Monday, June 9, 2014

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Apple can't eat its own dog food

Posted: 09 Jun 2014 01:50 AM PDT

Apple is so confident of the superiority of its software that it has placed it in the forefront of its production lines. Nah not really, it depends entirely on Microsoft Windows.

Geek Magazine found a snap of Microsoft CEO Tim Cook inspecting the production lines in Austin, Texas manufacturing facility where the Pro is put together.

Apple is apparently jolly keen to tell the world+dog that its Mac Pro production line is supporting manufacturing on US soil, thus making it all Americans' patriotic duty to buy a Mac. Of course that does not apply to the iPad and iPhone which are made in China, but that is not the point.

Cook tweeted the photo to show the world that he could work with Americans. Sadly, it also showed another dirty little secret that Apple has.

Manufacturing the Mac Pro involves the use of the Windows operating system and the photo shows Windows running on iMacs right down the production line. To make it even more embarrassing it would appear to be Windows XP, although Windows 7 or some release of Windows Embedded can't be ruled out, either. One wonders what Apple could do if it actually splashed out on some modern software.

It also begs the question, if iOS is so great, why are you running your "state of the art" production line on ancient Microsoft software. Is it because iOS is actually Windows five years ago?

It also makes Cook's recent claim the latest version of iOS Mavericks "is the fastest adoption ever of any PC operating system in history" look a bit silly. Cook told a company rally that Mavericks was cleaning Windows 8's clock because it had been adopted so fast. The statement was shown to be statistically unsound, but it is fairly clear that if Apple is too scared to trust Mavericks on its own production line, so there must be something wrong with it. 

Thailand's junta turns to social notworking

Posted: 09 Jun 2014 02:16 AM PDT

As a sign that it does not really get the internet, Thailand's military junta has decided to set up its own social networking site.

The military seized power in May and has not been particularly popular. This might have something to do with the fact that every time you call for elections, soldiers show up and arrest you.

It has been a lot harder for the military to shut its population up when they post on Facebook. So the Junta has decided to create a patriotic, easy-to-censor Facebook rival of its own design.

Dubbed "Thailand Social Network" the social notwork will be out in two months.

Then this site will have to compete with Facebook which has more than 24 million Thai users. That amounts to one third of the population.

Facebook also has more money and resources than the Junta. Facebook's market capital is $162 billion while the annual output of Thailand's capital Bangkok, an estimated $105 billion.

The junta is also not dumb enough to shut Facebook down. When it did that in May the ban only lasted for an hour. Thais were more upset about the Facebook closure than the junta's late-night detainments or its shredding of the constitution. The army was so overwhelmed with complaints that it had to promise it will never totally block Facebook — just individual pages deemed subversive.

Humanity really has hit a low point when social networking is considered more important than human rights and a state constitution. Still not many people expect a military run Facebook to work very well. 

Big content wants to freeze Dotcom's assets

Posted: 09 Jun 2014 02:15 AM PDT

Music and movie giants have joined forces to freeze Kim Dotcom's assets, but it looks like they might have to come up with a deposit first.

Lawyers appeared at the High Court in Auckland on Monday on behalf of four music industry companies and six Hollywood film studios seeking to have Dotcom's assets frozen ahead of their claim against him.

They claim that Dotcom, facilitated, encouraged and profited from massive copyright infringement and want Dotcom's New Zealand assets to remain frozen while their case is under way. The advantage is that if Dotcom can't afford expensive legal aid in a US they will win because they have huge wallets.

Warner Music, UMG Recordings, Sony Music and Capitol Records, 20th Century Fox, Disney, Paramount, Universal, Columbia Pictures and Warner Brothers are all involved in the attempt.

Dotcom and his wife have had their assets frozen already, Matthew Sumpter, who appeared for the film companies, said there was no evidence of any suffering or loss to Dotcom.

But lawyers appearing for Dotcom and his wife, Mona, said the estranged pair were prepared to maintain the current freeze but the companies needed to offer security first.

Dotcom's lawyer, Robert Gapes, said the companies should put up $NZ250,000 ($A232,742) for Dotcom and a further $NZ250,000 for his wife.

But Justice John Fogarty agreed with the Dotcoms and said that the amount was "peanuts" for such wealthy clients and said the Dotcoms could suffer damages by having their capital tied up.

He asked the parties to negotiate the conditions of the freeze. If they can't sort it out themselves they'll be back in court later this month.

In April, an application to extend restraining orders on Dotcom's assets – including cars, jewellery and other property – that have been in place since his arrest in January 2012 was declined.

However, the Crown, on behalf of the US government, appealed against the decision to allow Dotcom to get his assets back.

That hearing is due to be held on July 30 and lawyers for the studios want to have their separate application to have Dotcom's assets frozen in relation to their civil case to be heard beforehand, probably in mid-July. 

Chrome is now the world's most popular browser

Posted: 09 Jun 2014 01:48 AM PDT

Search engine Google's Chrome browser has officially overtaken Microsoft's Internet Explorer as the most popular web browser in the US.

According to Adobe Digital Index Chrome has 31.8 percent of the combined desktop and mobile internet market which means Google's freeware is up six percent year-over-year.

Internet Explorer which once ruled the known world, now has 30.9 percent.

The figures however are somewhat suspect as it listed Apple's Safari came in third with a market share of 25 percent and claims that Firefox held only eight percent of the market, something that would have most users think there was something wrong.

According to ADI, this decline is likely due to its lack of mobile presence.

Most of the reason for this is because the figures included mobile browsing and was focused on the US where Apple rules the smartphone market.

Google Chrome was already a market leader worldwide, with StatCounter estimating its usage at 43 percent.

Dominance: Apple's Safari browser has cornered the mobile market thanks to overwhelming popularity of the iPhone

ADI technology analyst Tyler White said the results are likely due to the increased reliance of the mobile operating system.

Internet Explorer had long held onto its dominance by being the default web browser on desktops.

But mobile devices are not relying on Internet Explorer as a web portal, instead defaulting or embedding Chrome or Safari, predominantly.

Chrome is likely to become the default browser on all Android devices soon and it has seen more success outside of the US where it took over the market share lead last year. 

Supercomputer passes Turing test

Posted: 09 Jun 2014 01:47 AM PDT

More than a a third of Royal Society testers have been fooled by a super computer into thinking that it was a 13 year old boy.

Five machines were tested at the Royal Society in central London to see if they could fool people into thinking they were humans during text-based conversations.

The test was devised in 1950 by computer science pioneer and World War II code breaker Alan Turing, who said that if a machine was indistinguishable from a human, then it was "thinking".

So far no computer has passed the Turing test, which requires 30 percent of human interrogators to be duped during a series of five minute keyboard conversations.

"Eugene Goostman", a computer program developed to simulate a 13-year-old boy, managed to convince 33 percent of the judges that it was human, the university said.

Professor Kevin Warwick, from the University of Reading, said: "In the field of artificial intelligence there is no more iconic and controversial milestone than the Turing test.

"It is fitting that such an important landmark has been reached at the Royal Society in London, the home of British science and the scene of many great advances in human understanding over the centuries. This milestone will go down in history as one of the most exciting."

The successful machine was created by Russian-born Vladimir Veselov, who lives in the United States, and Ukrainian Eugene Demchenko who lives in Russia.

Of course a 13 year old boy is not difficult to simulate. The computer had to have an incredibly slow start up time, not say much and mumble, but it was a start.

The event on Saturday was poignant as it took place on the 60th anniversary of the death of Turing, who laid the foundations of modern computing. 
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