Tribute to Ferdinand Alexander Porsche

When someone thinks of fast cars and iconic designs, it's impossible not to think Porsche 911. German engineering with a twist, an unmistakable shape, and blistering performance.
The guy who designed this car was the grandson of none other than Ferdinand Porsche himself, who started the company and is famous for his tank designs and the Volkswagen Beetle. The 911 was meant to be the new flagship model for the company and boy did it become so. Arguably the most successful sports car ever, with many iterations but maintaining the original design. Introduced in 1963, to this day it is impossible to mistake it's shape with any other cars (save other Porsches which borrow a little from it), and it would be rare to find a high performance touring race without one of these rolling around.

So I wanna leave my respects to Ferdinand Alexander Porsche for designing one of the icons of the 20th century. He passed away thursday and we should all know who he was.

(photos include a Porsche 904, which was also designed by him)

iPad 3... too hot, too cold? Revolutionary, dull?

Reports are coming in that the new Apple tablet, the iPad 3, is getting too hot for comfort, literally. It can run 7º C hotter than its predecessor, the iPad 2, and is causing concerns among experts.

The simple fact is that the iPad 3 packs quite some punch compared to the previous one, thanks to a new faster quad-core processor and graphic unit, as well as a bigger capacity battery and a much more higher resolution display, dubbed the "retina display", boasting 'as much resolution as a human eye is capable of seeing', a claim contested by some.
All of this packed in about the same case, albeit a tiny bit thicker, means the device can run a little hotter, which concerns some people who claim it could cause "toasted skin syndrome", a skin condition normally attributed to using a hot laptop on one's legs, leading to lesions, and to low sperm counts on males.

Toasty...

This is only minor news though compared to the disappointment Apple fans felt when it was introduced. The device looked exactly like the iPad 2, and nothing like the edge-to-edge, 3D, revolutionary display everyone was expecting. Quite the contrary, many have dubbed this 3rd generation 'the least innovative of the iPads'.
Others on the other hand are declaring the iPad 3 is the "PC Killer". This is, that it's going to be the first device that will mark the beginning of the end for big, bulky personal desktop (and maybe even laptop) computers.
I don't see that happening but people are free to speculate. In the mean time, I will be using my very good Samsung Laptop which doesn't burn my crotch.

Artist concept of what the community expected the iPad 3 to look like...

Ferrari F12 Berlinetta

Or like Jeremy Clarkson will probably describe it whenever he reviews it: The most powerful production Ferrari ... in the world!

When the ruling word over car engineering is "eco", it is weird to see an announcement for a brand new V12 engine, the most powerful Ferrari engine ever. Weird and exciting for petrolheads all over the world. Yesterday it was at last unveiled, not only the engine, but also the car that will benefit from it's extreme performance.
Here it is, and it's a gem.

Apple and Samsung at it again

Shortly after losing a case in the German courts, Apple, creator of the very famous and loved by the masses iPod, iPhone and iPad, is at it again, suing Samsung for 'copying' their products. All in all, these two electronic giants are engaged in 30 patent infringement battles in 10 countries, and honestly I think it's becoming kind of pathetic.

We were the first! Oh wait no we weren't.

Basically Apple is sad because their iPhone and iPad design was "copied" by other companies, never mind the fact that touch-screens have been around for decades and present in smart phones even from the day when there were no color screens, or that commercial lithium ion batteries were developed by Sony in 1991, and all other technologies behind the iPhone were not Apple's idea; putting them together, however, it was, and that is commendable and gave them unprecedented success. But you can't sit on your laurels forever. Other companies are bound to catch up and copy your ideas, eventually even improving them somehow, which is what all other phone companies are trying to do in order to remain competitive which is what companies are all about.

This has a Samsung processor... Awkwaaard

My point is: crying over this is just hypocritical and wrong. Almost none of the products Apple offers were originally their ideas, but ideas borrowed from others and improved into something people like.

The bottom line is that Samsung's devices are outselling Apple's. Instead of trying to improve their products in some way that will give them an edge, they are spending millions in courthouse bullying. Since Samsung holds some patents of their own, it's throwing some punches back.

In the end it's all about who manages to convince people who don't need these gadgets to lay down the better part of a thousand dollars to get one, just to be cool.

Tech news

It's been a busy week in the technology world. Here's a quick round up of the main articles:

The Pirate Bay founders refused appeal

The founders of the popular torrent hosting and tracker The Pirate Bay were denied an appeal by the Swedish Supreme court, thus making their previous sentences final. Guilty of "assisting in making copyright content available", Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde are sentenced to one year and in jail and to pay around 3 million euros all together as reparations.
From Sunde's blog:

"From having the minister of justice pressured by the US to illegally make a case of TPB, through the police officer responsible for the investigation (Jim Keyzer) 'just happened' to get a job at Warner Brothers the weeks before I myself got promoted from a witness to a suspect to the judges in the court cases being either board members, or in one case the actual chairman of the board, for the Swedish pro-copyright society, it was clear to us that the supreme court – where many of the judges make a lot of money on their own copyrights – would be hard to persuade to take the case." 

The site moved to the domain www.thepiratebay.se , but taking the recent event with Megaupload, it is quite possible that their site will be taken down by the US justice department, despite SOPA and PIPA not passing. It would seem they never needed those laws in the first place to blatantly censor the internet; they were just an mirage.

Apple's appeal to ban Samsung products in Germany fails

An appeal to ban Samsung smartphones and tablets was rejected by the Munich Regional Court. Apple Inc. claimed these devices to be in violation of their patents on who knows what. At the end, the final verdict was "Apple should go eat some oranges, this is just a case of sour grapes."

Where's Megaupload?

So as many of you know, the sharing site Megaupload was forcefully closed by the U.S. Justice Department yesterday after an investigation into alleged copyright infringement. It's founders were detained in New Zealand and will be shipped to the US where they will await trial.

The reasons for this raid are simply ridiculous, far fetched and unjustified; at points, it's borderline crazy or paranoid. It's just corporate America wanting to limit the sharing freedom of the people: Megaupload was previously targeted by large corporate copyright sharks such as Universal Music Group.


The legal document released is full of complete garbage that doesn't justify such drastic action. Read the whole thing here, if you wanna subject your brain to injury. If you don't, I did it already... read some excerpts below and what I think of them.

Calling the owners of Megaupload "The Mega Conspiracy", a worldwide criminal organization whose mombers engaged in criminal copyright infringement and money laundering on a massive scale, with estimated harm to copyright holders well in excess of $500,000,00"

Well we're off to a good start. Let the paranoia begin! A file hosting service is not such thing, not even a conspiracy. It's the Mega Conspiracy against those honest hard working copyright holders that are losing so much money because of the Internet, it's intolerable and has to end ! </sarcasm>

Megaupload.com is a commercial website and service operated by the Mega Conspiracy that reproduces and distributes copies of popular copyrighted content over the Internet without authorization. 

No, it's a site where anyone can upload anything at any time and where as there are files which are intellectual property of some, it doesn't mean the primary goal of the site was to host illegal files.

Megaupload.com was at one point in its history estimated to be the 13th most frequently website on the entire Internet. The site claims to have had more than one billion visitors in its history more than 180,000,000 registered users to date (...).

So being successful is a crime?

Megaupload.com's income comes primarily from two sources: premium subscriptions and online advertising.

Like many websites nowadays.

In exchange for payment, the Mega Conspiracy provides the fast reproduction and distribution of infringing copies of copyrighted works from its computer servers located around the world.

No, that's nowhere on the site and are bogus conclusions of what someone CAN do with a megaupload membership, not what they were designed for. 

Subscription fees collected during the existance of the Mega Conspiracy from premium users are estimated to be more than $150 million. 

Good for them...?

Any internet user who goes to the Megaupload.com website can upload a computer file. Once that user has selected a file on their computer and clicks the "upload" button, Megaupload.com reproduces the file on at least one computer server it controls and provides the uploading user with a unique Uniform Resource Locator ("URL") link that allows anyone with the link to download the file.

Thank you for explaining how someone can host ANY file in megaupload, not only copyrighted material.

For example, a link distributed on December 3, 2006, by defendant DOTCOM links to a musical recording by US recording artist "50 Cent." A single click on the link accesses a Megaupload.com download page that allows any internet user to download a copy of the file from a computer server that is controlled by the Mega Conspiracy.

A link from 2006? Damn, these guys talk like most of the content in Megaupload.com is copyrighted material, and all they could find is a 50 Cent mp3 from 5 years ago? 

It must have been a huge deal though. That poor guy must be living on the streets because megaupload deprived him of so many dollars. The poor fella.

Megaupload.com advertises itself as a "cyberlocker", which is a private data storage provider. However, as part of the design of the service, the vast majority of Megaupload.com users do not have significant capabilities to store private content long-term. Unregistered users (referred to as "non-members" by the Conspiracy) are allowed to upload and download content files, but any Non-member-uploaded content that is not downloaded within 21 days is permanently deleted. 

Surely deleting old unused files can't be because hosting files costs them money. Oh no, it's a conspiracy. 

Yes, if you want your files to permanently occupy space on a server rented and paid for by megaupload.com, you must pay some cash to help with the bill. Is this proof of criminal activity or just something that makes sense?

Once a user clicks on a link, the user is generally brought to a download page for the file. The download page contains online advertisements provided by the Conspiracy, which means that every download on Megaupload.com provides a financial gain to the Conspiracy that is direcltly tied to the download. The more popular the content, such as copies of well-known copyrighted works, the more users that find their way to a Megaupload.com download page; the access of these additional users, in turn, makes the Mega Conspiracy more money. 

Another good idea they didn't have which they wish they did, probably. To pay for the costs of freely-hosted files, those which are not supported by the paying members, Megaupload displays ads and generates some revenue which goes to paying hosting costs for those files. Again not an illegal thing to do. 

The argument that most popular files are copyrighted material is debatable and no actual evidence was shown for this claim.

Though the public-facing Megaupload.com website itself does not allow searches, it does list its "Top 100 files", which includes motion picture trailers and software trials that are freely available on the Internet. The Top 100 list, however, does not actually portray the most popular downloads on Megaupload.com which makes the website appear more legitimate and hides the popular copyright-infringing content that drives its revenue.   

So at least some honesty in the middle of this witch burning circus. Megaupload is NOT searchable, so that makes it not a reliable means of getting copyrighted material. Saying the Top 100 files is a façade hiding the illegal pirating scene is just going complete bananas at this point.

A non-premium user is limited to watching 72 minutes of any given video on Megavideo.com at a time, which, since nearly all commercial motion pictures exceed that length, provides a significant incentive for users who are seeking infringing copies of motion pictures to pay the Mega Conspiracy a fee for premium access.

Again, someone forgot that hosting video and streaming that video is very expensive both in server capacity and bandwidth prices, and pushing people into buying the premium access is also a way to paying the bills and making a little money, which is what most sites actually aim for, right?

It goes on and on with useless points that anyone with a shade of intelligence could tear apart in just seconds.
What's really scary about this event is that if SOPA passes, we will be seeing this everywhere. Again, I urge everyone to do whatever they can to speak up and stop this complete nonsense.

2011 in pictures

So, there goes another year, and this one was certainly full of important historical events. Here is a quick recap with pictures.

The Arab spring protests and riots rise on to full blown revolutions, aimed to depose the life-long dictatorships in many Arab countries.

An earthquake followed by a tsunami hits Japan and causes devastation, compromising vital infrastructure, most famously the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

President Barack Obama announces that the most wanted man in the world, Osama Bin Laden, fugitive since 2001, has been found and killed by a special forces team in Pakistan.

The world wide economic crisis worsens, but all attentions are turned to the situation in Europe, where countries like Greece, Portugal and then Spain and Italy seem to be struggling to balance their accounts.

The first ever synthetic organ transplant takes place in London when a cancer patient receives a new lab grown windpipe. The operation is a success.

Shuttle Atlantis lands at Cape Canaveral marking the end of the Space Shuttle program after 20 years of service.

Two bombs are set off in Norway along with an attack in the island of Utøya by a christian extremist, leaving 77 dead and many more wounded.

Another terrorist attack, this time in Mogadishu, capital of Somalia, leaving some 70 dead.

Rebels capture capital Tripoli as part of the Libyan civil war, ending Muammar Gaddafi's long control over the country. Later the dictator would be found and killed in his home city of Sirte.

Riots break out around the United Kingdom, mostly concentrated in London and the surrounding areas. Commerces are looted, buildings and cars burnt down, in response of the increasingly worrying economic situation spreading to the region.

The Curiosity rover is launched and headed for Mars. It is the most advanced probe sent so far to the red planet and will be landing there in late 2012.

The world's human population surpasses 7,000,000, people.

United States announces the end of their operations in occupied Iraq, leaving the country to run itself after almost 9 years of military presence and 5 thousand killed, times six wounded.

As you can see, it's mostly negative things. Here's to hoping I will be writing here in one year's time, with more good news than bad.

Happy 2012, everybody!

SOPA, and why it sucks

Let's talk about something shameful. Online censorship. 

One of the reasons why the internet grew at the rate it did was because people felt liberated and freed by it, the ability to say anything and read anything at any time. View content from across the world in a few seconds, created by someone like you. Soon, this shape of the internet might change drastically. Enter SOPA.

What is it? 

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a bill that's proposed to become a U.S. Law, soon to be voted by congress. Basically, it's a censorship program, which would allow corporations, through intimidation of multi million dollar lawsuits, to close any website they deem are infringing their copyrights. If those websites refuse to close, they could go straight to the companies that host the domains and servers of said websites and sue them instead, giving the corporations such as RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) the power to basically squash any little bug that's smaller than them.

Why is this so bad?

Basically, anything that even slightly breaks the copyright laws is liable to get censored. Even more, websites that host user submitted content are liable for what those users are saying. So if anyone posts lyrics of a song in Facebook, for example, then the copyright holders could force Facebook to block that post unless they wanna face legal action. There go all those lovely song covers in YouTube, any tribute band hosted in MySpace, etc..

Let's make believe SOPA passed on the year 2000, which websites would probably have never existed (or would have been extremely less successful)?

Google
Yahoo!
MySpace
DeviantArt
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Tumblr
Reddit
and many, many more.

What is the drive behind SOPA?

Nothing else but greed. The reason why these corporations see this is necessary is because they are "losing over 100 billion dollars annually". What the mean is they are not earning those 100 billion (allegedly, this figure is probably fabricated and false) on top of their already multi billion dollar earnings. The musicians nowadays live a much wealthier lifestyle than those in the 50s or 60s when piracy was nowhere to be seen. The movies keep breaking income records year after year. Movie stars are paid millions of dollars for 3 months worth of work, more than any normal human being will make in their entire lives. Socialites out of stupid reality TV shows are paid thousands of dollars just to show up at an event.

Why is it ridiculous?

I think everyone can figure out their own reasons to find this bill extremely laughable but worrying at the same time. For me, it's a couple of reasons. First of all it's so against everything the United States of America is usually proud of, "freedom". It is sadly funny to see how America opposes countries like China, Iran or Syria censoring their internets for the sake of religion or government control, and now they're bound to pass a law for the sake of making fat corporations even fatter.

Secondly, it's a case of bullying. It's exactly like that fat, big, not so bright bully at school, getting what he wants by force. Instead of adapting to the changes of the times, these corporations are looking to stomp on change and innovation. They are crying because they didn't have such ideas first. With this attitude not only would they be crushing already existing content, but also hampering the growth of new ideas, companies, and ventures. A study shows that venture capitalists would be extremely fearful to invest in new start-up companies in fear of the legal consequences.

Lastly, some copyright infringement actually leads to earnings for these companies. I have, on many occasions accidentally, come across new bands I had no idea about in YouTube videos which used them as a background music.
For example, this famous video by MadV has a soundtrack by Mogwai, which led me to download (yes, illegally) some more of their music and ultimately to become a fan. Remember this post back from summer? Yes, I paid 75 euros to attend a festival with friends mainly to go see them play and I loved the experience, and will go see them again if they play here. I am sure many people have examples just like this where "illegal" content is actually doing something the record companies have failed doing these past 10 years, advertising and promotion.

I'm not American, why should I worry?

As we all know, the western world has a tendency to follow on the footsteps of the US, whether we like it or not. There are other initiatives in the U.S., such as the PROTECT IP, which could be implemented even if SOPA fails, and more worryingly, something international is being pushed called ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) which, quote, "the current draft of ACTA would profoundly restrict the fundamental rights and freedoms of European citizens, most notably the freedom of expression and communication privacy."

What are our weapons?

Luckily, there is a lot to be done by many people. Many huge internet ventures like Google (by extension, YouTube), Facebook, Mozilla, Wikipedia, to name a few. The president of the United States, Barack Obama, has said he would move to veto this bill, but the congress could still overrule him. Hopefully, even if it becomes law, the Supreme Court could deem it unconstitutional (which it is, see link below), and scrap it.
Visit this website to learn more about what can you do in your current position, be it as a webmaster, just a user, US citizen or not.

Other links:

Funny anti-censorship comics

SOPA is unconstitutional

A list of companies supporting SOPA

A giant earth discovered: Kepler 22b

When people ask me whether I think there is life outside our planet, I say yes. When they ask me why... I don't feel like explaining.


But here's why:

The Milky Way (the galaxy in which our Solar system is located) has around 400,000,000,000 stars. If only a 0.5% of those have planets, then there are 2,000,000,000 Solar systems out there. If out of those solar systems only 0.1% have any planets within an inhabitable region, there are 2 million planets suitable for life out there. Even if one out of a thousand actually harbors life, then there are 2 thousand living planets floating around. And this is being really pessimistic with the numbers.

Then we look beyond our galaxy. The Hubble telescope was pointed a tiny piece of the sky for a month taking in all the light it could get. The result was this famous picture:

Each one of these dots is another galaxy, each one containing billions of other stars. So in my mind, it's very likely there are hundreds of civilizations out there. However, I don't think we will meet any of them.

Keep your helmets on! 2005 YU55 near pass.

Tomorrow (tuesday the 8th of November) an asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier will pass us really close by. It's called 2005 YU55, and while astronomically we can call this a close miss, it will be 0.00217 AU (Eart-Sun distance) away, around 325,000 km or 200,000 mi. This is 15% closer than the distance at which the moon orbits (0.85 lunar distances).

Unfortunately, it will not be visible to the naked eye as it is not big enough, and since it is not a comet, it will not leave a visible trail. The object is approaching from the direction of the Sun, so it will be a daylight object, observable for astronomers who will surely be delighted pointing their optical and infra-red telescopes at it.
It poses no threat of collision, and by calculations, it won't do so for at least 100 years.

The next tracked object to come close to earth (0.6 lunar distances) won't come until 2028. Keep your helmets in good condition for that one as well.

Check out the original story at NASA's site

I hope there is two without three

This month I've covered a lot of motorsport and car related subjects on the blog. Some have enjoyed it while others want me to go back to writing about random interesting stuff, and I will, but bear with me on this one.

It is with a saddened heart that I write about the untimely departure of two talented racers, which lost their lives a week apart, these past two Sundays.

Dan Wheldon

Dan Wheldon was born in England in 1978. He started karting at the very early age of 4 and continued racing throughout his youth and teens, even crossing paths with Jenson Button, before moving to America to compete in the lower ranks of open wheeled racing, but it wasn't too long before his talent was noticed and, eventually, earned him a seat at the pinnacle of competition, the Indy Racing League, in which he won Rookie of the Year award in his first full season. A year later he was 2nd overall, and the next year, champion.

In 2011 he was replaced at Panther Racing by rookie J.R. Hildebrand, and was without a drive for most of the year. Ironically, he did enter the mythic Indy 500 with Bryan Herta Autosport, and beat Hildebrand to the finish, after a mistake by the rookie saw him crashing into the wall in the last corner of the race.