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Comment Some links to the actual bill (Score 4, Informative) 329

http://www.copyright.com.au/Latest_News/New_Zealand_passes_Copyright_Amendment_Bill.aspx http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2011/0011/latest/viewpdf.aspx New Zealanders protested quite loudly against this bill - with the internet blackout campaign - http://creativefreedom.org.nz/blackout.html - , unfortunately it was still passed. More proof that politicians are mostly a bunch of money grubbing ass bandits that will do what ever big business wants them to for a little time at the swill trough!

Comment Update the software that updates the updater first (Score 1) 177

Update the Zune software first, so you can update your phone with software that will help with future updates. And users get what exactly out of this process? I love instructions pages that mention the first thing you should do right at the bottom of the page, after you have completed all the other steps... way to go! Instructions on that page are a prime example of how MS has no idea about designing computer user interfaces for people!

Comment Just another attack vector (Score 2) 302

Anything like this 'trusted certificate' or 'health scanning app' will just become another attack vector.

Microsoft should just build a new operating system from the ground up that is secure. If MS applied everything they should have learnt from all the security problems they have had over the last 20 years, they could probably make something quite good.

Wouldn't this solve 95% of the problems with infected PC's? Of course that would require reinvesting some of the billions they make from selling their current offering.

Comment Re:hack (Score 1) 377

Sometimes words can be used for multiple purposes... don't worry you can still use it to mean the branch of science concerned with design, building and use of mechanical structures. In this case 'engineering' is being used in this context (from the dictionary meaning): skillfully or artfully arrange for (an event or situation) to occur : she engineered another meeting with him. It's social engineering... (Now on topic) nice hack!

Comment Re:Counterproductive (Score 1) 703

These attacks are hypocritical as well. The attackers are saying to these companies "You must do as we wish. You must associate with Wikileaks even if you don't want to or find their behavior objectionable." They are attempting to impose their will upon others from a position of secrecy.

Actually the only hypocrisy going on here is by the US government which is bound by the US constitution, and is quite obviously ignoring it when ever it suits it. In this particular case they are trying to restrict freedom of speech and suppress information that shows that they have been breaking the law, using the government as a vehicle to further members own financial positions and various other dirty tactics that some of us suspected was going on, but up to this point in time had no proof.

Anonymous has no charter that states they won't harass, DDoS or use whatever means necessary to get their point across. In fact from what I understand that is in fact the whole idea of the movement.

There are plenty of companies that will support Wikileaks (and other whistle blower movements) as there are people that will support anyone who tries to show where the hypocrisy truly lies

Comment Re:Great News !! (Score 1, Flamebait) 461

learn never to trust a closed platform.

Why do people insist on regurgitating the same inaccurate crap all the time?

iPhone OS is NOT a closed platform, for $160 I get a world class development environment and I can install and run what ever I want onto my iPhone or any of the devices owned by my co-workers or friends. I also get a world wide distribution network for Apps I choose to sell.

If I choose to jail break my device (which is a 10 minute process) I can install and run thousands of apps created by others around the world (cydia etc) including ones which use custom API's and undocumented features, they may feature backdoors, trojans and steal my credit card details, but it is open!

So Apple wants to make sure the Apps people sell in the iTunes store actually work, and will continue to work next week? Good on them, its obviously working for the consumers.

iTunes Store does not equal iPhone OS.

Comment Best kids ebook format - QBook - Touchable Text (Score 1) 684

Disclaimer: I make it, so I'm biased. There's a vid on youtube http://youtube.com/kiwamedia or you can download the free iPhone app of one of our first releases Seb's Tail from itunes.

http://kiwamedia.com/qbook
http://itunes.com/apps/kiwamedia

QBook is a touch enabled color children's book. I've been working on this for a number of years now, its the first ebook that features touchable text. You simply swipe your finger over the text to hear it read aloud, tap words to hear them or touch and hold to hear the word spelt and each book contains multiple languages (so far we have US English, Maori, Spanish, Portugese, French, Japanese, German and Italian... still working on Chinese), so its great for language development for both adults and kids. Kids love it because they can explore the words at their own pace. Parents can also record the story in their own voice.

I've talked with a lot of publishers and most of them have not migrated their childrens books to ePub format due to its lack of support for full color pictures and text styling (kids books often use lots of different fonts etc).

Its been well received so far and we have a large library of material which is due to be released over the next few months. We've spent a lot of time making the tools to build these books easily, we have a WYSIWYG editor that allows us to follow the format of the books and can then hit a build button and see the app running on the iPhone or iPad simulator.

We already have our books optimised for iPad and we believe that QBook takes full advantage of this industry changing device. We foresee this becoming a great educational tool for children as well as a language learning tool.

I personally read alot of material on my iPhone and the only down side is the screen size just isnt big enough. Of course the iPad resolves this issue and I think the iPad will become the market leader by the end of this year.

Comment Re:Because the market is to small and fragmented (Score 1) 303

That is the final answer why there is no gaming phone, phones advance to fast to develop for. Develop a 1 year title starting at launch and the phone will be hopelessly obsolete.

I guess a smart company would develop an OS that would allow you to change the hardware underneath without having to redevelop all the applications and development tools, and also release the development tools before the devices. And to answer the question posed in the title... Apple makes a great gaming phone, its called iPhone. Maybe you should have asked the question "When will the power of mobile chips match gamers unquenchable thirst for CPU and graphics horsepower?" and we all know the answer to that already.

Comment I could fly naked but I prefer my DNA zipped (Score 1) 350

The real issue for me is not that these scanners are unzipping our clothes, but that they may be unzipping our DNA. A study conducted by Boian S. Alexandrov (and colleagues) at the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico shows that terahertz waves could

"...unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the double strand that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication."

Genes not properly expressed during replication can lead to lots of terrible diseases like Autism and Alzheimer's. Can we refuse the radiation and ask for a strip search instead?

Comment Ad Agencies are responsible, not the TV stations (Score 2, Interesting) 636

Having worked in audio production for many years I can say that in my experience ignorant people from ad agencies judge how good a studio is by how loud they can mix the commercials. Its nothing to do with the TV stations.

The problem is commercials are mixed with LOTS of compression (which limits the dynamic range) and recorded to the master tape at the maximum level it can handle. Movies and TV shows are mixed with a lot more dynamic range to allow for example, a gunshot to sound louder than a voice.

If the TV stations consistently lowered the level of commercials when they transferred them into their systems (by 3-6db), then they would sit better after programs and wouldn't send us all grabbing for the remote to mute them. It's not going to stop me from muting them, but then I hardly ever watch TV as I find it mind numbingly boring and retarded.

Also in response to some sort of volume limiter that kicks in when the level gets loud, its only going to ruin your movie soundtrack and make those huge explosions small... so IMHO its a bad idea.

My idea was to scan the picture for the TV station ID which they impose over the programs but not commercials and detect which is which by this method or link the TV to a internet based service which can tell you when commercials are playing on your channel and auto-mute and dim the picture. Probably people would pay for a service like this.

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