lobbyist tactics. Why? Because no politician wants to be branded a racist.

Here are some places where corporate lobbyists have pulled this exact same trick:

* Critics of Rep. Conyers called "racist" ... because they're against radio performance royalties which "exploit black musicians" even though the RIAA types pushing for these royalties are going to pocket most of them and exploit the artists far more than anyone else. (citation) This was in an NAACP resolution, incidentally.

* Lobbyists fearing a loss of Microsoft leverage stir up a bunch of disabled people who don't even know the difference between a file format and an application to protest ODF as harmful to the disabled. They also create a bogus story calling Peter Quinn "corrupt" (with the retraction to be printed later, in a place most people won't see it). (It's harder to find good links any more, but try this and this).

As you can see, this is a common trick being used by lobbyists. These groups aren't, incidentally, usually controlled by the lobbyists directly. They just get told what to think about some issue they don't fully understand by someone who happens to donate money to them. If you tell people that somebody is out to screw them, they'll be biased against it no matter what.

And it's funny on Net Neutrality, because if you remember, the one thing that everyone from the ACLU to the Christian Coalition protested was the idea that an ISP (I think it was AT&T) could pick any high-traffic website and say to them "we're going to throttle access to your website unless you pay up." Nowadays, people are all saying "what IS Net Neutrality, anyhow?" because they've forgotten what we're all against. Or they're worried that the government will try to create some rule against doing exactly what I just said and end up banning QoS, end-user traffic shaping, etc.

Part of the "confusion" is due to highly-paid lobbyists. Suppose there's some popular outcry against something a business wants to do. As with smoking and laws banning it in public. Then you do a few things:

* Find people who are naturally against this law (e.g. smokers) and convince them their rights are being "trampled." These are your allies. Fund them if need be. Create them if need be.

* Find out why people oppose smoking (it's deadly) and counter this with disinformation. First, they said that smoking hadn't been "proven" to cause anything, it was only "linked" to dozens of diseases, cancer, etc. but not "proven." After that failed, they did exactly the same thing with second-hand smoke. There's no doubt in the scientific community that cigarette smoke is harmful, even if you're not actually smoking. Someone will probably show up shortly to claim otherwise.

* Lobby politicians. As seen with Mr. Quinn, if you can find alleged dirt, even if it's bogus, you can use that to threaten them by "exposing" them to the press. You can also get your allies, especially if they're groups of minorities/disabled/whoever, to decry the move as somehow racist/homophobic/whatever if there's any possible way to make this mistake. No politician wants to be a racist or to have a group of disabled people protesting them.

There's more, but if you look around, you'll see the same fact pattern. The advice to "follow the money" has always been golden. It works on tobacco lobbyists, Microsoft lobbyists, RIAA lobbyists... ever

You joke, but there's mounting evidence that the placebo effect is indeed getting stronger.

(Of course, conducting a double-blind test to confirm this would create numerous paradoxes)

Wired says 6% of traffic is Google. Wired also says YouTube's internet costs are near zero as Google uses private optical fibers.

Yes, absolutely, indeed, MS Windows a long history of reliability in military applications. At least it will be a short war.

But they didn't have proper laws to charge Drew with behavior that arguably resulted in the death of a teenager. She was guilty of that bad behavior, but the got acquitted because the judge didn't want to establish "breaking a website's terms of service" as precedence for violating the law. For whatever reason, there were not any "harassment" charges to levy against Drew.

Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/the-150-space-camera-mit-students-beat-nasa-on-beer-money-budget/

The only real difference is that this one went a bit higher (100,000 ft) where as the MIT guys made it 93,000. Still pretty close though.

From Wired

Wired has an article on Willie Nelson's setup in his tour bus running, http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/willie-nelson-broadban/ "Willie Nelson has tossed the satellite dish off the back of his corn-powered tour bus in favor of a little box that fuses wireless data cards from a variety of networks into a single connection."[Mushroom Networks PortaBella 141]

The key is the carriers.
Verizon has the largest network and subscriber base, but doesn't have any good smart phones.
T-mobile has the g1, but T-mobile is a horrible company.
AT&T has the iphone but it costs a fortune for service.

The key will be what smart phone takes hold on Verizon; currently it looks like it is going to be an android phone.

Verizon Wireless: 87.7 Million subscribers
AT&T Mobility: 79.6 Million Subscribers
Sprint: 49.3 Million subscribers
T-Mobile: 38.2 million subscribers

Personally I'm waiting for a phone similar to the G1 to be available on the Verizon network.

The RIAA types shoot at anyone who dares question copyright these days. The PFF (an industry-funded EFF knock-off group) has been going after people like William Patry, the former top Google lawyer and copyright law expert, these days.

You may remember them from back when they were badmouthing the judge in Capitol v. Thomas, even though they receive major funding from one of the plaintiffs in that lawsuit. They didn't bother to disclose that to the reporter, which is why there's that update at the top of the page.

Interesting. According to Wired, motion to sanction was filed a year ago and has been awaiting a decision the entire time.

The last line of the linked article reads, "Expect a ruling on the RIAA's motion for sanctions soon."

OK. [checks watch] For future reference, Soon = 11 months in legalese.

Here, Defendant’s counsel should be sanctioned for forcing Plaintiffs to take many unnecessary steps to obtain basic information, for making misleading statements, and for making baseless discovery objections and frivolous motions which he posted on his anti-recording industry blog. Specifically, as demonstrated above, Defendant’s counsel consistently forced Plaintiffs to seek Court intervention for routine discovery requests and engaged in a pattern of filing frivolous motions. For example, Plaintiffs were forced to seek the Court’s assistance to inspect Defendant’s computer, to serve deposition subpoenas on basic fact witnesses like Woody Raymond, Junior Lindor, and Yannick Raymond-Wright, and to compel Defendant and her son to produce the missing hard drive. As the Court held, each of these requests was a good faith effort to uncover evidence of copyright infringement. Similarly, Defendant’s counsel filed frivolous motions seeking, among other things, to preclude evidence (Doc. No. 69), to exclude Plaintiffs’ expert’s testimony (Doc. No. 165), and to compel production of a proprietary contract with MediaSentry (Doc. Nos. 62 and 201). Defendant’s counsel’s refusal to cooperate in good faith and repeated frivolous motions designed to thwart Plaintiffs’ discovery resulted in an unreasonable multiplication of these proceedings. Defendant’s counsel also made misleading statements to Plaintiffs. His assertions that there was no computer in the home at the time of infringement and that Defendant had no way of contacting her nephew Junior Lindor were both false, and both materially prolonged and complicated these proceedings unnecessarily. Finally, as this Court is aware, Defendant’s counsel has maintained an anti-recording industry blog during the course of this case and has consistently posted virtually every one of his baseless motions on his blog seeking to bolster his public relations campaign and embarrass Plaintiffs. Such vexatious conduct demeans the integrity of these judicial proceedings and warrants this imposition of sanctions. See Galonsky, 1997 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19570, at *18-19.

Now I can't find the court case cited here (Galonsky v. Williams in 1997?) because my judicial system here likes to be the only ones able to speak latin so I rely on them to tell me what's been established and what hasn't. Otherwise, I'd give you my honest opinion of their claims from a non-lawyer perspective, of course.

Essentially they seem to be upset with him discussing this case on his blog ... if you read Slashdot regularly you'd be familiar with Ray's ability to say something along the lines of: so then I asked for this and they ruled it as frivolous and here's my documents asking for it! Which I guess is the kind of actions the RIAA was appealing to the judge to find 'vexatious' as the judge is the utmost authority in these cases about what is and isn't frivolous. Not Ray's blog, not the people who read Ray's blog and not the internet. People read his blog and get upset then the RIAA (and they were hoping the judge) get upset because they feel Ray spun the material to suite his arguments. Unfortunately for the RIAA the judge seemed to react along the lines of "Yeah, that's what I did, so what? I understand how this upsets you but he's free to run for office on his free time if he wants ... let alone run a political campaign against you or I. Now both of you act like adults and stop calling each other 'vexatious.'" So I'm guessing what Ray did was vexatious but apparently being vexatious isn't illegal (maybe being 'overly vexatious' is?).

Actually the Judge ruled that the RIAA was not a vexatious litigant either

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/magistrate-clears-blogger-riaa-of-vexatious-charges/

Levy also ruled that the RIAA, which has sued 30,000 individuals, was not a vexatious litigant, shooting down Beckerman's counter-complaint against his courtroom opponents. "Plaintiffs have doggedly pursued their copyright infringement claim, but I find no evidence of undue vexatiousness or ill motive on their part," Levy wrote.

Mind you, I do wonder if outing NewYorkCountryLawyer's identity here might be a bad idea. It means that an RIAA staffer will now be reading every post he made looking for a sentence they can use against him.

Pentagon way-out research arm Darpa and Predator drone maker General Atomics are teaming up to try to turn algae into jet fuel. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/12/darpa-general-a/ well they were still at it towards the end of 2008.

Or a anti matter bomb like in angels and demons.

That sounds like a myth to me.

Can you give me a link to where he said that? I did a quick Google and I found a Wired article on it saying that he never said it.

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/01/1484

It also claims that Bill Gates denies ever saying it - "Meanwhile, I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again"

So, it sounds like it shows up in the infrared. But, it must be filtered by our atmosphere, or something -- otherwise we'd be able to see it from the ground.

What a shame. It would be really cool to capture it with a DSLR.

Wired had a nice article about the motivating power of statistics, and the positive sociological pressure that motives members from feeling they are part of a group. There's five excellent reasons to keep track of your workouts in this article.

You know, that "sky is falling" prediction has been coming and going for years now. It's always just a couple years away. Things get reallocated, and then it's "oh a couple years away". Someone always "discovers" IPv6, because they were just taught about it and suddenly it's the most important thing to them since storing rations for Y2K.

Sept 1998
In many ways, the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 marks the period of the Internet's adolescence. Within the user community, there's angst over ... IPv4's 4.2 billion addresses will run out in about 10 years-by 2010 at the latest.

July 1999 - Wired
The Internet on Thursday began moving from its old addressing system to a radically new one, though no one is likely to notice.

After four years of testing, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority on Thursday rolled out Version 6 of the Internet Protocol (IPv6), the next-generation numeric addressing system for the global network.

March 2002, screen digest

Under present conditions, Internet protocol (IP) addresses will run out by 2005, according to report by European Commission. Old IP version four (IPv4) cannot provide each person around the world with one address, especially since greater proportion of addresses have been assigned to North America.

May 2007, internetnews.com

The IPv4 Address Report lists two possible dates for when the number of IPv4 dates will run out: April 17, 2010 or December 2, 2010, depending on the source.

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/08/alt-text-an-all-star-cavalcade-of-product-reviews/

And no one is downloading or mirroring this data? No one has hard copies of the complete 2008 law? This is trivial compared to the benefits. Right now we have a situation where a page can change the law, and elected congresscritters have plausible deniability.

I haven't found the source yet, but there was one case where a wording change was discovered to have been done by an aide without anyone's knowledge. This was on slashdot a while back.

And yes, this has come up before. Lots of comments everywhere.

http://www.google.com/search?q=congress+needs+source+control&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/03/federal-bill-wo/

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/07/why-congress-ne.html

http://tonybuser.com/post/189954813/congress-needs-a-version-control-system

http://bexhuff.com/2007/07/congress-needs-version-control-system

http://freegovinfo.info/node/1321

That was not a made up story, though I wish it had been):

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/08/britain-to-put-cctv-cameras-inside-private-homes/

http://current.com/items/90587783_uk-plans-to-monitor-20-000-families-homes-via-cctv.htm

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/115736/Sin-bins-for-worst-families

Indeed, and the best way to do this is not to become the control freaks that Apple are.

Maybe yes. Maybe No.

"Tell me, do you know what this is?"

Why no mention of nuclear? I hear the US public is now coming round to that idea recently. Why not ALSO have the option to swap the battery at a service station when it goes flat. See: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/05/better-place/ [wired.com] for that idea.

Why not ALSO have the option to swap the battery at a service station when it goes flat. See: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/05/better-place/ [wired.com] for that idea.

"You will not charge at stations, instead you will get replacement battery instantly in return for some cash and old battery" Now, take your idea a bit further... the car owner doesn't need to own the battery. See: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/05/better-place/

Um, why not just swap out the battery if it goes flat? See: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/05/better-place/ for that idea.

Man, people on Slashdot are so negative and surprisingly restrictive in their thinking. All this moaning about "will never work, because I don't want to wait for my battery to charge" and hardly any ideas to solve that problem! Why not ALSO have the option to swap the battery at a service station when it goes flat. See: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/05/better-place/ for that idea.

The high energy rays and penetrate deep into the atmosphere where they create nucleation points which increase cloud over. The inreased cloud cover reflects more energy into space and the planet will cool.

Why didn't you provide any citations? Perhaps because it was disproved in 2007.

Thirty seconds with google and the keywords "cosmic rays global warming" brought a wealth of stories describing research which found no correlation of any kind between cosmic ray flux and cloud cover. Sure, you'll find articles describing this theory, but it's called a "hypothesis," and "controversial" at best. And all those stories are older than the 2008 analysis of MODIS data.

Hmmm...which is worse? "Total surveillance societies like Great Britain" where the people know they are under surveillance as opposed to total surveillance societies like the USA where the people don't know they are under surveillance?

e.g. http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/05/70910 ;-)

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/google-cracks-down-on-android-developer/

"The Android engineers at Google are now making available previously unreleased components â" makefiles and configuration files â" that will give independent developers the ability to create Android releases in the same manner that Google does, but without using Googleâ(TM)s proprietary apps. These engineers are working with volunteers from the community and have already begun working on alternatives to the proprietary Google applications."


It doesn't sound as contentious as the OP but it definitely seems like Google is taking the right tact on this to me.

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

Sir;
reading that took up my entire afternoon. Thank you.

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

Brand Fortner, who exchanged marriage vows with his wife on a PLATO monitor 20 years before online weddings were in vogue...

All you have to do is detect how many lolcat/txting words are in their essay and mark accordingly. Anybody who can put two sentences together without using any is "advanced".

Allow me to pee on your fantasy world with actual knowledge.

Clive Thompson on the New Literacy
"I think we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilization," she says. For Lunsford, technology isn't killing our ability to write. It's reviving it--and pushing our literacy in bold new directions.
...
The Stanford students were almost always less enthusiastic about their in-class writing because it had no audience but the professor: It didn't serve any purpose other than to get them a grade. As for those texting short-forms and smileys defiling serious academic writing? Another myth. When Lunsford examined the work of first-year students, she didn't find a single example of texting speak in an academic paper.

I thought this was a troll, but it isn't.

Obama Backs Extending Patriot Act Spy Provisions

Heavy? Tell that to the MIT team who built a solar powered car that does 90 miles an hour.

Everything is packaged in a chrome-moly steel frame wrapped in carbon-fiber-and-Kevlar bodywork. The car weighs just under 500 pounds, and the top half of the body weighs just 40 pounds - with the solar cells

If it's Third Voice you are referring to, it went away about 8 years ago for most of the reasons raised in the comments here.

1) Are they really more efficient?

They're certainly better than helicopters for hovering and slow patrolling, but for transporting lots of people or stuff to a definite destination I doubt it. Given the typical shapes used, I can imagine them spending lots of fuel just fighting the wind or air resistance. Not going to be easy to beat ships or trains, or even normal planes.

Airships are fuel efficient if you don't mind going wherever the wind blows you.

2) What gas to use though?

I don't think there will be enough helium to go around:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.08/helium.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-12-02-Helium_N.htm

So the options are hot air (which doesn't produce as much lift) or hydrogen (which has significant PR problems for airship usage).

I suppose this would be a smaller problem. Could use hydrogen both for fuel and for lifting.

The way I read it when it first came out was, most of their feature requests were already in the product. So the ribbon was intended to (among other things) try to make it easier for people to find things.

You still have to know what you're looking for, and how Microsoft decided it should be classified. For example, to insert a new line of cells you don't look on the Insert ribbon - if you do, you'd see "Insert / Line" and be surprised when a graph pops up. It's not under Data, as in Insert a line of data. So I go to Home. There's an Insert option, but it's in the box labeled Cells. I don't want cells, I want a whole line. The "old way" was Insert -> Row, and the 2003 shortcut still works in 2007.

"Nine out of 10 feature requests we got for 2007 were already in the 2003 product," says Microsoft senior marketing manager Paul Coleman. "People just couldn't find them."

http://www.wired.com/software/softwarereviews/news/2007/01/72596

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/114467/is-microsofts-ribbon-ui-really-that-great-from-a-usability-perspective
http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/maryb/2009/07/13/dont-like-the-ribbon-you-will/
http://www.evernote.com/shard/s1/note/666e1143-e735-4d8e-a98a-931fda130235/pivic/Tech
http://www.betanews.com/article/Top-5-obvious-feature-enhancements-to-Microsoft-Office-2010/1247509742/2
http://www.factplace.com/microsoft_onenote_12.htm

Corn? You just pass that in 4 to 6 hours, how about a little smack? http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.11/columbia.html

You could always try one of these - no need for the bulky treadmill. Or you could see if these folks have progressed any further.