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Medicine

Apple Voiding Smokers' Warranties? 1078

Posted by Soulskill from the a-what-a-day-keeps-the-doctor-away dept.
Mr2001 writes "Consumerist reports that Apple is refusing to work on computers that have been used in smoking households. 'The Apple store called and informed me that due to the computer having been used in a house where there was smoking, [the warranty has been voided] and they refuse to work on the machine "due to health risks of second hand smoke,"' wrote one customer. Another said, 'When I asked for an explanation, she said [the owner of the iMac is] a smoker and it's contaminated with cigarette smoke, which they consider a bio-hazard! I checked my Applecare warranty and it says nothing about not honoring warranties if the owner is a smoker.' Apple claims that honoring the warranty would be an OSHA violation. (Remember when they claimed enabling 802.11n for free would be a Sarbanes-Oxley violation?)"
Businesses

Some Claim Android App Store Worse Than iPhone's 289

Posted by kdawson from the scylla-meet-charybdis dept.
eldavojohn writes "If you think the iPhone app store is the only mobile game store suffering an exodus, some game publishers claim Android's app store isn't much better, for a different reason — it doesn't generate much revenue. In fact, French game developer Gameloft (which owes 13% of its profits to iPhone game sales), said, 'We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like... many others. It is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue. We are selling 400 times more games on iPhone than on Android.' So the trade-off seems to be more sales but an annoying approval process, versus a lack of sales promotions and no annoyance around approval. It seems that those in it for money will opt for iPhone, and those in it for distribution will opt for Android. Or maybe someone will get it right one of these days?"
Earth

Climatic Research Unit Hacked, Files Leaked 882

Posted by kdawson from the playing-dirty dept.
huckamania was one of many readers to write with the news that the University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Unit was hacked, and internal documents released. Some discussion and analysis of the leaked items can be found at Watts Up With That. The CRU has confirmed that a breach occurred, but not that all 61 MB of released material is genuine. Some of the emails would seem to raise concerns about the science as practiced — or at least beg an explanation. From the Watts Up link: "[The CRU] is widely recognized as one of the world's leading institutions concerned with the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change. Consisting of a staff of around thirty research scientists and students, the Unit has developed a number of the data sets widely used in climate research, including the global temperature record used to monitor the state of the climate system, as well as statistical software packages and climate models. An unknown person put postings on some climate skeptic websites that advertised an FTP file on a Russian FTP server. Here is the message that was placed on the Air Vent today: 'We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents.' The file was large, about 61 megabytes, containing hundreds of files. It contained data, code, and emails apparently from the CRU. If proved legitimate, these bombshells could spell trouble for the AGW crowd." Reader brandaman supplied the link to the archive of pilfered data. Reader aretae characterized the emails as revealing "...lots of intrigue, data manipulation, attempting to shut out opposing points of view out of scientific journals. Almost makes you think it's a religion. Anyone surprised?" And reader bugnuts adds, for context: "These emails are certainly taken out of context, whether they are legitimate or fraudulent, which adds to the confusion."
Patents

Wi-Fi Patent Victory Earns CSIRO $200 Million 267

Posted by samzenpus from the pay-up dept.
bennyboy64 writes "iTnews reports the patent battle between Australia's CSIRO and 14 of the world's largest technology companies has gained the research organization $200 million from out of court settlements. CSIRO executive director of commercial, Nigel Poole, said the CSIRO were wanting to license their technology further, stating that he 'urged' companies using it to come forward and seek a license. 'We believe that there are many more companies that are using CSIRO's technology and it's our desire to license the technology further,' Poole said.'We would urge companies that are currently selling devices that have 802.11 a,g or n to contact CSIRO and to seek a license because we believe they are using our technology.'"

Comment Virtual Keyboard (Score 1) 145

by dean.collins (#28580691) Attached to: CrunchPad Will Be a 'Dead Simple Web Tablet'
Will it have a virtual keyboard though? I cant wait for these to be released to use for watching baseball games and chatting on http://www.livebaseballchat.com/ but the only problem is that with a netbook and wifi i'm not sure what additional value this is going to be offering. I think i'd miss the keyboard for typing. Cheers, Dean

Comment Re:Aren't they all? (Score 5, Informative) 226

by dean.collins (#28342445) Attached to: The Next Ad You Click May Be a Virus

As a content provider (I'm the founder of http://www.livebaseballchat.com/ stuff like this annoys the hell out of me.

I mean we go to all the effort to secure passwords, code tc - then our users are infected with ads they view....

We were sourcing our banner ads from Pubmatic but after a two 'problem ads' about 3 weeks I've cut it back to Google + banners we sell internall direct to end companies.

I dont have any answers but if you have a problem with a website be sure to let the content owners know - they might not even realise they have a problem.

Cheers,
Dean Collins
http://www.livebaseballchat.com/

Comment Re:Don't crash their party (Score 1) 121

by dean.collins (#23999807) Attached to: Cell Phones Tracking Nightlife Activity

Citysense
"CitySense is attempting to use real time location data from those who download its client software as well as GPS enabled cabs and other "sensors." The goal is a near real time thematic map of activity in the city."

Eg. go and download this application and we'll mash it up with some other data to tell you where people are.

Cool concept but the issue of "data access" is the real killer here. Getting access to "where handsets are" is the real problem....and carriers are stuck in the mud about sharing.

I've seen some really great web services but these all rely in some form of another from opt-in services which suffer from "inertia issues".

There have been some traffic related cell phone projects like http://www.physorg.com/news76178303.html and http://www.edmunds.com/ownership/audio/articles/123531/article.html

but none of these 'subsidised the end user'. So i think there needs to be a new solution the same way there is for Virgin SugarMama Minutes - so the proposal is this, allow your cell phone to be 'tracked' and data from this to be sold to anonymized data services like Citysense in return for a 10% reduction in your cell phone costs.

BUT the carriers cant sell your location data without you signing up for this program. I know that for $10-15 a month discount I dont care if you use my location data, but if you are selling it and I dont get anything from it then I'm pissed.

Just look at what happened with BT and Phorm, they could have got that adopted in like 1 month if they paid people for their data, lol wouldn't have cost more than a few glass beads like wallpapers or mp3 downloads etc. They just chose to take the easy route.

Lol I love this comment

http://www.citysense.com/moreInfo.php
"The company plans to profit primarily from business clients purchasing deeper data from the Macrosense platform; Citysense and all future consumer applications are intended to be strictly icing on the cake".

In other words we got some vc funding and we are going to work out later how to make money.

Cheers,
Dean

P.S. If location apps "float your boat" then you might also like to check out Cityware a bluetooth application I blogged about last year.
http://deancollinsblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/cityware-facebook-bluetooth-application.html

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