...more recent posts
According to Infoworld, Mitsubishi is moving into the mesh network space.
In a nutshell, MOTERAN will allow any client PC or handheld with an IEEE 802.11x card or Bluetooth capabilities to behave as a relay point to communicate with the next terminal down the line and to use this terminal to move packets along to their ultimate destination.
Side note: what's the deal with all the inforworld.com pop up definition links? Seems like a possibly good idea gone awry. At the very least it should be smart enough to not keep offering the same definition for the same word that is repeated in the same article.
There is a RealPlayer for OS X now. I'm not saying you want to install it, but it's there.
Here's the beginners guide to installing things on OS X (executive summary: just keep double clicking):
Download the file. Double click the file. Double click whatever new file results from double clicking the first file. Repeat this until you get to a screen saying you need administrative access (if you get a folder or drive icon along the way - and you will - just double click that to open it, and then double click again on whatever is inside that - probably a graphic that looks like an open box.) On the you need administrative access screen click the lock icon on the lower left, enter your password to the computer (the one you log on with.) Agree to whatever it asks you. Reboot if it insists, but you shouldn't need to.
Update: you don't have to do anything to install RealPlayer. Just download it, and everything should happen automatically (it did for me.) You'll end up with the application on your desktop. Double click to launch it. Nice.
Interesting (well, if you find artificial intelligence interesting) slashdot interview with Dr. Richard Wallace, creator of Alicebot. You can talk to Alice yourself here. And here is the A.L.I.C.E. (Aritificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) website. Don't miss the cool visualizations of Alice's brain.
Early non functional Apple Newton prototypes on eBay. Like a keyboardless emate in a duo 210 body. No, I don't know why you'd be interested either.
Weird. Someone from the Building and Fire Research Laboratory just emailed me about my World Trade Center photos.
...We are conducting an investigation to see if we can learn some lessons from the World Trade Center fire and collapse. I came across the photographs on your site during a WEB search. These images are very interesting with regard to the fire. I have a few questions. Would you be willing to make your images available to our investigation? Are the images at their full resolution, or did you compress them? We are interested in as much detail as possible. If compressed, would it be possible to obtain full resolution versions? Do you have accurate time stamps for the images? Are all of your images posted?...Looking at them again I can't really see what help they could be. On the other hand, what do I know about building and fire research? Guess I'll have to find that DV footage.
Here's two things I've been trying to write more about:
Aside from the fact that it won't happen, why wouldn't Apple open source all the iApps? Is there even a single disadvantage?
And unrelated, in regards to the WTC site reconstruction planning, I propose a fibre optic cable stretching from the top of whatever tower gets built up to a high altitude balloon (or geo synchronous satellite, but I'm not sure they could do that strentgth to weight ratio wise). The whole contraption is a WLAN antenna for a public wireless network. A virtual city commons. They could make it so the fibre thread would light up in different colors depending upon the bandwidth being used. I imagine it looking something like the input/output towers from the movie Tron.
Paul Ford has an interesting magazine article from the future (2009) about Google. Good overview of RDF and how meta data might actually work in the future. Plus Paul Ford wrote it, so it's bizarre in a friendly amusing way. I still laugh when I think about that older piece where he finds the googlebot in his shower. "I am the googlebot! I'm indexing your apartment."
40 Gigabyte Seagate Barracuda ATA/100 hard drive: $74.95!
Looks like Apple will be able get the superdrive into the Powerbook soon. I wonder if I'd ever burn DVD's if I could. Seems like a nice way to archive I guess. Regardless, it's cool for sure, and I want one.
This is my tech lust strategy. I want all the stuff, but of course can't afford it. So I just admit to wanting it, but instead of also admitting that I can't afford it, I just say I'm waiting for some new feature X to appear. When that feature finally does appear, there will be some new X on the horizon to postpone my collision with fiscal reality.
So I'm going to buy a Powerbook. I'm just waiting for the superdrive. Or I'm waiting for airport reception to be improved. Or I'm waiting for a higher pixel density on the screen. This way I'm not poor, I just have very high demands.
Went to see The Fast Runner last night at the Sunshine theatre on Houston. The theatre is a winner for sure, as others have noted. I liked the film too. The long running scene is beautiful.