280? 95? 101? Child's play. At least here, the infrastructure has grown at a pace to match the saturation of cars. Not so in China:
A traffic jam stretching more than 60 miles in China has entered its ninth day with no end in sight, state media reported.
Cars and trucks have been slowed to a crawl since August 14 on the National Expressway 110, which is also known as the G110, the major route from Beijing to Zhangjiakou, Xinhua News reported.
Officials expect the congestion to continue until workers complete construction projects on September 13, the report said.
State media reported that Chinese drivers have become accustomed to the severe delays, noting a similar jam in July that slowed traffic for close to a month.
It even has its own Wikipedia page, putting it on a footing with hurricanes and oil spills. There's a whole illicit economy springing up to cater to drivers who evidently haven't been home in days. My question is: how does this affect the real economy? That's got to be a lot of weirdly empty workplaces...
There was some uncertainty as to whether the newly revived season of Futurama would preserve the geeky humor that so characterized the original run. The first few new episodes have seemed like they're making a game attempt (plots focusing on Leonardo da Vinci and iPhones and the like), but occasionally forced rebus-style math gags ("Studio 1²2¹3³", huh?) have left me cold. Well, this latest one should put paid to such gripes.
In the episode “The Prisoner of Benda,” the Professor and Amy use a new invention to switch bodies. Unfortunately, they discover that the same two brains can’t switch twice and have to come up with some equation to prove that, with enough people switching, eventually everyone will end up in their rightful form. This, of course, leads to much hijinks as well as the grossest sex scene the show has ever done (take that, Prof. Farnsworth and Mom!).
Of course, Keeler decided to go the hard route and come up with a suitable equation himself. It was first teased in an interview that head writer and executive producer David X. Cohen gave to the American Physical Society:
“In an APS News exclusive, Cohen reveals for the first time that in the 10th episode of the upcoming season, tentatively entitled “The Prisoner of Benda,” a theorem based on group theory was specifically written (and proven!) by staffer/PhD mathematician Ken Keeler to explain a plot twist. Cohen can’t help but chuckle at the irony: his television-writing rule is that entertainment trumps science, but in this special case, a mathematical theorem was penned for the sake of entertainment.”
Now that the episode has aired, we can check out the theorem in full. Well, I won’t. I suck at math. But the people over at the Futurama wiki The Infosphere have. If there’s anyone as smart as Futurama writers, it’s Futurama fans.
Of course I was traveling at the time it aired, and hotels tend not to have Comedy Central (apparently due to them using naughty-type words on occasion), so it wasn't until last night that I saw it. But damn, was it well worth it. Not just geeky as hell, but damn fine entertainment too.
Color me skeptical but slightly optimistic: here's the teaser trailer for Top Gear USA.
No Adam Carolla, for whatever reason. My first reaction is that the hosts all look the same and are way too supportive of each other. But my second is that we have no idea how these guys all actually act when they're establishing their own characters and chemistry. Maybe they really have given up on the idea of trying to recreate Top Gear with American clones of the British presenters.
Which is probably the way it should happen, if they're going to do it at all. I mean, the whole concept seems superfluous; we already have the real thing on BBCA, and if the producers think the American audience is failing to follow it because they can't understand the accents or the local politics or car brands like Vauxhall and Citroën, they need to talk to a few car people. Everyone loves it just as it is.
If the show is being created by people who think there's domestic advertising money that can be made from a domestic Top Gear, they must be fully aware that all those advertisers will be car companies, and therefore the show won't be able to slam bad cars. This isn't the BBC. So I guess they must be redesigning the format of the show to focus more on the challenges, the feats of driving, the... character interplay?
Top Gear strikes a balance between omniscient voice-overs explaining truths about the auto industry and goofy first-person driving experiences by a trio of misfits whose foibles we're all intimately familiar with. Character is all-important to the existing show. Without it even Top Gear would be unwatchable.
The only way Top Gear USA would not be is if it's being cast as a completely different kind of show.
I'll definitely watch it, just out of morbid curiosity. This trailer makes it look like they've got at least the building blocks in place. But there's so much more that's all still up in the air.
I think it'll suffer without Carolla, I really do. No matter what kind of show it is. He would have been perfect.
Don't suppose this is that whole "green economy" thing everyone's been talking about for so long:
Lotus has finally taken all of the wraps off of its newly upgraded 2011 Elise roadster, with the big change coming in the form of a startlingly high 46.7 U.S. miles per gallon on the European cycle. Lotus says this new Elise also manages to put out the lowest amount of carbon dioxide of any gasoline driven sportscar in the world, with just 149 grams per kilometer.
Between this, the Porsche 918 Spyder, and the various Ferraris with "green" credentials (mostly due to paint), I guess we have to conclude that the busiest people in the automotive industry these days are the ones trying to figure out how to make sports cars eco-friendly while still maintaining acceptable performance—and even increasing it.
It'll inevitably mean more computer control, since it's difficult to imagine a car with minimalist feature sets and manual powertrains at the same time as invasive hybrid systems and fuel-saving and emissions-controlling features (EGR and catalytic converters and direct injection tend to do more harm than good to performance).
Still, this sounds like a whole lot better proposition than a Tesla.
Wouldn't surprise me if not. Maybe one of these days I should go ahead and change the blog code to show a minimum of x posts if there are none from the past week, but a) I've always considered it a failure of the endless decade-and-counting blogmathon if I resort to such a solution, and b) how can I think of modifying this, the world's most perfect, feature-rich, and well-conceived blogging software that I wrote in about eight hours back in 2001?
What's to say, anyway? I hate making empty statements for the sake of keeping traffic flowing. But there's just not that much I can pontificate about these days. iPhone 4? iPad? Haven't yet had the pleasure. Cars? Nothing too photogenic or storyworthy to report. Life in the Big City™? It's still there. Politics? Um... what?
Oh, hey, I just got a 401 scam-spam with the subject line:
Dogs that bite are not ordinarily lavished with praise, but Jerry Douthett's little dog Kiko is being hailed as a lifesaver. Kiko apparently sensed an infection festering in his master's right big toe -- and chewed most of it off after Douthett passed out in a drunken stupor.
A trip to the hospital confirmed Douthett's digit required amputation, and Kiko is being heralded by his owner for helping him realize he has been suffering from Type 2 diabetes. Douthett had a dangerously high blood-sugar level of 560 when admitted -- many times the recommended 80 to 120.
"Jerry had had all these Margaritas, so I just let him sleep," said his wife, Rosee, a registered nurse. "But then I heard these screams coming from the bedroom, and he was yelling, 'My toe's gone, my toe's gone!'"
That's a hell of a way to wake up. But I love the writing style in this article:
In the meantime, he and friends are trotting out every pun they can think of to lighten the incident. That would include hosting a concert -- a "toe-jam" -- to recognize Kiko, and jokes about how Douthett should patronize eateries like Noto's.
Even before surgery, he said he asked a nurse, "Is there any chance I can get whatever's left of my toe, so I can give it to Kiko as a treat?"
He said she replied, "That's the sickest thing I ever heard."
We used to have a problem with a variety of birds that would persistently build nests in the rafters right above where a car would usefully be parked, with predictable results.
They were quite stubborn. No matter how many times their nests got washed away with high-pressure hose water, they'd just sit in the trees across the clearing and sulk for a little while, then come back as soon as the coast was clear and rebuild it.
Well, it hasn't been much of a problem in the last month or so, ever since a family of eagles moved in.
I say "family" because I'm pretty sure there's at least three of them, though I generally only see two at once. They roam all around the neighborhood, hulking on power lines and tree branches and swooping low across the road with nary a care for cars or humans. They have a distinctive call that they seem to use for great effect in short bursts of communication.
And they've taken to keeping the backyard completely clear of interloper birds. The other day I was walking across the lawn to the driveway when suddenly the trees across the creek exploded in a mass of blackbirds that frantically flew off in every direction; spinning around I saw two eagles gliding low across the lawn behind me, one of them carrying a bird it had just nabbed.
They hunt in concert, but then go all NOT YOURS CANT HAVE. You know, every relationship requires communication.
Still, they've got their schtick down pat. Replete with gloating, just like kookaburras.
Regarding the iPhone 4 antenna debacle: Jobs says free cases for all, and refunds for anyone who wants one.
Just wondering something:
Jobs: Certainly what was portrayed in that total article never passed my consciousness. And I talked to Ruben and Ruben says it's total bullshit too.
Is that a direct quote? Rather strong language for a press conference, I tend to think.
Anyway, I guess this is how a company gets to make its customers happy when it has all the money in the world. According to the data, though, not a lot of people are very likely to jump on this offer.
Something that's been common to all the Stevenotes going back the past ten years or so is that they're packed to the gills with supporting information, positive press stories, data that backs up the company's line—stuff you wouldn't get from any other source, possibly because it sounds so suspect coming from the horse's mouth. I wonder how much of Steve's beguiling stage presence has to do with his ability to wrap up any piece of juicy information in a pillow-fort of customer satisfaction numbers, performance stats, raw numbers of features, and other such numerical hors d'oeuvre such that by the time you actually get to the main course of the missive you feel like anyone would be an idiot not to jump on board.
But hey, he even had a piece of unexpected bad news to deliver in this one: according to customer data, more calls are getting dropped with the iPhone 4 than with the 3GS. Not many more, but more nonetheless. Certainly judging by the independent benchmarks we've been seeing from various sites, you'd think the reception would be far more robust even with the Grip of Death taken into account. But apparently it isn't. (Steve does have a theory for why this is, though: people upgrading from their 3GSes haven't bought new cases yet.)
Anyway, the big question is whether holding a press conference like this and making this kind of customer-pacification offer will help calm the shouting, or if it'll just exacerbate it. That's probably the trickiest question anyone in Steve's position has to make. I certainly can't guess which will happen; but I think this was the right move. Lots of upsides, and considering Apple can absorb the cost pretty easily these days, one (potential) downside: it might just spawn memes as enduring as "Apple's Windows Vista" or "Eat Up Martha". And that, they don't need.
DETROIT - Corvette owners could soon be revving up an engine they built with their own hands.
General Motors Co. said Monday that buyers who order a 2011 Corvette Z06 or ZR1 can help assemble their cars' high-performance LS7 and LS9 engines. The automaker believes the program is the first of its kind in the industry.
The engines will be built at GM's Performance Build Centre in Wixom, Mich., where GM assembles all of its high-performance engines by hand. The facility can assemble up to 15,000 engines per year, GM spokesman Tom Read said.
Read said it will take buyers about six hours to assemble, adjust and clean their engines with the parts provided. A skilled technician will supervise.
And the engines are even covered under the normal warranty. I think this is an awesome idea.
Of course, if they're just giving people a carrot prior to sticking us with the inevitable V6 Corvette, that's another story...
So Family Guy came back from the dead, and that was successful enough that it made Comedy Central bring back Futurama, and thus far it looks like that was a good move—it's taken them a little while to settle back down into their groove, but the consensus as of last week's episode ("Proposition Infinity") seems to be that it's back and IN COLOR.
So clearly the latest trend is to resurrect cancelled properties that have proven cult favorites among fans who have now grown to DVD-buying age. So what's next? Beavis & Butt-head?
It has been over 12-years since Beavis and Butt-Head were airing new episodes on MTV, but most people can still instantly recognize the unique “huh huh, huh huh” laugh of Butt-Head, or the “fire, fire!” cries from Beavis. The show produced 200 episodes over seven seasons, a feature movie, and now it seems that the trash talking duo are about to make their TV comeback on the network that made them- and creator Mike Judge- famous.
Since the end of the series, Judge has been a busy guy. He wrote and directed several movies including the cult classics Office Space and Idiocracy, he created King of the Hill and has leant his voice to several animated shows. The guy has been busy. Now, according to Reviewniverse, Judge is hard at work to bring back Beavis and Butt-Head for a slot on MTV’s new primetime lineup.
Recently MTV has begun to limit their once rampant slew of reality shows like the recently cancelled The Hills, in favor of scripted programming like The Hard Times of RJ Berger.
According to the report, Judge will keep the original show’s low budget look, and the format will remain true to the original episodes, where Beavis and Butt-Head comment on music videos. The show will feature current music videos, but the format will be the same.
That certainly hits the right notes: for one thing, it has to look desperately low-budget, and sound barely-scripted. The show was at its most successful as a stream-of-consciousness series of ad-libs by Judge, with one-liners and oddball turns of phrase coming out of left field, the way that South Park in its early years kept hitting us with "butt-pipe" and "ass spelunker" and random jokes about Murphy Brown. Trying to formalize the lexicon polished off all the sharp little knobs from South Park, but unfortunately those were what made it so funny; and it's the same with Beavis & Butt-head, no matter how hysterical the thoroughly polished movie was (and it was).
But it's also key that it'll be focused on music videos. Those were always the best part; and every DVD release that has trimmed them out and strung together little ten-minute "episodes" based on nothing but the thin plots that took place between the video riffings has the feel of a reanimated zombie. It's visually recognizable, but there's just no life in it.
Judge of all people seems not to have fallen so far from his roots, Lucas-style, as to have forgotten what made his signature show so funny. Naturally I'll withhold judgment until I see it... but I definitely want to see it.
Okay, am I the only person who thought that the evil bear in Toy Story 3 was voiced by Jack Sheldon, the "Schoolhouse Rock" guy? I was shocked to discover that it wasn't him.
Especially considering all the self-parody work Sheldon has done lately, ranging from Johnny Bravo to Family Guy to Drawn Together. I thought it was perfect casting, until I found out it wasn't.
In the end it’s difficult to describe without spoiling it, which is why I’m not going into more detail. But since everyone talks about misting up at the end – or flat-out sobbing, depending – and yes, it’s a killer. It’s a surprisingly long goodbye that gives each character their due and closes the story with gentle grace. (And they promptly pick you back up and makes you laugh with an extended credit sequence.) For me, though, the most effective episode came earlier, in the final Scene of Great Peril. All of these movies have moments were everything seems lost, when escape seems impossible, when Evil seems about to triumph, and of course TS3 had that scene. Usually the heroes are just about to do something before they’re saved, or they make one desperate last lunge that turns to be the exact right thing to do, and if they have a moment of doubt and fear it lasts one beat, two beat, three – SALVATION!
Not this time. Again, I don’t want to spoil anything, but in retrospect it reminded of “Titanic,” only inasmuch as the emotion in TS3 were absent from the sinking of the ship. Cameron uses emotion to explore the possibilities of computers; Pixar uses computers to explore the possibilities of emotion. You’ll know what I mean when you see the scene. If you saw, you know, right? The expressions, the hands, the dread, the quick and necessary assumption of acceptance. It’s a Bambi’s-Mom-is-Shot moment but much deeper, and I don’t think there’s anything like it in the Disney canon.
It's funny: you can describe the scene in synopsis form using maybe three brisk sentences. The plot of it is simple; the staging is nonspecific. But it's the execution that makes a great movie (or a Pixar movie, but I repeat myself) what it is.
Someone of the Michael Bay or Brothers Wachowski school would flesh out the scene by building it up with intricate details of character movements and actions, stringing them together in a Rube Goldberg machine of direction and cause-and-effect until you can't summarize the scene in those few brief words, but rather a thick sheaf of stage directions and storyboards covered with arrows and notations. But the way this was done, it's 10% concept and 90% all the little things that fit in between, things that can't be captured on paper: character and camera work and color and pacing and what for all the world feels like volcanic heat on your face.
They're relentless, these Jobsian people. And never once do they give the impression they're making it up as they go along.
Is it just me, or have those conversational and forthright press releases by Steve Jobs of late been the start of a trend?
Here's McDonalds' CEO responding to some anti-anything-fun group:
On behalf of McDonald's franchisees and our 1.6 million employees around the world, I am writing to set the record straight regarding the misinformation that CSPI communicated about McDonald's in your June 22nd press release. I am referring to CSPI's threat to sue McDonald's within 30 days if we continue to include a toy as part of the positive and popular Happy Meal customer experience we provide.
We have a long history of working with responsible NGOs who are interested in serious dialogue and meaningful engagement; and we are open to constructive feedback. You say you want a dialogue with McDonald's, but your tactics and inflammatory rhetoric suggest otherwise. CSPI's twisted characterization of McDonald's as "the stranger in the playground handing out candy to children" is an insult to every one of our franchisees and employees around the world. When CSPI refers to America's children as "an unpaid drone army," you similarly denigrate parents and families, because they are fully capable of making their own decisions. You should apologize.
Here are several other things you should know.
First, the public does not support your lawsuit. Internet sites, blogs and network surveys suggest that public opinion is running overwhelmingly against your premise. Our customer websites and phone lines at McDonald's are also busy, with more than nine out of ten customers disagreeing with your agenda. Parents, in particular, strongly believe they have the right and responsibility to decide what's best for their children, not CSPI. It really is that simple.
Speaking of fast-food joints, I hope people have stopped picking on McDonald's, because have you been in a McDonald's lately? It's pitiful: it's like the whole restaurant is one big apology for its own existence. Everything they sell and do is just wreathed in contrition for all past sins real or imagined. Chicken wraps. Fruit salads. The only place Ronald McDonald appears is in a tiny icon on the bag, of him jumping around and being "active" and recycling the bag in an approved disposal container. Even the "I'm Lovin' It" slogan is printed on the bag in about seventy different languages, just in case anyone was planning to accuse McDonald's of being racist or something. Far from being purveyors of gluttonous masses of meat, you can barely even buy a frickin' burger there anymore—they get smaller every year, it seems, and even a Big Mac is less food than your typical Taco Bell gordita—but the "We're good guys, honest, please don't leave" slogans just get louder and louder. I hope people are proud of themselves.
Yet, naturally, everyone loves In-N-Out, even though it's far far worse for you. (And tastier, too. By some kind of astonishing coincidence.)
I'm glad they're standing up for themselves for once. Maybe Steve's setting the example.
Via JMH, an anonymous Microsoft blogger gives the inside view on the state of the union.
Yes, we need our Neutron Jack at this point. We have our supposedly endangered cash cows and then a lot of products and operations clinging on. Many of which that would never exist in a sane company. Spin-off those groups to live or die on their own, with Microsoft owning appropriate stock such that if their survival instinct kicks in and they flourish, it will be a nice hefty return. You also have to realize that product groups are way overstaffed and just need engineers, in this day and age, that can do it all vs. being silo'd into their coding, testing, or spec'ing narrow band. Specialization is not sustainable. And the Partner system needs to be nuked away: more and more it's leading to bad short-term shiny decisions meant to make Partner. Well, this list goes on. I think our next CEO comes from the outside, because only an outsider at this point can scrub the company clean and ensure that the corporate DNA is rewritten.
And it's written from a May 30 perspective, prior to the Kin being killed off, so it's probably more optimistic-sounding than it even should.
So yeah, there's that sober look at the numbers that states that it's premature to suggest Microsoft is at death's door. But it sure doesn't look like a company a lot of fresh college kids are going to want to jump on board with by default anymore.
Lotus is planning a radical shake-up of its heritage as it pushes upmarket to take on Porsche, Ferrari and Aston Martin as part of what it is calling "the dawn of a new era".
The radical restructuring includes dropping founder Colin Chapman's 'lightweight and simple' ethos for all new cars, instead using more complex, more expensive and more upmarket manufacturing techniques.
. . .
The average car will cost £80,000-£110,000, the prices being justified by the use of technology including seven-speed twin clutch transmissions, active aerodynamics, continuously variable dampers, hybrid and range extender systems, heads up displays, and the option of more alternatively-fuelled variants.
'Course.
Because that's what you do when you make a killing selling the Elise for ten years to people who adore the traditional and unique design philosophy: throw it away and do what everyone else is doing!
Well, wait:
While Lotus has refused to divulge its vision for the company's future until the Paris motor show in September, company owner Proton has held a briefing in Malaysia outlining its plans to make Lotus profitable within five years. Lotus has not made a profit for Proton since it bought it in 1996.
Is it hypocritical to defend and applaud Apple's recent acts of anticompetitive behavior after having spent so many years skulking in the shadows decrying the same behavior in Microsoft?
Michael Comeau says no:
Dear Mr. Jobs,
Under your leadership, Apple (AAPL) has recently committed the following unreasonable acts:
[recent examples snipped]
Thanks! Because if it weren't for you, technology would be way too boring to write about.
Sincerely,
Mike
PS: When is Aperture coming to the iPad?
You may be wondering why I'm thanking a person I just called unreasonable.
Well, the answer is simple: The human race wouldn't be flying to outer space, creating wonderful art, and transplanting organs if not for the work of unreasonable people willing to push forward. Critics have their place in the world, and I often act as one myself.
But for the life of me, I can't understand how some people wake up in the morning and expect Apple to follow some arbitrary set of rules that would make the world a better place, if only that damn Jobs would listen to reason.
No one is obligated to use any Apple product, and in fact, few people actually do. Less than 5% of the mobile phones and computers sold each year are from Apple. So if you don't like Apple's behavior, you have an easy way out -- just be part of the 95% that doesn't buy Apple products!
I think most of the nerd objection against Microsoft over the years came from the segment of the population that didn't so much begrudge Microsoft its dominance, but only the fact that it had achieved dominance using such mediocre products. We all knew that someone would have to be on top, and every corporation is going to behave all corporation-y simply by necessity. What didn't have to be true was that the status quo was made up of shoddy, annoying trash. We could do better.
Still, I don't think anyone agitating for a better way ever thought that the entire world of technology could be raised up to a higher standard. It's only sustainable at the high end, where customers are willing to pay a bit more for the products that eschew the cost-saving shortcuts that lead to mediocrity.
To use the ever-popular car analogy, the question may be whether it's possible for everything on the road to be a BMW, or of commensurate quality. Probably not. Someone has to make econoboxes, because BMWs aren't getting any cheaper, nor is BMW interested in making low-end, entry-level cars that would cheapen the brand.
The discussion of Apple's "monopolistic" tendencies and Jobs' thus-far-benevolent dictatorship is a luxury only available to people with extra money to spend and a vested interest in the trajectory of the industry. To people inhabiting the low end of the market, buying Apple stuff is still going to be seen as an upgrade, something aspirational. People who can afford to care about what apps run on an iPad are a pretty small slice of the overall market.
I don't think we'll ever reach a point where Apple and Microsoft will have traded places and we all have to start singing "meet the new boss, same as the old boss". Apple doesn't want that. Jobs just wants the high end of the market to be as good as it possibly can be, and doesn't at all mind if everyone else tries to follow suit in their own way, because at least then everybody'd be a little better off. That's why nerds will forgive his idiosyncracies: this is what we wanted all along. A better choice.
UPDATE: Then again, sometimes the knockoffs are so shameless that you feel like if you were Steve you'd go all DOCTOR OCTAGONAPUS BLAAAAHHH on them yourself.
If a snapped circular is to be believed, Best Buy Mobile will soon be carrying a white version of Sprint's popular EVO starting July 11th.
PhoneArena.com took a picture of a purported Best Buy circular (right, full sized, below) which seems to indicate that Sprint's EVO 4G will be coming in White. The white EVO is expected to be a Best Buy Mobile exclusive until August, and orders are supposed to begin today.
Pricing is expected to be the same, $199 with a two-year Sprint 4G plan.
With Apple's quick sellouts and limited options, will prospective iPhone 4 buyers stray?
Title stolen from the comments of this Gizmodo story, which sounds like something out of 1996:
The first iPhone 4 pre-order day was a total disaster, with collapsed AT&T and Apple servers unable to take any orders, multiple incorrect purchases, reservations that didn't reserve anything, physical stores closing or having to take order with pen and paper, and, the worst of all, people entering into AT&T's account servers and seeing different customers' information on screen.
By itself, that's a major security problem. But it gets worse. According to emails sent by readers, the ordering system is mistakenly showing and using the wrong customers' personal information. Not only that, but the problem is affecting other systems: Reader Christian du Lac saw his credit card information changed to another person in his AT&T Wi-Fi Premium account...
Wrong credit cards showing up in your profile, iPhone 4 order confirmations (sometimes multiple) sent to people who never ordered one, failures to place a preorder... geez, AT&T is getting better and better at this "being on the cutting edge of the tech industry" thing.
Pretty soon they'll not only be seen as the weakest component of the iPhone ecosystem, but a branding boat-anchor that actively delegitimizes Apple by association.
The folks who gather early every morning in the West Wing office of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel have something new in common these days. Practically everyone has an iPad -- or will have one very soon.
Emanuel just got his, as did senior adviser David Axelrod and deputy press secretary Bill Burton. Both communications director Dan Pfeiffer and press wrangler Ben Finkenbinder have one on order. Economic adviser Larry Summers takes his to staff meetings.
The device is the hot, new White House toy, a gizmo that is popping up around Washington but seems to be particularly in vogue at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
You don't say. I don't think this counts as a scoop anymore.
A hacking group has obtained the e-mail addresses of 114,000 owners of 3G iPads by exploiting a security hole on AT&T’s Web site, according to a report by Gawker.
The group also obtained the identification number that those iPads use when they communicate over AT&T’s network, known as an ICC-ID. It is not clear what that information could be used for.
According to Gawker, which was given a copy of the list of e-mail addresses, it includes military personnel, staff members in the Senate and the House of Representatives, and people at the Justice Department, NASA and the Department of Homeland Security. Private-sector addresses that were exposed include those of executives at the New York Times Company, Dow Jones, Condé Nast, Viacom, Time Warner, the News Corporation, HBO and Hearst, along with bankers and venture capitalists.
The hacking group, Goatse Security, found that a program on AT&T’s Web site, when given an iPad’s ID number, would return the owner’s e-mail address. It used a script that could guess IDs and collect the associated e-mail addresses. The group eventually notified AT&T of the breach, and the security hole was closed.
Like it does with the iPhone name, Apple is also licensing the iOS name of its iPhone operating system from Cisco Systems. iOS 4 is a new name that will replace Apple's "iPhone OS" moniker, and it is the operating system that will power the new iPhone 4 as well as older versions of the device. Cisco's own IOS is used on some of its hardware devices. Apple also received the FaceTime trademark from a company called FaceTime Communications, which is planning to change its name.
If the license fee is based on units sold, Cisco could be making out like bandits.
Of yesterday's Apple announcements, none is more welcome to me than Safari 5. If for no other reason than this:
They've gone back to the old progress bar! Wooooo!
Now it matches the behavior they've stubbornly—and rightly—stuck to for the iPhone and iPad, and gives you visual feedback of the amount of loading progress, unlike the strange and crippled slate-gray button-spinner thing of Safari 4:
But that's not the worst part. The worst part is that the blue progress bar that fills up the address field from left to right—as we've been accustomed for so long—is still, and seemingly forever, gone. Apple doesn't seem to want us seeing an activity indicator that shows actual progress anymore; they'll give us a little spinner, sure, but no more progress bar. And never mind that Safari on the iPhone still has the blue progress bar; now it's just there to mock us on the desktop, who now have to pretend it's 1995 again with the functional equivalent of the Pulsing Breathing Blue N in the upper right corner of our Netscape window.
But that's okay; they'll probably helpfully get rid of the progress bar in Safari for iPhone OS 3.0.
It's nice to be wrong sometimes.
Of the other features that are new, the Reader mode looks quite pretty—it's like a little piece of iBooks in a desktop browser. I may find myself using it from time to time, just because the affordance of switching from full-page mode to reader mode and back is so lightweight and unobtrusive and pleasant.
I'll be looking forward to trying out the new HTML5 hotnesses. The new Firefox-esque location bar is rich and meaty and feels far faster and more graceful than Firefox's. Bing is now officially invited to the party, signalling that Apple views Google as a bigger threat than Microsoft these days. And geolocation should be fun.
And oh yeah, the new iPhone looks pretty cool too. Hey, gyroscope! And a high-res screen with pixel doubling. Woo again!
Brian Tiemann
