Via Time Techland:
A spokesman for Zenith Electronics says Eugene Polley, the inventor of the first wireless TV remote control, has died.
John Taylor says the former Zenith engineer died of natural causes Sunday at a suburban Chicago hospital. He was 96.
Great invention.
Via MIT Tech Review:
Ever since Facebook announced its $1 billion acquisition of the company behind the popular photo-sharing app Instagram last month, the question on every nerd’s lips has been: What will be the next big thing in mobile apps?
For many, the answer is video. Apps like Viddy and Socialcam have picked up steam, gaining users—including pop stars Justin Bieber and Britney Spears—who are shooting and sharing videos with others within the apps and on social networks. Like Instagram, many of these apps also include a number of effects you can use to give your videos an edge, such as filters and background music.
Could be.
However, this is from the same MIT, who’s Economics Department that foisted Ph. D. Paul Krugman upon the world. And, it goes without saying, any institution giving Paul Krugman a degree, of any kind, will do serious damage to your reputation.
A mistake like that is difficult to overcome.
Plus, having Ben Bernanke and Christina Romer on MIT Economics Department alumni roster is not going to help repair their reputation either.
Remember, most bad ideas that start in Europe have a tendency to find their way here.
Via the Telegraph (UK):
David Cameron said it was “ludicrous” that parents received more training in how to drive a car than in how to raise children.
A £3.4million digital information service, which begins today, will provide free email alerts and text messages with NHS advice “on everything from teething to tantrums”, Mr Cameron said.Separate pilot schemes will offer couples with young children free parenting classes and subsidised relationship counselling to help cope with “tiredness” and “mess”.
As part of a series of “family friendly” initiatives unveiled this week, the Prime Minister yesterday gave his strongest signal yet that tax breaks may be offered to families who hire nannies or childminders.
Speaking at a business event in Manchester, he said he was “hugely attracted to the idea of making child care tax allowable”.
Really? How have we been getting along all this time without any official government training to raise children.
Think about all licensed drivers who received more training in how to drive a car than raise children driving on the road today.
Keeping the government out of the child raising business is best.
This is bad…
Magic Hand?????
The left’s dream on display, rule by the credentialed:
Because, they know more about our children than we do…
Via the NYT:
When Facebook goes public in the coming weeks, there will be a lot of winners. Among them is one of the stalwarts of the tech industry, Microsoft, which has a small stake in the company.
But Microsoft has an even bigger bet on Facebook through an alliance between its Bing search engine and the social network. And that partnership is about to get even deeper.
On Thursday, Microsoft introduced a set of changes to Bing that it says will improve searches by tapping into the expertise of friends on Facebook and other social networks. The company hopes to mine people’s online social connections to provide more personal search results for everything from hotel searches in Hawaii to movie recommendations.
Here’s a “handy” video from Microsoft to explain how this works.
According to the report authored by UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh: “Google, Microsoft’s Bing, Yahoo! Search and other search engine companies are rightly seen as media enterprises, much as the New York Times Company or CNN are media enterprises” and deserve the same protections. It adds that search engines have the same freedom to choose a set of links as do news aggregators like the Drudge Report or the Huffington Post.
Search engine results are a form of opinion, says the report, in which companies offer information they think is most relevant to users.
In practice, this would mean Google has the right to punt sites like Yelp, which has complained that Google is a monopolist, to the search equivalent of Siberia if it decided that was best for users (Yelp now comes up second in a search for “restaurant review”).
The US has a long history of companies claiming First Amendment protections. One example is a newspaper that was allowed to exclude certain advertisers even though it had a “substantial monopoly.”
If search engines such as Google begin choosing what links are presented, as do news aggregators like the Drudge Report, then they are no better than the old Yahoo! sites.
Ahh… April 14th, 2009 seems like yesterday:
Governor Jennifer M. Granholm today announced that Michigan’s aggressive film production attraction efforts have helped land Burbank, California-based Unity Studios to launch a $146-million state-of-the-art production studio in Allen Park. The project is expected to initially create up to 121 new jobs, including 83 directly by the company. At full operation, Unity Studios, factoring in related business and film and television productions, expects to employ up to 3,000.
“We are working hard to build a diversified economy and create good-paying jobs for our talented workforce,” Granholm said. “As a result of our aggressive film incentives enacted just a year ago, we are not only bringing new investment to the burgeoning film production community in Michigan, we are putting in place the infrastructure for an industry that will support long-term job growth and opportunity in new, creative sectors.”
Allen Park City Manager John Zech says if a tax increase isn’t approved by voters today, the city will likely have to get an emergency manager.
Zech says a 4-mill, 2-year tax increase to pay for $28 million it borrowed to buy land for a failed movie studio is much needed. The city also borrowed $2 million against next year’s tax revenue and is asking for another $2 million from the state of Michigan in an emergency loan, Zech said.
Not like anyone could see this coming.
Via William M. Briggs:
Regular readers will be long familiar with the parade of faulty papers which claim that Republicans, conservatives, and Christians are stupid, unthinking, easily led, uncompassionate, and set off on their sad road by delusional beliefs in God or because they once attended a Fourth of July parade (yes, really).
Apparently Mooney, who also wrote The Republican War on Science, has compiled these studies and come to the conclusion that the sheer number of them proves that he and his fellow leftists are just better creatures. As in wired better, genetically superior, purer souls by birth—made of the Right Stuff, worthy of what comes to them, more worthy, perhaps, of life.
Doubt me? From the blurb: “A significant chunk of the electorate, it seems, will never accept the facts as they are, no matter how strong the evidence.” Just you ponder what this sentence implies.
Here is the blurb W.M.B. references:
Being a good liberal, Mooney also has to explore the implications of these findings for Democrats as well. Are they really wishy-washy flip-floppers? Well, sometimes. Can’t they be just as dogmatic about issues close to their hearts, like autism and vaccines, or nuclear power? His research leads to some surprising conclusions.
While the evolutionary advantages of both liberal and conservative psychologies seem obvious, clashes between them in modern life have led to a crisis in our politics. A significant chunk of the electorate, it seems, will never accept the facts as they are, no matter how strong the evidence. Understanding the psychology of the left and the right, Mooney argues, should therefore fundamentally alter the way we approach the he-said-he-said of public debates.
Be sure to visit WMB’s post where he decimates Chris Mooney and his book.
This type of leftist propaganda thinly disguised as “research” reminds me of this great movie scene:
Ha!
Because R.S. McCain nonsensically claims no great rock musicbeen recorded since September 25th, 1980. In other-words, great rock music died in 1980 with the passing of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham.
To illustrate that great rock is still alive and kicking here is the band What About Your Mom performing an awesome cover of Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.”
Oh, by the way, this great rock song was recorded and released this year: