Okay... I realize that we live in a seriously acronym heavy society, but WPAN?!
Seriously though, the article in question seems to underline the problems with Bluetooth:
The data rate for Bluetooth communications is about one-tenth that of IEEE 802.11
The reach of IEEE 802.11 is about ten times that of Bluetooth technology
Bluetooth uses packets designed specifically for Bluetooth transports
So, we're talking about a networking protocol that is slow, only works in very close proximity, and is an additional, propietary packet structure. Great...
802.11 works for both "WLAN" and "WPAN" applications... why bother addressing two protocols?
You mean like the clearly marked |<< and >>| (backward and forward) buttons? Come on man, if Apple is good at one thing, we all know it to be user interface... heck, the wrote the book on it.
I dare not imagine how badly they've ginnied up the volume control. The volume control is achieved via the circular knob in the middle: just like your home stereo. The UI is quite elegant as seen in this video (Quicktime 5 only).
Although I immediately felt a little let down by this release--after all the hype--after thinking about it a little more, I'm convinced that this iPod is cool.
I use iTunes, so the seamless integration is nice. I have different mp3s in my work library than at home. I don't have a portable HD or burner, so I never bothered to sync my two libraries... with the iPod, I definitely will.
The price point is a bit high, but then again, I've been shopping for a portable player for a long time and they're all pretty expensive.
I'm guessing that this thing runs OS X underneath. Assuming this is so, the hacks could be pretty awesome. Firewire devices are becoming more and more prevalent... maybe this tiny little device will come in handy.
Even though the "DNA profiling" concern is often a standard part of this science, this kind of technology seems like it might underline that concern. A "consumer level analyzer" could give bigots and xenophobes an easy way to test and target a particular group.
This is a floundering effort on behalf of the regulatory bodies (and the big businesses who back those bodies, a different debate entirely) to address technology in relation to capitalism. The bill itself seems to be so confused between hardware, software, intellectual property.
The incredible advancement that we've seen in the last few years is a direct result of the lack of this kind of intervention. It's been a natural market evolution. Don't they realize that legislation such as this crushes that progress?
What a strange dichotomy between capitalism and technology: the free market promotes the technology, but the corporations behind the "free market" are against it.
Elison is offering to put something in place that already exists.
A national ID card program was signed into law by Clinton in 1996. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act included provisions for a National ID card. The card would include biometric info (section 656) and is already on the books. The cards are supposed to be developed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of the Department of Transportation.
Also, check out this great article which draws some Orwellian examines connections between recent technologies and privacy.
I wanted to get a certain.biz domain. I pre-pre-submitted a request for the name WAY back when they first started talking about these new tlds. After a while, more people jumped on the bandwagon and it began to look like we were really going to see these come into circulation. I did some more research about the (pre) registration process and found that while you could pay your registrar to 'reserve' the name for you, they couldn't initially guarantee that you would get the name. In fact you just got an entry into an intial drawing (which is tomorrow, IIRC) when you might actually be awarded the name. Needless to say, I bought several more "entries" for my domain of choice (it's that good... really)
One critical loophole: the initial pre-registration period is also meant to allow those with trademark or "intellectual property" claims to a name to challenge your right to register it. While this sounds like a good way to protect legitimate rights, it just allowed people time to register all kinds of bogus claims with the USPTO. Last week I received a notice from Neuland (?) informing me that 15 or 20 people had "IP" claims to my domain. What should I do? Do I have any chance, as a non-corporate-lawyer-holding netizen of preserving my rights to the name even if I happen to be awarded it? I'd think that I should have just as much right to it as anybody else considering there's no "prior use" of the.biz tld.
The only downside is that the TV has to be turned on to use any of the menus.
This might actually be a kinda nice feature... My stereo components are an integral part of my home theater.
If you had a WebTV (? -- yuk, right?) or another similar product (no direct experience of TV-based web interfaces) you could probably control this device via its web interface on your tube.
I wanted to get a certain.biz domain. I pre-pre-submitted a request for the name WAY back when they first started talking about these new tlds. After a while, more people jumped on the bandwagon and it began to look like we were really going to see these come into circulation. I did some more research about the (pre) registration process and found that while you could pay your registrar to 'reserve' the name for you, they couldn't initially guarantee that you would get the name. In fact you just got an entry into an intial drawing (which is tomorrow, IIRC) when you might actually be awarded the name. Needless to say, I bought several more "entries" for my domain of choice (it's that good... really)
One critical loophole: the initial pre-registration period is also meant to allow those with trademark or "intellectual property" claims to a name to challenge your right to register it. While this sounds like a good way to protect legitimate rights, it just allowed people time to register all kinds of bogus claims with the USPTO. Last week I received a notice from Neuland (?) informing me that 15 or 20 people had "IP" claims to my domain. What should I do? Do I have any chance, as a non-corporate-lawyer-holding netizen of preserving my rights to the name even if I happen to be awarded it? I'd think that I should have just as much right to it as anybody else considering there's no "prior use" of the.biz tld.
The only problem I've had of late is that the network device stops working after about three hours but I just kill MOL and restart it.
First off, mol is very cool. From what I can tell, it's a very well mananged project and is helping us go down some pretty fun roads (i.e., DOS-on-windows-on-mac-on-linux).
However, we started to implement mol as part of a rapid web development environment. However, network driver issues eventually slowed the process to a halt. Then OSX was released: a robust solution that worked right out of the box. No more mol for that project...
This is my first post about the events of the past weeks. Not because I didn't have anything to say; rather there was (and is) just so much being said that I didn't feel a need to contribute to the noise.
That said, this bit of video brings up an interesting question that has crossed my mind: What will be the fate of the Center itself? While the focus has been on the destruction of the two main towers, the site itself is very large.
I have heard various suggestions: the owner/developer of the property is considering putting up four new 50-story buildings; some are calling for the twin towers to be rebuilt exactly as they were. NYC officials have been quoted as saying that this is an opportunity for New York to rethink not only its skyline but its vision of itself.
I hope that whatever happens, it is something more interesting that another corporate filing cabinet. Of course there will be an extensive memorial (as well there should be), but doesn't the site deserve something at least as interesting as the twin towers were in the 60s? How about an arcology? Ideas?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but not a single current browser supports the format natively.
Of course "Adobe is very pleased that the SVG specification has been officially approved as a W3C Recommendation. SVG is a fundamental element of Adobe's Network Publishing strategy." You must download their flaky, propietary, plug-in. To even check it out...
For what it's worth, I can validate this as well. I'm a big fan of mp3 and have a ridiculous amount of music archived from various sources (my cds, my friends' cds, and the "internet's cds", etc).
The best thing about the specialized pieces is figuring out a better uses than what was originally intended for them...
Even the super specialized Technique pieces like gears and plastic tubes had similarities that allowed them to be used with regular blocks... A bunch of the tube pieces together (they fit on the nubs perfectly) made a great approximation of a tractor beam.
If you read your service contract (nothing you signed, but what your provider sent you in the mail after you signed up), they probably prohibit you from connecting multiple computers to your standard consumer level DSL
Not to say that most people don't ignore this rule (I've been a party to several myself), but if whole neighborhoods (minus the one sharepoint subscriber) started cancelling their DSL, the telcos would start enforcing.
I don't think people are as adverse to paying $0.076 as they are to having to deal with paying $0.076.
This is an obvious point, but:
The flipside to this is that it's also costly for merchants to accept these kinds of payments using any kind of current processing mechanism. Most merchant accounts charge you not only a percentage ('points') on each transaction, but also a per-transaction fee. Sometimes this fee is only on charges less than a certain amount (i.e., micropayments). Sometimes this fee can be as much as $.25 per transaction. If a charge of $0.076 gets levied a quarter charge, the merchant is losing big time.
Until there is a good, cost effective, mechanism for facilitating these types of payments, we won't see them take off.
Slashdot Mirror
And the last one until 2020.
Seriously though, the article in question seems to underline the problems with Bluetooth:
The data rate for Bluetooth communications is about one-tenth that of IEEE 802.11
The reach of IEEE 802.11 is about ten times that of Bluetooth technology
Bluetooth uses packets designed specifically for Bluetooth transports
So, we're talking about a networking protocol that is slow, only works in very close proximity, and is an additional, propietary packet structure. Great...
802.11 works for both "WLAN" and "WPAN" applications... why bother addressing two protocols?
Alta Vista has certainly been an innovator in its day... and was by far the best search engine until Google.
They were the first to have a searchable full-text database and asian character sets (Chinese, Korean, Japanese).
Don't forget about Babel Fish either... seems like this alone would be enough to keep them alive...
Ah well, wish them luck in a very difficult market.
You mean like the clearly marked |<< and >>| (backward and forward) buttons? Come on man, if Apple is good at one thing, we all know it to be user interface... heck, the wrote the book on it.
I dare not imagine how badly they've ginnied up the volume control.
The volume control is achieved via the circular knob in the middle: just like your home stereo. The UI is quite elegant as seen in this video (Quicktime 5 only).
Although I immediately felt a little let down by this release--after all the hype--after thinking about it a little more, I'm convinced that this iPod is cool.
I use iTunes, so the seamless integration is nice. I have different mp3s in my work library than at home. I don't have a portable HD or burner, so I never bothered to sync my two libraries... with the iPod, I definitely will.
The price point is a bit high, but then again, I've been shopping for a portable player for a long time and they're all pretty expensive.
I'm guessing that this thing runs OS X underneath. Assuming this is so, the hacks could be pretty awesome. Firewire devices are becoming more and more prevalent... maybe this tiny little device will come in handy.
Even though the "DNA profiling" concern is often a standard part of this science, this kind of technology seems like it might underline that concern. A "consumer level analyzer" could give bigots and xenophobes an easy way to test and target a particular group.
Just a thought...
This is a floundering effort on behalf of the regulatory bodies (and the big businesses who back those bodies, a different debate entirely) to address technology in relation to capitalism. The bill itself seems to be so confused between hardware, software, intellectual property.
The incredible advancement that we've seen in the last few years is a direct result of the lack of this kind of intervention. It's been a natural market evolution. Don't they realize that legislation such as this crushes that progress?
What a strange dichotomy between capitalism and technology: the free market promotes the technology, but the corporations behind the "free market" are against it.
Hm.
Elison is offering to put something in place that already exists.
A national ID card program was signed into law by Clinton in 1996. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act included provisions for a National ID card. The card would include biometric info (section 656) and is already on the books. The cards are supposed to be developed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of the Department of Transportation.
Also, check out this great article which draws some Orwellian examines connections between recent technologies and privacy.
My post from another story.
.biz registration process:
.biz domain. I pre-pre-submitted a request for the name WAY back when they first started talking about these new tlds. After a while, more people jumped on the bandwagon and it began to look like we were really going to see these come into circulation. I did some more research about the (pre) registration process and found that while you could pay your registrar to 'reserve' the name for you, they couldn't initially guarantee that you would get the name. In fact you just got an entry into an intial drawing (which is tomorrow, IIRC) when you might actually be awarded the name. Needless to say, I bought several more "entries" for my domain of choice (it's that good... really)
.biz tld.
Just a note on the
I wanted to get a certain
One critical loophole: the initial pre-registration period is also meant to allow those with trademark or "intellectual property" claims to a name to challenge your right to register it. While this sounds like a good way to protect legitimate rights, it just allowed people time to register all kinds of bogus claims with the USPTO. Last week I received a notice from Neuland (?) informing me that 15 or 20 people had "IP" claims to my domain. What should I do? Do I have any chance, as a non-corporate-lawyer-holding netizen of preserving my rights to the name even if I happen to be awarded it? I'd think that I should have just as much right to it as anybody else considering there's no "prior use" of the
This might actually be a kinda nice feature... My stereo components are an integral part of my home theater.
If you had a WebTV (? -- yuk, right?) or another similar product (no direct experience of TV-based web interfaces) you could probably control this device via its web interface on your tube.
The evil hacker from Charlie's Angels won't have to spend so much effort to track down Charlie.
Setting StuffIt Expander to be the helper app for .sit, .bin. and .hqx file types should circumvent this problem, right?
2 megabits to my phone means 2 megabits to my laptop too! I can stand still for that.
Just a note on the .biz registration process:
.biz domain. I pre-pre-submitted a request for the name WAY back when they first started talking about these new tlds. After a while, more people jumped on the bandwagon and it began to look like we were really going to see these come into circulation. I did some more research about the (pre) registration process and found that while you could pay your registrar to 'reserve' the name for you, they couldn't initially guarantee that you would get the name. In fact you just got an entry into an intial drawing (which is tomorrow, IIRC) when you might actually be awarded the name. Needless to say, I bought several more "entries" for my domain of choice (it's that good... really)
.biz tld.
I wanted to get a certain
One critical loophole: the initial pre-registration period is also meant to allow those with trademark or "intellectual property" claims to a name to challenge your right to register it. While this sounds like a good way to protect legitimate rights, it just allowed people time to register all kinds of bogus claims with the USPTO. Last week I received a notice from Neuland (?) informing me that 15 or 20 people had "IP" claims to my domain. What should I do? Do I have any chance, as a non-corporate-lawyer-holding netizen of preserving my rights to the name even if I happen to be awarded it? I'd think that I should have just as much right to it as anybody else considering there's no "prior use" of the
First off, mol is very cool. From what I can tell, it's a very well mananged project and is helping us go down some pretty fun roads (i.e., DOS-on-windows-on-mac-on-linux).
However, we started to implement mol as part of a rapid web development environment. However, network driver issues eventually slowed the process to a halt. Then OSX was released: a robust solution that worked right out of the box. No more mol for that project...
That said, this bit of video brings up an interesting question that has crossed my mind: What will be the fate of the Center itself? While the focus has been on the destruction of the two main towers, the site itself is very large.
I have heard various suggestions: the owner/developer of the property is considering putting up four new 50-story buildings; some are calling for the twin towers to be rebuilt exactly as they were. NYC officials have been quoted as saying that this is an opportunity for New York to rethink not only its skyline but its vision of itself.
I hope that whatever happens, it is something more interesting that another corporate filing cabinet. Of course there will be an extensive memorial (as well there should be), but doesn't the site deserve something at least as interesting as the twin towers were in the 60s? How about an arcology? Ideas?
SVG Enjoys Broad, Continued Industry Support
Correct me if I'm wrong, but not a single current browser supports the format natively.
Of course "Adobe is very pleased that the SVG specification has been officially approved as a W3C Recommendation. SVG is a fundamental element of Adobe's Network Publishing strategy." You must download their flaky, propietary, plug-in. To even check it out...
Doesn't sound so bad to me...
The most recent example of this happening for me was with the Legendary Marvin Pontiac: Greatest Hits album:
- I heard some unidentified tracks on a streaming radio station
- A Google Search turned up the name of the musician: Marvin Pontiac.
- Repeated Gnutella searches turned up only two more songs, which I liked even more than the first one I heard.
- I ran down to the record store and bought the album.
In my mind, the perfect symbiosis of internet radio, mp3, and full album. Make sure you check out Marvin Pontiac too!Even the super specialized Technique pieces like gears and plastic tubes had similarities that allowed them to be used with regular blocks... A bunch of the tube pieces together (they fit on the nubs perfectly) made a great approximation of a tractor beam.
Also check the old standby Macintouch for coverage and some interesting bits.
</karmawhore>
Not to say that most people don't ignore this rule (I've been a party to several myself), but if whole neighborhoods (minus the one sharepoint subscriber) started cancelling their DSL, the telcos would start enforcing.
This is an obvious point, but:
The flipside to this is that it's also costly for merchants to accept these kinds of payments using any kind of current processing mechanism. Most merchant accounts charge you not only a percentage ('points') on each transaction, but also a per-transaction fee. Sometimes this fee is only on charges less than a certain amount (i.e., micropayments). Sometimes this fee can be as much as $.25 per transaction. If a charge of $0.076 gets levied a quarter charge, the merchant is losing big time.
Until there is a good, cost effective, mechanism for facilitating these types of payments, we won't see them take off.
Unless the problem is constipation and the magic fairy is Metamucel.