The invention can 'take steps to verify ad consumption,' be used to block ads from competitors, and even sneak a peek at'user document files, user e-mail files, user music files, downloaded podcasts, computer settings, [and] computer status messages' to deliver more tightly targeted ads. This is a stunning example of why I refuse to use Microsoft products. They put the wishes of corporations before that of their customers. I will be highly surprised if this is an opt-in "service" - hell, I'll eat my hat if it's even opt-out.
The only reason Microsoft still has any customers is because most of the computer-using world is locked into using their products by default. If Microsoft were just starting out today, they'd never get anywhere with priorities like this. Hell, if you could go back to zero and start the computer industry all over again in the present day, they still wouldn't get anywhere.
Microsoft cares about the satisfaction of whomsoever has paid it the largest sum of money recently, not their end users. I truly hope this will motivate a large amount of complacent Windows users to change, but if history has taught us anything, that's not likely.
Just wondering, what do you think should be illegal? Posting anonymously on message boards? Bad mouthing a company? Do you propose to make it illegal to say bad things about a company at all?
This isn't illegal because he was not using any inside information that he wasn't supposed to disclose. Nobody even knew who he was. He was more or less just anonymously posting "Whole Foods rules, Wild Oats sucks" on a freaking Yahoo! stocks message board. A single anonymous poster can not drive down the stock price of a company in such a fashion, because the financial world does not revolve around online message board discussions.
It's not a nice thing to do, and I certainly would rather patronize a company that takes the high road rather than dissing competitors, but there's nothing illegal about this.
Yeah, cause, you know, when they proclaimed the Titanic unsinkable, that pissed off all those icebergs in the North Atlantic, and it just went downhill from there. Them icebergs are mean SOB's.
I'm with you on Alpha Centauri in the top 10. I was shocked that Civ IV was the only Civ game on the list. While it has great graphics, and the culture system is a good edition, no game can beat AC in terms of all-around experience.
From the carefully crafted faction balances, to the relevant and often insightful quotes that accompany tech breakthroughs, to the kick-ass Secret Project videos (the Wonder vids in Civ IV pale in comparision), to the careful managing of diplomatic relationships (which gets extremely tricky in thinker and transcend difficulties), to the awesomeness of the concept of mind-worms, the game is a masterpiece. Civ IV improves in a couple of areas, but is too weak on relationship between civ ideology and societal mechanics, unique style of play for each civ, and intellectual maturity for me to fully enjoy. Ten years later, I still keep coming back to Alpha Centauri.
No, only the Macbook Pro has had a recent update. I'd be very surprised if the Pro's were updated again in October. The next Pro refresh will likely be when Intel releases it's Penryn mobile chips in late 07 or early 08.
I don't know about you, but I never look at my track-pad while I'm using it. What's the point? What added functionality or increased productivity does this allow?
I think it's unlikely for Apple to release an iPod with a screen as big as the iPhone, simply because there is no need for so much information on a simple music player. The iPod is no longer strictly a music player. The latest iPod can play video content, and you can even buy games for it. Notice how Apple has been selling movies and TV Shows in the iTunes "Music" Store for a while? A true widescreen iPod (one similar to the iPhone, except with only iPod functionality, along with an HD) is the logical next step in Apple's game plan. People want to watch movies on the go, and they want to do it on as large of a screen as possible. And there's a much bigger market for a $300 multimedia player than a $600 convergence device.
Actually, they do block a lot of English websites - and English television, even in places that cater exclusively to westerners. I visited Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai in May, and while there, I could not access the English Wikipedia from any of my hotels or the Wang Ba's (Internet Cafe's). If I searched on Google for "Tiananmen Square," I got some lovely tourist information, but nothing about what happened there in 1989.
In fact, one morning, I was idly gazing at CNN whilst eating breakfast in my hotel, when the TV just blacked out. "Hmm, that's odd," I thought, and looked at the TV behind me - also blank. The CNN channel in my hotel room was also out, even though every other channel was fine.
Censorship is alive and real in China, no matter what language you speak.
Hardly a conclusive or thorough study - were it really double-blind, some subjects should have heard two 128 Kb/s tracks, while others heard two 256 Kb/s tracks, and there should have been a "no difference" option. Also, some types of music, or some particular musicians, make it much easier to discern difference between bitrates, but every subject listened to a different song.
Personally, I can tell the difference between 128 and 256 versions of most Radiohead songs, where there are frequently numerous layers of instrumentation, while Coldplay songs, which are more simplistic, make it harder to discern. However, I can only tell the difference when I'm using my Etymotic ER-6i's - it's impossible for me to tell when using Apple buds, or my Sony MDR-XD2000 over the ear cans - even with my youthful teenage hearing.
From what I can gather from the summary (the New Scientist domain seems to be blocked by the PRC to those in China, so I can't RTFA), the security of this lies in the fact that Eve cannot seperate the message from the inherent thermal noise of the channel. However, wouldn't she be able to decode the message by trial and error by hooking her own resistors? Surely she doesn't have to have identical resistance just around 10 or 100 Ohms of the average.
Could someone correct me if I'm wrong (which I think I am)?
It doesn't matter how long it takes to patch an exploit, as long as it is patched before it's used in a virus or other attack on a system. There are currently no OS X viruses in the wild that can attack a Mac in a meaningful way (there is a proof-of-concept one that requires the user to install it). Compare that to the tens of thousands of Windows OS viruses and worms exploiting security holes without requiring the user. Given that, I'd say that Apple has an excellent track record when it comes to patching vulnerabilities.
The radiation in question is the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, or CMBR. The CMBR is (analogously speaking) an "echo" of the Big Bang, in the form of electromagnetic radiation. As space expanded, the radiation's wavelength expanded with it, slowly lengthening from the Gamma and X-ray spectrums, through visible light, to the microwave spectrum (where it is now). As space continues to expand, so will the wavelength of the Cosmic Background Radiation.
As an interesting side note, since analog TV operates in the same part of the radio and microwave spectrum that the CMBR is observed, if you tune an analog TV to a blank channel (static), about one percent of that static is the CMBR. Turn the TV on, and watch the Big Bang!
From my (college-level) physics knowledge, the advantage of these colliders is that they come close to recreating the conditions which existed at the time of the beginning on the Universe (according to the Big Bang hypotheses). Whether or not these conditions allow certain never-before-seen particles to be observed is uncertain, but likely, since some kinds of particles (like mesons or bosons) have a tendency to dessapear in less than a nanosecond (1*10^-9 seconds).
On a related note, all the particle colliders of the most recent generation (like the Tevatron at Fermilab or the Relativistic Heavy Ion collider in New York) have the capability (if certain theoretical models are accurate enough) to generate very tiny (around nine millimeters), but stable black holes (though the probability is extremely low). See "How to Destroy the Earth" for more information on this.
It's interesting how many recent developments in visual technology have largely been used for advertising - I'd say the majority of animated GIFs and SWF's on the web are advertisements of some sort, and check out those huge animate billboard displays that are getting more and more common place.
The end goal of advertising seems to be the elimination of any visual stimulus that doesn't somehow alert you to the existance of a product.
There is a Carbon version developed by Westwood Interactive, and it works almost flawlessly - some unit animations don't work, and sometimes the base screen locks up, but it works well enough for me. The problem is finding a Mac copy of the game to use.
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The only reason Microsoft still has any customers is because most of the computer-using world is locked into using their products by default. If Microsoft were just starting out today, they'd never get anywhere with priorities like this. Hell, if you could go back to zero and start the computer industry all over again in the present day, they still wouldn't get anywhere.
Microsoft cares about the satisfaction of whomsoever has paid it the largest sum of money recently, not their end users. I truly hope this will motivate a large amount of complacent Windows users to change, but if history has taught us anything, that's not likely.
Just wondering, what do you think should be illegal? Posting anonymously on message boards? Bad mouthing a company? Do you propose to make it illegal to say bad things about a company at all?
This isn't illegal because he was not using any inside information that he wasn't supposed to disclose. Nobody even knew who he was. He was more or less just anonymously posting "Whole Foods rules, Wild Oats sucks" on a freaking Yahoo! stocks message board. A single anonymous poster can not drive down the stock price of a company in such a fashion, because the financial world does not revolve around online message board discussions.
It's not a nice thing to do, and I certainly would rather patronize a company that takes the high road rather than dissing competitors, but there's nothing illegal about this.
Yeah, cause, you know, when they proclaimed the Titanic unsinkable, that pissed off all those icebergs in the North Atlantic, and it just went downhill from there. Them icebergs are mean SOB's.
Great idea, but unfortunately the Hutter Prize uses a static sample of the first 10^8 bits of Wikipedia.
Plus, the fact that you can buy more votes shows this was an entirely commercial operation in nature.
Unfortunately for you, they'll probably also copyright tin foil hats.
Oh, the humanity!
I'm with you on Alpha Centauri in the top 10. I was shocked that Civ IV was the only Civ game on the list. While it has great graphics, and the culture system is a good edition, no game can beat AC in terms of all-around experience.
From the carefully crafted faction balances, to the relevant and often insightful quotes that accompany tech breakthroughs, to the kick-ass Secret Project videos (the Wonder vids in Civ IV pale in comparision), to the careful managing of diplomatic relationships (which gets extremely tricky in thinker and transcend difficulties), to the awesomeness of the concept of mind-worms, the game is a masterpiece. Civ IV improves in a couple of areas, but is too weak on relationship between civ ideology and societal mechanics, unique style of play for each civ, and intellectual maturity for me to fully enjoy. Ten years later, I still keep coming back to Alpha Centauri.
No, only the Macbook Pro has had a recent update. I'd be very surprised if the Pro's were updated again in October. The next Pro refresh will likely be when Intel releases it's Penryn mobile chips in late 07 or early 08.
I don't know about you, but I never look at my track-pad while I'm using it. What's the point? What added functionality or increased productivity does this allow?
Powering the next generation with the accumulated shit of the previous one. Brilliant.
Actually, they do block a lot of English websites - and English television, even in places that cater exclusively to westerners. I visited Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai in May, and while there, I could not access the English Wikipedia from any of my hotels or the Wang Ba's (Internet Cafe's). If I searched on Google for "Tiananmen Square," I got some lovely tourist information, but nothing about what happened there in 1989.
In fact, one morning, I was idly gazing at CNN whilst eating breakfast in my hotel, when the TV just blacked out. "Hmm, that's odd," I thought, and looked at the TV behind me - also blank. The CNN channel in my hotel room was also out, even though every other channel was fine.
Censorship is alive and real in China, no matter what language you speak.
Hey, relax. If it we're an Apple device, I would've just photoshopped a spinning beach ball of doom on it. It was a joke.
You should've left out the tag just to see how many people would've flamed you assuming you were serious.
Hardly a conclusive or thorough study - were it really double-blind, some subjects should have heard two 128 Kb/s tracks, while others heard two 256 Kb/s tracks, and there should have been a "no difference" option. Also, some types of music, or some particular musicians, make it much easier to discern difference between bitrates, but every subject listened to a different song.
Personally, I can tell the difference between 128 and 256 versions of most Radiohead songs, where there are frequently numerous layers of instrumentation, while Coldplay songs, which are more simplistic, make it harder to discern. However, I can only tell the difference when I'm using my Etymotic ER-6i's - it's impossible for me to tell when using Apple buds, or my Sony MDR-XD2000 over the ear cans - even with my youthful teenage hearing.
Yeah, but can the DoD's display do this!?
From what I can gather from the summary (the New Scientist domain seems to be blocked by the PRC to those in China, so I can't RTFA), the security of this lies in the fact that Eve cannot seperate the message from the inherent thermal noise of the channel. However, wouldn't she be able to decode the message by trial and error by hooking her own resistors? Surely she doesn't have to have identical resistance just around 10 or 100 Ohms of the average.
Could someone correct me if I'm wrong (which I think I am)?
It doesn't matter how long it takes to patch an exploit, as long as it is patched before it's used in a virus or other attack on a system. There are currently no OS X viruses in the wild that can attack a Mac in a meaningful way (there is a proof-of-concept one that requires the user to install it). Compare that to the tens of thousands of Windows OS viruses and worms exploiting security holes without requiring the user. Given that, I'd say that Apple has an excellent track record when it comes to patching vulnerabilities.
The radiation in question is the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, or CMBR. The CMBR is (analogously speaking) an "echo" of the Big Bang, in the form of electromagnetic radiation. As space expanded, the radiation's wavelength expanded with it, slowly lengthening from the Gamma and X-ray spectrums, through visible light, to the microwave spectrum (where it is now). As space continues to expand, so will the wavelength of the Cosmic Background Radiation.
As an interesting side note, since analog TV operates in the same part of the radio and microwave spectrum that the CMBR is observed, if you tune an analog TV to a blank channel (static), about one percent of that static is the CMBR. Turn the TV on, and watch the Big Bang!
From my (college-level) physics knowledge, the advantage of these colliders is that they come close to recreating the conditions which existed at the time of the beginning on the Universe (according to the Big Bang hypotheses). Whether or not these conditions allow certain never-before-seen particles to be observed is uncertain, but likely, since some kinds of particles (like mesons or bosons) have a tendency to dessapear in less than a nanosecond (1*10^-9 seconds).
On a related note, all the particle colliders of the most recent generation (like the Tevatron at Fermilab or the Relativistic Heavy Ion collider in New York) have the capability (if certain theoretical models are accurate enough) to generate very tiny (around nine millimeters), but stable black holes (though the probability is extremely low). See "How to Destroy the Earth" for more information on this.
Additionally, because of the distance, if they invented radio any more recently than 20 years ago, then the signals are still traveling our way.
It's interesting how many recent developments in visual technology have largely been used for advertising - I'd say the majority of animated GIFs and SWF's on the web are advertisements of some sort, and check out those huge animate billboard displays that are getting more and more common place.
The end goal of advertising seems to be the elimination of any visual stimulus that doesn't somehow alert you to the existance of a product.
He says it'll be released on time, but he said the same thing about the Apple TV a few weeks before they announced it would be delayed.
There is a Carbon version developed by Westwood Interactive, and it works almost flawlessly - some unit animations don't work, and sometimes the base screen locks up, but it works well enough for me. The problem is finding a Mac copy of the game to use.
Especially at a time when Apple is supposed to be experiencing a Renaissance in market share. *sigh* I suppose there's still Alpha Centauri...