Comment: Nokia's MeeGo is doomed - A summary of Dublin's MeeGo Summit | TechEye

Comment: Nokia's MeeGo is doomed - A summary of Dublin's MeeGo Summit | TechEye


And yet, the most striking impression I walked away with had nothing to do with the MeeGo OS. My most common reoccurring thought was something along the lines of, "Holy hell, Nokia and Intel have a lot of money to throw at us."

Both industry dinosaurs spent like drunken sailors with an itch. They rented out the new half-billion dollar Aviva Stadium for three days. They rented out the entire Guinness Storehouse for a night, including multiple bands and food. They bought us all tickets to a football game, provided an open bar and snacks for a thousand people for three straight nights and, to top it off, they bought us all touchscreen tablet-netbooks. The Lenovo IdeaPad S10 S3, to be specific.



Read more: http://www.techeye.net/software/nokias-meego-is-doomed#ixzz16nJonI3F

The Men Who Stole the World - TimeFrames - TIME

The Men Who Stole the World - TimeFrames - TIME

Which brings us to another important reason the media apocalypse never happened: Steve Jobs. On April 28, 2003, the very day TIME published a grand excursus on the explosive growth of file sharing, Apple unveiled the iTunes Music Store. At the time, it was difficult to see why iTunes would succeed where Snocap, among many others, had failed. Because, again, how do you compete with free?

But iTunes did succeed. Apple's relentless emphasis on simple, attractive user interfaces, backed by Jobs' steely negotiating power in dealing with music studios, produced a streamlined, curated service with which you could download and transfer music with a minimum of fuss. And we did — even though it cost us money and our purchases were bogged down with DRM that constrained what we could do with them.

It turns out that there is something that can compete with free: easy. Napster, Gnutella and BitTorrent never attained the user-friendliness that Apple products have, and nobody vets the content on file-sharing networks, so while the number of files on offer is enormous, the files are rotten with ads, porn, spyware and other garbage. When Jobs offered us the easy way out, we took it. Freedom is overrated, apparently — at least where digital media are concerned.



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,2032304,00.html #ixzz16mmM6H2P

For DecorMyEyes, Bad Publicity Is a Good Thing - NYTimes.com

For DecorMyEyes, Bad Publicity Is a Good Thing - NYTimes.com: "A Bully Finds a Pulpit on the Web

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Judge: Let lesbians into military so male GIs can turn them straight | Raw Story

Judge: Let lesbians into military so male GIs can turn them straight | Raw Story: "In the original article, Rehyansky concluded that his lesbians-only policy 'would get the distaff part of our homosexual population off our collective ‘Broke Back,’ thus giving straight male GIs a fair shot at converting lesbians and bringing them into the mainstream.'

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Guns of August

Two armies, now totally committed, surged and gripped and broke apart and clashed again in confused and separate combats over a front of forty miles. A regiment advanced, its neighbor was thrown back, gaps appeared, the enemy thrust through or, unaccountably, did not. Artillery roared, cavalry squadrons, infantry units, heavy horse-drawn field-gun batteries moved and floundered through villages and forests, between lakes, across fields and roads. Shells smashed into farmhouses and village streets. A battlion advancing under cover of shellfire disappeared behind a curtain of smoke and mist to some unknown fate.Columns of prisoners herded to the rear blocked the advancing troops. Brigades took ground or yielded it, crossed each other's lines of communication, became tangled up with the wrong divisions. Field commanders lost track of their units, staff cars sped about, German scot plans flew overhead trying to gather information, army commanders struggled to find out what was happening, and issued orders which might not be recieved or carried out or conform to realities by the time they reached the front. Three hundred thousand men flailed at each other, marched and tiredly countermarched, fired their guns, got drunk if they were lucky enough to occupy a village or sat on the ground in the forest with a few companions while night came; and the next day the struggle went on and the great battle of the Eastern Front was fought out.
-- Barbara Wertheim Tuchman, The Guns of August

THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER 2010 — Page 7

THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER 2010 — Page 7: "MATT RIDLEY
Science Writer; Founding chairman of the International Centre for Life; Author, Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code.

THE COLLECTIVE BRAIN

The Internet is the ultimate mating ground for ideas, the supreme lekking arena for memes. Cultural and intellectual evolution depends on sex just as much as biological evolution does; otherwise it remains a merely vertical transmission system. Sex allows creatures to draw upon mutations that happen anywhere in their species. The Internet allows people to draw upon ideas that occur to anybody in the world. Radio and printing did this too, and so did writing, and before that language, but the Internet has made it fast and furious.

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER 2010— Page 2

THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER 2010— Page 2: "KAYAKS vs CANOES

In the North Pacific ocean, there were two approaches to boatbuilding. The Aleuts (and their kayak-building relatives) lived on barren, treeless islands and built their vessels by piecing together skeletal frameworks from fragments of beach-combed wood. The Tlingit (and their dugout canoe-building relatives) built their vessels by selecting entire trees out of the rainforest and removing wood until there was nothing left but a canoe.

The Aleut and the Tlingit achieved similar results — maximum boat / minimum material — by opposite means. The flood of information unleashed by the Internet has produced a similar cultural split. We used to be kayak builders, collecting all available fragments of information to assemble the framework that kept us afloat. Now, we have to learn to become dugout-canoe builders, discarding unneccessary information to reveal the shape of knowledge hidden within.

I was a hardened kayak builder, trained to collect every available stick. I resent having to learn the new skills. But those who don't will be left paddling logs, not canoes.

Medical Daily: Danish researchers finally solve the obesity riddle

Medical Daily: Danish researchers finally solve the obesity riddle: "A high-protein, low-GI diet works best

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Is MiFi the future of wireless internet -- or a fad? - CNN.com

Is MiFi the future of wireless internet -- or a fad? - CNN.com: "The devices, many of them smaller than a smartphone, are similar to the wireless routers in many homes except they don't need to be plugged into anything.
They connect to a cellular carrier's data network. Once the battery is charged, a MiFi can be taken anywhere, and it provides a Wi-Fi signal to computers or iPods in a nearby vicinity."

Rovio - Blog

Rovio - Blog: "Face it, you're playing in the kiddie pool and trying to taunt the adults. Have fun splashing, little one! We'll be doing the high dives while you paddle around with your water wings."

RIM’s Rival to IPad Wins Fans as Clients Seek Security - BusinessWeek

RIM’s Rival to IPad Wins Fans as Clients Seek Security - BusinessWeek: "PlayBook’s security features, such as e-mail encryption, to win over companies used to working with the BlackBerry."

Google TV: No Need to Tune In Just Yet | Walt Mossberg | Personal Technology | AllThingsD

Google TV: No Need to Tune In Just Yet | Walt Mossberg | Personal Technology | AllThingsD
Google TV: No Need to Tune In Just Yet
November 17, 2010
by Walter S. Mossberg

SharePrint The quest to bring the full range of Internet video to your TV in a simple way continues, but it isn’t going well. The latest team to try—Google, Logitech and Sony—has made an admirably bold effort, but, like others before, it has missed the mark, at least in its first effort.



Google TV—software built into hardware made by Logitech and Sony—is very different from competing products, such as Apple TV and Roku. Unlike the others, it aims to merge Web video and regular TV in one simple interface, via one box, with one easily usable controller. Also, unlike the others, it isn’t limited to just customized channels that bring specific Web-video services to the screen. It lets you browse to almost any website with video, and play it on the TV.

But, for now, I’d relegate Google TV to the category of a geek product, not a mainstream, easy solution ready for average users. It’s too complicated, in my view, and some of its functions fall short.

Why Smart TV is Not PC

Why Smart TV is Not PC
hmm, right Genevive? So much for Intel's wonderful "ethnographic research"...

Another key factor in the attempt to get a better grasp of what users want research project led by Bell's group called "The Social Lives of Television."


Johnson and a team of Intel anthropologists and ethnographers visited hundreds of people in their homes in India, the U.K., the U.S. and China to learn how they engaged with their TVs so that Intel could better understand what consumers actually wanted.


"When we started working on the concept 4 years ago, we figured the No. 1 thing people would want in the future is movies-on-demand," Johnson said. "But our focus groups revealed that what people really wanted on their TVs was Internet access. People saw the Internet as a way they could get whatever they wanted on demand. Watching what they wanted, when they wanted it, and where they wanted was a profound and liberating experience."

Google TV’s Chaotic Interface - David Pogue - NYTimes.com

Google TV’s Chaotic Interface - David Pogue - NYTimes.com: "This much is clear: Google TV may be interesting to technophiles, but it’s not for average people. On the great timeline of television history, Google TV takes an enormous step in the wrong direction: toward complexity."

Woody Allen on Faith and Fortune Tellers - Question - NYTimes.com

Woody Allen on Faith and Fortune Tellers - Question - NYTimes.com: "“To me,” Mr. Allen said, “there’s no real difference between a fortune teller or a fortune cookie and any of the organized religions. They’re all equally valid or invalid, really. And equally helpful.”

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

How the Cell Phone Is Changing the World - Newsweek

How the Cell Phone Is Changing the World - Newsweek: "The phones now allow Masai tribesmen in Kenya to bank the proceeds from selling cattle; Iranian protesters to organize in secret; North Koreans to communicate with the outside world; Afghan villagers to alert Coalition soldiers to Taliban forces; insurgents to blow up roadside bombs in Iraq; and charities to see, in real time, when HIV drugs run out in the middle of Malawi."

Skepticblog » What Do You Believe In?

Skepticblog » What Do You Believe In?

Illadore's House o Crack - Copyright Infringement and Me

Illadore's House o Crack - Copyright Infringement and Me: "But honestly Monica, the web is considered 'public domain' and you should be happy we just didn't 'lift' your whole article and put someone else's name on it!

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

"Known as the Trusted Multi-Tenant Infrastructure Work Group, there are about 50 TCG members participating, including HP, IBM, AMD and Microsoft"

Say What? Top Five IT Quotes of the Week - InternetNews.com

Say What? Top Five IT Quotes of the Week - InternetNews.com: "'The utility of the classic firewall is becoming increasingly limited as time marches on. Just because you block the entire Internet except for port 80 -- these days it means you're not blocking anything, since everything is tunneled over HTTP. HTTP is the new TCP.'
Sourcefire CTO and creator of the open source Snort IPS, Martin Roesch talking about new firewall technology. (eSecurity Planet)"

10 Open-Source Security Products You Can Download Now

10 Open-Source Security Products You Can Download Now: "Spamato
Okay, it sounds like a highly processed liquefied lunch food. But this OS-independent open-source product provides a complete client-side spam filter that can integrate into popular e-mail clients such as Microsoft Outlook, or as an extension for other open-source e-mail clients such as Mozilla Mail and Thunderbird. It can also work as a standalone proxy component"

Scenes From IBM's Information On Demand Conference

Scenes From IBM's Information On Demand Conference: "'We believe we are at a very important inflection point relative to this whole idea of analyzing data and using data for strategic advantage,' said Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive, IBM Software and Systems, at a press conference. Businesses, he said, 'need to become more predictive [and] more forward-looking, they need to get more insight into where the world around them is going, the markets they serve [and] the customers they work with.'"

European Specialists to Define Security Standards for Smartphones

European Specialists to Define Security Standards for Smartphones: "From a technical viewpoint, the SEPIA project will be based on a mobile platform combining ARM TrustZone technology, which creates a protected area in advanced systems-on-chip, and the high-security MobiCore operating system developed by G&D. The interplay between TrustZone and MobiCore ensures that if online services incorporate security-sensitive functions - for instance payment transactions - it is not possible for malware on the phone to manipulate username and password entries via the keypad or data output on the display"