Wow, it got just about everything wrong in analyzing my profile. Right off the bat it shows a picture of my girlfriend that it thinks is me. It shows pictures of people I have a high level of interacting with, one of whom is George Tekei who it says it doesn't recognize and I've only briefly met once at a political fundraiser. It also doesn't recognize Wendy Davis (running for governor of Texas) even though the picture they used isn't one I took, but an official campaign photo.

The commonly used words are out of context and were only used once each... Fire, Breast, Parties:

Photo from an Arcade Fire concert.
Photo from Breast Cancer fundraiser.
"I rarely go to parties unless they're for a political or charity event".

The "we can find you" shows a concert venue that is the 4th most common concert venue that I go to (only twice in the past year). This despite the fact that I have my home town listed and do check-ins at places there all the time.

My income is about 1/3 of what it actually is and wouldn't come close to paying for any of the vacations I posted about, or the property tax where I listed that I live, or for my boats and cars. This one surprised me the most, since I list where I got my graduate degree and the titles of my jobs and companies I work(ed) for.

The password attempts didn't even come close. My close friends and family could guess my "dummy" password really quickly (the password I use for sites I don't care about). My other passwords I wouldn't expect to be guessed at all since they're all different and randomly generated.

Now all of that said...

Ya, I see the point. There is data to be mined, and as foolishly as it is mined, it can be used even though the chances are high that it will be misused due to incorrect analysis.

I'm not sure what the answer is. Initially, I thought having a profile allows you to at least project what you want your profile to be as opposed to being off-grid, which I can't be in my profession. Now I'm realizing that increasingly, the issue may not be humans individually making assessments based on manually viewing your profile but by using very, very stupid tools.

Imagine this... an HR person looks for your profile and sees you're off-grid, ok toss that resume. They do a manual inspection and see you're high risk or acceptable. That's what we were dealing with, but now the HR person may get access to stupid tools and you could be labeled as risk for using keywords that were analyzed out of context.

Ugggh!!!
(oops, according to this tool, saying this once makes you depressed)

Can they order him to do a reboot of Miami Vice?

I'm finding it funny that you kids never saw these. Around 2001 (not that long ago), there were a bunch of tablets being shown at CES that never caught on. Some were PCs as tablets. Some were more consumption like tablets, only with a lot less to consume.

They were slow, clunky, expensive. No YouTube, no videos (the storage was measured in MBs). They were heavy, had short battery lives and terrible screens.

The user experience of these things was really poor as well. Think WebTV.

This thing was nothing like an iPad. And it's not like as if you can really say, "like an iPad would've been in 2001". If you look at what most people use their iPads for, none of that would be possible/practical on the 2001 tablets. It's more like saying that Apple had a QuickTake digital camera, but it never really took off... amazing because today we all have digital cameras all over the place.

I applaud Nokia for developing a prototype to demo at CES, but it was a good thing they didn't take this to production.

Everything you described is NOT default behavior. The default behavior is for iMessage not to be on. If you have an iPhone and don't turn on iMessage then texting works just as normal.

To be clear, you have to actively assign your phone number to iMessage, and then assign email addresses and devices to that account.

The whole point of iMessage is to disassociate your phone service as the controller of your SMS and have the control be given to iMessage. This is in part so that you CAN send and receive texts on things like your MacBook over WiFi with no cell connectivity and all transparently.

Sure, I can see how it may be confusing for people who stick their heads in the sand and wave their hands in the air when it comes to reading instructions, but changing the way the system works to accommodate the ignorant isn't the answer.

That's like blaming Google hosted email for hijacking a domain's email.

Why did your wife's iPad get the text message? Because she configured it to do just that. Same goes for your coworker's MacBook Air. As far as your niece goes, the phrase "after she wiped it" is false.

This comes from someone traveling in another country right now who just had to send several iMessages from my MacBook Air that would've cost $$$ in international texting had Apple not set things up the way they did.

I think it's great for cops to be recording what they're doing, as long as their video can't be destroyed (until a standard time-based dump applied to all recordings not being used as evidence), and as long as individuals remain free to record cops as well.

However, there are all kinds of issues with Google Glass and other smart video processing being used, not only by cops, but by individuals as well.

So imagine a world where cops all have smart glasses and are running apps that do face recognition combined with database lookups. So instead of stop-n-frisk based on race, they can stop-n-frisk based on "He's a known convict" or "He once Tweeted that he likes to get high" or "He's unemployed, but walking out of a high-end department store", etc...

Likewise amongst civilians, smart glass apps tied to mugshots.com, sex offender databases or other public records... political contributions, licenses, etc...

There are lots of posts here claiming that they aren't using like to like comparisons. The point of the post isn't that an iPhone is getting better battery life than a MS Exchange Server, the point of the article is that in almost every scenario you can match up, Android/iOS/OS X comes out clearly ahead. And this is the case regardless of what hardware or type of hardware you're comparing. Put Windows on a MacBook and it's going to get lower battery life... a-ha, it's a driver issue, you say, ok, but spec out a similar PC notebook and it will have lower battery life than the MacBook.

In other words, Microsoft doesn't have a battery life on the Surface RT or any other product problem, Microsoft has a battery life problem. Why is that?

But couldn't someone from a distance have used a super strong magnet to turn the radio on and then from a distance transmit the "off" signal?

I'm not talking about someone doing this from another country, but perhaps near enough where Cheney would've have been.

It seems like there was enough of a possible threat that he, and his doctors, felt the need to do this.

"My last two phones and the one I have now had and have micro-USB."

That's not very many. I've probably had just less than 100 different devices, and about 5-10% have been damaged. However, many cables have gotten damaged.

Worse though is that some cables and some ports don't want to work together.

Some devices, like my Motorola Bluetooth headphones, I feel like I have to jam it in so hard that it's going to break each time, though it hasn't yet.

I think this is also one of those things where Micro-USB is better than what I could come up with. It works, and you can live to deal with needing to wake up your girlfriend by turning on the lights, and figuring out how to plug it in at night. Likewise, the fragility isn't bad enough to be a consistent problem, even if it *feels* much worse than it actually is.

Try using the Lightning connector, and even better the Lightning connector on actual Apple cables with the hard-coil. It's pretty sweet to be able to plug in a device one-handed and completely in the dark on a single shot.

Honestly, the convenience of this makes up for the messed up inconvenience of having to also carry around 30-pin, Micro-USB, and Mini-USB.

I would definitely like to see Apple license Lightning rather than adopt Micro-USB.

"USB itself will only plug in one way, polarized wall plugs only plug in one way, and I don't remember anyone bitching when they went from non-polarized to polarized wall plugs."

The difference there though is that in both cases, for the most part, it easily plugs in one way and definitely doesn't plug in the other way. Furthermore, for the most part those connections are static. Meaning most people just need to think "larger blade goes in on the left". However, have you ever been in an older partially renovated house? It is annoyting trying to reach behind the furniture to plug in a lamp in a socket that you don't know if it's polarized or not, and if so which direction it was placed in.

Likewise with USB-A, the icon usually faces up, or vertically towards you or to the right. Again you're dealing with a static thing, so it's always facing the same way and very easy to detect when you're trying to go the wrong way.

"I would guess that most problems with any plugs stem from users pulling them out holding the wire rather than the plug."

That, and coiling up cables incorrectly, but Micro-USB connectors definitely aren't as robust as Lightning even when used properly.

So if I get his premise...

Conventional advertising is good because good companies with good products can afford the ads.

Ok, I guess I can kind of buy that if you through in a bunch of caveats and exceptions.

But where he's losing me is on targeted ads being bad because they're too efficient and thus lower the bar to enable any advertiser.

I understand the point... I once took out some very cheap ads that were targeted towards my nephew for an imaginary fake product in an elaborate prank.

However, that only worked because there was no competition. Nobody else bid on ad placements for the exact criteria that I knew perfectly defined my nephew and would result in him seeing that specific ad.

In real-world usage, if I'm constantly searching for shoes, I'm going to get all kinds of shoe vendors bidding to target me. Jimmy's Shoes won't be able to bid as high as Nike, and if what I want are Kenneth Cole, it won't matter anyway.

Even if I'm wrong and bidding isn't a factor, won't we just adjust to discrediting ads the same way that we discredit spam from Nigeria? Won't we rely more on editorial and user reviews as well as brands we've experienced and trust?

I used to fly a Cessna 172. From the front seats, there's good visibility over the dash when flying. When taxiing, your view is a little obscured, especially if you're short, but it's definitely manageable. Of course, he didn't have to deal with that.

I'm not sure why the tower didn't work with him to turn on his landing lights...although the story seems to be a bit odd... his first attempt was aborted because of being blinded by the setting sun, and then his 4th attempt was "in the pitch dark". That's a really long time.

Anyway, even without the landing lights, visibility at night is still good enough with giving ambient light.

Still, pretty cool dude to be able to do this... more so that he didn't crash from stalling. He mentioned he did stall, but recovered. It sounds like he had at least *some* knowledge of what it took to fly.

This blurb is different from the article. I don't see in the article what Google itself is doing to correct the problem. To me, it seems simple on their part, just band justmugshots.com and whatever other domains are being used. That's what I was hoping to see, but nope, the Do Know Evil company is still not only including mug shot sites in their image search results, but they're unjustifiably highly ranked.

Here's my problem...

My name shows up in image search results. Great here's what "first_name last_name" looks like. However, the top results are a bunch of mugshots. Ok, so I've made sure my actual image is properly SEO'd and linked to from a bunch of sites, but still, the mugshots are showing higher ranked images (of not me, but people with the same name and in some cases they look similar).

How are the mugshots so highly ranked? Are people really sending inbound links to them? I don't think so, but even if they were, Google should be banning these domains.

And no, this wouldn't be censorship... besides being a company and not the government, Google wouldn't be preventing the sites or the information from being available, but simply doing two things:
1) Justifiably punishing sites that obviously broke the rules in terms of SEO.
2) Protecting people a little bit more from being extorted.

Well, as you pointed out, it has that and it hasn't been selling.

For me those things don't really matter...

USB - I can print just fine with AirPrint. Mouse... I vaguely remember seeing one of those last decade.

SD card slot - There's an adapter, but why bother when I can just use WiFi hard drives and WiFi SD cards?

Video out port. As long as I'm buying an adapter, what's the difference in buying an adapter for the iPad versus another for the Surface? I've rarely used mine since AirPlay is much easier.

What would make the Surface RT sell is a time machine so they could go back in time before iOS and Android came to dominate the market.

The RT version is dead, and Microsoft should give up on it as all of the Windows RT partners have.

The iPhone just brought in more revenue over the weekend than the entire enterprise value of Nokia.

I'm sorry if we're boring you with this.

I've been using Pandora since shortly after launch. I've been using iTunes Radio since the beta launched.

Generally I prefer iTunes Radio, although there are some custom stations I've made in Pandora that I can't seem to get the same level of match quality in iTunes Radio. Usually the opposite is true though, the stations in iTunes seem to be better matched and have more songs rotating.

It's also hard to beat that iTunes Radio is commercial free with iTunes Match, which I have anyway, so it's just a bonus. On the other hand, Pandora's premium service without ads is incredibly dirt cheap.

For me, it all depends on what Apple wants to do with content as a business. If it uses content to sell hardware, then I'd imagine iTunes Radio will be iOS and iTunes (Mac/Windows) only. However, if Apple discovers that content can be a worthwhile business in of itself, it could license iTunes Radio and make it available on other platforms (as well as their TV shows, movies, and other content).

If they license, then great, my Sonos system will likely get iTunes radio as well as the bazillions of other smart devices I have which get Pandora now. In that case Pandora (and others would likely die).

The reason is that if Apple licenses iTunes Radio or develops apps for a broad range of non-Apple platforms, Apple will have a mega-advantage in several ways besides just the brand advantage. Apple already has bazillions of credit cards active on file with Apple IDs making it very easy for people to join in. Apple has bazillions of people buying music every day and has been tracking their purchases through Genius Playlists for years now, so they have a huge-ass database of matched music and are well equipped to provide better smart stations. Apple also has the ability to bundle advertising with other ad sales, instead of just having it be a smart radio ad buy. And of course Apple makes money through increased music (and other content) sales as well as feeding the overall ecosystem. I just don't see how anyone could compete with that, unless Apple just decides not to license or build on other platforms.