ZOMG!!!

Drawing Mona Lisa in 80 milliseconds!

Protocol buffers are Google's language-neutral, platform-neutral, extensible mechanism for serializing structured data – think XML, but smaller, faster, and simpler. You define how you want your data to be structured once, then you can use special generated source code to easily write and read your structured data to and from a variety of data streams and using a variety of languages – Java, C++, or Python.

Protocol Buffers - Google Code

Decius wrote:

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has just approved the relaxation of the rules for the introduction of new Top-Level Domains—a move that could drastically change the Internet. The new decision—some calling it of historic importance and others predictable—will allow companies to register their brands as generic top-level domain names (TLDs). For instance, Microsoft could apply to have a TLD such as '.msn' and Apple apply for '.mac'.

"We are opening up a new world and I think this cannot be underestimated," said Roberto Gaetano, ICANN board member. The new rules will allow any public or private organization from anywhere in the world to register any string of letters as a gTLD, which could result in hundreds of new gTLDs registered this year. The decision was taken unanimously on Thursday, June 26, 2008 at the 32nd ICANN Meeting in Paris.

HUGE!

The question is how much they're going to cost. If they cost $10k, I'm a lot less opposed than if they cost $100.

RE: ICANN Board Approves Sweeping Overhaul of Top-level Domains

Decius wrote:

Within minutes of riding on the first trains in Japan, I notice a significant change in advertising, from train to television. The trend? No more printed URL's. The replacement?

Search boxes!1 With recommended search terms!

It makes sense, right? All the good domain names are gone. Getting people to a specific page in a big site is difficult (who's going to write down anything after the first slash?). And, most tellingly, I see increasingly more users already inadvertently put complete domain names like "gmail" and "netflix" into the Search box of their browsers out of habit — and it doesn't even register that Google pops up and they have to click to get to their destination.

I told you so :P

RE: cabel.name: Japan: URL's Are Totally Out

The STEPS project is setting out to create “Moore’s Law Software”: a high-risk high-reward exploratory research effort to create a large-scope-and-range software system in 3-4 orders of magnitude less code than current practice.

This is new from Alan Kay's Viewpoints Research Institute.

From the archive:

"Thinking" is a higher category than "just" math, science, and the arts. It represents a synthesis of intuitive and analytical approaches to understanding the world and dealing with it.

STEPS Toward The Reinvention of Programming

Decius wrote:
HD-DVD or BlueRay?

I'll probably buy a bluray player in the form of a ps3 this summer. I'll consider buying a standalone dual-format player when they become available (winter?). My prediction is that dual-format players will end the format war; consumers don't want to bet on one or the other.

Hopefully, this will be the last generation of fixed-format stuff that has to be set in stone for 20 years and there will be enough network in a few more years that we can just ship the stuff around that way instead of on silly plastic discs.

RE: Survey Question

I have long been intrigued by the question of how do we turn the internet into a lifeline grade infrastructure.
My hope that this will occur soon or even within decades is diminishing.

Are We Slowly Losing Control of the Internet?

Arnezami, a hacker on the Doom9 forum, has published a crack for extracting the "processing key" from a high-def DVD player. This key can be used to gain access to every single Blu-Ray and HD-DVD disc.

Boing Boing: Blu-Ray AND HD-DVD broken - processing keys extracted

Steve Jobs on the future of DRM...

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.

Apple - Thoughts on Music

Hitachi has reached a milestone in tech's continuing arms race, announcing today that it will sell the first 1-terabyte hard drive.

It finally happened.

TECH CHRONICLES / A daily dose of postings from the Chronicle's technology blog (sfgate.com/blogs/tech)