Hasta La Gadget!

You know how some studies on the same topic seem to contradict one another from time to time? Is it good to have a glass of wine each day, or a cup of coffee? Well, here is one for the ages – a new study which was published by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre discovered something that illegal music downloaders have been saying all this while – it does not hurt the music industry. After checking out the browsing habits of over 16,000 Europeans, the research concluded on the contrary, that a positive link existed between online piracy and visits to legal music stores. The bottomline is, music sales will actually benefit from piracy. Sounds strange, doesn’t it?

In the words of the researchers themselves, “It seems that the majority of the music that is consumed illegally by the individuals in our sample would not have been purchased if illegal downloading websites were not available to them.” Not only that, the study also mentioned that music streaming websites like Pandora (P) and Spotify do not cannibalize music purchases, but rather complements it. This is one topic that divides down the middle, and folks can argue till the cows come home. What do you think?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Spotify Gradually Rolling Out New Social Network Features, Billboard Incorporates YouTube Viewership,

When the concept of the original iPad was being knocked around a number of years ago, many people hoped it would end up being a tablet with OSX installed on it. Ultimately, Apple used its iOS platform for its iPads, but that doesn’t mean you have to settle for a stripped-down tablet considering you can spend $3,500 to get the MacBook Pro in tablet form.

The Modbook Pro brings Mac OSX to tablet form as its sports a 13.3-inch screen and brings all of the internal specs a mid-2012 MacBook Pro has. The base model features an Intel Core i5 dual-core 2.5GHz CPU and 8GB of RAM, although it’s possible to upgrade to a i7 dual-core 2.9GHz CPU with double the RAM. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Including The iPad, Report Claims Apple Owns 20.1% Of The PC Market, ITC rules that Apple did not violate Motorola’s patent, remands case back to judge,

Now this is definitely a triumph for Apple in the perception stakes over Google as an Illinois high school has purchased 600 new MacBook Airs to complement current notebook coverage among students there, which means there would be 600 less Google Chromebooks purchased if one were to approach the situation from a zero sum game. Of course, the 600 new MacBook Air models will arrive over the course of the next school year, and this decision came about after a committee that comprised of teachers and administrators recommended the MacBook Air as the best option for the high school students’ age group.

Of course, the board has yet to finalize the amount of funding required, it has already submitted its approval to the request, and will definitely sniff around for the money required for this initiative. There is also a new proposal for the high school students which would see them being given the green light to bring home the MacBook Air for continuous access and hopefully productivity, instead of playing Candy Crush on Facebook back home.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Modbook Pro Brings Us The iPad We’ve Wanted All Along, Retina MacBook Pro Owner Files Lawsuit Against Apple Over Ghosting Display,

The young boy that you see above wearing camouflage clothing, smiling from behind a pair of glasses while holding his father’s gun with pride (it was his 11th birthday present) has caused more attention than the family wanted to, especially since the photo hit Facebook. While it might look like a military-style assault rifle at first glance, the weapon is a .22-caliber copy, and the confusion could be the reason behind the visit paid by child welfare case workers as well as police officers, who made their way down to the family’s home in Carneys Point last Friday.

The family believes that someone who spotted the photo of Facebook must have rung up New Jersey’s anonymous child abuse hotline. According to Shawn Moore, this rifle was his son, Josh’s 11th birthday present to use on hunting trips. What do you think would be a better present for an 11 year old? I guess when you grow up in a hunting culture, that should be fine, and one cannot deny that security measures have ramped up in recent years (along with paranoia) due to the spate of seemingly mindless public shootings. I guess one thing we can all learn from this – be careful with what you post on Facebook or other social media, it might come back to bite you later.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Sapphire Announces Mac Edition Radeon HD 7950, 600 Students To Receive MacBook Air At Illinois High School,

At GTC 2013, NVIDIA has demonstrated their version of Image Search, which was powered by their massively parallel processors. The goal of computer vision is to be able to recognize and understand what things are – not merely “seeing” them. This is a very intricate problem since computers are fast but fairly dumb (out of the box). They have no notion of “concepts”, unlike humans who can be shown one object, like a hat, then are able to recognize new hats as they see them. That’s because humans can acquire a notion of what a “hat” is. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: 600 Students To Receive MacBook Air At Illinois High School, Twitter Receives Own Patent,