Comment Oh puh-leeze (Score 1) 165
Somehow I picture the executives at Google, and US State Department officials having a good laugh over this one.
Nobody outside of China believes the type of propaganda crap spewed by Chinese newspapers.
Comment Just costumers? (Score 1) 199
it's all irrelevant, as long as those loss leaders bring costumers to revenue/profit generating products.
I bet they also appreciate the customers who work outside of the theatrical clothing field.
Comment That doesn't mean they're going to open FT up (Score 2) 199
Steve Jobs said it at the WWDC keynoe when it was announced in June of last year: "We're going to the standards bodies starting tomorrow and we're going to make FaceTime an open industry standard."
All that means is that FaceTime's protocols will be open - so anyone could build their own implementation of a FaceTime client or a FaceTime server (presumably it needs one).
It does not necessarily mean that Apple's FaceTime system will accept connections from non-Apple FaceTime clients, or that Apple's FaceTime clients (the FaceTime app on OS X, or FaceTime on iOS devices) will connect to non-Apple FaceTime servers.
Which is too bad, really. I hope they do fully open it up to outside use, but I doubt it.
Comment None of those things are private (Score 1) 109
I am disturbed by this as well. Unless Ted Kacynkski signed a waiver to allow the government to auction off what can be considered private records, I don't see how the government should be allowed to do this. Selling off other property to pay restitution to his victims, I don't have a problem with.
As long as you're not a criminal, you don't have to worry about it too much. The government can't take your stuff away and sell it unless you cause them to by, for example, mailing bombs to innocent victims.
None of the items mentioned can be considered private records. Driver's licenses, birth certificates, deeds, and academic transcripts are publicly accessible anyway, even before they become evidence in a criminal trial.
The other items became public information or government property once they were entered into evidence in the court proceedings against him, unless Kaczynski's attorney won a court order to have the evidence sealed or to have the items returned to him - which he didn't.
Comment Would you rather have the extra radiation or not? (Score 1) 277
Pretty typical logic, Occupational Exposure limits are very tight in the US, but diagnostic exposure limits are very loose. It's kind of schizophrenic for us working in dental offices where we're limited to an exposure of about 1/10 on the job of what we get as a patient from the same machines.
Not really, unless you believe that individual patients should really really be x-rayed every year*.
*which seems like in most cases it might just be a way to pad their bill.
Comment Most frustrating show ever (Score 1) 66
The show being projected is: Gerry Anderson's UFO (TV series 1970–1971) Episode 12 The Psychobombs http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0735638/
Was there ever an episode of UFO where something actually happens?
I've watched a bunch of them and it's always just one or two things happening, never a complete story. So unsatisfying given the work that went into the visual look of 1969's version of 1980.
I wonder why the shirts made of string never caught on.
Comment Theater sound is very often subpar (Score 1) 178
The picture quality is often poor too.
Because you don't have a 100ft wide screen with more than 7 channels (movie theaters have many more channels than 7).
I bet you also listen to your iPod rather than going to see a musician live...
Since your technical arguments aren't valid you throw in an ad hominem attack. I guess you're not going for any positive moderations, and that's ok.
Turns out you don't need a 100ft screen if you sit closer to it - like you can in your own home. We have a 108" picture from our projector and it is a better picture than I've seen in a number of the local theaters.
The number of channels is irrelevant if they are not set up properly. Even as recently as a couple of months ago I've sat through muddy sound in a theater. It's not like I live out in the middle of nowhere either, there are a lot of theaters in the area so you'd think they'd want to stay on top of their game to compete with each other.
Pretty much all decent modern surround sound receivers will do automatic calibration - if the theaters did this too, we'd probably be much happier theatergoers. My receiver supports 11.2, which is in fact more than 7 channels, and it wasn't expensive. Our low frequency setup is the envy of our audiophile friend, and it wasn't expensive either.
As it is now, we only go the theaters as a social occasion with friends.
Why You Shouldn't Panic Over Mac Malware 370
Earlier this week, we discussed reports that Mac malware was finally becoming a significant problem. Now, reader wiredmikey points out an editorial arguing that everyone should slow down and analyze the situation more calmly so the threat can be accurately assessed. Quoting:
"According to Apple, the Mac installed base is approximately 50 million users. But according to Gartner, the number of Android handsets sold in 2010 alone exceeded 67 million units, giving it an installed base that is larger, and growing much faster, than the Mac base. If a large numbers of eyeballs is indeed the lure that causes criminals to write malware for a given operating system, surely Android is a more tempting target than Mac OS. ... I predict that the increase in perceived risks to Mac customers will give Apple the excuse it needs to increase its control over the Mac software ecosystem, by moving ISVs to the Mac App Store. It is no accident that the theme of the upcoming Lion desktop operating system is 'Back to the Mac': taking concepts that Apple employed successfully with the mobile version of OS X (iOS) and back-porting them to the desktop OS. One of those features is the introduction of the Mac App Store, an Apple-controlled storefront for selling and distributing applications. ... This provides buyers some assurance that their apps are from known points of origin and that they don’t contain malware, such as the Mac Defender Trojan horse.
Comment Not a single product; good design a la Dieter Rams (Score 1) 198
2. Sealed batteries, smaller sim cards and the like are critical paths to Apple's future product plans.
So what sort of future product would cause a problem with current products having replaceable batteries?
It's not a single product that would be hurt by those things - it's that they are anathema to Apple's design principles.
The guiding set of principles at Apple are a constant movement towards Dieter Rams' ideals of "good design".
- Good design is innovative.
- Good design makes a product useful.
- Good design is aesthetic.
- Good design helps us to understand a product.
- Good design is unobtrusive.
- Good design is honest.
- Good design is durable.
- Good design is consequent to the last detail.
- Good design is concerned with the environment.
- Good design is as little design as possible.
Good design means eliminating parts that the user interacts with (the battery cover, physical controls, etc).
Good design requires reducing parts count where practical - the battery cover, the battery connectors, the casing a replaceable battery must have, for example. I have a first generation iPhone in my pocket which is still on its original battery, so I'm not too worried about the difficulty of replacing it. I'd rather have a physically smaller phone or a better camera in the same-size phone than a replaceable battery.
Any time a designer adds yet another button, or another removable part, they're moving away from that ideal of "good design".
Now, wether you agree with that philosophy or not is up to you and there are a wide range of products on the market if you don't - you aren't required to buy Apple products to fulfill your needs or wants. The idea that Apple can lock down the entire market is a fallacy often professed by anti-Apple trolls in these discussions.
Of course, Jonathan Ives is just copying the old Braun products
, but that's not such a bad set of products to copy.
Apple Causes Religious Reaction In Brains of Fans 636
satuon writes "In a recently screened BBC documentary called 'Secrets of the Superbrands', UK neuroscientists found that the brains of Apple fans are stimulated by images of Apple products in the same areas as those triggered by religious imagery in a person of faith. According to the scientists, this suggests that the big tech brands have harnessed, or exploit, the brain areas that have evolved to process religion."
An Apple TV-Based Webserver 45
Wyvere writes "The folks over at Mac Mini Vault jailbroke an Apple TV, stuck lighttpd on it, and connected it up to the internet in the name of fun hacking. 'This project was a fun way to see how far we could take the A4 powered Apple TV. The Apple TV is running iOS 4.2.2 (obviously jailbroken) with lighttpd for a web server.'"
Powerline Networks Interfere With Spooks? 85
An anonymous reader writes "Powerline technology which ships network data over mains cables could be causing interference for spies, according to a letter from the UK's top secret listening station, GCHQ. However, the British regulator says that objections to powerline all come from radio amateurs — and a Google search reveals that the writer of the letter (which GCHQ seems to be disowning) comes from a ham."
Comment When it's not a legal service (Score 3) 146
Can someone remind me how can a government say "no" to someone operating a legal service again?
When it looks like you're operating it in a way that does not comply with all of the laws.
You can read into that the Japanese government believes that PSN is not a legal service in Japan if PSN does not protect the privacy of the users.
Comment Why can't they come up with a unique acronym? (Score 1) 77
The equipment vendors are aware that "deep packet inspection" has negative connotations, and at least some of them are now using the term "traffic and policy management" or TPM.
Doesn't that sound nice and innocuous?
Great. Nobody would ever confuse it with the other TPM.
You'd hope these acronym buffoons would eventually try Googling their three-letter combinations to see if they've already been used in the computing field.
35% Use Mobile Apps Before Getting Out of Bed 180
alphadogg writes "Thirty-five percent of Android and iPhone owners in the US use apps such as Facebook on their smartphone before even getting out of bed, according to a survey conducted by telecommunications equipment vendor Ericsson. The most popular in-bed activity is accessing social networks. Eighteen percent of users log in while they are still in bed, and the most popular application is Facebook, Ericsson wrote."
