Monthly Archives: July 2012


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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When I was a youngster, we were taught that all matter in the universe was made up… 2

When I was a youngster, we were taught that all matter in the universe was made up of various combinations of electrons, neutrons and protons and you couldn't get any smaller. 

Well apparently the more that particle physicists looked at more the more they came to the realization that matter is in fact far more complex with quarks and neutrinos and bosons. 

For those of us that aren't particle physicists all of this stuff can be extremely daunting to wrap your head around. When I took physics III as an elective while studying mechanical engineering we just scratched the surface of relativity and didn't even begin to approach this stuff and it was already making my brain hurt.

It seems that most of what we think of mass in an atom may come from one of these sub-atomic particles known as the Higgs boson. Some of the smartest scientists in the world (certainly way smarter than myself when it comes to most of this stuff) have been running experiments at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland for the past several years to compile physical evidence that the Higgs boson exists and does what many think it does. They've now compiled enough data to support the existence (you can never conclusively prove anything in science, only fail to disprove it) of the existence of the Higgs Boson. 

Take a few minutes and watch this video to start getting an idea of what this all means. 
#higgsboson  

Reshared post from +C.C. Chapman

This helped explain the whole Higgs Boson discovery a bit to me. Not an area I follow, but fascinating just the same.

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My friend +Alex Nunez showed off the Camaro ZL1 on TV in Manhattan the other day…

My friend +Alex Nunez showed off the Camaro ZL1 on TV in Manhattan the other day. 

Reshared post from +Alex Nunez

Here's my appearance for ConsumerSearch on Good Day New York with the Camaro ZL1 from this morning. Thanks to Sam Abuelsamid for giving me the easy layman's explanation of Magnetic Ride Control in a comment on another social network, which I crib (and partially botch) here. 

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Video Landing Page – New York News | New York Breaking News | NYC Headlines
Watch live breaking news video from Fox 5.

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Just because ACTA is dead in Europe it doesn't mean the big media companies won't…

Just because ACTA is dead in Europe it doesn't mean the big media companies won't keep trying to lock things down.

Reshared post from +Patrick Beja

RIP ACTA!!

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ACTA Is DEAD After European Parliament Vote | TorrentFreak
Today at 12:56 CET, the European Parliament decided whether ACTA would be ultimately rejected or whether it would drag on into uncertainty. In a 478 to 39 vote, the Parliament decided to reject ACTA o…

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Google and Asus show that form doesn't have to completely give way to functi… 1

Google and Asus show that form doesn't have to completely give way to function.

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With one millimeter, the Nexus 7 proves powerful and thin devices can still be repairable
Google’s new Nexus 7 tablet has some impressive hardware beneath its sleek, stunt driver-styled skin — impressive enough, in some ways, to go toe-to-toe with Apple's iPad. But there's one takeaway from peeping at the device's internals that's particularly worth noting: with hardware design trending toward thinner, less serviceable, and thus shorter-lasting devices, the new tablet is still easier to repair than the most recent iPad, despite being only one millimeter thicker.
That one millimete…

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I saw this morning that much of the mainstream media started yelling fire in the…

I saw this morning that much of the mainstream media started yelling fire in the wake of a press release from the Highway Loss Data Institute on driver assistance systems. 

Before anyone panics it might worth actually pausing to read the full report and giving some thought to how the data was derived. (yeah I know, Ready- Aim-Fire is how media handles news these days) HLDI is the branch of the auto insurance industry that compiles data on claims. In general they don't go out and actually test vehicles like the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) does. The data in this study is based on real world claims data for various models from five different car makers that are available with one or more driver assistance systems including forward collision alert, autonomous emergency braking, adaptive headlights and lane departure warning.

In general the data indicates that active safety systems that intervene autonomously to avert or mitigate accidents can improve safety and reduce insurance losses. Systems that only provide an alert to the driver but don't attempt to correct the problem seem to be at best neutral or provide worse results although these differences were statistically insignificant and in a larger population of vehicles, the results could go either way. 

Unfortunately these apparent results may be a bit premature and even misleading. Since this is basically a summary of claims data correlated to vehicle equipment it's not really a very good experiment.

The comparisons of cars equipped with/without each system don't attempt to isolate the effects of those systems. For example the Volvos equipped with lane departure warning seem to do better than Mercedes or Buicks with similar systems.  However, the Volvos are also bundled with forward collision alert with automatic braking while the others are available as stand-alone options. The report's authors acknowledge this, but it does somewhat limit the validity of the apparent results. 

Another major factor to consider is that in almost if not all cases, these assistance features can be switched off by the driver and in some cases are off by default. The results do not seem to account for whether the systems were on/active or switched off. This way a car with lane departure warning that was switched off would still be counted in the group of vehicles that had the system if it slid off the road, even though it might as well have not been equipped. 

There are nuggets of very valuable data in this report and the efficacy of these systems is worthy of further investigation. However, this particular report is in no way conclusive of anything at this time and shouldn't be treated as such. 

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http://www.iihs.org/externaldata/srdata/docs/sr4705.pdf

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Here's something I don't recall hearing about the Affordable Care Act be… 1

Here's something I don't recall hearing about the Affordable Care Act before.

Starting today, health insurers will have spend at least 80% of the premium dollars they collect providing the actual medical services that customers are paying for. That means they will have cut down the outrageous overhead they have today such as the multi-million dollar salaries for CEOs and the huge staffs that are dedicated to finding ways to not actually pay for services.

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The Bomb Buried In Obamacare Explodes Today-Hallelujah! – Forbes
Image by AFP via @daylife I have long argued that the impact of the Affordable Care Act is not nearly as big of a deal as opponents would have you believe. At the end of the day, the law is – in the …

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I first met Tony Posawatz in a Manhattan conference room in mid-December 2006

http://green.autoblog.com/2007/01/07/detroit-auto-show-its-here-gms-plug-in-hybrid-is-the-chevy-v/

I was there for a background briefing with General Motors executives on the new +Chevrolet  concept that would be revealed a few weeks later at the 2007 North American International Auto Show in Detroit. That car was the +Chevrolet Volt Over the next four years I was fortunate to have many opportunities to talk with Tony as I wrote about the development of the Volt. http://rechargingthecar.abuelsamid.com/

General Motors was fortunate to have Tony leading the Volt development team and he was a steadfast supporter of the the extended range electric vehicle concept. He was one of the first people recruited after Bob Lutz and Jon Lauckner originally sketched the idea out in early 2006.

Now after 30 years with GM, Tony has opted to retire and move on to new challenges. No doubt Tony will do something interesting no matter where he lands next. http://www.autonews.com/article/20120702/OEM02/120709984/1261

In April 2008 I was one of the first outsiders to get a change to drive the Volt powertrain development prototypes and I chatted with Tony about the state of development at the time.
http://greenfuelsforecast.com/ArticleDetails.php?articleID=708

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