Dvorak News Blog

Sidekick disaster will ultimately co$t Microsoft

By Eideard Tuesday October 13, 2009

Additional insiders have stepped forward to shed more light into Microsoft’s troubled acquisition of Danger, its beleaguered Pink Project, and what has become one of the most high profile Information Technology disasters in recent memory.

The sources point to longstanding management issues, a culture of “dogfooding” (to eradicate any vestiges of competitor’s technologies after an acquisition), and evidence that could suggest the failure was the result of a deliberate act of sabotage.

What starts out reading like high tech conspiracy theories becomes more real as you follow the details, follow the money, follow the office politics.

The World’s Most Beautiful Object. Ahhh… Um… Huh?

By Uncle Dave Tuesday October 13, 2009

39 Comments

The Gyrofocus, designed by the award-winning contemporary fireplace maker Focus, has been named as the World’s Most Beautiful Object for the 2008-2009 Pulchra design competition. The suspended fireplace achieved the highest number of votes in the inaugural year of the ten-year design competition. Over a year, 74,425 participants voted by Internet for the 10 most beautiful objects among 100 selected by a jury of experts in design and architecture, including Alessandro Mendini, Italo Lupi and Matteo Vercelloni. The fireplace created by Dominique Imbert in 1968 came out as the voters’ top choice, over objects ranging from a television designed by Philips, a Sony Ericsson mobile phone, creations by Philippe Starck, and a Leo Cut diamond; their key point in common being the beauty of their design.

Anybody else got anything more beautiful?

Finally, a Drug that Addresses the Horror of Inadequate Eyelash Syndrome

By McCullough Monday October 12, 2009

26 Comments

Big Pharma… working tirelessly for the benefit of man/womankind… What are these idiots thinking!!!

Dogfooding Reigns at MSFT

By John C Dvorak Monday October 12, 2009

6 Comments

Sidekick/T-mobile fiasco continues with lost cloud data. Still lost for good? So far, yes.
Google says Q3 will be hot.
Snow Leopard has issues.
LG has new solar powered e-Reader.
Photoshop on the iPhone.
Oracle slams IBM.
Facebook poke gets woman arrested.

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CNN screws up audio tracks of in-house ad and makes it accuse the network of left-leaning bias

By Jacob Galt Monday October 12, 2009

22 Comments

After reports yesterday about an ad for AC: 360 that apparently had a woman touting the merits of the show while describing herself as a “lifelong Democrat,” we picked up the story as an apparent shift in strategy for CNN.

CNN tells us the promo had audio dubbed in stereo, rather than a mono track. The spot has been remixed and is now more clear.

So what does the ad really say? Well for a 30 second spot, it’s actually rather complicated. A woman’s voice and a man’s voice are speaking simultaneously throughout much of the ad. While the woman says, “I’m a lifelong Democrat,” a man is saying, “I’m a lifelong Republican.” As it continues, there is more overlapping audio. She says, “The issue that matters most to me is the economy,” while he is saying, “The issue that matters most to me is national security.”

Japan Tech Makers Bet Exposure Can Help Sell 3D TVs

By hhopper Monday October 12, 2009

20 Comments

Business Week

Anyone who visited Japan’s electronics show, CEATEC, this week would not have missed the next big thing for the country’s largest technology makers: 3D TVs. Panasonic, Sony, Sharp and Toshiba all demonstrated that they can build high-definition 3D sets. But even as the industry bets on these newfangled TVs, some bigwigs were offering a reality check.

On Oct. 6, Panasonic President Fumio Ohtsubo called the industry’s hopes of getting consumers to buy 3D TVs “ambitious.” It could be years before mainstream consumers are lured by lower prices and a broader selection of movies and TV programs, he noted.

That’s a sentiment tech analysts share. Many think that consumers may not like having to wear special glasses for 3D at home. Price could be another hurdle. None of the major Japanese electronics companies has said how much consumers will have to pay—and they will have to pay more than the usual high-definition TV—for a 3D set.

But here’s where exposure could play a key role. Hollywood studios have announced more than 30 movies that will be shown in 3D in 2010. Tech manufacturers are betting that as movies draw bigger crowds, an increasing number of consumers will get over their resistance to glasses. And if the Blu-ray Disc Assn. approves standards for 3D movies later this year, as is expected, Hollywood could begin releasing movies in 3D within months, industry executives say.

Coming Soon to a Theater Near You, If You Demand It

By hhopper Monday October 12, 2009

17 Comments

The New York Times

If you have not yet heard of the horror movie “Paranormal Activity,” you will soon. It is about to become the first major studio film to be released nationwide as the result of online requests from the public.

The film is about a young couple who become convinced that a demonic presence lurks in their bedroom at night, so they decide to set up a video camera to catch it. The movie was shot on an extremely low budget of $10,000 and opened at the end of September with midnight screenings in just 13 small college towns.

From there, it has become a Web sensation, with chatter about the movie bouncing from Twitter to Facebook, spurring a coming nationwide release.

The net is having more of an impact all the time.

I think the squirrel has run away

By Marc Perkel Monday October 12, 2009

32 Comments

Well, I think he grew up and left. He has technically been free for quite a while, but in the last two weeks he quit coming back to his home that I built for him. He was coming back to eat and he liked to get attention, but as of October 10th he stopped showing up. He did seem to develop survival skills and he was wandering farther away. He was making noises that sounded like mating calls but he’s only 4 months old and a little young for that. He might yet show up again some day but I think he’s out there on his own. (As opposed to being cat food.) I’m calling it mission accomplished.

The Puma Index

By hhopper Monday October 12, 2009

5 Comments

Puma Bodywear – The Puma Index – (2009) 1:47 (USA)

This is my kind of stock ticker.

Found by duddits-fairuse.

Zero Tolerance School Policies Are Out Of Control

By Uncle Dave Monday October 12, 2009

46 Comments

The issue isn’t did the kids break the rules, it’s that the lack of discretion those determining sentence on the kids have or use is less than the worst serial killer would get in court. However well intentioned, the results for these kids and society is far worse if intent is ignored.

[6 year old Zachary Christie]’s offense? Taking a camping utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about recently joining the Cub Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary now faces 45 days in the district’s reform school.
[…]
Spurred in part by the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings, many school districts around the country adopted zero-tolerance policies on the possession of weapons on school grounds. More recently, there has been growing debate over whether the policies have gone too far.
[…]
Critics contend that zero-tolerance policies like those in the Christina district have led to sharp increases in suspensions and expulsions, often putting children on the streets or in other places where their behavior only worsens, and that the policies undermine the ability of school officials to use common sense in handling minor infractions.

For Delaware, Zachary’s case is especially frustrating because last year state lawmakers tried to make disciplinary rules more flexible by giving local boards authority to, “on a case-by-case basis, modify the terms of the expulsion.” The law was introduced after a third-grade girl was expelled for a year because her grandmother had sent a birthday cake to school, along with a knife to cut it. The teacher called the principal — but not before using the knife to cut and serve the cake.

4 month old baby denied health insurance because he’s “chubby”!

By SN Monday October 12, 2009

104 Comments

Denver Post – 10/10/2009:

Alex Lange is a chubby, dimpled, healthy and happy 4-month-old.

But in the cold, calculating numbered charts of insurance companies, he is fat. That’s why he is being turned down for health insurance. And that’s why he is a weighty symbol of a problem in the health care reform debate.

Insurance companies can turn down people with pre-existing conditions who aren’t covered in a group health care plan.

Alex’s pre-existing condition — “obesity” — makes him a financial risk. Health insurance reform measures are trying to do away with such denials that come from a process called “underwriting.”

“If health care reform occurs, underwriting will go away. We do it because everybody else in the industry does it,” said Dr. Doug Speedie, medical director at Rocky Mountain Health Plans, the company that turned down Alex.

By the numbers, Alex is in the 99th percentile for height and weight for babies his age. Insurers don’t take babies above the 95th percentile, no matter how healthy they are otherwise.

“I could understand if we could control what he’s eating. But he’s 4 months old. He’s breast-feeding. We can’t put him on the Atkins diet or on a treadmill,” joked his frustrated father, Bernie Lange, a part-time news anchor at KKCO-TV in Grand Junction. “There is just something absurd about denying an infant.”

Update: Insurer Rocky Mountain Health Plans has relented and will now offer insurance to cover Alex Lange.

“A recent situation in which we denied coverage to a heavy, yet healthy, infant brought to our attention a flaw in our underwriting system for approving infants,” says Steve ErkenBrack, president and CEO, Rocky Mountain Health Plans. “Because we are a small company dedicated to the people of Colorado, we are pleased to be in a position to act quickly. We have changed our policy, corrected our underwriting guidelines and are working to notify the parents of the infant who we earlier denied.”

Pic of the Day… The Crazy Ivan

By McCullough Sunday October 11, 2009

7 Comments

Click here for larger version and explanation.

Bible Translation Wrong — God Didn’t Create The Earth Says Academic

By Uncle Dave Sunday October 11, 2009

165 Comments

Bad translation upon worse translations manipulated for political ends. Here’s another example that makes the God-was-an-alien-experimental-biogenetisist seem more plausible. Assuming you ignore the staggering amount of physical evidence for evolution, that is.

Professor Ellen van Wolde, a respected Old Testament scholar and author, claims the first sentence of Genesis “in the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth” is not a true translation of the Hebrew.

She claims she has carried out fresh textual analysis that suggests the writers of the great book never intended to suggest that God created the world — and in fact the Earth was already there when he created humans and animals.
[…]
She said she eventually concluded the Hebrew verb “bara”, which is used in the first sentence of the book of Genesis, does not mean “to create” but to “spatially separate”. The first sentence should now read “in the beginning God separated the Heaven and the Earth.”
[…]
She writes in her thesis that the new translation fits in with ancient texts.

[…]”There was already water,” she said.

“There were sea monsters. God did create some things, but not the Heaven and Earth. The usual idea of creating-out-of-nothing, creatio ex nihilo, is a big misunderstanding.”

When Clouds Die: T-Mobile loses all Sidekick personal data!

By SN Sunday October 11, 2009

43 Comments

Slashdot 10/11/09:

“T-Mobile’s popular Sidekick brand of devices and their users are facing a data loss crisis. According to the T-Mobile community forums, Microsoft/Danger has suffered a catastrophic server failure that has resulted in the loss of all personal data not stored on the phones. They are advising users not to turn off their phones, reset them or let the batteries die in them for fear of losing what data remains on the devices. Microsoft/Danger has stated that they cannot recover the data but are still trying. Already people are clamoring for a lawsuit. Should we continue to trust cloud computing content providers with our personal information? Perhaps they should have used ZFS or btrfs for their servers.”

Craigslist Wanted: Astronaut For One-Way Trip To Saturn’s Moon, Titan

By Uncle Dave Sunday October 11, 2009

22 Comments

Click pic to embiggen

What is it with these one-way space flights lately? First it was a guy saying a one-way to Mars might be a good idea. Now this guy. Admittedly, there is a bit of the Astronaut Farmer and (I’m guessing) a lot of weed involved with this one.