Archive for June, 2008
167 redundant news articles about Bill Gates quitting Microsoft. Cripes, how boring. Comscore tumbles on Google news. ICANN fooling around with the TLD’s again. Contradictory stories abound. I check out a few. Microsoft pledges XP support through 2014. SUN doing a nifty 16-core processor. Larry Lessig pushing broadband initiative. Germans ban the G-mail name. You have to do a workaround. Yahoo-Google deal triggering hearings. Kodak buying back its shares.
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When the iPhone launched last year, it didn’t actually go on sale until 6PM. Reports are being leaked out that at&t managers have received a memo stipulating that the sales begin at 8AM. No specific time zone is listed, so we are left to assume that it will be 8AM local time.
This decision is likely based on the draconian activision policy being instituted, you have to activate in the store when you buy. Purchase times will go from 5 minutes to upwards of 20 - 25 minutes, meaning if they wait to actually start selling the phones till six, it will drastically cut down on the actual sales numbers for the launch day.
This is good news for me, since I will just saunter over to an apple store during the work day and get my phone before the after work crowds form.
Remember this article [ Previously uncontacted Amazon Tribe photographed ]? Well, it appears that we fell victim to exaggerated facts, as did many major news agencies.
They are the amazing pictures that proliferated online: a group of warriors from an ‘lost tribe’ in the rain forest on the Brazilian-Peruvian border brandishing bows and arrows at the helicopter that photographed them.
That was not quite true. It has now come out that, the tribe’s existence was discovered around 1910 and the mission to photograph them was undertaken in order to prove that ‘uncontacted’ tribes still existed in an area endangered by the menace of the logging industry.
José Carlos Meirelles, 61, one of the handful of experts on indigenous tribes working for the Brazilian Indian Protection Agency, Funai, which is dedicated to searching out remote tribes and protecting them, made the disclosures.
In interviews, Meirelles described how he found the group, detailed how they lived and how he planned the publicity to protect them and other tribes in similar danger of losing the habitat in which they have flourished for hundreds of years.
Meirelles admitted that the tribe was first known about almost a century ago and that the apparently chance encounter that produced the now famous images was no accident.
“When we think we might have found an isolated tribe, a sertanista like me walks in the forest for two or three years to gather evidence and we mark it in our [global positioning system]. We then map the territory the Indians occupy and we draw that protected territory without making contact with them. And finally we set up a small outpost where we can monitor their protection.”
However, in this case Meirelles went out to seek and find the uncontacted tribe in an area where it was known to be living.
According to his account, the Brazilian state of Acre offered him the use of an aircraft for three days.
“I had years of GPS coordinates, a friend of mine sent me some Google Earth co-ordinates and maps that showed a strange clearing in the middle of the forest and asked me what that was, I saw the coordinates and realised that it was close to the area I had been exploring with my son – so I needed to fly over it.
What he was looking for was not only proof of life, but firm evidence that the tribes in this area were flourishing – proof in his view that the policy of no contact and protection was working. On the last day, with only a couple hours of flight time remaining, Meirelles spotted a large community.
“When I saw them painted red, I was satisfied, I was happy, because painted red means they are ready for war, which to me says they are happy and healthy defending their territory.”
Survival International, the organization that released the pictures along with Funai, conceded yesterday that Funai had known about this nomadic tribe for around two decades. It defended the disturbance of the tribe saying that, since the images had been released, it had forced neighboring Peru to re-examine its logging policy in the border area where the tribe lives, as a result of the international media attention. Activist and former Funai president Sydney Possuelo agreed that – amid threats to their environment and doubt over the existence of such tribes – it was necessary to publish them.
But the revelation that the existence of the tribe was already established will provoke awkward questions over why a decision was made to try to photograph them – a form of contact in itself – in order to make a political point.
Meirelles, one of only five or so genuine sertanistas, has no regrets, arguing that the pictures and video released to the world were powerful and indisputable evidence to those who say isolated tribes no longer exist.
But he is determined to keep the tribe’s location secret – even under torture, he says.
“They can decide when they want contact, not me or anyone else.”
Google Android delayed. Bill Gates getting ink everywhere. It’s ridiculous. The Mac finally gets hit with a couple of Trojan Horse programs. Welcome to the club boys! MPAA thinks evidence is over-rated. What? Toshiba uses Cell chip in a laptop. Prediction: dead-end. Chinese ripping off themselves. Chinese brand-name phones being copied by Chinese. One billion computers now in use.
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Call of Duty is one of the most impressive gaming engines for shooter games that has come around in awhile and the a trailer for a new version of Call of Duty has been released.
The setting is very World War II, and the game in entitled world at war. Personally, I am very excited to play a WWII setting in the COD environment.
Other rumors are indicating that Infinity Ward is in works with a “Science Fiction” game. Is this a whole different game, or as some are speculating, a COD6 that will be set in the future. Either way, that is another game that will be on the list for those of you out there looking to buy me presents.
I remember downloading the initial demo video of StarCraft II more then a year ago, and being blown off my chair at how awesome it looked … then anything StarCraft related seem to dissapear into the ether… it was sad. When I saw that video I, of course, wanted to play the game immediately.
Finally, though, rumor and speculation, and this page at [ Best Buy ] are telling us that StarCraft II will be available on 12/03/08 …
ROCK ON!
Blizzard is still denouncing any official release date rumors, and is telling everyone that “StarCraft will ship when it is done” ..
Hmm, the Worldwide Invitational is this weekend, and Best Buy is known for jumping the gun a bit, so I imagine they will officially release the date then
From the Harmonix Rockband.com website
Harmonix and MTV Games have announced their next online pack, new tracks from WEEZER’s sixth studio release, WEEZER (Red Album), available on June 24th. The critically acclaimed LA-based, guitar-pop quintet contribute the following three tracks; “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived,” “Dreamin’” and “Troublemaker” to the Rock Band™ Music Store of downloadable content. Each track will be available for $1.99 per track (160 Microsoft Points for Xbox 360) or $5.49 (440 Microsoft Points for Xbox 360) for the three-pack.
Awesome!…
I am a big Weezer fan, and love playing the currently available songs by them, so I will definitely be adding these to my collection.
Also available tomorrow is the third complete album available from Rockband, which is from The Pixies. Thier full album “Doolittle” will be available for purchase and download at the cost of 18.99 (1520 Microsoft Points for Xbox LIVE Marketplace for Xbox 360) for the album.
Tracks:
Pixies Doolittle
“Crackity Jones”
“Dead”
“Debaser”
“Gouge Away”
“Here Comes Your Man”
“Hey”
“I Bleed”
“La la Love You”
“Monkey Gone To Heaven”
“Mr Grieves”
“No 13 Baby”
“Silver”
“Tame”
“There Goes My Gun”
All of these tracks from both bands utilize the original master recording…
I have, to date, not been a huge fan of the remake movies. The Charlie’s Angels movies were entertaining, but I was hoping for more from them. I am also not a huge fan of Steve Carell, in the movies I have seen from him, he left me wondering why everyone was laughing so much. So when I saw the first trailer for Get Smart, I was apprehensive, and while Steve Carell was not my favorite actor, I had to admit that he was the perfect person to star as Maxwell Smart aka Agent 86, and he has made me a believer. This was the perfect remake. Spoilers abound after the jump..
Maxwell Smart ( Steve Carell ) is an analyst for CONTROL (yes, it is capitalized, and no it does not stand for anything). He wants to be a field agent and for the last 8 years has taken, and failed the agency field operative exam. However, even after he passes the test, his boss “The Chief” ( Alan Arkin ) says he won’t promote him, due to the fact that he is too valuable as an analyst. After CONTROL is infiltrated, attacked, and all the covert agents identities are compromised the chief decides that he ahs no choice but to make Max an agent and team him up with Agent 99 ( Anne Hathaway ), who is still unknown since she had extensive plastic surgery.
The two go after KAOS (also capitalized, but not an acronym) which is the evil agency that is just as inept as CONTROL. Max and 99 initially do not get along, but Max continues pressing and eventually starts to get under 99 tough exterior.
Several times during the movie, 99 hints that CONTROL was likely destroyed by an mole in the agency and we know that there is an unknown man who controls KAOS behind the scenes. The mission is disastrously successful due largely because Max helps a very very large Russian assassin come to grips with his feelings, but afterwards Max is identified as the mole. This is because he claimed to have destroyed the nuclear missiles they were after, but no one could corroborate that, and they resurface almost immediately along with a demand for 200 billion dollars (someone cue the Dr. Evil theme). Max is locked up, and CONTROL is effectively shut down by the president and vice-president.
The Chief, 99 and Agent 23 ( The Rock or Dwayne Johnson as he going by now), all go to LA, where the president is located, to try and get CONTROL up and running again, meanwhile Max is languishing in a CONTROL lockup. On the radio he hears a song dedicated to him, from the Russian agent, telling him to get to LA because that is where KAOS is planning on detonating the nuclear device. He is assisted in escaping by the two geeky lab rats for CONTROL ( Masi Oka , and Nate Torrance ) who have it out for the agents since they get picked on.
Back in LA, Maxwell hooks up with the rest of the team, and they go after the nuclear bomb. The true mole is revealed, which I won’t spoil even though I thought it was fairly obvious through out the movie, and the KAOS is ultimately stopped.
Bottom line, this movie was FUN. Carell found the perfect balance between being a bungling idiot and a fairly impressive secret agent. Hathaway provided a sexy, but exciting sidekick and gave a convincing portrayal of a woman trying to deny her attraction to her partner. The Get Smart movie, and TV series, was always meant to be a combination of a Mel Brooks movie and a James Bond flick, and that is exactly what this is, and it works on every level.
I had three personal favorites during the movie. At the beginning, when Smart is heading to CONTROL, he goes through the “CONTROL museum”, since the official position is that CONTROL was shut down after the cold war, and all the old props were there from the original series. I also clapped and cheered when Carell said the famous “Missed it by that much” line, which was tastefully used in the movie. Lastly the movie was dedicated to Don Adams, and I shed a small tear.
You are missed Mr. Adams. 
Hot weather in California means no good news. Ballmer making more noise than ever. He mentions that MSFT blundered in the search business. Microsoft says no buying spree. China says its not investigating Microsoft story continues. All this means is that they ARE investigating. Delta to use cell phone as boarding passes. Firefox up to 14 million downloads. Its started to crash on me and give me weird errors. FCC tells Sprint-Nextel to get out of 800 MHz band in 30 days, or else. I recommend my own column in Marketwatch.
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Ok, first of all, I don’t condone hacking, or cheating. I think both activities are egregious and if you get caught doing either then you deserve to be punished.
Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, what happened, if you haven’t been keeping up, is that two high school seniors were caught hacking the school network, and altering grades, and they also apparently broke into school property and stole tests and answers.
Omar KhanThese are very serious charges, no doubt, but really? 38 years … I could murder someone and not get 38 years in prison for it. I think we need to take a very serious step back here, and realize that these kids are only doing what they have seen touted in popular movies like WarGames and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. While that does not make it OK, are we willing to sacrifice someone’s future over a crime that in reality show’s that they have extreme promise for a career in computer technology, if properly guided.
Coto de Caza is an extremely well-to-do area, and these kids have obviously not received proper parental guidance, and they have found, likely through most of their short lives, that shortcuts are easier then actual work. However, taking their lives away because of that is as wrong as the crimes these kids committed.
Jim Amormino, of the local sheriff’s department, said that he was astonished by the sophistication of the scheme, especially given the age of the defendants. “I think they wish they would have put their talents into studying,” he said.
Way to go Jim.. you hit the nail on the head. Yes, they should have put their efforts into studying, but clearly they were not guided in that direction.
Should these kids be punished? YES! They definitely need to feel the consequences of these actions. Should this be the end of what could be a promising future? NO.
A 38 year sentence for this kid is a crime in itself. All the kids involved should serve no less then 90 days (summer vacation) in jail, and then perform a years worth of community service, where they can put their computer skills to a proper use. After which, I am sure there are a few high-tech companies that would love to put their skills to use.