This video is only a lab experiment, but it shows developments in technology that could revolutionize America’s military use of armed drones. Note that these craft are all operating autonomously yet collectively.
More at WIRED.
The FBI is circulating a set of flyers purported to identify suspicious behaviors that indicates possible terrorist activities that therefore should be reported to the FBI by all good citizens. The flyers are headlined “Communities Against Terrorism” and there are at least 25 versions.
The version for Internet Cafes is particularly disturbing in that is essentially says that anyone protecting their privacy online is quite possibly a terrorist. Among the “suspicious” activities listed on the flyer are:
So people who want to protect their privacy online, or who wish to pay for things with money, or who look up a sports stadium (maybe to find their seat for an event, say) ought to be reported to the FBI?
Image via Wikipedia
Paul Tassi, writing in Forbes, has a good overview of an underlying and unavoidable reality of the digital age in which we live: piracy cannot be stopped. Technological blocks are temporary at best, because blocking any particular digital tools for sharing content merely results in the rapid invention and deployment of new technologies. Consider Napster. When it was such down, numerous clones of its technology appeared. As the IP industry filed lawsuit after lawsuit to shut down the Napster clones, bit torrent technology was created and widely deployed, leading to Pirate Bay. Sharing sites themselves come and go as well. If Pirate Bay is shut down, it will matter little as there are dozens of alternatives already in operation.
But Tassi also notes that piracy will not kill the IP industry. The industry’s claimed number of lost sales caused by piracy are simply silly. Most pirated material is acquired by people who would never buy the content in any case, either because they don’t have the money to do so, or the content is not available in any legal fashion at the time, or because it is simply not worth the trouble or expense to buy, say, a $30 Blu-ray disc.
The real problem, in his view and mine as well, is that the IP industry has failed to adjust their its business model to something that customers actually want and are willing to pay for. (Perhaps the exception to this is the music industry that was successfully prodded by Steve Jobs into relatively easy legal access at a modest price).
Here is how Tassi put it:
The seven step, ten minute [Pirate Bay] download process (which will be about ten seconds when US internet speeds catch up with the rest of the world) is the real enemy the studios should be trying to tackle. Right now, the industry is still stuck in the past, and is crawling oh-so-slowly into the future. They still believe people are going to want to buy DVDs or Blu-rays in five years, and that a movie ticket is well worth $15. Netflix is the closest thing they have to an advocate, but the studios are trying to drive them out of business as they see them as a threat, not a solution. It’s mind boggling.
The primary problem movie studios have to realize is that everything they charge for is massively overpriced. The fact that movie ticket prices keep going up is astonishing. How can they possibly think charging $10-15 per ticket for a new feature is going to increase the amount of people coming to theaters rather than renting the movie later or downloading it online for free? Rather than lower prices, they double down, saying that gimmicks like 3D and IMAX are worth adding another $5 to your ticket.
They have failed to realize that people want things to be easy. Physically going to the movies is hard enough without paying way too much for the privilege. Going to a store and buying a DVD instead of renting or downloading is generally an impractical thing to do unless you A) really love a particular movie or B) are an avid film buff or collector.
The essay is worth a full read.
The explicit awareness that you’re a breathing piece of defecating meat, destined to die and ultimately no more significant than, let’s say, a lizard or a potato, is not especially uplifting.
– Sheldon Solomon, professor of psychology at Skidmore College. (via Quotation of the Day Mailing List)
Frank Rich, writing in New York Magazine, has a great essay trying to decipher the true Mitt Romney. It is worth a full read.
Excerpt:
Even as the Republican Establishment continues to prop up Mitt, it remains in denial about his long-term prospects. Romney rationalizers argue that Gingrich’s blunderbuss assault on Bain was a blessing in disguise, for it will force Romney to come up with an airtight defense before the fall. But Romney has been trying since 1994 to formulate answers to questions about his Bain career, his vast wealth, and his leadership role in his church. If he hasn’t found them by now, it’s because he doesn’t have them. And so his preferred route has been just to avoid tough questions altogether—and confrontation in general—by sticking to manicured campaign events as immaculate as his Brooks Brothers shirts. He tries to shun mainstream-news-organization interviews, and dropped the “Ask Mitt Anything” sessions with voters that were a staple of his 2008 campaign. Even straightforward interviews with sympathetic interlocutors like Fox News’s Bret Baier and the radio talk-show host Laura Ingraham throw him into a tizzy, if not a hissy fit. Remarkably, he received high marks for months for his steady demeanor and discipline in the Republican debates, but as we now know, all it takes is a tough question about his own biography to prompt a stammering answer and robotic herky-jerky head movements suggestive of a human-size Pez dispenser. His belated efforts to go on the attack against Gingrich often make him sound like an adolescent tattletale. In Romney’s best debate, last Thursday, he was still outshone by the also-ran Rick Santorum.
US payrolls are up by 243,000 in January (vs. expected 150,000) and the jobless rate has dropped to 8.3% in January, the lowest level since February, 2009.
…, the industry is fighting what amounts to a new popular culture.
Unlike the old pop culture Hollywood dominated, this one is largely independent of the music, movie and broadcast industries. In fact, people who spend hours online instead of watching TV or going to movies will probably encounter the entertainment industry only when YouTube videos of their kids dancing to Prince or spoofing Star Wars are pulled down by Hollywood’s bots, or when the RIAA threatens to sue them for their college savings, or when digital rights software makes it hard to move their stuff to a new tablet or phone.
To the entertainment industry, these episodes might seem like collateral damage in the fight to stop piracy. To the new pop culture, though, collateral damage and misuse of enforcement tools are everywhere, and they threaten everyone. The content industry has made itself into the villain. Increasingly, it looks like an occupying power, obeyed at gunpoint, despised for its ham-handed excesses and resisted from every dark corner. Unfortunately for Hollywood, as its customers migrate to the Internet, it is losing not just their money but their hearts and minds as well.
– Stewart Baker, writing in The Hollywood Reporter, and explaining how Hollywood is losing the culture war with the new online majority.
Here is yet another example of the IP industry seeking to protect itself via secret agreements behind closed doors, thereby avoiding public input.
This time it involves a trade agreement called the Trans Pacific Partnership. Apparently a secret meeting between industry and government participants is being held from January 31 to February 4 at a hotel in West Hollywood.
More details from Ars Technica here and from TechDirt here.
I’m not concerned about the very poor.
– Mitt Romney, yesterday morning, during a CNN interview. To be fair, he followed up the above comment with the following: “We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich; they’re doing just fine.”
I would like to ask Romney about his detailed plans to repair the “safety net” and whether limiting unemployment insurance if a part of that terrific plan.
More from Gail Collins here:
… Rest assured that Mitt Romney is not going to be spending a single second fretting about the problems of really, really poor people. His supporters can breathe a sigh of relief. Now all they’re going to have to worry about is the fact that he’s going to keep talking like this for the next nine months.
Many investors are puzzled about Apple’s stock price growth. In effect, Apple’s stock price seems to be greatly lagging its earnings growth. Horace Dediu, writing on his blog asymco.com, offers a possible explanation that makes sense to me. He believes that the market does not understand how Apple has produce and sold its blockbuster products, iPod, iPhone, iPad, over the past few years. Each of these products seemingly came out of nowhere.
A disruptive company is inherently unpredictable. Success and growth are unrewarded because there no understanding of the underlying causes of these phenomena and therefore there is no expectation of repetition.
The entire article is worth a careful read if you are an Apple investor.
Disclosure: I am long AAPL.
Paula Deen as portrayed by Imus regular Rob Bartlett. Terrific.
The Flaming Lips have released a new song that features Siri on backup vocals.
According to this report from Canalys, Apple is the number one vendor of personal computers in the world. It reaches that conclusion by including tablets as personal computers, which they most certainly are. PCs are PCs based on what they do, not on what they look like.
Canalys today announced that Apple, after reporting stellar results, became the leading worldwide client PC vendor in Q4 2011. Apple shipped over 15 million iPads and five million Macs, representing 17% of the total 120 million client PCs shipped globally in Q4. Overall, the total client PC market, including desktops, netbooks, notebooks, and pads grew 16% year-on-year. Excluding pads, the client PC market declined 0.4%. The floods in Thailand, that impacted hard drive assembly plants, caused mild disruption to shipments during the quarter, but the side effects are likely to be felt in the first half of 2012.
Among the other top five PC vendors, only Lenovo managed to increase its market share, by a relatively modest two points, compared to Apple’s six-point gain over the same quarter a year ago. Acer, Dell and HP – the hardest hit – all lost market share. Now the second largest client PC vendor worldwide, HP will struggle to compete with Apple following the end of its Touchpad.
Welcome to the post-PC era.
Disclosure: I am long AAPL.
