Water Fuel Car Scam –again?!
If you (as I did) thought that only Fox news reached the lowest level of journalism in claiming that a car can use “just” water as a fuel…. well, you (we) were wrong. Even REUTERS has decided to spread the scam –sorry, the news. “It sounds too good to be true,” says Michelle Carlile-Alkhouri in her report. Ms Carlile: it sounded too good to be true because it is false. Did you really need another reporter, Siddhartha Dubey always from Reuter, to call a Professor from Queen Mary University, to tell the audience that “water is not a fuel?” in a new, different video-reportage. Where did you think these people take the energy for separating Hydrogen from Oxygen from? Santa Klaus?
I also used to believe that Santa Klaus brought my presents, but I did not wait for my sister to call a university professor to tell me the truth. Next time, Ms Carlile, do call yourself any physicist you might know and try to convince your editor that publishing scam –sorry, news –is not healthy both for Reuter itself and for the audience.
That is not flat-earth journalism. That is ignorance less professionality equals misinformation. Here is the video-scam.
PS I just discovered that I’m late…. thanks god.
Fox News and Water Fuel Cars
And someone says Physics is not important. And someone thinks journalists should be competent. Please note, the video below is something like a scam.
Nowadays, there is a silly competition in offering green solutions. General Motors, just before dying (yes it is dying: I just discovered the company’s three-year bonds are traded at half their value), says its SUVs are green because are the greenest of their kind –and then you discover they use 1 liter of fuel every 6 km (14 mpg). That is slightly less than a Ferrari! If you want to be green, you better don’t even buy a car. Whatever the car-makers try to show in their ads, cars are not green. They are big and heavy –an electric bicycle is green, not a one-ton car.
If GM is acting like a Far West charlatan, real charlatans have to scream even louder, possibly with the help of established media, like Fox News (same group as The Times of London and The Wall Street Journal, by the way).
In the video above, Fox News breaks the news: a revolutionary attempt to separate Hydrogen and Oxygen in water, with the use of electricity. Electrolysis is actually 200 years old (see my beloved wikipedia), but ok, at that time there was no Internet, and Fox’ editors are just coming a bit late.
What is amazing is that they say you can use electrolysis to get Hydrogen, and put the Hydrogen back in your car, and be green!
Now, the reality is that if you use Hydrogen, extracted through electrolysis, in an internal combustion engine, you actually waste energy. [The maximum (ideal) efficiency of an engine is given by the gap between the temperature of the environment and the temperature of the combustion chamber. The higher the gap, the higher the efficiency.] In today’s engines, if you produce 5 HP of heat power burning fuel (let it be gasoline or hydrogen) you can only use 1 HP of power for moving the car.
That is why Hydrogen cars are good only when they use fuel cells: the Hydrogen is “burnt” at low temperature, and the electrons moving from it to the Oxygen are used as electric power source. Something like a reverse electrolysis, nothing to do with internal combustion engines. Here the efficiency is extremely high, almost 90%. Only an incompetent would then use electricity to separate Hydrogen and Oxygen, and then burn them in a combustion engine: much better to use the electricity directly to move an electric engine.
In the video above, they say that the American congress and the Army are examining the invention. There are many studies showing that education in the US is not as good as it used to be. Let’s hope congress-people and army-people are from the old good school.
Una cartolina da Atlanta
Non sapevo che Atlanta fosse la città natale di Martin Luther King. Mi fa sempre impressione pensare che una persona possa influenzare il suo tempo solo con la forza delle parole. Ti metti su un palco, parli, la gente ti ascolta e vuole cambiare la propria vita, e la società cambia.
E in effetti ad Atlanta ancora oggi si sente che siamo nel sud degli Stati Uniti. Già a New York amici di colore mi dicono che c’è razzismo, ma per lo meno in giro vedo un sacco di coppie mixed, e i gruppi di amici non son monocolori. Soprattutto, mi sembra, perché ci sono molti immigrati di colore dalla zona caraibica.
A New York si ammazzavano anche i Sacco e Vanzetti, cento anni fa, non c’era bisogno di prendersela con gli afroamericani. In Georgia invece c’era la mami di via col vento che nella versione italiana parla in maniera ridicola. C’erano i tram dove i neri dovevano cedere il posto ai bianchi.
Un giornalista italiano disse ad un seminario che citare i tassisti e i portieri di albergo dovrebbe essere vietato. Ha ragione. Però qui non si può evitare.
Dal centro congressi al motel prendo il taxi di Morgan, nigeriano. Igbo, per la precisione (gli Igbo erano famosi per aver costruito un regno senza aristocrazia, dove pescatori, agricoltori, artigiani eccetera vivevano in simbiosi, senza prevalere l’uno sull’altro).
Aspetta il terzo figlio e parla al cellulare con la madre «nella giungla». Addirittura. E si lamenta del fatto che i black originari di Atlanta non vogliono lavorare.
Io controbatto che se ci sono un bianco ed un nero senza troppa voglia di lavorare, il nero ha più probabilità di diventare un accattone. Che non tutti hanno il fegato di lasciare la madre «nella giungla» (addirittura) e farsi 10.000 chilometri per venire in America. Che a NY ho conosciuto un tipo di Puertorico finito in prigione per aver insozzato i muri (dipinge i muri, come Giotto, solo che non sempre chiede l’autorizzazione): «Ho capito una cosa –ha detto il graffittaro– in America, in prigione, ci finiscono solo i neri».
Poi per andare al cinema prendo il taxi di Abiy. Sulla cinquantina, di aspetto etiope. Mi dice che è keniota ma parla maluccio inglese, strano per un keniota. Io non metto in dubbio la sua origine e iniziamo a parlare. Mi fa domande a raffica sul mensile. E quanti ci lavorate? Quanti a tempo pieno? Quanto costa? E la distribuzione chi la fa?
Alla fine gli dico che dovrebbe fare il giornalista. Scopro che è il direttore di un mensile in amarico (non aramaico), e che etiope. Purtroppo non ho con me una copia del nostro giornale, come al solito non ho neppure il biglietto da visita, così è lui che mi dà giornale e biglietto.
Mi lascia al cinema, serata horror demenziale con Il ritorno dei morti viventi. Prima di prendere il taxi ero finito in una piazza dove ero l’unico bianco –e c’erano un centinaio di persone. Un vecchietto dalla pelle incartapecorita mi ha dato dei depliant su Luther King per qualche dollaro. Un ragazzino incredibilmente effemminato mi ha chiesto 2.75 dollari (sic, forse è un messaggio in codice) per comprarsi la cena. Ora nel cinema sono ripiombato nell’America bianca –boom.
Qui sono tutti bianchi. Tutti. Mi viene in mente La notte dei morti viventi (di cui questo è il tremendo sequel) in cui il più assennato di tutti è il personaggio di colore che alla fine viene ucciso dai poliziotti pur essendo sano.
Per tornare prendo un taxi, ancora. Il tassista è somalo.
Un’altra caratteristica di Atlanta è che non ci sono molti trasporti pubblici.
Protected: Water Scarcity in Sanaa, Yemen
Naples under a mountain of… disorganization
Neapolitans are dressed more smartly than usual these days. Though this might be merely an impression created by the contrast of their appearance with that of the town; not really in the best shape lately. It might be that because of the condition of the town, its inhabitants are more focused than usual on their aspect; Dressing is important in Italy anyway, and a clear indication of who you are in the South.
So shave, don a suit, and a tight white (long sleeved) shirt and don’t let anyone spot short (or even worse, white!) socks under your long trousers. Drink your caffè, eat your sfogliatella, focussing your senses on their scent and completely ignore the hills of garbage in various degrees of fermentation along via Roma, one of the most visited streets by tourists.
Because tourists –those barbarians– don’t ignore the foul smelling heaps, and instead of taking pictures of monuments, photograph the garbage. The month of May has been
celebrated as the month of the monuments in Naples, and posters have hung in airports to advertise this fact: Naples under a mountain of…. art.
Naples is indeed full of art. But at least for the last 30 years — as far back as my memory goes — it has been full of garbage too. The situation worsened after the earthquake in the 1980, when the government poured billions of today’s equivalent Euros in the region for the reconstruction.
Eventually after the killing of local administrators, judges, mayors, and reporters, the
Camorra (the local mafia) began to manage the reconstruction.
Politicians from the Christian Democracy were elected by the Camorra, which
still today decides who can and can’t be voted in. The politicians obtained power together with a seat in the Parliament – and the bosses received the money, and even more power.
But the Camorra, at the time, was well organised. It was officially called
Nuova Camorra Organizzata (NCO, New Organised Camorra), branded by Raffaele Cutolo. Cutolo (nicknamed the professor, il professore) organised the
Camorra as a modern efficient Mafia, taking as its consultants bosses from
Sicily and Puglie, where the Mafias are structured as criminal brotherhoods. He had good relations with politicians; was pitiless with his enemies; ferocious with the repentants and helpful towards the relatives of his imprisoned fellows. He created a pyramidal organisation from a plethora of small anarchical criminal groups.
But all good adventures must come to an end. And il professore, who was doing all that from inside of a prison, provoked the anger of the President of the Republic, Sandro Pertini, an old socialist and arguably the most beloved of all Italian politicians So il professore ended up in a little prison on a small island (a little like Napoleon did) and the NCO collapsed. The Camorra lost, if not its power, then most definitely its organizational structure.
Lack of organization: that is the only possible explanation for the situation of Naples today. Stupid, dishonest administrators? Yes. Garbage collection managed by the crime? Of course. But where is the problem? Is garbage collection for the 12 million people in Sao Paulo, Moscow or Cairo organised by a charity?
No, garbage is big business, and crime eventually becomes involved in it everywhere. It is dirty business after all! The problem is that Naples is so disorganised, that even crime is unable to collect the garbage, and dispose of it.
Nowadays, it is the only town with such a disorganised criminal presence…
So stop blaming the Camorra, and the governor of the Region Campania (Bassolino, currently on trial for the dirty business). And leave the Neapolitans, carefully dressed but oblivious to any rule, alone. The real villains are those reporters, investigators and judges who in the 1980s forced the best administrator Naples ever had, il professore, to resign and move onto the sunny little island.
Drummatica Madrid – Esodo
A Ferrara al Buskers’ Festival comprai Carbon Copy della Compagnia d’Arte Drummatica. A Madrid, nel 2001, con Giuliano , che adesso fa effetti speciali per la BBC, girammo questo nascondino. Non so se prima girammo e poi decidemmo la musica o viceversa – ma video e parole, musica e immagini si accoppiano benino, considerando che è il prodotto di una giornata di scazzo.
Mirror Neurons
In 1992, three Italian researchers from Parma, Italy, were studying the motor cortex of monkeys’ brains - a region that until then was supposed to deal exclusively with movement. Through electrodes implanted in the brain, they could “see” neurons firing when the monkey did a simple action, like grasping for food. The surprise came when the monkey’s neurons fired as one of the researchers reached for his own food.
Further research revealed the true nature of these neurons. If the researcher put his hand in a box containing a banana, the neurons fired. If the box was empty, and the monkey knew it, the neurons did not fire. Putting a hand in a box is the same movement, whether or not there is a banana – but is not the same action. The monkey understands, through these new kind of neurons, that the researcher is going to grab a banana. The monkey can build “a true representation in the brain of the action itself”, as the scientists wrote recently in Science magazine. It was not a mere observation of the movement: it was the understanding of the action that made the neurons fire.
The neurons were then called Mirror Neurons and have been regarded with increasingly more interest by the community of neuroscientists around the world. They have recently been said to be for psychology what DNA is for biology. This year, the three researchers – Giacomo Rizzolatti, Vittorio Gallese and Leonardo Fogassi – received the Grawemeyer award for psycology.
From imitation to language
It was Professor Vilayanur Ramachandran, director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California San Diego, who in 2000 drew a parallel between DNA and mirror neurons. The title of his essay “Mirror Neurons and imitation learning as the driving force behind the great leap forward in human evolution” is self-explanatory: in Mr Ramachandran’s opinion, “they can provide a unified framework [in psychology] and help explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments.”
Mr Ramachandran is only one of the most prominent scholars who looked at mirror neurons as the discovery of the century – why so much excitement? Because mirror neurons, apparently, are responsible for the comprehension of what other people do. When someone else smiles, our cortex runs a simulation of the expression, making other parts of our brain understand the message: “I know what you are doing”, says the brain, “because I do the same in similar conditions”.
It is possible to understand the message behind the smile because the same mirror neurons activated in our brain when we smile are activated when others smile. There is an empathy that allows us to understand others’ mood with expressions alone. And expressions are proto-language – if we do not speak the same language as someone else, we can use expressions to communicate simple concepts.
The mirror neurons provide a neural basis for some simple interpersonal relations, like communicating happiness through a smile, on which more complex ones are built, like language. “The billion dollar question,” says Richard Ivry, director of the Cognition and Action Laboratory at The University of California, Berkeley, “is to understand if it is possible to link comprehension of actions to language. Few scientists care about how we understand actions”, he says, “but we all care about how we developed language. That is why what really drives the research in mirror neurons is [research into the] development of more abstract thoughts”.
The human Big Bang
In little more than 100,000 years, human beings have become one of the most successful animals on earth. One hundred thousand years ago the human population was about one million, concentrated in Africa. Now we are 6,000 times more and we have colonized the whole planet – plus the moon. How was it possible? Prof Ramachandran and others think that mirror neurons are the key factor to understand the passage from a smart primate to a human being.
Archaeological studies show that around 200,000 years ago, Homo sapiens was genetically very similar to us. Nevertheless the Homo remained all but sapiens (wise) for more than 100,000 years. No advanced tools, no painting, no language… then, suddenly, the first signs of wisdom appeared. About 100,000 years ago “multi-part tools, tailored clothes, art, religious belief and perhaps even language emerged, quite rapidly”, writes Prof Ramachandran.
Prof Rizzolatti wrote that “200,000 years ago Homo sapiens can be characterized by a further evolution of the mirror neuron system, which corresponded to an increased capacity for communication.” But that did not correspond to the immediate invention of the language, for which the humans had to wait some more 100,000 years. For Prof Ramachandran, the mirror neurons originally created the opportunity to have a mimicking culture for Homo habilis (about two million years ago) and then the evolution of language for the Homo sapiens.
While we may see a sudden appearance of culture (technology, religion, politics etc) in the archaeological record, the reality may be different. Culture is knowledge based. The more I know the more I invent. The more the society knows, the more the society will advance. Passing, with the same 1500 cc brain, from a society without tools to a society with complex tools, is the same leap forward as moving from a society with complex tools to one with nuclear bombs. Then, wrote Prof Ramachandran, “inventions like tool use, art, math and even aspects of language may have been invented ‘accidentally’ in one place and then spread very quickly, given the human brain’s amazing capacity for imitation learning and mind reading using mirror neurons.”
“A person growing up, alone, in a cave does not develop any language capacity” said Prof Ramachandran. Mirror neurons are necessary, but not sufficient, to develop language. It is thanks to mirror neurons and to “our species’ remarkable propensity for miming, that any major invention would tend to spread very quickly through the population.”
“Mirror neurons, said Prof Gallese, are physiologically equal to other neurons (a neuron is characterized by its connections with other neurons), and it is not yet clear why 20-25% of the neurons become mirror neurons. It is the revenge of the environment on DNA: we are not what we are, but we are our history,” he said. Developing a brain suitable for language it is not simply a matter of DNA: we must grow up in a society with language. And our society could have developed language through small leaps forward. As said, one person, growing up alone in a cave, would not develop language capability — but nor would ten people. Language appears to be something humanity has built on an increasingly more efficient ability to use the brain to communicate, thanks to mirror neurons.
Communication, the real asset
Spinoza said the human being is a social animal, and we are indeed social, in a very profound way. Human society is built on communication. Without the capacity to exchange information and retain information through generations thanks to language and memory, the human being would be nothing more than a hairless monkey, as Huxley said, with a very low probability of survival. The fact that we are “immersed in a culture that can take advantage of the learnability” makes human society what it is.
Isaac Newton said, quite modestly, that he only “worked on the shoulder of the giants” . Giants like Galileo, who could use the so called “Arabic” numerals, invented by some Indian sapiens and brought to Europe by the Arabs. What Newton meant was that, provided you are smart enough, it is all about exchanging information. Today, huge software applications like the GNU/Linux operating system have been developed thanks to the possibility of exchanging information and knowledge through the Internet.
All this would have not been possible if our progenitors 200,000 years ago had not begun to develop a mirror neuron system capable of giving humanity empathy and language. Prof Gallese, during a conversation from Italy, called the mirror neurons “the collaborative neurons”. Prof Ramachandran, some hours later from India, said that mirror neurons are “the first Internet, built by our brain”. The two academics speak a common language and, just like everybody else, have different media to exchange easily information from any part of the world. Whatever the origin, communication has always played the central role in our society. The Latin words “socius”, friend, and “communem”, obliged to participate, gave rise to the words “society” and “community”. Indeed, the essence of our society was clear to our ancestors, much before any theory of the brain was formulated.
PS1 Prof Ramachandran’s essay was written before mirror neurons could be studied on human beings. But he successfully explained some brain disorders in terms of mirror neuron deficiencies. One disorder was autism. Autistic people have both language disorder and problems in understanding others’ feeling in a social environment. Prof Ramachandran’s group predicted successfully that autism could be related with mirror neuron system, a theory that was finally confirmed in November 2006. Autistic children have a problem in activating their mirror neuron system when observing someone else performing an action. In autistic people, for some reason (either genetic or due to problems of neural development), fewer neurons become mirror neurons.
PS2 The best known theory of how human beings can use language, probably, is Noam Chomsky’s language organ, situated in the brain, which mediates language. According to Prof Chomsky, arguably the most influential linguist of the twentieth century, language is innate. This would explain the ease with which children can learn languages, how different languages have a common “universal grammar” and how it is possible that Creole languages can build a high level grammar after a single generation. The problem with Chomsky’s innateness of language is that, as Prof Ramachandran put it, the language organ “comes out of the blue.” On the other hand, mirror neurons offer a less ad hoc explanation.
PS3 Charles Darwin analyzed the capacity to pass information through expressions. He took as an example the expression of disgust. In The expression of the emotions in man and animals, 1872, Darwin wrote: “Extreme disgust is expressed by movements round the mouth identical with those preparatory to the act of vomiting “. Expression of disgust is a form of language, although a rudimentary language. Our ancestors, Darwin said, would surely have the “power of voluntarily rejecting food”, and understanding the expression of disgust could have saved the life of early primates: a child seeing an adult contracting the muscles that draw the corners of the mouth downwards after lunch would immediately understand that the food was not… that good, and eventually reject it if eaten.
What is amazing is the simplicity with which Darwin goes from the communication through expressions to the communication through language: “We can see that a man is able to communicate by language to his children and others the knowledge of the kinds of food to be avoided…” That means: at a certain point in history, our progenitors began speaking, and a mother could simply tell the child not to eat the food, without expressing particular disgust with her face.
Virtual water: impossible reality in Yemen
While Yemen suffers from grave water shortages, specialists and officials keep on warning that the country
’s water supply relies on limited groundwater. Only 125 cubic meters are available annually per capita, and the groundwater has been polluted and heavily overexploited
read more | digg story
Saudi Arabia, Yemen and women.
I’ve been here in Yemen for just five days, and what strikes me most is 1) how tasteful the bread is and 2) most women are covered in black from head to toe. What strikes me even more is that the veil is not mandatory.
There are Yemeni woman driving car (I have seen at least one), women with uncovered face (I’ve seen at least a dozen of them), and westerners are not judged for their dress code. A young blond Italian girl I met refuses to wear more than a coloured singlet and never had problems.
If you think you are in Saudi Arabia, where a woman may not, by law, have a driving licence, walk by herself and other amenities, you are wrong. The black dress is a cultural must.
For five days, I thought the tradition was so strong, that even if Yemeni people watch Lebanese and Egyptian movies (quite voluptuous by any standard), they can not renounce to their traditional clothes. It turned out that I had the same attitude of someone thinking that bell-bottom blue jeans are the typical European costume from middle eve –or something like that.
For a male tourist, speaking with a Yemeni woman is a difficult task. There are no women in any cafe. Should you (male) meet some guy and go out with him, he will only introduce you to male friends, and so on.
But if you are here for work, the situation is different. At the Yemen Observer headquarters, half of the workforce is female –and not just the receptionist. Ok, you never know if you are speaking with the environment reporter or the public relation manager (they have similar eyes to me), but that is more your problem.
After my n-th gaffe, addressing to a girl with the wrong name, I acquainted Mohammad, reporter at the Observer, with my frustration. He said he has the same problem. “On the other hand – he said – it has not been like that for ever. Thirty years ago women had uncovered face.”
Even more, you could be the guest of a family, and eat and chew qat together with women. Something, as far as I have seen, impossible today.
What happened is that in the 1970s the oil price went from $15 a barrel to $40 (in 1973) and then to $70 (1980). The biggest producer of oil in the Middle East region (and in the world) was Saudi Arabia, which consequently with high oil price saw its economic, political and cultural influence increase all over the region. Wahhabism, the conservative Islamic Sunni stream from Saudi Arabia, became more influential in the Islamic world. Particularly in Yemen and Afghanistan, apparently.
(Just to give an idea: Osama bin Laden, a Saudi, was, or is, in Afghanistan, and one third of Guantanamo Bay’s prisoners are Yemeni)
Religious schools were founded with the financial help of Saudi Arabia. And the process begun. At that time, the veil worn now by Yemeni women could not be found in any part of Yemen. That black clothes is a traditional Saudi costume. Even for men, the long shirt they wear… that comes from Saudi Arabia, it is not autochthonous. Traditionally, they would wear a shovel wrapped around their hip to cover the legs and a shirt for the torso.
At the beginning of the 1990s, Saudi influence became more marked. With the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, more than one million Yemenis were expelled from Saudi Arabia –the Yemeni government was accused to have backed Saddam. Back to their fatherland, they imported Saudi culture as well.
Today, I went to the rural area outside Sanaa. It is true that I could not find a single woman in black, but it is true that I could only “steal” images of (fully covered) women at wells. Ali and Hussein, my Virgilii, refused to speak with any woman: “It would be shameful for her if we addressed to her.”
The cover story of the last issue of the Yemen Today magazine is about women in Yemen. Statistics are frightening. In some rural areas, women have a life expectancy of 38 years. Illiteracy is above 90%. Few rights –if any– and many duties –like giving birth to 8 kids, on average.
But the mistake, as far as I can understand, is thinking that all that is linked to religion. That Islam is a religion against women. Indeed, Turkey had a women as prime minister, Italy never did (and allowed women to be judges only in 1964). In the first year of prophet Mohamed “reign”, women apparently came out of a terrible condition. Then, good periods alternated to bad periods. Thirty years ago, it was maybe better than now –but honestly I cannot believe that in the rural area the situation was *that* good…
Even today, I cannot think about any society where women have the same opportunities as men. Human societies are sexist –some of them are more, some are less. The only two axioms I can find, regarding the difference between women and men, are: women are physically weaker than men; women, even in our “knowledge driven” societies, are happy to sacrifice themselves for their kids much more than men are.
On these two simples facts, a plethora of superstructure has been built –and will for ever. At the present moment, superstructures against women here in Yemen seem pretty tough.
Una cartolina dall’Apple Store della 14esima
Sì. Dopo anni di anticonformismo, dopo aver cercato di diversificarmi dagli anticonformisti, dopo non aver mai preso un iPod, un BlackBerry (che tanto non è che mi scrivano in molti), un “Pager” (credo voglia dire palmare)… alla fine mi son comprato l’iPhone.
Pensavo fosse dotato di software avanzatissimo, invece c’è una versione minimalista di Darwin (il sistema operativo alla base di Mac OS X, basato su BSD, ossia Berkley Software Distribution, che è una versione libera di Unix… uff!) con un’interfaccia grafica ancor piu` minimalista.
Il software delude. Credo che l’interfaccia dell’iPod classico per la musica sia meglio. O per lo meno, questa e` indecente. Un browser senza fronzoli. Un software simile a Google maps – che in molti blackberry è molto più avanzata –, una fotocamera che fa poco o niente (niente zoom, niente video).
Eppure son felice di aver speso $500. Perché?
Perché è ingegnerizzato in maniera geniale. È un piccolo computer con l’hardware perfetto. Una cosa per tutte: ha l’accelerometro. Misura le tre componenti dell’accelerazione. Integrando potete avere la velocità a cui andate, integrando due volte lo spostamento.
Vabbé, si sono eccitati due fisici e basta alla notizia. Forse un ingegnere. Aggiungiamo che lo schermo sensibile è perfetto – indovina dove lo toccate, non avete bisogno di pennini o unghie affilate.
E` possibile che Apple non abbia sviluppato apposta software per l’iPhone. Si e` limitata a rilasciare le Application Program Interface (API) per permettere ai programmatori di sviluppare il loro software. Gia` un mese dopo l’arrivo delle API ci si poteva installare programmi impensabili — tipo quello che mostra le tre componenti dell’accelerazione.
Per usarlo senza fare un contratto con AT&T (ma siamo pazzi??? Oramai la politica commerciale di Apple sta diventando peggio di quella di Microsoft. Solo che la Apple fa prodotti decenti) si installa sul proprio computer ziPhone.
ziPhone installa sull’iPhone un programma che vi permette di installare varie applicazioni. Potete mettere, per ora, un centinaio di applicazioni sviluppate da terzi. Si va dal server http, al file sharing AFP, dall’accelerometro-log alla calcolatrice Hp 11c, il server ssh, la batteria, potete trasformare l’iPhone in un touchpad, avere un eBook reader portatile…. o un vibratore portatile.
Sì, potete trasformare il vostro iPhone in un vibratore. Incredibile, eh?
PS Credo che un vibratore costi meno di $500, però non ci potete fare telefonate
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