Dvorak News Blog

Planning To Buy Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 or Their Christmas Tablet?

By Uncle Dave Wednesday October 6, 2010

Personally, I’m mainly waiting for the bizarre parallel universe that, if history is any judge, the commercials will inhabit.

One of the technology industry’s big Steves — Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive of Microsoft — on Tuesday promised that Windows tablets won’t take much longer to hit the market and compete with Apple’s popular iPad and upcoming Google Android/Chrome OS tablets. He remarked, “You’ll see new slates with Windows on them. You’ll see them this Christmas.”

Of course “see them this Christmas” could have a variety of meanings — anything from “see them” as be unwrapping them, or “see them” as in reading an online press release that they will be available in March.
[…]
Mr. Ballmer also hit on one of Microsoft other key problem spots — the mobile phone market. Microsoft’s Kin project was a colossal sales failure perpetrated by miserably outdated hardware, bizarre commercials that bordered on disturbing, and a lack of carrier support. At the end of the day Microsoft pulled the plug.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s veteran Windows Mobile brand has languished, bleeding market share to Apple and Google. Microsoft’s answer is a brand-new smart phone operating system dubbed Windows Phone 7, which will air October 11th.

Mr. Ballmer addressed his company’s challenging state of affairs in this sector, summarizing, “The job right now is we’ve got to get back seriously into the game of phones. We’ve got to have a comeback against the competition and I think with our new Windows phones we really have a beautiful product.”

Toy of the Day

By Uncle Dave Wednesday October 6, 2010

17 Comments

Click to embiggen

Another 9-11 Video Crops Up

By John C Dvorak Wednesday October 6, 2010

62 Comments

One Take Music Video

By McCullough Wednesday October 6, 2010

9 Comments

HOLLERADO – AMERICANARAMA (NEW)
This is the “Human 8-bit Video”. We wanted to make something cheap and awesome. It was directed by our buddy/chief mad scientist Greg Jardin. It was all shot in one take. It took lots and lots and lots of practice to get it right. A guy in one of the cells also played the serial killer on season 5 of “the wire”. Please pass this link around to all your friends…..i think with your help we can get this video up to ONE BEEEELION views. ah-ah-ah-ah-ah.

Nicely done, now get the hell off my lawn.

A Good Cop

By hhopper Wednesday October 6, 2010

29 Comments

There are plenty of good cops out there. We’d be screwed without them.

Found by Cinàedh.

DH Unplugged #84
Dollar Begins Falling Again. Why?

By John C Dvorak Tuesday October 5, 2010

7 Comments

Here is the latest conversation I had with money manager Andrew Horowitz…. new insights for anyone who invests in anything. The stock picks are beginning to perform.
Click here for non-Flash version.

click ► to listen:

Right click here and select ‘Save Link As…’ to download the mp3 file.

Contribute to the future of the show here.

Limbaugh’s Obama Rant, Calls Prez a “Jackass” and More!

By McCullough Tuesday October 5, 2010

151 Comments

Derision of the president on his program is nothing new, but Rush Limbaugh’s tone today may have struck the ears of regular listeners as particularly disdainful, taking his contempt of the president to a new level. The nation’s preeminent conservative talk radio host referred to Mr. Obama as a “jackass,” an “economic illiterate” and an “idiot, where capitalism is concerned.”

The rough stuff came during a monologue on the president’s position on extending the Bush tax cuts to all but the top two percent of wage earners. Obama, Limbaugh says, is an “economic ignoramus” for not understanding how a “tax increase” on the wealthy won’t stimulate growth.

Quoting an AP article from yesterday, Limbaugh pointed out Obama’s remarks at a meeting of his Economic Recovery Advisory Board that the wealthy would “take our ball and go home” if their tax cuts aren’t extended. Limbaugh then addressed the following line to the president directly:

“Mr. Obama, our imam-child, they have already taken their trillion dollar ball home, and they’re sitting on it, you jackass.”

Are We Doomed To Having An Underclass Of Permanently Unemployed?

By Uncle Dave Tuesday October 5, 2010

89 Comments

With so many manufacturing jobs permanently moved overseas and the government only willing to bail out the wealthy, where are these people supposed to go?

The numbers tell so much of the story. The 6.76 million Americans — or 46% of the entire unemployed labor force — counted as long-term unemployed in June were the most since 1948, when the statistic was first recorded, and more than double the previous record of 3 million in the recession of the early 1980s. (The numbers have since dipped slightly, with a total of 6.2 million long-term unemployed in August.) These are people who, despite dozens of rejections, leave phone messages, send emails, tweak their cover letters, and toy with resume templates in Microsoft Word, all in the search for a job.

Not counted in this figure are so-called “discouraged workers,” including plenty of former searchers who have remained on the unemployment sidelines for six months or more. In August of this year, 1.1 million Americans had simply stopped looking and so officially dropped out of the workforce. They are essentially not considered worth counting when the subject of unemployment comes up. Nonetheless, that 1.1 million figure represents an increase of 352,000 since 2009. In effect, the real long-term unemployment figure now may be closer to 7.5 million Americans.

So who are these unfortunate or unlucky people? Long-term unemployment, research shows, doesn’t discriminate: no age, race, ethnicity, or educational level is immune.
[…]

Much Better Airline Safety Instructions

By Marc Perkel Tuesday October 5, 2010

17 Comments

Dumb Cops of the Day

By Eideard Tuesday October 5, 2010

29 Comments

Ready to give out parking tickets

Patricia Pantano, education director of the Camino de Paz Montessori School and Farm in Cuarteles, between Española and Chimayó on N.M. 76, said the raid occurred Sept. 21 during the lunch hour.

“We were all as a group eating outside as we usually do, and this unmarked drab-green helicopter kept flying over and dropping lower,” she said. “Of course, the kids got all excited. They were telling me that they could see gun barrels outside the helicopter. I was telling them they were exaggerating.”

After 15 minutes, Pantano said, the helicopter left, then five minutes later a state police officer parked a van in the school’s driveway. Pantano said she asked the officer what was happening, but he only would say he was there as a law-enforcement representative.

Then other vehicles arrived and four men wearing bullet-proof vests, but without any visible insignias or uniforms, got out and said they wanted to inspect the school’s greenhouses. Pantano said she then turned the men over to the farm director, Greg Nussbaum.

“As we have nothing to hide, you know, they did the tour and they went in the greenhouses and they found it was tomato plants and so that was the story,” she said…

Some parents, who did not want to be named, said they, too, were concerned about the raid on their children’s school.

Pantano said she did not want to make too big an issue out of the raid, but questioned why such a commotion was necessary when anyone who asked would have been given a tour of the greenhouses.

“We’re sitting here as a teaching staff, always short on money, and we’re thinking, ‘Gosh, all the money it takes to fly that helicopter and hire all those people, it would be great to have this for education.’ ”

Let us all be glad we live in a nation that has its priorities in order.

Har!

Oct. 11 is Doomsday for Microsoft

By John C Dvorak Monday October 4, 2010

10 Comments

October 11 is the day for the big launch of Phone 7.
Skype and Twitter name two new CEO’s.
Google TV is coming with a lot of partners.
FCC investigating mystery charges.
Toshiba doing glasses-free 3D.
David Gelertner gets huge settlement from Apple after Apple used his patents. I have a short rant on the topic.
Samsung doing deal with Docomo. Are they still around?
Wasted food is lost energy! Ack.

click to listen:

Right click here and select ‘Save Link As…’ to download the mp3 file.

Welcome to Fantasy Island

By McCullough Monday October 4, 2010

25 Comments

A Lithuanian company plans to set up a holiday island in the Maldives run entirely by blondes – the latest project in a growing blonde movement in the Baltics. But how legitimate is this latest sign of Baltic blonde ambition? The Lithuanian company Olialia, pronounced “ooh-la-la”, is planning a holiday resort in the Maldive islands.

The firm hopes to pull in the tourists by employing only blonde staff, and offering direct flights to the island crewed entirely by blondes, including the pilots. Olialia is run and staffed by blonde women, and already operates in 75 different business sectors, making products from computer software and food products to pop music. Olialia’s blonde managing director, Giedre Pukiene, says she wants to break the stereotype that blonde women are less intelligent.

“Our girls are very smart and they have degrees,” she says. All of them want to do something with their lives. They have lots of business ideas.”

The island project was officially unveiled this weekend at a party with a blonde dress code, in a new nightclub in Vilnius opened by Olialia. But the resort, which is meant to be opened in 2015, has been heavily criticised. When it was announced on the Maldivian news website “Minivan” in September, many readers condemned it as discriminatory by potentially excluding non-white Maldivians.

“This is racist and should not be allowed in the Maldives,” wrote one reader identified as Ablo.

Local laws could make things difficult as resorts in the Maldives are required to hire at least 50% local staff.

In Lithuania itself, which is a member of the EU, there is the question about whether stipulating blonde hair as a criterion for a job applicant contravenes EU employment laws. Would older women with grey hair or men be eligible for a job?

Now, meet the children.

Laptops Blamed for Roasted Nuts Syndrome

By McCullough Monday October 4, 2010

14 Comments

NEW YORK (CBS 2/AP) – Have you ever worked on your laptop computer with it sitting on your lap, heating up your legs? If so, you might want to rethink that habit. Doing it a lot can lead to “toasted skin syndrome,” an unusual-looking mottled skin condition caused by long-term heat exposure, according to medical reports.

In one recent case, a 12-year-old boy developed a sponge-patterned skin discoloration on his left thigh after playing computer games a few hours every day for several months.

“He recognized that the laptop got hot on the left side; however, regardless of that, he did not change its position,” Swiss researchers reported in an article published Monday in the journal Pediatrics. Another case involved a Virginia law student who sought treatment for the mottled discoloration on her leg.

Dr. Kimberley Salkey, who treated the young woman, was stumped until she learned the student spent about six hours a day working with her computer propped on her lap. The temperature underneath registered 125 degrees.

That case, from 2007, is one of 10 laptop-related cases reported in medical journals in the past six years. In very rare cases, it can cause damage leading to skin cancers, said the Swiss researchers, Drs. Andreas Arnold and Peter Itin from University Hospital Basel. They do not cite any skin cancer cases linked to laptop use, but suggest, to be safe, placing a carrying case or other heat shield under the laptop if you have to hold it in your lap.

Salkey, an assistant dermatology professor at Eastern Virginia Medical School, said that under the microscope, the affected skin resembles skin damaged by long-term sun exposure. A medical report several years ago found that men who used laptops on their laps had elevated scrotum temperatures. If prolonged, that kind of heat can decrease sperm production, which can potentially lead to infertility.

IVF Pioneer Robert Edwards Wins Nobel Prize

By Eideard Monday October 4, 2010

23 Comments

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Robert Edwards with Lesley Brown, Louise Brown and her son, Cameron

The Nobel prize for physiology or medicine for 2010 has been awarded to the British scientist who pioneered in-vitro fertilisation, a procedure that has helped in the conception and birth of 4 million people around the world since the first test-tube baby, Louise Brown in 1978…

Edwards developed the IVF technique in a research career that started in 1958 at the National Institute for Medical Research in London and continued at the world’s first IVF centre, the Bourn Hall Clinic in Cambridge, founded with the English surgeon, Patrick Steptoe…

Robert Edward’s wife, Ruth, and his family said in a statement today that they were “thrilled and delighted” at the award of the Nobel Prize. “The success of this research has touched the lives of millions of people worldwide. His dedication and single-minded determination, despite opposition from many quarters, has led to the successful application of his pioneering research…”

“Opposition from many quarters” means the same religious fanatics, political opportunists and cowards who have always rallied together in vain attempts to halt knowledge. Whatever the science, the fearful, the indoctrinated, those afraid to venture out into this good night try their best to stop progress, censor understanding, disallow choice.

Speaking in 2008, Edwards recalled the moment he first created a fertilised human embryo in 1968. “I’ll never get forget the day I looked down the microscope and saw something funny in the cultures. I looked down the microscope and what I saw was a human blastocyst gazing up at me. I thought: ‘We’ve done it.’”

“The most important thing in life is having a child,” he said. “Nothing is more special than a child. Steptoe and I were deeply affected by the desperation felt by couples who so wanted to have children. We had a lot of critics but we fought like hell for our patients…”

Three decades on, IVF is an established technique to help infertile couples have children. There have been many advances on Edwards’ initial research: a single sperm can now be injected directly into an egg and the extraction of eggs from ovaries has been improved so that it causes less trauma. IVF is also at the centre of a technique, called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), that screens fertilised embryos for genetic conditions such as cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s disease…

Martin Johnson, professor of reproductive sciences at the University of Cambridge, said he was delighted. “This is long overdue…Bob’s work has always been controversial but he has never shrunk from confronting that controversy. He was a real visionary, and always ahead of his time on so many issues – not just IVF – but also on PGD in the 60s, stem cells in the 70s, and the whole process of thinking ethically.”

Bravo!

Finally! A Gold Vending Machine!

By Uncle Dave Monday October 4, 2010

27 Comments

Right now, these gold ATMs are only in Germany, Italy, Spain and Abu Dhabi. In a few places here, soon, but just you wait. With Obama’s recovery plan in place I can see every WalMart in the country having at least one, right next to cash for coins machines.

Times are changing. We’re keeping pace and going a step ahead. GOLD to go® has developed the world’s first gold vending machine.

The GOLD to go® vending machine is an unmanned point of sale. It offers an extraordinary opportunity to purchase gold bars and coins of assured quality, backed by the security of a Swabian Fort Knox® and with the ease-of-use of a vending machine. Prices are updated in real-time. The GOLD to go® gold vending machine is largely burglar-proof and tamper-resistant. It has an excellent user guidance, which makes it very easy to handle.

In the standard version, our GOLD to go® ATM’s are equipped with the following products (alternative product portfolio is possible, depending on the requirements of the respective location):

* Gold Bars 1 gram, 5 gram, 10 gram and 1 ounce
* Krugerrand 1/10 ounce, 1/4 ounce and 1 ounce
* Kangaroo 1/10 ounce ($15) and 1 ounce ($100)
* Maple Leaf 1/10 ounce ($5)