Linked List: July 30, 2009

Thursday, 30 July 2009

Un-Humble Opinions 

Remember the piece I linked to earlier this week on research suggesting that people prefer advice from a confident source, regardless how accurate the source has been in the past? Davin O’Dwyer had a good piece on the same subject in The Irish Times last month:

At first, this quirk of human psychology sounds like an interesting nugget of pop science, until you consider the cumulative cost of this cognitive error. If the result of this psychological quirk were restricted to football commentators embarrassing themselves before a Champions League final, no harm done. Unfortunately, the implications are rather more profound, and dangerous.

David Pogue’s Take Back the Beep Campaign 

David Pogue:

Last week, in The Times and on my blog, I’ve been ranting about one particularly blatant money-grab by U.S. cellphone carriers: the mandatory 15-second voicemail instructions.

Also interesting:

iPhone owners’ voicemail doesn’t have these instructions — Apple insisted that AT&T remove them.

Brent Simmons: ‘Anatomy of a Feature’ 

“Oh, it’s easy.”

WSJ: Never Mind 

The WSJ has posted an update to Ben Charny’s “Apple at CES 2010” story:

Correction: It is not clear whether Apple will attend the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show. This post previously stated that Apple would attend.

Security Researchers to Unveil iPhone SMS Exploit 

Elinor Mills:

Researchers have discovered a way to take complete control over an iPhone merely by sending special SMS messages and demonstrated it on my iPhone at the Black Hat security conference on Wednesday.

Spooky, to say the least.

The Windows 7 Upgrade Story 

Walt Mossberg on the differences between the many versions of Windows 7, and how to upgrade to them:

However, there’s another complication. For each of the three main consumer versions of Windows 7, there are actually two editions. One is meant for PCs with standard processors, called 32-bit processors, and the other for PCs that sport newer processors called 64-bit processors. The 32-bit version of Windows can recognize only 3 gigabytes of memory, but the 64-bit version can use much, much more. For most average users, 3 gigabytes is plenty, but some consumers have 64-bit Vista machines, which can move faster when lots of programs are being used at once, or when doing tasks like playing back high-definition video.

The problem is that you cannot directly upgrade 32-bit Vista to 64-bit Windows 7, or vice versa. So that adds another layer of complexity to the upgrade process.

iPhone Application Design Patterns 

Mike Rundle’s thoughtful analysis of the most common iPhone app design patterns.

Apple KnowledgeBase: ‘Unauthorized Modification of iPhone OS Has Been a Major Source of Instability, Disruption of Services, and Other Issues’ 

Apple support article:

This article is about adverse issues experienced by customers who have made unauthorized modifications to the iPhone OS (this hacking process is often called ”jailbreaking”). Issues that have been encountered include instability, disruption of services, and compromised security.

Not sure if this article is new, but it was just modified.

How to Tell if Your Intel-Based Mac Has a 32-Bit or 64-Bit Processor 

Core Solo and Core Duo: 32-bit.
Core 2 Duo and Quad-Core Xeon: 64-bit.

Tom Insam: ‘It’s Hard to Like Android’ 

Tom Insam on the little annoyances in Android:

Linux vs Windows/MacOS, all over again. You gain Freedom by using an open platform, making life worse for yourself in a thousand tiny ways, any one of which can easily be dismissed, so they are. But it’s still worse.

MarketWatch: Microsoft’s Zune Continues to Struggle 

Sales are way down, and they weren’t high to begin with.

Ryan Block on Apple and CES 

Block calls bullshit on Ben Charny’s odd report that Apple is attending:

Unfortunately, it’s also specious and flatly wrong. I was seated directly across from Gary, and present for the entire conversation, wherein a dozen or so other journos chatted with him and one another. […] At no point did Gary even remotely imply that Apple would be present at a future CES — let alone state flatly that Apple “will be there” in 2010. In fact, at one point, someone asked if, hypothetically, Apple did want to attend CES, whether the CEA could accommodate them. Gary said flatly that if pressed, they might be able to come up with a small 2,000 square foot booth, but they couldn’t do anything, say, Microsoft-sized on such short notice.

The Gary in question is Gary Shapiro, chief executive of the CEA, the trade group that puts on CES.