Remember That Future Gene Roddenberry Promised Us?

We’re beginning to see it come together. Reporting for the New York Times, Denise Grady reveals how one of humanity’s viral nemesises, HIV, was captured, disabled, and turned so that it could be used to fight another medical foe— Leukemia. “The technique employs a disabled form of H.I.V. because it is very good at carrying genetic material into T-cells. The new genes program the T-cells to attack B-cells, a normal part of the immune system that turn malignant in leukemia.” For most Westerners, this is tantamount to magic. Cancer has long been the death sentence in the 1st world, with HIV a close second. most of ys can comprehend the use of little silicon-based machines working wonders based on their programming but the idea that we could take an insidious, virulent virus and use it to throw person after person into remission is pretty abstract— even for this geek. Don’t get me wrong—Breakthroughs like the discovery of Dark Energy (72% of the stuff in the Universe, but which we can’t “see”) are amazing, as well as being similarly confounding, but the use of this tech to solve more mundane problems is astounding.

BBC: Police warn over Apple Maps error

Looks like the current Maps app could get you killed in Australia. ** ** Inaccuracies in Apple Maps could be “life-threatening” to motorists in Australia’s searing heat, police warn. The bad news? Police believe that you can actually die by using this app. The good news? This tech is so pervasive that this announcement could only happen if smart phones were not the default.

Moro Reneges on Android 4.0 Upgrade for the Atrix

This is ridiculous. If the news came out that Samsung or HTC wasn't going to fulfil and OS upgrade promise then OK, sure. But Moto? It's owned by Google. I know there are more efficiencies to be had where the OS maker and the handset maker are concerned-- they were only recently mated, but it's still sad for Atrix owners, who bought what was once considered one of the few future-proof devices.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/10/motorola-reneges-on-ice-cream-sandwich-software-update/

Tim Cook offers an Apology for iOS 6s Maps

Apple made a mistake ere but what's most bothersome is that the whole thing is stupid-- this could have easily been avoided.

We know that Apple had pushed Google to provide the necessary data for voice-guided navigation, and that Google declined (All Things D), which makes sense because why would you gove your key differentiator to a competing platform-- especially when Jellybean just about caught up in terms of UI/UX? No San leadership would do that.

Still, this lack of agreement on turn-by-turn data meant that Apple had a few options--

1. Pull a software coup and, just like they do with hardware, assemble a magical experience with pieces from disparate vendors. that is to say-- Develop its own map with various partners app and load it into iOS 6.

2. Keep the mapping experience the same or incrementally better (iOS 5 brought us routes. Perhaps they could have given us offline map tiles when requesting a route, you know, small stuff) while STILL pursuing and fully QAing the above option for a year.

They made a huge mistake in choosing option 1. Why? Because we would have waited. We're used to incremental growth and Maps has never been the sore point that notifications were before notification centre or that background processes were before they instituted background API access for thing like uploading images or app session restore (the fact that you find your app where you left it rather than have to start from the beginning).

I can't find any carping or griping around maps in this way over that last several years-- likely because Mapquest and Navigon were available for free and $25 respectively.

This was bad judgment on Apple's part. They could have honed this thing and done a side by side comparison for years until it was ready and we would have waited AND been surprised and delighted when it showed up in robust fashion.

They shoulda spent this time adding a damned PowerNap feature to iOS. Who the fuck wants to open the App Store just so they can click "Update All" amd then wait for 20 minutes while all their most-used Apps are unusable? Give the thing permission in the settings, have it wait until it's plugged in, on WiFi, and done with an iCloud Back-Up, and then, have at it.

Trayvon Martin's mom says she thinks his killing was an accident

Interesting take, considering the celebrations around Zimmerman's arrest.

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/12/11159111-trayvon-martins-mom-says-she-thinks-his-killing-was-an-accident?lite

First Post

Recorded tonight w/ Andy and the fellas. Spoke about the purchase of Instagram by Facebook and whether or not the unlocking trend AT&T set off this week is going to stick.

You can catch it all at Geeks of Doom in a couple of days.