OMG It Blinks

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This guest post was written by Mark Hurley of the blog Scumbag Style. Mark is a grade-A, certified scumbag, with many years experience. He is working as a freelance writer, and you can also find him lurking through the back alleys of Twitter.

Everyone who gets their offensiveness on at my regular site is most likely concerned about the downright clinical paranoid undertones concerning the coming robotapocalypse. It’s like those people who are terrified of dying to the point of paralysis, even though it is an absolute inevitability, and everyone around them has resigned themselves to it. No matter how you try, you can’t come to terms with it. It’s coming and it’s coming fast. They have robots that can blow you, and robots that, while not specifically designed to, will blow you up if it decides to. They have robots, man, designed—frigging designed—to eat dead humans for sustenance, because there’s no way that will come back and bite you in the ass. God damned literally. Our own president has already warned us about it. In pimping his Educate to Innovate campaign, he was quoted as saying, “As President, I believe that robotics can inspire young people to pursue science and engineering. And I also want to keep an eye on those robots in case they try anything.” But we didn’t listen, and I’m afraid it’s too late. The price will be the species.

And then there’s this thing. Friends and admirers sent me links to this thinking it would be funny if I peed my pants right where I sat. Well, guess what. Joke’s on you.

Congratulations. You’ve built the world’s most expensive Disneyland ride character. Beardy McTeeshirt’s Community College Raft Adventure. Seriously, you have really taken out the balls and succeeded in freaking out that one guy’s dog with that soulless smile at 00:17. This was a real leap in movie makeup magic, Jim “Studly” Cameron, but until the AI catches up to our ability to make really special animatronic eyebrows, I think I’ll keep the Depends in reserve for the dead human eater.

Not to change the subject, but do you think the guy that robot is based on has had sexwith ‘himself’ yet? Or do you think he went straight to tricking his wife into it? Those are the difficult questions you have to ask yourself when you’re a super genius robotengineer.

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Super Fast Internet for Cheap, not in the US

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Here in the United States, the fastest option for fiber-to-home broadband access is around 50 megabits a second for downloading and 20 megabits a second for uploading and costs $144.99 per month through Verizon. Sounds about right, right?

But people living in Hong Kong are currently able to get 1,000 megabits a second (yes, an entire gigabit a second) for less than $26 a month.

So, why aren’t speeds like this available in the United States? How did we fall so far behind?

High speed, low cost internet in Hong Kong is being offered by Hong Kong Broadband Network, a subsidiary of City Telecom, who were willing to operate at a loss for seven years. During this time, the company built an intricate fiber network, which allows them to currently offer such high speeds at such a low cost.

A large hold up for the US high speed internet market is a lack of competition. There are no highly motivated companies building a fiber optic network here in the United States. Verizon (the nation’s leading internet provider) and other internet service providers have no reason to saturate their market with lower prices and more competition. That’s just bad business.

Does that mean we’re doomed to internet that is 80% slower than Hong Kong while costing more than five times their price? Hopefully not. Google, the jack-of-all-trades company, is working on a campus with high speeds comparable to those available in Hong Kong. And they’re already working to bringing this ultra-high speed internet to test communities of consumers.

What would I do with a gig per second internet? I have no idea. Hell, streaming HD video only uses 23 megabits a second. But, dammit, I want my gigabit per second!

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Google Fighting Android Malware

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As much as people may complain about Apple’s App Store’s closed platform, at least iPhone users don’t have to worry about malware applications.

On March 1st, news broke about how 21 popular free applications in the Android Marketplace were updated and re-released with root exploits. Meaning, these applications could burrow into your Android phone’s core and potentially do some real damage. As of today, Google has confirmed a total of 58 applications have been discovered, downloaded by a total of 260,000 devices.

To be fair, Google was able to respond extremely fast, removing the malicious applications within a few minutes of being alerted. However, having 260,000 infected phones is definitely no small matter.

While Google is able to remotely remove these applications and  fix these devices (with no action required from the user), the security hole that allowed these applications to gain root access is a hardware issue, not a software breach. This leaves the fix in the hands of phone retailers and consumers.

If Google doesn’t come up with a way to better screen new applications in the Android Marketplace, the Android platform is going to be in trouble. If consumers can’t trust new applications, it will hurt the entire Marketplace system. Users won’t download new apps, there will be much less incentive for lesser-known developers to build creative applications for the Android, and this open and creative platform might fall into a stasis. This would not be good for trying to compete with Apple’s App Store, nearing 400,000 active applications, versus the Android Marketplace, with just over 50,000.

The first Android phone, the HTC Dream, was released on October 22, 2008 (about two and a half years ago). Shouldn’t issues like this be worked out by now?

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The iPad 2: Not That Exciting

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The iPad 2, the second version of Apple’s Tablet PC (if we’re even allowed to call it that) was announced yesterday. And despite Steve Job’s reassurance that “it is an all new design” and “it’s not a tweak design, it’s not [just] marginal improvements,” the new iPad appears to be simply a slightly modified design with a few marginal improvements.

If you check out Apple.com‘s frontpage at the time of this article’s writing (the above image is a screenshot from March 3rd, 2011), you can see the six main points that Apple feels makes their new device stand out against the old iPad: thinner, lighter, faster, FaceTime, smart covers, 10-hour battery.

I would not describe a device that is simply “thinner, lighter, [and] faster,” as having an “all new design” in any sense of the term. Do you know how I knew the new iPad would be thinner, lighter, and faster than the old iPad? Because that’s the natural progression of technology. In fact, let’s not even looking at the canon of technological history but just look simply at Apple’s specific progress. We can see how Apple products shrink over time.

Photo by Brett Jordan

So, to have a new iPad that is thinner, lighter, and faster is simply predictable. Sure, we all want these qualities in a new device, but they’re expected improvements, nothing revolutionary or game-changing. Sure, Steve Jobs never claimed that the iPad 2 was either revolutionary or game-changing specifically (in contrast to Apple’s descriptions of the first iPad), but the marketing sure makes it feel that way.

The next featured improvement is FaceTime, which I admit is probably the most desirable new feature in the iPad 2. FaceTime was first revealed with the iPhone 4 and people were extremely excited…until the novelty wore off and people realized how awkward it is to hold the phone in front of you to have a face to face chat when text messaging or voice calls are much faster and more convenient. But with the iPad, FaceTime is finally a logical element. It is much more practical on this larger yet highly portable device. But again, it is no surprise that this feature was migrated to the iPad 2.

In terms of a 10-hour battery life, this is also not a surprise. The last iPad had a 10-hour battery life. And yes, this new device does a lot more and has more computing power. But to shirk on the battery on the iPad 2 would be extremely bad form. Battery life needs to trend progressively longer, not shorter. Offering a shorter battery life would drastically reduce the iPad 2’s appeal.

The new case is what most people are talking about, and this is simply cosmetic. Sure, it’s cool. But nothing to get extremely excited about. Plus magnets are extremely annoying when you have one on an electronic device that is constantly floating around in your bag. At least in my opinion.

So there you have it, the new iPad 2. Extremely *yawn* exciting. I think I’ll keep my iPad 1. I don’t see it as any less relevant of a device. At least not yet.

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Wikileaks Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

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Wikileaks, the now famous (infamous?) whistle-blowing website has been nominated for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. They’re up against a bit of competition (a record 241 nominees this year), but this website, founded by Australian Julian Assange, is definitely one of the most controversial nominations on the ballot.

Nobel Peace Prize MedalsIf Wikileaks wins the Nobel Peace Prize, they will be awarded a piece of metal, a personal diploma, and a cash reward (a little over $1 million in USD). It may also add a layer of legitimacy to Wikileaks, who is currently under fire from governments, political talking heads, and banks alike. Especially since the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to newly elected US President Barak Obama just two years earlier.

On the other hand, maybe the Nobel Peace Prize just doesn’t really mean anything anymore. Barak Obama was awarded the prize in 2009 “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Remember, he had only been in office for nine months at that point; he hadn’t really done anything yet. And his administration has since proven to go above and beyond any other administration in regards to hunting anyone attempting to share the details of these “extraordinary” international diplomacy efforts being perpetrated by the US government.

At least the Nobel Peace Prize nomination is bringing a bit of positive attention for the revolutionary website. I think the general public, many of whom aren’t following the Wikileaks stories closely, will be more willing to accept the legitimacy of the website. It’s much easier to get mainstream acceptance when backed by organizations such as the Nobel Peace Prize committee rather than simply a small group of (albiet important) activists calling themselves Anonymous. Wikileaks need as many organizations on their side as possible, and the Nobel Prize nomination is extremely positive support.

IAmDann does, and will always, support free speech.

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The Grand Whac-A-Mole Sabotage

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Marvin WimberlyMarvin Wimberly, of Daytona Beach, Florida, is facing up to fifteen years in prison. His crime? Planting programmed logic bombs in numerous arcade games, such as the ever popular Whac-A-Mole. These computer viruses would systematically shut down the game after a set number of days. As a repair man, Marvin Wimberly used this ploy to maintain job security, being the only person capable of fixing these “broken” machines. At the time of repair, he would then simply plant a new logic bomb.

It is estimated that Wimberly’s exploits have cost the arcade game manufacturer, Holly Hill, at least $100,000 as well as damage to the company’s reputation.

Apparently Wimberly got a bit too cocky, and told a few of the company’s employees about his virtually undetectable virus plating, which lead to months of technical work to prove. He is now being charged in the Florida legal system for “offenses against intellectual property.”

I’m just happy that the Whac-A-Mole game is finally being recognized as “intellectual property.” I’ve been saying this for years.

Photo by JDRedding.

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