Technolotics #22 – Mintback Mountain

Listen: Episode 22 Watch: Youtube Feed: RSS Notes Granny Apple in the News Will Disney buy Pixar, and make Steve King? After days of speculation the Telegraph are reporting that the deal will go ahead Jobs will be largest Disney shareholder But will he have any power – Roy Disney failed to save animation at disney despite 1% […]

https://garethstack.com/content/audio/technolotics/22_technolotics.mp3

Listen: Episode 22

Watch: Youtube

Feed: RSS

Notes
Granny Apple in the News

Will Disney buy Pixar, and make Steve King?

After days of speculation the Telegraph are reporting that the deal will go ahead

Jobs will be largest Disney shareholder

But will he have any power – Roy Disney failed to save animation at disney despite 1% of shares

What of Pixar, can its independent spirit survive?

Jobs invites microsoft to make their own iPod. As this week mine dies.

Implication is they need to produce a competing music store

My guess? – Jobs is feeling the heat to increase iTunes store pricing, and feels a big no. 2 would spread the load

If MS had a licenced DRM platform, then Apple might open up fairplay

Apple matters speculates Apple owns the markey + the invitation is bait

Links:

MSNBC – Disney in talks to buy Pixar

Telegraph – Disney buys Pixar

The Rise and Fall of Disney in the Modern Era – account of Roy’s attempts to save Walts company from Eisner et al

Apple Matters – Jobs to Gates, bring it on!

Wasted Business Opportunity

My stickies – Tagged web notes – **When I first saw these I thought – ah one of those genius, why didn’t I think of it ideas – but is the market to saturated?

Then I realised they haven’t yet implimented the obvious thing – web stickies aren’t a del.icio.us style folksonomy – although the site suggests they intend to

Heads up to anyone with excellent coding skills looking for a business opportunity – produce a whiteboard collaborative / quasi-collaborative RSS syndicated folksonomy notation system – lacking the limitations of del.icio.us (bland interface, no private bookmarking)

Links:

My Stickies

Firefox 2 on the Way

The alpha version of the worlds best browser is due next month

New Features to include:

Tab & Interface enhancements – e.g.: Saving open tabs on close, history of each tab, tag based bookmarks

Smoother RSS Integration – integrated viewer, everything is feeds

Offline support of web apps – ‘supercookies’

Unifed smoother search – (combination of all engine output?), search cache history

Better antiphishing / security

What would you change? – Media plugin crashes, better popup blocking, better conversion of javascript open window commands to tabs, replacement of bookmarks with del.icio.us etc (by default), update without reset

Links:

PC Pro Article

Official FF Roadmap

Cringley’s 2006 predictions

Bob Cringley’s predictions for last year were down on his usual average 66% – and he calculates generously

Apple

Will lose in their streaming case versus Burst.com

The new Intel Macs will support XP and Apple will start stealth competion with Microsoft

Boxed X will work on Wintel machines

.Mac online storage goes to a terabyte

Google

2006 is merely preparation for a big push in 2007

New products and services will be announced and another public offering of shares to boost the warchest.

Wont release a PC or OS

Links:

iCringley 2006 Predictions

Al Gore compares wiretapping to Martin Luther King Surveillance

Al Gore – who since failing to convince the American people of anything but his inadaquacy has become an amazing speech writer (or hired some)

compared Bush’s warrentless mass wiretaping to J. Edgar Hoover’s surveillance of the black leader

who vowed to “take him off his pedestal.”, and blackmailed him in an attempt to induce suicide

Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA) partly introduced in reaction

Bush’s indescriminate automated wiretapping illegal (under FISA) & unconstitutional

Gore brings indeterminate detention without warrant, extraordinary rendition and torture of prisoners – examples of Bush regiemes disregard for constitution

Deeper Questions: Unitary executive – enslavement of judicial and legislative branches, perceptual war, imperialism

Calls for an investigation by Senate and Congress, Special counsel should be appointed by Attorney Gen to investigate presidental abuses of power

Meanwhile bob cringley downplays the illegality and importance of the Bush wiretaps

Links:

The Raw Story – commentary and text of speech

iCringley on Wiretaps

Googleblogger: Google defies the US government

Google is fighting a subpoena to hand over some of the information in its database to help “fight pornography”.

Google is fighting the subpoena on justification of request grounds

Commentators speculate – dont be evil, and commercial access to database grounds

Microsoft and yahoo have already surrendered data to the request

FBI is seeking to resusitate anti-porn laws already ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme court

Child Online Protection Act – would have forced every site to age check adults using their services

effectively useless because non-us sites would not have to comply

emphatically dangerous because there is no anonymous free method of confirming such identity

Additionally your obscenity is my art – new anti porn laws are already being used to curtail free expression

Links:

International Herald Tribune – Google refuses to hand over search records

CBS – Feds Seek Google Records On Porn

Media Pimp

Francis’ Pimp

A photograph of the world’s first ‘Bug’. A moth that got caught in a relay in an early computer system [1]

Watch out ladies the Hoff is single again. Check out this music video of The Hoff singing Hooked on a Feeling. [2]

Gareth’s Pimp

The Socratic teaching method – useful for anyone who’s had to give a lecture [3]