Sunday, June 9, 2554

Australia signs deals to expand Internet service

SYDNEY — 38 billion Plan of Australia to provide high-speed Internet to more than 90 percent of its households one of his last major obstacles Thursday, when the Government has signed $12,5 billion of net deals with Telstra and SingTel cleared.

The national broadband network, the largest Australian infrastructure project in decades, will use network Telstra in a bid to knit together a country the size of Western Europe with high-speed broadband, wireless or satellite services with covering any shortcomings.

The national broadband network, also known as NBN, which is owned by the State, to pay Telstra Australian 11 billion or 11.6 billion, to deliver most of their network.

Optus, which is owned by SingTel will receive 800 million dollars to move customers from fiber-optic network on national broadband network.

The deals are a victory for a Labour Government deeply unpopular, that made the network a main plank in his program, as the distances and terrain in Australia keep slow Internet Speeds and costs.

Some approvals remain before they can be resolved by the two deals, including a vote by shareholders on 18 October 2002 Telstra and wound up the competition regulator for the company's plan to divide.

Also offers facing a challenge from the conservative opposition, who argued against the national broadband network and has promised to review the project, if it comes to power.

"What we want to do is get broadband delivered, but at a lower cost and that would have involved at least in part by redesigning the network," Malcolm Turnbull, a spokesman for telecommunications for the opposition, told Australian radio.

"These contracts that will make it more difficult, but I don't think that will make it impossible."But there is no question of anything destroyed, ripped or terminated, or something like that, said Mr. Turnbull.

The network will require the total expenditure of capital of 35.9 billion dollars and will require 40.9 billion dollars of debt and equity. The Government plans to put up 27.5 billion dollar financing, while the project will have to borrow $ 13.4 billion of debt markets.

The Chief Executive of Optus, Paul O'Sullivan, said the company looked forward to using the national broadband network to turbo-charge.

"This agreement supports the NBN to create a level playing field for all telcos. Australian consumers will be the winners, "Mr O'Sullivan said in a statement.

As for Telstra, the deal removes an uncertainty that has weighed on its actions, but a rally in the short term is unlikely because of the challenges in implementing the deal and then adapts to new market, said Angus Gluskie fund management, a manager of wholesale Australian investment.

"People will see it as a positive sign that have gotten through this final step," said Mr. Gluskie. "But it's still an incredibly difficult for a telecommunications company to be".


View the original article here

House passes patent Bill approaching global Norm

The legislation also takes measures to help the underfunded United States Patent and Trademark Office facing a backlog of 1.2 million pending applications that forces inventors to wait three years to get a decision.

The vote was 304-117, more than 95-5 votes with which a similar Bill cleared the Senate in March. The two have yet to reconcile differences in their bills, which are supported by the White House, key enterprise groups and leaders from both sides who have hailed as a measure that would create jobs.

"This legislation modernizes our patent system to help create private sector jobs and keep America on the edge of innovation", Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said.

Before coming to a final vote, the home fans had to overcome challenges from opponents who claimed that the legislation violated the Constitution and makes it more difficult for individual inventors to prevail in disputes with major corporations.

There was also a strong opposition to a provision that would allow financial institutions to challenge patents on business methods, such as systems for process controls. Opponents said the provision amounted to a bailout for banks, but representative Robert Goodlatte, Virginia Republican and Chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on intellectual property, said business method patents, a fairly recent phenomenon, were "a fundamental flaw in the system which is costing consumers millions every year."

An amendment to remove the section on business method patents was defeated 262-158.

The most significant change caused by law would put the United States under the same system for patent applications used by Europe and Japan, which encourage inventors who file their applications for patents before. Currently the United States it operates on a first to invent system that the President of the House Judiciary Committee, Lamar Smith of Texas, said it was "outdated and dragged down from frivolous lawsuits and uncertainty on patent ownership".

A main opponent of the change, John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat and former Chairman of the Committee on justice, said that the Bill "would allow the Patent and Trademark Office awarded a patent for the first person who can win a race to the Patent Office, regardless of who is the inventor."

But Mr. Smith said that, for a fee of $ 110, an inventor may file a provisional application that would allow a year prepare a formal application. He said that could cost $ 5 million for legitimate inventors to defend against unwarranted lawsuits.

The Senate and the House will also have to work their differences on another important element of the Bill, how to finance the Patent Office.


View the original article here

Saturday, June 8, 2554

Crash puts spotlight on Hacking group shameless LulzSec

But charges of British police link Mr. Cleary to a group of hackers called Lulz, or LulzSec, which has been on a crime spree of the Internet in recent weeks, attacking Web sites and computer networks, including those of the Senate of the United States, the Central Intelligence Agency and Sony.

The British tabloids were quick to Mr Cleary, as the young criminal mastermind behind LulzSec, calling him a "Hack" the Lad "in titles on the front page of the cast. His mother, Rita, said his son is very intelligent, but has a history of mental illness, including agoraphobia. His lawyer, Ben Cooper, described Mr Cleary "vulnerable young."

Although it is unclear how much publicity it deserves, the arrest of Mr. Cleary made him a focus of public fascination with a wave of computer hacking cases, carried out by amorphous collective online.

Police say Mr Cleary is guilty of illegally using a computer to perform a denial of service — bombarding Web sites with so many automated messages that have closed. They say his targets were organisations including the British Serious Crime Agency organized.

In the hierarchy of computer hacking, the charges against Mr. Cleary and actions of LulzSec largely fall into the category known as hacktivism. Hackers are not motivated by money, but are primarily interested in protest or antagonize their goals, or in technical skills on display.

Hacktivists, according to computer security experts, are a different race from cybercriminals mainstream, seeking financial gain. These criminals, for example, manipulated the Citigroup Web site to steal personal information of credit cardholders.

The third category, say that experts are warriors, both working in the "cybercommands" governments like those of the United States and other countries, or for terrorist groups or mercenaries. They defend the computer networks, electricity networks and State secrets in his own country, while devising tactics to attack enemies.

Hacktivists tend to portray their activity as the sit-in digital, a form of protest. But security experts say that their actual attacks often cause damage to computer networks, and financial losses. LulzSec was more aggressive than most and most brazen in his choice of targets.

"This is organized crime that is typically distributed in several countries, said Mark Rasch, a former Justice Department Prosecutor, who is Director of security for CSC, a computer services company."It is a serious crime ".

The Thursday evening LulzSec released what it said were hundreds of internal documents from the Department of public safety to Arizona, including materials relating to counterterrorism and patrol operations. It says that it shall aim at the Agency because of anti-immigration policies of Arizona. A spokesman for the Department of public safety, Captain Steve Harrison, said the documents appeared to be genuine, but were sensitive, non-confidential.

Hacking was a mischievous young men — and are almost all men — because the computers were invented soon after. But the Internet has made an increasingly international pursuit. Power users of message boards online and chat software from the Internet, using these tools to communicate and organize activities became quickly the intruders.

"Hackers were among the first to understand the benefits of social networking," said Alan Brill, senior managing director of Kroll, a security consulting firm.

Hacker distant networks present a formidable challenge for law enforcement. But in recent years, they and prosecutors have formed their own international networks of communication, sharing information across borders. Arrest of Mr Cleary, for example, involved cooperation between Scotland Yard and the FBI

LulzSec, on a Twitter feed that you use to communicate with more than 250,000 followers, said that Mr. Cleary is "at best marginally associated with us." The Group did not respond to a Twitter message seeking comment for this article.

LulzSec, experts say, is a splinter group from anonymous, another line hacking collective. Anonymous is best known for his attacks in support of WikiLeaks, led by Julian Assange last year. The group went after the Web sites of companies such as MasterCard and PayPal, who had refused to process donations of WikiLeaks after it disclosed confidential diplomatic cables.

This year, said Barrett Brown, a former activist anonymous, "some of the most important leaders and hackers broke off and are now LulzSec."

The two groups of hackers certainly affect different poses. Declarations of LulzSec and his actions display a spirit of joy anarchist exuberant. Lulz, means essentially laughter mean-spirited and website LulzSec describes the group as "a small team of individuals who feel lulzy dullness of cybercommunity is a burden on what matters: fun."

The group is strongly antagonistic to the media. When a TV journalist for Russia today asked for an interview, she was told that he would be granted only if she and her producer wore shoes on their heads and wrestled in the mud while singing. They refused.

There seems to be much less joy in the anonymous culture. In a YouTube video that describes the group a voice intones: "there is no control, no leadership, only influence. The influence of thought ". Later, the video adds that the actions of anonymous have "brought justice to our world."

LulzSec Exploit have irritated others worldwide hacker who oppose its activities, particularly the exposure of the personal data of innocent Internet users. Those people are working to stop LulzSec investigates the identity of its members and providing information to the FBI

The LulzSec group, according to Mr. Brown, the former activist anonymous numbers between 5 and 10. Mr. Brown said members had faced — known by nicknames online as Topiary and Sabu — are mostly men in their 20s.

Mr. Brown said he had discussed with Mr. Cleary, and that he believed — contrary to the Declaration of LulzSec — who was involved with the group. But a person involved with anonymous, who declined to be named for fear of prosecution, said that Mr. Cleary was peripheral.

On Thursday, the Court decided to delay the application of Mr. Cleary for bail while police investigated.

Networks of hackers and their activities are murky by design, said Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer of BT Group company. LulzSec, Mr. Schneier said, "is a badge, a name that is called each other, if you are one of the guys cool hackers now."

Riva Richmond contributed from New York.


View the original article here

Gadgetwise: Using a Mac for converting a Windows laptop in a Linux machine

My old laptop Windows XP crashes constantly and I decided to erase everything and install Ubuntu on it maybe to squeeze a couple of years out of it as a Web browsing and e-mail machine. I would like to burn a CD from the software available on Ubuntu on my Mac, but a burned disk Mac-will work on a Windows computer?

If you burn the downloaded Ubuntu properly, should be able to create a system installation disc on your Mac that you can then use to reformat the old Windows laptop as a Linux machine. Start by downloading the Ubuntu CD files from the site of the company for Mac. The file must be named something like ubuntu-desktop-i386-11.04. ISO. (The file extension .ISO means that is an disc image and an exact copy of the master CD used to install Ubuntu Linux).

Use the Mac Disk Utility program to burn the ISO file to a CD so that the old Windows laptop can recognize as a system installation disk. After the file. ISO of Ubuntu has completely downloaded to your desktop, open the applications folder in the Mac and open the Utilities folder inside of it. The Disk Utility program is inside the Utilities folder, then double-click Disk Utility to start up.

Then, put a blank CD into the disc drive on your Mac. Drag the file. Ubuntu ISO from the desktop and drop it in the left pane of the open Disk Utility. Click the .ISO file listed in the left pane, and then click the burn button in the top of the Disk Utility to initiate the process.

After the CD burn, eject it from the Mac and put it in the disc drive on your Windows laptop. When you boot the CD, follow the on-screen instructions to install Ubuntu Linux.


View the original article here

World Briefing | Europe: Britain: Hacker, 19, is charged

Two Men Hang Out. But One Appears to Be a Dog.The three States opting out an immigration program are an essential tool of weakening rather than working to improve it.On City Rooftops, Scrappy Green Spaces in Bloom The Quiet Royal Wedding Mission of an American diplomat in Italy reveals confusion about war objectives of the Union.Pack a Picnic for Your Next Flight

View the original article here

A revival in the art of buying on the Web

server temporarily unavailable
Chad Batka for The New York TimesFrom left, Bill Fine, Artnet's president; Hans Neuendorf, the company's chief executive; and Brian McConville, its executive vice president, in front of Warhol's "Double Elvis" (1963-1976).

Roland Sledge, a 65-year-old lawyer for an oil and gas company in Houston, is no art world regulars. He began collecting prints and works on paper a little more than a decade ago, focusing on Abstract Expressionism, and has done some business with small New York galleries, "though I mostly just stumbled into things that I liked," he said in a broad Texas accent.

The latest on the arts, coverage of live events, critical reviews, multimedia extravaganzas and much more. Join the discussion. A recent Artnet sale: Robert Mapplethorpe's "Ken Moody and Robert Sherman" went for $83,636.

"I don't have a lot of connections," he added.

But Mr. Sledge, and a growing number of collectors like him, have lately been demonstrating that connections may not be as important as they once were — and that online sales, a segment of the art business given up for dead not long ago, are becoming an increasingly important part of its future.

Over the last year and half, Mr. Sledge has collected almost exclusively online, buying nine pieces at an average of about $ 4,000 each at online-only auctions through Artnet, the art market information company. Artnet tried and failed to become one of the pioneers of online sales in 1999, suspending those auctions two years later after it lost millions of dollars and decided that the market wasn't ready. But it got back into the business in 2008, and after less than three years, the auctions now account for 14 percent of the company's income.

The glamorous, newsmaking sales of Sotheby's and Christie's "these are not. The average price of an artwork won through an Artnet auction is about $6,800 now, up from $5,600 last year, which wouldn't come close to paying the commission on most high-end auction sales. But Artnet is one of many companies that believe the time might finally be right for a sizable portion of the art market to begin migrating online, the way sales for specialized items like rare books and antiques already have.

The VIP Art Fair, a weeklong online event that mimicked the mechanics of a traditional art fair with virtual booths, attracted a large international group of blue-chip galleries last January and, despite some well-publicized technical glitches, was seen as a success by dealers and collectors. Art.sy, a venture that will use Pandora-like technology to help art buyers find pieces and the galleries selling them, has already lined up heavyweight supporters like the dealer Larry Gagosian and Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter. And most major auction houses also now allow online bidding for sales happening in the physical world.

But while online bidding and fairs and services like Art.sy essentially serves as a digital bridge to bricks-and-mortar galleries and auction houses, Artnet officials say that much of the art market below a certain price level will soon operate almost entirely in the virtual realm. Auctions on Artnet take place around the clock, eBay-style (though the lots close only on weekdays, so far), and the company vets sellers and relies on their photographs and descriptions of the provenance and quality of artworks.

A buyer, who pays a 15 percent commission to Artnet, usually sees only a single picture of the work and often doesn't talk to the seller, who could be an art dealer, a private collector or an artist's family. (Sellers pay a 10 percent commission.) After the auction, the buyer pays the seller, and the work is shipped.

"It's one thing to point out to someone where they can find something and give them to the gallery's phone number," said Hans Neuendorf, the company's chief executive, referring to many other online art-selling services. "It's another thing to make a sale online."

"That's a sea change, in my opinion," said Mr. Neuendorf, who presents himself as a kind of revolutionary, "and it's happening."

Art sellers have been waiting for it to happen for many years. Sotheby's tried online-only sales for lower-priced works in the late 1990s, but, like Artnet, it abandoned the initiative a few years later, convinced that buyers simply were not willing to pay four-or five-figure sums for art they had not seen in person.

Mr. Neuendorf said several factors led Artnet, a public company based in Berlin, with offices in New York, to venture back into the field. One was the comfort people have begun to feel with online commerce in general, he said. But the more important factor was the considerable increase in the last decade in the number of people who spend money on contemporary art as a pastime or as an investment. They tend to see online art sales as more accessible and transparent than sales in the gallery world, with its reputation, fair or not, for being a kind of exclusionary club. And as many online art vendors like to point out, there are far more $ 5,000 and $ 10,000 prints and photographs in the world than there are 50,000 .000 Warhols changing hands at marquee auctions.


View the original article here

Personal Tech: Smartphone With games, downtime becomes a pastime

5: 37, 23 June 2011 LOVES the new site allows you to check whether the information publicly available in 13 stashes that contains over 800,000 records stolen. 5: 26, 23 June 2011 process of PC LOVES three-way to transform a Windows machine to a PC Linux only e-mail and the Web. 5: 57, 22 June 2011 laptop bag like that held in what you needwithout overwhelming the wearer. 5: 36, 22 June 2011 4.04.40 Casio g'z one Commando is a shock and waterproof phone with applications for outdoor types, but its many features make it complicated.

View the original article here

Bits: Yahoo Chief Executive faces unhappy shareholders

Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo, almost escaped his company's shareholder meeting Thursday with hearing nothing but support, despite a stagnating business and shares depressed. But in the final minutes, the unlikely lovefest transformed litigation when an investor has made a fierce attack on the direction of Yahoo and called for MS. Bartz be replaced.

"Out of disbelief and frustration, I think it's time to talk and demand change," the shareholder told the microphone. He added that "talks to buy out your contract need to start today".

Ms. Bartz Yahoo is trying to turn around after several years of indirection and missteps by his predecessors. Patience of investors for his mandate of two years, however, is wearing thin.

Shareholders of Yahoo expected to be a public airing of frustration shareholder. But only one of a few questions from participants was negative.

The investor who voiced dissent, later identified as Steve Landry, called himself as an individual who advised the shareholder holds more than a million shares to institutional investors. The media was not invited to the meeting and could hear only through a Webcast.

Mr. Landry has taken issue with slow turnaround of Yahoo and criticized the portrayal of Ms. Bartz of the company during the event as a strong and growing. He then mentioned a rumor that the Council had been looking for a replacement — the elephant in the room, as he put it — and said that "the last thing that Yahoo needs is a lame duck a.d."

Ms. Bartz, who is known for his pugnacious, replied calmly: "thanks for your opinion, thanks to bloggers and thanks for the entries. Wonderful — which was certainly a downer. "

Then the meeting ended abruptly.

At the beginning, Roy Bostock, Yahoo's President, gave a glowing review of the work of Ms. ra Bartz, which included streamlining its operations, concentrating on its strengths such as content and restructure its infrastructure. Although there remains much work to do, said he was confident that the company was heading in the right direction.

"The progress that we have done is thwarted because this card is very supportive of Carol and the management team," said Mr. Bostock.

A person who knows the mind of the Council emphasized support for MS. Bartz said "rumors that there is a search c.e.o are unequivocally false."

In their voting, investors showed some dissatisfaction with Ms. ra Bartz and Mr. Bostock, though not an overwhelming amount. Both were re-elected after receiving the votes against them by about 20 percent. The other members of the Council supported by the society were elected with votes against them by about 10 percent.


View the original article here

Friday, June 7, 2554

Advertising: Build a buzz in Social Media ahead of traditional Marketing

Perfetti Van Melle has hired the Agency Martin part of Richmond, Virginia, the Interpublic Group of companies, as the Agency of social media in the United States for its line of Mentos mints and gums. As Perfetti Van Melle Mentos prepares to introduce UP2U, its first rubber stick sold in this country, initial publicity efforts will focus in social media like Facebook.

For example, the new rubber already has a Facebook fan page on facebook.com,/up2u, that more people have shown 95,900 their "likes." The first 1,000 visitors who clicked on the button "as" obtained in a rubber free promotion that began on June 13 and ended on Wednesday.

Plans call for an invitation to be made next month on the fan page, wondering who "like" the new product to provide the name of friends who would like to receive samples.

Perfetti Van Melle long has been a part of digital media for Mentos. In 2003, during the election for Governor, California Mentos introduced a microsite, or special Web site, which tried to declare a new boxed product, Mentos mints, such as "chewy Mint official" of the elections.

And in 2006, when performance artists loaded to a website called eepybird.com, a video clip that showed how mixing Diet Coke with Mentos mints can produce cool explosions, Perfetti Van Melle hugged them and posted the clip on mentos.com.

The strategy of introducing Mentos UP2U "is very marketing 360 degrees, starting with very compelling and unique content, social media," said Mehmet Yuksek, executive vice President for North America at the Office of Perfetti Van Melle in Erlanger, KY.

"We would like to build a buzz," he added, and then navigate to advertising in traditional media such as television.

To help generate that word of mouth, Perfetti Van Melle is also using Lizzie – Grubman public relations in New York, which will distribute samples of Mentos UP2U to events in places like Las Vegas and Miami.

Aspects of interactive marketing plans are indicative of the growing importance of digital initiatives at companies that peddle packaged consumer goods.

"Only a few years ago, digital information meant one thing to senior executives: risk," said Susan McPartlin, retail and consumer industry leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he joined with the Grocery Manufacturers Association, on Tuesday to release a study entitled "thriving in a world connected".

"However, companies are no longer defending the thought," he added. "They are using the digital data to advance their competitive position."

At the same time, social media, smart phones and other digital technologies are empowering consumers with more control of their shopping choices, "ms. McPartlin said. "And are not shy of posting their feelings about products online, where they literally are deliver reams of potential insights that can create a tremendous opportunity for consumer packaged goods organizations that can find patterns in noise."

Which is shown repeatedly on Facebook fan page UP2U. For example, about an hour after the mark has posted a question on the Wednesday afternoon — "a song theme plays whenever you enter a room. The UP2U, what song is choose? "— There were already more than 120 comments that included "I Will Survive", the theme from "Jaws", "Like a Virgin" and "my children say the music from ' the wizard of Oz ' when the old lady is on her bike. "

In this realm, "consumers are out in front, said Marc Kempter, senior vice president and group account Director at Martin, in particular the target for the gum, which is of teenagers and young adults.

"Television is still necessary to create broad awareness" for a new product, he added, but the propensities of digital extroverts "" in the market for core UP2U has led to a decision "to launch it digitally before, building up a following of fans and then take mass."

There are disadvantages to this strategy, Mr. Kempter said, especially that "there is no playbook" for success.

"Six months ago, a year ago, everyone was talking about Facebook ' likes '," he added. "Now, it's not just ' tastes ', is the interaction that you want to have with consumers. "

Perfetti Van Melle already sells a variety of chewing gum pellets of Mentos, called Mentos pure fresh, but wants to enter the segment of Chew Stick because it is about four times larger. The segment of baton-rubber, however, is intensely competitive, as the confectionery giant Mars, which now owns Wrigley chewing stick brands like orbit, juicy fruit, 5 and collides with Kraft Foods, which now owns brands like Cadbury-stick gum, Dentyne and Trident Stride.

"We are a top-tier global rubber formidable player," Mr. Yuksek said, referring to the brands Perfetti Van Melle sold internationally as Brooklyn and Happydent. "We are here to make it happen in the United States."

Mentos UP2U carries that name, because each package 14-stick contains seven sticks of a flavor and seven sticks of a second. Packages to declare: "2 flavors. 1 package. You decide '. The four couples include Berry watermelon/fresh mint and fresh mint sweet/bubble.

In September, there will be "an entire digital experience bringing the brand to life, all about choice celebrates," Mr. Kempter said, "and then TV in late autumn."

According to Mr. Yuksek, Perfetti Van Melle expects to spend 50 million dollars in advertising and marketing to introduce new rubber. The company spent $ 17.3 million in the United States last year, the unit of WPP's Kantar Media reported, to advertise in major media in all its gums, mints and candy, including taffy Air Heads and Chupa Chups lollipops.


View the original article here

Errol Morris: my brother invented E-Mail with Tom Van Vleck? (Part 4)

Translate Request has too much data
Parameter name: request
Translate Request has too much data
Parameter name: request

This is part four of a five-part series. Parts 1 | 2 | 3 4.

THE FIG TREE AND THE WASP

From “Commercial Gardening Volume III”, John Weathers (editor), 1913

It could be a 20th century version of Genesis. In the beginning there was Robert Fano, Fernando Corbat? and J. C. R. Licklider. There were others, of course. Many others. John McCarthy and Edward Fredkin at a Cambridge consulting firm, BBN (Bolt Beranek & Newman) — Licklider was at MIT, then BBN, then at ARPA, and ultimately back at MIT — but MIT was the hub. A group of professors and engineering students wanted to change how computers were used and as a result changed the world. Licklider, by all accounts, was the visionary, the force behind it all. He was not only the oracle of the revolution, but he managed to put himself in a position in the government (at the newly created ARPA) where he could channel financing to projects of interest to him. And he wrote a number of legendary articles, where he foresaw the World Wide Web and personal computers. [23] He saw computers not just as adjunct to problem-solving, but — he took the term explicitly from biology — in a symbiotic relationship with man. His paper “Man-Computer Symbiosis” (from 1960) opens with what might be considered a metaphor — except that it isn’t one, it is an illustration of what the relationship between man and computer can become.

The fig tree is pollinated only by the insect Blastophaga grossorum. The larva of the insect lives in the ovary of the fig tree, and there it get its food. The tree and the insect are thus heavily interdependent: the tree cannot reproduce without the insect; the insect cannot eat without the tree; together, they constitute not only a viable but a productive and thriving partnership…

Man-computer symbiosis is a subclass of man-machine systems. There are many man-machine systems. At present, however, there are no man-computer symbioses… The hope is that, in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly, and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information-handling machines we know today. [24]

Many of these early pioneers came from different fields. Licklider had come from psychology; Corbat? from physics; Fano from electrical engineering. [25]

I contacted Dr. Corbat?.

ERROL MORRIS: Tom Van Vleck urged me to talk to you about my brother and his contribution to e-mail.

FERNANDO CORBAT?: I don’t remember the technical details of who did what and so forth. But Noel was right in the middle of things — working on the inner machinery of the system — and was one of the really crack system programmers. He knew how to make things work, how to put them together. And could write really well. It was a big project. And a very tough one, because we were breaking new ground in all directions. But the core of it was the young people who believed in the idea and made it work.

Professor Fernando Corbat?, c. 1965MIT MuseumProfessor Fernando Corbat?, c. 1965MIT Museum

ERROL MORRIS: What was the idea?

FERNANDO CORBAT?: Back in the early ‘60s, computers were getting bigger. And were expensive. So people resorted to a scheme called batch processing. It was like taking your clothes to the laundromat. You’d take your job in, and leave it in the input bins. The staff people would prerecord it onto these magnetic tapes. The magnetic tapes would be run by the computer. And then, the output would be printed. This cycle would take at best, several hours, or at worst, 24 hours. And it was maddening, because when you’re working on a complicated program, you can make a trivial slip-up — you left out a comma or something — and the program would crash. It was maddening. People are not perfect. You would try very hard to be careful, but you didn’t always make it. You’d design a program. You’d program it. And then you’d have to debug it and get it to work right. A process that could take, literally, a week, weeks, months —

ERROL MORRIS: Yes. I remember my brother lugging around reams of paper, all of these computer print-outs. It seemed like a nightmare.

75 ThumbnailTry writing some code and then send an e-mail from 1965.

FERNANDO CORBAT?: Yes. People began to advocate a different tactic, which came to be called time-sharing. Take advantage of the speed of the computer and have people at typewriter-like terminals. In principle, it seemed like a good idea. It certainly seemed feasible. But no manufacturer knew how to do it. And the vendors were not terribly interested, because it was like suggesting to an automobile manufacturer that they go into the airplane business. It just was a new game. A group of us began to create experimental versions of time-sharing, to see if it was feasible. I was lucky enough to be in a position to try to do this at MIT. And we basically created the “Compatible Time Sharing System,” nicknamed CTSS from the initials, that worked on the large mainframes that IBM was producing. First it was going to be just a demo. And then, it kept escalating. Time-sharing caught the attention of a few visionary people, like Licklider, then at BBN, who picked up the mantle. He went to Washington to become part of one of the funding agencies, namely ARPA. ARPA has changed names back and forth from DARPA to ARPA. But it’s always the same thing.

ERROL MORRIS: They’re close.

FERNANDO CORBAT?: Yes, it is the same organization. They just keep periodically relabeling themselves. Sometimes “Defense” was the initial word and sometimes “Advanced Projects Research Agency.” Anyway, Licklider went down to DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] and proceeded to get in the position where he could go out and parcel out a lot of money, to try to encourage people to do good research. And, in particular, the one thing he was quite interested in was time-sharing and he came up to MIT and talked to a bunch of us. In those days, the MIT computation research was sprinkled in a lot of directions, a lot of different groups. And Bob Fano was one of the people that was involved in the discussions. He was a little bit like the elder statesman, even though he was just a few years older. But he took it upon himself to propose a new project, which came to be called Project MAC, which would collect together all these different groups who were interested in man-machine interaction.

ERROL MORRIS: What year was this?

FERNANDO CORBAT?: I believe it was ’63. I don’t have the dates firmly locked in my mind. But we had done a demo with four typewriters in November of 1961 and we kept improving it. Fano proposed this project, which we all kind of coalesced on, and by the end of 1962, he had the proposal written.

ERROL MORRIS: And the goal was —

FERNANDO CORBAT?: — to use CTSS as an initial platform and to explore the ramifications of man-machine interaction. It was also an opportunity to build a tool. [26]

Scientific American

ERROL MORRIS: From the beginning, did you have terminals hooked up to the mainframe? Was that something that happened early on?

FERNANDO CORBAT?: It happened fairly rapidly. During that summer of anticipation, we beefed up CTSS by acquiring an IBM terminal controller, which was a big box called a 7750 that allowed us to have a large number of terminals. Modems were just coming into play. We were able to attach modems to the 7750, and modems to the terminals, and interconnect the modems via phone lines. MIT, at that point, had its own switched telephone network and we were allowed to put our modems onto the MIT telephone network. So to connect a terminal, it was just a matter of dialing up from the terminal’s modem and being assigned to the next available modem at the 7750.

ERROL MORRIS: I spent a summer with my brother in 1969. And his apartment had a terminal.

FERNANDO CORBAT?: In ’69? Absolutely. We had a phone and a modem at each terminal. And we could dial up the computer. The speed wasn’t very high. The modems started out being 110 baud, which roughly is a dozen characters per second.

ERROL MORRIS: That’s incredibly slow —

FERNANDO CORBAT?: They were slow and as big as a shoebox. And it was really pretty awkward. We were lumbering along. But just being able to do it at all was a big step forward. The technology was just changing from vacuum tubes, the 709, to the transistor machine, the 7090. Project MAC was going to be several hundred people, and so we needed the space to start a project of that magnitude. Fano managed to work out the plan to get space over in Technology Square, which became Project MAC’s first home. Initially we had just two floors. One of the service bureaus had decided they’d over-expanded and wanted to give up the space they had in the building. We were able to get one floor, and then another floor opened up, and so forth.

ERROL MORRIS: Did many patents came out of this?

Cambridge Historical Commission

FERNANDO CORBAT?: We didn’t try to patent anything. The object was to influence the direction of the computer industry.

ERROL MORRIS: Which you did.

FERNANDO CORBAT?: — which we did. That was our goal. And to form a nucleus of computer science at MIT. Until then, computer specialists had been sprinkled around in various groups and places.

ERROL MORRIS: And still no computer science department —

FERNANDO CORBAT?: Most of the key leaders came out of the electrical engineering department. But electrical engineering at MIT was a peculiar department. It had a very, very broad view of what its charter was. It had everything, from biologists to material scientists — a rich tradition of being very spread out in its research directions. And so, most of the people that joined us, Project MAC, were part of electrical engineering, but not all. And Fano asked everyone to make their principal office in the same building where the computer was. This is turning into a longer story than I expected.

ERROL MORRIS: That’s fine.

FERNANDO CORBAT?: And we wanted to come up with hardware that was designed to be time-sharing from the word go, rather than designed for batch processing. So we shopped around. And we talked to about half a dozen different vendors. IBM thought they were the prime possibility, because we were using an IBM machine for CTSS. But we discovered afterwards that they had been working on the 360 line of computers — a very ambitious project in its own right — to produce a family of machines, small to large, which were all batch processors. Unfortunately, a lot of the architecture was against the grain of what we were trying to do with time-sharing. [27]

ERROL MORRIS: So you didn’t go with IBM —

FERNANDO CORBAT?: We formed a triumvirate. Bell Labs, MIT and the G.E. Computer Department agreed orally to work on this project. And each group had its own expectations of what they were going to get out of it. MIT was trying to influence the world. Bell Labs was trying to get a machine which was going to be a workhorse for their laboratories. And General Electric was hoping to get a brand new shiny product that they could sell to other customers. That was the genesis of Multics. We threw down the gauntlet and said, “This is what we’re going to do,” which was very unusual for software projects in those days.

ERROL MORRIS: Did you have any idea how difficult it would be to actually change how people used computers?

FERNANDO CORBAT?: No. We didn’t realize how difficult it was going to be. Once you start from scratch, you really have to do everything. And even though we had anywhere from 50 to 100 people at one time working on the project, it was still a tremendous effort to try to get everything right. It was a visionary goal that everyone who joined the project came to believe in. It wasn’t just another job. And that’s how we kept people like your brother interested as a career. He was part of a group of people that knew how to make things happen. It was an exciting time, and everybody was inspired because they felt they were working on something worthwhile, not just another programming job. Not just another product.

MIT Museum

ERROL MORRIS: But e-mail? Was it a big thing? Or was it just —

FERNANDO CORBAT?: E-mail just evolved. One of the first things you notice when you have everyone on the same machine is that it’s possible to share information back and forth. You can let others use your programs. You can send them data. You can send messages to one another. So early in the game with CTSS, we started up the ability to send messages to people that were logged in. I don’t remember exactly when we began to allow messages to be saved. But that was a natural consequence. And about the time that Multics was coming to life, the idea of networking also began to come to life.

ERROL MORRIS: Networking?! Did everything start at MIT?

FERNANDO CORBAT?: No, it started with Larry Roberts, then at ARPA, who proposed — with Licklider’s encouragement — what came to be called the ARPANET. [28] He went around to all of the sites that Licklider was funding and talked up the idea, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could all send programs back and forth to each other, and to even operate computers from one side of the country to another?”

ERROL MORRIS: But didn’t you have to deal with different kinds of computers?

FERNANDO CORBAT?: The ARPANET was complicated, because everybody in the country had different kinds of equipment. And so, part of creating the ARPANET was to come up with a plan to, homogeneously, allow people to talk to each other, even though they had different kinds of equipment. And Larry proposed a so-called interface message processor — an IMP — attached to what ever computer they were using. And the IMP smoothed out the fact that everybody had a different computer. [29] There were a lot of DEC computers, but there was a tremendous amount of variety. And that allowed the variety to be screened off, so people could communicate. Each of the sites that was interested got an IMP and programmed it to match the ARPANET, and then programmed the IMP to match whatever equipment they had. [30] At MIT we did that, too.

ERROL MORRIS: With so many innovations, what are you most proud of?

FERNANDO CORBAT?: Oh, the fact that it was a team effort. We were able demonstrate that interactive computing was not only a viable idea but a powerful one.

ERROL MORRIS: But when you first started —

MIT Museum

FERNANDO CORBAT?: It was very different. Batch programming software was not designed to be interactive. It was designed to dump out reams of paper, at best. It’s when you begin to get into the man-machine business, when we had first had time-sharing, that you designed different interfaces. You designed different ways to edit text. You designed different ways to write programs. It changed your strategy. All of that first began to show up on these mainframes that were being time-shared. And then, it migrated from the mainframes to the mini computers, which maybe had 10 or 15 people on them, and finally the personal computer, as the hardware kept allowing more new options.

ERROL MORRIS: Did you foresee any of this back in the early ‘60s?

FERNANDO CORBAT?: In a dim way. Not quite so dramatically. We didn’t quite know which shoe would fall next. For example, we knew, from the earliest days, that a graphical interface would be advantageous. But the economics were such you couldn’t afford it. It would cost $50,000 to create a terminal for just one person. It just was not feasible.

ERROL MORRIS: But didn’t you experiment with graphical interfaces, as well? I remember seeing one.

Scientific American

FERNANDO CORBAT?: Yes, we did have one attached to CTSS, which was called the Kluge, a very fancy graphical terminal. [31] [32]

But it wasn’t until the personal computer showed up that people began to really see the potential. There is a side bar on that. One of the reasons that IBM jumped into personal computers was that Apple II was so successful. But the reason the Apple II was so successful was not because it was such a great machine. It was because there was one program on it which suddenly made it of immense value to companies, namely VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet. It was a runaway success. Apple doesn’t like to admit it, but that was the main reason why people were buying Apple IIs. And that’s what got IBM’s attention — suddenly the business world was finding something valuable that they weren’t building.

ERROL MORRIS: History is odd. It’s almost impossible to guess what will be saved and what will fall by the wayside. I’m indebted to Tom Van Vleck and glad that he has become an historian. Without him, I would never know about my brother’s work. I told him he should publish a book. And he said, “What would I want to do that for?” [laughter] He said, “If I put it online, I can constantly update it and correct it and improve it. If I write a book, it’s just a book.”

FERNANDO CORBAT?: Yes, yes. That’s the modern publishing conundrum, isn’t it?

ERROL MORRIS: I keep thinking of the crowd at my brother’s funeral. How did they all know? Do you remember how you found out?

FERNANDO CORBAT?: I don’t remember, but I remember it was a shock. The Multics group, by and large, was young. And death was not a common phenomenon. Very few people have died that worked on the project. That will change with time, of course.

ERROL MORRIS: Yes. Time catches up with all of us, eventually.

FERNANDO CORBAT?: But this project inspired people. They felt they were working on something that would last. It was a chance to make a mark on the industry and to change the way things happened.

ERROL MORRIS: To change the world.

FERNANDO CORBAT?: Yes. We were the forerunners of the way things went.

*******

I then learned that Robert Fano, Corbat?’s roommate and officemate, was still alive. And delighted to talk about the past.

Try writing some code and then send an e-mail from 1965. Go to the interactive feature ?

Follow Errol Morris at twitter.com/errolmorris or join him on Facebook.

*******

[23] Memorandum For Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network

[24] Man-Computer Symbiosis

[25] Oral history with Robert Fano from the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota: “It was around 1960. Let me see if I can remember the exact date. There was a great deal of concern on the part of the administration about computer facilities at MIT. So they appointed a committee to make a recommendation consisting of Al Hill, Phil Morse, and myself. Various records also show Jerry Wiesner [Pres. Kennedy’s science adviser and, eventually, president of MIT] was a member. But I do not recall — he probably left for Washington. But he did not really play a part. We promptly appointed a technical committee, which consisted of the various computer types at MIT: Corby, and John McCarthy, and Minsky, and Doug Ross, and Jack Dennis were there. Herb Teager was chairman. Now by that time the idea of timesharing was already moving, and they proposed the development at MIT of a timesharing system.”

[26] In an interview years earlier, Corbat? said, “So that was mostly to convince the skeptics that it was not an impossible task, and also, to get people to get a feel for interactive computing. It was amazing to me, and it is still amazing, that people could not imagine what the psychological difference would be to have an interactive terminal. You can talk about it on a blackboard until you are blue in the face, and people would say, ‘Oh, yes, but why do you need that?’ You know, we used to try to think of all these analogies, like describing it in terms of the difference between mailing a letter to your mother and getting [her] on the telephone. To this day I can still remember people only realizing when they saw a real demo, say, ‘Hey, it talks back. Wow! You just type that and you got an answer.’”

[27] Fernando Corbat?, “IBM was trying to humor us. They viewed it as kind of an interesting experiment. Unbeknownst to us in this whole time frame, they were hard at work developing what came to be known as the 360 line of machines and they had it close to their vests. The people that had sold the management of IBM on the 360 had convinced them that it was a machine to solve all problems from here to forever after. That wasn’t true. Clearly, timesharing was not on their agenda and they viewed it as an aberration. They saw the goal as to have a line of machines which allowed them to sell much like the auto manufacturers. You would have a starter machine and then a larger machine and then a larger machine. They saw it only as a way to sell machines to customers. They did not think of it in terms of the way people would use computers.”

[28] In his ARPA Program Plan of 1968, Lawrence Roberts wrote, “Just as time-shared computer systems have permitted groups of hundreds of individual users to share hardware and software resources with one another, networks connecting dozens of such systems will permit resource sharing between thousands of users.”

[29] IMPs were the forerunners of today’s routers.

[30] Interface Message Processor (IMP) 1969

[31] “Cyrus Levinthal, the Kluge and the origins of interactive molecular graphics” (pdf)

[32] Early Interactive Molecular Graphics at MIT


View the original article here

Accelerating Android with tips and tricks

But despite the variety of Android phones and carriers, there are a lot of useful functions that are common to all. Here are some tips on how to find them:

The long press The key to many of these suggestions is the long press: instead of tapping a button, or icon on the screen, press and hold your finger on it for two seconds. Often, this will bring up a menu of options specific to the type of item, such as one to bookmark a Web link. You can also press the hardware keys on the phone and the background of the home screen, to reveal the various options.

In general, long-tap functions are intended to save from eavesdropping through a series of menus to perform a common task. Is the equivalent of right-clicking your mouse on the screen of a PC.

So, for example, you can long press the home button on your phone — one that looks like a small house — to bring up a menu of your eight most recently used apps. This allows you to hop quickly between, say, an email that are writing and Web browser.

You can also press the search key — looks like a magnifying glass — to pop-up a microphone icon labeled "zansu". Voice command system Android understands at least 10 commands, such as "text Send to Alison Wright, late you will see a 6," "go to the nearest pizza place," "Listen to Taylor Swift" and of course, "Note to self". If it does not begin with a special command, Android will assume that you speak a Web search.

Within the browser app, press the back key — the one marked with an arrow left U-turning — snap open a screen with bookmarks, most visited pages and navigation history displayed in tabs.

Press on your home screen to bring up a menu of options that includes links. You can create a shortcut, it just seems like an app on your home screen, which connects directly to a Web page bookmark, a person in your contact list or a navigation destination. Android will label the link with the logo of the website, the face of a person or an icon you choose for destinations.

Too many icons on your home screen? Press on the screen a pop-up menu that includes a folder option. You can create an icon folder and call it, say, games, in which you can drag all your applications.

Click a link on a webpage to pop-up menu to open the link in a new window. To switch to windows, press the menu key — what is a grid of four square — and tap Windows in the options that appear on the screen.

And prolonged pressure may also be used for accent marks. To enter, say, an e with a grave accent in a message, press the "and" on the keyboard. That opens a menu of characters "and" with different accents.

Quick access to phone, text and email In your address book, do not touch the name of the person. To touch their photo. That opens a menu of icons to call, text or email. There are also options to send messages through Twitter and Facebook.

Take photos of yourself Android cameras without a second camera for self-portraits have a Self Portrait in the camera APP. Tap and the camera will search for faces in its crosshairs using facial recognition software. The phone will be turned over a new photo of you every few seconds, adding that the images from your camera roll. Is more hit or miss to take your photo in a mirror, but it's more fun, as the robbery in an old fashioned photo booth.

Phrases faster Android collected a trick from BlackBerry phones of old school: when you type a text message or e-mail, there is no need to fumble for the key at the end of a sentence. Just press the SPACEBAR twice. Android will insert a period and a space much faster than you could type them yourself.


View the original article here

Upending anonymity, these days the Web reveals all

Now, apparently, is the place where he died the anonymity.

A commuter in New York that tangled verbally with a conductor on Tuesday — and defended herself asking "do you know which schools, I've been to and educated as they are?" — has been identified publicly after a fellow pilot posted a video phone meeting on YouTube. The woman, who had gone to NYU, was ridiculed by a group of bloggers, one of which was the last episode of "Name and shame on the Web."

Women who were friends of pen on-line former representative Anthony d. Weiner Similarly learned how quickly Internet users can sniff all the details of a person's online life. So did the men who set fire to cars and shops looted in the wake of Vancouver's Stanley Cup defeat last week, when they have been identified, marked with online acquaintances.

The collective intelligence of the two billion Internet users and fingerprints that many users leave websites, combine to make it increasingly likely that any embarrassing video, every intimate photos and every email Indelicato is attributed to its source, if that source wants it or not. This intelligence makes the public sphere more public than ever before and sometimes forces personal lives in public view.

For some, this may evoke comparisons to repressive Governments in the Middle East that control the exact punishment offline and online protests. But the positive effects can be numerous: criminality can be booked, can be rebutted falsehoods and individuals can become icons of the Internet.

When a freelance photographer, Rich Lam, digested his photos of the riots in Vancouver, saw several shots of a man and a woman, surrounded by police officers in riot gear, in the middle of a kiss like nobody's watching. When the photos were published, a worldwide roundup of sorts followed to identify the pair kissing. " In one day, relatives of the couple had leaked news websites for their identity, and there were, on Monday, her show "Today": Scott Jones and Alex Thomas, the ultimate test that, thanks to the Internet, every day could be a day that will be remembered around the world.

"It's kind of amazing that there was someone there to take a photo," ms. Thomas said "Today".

The "couple kissing" will probably only worth a tweet of Fame, but it is worth noting that were monitored at all.

This erosion of anonymity is a product of pervasive social media services, cheap cell phone cameras, photos and videos free Web host, and perhaps most important of all, a change in people's views on what should be public and what should be private. Experts say that sites like Facebook, which require real identities and encourage the sharing of photos and videos, have accelerated this change.

"Humans want nothing more than to connect, and companies that we connect electronically wants to know who says what, where," said Susan Crawford, Professor at the Benjamin n. Cardozo School of Law. "Consequently, we are more popular than ever."

This growing "publicness", as it is sometimes called, comes with significant consequences for the trade, for the political discourse and for ordinary people to the right to privacy. There are the efforts of Governments and corporations to create online identity systems. Technology will play an even greater role in identifying individuals once anonymous: Facebook, for example, are already using facial recognition technology in ways that are alarming to European regulators.

After the riots in Vancouver, unnecessary spaces such facial recognition technology — they simply combed through social media sites to try to identify some of the people involved, as Nathan Kotylak, 17, a star on Canada's junior water polo team.

On Facebook, Mr. Kotylak apologized for the damage he had caused. Reports not only hit him, it influenced his family: local news media reported that his father, a doctor, had seen its rankings on a site review of medical practice, RateMDs.com, after people posted comments on his son's involvement in the riots. Other people then went to the website of the doctor and improve his place.

Predictably, there was a reaction to the identification of persons involved in the riot-assisted Internet alcohol-fueled. Camille Cacnio, a student in Vancouver, who was photographed during the uprising and who admitted to stealing, wrote on his blog that the "21st century witch hunt" on the Internet was "another form of bullying".

In the area of New York commuters who was the object of derision on-line last week shut down both her Twitter accounts and LinkedIn once his name bubbled up on blogs. Even if the person who originally posted the video took down cell, other people quickly republished, giving new life history. The poster of the original video remains anonymous because his YouTube account was closed.

Half a world away, in countries such as Iran and Syria in the Middle East, activists sometimes have managed to identify victims of violence and dictatorship through YouTube videos uploaded anonymously.

They are also able to identify false: In a case widely publicized this month, a blogger who claimed to be a Syrian-American and lesbian herself called "A Gay Girl in Damascus" proved to be an American man, Tom MacMaster.

The investigator was led by Andy Carvin, a strategist for NPR who exhaustively covered Middle East protests on Twitter. When said sources who were skeptical of the identity of the blogger, "I just started to ask questions on Twitter and Facebook," Mr. Carvin said on CNN. "Have you met someone in person? You know you at all? As I asked, but I've learned, because no one had even met her, presumably had reporters who interviewed her in person. "

Mr. Carvin, his followers and other on-line used photos and server log data to connect your blog to the wife of Mr. MacMaster.

"Advertisement" — something normally associated with celebrity — "is no longer scarce," Dave Morgan, CEO of Simulmedia, written in an essay of this month.

He postulated that because the Internet cannot be made to forget "pictures and moments of the past, such as an explosion on a train or a kiss during a riot," the reality of a world government inevitable is a problem that we're going to hear about a lot more. "


View the original article here

Camera of a start-up allows you to take shots before and later will focus

The company's technology allows the focus of an image to be adjusted after it is taken. When viewing a photo taken with a camera Lytro computer screen, you can, for example, click to bring people in the foreground into sharp relief or change focus to the mountains behind them.

But is the technology of Lytro only a neat feature, or is the next big thing in cameras?

Team founder of Silicon Valley startups and investors who have put in 50 million dollars is betting on the latter. The technology has won praise from computer and rave from early users of his prototype camera.

"We see technology companies in all the time, but it is rare that someone comes up with something that is so much of a breakthrough, said Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, a big investor in Lytro."Is superexciting ".

The Lytro founder and chief executive is Ren Ng, 31. Its success, experts say, was to take the research projects of recent years — that require perhaps 100 digital cameras and hurled a supercomputer — and squeeze the technology in a camera Assistant for the consumer market, this year.

Mr Ng explained the concept in 2006 in his doctoral thesis at Stanford University, who won the contest for the best PhD dissertation in computer science that year in the world of the Association for Computing Machinery. Since then Mr Ng tried to translate the idea into a product that can be brought to the market — and building a team of people to do so.

The camera Lytro data capture more light, from many points of view, it is possible with a traditional camera. That is accomplished with a special sensor called a microlens array that provides the equivalent of many goals in a small space. "That is the heart of the publication," said Pat Hanrahan, a professor at Stanford, who was Director of Mr Ng's thesis but is not involved in Lytro.

But the wealth of raw data only light comes to life with sophisticated software that enables a viewer to pass fire points. This allows you to still photographs to explore, like never before. "Become interactive images, living," said Mr Ng. He believed that a popular use can be families and friends roaming through different perspectives on the images of, say, holidays and parties published on Facebook (Lytro will have a Facebook application).

For a photographer, both amateur and professional, the Lytro means that the technology headaches to focus a shot go away. Richard Koci Hernandez, a photojournalist, said that when he tried a prototype of this year, he immediately recognized the potential impact.

"You just concentrate on image composition, but you don't need to worry about focusing more," says Mr Hern?ndez. "This is something you do later."

"That was the aha! time for me, "said Mr. Hernandez, Assistant Professor of new media at the Graduate School of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. "This is game-changing."

Mr. Hernandez, who is not affiliated with Lytro, was one of several photographers who tested prototypes. His model, he said, was sheathed in a black plastic shell, so he has not seen his design. But he said it was the size of a standard point-and-shoot camera. Image resolution, he added, was indistinguishable from that of his other point-and-shoots, a Canon and Nikon.

Eliminating any loss of resolution in camera as of Lytro, which is capturing light data from many points of view, is a real step forward, said Shree Nayar, Professor at Columbia University and expert on computer vision. Mr Nayar is familiar with the work of Mr. Ng, but said he had not seen anything that lytro did in more than a year.


View the original article here

State of the art: Apple Final Cut is dead. Viva the final cut.

He did use the present tense? Sorry. Final cut has been the industry leader. Did it cost $ 1,000. But now that it's all over.

Tuesday, Apple pulled a typical move by Apple: he killed off the two Final Cut 7 years at the height of its popularity.

Instead, Apple now offers something called Final Cut Pro X (pronounced "10"). But don't be fooled by the name. Is a new program, written from scratch. Apple says that a fresh start was needed to accommodate huge changes in the technological landscape.

Veteran Apple may, at this point, be feeling some creepy d?j? vu. Have you seen this movie before. Apple iMovie, not kill too, in 2008 and replace it with a completely new version, less capable that lacked many important features? It took three years before new updates iMovie finally passed its predecessor in features and consistency.

Some professional editor are already insisting that Apple has done exactly the same error with Final Cut X; underlined several flaws with the program after an earlier version of this article was published online on Wednesday. They say the new program lacks high-end features like the ability to edit multiple camera angles, for export to tape, to burn something more rudimentary DVD and work with EDL, XML files and OMF (used to exchange projects with other programs). You can use a second monitor to your computer, but you need new drivers of TV output for connecting a video monitor. You cannot change the settings of your exported QuickTime movies without the compressor to $ 50.

Apple admits that version x is a foundational piece ". It says that it will restore some of these features in time, and that other companies are quickly filling other holes.

For nonprofessionals, meanwhile, Final Cut is already tempted — especially because the price is $ 300, not $ 1,000. Is the first program of Apple which is only available for download by Mac App Store online, not on DVD. All programs previously called Final Cut Studio have been rolled into Final Cut except Motion and compressor, which are sold separately. Final Cut Express and DVD Studio Pro are gone.)

The new Final Cut has been radically redesigned. Actually, it looks and works much like iMovie, all dark grey, with "skimming"; you run the cursor over a clip without pressing the mouse button to play it.

Once you're past the shock of the new layout, the first thing you'll notice is that Apple has left most of the biggest annoyances of the old Final Cut cutting-room floor.

First — and this is huge — no more waiting to "make". You no longer sit there, dead in the water, while the software calculates the changes, block the program, meanwhile, whenever you add an effect or insert a piece of video that is in a different format. Final Cut X renders in the background, so you can keep right on changing. You can, however, organize your files, or delete clips during rendering.

Secondly, in the old Final Cut, was all too easy to drag and drop audio and video clip of sync accidentally; Little indicators " -1" or "+ 10", which shows how many frames out of you were a chronic headaches. But in the new final cut, "sync is sacred," as Apple puts it. Primary audio and Video are always in sync, and you can also block other clips together so that all move as one.

In fact, a clever feature called Compound clip allows you to collapse a stack of audio and video clips into a single sequence, resulting from the merger on the timeline. You can edit, move, and apply effects as if it were a single unit and then UN-Union that whenever you like. Clip compound make it simple to manage with a complicated composition without going quietly mad.


View the original article here

Thursday, June 6, 2554

Mature a start-up, working with AmEx

Then Facebook and Google borrowed the concept — and even the term check-ins. Analysts and users wondered if those Internet giants would squash Foursquare as a bug.

So far, apparently, Foursquare is holding the Earth. The company said this week that it had hit 10 million registered users, although I would not say how many of them are active.

And Thursday, Foursquare plans to introduce its partnership biggest until now: a national agreement with American Express to offer discounts to cardholders when they check in on their cell phone at some stores and restaurants.

Foursquare users are accustomed to receive prizes in the form of coupons and merit badges. But bids more substantial, such as those offered to holders of American Express card can bring Foursquare and other location based services further into the mainstream.

These services have been slower to recover between people who do not live in dense urban areas like Manhattan, where the meetings with friends are often just a taxi ride away.

In may, the Pew Research Center found that only 4 percent of American adults use such services to share their location. Companies like Foursquare to offers, as a way to make their offers more attractive for those who may not want to meet after work for a drink, but would be interested to get a deep discount on sneakers.

"In 2010, it was all about check-in," said Noah Elkin, an industry analyst with eMarketer, a mobile advertising and marketing company. "Now, is to check out".

Although Foursquare will not receive any revenue from the deal, American Express, says the promotion will help legitimize the approach of the company and will help attract other more profitable partnerships.

To begin, American Express will offer deals to the authorities and the sports clothing retailer H & M, together with some restaurants in New York, as the barbecue and Union Square Cafe mixed Blue Smoke. For example, buyers who spend $ 75 m & H will receive a $ 10 credit to their American Express accounts. Those who spend $ 50 at Sports Authority will get a reward of $ 20.

Edward p. Gilligan, vice President of American Express, said that the national deployment came after a test run in March South from music and Technology Conference Southwest. On average, those in the program spent more than 20 percent of American Express card holders who do not have access to special offers, Mr. Gilligan said.

"We have always done marketing with merchants to make offerings to our members, how to send offers by direct mail, put the information on sales on the Internet," he said. "But the response rates tend to be low".

The trial version of Foursquare bond brought a higher response rate than anything we're doing, "said Mr. Gilligan.

American Express also hopes that by combining with a start-up that appeals to hip and technologically skilled, it can appeal to a younger clientele.

"We don't tend to tilt under 35," said Mr Gilligan. "Hopefully this will help us to remain relevant to younger customers.

He said the company elected to partner with Foursquare instead of Google or Facebook why Foursquare already has a widely accepted system that rewards the user loyalty.

American Express can work with other companies in the future, said Mr. Gilligan, though he said he was sure that Foursquare would be the focus of the company for a while. "The point is for us to find customers where they are already active," he said.

Dennis Crowley, Executive Director and a founder of Foursquare, attributed his momentum continued in its singular focus on the spot. "When people think about Facebook, think about it as a place to send their friends messages or post updates, not necessarily as a place for check-in," he said. "We are associated with one thing, position, and that really helps."

He also said that the partnership of American Express was a sign that Foursquare, which now has about 21 million dollars from investors and more than 60 employees, was maturing. "We started by offering vouchers for Keys D-Lite and other smaller deals, and now we are introducing offers to the millions that use American Express," he said.

Foursquare is growing faster than similar startups. Gowalla, another check in service based in Austin, TeX., has about a million users, while Loopt, a location service rival mobile, has more than five million.

Google says its latitude service has 10 million active users over the last 30 days, although that includes people who were using on the PC.

Malorie Lucich, Facebook spokesman, declined to say how its location service called places, was faring. In the past, the company said that more than 250 million people were using the mobile application, although it did not offer specifics on location service.

Analysts say the capacity of those services offer customized offers buyers will become more valuable as the daily deal and coupon market becomes more and more cluttered.

"If you look at Groupon and LivingSocial, they put out a lot of offers, but are random," said Madeline k. Aufseeser, a senior analyst at Aite Group, a research and consulting firm focused on the financial services sector. "You could be a man and constantly getting beauty services offered by you."

Collaborations, such as the American Express one, he said, is targeted to merchants because the sites are aimed at those who actually use them. In addition, companies working with Foursquare and American Express will be able to leave the paper coupons or even the need to scan the screen of their phone at a Terminal. The awards will be counted behind the scenes with every shot and the tap.

"There is a whole new industry evolving around to deliver more sophisticated offerings, geographic based," he said. "It's only going to get much more powerful."


View the original article here

Oracle profit rises, but weak Hardware sales are troubling

Oracle said computer sales in its fourth quarter ended May 31, dropped the 6 percent to 1.2 billion dollars compared to the same quarter a year earlier. When services are added, the company's hardware revenue was flat, at 1.8 billion dollars.

Oracle threw hardware as an important part of its future and the poor showing raised fears that the acquisition of 7.4 billion Sun was failed to live up to its billing.

Shares of Oracle fell by more than 4 percent in after-hours trading. Investors have long been suspicious about Oracle can turn around business server Sun, who struggled before the acquisition was completed in late January.

Oracle's fourth quarter was the first time investors were able to see a full-on-year comparison of that segment owned by Oracle.

Brendan Barnicle, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities, said the results underwhelming hardware sector were not too worrying. The results of hardware, however, were still much lower than the company had forecast, he said.

"They have identified this early that they would streamline the business of Sun," said Mr. Barnicle. "It takes a while to do, but all of us hoped that would have done by now."

Oracle execs emphatically rejected the idea that they are suffering for hardware sales. Throw the decline as part of a deliberate strategy to pare back unprofitable sales. Two policies, the resale of products of other companies and sale of low-cost servers, not the Oracle strategy, said Mark Hurd v., Oracle Co-President.

"I just think we are following the fundamentals of building a solid business," he said in a conference call. He described the lost revenue as "worthless".

Oracle profit still beat expectations. Excluding certain one-time charges, earnings were 75 cents per share; analysts had expected 71 cents per share, according to a survey conducted by Thomson Reuters.

Oracle has reported that the total net income in the fourth quarter rose 36 percent, to $ 3.2 billion, or 62 cents per share, from $ 2.4 billion, or 46 cents, in the year-ago quarter.

The company said revenue climbed 13 percent to 10.8 billion, from $ 9.5 billion. Analysts had expected 10.75 billion.

The decline in sales of hardware was more than made by increases in the main business of Oracle software. New license software revenue, a critical measure of the activity of the company because it brings future recurring revenues, grew 19 percent to $ 3.7 billion.

Executives also boasted Exadata, a more recent initiative to sell software bundled with the server for large companies. More than 1,000 Exadata machines installed around the world, Oracle said, and the current fiscal year in goal is to triple that number.

Oracle has estimated that its revenues would rise before the fourth 10 to 13 per cent, which falls within analysts ' expectations. Adjusted income should be 45-48 cents per share, in line with the average estimate of 46 cents by analysts.


View the original article here

DealBook: Hulu weighs sale after unsolicited offer

HuluHulu has established itself as a Centre for TV shows and movies online streaming.

Hulu, the online video service, weighs a possible sale of the company after receiving a takeover bid by an unidentified bidder, informed on people said Tuesday.

The unsolicited bid has prompted the Council of Hulu, considering its options, and the company is talking to potential counselors, these people said. May contact potential buyers, as well as on other media companies and private equity firms who wanted the opportunity to purchase the service.

Once people warning that the Council of Hulu had not decided to sell.

Founded as a joint venture by NBC Universal, News Corporation, the Walt Disney Company and Providence Equity Partners, Hulu has established itself as a hub for streaming TV shows and movies online.

Though popular, Hulu has worked to make a profit. The company introduced a subscription service to complement its main offering free, advertising based.

A potential buyer would also consider the cost of premium content from Hulu, noted Andy Hargreaves, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities. A giant of technology such as Microsoft or Google might be a good fit, he said, but it would be difficult.

"The difficulty of purchasing Hulu is that you are purchasing from content providers, so there's a decent chance that the cost of content eventually will rise," he said. "But if you think revenue will grow in line with the costs, so it might be worth 2 billion dollars or more."

Hulu has lost two of his most vocal supporters: Peter Chernin, former President of News Corporation and Jeff Zucker, NBC Universal, who left last fall. James Murdoch, who became Deputy Chief Operating Officer of News Corporation in March, is among those who are much more skeptical about the prospects of Hulu's business

Last year, Hulu considering an initial public offering of staging, but set aside his plans.

Representatives for Hulu declined to comment or were not available.

News of the offer at the beginning is reported by The Wall Street Journal.


View the original article here

As 3D falls from favor, Director of ' Transformers ' seeks to promote it

In particular, Mr Bay, the Director and Paramount Pictures, which will publish "Dark of the Moon" on June 29, are racing to convince viewers that the robot movie is really, truly, honestly worth the extra $ 3 to $ 5 per ticket to see it in 3-d.

This is unknown territory for Mr. Bay, which usually has to defend the narrative arc of his films, not the visuals. But there has been a spate of disappointing revenues for movies in 3D as an audience in North America has been souring on format. Consequently, companies with huge investments in technology are scrambling to reverse the downward trend. Rebellion of consumers above the premium ticket price is a recent films like "Pirates of the Caribbean: on Stranger tides" fought in 3-d while 85 percent of the total domestic box office for "Avatar" came from 3D in 2009, the format delivered only about 47 percent of revenue "On Stranger tides."

The industry is counting on "Dark of the Moon" to turn around perceptions of 3-d — even on Wall Street. Actions for DreamWorks Animation, one of Hollywood's most vocal supporters of 3D, fell nearly 18 percent compared to last month. Stock in Regal Entertainment, the largest theater chain in the nation, dropped 11 percent, which analysts link to 3D. RealD 3D technology leader, down 24 percent.

So Mr. Bay was chatting with journalists and bloggers about how he has pushed the technology, including a camera for the helmet of a paratrooper strapping. At an industry event on May 18, Paramount put on stage with James Cameron, who directed "Avatar" to extol the virtues of middle and fanned chat video across the Web. Television advertising almost sort of funny and wear glasses contain slogans such as "3-d was transformed".

Last week, Mr Bay also called leaders of major theater chains to implore them to show "Dark of the Moon" in a way that burns more rapidly out bulbs 3D projector but does look brighter and sharper.

"We are putting all our resources in this," said Brad Grey, Chairman of Paramount. "Is the most spectacular visual experience I have ever seen".

Filming of "Dark of the Moon" cost an extra $ 30 million at Paramount, bringing the total budget of 195 million dollars. Robot launch straight to viewers, and the men of the same suit ala soar around office buildings in Chicago. Tangle of robot wheel with military helicopters; a skyscraper is ripped in half by a trio of crazed mechanic. The story focuses on the Autobots and Decepticons clash on a spacecraft.

"If this was my name on it, I was determined to make technically perfect," Mr Bay said by telephone. "We have devoted an enormous amount of time making sure that the eye is the transition from one shot to shot."

Using the crew "Avatar" of Mr. Cameron, Mr. Bay in particular turned in 3-d on outdoor collections; so far the technology has mostly been limited to departments because of its mass. Mr Bay, known for the rapid pace of its images, also had to slow down a bit, using the blows longer and wider shots to maximize the effect. "If you pan too quickly will give viewers a feeling nervous," he said.

Industry analysts say studios themselves have sent the market reeling releasing 3D movies stream in paragraph format. Many film billed as 3D extravagances recently haven't been filmed using 3D cameras but were hastily converted into three dimensions during the post-production work.

"The consumer has had a reaction to evil 3D and 3D thin," said Rob Moore, vice Chairman of Paramount. "I'm tired of sitting in a theater thinking, ' wait, is this film in 3-d, or not?" Well, with ' Transformers ' people are going to leave saying: ' Absolutely see this in 3-d. ' "

Mr. Bay is not just big-time Director having to proselytize. Next month, Steven Spielberg would trek at Comic-Con International Convention in San Diego for comic book enthusiasts and entertainment related, to promote his upcoming film 3-d "the adventures of Tintin: secret of the Unicorn." Martin Scorsese has a 3-d period mystery, "Hugo cabret," due in November; Mr Cameron is working on "Avatar" sequels and a 3D version of "Titanic".

"Transformers" is one of the most valuable franchise of Hollywood. The first movie took in approximately $ 710 million in 2007. Two years later "Revenge of the Fallen" had global sales of more than 836 million dollars despite abysmal reviews. (Mr Bay has then said that even he winces when she looks back on his fiction.)

If many viewers opt to see "Dark of the Moon" in 3-d, it could climb over one billion dollars. Mr Cameron predicts consumers will respond favorably.

"When they see something that blows their minds, which is the most exciting," said may 18 event, which contained about 15 minutes of the film "Dark of the Moon". "Like the one we just experienced here."


View the original article here

Bits: Loopt limelight everyday Deal model upside down with U-Deal

The best feature of the daily deal sites like Groupon and living social is also their worst. They tend to flood the inboxes of their subscribers with dozens of discounted services from a wide range of places — by tequila tastings at a Mexican restaurant with private lessons at a yoga studio in lawn care services of luxury — whether or not users are concerned.

Loopt lets users request a deal and recruit others to commit to purchase it if the deal is offered.Loopt lets users take a bargain and recruit others to commit to purchase if the deal is offered.

Loopt, a location-based mobile communications, is seeking a slightly different approach to the phenomenon daily deal. The company is testing a program in San Francisco that calls U-offerings; the idea is to let people who use its service request the deal they want and then recruit their friends and family through Facebook and Twitter to commit to purchase if the deal gets green lighted. Then, Loopt stretches for the company or the dealer and presents them with the offer.

"Users get to choose where the deal is and are involved in the process," said Sam Altman, CEO and founder of the company. "This is the inverse of the daily deal model".

The company introduced the new early Wednesday and late in the afternoon had already secured the first agreement: a travel voucher $ 35 with Virgin America worth $ 100. Loopt provided 500 gift certificates to their users and sold all of them within the hour.

While Loopt is already partnering with Groupon to show users deals in their area, Mr. Altman thinks that the new feature could be a bigger advantage for companies looking for loyal customers. In addition, Loopt can set caps on how many registered users for a bargain, circumvent the problem of small businesses that get overwhelmed by the response to their bigger deal than expected.

"Their main customers claim by word of mouth," he said. "As more people sign up for a deal, we can call this activity and say we have $ 2,000 in revenue and new customers, if you accept these conditions."

Abby Lunardini, a spokesman at Virgin America, said the company was satisfied with the results from the experiment group purchasing.

"Adding component generated through U-Deals was something that was really cool and interesting for us, because you really get to people who want to buy," he said. "Our fliers tend to live through their mobile devices and online and are super-engaged with our brand in those channels".

On Thursday, I reported the growing interest of merchants to offer personalized offers to encourage repeated visits and loyalty, instead of targeting a large audience that can collect once and never return.

Ms. Lunardini said that American Virgin has seen the high returns from work with Loopt users offers targeted campaigns.

"Last year we launched the first airline offer with their geolocation, offering a two-for-one deal on our New Mexico flights for those who checked in at popular local food truck in L.A. and San Francisco," he said. "That day was our fifth day of highest sales in 2010."


View the original article here

Dutch lawmakers adopt net neutrality Bill

The measure, which was adopted by a large majority in the lower House of Dutch Parliament, will prevent the Tweede Kamer, KPN, the Dutch telecommunications market leader and the Dutch unit Vodafone and T-Mobile, block or charging for Internet services. Its sponsors said that the measure would pass a proforma to review Dutch Senate smoothly.

Analysts said that the restrictions imposed in the Netherlands may shape Europe is wider, the evolving debate on net neutrality, pushing more countries of the continent to limit operators acting as self-appointed toll collectors of mobile Internet.

"I could see even some countries, following the example of the Netherlands," said Jacques de Greling, an analyst at Natixis, a French Bank. "I think there will be pressure from consumers to make clear what they are buying, whether Internet or Internet-full light."

Supporters greeted the move as a victory for consumers, while industry officials predicted that the mobile broadband charges could increase in the Netherlands to compensate for the new restrictions.

"We support network neutrality," said Sandra de Jong, spokesman for Consumentenbond, the largest Dutch consumer organization, based in the Hague. "We do not believe that operators should be able to limit Internet. That would be a bad precedent. "

Luigi Gambardella, President of the Executive Committee of the Association of European Telecommunications Network operators, an industrial group headquartered in Brussels, warned that the Netherlands legislation could dissuade operators from making the necessary investments in high-speed networks for fear of expensive infrastructure but unprofitable.

"Any further regulation should avoid discouraging investment and innovative business models, which leads to more efficient use of networks and the creation of new business opportunities," said Mr. Gambardella. He said that operators needed the ability to charge different rates for different levels of service, to cover the costs of data-demanding applications.

Operators still could offer a range of mobile data rates with different download speed and service levels, but would not be able to bind the specific rates for specific Internet services.

Under Dutch law, the operators could be fined up to 10 percent of their annual sales to violations by the national telecommunications regulator OPTA.

Patrick Nickolson, a spokesman for KPN, said that the measure could lead to increased broadband prices in the Netherlands, because operators are limited in their ability to structure differentiated data packets based on consumption.

"We regret that the Dutch Parliament will not take more time to consider this," said Mr. Nickolson. "This will limit our ability to develop a new portfolio of rates and there is at least the risk of higher prices, because our options to differentiate now will be more limited."

Stephen Collins, the head of Government and regulatory affairs in London for Skype, applauded the move by legislators.

"Skype welcomes the fair and reasonable that the Dutch Parliament has adopted today," said Mr. Collins. "Set an example for other countries in Europe and elsewhere to follow."

Bruno Braakhuis, a Dutch legislator from Haarlem, which was the original sponsor of the legislation, called the adoption of a victory for consumers.

"For us, this is indeed a fundamental right," said Mr. Braakhuis, a member of the party GroenLinks. "We believe net neutrality to be as important as freedom of the press, freedom of speech".

The Dutch restrictions on operators are the first 27 European Union countries. The European Commission and the European Parliament have approved the guidelines of network neutrality, but still have not taken any legal action against operators that block or impose additional fees on consumers using services like Skype, voice and Internet video service is being acquired by Microsoft and WhatsApp, a mobile software company headquartered in Santa Clara, California.

Sanctions may be coming, however.


View the original article here

Wednesday, June 5, 2554

Home nearing completion of review Patent Office

WASHINGTON — A legislative review of the United States Patent and Trademark Office moved towards completion in the House on Tuesday, when members of important committees decided to keep the Office subject to annual appropriations, but in the end for the first time the diversion of patent fees for other uses.

The agreement between the leaders of the House Judiciary and appropriations committees clears the way for the Bill, H.R. 1249, to be brought to the House as soon as Wednesday, when other amendments also will be considered.

The Bill generally updates the process for challenging patents and would change the patent system is one that rewards a patent for the first inventor to submit a specific request.

Currently, the first person to invent something has priority, regardless of whether he is the first to submit an application.

The financing agreement received conditional support from the sponsor of a similar Senate bill that passed by a wide margin in March.

Added to the White House to support his cautionary tale, though noted that the final bill may need "additional direction" to ensure adequate funding for the Patent Office.

"After six years of work towards patent reform, we are close to the finish line," Lamar s. Smith, a Texas Republican who is Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said Tuesday.

The appropriations Committee members were reluctant to support a proposal that would make the patent office self-financing, leaving out of the annual appropriations process.

The compromise calls for some collections of taxes in excess of the budget every year allocated to the Patent Office deposited in a reserve fund exclusively for the Patent Office.

The specific language, however, says that the House will have to separately authorize the use of any part of the reserve fund.

The Office of management and budget said that access "to ensure" available to the reserve fund.

"The Administration looks forward to working with Congress to provide additional direction" for "timely access to all tax collections," said the statement O.M.B ...

Senator Patrick j. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who is Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and that was the main sponsor of such a patent law, said that the compromise language on a reserve fund "would be a concrete step in the right direction", "if it is coupled with a commitment of appropriations House Committee to provide the Patent and Trademark Office with access to the excess taxes it collects each year."


View the original article here