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Comment Cloud FPGAs (Score 1) 188

As has been pointed out, the FPGA isn't tightly coupled architecturally-wise enough to provide a performance gain in tightly coupled software. This solution, like any board with an FPGA, works best when the task allocated to it is relatively stand-alone (some intensive DSP, etc). Now what would be interesting in this field is cloud providers making FPGAs available as part of their packages, or even using them themselves. So many web applications grind the server for image processing, that would be well suited to an FPGA. Maybe Google should consider it for GAE, for example?

Comment But (Score 3, Insightful) 142

Are third party sites any more capable of doing anything complex with this information than Facebook? The extent to which I noticed facebook profiled me is the ads on the side would say "free gifts if you're male, 67 years old and live in Sausageville". Let's face it (no pun intended), Facebook probably gives prospective advertisers and third-party sites looking to use profile information some complex sounding presentation about the way that break down demographics to the point that an individual can be uniquely identified 24 seconds before they even think about logging into Facebook. But really, 99% of ads are based on sex, age and where they live, I'm sure a lot more companies than Facebook know this information, I think we're somewhat over-estimating technology companies' ability to mine data. OK, once I told a FB friend to not be such a baby and they got some ads about gifts for new parents. Maybe we should have a social experiment where we try to affect the ads by what we post. "Man, I wish I could get a cheap rate mobile, easy date in my area , cartoonize myself" should be a good starting point...

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Submission + - How Apple orchestrates controlled leaks, and why (macobserver.com)

Lanxon writes: "I was a Senior Marketing Manager at Apple and I was instructed to do some controlled leaks," confesses John Martellaro in a fascinating article in Mac Observer. Monday's article at the Wall Street Journal, which provided confirmation of an Apple tablet device, had all the earmarks of a controlled leak. Here's how Apple does it. Often Apple has a need to let information out, unofficially. The company has been doing that for years, and it helps preserve Apple's consistent, official reputation for never talking about unreleased products. The way it works is that a senior exec will come in and say, "We need to release this specific information. John, do you have a trusted friend at a major outlet? If so, call him/her and have a conversation. Idly mention this information and suggest that if it were published, that would be nice. No e-mails!"

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