http://memhole.com//atom.php?userid=mshea&type=Latest+Items Latest Items saved by Michael E. Shea using the Memory Hole web page capture utility. 2007-05-31T02:10:01-05:00 Michael E. Shea mike@mikeshea.net 2007-05-02T12:09:48-05:00 http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/05/33-rules-to-boost-your-productivity/

33 Rules to Boost Your Productivity Steve Pavlina . comPersonal Development for Smart PeopleTM Home Blog Forums Articles Audio Archives About Contact Donate Erin Making Peace With Death 33 Rules to Boost Your Productivity - Volume 2 33 Rules to Boost Your Productivity May 1st, 2007 by Steve Pavlina Heuristics are rules intended to help yousolve problems. When a problem is large or complex, and the optimal solution is unclear, applying a heuristic allows you to begin making progress towards a solution even though you can’t visualize the entire path from your starting point. Suppose your goal is to climb to the peak of a mountain, but there’s no trail to follow. An example of a heuristic would be: Head directly towards the peak until youreach an obstacle you can&

2007-04-29T13:34:44-05:00 http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=3218

AACS licensor complains of posted key -- Chilling Effects Clearinghouse Chilling Effects Clearinghouse > Anticircumvention (DMCA) > Notices > AACS licensor complains of posted key AACS licensor complains of posted key April 17, 2007 Sender Information: Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator, LLC (AACS LA) Sent by: [Private] Proskauer Rose LLP New York, NY, 10038, USA Recipient Information: [Private] Google Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy.Mountain View, CA, 94043, USA Sent via: express mail Re: Illegal Offering of Processing Key to Circumvent AACS Copyright Protection http://uscpwned.blogspot.com/2007/02/holy-grail-located-hd-dvd-and-blu-ray.html[http://linuxnotes.blogspot.com/2007/02/09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63.htmlhttp://simonsta.blogspot.com/2007/02/lost-

2007-04-12T13:35:32-05:00 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/13893143/the_last_confessions_of_e_howard_hunt/print

Once, when the old spymaster thought he was dying, his eldest son came to visit him at his home in Miami. The scourges recently had been constant and terrible: lupus, pneumonia, cancers of the jaw and prostate, gangrene, the amputation of his left leg. It was like something was eating him up. Long past were his years of heroic service to the country. In the CIA, he'd helped mastermind the violent removal of a duly elected leftist president in Guatemala and assisted in subterfuges that led to the murder of Che Guevara. But no longer could you see in him the suave, pipe-smoking, cocktail-party-loving clandestine operative whose Cold War exploits he himself had, almost obsessively, turned into novels, one of which, East of Farewell, the New York Times once called "the best sea story" of World War II. Diminished too were the old bad memories, of the Bay of Pigs debacle that derailed his CIA career for good, of the Watergate Hotel fiasco, of his first wife's death, of thirty-three months in U.S. prisons -- of, in fact, a furious lifetime mainly of failure, disappointment and pain. But his firstborn son -- he named him St. John; Saint, for short -- was by his side now. And he still had a secret or two left to share before it was all over.

2007-04-06T16:58:48-05:00 http://arstechnica.com/reviews/games/guitar-hero-2.ars/3

The Good: Solid song list Improved graphics Surround sound vastly improves the experience New songs for the 360 Upcoming downloadable content Leader boards keep everyone competitive Detailed stats let you monitor your progress on the songs Great practice and training modes HD lag adjustment setting The Bad: Song selections lean a little too far towards metal Buying a second guitar makes for an expensive game You're going to think about playing the game for the next month, no matter what else you do The Ugly: Your girlfriend walks in as you're rocking out on top of the couch and sees you jump onto the beanbag chair while not missing a note. You're not ashamed as much as you're proud.You're also not 15.

2007-04-02T13:53:36-05:00 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/02/AR2007040200504_pf.html

LONDON--EMI Group has announced a plan to sell its music through online retailers without copy protection technologies, a significant move that should give consumers greater freedom in the way they can listen to music purchased online.Apple's iTunes Store will be the first to offer the new-format downloads, which the companies say will be of a higher sound quality--but also carry a higher price--than existing offerings. Each DRM-free song will cost about 20 percent more than current downloads.EMI Group Chairman Eric Nicoli was joined by Apple CEO Steve Jobs to make the announcement this morning at EMI's headquarters here. EMI becomes the first of the big music labels to announce such a move, which could create pressure on other labels to follow suit.

2007-04-01T22:14:46-05:00 http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070401-emi-to-announced-drm-free-plans-tomorrow-reports.html

EMI will announce on Monday that it will be freeing much of its catalog from the shackles of DRM. The Wall Street Journal, citing "people familiar with the matter," reports (sub. required) that Apple CEO Steve Jobs will be present at the announcement in London and that the music will be sold through the iTunes Store and possibly other online outlets. Related Stories EMI to Apple, Microsoft: Ditching DRM is going to cost you Making money selling music without DRM: the rise of eMusic Musicload: 75% of customer service problems caused by DRM Testing DRM-free waters: EMI selling a few MP3s through Yahoo Music The news comes less than two months after Apple published Steve Jobs' famous open letter on the issue of DRM. In his missive, Jobs laid the blame for the DRM mess squarely at the feet of the music industry and said that he would gladly sell unprotected music if only the record labels would agree.

2007-03-29T10:59:30-05:00 http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/apple-should-pull-plug-iphone/story.aspx?guid=%7b3289E5E2-E67C-4395-8A8E-B94C1B480D4A%7d&siteid=yhoo&dist=yhoo&print=true&dist=printTop

There is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive. Even in the business where it is a clear pioneer, the personal computer, it had to compete with Microsoft and can only sustain a 5% market share.And its survival in the computer business relies on good margins. Those margins cannot exist in the mobile handset business for more than 15 minutes.And note that the Microsoft Corp. (MSFTMicrosoft CorporationNews , chart , profile , moreDelayed quote dataAdd to portfolioAnalystCreate alertInsiderDiscussFinancialsSponsored by:MSFT ) versus Apple battles are laughable compared to the frenzied marketing mania in the handset business. Even Microsoft itself has troubles with its attempts to get into a small sub segment of the handset business with its operating system.What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it's smart it will call the iPhone a "reference design" and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else's marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures.It should do that immediately before it's too late. Samsung Electronics Ltd. (SSNGYsamsung electrs ltd gdr 144aNews , chart , profile , moreDelayed quote dataAdd to portfolioAnalystCreate alertInsiderDiscussFinancialsSponsored by:SSNGY ) might be a candidate. Otherwise I'd advise you to cover your eyes. You're not going to like what you'll see. End of Story

2007-03-29T10:58:32-05:00 http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008804.html#008804

Hugo and John W. Campbell Award finalists, 2007Posted by Patrick at 09:44 PM * 74 commentsComplete list below the fold.UPDATE, March 29: Quite a few small corrections, mostly entailing additional bibliographic information.NovelMichael F. Flynn, Eifelheim (Tor)Naomi Novik, His Majestys Dragon (Del Rey; also, Voyager, 1/06, as Temeraire)Charles Stross, Glasshouse (Ace)Vernor Vinge, Rainbows End (Tor)Peter Watts, Blindsight (Tor)NovellaThe Walls of the Universe by Paul Melko (Asimovs, April/May 2006)A Billion Eyes by Robert Reed (Asimovs, October/November 2006)Inclination by William Shunn (Asimovs, April/May 2006)Lord Wearys Empire by Michael Swanwick (Asimovs, December 2006)Julian: A Christmas Story by Robert Charles Wilson (PS Publishing)NoveletteYellow Card Man by Paolo Bacigalupi (Asimovs, December 2006)Dawn, and Sunset, and the Colours of the Earth by Michael F. Flynn (Asimovs, December 2006)The Djinns Wife by Ian McDonald (Asimovs, July 2006)All the Things You Are by Mike Resnick (Jim Baens Universe, October 2006)Pol Pots Beautiful Daughter by Geoff Ryman (F

2007-03-23T18:56:20-05:00 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/technology/22pogue.htm?_r=1&pagewanted=print

In the end, these early attempts to bridge the gulf between computer and TV perfectly reinforce the conventional wisdom about Apple: Apple TV offers a gracious, delightful experience but requires fidelity to Apples walled garden. Its rivals, meanwhile, offer many more features, but theyre piled into bulkier boxes with much less concern for refinement, logic or simplicity. Put another way, these machines arent direct competitors at all; theyre aimed at different kinds of people. Microsofts young male gamers probably couldnt care less that they cant change the slide-show speed, and Netgears box is for people who are more experienced, according to a representative. This is not for the random person. Apple, on the other hand, is going for everybody else, random people included (at least those with HDTV sets). And that, perhaps, is Apple TVs real significance. To paraphrase the old Macintosh advertisement, its a computer-to-TV bridge for the rest of us.

2007-03-21T20:27:00-05:00 http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117443716237743525-AC8bUe8X978hZmC7A85mAccsld8_20080320.html

Apple TV is tiny, just about eight inches square and an inch high, far smaller than a typical DVD player or cable or satellite box, even though it packs in a 40-gigabyte hard disk, an Intel processor and a modified version of the Mac operating system. And it has a carefully limited set of functions. Yet, in our tests, it worked great, and we can easily recommend it for people who are yearning for a simple way to show on their big TVs all that stuff trapped on their computers. We tried it with various combinations of Windows and Mac computers, with movies, photos, TV shows, video clips and music. And we didn't even use the fastest wireless network it can handle. It performed flawlessly. However, it won't work with older TVs unless they can display widescreen-formatted content and accept some newer types of cables.

2007-03-21T20:19:38-05:00 http://consumerist.com/consumer/drm/how-i-became-a-music-pirate-245644.php

So I called Rhino customer support and after an 8 minute wait spoke with a representative. She informed me that the files were indeed copy protected so that I could only play them on specific music players, most notably not iTunes. "You don't understand," I said, "These files were not copied or pirated, I actually purchased them." "Well" she responded, "You didn't actually purchase the files, you really purchased a license to listen to the music, and the license is very specific about how they can be played or listened to." Now I was baffled. "Records never came with any such restrictions," I said. She replied, "Well they were supposed to, but we weren't able to enforce those licenses back then, and now we can"

2007-03-20T22:39:24-05:00 http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/03/so_apple_tv_is_.html

5. Won't work with other DRM systems. Goes without saying, but say it I must. It's our fault for using DRM, of course. Then again, DRM is the top reason for having to buy this expensive baby.

2007-03-20T09:30:13-05:00 http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/16/magazines/business2/simple_tech.biz2/index.htm?source=yahoo_quote

(Business 2.0 Magazine) -- I'm writing this column using the hottest gadget to have entered my house this year. It's not a flashy PDA cameraphone with a Bluetooth headset or a WiFi-enabled MP3 player with streaming video capability. In fact, this isn't a new product at all. It's a three year-old word processor called the Neo--and everything about it points to the future of electronic devices.The simplicity of the Alphasmart Neo has been an unexpected hit with niche users.More from Business 2.0Live rich, retire richer Cell phones embrace Wi-Fi The trouble with gee-whiz gadgets Fastest Growing Tech Companies Current Issue Subscribe to Business 2.0 The Neo, by a tiny company called Alphasmart, was initially designed to be used by students and their educators. But in true Web 2.0 style, the users spoke louder than the designers. Over the last three years, Neo has been embraced less by students than by an unexpectedly different audience: journalists and writers, who have written little hymns to the Neo in magazines, blogs, and even a Flickr group where they share pictures of their Neos.

2007-03-20T09:25:24-05:00 http://www.wired.com/news/columns/1,73005-0.html

There's been a distinct sea change in the way people think about Apple in the last few weeks.Recently, people have been saying the strangest things about Apple and the Mac. Everything is topsy-turvy. Pundits aren't trotting out the old conventional wisdoms any more. They're saying odd stuff, like Macs are good for business; Macs can save money; and that Apple's stock -- at $90 a share -- is a bargain.In fact, there seems to be a widespread re-evaluation of Apple going on, a cultural shift that's changing the way people think about the company. It's been building for a while but it has reached a tipping point in the last couple of months. Here's what people are saying now.

2007-03-16T21:52:05-05:00 http://www.nypost.com/seven/03152007/gossip/pagesix/pagesix.htm

March 15, 2007 -- THE people who dole out ratings at the Motion Picture Assn. of America just might flip out when they see "Grindhouse," Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's tribute to the ultraviolent, nudity-drenched pictures that once screened 'round the clock in the grungy movie palaces of 42nd Street. The Weinstein Company, which is releasing the picture April 6 through its Dimension Films arm, needs an R rating for the flick to get into mainstream theaters. But, "some of it is so graphic and outrageous for a major Hollywood studio, there's no question it's headed for an NC-17 without big cuts," says a Page Six operative, who got a sneak peek at the most over-the-top footage.