Internet access may not be as important as water. But it’s now right up there with hot water.
Yet given how important broadband is to the future of our economy, our educational system, even our democracy, there is amazingly little public discussion about it.
For too long, that conversation has been happening behind closed doors among self-appointed experts, deep-pocketed lobbyists and politicians who either believe the Internet is “a series of tubes” or don’t use it at all.
A notable exception is U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Forest Hills, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who’s helping to bring the entire Federal Communications Commission to a public hearing tomorrow at Carnegie Mellon University.
He voted the right way on FISA, too.
For those of you who want to attend:
The FCC hearing on the future of the Internet will start Monday, July 21 at 4 p.m. in McConomy Auditorium at Carnegie Mellon University. For more information: www.savetheinternet.com
Add commentJuly 20th, 2008 at 04:56pmPosted by Eli
The creator of Linux is fed up with the obsession over security:
In an email to the Linux kernel developer mailing list, Torvalds said a section of the security industry was dedicated to finding bugs in software only to publicize their findings and gain notoriety.
The row erupted in the Gmane mailing list after a developer for the PaX Team, which patches the Linux kernel, accused Torvalds and other top Linux kernel developers of “covering up [the] security impact of bugs” by not clearly labeling them as security flaws.
Torvalds wrote that disclosing the bug itself was enough, without having to label each individual security flaw. He added that taking the bugs to the “security circus” level only glorified the wrong kind of behavior. “It makes heroes out of security people, as if the people who [...] fix normal bugs aren’t as important,” wrote Torvalds.
(…)
“Boring normal bugs are way more important, just because there’s a lot more of them,” wrote Torvalds. “I don’t think some spectacular security hole should be glorified or cared about as being any more ’special’ than a random spectacular crash due to bad locking,” he said.
The Linux leader went on to state that “security people are often the black-and-white kind of people that I can’t stand”.
(…)
“I think the OpenBSD crowd is a bunch of masturbating monkeys, in that they make such a big deal about concentrating on security to the point where they pretty much admit that nothing else matters to them. To me, security is important. But it’s no less important than everything else that is also important!” Torvalds concluded.
By a remarkable coincidence, “Masturbating Monkey” is actually the title of an upcoming Ubuntu Linux release.
This is great. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Microsoft blogger found an e-mail from Bill Gates to the rest of Microsoft senior management from 2003, complaining about the awful design and total unusability of Windows and the Microsoft website. Some highlights:
I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don’t drive usability issues.
(…)
I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack … so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there.
The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up.
This site is so slow it is unusable.
(…)
I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.
So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying - where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?
So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.
(…)
I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.
In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.
This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download moviemaker?
(…)
Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night — why should I reboot at that time?
So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state.
(…)
So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.
It is not there.
What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.
Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.
But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the patches just things like Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for more information.
What an absolute mess.
(…)
I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed.
I try (typing) the right stuff in 5 times and it just keeps clearing things out for me to type them in again.
So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven’t run Moviemaker and I haven’t got the plus package.
The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don’t you just love that root certificate message?)
On the one hand, I think it’s great that Bill Gates has the same kind of awful, frustrating experiences with Microsoft that the rest of us Windows users do (shut it, Mac & Linux people). On the other hand, it’s pretty pathetic that five years later hardly anything has changed.
I found some leaked specs for the upcoming Nikon D90, and it sounds amazing:
The new D90 incorporates an optional feature called Universal Vibration Reduction (uVR). This turns all lenses into uVR lenses, and offers a 10-stop advantage.
This means a person using a 500mm lens, who would normally have to shoot at 1/500th of a second, can shoot at 2 seconds when uVR is enabled.
The new uVR system isn’t sensor based, and instead requires… the MB-D90a [battery grip]. This grip provides all the normal controls and extended battery life of a regular grip. It also holds 8 EN-EL4a batteries, along with a step-up transformer.
With uVR enabled, the combined power of the batteries sends a current through the step-up transformer. This then delivers a 110 volt shock through metal pads around the grip. The resulting electrical shock matches the shutter speed (maximum of 10 seconds).
The shock causes a very stable clenching of the photographer’s muscles while the shutter is open, simulating the stability of a tripod.
Nikon advise that people with rubber-soled shoes, heart problems or pacemakers shouldn’t use uVR.
(…)
The new D90 builds on the D80’s popular in-camera editing functions. Rather than cannibalizing yet more features from Capture NX, Nikon decided to include a full working version of Photoshop CS3 in the D90.
We found using Photoshop CS3 on a 3 inch LCD with a 4-way controller much easier than you might imagine. Well done on a great new feature, Nikon.
(…)
The new D90… includes a fully-fledged iPod. This ensures you’re never short of a tune, as long as you have your D90 with you. And it’s switched on. And you’ve uploaded some songs to it.
(…)
They’ve not only included stereo speakers in the camera itself, but also the necessary cabling for a full Dolby 5.1 surround sound setup. What’s more, the D90 is capable of playing movies on the 3 inch LCD via the built-in DVD writer/player found in the second optional battery grip (MB-D90b).
But just before you rush out an get yourself an MB-D90b, you might want to consider the MB-D90c. This version of the grip includes a sub-woofer (fully compatible with the D90’s Dolby surround). That’s right, the optional MB-D90c allows you to play music with unprecedented levels of fidelity for a consumer-level DSLR.
Let’s see Canon top that!
(…)
While the D80 was pretty responsive, your reactions aren’t. By the time you’ve realized you should have pressed the shutter, the moment is lost forever.
The D90 solves this problem thanks to Nikon’s new MindProbe technology. MindProbe scans your brain, looking for those tell-tale low amplitude beta waves that signal an imminent shutter-press. By the time your neurons react, and you actually press the shutter, the D90 has already captured 3 images (or 6 in GTI mode).
That’s right folks, for the first time in the history of photography, the shutter delay is actually measured in negative time. Now that’s progress.
(…)
The D50 and D80 caused some controversy by moving Nikon’s consumer-orientated DSLR models away from CF cards….
In an effort to avoid such distasteful events this time around, and ensure everybody can enjoy a D90, Nikon now supports the following storage formats…
SD
CF
XD
Memory Stick
3.5 inch floppy
5.25 inch floppy
8 inch floppy (in MB-D90b only)
CD/DVD (in MB-D90b only)
High-speed paper tape to maintain compatibility with Colossus
One of the complaints about the ML-L3 wireless remote, was that it was line-of-sight. For some reason, you couldn’t set up your camera in Texas, and trigger the shutter from France. Clearly, this should be well within the capabilities of a $15 remote control.
To answer these complaints, Nikon has put a series of satellites in orbit that are dedicated to receiving wireless remote signals from users anywhere on the planet. These are then forwarded to your camera, allowing you to trigger the shutter no matter where you are.
How long have we been waiting for this simple addition to the feature-set? Canon have had this functionality in their DSLRs for years.
I would totally pre-order this as soon as it was announced, except that Nikon plans to start selling it five days before.
The Binaural Mic from Otokinoko… is a simple way to record the most realistic sounds possible. Binaural recording allows you to record sounds the same way they are heard in real life by placing the two microphones in the same position as human ears. The resulting playback in omnidirectional 3D sound is more realistic than normal stereo because of the subtle shifts in feeling.
First of all, the mics are not in the same position as human ears unless you have a really really tiny head.
Second of all, is there any technological reason why they have to be shaped exactly like gray human ears?
‘Passive Aggressive Anger Release Machine’ is an interactive sculpture by Yarisal and Kublitz. Experience the most satisfying feeling when a piece of China breaks into million pieces . All you have to do is insert a coin, and a piece of China will Slowly move forwards and fall into the bottom of the machine, breaking, and leaving you happy and relieved of anger.
*rummages around for loose change*
Ahh, I’m feeling better already. You know, if they had blanketed the country with these during primary season, they would have made a fortune.
If millions of Christians suddenly disappear from the face of the Earth as the opening act for Armageddon, Threat Level thinks most nonbelievers will be too busy freaking the hell out to check their e-mail. But if they do log in, now they can be treated to some post-Rapture needling from their missing friends and loved ones, courtesy of web startup YouveBeenLeftBehind.com.
For just $40 a year, believers can arrange for up to 62 people to get a final message exactly six days after the Rapture, that day when — according to Christian end times dogma — Christians will be swept up to heaven, while doubters are left behind to suffer seven years of Tribulation under a global government headed by the Antichrist.
“You’ve Been Left Behind gives you one last opportunity to reach your lost family and friends for Christ,” reads the website, which is purportedly run “by Christians, for Christians.” The domain name is registered through an anonymous proxy service, presumably to protect the proprietors from the Forces of Darkness, and not because they’re up to anything shady.
The e-mails will be triggered when three of the site’s five Christian staffers “scattered around the U.S.” fail to log in for six days in a row — a system that incorporates a nice margin of safety, should two of the proprietors turn out to be unrepentant sinners or atheists.
Users can also upload up to 150 megabytes of documents, which will be protected by an unidentified encryption algorithm until the Rapture, then released to up to 12 nonbelievers of your choice. The site recommends that you use that storage to house sensitive financial information.
“In the encrypted portion of your account you can give them access to your banking, brokerage, hidden valuables, and powers of attorneys,” the site says. “There won’t be any bodies, so probate court will take seven years to clear your assets to your next of kin. Seven years, of course, is all the time that will be left. So, basically the Government of the Antichrist gets your stuff, unless you make it available in another way.”
Of course, some of us would sooner trust the Antichrist with our stuff than turn it over to a company that hides behind an anonymous domain registration service, and doesn’t list a single corporate officer or employee by name on its website.
The company, You’ve Been Left Behind LLC, didn’t respond to an e-mail query, raising the obvious question of whether the Rapture has already begun. Developing …
Awesome. They sound totally trustworthy to me. I’m sure all the security measures are to ensure that no-one unscrupulous kidnaps the staffers to trigger those e-mails prematurely. Yeah, I’m sure that’s it.
Do you have trouble sticking to a diet? Have patience. Within 10 years, Dr. Kurzweil explained, there will be a drug that lets you eat whatever you want without gaining weight.
Worried about greenhouse gas emissions? Have faith. Solar power may look terribly uneconomical at the moment, but with the exponential progress being made in nanoengineering, Dr. Kurzweil calculates that it’ll be cost-competitive with fossil fuels in just five years, and that within 20 years all our energy will come from clean sources.
Are you depressed by the prospect of dying? Well, if you can hang on another 15 years, your life expectancy will keep rising every year faster than you’re aging. And then, before the century is even half over, you can be around for the Singularity, that revolutionary transition when humans and/or machines start evolving into immortal beings with ever-improving software.
At least that’s Dr. Kurzweil’s calculation. It may sound too good to be true, but even his critics acknowledge he’s not your ordinary sci-fi fantasist. He is a futurist with a track record and enough credibility for the National Academy of Engineering to publish his sunny forecast for solar energy.
He makes his predictions using what he calls the Law of Accelerating Returns, a concept he illustrated at the festival with a history of his own inventions for the blind. In 1976, when he pioneered a device that could scan books and read them aloud, it was the size of a washing machine.
Two decades ago he predicted that “early in the 21st century” blind people would be able to read anything anywhere using a handheld device. In 2002 he narrowed the arrival date to 2008. On Thursday night at the festival, he pulled out a new gadget the size of a cellphone, and when he pointed it at the brochure for the science festival, it had no trouble reading the text aloud.
This invention, Dr. Kurzweil said, was no harder to anticipate than some of the predictions he made in the late 1980s, like the explosive growth of the Internet in the 1990s and a computer chess champion by 1998. (He was off by a year — Deep Blue’s chess victory came in 1997.)
“Certain aspects of technology follow amazingly predictable trajectories,” he said, and showed a graph of computing power starting with the first electromechanical machines more than a century ago. At first the machines’ power doubled every three years; then in midcentury the doubling came every two years (the rate that inspired Moore’s Law); now it takes only about a year.
(…)
Now, he sees biology, medicine, energy and other fields being revolutionized by information technology. His graphs already show the beginning of exponential progress in nanotechnology, in the ease of gene sequencing, in the resolution of brain scans. With these new tools, he says, by the 2020s we’ll be adding computers to our brains and building machines as smart as ourselves.
(…)
Dr. Kurzweil’s predictions come under intense scrutiny in the engineering magazine IEEE Spectrum, which devotes its current issue to the Singularity. Some of the experts writing in the issue endorse Dr. Kurzweil’s belief that conscious, intelligent beings can be created, but most think it will take more than a few decades.
He is accustomed to this sort of pessimism and readily acknowledges how complicated the brain is. But if experts in neurology and artificial intelligence (or solar energy or medicine) don’t buy his optimistic predictions, he says, that’s because exponential upward curves are so deceptively gradual at first.
“Scientists imagine they’ll keep working at the present pace,” he told me after his speech. “They make linear extrapolations from the past. When it took years to sequence the first 1 percent of the human genome, they worried they’d never finish, but they were right on schedule for an exponential curve. If you reach 1 percent and keep doubling your growth every year, you’ll hit 100 percent in just seven years.”
I hope he’s right. I totally can’t wait to become an immortal cyborg.
The only known edition of the world’s first telephone book has just surfaced in Connecticut.
It will be auctioned along with a collection of noteworthy books and documents covering technology, science, math and philosophy over six centuries.
The 20-page directory was issued in November of 1878, just two years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. The phone book contained information useful to 391 subscribers within the New Haven, Conn., area who were obviously still learning their way around the new communication device.
“Should you wish to speak to another subscriber you should commence the conversation by saying, ‘Hulloa!’” it instructs.
Tom Lecky, who is head of books and manuscripts at Christie’s auction house, which is handling the sale, told Discovery News, “The directions start off by amusingly saying, ‘Never take the telephone off the hook unless you wish to use it…When you are done talking say, ‘That is all,’ and the person spoken to should say, ‘O.K.’”
The book goes on to tell readers they should leave the “lower lip and jaw free.” They were also warned never to “use the wire more than three minutes at a time, or more than twice an hour” without first “obtaining permission from the main office.”
(…)
No phone numbers were printed in the Connecticut city’s milestone book — just the names of subscribers. It did, however, list businesses in a separate section at the end, making it the world’s first yellow pages too. The businesses included local newspapers, grocers, physicians and manufacturers.
Wow. I can’t even begin to imagine what they would make of my Treo. Yet another reminder of how far we’ve come technologically. And how goofy the culture of a technology in its earliest stages can be.
Well, okay, it’s just a robot hand - but it’s still pretty cool:
In previous studies, researchers showed that humans who had been paralyzed for years could learn to control a cursor on a computer screen with their brain waves and that nonhuman primates could use their thoughts to move a mechanical arm, a robotic hand or a robot on a treadmill.
The new experiment goes a step further. In it, the monkeys’ brains seem to have adopted the mechanical appendage as their own, refining its movement as it interacted with real objects in real time. The monkeys had their own arms gently restrained while they learned to use the added one.
(…)
In the experiment, two macaques first used a joystick to gain a feel for the arm, which had shoulder joints, an elbow and a grasping claw with two mechanical fingers.
(…)
The scientists used the computer to help the monkeys move the arm at first, essentially teaching them with biofeedback.
After several days, the monkeys needed no help. They sat stationary in a chair, repeatedly manipulating the arm with their brain to reach out and grab grapes, marshmallows and other nuggets dangled in front of them. The snacks reached the mouths about two-thirds of the time — an impressive rate, compared with earlier work.
The monkeys learned to hold the grip open on approaching the food, close it just enough to hold the food and gradually loosen the grip when feeding.
On several occasions, a monkey kept its claw open on the way back, with the food stuck to one finger. At other times, a monkey moved the arm to lick the fingers clean or to push a bit of food into its mouth while ignoring a newly presented morsel.
The animals were apparently freelancing, discovering new uses for the arm, showing “displays of embodiment that would never be seen in a virtual environment,” the researchers wrote.
“In the real world, things don’t work as expected,” said the senior author of the paper, Dr. Andrew Schwartz, a professor of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh. “The marshmallow sticks to your hand or the food slips, and you can’t program a computer to anticipate all of that.
“But the monkeys’ brains adjusted. They were licking the marshmallow off the prosthetic gripper, pushing food into their mouth, as if it were their own hand.”
(…)
…Dr. Schwartz’s team, Dr. Donoghue’s group and others are working on all of the problems, and the two macaques’ rapid learning curve in taking ownership of a foreign limb gives scientists confidence that the main obstacles are technical and, thus, negotiable.
In an editorial accompanying the Nature study, Dr. John F. Kalaska, a neuroscientist at the University of Montreal, argued that after such bugs had been worked out, scientists might even discover areas of the cortex that allow more intimate, subtle control of prosthetic devices.
Such systems, Dr. Kalaska wrote, “would allow patients with severe motor deficits to interact and communicate with the world not only by the moment-to-moment control of the motion of robotic devices, but also in a more natural and intuitive manner that reflects their overall goals, needs and preferences.”
The potential really is amazing. And, sadly, we have an ever-increasing group of combat veterans who could really benefit from it.
Typically, in technology circles, the term “convergence” means the eventual combining of the television and the PC into a single device, which, frankly, I kinda have a hard time seeing. The convergence that I’ve been seeing lately, which I find very intriguing, is between cellphones and computers, as the former get more and more powerful, and the latter get more and more compact.
We are nearing a point where screen and keyboard size will actually be more significant limiting factors than storage or processing power - and I think foldable OLED screens will provide much relief there, especially if they can also function as touchscreen keyboards.
But that’s not the kind of convergence I want to talk about, either. I was reading Olivia Judson’s NYT blog entry on cytological hybrids, or “cybrids”: a cell from one species implanted whole into an egg cell of another species, becoming its nucleus, and eventually an embryo of the cell “donor” species, and it hit me. This is just like the DIY hackers I read about all the time in Engadget, the people who stick the guts of a Sega Dreamcast into a jewelry case to create a brand-new portable console.
Not only that, but I’m fascinated by DNA’s similarities to computer code: It’s a set of instructions that is both complex and modular - snippets of it can be copied and pasted to perform the same functions in completely different programs! It’s also bloated with a lot of useless legacy code that no longer serves a function - some of which is actually old viruses that have been defanged and absorbed. There can even be copying errors, and compatibility issues if the DNA in a transplanted egg nucleus doesn’t mesh with the DNA in the egg’s mitochondria (which is in fact modified bacteria code).
My point is, the most fascinating and important convergence coming down the pike is the one between technology and biology. Right now, we’re at the novice stage when it comes to DNA and cell biology, copying and pasting and tweaking here and there, but I think there will come a day when we can actually read DNA like any other kind of programming language. Which means that we could write and edit it, too. Which would be both cool (we wouldn’t have to go looking for a gene to perform the function we want - we could just write it from scratch) and kinda scary (what happens when a gene programmer screws up, or a bioterrorist writes The Perfect Virus?).
I’m not sure whether I’m looking forward to it or dreading it, but the possibilities and threats are wide open.
…[I]f I could design the Perfect Portable Device, based on existing or at least plausible/impending technology, what would it be?
(…)
There are devices that can pretty much do all of this already, but they have the absolute constraint that they have to be at least as large as their screens. So large-screen devices are bulky, and compact devices have tiny screens. So here’s my idea: A screen that folds. OLED technology will make it possible to manufacture displays that can bend in half, so why not have a device with the form factor of a book? You open it up, and you have a screen that’s the size of two “pages.” For typing, you could turn it 90 degrees and use one “page” as a touchscreen keyboard - or just use the bottom half of the two-page display (needless to say, it would auto-tilt the screen like on the iPhone). By my calculations, a 4″ X 3″ folding device would have a 7″ display when fully unfolded. At the other extreme, you could fit a 15″ screen on something roughly the size of a hardcover book.
Negroponte didn’t share many details about the XO-2’s hardware, but the new system has two touch-sensitive displays. As you can see from the video and the pictures, the XO-2 will be much smaller than the original machine (half the size, according to the press release) and will have a foldable e-book form factor. “The next generation laptop should be a book,” Negroponte said.
The XO-2 will employ the dual indoor-and-sunlight displays, which was pioneered by former OLPC CTO Mary Lou Jepsen. The design will provide a right and left page in vertical format, a hinged laptop in horizontal format, and a flat, two-screen continuous surface for use in tablet mode.
It’s not exactly what I had in mind - two screens instead of a single foldable OLED one, but it’s the same basic strategy for fitting more screen real estate into a small form factor, and the ability to convert to a laptop mode with one half of the screen turning into a keyboard.
Now I just need one with a 128GB solid-state drive and some PSP-quality gaming capability…
Not satisfied with a future vision that already includes flexible screens and wafer-thin phones, a pair of Japanese companies has pushed the envelope to come up with far-fetched gadgets that do all of the above without ever going near a power socket.
The key to the work by Mitsubishi Chemical and Sumitomo Chemical lies in so-called spreadable electronics – liquids containing molecules of the type used in OLED screens.
Engineers like Tokitaro Hoshijima at Mitsubishi Chemical see the possibility of using spreadable electronics to create both ultra-thin displays and solar panels at the same time [subscription link].
Because solar cells and OLEDs work on similar, but opposite, principles, it is possible to make materials that both take light and turn it into electricity and also do the opposite to provide a controllable display.
Hoshijima and many others are working on a molecular soup that can be spread anywhere and then dried to leave a residue layer that is only 100nm thick. This currently forms the basis for their proposed solar cell.
He explains: “What I want to create is a world that does not need power sockets.” He goes on to describe how his paste applied to the back of a phone could be enough to charge the device when exposed to light.
By the same token, researchers at Sumitomo Chemical have created a similar organic solution that can be sprayed onto a surface to create an OLED screen.
Such a display could be on a rollable piece of plastic or even applied directly to a wall. The solar-charging properties described above mean it would never need to be plugged in.
Blue-sky projects like these typically take years to bear fruit, but both companies are looking at getting usable prototype devices ready within the next two years.
Wow. I really hope they can pull this off. You could paint displays on your clothes - or solar panels to power your iPod and charge your cellphone. A paintable display could also be pretty much any size and shape you want. And if you could actually paint your house with solar panel paint, you could seriously cut down on your electric bills. Amazing.
Probably too good to be true, but I’ve got my fingers crossed.
While IPv4 provides about four billion IP addresses — not enough to assign one to every one of Earth’s more than six billion inhabitants — IPv6 provides enough address space to assign almost three billion networks to every person on the planet.
Okay, so I’m not on IPv6 yet, but when I am, I totally intend to collect. I’m going to turn my white blood cells into the most awesome computing cloud the world has ever seen.
This is just brilliant, and if I don’t post it tonight, I’ll forget about it. The Datastorm is the only high-speed data transfer device you will ever need. It runs on “electricity”.
Other than the sound levels, this is absolutely brilliant.
Some entirely too ingenious hackers have found a reference to the rumored D3X deep within the bowels of Nikon’s D3 firmware. The reference includes a list of resolutions available to the upcoming shooter, and it’s apparently set to max out at a potentially Higgs Boson-inducing 24.4 megapixels. Word has it that this sensor is likely a variant of the megapixel monster behind Sony’s upcoming A900, but since this is all being extrapolated from a few numbers hidden in some firmware, we’re going to try not to get too ahead of ourselves at this point.
You probably can’t hear it, but I’m pining furiously. If I ever hit the Powerball, this’ll be the first thing I buy. Um, assuming it’s for real, of course. But it does seem a bit odd that they would stand pat with the D3 having the same megapixels as the D300 (which is pretty awesome in its own right).
Add commentApril 15th, 2008 at 10:47pmPosted by Eli
Researchers for [IBM] are working on a technology known as racetrack memory which uses tiny magnetic boundaries to store data.
In a paper in the journal Science, the team at IBM’s Almaden lab in California outline ways to make the building blocks of the novel storage medium.
The capacity of MP3 players could increase 100 times from present levels.
But the IBM team say racetrack memory is still seven to eight years away from commercial use. [NOOO!!!!]
(…)
Hard drives are cheap but their moving parts mean they are not very durable. They are also slow in that they typically take a few milliseconds to find and fetch data.
By contrast flash memory is more reliable and data can be read from it much faster though it has a finite lifespan and is expensive compared to hard drives.
The work being done on racetrack memory by Dr Parkin and colleagues could produce a storage medium that is cheap, durable and fast.
Ultimately, said Dr Parkin, racetrack memory could replace both flash and hard drives in computers and other gadgets.
(…)
The racetrack memory stores data in the boundaries, known as domain walls, between magnetic regions in nanowires.
The medium gets its name because the data races around the wire or track as it is read or written.
The domain walls are read by exploiting the weak magnetic fields generated by the spin of electrons.
The tiny amounts of power needed to exploit these fields means racetrack memory generates far less heat than existing devices.
(…)
If the expected data densities of the technology are realised it could mean gadgets that have about 100 times more memory on board than is possible today. It would mean that a portable MP3 player could hold up to 500,000 songs.
“We are embarking on a path to build a prototype,” said Dr Parkin. He said it could take up to four years to produce that prototype and a further three or four to refine it for commercial use.
We are talking terabyte iPods, people! And lightning-fast multi-terabyte PC/server drives that don’t crash. You could use the same memory card in your digital camera for your entire life and never have to delete a single image.
So last week Deutsche Telekom, owners of the global T-Mobile brand, sent Engadget a late birthday present: a hand-delivered letter direct from their German legal department requesting the prompt discontinuation of the use of the color magenta on Engadget Mobile. Yep, seriously.
Granted, we get nastygrams from angry tech companies practically every day, but rarely regarding anything that’s not some piece of news we published that they’re livid about having out in the open. And irony of ironies, this whole use-of-magenta thing is precisely the topic we took up last year on behalf of DT.
We spoke with David Beigie, vice president of corporate communications for T-Mobile US, who offered: “As a trademark owner, from time to time Deutsche Telekom looks at usage that could lead to confusion in the marketplace. The letter sent by DT merely outlines these perspectives and is meant to simply open a dialogue. Engadget continues to pioneer forums for discussion of wireless industry developments and innovation. T-Mobile respects the role Engadget and its readers play in advancing dialog on these important topics.”
I mean, come on. What the hell were they thinking??? Please tell me they haven’t actually trademarked the color magenta.
Engadget also included this handy little chart, which I found quite useful:
Deutsche Telekom
Engadget Mobile
Cellphone carrier
Yep
No
Distributor of telecom equipment
Yep
No
Likely to be mistaken for T-Mobile / Deutsch Telekom
It’s not often we see a cellphone that we’re actually a little hesitant to pick up, but LG has managed to pull off that considerable feat with its new LG-SH240 slider, which boasts the rather unique characteristic of a keypad that purportedly feels like real human skin. If that hasn’t swayed you away from it, you can also expect the phone to pack a 2 megapixel camera, 3G HSDPA connectivity, and built-in Bluetooth, among other decidedly non-creepy features.
Really, that’s just disturbing.
4 commentsMarch 25th, 2008 at 09:05pmPosted by Eli
Passing the Turing test–the holy grail of artificial intelligence (AI), whereby a human conversing with a computer can’t tell it’s not human–may now be possible in a limited way with the world’s fastest supercomputer (IBM’s Blue Gene), according to AI experts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. RPI is aiming to pass AI’s final exam this fall, by pairing the most powerful university-based supercomputing system in the world with a new multimedia group designing a holodeck, a la Star Trek.
“We are building a knowledge base that corresponds to all of the relevant background for our synthetic character–where he went to school, what his family is like, and so on,” said Selmer Bringsjord, head of Rensselaer’s Cognitive Science Department and leader of the research project. “We want to engineer, from the start, a full-blown intelligent character and converse with him in an interactive environment like the holodeck from Star Trek.”
Currently, Bringsjord is stocking his synthetic character will all sorts of facts, figures, family trivia and personal beliefs gleaned from what he calls his “full-time guinea pig,” a graduate student that has agreed to bare all for his synthetic doppelganger. The synthetic character will be able to converse with other human-controlled avatars about his educational and family history, his personal pastimes, and even his feelings and beliefs.
“This synthetic person based on our mathematical theory will carry on a conversation about himself, including his own mental states and the mental states of others,” said Bringsjord. “Our artificial intelligence algorithm is now making this possible, but we need a supercomputer to get real-time performance.”
The Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations (CCNI) is donating the supercomputer time this fall, when the Turing-test demonstration will open along with RPI’s new Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC). There, the Turing test will be limited to controlling avatars in a virtual world–probably Second Life. Both the synthetic character and his human doppelganger will be operating different avatars. If the human-operators can’t tell who the RPI synthetic character is, then it passes the Turing test.
(…)
Mimicking the behavior of a human-controlled avatar in a virtual world like Second Life is possible, according to Bringsjord, if you craft the necessary algorithms carefully and run them on the world’s fastest supercomputer. Bringsjord’s synthetic-character software runs on the supercomputers at CCNI, which together provide more than 100 teraflops, including a massively parallel IBM Blue Gene supercomputer (the title-holder to world’s fastest supercomputer), a Linux cluster-supercomputer, and an Advanced Micro Devices Opteron processor-based cluster supercomputer.
…[T]he brains of the algorithm running on the supercomputers will come from software called Rascals, for Rensselaer Advanced Synthetic Architecture for Living Systems.
Rascals is based on a core theorem proving engine that deduces results (proves theorems) about the world after pattern-matching its current situation against its knowledge base. Each proven theorem then initiates a response by virtue of having a synthetic character speak and/or move in the virtual world.
“Upon analysis, anything that our synthetic character says or does, is the result of a theorem being proven by the system,” said Bringsjord. “So far, theorem provers have only been used in toy-problems. We are scaling that up to enough knowledge for a synthetic character, which requires a very fast supercomputer.”
A computer that Rockwall County District Attorney Ray Sumrow says he built as a backup server for his office contained documents related to eBay sales, personal e-mails and a cheat sheet for a computer game, an FBI computer expert testified Monday morning.
Rod Gregg, an FBI senior forensic examiner, said 80 percent of the content he found on the computer appeared to be personal rather than work-related.
Mr. Sumrow is being tried in Dallas on charges of forgery, theft and records tampering. As part of the case, prosecutors allege that he used office funds to buy the computer for personal use.
“I would not configure a backup computer in that way,” Mr. Gregg said.
(…)
The computer - equipped with two hard drives, seven fans, high-end video and audio cards, a wireless Internet connection and cables that glow under ultraviolet light - is designed for playing video games, prosecutors say.
Testimony will take place through the week, and prosecutors expect to hear how it was imperative to Mr. Sumrow’s legal work that he, “Frag the crap out of dudes.”
Hey, at least he didn’t blow the money on hookers.
Add commentMarch 14th, 2008 at 07:22amPosted by Eli
Great moments in tech support, courtesy of NYT’s David Pogue:
Caller: So, I’m having a problem with my mouse? It’s, like, squeaking?
Agent: I’m sorry, did you say squeaking?
Caller: That’s right. The faster I move it across the screen, the louder it squeaks.
Agent: I’m sorry—are you pressing your mouse up against the screen?
Caller: Well, sure! There’s a message that says, “Click here to continue!”
(…)
On one call, the caller seemed to be taking an inordinately long time to complete each instruction she was given.
Agent: Ma’am, I can’t help noticing that every time I give you an instruction, it takes a really long time before you get back to me. Is your computer that slow?
Caller: Oh, no, it’s just the stupid, stupid design of this computer. Every time I want to click something, I have to unplug the keyboard to plug in the mouse. And then every time I want to use the keyboard again, I have to unplug the mouse. Because there’s only one jack.
Agent: Ma’am, you do realize that there’s a jack on the keyboard itself? You’re supposed to plug the mouse into the keyboard, and the keyboard into the computer.
Caller: Are YOU KIDDING ME!? Oh, wait a minute—yes, I see it now! Oh, holy cow. That’s going to be so much easier!
Agent: Just out of curiosity, how long have you been using your computer that way?
Caller: Six weeks!
(…)
Agent: Certainly, sir. There are keyboard shortcuts for many of those commands. For example, suppose you want to trigger the Select All command…
[Canadian] Caller: Yes, I use that one all the time! How do I do it?
Agent: Well, you just press Control-A.
Caller (after a pause): Well, that’s not working for me.
Agent: Do you have a text document open in front of you?
Caller: Yes, I sure do.
Agent: OK, now press Control-A.
Caller: I am, but nothing happens.
Agent: The text isn’t highlighted?
Caller: No, there’s no change at all.
Agent: That’s odd. If you press Control-A, the whole document should be highlighted. Try it again. Press Control-A. Tell me exactly what’s happening.
Caller (nearing his Canadian breaking point): Listen. I’m pressing Control, eh? And nothing’s happening, eh?
Those keyboard shortcuts are especially handy if you’re unplugging your keyboard every time you use your mouse.
Add commentMarch 12th, 2008 at 09:09pmPosted by Eli
Megan Hustan bemoans the decline of the phone call as a tool of business. Apparently she learned vital skills while eavesdropping and first made a mark for herself as a placer-of-phone-calls for her boss. Personally, I couldn’t be more thrilled with the phone’s decline. I used to be painfully shy as a person, and while I’ve largely gotten over that IRL I still find it incredibly stressful to talk to people on the phone.
Instead, I email. I SMS. I blog. I Twitter. I write on Facebook wall pages. I use IM and GChat constantly. Anything but the phone. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way, and in the years to come we phone-haters will inherit the earth. I call it progress.
I think I enjoyed chatting with girls when I was 13 or so, but since then I’ve pretty much hated the phone.
I dunno what happened. I used to really like talking on the phone, I’ve had phone conversations that have lasted, 4-8 hours (memory’s hazy, but it was some ungodly length of time like that), but now I start squirming to escape within a few minutes. It’s like my hatred for cellphones has bled over into my attitude towards regular phones.
Some of the comments to Yglesias’ post really ring true (so to speak), especially the ones about how you can deal with e-mails at your own pace, but the phone is kind of peremptory and demands that you drop whatever you’re doing and deal with it.
My own personal pet peeve: People who leave voicemails asking me to call them back, without giving the slightest hint as to what it’s about. I mean, how hard could it be?
I find phones useful for coordinating logistics, and sometimes you do need real-time interaction to hammer something out quickly and nip misunderstandings and verbal dead-ends in the bud, but for the most part I just find them irritating. I guess I’m just a creature of the digital age.
3 commentsMarch 11th, 2008 at 07:27amPosted by Eli
This is a combined synopsis/solicitation for commercial items prepared in accordance with the format in FAR Subpart 12.6, as supplemented with additional information included in this notice. This announcement constitutes the only solicitation; proposals are being requested and a written solicitation (paper copy) will not be issued. Further, offerors are responsible for monitoring this site for the release of amendments (if any) or other information pertaining to this solicitation.
(…)
The contractor shall provide the following items on a firm fixed price basis:
Item 1: Sony PlayStation 3 Game Console - 40 GB Hard Drive
Qty: 300
Sony Part Number 98006
Specifications:
Processor: CPU: Cell Broadband Engine. GPU: RSX.
Main Memory: 256MB XDR Main RAM. 256MB GDDR3 VRAM.
Hard Drive: 2.5″ Serial ATA Drive- 40GB.
I/O Ports: (4) USB 2.0 ports. Slots for Memory Stick/SD/CompactFlash.
Communication: Ethernet (10BaseT/100BaseTX/1000BaseT). IEEE 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi. Bluetooth 2.0 (EDR). Wireless Controller Bluetooth (up to 7).
A/V Output: Screen Size: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p. HDMI: HDMI Out x 1. Analog: AV Multi-Out x 1. Digital Audio: Optical Digital Out x 1. Blu-ray/DVD/CD Drive “read only”.
Accessories: 98040: PS3 Wireless Controller. 98042: PS3 Memory Card Adaptor.
Dimensions: 13.0″w x 3.92″h x 11.0″d.
The Air Force Research Laboratory is conducting a technology assessment of certain cell processors. The processors in the Sony PlayStation 3 are the only brand on the market that utilizes the specific cell processor characteristics needed for this program at an acceptable cost.
Not entirely sure what they have in mind for those Cell processors. Perhaps to provide intensive training for possible real-world combat scenarios like the one shown here:
The United Technologies Corporation made public on Sunday an unsolicited $3 billion bid for Diebold, one of the largest makers of automated teller machines and voting machines.
United Technologies, which first approached Diebold two years ago, initially made the offer in private on Friday. The bid amounts to $40 a share in cash, or a 66 percent premium over Diebold’s closing price on Friday of $24.12, United Technologies said.
(…)
Founded in 1859, Diebold grew as a provider of security technology for financial systems. But Diebold was thrust into the spotlight in the 2004 election, when it was criticized over flawed electronic voting machines in Ohio and elsewhere.
The company has struggled recently with a variety of problems, both internal and external. In January, Diebold said it would restate its financial reports from 2003 through the first quarter of 2007 because of changes to its accounting methods.
Diebold previously disclosed that both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department had made inquiries into the way it recognized certain kinds of revenue.
The global credit crisis that has stung financial services companies has affected Diebold as well. It said last week that it would cut about 5 percent of its work force, or 800 jobs, in anticipation of slowing demand for A.T.M.s.
Diebold also said it expected slower growth in its voting-machines business. It reported $61 million in revenue from those operations in 2007, compared with $195 million in 2006.
United Technologies, based in Hartford, has 225,600 employees spread across businesses like the plane engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney, the helicopter maker Sikorsky and the elevator company Otis. The company has a market value of $69 billion.
I’m sure a defense contractor wouldn’t have any kind of vested interest in seeing Republicans maintain control our government for, oh, forever. Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if election reform made Diebold voting machines illegal?
Even in the cosmos there will be no escaping the ringtone as NASA and the British National Space Centre prepare to trial a mobile phone network for the moon.
Astronauts and robots exploring the moon’s surface will only be a text message away after the system goes live later this century.
The satellite system should ensure a full four-bar signal for lunar colonists living in the base NASA wants to build at the south pole of the moon after 2020.
(…)
Phone calls and other information would be bounced off satellites orbiting the moon for communication between colonists, the moon base, and the Earth.
The joint NASA/BNSC MoonLite mission, due to be launched after 2012, will test a prototype version of the satellite phone network, similar to the Inmarsat network on Earth.
(…)
The early lunar system will be comparable to the “satellite phone network of the 1980s and 1990s on Earth,” said David Parker, director of space science at the BNSC. “The robots and astronauts would be spread out from the base to do exploration and some sorts of comms infrastructure would be needed. MoonLite is taking the first step towards that network.”
The explorer will rely on the expertise of BNSC satellite specialists from Guildford, who have built 27 satellites to date, with NASA making the communications module.
The final system would initially be served by one or two satellites providing coverage of the south pole, with scope for more satellites to be added as a greater range is required.
Sure, there’s always the pukelight for good times around the house, but sometimes you’ve just got to do some damage — which is where The Torch from Wicked Lasers comes in. The 4100-lumen flashlight is being considered for the Guiness Book of World Records, and can ignite paper, light cigarettes, melt plastic, and even fry an egg — but only has a fifteen minute battery life….
I’m not entirely sure what practical purpose this serves, but it sure is impressive.
