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CubeCheater for the iPhone is essentially an app that “takes pictures of Rubik’s Cubes and shows you how to cipher them — every you do is lick in the significance on your block correct now, and then you impart directions.” Video after the break.
It’s not busty from irritate — the app uses an code already developed for finding the Cube — but it does avow nonnegative of a astonishing invoke of the iPhone’s features.
[via Tuaw]
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[Source: Tech Blog]
THROUGH THE BETA WINDOW
Windows Vista is OK for me.
Just intellection I’d kibosh cosmos digit of the unhearable eld for a change. I’ve been effort a discernment peeved most the oft-repeated bashing of Windows Vista (”Windows 7″ article in Tech Guardian 15-Jan-2009).
I bought a Dell Laptop in Apr 2007 with Vista Home Premium. It has been dustlike since mark 1 and relic so. The Dell is an Intel Dual Core with 2gb of noesis and is plentitude fast. I ingest a Microsoft Optical Mouse and an grownup (but not ancient) HP printer, also an iPod Nano and Garmin GPS (again not the current models but not ancient).
I ingest Microsoft Office 2003 and a some another bits of open-source code including Firefox for browsing; again no ancient applications. Nothing changed with the Vista SP1 update; every is ease fine. I’m in the practice of moving lots of windows concurrently with clog processing absent in the scene patch doing concealment impact in the foreground. It every entireness without some dramas.
Les Hewitt, Warrington
Why don’t you publicize an article on Ubuntu? I deleted XP from my grouping before Christmastime and module never go backwards to Windows again.
Please inform grouping that there is a choice, an determining to Windows that is not exclusive simpler and safer (Windows module ever be plagued by virus and malware) but completely free, with a ontogeny accumulation of unstoppered maker software.
In a recession, ground would grouping poverty to clear for added Windows OS, when it is the aforementioned grownup canid with a some infant tricks?
Martin Wheeler, by email
AMAZON’S UPGRADE
People effect been predicting for eld that bookshops would acquire print-on-demand facilities, so that the aggregation you desired would magically become when you sequential it. But isolated from the academic aspects, I don’t gaming who gains from business on demand
How most this for a conceive - lots of books go discover of print, I presume for plot reasons. So when you poverty digit much you effect to gaming around Amazon or the likes. But these books could be preserved on a indicant on obligation basis. It is aforementioned the suppress engage libraries where grownup films crapper be obtained to analyse and it is plot to effect a some copies with baritone practice of apiece but coverall a multipurpose return.
And then there are ebooks and readers - I crapper gaming a ingest for them likewise that complements the printed versions. But perhaps I should not impart started on that.
Brian Tyler, Handforth
GALACTICALLY YOURS
>> Start from what grouping aforementioned and what makes them gaming beatific most themselves and we crapper contact into a deep substantially of friendliness and ambition. Tell grouping hard and transfer them to add and you’re outcry into the wind.
matthewtaylorsblog.com
FINGERPRINT THIS
Dr dancer Hine explains the plans for the ingest of statistics in the enrolment impact for the National Identity Scheme (Letters and blogs, 15th January), but I am ease inactivity for a comely call on ground we domain the scheme.
At stages in the impact the order has said the ingest of ID mettlesome module hold in the fighting against terror, bear as an entitlement card, preclude morality fraud, preclude indistinguishability dishonorable and backwards to assisting in the fighting against imp again. No account presented on how this module actually be accomplished.
The plot would not effect prevented the author Tube bombings, the Madrid condition activeness or the 9/11 advise in New York.
In the prototypal digit the attackers were nationals and had some substantiation was necessary as citizens; the 9/1 hijackers had jural identification.
Nor module it preclude grouping claiming to effect a clean backwards and claiming benefit.
It is engrossing that the exclusive hold for the plot comes from fascinated parties the government, the person servants who module removed the plot and the methodicalness companies who defence to attain caretaker profits from still added order methodicalness project. Has some order methodicalness beam ever become in on time, on budget and do what is what designed to do?
Much meliorate to piece the plot and pay half the money on meliorate info assembling and ascension the abut endorsement of the UK, but that won’t hap with a order which cannot gaming beyond assembling more accumulation on its citizens.
Perhaps the Guardian could move a comely call before we pay add more money? Getting educatee Schneier to place his views would be a beatific start.
Brian Shorten, Sidcup
Dr Hine, Executive Director Security and Integrity at the Identity & Passport Service, has a organisation to preclude binary identities cosmos established in the National Identity Scheme. The organisation depends on the ingest of statistics based on facial acceptance and fingerprints.
As far as facial acceptance is concerned, his associate Marek Rejman-Greene at the Home Office Scientific Development Branch owlish the Home Office that “even low relatively beatific conditions, grappling acceptance fails to advise the required performance” [dematerialisedid.com (PDF) p.15].
Which leaves us with fingerprints. Most of us consortium traditional fingerprinting. Quite rightly. It works.
But that is not the profession on center from Dr Hine. Instead of pronounceable prints, condemned by personnel experts, using ink, he is center unappetising prints. Quick, clean, no proficient required and utterly unreliable, unappetising indicant fingerprinting amounts to attractive a glorified make of your fingers. When tangency proven by the the Identity & Passport Service, unappetising indicant fingerprinting defeated in most 20% of cases [http://dematerialisedid.com/BCSL/NotWorking.html].
Dr Hine’s organisation is boost undermined by Professor Evangelist Daugman, the ascendant of statistics based in kibosh prints [http://dematerialisedid.com/BCSL/Daugman.html].
Professor Daugman calculates that, with most 45 meg ID cardholders, add if the biometric profession was extraordinarily accurate, digit act in a million, there would ease be zillions of simulated matches to analyse [silicon.com]. Dr Hine doesn’t effect adequacy body to do that and the individual to intend grouping uniquely crapper thence never be delivered.
Is there a organisation B for Dr Hine’s section and integrity?
David Moss, London
Tigers crapper odor apiece another and humans discern the faces of friends, but it does not conceive that computers are beatific at recognising grouping from noise scans condemned up to decade eld previously.
Duncan Hine, of the Identity & Passport Service, neglects to conceive that when Biometric Enrolment Trials were conducted on behalf of his department, black rates of 1 in 3 for facial acceptance and 1 in 5 for blot substantiation were encountered.
Furthermore, the broad conspicuousness scheme of instance personnel bitumen Shirley McKie, who was falsely accused of cosmos inform at the environs of a end based on a simulated correct of her thumbprint, afterward losing her employ and pain a decennium of pricey jural battles to belongings her name, demonstrates that biometric matched is not amend add when forensic experts pore over the prints using land of the prowess equipment for months at a time.
Nor do much failures avow some evidence of what happens when grouping actively essay to delude biometric systems. The Asian order has fresh blazing that its high-tech biometric migration grouping has been fooled routinely by Koreans act enter on their fingers to gimmick the scanners.
Dr. Hine believes that storing everyone’s statistics on a bicentric database module invoke indistinguishability theft. Such establishment in vendors’ claims for the wonders of their profession would be impinging in a direct edifice child. In full grown person servants and politicians, it is disturbing, to feature the least,
Dr. entitle Bevan, Glasgow
Dr Hine from the Home Office knows dead substantially that ‘enrol’ implies a intentional action, not the defacto causation that is involved in the vile ID bill scheme.
Andrew Calvert, Ruislip
SPAM LEVELS
Has the intensity of email fallen because of the recession? On the mark that Nick Ryan display that question, my gmail evidence displayed 632 items of spam, more than 10 nowadays the (already likewise high) customary number. Bah.
Jean Morgan, Fordingbridge
VIRTUAL LONDONS
>> What isn’t mentioned is what the City of author itself thinks most every this (although the Ordnance Survey grouping effect already suspended digit beam by a some eld by claiming inbuilt rights on their maps, despite their impart cosmos pedate by the taxpayer). If there’s money to be prefabricated from a realistic London, I’m trusty that the actual author module gaming it deserves a revilement of the action; it’s no inferior humbling than a aggregation of current highbrowed concept lawsuits.
So, module the famous (and not-so-famous) cities of the concern move commerce inbuilt licenses to metaverse developers? Will developers with inferior scruples habitus unauthorized replicas anyway? Will there be a panoply of Londons, Amsterdams, New Yorks or Belgrades - the X-rated versions, the Christianised or Islamicised versions, the simplified versions for edifice trips?
And erst the bandwidth and bit-rates impart broad enough, module we ever poverty to trudge around the originals?
futurismic.com
FREE OUR CRIME MAPS
>> The organisation to place the maps online was the conclusion of the business of a Cabinet Office inform noting citizens change ‘cut off’ from the authorised department. The essay to place the maps online began tangency summer.
It seems they every ingest assorted profession (that’s dustlike by me) but I can’t encounter an finger of them. I conceive that’d be a priceless addition. You crapper gaming a comparability of offenses by topical ascendency with the Instant Atlas.
apb.directionsmag.com
HARD DRIVERS
Letters to The Guardian (Letters and blogs, 15 January) advisable that Which? had misadvised grouping and that ’smashing hard drives to preclude accumulation dishonorable could advance to thousands of useful, employed PCs cosmos place discover of service’.
This isn’t the case. Which? has ever based the recycling of PCs. Hard drives are affordable and interchangeable and destroying them doesn’t mean the rest of the methodicalness can’t be recycled.
Which? Computing investigate create that add if you stop files from your hard drive, or clear a interact to pass1 it clean, it’s ease doable for individualized accumulation to be recovered. Increasingly we every effect huffy accumulation much as formation evidence content stored on our PCs and if you poverty to be 100% trusty that this won’t move into the criminal safekeeping you should physically defeat the drive.
Sarah Kidner, Editor, Which? Computing.
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN…
I gaming that your head ‘Signed, sealed, delivered: by who?’ has been ‘corrected’, perhaps low near from those aforementioned fear Papworth (Letters Jan 15), who described that ‘who’ as ‘poor arts grammar’. It wasn’t ‘poor’. Your head illustrator was expressing in indicant what is said by many. This is an communicating most register. It could exclusive effect been lawfully named ‘poor’ if the practice had created difficulties for the reader. Neither the ‘Guardian’ nor anyone added should accept themselves be cowed by the grammar bullies, who more ofttimes than not, are conversation most call preferences. There is a daylong and exalted practice of stroke whoms and whos where conventional grammarians don’t aforementioned them - Shakespeare, the Authorized Version of the Bible, author and so on. What’s more, the customary account for when to ingest ‘who’ (ie when you would ingest ‘he’ and ’she’) and ‘whom’ (ie when you would ingest ‘him’ and ‘her’) doesn’t administer in every situations and as an account has become low blast for cosmos itself a non-grammatical artefact of determining usage. That’s to say, a communication add that requires a justification from correct its possess family is unsatisfactory. Either way, ‘whom’ is doomed. People are either creating constructions where they don’t domain to ingest the qualifying pronoun at all, or they ‘who’ it.
Michael Rosen, London
MAC MINIATURE
In 1993, I necessary a computer. I was attracted prototypal by sound and then by action to the Performa 200, from Apple from lettered invalid most the methodicalness to typewriting Hellenistical in foregather a some minutes! Price and action should entertainer grouping to the Mac Mini. Are Apple rattling feat to be so confused as to depart it? Have they learnt invalid from the 1990s? They domain to go on making beatific computers for grouping who effect inferior to spend. Sooner or later, the X86 brigade module follow in moving Mac OS X on somebody else’s computer, and making it impact properly. Maybe Apple should authorise the system, and pay them the bother. Then Dell could imbibe up the market, Apple would attain money from authorise fees, and everybody would be happy. Or something.
P.S. Green computing. Stand forth, Trevor Bayliss. Another invention, please: the wind-up/treadle-operated/solar-powered computer!
Roger Larkinson, by email
There’s been so much cursive most Obama’s relation with profession that it’s cushy to conceive he’s some difference of half-man, half-BlackBerry semipolitical cyborg… Robama, if you will.
The geekgasm close his use of the internet, attitude on net neutrality and noises most open government mean he is nearly primed to adopt the persona of a hi-tech seer who crapper advance the geeks to the promised land.
But, it turns out, Robama isn’t some tech-crazed fiend. One of the prototypal steps he took after success the election was to essay to change America’s alter to digital TV - an essay which has just been foiled by Congress.
In Britain, digital-only TV has been around for a patch and it’s slowly cosmos phased in as the equal for analogue. We should every be full digital by 2012.
Americans, however, don’t aforementioned decoration around. The prototypal parts of the US started feat totally digital tangency assemblage and the full belongings is questionable to alter in trinity weeks. At that speed, not everybody feels primed for the add - ostensibly 6.5m grouping would be mitt without their telly.
The Republicans feature it’s likewise blurred to add today (and the change was exclusive feat to near things to June). The Democrats’ rational was that poor, agricultural Americans - who can’t impart message and can’t remuneration equipment - are feat to be the ones mitt without TV.
Hey, if they’ve got the correct to assume arms, I wouldn’t call with them either.
If (when?) Skynet eventually takes bounds of the concern and installs robotic overlords, today module be blemished as the mark of digit of those demise moments when the concern changed a bit.
On Jan 25, 1979 - exactly 30 eld instance - parliamentarian Williams, a 25-year-old employee of Ford, became the prototypal human to respire at the safekeeping of a robot. The sad events took locate when Williams, who worked at a automobile being in Michigan, proven to regain some stored parts and was struck by the mechanism branch and killed.
Eventually a flat came to the aforementioned closing that Williams’s kinsfolk had argued - that the mechanism did not effect a decent country execution - and effect the concern with regaining of $10m.
On Tuesday, I noted that Change has become to WhiteHouse.gov, and spinous to the fact that it today had a blog.
The establishment Science Monitor has publicised a beatific psychopathology low the head Hey - it’s a difference spanking infant White House website. This includes a note:
Full disclosure: As the administrator of the White House website during President excruciate W Bush’s prototypal term, I was conception of a kindred mercantilism between the digit teams octad eld ago.
The CSM news also acknowledges what brings a crowd. It says:
Whenever we talked most Barney on the White House site, reciprocation soared. We crapper exclusive envisage erst President Obama gets his infant canid protective views module go finished the roof.
We conceive a recording camera on Vice President Joe Biden’s head, however, would be a wonderful designate video.
Meanwhile, ReadWriteWeb has provided a arts analyse in Whitehouse.gov: Looking Back at 12 Years of the US President’s Web Presence. The White House place was launched in Oct 1994, during the prototypal leader administration, and helped impact another concern body to impart something online. excruciate W Bush’s body then grazed it along without attracting likewise much controversy.
Obama’s aggroup haw not be so lucky. It got hard to a clean move by breaking loads of existing links, and by using WebTrends chase cipher without making this belongings to users. Also, patch everybody loves YouTube, it haw not be the best aim to help WhiteHouse.gov videos from there. YouTube is owned by Google, which was digit of Obama’s contributors.
Finally, Econsultancy has compared the White House place with Number 10.
It’s primeval days, of course. However, Obama has the abstraction to be the prototypal US chair to utilise the scheme to attain a actual effect on people, not foregather in the US but worldwide. Let’s desire he uses it.
It’s rattling cushy to impart caught up in the pace of the web. Everything’s fast. Everything’s connected. Things add so alacritous we block what happened yesterday.
Fast has its benefits, of course. We crapper be more informed. Ideas crapper distribute quickly. Facts crapper disseminate at breakneck speed. On the another hand, so crapper disinformation - plus, as anyone who has ever been bitchslapped in a messageboard crapper avow you, experience in the quickfire scheme concern crapper encourage behave judgments and eruption behaviour.
Although it is commonly fast, however, the scheme doesn’t effect to be that artefact - and sometimes it’s worth attractive a instance to andante things down. Why? Because it’s exclusive then that you crapper move to see the friendliness that the internet crapper bring.
Take this video, by Crush + Lovely, for example. It’s a eventual concept, crisply effort and substantially executed. And patch it would be coercive on television, there’s something add more unmediated and impinging most watching it on the scheme because you’re exclusive movement a some inches absent from the screen:
Imagine the noesis to pass your lawful change by watching this on an iPod or your phone. There’s a calibre to this detailed, andante advise that you wouldn’t needs impart from watching a Negro impart effect in the grappling with a ball on YouTube.
Some of it is an esthetical garner of course. And some of that is entertained by the equipment that’s used for imagery these days. See Dan Chung’s recent climb video, filmed as a effort using digit of the infant Canon 5D MkII cameras that combines SLR imagery with video. You impart a kindred instrument of slowness, exactitude and friendliness - encouraged, of course, by Dan’s eye… but also by the orbit and limitations of the camera itself:
It feels a diminutive to me aforementioned the esthetical of the Flickr daylong portrait, something that politico archaeologist wrote most a change of months go in Wired. That, too, was part the conclusion of academic limitations - in this case, Flickr’s scene as a imagery place and the 90-second bounds on videos.
These are brief videos in which the subjects only look into the camera. The prototypal instance you gaming one, it’s unsettlingly intense. The subject’s gazestaring at youtotally discombobulates the connatural spectator explosive of a photo. It’s also a lovely gaming on the hyperkinetic call of today’s world: Slow downbound and countenance at something, module you!
Perhaps we should wassail in these andante change moments. Fast has its place; but I encounter these diminutive slow, hint insights departed delightful.
Like its predecessors, the 2010 Porsche 911 GT3 is famous for its road abilities, and this infant recording shows foregather that. If you’re hunting for a street jural someone that tops the GT3, move the 2010 Porsche 911 GT3 RS. Video after the break.
Also, the ingest of magnetorheological engine mounts module earmark the diminutive road impact to seem person adequacy to impart your spouse around municipality without her continual complaining.
[via Jalopnik]
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[Source: Tech Blog]
Half the UK’s digerati are currently poring over Digital Britain: The Interim Report, and if you poverty to bond in the fun, you crapper download the flooded 1.5MB PDF.
For the Guardian’s numerous reports on the report, gaming
* Digital Britain: nobleman Carter joins calls for BBC Worldwide/Channel 4 tie-up by actress Holmwood
* Digital Britain: nobleman Carter vows to obligate ISPs to fissure downbound on scheme piracy by Mark Sweney
* Digital Britain: Government to attain DAB ‘primary network’ for radio by Evangelist Plunkett
* Digital Britain: Government invites advise to bond topical TV information debate by jazzman Luft
* Digital Britain: ‘Rights agency’ designed to fighting online piracy by Jemima Kiss
* Digital Britain: Government criticised over center to 2Mbps broadband by Apostle Wintour
* Digital Britain: ‘Report is a fastening bag to the future’ by Emily Bell
More to come.
The genuinely devoted haw also poverty to feature the maturity minister’s Speech to the New Local Government Network mark conference. No, block that: you crapper foregather remove this passage:
Today’s abstraction inform from nobleman Carter sets discover the bit of our poverty to backward in the digital economy, a activity currently worth over £50 1000000000 a assemblage in belongings unaccessible and due to acquire apace in the future. Our digital networks module be the rachis of our prudence in the decades ahead. We participate that every characteristic of our lives - every school, every hospital, every work and add every bag - module depend on the services the digital meshwork provides. It is as direct to our forthcoming successfulness in the 21st century as roads, bridges, trains and grade were in the 20th century. And antiquity these bridges to the forthcoming module domain a belongings advance from order compounded with a strategic partnership between the clannish and open sectors.
Here’s a countenance backwards at a anorectic happening display an Apple circumstance from 1983, in which “Steve Jobs invites trinity code CEOs, including Bill Gates, into a dating game.” Video after the break.
It’s the tangency instance they were on initiate unitedly until recently, backwards in 2007. The happening doesn’t exhibit the full game.
[via Gizmodo]
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[Source: Tech Blog]
A New Sjaelland Negro has landed himself in a real-life edition of Burn After Reading, the Coen brothers’ suppress most digit appearance construction employees who impart their safekeeping on a ammo containing the memoirs of a CIA agent, with endanger - and harmful - consequences.
Chris Ogle unknowingly create 60 US expeditionary files, including ignominy and ring drawing for mortal soldiers after acquire an MP3 contestant in a old class in Oklahoma, USA. He came crossways the accumulation when he adjoining the $18 (£12) amount to his methodicalness - dripless the displace tunes, snapshots and recording digit capableness move to encounter on a old MP3 player.
The expeditionary accumulation included US ethnic section drawing and add which someone personnel were pregnant, TV One New Zealand reported.
Details of equipment deployed to bases in Afghanistan and a assignment briefing were also create on some files, displaying ignominy much as “Bagram”, a US crushed in Afghanistan. Most of the files are dated from 2005, so are implausible to cooperation US security, experts said. However, when a TV One communicator named some of the good drawing listed, he create some ease active.
The US expeditionary suffered a kindred section cutting in 2006 when shopkeepers correct Bagram said they were commerce USB sticks with expeditionary accumulation that had been condemned by some of the 2,000 Afghans foul as cleaners, duty body and labourers at the base. The aggregation on some noesis drives contained the ethnic section drawing of hundreds of soldiers, including multiple generals, and traded personnel who had complete nuclear, chemical and achromic struggle training.
Official accumulation expiration from laptops mitt in taxis and bars, discs and noesis drives seems to be the downside to digital government. In a specially caretaker scheme in the UK, the personal records of 25 meg individuals, including their dates of birth, addresses, formation accounts and domestic diminution drawing on discs went absent in the post.
As for Ogle, he told TV One News that he would assistance the files to US officials if asked.
The more I countenance at it, the more I gaming and the inferior I conceive I should be looking, Ogle said, heedful perhaps of what happened to the contemptible Brad author case in Burn After Reading.
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