I took six months after Moody’s rating upgrade, but finally Moody’s upgraded from Ba1 to Baa3 with a “positive” outlook. What took you so long Moody’s? :P
The Apple A7 Chip is a Marketing Gimmick
So says Qualcomm. They (and others) are always highlighting the memory addressability when talking about the A7. A 32-bit processor would be able to address 2^32 or 4 gigabytes of memory. A 64-bit processor would be able to address 2^64 or 4 exbibytes. At this point, exbibytes is not really relevant smartphone or not. The more important things are the datapaths and register sizes. A 64-bit datapath can carry twice the data a 32-bit datapath can. A 64-bit register can process twice the data a 32-bin register can. Of course software needs to take advantage of it. But iOS 7 is 64-bit and Apple has provided the tools to rebuild to 64-bit. And then they go on and admit that they’re also working on a 64-bit processor. Now who is pulling a marketing gimmick?
Vertu
Personally, I don’t comprehend the appeal of Vertu phones. There’s definitely something in finely crafted objects. Mechanical watches and supercars immediately come to mind. However, phones, especially smartphones, are definitely don’t. At the rate electronics are going, a top-of-the-line smartphone is no longer top in a year and is practically obsolete in 2-3 years. Certainly not comparable to mechanical watches. When that happens, the only thing of value is the casing. Vertu should just turn to crafting the world’s finest crafted phone cases out of titanium, leather, or other luxury materials.
Europa Report
I believe that for a science fiction movie to be good, it has to pay careful attention to the science part (duh). Europa Report does that. Water has been discovered in Europa (one of Jupiter’s moons, if you’ve already forgotten high school astronomy) and where there’s water, there’s a high possibility, even probability of life. So a mission has been sent to investigate further. Halfway through, the mission lost all contact with Earth and only recently have the video, audio, and other mission data been received. Yes, this is a “found footage” film. But that is incidental and, anyway, is quite plausible. It gives the movie a documentary feel which suits it just fine. There was definite attention to the detail to the mission, the environment, even in the dynamics of the individuals on how they would behave on a long and dangerous space journey. On a final note, I was going to applaud the movie for using non-traditional life forms but I was a bit disappointed by the final scene :P
The East
Who would have thought that you can make an espionage thriller from an environmentalism theme? I guess you can and this movie pull it off nicely. It’s like Erin Brockovich fictionalized and on steroids. Brit Marling (Arbitrage) was great as Sarah a conflicted private intelligence operative who is infiltrating a shadowy environmentalist anarchist group called “The East”. Her role is well supported by actor Alexander Skarsgård (True Blood) who was equally as good as Benji, the charismatic leader of the group. As Sarah stays longer with the group, she gradually sympathizes and eventually switches sides. But as she doesn’t agree with Benji’s methods she decided to strike out on her own. There’s not much, if any, gunplay or chases but the suspense and the drama is very much there. Well done!