Daily Archives: July 5, 2012


It's a damn shame to hear that HBO has opted to grant a second season to Newsroom…. 3

It's a damn shame to hear that HBO has opted to grant a second season to Newsroom. Frankly the show sucks and Aaron Sorkin is easily amongst the most over-rated screen writers of recent times. While his dialog moves along at a brisk pace, it is mostly inane and Sorkin may well be the most prolific serial self-plagiarizer of all time judging by this video montage. His female characters are also poorly developed and generally weak or ditzy. 

I had high hopes when I saw the first trailer but following teh overwrought Jeff Daniels rant, the show quickly goes downhil and I not inclined to watch the show anymore.
#overratedaaronsorkin  

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It's not about fighting fraud, it's about taking away votes from those that… 8

It's not about fighting fraud, it's about taking away votes from those that would vote for the other party

Reshared post from +Talking Points Memo

Wow

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Pennsylvania Voter-ID Law Could Disenfranchise Up To 750,000
The impact of Pennsylvania’s new Voter-ID law could be much wider-reaching than the state’s Republican officials claimed when passing the bill, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

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I totally agree with this and I think that there should be a total moratorium on… 4

I totally agree with this and I think that there should be a total moratorium on new patents until we can come up with a better solution that fits the modern world.

Reshared post from +Ashley Esqueda

I know a lot of you here on G+ are hell bent on this #BoycottApple  thing. 

But do you understand that Apple is merely a SYMPTOM of a much larger problem? The US Patent System is incredibly broken. And since a lot of you are so vehemently charged up about technology/mobile patents, I'm asking you TODAY to get outraged about another sector of the patent system that needs revamping. 

Did you know that drug companies can patent GENES? As in, ones that cause breast/ovarian cancer? Because they can. 

And then they can refuse other lab requests to do research on said gene, therefore stifling any manner of "cure" testing. In fact, if they let a lab test, often that lab has to pay huge fees to license the patent in order to research. 

This isn't just about people's cell phones. This is about human lives. How many more relatives will we lose to a disease whose gene was patented by a pharmaceutical company before we speak up for OUR rights? 

If you want to be mad at Apple, go ahead. Be mad. But realize it's just like being mad at the itchy red spots on your skin when you get chicken pox. Those spots show up because that's what the disease tells it to do.

Combat the disease, not the symptoms. And share this with your offline family, too. People should be outraged by this. 

#NerfPatents

http://www.aclu.org/free-speech-womens-rights/aclu-challenges-patents-breast-cancer-genes-0

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ACLU Challenges Patents On Breast Cancer Genes: BRCA
On May 12, 2009, the ACLU and the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) filed a lawsuit charging that patents on two human genes associated with breast and ovarian cancer are unconstitutional and invalid…

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This is a fascinating concept for actively controlling headlights to minimize the…

This is a fascinating concept for actively controlling headlights to minimize the reflections from falling rain.

Inclement weather at night is one of the most difficult and stressful driving conditions imaginable. In addition to reduced traction, drivers have to deal with little or no visibility. 

The demonstration appears to work very effectively although given my own past experience with engineering demonstrations getting something to work in the lab under controlled conditions is very different from doing it in the real world. In the lab the water drops are falling straight down and are unaffected by wind blowing sideways and vehicle speed. There also isn't any spray coming back at your from the vehicles ahead. 

Snow is another huge variable since the size of the flakes and their speed can vary even more dramatically then water. I certainly hope the CMU researchers are successful since it make driving much safer. However, I'm not holding my breath. 

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Carnegie Mellon researchers develop 'smart headlight' prototype
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon are working on a prototype "smart headlight" that avoids shining light on raindrops and snowflakes to reduce distraction for the driver. It works using a Viewsonic…

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+Ford Motor Company engineers have more than 25 patents pending on the control systems… 1

+Ford Motor Company engineers have more than 25 patents pending on the control systems for the Auto Start-Stop on the upcoming 2013 Fusion. They model all of the electrical loads to make sure the battery will have enough power for a good restart if items like lights, heaters and defoggers are on before switching off the engine. 

http://fordfusionstory.com/latest/index.php/2012/07/05/auto-start-stop-saves-gas-with-over-25-patents-pending/

When the temperatures get steamy like they are here in Michigan this week they monitor, the cabin temperature, humidity and the outlet temperature of the A/C evaporator to help decide when to restart so that the cabin stays comfortable. #2013fordfusion

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An excellent editorial from +Nilay Patel about the broken mobile phone market.?… 2

An excellent editorial from +Nilay Patel about the broken mobile phone market. 

The mobile carriers are just like every other industry that has been obsoleted and wants to maintain a business model. We're already seeing more people move to prepaid plans where they forego the subsidy for a contract free experience.

Hopefully once http://ting.com/ starts offering some LTE phones we'll start to see some more uptake on their approach of selling voice, messages and data by the bucket and only charging for what you use. 

Reshared post from +The Verge

Is the iPhone's success blinding us to a broken market?

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Five years after the iPhone, carriers are the biggest threat to innovation
Five years ago, the iPhone revolutionized the mobile business and kicked off a seismic shift in the technology industry that continues today. But the massive success of Apple's phone has overshadowed….

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Prof Peter Higgs didn't actually provide the "god particle" nickname…

Prof Peter Higgs didn't actually provide the "god particle" nickname for the boson that he theorized back in the 1960s. 

Here's an interesting interview with University of Edinburgh physics lecturer Victoria Martin (she studied under Higgs as a student) where she explains that the name is actually a bastardization (my word, not hers) of what Nobel physics laureate Leon Lederman wanted to call it. Because of the difficulty in proving the existence of the Higgs boson, Lederman, author of The God Particle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Particle:_If_the_Universe_Is_the_Answer,_What_Is_the_Question%3F)  wanted to call it "that god-damned particle" a phrase which his publishers objected to. 

So there it is.
#higgsboson  

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'God Particle' Scientist Vindicated 50 Years Later : NPR
Peter Higgs is the name — and man — behind the Higgs boson. He and his team proposed the particle's existence back in the 1960s. Robert Siegel talks to Victoria Martin, a lecturer in physics and astro…

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Verizon makes its arguments against the FCC's net neutrality rules — and they…

Reshared post from +Jeff Jarvis

Verizon makes its arguments against the FCC's net neutrality rules — and they are fraught with danger. 

Verizon sees the net as its newspaper and believes it has First Amendment rights to control what goes on the net. This is why +Doc Searls has taught me that it is dangerous to see the net as a medium. No, the net is a network and Verizon only offers access to it. 

But there's the next argument: Verizon says the net is its private property and so it makes a Fifth Amendment claim that imposing restrictions on its ability to impose restrictions on the net is like confiscating property without compensation. 

Danger, danger! 

[Added later:]

The First Amendment argument is absurd on its face. Does Verizon really want to be responsible for everything distributed on the net, including libel, theft, and other illegal behavior? I doubt it. Verizon is no publisher. 

The Fifth Amendment argument is a corner we've painted ourselves into by finding ourself dependent on a public good privately owned. But just as we make restrictions on private property — I can't build a gas station on my house; I have to give access to public utility workers — so must we here. 

We need a SOPA/PIPA/ACTA-level fight for net neutrality, for not allowing Verizon et al to mess with the net. We need a principle: First, do no harm. You might want to at least start here, by signing the Declaration of Internet Freedom. 

See: My post on a Hippocratic Oath for the net: http://buzzmachine.com/2011/05/23/a-hippocratic-oath-for-the-internet/ And the Declaration of Internet Freedom: http://www.internetdeclaration.org/freedom

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Verizon: net neutrality violates our free speech rights
Company argues FCC regulations run afoul of Fifth Amendment property rights too.

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Oops!

Oops!

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San Diego Accidentally Set Off All Its Fourth Of July Fireworks at Once
Folks in San Diego witnessed either the worst Fourth of July fireworks celebration — or the absolute best — when a technical malfunction caused all of their pyrotechnics to go off at the same time.

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An excellent summary from +Joe Wilcox about his independence from Apple.  1

An excellent summary from +Joe Wilcox about his independence from Apple. 

I totally agree with Joe's rationale for avoiding Apple although I'm not going to abandon the existing Macbooks and iPods in my household. As Joe describes, Apple's method has always been about copying/stealing ideas that were pioneered by others (with the possible exception of Apple 1/2 and the Newton) and then refining and editing to create a superior user experience.

From the original 1984 Mac to the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad each product was done before. What Apple has done is no doubt extremely important to bring new technology to the masses. But that doesn't give them the right to try create a technology monoculture. 

As we learned from our collective experience with Windows security problems monocultures are ALWAYS a bad thing. 

I will continue using the products I have, but I'm not spending any more money on Apple.
#boycottapple  

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I declare independence from Apple
Since December 1998, when on impulse I bought the original iMac from CompUSA, I've used Apple gear. No longer. Late yesterday, I replaced the last fruit-logo with another, fulfilling my pledge nearly …

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