I don’t how U.S. humor is, but our televised humor usually sucks here in Canada Quebec. When it comes to grabbing my attention, nothing beats a good British show, and the latest one to be part of this list is named “The Wrong Door”. Now this isn’t for everybody; it’s a bit weird, violent and bloody, but if you’re into that kind of stuff, you’ll love it. Videos After the jump.
By Jerry King for [GAS]
By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]
If you’re in China and looking to download your iTunes tracks then you’ve probably been having some problems in the past few days. That’s probably because Beijing doesn’t like a new Tibet-themed album that is now out on iTunes with the Dalai Lama giving a 15-minute talk.
As well as the talk, The Art Of Peace album also includes songs by Sting, Alanis Morissette and Moby. According to iTunes, all money raised from the album will go to “support peace initiatives and Tibetan cultural preservation projects important to the Dalai Lama”.
According to the Associated Press, over 40 Olympic athletes competing in China downloaded the album from iTunes as “an act of solidarity” and it is speculated that it was this that caused the Chinese government to start blocking iTunes.
President Jintao – if you don’t like Sting’s music, just issue a press release and tell him to shut up! You don’t have to block him!
In the following video, Physicist Patricia Burchat sheds light on two basic ingredients of our universe: dark matter and dark energy. Comprising 96% of the universe between them, they can’t be directly measured, but their influence is immense. This is one of the best and most easy to understand explanation on Dark Energy and Dark Matter I’ve ever heard. Enjoy!
The following document was apparently leaked from Verizon and serves to brief its employees on many of the iPhone’s not-so-shiny particularities. The document is divided into four sections, each covering a different “myth”.
Myth #1: The iPhone 3G is now twice as fast, but ONLY where AT&T has 3G coverage.
NO WAY! Isn’t that logical? Apparently, AT&T 3G coverage is only available to 40 to 50% of the US population, while Verizon’s EV-DO covers more than 80% of the US map.
Myth #2: The iPhone 3G is half the price!
Let’s see, the phone costs less, but the service is more expensive. Yep, I think most of us have already realized this by now, but most of the technically-challenged users will probably think that the new iPhone is indeed cheaper. A good selling point for Verizon.
Myth #3: iPhone Data Plan Covers All Data.
Apparently, people selling the iPhone let potential customers presume that the iPhone data plan covers all data, while in reality, it does not. Common seller’s tactic, nothing to say here.
Myth #4: The iPhone 3G Data Plan includes more data at affordable prices.
Again, Verizon says that only Verizon offers true “unlimited” data service.
So, what are your thoughts on this, do you think this document was made up, or is it official? And what about the four myths? Let us know in the comments section below!
[Via Gizmodo]
The Spitzer Space Telescope, NASA’s last great space observatory to have been lauched into Earth’s orbit, is now celebrating its fifth anniversary. To celebrate the event, NASA has released this multigenerational shot of a stellar nursery located in the Cassiopeia constellation, 6,500 light-years from Earth.
Jaw-dropping, isn’t it?
[Via Cosmiclog]
By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]
It seems that all that “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” advertising by Apple has finally pissed off Microsoft to the point where they feel the need to get some payback. So they have signed up Jerry Seinfeld to joke around with Bill Gates in a series of adverts for which he will be paid a cool $10 million. Joke around with Bill? Does Bill Gates do humor?
The hope is that finally Microsoft can bury the stuffy “I’m a PC” suit guy that Apple has built up in their adverts and promote Windows as the “cool operating system”. Whether or not that will happen remains to be seen, but there is apparently lots of optimism over at Redmond that they can pull it off. Well with Jerry and Bill, the two jokers, getting it together, who knows what can be accomplished eh?!
What do you think? Can Seinfeld do the impossible and make Windows look totally drop dead cool? Or is Microsoft throwing $10 million down the toilet?
[Via Guardian Media]
Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]
In a move which will do no harm to the Apple share price, some US universities are starting to hand out free iPhones and free iPod Touches to new students. The benefits are obvious – be seen as a cool cutting-edge university, and at the same time, encourage your students to use the devices in their education. But not everyone is on board with the idea.
The opponents are obvious – the professors – who are concerned that their students will spend more time fiddling around with their new toys than listen to the lectures. But they seem to be outnumbered by the supporters of the scheme.
The first supporter is obviously Apple who are keen to snag students as early adopters of Apple technology. Get them now while they are young and hopefully they will continue to buy Apple products for the rest of their life.
The second supporter are the universities themselves (minus the grumpy professors) who want to attract more students to their campuses. They are also exploring the possibility of making useful learning applications which students can download to their iPhones, making their devices useful learning tools. As far as the universities are concerned, this is the way of the future so what’s the point of fighting it? Better that they get on board and go with the flow.
The lucky students who receive a free iPhone have to pay for the contracts. They only get the phone free, and once they have paid for the contracts, they can then connect with the campus wireless network.
So is this the way of the future? Should universities be handing out free iPhones to incoming students? Or are professors right to call them a distraction?
[Via Washington Post]
AJAX developers, get your game on. Firefox version 3.1 will deliver massive speed improvements for JavaScript, the language behind many of the cool interactive effects on today’s web pages.
Andreas Gal and Michael Franz of the University of California, Irvine invented a novel approach to Just-In-Time compilation called “tracing”. Put simply: rather than compiling complete, individual methods at runtime, they record trace paths through the code that represent loops, then compile those based on how often they’re called. That means that the code that gets executed repeatedly is the code that gets compiled — and the compiler doesn’t need to waste time on compiling anything else.
While the theory behind this is pretty advanced, the speed improvement is certainly more than academic. Mozilla has already built tracing optimization into SpiderMonkey (Firefox’s JavaScript interpreter), re-christening it “TraceMonkey” — with the following results:
As you can see in the graph above, a global loop is almost 40 times faster with TraceMonkey than in Firefox 3.0, and an empty loop is 20 times faster. With a 22x performance boost on function calls, maybe we’ll see more thorough functional style in JavaScript scripts down the road (yeah, sure).
Don’t use much JavaScript, you say? Don’t be so sure. If you use GMail or any number of other online services, you probably run JavaScript. Most widgets (including ad services) and plugins for WordPress and other blogging platforms use JavaScript. If you’re curious, do a “View Page Source” in your browser and search for “javascript”. Much of the implementation of Firefox itself is in JavaScript, as well as its extensions. So if you’re a Firefox user, this improvement could noticeably speed up your browsing.
And just how many people use Firefox? According to this graph, almost 19% of web surfers use either Firefox 2.0 or 3.0, up from under 14% last September. While Internet Explorer 7 still holds a comfortable lead at 47%, we all know that those are the non-geeks who don’t count. Maybe faster browsing in Firefox will win them over, too.
[Chart Source: Brendan’s Roadmap Updates]
Offered by online retailer Forbidden Planet international, the Star Wars MP3 player features a slick, black design, 512MB of internal memory and an integrated FM radio. Unfortunately, at $80, this piece of the Dark Side comes with a very hefty price tag. My guess is that only hardcore Star Wars geeks will be interested in the device, since similar MP3 players usually cost around $20 now.
[Via PopGadget]