For one thing, it means that you can run gtk apps in your web browser even if an administrator has locked down your system and limited the apps you can use.
I'd like to see Qt do this too, so there'd be some competition;)
Given that GeoHot published the master key for the world to see, aren't any new security measures essentially useless? Don't all future firmwares and consoles need to honor code signed with that key or risk incompatibility with all old games and content?
No, any new security measures tied to the master key are essentially useless; intead they're playing the DirecTV game and analysing the rest of the system. Essentially, they're blocking any consoles that have a means of messing with the master key verification due to ffirmware or hardware mods from operating on the network.
After all, it doesn't really matter that we all know the master key; what matters is whether we can actually use that key in any meaningful way.
Or the messages are being sent and received, but not believed. Or the messages were misinterpreted due to context. Or the messages have been flying freely for years, and it's just not tech they want most people to get their hands on.
Think about it: if some bureaucrat in Japan got a message in 2000 purporting to be from some guy in the US in 2011 saying to decommission the plant, would he even remember tossing it in the recycle bin?
I think the scenario that's most likely is the "we don't have the tech to decode them" one though. For something like this to work, you'd need a send/receive mechanism that existed at both ends of the transmission. If if's not there, you'd have to start resorting to other means of detection to prove the theory (for example, has any strange/abnormal phenomenon ever been detected at the current site of the LHC before it was finished?)
Obviously, the relative location will use the LHC as its reference point, not the centre of our galaxy. This means that as long as the particles are sent back in time inside the LHC, there should be no problem. Ejecting time-distorted matter from the LHC could cause some problems though.
This does raise another issue though... if particles in the LHC are sent back in time, does this mean that you can set things up such that a particle collides with multiple instances of itself? If so, when does the energy get released from the collision?
Less than that, as they haven't even mentioned that their laser would be based in the visible spectrum.
However, I think they'd do better with a mirror and lens array operated from the moon, where they wouldn't be draining energy from the earth's supply and wouldn't have to deal with atmospheric interference (thus allowing them to operate at a MUCH lower power.
Actually, this raises an interesting point... in my opinion, corporations are extensions of the government; they wouldn't exist if government didn't say they could. Corporations are protection rackets allowed by the government in exchange for taxes and other financial support. Without the government protection, businesses would not be able to incorporate, but instead would still hold all employees liable for their actions.
Based on this argument, it should be possible for government to add extra limitations to the laws of incorporation saying that in exchange for limited liability, they are responsible to uphold a certain level of privacy standards on all personally identifiable information they collect and store.
The problem here is that in the US, incorporating is a license given to a business by the state, not the nation. I don't really see how the federal government can uphold such laws under the federal constitution; one or the other would have to be modified, requiring the agreement of all the state legislatures to make the changes.
I'd say it's more like the university professor who walks around through his entire day wearing microphones and video cameras, and stores all data he gets in a central database he and his acquaintances can search and review whenever they want to.
The problem here is that some people are looking at this as if it is centered around some mythical "individual" -- instead, Google is just storing a bunch of public information in one big database. Not only that, but when they discover they've stored some data that might make some people uncomfortable, they remove it from said database. That's more like me taking video of my kids at a public park, only to later realise that in some of the footage I also caught some neighbour on video walking around naked in their house with the blinds open. Like Google, I'd probably toss that as soon as I discovered it and keep the stuff I was actually interested in.
As someone else wrote, exactly which wire did Google tap?
They eavesdropped and recorded "conversations"
Really? Eavesdropping involves targeted listening aimed at a specific person over a period of time... Google just drove down the street recording whatever was sent their way.
carried out over FCC regulated airwaves.
I think you'll find that WiFi operates on the UNregulated bands. If Google had been doing this on cellular wavelengths, or microwave transition bands, or even UHF or VHF or AM or FM, you might have a point.
There is no difference between what they did and placing a tap on your phone line and recording bits of your conversation.
...except for everything stated above. They didn't target an individual, they didn't trespass on private property, they didn't interfere with a federal mandate. They just listened and indiscriminately recorded the data (kind of like what they do with web pages).
Wiretapping laws don't require your "conversations" to be encrypted, so don't bother wasting your energy ranting about Wi-Fi encryption.
Hate speech laws don't require your "conversations" to be encrypted either, and Google didn't break these laws either. What's your point here exactly?
You government shills... easy to spot a mile a way...
Yup. Despite the fact that in my country, I vote for my local representative based on his platform for what he's going to do for his local constituents. The only interest I have in US politics is in how it affects the rest of the world -- and how its politicians often jump to false conclusions (based on public/corporate support and lobbying) and then act in ways that go on to impact the rest of the world.
Here's a hint: most government shills would not be attempting to sway public opinion in this way; they'd be busy trying to sway corporate opinion.
I remember from growing up that kids generally get around these restrictions by going to a friend's house to play. The parents that didn't have these restrictions generally ended up with all the kids spending time there -- and as the paren'ts didn't care/didn't know, and the kids wanted the freedom, it didn't tend to get back to their parents.
And really, by discouraging kids from playing with technology it breeds them into people who are paranoid about technology. The people who think that every little thing is going to destroy their computer/phone.
I disagree. I was brought up the same way as the GP, and this just meant that I spent more time being creative and less time consuming. It means that I grew up with a hacker mentality of "how can I do that with these things I've got on hand" instead of a consumer mentality of "ooh! shiny technology! Let's play with it!" Sometimes the distinction is subtle, but it's the difference between being someone who is good at using technology and someone who is good at creating technology.
My kids are discouraged from random playing with technology until they understand what makes that technology work, and understand the implications of screwing up. Sometimes this involves us playing with the technology *together* (gasp, what a concept) so that I can stop them and explain the pitfalls of what they're going to do, or sometimes just so that I can be prepared to explain to them why their favorite "toy" no longer works in the post-mortem. I've had the most success in this discussing viruses and the immune system (failure to wash hands after playing in a public place can cause you to get violently sick), relative strengths of materials (hammers and heads can punch through drywall, nerf balls can't), gravity (things don't stop moving sideways through the air until they hit something with more friction), and the like. They also understand that calling Grandma on the phone is going to mean that there's less money in the money pool that can be used to buy their favorite food / toy / etc whereas calling Grandma on Skype does not incur a cost, as we've already paid the fees. I've drilled my kids in the three laws of thermodynamics since they were born. I'd say the result (so far) is that they are not blase or paranoid about technology -- instead they are both curious and cautious about technology.
I wonder how the radiation level compares to that from a local grocery store....
Think of it this way. at 5km away, you're getting the same exposure as standing next to 30 bananas. What do you think the exposure would be at 2.5 km away? I'm guessing it's a lot more than 60 bananas. Also, I bet that unlike the bananas, which will be eaten and disposed of quickly, the increased radiation is there to stay for quite some time.
I just hope that there isn't a nuclear meltdown near a banana plantation sometime... they'd end up with bananas having 1000 banana equivalent ratings, without the nutrients!
I recently re-watched an episode where they concluded that the wiping of backup data on a remote colo was an inside job because "there were no traces of DDoS". I think I missed the next 30 seconds or so trying to figure out what on earth they thought they were babbling about.
To me this sounds like a GOOD thing. It prevents large corporations with unlimited funds from dragging a case out for years until the other side goes bankrupt. If a side thinks it has a strong case and will win, it would have no problem spending thousands even if the other side spends nothing.
Added to that, the other side will still want representation, which costs money.
This could go a long way towards decreasing frivolous lawyer's fees, as the lawyers are going into the suit knowing how much they'll be paid no matter the outcome or how long it takes.
Yes, but clickthroughs aren't usually contracts, as there is no way to actually negotiate a contract via them.
That would be an interesting one though... what happens if I modify and initial the clickthrough before clicking "I agree"? Isn't it up to the principle to then verify that they agree with my changes?
After all, it's pretty simple to modify the clickthrough text in an installer (even easier in a web form) before clicking "I agree".
The problem here is that usually the principle gets back zero feedback as to what you agreed to -- only that you must have agreed because you're using their product. Real contracts involve both parties actually agreeing to something. Clickthroughs are the equivalent of the principle setting up a fruit stand with a gate in front of it with a sign reading "If you open this gate, you agree to the following...."
If someone comes in from the back field or climbs over the fence, they haven't agreed. They might run afoul of copyright, but there is no contract whatsoever. The undisclosed agent argument could be used here. But if they modify the actual agreement and sign the changes, there is already implicit agreement from the principle, or it's not a contract. They can choose to reject the changes, but they have to be there to do that.
I agree with most of your tips... but I add two more things: 1) Control the information you put online. If you don't have some sort of profile, it'll flag you as needing more study -- and the only info will be what others say about you. 2) Just don't use a cellphone. This also lowers your stress level and provides you with more free time in a day. 3) Salt misinformation. Instead of using cash, use other people's loyalty cards. Don't worry too much about credit cards, as CC data is hoarded very carefully by marketers and isn't likely to get used to profile you in other ways. Use cash for non-standard purchases, but don't worry about your groceries.
Regarding your Facebook example: From your perspective, you've just linked 6-7 of your real friends and posted your photos there. From a data miner's perspective (the government, or the person who hacks into Facebook, or the person who exploits one of your real friends' accounts, or facebook employees) this is only a small part of your facebook profile. You'll be tracked by the relationship between your tagged images, your firends' tagged images, what you say about your friends, what they say about you, and all this will be correlated with those images uploaded by the other people on the same vacation spot (as your face has been tagged multiple times, giving the facial recognition programs an easy job of spotting you elsewhere).
Even having a Facebook account that you never use degrrades your privacy significantly if other people know the account belongs to you and reference it.
Here's something that definitely affects anyone who travels internationally: US, UK and Canadian (and likely others) border agencies have full access to your FaceBook, MySpace and LinkedIn profiles. They use this information to profile you -- so if you post to your friends that you live in Buffalo and this weekend you're going to go to a rave in Toronto, you can be sure that US border guards will flag you on your return to check for drugs -- and the Canadian border guards are likely to give you closer scrutiny too.
Also, you say you protect your passwords and banking data -- but can people find the answers to your "security questions" by mining your FaceBook page? If so, then you can't really rely on your passwords to keep your data safe.
That might have been true 20 years ago. Nowadays there are hefty computers and elegant algorithms that can mine that huge pool of data, and anything you do that is either "not normal" or "undesired" has a high likelihood of coming back to bite you. We live in a world where processing huge datasets at the single point level can be easily automated.
Examples: Insurers can take that huge dataset and mine it and plot your insurance based on that data (at which point, they've moved out of underwriting and into reliably overcharging you for a service -- if you had their data, you'd know how to save the money yourself). Employers and government officials can make inappropriate inferences based on said dataset -- they decide things about you based on the information they don't have. If a money launder/ID thief has thousands of credit card numbers, does it really matter? The fact is, they've got *your* PII, and can abuse it. The fact that everyone else is being affected too isn't going to help you any.
There are many more examples I could use, but I'm sure you get the point.
Of course, you were right on the edge of a good idea, which I've already posted to this thread: make your data online unreliable enough, and the data points can't be trusted. Just make sure there's enough data that *could* be tied to you that is obviously not accurate, and anyone attempting to analyze your data is going to have a huge margin of error on any conclusions.
You do know that WebOS is the successor of PalmOS, and was acquired by HP when they bought Palm and replaced all the HP and Compaq handheld devices, right? What they're doing is saying "Guess what... all those apps you have for your mobile device will now run on your HP desktop as well -- and have full access to the same data pool."
WebOS is no discount OS -- it's version 2 of the first successful handheld OS out there (NewtonOS doesn't count), updated to take advantage of the latest and greatest technologies (if you consider cloud computing great, that is). Its pedigree is older than Symbian, and it has retained a strong developer following from the PalmOS crowd. This means that it isn't as open as Android, and isn't as closed as iOS -- it's the happy medium. HP is banking that this will help them gain a large marketshare in the ubiquitous computing market.
Indeed -- my going rate when I was doing this a decade or so ago was $100/hr, which was generally reasonable. I had a rule that friends and family could discuss their computer issues with me, but if they asked for me to touch their computer, they paid the going rate. If they discussed their problem with me and it was something I knew how to immediately fix, then I'd just offer to do it for them without them asking.
It's now been years since I felt pressured to pull off miracles, but the relationship's still there, as people feel free to tell me their woes and hear my advice.
I couldn't have put it better myself:) This is exactly what I was talking about... and yes, there's a photoshop plugin for it; I know I've used it, but I can't remember its name offhand either.
And just like your retina doesn't magically show you objects hidden in your blind spot (and neither does the AI that simulates the effect), these techniques don't bring back objects you can't see. In the vase example, you wouldn't see a recreation of the vase, you'd see texture that is the approximate shade and hue of what's behind the arm, interpolated from the bits you can see and the reflected aspects of that object from computer's light model (which will never be 100% accurate unless you can input the 3-D meter readings taken when the image was taken).
Slashdot Mirror
For one thing, it means that you can run gtk apps in your web browser even if an administrator has locked down your system and limited the apps you can use.
I'd like to see Qt do this too, so there'd be some competition ;)
Given that GeoHot published the master key for the world to see, aren't any new security measures essentially useless? Don't all future firmwares and consoles need to honor code signed with that key or risk incompatibility with all old games and content?
No, any new security measures tied to the master key are essentially useless; intead they're playing the DirecTV game and analysing the rest of the system. Essentially, they're blocking any consoles that have a means of messing with the master key verification due to ffirmware or hardware mods from operating on the network.
After all, it doesn't really matter that we all know the master key; what matters is whether we can actually use that key in any meaningful way.
The answer is obvious: it generated a buzz in 2107.
Or the messages are being sent and received, but not believed.
Or the messages were misinterpreted due to context.
Or the messages have been flying freely for years, and it's just not tech they want most people to get their hands on.
Think about it: if some bureaucrat in Japan got a message in 2000 purporting to be from some guy in the US in 2011 saying to decommission the plant, would he even remember tossing it in the recycle bin?
I think the scenario that's most likely is the "we don't have the tech to decode them" one though. For something like this to work, you'd need a send/receive mechanism that existed at both ends of the transmission. If if's not there, you'd have to start resorting to other means of detection to prove the theory (for example, has any strange/abnormal phenomenon ever been detected at the current site of the LHC before it was finished?)
Obviously, the relative location will use the LHC as its reference point, not the centre of our galaxy. This means that as long as the particles are sent back in time inside the LHC, there should be no problem. Ejecting time-distorted matter from the LHC could cause some problems though.
This does raise another issue though... if particles in the LHC are sent back in time, does this mean that you can set things up such that a particle collides with multiple instances of itself? If so, when does the energy get released from the collision?
Less than that, as they haven't even mentioned that their laser would be based in the visible spectrum.
However, I think they'd do better with a mirror and lens array operated from the moon, where they wouldn't be draining energy from the earth's supply and wouldn't have to deal with atmospheric interference (thus allowing them to operate at a MUCH lower power.
Actually, this raises an interesting point... in my opinion, corporations are extensions of the government; they wouldn't exist if government didn't say they could. Corporations are protection rackets allowed by the government in exchange for taxes and other financial support. Without the government protection, businesses would not be able to incorporate, but instead would still hold all employees liable for their actions.
Based on this argument, it should be possible for government to add extra limitations to the laws of incorporation saying that in exchange for limited liability, they are responsible to uphold a certain level of privacy standards on all personally identifiable information they collect and store.
The problem here is that in the US, incorporating is a license given to a business by the state, not the nation. I don't really see how the federal government can uphold such laws under the federal constitution; one or the other would have to be modified, requiring the agreement of all the state legislatures to make the changes.
I'd say it's more like the university professor who walks around through his entire day wearing microphones and video cameras, and stores all data he gets in a central database he and his acquaintances can search and review whenever they want to.
The problem here is that some people are looking at this as if it is centered around some mythical "individual" -- instead, Google is just storing a bunch of public information in one big database. Not only that, but when they discover they've stored some data that might make some people uncomfortable, they remove it from said database. That's more like me taking video of my kids at a public park, only to later realise that in some of the footage I also caught some neighbour on video walking around naked in their house with the blinds open. Like Google, I'd probably toss that as soon as I discovered it and keep the stuff I was actually interested in.
What Google did amounts to wiretapping. Period.
As someone else wrote, exactly which wire did Google tap?
They eavesdropped and recorded "conversations"
Really? Eavesdropping involves targeted listening aimed at a specific person over a period of time... Google just drove down the street recording whatever was sent their way.
carried out over FCC regulated airwaves.
I think you'll find that WiFi operates on the UNregulated bands. If Google had been doing this on cellular wavelengths, or microwave transition bands, or even UHF or VHF or AM or FM, you might have a point.
There is no difference between what they did and placing a tap on your phone line and recording bits of your conversation.
...except for everything stated above. They didn't target an individual, they didn't trespass on private property, they didn't interfere with a federal mandate. They just listened and indiscriminately recorded the data (kind of like what they do with web pages).
Wiretapping laws don't require your "conversations" to be encrypted, so don't bother wasting your energy ranting about Wi-Fi encryption.
Hate speech laws don't require your "conversations" to be encrypted either, and Google didn't break these laws either. What's your point here exactly?
You government shills... easy to spot a mile a way...
Yup. Despite the fact that in my country, I vote for my local representative based on his platform for what he's going to do for his local constituents. The only interest I have in US politics is in how it affects the rest of the world -- and how its politicians often jump to false conclusions (based on public/corporate support and lobbying) and then act in ways that go on to impact the rest of the world.
Here's a hint: most government shills would not be attempting to sway public opinion in this way; they'd be busy trying to sway corporate opinion.
I remember from growing up that kids generally get around these restrictions by going to a friend's house to play. The parents that didn't have these restrictions generally ended up with all the kids spending time there -- and as the paren'ts didn't care/didn't know, and the kids wanted the freedom, it didn't tend to get back to their parents.
And really, by discouraging kids from playing with technology it breeds them into people who are paranoid about technology. The people who think that every little thing is going to destroy their computer/phone.
I disagree. I was brought up the same way as the GP, and this just meant that I spent more time being creative and less time consuming. It means that I grew up with a hacker mentality of "how can I do that with these things I've got on hand" instead of a consumer mentality of "ooh! shiny technology! Let's play with it!" Sometimes the distinction is subtle, but it's the difference between being someone who is good at using technology and someone who is good at creating technology.
My kids are discouraged from random playing with technology until they understand what makes that technology work, and understand the implications of screwing up. Sometimes this involves us playing with the technology *together* (gasp, what a concept) so that I can stop them and explain the pitfalls of what they're going to do, or sometimes just so that I can be prepared to explain to them why their favorite "toy" no longer works in the post-mortem. I've had the most success in this discussing viruses and the immune system (failure to wash hands after playing in a public place can cause you to get violently sick), relative strengths of materials (hammers and heads can punch through drywall, nerf balls can't), gravity (things don't stop moving sideways through the air until they hit something with more friction), and the like. They also understand that calling Grandma on the phone is going to mean that there's less money in the money pool that can be used to buy their favorite food / toy / etc whereas calling Grandma on Skype does not incur a cost, as we've already paid the fees. I've drilled my kids in the three laws of thermodynamics since they were born. I'd say the result (so far) is that they are not blase or paranoid about technology -- instead they are both curious and cautious about technology.
Also, massive use of wind turbines will affect airflow, causing multiple levels of ecological shift (change in rain patterns, etc.)
And the birds... think of the birds....
I wonder how the radiation level compares to that from a local grocery store....
Think of it this way. at 5km away, you're getting the same exposure as standing next to 30 bananas. What do you think the exposure would be at 2.5 km away? I'm guessing it's a lot more than 60 bananas. Also, I bet that unlike the bananas, which will be eaten and disposed of quickly, the increased radiation is there to stay for quite some time.
I just hope that there isn't a nuclear meltdown near a banana plantation sometime... they'd end up with bananas having 1000 banana equivalent ratings, without the nutrients!
I recently re-watched an episode where they concluded that the wiping of backup data on a remote colo was an inside job because "there were no traces of DDoS". I think I missed the next 30 seconds or so trying to figure out what on earth they thought they were babbling about.
Let me introduce you to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_recluse_spider#Bite and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_bite#Widow_spiders both of which exist in some parts of Canada. However, I'd be much more worried about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_tick_fever and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountain_spotted_fever -- both of which affect ticks in some parts of Canada.
To me this sounds like a GOOD thing. It prevents large corporations with unlimited funds from dragging a case out for years until the other side goes bankrupt. If a side thinks it has a strong case and will win, it would have no problem spending thousands even if the other side spends nothing.
Added to that, the other side will still want representation, which costs money.
This could go a long way towards decreasing frivolous lawyer's fees, as the lawyers are going into the suit knowing how much they'll be paid no matter the outcome or how long it takes.
Yes, but clickthroughs aren't usually contracts, as there is no way to actually negotiate a contract via them.
That would be an interesting one though... what happens if I modify and initial the clickthrough before clicking "I agree"? Isn't it up to the principle to then verify that they agree with my changes?
After all, it's pretty simple to modify the clickthrough text in an installer (even easier in a web form) before clicking "I agree".
The problem here is that usually the principle gets back zero feedback as to what you agreed to -- only that you must have agreed because you're using their product. Real contracts involve both parties actually agreeing to something. Clickthroughs are the equivalent of the principle setting up a fruit stand with a gate in front of it with a sign reading "If you open this gate, you agree to the following...."
If someone comes in from the back field or climbs over the fence, they haven't agreed. They might run afoul of copyright, but there is no contract whatsoever. The undisclosed agent argument could be used here. But if they modify the actual agreement and sign the changes, there is already implicit agreement from the principle, or it's not a contract. They can choose to reject the changes, but they have to be there to do that.
I agree with most of your tips... but I add two more things:
1) Control the information you put online. If you don't have some sort of profile, it'll flag you as needing more study -- and the only info will be what others say about you.
2) Just don't use a cellphone. This also lowers your stress level and provides you with more free time in a day.
3) Salt misinformation. Instead of using cash, use other people's loyalty cards. Don't worry too much about credit cards, as CC data is hoarded very carefully by marketers and isn't likely to get used to profile you in other ways. Use cash for non-standard purchases, but don't worry about your groceries.
Regarding your Facebook example:
From your perspective, you've just linked 6-7 of your real friends and posted your photos there.
From a data miner's perspective (the government, or the person who hacks into Facebook, or the person who exploits one of your real friends' accounts, or facebook employees) this is only a small part of your facebook profile.
You'll be tracked by the relationship between your tagged images, your firends' tagged images, what you say about your friends, what they say about you, and all this will be correlated with those images uploaded by the other people on the same vacation spot (as your face has been tagged multiple times, giving the facial recognition programs an easy job of spotting you elsewhere).
Even having a Facebook account that you never use degrrades your privacy significantly if other people know the account belongs to you and reference it.
Here's something that definitely affects anyone who travels internationally:
US, UK and Canadian (and likely others) border agencies have full access to your FaceBook, MySpace and LinkedIn profiles. They use this information to profile you -- so if you post to your friends that you live in Buffalo and this weekend you're going to go to a rave in Toronto, you can be sure that US border guards will flag you on your return to check for drugs -- and the Canadian border guards are likely to give you closer scrutiny too.
Also, you say you protect your passwords and banking data -- but can people find the answers to your "security questions" by mining your FaceBook page? If so, then you can't really rely on your passwords to keep your data safe.
That might have been true 20 years ago. Nowadays there are hefty computers and elegant algorithms that can mine that huge pool of data, and anything you do that is either "not normal" or "undesired" has a high likelihood of coming back to bite you. We live in a world where processing huge datasets at the single point level can be easily automated.
Examples:
Insurers can take that huge dataset and mine it and plot your insurance based on that data (at which point, they've moved out of underwriting and into reliably overcharging you for a service -- if you had their data, you'd know how to save the money yourself).
Employers and government officials can make inappropriate inferences based on said dataset -- they decide things about you based on the information they don't have.
If a money launder/ID thief has thousands of credit card numbers, does it really matter? The fact is, they've got *your* PII, and can abuse it. The fact that everyone else is being affected too isn't going to help you any.
There are many more examples I could use, but I'm sure you get the point.
Of course, you were right on the edge of a good idea, which I've already posted to this thread: make your data online unreliable enough, and the data points can't be trusted. Just make sure there's enough data that *could* be tied to you that is obviously not accurate, and anyone attempting to analyze your data is going to have a huge margin of error on any conclusions.
You do know that WebOS is the successor of PalmOS, and was acquired by HP when they bought Palm and replaced all the HP and Compaq handheld devices, right? What they're doing is saying "Guess what... all those apps you have for your mobile device will now run on your HP desktop as well -- and have full access to the same data pool."
WebOS is no discount OS -- it's version 2 of the first successful handheld OS out there (NewtonOS doesn't count), updated to take advantage of the latest and greatest technologies (if you consider cloud computing great, that is). Its pedigree is older than Symbian, and it has retained a strong developer following from the PalmOS crowd. This means that it isn't as open as Android, and isn't as closed as iOS -- it's the happy medium. HP is banking that this will help them gain a large marketshare in the ubiquitous computing market.
Indeed -- my going rate when I was doing this a decade or so ago was $100/hr, which was generally reasonable. I had a rule that friends and family could discuss their computer issues with me, but if they asked for me to touch their computer, they paid the going rate. If they discussed their problem with me and it was something I knew how to immediately fix, then I'd just offer to do it for them without them asking.
It's now been years since I felt pressured to pull off miracles, but the relationship's still there, as people feel free to tell me their woes and hear my advice.
err... iMovie, not iTunes.
I couldn't have put it better myself :) This is exactly what I was talking about... and yes, there's a photoshop plugin for it; I know I've used it, but I can't remember its name offhand either.
And just like your retina doesn't magically show you objects hidden in your blind spot (and neither does the AI that simulates the effect), these techniques don't bring back objects you can't see. In the vase example, you wouldn't see a recreation of the vase, you'd see texture that is the approximate shade and hue of what's behind the arm, interpolated from the bits you can see and the reflected aspects of that object from computer's light model (which will never be 100% accurate unless you can input the 3-D meter readings taken when the image was taken).
Think of it as reverse raytracing.
Obviously, first they need to build the robotic Gazelle for the robotic Cheetah to chase :)