tech
Microsoft patents <i>sudo</i>
Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. (With a wave of the flipper to Lawson.)
Bleex
Could this Berkeley project be coming to a future-soldier project near you? (Wouldn't that just tick the lefties at Berkeley off...)
Auto theft reducer
DataDots are reducing auto theft in Australia, but have yet to make it in to the U.S. other than on Nissan headlamps.
Pool tunes
I have an Onkyo SE-U55 USB Digital Audio Processor hooked up to my Power Mac G4 Cube. This allows me to run all Cube audio through my Aiwa shelf stereo system (which happens to reside on my desk instead of a shelf). My wife and I have been wanting to get some speakers for use on the patio and by the pool, preferably wireless. We picked up a pair at The Sharper Image, and the set includes a 900 MHz transmitter. The transmitter plugs in to the headphone jack on the front of the Onkyo. This allows us to hear the audio on the Aiwa's speakers as well. So, for the pool party this Saturday, we will have iTunes playing the party mix on the Cube, and getting tunes out by the pool, without having to have the beloved iPod within drenching distance. (Yes, I know this could have been accomplished via Airport Express, but I would still have to have the speakers for outside, and in this instance, the transmitter was included.) But we're not done yet... Now we have Salling Clicker installed on the Cube, and synced with my Sony Ericsson T616 via Bluetooth. I can now control iTunes remotely with my phone, so long as I'm within thirty feet of the Bluetooth adapter hanging off the back of my Cube. The study, where said Cube is located, is in the back corner of the house, just outside of which is the patio and pool. Now I'm thinking of other possibilities. My clock radio has a crappy cassette deck built in to it, but I could put one of the speakers next to my nightstand. A cron job could start playing iTunes in the morning at the appointd time. And before you can say, "No snooze bar," don't forget about the phone! Just hit the appropriate control key for "Pause." This is how technology is supposed to work: enriching our lives, making it easier to accomplish a goal or dream, no matter how simple--or simple-minded--those might be.
Industry modeling
The bulk of Paul Graham's essay Great Hackers is about dealing with and cultivating great hackers in the corporate environment. I found this very insightful as well:
I think what a lot of VCs are looking for, at least unconsciously, is the next Microsoft. And of course if Microsoft is your model, you shouldn't be looking for companies that hope to win by writing great software. But VCs are mistaken to look for the next Microsoft, because no startup can be the next Microsoft unless some other company is prepared to bend over at just the right moment and be the next IBM.
It's a mistake to use Microsoft as a model, because their whole culture derives from that one lucky break. Microsoft is a bad data point. If you throw them out, you find that good products do tend to win in the market. What VCs should be looking for is the next Apple, or the next Google.
I think Bill Gates knows this. What worries him about Google is not the power of their brand, but the fact that they have better hackers. (With a wave of the flipper to Michael.)
War of the worlds
Last month's Wired has a short article with a lot of graphs and charts on the Free versus the Unfree worlds, as it relates to consumers and producers, IP registrations and pirates. It looks at four industries: media, medicine, agriculture, and software. Worth a look.
On buying DVDs
So today at Costco I picked up The Bourne Identity: Explosive Extended Edition, Widescreen, of course. I am seeing a trend in DVD releases lately. Release the movie as soon as feasible on to DVD after its theater tenure. Get the rental money back, then flood the retail market with copies. Nine months to a year later, release another version of the same DVD, only include myriad extras. This was done with the X-Men 1.5 edition, Black Hawk Down, and more recently with Saving Private Ryan. I had been keeping my eye on The Bourne Identity at Target, waiting for it to drop from $19.99 in to their $14.99 or even $9.99 line-ups. The new DVD version was $18.88 at Costco. So the lesson is becoming clear: if you really liked a movie enough to buy it on DVD, wait until the extras-filled DVD is released. Rent it from Netflix in the mean time.
Zimmermann online
Cryptologists and cypherpunks will note Phil Zimmermann's home page. For the uninitiated, Zimmermann is responsible for the wildly popular PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy. You can even purchase PGP on Zimmermann's site, giving him a slice of the pie now owned by PGP, Inc., the company he founded but now only works at as an advisor and consultant.
Scanner lust
Is it just me, or does anyone else notice that the prices for superior-technology scanners continue to drop? Take, for instance, Canon's new CanoScan 8000F. It would be nice if the "F" stood for "FireWire," but we can't always get what we want. (Via MacMinute.)
A man's scooter
Not that I'm in the market for a scooter, but if I were, the Scarabeo 500 would be it. In black and silver, please.
Miscellany
gCount: menu bar application for OS X that tells you when new mail arrives in your Gmail in box. So now you don't have to keep a browser window open all the time to see when you get new Gmail. Of course, if you're like a lot of the Gmailers I know, you're still trying to figure out how much you're going to use Gmail...
I do like the menu bar icon, and how it lights up red when you get new mail.
When your three-thousand dollar suit can actually stop bullets...
I love the retro styling of Tivoli radios, and they now have a Sirius satellite radio model. Their web site, however, needs a lot of help.
Ben Hammersley has been busy:
XHTML Validator to RSS
Google to RSS
FedEx package tracking in RSS
Listing Installed Perl Modules in RSS
Links from MacUpdate, Wired, and Daring Fireball.
Dropload
If I didn't already have my own server space for such usage, Dropload would be quite useful. Don't ruin it for everyone else.
If you have to fly 14 hours
If you have to fly 14 hours, it seems Jimmy Grewal has found a great way to do it. I simultaneously would love to experience such a flight, and would dread doing so.
Has the privatization of space begun?
The big tech news of the week has to be the first step toward space privatization, with the successful launch of SpaceShipOne on Monday. Pilot Mike Melvill took the craft into a suborbital flight 62 miles above the Earth's surface, and returned safely, landing at Mojave Airport, which Dan claims is the first certified and now operational civilian space port. Melvill had the plane in freefall weightlessness for three minutes, releasing, in now-famous video footage, a bag of M&Ms to float around in the cockpit. He landed SpaceShipOne on the same runway it had taken off from, under the launch vehicle White Knight, an hour and a half earlier. The venture is that of renowned designer Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites, and was financed by former Microsoftie Paul Allen for a cool $20+ million. The flight marked the highest altitude ever reached by a non-government aerospace venture, and proves what commercial enterprise can do when left alone. Scaled Composites will now turn its attention to readying SpaceShipOne for another flight, as it pursues the Ansari X Prize, which will award $10 million to the first group to launch a resuable spacecraft with three passengers in to space, return them safely home, then do it again with two weeks. With the same reusable spacecraft. Scaled Composites' endeavor underscores some of what is wrong with NASA and the U.S. government's continued interest in space. The space agency is greatly interested in the SpaceShipOne mission, and is in talks with Rutan and company. There is room for healthy competition and co-opetition in the space race. Our nation has greatly benefited from space missions in the past, and this week's event could foreshadow greater government cooperation with private enterprise as we look beyond our own atmosphere.
Sterling at Microsoft
Bruce Sterling spoke at Microsoft last week, and someone was nice enough to transcribe it for him, since by his own admission, Mr. Sterling had no idea what he said.
World's Fastest Man Remembered
The world's fastest man has left this earth for the last time. William J. "Pete" Knight became the world's fastest man on October 3, 1967, while flying the X-15 hypersonic rocket plane. He died of cancer on May 7. His record-breaking Mach 6.7 (nearly seven times the speed of sound) flight remains the highest speed ever attained by a manned aircraft.
Welcome to the 21st century, Mr. Gates
Six years after Steve Jobs and Apple declared the floppy disk dead, with the release of the iMac, Bill Gates states the same:
In some ways, I think this is the first time I can say that the floppy disk is dead. You know, we enjoyed the floppy disk, it was nice, it got smaller and smaller, but because of compatibility reasons, it sort of got stuck at the 1.44 megabyte level, and carrying them around, and having that big physical slot in machines, that became a real burden. Today, you get a low-cost USB flash drive, with 64 megabits on it very, very inexpensively. And so we can say the capacity there for something that's smaller, better connectors, faster, just superior in every way has made that outmoded. So I suppose now that the tech industry pundits will proclaim Mr. Gates as a tremendous visionary for getting rid of the tiresome floppy disk, when in fact, Mr. Gates' company is one entity responsible for extending the floppy's life. (via RAILhead Design)
Next Windows OS requires non-existent PCs
Microsoft Watch is reporting that the next verison of Windows, codenamed Longhorn, is going to require a PC that doesn't yet exist. That's okay, since Longhorn isn't due until 2006, plenty of time for Mac OS X to steal market share as the Redmond monopoly struggles to catch up. Longhorn will purportedly require "a dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHz; a minimum of 2 gigs of RAM; up to a terabyte of storage; a 1 Gbit, built-in, Ethernet-wired port and an 802.11g wireless link; and a graphics processor that runs three times faster than those on the market today." I'm sure Intel and AMD have 4 GHz CPUs waiting in the wings, but I wonder if we'll see 6 GHz in 2006. Hard drive sizes are increasing expotentially, to be sure, and I can see a terabyte being available in the next two years, but I'm not sure if it will be available in such quantities as these specifications would assume. Gigabit Ethernet is a reality here and now, especially for Mac owners, as is the 802.11g wireless spec, so those aren't any big surprises. In a nutshell, I imagine you will see Microsoft having to blunt Longhorn for lower-end systems than what is currently called for. I simply don't believe that those systems will be available, in mass quantity, by the time the OS ships. (via MacMinute)