As a fellow iOS developer, I truly feel for them. On the flipside, it's outright naive (and not just in hindsight) for them to have relied on communications with Apple about their business model. Apple was under no obligation to disclose the fact that they were working on iBooks, and it's unrealistic for anyone to…

Wow, it's about time someone made it back down to the Challenger Deep. The sub looks great, too. I imagine the one in the picture is a prototype, as the design for the final sub looks very different (the renderings show two separate hemispheres, whereas the photos on the site clearly show a nearly-intact sphere with a…

I remember some manufacturer was offering significantly faster flash ram blades as upgrades for the new Airs, but Apple "requested" that they be pulled from the market for the time being. I wonder if these are the same.

I actually agree that golf can benefit greatly from 3D. What's lacking is the current videography implementation. If they can incorporate more close angles, more crane shots directly over the fairway and green, and more dynamic flybys, it could be a boon to 3D. With current techniques, I think a lot of the effect is…

No, I'm not assuming that. I'm assuming aggregate gmail has more searchable content than the aggregate web, which means Google would require more email crawling servers than web crawling servers in order to maintain the same speed.

At first I didn't understand what the heck he was trying to say. Then I didn't believe him. Then it actually made sense. I get 50-200 emails a day, some important, some spam. I don't create that much web content every day. Even the people who create a lot of web content probably get a lot more email than that. So it…

I gotta say, I do not buy this "Golf is ideal for 3D" argument. The principal reason is because the cameras cannot be close to the players. Golf videography with players in the frame is typically done with long telephoto lenses, and "ball sailing through air" wide angle shots are typically distance shots as well.…

That's what I first thought when Apple made the ipod wheel touch-sensitive, too. Oh well, we live and adapt. My laptop trackpad has a "prevent accidental palm presses" feature that works quite well, I'm sure Apple could make it so that only deliberate presses register.

That's exactly the right phrase to zero in on. "Exchanged fire." When I read it, my first thought was whether the reporter "got it right" or if he/she was just regurgitating a phrase often heard and not often thought about. Typical smash'n'grabs aren't armed, and getting to a point of gunfire would seem rare. If…

Hahaha so well done. The bit at the end with Kim Jong Il is hilarious.

It really depends; most often, the court is the real stickler and browbeats the parties for de minimus violations of local rules; it's theirs to enforce as they wish. But typically, unless the litigation is incredibly contentious, you don't earn any favors by pointing out small errors, and if the court thinks you're…

Way to take the high road, Microsoft.

When they say "doubling" the resolution, they usually mean 1024x768 -> 2048x1536, or doubling the dimensions. You have two times as many pixels going across the screen, and two times as many going down the screen. That of course, means the total area (and number of pixels) is quadrupled. It's the same as what was…

"who's that?" right there is enough. I don't think anyone doesn't know who Mark Zuckerberg is nowadays.

Yep, when watching the show, I've often had that lightbulb go off over my head as it was asked, but the answer just stays on the tip of my tongue until the contestant answers it. You gotta balance buzz-in speed with actually "knowing" the answer, not just having an inkling of it.

Uh, yeah. Really well done, but I'm ashamed to admit that it still baffles me.

I agree. Most of the questions are pretty straightforward trivia, just throwing the text into Google would probably yield the right answer.

Also, if you step back and look at the whole of the device, you can see the two parts quite clearly because the perspective of the device does not match the perspective of the rest of the room (they didn't take the depth compression from the focal length of the video camera into account).

I think he got it at the same place we all did: Saturday morning cartoons. He just has way more...intensity.

Not voice recognition—technicians fed Watson the text of each "answer" at the same moment it was revealed to the human contestants. Whether you call what happens next "raw computing power" is somewhat semantic, but I think it's fair to say that getting the right answer most of the time involves something like 10-20%…