Nyt Archive

  • No, The Internet Won’t Make You Stupid

    No, The Internet Won’t Make You Stupid

    Posted on June 14, 2010 | No Comments
    Nick Carr is worried the Internet is making us stupid. It's not so much our preoccupation with LOLCat photos or videos of fat girls flying off of swings that concerns him as it is the way we read and consume information on the Internet itself. He thinks the Internet is rewiring our brains, perhaps for the worse, and he's written a book to warn us all about it called The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains. Carr also finds links to be too distracting. Carr raises some good points worth contemplating, but his arguments also strike me as incredibly self-serving. After all, he is an author who makes money writing books. Of course he is going to argue that they make you smarter than the Web, with all of its neurological distractions. Carr is the master of technological alarmism. It sells his books and provokes debate, and this time is no exception. Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker wrote in the New York Times on Friday that "cognitive neuroscientists roll their eyes at such talk," and NYT Bits blogger Nick Bilton marshaled some other counter-evidence as well. Carr then responded to Pinker's Op-Ed at length, claiming that Pinker has an "axe to grind here" because Carr's point that experiences can change the brain on a cellular level "poses a challenge to Pinker's faith in evolutionary psychology." Of, course, Carr as his own axe to grind. Remember, he's the one pushing the new book. At the core of Carr's alarmism is that the Web is simply at odds with deep, contemplative thought and reflection. It's really a defense of book learning in its most basic form—again, not surprising coming from an author of books who values above all else the printed word.

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  • Nikkei, Japan’s business newspaper, pulls some 2001 anti-linking tricks

    Nikkei, Japan’s business newspaper, pulls some 2001 anti-linking tricks

    Posted on April 9, 2010 | No Comments
    Remember back during the days of Netscape when folks tried to use Javascript to prevent you from copying their images? You'd get a little window that says "YOU ARE A THIEF! HOME HOTLINKING IS KILLING THE MUSIC INDUSTRY!" and then you'd view source, grab the image tag, and be on your way? Well Nikkei just pulled out its Learn HTML 1.0 in 48 Hours book and is now preventing links to its articles and severely limiting right clicking on its exciting home page. According to the NYT, Nikkei not only stops right clicking but now requires a written application to link to its news, citing issues with the free vs. paid model that has essentially destroyed American news-gathering as well as concerns that its precious news will end up in pump and dump scams.

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  • eBooks on the iPad may not be so outlandishly expensive

    eBooks on the iPad may not be so outlandishly expensive

    Posted on February 18, 2010 | No Comments
    The NYT has a report on ebook pricing for the iPad, saying that Apple may charge $9.99 for popular titles, just like everyone else in the free world. While most prices will be higher - it's an iPad! Why go slumming? - popular books can hit the $9.99 if need be. Apple takes 30 percent of the sale while the publishers take 70 percent.

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  • Netflix streaming to hit the Wii this Spring

    Netflix streaming to hit the Wii this Spring

    Posted on January 13, 2010 | No Comments
    The good news: read the headline again. The bad news: You’ll need to use a disc like in the PS3 and the Wii cannot output video over 480p. [via NYT]

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  • Dear Internet: Bill Keller doesn’t know the first thing about the “Apple Slate”

    Dear Internet: Bill Keller doesn’t know the first thing about the “Apple Slate”

    Posted on October 26, 2009 | No Comments
    Good old "Two-Fist" Bill Keller, executive editor of the NYT, dropped the Apple bomb at a pay-vs.-free talk at an "off-the-record" staff meeting which, luckily, was been recorded for posterior. His talk mostly revolves around how the NYT will survive the web, itself an important and fascinating topic. However, the Internerds aren't happy with all of that. Keller, probably tipped off by his staff, mentions the "Apple slate." You see, after hemming and hawing about all this "digitalization" of the computer nerds with all their Kindles and ebooks and supercomputers he lets loose with this rocking little piece of fluff:
    "... we need to figure out the right journalistic product to deliver to mobile platforms and devices. I’m hoping we can get the newsroom more actively involved in the challenge of delivering our best journalism in the form of Times Reader, iPhone apps, WAP, or the impending Apple slate, or whatever comes after that."
    BLAM! WAP! When a man past a certain age plops the word WAP next to the words "impeding Apple slate," you can be sure said man knows nothing on either topic.

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  • Verizon’s CEO has been rocking the Storm 2 for weeks, demoing it to employees

    Verizon’s CEO has been rocking the Storm 2 for weeks, demoing it to employees

    Posted on October 14, 2009 | No Comments
    The BlackBerry Storm 2 is no secret. We've known that a second generation touchscreen BlackBerry has been in the works for months. Actually it was probably RIM that "leaked" all the info in an effort to save face from the flop that is the original Storm. A NYT article quotes Verizon's CEO saying that he's been carrying the phone for weeks and been giving impromptu demos at Verizon Wireless retail outlets. Spoiler: employees like it.

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  • What Steve Jobs Actually Said About eBooks

    What Steve Jobs Actually Said About eBooks

    Posted on September 12, 2009 | No Comments
    There's been a big brouhaha over comments Steve Jobs made to NYT's David Pogue in an interview following Apple's event on Wednesday. Basically, most people are interpreting what Jobs said about eBook readers to mean that Apple plans to completely stay away from the market. But that's not actually what Jobs said at all. How do we know? Because before Pogue re-wrote his interview, he posted the transcription of the Q&A, which still resides in Google's cache. Here's the relevant part:

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  • Always being ‘connected’ is ruining our way of life

    Always being ‘connected’ is ruining our way of life

    Posted on August 10, 2009 | No Comments
    It sure is great to live in the developed world. No having to worry about having enough to eat or finding clean drinking water or anything like that. Nope: we freak out when Twitter momentarily goes down, or when we can't use certain software on our phones. Or, conversely, we complain about the undue influence certain technologies have over our lives. We're all over the place.

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  • Inexpensive touch-screen Android devices coming from Samsung next year, says rep

    Inexpensive touch-screen Android devices coming from Samsung next year, says rep

    Posted on August 6, 2009 | No Comments
    It shouldn’t really come as a surprise considering the fact that we’ve known for some time that Samsung is hard at work on multiple Android devices, but the NYT is reporting that Samsung will have multiple touch-screen Android devices in the market next year for under $100.

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  • Samsung product manager says sub-$100 Android devices will be out next year

    Samsung product manager says sub-$100 Android devices will be out next year

    Posted on August 6, 2009 | No Comments
    It shouldn’t really come as a surprise considering the fact that we’ve known for some time that Samsung is hard at work on multiple Android devices, but the NYT is reporting that Samsung will have multiple touch-screen Android devices in the market next year for under $100. Casey Ryan, the product manager for the Reclaim [...]

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  • Sony loses $390.5 million

    Sony loses $390.5 million

    Posted on July 30, 2009 | No Comments
    Poof! Sony lost $390.5 million in the first quarter compared to a profit of almost $800 million in Q1 last year. TV sales are way down along with still and video cameras. Samsung, it seems, is kicking their butt.

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  • Report: Foxconn compensated family with more than $44k and notebook

    Report: Foxconn compensated family with more than $44k and notebook

    Posted on July 27, 2009 | No Comments
    This is probably the last piece of the puzzle concerning the iPhone suicide incident. The NYT is stating that Foxconn gave the man’s family more than $44,000 and his girlfriend got an Apple notebook. That’s all, folks. Come up with your own conclusions and/or morbid jokes. This sad event makes us sick.

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  • Planes To Get Airbags, But Only in First Class

    Planes To Get Airbags, But Only in First Class

    Posted on July 10, 2009 | No Comments
    It won’t help you if your plane falls out of the sky and plummets 30,000 feet to the ground, but if you’re in an emergency landing or your plane just flops off the runway on takeoff, new airplane seats could save your life. The seats, which will have to be retro-fitted to even some old commercial [...]

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  • CrunchPad prototype coming this month, be available ASAP

    CrunchPad prototype coming this month, be available ASAP

    Posted on July 4, 2009 | No Comments
    Big Mike has been pretty quiet about the CrunchPad since it was first leaked the other month and for good reason. We’ve heard from reliable sources that Apple is still on track with an oversized iPod Touch in the coming months. We more or less know everything there is to know about the CrunchPad, but a few more specs have popped up thanks to the NYT and SF Biz Times. The CP, made by Fusion Garage, is 16mm thick with a 12-inch screen encased in aluminum.

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  • Review: Kindle DX

    Review: Kindle DX

    Posted on June 12, 2009 | No Comments
    Another month, another version of the Kindle. I’ve been using a Kindle since it was shaped like a very thin doorstop and I’m delighted each time I see a new version. The latest version is the DX, a monstrous 9-inch version of the smaller Kindle 2 that supports direct PDF reading without conversion. Why am I [...]

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