I work for an Australian Bank. We had an internal competition where they didn't sanitise the data for this competition well enough. After a week of analysing the data one of the people in competing in the competition knew who's data we were looking at. It was a friend of theirs.
All identifying information had been removed/sanitised, they could tell from looking at the spending habits.
... So they knew, because they already knew. So really they just confirmed.
Ask that person to go and find my details, and they will surely fail. Because they know nothing about me, and the transaction history doesn't tell them anything... thus it is not 'identifying'.
I would agree with that for the most part, however, if you're receiving a large sum of money (e.g. the $8 million dollars Ouya received as mentioned in the article received) I think you owe it to your investors to take the time to set up those business entities.
Sorry, I'm not usually a pain with comparisons but comparing "Super Bass: 268M views in a year; Khan Academy: 175M views in 5 years" is illogical as Super Bass, from my quick Googling is around a song lasting 2m30s to Khan Academy which probably on average has around 10-20minute videos.
This doesn't even go into the fact that people could easily passively listen to Super Bass in a non-active window while Khan Academy requires much more active watching from the user.
(i.e. I could have super bass on my iPad in my car while I drive somewhere as background noise but Khan Academy requires me to be sitting in front of my PC focused on it).
Yeah, it's mostly a tongue-in-cheek comparison :). The meta-point is that the entire online learning space has a small fraction of society's collective attention, scraping by against the popularity of a rap artist who will be forgotten in a few years.
the US government spends $100 million on sensors yet the catels stand to make (if you can believe the figures) "$16 million wholesale" for one shipment of cocaine via this method.
The drug cartels stand to make more selling drugs than the US government spent trying to stop them in merely 7 trips with an ultralight
$16 million is revenue, not profit, but I agree the scale is amazing. I know the price of cocaine in America is thousands of times more than straight out of the lab in Columbia. I wonder how big of a cut each group takes from the massive profit as it works it's way to America...
Because in English, that second 'o' in such an awkward place would obviously become a schwa, and because the country's namesake is spelled with a 'u' in English, too?
"There’s a reason coke and heroin cost so much more on the street than at the farm gate: you’re not paying for the drugs; you’re compensating everyone along the distribution chain for the risks they assumed in getting them to you. Smugglers often negotiate, in actuarial detail, about who will be held liable in the event of lost inventory. After a bust, arrested traffickers have been known to demand a receipt from authorities, so that they can prove the loss was not because of their own negligence (which would mean they might have to pay for it) or their own thievery (which would mean they might have to die). Some Colombian cartels have actually offered insurance policies on narcotics, as a safeguard against loss or seizure."(source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican-dru...)
I had a similar user experience with iOS (I admit I bailed out of the ecosystem at the 3GS but it hasn't changed substantially since then).
You're correct with everything you say, however, I feel that while you should always cater for the lowest common denominator (which Apple does, very well with iOS). You should also cater for the power user and the ultimate reason I switched out of the iOS ecosystem the only way I could get all the functionality I wanted was by jailbreaking my iPhone, whereas with an Android it's all native (and am glad to say I haven't had to root my Android).
Further to the above paragraph from what I observe in iOS is that it appears that they do not want to progress towards power users, unless I've missed some key developments recently.
In saying this, I've recently purchased a MacBook and I feel that they've done an incredible job with OSX in the regards, it's very easy to use for the novice but allows for a lot of power user functionality (e.g. multiple finger swipes, access to terminal, keyboard shortcuts for things like spotlight).
I think it was iOS 4 that gave apps a filesystem users could directly (through iTunes) manipulate... I'm not sure how to describe it, so take a look at this picture: http://d.pr/i/PGfr - I can drop PDFs (and other files) in that window and the app would see them. It's fast, sine it's using USB. AND, if you plug the iPad to another computer, they can add PDFs too (no need to sync with that computer).
Also, wireless syncing (or syncing with icloud.com) is a big deal IMO.
And interaction between apps (like opening a PDF that's in ReaddleDocs in Adobe Reader) is easy now. Most apps implement a simple "sharing" button that lets you open a file in all qualifying apps.
And Safari... Safari is finally a decent browser. Specially on iPad.
And the whole iClous thing is just magnificent if you have iPhone, iPad and a Mac.
But still, it lacks some of "advanced" features of Android ("intents", for one), and wouldn't have them for at least 13 months (when iOS 7 comes out).
Not sure if I agree with your "beautiful and usable" comment, there's a very good reason for design iteration.
Check out some geocities sites from a while ago for some 'usable' websites.
Personally I feel like the UI of iOS is very aged, requiring you to click on a icon to see information about that app whereas a widget allows a wealth of information at a glance. Often even access to an application's controls without having to open the app.
I watched the video but it hasn't convinced me why gimme bar is better than my current bookmark system in Chrome with folders etc. to be honest, I quite like my bookmark bar at the top
All the video did was told me that gimme bar is better, but not why it is.
It saves the content so it doesn't matter if the original goes away. FWIW, I learned this from the video, hadn't used the product or even heard of it before.
The only things we really buy from the supermarket are week to week things like meat etc.