Posts Tagged ‘Blockquote’
Jeff Bezos on the Inevitable Obsolescence of Books [Blockquote]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 28th, 2009
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos tells Dan Lyons, aka FSJ, just how deep his "missionary zeal" for spreading the gospel of the Kindle runs: One day, it's going to kill books entirely. The full quote:
Lyons: Do you think that the ink-on-paper book will eventually go away?
Bezos: I do. I don't know how long it will take. You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author's world. That's not going to go away; that's going to thrive. But the physical book really has had a 500-year run. It's probably the most successful technology ever. It's hard to come up with things that have had a longer run. If Gutenberg were alive today, he would recognize the physical book and know how to operate it immediately. Given how much change there has been everywhere else, what's remarkable is how stable the book has been for so long. But no technology, not even one as elegant as the book, lasts forever.
Also, Bezos isn't afraid of the Apple tablet, even if it does do all that stuff everybody thinks it will, because the Kindle's so darn good at the book thing. A dedicated device for reading? Sounds like a shorter shelf life than books. [Slate]
Jeff Bezos on the Inevitable Obsolescence of Books [Blockquote]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 28th, 2009
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos tells Dan Lyons, aka FSJ, just how deep his "missionary zeal" for spreading the gospel of the Kindle runs: One day, it's going to kill books entirely. The full quote:
Lyons: Do you think that the ink-on-paper book will eventually go away?
Bezos: I do. I don't know how long it will take. You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author's world. That's not going to go away; that's going to thrive. But the physical book really has had a 500-year run. It's probably the most successful technology ever. It's hard to come up with things that have had a longer run. If Gutenberg were alive today, he would recognize the physical book and know how to operate it immediately. Given how much change there has been everywhere else, what's remarkable is how stable the book has been for so long. But no technology, not even one as elegant as the book, lasts forever.
Also, Bezos isn't afraid of the Apple tablet, even if it does do all that stuff everybody thinks it will, because the Kindle's so darn good at the book thing. A dedicated device for reading? Sounds like a shorter shelf life than books. [Slate]
Researchers Accidentally Demolish Building With Cannon-Like Gun [Blockquote]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 24th, 2009
Researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory have managed to accidentally cause $3 million of damage as they blew up one of their own buildings using a large-bore powder gun, a weapon which acts like a Civil War cannon. Updated.
According to Project on Government Oversight's Senior Investigator, Peter Stockton, this incident "is a new twist in the long history of screw-ups by Los Alamos." I can't really blame him for saying that when testing a gun results in several million dollars of structural damage, propels doors away from the building, and leaves pieces of the weapon spread out on the ground outside. Geez.
Let's look at the positive side of this though. The gun was a mess, but they discovered a heck of a bomb here, no? [Pogo via Wired]
Update: Wired reports that they've received an email from National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Damien LaVera which implies that what we've first heard might not be entirely true:
Here are the facts: On December 16, Los Alamos conducted a standard proof test on a new design for a catch tank in the target chamber for one of our large bore powder guns (LBPG). These types of experiments are routine and responsible. The LBPG is used to conduct measurements of material properties at pressures needed for understanding nuclear weapons performance. During this particular test, unexpected explosive damage occurred and, because that damage could result in $1 million in damages, an investigation was automatically triggered. That investigation will seek to identify the cause of the incident and any changes in procedures that might be required. NNSA, Los Alamos, and all of our facilities take their commitment to safety very seriously. It is important to note that no personnel were injured from this event, no hazardous or radioactive materials were involved, and that lab's incident response mechanisms appear to have performed as intended.
Microsoft Is the New IBM [Blockquote]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 23rd, 2009
Don Dodge was Microsoft's champion in the startup community, their connection to the crazy world that gave us Facebook and Twitter. They laid him off a month ago. Now we know what he really thinks about Microsoft. It's bad.
What's interesting isn't Dodge lobbing the bomb that Microsoft is the new Big Blue because "after 20 years they are losing the innovation edge," but he insinuates that if Bill was still running the show it'd be different: "The transition was smooth, but not having Bill there every day has far-reaching implications."
Bill was a geek. Ballmer's a suit. I suppose we shouldn't expect anything different. [Seattle PI]
Know Your Place, Meat Creatures [Blockquote]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 16th, 2009
Katherine Hayles, author of "How We Became Posthuman" goes biological to remind us that machines aren't the ones in charge. And neither are we. [WaPo]
Has Anybody Used Bing to Find the Nearest Arby’s? Whoa, Man. Whoa. [Blockquote]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 15th, 2009
What Is “Success” for Blu-ray? [Blockquote]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 14th, 2009
According to the president of Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Craig Kornblau, if 30 percent of a movie's home video sales today are Blu-ray, that's pretty damn good.
Consider the big picture laid out in the WSJ piece: Blu-ray, as a format, despite costing more per individual movie, only pulls around 14 percent of the revenue that DVD does. If you compare the formats at the same year in their life cycle, Blu-ray, in its fourth year, only has revenues that are about a quarter of what DVD made in its fourth year. Hrm, I guess those Flipper discs make a lot more sense now. [WSJ]
Google Is Handing Out the Google Phone to Employees [Blockquote]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 12th, 2009
The above is just one of many Google Phone tweets that made the rounds yesterday. Unless this is some giant Twitter prank, looks like Google is handing these things out to employees. And they're talking. Updated:
Update 2: Google speaks!
Update: We're hearing from our sources that it's the HTC Passion. We're not sure if it's the same Passion we saw a few weeks ago, but we're on the lookout for pics.
Assuming this isn't some sort of coordinated Twitter joke (trust me, it happens), here are the details we can extract:
• It's running Android 2.1 on HTC hardware (the Passion, see above)
• It should be coming out in January
• Employees were given unlocked versions
• "It's beautiful," "a sexy beast."
No one grabbed any concrete hardware details, but hopefully those are the next to come around. Great White Snark elaborated on his original tweet in the comments over at TechCrunch:
Yeah, it's a hot, sexy mess. And I mean that in a good way. Similar form-factor to the iPhone, but with a smooth-brushed-metal-looking shell instead of a glossy one. And perhaps a smidgen lighter.
Super fast, speech-to-text in EVERY app, awesome "live wallpapers" in the background that respond to touch in really beautiful ways. Like water ripples that emanate out from a touch.
Confirmation, or mass hysteria? It's confirmed, see above. Whatever it is, we'll be on the lookout for more details. [TechCrunch]
Yahoo CEO Wishes More Celebrities Philandered [Blockquote]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 9th, 2009
That's Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz at the UBS Media Conference, celebrating the revenue generated by another human being's personal tragedy. Hang in there, Yahoo! You're just a few thousand celebrity scandals away from relevance.
Bartz couldn't resist a shout out to the beleaguered golfer when speaking to analysts in New York yesterday afternoon. Yahoo's traffic has been doing gangbusters since the Tiger story broke, which in some ways validates their strategy to be a "portal" rather than a search company. When something big and gossipy like this happens, Yahoo's multichannel setup allows them to cover it from a number of different angles. On the other hand, if your sprawling search and content company is set up so that a single tabloid story can "make" your quarter, well, what happens if that story doesn't break?
Oh, that's right. Google drinks your milkshake. [WSJ via Huffington Post]
How 30 Rock ’s Jack Donaghy Feels About Comcast Swallowing NBC [Blockquote]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News on December 4th, 2009
Alec Baldwin reveals how his GE-jingoist counterpart on 30 Rock, Jack Donaghy, will take the news about Comcast buying a majority stake of NBC. It's sort of how I feel, but about life, and without an office. [Media Decoder]
