Spanish medicine stands to turn Google Glass from spring 2014’s hottest accessory into a way to save lives. From the first surgery performed entirely through the eye of the Glass to dozens of mobile applications, Spanish Glass-based innovation is poised to change the way doctors work and communicate.
This June, Dr. Pedro Guillen became the first to operate wearing Google Glass. The chief of trauma at the Clínica CEMTRO de Madrid performed a highly complex chondrocyte implantation, to form a membrane in the damaged knee of a 49-year-old. The surgery, which requires harvesting cartilage from another part of the leg and which Guillen pioneered in 1996, was streamed in real time to 150 doctors around the world, all sharing the same view as him.
The purpose of Google Glass — a lightweight pair of glasses equipped with a camera, GPS, bluetooth, microphone and viewfinder — is to connect with smartphones to allow the wearer to search and access information online and to use an eye-level camera, all hands-free. For Guillen, Google Glass gives the phrase “doctors without borders” a whole new meaning.
He described Google Glass as “la universidad de hospitales de todos los países del mundo” — the university for all medical schools around the world. “You see my hands, how I do the surgery,” he said, in awe of the possibilities of Google Glass in his field. In this first Glass surgery, Guillen was accompanied by Dr. Homero Rivas, director of innovative surgery at Stanford University’s School of Medicine and an expert in telemedicine, who advised the doctor throughout the course of the surgery, all from his packed classroom on the California campus. “The universities can interact with me,” Guillen said, as Rivas could also pass on questions from his students, many of whom were witnessing surgery from a firsthand perspective for the first time.
Guillen seems simply thrilled to be able to perform surgery with Google Glass, not just for the teaching opportunities, but for his own sake, too. He enthusiastically talked about being able to use Glass’s miniature split screen to look at the arthroscopic view of the knee he’s working on and a video refreshing how to properly separate and repair the joint, all at the same time, without taking his eyes off the operating table.
“In one minute, I can Google ‘anatomy of the knee,’ for example,” and find and watch a video he already prepared, or he could reference his own chondrocyte implantation from the exact same view that he performed it. If something were to go wrong, like during a live sports game, he could even rewind the tape to review the surgery then and indoor Tracking. Not only does he have the information the moment he needs it and doesn’t need to distract himself to discover it, but also keeping difficult-to-sterilize computers out of the O.R. helps prevent infections.
Guillen, who, like all surgeons, is preoccupied with the comfort and ease of use of anything added to their routine, assured us that the glasses — which he said are “at the perfect height” over his own — were not uncomfortable, and, by the time he was in surgery, he didn’t notice them at all.
Of course, like all smartphones and tablets, Google Glass is nothing without the apps. Murcia-based mobile app company Droiders has an entire department called Glassters, developing everything from augmented realities to assistance for those with disabilities. On the medical side, they are working on developing apps that enable ophthalmologists to examine eyes directly and to compare with results of Google’s “Search by Image.” There’s also talk of an app that would allow any doctor or nurse to take a pulse rate without having to touch a patient. Guillen’s surgery was broadcast live through the Glassters Streamer.
Guillen is ready to perform his next Google Glass surgery on September 17, where he will be able to show from his perspective another operation that he invented — wireless arthroscopic surgery, which was first performed in 2007. Guillen and his team at the Clínica CEMTRO de Madrid invented the Wireless Arthroscopic Device, which is a tiny camera inserted through a small incision used to examine and sometimes repair a damaged joint. Since the joint isn’t fully opened, recovery time is much shorter.
He said that his clinic is “probably the top in the world” for such surgeries and that “all of my patients are out-patient,” including former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar, footballer Fernando “El Ni?o” Torres, and several rhythmic gymnasts, an Olympic sport that Spain typically medals in.
"Later that evening I checked my Bank of America account online and noted not only had I been charged for my purchase, but there was an additional charge for $213.96 from Verizon," said Guinan, 63. "Interestingly, the charge had been made an hour-and-a-half later, after the first — and correct — Verizon charge."He said he immediately called Bank of America to report the unauthorized charge. He said he also talked to Verizon, which acknowledged there was a problem, and it said it would work with the bank to correct it.
"The money was placed back in my account and all was well until Feb. 15, 2013, when the $213.96 was debited from my account," he said, noting he received a letter from the bank on the same day."They said after investigating, they found that there was a signature on the receipt and therefore it was an ‘authorized purchase," he said.Knowing that wasn’t the case, Guinan called Bank of America.
"After explaining and discussing the situation, the Bank of America representative determined that the claim was in the wrong category and it would be placed in the correct category — fraud — and the claim would be reopened," he said.Guinan said he knew it could take several months, so he waited it out.
On July 26, Giunan said, he called Bank of America again."They said that the charge was authorized by a signature and therefore was a legitimate charge," he said. "I stated that it clearly was not mine, but that didn’t seem to matter. The Bank of America representative said to go back to Verizon."
So he did, visiting the Union store during the first week of August.Guinan said the manager was able to bring up Guinan’s account, confirming he purchased the phone case for $24.06. He said the manager was also able to view the $213.96 charge, and had access to the buyer’s name, address and phone number.
"I received a copy of the Verizon receipt for the $213.96 purchase," he said. "Not only was the signature clearly not mine, but the phone number listed with the account was in no way connected to me."
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
2013年9月2日星期一
Trans Pacific Partnership
With President Barack Obama’s popularity at home and overseas suffering, there’s yet another area of policy where his influence is diminishing: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement. World leaders from 12 different countries wrapped up a week of negotiations in Brunei Friday and will meet again later this month in the United States. The TPP represents the largest free trade agreement in U.S. history.
As Congress comes back from its August recess, it’ll be facing big questions about U.S. intervention in Syria as well as raising the debt ceiling, putting the administration’s goal of completing the TPP by year’s end in doubt. Negotiators have run into protectionist roadblocks at home, and with many of the main sticking points making no progress during the Brunei talks, some countries, such as Malaysia, admit things have reached a critical stage and they’re contemplating whether to withdraw from the pact completely.
Japan, who only joined talks mid-summer, is seeking exceptions to aspects of the TPP, which is causing other countries to balk at the effects the TPP could have on their own native, many of them state-owned, industries. Japan is seeking to shelter certain key agricultural crops from the removal of tariffs as required by the TPP. The five major products its seeking to protect are: rice, wheat, beef and pork, dairy products and sugar.
However, the ‘official’ joint statement by TPP members claimed the negotiations were ‘successful’ and that progress was made: “…discussions both jointly and bilaterally were successful in identifying creative and pragmatic solutions to many issues and further narrowing the remaining work.”
Progress was touted on market access, rules of origin, investment, financial services, intellectual property, competition and environment, as well as providing access to each other’s markets for “goods, services, investment, financial services, temporary entry and government procurement.”
But insiders say some work groups were not as successful as desired, including the environmental work group that made less than 40 percent of the progress expected. This was the last of the major negotiating sessions, and now the focus is said to be turning inward to ‘intercessional’ talks ahead of a planned TPP summit on October 8 in Bali, Indonesia.
Opposition isn’t just brewing overseas. Obama, though he’s cozy with big labor interests, started pushing the TPP on an unsuspecting U.S. public in 2008 with an ambitious Asia-Pacific free trade region that would cover 40 percent of global economic output representing about one-third of rtls. The countries at the table so far include: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam. The TPP is expected to be a ‘docking agreement,’ leaving the door open for other nations to join with Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea and others already expressing some interest.
According to Citizens Trade Campaign, these corporate interests are seeking new access to cheap labor (Vietnamese workers are paid one-third that of Chinese workers), the ability to skirt environmental laws, longer drug patents (delaying the production of low-cost generic drugs), financial de-regulation (preventing regulations that could stave off ‘too big to fail’ bailouts), caps on food safety protections (ie – limit liability for pesticides and genetically modified foods), concentration and hence control of global food supplies (making ‘buy local’ initiatives harder), and tax advantages.
First implemented under President Richard Nixon, fast track “trade promotion authority” is a trade negotiation and approval process designed to keep the terms of trade agreements out of the hands of the public and its elected representatives and into the hands of an un-elected trade representative and private corporations. This will allow the TPP to be signed before the public can see or scrutinize it. Fast track rules allow such trade agreements to be rushed through Congress and bypass normal Congressional review.
Opponents claim the TPP is another NAFTA and will threaten more U.S. jobs at a time when unemployment and underemployment remain stubbornly high, especially among 18-35 year olds. The lack of high-paying, gainful employment relevant to one’s college education has sparked an effort by the administration to forgive student loan debt riddling the millennial generation, debt that’s causing many to be stuck living at home with their parents delaying home ownership and starting their own families.
The success of upcoming meetings in Washington and later in Bali will largely determine how quickly the TPP could come to fruition. But with some countries re-thinking the threat to their own economies and key markets, the TPP may be another Obama initiative that bites the dust in 2013.
Levequests are special solo quests you can take over and over again at various levels and locations that are a great way to level your character up quickly. Guildhests partner you with three other players in increasingly difficult co-op missions.
Even some of the earlier story quests—or at least one of mine at about level 19—required a party to undertake, forcing solo players to at the very least team up for a brief dungeon. The only problem here was the wait time, and finally through various chatting diplomacy we cobbled together a party rather than wait for one to be made. This is largely due, I suspect, to the lack of certain types of classes at this point, since specific combinations of classes are required.
If I had to recommend one version over the other, I’d say stick with the PC both for graphics and the mouse-and-keyboard. Gamepad support is quality, but this is really a keyboard and mouse game. Action-MMO it is not, and really action is the only time a gamepad works particularly well.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
As Congress comes back from its August recess, it’ll be facing big questions about U.S. intervention in Syria as well as raising the debt ceiling, putting the administration’s goal of completing the TPP by year’s end in doubt. Negotiators have run into protectionist roadblocks at home, and with many of the main sticking points making no progress during the Brunei talks, some countries, such as Malaysia, admit things have reached a critical stage and they’re contemplating whether to withdraw from the pact completely.
Japan, who only joined talks mid-summer, is seeking exceptions to aspects of the TPP, which is causing other countries to balk at the effects the TPP could have on their own native, many of them state-owned, industries. Japan is seeking to shelter certain key agricultural crops from the removal of tariffs as required by the TPP. The five major products its seeking to protect are: rice, wheat, beef and pork, dairy products and sugar.
However, the ‘official’ joint statement by TPP members claimed the negotiations were ‘successful’ and that progress was made: “…discussions both jointly and bilaterally were successful in identifying creative and pragmatic solutions to many issues and further narrowing the remaining work.”
Progress was touted on market access, rules of origin, investment, financial services, intellectual property, competition and environment, as well as providing access to each other’s markets for “goods, services, investment, financial services, temporary entry and government procurement.”
But insiders say some work groups were not as successful as desired, including the environmental work group that made less than 40 percent of the progress expected. This was the last of the major negotiating sessions, and now the focus is said to be turning inward to ‘intercessional’ talks ahead of a planned TPP summit on October 8 in Bali, Indonesia.
Opposition isn’t just brewing overseas. Obama, though he’s cozy with big labor interests, started pushing the TPP on an unsuspecting U.S. public in 2008 with an ambitious Asia-Pacific free trade region that would cover 40 percent of global economic output representing about one-third of rtls. The countries at the table so far include: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam. The TPP is expected to be a ‘docking agreement,’ leaving the door open for other nations to join with Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea and others already expressing some interest.
According to Citizens Trade Campaign, these corporate interests are seeking new access to cheap labor (Vietnamese workers are paid one-third that of Chinese workers), the ability to skirt environmental laws, longer drug patents (delaying the production of low-cost generic drugs), financial de-regulation (preventing regulations that could stave off ‘too big to fail’ bailouts), caps on food safety protections (ie – limit liability for pesticides and genetically modified foods), concentration and hence control of global food supplies (making ‘buy local’ initiatives harder), and tax advantages.
First implemented under President Richard Nixon, fast track “trade promotion authority” is a trade negotiation and approval process designed to keep the terms of trade agreements out of the hands of the public and its elected representatives and into the hands of an un-elected trade representative and private corporations. This will allow the TPP to be signed before the public can see or scrutinize it. Fast track rules allow such trade agreements to be rushed through Congress and bypass normal Congressional review.
Opponents claim the TPP is another NAFTA and will threaten more U.S. jobs at a time when unemployment and underemployment remain stubbornly high, especially among 18-35 year olds. The lack of high-paying, gainful employment relevant to one’s college education has sparked an effort by the administration to forgive student loan debt riddling the millennial generation, debt that’s causing many to be stuck living at home with their parents delaying home ownership and starting their own families.
The success of upcoming meetings in Washington and later in Bali will largely determine how quickly the TPP could come to fruition. But with some countries re-thinking the threat to their own economies and key markets, the TPP may be another Obama initiative that bites the dust in 2013.
Levequests are special solo quests you can take over and over again at various levels and locations that are a great way to level your character up quickly. Guildhests partner you with three other players in increasingly difficult co-op missions.
Even some of the earlier story quests—or at least one of mine at about level 19—required a party to undertake, forcing solo players to at the very least team up for a brief dungeon. The only problem here was the wait time, and finally through various chatting diplomacy we cobbled together a party rather than wait for one to be made. This is largely due, I suspect, to the lack of certain types of classes at this point, since specific combinations of classes are required.
If I had to recommend one version over the other, I’d say stick with the PC both for graphics and the mouse-and-keyboard. Gamepad support is quality, but this is really a keyboard and mouse game. Action-MMO it is not, and really action is the only time a gamepad works particularly well.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
2013年8月28日星期三
Hacker scenes are all the same
Look, I get it. When the hero inevitably runs into a dead end, I’m willing to suspend my disbelief and accept that a fictional hacker can solve everything. But it’s not 1995 anymore; computers are not relatively new inventions, so over time, these hacker scenes have only become more tedious than revolutionary.
Let’s start with the latest hacking-as-a-plot-point offender: this summer’s Elysium. Toward the end, our hero Max is forced to carry critical data to the “core” of the wealthy outpost in space. Who does he bring along? A hacker named Spider who just happens to know exactly how to use the data stored in Max’s head to—what else?—save the world.And Spider does what every movie hacker does: He types a thousand lines of “code,” steps back and clasps his sweaty hands together, praying that what he just keyboard-smashed will work.
I didn’t always find “hacking” scenes so annoying to watch. When Lex tries to reboot the security system in Jurassic Park, I remember being on the edge of my seat, nervously gritting my teeth while she navigated the files. I used to sweat alongside Livingston Dell in Ocean’s Eleven and its sequels, as he used one shortcut after the next to help his fellow thieves access casino vaults.
Not anymore. Now, whenever a character takes a seat in front of a computer, cracks his knuckles and starts typing, I’m bored out of my mind, because every hacking scene ends up looking the same. Fingers fly over the keys, sweat drips from the hacker’s eyebrows and the monitor displays some fancy graphic to convince you that, yes, this hacker is doing something. And when screenwriters don’t know what else to do, they have the characters ramble off gibberish to distracts the viewer. Even Hugh Jackman can’t make scenes like those coherent.
And then there’s the annoying trope of timing. A buffering video is frustrating enough; why must films involving hackers have them staring at a bar slowly go from 98 percent… to 99 percent… to 100?It’s become a weak ploy to get the audience invested in the drama and Indoor Positioning System, simply put, no fun to watch. Yes, it can play up the tension, but if most of the film already includes hacking as a plot device, it slows down the pace.
It’s not just the portrayal of these scenes, but the portrayal of the hackers as well. Most hackers—Matt Farrell in Live Free or Die Hard, the aforementioned Dell in Ocean’s Eleven, Skip Tyler in White House Down—are shown to be awkward, stuttering, usually bespectacled nerds.
It’s been done so often that every hacker, no matter what weird characteristic they’re given, comes off as one-note, socially awkward outcasts. And no, not every film is meant to delve into extensive character backgrounds, but enough with this stereotype already. Hackers can be cool, too. Smallville’s Chloe was my idol, and another Chloe is set to play Skye, a hacker on Agents of SHIELD, who promises she won’t be one of the “weird outcasts who only know how to deal with electronics.” Even though they’re still victim to hacking scenes, both Girl with the Dragon Tattoo adaptations characterize Lisbeth Salander as more than just a hacker.
Ultimately, it’s all about hacking as a skill, not as the sole characteristic or a vague plot device. Break a firewall and the MI6 headquarters blow up? Type some gibberish and all of America goes in lockdown? You’re better than that, screenwriters. Before you dive into making movies about Wikileaks or the NSA, remember: It’s not about whether or not the hacking is realistic, it’s about using that hacking effectively in your plot.
Despite the fact that he was making his presentation to an assembly of some of the world's most accomplished semiconductor engineers, Parviz stayed away from technical matters, and didn't reveal anything about Glass beyond what is already known. Instead, he focused on its possible impact on, well, everyone.
Parviz characterized Glass as the next step in communication. At the dawn of history, he said, "Basically what we did was we talked to each other, so we had to be in physical proximity of each other, carry our emotions through speech, and communicate – that was the only thing we could do."
Next came the invention of writing, which enabled sending messages long distance – an improvement, but slow. Enter the telegraph, he said, which was able to send text messages quickly over long distance. Then came the telephone – fast, long-distance, without the requirement for conversion into text, with the ability for instant back-and-forth conversation, but tethered.
The digital age brought email – essential a private, mobile telegraph – and untethered, aka mobile, phones. All well and good, but from Parviz's point of view, "What we haven't really had actually, to this day, genuinely, has been a device, a technology that has been engineered from the get-go for visual communication from person to person – and that's one of the main drivers of Google Glass."
Sure, he said, you can take photos with your smartphone and email them to a friend, he said, "But that is sort of an extension of taking a picture and putting it in paper mail and mailing it to someone else."
A camera-equipped computing device that, as Parviz put it, "lives on your head," will enable you to immediately live-stream what you're looking at to one or many viewers who can "experience [your] life at this very moment" while leaving your hands free. "This has a camera that sees the world through my eyes – and that's unique to this form factor," he said. "We don't have other electronic devices that can live with me as I live my life rather than be an intrusion into my life."
With the world of human interaction upgraded from mere speech to "see the world as I'm seeing it when I'm seeing it" pictorial communication, Parviz moved on to how humans have looked for information over the years, how they have sought out answers to questions they might have had. "A few thousand years ago," he said, "basically you were out of luck" if you didn't know someone who could answer your question.
Over time, however, as mankind became urbanized, you could maybe track down your local polymath would could answer your questions – but whether that smart person was actually correct, you had no way of knowing. After that came writing, scrolls, and books, and you could look things up in the library – a big improvement that ruled the roost for centuries.
Let’s start with the latest hacking-as-a-plot-point offender: this summer’s Elysium. Toward the end, our hero Max is forced to carry critical data to the “core” of the wealthy outpost in space. Who does he bring along? A hacker named Spider who just happens to know exactly how to use the data stored in Max’s head to—what else?—save the world.And Spider does what every movie hacker does: He types a thousand lines of “code,” steps back and clasps his sweaty hands together, praying that what he just keyboard-smashed will work.
I didn’t always find “hacking” scenes so annoying to watch. When Lex tries to reboot the security system in Jurassic Park, I remember being on the edge of my seat, nervously gritting my teeth while she navigated the files. I used to sweat alongside Livingston Dell in Ocean’s Eleven and its sequels, as he used one shortcut after the next to help his fellow thieves access casino vaults.
Not anymore. Now, whenever a character takes a seat in front of a computer, cracks his knuckles and starts typing, I’m bored out of my mind, because every hacking scene ends up looking the same. Fingers fly over the keys, sweat drips from the hacker’s eyebrows and the monitor displays some fancy graphic to convince you that, yes, this hacker is doing something. And when screenwriters don’t know what else to do, they have the characters ramble off gibberish to distracts the viewer. Even Hugh Jackman can’t make scenes like those coherent.
And then there’s the annoying trope of timing. A buffering video is frustrating enough; why must films involving hackers have them staring at a bar slowly go from 98 percent… to 99 percent… to 100?It’s become a weak ploy to get the audience invested in the drama and Indoor Positioning System, simply put, no fun to watch. Yes, it can play up the tension, but if most of the film already includes hacking as a plot device, it slows down the pace.
It’s not just the portrayal of these scenes, but the portrayal of the hackers as well. Most hackers—Matt Farrell in Live Free or Die Hard, the aforementioned Dell in Ocean’s Eleven, Skip Tyler in White House Down—are shown to be awkward, stuttering, usually bespectacled nerds.
It’s been done so often that every hacker, no matter what weird characteristic they’re given, comes off as one-note, socially awkward outcasts. And no, not every film is meant to delve into extensive character backgrounds, but enough with this stereotype already. Hackers can be cool, too. Smallville’s Chloe was my idol, and another Chloe is set to play Skye, a hacker on Agents of SHIELD, who promises she won’t be one of the “weird outcasts who only know how to deal with electronics.” Even though they’re still victim to hacking scenes, both Girl with the Dragon Tattoo adaptations characterize Lisbeth Salander as more than just a hacker.
Ultimately, it’s all about hacking as a skill, not as the sole characteristic or a vague plot device. Break a firewall and the MI6 headquarters blow up? Type some gibberish and all of America goes in lockdown? You’re better than that, screenwriters. Before you dive into making movies about Wikileaks or the NSA, remember: It’s not about whether or not the hacking is realistic, it’s about using that hacking effectively in your plot.
Despite the fact that he was making his presentation to an assembly of some of the world's most accomplished semiconductor engineers, Parviz stayed away from technical matters, and didn't reveal anything about Glass beyond what is already known. Instead, he focused on its possible impact on, well, everyone.
Parviz characterized Glass as the next step in communication. At the dawn of history, he said, "Basically what we did was we talked to each other, so we had to be in physical proximity of each other, carry our emotions through speech, and communicate – that was the only thing we could do."
Next came the invention of writing, which enabled sending messages long distance – an improvement, but slow. Enter the telegraph, he said, which was able to send text messages quickly over long distance. Then came the telephone – fast, long-distance, without the requirement for conversion into text, with the ability for instant back-and-forth conversation, but tethered.
The digital age brought email – essential a private, mobile telegraph – and untethered, aka mobile, phones. All well and good, but from Parviz's point of view, "What we haven't really had actually, to this day, genuinely, has been a device, a technology that has been engineered from the get-go for visual communication from person to person – and that's one of the main drivers of Google Glass."
Sure, he said, you can take photos with your smartphone and email them to a friend, he said, "But that is sort of an extension of taking a picture and putting it in paper mail and mailing it to someone else."
A camera-equipped computing device that, as Parviz put it, "lives on your head," will enable you to immediately live-stream what you're looking at to one or many viewers who can "experience [your] life at this very moment" while leaving your hands free. "This has a camera that sees the world through my eyes – and that's unique to this form factor," he said. "We don't have other electronic devices that can live with me as I live my life rather than be an intrusion into my life."
With the world of human interaction upgraded from mere speech to "see the world as I'm seeing it when I'm seeing it" pictorial communication, Parviz moved on to how humans have looked for information over the years, how they have sought out answers to questions they might have had. "A few thousand years ago," he said, "basically you were out of luck" if you didn't know someone who could answer your question.
Over time, however, as mankind became urbanized, you could maybe track down your local polymath would could answer your questions – but whether that smart person was actually correct, you had no way of knowing. After that came writing, scrolls, and books, and you could look things up in the library – a big improvement that ruled the roost for centuries.
Abbott's policy on the run at Rooty Hill debate
Kevin Rudd has thrown the lever to populism by calling for tighter restrictions on the sale of Australian land to foreign individuals and state-owned enterprises and admitting he feels ''anxious'' about foreign ownership.The clearly vote-driven shift came as the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott faced off at the third and final leaders debate of the 2013 campaign at Rooty Hill RSL Club in Sydney.
Mr Rudd was pressed on his political assassination of Julia Gillard in late June, and Mr Abbott was criticised for his paid parental leave scheme.An exit poll of the audience of 100 undecided voters scored the debate as a comfortable win for Mr Rudd with 45 votes, to Mr Abbott's 38. However, 19 remained undecided.
Small businessman Ian told Mr Abbott: ''I just think that a fork-lift driver from Mt Druitt should not be paying his taxes so a pretty little lady lawyer on the north shore on 180 grand a year can have a kid.''Declaring himself ''old-fashioned'' when it comes to allowing foreign access to Australian land, Mr Rudd said he was ''not quite as free market as Tony [Abbott] on this stuff''.
Kevin Rudd.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd: "I believe I was doing absolutely the right thing by the party and by the country". Photo: Alex EllinghausenHe said he was far more in favour of joint venture approaches to ensure Australian land stayed in Australian hands.
The shift will be seen as rank populism that threatens to overturn a longstanding consensus in Australian mainstream politics between free market-oriented figures in both the Liberal Party and the ALP. The shift appeared to come without prior party consultation.
The second questioner – Amanda – asked if he ''honestly'' believed that he was not ''destabilising'' Ms Gillard’s leadership, and if he really thought voters had not seen through it.''I can say that through all of that, I believe I was doing absolutely the right thing by the party and Indoor Positioning System,'' he said.The question was one of several hostile queries directed at both men, although Mr Rudd received the majority.
Mr Abbott found himself defending his plans for budget management as Mr Rudd accused him of not committing to the full six years of the education spending promised by Labor and of having secret plans to close Medicare Locals at the expense of services and hundreds of jobs.In response, Mr Abbott declared he would not close any Medicare Locals. This definitive guarantee also appeared to be improvised after he had pointedly left open the possibility of closures less than a week ago when he said: ''Now, can I say that absolutely no Medicare Local will close? I'm not going to say that.''
But it was in response to a complaint about foreign land sales, from a grandmother called Janine, that both leaders broke with Australia's established globalism to shun foreign investment.Mr Abbott, who admitted there were many circumstances where someone investing ''hundreds of millions'' was a good thing for Australia, said a Coalition government would lower the scrutiny threshold for the Foreign Investment Review Board to examine acquisition proposals above ''about $15 million'' – down from the current threshhold of more than $220 million.
Robocop may not be real, but his efficiency is something worth aspiring to. Through the use of Google Glass, communications vendor Mutualink may soon give public safety and military personnel a chance to capture some of the half-robot, half-man’s technological capabilities. Showcased from August 18 to 21 at the annual Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) conference in Anaheim, Calif., Mutualink demonstrated how Google Glass could serve real-time information, hands-free, to public safety officials using their interoperability communications platform.
Mutualink provides public safety and military organizations with the ability to share all kinds of data despite mismatched hardware or software. During their demonstration at APCO, hundreds of indoor Tracking, schools, hospitals, utility plants and operation centers were connected, able to share video, voice and data ad-hoc. That, said VP of Innovation Michael Wengrovitz, is the basic capability already offered by their company. Google Glass, about to enter the consumer market, will provide a new avenue for delivery of their services, Wengrovitz explained.
Google Glass doesn’t change how their system works, he said. In many ways, it’s just another computer, but with the important difference that it frees up the hands of the person using it. In one demonstration, the company illustrated how Google Glass and their network could allow video or a map to be shared during a mock school shooting.
“We really saw firsthand that first responders inside a school need to have timely and situational awareness and they need their hands. Both of them,” he said. Google Glass’s heads up display (HUD) allows users to look to the right in their peripheral vision and view information that is being served to them, like maps, blueprints, surveillance video feeds, or other documents. Information can also be returned back to command and control from the field.
“What we showed there, which I think is very unique, is that our system can bridge together facilities that are already on wired connections with facilities that become connected to FirstNet when it deploys across the United States,” Wengrovitz said. This is important, he noted, because there will be a migration period when people are moving to FirstNet’s network and Mutualink will be there to support everyone, regardless of which network they’re on.
Google Glass is a very promising technology, said Mutualink Senior VP Joe Mazzarella, but for public safety, there are a couple improvements that could be made. The audio, which works through cranial vibration, works well, but its reliability in a loud environment is an open question. And the HUD, while useful, will also continue to evolve in future wearable computers, he said, adding that all of this is pushing people toward an augmented reality.
Eventually, he said, wearable computers will have more advanced HUDs. “You’re looking at your normal view through your eyes, but through a screen that allows data to be opposed onto that view space so that you could look at different information,” he said. This type of capability will be very useful for first responders and soldiers alike, he said – adding that the capabilities of this technology will only become greater as companies like Google enchance their products.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
Mr Rudd was pressed on his political assassination of Julia Gillard in late June, and Mr Abbott was criticised for his paid parental leave scheme.An exit poll of the audience of 100 undecided voters scored the debate as a comfortable win for Mr Rudd with 45 votes, to Mr Abbott's 38. However, 19 remained undecided.
Small businessman Ian told Mr Abbott: ''I just think that a fork-lift driver from Mt Druitt should not be paying his taxes so a pretty little lady lawyer on the north shore on 180 grand a year can have a kid.''Declaring himself ''old-fashioned'' when it comes to allowing foreign access to Australian land, Mr Rudd said he was ''not quite as free market as Tony [Abbott] on this stuff''.
Kevin Rudd.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd: "I believe I was doing absolutely the right thing by the party and by the country". Photo: Alex EllinghausenHe said he was far more in favour of joint venture approaches to ensure Australian land stayed in Australian hands.
The shift will be seen as rank populism that threatens to overturn a longstanding consensus in Australian mainstream politics between free market-oriented figures in both the Liberal Party and the ALP. The shift appeared to come without prior party consultation.
The second questioner – Amanda – asked if he ''honestly'' believed that he was not ''destabilising'' Ms Gillard’s leadership, and if he really thought voters had not seen through it.''I can say that through all of that, I believe I was doing absolutely the right thing by the party and Indoor Positioning System,'' he said.The question was one of several hostile queries directed at both men, although Mr Rudd received the majority.
Mr Abbott found himself defending his plans for budget management as Mr Rudd accused him of not committing to the full six years of the education spending promised by Labor and of having secret plans to close Medicare Locals at the expense of services and hundreds of jobs.In response, Mr Abbott declared he would not close any Medicare Locals. This definitive guarantee also appeared to be improvised after he had pointedly left open the possibility of closures less than a week ago when he said: ''Now, can I say that absolutely no Medicare Local will close? I'm not going to say that.''
But it was in response to a complaint about foreign land sales, from a grandmother called Janine, that both leaders broke with Australia's established globalism to shun foreign investment.Mr Abbott, who admitted there were many circumstances where someone investing ''hundreds of millions'' was a good thing for Australia, said a Coalition government would lower the scrutiny threshold for the Foreign Investment Review Board to examine acquisition proposals above ''about $15 million'' – down from the current threshhold of more than $220 million.
Robocop may not be real, but his efficiency is something worth aspiring to. Through the use of Google Glass, communications vendor Mutualink may soon give public safety and military personnel a chance to capture some of the half-robot, half-man’s technological capabilities. Showcased from August 18 to 21 at the annual Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) conference in Anaheim, Calif., Mutualink demonstrated how Google Glass could serve real-time information, hands-free, to public safety officials using their interoperability communications platform.
Mutualink provides public safety and military organizations with the ability to share all kinds of data despite mismatched hardware or software. During their demonstration at APCO, hundreds of indoor Tracking, schools, hospitals, utility plants and operation centers were connected, able to share video, voice and data ad-hoc. That, said VP of Innovation Michael Wengrovitz, is the basic capability already offered by their company. Google Glass, about to enter the consumer market, will provide a new avenue for delivery of their services, Wengrovitz explained.
Google Glass doesn’t change how their system works, he said. In many ways, it’s just another computer, but with the important difference that it frees up the hands of the person using it. In one demonstration, the company illustrated how Google Glass and their network could allow video or a map to be shared during a mock school shooting.
“We really saw firsthand that first responders inside a school need to have timely and situational awareness and they need their hands. Both of them,” he said. Google Glass’s heads up display (HUD) allows users to look to the right in their peripheral vision and view information that is being served to them, like maps, blueprints, surveillance video feeds, or other documents. Information can also be returned back to command and control from the field.
“What we showed there, which I think is very unique, is that our system can bridge together facilities that are already on wired connections with facilities that become connected to FirstNet when it deploys across the United States,” Wengrovitz said. This is important, he noted, because there will be a migration period when people are moving to FirstNet’s network and Mutualink will be there to support everyone, regardless of which network they’re on.
Google Glass is a very promising technology, said Mutualink Senior VP Joe Mazzarella, but for public safety, there are a couple improvements that could be made. The audio, which works through cranial vibration, works well, but its reliability in a loud environment is an open question. And the HUD, while useful, will also continue to evolve in future wearable computers, he said, adding that all of this is pushing people toward an augmented reality.
Eventually, he said, wearable computers will have more advanced HUDs. “You’re looking at your normal view through your eyes, but through a screen that allows data to be opposed onto that view space so that you could look at different information,” he said. This type of capability will be very useful for first responders and soldiers alike, he said – adding that the capabilities of this technology will only become greater as companies like Google enchance their products.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
2013年8月26日星期一
Hillary, Helmets, Crossfire and Cash
When Reince Priebus pressured Comcast's NBC to drop a miniseries starring Diane Lane as Hillary Clinton, the hostage that the RNC chairman threatened to snuff was the network's access to the 2016 presidential primary debates. When the N.F.L. forced Disney's ESPN to pull out of a documentary about concussions jointly produced with PBS's Frontline, the league's leverage was its deal with Disney's ESPN to air Monday Night Football. And when Time Warner's CNN hired Newt Gingrich for its exhumed edition of Crossfire, its motive wasn't political journalism in service of democracy; it was stunt casting in service of ratings.
On the surface, the fight between the GOP and NBC is about the effects of media on audiences. The party's presumption -- based on no evidence -- is that the miniseries would put Clinton in a favorable light, and -- also based on no evidence -- that the halo would translate into votes. But if a movie could do that, then John Glenn, heroically portrayed in the 1983 movie The Right Stuff, would have been the 1984 Democratic presidential nominee. The real issue here isn't the impact of entertainment on audiences, it's the coup that took presidential debates out of the hands of rtls and handed them to party hacks.
Once upon a time, groups like the League of Women Voters sponsored the debates, and all cameras were welcome to cover them. But starting in 1988, the Democratic and Republican parties wrested control of the process. Since then, the general election debates have had an aura of patriotic respectability, but in reality they've been run by the same folks who've earned an eight percent approval rating for Congress. The primary debates have become cash cows for the networks, interest groups and faux think tanks. They're spectacles that provide free media to candidates, attract eyeballs to sell to advertisers and offer co-branding opportunities to burnish the images of the evenings' co-sponsors. The right question isn't whether NBC's miniseries would put a finger on the scale. It's why the hell a political party should be permitted to use the money that can be milked from the democratic process as a bargaining chip.
When ESPN withdrew its logo and credit from Frontline's "League of Denial," a two-part investigation of the N.F.L.'s handling of head injuries, its explanation was that "the use of ESPN's marks could incorrectly imply that we have editorial control." The N.F.L., of course, denies that it coerced ESPN, but as the New York Times has reported, ESPN's turnabout came a week after a heated lunch between Roger Goodell, commissioner of the N.F.L., and John Skipper, ESPN's president. For more than a year, the ground rules covering editorial authority had been working just fine; Frontline and ESPN each had control over what each aired. PBS and ESPN executives had even appeared together this summer at the Television Critics Assn. to promote the coming documentary. But when the N.F.L. belatedly realized -- hello? -- that they were about to get slammed for their see-no-evil response to players' brain traumas, they took ESPN to the woodshed. Disney is paying $1.1 billion for the lucrative rights to broadcast Monday Night Football this season, and $2 billion next season. "Nice deal you've got here. Too bad if anything were to happen to it." Surely nothing like that got said over the salad.
What makes this especially grim is its impact on the ESPN newsroom. Ever since CBS discovered that 60 Minutes could make a profit, the networks have treated news as a revenue center within their entertainment businesses. For sports reporters operating within that corporate structure, there's an inherent conflict between the network's financial contracts with sports content rights-holders, and its journalistic contract with its viewers. The fate of "League of Denial" is a case study of who wins that fight.
CNN, like NBC and ESPN, lives and dies by ratings. Outside of the new morning show New Day, CNN president Jeff Zucker's efforts to resuscitate the network have not much tested the possibility that actually covering the news, rather than filling time with blowhards, food fights and murderers, could be a winning strategy. Anyone who's watched CNN International while traveling abroad knows that CNN can in fact deliver solid, round-the-clock journalism, but apparently management thinks Americans are too ADD-addled, or maybe just too dim, to have a hearty appetite for real news. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that CNN is pulling Crossfire out of Indoor Positioning System, or that it's giving a certifiable demagogue like Newt Gingrich a regular seat at its table.
When Jon Stewart appeared on Crossfire in 2004, he was the guest from hell. "Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America," he told its then hosts, Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala. "I'm here to confront you, because we need help from the media, and they're hurting us... I would love to see a debate show," he said, but calling Crossfire a debate show was "like saying pro wrestling is a show about athletic competition... You have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably.... I watch your show every day. And it kills me... It's so -- oh, it's so painful to watch... Please, I beg of you guys, please... Please stop." That clip went viral.
The story goes that King Canute had his throne carried to the shore, where he ordered the waves to stop. When they didn't stop, he said he'd done this to demonstrate that kings were powerless compared to God. Three months after Stewart's "stop hurting America" appearance, when CNN announced it was cancelling Crossfire, I thought he was a god. Now, with Crossfire coming back, it looks like the god with the last laugh is Mammon.
It has taken six decades for the CIA to formally acknowledge that it undertook a coup against Iran’s elected government in 1953, but the spy agency might never concede that some of its officers joined in a political strike against a sitting U.S. president in 1980, yet that is what the evidence now indicates.
As with the ouster of Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, the motive for sabotaging the reelection of President Jimmy Carter in 1980 appears to have flowed from fears about the direction of the Cold War, with American hardliners justifying their actions based on an assessment that Carter, like Mossadegh, was a dangerous idealist.
In 1953, the nationalistic Mossadegh was challenging America’s British allies over control of Iranian oil fields, prompting concerns that an armed confrontation between Great Britain and Iran might play to the Soviets’ advantage, according to a secret CIA document declassified last week. In 1980, Cold War hardliners, including disgruntled CIA officers, were warning that Carter’s decision to make human rights the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy was dangerously na?ve, inviting Soviet advances.
But a key difference between the two episodes was that the ouster of Mossadegh, an operation codenamed TPAJAX, was carried out in 1953 “as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government,” the CIA report said, presumably meaning President Dwight Eisenhower himself.
The apparent 1980 plot to undermine Carter by sabotaging his negotiations with Iran over the fate of 52 American hostages would have been pulled off by rogue CIA officers collaborating with the Republican presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan (and his running mate George H.W. Bush), without the knowledge of Carter and CIA Director Stansfield Turner.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
On the surface, the fight between the GOP and NBC is about the effects of media on audiences. The party's presumption -- based on no evidence -- is that the miniseries would put Clinton in a favorable light, and -- also based on no evidence -- that the halo would translate into votes. But if a movie could do that, then John Glenn, heroically portrayed in the 1983 movie The Right Stuff, would have been the 1984 Democratic presidential nominee. The real issue here isn't the impact of entertainment on audiences, it's the coup that took presidential debates out of the hands of rtls and handed them to party hacks.
Once upon a time, groups like the League of Women Voters sponsored the debates, and all cameras were welcome to cover them. But starting in 1988, the Democratic and Republican parties wrested control of the process. Since then, the general election debates have had an aura of patriotic respectability, but in reality they've been run by the same folks who've earned an eight percent approval rating for Congress. The primary debates have become cash cows for the networks, interest groups and faux think tanks. They're spectacles that provide free media to candidates, attract eyeballs to sell to advertisers and offer co-branding opportunities to burnish the images of the evenings' co-sponsors. The right question isn't whether NBC's miniseries would put a finger on the scale. It's why the hell a political party should be permitted to use the money that can be milked from the democratic process as a bargaining chip.
When ESPN withdrew its logo and credit from Frontline's "League of Denial," a two-part investigation of the N.F.L.'s handling of head injuries, its explanation was that "the use of ESPN's marks could incorrectly imply that we have editorial control." The N.F.L., of course, denies that it coerced ESPN, but as the New York Times has reported, ESPN's turnabout came a week after a heated lunch between Roger Goodell, commissioner of the N.F.L., and John Skipper, ESPN's president. For more than a year, the ground rules covering editorial authority had been working just fine; Frontline and ESPN each had control over what each aired. PBS and ESPN executives had even appeared together this summer at the Television Critics Assn. to promote the coming documentary. But when the N.F.L. belatedly realized -- hello? -- that they were about to get slammed for their see-no-evil response to players' brain traumas, they took ESPN to the woodshed. Disney is paying $1.1 billion for the lucrative rights to broadcast Monday Night Football this season, and $2 billion next season. "Nice deal you've got here. Too bad if anything were to happen to it." Surely nothing like that got said over the salad.
What makes this especially grim is its impact on the ESPN newsroom. Ever since CBS discovered that 60 Minutes could make a profit, the networks have treated news as a revenue center within their entertainment businesses. For sports reporters operating within that corporate structure, there's an inherent conflict between the network's financial contracts with sports content rights-holders, and its journalistic contract with its viewers. The fate of "League of Denial" is a case study of who wins that fight.
CNN, like NBC and ESPN, lives and dies by ratings. Outside of the new morning show New Day, CNN president Jeff Zucker's efforts to resuscitate the network have not much tested the possibility that actually covering the news, rather than filling time with blowhards, food fights and murderers, could be a winning strategy. Anyone who's watched CNN International while traveling abroad knows that CNN can in fact deliver solid, round-the-clock journalism, but apparently management thinks Americans are too ADD-addled, or maybe just too dim, to have a hearty appetite for real news. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that CNN is pulling Crossfire out of Indoor Positioning System, or that it's giving a certifiable demagogue like Newt Gingrich a regular seat at its table.
When Jon Stewart appeared on Crossfire in 2004, he was the guest from hell. "Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America," he told its then hosts, Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala. "I'm here to confront you, because we need help from the media, and they're hurting us... I would love to see a debate show," he said, but calling Crossfire a debate show was "like saying pro wrestling is a show about athletic competition... You have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably.... I watch your show every day. And it kills me... It's so -- oh, it's so painful to watch... Please, I beg of you guys, please... Please stop." That clip went viral.
The story goes that King Canute had his throne carried to the shore, where he ordered the waves to stop. When they didn't stop, he said he'd done this to demonstrate that kings were powerless compared to God. Three months after Stewart's "stop hurting America" appearance, when CNN announced it was cancelling Crossfire, I thought he was a god. Now, with Crossfire coming back, it looks like the god with the last laugh is Mammon.
It has taken six decades for the CIA to formally acknowledge that it undertook a coup against Iran’s elected government in 1953, but the spy agency might never concede that some of its officers joined in a political strike against a sitting U.S. president in 1980, yet that is what the evidence now indicates.
As with the ouster of Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, the motive for sabotaging the reelection of President Jimmy Carter in 1980 appears to have flowed from fears about the direction of the Cold War, with American hardliners justifying their actions based on an assessment that Carter, like Mossadegh, was a dangerous idealist.
In 1953, the nationalistic Mossadegh was challenging America’s British allies over control of Iranian oil fields, prompting concerns that an armed confrontation between Great Britain and Iran might play to the Soviets’ advantage, according to a secret CIA document declassified last week. In 1980, Cold War hardliners, including disgruntled CIA officers, were warning that Carter’s decision to make human rights the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy was dangerously na?ve, inviting Soviet advances.
But a key difference between the two episodes was that the ouster of Mossadegh, an operation codenamed TPAJAX, was carried out in 1953 “as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government,” the CIA report said, presumably meaning President Dwight Eisenhower himself.
The apparent 1980 plot to undermine Carter by sabotaging his negotiations with Iran over the fate of 52 American hostages would have been pulled off by rogue CIA officers collaborating with the Republican presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan (and his running mate George H.W. Bush), without the knowledge of Carter and CIA Director Stansfield Turner.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
How Google designed its wearable Glass gadget
When Google set out to create Glass, it was looking for the next big platform for communications and computing, he said in a talk at the Hot Chips engineering conference at Stanford.The first prototype was not impressive. Smartphones weigh around 135 grams, but the first Glass prototype required a backpack and weighed 3,350 grams — 7.4 pounds.
Glass is a sophisticated computing platform in that it takes pictures and videos, recognizes your speech commands, and delivers sound to you via a bone conduction method. It has a dual-core processor running at more than a 1Ghz. And it has a three-axis gyroscope, a three-axis accelerometer, a magnetometer, and global positioning system location information. These devices give sensor information on your location and Indoor Positioning System.
The device is not symmetric, with two Glass elements covering both eyes, because it’s much more complex. It doubles the weight, increases power consumption, and distracts your other eye from the real world.“Comfort is very important because we want people to wear it the whole day,” Parviz said.
The device can transfer data via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios. At the moment, there is no plan to add cellphone service or a data modem. If there is an overriding mission of Glass, it’s to deliver information fast.“As I talk to you, this is how fast I can access the computer,” he said. “The camera sees the world through my eyes. It lives with me as I live my life. This device is intimately aware of what I see.”
One of the advantages of the form factor is that you can use it to perform tasks much more quickly than even if you were pushing buttons on your smartphone. It responds to touches or to voice commands, and it delivers sound directly to the bone in your head, rather than into your ears.Google Glass can also be more immersive, as the screen can be closer to your eye and make you feel like you are immersed in a computing environment. Smartphone screens can do that, but they are already getting too big.
“This is possible now because of you guys and what you enable in the electronics industry,” Parviz said. “We have also take advantage of the smartphone and the infrastructure it created.He noted smartphone camera resolution has risen from virtually nothing in 2002 to more than 16 megapixels today. That’s a huge leap that paved the way for Glass.
“It produces a beautiful image, and it costs a few dollars,” he said. “That is mind-boggling, and it is an example of why this device was not possible 15 years ago.”As to why Google embarked on this task in the first place, Parviz noted how it is the next logical step in the expansion of knowledge.“This device significantly expands my knowledge base,” Parviz said. “This is why we created Google Glass. The answers are just a question away.”
Today, the company is selling its first Google Glass units for $1,500. Over time, that price will come down. Parviz described it as an interesting first step.“As we released it to a number of Hands free access, and they tested it; it was amazing to experience their lives through their eyes,” he said. “We noticed if you have an electronics device all day, it should not impede any of your other senses.” His eyes and ears are still open and hands are free. ”That was very important,” he said. “You can get very rapid access to technology when you need it.”
Parviz said, “Now you use a huge amount of computing power for a fraction of a second. You ask a question, and it gets back to you.On the road ahead, Parviz wants technology to disappear. That’s why he likes Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing system. You don’t even know it’s there.“It should be the least intrusive,” he said.He said this will require advances in optics, photonics, miniaturization, transducers, computing power, and ultralow power designs. Since the device is on your body, it can’t generate much heat. That puts a lot of constraints on design.
“We are very excited about this platform, potentially as the major next thing in computing and communication,” Parviz said.He said the team takes security very seriously. Everything is pushed from the cloud, and an app cannot be installed and run on the device itself. That might change in future versions, and that will introduce implications for security.
Asked what he thought of the privacy issues as Glass technology becomes more invisible in the future, Parviz said, “That’s already an issue with smartphones. Back in the 1880s, when the first camera came out, and it became possible for someone to take a picture of you, it made people uncomfortable. It took some time for society to figure it out. The trajectory for a device like this is something similar.”
TasksEveryDay promised just such a service for around $10 an hour, which is about half the rate I'd have had to pay a personal assistant in my area. Looking at the site now, I see things that should have clued me in to the possibility that the rates weren't low just because of global labour arbitrage. It's rife with clip art, its marketing copy is riddled with not-quite-correct punctuation and capitalisation, and customer testimonials bear more than a passing resemblance to hostage videos. But in my stupor I was blind to these flaws. What's more, my negotiations with the company's sales representative went smoothly. The woman on the phone was polite, spoke English fluently, and expertly soothed my fears about how the site's assistants would handle my personal data. In addition to a non-disclosure agreement, the company constantly monitors its workers' online activities, its call centre is outfitted with surveillance cameras, and assistants aren't allowed to install any storage devices (like USB disks) into their computers. I was sold.
Things started promisingly. The saleswoman introduced me to my assistant, a young man I'll call Mr F. He sent me an email with his picture - big, slicked-back hair, a boyish face, Bible-salesman suit - and a promise to "put in my best efforts to ensure that all your tasks are executed 100 per cent efficiently".
At 9 am the next day, I shared my Google Calendar and Gmail accounts with Mr F, and I gave him his first task. I needed a flight from San Francisco to Minneapolis. I gave him my dates. I wanted times and prices. Once he'd found an ideal flight, I planned to give him my credit card number so he could book it for me.
But after sending him my request, I heard nothing. After 40 minutes, I sent him a follow-up to make sure he'd received the task. About 40 minutes after that, he responded: "Yes I have received your email and I have started working on it."
Huh. This task should have taken him about 10 minutes; why was he just getting started after a nearly an hour and a half? Around noon - about three hours (and $30) after I'd assigned the task - Mr F finally sent me an email to say he was done. Now I saw why he'd taken so long: Instead of looking for the best two or three flights that conformed to my calendar, he'd created a spreadsheet listing all the details of 10 flights. This was madness: I could have got a similar list myself in 30 seconds on any travel site. What I needed was someone to help me narrow down my options, not replicate a web search. And why did he think I'd need an Excel version? Why didn't he just send me a link to his search?
I chalked it up to first-day troubles. The weekend was coming up, and I didn't need Mr F on Monday morning. I told him to be ready to work on Tuesday. But on Tuesday I heard nothing. Not on Wednesday either. The whole week passed. Then another week. If I had a personal assistant, I would have had him call up TasksEveryDay to find out what kind of two-bit operation they were running. But I had no such help, so the task of calling up the firm to complain was added to a dozen other low-priority tasks on my to-do list. I did revoke Mr F's access to my Gmail and calendar.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
Glass is a sophisticated computing platform in that it takes pictures and videos, recognizes your speech commands, and delivers sound to you via a bone conduction method. It has a dual-core processor running at more than a 1Ghz. And it has a three-axis gyroscope, a three-axis accelerometer, a magnetometer, and global positioning system location information. These devices give sensor information on your location and Indoor Positioning System.
The device is not symmetric, with two Glass elements covering both eyes, because it’s much more complex. It doubles the weight, increases power consumption, and distracts your other eye from the real world.“Comfort is very important because we want people to wear it the whole day,” Parviz said.
The device can transfer data via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios. At the moment, there is no plan to add cellphone service or a data modem. If there is an overriding mission of Glass, it’s to deliver information fast.“As I talk to you, this is how fast I can access the computer,” he said. “The camera sees the world through my eyes. It lives with me as I live my life. This device is intimately aware of what I see.”
One of the advantages of the form factor is that you can use it to perform tasks much more quickly than even if you were pushing buttons on your smartphone. It responds to touches or to voice commands, and it delivers sound directly to the bone in your head, rather than into your ears.Google Glass can also be more immersive, as the screen can be closer to your eye and make you feel like you are immersed in a computing environment. Smartphone screens can do that, but they are already getting too big.
“This is possible now because of you guys and what you enable in the electronics industry,” Parviz said. “We have also take advantage of the smartphone and the infrastructure it created.He noted smartphone camera resolution has risen from virtually nothing in 2002 to more than 16 megapixels today. That’s a huge leap that paved the way for Glass.
“It produces a beautiful image, and it costs a few dollars,” he said. “That is mind-boggling, and it is an example of why this device was not possible 15 years ago.”As to why Google embarked on this task in the first place, Parviz noted how it is the next logical step in the expansion of knowledge.“This device significantly expands my knowledge base,” Parviz said. “This is why we created Google Glass. The answers are just a question away.”
Today, the company is selling its first Google Glass units for $1,500. Over time, that price will come down. Parviz described it as an interesting first step.“As we released it to a number of Hands free access, and they tested it; it was amazing to experience their lives through their eyes,” he said. “We noticed if you have an electronics device all day, it should not impede any of your other senses.” His eyes and ears are still open and hands are free. ”That was very important,” he said. “You can get very rapid access to technology when you need it.”
Parviz said, “Now you use a huge amount of computing power for a fraction of a second. You ask a question, and it gets back to you.On the road ahead, Parviz wants technology to disappear. That’s why he likes Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing system. You don’t even know it’s there.“It should be the least intrusive,” he said.He said this will require advances in optics, photonics, miniaturization, transducers, computing power, and ultralow power designs. Since the device is on your body, it can’t generate much heat. That puts a lot of constraints on design.
“We are very excited about this platform, potentially as the major next thing in computing and communication,” Parviz said.He said the team takes security very seriously. Everything is pushed from the cloud, and an app cannot be installed and run on the device itself. That might change in future versions, and that will introduce implications for security.
Asked what he thought of the privacy issues as Glass technology becomes more invisible in the future, Parviz said, “That’s already an issue with smartphones. Back in the 1880s, when the first camera came out, and it became possible for someone to take a picture of you, it made people uncomfortable. It took some time for society to figure it out. The trajectory for a device like this is something similar.”
TasksEveryDay promised just such a service for around $10 an hour, which is about half the rate I'd have had to pay a personal assistant in my area. Looking at the site now, I see things that should have clued me in to the possibility that the rates weren't low just because of global labour arbitrage. It's rife with clip art, its marketing copy is riddled with not-quite-correct punctuation and capitalisation, and customer testimonials bear more than a passing resemblance to hostage videos. But in my stupor I was blind to these flaws. What's more, my negotiations with the company's sales representative went smoothly. The woman on the phone was polite, spoke English fluently, and expertly soothed my fears about how the site's assistants would handle my personal data. In addition to a non-disclosure agreement, the company constantly monitors its workers' online activities, its call centre is outfitted with surveillance cameras, and assistants aren't allowed to install any storage devices (like USB disks) into their computers. I was sold.
Things started promisingly. The saleswoman introduced me to my assistant, a young man I'll call Mr F. He sent me an email with his picture - big, slicked-back hair, a boyish face, Bible-salesman suit - and a promise to "put in my best efforts to ensure that all your tasks are executed 100 per cent efficiently".
At 9 am the next day, I shared my Google Calendar and Gmail accounts with Mr F, and I gave him his first task. I needed a flight from San Francisco to Minneapolis. I gave him my dates. I wanted times and prices. Once he'd found an ideal flight, I planned to give him my credit card number so he could book it for me.
But after sending him my request, I heard nothing. After 40 minutes, I sent him a follow-up to make sure he'd received the task. About 40 minutes after that, he responded: "Yes I have received your email and I have started working on it."
Huh. This task should have taken him about 10 minutes; why was he just getting started after a nearly an hour and a half? Around noon - about three hours (and $30) after I'd assigned the task - Mr F finally sent me an email to say he was done. Now I saw why he'd taken so long: Instead of looking for the best two or three flights that conformed to my calendar, he'd created a spreadsheet listing all the details of 10 flights. This was madness: I could have got a similar list myself in 30 seconds on any travel site. What I needed was someone to help me narrow down my options, not replicate a web search. And why did he think I'd need an Excel version? Why didn't he just send me a link to his search?
I chalked it up to first-day troubles. The weekend was coming up, and I didn't need Mr F on Monday morning. I told him to be ready to work on Tuesday. But on Tuesday I heard nothing. Not on Wednesday either. The whole week passed. Then another week. If I had a personal assistant, I would have had him call up TasksEveryDay to find out what kind of two-bit operation they were running. But I had no such help, so the task of calling up the firm to complain was added to a dozen other low-priority tasks on my to-do list. I did revoke Mr F's access to my Gmail and calendar.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
2013年8月19日星期一
6 ways to repurpose a retired PC
Oh, joy! You’ve unboxed your new computer and are a ready to enjoy the faster processor, better display, and shiny new keys – but what do you do with your old computer? Many folks might just sell it to earn back some of the money spent buying their new machine, but you might be wondering how you can repurpose your old computer to keep it around longer.
If you’re like most of us, you’ll probably just stick it in a closet or leave it on a shelf to collect dust. If you’d rather make use of your old PC instead, there are actually several clever ways to reuse your old clunker. More often than not, it can fill a void that’s been missing in your home computing repertoire. Here are six new uses for your old PC.
Home theater PCs don’t need a lot of computing power to do basic home theater tasks, which makes an old computer a great option. Plus, all you really have to do is connect the computer to the TV using some sort of video cable, like HDMI, S-Video, DVI, or VGA. From there, you can watch Netflix shows, YouTube videos, and your own movie collection right on your TV from that old computer.
If you want to get even more advanced, you can install media center software, such as XBMC or Plex, in order to have a TV-friendly user interface to browse through your Indoor Positioning System. If you feel that your HTPC needs are growing over time, you can even upgrade it by putting a larger hard drive in to make room for more media files.
Old computers make great NAS boxes, mostly because they don’t need a lot of power to run in the first place. If you have multiple computers in your home and want a central storage system that each of these computers can access, turning an old computer into a NAS is a great way to go. There are a number of free NAS software solutions out there, including FreeNAS. Ubuntu is a great alternative as well.
If you’ve always wanted to try out Linux but didn’t want to experiment with it on your main computer and risk messing something up, use your old computer! By using your old PC for experiments, you’ll feel more liberated to try new things without the fear of wiping all your important files. Use it try out different distros and become familiar with the open-source operating system that everyone is talking about.
Furthermore, if Linux doesn’t interest you, you can still use that old PC to do experiments on, such as trying out buggy beta software, or simply just giving a new program a trial run before you commit to it and install it on your main computer.
Wouldn’t it be nice to look up a recipe online right from your kitchen? Or look up a how-to video on fixing your car while you’re in the garage? Putting a computer in a room that you spend the most time in (besides your home office or living room) can be beneficial for a lot of reasons. It can be useful for looking up recipes on the fly while in the kitchen or using it to watch videos to pass the time while you prepare and cook food.
A computer can also be an indispensable tool in your toolbox out in the workshop or garage. If you’re a novice carpenter or are DIYing a car repair, having a computer at your fingertips to look up tutorials can be extremely handy. Just make sure you get a keyboard and mouse that you don’t mind getting dirty, as your hands will no doubt be covered in grease and oil from car parts and such.
If all of the above options don’t really interest you, just go ahead and donate your old computer, either by giving it to Goodwill or Salvation Army, or handing it down to a relative or friend who needs a computer. It’s quicker and less of a hassle than selling it, and you’ll most likely make someone’s day in the process.
Of course, before you hand off your old computer to someone else, be sure to wipe it clean and delete any personal information that you might still have on there. It also wouldn’t be a bad idea to back up all that info before you wipe it, just in case you ever need it in the future. The built-in tools in Windows are usually sufficient enough if you’re just handing your old machine over to a relative or indoor Tracking, but if you’re donating it to a stranger, it’s always a good idea to use a more robust piece of software to completely erase everything on the hard drive.
Hubris is from ancient Greek. According to Webster's, it means "overweening pride or self-confidence; arrogance." According to Wikipedia, hubris "often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence, accomplishments and capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power."
Let's start with Sept. 11, 2001. We may have forgotten how terrified New Yorkers were then. The day after Rupert Murdoch visited Ground Zero, his NY Post in an editorial endorsed then police commissioner Bernard Kerik as commissioner "for life."
That's what it was like amid the terror. You grabbed on to whatever you could. Anything that seemed solid. Commissioner for Life.
Well, we all know what happened to Kerik. He got so carried away with sex [his publisher Judith Regan] and money [hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans and freebies from contractors and real estate guys] that he ended up serving three years in federal prison.
Mayor Rudy Giuliani also got carried away. He convinced himself that only he could shepherd the city through 9/ll and attempted to have his mayoral term extended three months. New Yorkers didn't go for the idea.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
If you’re like most of us, you’ll probably just stick it in a closet or leave it on a shelf to collect dust. If you’d rather make use of your old PC instead, there are actually several clever ways to reuse your old clunker. More often than not, it can fill a void that’s been missing in your home computing repertoire. Here are six new uses for your old PC.
Home theater PCs don’t need a lot of computing power to do basic home theater tasks, which makes an old computer a great option. Plus, all you really have to do is connect the computer to the TV using some sort of video cable, like HDMI, S-Video, DVI, or VGA. From there, you can watch Netflix shows, YouTube videos, and your own movie collection right on your TV from that old computer.
If you want to get even more advanced, you can install media center software, such as XBMC or Plex, in order to have a TV-friendly user interface to browse through your Indoor Positioning System. If you feel that your HTPC needs are growing over time, you can even upgrade it by putting a larger hard drive in to make room for more media files.
Old computers make great NAS boxes, mostly because they don’t need a lot of power to run in the first place. If you have multiple computers in your home and want a central storage system that each of these computers can access, turning an old computer into a NAS is a great way to go. There are a number of free NAS software solutions out there, including FreeNAS. Ubuntu is a great alternative as well.
If you’ve always wanted to try out Linux but didn’t want to experiment with it on your main computer and risk messing something up, use your old computer! By using your old PC for experiments, you’ll feel more liberated to try new things without the fear of wiping all your important files. Use it try out different distros and become familiar with the open-source operating system that everyone is talking about.
Furthermore, if Linux doesn’t interest you, you can still use that old PC to do experiments on, such as trying out buggy beta software, or simply just giving a new program a trial run before you commit to it and install it on your main computer.
Wouldn’t it be nice to look up a recipe online right from your kitchen? Or look up a how-to video on fixing your car while you’re in the garage? Putting a computer in a room that you spend the most time in (besides your home office or living room) can be beneficial for a lot of reasons. It can be useful for looking up recipes on the fly while in the kitchen or using it to watch videos to pass the time while you prepare and cook food.
A computer can also be an indispensable tool in your toolbox out in the workshop or garage. If you’re a novice carpenter or are DIYing a car repair, having a computer at your fingertips to look up tutorials can be extremely handy. Just make sure you get a keyboard and mouse that you don’t mind getting dirty, as your hands will no doubt be covered in grease and oil from car parts and such.
If all of the above options don’t really interest you, just go ahead and donate your old computer, either by giving it to Goodwill or Salvation Army, or handing it down to a relative or friend who needs a computer. It’s quicker and less of a hassle than selling it, and you’ll most likely make someone’s day in the process.
Of course, before you hand off your old computer to someone else, be sure to wipe it clean and delete any personal information that you might still have on there. It also wouldn’t be a bad idea to back up all that info before you wipe it, just in case you ever need it in the future. The built-in tools in Windows are usually sufficient enough if you’re just handing your old machine over to a relative or indoor Tracking, but if you’re donating it to a stranger, it’s always a good idea to use a more robust piece of software to completely erase everything on the hard drive.
Hubris is from ancient Greek. According to Webster's, it means "overweening pride or self-confidence; arrogance." According to Wikipedia, hubris "often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence, accomplishments and capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power."
Let's start with Sept. 11, 2001. We may have forgotten how terrified New Yorkers were then. The day after Rupert Murdoch visited Ground Zero, his NY Post in an editorial endorsed then police commissioner Bernard Kerik as commissioner "for life."
That's what it was like amid the terror. You grabbed on to whatever you could. Anything that seemed solid. Commissioner for Life.
Well, we all know what happened to Kerik. He got so carried away with sex [his publisher Judith Regan] and money [hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans and freebies from contractors and real estate guys] that he ended up serving three years in federal prison.
Mayor Rudy Giuliani also got carried away. He convinced himself that only he could shepherd the city through 9/ll and attempted to have his mayoral term extended three months. New Yorkers didn't go for the idea.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
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