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Sunday 1 July 2012

4 Questions For Siri

4 Questions For Siri:


I was the biggest Siri fanboy ever both before Apple launched the iPhone 4S with Siri integration, and immediately after.
For example, I wrote this in September and this in October. I was certain that Siri was going to change everything.
But since then, it’s slowly dawning on me that Siri isn’t what I thought it would be, at least not yet. Worse, I’ve been confused by events and facts related to Siri that have emerged since the iPhone 4S launched.
So here’s what I would like to ask Siri.

1. Siri: Why do you call yourself “beta”?
Companies aren’t supposed to sell beta software for money, or use beta software as a major selling point for an integrated product. Because if you are, what does “beta” mean?
The word “beta” as it relates to software means: still in the testing phase, and not ready for the general market. For years, companies have released “beta” software free of charge so that volunteers could test it and help the company find bugs before the beta program ended and the general release began. It was only after the beta program ended that customers were charged for the product.
Years ago, I called out Google for monetizing Gmail while continuing to call it “beta.” Gmail was in “beta” for five years! But that didn’t stop them from peppering it with advertising and making millions of dollars from it.
Google tried to have it both ways. You, as a user, were expected to participate in their monetization scheme, allow your email to be scanned by computers and allow yourself to be influenced by the resulting contextual advertising. But you were not expected to criticize it. “Hey, it’s just beta!” Eventually, Google found that their have-it-both-ways beta labeling was causing hesitation among corporate customers, so they dropped it.
I slammed Google then, and I’m slamming Apple now.
Apple is pushing Siri hard as a major selling point — perhaps THE major selling point — for their biggest and most profitable product, the iPhone. Slick, expensive TV commercials create a totally unrealistic picture of how well Siri works in order to convince customers to buy an iPhone 4S.
But once the money has been spent, and consumers learn that Siri doesn’t work as advertised, Apple hides behind the old Gmailesque “Hey, it’s “beta!” It’s not finished. Don’t criticize!
“Beta” means “not ready to sell,” not “it sucks, but we’re selling it anyway.”
Either release something for “beta” testing, or use it to make billions of dollars as a shipping product. But don’t ship and advertise a deeply flawed product and hide behind a “beta” label.
2. Siri: Why did you get worse after launch? 
Siri worked way better in the first few weeks after launch than it does today. It was less reliable then. But when the servers returned a result, it tended to be far more accurate.
What happened? Although dictation works great, Siri requests fail at an alarming rate.
A recent test found that Siri returned good results only 62 percent of the time in a noisy environment and 68 percent in a quiet one.
I’m almost certain that it worked better when the iPhone 4S first came out.
Why is Apple unable to replicate the capabilities it had eight months ago?
3. Siri: Why are you being secretive about the recordings you make of my voice?
It emerged this week that Apple keeps recordings of our voices as we interact with Siri. A voice pattern is a biometric identifier, just like a fingerprint. It’s as if Apple had a scanner on the surface of our iPhones, and was keeping a database of all our fingerprints.
A spokeswoman for Apple told a reporter that the recordings are “used for Siri’s operation and to help Siri improve its understanding and recognition.”
Fine. But why the secrecy and lack of transparency?
Why didn’t Apple tell us they were doing this? Why won’t they tell us for how long they’ll keep these personal identifiers, or what they’re doing to secure them against leaks, hacks or subpoena?
4. Siri: Why are you censoring facts on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party?
We also learned this week that the Chinese versions of Siri are pretty good at toeing the Chinese Communist Party line about sensitive topics like the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989.
It could be, for example, that Siri gets all its information from Chinese sources that are themselves censored by Chinese government authorities. Or, it’s possible that the Chinese government explicitly sent Apple a list of forbidden topics. Or the worst-case scenario is that Apple is preemptively and voluntarily censoring on behalf of the party, just to avoid trouble.
Whichever it is, it would be nice to know the answer.
I want to love Siri, but a loving relationship requires openness and honest. I and I believe many others want to know how Siri is marketed, why it doesn’t work as well anymore, what it does with the biometric data it retains about us and to what extent it’s used by authoritarian regimes to censor history for political aims.
Siri: Is that too much to ask?




Is Your iPad Reading You?

Is Your iPad Reading You?:

The Wall Street Journal today has a report on how the e-book industry is paying close attention not only to what books people read, but how they are reading them. Do readers skim the intro, skip around in the chapters? Do they read straight through? What are readers’ favorite passage to highlight and share? This kind of data mining is happening now, even on your iPad.
Should we be worried?

The data mining that is possible with our new e-book technology is fairly astounding. Consider the following:
It takes the average reader just seven hours to read the final book in Suzanne Collins’s “Hunger Games” trilogy on the Kobo e-reader—about 57 pages an hour. Nearly 18,000 Kindle readers have highlighted the same line from the second book in the series: “Because sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them.” And on Barnes & Noble’s Nook, the first thing that most readers do upon finishing the first “Hunger Games” book is to download the next one.
That’s fairly specific information, right? Do you want publishers to know that about you? How about your kids or grandkids?
Privacy is something we all take for granted when it comes to reading books. With e-books, however, that line is blurred, perhaps even erased. Some privacy experts think that is a bad thing.
“There’s a societal ideal that what you read is nobody else’s business,” says Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). “Right now, there’s no way for you to tell Amazon, I want to buy your books, but I don’t want you to track what I’m reading.”
The EFF, a consumer rights and privacy advocacy group, has pushed for legislation to keep e-bok sellers from passing along reading data to law enforcement without a court order, a very real concern if you’re reading e-books on sensitive topics. In fact, it might prevent people from buying books in digital form on those very topics.
Whether you buy your e-books through Apple’s own digital bookstore and iBooks, or read with a Kindle or Nook app on your iPad, chances are you’re contributing to this data. We truly have no idea whether such data is tracked on an individual or aggregate level from these apps or devices. In a society increasingly able to watch our every move, shouldn’t we have a say in what and how much is tracked?
Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Source: Wall Street Journal
Image: Apple



How an Electrical Storm in Virginia Brought Down a Large Chunk of the Internet [Internet]

How an Electrical Storm in Virginia Brought Down a Large Chunk of the Internet [Internet]:
Late last night, a severe electrical storm struck over Northern Virginia, Maryland and DC, halting train traffic and felling trees. More »


Source: Google Reader






Happy Social Media Day From People Who Get What It's All About

Happy Social Media Day From People Who Get What It's All About:


As we learned when the hashtag took over our Twitter feed this morning, today is Mashable's third annual Social Media Day. It's kind of bad timing, as the big storm that hit the Washington D.C. area last night knocked out Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud, along with Netflix, Pinterest, and Instagram,
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Stolen Dali Painting Returned to Gallery in ‘Pristine’ Condition

Stolen Dali Painting Returned to Gallery in ‘Pristine’ Condition:


A $150,000 Salvador Dali painting stolen from an Upper East Side gallery the week before last has been returned unharmed. The 1949 watercolor-and-ink work, called Cartel de Don Juan Tenirio, went missing from the Venus Over Manhattan gallery when a thief in a checkered suit (who was caught on camera)
...
Source: Google Reader
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American Women Love a Dark-Haired European Hero

American Women Love a Dark-Haired European Hero:


"The perfect man, according to data collected by digital publisher Coliloquy from romance-novel readers, has a European accent and is in his 30s with black hair and green eyes." — The most interesting thing we learned from reading article about data mining the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook.
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Source: Google Reader
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FSF publishes whitepaper with recommendations for free operating system distributions considering Secure Boot

FSF publishes whitepaper with recommendations for free operating system distributions considering Secure Boot: In the paper, the FSF outlines the difficulties Secure Boot poses for the free software movement and free software adoption, warns against the threat of Restricted Boot, and gives recommendations for how free software developers and users can best address the issues.
BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA -- Saturday, June 30th, 2012-- The Free
Software Foundation (FSF) today published a whitepaper entitled, "Free Software Foundation recommendations for free operating system distributions considering Secure Boot."

The paper can be downloaded as a PDF from http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot/whitepaper.pdf or read online at http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot/whitepaper-web.

In the paper, the FSF outlines the difficulties Secure Boot poses for the free software movement and free software adoption, warns against the threat of Restricted Boot, and gives recommendations for how free software developers and users can best address the issues. The paper also responds to recent announcements made by two popular GNU/Linux distributions, Ubuntu and Fedora, detailing their intended approaches to implementing Secure Boot.

Because Microsoft's security key will be installed on nearly every laptop and desktop sold, there is a temptation for free software operating system distributions to connect their key to Microsoft's in order to facilitate easy installation.

The FSF rejects any approach to computer security which requires users or computer distributors to place their trust in Microsoft or any other proprietary software company, and instead stresses the importance of enabling users to both easily disable Secure Boot and to use security keys they generate themselves, so that they -- and not a third party -- can determine which software should and should not run on their computers.

"We will do what we can to help all free software operating system
distributions follow this path, and we will work on a political level
to reduce the practical difficulties that adhering to these principles
might pose for expedient installation of free software. The FSF does
want everyone to be able to easily install a free operating system --
our ultimate goal is for everyone to do so, and the experience of
trying out free software is a powerful way to communicate the
importance of free software ideals to new people. But we cannot in the
name of expediency or simplicity accept systems that direct users to
put their trust in entities whose goal it is to extinguish free
software. If that's the tradeoff, we better just turn Secure Boot
off," writes John Sullivan, FSF's executive director.

About the Free Software Foundation


The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to
promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and
redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and
use of free (as in freedom) software -- particularly the GNU operating
system and its GNU/Linux variants -- and free documentation for free
software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and
political issues of freedom in the use of software, and its Web sites,
located at fsf.org and gnu.org, are an important source of information
about GNU/Linux. Donations to support the FSF's work can be made at
http://donate.fsf.org. Its headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA.

About the GNU Operating System and Linux


Richard Stallman announced in September 1983 the plan to develop a
free software Unix-like operating system called GNU. GNU is the only
operating system developed specifically for the sake of users'
freedom. See http://www.gnu.org/gnu/the-gnu-project.html.

In 1992, the essential components of GNU were complete, except for
one, the kernel. When in 1992 the kernel Linux was re-released under
the GNU GPL, making it free software, the combination of GNU and Linux
formed a complete free operating system, which made it possible for
the first time to run a PC without non-free software. This combination
is the GNU/Linux system. For more explanation, see
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html.

Media Contacts


John Sullivan

Executive Director

Free Software Foundation

+1 (617) 542 5942

campaigns@fsf.org

Joshua Gay

Licensing and Compliance Manager

Free Software Foundation

+1 (617} 542-5942

licensing@fsf.org

###


Source:Google Reader

How Much Is A Computer Networking Patent Worth?

How Much Is A Computer Networking Patent Worth?: A federal jury ruled last week that software company Citrix Systems should pay a USD $10 million fine for infringing on the patent of another U.S. firm. While that's a ...

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Source:Google Reader

AMD Posts Catalyst 12.6 WHQL, 12.7 Beta

AMD Posts Catalyst 12.6 WHQL, 12.7 Beta:

Closing out the month of June, AMD has posted two new Catalyst driver builds.

The first is Catalyst 12.6, the WHQL’d final version of the 12.6 beta at the start of the month. So this is virtually identical to the betas, save a few quick fixes. These are the first release drivers that only support AMD’s DX11 GPUs – since 12.5 was canceled, the latest driver for DX10 card owners continues be 12.4.

The second is Catalyst 12.7 beta, which we first saw with the launch of the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition earlier this month. Catalyst 12.7 introduces performance updates for several games and MSAA/SSAA support for Diablo 3, which comes as a bit of a surprise since it doesn’t appear to be part of a new driver branch.

AMD has a blog post up on their site covering both of these drivers, including a more complete lists of improvements.

Source: AMD



Source:Google Reader

Informatics in Schools: Situation, Evolution, and Perspectives 2013 in Oldenburg, Germany

Informatics in Schools: Situation, Evolution, and Perspectives 2013 in Oldenburg, Germany:

Another conference on secondary school education in computing, also in Germany: 6th Conference on Informatics in Schools: Situation, Evolution and Perspectives. This one has been running since 2005, which is as long as ICER.  This one is for researchers and practitioners.

Information technology surrounds us and from very early ages onwards, children are using it regularly. But in many countries Informatics Education featuring educational aspects provided by informatics is not part of compulsory curricula at schools, yet.

The International Conference on Informatics in Schools: Situation, Evolution and Perspectives – ISSEP – is a forum for researchers and practitioners in the area of Informatics education, both in primary and secondary schools. It provides an opportunity for educators to reflect upon the goals and objectives of this subject, its curricula and various teaching/learning paradigms and topics, possible connections to everyday life and various ways of establishing Informatics Education in schools. This conference also cares about teaching/learning materials, various forms of assessment, traditional and innovative educational research designs, Informatics’ contribution to the preparation of children for the 21st century, motivating competitions, projects and activities supporting informatics education in school.

via ISSEP 2013 in Oldenburg, Germany.


Tagged: computing education, computing education research, high school CS, K12, teachers

Source:Google Reader

New Marvel Comics game coming from Activision and High Moon Studios?

New Marvel Comics game coming from Activision and High Moon Studios?:
In the most recent round of panels revealed for Saturday of San Diego Comic Con, an interesting new tidbit escaped about games based on Marvel Comics. What's Activision have planned next for Marvel fans?


Source:Google Reader