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Coffee With Tim Cook? You Will Need A least Half a Million

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Apple CEO Tim Cook
Apple CEO Tim Cook (Source:Apple)

You can have coffee with Tim Cook at Apple headquarters but it will cost you at least $600,000 according to the latest bid on Charitybuzz. All of the money goes to charity, in particular the RFK Center For Justice and Human Rights. This number is pretty incredible considering the original value of the meeting was thought to be worth $50,000. Apparently that number was just a bit off.

What makes all of this even more interesting are some of the other auctions that are up on the site for this particular cause, including getting to act in a scene with Chris Hemsworth in a Michael Mann Film. The current bid for that is just over $3,500. Another auction has you visiting Jay Leno’s car collection and meeting him backstage, that one is just under $8,000

 

Awesome New Way To Experience Google Street View

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An amazing little project by Teehan+Lax changes the way we use Street View by creating incredible “Hyper-Lapse” video from the images in google’s Street View database by stringing them all together. The end result is just plain awesome to look at.

hyperLapseSS

 

Even better, you can make your own version, although it will be a slightly lower quality version. All you need is a browser that supports WebGL, like Goole Chrome, Safari, Opera, or Firefox and then you can simply head here to set a start and finish point and make your “Hyper-Lapse” video.

Hyper-lapse photography – a technique combining time-lapse and sweeping camera movements typically focused on a point-of-interest – has been a growing trend on video sites. It’s not hard to find stunning examples on Vimeo. Creating them requires precision and many hours stitching together photos taken from carefully mapped locations. We aimed at making the process simpler by using Google Street View as an aid, but quickly discovered that it could be used as the source material. It worked so well, we decided to design a very usable UI around our engine and release Google Street View Hyperlapse.”

To Enable WebGL in Safari on the Mac (Safari 5.1 and Up):

  • In Safari, open the Safari menu and select Preferences.
  • Click the Advanced tab in the Preferences window.
  • At the bottom of the window, check the Show Develop menu in menu bar checkbox.
  • Open the Develop menu in the menu bar and select Enable WebGL.

Firefox (4 and Up) WebGL is on by Default

For Internet Explorer you can use this plugin.

Ruling Says Digital Content Can’t Be Resold

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As digital content begins to play a bigger role in our society we have to begin to try to understand it more and that includes in what ways do we actually own our digital goods. When you make a digital purchase your not actually buying something physical.

It’s kind of strange to think about, but what we’re really doing is buying the rights to use the said digital goods. Some people have started to look at this and wondered that if we own specific rights to use something then we should be able to sell those rights to others and we would then be effectively forfeiting our own rights to use the content.Digital Lock

Sounds pretty straight forward right? I give my rights that I bought to you at a discounted price. Well, as always, there is going to be a huge debate on whether this kind of stuff is actually legal or not and considering this is all brand new, we’re going to have to work that out in court.

This is exactly what has just happened as a federal judge in a case involving Capitol Records v. ReDigi, has just ruled that attempting to resell digital goods is illegal.

The general idea keeping this kind of activity alive was based on the first-sale doctrine, which allows someone who has legally purchased copyrighted material to resell it. This sounds like it should apply to digital content as well but the judge decided that even though Redigi makes users confirm that they have no existing copies and that the uploader will no longer have access to the files after the transaction is made, they still make copies despite ReDigi’s efforts.

This presents a clear challenge for companies like Apple who have plans to offer up a type of “used digital content” system. This also makes it less appealing to move to an all digital platform as used movie, music, and gaming stores will become obsolete and there will be no similar alternative.

Keep NASA Strong Sign a Petition

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NASAmeatball

Help keep NASA going strong by helping them keep their budget from dropping below 1% of Federal Funding. There are many things that make the United States successful and advancing our knowledge and ability, which NASA greatly contributes to, is clearly one program worth keeping strong.

So, if you feel the same, then let’s take action and let the government know how we feel by signing a petition.

In 1961, at the height of the space race, the NASA budget was 4.41% of federal outlays. In 2005, despite the federal government spending only ~$15 billion on NASA.

The 2013 budget expects ~$19 billion of funding for NASA or half of a percent of spending; truly this is a pittance, but one that yields vast economic and scientific rewards.

NASA advances our nation when well-funded; by guaranteeing that no less than 1% of federal spending will be on NASA, we promote job creation, encourage creativity in the economy, and gain insight on our universe.

1% is a small financial guarantee of progress in the final frontier!

A Quick Guide to IPv6

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In order to better understand what IPv6 is and why it’s important to the internet’s future, we should briefly discuss what Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) is and what the main problem with it is.ipv6Illustration

IPv4 addresses are comprised of a 32-bit value. This system is what the majority of the internet has been using for Internet Protocol (IP). A standard IPv4 address looks like this:

(192.x.x.xxx)

This 32-bit integer system allows for a possible combination of up to 4,294,967,296 (232) addresses. Yes, that’s a lot of addresses but we have run out of them, in fact we ran out of them in early 2011. Keep in mind that there are over 20 billion active devices connected to the internet.

The Problem:

Every single device that connects to the internet is assigned an IP address. As we mentioned earlier, there are billions of devices out there and that number keeps getting higher every day. The internet needs to be able to keep up with that incredible pace, but it can’t. IPv4 has already run out of addresses and all we can do with IPv4 addresses now is reclaim them and re-assign them.

The solution

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the next step forward in internet address assignment. IPv6 uses a 128-bit address system and that means a possible combination of up to 3.4×1038  addresses, yes, that’s 340 trillion trillion trillion! Clearly this is the format we wan’t to be using in a world that’s constantly adding more and more devices to the internet.

A common address for IPv6 is formatted like this:

(2001:0db8:85a3:0042:1000:8a2e:0370:7334).

What are some other benefits that IPv6 has?

IPv6 is far more efficient when it comes to sending data and it even offers up auto configuration capabilities that don’t exist with IPv4. The new protocol is also much more secure and offers true end-to-end connectivity, which eliminates the need for Network Address Translation (NAT). NAT helped reduce problems with the IPv4 model as it began to run out of addresses by allowing you to hide multiple private IP addresses behind one IP address. Without it, we would have had a lot more trouble with IPv4 in the past.

So when do we switch and how long will it take?

Well the transition to IPv6 is going to take quite a while but it has already begun. The world IPv6 Launch occurred on June 6, 2012 and we continue to make progress as internet providers and websites make the change.

Am I on IPv6 Already?

Chances are that you aren’t but if you want to be sure, Google can help you figure that out by heading here.