A bonus PalmCast: Dieter, Derek, Keith, and Phil Nickinson talk about the big news that HP is buying Palm.
Thanks to everybody for writing and calling in!
Here’s your first look at the upcoming trailer of highly anticipated sci-fi survival horror sequel, Dead Space 2. Watch the teaser after the jump.
Well, look what we have here! The above HTC Android handset has just passed through the FCC with AT&T 3G bands. Yippee! I have got to be honest, I am loving the form factor, looks a lot like an HTC Touch Pro 2. Typing on an Android version of the Touch Pro 2 makes me drool just thinking about it. What do you guys think? Nice form factor? Let us know in the comments!
Source: Android Cenral
Well, if you can’t chase ambulances, you might as well chase acquisition announcements. Howard G. Smith is a lawyer in Bensalem, PA and he’s apparently looking to file a case against Palm and/or HP regarding the proposed acquisition.
Smith contends that the proposed price of $5.70 per share undervalues the stock and does a disservice to stockholders, given that the stock has been as high as $13.58 within the past few months. He’s even going so far as to suggest that Palm "failed to shop the Company to other potential buyers," which seems patently false given the hints dropped in Rubinstein’s letter to Palm employees.
We’re calling lawsuit troll on this one – but it does raise an interesting point that we haven’t addressed in our flurry of posts about HP buying Palm: do you think that $5.70 per share / $1.2 billion is a fair price?
Thanks to @5xBEAR for the tip!
After modding the toy Millennium Falcon, Peter Clute decided to combine Buzz Lightyear with the Terminator, resulting in a zombie nightmare for kids and yours truly. I wish Toy Stoy 3 included this character. More »
Found under: Palm, HP, Hewlett Packard, WebOS, Acquired, Jon Rubinstein,
Read more in mobile format
The fundraiser is scheduled for 5 p.m. Sunday at the home of Jill and Dan Ciporin and Tea Party activists affiliated with the group Right Principles plan to protest outside.
Just reading this article in Slate, How To Throw an Election:
On paper, that’s what Sudan’s 21-year civil war was all about. More than 2 million people died in that terrible religious-themed conflict between the Muslim, Arab-led north and the pagan and Christian black south. In reality, almost no one in the south bought the unity line except their charismatic (and autocratic) leader, John Garang. Garang, a favorite of the West, negotiated Sudan’s 2005 peace treaty, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, that finally ended the war. The document was essentially written to ensure he would be elected Sudan’s first black president.
How is it that the current president of Sudan (picture to the left) isn’t black, but Barack Hussein Obama is black? I’m in the category of people who think the world “race” has some utility and maps onto real patterns of human variation, but sometimes it’s just funny. The distinction between the Arabs of Sudan and blacks of Sudan is kind of weird, because Arab is not a race, and Arabs can be of any race theoretically (there are even Arabs in Yemen’s Hadhramaut who have a lot of Malaysian ancestry because of international trade), though generally they are of the olive persuasion. Perhaps the Sudanese Arab elite wouldn’t want to be identified as black because that isn’t particularly prestigious, but they’d certainly be identified as such in other Arab countries. Anwar Sadat was the subject of some racist attitudes within Egyptian society because of his Sudanese ancestry (his mother was Nubian) and his dark skin.
Anyway, my amusement was mostly the fact that they went with this text, and, added a picture of a man who most Americans would identify as black but noted implicitly that he wasn’t black. American journalists are generally punctilious about following the rule of hyodescent when it comes to Americans, even when those individuals object to this framing, such as Tiger Woods (who is twice as Asian ancestrally as he is black). But I guess in an international context they will bend more. It reminded me of stories that Afro-Arabs were often allowed to stay at “whites only” facilities in the USA when segregation was the norm because they were foreign.
Note: Hypodescent isn’t just an American issue. There are controversies about a new biopic of Alexandre Dumas where he is played by Gérard Depardieu. Some people wanted a non-white actor cast because Dumas’ mother was mixed-race. But of course Dumas was mostly white, and he seems to basically looked like a white guy. France of the 19th century was not the American South of the 19th century, and a drop of black blood did not make you persona non grate within white society. If you want real accuracy, perhaps cast Wentworth Miller as a young Dumas, he’s a white-looking mixed-race actor.
Image Credit: Slate & Whitehouse.gov
A post on the Mobileread forums pointed me to an Amazon announcement posted today about a new firmware (software) update for the Kindle and Kindle DX. Based on the announcement, the update will go to a select group of beta testers first, and then move out to all Kindle users by late May 2010.
New Firmware Features Include:
The official Amazon announcement is at Amazon.com. I’m hoping we’ll see a price reduction as the next big news item from Amazon.
by Kevin Jon Heller
Whoops, spoke too soon about the WSJ’s anti-ICC editorial. It does indeed contain a lie — and its a doozy:
What’s more, no amount of reform of the founding treaty will change the ICC’s inherent flaw. The ICC is a child of the doctrine of “universal jurisdiction,” which holds that courts can adjudicate crimes committed anywhere in the world.
As anyone who has spent five minutes reading the Rome Statue knows, the Court is based on two forms of jurisdiction: territorial and active-nationality. Both of which the U.S. uses and accepts that other states may use. Proposals to base the ICC on universal jurisdiction were soundly rejected during the drafting of the Rome Statute.
Not that the Editorial Board of the WSJ cares. In the absence of facts, lies suit them just fine.
It’s almost a question of what isn’t RIM working on these days. Our friends at BBLeaks managed to score some screenshots of RIM’s upcoming Podcast App. It seems this new app will allow you to browse and subscribe to podcasts with a simple click of a touchpad or screen. The overall design seems to be similar to RIM’s upcoming BlackBerry 6 OS, which was previewed at WES 2010, officially. No real details have been said about the Podcast app, but its interesting to see that RIM is indeed working on one.
What are your thoughts? Do you enjoy podcasts? If so will you listen to them on your BlackBerry?
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It’s been rumored for a while that TELUS off-spring, Koodo Mobile would be launching BlackBerry service on their low cost brand. Today Koodo announced that they will be bringing the popular entry level BlackBerry Curve 8530 to their lineup. Koodo plans to offer the Curve 8530 for $300 outright or $150 with tab (contract-less). They didn’t announce any launch dates, besides saying this Spring. We heard rumors that Koodo may launch the new BlackBerry service late May, with plans focused on social networking. Stay tuned for more details when they arrive.
The BlackBerry Curve 8530 smartphone makes writing text messages, emails and Facebook updates easier than ever
TORONTO, April 28 /CNW/ – Koodo Mobile, Canada’s decidedly different, pay for what you need wireless company, is thrilled to announce the addition of the BlackBerry Curve 8530 smartphone from Research In Motion (RIM) to its line-up later this Spring. Koodo is introducing the BlackBerry Curve in response to consumer demand for a social media friendly, QWERTY handset.
“Since launching as Canada’s back to basics wireless company, Koodo has focused on providing exceptional value by sticking to communication essentials like talk and text,” says Kevin Banderk, Chief Koodo Officer. “For many Koodo customers, easy mobile access to email or social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter has become an essential communication need. The BlackBerry Curve 8530 offers these customers a high-quality smartphone with a full-QWERTY keyboard for easy interactivity with popular social networking sites.”
The BlackBerry Curve 8530 smartphone comes in charcoal and is expected to retail for $300, or $150 for new customers who put the smartphone on their Tab. Existing customers who have paid their Tab in part or in full can also use the Tab to get the new BlackBerry Curve 8530 smartphone. Unique to Koodo Mobile, the Tab is an alternative to fixed-term contracts that allows customers to put up to $150 of a phone’s price on their Tab. Ten per cent of each monthly bill is then credited to the Tab. If the customer decides to leave, they simply need to settle their Tab. Some existing customers who have paid off their Tab may be eligible to receive the BlackBerry Curve 8530 smartphone at no additional cost.
For more information about Koodo Mobile phones and plans, visit koodomobile.com. For more information on the BlackBerry Curve 8530 smartphone, visit www.Blackberry.com/curve.
About Koodo
Launched in March 2008, Koodo Mobile is Canada’s simple, affordable and flexible mobile alternative for those who just want to talk and text. Koodo Mobile offers a transparent approach to cellular service with per-second billing and no fixed-term contracts. Service plans are pre-packaged or build-your-own. Customers have the option to purchase a phone or take advantage of the revolutionary Koodo Tab. Visit koodomobile.com for information and retailers.
The BlackBerry and RIM families of related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties and trademarks of Research In Motion Limited.
[via MobileSyrup]
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Koodo Mobile announces BlackBerry Curve 8530 is Coming! $300/$150 with Tab
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The smartphone market was given a massive boost today as the news broke that HP will acquire smartphone pioneer Palm and perhaps most significantly, the Palm webOS mobile operating system. HP’s international infrastructure, fiscal strength and influence will ensure Palm now has not only a future, but will now become an even more serious competitor to Apple, Google’s Android, RIM, Microsoft et al in US$100 billion smartphone and connected mobile device marketplace…
Continue Reading Smartphone market gets an old new player as HP buys Palm
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You may recall Bev Stayart (or Beverly Stayart), the woman who insisted that she was such an upright citizen that it was scandalous (and apparently illegal) that when you did a Yahoo search on her name, some of the links went to questionable sites. So she sued Yahoo. After we wrote about it, she also threatened to sue us as well. She hasn’t done that (yet) thankfully. Either way, the court quickly dismissed her lawsuit against Yahoo, seeing as Yahoo was protected by Section 230 of the CDA. She later sued Yahoo again, because Yahoo’s “suggested search” connected her name to the pharmaceutical Levitra. As we noted at the time, however, part of the reason for those suggestions were not (as she claimed) that Yahoo “knowingly connected” her name to that drug (along with Viagra and Cialis), but because of her original lawsuit, which noted that a search on her name pointed to websites relating to those drugs.
Of course, given more news coverage of her quixotic legal quest, it seemed only natural that this connection would actually get stronger, since more people were legitimately writing stories about her, and her concerns about being connected to Levitra, Viagra and Cialis. So, I guess it should come as no surprise that she’s now suing Google as well, for also “suggesting” “bev stayart levitra” when you start doing a search on “bev stayart.” The problem, which she still doesn’t seem to get, is not that Google (or Yahoo) are deliberately doing this to her, but the more she complains about it, the stronger the algorithmic connection becomes. As Eric Goldman notes in his post about this latest lawsuit:
Some unsolicited advice for Bev Stayart: stop suing search engines, and stop running vanity searches on the search engines. Life is too short to fret about sploggers!
Indeed.
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Looking for more reasons to hate spam? Here’s one. According to McAfee and ICF International, annual spam energy use totals 33 billion kilowatt-hours (KWh). That’s equivalent to the electricity used in 2.4 million homes in the United States, with the same GHG emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars using two billion United States gallons of gasoline.
This comes from The Carbon Footprint of Email Spam Report (download here).
The good news is that spam filtering makes a difference. According to McAfee, spam filtering saves 135 TWh of electricity per year. That’s like taking 13 million cars off the road.
In fact, if every inbox were protected by a state-of-the art spam filter, organizations and individuals could reduce today’s spam energy by approximately 75% or 25 TWh per year. That’s equivalent
to taking 2.3 million cars off the road.
Filtering spam doesn’t seem like a huge environmental contribution when there are 42,000 gallons of oil from the Deep Horizon oil disaster still gushing into the Gulf Coast every day, but when you look at it from a global perspective, it makes a difference.
Besides, I can’t do anything about the oil in the Gulf Coast. But I can do something about my spam.
Get me rewrite.
I had started writing my post to debunk the utter canard that the IPCC’s and media’s treatment of uncertainty have left the public with an overestimation of projected climate impacts on our current emissions path. But then came her latest jaw dropper:
The people slagging off on McIntyre, Watts et al. have probably spent no time over at their blogs or made an effort to get to know them personally and understand what makes them tick. Or to talk to the scientific skeptics like Christy, Michaels. Or talk to the libertarian think tanks, like CATO and CEI. Well, i’ve made that effort, and therefore I think I know alot more about the what the “deniers” are really like than the people accusing me of naivete, who have drawn premature conclusions because somebody found some sort of obscure link to an oil company.
That isn’t true of me or many commenters here or many science bloggers, who have wasted countless hours on those thoroughly debunked and discredited blogs. Indeed, that’s why they are debunked and discredited. And here’s CEI’s “obscure” link to oil.
What is shocking is that she asserts she has spent a lot of time over at WattUp and yet still wrote the following in her unconstructive February essay, “On the Credibility of Climate Research, Part II: Towards Rebuilding Trust”:
And finally, the blogosphere can be a very powerful tool for increasing the credibility of climate research. “Dueling blogs” (e.g. climateprogress.org versus wattsupwiththat.com and realclimate.org versus climateaudit.org) can actually enhance public trust in the science as they see both sides of the arguments being discussed.
Huh? You may not agree with everything I write, but at least it is grounded in the actual scientific literature. Watts posts whatever anti-scientific nonsense he can get his hands on, as just about everyone in the science blogosphere has shown (see Wattergate: Tamino debunks “just plain wrong” Anthony Watts).
He is a hard-core disinformer (see FoxNews, WattsUpWithThat push falsehood-filled Daily Mail article on global cooling that utterly misquotes, misrepresents work of Mojib Latif and NSIDC). He reprints utter bunk (see “here“).
Not content to simply dispute the science with disinformation, he attacks climate scientists. Watts said last year that NASA’s James Hansen is “no longer a scientist.” Watts routinely smears all climate scientists, approvingly reprinting anti-science manifestos that claim global warming “is the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind” — see here. He also smeared NSIDC director Mark Serreze.
I rarely “duel” with Watts, since he’s not making a serious effort to understand and report on the science. He is making a serious effort to spread disinformation and confusion. I confess I gave up trying to understand what makes such a person “tick” — same for Christy, Michaels, and the disinformers at Cato and CEI.
As Scott Mandia, Professor of Physical Sciences commented on CP:
McI[ntyre] and Watts operate their blogs with the notion that climate scientists are liars and cheats at worst or misguided group-thinking incompetents at best.
Dr. Curry is setting science back and hurting her reputation by including those two.
In spite of spending time on his blog, Curry apparently believes WattsUpWithThat is somehow contributing to increasing the credibility of climate research. In fact, Watts ain’t interested in science and balked at the biggest chance he had to do so (see Watts not to love: New study finds the poor weather stations tend to have a slight COOL bias, not a warm one).
As for Curry, as recently as October 2007, she was going out of her way to debunk Bjorn Lomborg on the pages of the Washington Post, while endorsing “Making the transition to cleaner fuels,” in order to make a “big dent in carbon emissions” noting “the rationale for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide is to reduce the risk of the possibility of catastrophic outcomes.”
These day Curry spends her time demonizing the much-exonerated Michael Mann, repeating the long-discredited attacks on the much-vindicated Hockey Stick, praising the well-debunked Wegman report (repeatedly asserting the falsehood that it is an NRC report), and actually criticizing a blogger for failing to include WUWT in his blogroll.
So yes, I think I and everyone else has the right to be puzzled by what Judith Curry writes today (see “Beef with Curry” and “My response to Dr. Judith Curry’s unconstructive essay“).
She has personalized the entire debate by insisting on dividing scientists and others into tribes — with me, according to her, apparently in a very different tribe than her.
Some people are “warmists” (undefined), some are “lukewarmers” (undefined), some are “moderate warmers” (her, self-identified, essentially undefined), some are “deniers” (undefined), some are “affirmists” (undefined, except that, like “deniers” they “describe someone that isn’t open to changing their mind based on evidence” — which applies to not a single “warmist” scientist I know).
When William Connolley asks of her, “I’m a bit confused by what JC’s actual views on climate change are. Not the politics or that, but the actual state of the science,” she replies:
I find the main text of the WG1 Report to be an accurate assessment of the science. The problem that I have with the WG1 Report is the summary narratives (executive summary, summary for policy makers) where all this is integrated and summarized. My main issue with the WG1 report is that I think that many of confidence levels are too high: there is inadequate scientific uncertainty analysis, and lack of accounting for known unknowns and unknown unknowns. I have substantial issues with the WG2 report and the impacts.
So what does all this add up to? A moderate warmist that sees very large uncertainty with regards to hypothesized catastrophic impacts
Of course this “adds up to” undefined meaninglessness, since she doesn’t spell out what the “hypothesized catastrophic impacts” are or what emissions scenario she is talking about. Like many people who don’t define their terms or spell out what they believe the science says happens under business-as-usual emissions, she conflates uncertainty in the climate’s sensitivity with uncertainty about how much we’re going to emit.
You see, I’m also a moderate warmist that sees very large uncertainty with regards to hypothesized catastrophic impacts — if we act quickly to limit emissions and stay below 450 ppm. But WG1 doesn’t really leave much doubt that if we, say, listened to the people like Anthony Watts — or other disinformers, like those at CATO and CEI who keep asserting the whole damn thing is a hoax (or might actually be good for us) — then we are headed to very high concentrations (and yes catastrophic impacts) with high probability [see U.S. media largely ignores latest warning from climate scientists: “Recent observations confirm … the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised” — 1000 ppm].
Doing nothing sharply reduces the uncertainty of hypothesized catastrophic impacts (see here).
Curry says things like, she says, “If I say members of the climate consensus or establishment, that would almost leave out Romm and Hansen, since both go beyond the IPCC consensus in some ways.” But wait — I thought people should be open to changing their mind on evidence. And the overwhelming majority of studies published since the IPCC are more dire than the IPCC — sea level rise being the most obvious case.
Indeed, in a AAAS presentation this year, William R. Freudenburg of UC Santa Barbara discussed his research on “the Asymmetry of Scientific Challenge”:
New scientific findings are found to be more than twenty times as likely to indicate that global climate disruption is “worse than previously expected,” rather than “not as bad as previously expected”
So by Curry’s logic, anyone who doesn’t believe that climate impacts on the business-as-usual emissions path will be worse than the IPCC projected is either an affirmist or a denier.
And that is why failing to define one’s terms makes debate all but meaningless.
I believe her views on hurricanes have evolved. After much discussion with her trying to understand the hurricane issue while I was writing my book, she gave me this projection in late 2006:
On our current warming trend, four super hurricanes — category 4 or stronger — a year in the North Atlantic is likely to become the norm 20 years from now.
Now that is pretty friggin’ alarming, don’t you think?
If her views have evolved based on newer science, that’s fine. But then she can’t criticize others for evolving their views based on the science.
She tells Kloor in a second interview:
So should Joe Romm be puzzled by this? Probably, but I think part of his puzzlement arises from assuming that I and all “warmist” climate researchers share his policy objectives. People really find it hard to believe that I don’t have a policy agenda about climate change/energy (believe me, Roger Pielke Jr has tried very hard to smoke me out as a “stealth advocate”). Yes, I want clean green energy, economic development and “world peace”. I have no idea how much climate change should be weighted in these kinds of policy decisions. I lack the knowledge, wisdom and hubris to think that anything I say or do should be of any consequence to climate/carbon/energy policy.
That’s nonsense. And she should know it.
I spent a lot of time with her giving joint talks in Florida. She made clear again and again she was not an energy policy expert and didn’t want to talk about energy policy. But, again, she never defines what “policy” is, so like many of her statements, this one is all but meaningless.
When asked if our current understanding of climate sensitivity means “we should aim to keep CO2 well below 550 ppmv,” she writes in the comments of Kloor’s second post:
No. There is the whole issue of what constitutes “dangerous” climate change. Which is a value laden issue.
I for one do not have any confidence in setting a CO2 limit with two significant figures, given the uncertainties described in 1-3. This takes us into a policy arena, which is where I am drawing the line in this discussion.
Can’t set a CO2 limit with two significant figures? That isn’t “moderate warmist.” That is “maximal agnostic.”
Some people objected when I said she was in the McIntyre and WattsUpWithThat “tribe.” But I was using the term tribe the way she seems to. It does not mean people who share the same scientific and/or policy views. After all, she lumps me in with Hansen — and while I have far too much respect for Hansen to ever claim to be in his “tribe,” it is widely known that I do not share his scientific and/or policy views. She has also lumped me in with RealClimate, and again, I don’t share all of their views on the science — and they tend to avoid policy entirely.
No, tribes are determined by whose faults you gloss over. That seems to be Curry’s point about the IPCC. And THAT is why I wrote, “She has joined the WUWT and McIntyre tribe.“
That is why I titled this “The curious incident of Judith Curry with the fringe” (along with the fact that I’m a fan of the musical Oklahoma). As the Sherlock Holmes story goes:
“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.
If you read her Discover interview or her “On the Credibility of Climate Research, Part II: Towards Rebuilding Trust” paper, what’s curious is that among her incessant attacks on Mann, Jones, IPCC scientists and the like she has nothing negative whatsoever to say about McIntyre and Watts.
That’s the sense she’s in their tribe. When the most people are listening, she just can’t find fault in them. Now we know it’s because she spends so much time with them trying to understand what makes them tick.
