Technology

I've been a longtime user of the Tivo, and when my mother got an HDTV, I pushed her to get a PVR. In Canada, the only really workable option for her was to rent the HD-8000 HD PVR from Rogers, her cable company. No Tivo service in Canada, and she wasn't ready for a PC based PVR (And HD ones are still immature.)

Today, for the 2nd time, I lost a wireless access point in the process of putting new firmware into it. The new firmware apparently has some problems, but that's to be expected as a risk.

I called earlier for ideas for uses of ad-hoc wireless card data networks (with 802.11 or similar.) I've been having trouble finding any compelling because I think the space is narrow, especially for the driver. I don't see much data you will want that only other cars around you will have.

A couple of years ago, a series of digital picture frame products appeared. Some took memory cards. One plugged into a modem so grandma could get new grandchild pictures each day without doing things. But they were all super low resolution and high priced.

Panels have come down a lot recently. I see wall mount 1280x1024 panels getting to about $350, wall mountable (though you need power.) That's a resolution I could handle.

The new genertion of WiFi equipment supports WPA (WiFi Protected Access) a version of the IETF's EAP protocol, so that superior key authentication with different keys for each user and the keys are much harder to crack. In corporate networks, the keys can be fetched via RADIUS -- effectively allowing a single login password to provide all network access securely.

When SIP was designed for internet telephony, the feeling was to get rid of the phone number and replace it with IDs with the form of email addresses. E-mail addresses are of course easier to remember and read, though as a downside they tie your address to a domain, which is fine if it's yours, but silly if it's your service provider's.

I have accepted an invitation to join the Board of Directors for the Foresight Institute for Nanotechnology.

Foresight was created by Chris Peterson and Eric Drexler, author of "Engines of Creation" to act as advocate and watchdog in the field of molecular nanotechnology, of which Eric can claim to be the modern father. I've been a senior associate of the institute for some years and spoken at their conference. I will MC the conference coming up next weekend.

I wrote some time ago of how I would like a car's MP3 player/computer to have 802.11, so that when it parks in my driveway, it notices it is home and syncs up new data and music.

In 1965, Gordon Moore of intel published a paper suggesting that the number of transistors on a chip would double every year. Later, it was revised to suggest a number of 18 months, which became true in part due to marketing pressure to meet the law.

Recently, Intel revised the law to set the time at two years.

So this suggests a new law, that the time period in Moore's Law doubles about every 40 years.

I suspect that some time this decade we will see 3 tech trends converge which might make a big difference in the utility of remote real estate, land that currently remains undeveloped because it is so remote.

The first is already here, the internet. Many people can now use the internet to work from anywhere, and both long-range wireless broadband and satellite let you get the internet anywhere. That can give you data, video and phone service as well as the conduit for work.

Many people feel there's a patent law crisis underway. The Patent office has been granting patents that either seem obvious, or aren't the sort of thing that should be patented. Some advance that software shouldn't be patentable at all, just as mathematics is not patentable.

I don't go that far, for reasons I will explain. But I have found a common thread in many of the bad patents which could be a litmus test for telling the bad from the good.

Patent law, as we know, requires inventions to be novel and not obvious to one skilled in the art.

The weekend of May 14th, I will be attending (and MCing for part of) the Foresight Senior Associates Conference. This conference is always a lot of fun, with many at the edge (and beyond) ideas about nanotech, AI, anti-aging and other related topics. It's run by my friends Chris Peterson and Eric Drexler and their Foresight Institute. You may have read Eric's book "Engines of Creation."

In line with earlier thoughts about univeral DC power, let me ask why cell phones haven't standardized on USB (or a mini-USB plug) as an interface?

USB provides power. Not as much as some chargers, but enough to get a decent rate to many phones. And it has data, which can be used for phone control and configuration, speakerphone and headset interfaces, address book sync, ringtone download, memory card download, data-modem connections to PCs and anything else, all with one standard plug.

As you might guess from the prior entry, somebody I know recently had an ICU visit. The hospital had to cut back staff, laying off nurses' aides and hiring some extra nurses, then making them do the former work of the nurses aides (changing sheets etc) because of regulations forcing them to have a higher ratio of patients to nurses. So, more nurses per patient but the nurses end up doing less actual nursing per patient because they are doing the work the aides did. Clever, no?

You may have seen a new proposal for a "mobile" top-level domain name for use by something called "mobile users" whatever they are. (The domain will not actually be named .mobile, rumours are they are hoping for a coveted one-letter TLD like .m "to make it easier to type on a mobile phone.)

Centuries ago, as trademark law began its evolution, we learned one pretty strong rule about building rules for a name system for commerce, and even for non-commerce.

No surprise that after the RIAA started filing lawsuits against people they allege were distributing lots of copyrighted files, a movement has sprung up to build filesharing networks where the user hosting data can't be traced so easily.

Today, on Kazaa, all they need to do is try to find a file, look at what a user is sharing and try to download it. That gives them the IP address of the party in question.

I went around and counted that we seem to have around 30 birick and wall-wart DC power supplies plugged in around the house, and many more that are not plugged in which charge or power various devices. More and more of what we buy is getting to be more efficient and lower power, which is good.

But it's time for standardization in DC power and battery charging. In fact, I would like to move to a world where DC devices don't come with a power supply by default, because you are expected to be able to power them at one of the standard voltage/current settings.

Like many, I am interested in reputation systems, and eBay has built the largest public reputation system. Many have noted how feedback on eBay is overwhelmingly positive -- a 97% positive rating would be a reason to be wary of a seller.

It's also noted that people do this because they are scared of revenge feedback -- I give you a negative, you do it back to me. One would think that since the buyer's only real duty is to send the money that the seller should provide positive feedback immediately upon receipt of that money, but they don't.

For some time I have been musing over the design of an ideal home A/V system using digital technology. Sadly it's not coming, in part because it's illegal under the new Broadcast Flag rules.

To read my design of this system, and the musings of the legality of it and why that presents a problem, see a draft on an Ideal A/V digital system