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Comment Douglas Adams Edition Pulsar (Score 4, Informative) 466

by infonography (#40038155) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Wrist Watch For the Tech Minded

The original Pulsar digital watch was marketed through upmarket jeweller, Tiffany and Co. A solid gold version sold for $2,000 and a stainless steel model for $275.

Digital watches initially caught on only in the US and very few were exported. There was a strong market for them in 1973 and prices dropped quickly. Other firms entered the market, including Bowmar, which also pioneered the early pocket calculators in the US.

These are only sold at the gift shop in the Restaurant at the end of the Universe and at the Big Bang Burger Bar.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Kinect ads will watch you while you watch them (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: Do you watch commercials or do use that timeslot to run to the restroom or to the kitchen? Do you fast-forward to skip as many commercials as possible when watching TV via a DVR or On Demand? Microsoft hopes to change all that by offering Kinect-powered interactive commercials called NUads (Natural User Interface Advertisements).

According to CNET's Declan McCullagh, Microsoft manager Lyn Watts stated that advertisers can "go after the holy grail — the living room" with Kinect Nuads. Whether you like the idea of TV ads watching while you watch the advertisement or not, Microsoft's Kinect interactive NUads will "begin rolling out in late spring."

The Kinect privacy policy states, "Kinect can record speech data, photos and videos" and "collects and uses body recognition data." But Microsoft told CNET, "With respect to privacy, Xbox 360 and Xbox Live do not use any information captured by Kinect for advertising targeting purposes and NUads is no exception." Eurogamer pointed out Watt's statements about "how NUads may tailor advertising using data gathered by Kinect" contradict Microsoft's statement about privacy.

"With a NUads-based commercial, TV advertisers will be able to listen in on a TV audience at home via a microphone, or perhaps view the home audience via facial recognition or video," reported Neowin. "Of course, all of this conjurers up a 'Big Brother' future where we would be spied on while watching TV commercials." Indeed much like the Samsung smart TVs that watch you, the Kinect NUads bring to mind the spying TV sets that George Orwell foresaw, televisions that watched viewers on behalf of Big Brother.

Immediately after announcing Nuads last year, Microsoft's Mark Kroese wrote,"In this case of NUads and Kinect, I'm here to say that it will change television as we know it-forever." At that time Seattle Pi skeptically asked, "Would you actually interact with ads?" Whether Kinect-enabled advertising will prove "irresistibly interactive" or yawnsville to viewers remains to be seen, but Gizmodo called the NUads "awful" and that when it comes to interacting and sharing TV ads, "literally no one has ever wanted to do that."

NUads will incorporate voice commands as Kroese had suggested. Xbox Tweet and Xbox Share are about social media interaction. Xbox More will "request additional information and/or a discount coupon to be sent directly to your email inbox." Xbox Schedule will send calendar reminders. Xbox Near Me finds a local retailer and sends you "a text message with the location."
Idle

Submission + - History's first prank call is almost as old as the telephone (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
netbuzz
netbuzz writes: "You could picture the event as a 19th Century Bart Simpson making history’s first documented prank phone call to Mo’s Funeral Home. The documentation comes via Google Books from the February 1884 edition of The Electrical World – only eight years after Bell’s famous summoning of Watson — and the one-paragraph story is headlined: “A grave joke on undertakers.” The little-publicized gem was unearthed by Portland State University professor Paul Collins, who is also known at The Literary Detective."
Data Storage

Submission + - RunCore Introduces Self-Destructable SSD (runcore.com)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: RunCore announces the global launch of its InVincible solid state drive, designed for mission-critical fields such as aerospace or military. The device improves upon a normal SSD by having two strategies for the drive to quickly render itself blank. First method goes through the disk, overwriting all data with garbage. Second one is less discreet and lets the smoke out of the circuitry by driving overcurrent to the NAND chips. Both ways can be ignited with a single push of a button, allowing James Bond -style rapid response to the situation on the field.
Iphone

Submission + - Siri Caught Recommending The Nokia Lumia, Promptly Reprogrammed (techdirt.com)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "The Apple marketing machine has always thrived on organic media buzz. Devices like the iPad launch to such massive anticipation that whole TV news segments turn into commercials for the product, then hand off to on-the-scene reporters covering the line outside the Apple store, without the company paying a dime. Unfortunately, it seems like Apple didn't account for two things: the cold, cold heart of the Wolfram Alpha computational knowledge engine, and the dutiful messenger that is Siri.
Last week, CNET reported that iPhone users who asked Siri "what's the best smartphone ever?" (no doubt seeking reaffirmation of their consumer savviness) were told to their amusement and/or horror that the Nokia Lumia 900 is in fact the fairest of them all. It now seems like Apple engineers did some tinkering over the weekend, because Siri has suddenly changed its tune:

"When iPhone 4S owners now ask Siri which smartphone is the best ever, she replies with a sarcastic, "you're kidding, right?" A reader who tipped CNET to the change said Siri will also reply with "the one you're holding" when asked the question. A CNET staffer on the West Coast also got "the one you're holding" as an answer.""
Music

Submission + - BitTorrent Piracy Boosts Music Sales, Study Finds (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "A new academic paper by a researcher from the North Carolina State University has examined the link between BitTorrent downloads and music album sales. Contrary to what’s often claimed by the major record labels, the paper concludes that there is absolutely no evidence that unauthorized downloads negatively impact sales. Instead, the research finds that more piracy directly leads to more album sales.

For more than a decade researchers have been looking into the effects of music piracy on the revenues of the record industry, with mixed results.

None of these researchers, however, used a large sample of accurate download statistics from a BitTorrent tracker to examine this topic. This missing element motivated economist Robert Hammond, Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University, to conduct his own research."
Facebook

Submission + - UK man jailed for hacking a private Facebook account (techworld.com) 1

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: A 21-year-old man from West Sussex has been sent to jail for 12 months after hacking into a private Facebook account and gaining access to the private email facility.

The breach was originally reported to the FBI, who traced the source of the breach to the UK.

Thing is, how are they defining hacking? Nowadays 16-year-olds seem to be able to easily hack and take control of each other's accounts — will they now be liable too? Does guessing the Facebook password or hacking the attached email account to get the password count?
Piracy

Submission + - Indian ISPs blocking Vimeo, torrent websites (ndtv.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A second Indian ISP, Airtel, has blocked Vimeo, Dailymotion as well as popular torrent websites like The Pirate Bay and others. This after Reliance had done the same a fortnight ago.

While reasons remain unknown in the absence of clear statements from any of the stakeholders, the move might be linked to the local film industry trying to cut down on piracy.
Censorship

Submission + - TED.com Censors Talk Based on Income Inequality, Too Political (nationaljournal.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: TED.com hosts videos of talks given by a vast array of people based on a lot of different topics relating to science, business, design, and global issues, among others. Some famous people who have given TED talks include Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Julian Assange (of Wikileaks), and Bill Clinton. TED's tagline is "Ideas worth spreading".

But apparently one idea "not worth spreading" is that of income inequality. Multimillionaire Nick Hanauer gave a TED talk about why rich people like him need to pay more in taxes. Read more about his talk here. Initially, Mr. Hanuaer received emails from TED.com that they seemed excited about posting his talk online. But then TED.com people gave varying excuses on why Hanauer's talk would not be posted on TED.com. One excuse was a backlog of other talks which have not yet been posted. Later, the excuse changed to be that Hanauer's talk was too political, especially in an election year.

TED.com has previously posted talks about global warming and contraception. But apparently a talk on income inequality is too political because it would harm one political party which has been killing off the middle class.

Is TED no longer relevant now that TED.com censors certain topics because they may cast a bad light on a particular political party?

Submission + - US judge blocks indefinite detention of Americans (rt.com)

Submitted by rastos1
rastos1 writes: A US federal judge has temporarily blocked a section of the controversial National Defense Authorization Act that allows for the indefinite military detention of US citizens. In a 68-page ruling, US District Judge Katherine Forrest agreed on Wednesday that the statute failed to “pass constitutional muster” because its language could be interpreted quite broadly and eventually be used to suppress political dissent.
Power

Submission + - US is Happy To Pay More for Clean Energy. Well, a Little More (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
Fluffeh
Fluffeh writes: "A recent study of over 1,000 folks for a paper published in Nature Climate Change has found that the average US citizen is inclined to pay a premium to ensure that by 2035, 80% of US power comes from clean energy. At random, respondents received one of three "technological treatments" or definitions of clean energy that included renewable energy sources alone, renewable sources plus natural gas, and renewable sources plus nuclear power. Delving into the socioeconomics, researchers found that Republicans, Independents, and respondents with no party allegiance were less likely by 25, 13 and 25 percentage points respectively to support a NCES than respondents that identified themselves as Democrats."
NASA

Submission + - NASA counts 4,700 potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "NASA continues to get a better handle on the asteroids buzzing around in space saying today that there are roughly 4,700 potentially hazardous asteroids, or as NASA calls them PHAs.
NASA says these PHAs are a subset of a larger group of near-Earth asteroids but have the closest orbits to Earth's – passing within five million miles (or about eight million kilometers) and are big enough to survive passing through Earth's atmosphere and cause damage on a regional, or greater, scale."

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