Monthly Archives: December 2011
2011 Review Via Selected Links
This post is a sticky that will go away sometime late on January 1st. Scroll down for latest posts.
The lists:
Tech
Publishing
News/Miscellany
Doom
Deaths noted in this blog
Some of the movies/TV I saw
Filed under Blog Notes
Kindle Books: Free, Fast, And Out Of Control
That is not PhotoShopped or made up.
I now own two thousand one-hundred and seventeen Kindle Books.
And every single one of those is legit and free.
Filed under Amazon Kindle, eBooks: General
Occupy Jailbreaking
The Coming War on General Computation, Cory Doctorow, Presented at 28C3
So today we have marketing departments who say things like “we don’t need computers, we need… appliances. Make me a computer that doesn’t run every program, just a program that does this specialized task, like streaming audio, or routing packets, or playing Xbox games, and make sure it doesn’t run programs that I haven’t authorized that might undermine our profits”. And on the surface, this seems like a reasonable idea — just a program that does one specialized task — after all, we can put an electric motor in a blender, and we can install a motor in a dishwasher, and we don’t worry if it’s still possible to run a dishwashing program in a blender. But that’s not what we do when we turn a computer into an appliance. We’re not making a computer that runs only the “appliance” app; we’re making a computer that can run every program, but which uses some combination of rootkits, spyware, and code-signing to prevent the user from knowing which processes are running, from installing her own software, and from terminating processes that she doesn’t want. In other words, an appliance is not a stripped-down computer — it is a fully functional computer with spyware on it out of the box.
Because we don’t know how to build the general purpose computer that is capable of running any program we can compile except for some program that we don’t like, or that we prohibit by law, or that loses us money. The closest approximation that we have to this is a computer with spyware — a computer on which remote parties set policies without the computer user’s knowledge, over the objection of the computer’s owner. And so it is that digital rights management always converges on malware.
Boldfaced emphasis added by me.
Filed under Digital Overthrow, Infowar
TV: Steve Jobs: Billion Dollar Hippy
Another post-Steve Jobs program.
Unlike all the others, this one was both dense with information and excellent.
Screensnaps after the break.
Filed under Apple: The Company, TV
Why The iPad Camera Matters
Three models of iPad in January? Not very likely
The only difference between the two, according to the report? The high-end model will get an 8 megapixel CMOS image sensor, while the mid-tier version will get only a 5 megapixel.
The problem is that the camera on the iPad is more of an afterthought than a feature that will prompt users to pay an extra hundred or more dollars to upgrade to a higher-tiered device. On the current iPad, the rear camera captures still photos at less than a megapixel, which is fine, because if you are using your 10-inch tablet as a camera for anything other than the odd emergency situation or when making a video call, you are doing it wrong. Especially since most people with iPads are walking around with 5 to 8 megapixel shooters in their smartphones anyway.
Boldfaced emphasis added by me.
That is such smug, short-sighted thinking that I was compelled to do this post to argue against it.
Filed under Apple: The Company, iOS, Other Hardware
Very Rare HP TouchPad Go Gets Reviewed
The difference between a seven-inch tablet and a ten-inch tablet can be startling. You don’t really think about it, but it’s the almost equivalent to the difference between a full-size magazine and Reader’s Digest. For those accustomed to the original ten-inch TouchPad, upon first grasp it’s startling how small the Go is. In fact, it makes the older ten-inch model seem positively massive in comparison.
For god’s sake, I know that. Which is why I have been pining away for a true 4:3 7″ tablet (preferably iPad).
Filed under webOS
R.I.P. Joe Bodolai, Writer
IF THIS WERE Y0UR LAST DAY ALIVE WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Former ‘SNL’ Writer Dies in Suspected Suicide
Joe Bodolai Dies: Apparent Suicide For Former ‘SNL’ Writer
Aw, shit.
I hate it when someone experiences so much emotional anguish that they can’t find any way out of it other than ending their life.
Mike Cane’s xBlog 