Volunteer in your community

On November 13, I made a presentation of a check of $750 from the Verizon Foundation to the Woodside Elementary School PFC as a matching contribution for my volunteer hours as one of the parent volunteers in the traffic line, assisting kids to get safely to school each morning.

The Verizon Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Verizon Communications, is committed to improving literacy and K-12 education; fostering awareness and prevention of domestic violence; and promoting the use of technology in health-care delivery. In 2006, the foundation awarded more than $69 million in grants to nonprofit agencies in the United States and abroad. The foundation also matched charitable donations from Verizon employees and retirees, resulting in $29 million in combined contributions.

Under the foundation's Verizon Volunteer initiative, one of the nation's largest employee-volunteer programs, company employees and retirees have also contributed nearly 3 million hours of community service since Verizon's inception in 2000. In 2006 alone, volunteers contributed 600,000 hours. This latter Verizon Volunteer initiative is the grant program that I applied for. For more information on the foundation, visit http://www.verizon.com/foundation.

Many corporations have similar programs. Does your employer offer such a program that might “double up” the volunteer hours or contributions you may already be providing to the school, the PFC, or elsewhere in the community? Please check. If you are not already, consider volunteering for one of the many positions of the Woodside PFC or elsewhere in our community.

Update on Analog TV

A little bit ago, I reported on the death of analog TV, but one should note what the industry is trying to do... Here is an excellent story on what the future holds.

(this link is to an MP3 file, which will probably play just fine on your computer... You will need speakers to listen to the story)

Analog TV Death Delayed

as reported by SOSF,

This decision will require both network and cable broadcasters to continue providing an analog feed to their customers even though all of them have spent literally multi-millions of dollars gearing up and getting ready for the new digital age of television viewing.

I have analog coming into my home right now, mostly because it's cheaper than digital plus the cable company wanted to charge me a lot of money for "home-runs" to the TV's. At the time I had no digital TV's either.

Today, I don't really have digital TV yet (it's been an expense thing) -- I have a lot of component video and I do IP streaming from the video server near my router to the living room.

Until you get a larger and more recent TV in place, it's hard to justify the extra expense, both to install and recurring.

Once the incoming signal is digital, you will need these digital-to-analog converters for each analog TV you have. At the store, if you have to buy them, it's going to cost you about $20-30. Not counting whatever equipment your cable company wants to charge you (probably built into a set-top-box)

Note that some of the problems with DRM have been reported, and also all of that DRM code in Windows Vista has had various folks up in arms.

DRM strikes yet again

Wil Wheaton (yes that Wil Wheaton) posted problems with his DirectTV-HDMI connectivity. All due to software which "protects the content" from people who have legally paid for the content.

DRM is totally a mess right now, and it's not going to get better until customers speak up and force the content management and delivery mechansims to change.

Wil: How many DirecTV customers are currently hosed by this DRM-related nightmare? I'm not sure, but I can tell you what the number would be if the damn studios and networks weren't so dead set on treating their customers like criminals: zero.

Breakfast Computing

Heard recently on the pod-a-sphere:

"My inbox is full of SPAM and BACN.
I burn my CD's with Toast.
I get my podcasts with Juice.
Are there any other breakfast computing items out there?"

Gavin, forum/member on Buzz Out Loud.

Amazon Web Services

This review of the components of Amazon Web Services is a must "listen" for anyone interested in how to quickly deploy a service without having to make a huge investment in infrastructure... Amazon has done it for you...

Jeff Barr, Senior Manager, Web Services Evangelism at Amazon.com is interviewed by Phil Windley and others for Phil's personal podcast, "Technometria". A great listen, right on the page noted in the link and with further links for more detailed reading.

We need to fund basic science research

As some of you might know, I often write about technology topics in Telecommunications or Electrical Engineering. Today, however, I thought it important to pick a slightly different slant…

This weekend, I was listening to my backlog of podcasts and included in what I listened to were two different podcasts for TechNation where

• Dr. Moira Gunn (the host) interviews Greg Lucier, the Chairman and CEO of Invitrogen. In the interview, the point that is put across on why society needs to fund basic science research.
• Science journalist David Ewing Duncan discusses the "The Bio-Issue of the Week" with Dr. Gunn, in which drug spending (R&D) is up, but results in the from approved drugs are down and some drugs are about to come off patents, so revenues for these companies will eventually dry up.
  

In both cases, as I’m hearing and reading many other articles on diverse topics, it may be because our country doesn’t support the basic science research enough. For example, in the latter podcast, the point was made that there is a mountain of data out of the human genomics project that really needs detailed analysis; e.g. we know what a gene does, what we don’t know is exactly how it does it. Or considered another way, the genes that a human shares with a mouse is really a high percentage, something approaching 98%+, but what makes the difference between the human and the mouse is when and how the gene does it’s job.

Without interested people, without post-doc programs to provide research topics, … well, would you work in a field that is apparently drying up? But, it’s not really drying up, other countries, like Korea, China, and Australia have tremendous programs for this sort of thing. We are giving our best and brightest lost of reasons to leave this country.

The lack of sensible policy at the federal level, the lack of proper funding, in cross-disciplined approaches, to projects that are going to benefit us all, … well, I fear for the future (next couple of decades)…

You might say this isn’t important, but you’d be missing the point. The direct investment that DARPA, NASA, and other agencies had with science and technology research provided some glamour for the space program stuff of the 60’s, but it also lead to communications satellites and other mundane things like cellular telephone networks and devices.

Some like to say that Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise “invented” the cell phone, because of the use of the communicator on each Star Trek episode, but the fact of the matter was that the imagination of a whole generation was sparked, because of the believability of those episodes, and a market demand (for cell phone technology) was later satisfied, not only by companies trying to make money, but by a whole generation of engineering and scientific students that brought a passion to creating not only the mobile phone technologies we take for granted today, but the internet, the progress toward improvements in the cancer situation (many people can live out their lives today in remission, whereas 20 – 30 years ago, cancer was a death sentence) and countless other technologies we so easily take for granted.

We need to continue to improve upon this situation. Can you imagine a world without Diabetes? Did you know, we stand on the brink of figuring out how to accomplish this? This isn’t a would it be nice thing to do, there are huge costs in both medical support and human suffering associated with just this one disease. Make the investment – reap huge benefits; just like we did in mobile phone and internet technologies.

I’d like to ask you today, to write your congressman, tell them this is important to us, as a country, to change this situation. Invest in science. It doesn’t have to be preachy, it doesn’t have to any more than a 1-2 minute phone call or a 1 paragraph email, but do something to be part of the solution to change from an almost anti-science policy to one where, similar to the 60’s, we are on the road to great things.

Sunrocket calls it quits

Just saw (via Reuters) that Sunrocket appears to have closed down.

Recently, I posted about the perils of IP and the US Patent office, and Vonage was still holding on.

Hype has to be balanced with flawless execution, which is certainly a hard thing to do. If you have more money, you can weather some large mistakes. We'll have to see what the news is as this story develops, certainly at this early stage almost anything could be "blamed" for what has happened to Sunrocket. The Truth will probably take some time to come out.

Siemens brings DECT to US

According to The Business VoIP Report, DECT technology is now shipping from Siemens.

Siemens has begun shipping to the U.S. a variety of cordless phones built around the Digital Enhanced Cordless Telephony (DECT) standards. The new Gigaset models include the S450 IP and SX762 WLAN DSL gateway. While DECT phones have been on the European market for over 10 years, the new models represent the first DECT devices Siemens has brought to the U.S. The line includes both IP and non-IP devices, and brings a wide variety of new features and feature-delivery mechanisms to the U.S. market.

Noting other news sources earlier, I had written about this interesting trend (about 8 months ago) in which a European technology innovation was finally getting to our shores after 10 years of maturity. Actually, some early Gigasets where able to be purchased back then, so with a little more fanfare, we have a DECT device offering that is being broadened.

• Here (where Siemen’s Gigaset was noted as being an example of among the first of the DECT models you could purchase then that is/was coupled with Yahoo! Messenger w/Voice capabilities) and
• here where more models where announced and expected to be showing up by 3Q2007.
  

Cheatsheets

I really, really love the web.

Just about any resource you'd like to find is there, and predictably, someone else will show you the way to find it. In this case, Marc Andreessen, yes that Marc Andreessen.

Link here- Essential HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, and miscellaneous cheatsheets

7 years later, still a good example of what was to come

I was looking for some other piece of information, but stumbled, instead, upon this gem of a film from 7 years ago.

This film, produced in 2000, was 3 minutes long, took 4 months to make, before the kinds of film making tools that are available today. Still, this work, rivaled what the major motion picture studios could produce.

Link here or here

you think you have problems - consider this

Excellent story about the Space Station astronaut's problems after the Columbia Disaster

Tech Nation

http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail1124.html

from GigaVox,

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with NASA's Christopher Jones, the Director for Solar System Exploration, about the hair raising return to earth of the astronauts left aboard the International Space Station after the Columbia disaster.

WAMU - Tech Tuesday – Musings on mobile phone technology

I’m a little behind on my podcast listening, but I caught one just this weekend, The Kojo Nnamdi Show, Tech Tuesday, is a technology review radio show, which is recorded and available for the public as a podcast or a web download. Often, his shows depict the social aspects of technology and how society shapes technology.

A typical Tech Tuesday always includes the political or social implications of any new innovation, and explores the unexpected ways in which change creeps (or steam rolls) into our lives.

This particular show, from 5/22, had a few guests on the program, one gentleman from India and his efforts to bring internet to the public in less than metro areas of India, via wireless internet kiosks (not your typical internet access) for the farmer to provide agricultural product pricing, access to government services, for example… A second man talked about his company’s efforts in Cambodia, to bring a higher class of work to people there, via simple data entry jobs, since the work can be outsourced practically anywhere now…

This piece should remind us that our view of the “internet” resource isn’t necessarily the only one. Even mobile phone technology can be deployed differently in the 3rd world and allow different types of “applications” to be deployed. As an example, forget the “near” 100% coverage we have here in the U.S., think instead about coverage that might be “good enough” – and coupled with lower infrastructure costs as technology has improved, and you have a fixed-wireless phone system that doesn’t rely on mobility so much, but does indeed provide basic telephone service to a rural area, since to provide “real” fixed telephone service, with fiber, copper wires, and traditional telco switches is just too costly, indeed it’s unreasonable to consider in this environment.

Myself, I’m reminded about a deployment of SMS related technology I did for my last company. The scene: an African tribal herdsman. The problem: Moving his herd of cattle from one place to another. Why? Because of hoof and mouth disease, all cattle movement is strictly controlled by the government. The herdsman has to go to a government office, fill out some paperwork, come back the next day for his permit to go from point A to point B with his cattle.

These native African herdsmen are fiercely independent, often they’d rather distrust the government, but the hoof and mouth disease problem is endemic in parts of Africa and the situation does need to be improved upon.

The solution? My company worked with one of the local mobile phone companies to deploy an SMS based forms system that interconnected the farmer with the government. The technology was off the shelf web servers, so that “SMS applications” could be deployed with simple HTML tags in the basic web pages of a web app that already existed. What we added was a network based browser that rendered this HTML, on one side, and interfaced to the mobile provider’s SMS gateways. The special HTML tags identified specifically the text that was meaningful in the SMS messages, whereas the remaining text would be worthwhile to the typical computer screen.

So, how did this all work? Like this…

• The farmer decides he wants to move his herd. He knows where they are currently and he knows where he wants to go…
• He pulls out his mobile phone (and they do have and use them there) and sends a text msg to a specific number, for the government’s form for cattle movement.
• In response, he receives a “fill-in the blanks” msg, which he replies to, which allows him to fill-in the info that the government needs: name, number of cattle, that sort of thing. He sends it back, and receives a separate SMS msg, with an authorization code.
• The tribesman begins moving his herd.
• He comes to a government checkpoint, shows his SMS authorization code on his phone to the guard at the checkpoint, the guard sends the code number to the app on his own phone, and now the herdsman can proceed to the next checkpoint.
• Continuing on his journey, the herdsman repeats the checkpoint process with each guard he has to proceed through.
• Arriving at this destination, the herdsman sends his own authorization code back, just as the guards have been doing at each checkpoint, which closes out the herdsman’s cattle movement

So, the government gets to monitor herd movement within their country, the herdsman didn’t have to go to any government office, he simply used a tool he already had (his mobile phone). Even the guards didn’t have any paperwork to fill-out and submit. Everyone makes out for the better.

The interesting thing is this was deployed about 10 years ago, with existing SMS technology. Today, people might be thinking about web browsers in the phones, and a traditional web app or a mobilized web app, but the point is – for this service, we used an existing web app, modified HTML slightly, and inserted our network server, which

• rendered the pages, as if it were a user,
• extracted the special SMS tags and pertinent textual data,
• pushed this data onto the SMS gateway,
• upon response from the gateway, the text from the herdsman is formatted
• the HTML response is sent back to the application

No “special” phones or WAP browsers, just plain ole text msging.

Now don’t ask me about how the herdsman would charge his phone, while I suspect he had a solar charger, I never did find that out for sure.

New "terms" in the telephony business

I can't remember where I read this, but now that VoIP is a pretty common technology offering and that more and more of the common man is aware of what it is and what it does, it's fair that new terms are coming to the forefront...

• "Fuzzing" is essentially a denial-of-service attack against a VoIP system.
  
• "Footprinting" is using a search engine to find things like extension listings on the open Internet.
  
• "SIP Enumeration" means probing ports on a network to find one that isn't tightly locked down.

Nothing really new here as far as content, these security issues have been discussed before, what's new is the "catchy" terms themselves.

Railroads, Watches, and Sears

Catching the listener feedback for Technorama show 170, timezones and watches, well – it made me think about Richard Sears, who founded, with Alvah Roebuck, the whole Sears, Roebuck & Company mail order catalog industry.

Richard Sears was a station agent for the Railroad that ran through North Redwood, MN, not far from where I grew up. In the 1880’s, when he was in his 20’s, he was intrigued with the idea of products manufactured in one part of the country and sold (and delivered) to people in another part of the country. After all, his job as a station agent was somewhat in a value chain similar to this, in that farmers brought their grain to the railroad (no elevator companies existed right next to the railroad at that time; the grainery elevator's eventual purpose was to “cache” the grain for bulk transport at a later time). Among other things, Sears helped to get that grain shipped by rail to the mill, where it was processed into other grain products, like flour and cereals.

Many give him credit for observing other products being shipped via rail, through his station, and him getting the idea that if people could look at a product on a piece of paper, order it, have it delivered to them, well then such a company could revolutionize commerce. While this is somewhat true in hindsight, my father, who also was a small businessman in Minnesota, often talked about stories his grandmother had talked about when Richard Sears was doing his “thing” a few miles to the north of where I grew up.

Farmers had to get their harvested grain to the railroad, where someone loaded it onto a railroad car, and off it went. Railroads ran on a schedule, farmers ran by the sun, and as this was before cars/trucks; grain arrived via horse drawn cart. Sears had seen companies that were trying to sell pocket watches to the stores along the railway line, but the problem he was trying to solve was making sure the farmers got their grain to the railroad station on time. These watches were the answer, but he couldn’t afford any inventory, no money… so he got this idea of putting pictures of watches, along with a marked up price, in a loose leaf sort of book, which he planned to show to the farmers when they came to the station.

About this same time, a wholesaler had shipped an un-ordered consignment of pocket watches to a local retailer. This was a common practice at the time; wholesalers would then “offer” to sell the goods to a local retailer at a lower price, rather than have the goods shipped back. In this particular case, the retailer refused the entire consignment of pocket watches and Sears stepped in, offering to sell the watches for the wholesaler, but without having to pay for the consignment up-front.

Since he was a railroad station agent and when all the watches were sold, the farmers would look at his pictures of watches, trust him with taking an order, give him the money for the pocket watch, which he, in turn, used to purchase the watches, which were delivered by the railroad to him, and he delivered to the farmer.

He pocketed a profit of about $5,000 (good money at the time) from this consignment business and had these “orders” for more. Eventually, he moved to Minneapolis to start his company, which initially was putting advertisements in farm publications and ultimately developed a standalone publication, the Sears, Roebuck & Company catalog itself.

During this time, merchandising transactions in the United States were very risky (think unscrupulous sellers trying to fleece prospective buyers, ala the eBay issue of today). Bartering was the normal transaction and banks were just starting to come to rural parts of the country to handle larger money transaction exchanges (as escrow services do today).

I think that because of his railroad association, the “Eureka moment” of acting as the middle man between the watch maker and the farmer, and solving a common problem between the railroad and the farmer, this was the impetus for the mail order business becoming launched, indeed almost all commerce where money changes hands first, and goods later. The “deferred transaction” in commerce, where there is a time delay between money and merchandise changing hands, I believe started with Sears. (Of course, the refused consignment and his success at selling those pocket watches first, helped greatly because it gave him a financial "seed".) I have never heard of an earlier example of the deferred transaction model, and I have looked. As you probably know, Sears, Roebuck & Company eventually sold just about everything, including houses.

The famous Sears guarantee and a Cash-On-Delivery option helped to sway those who might be suspicious of unscrupulous merchants. Reputation still counts, after all… Indeed, Sears hired Roebuck at the very beginning in order to repair watches (so the guarantee could be met). Roebuck, of course, later became one of the company founders.

And all this from watches, being on-time, and the railroad.

Those who have ears - ABC Radio National

Excellent program on auditory processing for educators.

So much about science and nature (including the nature of us) is misunderstood. This was a refreshing program outlining work being done in this area.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2007/1913317.htm

Brisbane educator Jennifer Riggs discusses children who have serious problems with auditory processing. Studies have shown that a third of us are strongly visual-spatial learners and many children cannot learn through being talked at, but will learn better by seeing and doing. The fundamentals of learning are the five senses, but how many of them do we use in teaching?

Download audio

New Horizons program on Discovery

Last weekend I saw a program on the New Horizons Spacecraft on the Discovery Channel, and while this was a great program and very informative, I was disappointed about one fact that continued to be misrepresented. I cannot find a link to the show itself on the Discovery Channel website, because I'd like to view the whole program again.

I found the artwork of the spacecraft itself by Mike Derer.

I wrote about the subject matter I was disappointed in back in September, 2006 (here and here) when the whole Pluto is a planet or not stuff was going on. Journalism has a duty to inform the public, but when poor diagrams are utilized, the facts are misinterpreted.

New Horizons lifted off on 1/19/2006 and after a little more than a year, just had a Jupiter flyby in order to gain a speed boost, but trading the increase in speed for a little loss of Jupiter's rotational momentum. It's speed after launch was 16.21 km/s (36,260 mph) making it the fastest spacecraft so far, but as it approached Jupiter at 23 km/s (51,449 mph) relative to the sun. After the Jupiter flyby, on 2/28/2007, the gravity assist increased the spacecraft's speed by nearly 4 km/s (8,947 mph).

Even with the increase in speed, New Horizons will not get to the Pluto flyby until 7/14/2015, a little more than 8 years from now. The program mentioned this, but only stating these facts in passing, sort of letting the viewer figure it out. In fact, the pictures they showed were very similar to the inaccurate ones you used to see in text books, or similar to the planet models your kids make in school.

• one year to get to Jupiter
• 8 more years to get to Pluto
• without the gravity assist from Jupiter, it would have been 10-12 years to get to Pluto

Gee, it must be pretty big distances involved out there...

Well, as a matter of fact, yes they are very big distances... So here was an opportunity to inform the public, be a little more descriptive with the facts, but they didn't quite put the facts out there in the right manner.

Vonage hanging on?

On Monday, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling in KSR vs. Teleflex, finding that the "combination of two commonly known elements into something obvious" is not patentable. While on it's surface this is a good thing, eliminating lots of expense in litigating bogus patents or patents that do not really enhance, as might be expected the next piece of news was:

From FierceVOIP: Vonage has seized on the ruling, asking an appellate court to throw out the verdict against it and order a new trial. Verizon, of course, is opposed. Vonage is already appealing its loss at trial; the appellate court has set a June 25 hearing on that appeal. Vonage wants the appeal to be put on hold pending the results of the new trial. If it loses that second trial, Vonage wants the existing appeals process to resume. Even though Vonage was convicted of infringing three patents, the courts are letting the company operate pretty much as normal while the appeals are being heard.

I need a playbook.

Let's see,

• I've lost,
  
• I'm appealing, but
  
• I want my appeal on hold and I want a new trial,
  
• but if I lose at that trial, I want my appeal to start again

Public Service Msg for the Deaf

At this link is a PR regarding AOL and Sprint supporting Deaf people by extending the Sprint IP Relay to AIM users. I've noticed this in the past, since I was working some deaf related issues having to do with supporting TTY in voice mail, but this appears to be another public notice about the availability of this service.

I salute the efforts of both companies to get the word out about this service. I hope each and every deaf person with a computer uses it. Since there are IM clients for mobile phones as well, this just further extends the capabilities...

... Oh, I use Yahoo, I am deaf, I don't want to use AIM ???? For those people, don't forget that there are number of IM programs that support multiple IM services. Check out GAIM (small footprint version at here) and Trillian (here). It's easy to sign up for the extra account on AIM and you won't miss out on much at Yahoo or MSN, either.

Sprint has more than 15 years of experience in providing relay services to persons who are deaf, hard of hearing or deaf-blind, or who have a speech disability to communicate with hearing persons on the phone. Sprint offers relay services through an intelligent platform in 32 states, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, New Zealand and to the federal government.

April 18 - On This Day in History

Albert Einstein (b. 1879, died 1955)

1906 - SF earthquake and the fire afterwards, destroyed much of San Francisco.

(Sorry, should have posted this last week)

SPAM

I know you all get your share of spam, but I had an observation for one piece I got today.

Subject: approach on parachute
Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2007 22:38:43 -0800

Our loan officers is seriously happy to obtain your house refinancing requisition affirmation that we accepted nearly 4 days ago

Were pushing through your finance query
Please if you would this minute you need to finish up your last details at our form

"approach on parachute"????
"Our loan officers is seriously"

Seriously, even if they had received a req from me "nearly 4 days ago" (is that, like, 3.9 days ago? or 3.8 days ago?) because of the bad English, I certainly wouldn't respond to this. I guess they get what they pay for, the bottom of the Internet barrel responding to this junk. It's too bad that there are so many illiterate people that all have computers and driver's licences now...

BTW, this idiot didn't even bother to include a form or link to click, completely wasted spam, no way to harvest anyone.

I mean, they are not even trying anymore, it's like, jeez, copy the dictionary, man, at least that would be more interesting...

Spyware

A decent radio broadcast, available via podcast or direct download, is available in this link. Look slightly to the right of the text in the middle column, you'll see to links, one for Real Audio, the other for Windows media player. Most people reading this will probably have the Microsoft media player due to it being preinstalled on their PCs. You can download and listen in one click, and keep on working on your computer while it's playing.

Kojo's show, as do a number of NPR radio stations now, is available as a podcast as well. Just look for the orange POD button, and paste the link there into your podcatcher software.

Kojo does a decent job of hosting a weekly technical show, this week Spyware was the discussion topic, and it includes decent advise and I really "feel" for the call-ins, who are having trouble because of Spyware.

From Kojo's website:

Spyware and viruses cost Americans nearly $8 billion in the last two years, and experts say online attacks are getting more insidious and harder to fix. We'll look at the evolving nature of spyware and assess federal efforts to prosecute online wrongdoers.

Intel: Advancing Multi-Core Technology into the Tera-scale Era

From Intel:

ASCI Red was the first computer to benchmark at a teraflops (1996). That system used nearly 10,000 Pentium® Pro processors running at 200MHz and consumed 500kW of power plus an additional 500kW just to cool the room that housed it. Although not a general purpose computing device, this Teraflops Research Chip delivers 1.0 teraflops of performance and 1.6 terabits aggregate core to core communication bandwidth, while dissipating only 62W.

Wow! - from 1 teraflop requiring a 1,000,000 watts to 1 teraflop requiring 62 watts. Pretty soon, there will be a computer for a $1,000 with AI software that will probably be smarter than most everyone...

It was only 5-6 months ago that quad core were being announced.

Home Entertainment

Some in the UK say that "no one" reads the Daily Mail. But from the perspective of how technology impacts, say home entertainment, well--- many of us, wouldn't believe that from a human factors perspective this has any chance of catching on.



the link is here

Ex-Official at Monster.com Admits to Backdating Options

I try to write about Technology here in this blog, but I noticed this today and had to speak out. I guess everyone needs to speak out. This behaviour is unacceptable. I'm glad Mr. Myron F. Olesnyckyj is facing some stiff penalties and perhaps some jail time. It's about time these people were shown the door AND punished.

It's hard enough to do good things in a company, even harder in the bigger ones. When the executives are cooking the books, it makes the engineer and the rest of people on the front lines want to just give up.

Good companies, they need to set the example. Instead, we have so many examples of bad behavior. I mean, "What were you thinking? That you could get away with it and it wouldn't hurt anyone?"

Thought provoking piece

Here is a great video at YouTube by Michael Wesch (Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Kansas State university). Arjun Roychowdhury and Sunil Veluvali of CorporateRat and ElusiveCheese fame is where I noticed it first. Evidently also on Alec Saunders weblog.

This is a great piece from Professor Wesch and his group at KSU.

keep your speakers on




Currently Wesch is launching the Digital Ethnography working group at Kansas State University to examine the impacts of digital technology on human interaction.

Vista and DRM - *updated*

Recently, Steve Gibson, Leo Laporte, and Peter Gutmann talked extensively about what Microsoft put in the base of the Vista OS.

• For an introduction on the issue, click here or listen to a podcast by clicking here.
• The next week, they get into the Vista details here or listen here.
• In the 3rd week, they wrap it up here or listen here.
• ** Microsoft later responded in a blog post, read about it here or listen here
  

I've just reviewed all of these sessions, and I agree with the speakers:

Two questions do come to mind after digesting all of this.

1. Why did Microsoft do this? I mean, I wouldn't think they would be "beholding" to Hollywood for anything, heck the other way around, Hollywood would be interested in getting to 95% of the personal computing screens.
2. Considering all of the issues around SPAM, and related issues of identify theft, zombie PCs, etc., one would think that the same amount of effort in these latter issues would improve the situation for a very large number of users.

This work appears to do nothing except make users very unhappy, at least once they find out about it and are faced with real issues like the inability to "RIP" legally procured content that you have "fair use rights" to. Or perhaps your display manufacturer went on the "cheap" and didn't include the licensing keys for the crypto involved. Vista supposedly will not play the HD content on a display that doesn't "abide" by these rules. The policy that sets this thing is not in the display card or even Vista, it's in the content itself. People are reporting in forums this simple fact: I'm putting in an HD-DVD and it's not playing. It's still beta, so anything might happen between now and February.

As I say, we are left with the basic issue of Why?

** Update 1/21/2007
found via boingboing, click here

"...misses the larger issue: the stark demarcation that will arise between legal vs. pirated movies. On Windows Vista, the only way to get true HD movie and TV content from your $2000 home-theater PC will be to download illegal pirated content!

I cannot believe Microsoft/Hollywood haven't seen this coming ... Blu-Ray and HD-DVD protection schemes are likely to be completely broken in a matter of months, and once that happens, the various crippled features in Vista will only affect one type of user - the law-abiding ones who would never pirate a movie. Those users will suffer, while the pirates will party on. What's the point, Microsoft?"

300th Birthday

Did you know that Ben Franklin is/would have been 300 years old?

You might know about that electricity thing with the kite and perhaps bi-focals, but did you know about the rest of his contributions to medical science and technology?

Click the title above or the link here

Courtesy of ABC Radio National in Australia (Ockham's Razor Program)

Broadband Wireless - Now with WiFi!!

This week the NYTimes noted in the technology section that a company by the name of AutoNet had struck a deal with Avis to provide a wifi experience "in your rental car."

While aimed at the business person renting a car (and perhaps specifically targeted at the person with a wifi laptop but not yet having a broadband wireless access card or tethered phone, the concept is interesting (notwithstanding the safety and legal issues involved). Interesting, because it provides local access to a "router" - this is the wifi part - and wireless "wide area network" access to the Internet.

This isn't the first time this has been around, Kyocera has marketed a similar device for some time to the public (Link to rfwel website). People on InternetbyCellPhone (groups.yahoo.com) have been talking for quite awhile about how to do this with the basic laptop and Window's Internet sharing feature.

More players probably means this is starting to get real. Safety issues aside, the more connected we get, the easier it will be to travel with those "connected" kids of ours.

One point... the NYT article notes Autonet as the company involved with Avis. Autonet's website notes a Skype application of the technology (i.e. travel with your Skype client on the laptop or a Skype standalone wireless phone) make calls all day long on the wireless "data" network... This is something that the wireless carriers TOU spell out as something "not good" - not for technology reasons - really - but rather because the pricing for data plans is all messed up. Today's plans are designed for the "occasional" data user, not a cable modem user... Perhaps more pricing plans are headed our way?