The summary and article make it seem like this is some revolutionary *3D* device. It isn't. What it does to create 3D imagery has been around for a long long time (done in software, perhaps on a dedicated chip). The only newsworthy thing about this is that it can do very large panoramas.

It's nothing new, though. We've been doing this for ages. The only thing remotely cool about this is the fact that it has a whole bunch of cameras that can put together large panoramas.

(and yes, I know that this thing is using software to compute the distance of objects, but that isn't anything new. We've been able to do the same thing with two images for a long time)

Where do you get the idea that having a bunch of camera looking outward from a single point will be any more effective at doing 3D than 2 cameras set up to do stereoscopy? (let's assume no other differences here)

This thing can't magically look around corners just because it's looking outward at different angles.

Did you watch that video? The guy is making it up to get some money (he'll have more luck with getting money from news stations for interviews, since the evidence is clearly against him). The phone still works, which means a blown capacitor is very unlikely (and especially a blown up battery). The only thing wrong with it is the glass is cracked. He probably sandwiched the phone between his head and the car door as he was closing it.

What the GP is getting at is that Diaspora is only popular because they got a connection to some media exposure. They got $200,000 from the public when they had *nothing.* There are (and were) already alternatives that are much better and further along than Diaspora. As I mentioned in my post just below this one, Appleseed is one of them (there are others as well, but that happens to be the one that I personally feel deserves more attention).

Appleseed is getting close to production ready (and it's quite usable already).

The comments in this thread are ridiculous. Of course they meant to. This isn't some random project by 4 college dropouts. This is one of the most successful companies to ever exist. If something is open, they meant for it to be open. It isn't like they used some weak type of encryption. It's entirely open.

The point is that it's entirely plausible that they are parsing "return;" as "return null;" Yes, it's stupid, but it shows that there are real possibilities other than "they are cheating at this test."

And on top of that, maybe the JS spec says that "return;" is interpreted as something other than ending a function without a return statement (like "return null;" for example).

It should first of all be noted that MS is one of the only companies with enough balls not to try to get 100/100 on acid 3 (many of the "requirements" are not part of any official and final specification). I see MS as being the *least* likely to cheat on pointless benchmarks.

Second, adding a return value *does* in fact make a huge difference in run time. There is a very large difference in the way the stack functions, and many optimizations can be made when there is no return value in a function. There are of course some other requirements for this to be possible, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that the JS engine is just being smart about running pointless code. This is not cheating. Perhaps they were encouraged to make this optimization in order to do better on the test, but it could still very well be a valid optimization.

I'm sure many phone makers are very happy with the fact that MS charges royalties for Windows Phone 7. This is because MS will be the one defending any IP/patent lawsuits, etc. Why do you think people are suing HTC and other Android phone makers instead of Google? Google probably isn't legally responsible. MS will be, so they are charging a small amount for it.

How much do you think this has to do with Apple's prediction that Flash will die soon? They can't afford to be wrong about that one. They're doing whatever they can to make Steve Jobs a prophet. In fact this was probably Steve's idea.

Windows doesn't have it either, but Windows as a standalone product is sold to people who are completely capable of easily installing Flash themselves. Most hardware companies (Apple is a hardware company) include Flash with Windows.

This has been my thought during all of these discussions, but there is a difference. Apple is a hardware company. They sell computers that are supposed to have everything that *most* users need out of the box (they even claim this). Most users need flash. Windows is not a piece of hardware. It is a single piece of software (with many included pieces of software, but you wouldn't exactly complain if they unbundled some of them). Hardware companies who sell computers with Windows on them almost always include Flash. Apple is getting away from their model of "it just works" to "ok, casual users, you are now required to install certain things after you buy your mac. We know that 99% of you will need/want flash at some point, but we are going to make Steve a prophet (and profit) by making sure that Flash is too difficult to install so it will eventually die."

I've never been a paranoid one, and even in this case I don't think it's a *huge* deal (it's certainly a deal, but not a huge one), but I think what they are getting at is that this gives them the ability to connect the dots. Say you have an ad for a job opening that is only shown to gay people. User clicks said ad, and is sent to a specific entry point which can be recorded. User proceeds to apply for job. I'm not sure that this can cause much damage... if they weren't looking for gay people they wouldn't have posted ads to the... but I can definitely see paranoid people not liking this (and I'm not saying they are wrong in feeling this way, just that I'm not quite as paranoid). I'm sure a lot of people have their sexual orientation public on facebook, but don't tell their coworkers or employers (Oscar from the office until season 3 episode 1, for example).

The only thing you've shown is a correlation. There are thousands of other factors.