Comment It probably won't make a difference, but... (Score 5, Informative) 220
File a complaint against AT&T here: http://www.fcc.gov/complaints
Comment Re:Uhm, no... (Score 1) 332
Your point doesn't make sense considering that iTunes on Mac is the same mess that it is on Windows. It's iOS sync and buy* central with the added ability of playing music or watching a video from the same app.
After the iOS5 update split the iPod app into the Music and Video apps I kind of assumed Apple planned on doing the same thing on the desktop, but so far they haven't delivered.
*iBooks not included
Comment Re:Incomplete article (Score 1) 273
I'm getting the blackout page for any link to Wikipedia, except for links to the articles on SOPA and PIPA.
Comment Re:Why BASIC? What for? (Score 1) 783
You have to pay $99 a year to run any of your code on an iOS device though.
Comment Re:Why ban it? (Score 1) 248
not sure the US can afford both...
Sure we can, we've just got to cut all of those pesky social programs and eliminate all of the federal agencies (except DOD, of course) and then we'll have plenty of money to defend ourselves from the terrorists that hate us for our freedoms and save the job creators. Then we can all bask in the glorious stream of money that comes trickling down upon us.
Comment Re:What's it for? (Score 5, Funny) 290
What's it for? No surprise, domestic spying.
I think you mean "protecting your freedoms, fellow patriot."
Comment Re:In other words (Score 2, Insightful) 450
Not really, although possibly, depending on the recordings. The difference between 24-bit and 16-bit audio is the dynamic range, with 24-bit having a much wider range between the quietest possible sound and the loudest possible sound. This is something that can definitely be heard, even on lower end equipment.
Today's music, however, is so compressed (as in audio-compression, not data-compression) in the quest to "make it louder" that it doesn't even get close to reaching the possible dynamic range of 16-bit, which effectively makes an upgrade to 24-bit completely worthless.
Google "Loudness Wars" if you want more information on that.
Comment Re:Too big a change too soon (Score 1) 349
Are you seriously suggesting that most consumers shouldn't factor the possibility of fire/theft/etc. into their backup solution?
Japan Plans Moon Base Built By Robots For Robots 253
An anonymous reader writes "The Japanese space agency, JAXA, has plans to build a base on the Moon by 2020. Not for humans, but for robots — and built by robots, too. A panel authorized by Japan's prime minister has drawn up preliminary plans for how humanoid and rover robots will begin surveying the moon by 2015, and then begin construction of a base near the south pole of the moon. The robots and the base will run on solar power, with total costs about $2.2 billion USD, according to the panel chaired by Waseda University President Katsuhiko Shirai. 'As currently envisioned, the robots that will land on the lunar surface in 2015 will be 660-pound behemoths equipped with rolling tank-like treads, solar panels, seismographs, high-def cameras, and a smattering of scientific instruments. They'll also have human-like arms for collecting rock samples that will be returned to Earth via rocket.'"
Antarctic's First Plane, Found In Ice 110
Arvisp writes "In 1912 Australian explorer Douglas Mawson planned to fly over the southern pole. His lost plane has now been found. The plane – the first off the Vickers production line in Britain – was built in 1911, only eight years after the Wright brothers executed the first powered flight. For the past three years, a team of Australian explorers has been engaged in a fruitless search for the aircraft, last seen in 1975. Then on Friday, a carpenter with the team, Mark Farrell, struck gold: wandering along the icy shore near the team's camp, he noticed large fragments of metal sitting among the rocks, just a few inches beneath the water."
Comment Not Autotune (Score 1) 183
That doesn't sound like Autotune to me. It sounds like a vocoder.
Comment Re:Meh (Score 1) 57
I'm not sure any company would want to invest the money in that just to have to deal with Apple's spotty app store approval process. All that money could go down the drain with the waive of a finger in Cupertino.
Comment Re:DVD is poor by comparison, but is "good enough" (Score 1) 895
First of all, it's Blu-ray, not Blue-ray.
Second, it does not offer higher frame rates. In fact, the reason that it offers "better motion depiction" is due to its lower frame rate. Blu-rays can do 24 frames a second which is the same frame rate as film. DVDs do 30 frames a second (after being de-interlaced), so the film's 24 fps needs to be converted to 30 fps (actually, 29.97 fps).
See the wikipedia article on Telecine to learn about the conversion process.
Second, it does not offer higher frame rates. In fact, the reason that it offers "better motion depiction" is due to its lower frame rate. Blu-rays can do 24 frames a second which is the same frame rate as film. DVDs do 30 frames a second (after being de-interlaced), so the film's 24 fps needs to be converted to 30 fps (actually, 29.97 fps).
See the wikipedia article on Telecine to learn about the conversion process.
Submission + - Is Apple making bank on undelivered iTunes songs?
kingpetey writes: "Ever give an iTunes song as a gift? The folks at this blog did an experiment where they sent 20 songs (K-Fed, which is hilarious in itself) to different contacts and tracked how many made it successfully. A few failed, but Apple didn't notify them of the failure. If it happened to me, I'd be — how you say — royally pissed. They describe the experiment here:
a nk-on-undelivered-itunes-songs"
The full article is at http://www.simpletechnology.net/is-apple-making-bSo what happened to the 20 songs we gifted? iTunes had a twenty-five percent failure rate: fifteen of the gifted songs arrived while five never made it. However, Apple took the full price each of the 20 songs without alerting us about the failed deliveries: no refund, no second try, nothing....
This little experiment begs the question, how much money is Apple making on undelivered music? Let's say that only two percent of the one billion songs downloaded last year were "gifted" songs, that would add up to two million songs. Now, that's hardly a drop in Apple's bucket of revenue, but if a twenty-five percent failure rate is the norm, then 500,000 songs go undelivered while Apple makes around $495,000 for failing to deliver songs.
Submission + - Ars Technica rebuts Jobs claim about DRM security
twbecker writes: Ken Fisher at Ars Technica agrees that DRM is bad for business. But in this article, he questions Steve Jobs' claim that licensing it's DRM to other companies would make it less secure. Fisher compares iTunes Fairplay to Microsoft's WMA, and does a fair job of rebutting Jobs' assertion. Is Jobs being sincere about his concerns regarding licensing Fairplay, or is he using it as an excuse to perpetuate a lock-in strategy?
