Steve Jobs has a New Liver

200stevejobsWhen we saw Apple founder Steve Jobs getting skinnier and skinnier and looking a little older than he should, speculation was that he was dying. But now it looks like Jobs’ health may be on the upswing.

Although there were some reports of a potential liver transplant back in January,  Jobs managed to keep his medical decisions fairly private, at least for such a public person. According to the Wall Street Journal, which can be read in its entirety only by subscription, Jobs received a liver transplant in Tennessee two months ago. He is expected to return to work by the end of June, possibly in a part-time capacity. Jobs has been on leave since January.

There is speculation without confirmation that the pancreatic cancer Jobs battled in 2004 had spread to his liver. It’s sad that so many articles about Jobs’ health are focused on the price of Apple stock and the future of the company when a 54-year-old man is suffering and wants his privacy, both for his own peace of mind and for the welfare of his business. An organ transplant may be life-saving, but will commit you to a lifetime of anti-rejection drugs and the problems those always bring. We wish him a speedy and complete recovery.



Surgery’s Past, Present and Robotic Future

In the following video presentation, surgeon and inventor Catherine Mohr tours the history of surgery (and its pre-painkiller, pre-antiseptic past), then demos some of the newest tools for surgery through tiny incisions, performed using nimble robot hands. Fascinating — but not for the squeamish.

$222,000 filesharing fine leaps to $1.92 million in new trial

When Jammie Thomas-Rasset (pictured) was granted a retrial in the first (and to date only) US federal filesharing copyright case, she was likely relieved that it put aside her original punishment of a $222,000 fine. After the court ruled against her in the new case, that relief will be utterly shattered.

Jammie Thomas-Rasset, found guilty of illegally sharing 24 songs through Kazaa, has been fined $1.92 million.

The original trial, a civil action brought by several record labels and spearheaded by the Recording Industry Association of America, came after Thomas became the first alleged copyright infringer to refuse an out of court settlement. Although she was accused of sharing more than a thousand tracks on Kazaa, the case only covered 24 songs. A jury decided on damages of $9,250 per track. (The unusual amount may well have been a compromise figure negotiated between jury members with differing attitudes.)

However, the judge later threw out his own decision after deciding that his instructions to the jury had been unreliable. This was because he’d said with no doubt that simply “making available” the tracks broke copyright laws, a stance he later decided was legally uncertain.

The evidence against Thomas was that the songs had been shared on Kazaa under a username (tereastarr) that it could be proven she’d used on other sites, and that the files were shared from an IP address matching her computer.

In both trials, her defense team argued that the direct links between Thomas-Rasset and the files could not be proven to certainty. In the second trial a defense witness put together 14 other possible explanations for the user name and IP matches, though some of these were thrown out from evidence before the case as they were logistically impossible with Kazaa’s set-up.

The jury in the retrial again had the option of awarding damages anywhere between $750 and $150,000 per offense. There’s no word yet from jury members as to how they reached their decision: it’s possible they took into account the songs not covered by the trial; they punished Thomas-Rasset for continuing to pursue the case through the courts; or that they simply took a harsher attitude to the infringement than the original jury. Whatever the reasons, the jury awarded $80,000 per track for a total of $1.92 million.

There’s virtually no chance of the RIAA seeing that money though. In a colorful twist on the traditional cliché, Jammie-Thomas told reporters “The only thing I can say is good luck trying to get it, because you can’t get blood out of a turnip.”

Meanwhile the RIAA said it is still willing to settle the case. The average payment in the 35,000 previous cases has been in the region of $3,000. However, if the RIAA did accept a similar settlement from Thomas-Rasset, it might still go after her for legal costs.

The defense team hasn’t yet said if it will appeal the verdict. However, before the retrial started defense lawyer Kiwi Alejandro Danao Camara (a 25 year old who was the youngest ever Harvard law graduate and took on the case without a fee) said that if Jammie-Thomas did lose again, he’d consider pursuing the argument that the current system allows damages so excessive as to make the relevant laws unconstitutional.



Father’s Day Gift for the Technophobe? Snail (E)Mail.

mailboxHave you ever heard this from an older person in your life, maybe a grandparent? “You never write!” Maybe they’ve mentioned that when they were young, everyone kept up with their correspondence as is polite to do and the amount of mail going through the postal system wasn’t dropping 5% a year. I’ve had a conversation rather like this, and I tried to explain how I write far more than I ever have in my life by way of correspondence – not only is there email, but there’s Facebook, and Twitter, and on and on. And my cousin who has a baby seems to be posting status updates for every burp, gurgle, and coo, and wouldn’t you like to figure out how to use a computer so that you can read all about it? No? Well, I really am sorry, but I don’t even keep stamps in the house anymore. We’ll just have to make do with phone calls.

But just in time for Father’s Day, the New York Times reports on three services designed to “bridge the technical divide between those who e-mail and their loved ones who don’t.” The solution? Print ’em out! Print it all out. Emails, Facebook, Twitter feeds, even calendar reminders. Some of these services involve a printer/fax machine sort of device that just runs itself and spits out print-outs as they come in. Though one, Sunnygram, is even more old school – it sends a package once a week via USPS, and even allows the recipient to handwrite replies; the company will then scan them and send them via email.

It all seems a little convoluted to me (and imagine if you had to wait a week to get all of your emails!), but I guess if you are both a technophobe and fond of snail mail, it might be a nice solution. Of course, I might recommend leaving off the Twitter/Facebook except maybe in the case of my cousin with the gurgling baby; grandpa probably doesn’t want to read thirty pages of “OMG JUST DROPPED MY KEYS LOLOLOLZ” or frame those pictures of his grandson doing a keg stand.

[Picture source: Flickr (CC)]

Awesomely Cute Robot Makes Coffee for its Master

Isn’t that one of the most awesome thing ever? A cute little humanoid robot that prepares coffee for its master! Even though the whole act is staged, you have to be amazed by the complex movements this robotic gal can accomplish.

[Via CrunchGear]

The Reason Why Most Terminators Look Like Arnold

Have you ever wondered why a lot of the Terminator models look exactly like Arnold Schwarzenegger? The following footage, which was supposed to be included in Terminator 3 but was later removed from the final cut of the movie, will enlighten you.

Thanks Shea!

Opera Unite — should be “Untie”?

By Sterling “Chip” Camden
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Well, paint me in a two-tone pattern of “smug” and “disappointed”.  I correctly predicted that Opera’s self-styled “reinvention of the web” would have something to do with breaking the traditional model of web client/server that we’ve all come to know and curse.  But their execution on that grand plan leaves me feeling like I ordered a steak but they brought me the bull.

Opera’s “revolutionary” new idea is called Opera Unite, and it’s built into a version of Opera 10.  In a nutshell, it’s a web server built into your browser.  It provides an HTTP server that has access to your local file system, as well as a number of applications built on top of that:  file sharing, photo sharing, chat room, media player, and “the fridge” (a place where people can leave notes for you).

Each of these has its own URL, which you can send to someone to give them access.  Some of the services provide for password access control, but they can all be made public.  You can also write your own services, using the Unite API.

The grand vision here is that you are now freed from the shackles of depending on a dedicated web server.  No need for uploading, hosting fees, or domain registration!  Just serve everything right off your desktop.  But like Vitaly, I see a few gotchas with this approach:

  • You’re still relying on a server.  Every request has to go through a subdomain of operaunite.com in order to be relayed to and from your desktop.
  • Does anyone think that a lightweight web server running inside a browser will be able to scale on demand?  In my tests, it was dog slow, even for one client.  So much so that external clients kept timing out.
  • What about the drag it places on your workstation?  Should you get some major traffic, expect to crash.
  • The workstation not only has to be up and logged in, but it also has to be running Opera.  If you close Opera, all of your web clients go down.
  • This significantly broadens the attack surface for security threats.  I ran it on a VMWare virtual machine, behind two layers of NAT and a firewall device with all incoming requests denied.  The URL was still accessible by my good friend Joseph in Tennessee.  Furthermore, the files to which I gave him access resided on another system in my local network on which I had a drive mapped.  If my daughter decided to set this up on her workstation, she could open a huge tunnel into my local network.  Of course, I’m smart enough to set up different access privileges for each of my home users, but how many family computers out in the wild have any user privilege distinctions at all, yet contain quite a bit of sensitive material?  What happens when Junior decides to share C:\ publicly and Mom and Dad haven’t even heard of Opera Unite?
  • Even when a site is password protected, the URL is http: – which means the password is being sent in plain text.
  • The web server is very simple – no support for any kind of back-end scripting (not even PHP).  HTML, JavaScript, and CSS round out your available options.

It’s likely that Opera will offer improvements to this service in the future, but to me the design seems flawed from the start.  There’s a reason why we have web servers that can be available 24/7 and don’t place a drag on our desktops and handhelds.  I think the future is leaning more towards commoditized server horsepower in the cloud, rather than a web server in every browser.  Perhaps at some point that server glue may become completely invisible to everyone but us geeks, but I don’t think that will happen by placing server responsibilities on the client.

Broadband prices and take-up both on the rise

Broadband use in the United States has risen sharply despite increasing prices and the recession. However, one in six people say they aren’t interested in getting high-speed internet.

The headline statistic from the Pew Research Center report is that the number of homes with broadband was 63 per cent in April this year, up from 55 per cent in May 2008. It appears to be a recent trend as during the calendar year 2008 the Center found little variation in broadband use.

The growth appears to be mainly driven by groups which aren’t traditionally heavy users of broadband making the switch. There were significant increases in the proportion of elderly people, those on low incomes and people in rural areas who have broadband. Meanwhile demographic groups such as high earners and college graduates only saw minor increases, suggesting broadband may have reached saturation point among such people.

The average monthly broadband bill rose from $34.50 to $39 from May 2008 to April 2009, an increase roughly five times the rate of inflation. As the Pew-produced graph (below) shows, this reverses a recent trend for falling prices. The study also showed the effects of competition: the average price in areas with only one supplier was $44.70 compared with $32.10 where at least four suppliers are available.

The apparent disparity between rising broadband use and rising prices may be explained by people dropping cable TV spending in favor of more time online. Only nine per cent of people questioned said they’d cut back or canceled internet services during the year compared with 22 per cent who’d done so with cable TV.

The study also suggests that there’s a limit to how much further broadband use can increase. Among people who either have dial-up connections or no internet access, just over a third say broadband is either too expensive or not available in their area. The remaining 63 per cent (which make up 16 per cent of all adults) gave a variety of reasons which amount to being unlikely to pay for broadband under any circumstances.

Genetically Modified Turbine-Powered Rabbit

Even though Comcast has done some stupid things in the past, you have to agree that this ad promoting the company’s high-speed internet access is absolutely brilliant.

Disney Taps Kiddie Laptop Market

Not long ago I read the results of a study about litte girls and Disney Princess dolls, which pointed out the massive amount of branding involved – i.e., you can wake up in your Disney Princess sheets, brush your teeth with a Disney Princess toothbrush, eat breakfast out of your Disney Princess cereal bowl… and on and on until you slip into your Disney Princess PJs to go to bed. One of the reasons that branding is particularly powerful for kids is that they probably don’t care what thread count their sheets are, whether their toothbrush has angled bristled for maximum cavity-fighting, or whether the bowl is microwaveable. And odds are, a six-year-old doesn’t care one bit about the specs on her laptop – but given the choice between one that has a Dell logo or a Disney logo, then it’s very likely that the Disney branding team has done their job. Cue that up right after breakfast – check your email on your Disney Princess laptop.

The new Disney Netpal by Asus (the Taiwanese manufacturer known for their Eee PC netbooks, of which this is basically a Disney-fied version) will go on sale July 21 and come in “magic blue” and “princess pink.” However, they are thankfully considerably more subtle than the Disney Dream Desk PC. The price is $349.

Though the beauty of the product is that it’s not just marketed at kids with branding, but with parents, too – with control. Since this laptop is intended for kids, all of the parental control security features are built right in, and robustly. Rather than a “blacklist” of websites, parents can limit web use to an accepted “whitelist.” And also inside the laptop, Windows seems to be even more Disney-fied than the outside, with a special Disney “gadget tray” with a special Disney browser and lots of pre-loaded Disney software like “Disney Pix” (photos) and “Disney Mix” (media management).

I can’t even imagine the nightmare of trying to get other stuff to run on this machine – but I guess that’s not really the point. It’s about simplicity for ease of use, control, and branding, and just from what I’ve read about it so far, I think Disney might have this one in the bag on these counts. And here are the specs on the machine, according to PC Magazine:

  • Intel Atom N270 processor with 1 Gbyte of DDR2 RAM
  • 8.9-inch LED-backlit screen with a 1,024-by-600 resolution
  • 160-GB spinning drive
  • a VGA port, 3 USB ports, an Ethernet jack, audio-out and Mic-in, a multi-card reader, and a 0.3-megapixel webcam
  • 5 hours of battery life
  • weighs 2.6 pounds
  • runs Windows XP Home

There is also a version of the netpal exclusive to Toys ‘R’ Us, the only differences being that it features a 16-GB solid-state drive and weighs only 2.2 pounds.