So the integrated Siri program that is in all the new 4S models will say some funny things if you ask the right questions. Matt Legend Gemmell, a software designer from Edinburgh, got a new Apple Inc. iPhone on Friday and asked it: “Who’s your daddy?”
“You are,” the phone answered, in the voice of an authoritative man.
Earlier, he commanded: “Beam me up.” This time, the iPhone responded: “Sorry, Captain, your tricorder is in Airplane Mode.”
The phone takes verbal commands and questions, and responds with computer-generated speech.
Real humans are responding to this alarming breakthrough by asking their iPhones ridiculous questions.
The good news is, Siri has a sense of humor.
Nicky Kelly, a 40-year-old from Suffolk, U.K., asked her iPhone: “Tell me a joke.” It answered: “Two iPhones walk into a bar…I forget the rest.”
So there is a bit of comedy you can have with your iPhone 4S if you are lucky enough to get one. So try and it and see what it says.
The unlocked iPhone 4S is scheduled to come out in November but it will only support GSM networks, which means CDMA carriers such as Verizon and Sprint are out of luck.
When it was announced on Tuesday, the iPhone 4S was unveiled as a “world phone,” meaning it is compatible with both CDMA and GSM networks. But customers who want to operate the handset on a GSM network, like Verizon, the largest carrier in the U.S., will need to buy Apple’s latest smartphone with a new two-year contract.
“The unlocked iPhone includes all the features of iPhone but without a contract commitment,” Apple’s description reads. “You can activate and use it on the supported GSM wireless network of your choice, such as AT&T in the United States.”
The contract-free iPhone 4S is available in all three standard capacities, and is priced at $649 for 16GB, $749 for 32GB and $849 for 64GB. It will be available in both black and white.
So on Tuesday Steve Ballmer noted that over 500,000 copies of Windows 8 had been downloaded but he did say there was tons of work still to be done to the OS itself.
Ballmer said there are all kinds of opportunities in technology, from cloud-based services to new types of devices.
?Our approach to these new opportunities is centered in Windows,? Ballmer said. ?It?s not about doing something else. It?s about broadly re-imagining Windows. There is no phone, there is nothing on the tablet, there is no operating system on the planet that will ship 350 million units of anything other than Windows,? he said.
So it looks like Windows 8 is getting tons of buzz and is going to be successful. Is Microsoft finally making an OS that can battle Apple’s OS? This is sure to be a fun ride and I can’t wait to see more.
A large part of Google?s pitch for its new social networking service is that it?s easier for users to control who sees what they post on the site.
Privacy has never been a well-built suit for either Facebook or Google, but the Circles feature on Google+ is a simpler way to categorize groups of friends than is accessible on Facebook. Users are given the choice of which Circles of contacts to share a piece of content with, each and every time they post anything.
But this is a beta and there are going to be bugs. One appears to be in Google+?s ?resharing? feature, which works a little like a retweet on Twitter or reblogging on Tumblr.
While it?s not a privacy error on the scale of Google Buzz, which assumed friendships between email contacts that in at least one case included someone?s abusive ex-partner, it?s a little disheartening to discover that ?resharing? can, in two clicks, blow a hole in these little circles of trust.
Say a friend of mine posts a picture of his kids to hid ?friends? Circle. With the ?share? option on every Google+ post, I can reshare this with absolutely anyone, from another Circle to which my friend does not belong, right through to making it completely public. The same loophole applies not just to photos but to any kind of post, as far as I have read.
If he?d known about this risk (and how would he?), my friend could have disabled resharing using the drop-down menu on the right-hand side of every post, but it doesn?t seem to be possible to do this before she?d already published it. Google+ also, for now, lacks any way to turn off resharing of all your posts from within its privacy settings.
So looks like the first major bug has been found and isn?t that really what beta?s are meant to do?
Microsoft has finally released a development kit for the Kinect for Windows. Currently the Kinect is a camera/motion/mic device that is use to play certain XBOX 360 games and get around the XBOX360 interface. Well Microsoft and starting to acknowledge the expansion of said product and has introduced a dev kit for people wanting to make programs in Windows specifically for the Kinect to be attached to a PC with Windows 7 on it. The beta release of the free Kinect software development kit, or SDK, could fuel the grassroots Kinect applications that have until now been considered hacks as Microsoft did not have any formal development software for this product on the PC side. Microsoft says it?s also working on a version of the SDK for commercial software programs. Microsoft isn?t giving a timeframe for the release of a commercial version of the SDK, and it isn?t talking about how the sensor could ultimately be integrated into its own PC products. However, it?s not difficult to envision the sensor being used to control the new Windows 8 interface, or working in conjunction with Skype for video conferencing, after Microsoft?s acquisition of Skype is complete.
There seems to have been a loophole in laws the pirating of movies, TV shows and other intellectual property. Well that is starting to become closed, as the US Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday has approved to make illegal streaming of video over the internet a felony charge in many cases around the US. So now the law goes to the full Senate for consideration of making it a full blown law. The Commercial Felony Streaming Act (S. 978), introduced by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas), reconciles a disparity between the current law and streaming of content and peer-to-peer (P2P) downloading. What this will do is go after illegal streaming of video for commercial purposes. The penalty is increased to up to five years in prison when it involves 10 or more instances of streaming over a 180-day period. The retail value of the streamed video must exceed $2,500, or the licenses to the material must be worth more than $5,000. So if you are running a site that streams movies and TV shows to people illegal be on your toes because they are coming after you!
