This site will tell you who the registered sex offenders are who live in your neighborhood, and even show you on a map where they live, and their photo.
http://www12.familywatchdog.us/
Fortunately our immediate neighborhood doesn’t show any threats. How about yours?
Google’s corporate motto is “Don’t be evil.” Their hypocrisy with the Chinese government censorship demands inspires today’s anagram.
In college, around 1982, I was taking a graduate-level computer graphics software programming class, and we were using an expensive minicomputer that was considered advanced for its time (I don’t remember the brand or model though). The system had a large cabinet on the side for the hard disk system, and there were removable packs that had multiple large platters in them, about the size of an LP record. I recall that each pack had about a 5 MB capacity.
A few years later I purchased an original Macintosh, with the single internal floppy disk drive. Within a few minutes of setting it up at home, I realized that I’d need either a second floppy disk, or some sort of hard disk. Back then, Apple didn’t think users would need a hard disk, so didn’t offer one. But a company named IOmega had a product technology which was a hybrid of floppy and hard disk, called a Bernoulli Box. They had one which worked with the Mac, and the cartridges had a whopping 5 MB capacity. As a friend told me at the time, that is “way more than you’ll ever need.”
These memories came to mind after reading an interesting photo essay on CNET documenting major milestones in hard disk technology.
Compare the first entry against the ninth:
FIRST:
The IBM System 305, the world’s first hard drive, debuted in 1956 and relied on the random access method of accounting and control (RAMAC) to store data. This is a side view. The entire device required 50 24-inch diameter platters coated with iron oxide paint mounted on a rotating spindle. It held 5MB, or about 1/100th of the amount in flash cards for cameras today.
NINTH:
The microdrives from Hitachi, seen here, contain platters that measure 1-inch across, while Toshiba has shrunk this to 0.85 inches. But neither company says it has plans to shrink platters further. Instead, they will work on reliability and increasing density through technologies such as perpendicular recording.
One inch in diameter, up to 60 GB. Absolutely incredible.
Former President Bill Clinton’s reputation as a formidable and empathetic speaker is well-known. Of course, he’s also known for his formidable and enthusiastic inability to “keep it in his pants,” so to speak.
Well, there is news today of a new study:
Forget pretending you are talking to one person or concentrating on a single point in the audience — having sex is good way to calm nerves before giving a speech or presentation.
Which reminds me of a joke.
In a survey of American women, when asked, “Would you sleep with President Clinton,” 86% replied, “Never again.”
Lots of folks are weighing in on the prospects for Disney following the purchase of Pixar.
I think the deal could be hugely successful for several reasons, most of them have been discussed ad infinitum by many analysts and bloggers, so I won’t repeat them here.
One point that hasn’t been made is that Steve Jobs has done this before. In December 1996, Apple announced it was acquiring Next. Back then, Jobs was the CEO of Next, the company being acquired. Within a very short time, he seized control of Apple, and the Next leadership team reinvigorated and rebuilt Apple. Everyone knows that under Steve Job’s leadership Apple has redefined the music business and devstated the competition.
Pixar of course is in much better shape now than Next was back then, which only improves the odds of success. And I don’t expect Jobs to try to seize control of Disney. But have no doubt, Steve Jobs will have a huge influence on Disney.
Remember, he’s done this before, and Jobs seems to get better and better with age. The next several years should be quite exciting.
The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) is the organization which rates movies in the United States. They also are active in fighting piracy of movies. According to the MPAA’s website,
Movie pirates are thieves, plain and simple. Piracy is the unauthorized taking, copying or use of copyrighted materials without permission. It is no different from stealing another person’s shoes or stereo, except sometimes it can be a lot more damaging. Piracy is committed in many ways, including Internet piracy, copying and distribution of discs, broadcasts, and even public performances.
They’ve got some explaining to do.
This Film Is Not Yet Rated looks at the motion picture ratings system created and run by the MPAA. Director Kirby Dick submitted the film for rating in November. After receiving the movie, the MPAA subsequently made copies without Dick’s permission. Dick had specifically requested in an e-mail that the MPAA not make copies of the movie. The MPAA responded by saying that “the confidentiality of your film is our first priority.”
Dick later learned that the MPAA made copies of the film to distribute them to its employees, despite the MPAA’s stance on unauthorized copying. Ah, there’s nothing like the smell of hypocrisy in the morning-apparently the prohibition against copying films without the copyright owner’s consent doesn’t apply to the MPAA. A lawyer for the MPAA justified the organization’s apparent hypocrisy by saying that Dick had invaded the privacy of some MPAA staffers, which justified the MPAA’s actions.
hypocrisy |hiˈpäkrisē| noun ( pl. -sies) the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform; pretense.
Here’s an interesting article about preparations for high-definition broadcasting from this year’s Super Bowl.
In addition to just about every camera being high-definition, there is some interesting prototype technology being used.
ABC Sports will field test the Sony advanced prototype HD super slo-mo camera system, according to Robert Willox, director of marketing for content creation at Sony Electronics. He said the world’s first 3x super slo-mo camera captures video at 180 fps in multiple HD formats, from 720p to 1080i, “so the camera will be useful for NBC or CBS the next time they air the Super Bowl.” Several engineers from the Sony design center in Atsugi, Japan, will baby-sit the prototype during game, according to Willox. Sony also is providing its Cinealta HDW-F900 camera, which will shoot HD 1080p at 24 fps for archive material to be created by NFL Films.
Cool stuff. Hopefully we can get the network waivers we’ve requested via DirecTV to allow us access to the west coast high-definition network feeds (we’ve been unsuccessful at getting the local channels over the air). Otherwise, we’ll be stuck watching the game in standard definition.
Tivo Series 2 devices will be getting a recycle bin as part of a future update. Which is a nice feature, but unfortunately, DirecTV isn’t planning any updates to their DirectTV Tivo boxes, so this will be yet another nice feature we won’t get.
So, Google will comply with Chinese requirements for censoring access to unacceptable content.
But they refuse to provide aggregated statistical data on search terms used, with no personal or tracking data included, requested by the US Government to better target pedophiles. Read the explanation provided by the Department of Justice for the request.
Oddly, this behavior seems to conflict with some of the ten items in their corporate philosophy:
6. You can make money without doing evil.
8. The need for information crosses all borders.
I’m not sure how they can reconcile their philosophy with their behavior.
Guy Kawasaki has written several great books over the last few decades. He’s now got a blog, and is posting articles daily with great advice for entrepreneurs.
Today’s post, How to Be a Demo God, is a must-read for anyone who does software demos.
Back when Guy was CEO of ACIUS he gave a class on how to do a great demo, and I was fortunate to be a student. What I learned that day, and the several demos I’ve watched Guy do over the years, I’ve applied many times, and somehow managed to get it right more times than not.
I would add an item to Guy’s list: Practice, Practice, Practice… something that is true for any public speaking situation, but especially for doing a demo.
More news today of additional LCD manufacturing capacity, this time from a joint venture between Panasonic, Hitachi, and Toshiba, and sooner than originally scheduled. Previous announcements of capacity increases in the last few weeks were made by Sharp, Samsung, LG. This added capacity will accelerate the price drops seen over the past few months.
Meanwhile, production of traditional CRT displays continues to be eliminated in the US and Taiwan as demand drops.
The trend makes sense - flat-screen TVs are so much more convenient, and coupled with HDTV quality, why would anyone go with CRT?
We’ll be replacing the 19″ CRT in the bedroom with an LCD HDTV, probably around 27″ - 32″, sometime this year. Also, we’ll probably replace the 27″ CRT (Proton) that Alex is using with the PS2, probably around the time the PS3 comes out.
From Appleology.com, here are some useful function key tricks: Navigate through the dock, menu bar, and open windows with your keyboard.
- the F2 key enables you to navigate with the left side of the menu bar.
- the F3 key enables you to navigate the dock, using the left and right arrow keys to move between icons and the up and down arrow keys to view the navigate thought the contextual menu.
- the F4 key enables you to cycle through all of the open windows.
- the F8 key enables you to navigate through the right side of the menu bar. (Only works with some menu bar icons.)
Also, from the comments on that page:
Try Control F3, and then hold the alt button. Now press the left or right arrow, you can reposition icons in the dock!
This is absolutely hilarious.
Rusty Shackleford of the Jawa Report has a post today about his role in helping the FBI nab a potential terrorist. Quite an accomplishment, and there’s also insight into how the Patriot Act provided the FBI with the ability to close the deal, so to speak.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about emerging evidence about Saddam Hussein’s links to terror training camps.
New information about the impact of these links is discussed in an article by Thomas Joscelyn.
THE REVELATION that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq trained thousands of Islamic terrorists has important ramifications for European counterterrorism efforts. According to officials, one of the groups trained in Iraq prior to the war was al Qaeda’s Algerian affiliate, the Algerian Salafist Group for Call and Combat (”GSPC”). The GSPC and its predecessor, the Armed Islamic Group (”GIA”), are well-known to European counterterrorism officials: Within the last several months, in fact, the GSPC has been at the center of several substantive terrorist plots.
Just last week, Spain arrested 20 suspected terrorists who are alleged to have been recruiting and funding suicide bombers to send to Iraq. The New York Times covered the arrests, noting that according to a statement from the Spanish Interior Ministry the group included 15 Moroccans, 3 Spaniards, a Turk, and an Algerian. The suspects were “detained in Madrid and Barcelona, and in the Basque region, and had ties to two Islamic militant organizations . . . the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat [GSPC], based in Algeria, and the Moroccan Islamic Combat Group.”