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This actually sends chills down my spine. Like, literally. This is only a few steps away from any Tom-Dick-or-Harry being able to see through every wall around them. Police surveillance? Military reconnaissance? Peeping on the neighbors?
And just like those infrared camcorders that were abruptly pulled from shelves, after people started using them for more than just "bird watching"... there is an absolute guarantee that this technology will be abused. Nothing you do in your own home or anywhere else will be beyond observation. Nothing.
Now, where did I put that tin-foil hat?
I don't think any smart money is on an iPhone announcement at WWDC since they haven't done that in quite some time, and it would be a lot less than a year since the i5.
... And you won't se the new iPhone until September
To both of you, I will point out that I did say that it was a lame rumor seed... and I also noted that my evidence is entirely anecdotal. I'm sure that in the next week, we will see plenty of additional anecdotal rumors both for and against various speculative product announcements.
That said... give me a break, anethema: ya just gotta use phrases like "the smart money" or "almost guaranteed!" if you're going to try to wrangle in all of those needy journalists with baseless rumors. How else are they going to justify writing up their five page link-baiting works of fiction, otherwise?
(Sorry... I'm just feeling particularly cynical this morning. I'll stop now.)
You couldnt get a 64GB iPhone, so you get 2x32GB phones instead? I dont think you can treat phone space like hard disks
Touche'. To clarify: I wanted two 64GB phones, and got two 32GB phones instead. (My wife has the other one.)
Okay, I'll toss one out just for fun: I think the smart money is on an iPhone 5S announcement on June 10th, which will be a minor speed bump, and the new Mac Pro will wait until one of Apple's short-notice-press-conferences in the fall. I have no evidence for the Mac Pro speculation, other than what Cook has publicly stated about their timetables... but I have anecdotal evidence for the iPhone 5S: According to Sprint employees that I spoke to just yesterday, supplies of the current iPhone 5 are starting to dry up. (They couldn't find me the 64GB models at all... I ended up settling for a pair of 32GB models that they had shipped to the store.) When Apple starts to close off the supply chain for a given product, that's usually a good indicator of an impending replacement, and if memory serves, previous reports have suggested that Apple can flush almost their entire supply within about a week. With the WWDC just around the corner, that seems about right to me.
First Sale Doctrine vs. copyright/trademark/patent owners is a balancing act between the originator and the buyer. Take away the privileges of either side, or grant additional powers to one side or the other, and the system becomes unbalanced... corrupted. Simply put, both pieces of legislation must remain intact, and must continue to exist in balance, or we all lose -- one way or another.
Bingo. This is exactly why I came to the comments of this post... to call "bull" on Nuance, for the very reason that you've already cited:
Nuance assumes that people don't want to have conversations with customer service reps -- but what they fail to consider is that most people do indeed enjoy human interaction... when it's actually human interaction. Whether it's the rep behind the counter at a hotel with their fake plastic smile and artificially exaggerated concern for your exhaustion, or the cashier at your local supermarket with their scowl and monotonous droning "Thank you... have a nice day..." it's all just forced and... well, predictably inhuman.
Generally speaking, people love interacting with their friends -- and for some of us, that even includes family -- and that type of camaraderie has largely been lost in today's customer services... the small town where you know Doris behind the register at the supermarket and your good buddy Joe who pumps your gas for you is gone. So the reaction from far too many people in "customer service" roles are, quite frankly, already so robotic as to offer no real advantages over the automated check-in kiosk and automated check-out registers... so why wouldn't I want the efficiency of an actual robot?
Now, mind you, if more companies were intentionally hiring employees who show genuine customer focused attitudes -- for example, in the same fashion as the folks running Chick-fil-a seem to have done -- then the pendulum might start swinging back the other way. In the absence of that, I'll go to the kiosk at every opportunity.
I imagine the extended battery life is one of the reasons for the standard copter design, instead of the quadcopter design. Size is almost certainly another factor; they want to minimize the space that these little drones take up in a rucksack, as much as possible.
... My Syma IR copter is impossible to fly outdoors even on days I'd consider to be relatively calm.
I have a similar IR toy copter, and I'm surprised you've been able to successfully fly it outdoors at all. The package of mine specifically states that it's not intended for outdoor use, and flying it indoors into a bright stream of sunlight coming through the front window of my house demonstrated very clearly why: the sunlight apparently obliterates the IR signals. My copter promptly became uncontrollable when it went into the sunbeam. As long as I kept it out of that sunbeam, all was fine.
You may call me by my name, Wirth, or by my value, Worth. - Nicklaus Wirth