The space in between
Posted on 2007-05-03 at 07:07
I never knew a world with free and open space between buildings. The world in which I was dropped is a world of buildings that, island-like, sit between dangerous concrete veins overrun with bright yellow Hummers and psuedo-sporty minivans. My world has replaced the breathing flesh of the city with roads and the constant whine of rubber on asphalt. A hundred years ago, the space between buildings was occupied by organics---by horses, pedestrians, fruit carts, grass, and kids.
We need a return to pedestrian-centric communities. Move traffic underground where possible. In fact, where possible, why not move dwellings undergrund as well? However it's accomplished, I think we need to start finding ways to free up the planet's surface area. It'd be good for the planet and good for us.
Eat, Drink, Be Merry, Live Long, and Prosper!
Posted on 2007-05-02 at 21:27
Old news: Calorie restriction has a serious positive life-extending effect.
New news: We've isolated the gene responsible for this anomaly.
In short (for those too lazy to read the article), it appears that with some further study we may be able to invoke this longevity gene effect without the need to eat like a bird. I'm pleased and you should be too...unless you are a worshipper of a death cult, in which case you scare me and I hope I do not anger you, my creepy friend.
Only down side: Bryan, too, will benefit from this technology. Well, the bright side is that it gives me more time to plot his painful and humiliating demise.
These are a few of my favorite things
Posted on 2007-05-01 at 08:05
So, there are 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 things I like. I'll limit this point to 3:
- Linux
- Movies
- High Definition Video
Nissan and the sub $3000 car
Posted on 2007-04-25 at 07:44
Wow, that's pretty cheap!
"Renault-Nissan is planning on building a car for under $3000. The price could be as low as $2500, which is 40% less than the least expensive sub-compact car available today. The Chief Executive of the company, Carlos Ghosn, made this announcement at a plant-opening on April 4. An Indian carmaker, Tata Motors, plans to launch a $2500 car next year. This race for the really ceap car could have a major impact on the industry as a whole."
I can't wait to see the price fallout accross the board from this rollout. Moreover, if it preally passes crash tests adequately, as they claim it will, then you might see me riding one around town. I'm down with cheap and good. Cheap and good rock!
As We May Think
Posted on 2007-04-01 at 15:08
Once, in college, I wrote a paper in which I offered a short list of some of the most influential people to modernity. I suggested T.S. Eliot, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Charles Darwin, and Vannevar Bush offered more to change the worldview of modern man than most others.
The professor didn't appreciate my choices. She liked them all, mind you, except that last one. She'd never heard of him, and therefore didn't see how he could have been that much of an influence. I never could convince her that her logic was specious and her assumptions faulty (go figure). Nonetheless, I kept his name in the essay, despite her insistence that it's inclusion would color the final grade I received for the paper, but I was far too interested in getting an education to worry about things as mundane as grades.
She doesn't read this blog---of that I'm certain. That said, I feel compelled to remind people just how important an unknown figure can be to our society. Read Vannevar Bush's essay "As We May Think" as published in The Atlantic in July of 1945. Truly seminal work.
Tom, when is the future?
Posted on 2006-12-14 at 07:57
The Future? Why that would be now, my fine reader.
waiting for you to read the linked article....
For those too lazy to click the link, I'll offer some juicy snippets:
"It was the world's first purely electronic communication from brain to brain, and therefore the basis for thought communication."
"At the moment there is an implant that can be pushed right into the middle of the brain - in the subthalamic nucleus is one potential area - and it provides a stimulation that counteracts the tremor effects of Parkinson's Disease to the extent that many patients can lead a normal life, and so they leave the implant switched on all the time."
"One of them that is now ongoing is culturing neural networks - that is actually growing artificial brains from biological tissue - and we're working on that to control a little robot. So rather than have a robot controlled by a computer brain, the robot will be controlled by a biological brain."
So, the natural follow up question is can you define "Human"? How might your definition be altered or attacked in a future where the biological, the mechanical, and the electrical mashup into an indistinct glob? How much of the brain can be replaced before you will consider the person affected non-human? Does your definition of "Human" distinguish humanity in that way? If a being encapsulates a human brain and organs, but was built from the ground up mechanistically rather than organically is that being a human, a robot, or neither?
Code Monkey by Jonathan Coulton
Posted on 2006-12-09 at 10:29
Listen to Code Monkey by Jonathan Coulton.
The song is released under a Creative Commons license which allows for redistribution with very few conditions. If you like the song and want to support artists that use such liberal license terms (my posting it here in full is legal and encouraged!) you should consider putting your money where your mouth is and shoving $1 or so to the artist. Your eternal soul will thank you. :)
Anthropographics
Posted on 2006-12-08 at 08:13
Personalization. Individuation. Micromarkets.
The world is moving from a mass market, appeal to the crowd, nab the largest group economic model to one that seeks ever-smaller groupings. No longer is it a Good Thing to keep up with the Joneses. Now the modern consumer wants to differentiate themselves from the Joneses. Having a menu of generic product choices worked in the industrialized 20th century, but as we march further into a new economy we seek hyper-specialized products. It's not enough to buy the same album as the guy next to me. I must buy just the songs I want. Moreover, it's not enough to buy them in the same format as everyone else, I want choice. You may like your songs in AAC format (Apples lossy iTunes format) but I prefer mine in Flac (lossless encoding). The next guy might want his in simple MP3 format (a ubiquitous lossy encoding standard). It's not enough to buy a pair of Nikes. Now I can get a pair from their web site with customized colors and even words on the side! This is a radical shift in thinking and in markets. But what does it mean?
It means demographics---the study of delineations of groups of people into their respective subsets---becomes less useful to the marketer, who seeks something delineated at the individual level, something I'm gonna call anthropographics---the study of delineations of individual persons.
I have more to say about this. I'll be adding that to a later entry. I'm interested in feedback. What you you think about this "demassification" of commercial interests? What sorts of profound changes do you expect from it? Do you welcome it?
More to come....
42Notes.com
Posted on 2006-12-04 at 20:59
I just registered a new domain: 42Notes.com. You are---I'm sure---intensely curious about why I'd register a new domain, and in particular why it would be something called "42Notes.com". Allow me to satisfy your curiosity.
Some people like spam. I'm not one of them. Sadly, the more I give out my email address to businesses and on the Internet in general, the more spam that email address receives. What is a guy to do? Enter Google Domain Mail Hosting.
Google Domain Mail Hosting lets me run all my email for a given domain through their email server. They handle everything. It's quite easy. It also allows me to specify one email address as the "valid" one and then have any mail sent to a non-existent email address to that one valid address.
So here's what I do. I set up a new domain---42Notes.com---then I set up one valid address on that domain, like admin or me or punchmonkey. Anyway, I tell Google to forward all email that doesn't go to a specific account to forward to that addess. Then, when amazon asks for an address I give them Amazon at that domain as an answer. If Norfolk Florist asks for an address, I give them norfolkflorist at that domain. Next I sit back and watch the mail roll in. Those that play nice with the given address will be evident. I'll get email to [their site name]@ mydomain.com and it'll be relevant and so on. But for those that sell my address to spammers, I'll know right away. If I get mail from [your site name]@mydomain.com and it's trying to sell my viagra or penny stocks, then I know you've sold my address to spammers. This means that A) I won't do business with you any more, B) I'll publicize that you sell email addresses to spammers for all to see and learn, and C) I'll create an email rule that shunts all email to that corrupted address to the trashcan. Problem solved.
So, you are still asking, why the name "42Notes.com"? The answer is simple. It's easy to remember, short, and means nothing. Those were my criteria for choosing a domain name. I wanted something that was easy to type fast (short!), that I could say and people would remember without needed spelling or other clarification, and that means nothing so that it can mean whatever I want in a given context. 42Notes could be referring to music, class, post-it, or love notes. As for the number 42. Well, if you don't know why I chose that number, then you just aren't a geek (corollary: if you do know why, then you probably are a geek). :)
The End of the Blockbuster Era?
Posted on 2006-09-30 at 00:17
Luis Villa, gnome-guy turned law student has a must-read blog entry about the changing role of media in our culture.
The short of it is that he went to see some very smart people talking. He took notes. Those notes are interesting. Lawrence Lessig (one of those guys talking) is a personal hero. He even got portrayed on the West Wing once. That's just how cool he is!
Let the rant flow
Posted on 2006-09-16 at 09:31
I ordered my Tivo. I paid for next day shipping because I wanted it this weekend. What happened? They screwed up the shipping on everyone's order who ordered the same day as I did (the 12th). It'll likelu ship today and get here Monday. They did, on their own, refudn the shipping fee, but I'm still disappointed. I want my new Tivo now!
Tivo is dead. Long live Tivo.
Posted on 2006-09-13 at 07:08
I've ordered my Tivo Series 3. Have you ordered yours? I requested Next Day Air, because I must have this before the weekend hits. Following is my epic "Ode to Tivo":
Roses are red.
My devotion is spastic.
My Series One is dead,
But Series Three is fantastic.
I should submit that masterwork to the American Poetry Review.
The Internet stole my outrage
Posted on 2006-05-26 at 08:26
I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded... I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed... I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war. - Dwight D Eisenhower
The late 60's were a time of upheaval. The country was awash in the phrases of the time like "Operation Dewey Canyon" and the "Tet Offensive" and "Prague Spring" and "Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.". The world was in trouble. So what did we do?
Americans took to the streets. They protested. They fought. They cried. They shed blood and tears and they failed and they succeeded in countless small battles. They did it because the world needed fixing.
The world needs fixing again, but instead of taking to the streets, we've taken to the Internet. Site after site pops up decrying the President and his hijacked war. We complain about government corruption that has reached heights that would make President Nixon blush. We pass around videos of the few people who stand up to him. We blog angrily about the evils this administration has visited upoin us. We vent outrage at watching more of our personal human rights blindly granted to corporations and callously taken from us. We hate and we seeth and we watch the news with bug-eyed incredulity. And we do nothing.
I read recently that we do nothing becuase we are self absorbed as a culture---that we are too busy picking our favorite American Idol and commiserating with Britney's marital issues to worry about such things and Life, Liberty, and our ability to Pursue Happiness. But I don't believe that. I see the outrage and hate and dissappointment every day. This isn't a community that has given up its moral compass just yet. So why don't we see what we saw in the late 60's? Why don't we see people choking the streets in protest, swarming their congressmen at their offices and on the steps of Capitol Hill with questions and demands? Why don't we see people doing something about all this anger?
The Internet. Why bus up to Washington D.C. to complain when we can send a angry email? Why clog the roads with a thousand person sit-in when we can include millions with an online petition? Why bother with physical confrontation when we can spam our representatives with our views? The Internet stole our collective outrage. What once would have had us rising up to storm our leaders in indignation now drives us to our computers to send harsh messages out with closers like "If you feel as I do, then it is your patriotic duty to forward this message to everyone in your contact list!"
The Internet is a great thing---the Great Equalizer for the distribution of knowledge---but it is not a forum for real protest. In our zealousness to embrace all things e- or i- we have forgotten just how formidible a presence 1500 people can be when they are staring you dead in your real-life eyeballs. That makes an impression! That gets the attention of our representatives! That changes things! That matters! Your spunky missive from "An6ry-dood@aol.com" is dismissed with a click. Your face 2 inches from the face of the representative that betrayed your trust cannot be so easily dismissed or forgotten.
I'll end this entry as I began it---with a quote:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Freenet, Liberty, and Obscurity
Posted on 2006-04-06 at 07:30
The Freenet Project has released Freenet version 0.7 Alpha 1. To quote their own release notes:
Freenet 0.7 represents a major new approach to peer-to-peer network design. To protect the network, and the user's anonymity, Freenet users will now have the ability to connect directly to other people that they know and trust, together forming a "global darknet" making it extremely difficult for any third party, whether a government or another powerful organisation, to determine that a user is participating in Freenet, let alone what they are doing with it.
It's as I said on slashdot, though: I'd rather be free by liberty and than free by obscurity. To quote Satan from Milton's Paradise Lost:
This place our dungeon, not our safe retreat
Beyond his potent arm, to live exempt
From Heaven's high jurisdiction, in new league
Banded against his throne, but to remain
In strictest bondage, though thus far removed,
Under th' inevitable curb, reserved
His captive multitude.
Paradise Lost, Book II, Lines 317-323
Fighting from our dark places isn't really going to win this battle for Freedom. I appreciate what Freenet is doing. It's securing our fallback position. We need that, but we need more a willingness on the part of our citizenry to take the fight to the day-lit streets of the Mall in Washington D.C.
Truly unfortunate domain names
Posted on 2006-02-13 at 14:11
Who Represents Whom? Now you can know by consulting a database of agencies to the rich and famous: whorepresents.com
Looking for a quality pen? Look no further than the Pen Island website: penisland.net
Need a therapist? Not sure the ones you find here are gonna be safe, but it's your call...just dress conservatively. therapistfinder.com
Mole Station Native Nursery is a plant nursury based in New South Wales. Smart move redirecting you to a different domain, but this one still works: molestationnursery.com
If you are new to Milan and need electricity, why not sign up on-line with Power Generation of Italy: powergenitalia.com
This is why I say that all naming efforts should be vetted by at least one 4th grader before being presented publicly. It would save everyone a lot of trouble.
Honda's Advanced Driver Assist System
Posted on 2006-02-01 at 14:13
Honda's new Accord will ship with an Advanced Driver Assist System (ADAS) self-drive technology. This means that on highways, though not on other sorts of roadways, this new Accord will drive itself.
The ADAS consists of two components: an advanced cruise control system and a lane assistance system. Rather than maintain a static speed, the new radar-based cruise control system will adjust speed based on the surrounding traffic to better accomodate needs of the Lane Keep Assist System (LKAS). The LKAS will use an internally mounted camera to watch lane lines and adjust the car's steering to accomodate gentle turns.
In order for the system to operae, the driver must be touching the steering wheel, so this isn't a fully independant steering system. Instead, it's a way to lower driver fatigue for long trips.
The Honda Accord with ADAS will be released in March at a price of $46,500. By the year 2016, Honda expects to have all models come equipped with the ADAS technology.
Will the United States lose out to China and India?
Posted on 2006-01-26 at 20:08
We've all heard to claim.
The U.S. is slowing down on the science and technology track and China and India are nipping at our heels.
The reasons cited are numerous, but often boiled down to a few basic points. While other countries are steadily reducing rural anti-intellectualism, America is slowly being taking over by zealots who would rather the bible be our only science text book. Additionally, China and India are putting out many more engineers than the U.S. Our jobs are leaving our shores and going overseas where all these (inexpensive!) engineers dwell. And besides, isn't the Unites States showing all the signs of Roman decay and lethargy?
All these reasons are plausible, but are they true?
I submit that these perfectly plausible reasons do not represent the unfair reality of the situation.
Looking closer at America's anti-intellectual movement (as typified by those who deny such things as evolution and global warming), we can see that while these people may have the attention of the media, they do not have the attention of the researchers and developers of the country, including those funded by the government. If we set aside the media hype about fundamentalists running the country and just look at the numbers, the picture is quite different. The amount of money the U.S. spends on research is staggering. According to UNESCO's 2005 Report on Science and Technology Statistics, China spends about 1.23% of it's GDP on R&D. In the US, we spend 2.67% of ours on R&D and we have a much higher GDP. In an apples-to-apples comparison, China spends $72,014,408,000 in adjusted (ie standardized) currency on R&D (a lot to be sure), but in the U.S. we spend $275,095,956,000. If we rounded down to the nearest 100 billion dollars the rounded amount we drop would be more than China spends in total. And it's a snowball effect. We make advances in-country and those advances bring us both profit and more advances more quickly. It's hard to compete with that. China (a country I have a great affection for!) can't just throw bodies at that problem to see it solved. They simply cannot muster the technological resources to stand toe-to-toe with us in that way, and by the time they get to where we are now, we will have advanced significantly.
They don't fare much better when we look at other numbers as well. Let me start with the numbers you'll hear most often. The U.S. graduated 70,000 engineers in 2004, but China graduated 600,000 and India graduated 350,000 in the same period. Sounds dire until you hear the rest of the story. To hear the full story, we had to wait for Duke University to finish their report entitled "Framing the Engineering Outsourcing Debate: Placing the United States on a Level Playing Field with China and India." Rather than poorly paraphrase the conclusion of the report, I'll quote it:
Our study has determined that these are inappropriate comparisons. These massive numbers of Indian and Chinese engineering graduates include not only four-year degrees, but also three-year training programs and diploma holders. These numbers have been compared against the annual production of accredited four-year engineering degrees in the United States. In addition to the lack of nuanced analysis around the type of graduates (transactional or dynamic) and quality of degrees being awarded, these articles also tend not to ground the numbers in the larger demographics of each country. A comparison of like-to-like data suggests that the U.S. produces a highly significant number of engineers, computer scientists and information technology specialists, and remains competitive in global markets.
In other words, these numbers that are compared head-to-head really aren't head-to-head data. Our engineers are held to a standard. We have a clear definiton of Engineer, we know what a minimum educational level should be, and we know a minimum school accredidation should be. China and India cannot say the same. Moreover, even if you accept the higher raw numbers of engineers, the number per capita favors the U.S. The report suggests that per every one million citizens, the United States is producing roughly 750 technology specialists, compared with 500 in China and 200 in India. Of those that China and India count, many come from diploma, not degree, programs. Many are little more than copy machine repair techs (technically an engineer by some standards) whereas the U.S. does not use as loose a definition.
I'd refute the outsourcing claim, but anyone who has actually worked with these outsourcing outfits understands all too well the problems with that option.
So are we going to fall behind? In truth, I admit I wish I could say the world will be a fair place where hard work and dedication will see these others join us as leaders of the technolgoy community, but the world isn't fair. The world is no respecter of diligence or equity. The race is long, and I'm not saying we are garuanteed to win, but I am saying that at this point the race is rigged by circumstance to favor us...greatly! Unfair? Yeah, it is. Sadly, the most the international community can realistically hope for is that the U.S. becomes a nation that respects the rest of the world and seeks to lift others up rather than knock them down. As Spider Man's Uncle Ben once said, "With great power comes great responsiblity." Well, we have the power? Are we going to act responsibly or keep on as we have been?
My Predictions for 2006
Posted on 2006-01-06 at 11:32
The new year is upon us and with it a plethora of experts predicting the fate of their respective industries for the coming year. Rather than insult the experts, I'll submit to tradition and offer my own thoughts on what I expect to see this year for the software industry. Here are five specific predictions I have about the coming year.
1. Linux will master multimedia and thereby gain a new enemy---the multimedia content industry.
I expect that during this year, we'll see linux begin to make its audio/video experience simpler and more comprehensive. The Linux multimedia experience will surpass the Windows and Apple multimedia experiences in ease of use and in breadth of coverage. With it will come legal issues related to Digital Rights Management.
2. Linux will lose server market share to Windows
The latest offering from Microsoft greatly improves the stability and therefore reliability of Windows' Server Edition. All this is done without sacrificing ease-of-use for the admin tools. I hope I'm wrong, but I think this will negatively impact linux server market share in the short term. In the long term (ie, after htis year) I see this is a non issue. The benefits of linux are too great to ignore permanently.
3. Linux will gain desktop market share at Window's expense.
This one is a bit to obvious, since that has been happening at a steady rate for years, so to make it interesting, I will offer a concrete number: 5%. Linux will take 5% of the desktop market by year's end. This will mean that it surpasses Apple (unless Apple also grabs a greater share, which is outside the scope of this prediction). This increased marketshare will not be at Apple's expense, but rather at Microsoft Window's expense. In short, the long predicted "Year of the Linux Desktop" is, in some sense, upon us. Other's have predictied this in th epast and been wrong. This is the first time I'm predicting this. I, of course, will be right.
4. Home Servers will become the new thing to have.
Long a staple of the geek's home, home servers---serving up music and movies and more---will start to take hold in the general populace. By year's end, I predict that the youth market will be on board with this trend, looking for ways to store, access, and share their growing collection of digital miscellany. I'm not sure it will happen byu year's end, but soon enough the market will respond with appliance server devices similar to those on the market now for file and printer sharing. these new appliances will do much more than server files and printers to requesting computers. They will offer the ability to playback music and video, share printers, trade files with remote friends, serve web sites, and more.
5. Apple will enter Tivo's market
Apple will release a hardware solution (not just a software solution, which they already have) that will compete head-to-head with Tivo. Apple will, by consequence, begin moving itself more into the role of entertainment computing and away from professional computing. They will still offer professional enterprise solutions, but they will come to be known as the vendor for the entertainment market, just as they used to be known as the vendor for the graphics market. Specifically, I think Apple will embrace this new conception of themselves. Unlike the graphics market, the entertainment market is all but limitless. They can, and will, make a killing by playing to this.
6. Chairman Bill Gates will download himself into a computer and Google will drop him from the cache
I know I said I'd offer predictions, but I'm throwing this one in for free. Mark my words, Bill Gates will transfer his being into the cyber-ether and Google will in an act of techno-violence remove him from their cache. Many will decry the actions of Google as evil, but punishment will be softer than the public rhetoric. Life will go on.
Consequences
If any one of my above predictions are wrong, even number six, I will eat my hat, provided that I can find a chocolate hat by December 31st of this new year.
Tivo Series 3 HDTV
Posted on 2006-01-06 at 10:21
My drooling fit has come closer to an end.
At this year's CES, Tivo announced that they will be releasing in 2006 the High Definition Series 3 Tivo unit. This unit will sport two tuners, the ability to be used with or without cablecards, external SATA, ethernet and USB, and a front panel that shows you what is currently tuned in and how much space is left on the drive! There are pictures here to be pawed at.
Gadget fetish engaged: Must. Have. Now.
Giant Female Android Rampages Through Tokyo!
Posted on 2005-07-28 at 08:02
All of my headline is true, except that she isn't giant, can't walk, and didn't go on a rampage. But, there is a female android. And that's, like, cool and stuff. Oh yeah, and it's not in Tokyo either. It's in Osaka, Japan...but the remainder of the headline is totally factual and not at all misleading.
Anti-Intellectualism
Posted on 2005-07-27 at 08:01
What ever happened to our fascination with progress and science? Not too long ago, we looked eagerly ahead toward a future mirrored in Star Trek and even the Jetsons, and now it's all we can do to muster some passing interest in space exploration and scientific advance. Instead of embracing these new vistas being opened to us every day by science, we shun them, ignore them when they prove our older worldviews false.
We talk about the importance of college education, but all we really mean is the importance of a college degree. The jokes about the Liberal Arts are often funny, but underlying them is a deep-rooted anti-intellectualism---a belief that education is a fine enough means to an end, but should never be considered an end in and of itself.
That concerns me. We are slipping down the ladder of scientific leadership. Our society's attitude just implicitly and falsely confirms a misplaced fear that many working-class students and their parents have: college education is a waste of money, unless each day's lesson can be connected to something that will be needed on the job some day.
This attitude is damaging our country, our people, and our position in the world.
I look forward to a future when we all rejoice over our accomplishments, where we demand our priorities be the advancement of the human race, where progress isn't an abstract goal but a daily event. We should be shooting for the stars, living off the fruits of robotic labor, and putting an end to artificial scarcity. We should be doing something every day that makes us proud, and we should be celebrating each achievement loudly.
Something to think about
Posted on 2005-07-18 at 08:01
The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. It ended because it was time for a re-think about how we live.
Indiscriminate Object Fabrication
Posted on 2005-06-14 at 08:02
It's the way of the future. I look forward to a day when we all have CNC fabricators on our desks and to get a new desk all we have to do is get the binary schematic for the design and set our machines to fabricating. The elimination of scarcity will forever change the landscape of humankind. Think it's too sci-fi? Well it ain't.
I'm a freak...
Posted on 2005-06-14 at 08:01
...but if you're reading this blog, you already knew that. Here's why I'm a freak today. We bought these new cordless phones to replace some dying phones around the house and all I can think is "keep that air poison away from me, man!" Must repeat to myself, "Cordless phones do not cause cancer...".
Get Perpendicular!
Posted on 2005-04-09 at 08:01
You don't see corporate ads like this very often. I dig it. It's still an ad, and ads are of the devil, but as devilish lies to the common man go, this one's pretty catchy!
Transistor 2.0
Posted on 2005-02-04 at 08:03
HP says it has made some headway in finding a successor to the common transistor. The commercial results are way off, but early tests suggest a dramatic improvment in speed. Nice!
TiVo's CES announcement
Posted on 2005-01-07 at 08:02
TiVo has said that they plan to offer TiVo units that accept CableCards so they can bypass cable companies and market themselves as a hi-end DVR. Sounds good to me, but I still want my HiDef DVR, and I want it now, not in 2006 when TiVo plans this rollout. That could be too late for them, and it's definately too late for me.
The March of Progress
Posted on 2004-11-12 at 08:01
VoIP is growing. 3D is moving from gaming to the desktop and from the desktop to the PDA and phone. It won't be long before I can plug in a Wi-MAX router at home to tap into a growing mesh of free and independant routers that have no tie or allegiance to the corporate owned and operated Internet. Advances in wetware/hardware integration are arriving at a startling rate. Verizon is gearing up to roll out fiber optic to the home with a rated bandwidth of up to 30Mb/s. I have a personal home theater with 7.1 surround sound and a 9 foot screen in my room over the garage. Phillips was right. I've got to admit it's getting better. Better all the time. If we can just keep the government out of it and the corporations away from it the human race might have a bright future.
New Cell Phone
Posted on 2004-09-13 at 08:02
Same number, but the new phone is nicer. I also got the Jabra wireless headset for non-bluetooth phones so I could talk hands-free and wirelessly. I'm pleased with the change. Also changed my service to be a little more in line with my usage to get rid of those monthly overage charges. Will can't seem to stop calling on the cell phone even when I'm home and he knows it...because he is of the devil...so I have to fix the problem on my end.
Do you want this kind of future?
Posted on 2004-09-02 at 08:01
Wintel
Posted on 2004-06-09 at 08:03
Plugged in. Online
Jacked up. Fucked up.
T1 line-in. Media upchuck.
Mankind. MetalSoul.
Info Blackhole.
Lord Almighty,
Flood this rathole.
Byte-sized. ArkSafe.
Hi-Tech Street Waif
Who cares anyway?
Why should I pray?
Lead in. Lead out.
Have faith. Have doubt.
Talk loud. Don't shout.
Sine wave. Crest. Bough.
Christ when? Christ now!
Windows. Intel.
Dead soul. Oh well.
Hatred and sin.
Grow weak. Grow thin.
Love to hate me.
Ricki Lake me.
Let life linger
And infestate me.
-Tom Caudron
-Inspired by my job. Maybe I need a new one?
Random CD facts
Posted on 2004-04-30 at 08:03
The CD holds 72 minutes worth of music. Why? Because Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was that long. Seems like a reasonable mark to shoot for.
Also, the sampling rate was decided by a surfing contest between a Sony exec and a Philips exec. That's progress.
I want one SO bad
Posted on 2004-04-02 at 08:02
I hate lawn maintenance, but there's hope.