Technology as it applies to me.
30 Old PC Ads That Will Blow Your Processor | Information Technology Schools: “Many people today either are too young to have ever seen some early pc’s or have forgotten what they looked like and how much they cost. Today we complain about the cost of a laptop running 2Ghz with 4GB ram for a cost of $ 400.00, however it wasn’t that long ago that laptops and pc’s were priced quite a bit higher. Here are 30 Old PC ads that will make you laugh and possibly appreciate what you have today.”
The Paranoid Kit :: Add-ons for Firefox: “The collection aims to consolidate a package of add-ons, whose overall goal is to reduce/eliminate ads, web tracking, and other privacy sensitive matters involved in day to day browsing.”
Brabus’s iBusiness is a Mercedes-Benz S600 tricked out Apple style: “We’ve seen the iPad implemented both at school and at work, but in your car? That’s the idea behind the iBusiness, a Mercedes-Benz S600 that’s been tricked out with Apple gear aplenty by Brabus. Get this — you can see the two iPads and keyboards in the back seats, but there’s also a Mac mini in the back and a 64gb iPod touch as well. The display above is a 15.2′ TFT display, and all of the gear connects to the Internet via a high speed 3G system. The iPads can also control the car’s multimedia system, navigation systems, and the built-in telephone system.”
A Russian software company today released a password cracking tool that instantly reveals cached passwords to Web sites in Microsoft Internet Explorer, mailbox and identity passwords in all versions of Microsoft Outlook Express, Outlook, Windows Mail and Windows Live Mail.
An Interview With Wu Yu-Ying – Designer of the Breathing Chair
Posted by Dave on May 21st, 2010
The Red Dot Awards have featured an interview they’ve done with Wu Yu-Ying, designer of Breathing, a perforated foam chair that transforms its shape according to the body of the sitter.
[From An Interview With Wu Yu-Ying – Designer of the Breathing Chair » CONTEMPORIST]
belgian architectural firm dmvA designed ‘blob VB3’, a mobile unit for the office of
xfactoragencies as an extension to the ‘house’. the space – egg house consists of a bathroom,
kitchen, lighting, a bed and several niches for storage. the nose can be opened automatically
and functions as a kind of porch. it easily transportable and can also be used as an office,
guestroom or garden house.[From dmvA: blob VB3]
It may seem that Steve Jobs is on a lonely crusade against Adobe’s Flash format with the rest of the industry simply waiting who this battle will turn out. While Adobe is rallying support for Flash, Apple receives support from a rather unexpected ally, the adult film industry. The founder of Digital Playground, one of the porn heavyweights in the U.S., told ConceivablyTech that it will abandon Flash as soon as the desktop browsers fully support HTML 5. We also learned that 3D is just not there yet and that online movie streaming is unlikely to replace Blu-ray discs anytime soon.
[From An Unexpected Apple Ally: Porn Industry to Drop Flash | ConceivablyTech]
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in New York sided with Google Inc. in a $1 billion copyright lawsuit filed by media company Viacom Inc. over YouTube videos, saying the service promptly removed illegal materials as required under federal law.
Wednesday’s ruling by U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton in the closely watched case further affirmed the protections offered to online service providers under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The 1998 law offers immunity when service providers promptly remove illegal materials submitted by users once they are notified of a violation.
Microsoft’s CEO knows the future of personal computing lies with mobile, yet he continues to live in the past.
I sat incredulous last week listening to Steve Ballmer display more out-to-lunchness than I’ve ever heard from a major CEO. His company, Microsoft (MSFT), only recently lost the battle of most valuable technology company to Apple (AAPL). He is presiding over the umpteenth reorganization of the company he has run for years, having succeeded his pal, Bill Gates. His online business, whose Bing search engine is making modest gains against industry leader Google, lost more than $700 million last quarter.
Yet here was Ballmer traveling down a semantical rabbit hole over the future of the PCs. In Ballmerworld, it doesn’t matter that the PC is shrinking in relevance. Any device is a computer, and people will want to use Windows because they’re so familiar with it. By the way, Windows 7, Microsoft’s latest release, is crushing it, further proof that computer users love Microsoft.
CEOs certainly are paid to put on a happy face and represent as well as possible. But hearing Ballmer at the Wall Street Journal’s D conference left me with one question: What is the guy smoking? Windows 7 has been a “success” in part because Microsoft’s previous effort, Vista, was such a stinker. Businesses the world over held off so long on upgrading their PCs that once Microsoft got it right they had no choice but to start replacing obsolete equipment.
Semantics aside, Ballmer knows as well as anyone that the future of personal-computer industry is in mobile devices. Here, Microsoft’s hand is so weak that its most important global equipment partner, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), is buying a beleaguered smartphone maker, Palm (PALM), for its superior mobile operating system. Ballmer’s reminiscing that Microsoft was ahead of the curve on mobile software only draws attention to the fact that the PC kingpin’s cash, power, research and market might have left it approximately nothing in the phone arena. That’s not good. If the growth is in mobile devices and Microsoft can’t shoot straight on anything other than a PC or a laptop (and, to give credit where its due, gaming devices), then its fearsome cash flow and market position in the corporate enterprise mean less than nothing going forward. In the area of computing where Microsoft has been thrashed by Apple, it is nothing more than an extremely well-funded yet dysfunctional and emotionally scarred company. (This seems like a good time to point out that Microsoft has been pursuing tablet computers for a decade, the very segment Apple dominated in a couple months. But then that would feel like piling on.)
Microsoft has a problem—a big one. The problem is not just that its CEO, Steve Ballmer, has had a disastrous 10-year run. That’s been obvious for a while now, as I first pointed out last October in a piece titled “The Lost Decade—Why Steve Ballmer is no Bill Gates.”
It even prompted me to predict, last fall, that Ballmer would get pushed out of Microsoft this year.That wasn’t a popular position at the time. Microsoft’s head of PR called my piece a “hit job on Steve,” and told me all the ways I was wrong and stupid and off the mark. Then he pretty much stopped communicating with me.
I figured he was just in denial, or maybe just saying what he needed to say because he was getting paid to say it.
But my goodness, how much difference a year makes—because these days everyone seems to be piling on Ballmer. And that poor PR guy has a much bigger problem on his hands.[From Drumbeats: The Tech Press Turns on Microsoft’s Ballmer – Newsweek]
Steve Jobs has posted a rare open letter on Apple’s website entitled “Thoughts on Flash.” Here it is verbatim:
Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.
I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.
First, there’s “Open”.
Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.
Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.
Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.
Second, there’s the “full web”.
Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.
Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.
Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.
Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.
In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?
Fourth, there’s battery life.
To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.
Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.
When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.
Fifth, there’s Touch.
Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?
Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.
Sixth, the most important reason.
Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.
We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.
This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.
Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.
Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.
Conclusions.
Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.
The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.
New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.
Steve JobsApril, 2010
WikiLeaks
This Swedish organization publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive documents from governments and other organizations. WikiLeaks protects its sources. There is no better whistleblower website on the internet. In fact, The National said, in 2009, “WikiLeaks has probably produced more scoops in its short life than the Washington Post has in the past 30 years.”
Lower Merion School District employees activated the web cameras and tracking software on laptops they gave to high school students about 80 times in the past two school years, snapping nearly 56,000 images that included photos of students, pictures inside their homes and copies of the programs or files running on their screens, district investigators have concluded.
In most of the cases, technicians turned on the system after a student or staffer reported a laptop missing and turned it off when the machine was found, the investigators determined.But in at least five instances, school employees let the Web cams keep clicking for days or weeks after students found their missing laptops, according to the review. Those computers – programmed to snap a photo and capture a screen shot every 15 minutes when the machine was on – fired nearly 13,000 images back to the school district servers.
The data, given to The Inquirer on Monday by a school district lawyer, represents the most detailed account yet of how and when Lower Merion used the remote tracking system, a practice that has sparked a civil rights lawsuit, an FBI investigation and new federal legislation.
[From Lower Merion report: Web cams snapped 56,000 images | Philadelphia Inquirer | 04/19/2010]
Natasha, a five-year-old macaque living at Safari Park, near Tel Aviv, almost died from a severe case of the stomach flu. When she recovered she started walking upright like a human, no longer dropping down on all fours or using her hands to move along .
A zoo veterinarian says he has no idea why this happened but maybe the flu left Natasha with some brain damage.
[From Natasha the walking macaque]
What’s new in Photoshop CS5
Adobe® Photoshop® CS5 software redefines digital imaging with a strong focus on photography; breakthrough capabilities for superior image selections, image retouching, and realistic painting; and a wide range of workflow and performance enhancements.
Innovative door handle system, designed by Arnaud Lapierre, promises to ensure your privacy by hiding the knob when the door is locked.
Doorknob Condition uses clever pulley system that retracts the exterior door knob when pulled from the inside. [via]
CAREFUL WHAT YOU SAY!!
[From MacDailyNews – Library of Congress to archive every public tweet, ever, since Twitter’s inception]
Next week, the brightest lights of the psychedelic cognoscenti will gather in San Jose, California. Leaving swirls of tracer visions in their wakes, they will converge from around the world at an incongruously bland Holiday Inn, 50 miles south of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood that once served as the pulsing capital of Psychedelistan. There, several hundred turned-on and tuned-in doctors, psychologists, artists and laypeople will participate in the annual conference of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). For four days, they will explore — through workshops and lectures, nothing more — the widening gamut of clinical inquiry into the uses of the psychedelic experience, a global resurgence of which has led to hopeful talk of a “psychedelic revival.”
[From How Stanislav Grof Helped Launch the Dawn of a New Psychedelic Research Era | Drugs | AlterNet]
Bob Cringely has republished a quote from an interview he did with Bill Gates from June, 1998 for a never-published piece for Vanity Fair:
“What I can’t figure out is why he (Steve Jobs) is even trying (to be the CEO of Apple)? He knows he can’t win.” – Bill Gates, June 1998
Cringely writes, “Look at the two companies today. Jobs is still running Apple despite cancer and a liver transplant while Gates has moved on to saving the world at the Gates Foundation. Microsoft is worth $240 billion, a tiny drop from 12 years ago, with the shares now around $27 (down from $29). Nothing gained in more than a decade. Apple shares, on the other hand, have gone from $7.25 to almost $240, Apple’s market cap has risen more than 33X from $6 billion to $220 billion. And Cupertino’s cash hoard today is almost exactly the same as Microsoft’s at around $40 billion.”
This villa is designed by Enric Ruiz-Geli’s firm Cloud9. It is an example of usual contemporary structure made of concrete but with a quite intriguing shape and very usual features that changes its look entirely. The most cool feature is that the building itself is the extension of the site. It is conceived as a growing C-shaped spiral with grass and plants on the roof. Besides hydroponic rooftop garden there is an underground garage so the structure is very economical and environmental. There is a lot of glazing in the house and its rear features an almost 50 foot-wide expanse of glass. Being environmental by itself the house also features the landscape views from many rooms. { Cloud9 }
[From Villa Bio – Contemporary House with Hydroponic Rooftop Garden | DigsDigs]
Six-year-old boy told he will be able to hold chopsticks in a few months
Shenyang, Liaoning – Li Jinpeng, a 6-year-old boy born with 15 fingers and 16 toes, is happy he will soon be able to wear a normal pair of shoes.
Doctors at the Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University in Shenyang, Liaoning province, successfully removed Li’s additional fingers and toes in a surgical operation that lasted more than five hours on Tuesday.
Before the surgery, Li, the son of migrant workers from Heilongjiang province, was believed to be the world record holder for having the maximum number of fingers and toes.
He is not the least bit sad at losing the record to two Indians, Pranamya Menaria and Devendra Harne, who each have 12 fingers and 13 toes.
