"Imagine a free phone with no guaranteed contract on the back end. That is all in front of us." This was said by Jonathan Schwartz, the CEO of Sun Microsystems, seemingly to ignite some interest in a vision of the future. It sounds attractive, doesn't it? A cell phone with zero cost to the user, with no contracts and enforced terms, etc... Sounds like nirvana, no cell phone bills.
 | Apple iPod touch 32 GB with Software Upgrade asin: B0012JNQYK |
America's robot army covers the growing number of robotic equipment being deployed or developed for use by the American Military.
The scenario being developed is where Robots replace infrantry troops, where networked surveillance equipment is able to track everything moving in whole cities, etc. Rather than place flesh and blood troops at risk, it will be the machines instead.
GoPed's ESR-750 is one of the higher quality scooters available. It's been on the market for 2 years (I think) and has a high reputation among the scooter afficianados.
This video on video.google.com is one man's demonstration of the ESR-750 in action.
Okay, did Luann here get the idea? At tvturnoff.org they're suggesting we can "take control of technology" so that technology doesn't control us. They suggest doing this by excising TV from our life for a week.
I grew up watching television, just like all the kids around me. It was the 60's, and the shift from black and white to color television was just beginning. Yes, there were color televisions available, but they were more expensive so we didn't get one until pretty late in the 60's. And, yes, the installation of the color TV involved a lot of guys fiddling with technology and it might have coincided with the Super Bowl.
Basically any thing with a circuit board needs to be treated as hazardous waste. Yet, often they aren't. e.g. "There's a lot of stuff in a circuit board that you really don't want to ingest. Lead, mercury, cadmium and beryllium all have been shown to have harmful effects on humans." And that's not to mention the plastics in the case, etc.
In AT&T chief, FCC chair clarify on Net neutrality a C|NET News report offers a confused picture from the AT&T CEO. At issue are statements by several telephone company CEO's saying they need to charge large bandwidth users for access to their networks. That is, there are several bandwidth-hungry large and popular Internet services which represent a large amount of the Internet traffic. For example:
This is an issue I've been tracking, namely how well do the VOIP providers provide emergency dialing service. The VOIP providers want to replace the normal telephone companies, so the VOIP providers had better be able to provide all those services. But as I've noted in previous postings, some of the VOIP providers are dragging their feet.
Earlier I wrote about plans by BellSouth and other ISP's to discriminatorially throttle 3rd party Internet traffic. The BellSouth CEO was quoted saying, essientially, those other companies (such as Google) need to pay to use their lines. And that if those 3rd parties did not pay up, they'd throttle however much of their lines those 3rd parties can use.
Here's an interesting question ... suppose police capture a terrorists laptop and they want to get into the laptop to extract plans and other documents? Suppose the laptop is rigged so the file system is encrypted meaning the police can't get through the encryption? Suppose there's a ticking bomb, and the plans for the bomb are in the laptop?
