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The "Dumbness of Crowds"

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When everyone is talking about the "Wisdom of Crowds", this guys wrote an excelent article about the "Dumbness of Crowds"</a>. Very interesting, full of wisdom and signature material, like the following lines, that I quote:

No matter what, I believe that in our quest to exploit the "We" in Web, we must not sacrifice the "I" in Internet.

Read the full article.

Month of Apple Bugs

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A pair of security researchers has picked January 2007 as the starting point for a month-long project in which each passing day will feature a previously undocumented security hole in Apple's OS X operating system or in Apple applications that run on top of it.

The "Month of Apple Bugs" project, began on Jan. 1, and is being orchestrated in part by a security researcher who asked to be identified only by his online alias "LMH." This is the same researcher who in November ran the "Month of Kernel Bugs" project. LMH's partner in this project is Kevin Finisterre, a researcher who has reported numerous bugs to Apple over the past few years.

The security researchers told the Washington Post that, as with Apple bugs featured during the MoKB project, Apple would receive no advanced notice of the forthcoming security problems. The security researchers hope to use the project to dispel the perception that Apple systems are free of the security bugs that have long plagued Windows users.

In two days, as promised, two bugs have been publicized, all of which allows for remote arbitrary code execution:

Is this the end of the "bulletproof" Mac?

Welcome 2007

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The year has started with a blast: Publico's Ponto Media blog as pointed to my 5 games to think about post, so currently the number of unique visitors and page views is twice the average.

It's never too late to make new year resolutions, and the games itself help us to think about the world we are living. Political issues, ecological concerns and religious radicalism are every day issues, and we can/should/must have an active roll. No more "someone has to do something about it". It's up to you now.

So, play the games, spread the word, and think about it.

Cars...

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No support for the new Sony AVCHD

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Warning! If you intend to buy a new Sony camcorder, with AVCHD capabilities, think twice: there is no support for this codec, neither in Windows or Mac.

My girlfriend's father bought the new Sony HDR-SR1 (with 30GB harddisk) for a journey, recorded more than 300 clips, and now he can't do anything with it! Windows or Mac are not able to play (or edit) any of those clips, due to the lack of the proper codec.

He requested my help, so I searched for the codec in the web, just to find out that there are a lot of people complaining about the same issue. I drop the search when I found out that Sony itself does not support it in is own software. The solution? My girlfriend's father will have to wait for the spring. Now, imagine his face when I told him that.

In fact, this should be one of the worst years in Sony's life: look at the evidences. The Sony camcorders with AVCHD support are the new HDR-UX1 and the HDR-SR1. Beware.