technology: October 2007 Archives

More good promises from the Obama camp, this time dealing with net neutrality:

Affixing his signature to federal Net neutrality rules would be high on the list during his first year in the Oval Office, the junior senator from Illinois said during an interactive forum Monday afternoon with the popular contender put on by MTV and MySpace at Coe College in Iowa.

Net neutrality, of course, is the idea that broadband operators shouldn't be allowed to block or degrade Internet content and services--or charge content providers an extra fee for speedier delivery or more favorable placement.

Obama's endearing himself to me more and more with these announcements as of late. Net neutrality is an extremely important issue for the survival of the Internet as a whole. The existence of my own site would be threatened without it. Via boingboing.

Professor Orzel of Uncertain Principles writes on the difficulties faced by solar energy production:

As best I can reconstruct it, the argument went like this: In order to meet the energy needs of the US entirely with solar power, we would need to cover 0.2% of the land area of the United States with photovoltaic cells, roughly equal to the area of paved roads in the US. And that's using solar cells with an efficiency of 50%, not too far below the theoretical maximum for a single-layer device.

To give even more context, researchers at the moment are aiming for producing a solar panel with 20% efficiency. Even worse are the production problems faced with providing that many solar panels to feed the energy needs of the US. Solar energy just isn't economically feasible by any stretch of the imagination as an overall solution.

Ars Technica has posted their review of Leopard, the new version of Mac OS X.

They give it their usual thorough review, with both geeky and non-geeky sections of the review to appeal to everyone. Their conclusions:

I started this review talking about expectations. As I've learned more about Leopard, it's become increasingly clear where, exactly, those two-and-a-half years of development time went. Leopard is absolutely packed with improvements. It seems that not a corner of the OS has gone untouched.

Perhaps that's not as clear to the casual user who just sees the surface changes and the major new features in Leopard. But even in that case, there's more than enough to recommend it. if you're wondering whether you should upgrade to Leopard, the answer, as it's been for every major revision of Mac OS X, is yes.

The result is a 17 page long review that points to some of the great under the hood improvements to Leopard casual users will miss, but developers will love (and eventually users will greatly benefit from.) Ars Technica's comprehensive reviews are pieces of writing I always enjoy reading.

AT&T is giving free access to its Wi-Fi hotspots located in an around the areas affected by the California fires. AT&T says this will allow displaced residents to more easily communicate with family and loved ones.

I'm sure this is a move designed to garner positive public attention after their earliler deplorable actions.

Valleywag reports on some terrifying behaviour perpetrated by Facebook employees, who have access to tons of private data and consider the ability to look at this user data a "job perk:"

"My friend got a call from her friend at Facebook, asking why she kept looking at his profile," says a privacy-conscious source at a major tech company. Turns out Facebook employees can (and do) check out anyone's profile. Not only that, but they also see which profiles a user has viewed -- a major privacy violation. If you've been obsessed with a workmate or classmate, Facebook employees know. If Barack Obama's intern has been using the campaign account to troll for hotties, Facebook employees know. Within the company, it's considered a job perk, and employees check this data for fun.

With its growth as a public networking community, and self professed privacy activism, Facebook needs to address these glaring privacy concerns quickly if it intends to remain in the good graces of the fickle online community.

What do you do when you've got a great museum design for Mercedes, but those pesky fire code regulations want you to put in unsightly doors? Why, create the world's most powerful artificial tornado system to suck out all the smoke so you can avoid putting the doors in all together, of course!

Following Apple's record setting quarterly financial results, Apple's market cap has exceeded those of IBM and Intel, now making it the fourth largest computer company behind Microsoft, Google, and Cisco.

This has set off another round of "is Apple becoming the new Microsoft?" discussions on the Internet. I myself fear all this success may go to Apple's head and lead to a breakdown of its excellent customer service.

David Pogue of The New York Times has posted his review of Apple's new Leopard operating system.

The Internet is exploding with the news: Google is rolling out free IMAP support for Gmail accounts.

Finally, I can stop deleting e-mails twice on my iPhone.

Note: it's being rolled out in stages, so if it's not under your settings page, you'll have to wait.

The FCC has begun giving out fines to retailers for selling analogue TV sets without a warning label cautioning consumers that analogue transmissions will cease in 2009:

While the fines aren't massive, they do show that the FCC takes retailer compliance with its rules seriously. Those rules, which went into effect on May 25, 2007, force any company selling analog-only TV sets to display a prominent "Consumer Alert" in "a size of type large enough to be clear, conspicuous and readily legible" that is located on the set itself or immediately adjacent to it. The Alert warns potential buyers that the set will not receive over-the-air broadcasts after February 17, 2009 without a converter box.

These warning labels are extremely important in the crossover to completely digital broadcasting, as they will help clear consumer confusion regarding TV technology. Without them, I can see consumers panicking on February 17, 2009 as their less than 2 year old set no longer works. Retailers like Best Buy are avoiding the whole fiasco by only selling digital TV sets.

I'm dreading the switchover date, as I can already predict a few phone calls heading my way asking why the TV doesn't work.

David Pogue writes on what he finds completely illogical about the tech industry - the questions no one seems to know the answer to, or will not answer for unnamed reasons:

* Who are the morons who respond to junk-mail offers, thereby keeping spammers in business?

* Why do you have to take tape camcorders out of your carry-on at airport security, but not the tapeless kind? Couldn’t you hide a bomb equally well in either one? (Actually, I have about 500 more logic questions about the rules at airport security, but I have a feeling they’ll remain answerless for a very long time.)

* Why don’t public sinks have foot pedals?

I used to wonder about the junk-mail question myself until my very own friend, whom I had pegged as a more tech-savvy individual, called me in panic after clicking on a phishing e-mail wondering what would happen to his computer. Suffice it to say I was disappointed but tried to offer the help I could over the phone.

Due to the fall in the value of the US Dollar against the Canadian Dollar, Sony has now lowered the price of all PS3 models and PlayStation Network downloads to match US pricing.

There's no mention of game pricing being lowered as well. Now we'll have to wait and see if Nintendo and Microsoft will follow suit.

In more Apple news today, Steve Jobs wrote on the Hot News page at the Apple website that Apple will be releasing a true SDK for the iPhone/iPod Touch to allow 3rd party developers to make native applications starting February of next year.

It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.

Seems they'll go with a certification process like most of the rumour sites have been predicting, in which 3rd party developers will submit their apps to Apple for approval before they'll be able to install on the iPhone/iPod Touch.

In case you missed it, Apple has lowered the price of their DRM free iTunes Plus songs to match their normal DRM'd song price - $.99. From their press release:

Apple® today announced that it has expanded its iTunes® Plus offering to over two million tracks and lowered the price of all iTunes Plus tracks to just 99 cents. All iTunes Plus tracks feature DRM-free music with high quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio quality virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings (www.itunes.com). The iTunes Plus catalog is now the largest DRM-free catalog in the world, and includes artists from Sub Pop, Nettwerk, Beggars Group, IODA, The Orchard and many others, along with EMI’s digital catalog.

No doubt the move was fueled due to competition from Amazon's recently launched and popular DRM free music store, which also offers songs at less than $1 each.

Due to a claim filed by a third party, the USPTO has rejected a broad swath of Amazon's one-click patent:

In its Office Action released 9 October 2007, the Patent Office found that the prior art I found and submitted completely anticipated the broadest claims of the patent, U.S. Patent No. 5,960,411.

I had only requested the USPTO look at claims 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 21 and 22 but the Office Action rejects claims 11-26 and claims 1-5 as well!

Via boingboing.