December 2003 Archives

As 2003 comes to a close, we all start to wonder what will happen in 2004. Below are some predictions from each of the GearBits authors as to what they think we'll see in the coming year. Enjoy!

In 2004, Mitch predicts the following will happen:

1. Apple's AAC music encoding format will gain wide acceptance in the coming year due to the insane popularity of the iPod. With the combination of the excellent iTunes Music Store and the high fidelity and small size of the AAC-encoded files, I think this is a winner.

2. Home electronics that are net-enabled will become commonplace. With home theater receivers such as Onkyo's ethernet-enabled TX-NR801 on one side and media center PCs on the other, the line between audio gear and PC gear is about to get really fuzzy.

3. GPS technology will invade every facet of our lives. GPS is just too cool. There are so many industries that are just beginning to tap its potential. I think we will see GPS-enabled gear start to pop up everywhere and most likely all automobiles sold in the future will have one.

In 2004, Ken predicts the following will happen:

1) PalmOne will release a dream Palm OS6 device that is multi-tasking, multi-input, multi-media, and multi-purpose. It will also have a long battery life and easy portability. (OS6 will definitely happen in 2004, but it's the ideal device that will be a surprise).

2) PalmOne will release the Treo 800, a 320x480 resolution smartphone.

3) Virtual keyboard and screen PDA makes a debut, but it's too expensive for anyone to afford.

4) Windows Laptop with ultra high-speed nonvolatile ROM/RAM memory makes a debut (We will finally have the instant on-off Windows XP laptops).

5) A 12 Mega-pixel digital camera with a full 35mm sensor will debut in the $3000 price range.

In 2004, Sam predicts the following will happen:

1. First Electronic Paper-based PDA Released.

2. Recordable DVD Players Hit Mainstream.

3. Apple Debuts Video iPod.

4. Camphones Take Market Share from Low-End Digicams.

5. Push-to-Talk Phones Follow Camphones as New Consumer Darlings.

6. Nikon Discontinues 35mm Photography Line, Concentrates on Digital.

7. Digital Video Recorders Outsell VHS VCRs.

8. China Announces Manned Moon Landing Program.

9. Sales for J.K. Rowling's New 'Potter' Book Disappoint.

... And, just to make sure at least one predicted headline comes true...

10. Release of Microsoft's Longhorn OS Delayed.

In 2004, Craig predicts the following will happen:

1. PalmSource will release Palm OS 6 to much fanfare. It will be a marked improvment for the operating system, and devices running on OS6 will be available before July. They will rock.

2. Samsung will continue to encroach on Sony's market share in nearly every consumer electronics product area except for gaming.

3. LCD televisions will continue to expand as prices drop, brands multiply, and sizes increase. Plasma TV sales in 2004 will plateau, leading to a year-on-year decline (the first ever) in 2005.

4. Wi-Fi mania will continue to build and someone will announce a low-power, low-range Wi-Fi variant that effectively obviates the need for Bluetooth. The "death of Bluetooth" will be once again announced by the press...and this time they may be right.

5. Bad news will continue to pour forth from the US Congress and White House in terms of poorly conceived, technology-ignorant legislation and cow-towing to powerful media lobbyists (e.g., RIAA and MPAA). Environmental devastation and deregulation will increase at the hands of the Bush administration.

6. Convergence in home entertainment (audio/video) electronics will be hampered by an industry that is unable and/or unwilling to agree on and follow technical standards.

7. Despite technical and legislative solutions, spam will continue to increase as a percentage of total email, but more slowly (due to the convergence towards 100%).

8. There will be peace on Earth (hey, I can dream, can't I?)

Software company Adobe Systems recently opened an online store offering customers digital content in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF).

The Adobe Digital Media Store offers ebooks from publishers such as Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, McGraw-Hill, and Random House, and includes links to digital publications such as BusinessWeek, Popular Science, the New York Times, and USA Today.

Adobe's move is the latest chapter in the two-steps-forward, one-step-back saga of the ebook industry, which last saw Barnes and Noble exit the ebook market.

Based on Adobe Reader 6.0, digital content from the Digital Media Store uses a digital rights management (DRM) scheme that allows users to view paid-for material on desktop computers and Palm OS-based handheld computers.

Good stuff...check it out. You have to register, but it is so worth it.

So you think your 400 MHz wireless GPS-enabled PDA is pretty cutting-edge kit, eh? Well, it's not even close. NASA is working on the PSA, or Personal Satellite Assistant (shown), the next great thing in mobile electronics...at least for astronauts.

NASA's Ames Research Center is collaborating with other institutions and companies to develop a semi-autonomous astronaut's assistant. The PSA would float (due to micro-gravity) and propel itself around inside the space station using small air fans.

About the size of a cantelope, the PSA would record the astronaut's activities by streaming A/V to the space station's central computer via wireless LAN. It would also facilitate communication and perform routine minor tasks for the astronaut. The PSA would also have an array of sensors, so the astronaut could verbally instruct it to "go check the temperature in B module," and, after venturing there on its own, it would report back with the requested information.

This overview at Ames provides some still drawings and some concept movies. This page provides a lot more detail into how the specifics of the research effort are progressing. Finally, this link is to a quasi-academic research paper outlining the conceptual and theoretic foundation of the PSA.

Based on the photos and movies, it kind of reminds me of the training droids in the original Star Wars (the small hovering orbs Luke is using to practice using The Force). This just makes me want to be an astronaut just that much more -- they have all the best toys!

GearBits needs a logo...something better than our plain old font-astic name in the upper left corner.

So, if you have an artistic edge, craft up something that you think might look good and post a comment with a URL to it. Also include your name and email address since if we decide to use someone's logo idea, there will be a sweet prize (something good...haven't decided yet). Besides the prize, the winner will receive unparalleled fame via recognition here at GearBits.

Some guidelines. First, we'll go as long as we have to on this one...no set end date (at least a month). Second, try to make the logo work with the current color scheme of the site. Third, flaming or spinning logos do not get bonus points (although those that flame and spin just might).

So, all you creative types out there, show us what you got.

For over 2 years now, I've relied on D-Link's Wi-Fi (802.11b) products for my home wireless networking. All that time, the performance of my setup was never all that satisfying. I had always chalked it up to the inherent limitations of wireless in an older home. Well, my outlook has changed...for the better.

For Christmas, I received a Netgear WGR614 54g (802.11g) wireless router (pictured). I unplugged my D-Link components (yes, that's plural...more on that later), plugged in the Netgear, whipped through the browser-based setup in about 5 minutes, and was happily back in the game. I was very pleased at the ease of setup, but the real question in my mind was range -- was it better or worse than before?

Before I give the results, I should describe my old setup. As you might recall, I started out with a D-Link DI-614+ 802.11b router. The router alone didn't even cover my family room (down one floor and on the other side of the house), so I added a D-Link DWL-800AP+ range extender. That gave me another 30' of range towards the rear of the house so that the back deck was covered (just barely...signal strength was pretty low).

So, how did the Netgear fare? Amazingly well. The WGR614 provided a usable signal 40 feet beyond the range of BOTH D-Link products COMBINED. Now I have a usable signal clear out in our detached garage! Yes, where I had relied on two D-Link products to provide mediocre 11 Mbps coverage of my house, the Netgear WGR614 provides me with good-to-great 54 Mbps coverage across our entire property.

I'm really stunned. I didn't expect the Netgear to be this powerful. Or, alternately, I didn't expect the D-Link to be so wimpy. Either way, I'm a happy camper. And since the Netgear can be had for well under $90, it seems like a really good bargain. Now to just start upgrading the PCs in our house to 802.11g so I can make use of the increased bandwidth...

With the latest release of QuickTime, Apple is claiming that it has developed the first mainstream media format for rich multimedia content across CDMA 2000 and GSM wireless networks.

QuickTime 6.5 enhances the popular software - already a leading platform for high-quality audio and video over IP, wireless and broadband networks, with over 175 million downloads for the 6.0 version - and enables users to share high-quality multimedia across the two predominant wireless networking technologies worldwide.

The new release supports 3GPP and 3GPP2 standards, including Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR) and Qualcomm Code Excited Linear Predictive (QCELP) audio codecs, MPEG-4 and H.263 video codecs, 3G Timed Text, native .3gp and .3g2 file formats, Movie Fragments, cross-platform Unicode text support, and enhanced DV playback.

In the category of gifts that weren't under my tree this year - whew! - the Archie McPhee company, which bills itself as Outfitters of Popular Culture, is selling an Albert Einstein action figure.

Featuring "realistic dishevelled hair", the 5" tall Einstein action figure is armed with a piece of chalk, "poised to explain relativity or do battle with the forces of entropy."

Other available action figures include Sigmund Freud, "holding a distinctly phallic cigar"; William Shakespeare "with removable book and quill pen"; Ben Franklin complete with plastic kite and key; Pope Innocent III "armed with his formidable power of excommunication and an intimidating scroll inscribed with Latin text"; and, again in McPhee's words, "the coolest action figure since G.I. Joe", Jesus.

In a landmark case on virtual property rights, a court has ordered a web-based game company to return virtual property to a player whose online cache of virtual currency and weapons was stolen.

Li Hongchen, 24, spent the equivalent of $1,210 over two years on his virtual cache for the Chinese game Red Moon, only to find in February that his account had been cyber-burgled via the game's central servers by a hacker.

Hongchen took the game's creators, Arctic Ice Technology Development, to court when they wouldn't help him identify the hacker.

In court, the company stated that Hongchen's property had no real world value, but this December, a District People's Court in Beijing ruled that the company was liable for the player's virtual property because access weaknesses in its servers had allowed the looting to take place.

The result is one of the first legal rulings on virtual property rights, and another example of the blurring line between virtual and real worlds. Some Everquest gamers, for example, already trade game characters and articles for real money through eBay and similar sites.

CNN has a great review of the history of Monty Python, the world's greatest comedy troupe, which has written a group autobiography. The Pythons (St. Martin's/Thomas Dunne Books) was written by the group itself. I expect it may be funny.

I was reminded of the classic Saturday Night Live fake TV advertisement Happy Fun Ball by the "use and care" instructions that accompanied a set of 6 small glass prep bowls that we got for Christmas. Beyond the fact that Duralex appears 25 times in the instructions, some of the more bizarre statements from the 5-page instruction manual include:

• "Duralex...is made of tempered glass. This is actually not the same as ordinary glass." Hence the word "tempered."

• "Duralex, even though particularly resistant by its inherent qualities, is still glass." Wait a minute...you just said...

• "...if subjected to severe impact, can break either immediately or later, without apparent cause." Fun for amateur mentalists wanting to impress their friends.

• "The breaking of the glass may be accompanied by a loud noise. It will break in small fragments, contrary to ordinary glass." I'm still confused...is this glass or not?

• "Use only plastic or nylon sponges." What about sponge sponges?

• "Never stack one glass inside another unless the glass is specifically called "Stackable." :-\

Methinks the manufacturer may be taking his glass bowls a bit too seriously.

Have you ever suffered from writer's block? Whether you are a fiction, non-fiction, or scientific writer, we all had our momemnts in the dungeon. There are many tools out there that try to help you get out of your predicament, but I found a program that is dandy for doing just that. It's called Writer's Blocks. This program uses the index card approach to writing--that is you enter your information into a series of blocks and then you can sort and arrange blocks afterward. So, you don't have to worry about logical flow, organizational structure, and coherence up front. You just write whatever comes to your mind into a block, and if you thought pattern changes, you enter it into another block. This free-flowing approach frees your mind from constraints (writer's block), and it allows you to just write. You can organize the blocks into columns to give more structure up front if you want to as well. The new version now has a great built-in word processor so that you can convert your blocks into a manuscript all in the same program (version 2 lacked this capability). So, this program can help you start your writing and finish it in one program. You can also link the blocks to indicate relationships (a.k.a. mind-mapping) to create a mindmap.

Now, we've been always taught in the past that we should always start our writing with a good outline, but my experience taught me that it doesn't work for me at all. That approach has always constrained my writing, and I have often given up writing while I'm still on my outline stage. Several writing books I have been reading of late touts the effectiveness of free-writing (Writing with Power by Peter Elbow, Writing for Social Scientists by Becker), and I gave this new approach a try. So far, it has done wonders for me in terms of my scholarly and personal writing, and this computer program brings that approach to the electronic medium. So, if you have always wanted to write more, but couldn't for some reason, try out this new approach with Writer's Blocks.

It's no surprise that "The Return of the King," the final installment of "The Lord of the Rings" is racking up $$$ at the box office. According to studio estimates, the movie brought in $73.6 million during its first weekend and $125.1 million since Wednesday when it debuted.

Better yet, the film recorded the global total of $246.1 million during its first five days, breaking the previous record of $202.8 set by the finall installment of "The Matrix."

Now all those numbers are meaningless if the movie doesn't live up to the hype, but it does. I just saw the finall installment over the weekend, and I am thrilled to see that finally someone has done Tolkien justice! Peter Jackson will be remembered forever in posterity as the one who fulfilled the impossible: translating the vision of Tolkien into the big screen. The Ring has been building up momentum ever since the first installment "The Fellowship of the Ring" came out two years ago, and this final installment culminates into a crescendo of finale that is ultimately satisfying. Although the ending has to be compromised in the movie (the original ending by Tolkien is long and winding), it is nevertheless satisfying to see the return of halcyon days, and I, for one, am saddened to see the whole series come to an end. The main theme of "humanity" triumphing over evil through friendship, faith, hope, courage, perserverance, and maturity is both precious and eternal in my book.

The Lord of the Rings has been one of my favorite books, and the movie series is now ranked as one of my favorite movies. If you haven't seen it, go out and see it. What are you waiting for?

I have no first-hand, or even second-hand, experience or knowledge of these products, but a website I came across just now looks like it contains some wicked cool iPod accessories.

Griffin Technology appears to focus exclusively on iPod and Mac hardware accessories, some of which appear to be quite elegant. One example is the PowerMate (shown), a USB accessory that looks like you ripped the volume knob off a high-end stereo amplifier and stuck it on your desk. You can set it up as a volume control or shuttle/jog-dial for video editing.

Another interesting product is the iTrip, an iPod FM transmitter. While you can get the Belkin TuneCast for cheap, the iTrip both looks good and doesn't have any dangly cords to worry about.

Of course, I'm judging these things by their pictures, something you're not supposed to do.

The Register has a preliminary mini-review on the new e800 Pocket PC from Toshiba (shown). The most, if not only, notable feature on the e800 is its full VGA (480x640) screen, which has double the resolution of the next-highest resolution PDA screens (the 320x48 screens found on some palmOne and Sony Palm OS devices). However, the verdict isn't all good:

"The high resolution display is a bit of a mixed bag. The standard Pocket PC applications don't support the it, and nor, actually does much else. Toshiba provides the ClearVue Suite from Westtek, which allows you to look at, but not work with, Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents and a range of image formats. Reading Word documents without scrolling horizontally requires them to be rendered to a very small font indeed - it's not advisable to do this for long periods and some people will find it simply too hard on they eye to bother with at all.

It's also irritating that you need to effectively soft reset every time you want to switch resolutions. Finally, in standard 240 x 320 the display looks rather blocky due to relatively large pixel size. In short, I wasn't actually as impressed by the high resolution as I had expected to be. I can see, though, that with increased application support, landscape viewing modes, and good WLAN access to web and other content, that this feature could one day become something very useful indeed."

That's too bad. It sounds like the same type of growing pains that Palm OS devices experienced when Sony and HandEra pushed the limit of Palm OS screens past 160x160 a few years ago. However, given Microsoft's very tight-fisted approach to permitting vendor-driven changes to the Pocket PC platform, support for Toshiba's VGA screen may be virtually non-existant for the foreseeable future. Too bad, too.

So, 2003 is almost over. I know everyone is busy buying gifts and attending holiday parties, but this might also be a good time to think about how your year went. Was 2003 a fruitful, enjoyable, and rewarding year for you? Well, for someone who writes about Palm OS topics, 2003 was indeed a busy year. It was a little more than a year ago that both Sony and Palm released the first Palm OS5 device, but they and other Palm OS licensees kept me busy during the year. So, what are some of the highlights of this year? Let's review PalmCorner's top 10 memorable moments in 2003.

1. Palm broke the 16MB Memory Barrier. Now the Tapwave Zodiac features 128MB of RAM, and even the low-end Palm Tungsten E features 32MB of RAM. For years, we've been tied down to having only 8 to 16MB of RAM, but when the Tungsten C came out with 64MB of RAM, Palm rewrote the book on this front.

2. First built-in Wi-Fi in a Palm OS device. The Palm Tungsten C showed us how to design a device that both web and battery friendly. The Tungsten C set the new standard for web enhanced device (excellent screen, useable keyboard, built-in Wi-Fi, and battery life).

3. Fast Intel X-scale 400MHz chips. The Tungsten C and the T3 now boast the fastest chip ever in the Palm OS device. Bring on more speed.

4. Built-in GPS in a Palm OS device. Garmin released the IQue that has built-in GPS capability. Those of us who needed the navigation system, our prayer had been answered.

5. First built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in a Palm OS device. Sony released the UX50 that has both wireless capabilities. The jury is still out on this device, but if you want to have it all including the built-in camera and the keyboard, this is it.

6. Lower price barrier for Palm OS5 devices. The new Palm Zire 21 features 126 MHz TI OMAP 311 ARM processor and 8MB of RAM. Who would ever thought this is going to be possible about a year ago? Kudos for palmOne for making this possible.

7. Tapwave Zodiac. The gamer's paradise. Need I say more?

8. Palm Tungsten 3. The 320 x 480 Virtual Graffiti screen (plus hardware driven landscape mode) is awesome. Sony has had the 320x480 screen for awhile, but Palm got it right the first time.

9. Not having to listen to Pocket PC users boasting about their technological superiority over Palm OS devices.

10. GearBits, the most interesting and creative web site for technology-related topics, was launched, and PalmCorner finds a new home.

Well, that's it. I'm sure you have your own favorite or memorable Palm OS moment(s) in 2003. Let us know what yours is.

CNET News.com has a really intriguing article that outlines and illustrates several of the new services that are springing up related to tracking people and things in real time.

These services rely on a variety of technologies. Some cellular phones and service providers offer this function. Other devices rely on proprietary equipment to broadcast GPS location information. The data can be quite detailed, including speed, location (to within a few yards), and time (to within a minute or two).

The temptation to "spy" on family members and co-workers seems too much for some folks. Despite their best intentions and most sincere concern, I'm not sure any of us would like the idea of being the one tracked. Possibly more disconcerting is the fact that it's always possible that your location information is being used by people who shouldn't.

While I think the potential value for these services is extremely high in the right applications, the potential for abuse (which could lead to very bad things) seems frighteningly high. I guess it all goes back to the question "Is my present location private information?" Interesting, at least in a philosophical sense.

ExtremeTech has an interesting article about how marketers often try to claim that a new device is "easy to operate as a TV." Well, that doesn't really mean much any more, and as home A/V electronics resemble PCs more and more, we may be in for a backslide in terms of usability.

"In the past year, I've added two different home theater setups in my house and played around with a lot of home theater equipment of various types -- ranging to entry-level Home Theater In a Box kits to high-end receivers and media recorders. What I'm struck by is just how painful most of these are to install – and how much more of a pain they are to use."

In the late 1980's, an academic researcher named Fred Davis, along with some colleagues, published a simple theory, the "Technology Acceptance Model". That model posits that two factors will greatly influence the propensity of someone to adopt, or begin using regularly, a particular technology.

Those two factors are A) perceived usefulness (i.e., how much benefit does the technology offer to the user), and B) perceived ease of use (i.e., how simple and/or intuitive is the technology). Usability experts like Jakob Nielsen have long decried the ever-complexifying of web and user interfaces in software. The same complaints can obviously be made about hardware, as the ExtremeTech article plainly points out.

So, what can we do? Well, maybe it's time for industry to start listening to researchers a bit more. While it seems perfectly obvious now that usefulness and ease of use should influence someone's decision to adopt a technology, judging from the store shelves and marketing messages, that insight hasn't found its way thoroughly into the world's top consumer electronics makers.

I have an email address that has been active since the mid-1990s. That was back when it was unheard of to post anything commercial to USENET and there was no such thing as spam on the computer unless you were a messy eater. Email addresses were posted in the open in those dawning days of the new Internet frontier. That has come back to haunt the folks who have been "here" for a while.

My old email account receives 99.999% spam and the host it resides on does not filter at the mail server level. I have taken to not monitoring it for months and then opening the firehose just to see what crawls out.

Today I downloaded nearly 10,000 emails and started playing "The Spam Game" with them. Using the search tool, I tried to come up with the most common words that might reside in spam subjects. Using my total messages and my find hits, I could get a pretty good running percentage score.

OK, so I had some spare time today...

It seems that Microsoft, that behemoth juggernaut of the tech world, may currently be at its most vulnerable in quite some time. While vulnerability is a relative term -- Microsoft still has more in cash than some countries' entire GDP -- some strategic and market threats have combined to possibly create real concern for Microsoft's top management.

• Real Networks' Lawsuit threatens to reinvigorate the antitrust and antimonopoly landslide against the Redmond company here in the US.

• A host of other lawsuits, most related to anticompetitive behavior over the years, have forced the firm to burn up valuable cash and have damaged its reputation, especially in Europe.

• Additionally, some recent judgments, such as the win for Sun regarding Java, have forced Microsoft to abandon support for older products. This may force some enterprise and personal users of Windows 98 and 95 (which account for 39% of corporate users) to look at alternative products rather than simply update to the latest version of Windows.

• Alternatives to Microsoft's monopoly products, Windows OS and its Office suite, continue to gain credibility and technical robustness. Recent adoptions of OpenOffice.org, a competitor to Microsoft Office, Sun's Linux-based Java Desktop System (also just written up in Wired), and Munich, Germany's decision to dump Windows for Linux are all examples that Microsoft's strangle-hold on world IT may be beginning to wane...at least a bit.

• As spam, viruses, and other net-based security threats mount, Microsoft's record as having a rather relaxed attitude towards security in its products makes it potentially vulnerable to competing products.

• Finally, while the world is still very much PC-based, the trend is distinctly away from beige boxes. The growth of specialized computers and converged devices make it harder and harder for a single company to be all things to all people. Dedicated competitors are then able to nip away at the fringe of Microsoft's customer base as those customers' needs change more quickly than Microsoft can adapt its products.

Do I think that "market forces" are correcting what the antitrust lawsuits couldn't (or didn't)? Not really...at least not soon. While I certainly don't want Microsoft to go away entirely, I would like greater diversity and balance in the industries in which it competes. What do you think...is Microsoft more vulnerable right now than it has been in years, or is it just business at usual for Redmond?

From Slashdot comes a story about Sony's new "humanoid" QRIO robot. At about 18" tall, they're amazingly compact, yet they are still able to literally run (i.e., both feet off the ground at once). That link contains movie clips and photos.

Particularly stunning is this movie of four QRIO robots doing traditional Japanese dance. While they're not interacting with each other or their environment, Sony's QRIO seems to definitely set a new standard for self-contained bipedal robot mobility and agility.

I've always been a big fan of the Brit sense of humor. The average bloke on the streets of London is funnier than our best stand up commedians. Case in point with this eBay auction for the world's junkiest motorcycle. This guy deserves a million hits for a presentation like this.

Techdirt has a nice blurb about Ithaca College's new policy instructing professors to no longer use any content on the basis of "fair use," a well-established and perfectly valid loophole in our current morass of copyright law.

"While most such course packs do involve some approved material, much of it is often used on a fair-use basis - but university administrators are afraid of getting sued. Thus, they're going to tell professors that they need to license every last bit of content they use. This means that (a) professors will ditch a lot of materials, because they don't have time to get approval from everyone or because the publisher wants too much money to include a single paragraph and (b) the course packs will be much more expensive with less useful stuff for students."

Just today, I dropped off a huge coursepack full of copyrighted materials to our local bookstore for duplication and sale to my students next quarter. 18 out of 22 items in the coursepack will require authorization and the addition of some licensing/reprinting fee passed onto the students.

While I totally agree that creators of content should get paid for the use/enjoyment of that content, there needs to be a better way. Tracking down the 6 to 8 copyright holders of the materials in just my coursepack alone will take someone at the bookstore half a day, I'd imagine. If there were a better system in place, it could be done quicker and cheaper than it is now. Who knows...maybe if Congress stopped extending copyrights and instead paid more attention to how they should be operationalized, we'd all be better off.

[Hmm...I hope my quoting that Techdirt article falls under fair use.]

The last 100 years of flight, ushered in by Orville and Wilbur Wright on December 17, 1903, saw man break the sound barrier, visit the moon, and even leave the solar system.

The next 100 years of flight, as envisaged by an article in the Economist, promise to be just as astounding.

If things come to pass as the reviewer expects, the skies of the future will be teeming with unmanned aerial verhicles, planes that morph into optimal flight shapes using memory materials, economically viable supersonic transport, planes powered by new sources of power, and - yes, people have been predicting this since forever - the personal air car.

December 17, 1903 -- Kitty Hawk, NC. Orville and Wilbur Wright, two brothers from Dayton, Ohio, gave a gift to mankind that has taken us beyond our wildest dreams. Thanks, guys.

In a commentary at CNET, a Forrester "senior analyst" claims that the only viable solution to saving email from spammers is to charge everyone to send any email.

This is wrong, wrong, wrong.

First, it punishes the masses for the actions of a minority of miscreants. While there are certainly precedents for doing this, why make the same mistake now with email?

Second, spam really doesn't cost that much relative to the benefits of email, or companies would have stopped using email as a means of corporate communication. Spam email just doesn't create as much of a problem as the popular press wants you to believe. If companies were truly worried about their bandwidth usage, they'd stop giving Internet access to every desktop across the company (downloading a single graphics-intensive webpage, such as CNN.com's homepage, is about equivalent to downloading a hundred emails...and don't even start to think about employees streaming video onto their desktops for personal reasons).

Third, the economics of charging for sending email just don't make sense. The cost more to develop, implement, and operate a system that can accurately track and bill email senders is just prohibitive. The concept of micro-payments is attractive, but it has so far eluded even the best attempts at implementing it.

Finally, and most importantly, it would not stop spam. Charging for email would only happen within this country, whereas a lot of spam, if not most spam, comes from outside the realm of the US's legal influence. Moreover, it wouldn't change the fact that spoofing spammers' identities would still be really easy. How do you "bill" some unknown kid in China for sending his 10,000 emails?

This approach would doom email -- it would simply kill it outright. Since spammers would be the only ones motivated enough to circumvent the billing system, spam would only increase as a percentage of all email even faster than if the current system were left in place. Eventually, the only ones sending email would be huge corporations (internal emails only, so they don't get charged) and spammers, making the whole system just worthless to Joe and Jane User.

Forrester, once again, gets it wrong. When will the world stop listening to these guys??

Wi-Fi Planet has a story about the Media Player/Recorder (MP/R), a forthcoming device from PRISMIQ (huh?). In a nutshell, think of it as a "distributed TiVo" -- a DVR that relies on using space on hard drives of PC's scattered throughout a wired/wireless LAN for recording TV or watching stored media. Read the full article if the concept isn't clear.

While reading this, I thought, "no way will that ever be successful." Why do I think that? Well, if the DVR is reliant on both the network and one or more PCs in the home, then everything has to work correctly for the DVR to function. If a PC needs to be rebooted or locks up (gee, that never happens) or a router needs to be reset or the WLAN gets bogged down by a microwave oven or other interference, then the DVR is disrupted.

Since TV streams in real time, if even a 5-minute interruption happens, the recording is, for the most part, shot. I can't imagine most geeks' spouses being willing to live with that risk, especially when self-contained DVRs are relatively inexpensive (no more so than this MP/R) and very reliable (at least my TiVo is). Then why does PRISMIQ think this a better solution? Being able to stream/store content in distributed fashion would be a cool additional functionality for a DVR, but IMO it's certainly not a substitute for local, dedicated storage.

I don't usually post things I receive in "friendly spam" (you know, those circulating emails you get from well-intentioned friends and family), but this is worth mentioning.

80's Lyrics Quiz: People are What? is a not-so-short online test of your knowledge of 80's pop song lyrics. Fill in the blanks, hit "score it, baby" and your quiz is graded immediately for you. Most entertaining, perhaps, are the quippy comments when you get answers wrong (as you inevitably will).

I scored a 62.4 -- not too bad for someone whose wife claims that he can't remember his own name. Had there been extra credit for artist and song title, I would have done better...I swear.

Three years ago while waiting for a flight to take off or land or board or get de-iced or some other air travel inconvenience, I noticed the guy next to me was reading a book with an interesting name, "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West" by Gregory Maguire. A conversation ensued and he told me how wonderful the book was and that I just had to read it. I did a few days later and Wicked instantly became one of my all-time favorite books.

The Wicked Witch of the West was my ultimate horror when I was a little kid. She absolutely scared the holy crap out of me and I just loved it. I can remember watching The Wizard of Oz on our old black and white TV with my hand perched on the channel dial. When the Witch made an appearance, I had to quickly change channels and then switch back and forth a little bit at a time. I just could not handle her in large doses and those small doses gave me nightmares for several days. What an awful woman! I was doubly freaked when I first saw her on a color TV and learned that she was green. Ick.

Maguire's book put a wonderfully woven history behind her and creatively explained a lot of the things that I had always wondered about her. Like, where did those flying monkeys come from? Why is she so green? What's she so pissed about? What's up with those slippers?

Now, my favorite book is a musical on Broadway starring Kristin Chenowith as Glinda and Idina Menzel as Elphaba the Wicked Witch of the West. It's playing at the Gershwin in NYC. If I can figure out a way to get up there and see it, I'll report back.

So you couldn't quite afford the Aquada convertible that transforms into a speedboat? Well, at £70 ($100), here's a James Bond gadget you can finally afford.

The JB1 is a digital camera camouflaged as a Zippo-type lighter, and the first official, licensed 007 camera. Flip the cap, click to shoot, and close. Your nemesis is none the wiser.

With 8MB onboard memory, the JB1 is capable of holding over 300 images (at 320x240 resolution), using ST Micro technology to provide detailed images with small file sizes. LiteSync technology allows full depth-of-field images under fluorescent lighting, without a flash.

The JB1's surveillance mode enables time-elapsed photography at up to 90 minutes apart. Eavesdrop on suspects by capturing audio clips up to 12 minutes in duration, or capture audiovideo clips at up to 30 fps. Made by Digital Dream, the JB1 is USB-compatible, and powered by a single "AAA" battery.

About the only thing lacking in this ensemble - and possibly a fatal flaw, if you're ever approached by Miss Pussy Galore for a light - is a working cigarette lighter.

Tight Audio Systems has updated their specs for the forthcoming "TAZ I" portable multimedia system (see GearBits overview of the TAZ I here), shown above.

The big surprise is that it now appears to be specified as incorporating a removable/swappable cartridge-based hard drive. Tight's hard drive module is shown below. With claims that the audio cassette-sized HD will be available in sizes from 20 GB to 80 GB, this could be one very yummy multimedia player.

Plus, Tight's specs now also include a modular MP3 player: "About the size of a domino, mini-taz is a fully functional, stand-alone mp3 player that docks (and disappears) into the left hand side of TAZ I." Mini-taz also serves as the TAZ I's SD/MMC reader slot, so it itself is expandable.

Tight's website claims availability in early 2004. Let's hope they're on schedule.

I went slightly insane last night while trying to figure out why Windows was sorting some directories in a particular way. To illustrate, try this mental model:

Imagine two directories. One is named '09_temp' and '010_temp' is the name of the other. If the list of these two directories is sorted ascending by "name" (e.g., 'cat' would come before 'dog'), which directory would be listed first, 09_temp or 010_temp?

Well, I would have guessed 010_temp. Why? Well, the first character ('0') is the same for both dirs. The second character, however, is a '1' for one dir and a '9' for the other dir. When I was taught how to alphabetize things as a youth, I was told that '1' comes before '9'.

However, in the world of Windows, this ain't so. It seems that Windows has a bug (or a feature, depending on your point-of-view) that makes it treat directories and files that begin with numbers in a special way.

In the above examples, the dir named '09_temp' is viewed as beginning with the value 9 -- yes, 9, as in 1 greater than 8. Similarly, the other dir, 010_temp, is treated as if it begins with the value ten (yes, 10). So, in the above case, a value of 9 is less than a value of 10, so 09_temp would be listed above 010_temp when sorted alphanumerially ascending.

OK, is this documented somewhere..anywhere? Or, more to the point, what idiot at Microsoft thought that deviating from standard sorting precedence was a good idea? Jeez.

Follow-up: It seems that this practice is new for Windows XP (Windows 2000 uses common logic), and is documented in this MS Knowledge Base article. At least it's easy to change it...all I need to do is create a few registry keys, modify half a dozen settings, and reboot. Wow...how much more convenient could it be? </sarcasm>

I drove up to the ATM at a local bank and...stared at a brick wall. Huh? Then I looked up...waay up. There was the ATM...about 3 feet above my car's window and well out of reach.

Apparently, somebody at this bank figured that everyone must be driving 7-foot high SUV's now. Well, guess again, buddy boy -- cars still outnumber SUV's by a healthy margin, and will for the foreseeable future.

Interesting to note that someone else also recently had this same (crappy) experience. Wake up, bank -- lower your freaking ATM back down before all us car drivers start finding other places to do our banking.

If you, or someone you know, is in the market for a nice, basic PDA, this might be the best deal going: a new Sony Clie SJ-22 (high-res 320x320 color with Memory Stick expansion slot) for $79. Renee sent in instructions on how to get this deal:

1) Go to Staples.com and search for item# 504989
2) Add the PDA to your cart.
3) Add coupon 76595 for $20 off.
4) Receive your SJ22.
5) Send in $30 rebate from Staples.
Final Price = $79.99 with free shipping

Expires today (12/14/03). Enjoy.

Reports say that Saddam Hussein has been arrested in Iraq, hiding in a farmhouse cellar near Tikrit. Stories are available at CNN and MSNBC, among other places.

Not typical GearBits fare, I know, but it seemed important.

William H. Gates III is the world's richest man, according to the annual ranking by Forbes. Warren E. Buffet comes in a close second.

But have you ever wondered, with the annual income you're earning, where you would come in on one of those lists?

On the Global Rich List, you have a chance to find out.

I just spoke to a customer support person from T-Mobile and she confirmed that they are able to accomodate the Treo 600 smartphone in their system.

While you can't yet buy the Treo 600 directly from T-Mobile, if you acquire one elsewhere (e.g., directly from palmOne), a T-Mobile SIM card can be obtained at any store and the phone will work with your T-Mobile account.

Boing Boing linked to a wickedly cool site: James Howard Kunstler's Eyesore of the Month. James takes a no-prisoners approach to pointing out how the great banality and poor taste evident in a lot of American architecture is representative of failures and disturbing trends in other aspects of life in this country.

In one of my favorite pages from July of 2003, James posts this under the photo of a Denny's with an enormous American flag in front of it:

   Do you have this problem -- you walk out of the Target store at 4:30 in the afternoon after a day of shlepping and chaufeurring and. . . you forget what country you're in??
   Where the fuck am I??
   Portugal??
   Lichtenstein??
   Oh, thank God, there's the American flag. Whew, that's a load off my mind. Now I can drive eleven miles across the metroplex and pick up the kids at Soccer World.
   Actually, I have a theory about the promiscuous deployment of Old Glory all around the tilt-up utopia of Parking Lot Nation. A flag is a sort of supernatural totem, meant to protect the bearer against animadversion and harm. We're trying to distract ourselves from the spectacle of ugliness and banality that we've created, and protect our sensibilities against the suspicion that we have become a land of wicked, self-destructive slobs.
   Happy Independence Day.

Genius. Enjoy...

TeleRead has an interesting story about how there may be new life in the oh-so-quiet e-book industry. A collection of large publishing and related companies, lead by Sony, plans on using OpenMG, Sony's proprietary digital rights management (DRM) technology.

"Remember, Sony isn't just a hardware company. It's into music and other content. Time for trust-busters throughout the world to look very closely at connections between hardware and content--and make sure that companies don't abuse consumers?"

The initiative also involves E Ink, the main source of innovation in electronic ink and "smart paper" technologies. This could be a huge coup for Sony, which might just wind up having a major say in how this foundling market develops over the next decade.

Give it a read and tell me what you think.

Speaking of virtual people, the website for the first ever virtual beauty pageant - Miss Digital World - is now open, and accepting entries.

Franz Cerami, creator of the pageant, said "Miss Digital World is the search for a contemporary ideal of beauty, seen through virtual reality."

The outpouring of interest after the first announcements meant that the pageant - aimed at digital artists, advertising agencies, movie production companies and videogame developers - has pushed back several entry deadlines to December 20.

Prospective contestants should note that models "should not have taken part - not even as extras or cameos - in pornographic films, shows or plays nor have made statements...in any way out of tune with the moral spirit of the competition." (Too bad... it would have been nice to see Lara Croft on that catwalk...)

Contestants will be programmed to parade along a virtual catwalk, surrounded by virtual guests, with a virtual emcee presiding over the event. The winner - determined by votes over the Internet - will be crowned at a real world celebration in November 2004.

What has roughly 5,000 legs and is over 6 city blocks long?

Give up? The answer is the opening day line to get into the Ginza, Tokyo Apple store, the first in Japan.

Don't believe me that there were, like, 2,500 people in line on November 30th just to get into a retail store? Then watch the video.

But I warn you -- even after you watch it, you still won't believe it. I'm still in shock.

I was perusing this week's copy of TWICE (This Week In Consumer Electronics) and I noticed a few stories that seemed interesting in that they contained info I hadn't heard before. So, I'll summarize.

First, there's a large story about how sales of home audio (components, speakers, etc.) are in a major slump right now -- electronics retailers and custom installers just aren't selling much right now. Why is this? They suspect that the huge emphasis on innovative and large displays (DLP, plasma, LCD, etc.) is partly to blame (after all, consumers don't have endless checkbooks), but they also believe that the lack of innovation regarding compressed/digital audio (to attract younger buyers) and networking (part of integrated solutions) are also to blame. Sounds right to me -- there's just not much innovation going on in home audio right now...it's all in displays.

Second, there's an interesting pair of bar charts. While I can't reproduce them here, they provide the sales of LCD flat-panel TV's and plasma televisions from 1Q02 through 3Q03. I've long thought plasma was a neat, but interim and short-lived, technology -- something that was here for only a brief period until something significantly better came along (e.g., 8-track and DAT). Well, the numbers finally seem to be bearing this prediction out. Quarter-on-quarter growth of LCD sales during 2003 was 30% to 57% -- impressive numbers! On the other hand, during the same period, plasma saw only 2% to 7% growth. Granted, plasma sales last quarter were $438 million, versus $274 million for LCD, but the trend clearly shows LCD trumping plasma in 2004 and beyond. Unless something happens to either displace LCD or greatly improve plasma's performace or value, LCD will be the new king of the flat-panel display. For how long is anyone's guess -- maybe SED will rise up strong.

Finally, there seems to be a huge shortage of DLP- and LCD-powered rear-projection TV's. A Tweeter (retail chain) manager says that Samsung's DLP line is "turning very quickly." The root causes of the shortage appear to be overly conservative ordering by the retail chains as well as higher-than-expected demand by consumers. Could it also be the fact that there's finally enough HD programming on to interest a significant number of folks (e.g., the Super Bowl)?

Interesting stuff.

Wi-Fi Planet is reporting that SanDisk sent out an email explaining the reasons for the delay in their issuing Palm OS drivers for their Secure Digital (SD) Wi-Fi (802.11b) adapter cards (shown).

While we've covered SanDisk's delay here at GearBits before, there are several aspects to SanDisk's statements that seem a bit odd. For example:

"SanDisk goes on to say it and SyChip have "invested considerable time and resources into developing Palm OS 4.1 drivers" but that in the long run providing the drivers will not be worthwhile. The older hardware, they say, isn't fast enough to take advantage of the higher bandwidth speed of 802.11b, and models that lack networking software (like the Palm m500) would need upgrades that would require too much technical expertise by the end user."

Older hardware isn't fast enough to take advantage of Wi-Fi? That's simply untrue. I had Wi-Fi on my HandEra 330 by adding on a Symbol Wireless Networker Compact Flash Wi-Fi adapter. The 330 had a 33 MHz Dragonball CPU and it was more than able to use Wi-Fi in a meaningful way (e.g., instant messaging, IRC, and web browsing on mostly text sites were all very usable). Even running VNC on it was feasible (albeit a tad slow). So, I don't buy this story -- my suspicion is that they just weren't able to finish the drivers and finally said "screw it."

"The company blamed delays in the Palm 5.x drivers for the SD Wi-Fi card on proprietary changes to the OS that product makers can introduce (SanDisk will have to make device specific changes) [and] electrical issues on some devices that couldn't handle the SD Wi-Fi card (the Treo 600 is mentioned specifically)..."

Who said SanDisk had to support ALL devices running Palm OS 5 when the drivers are released? You couldn't just support some Palm OS 5 devices (just like you're supporting only some Pocket PC 2003 devices)? Geez, guys, make a business decision and see what devices you need to support, based on the installed base, to make the required profit on your development costs (it's called an "ROI calculation" in case that's a foreign idea to you). My hunch is that if you supported just a few devices (e.g., the Tungsten T line and the Zire 71 from palmOne, perhaps also the Tapwave Zodiac), you could easily recoup your dev costs and make a nice profit.

SanDisk also claims that the necessity of negotiating a new OS licensing agreement with PalmSource (since it was spun off from Palm, Inc.) has hindered its ability to release drivers. Knowing what I know about PalmSource, I might believe a delay of a month or two, but not the six-month delay that SanDisk is now defending.

Anyway, the upshot is that SanDisk has really fallen down on its promises. Given the way it has handled this all so far, I'm not sure I'd buy an SD Wi-Fi card from them now even if drivers were available. What about you? Are you troubled by this whole debacle, or is it just a little glitch that we'll all forget about in 12 months?

Thanks to Gizmodo for the link.

Before you think - Antimatter? What are they thinking? - consider that the common medical imaging technique called PET, or positron emission tomography, already employs the antimatter equivalent of electrons to detect tumors.

Now researchers working at CERN have found that another antimatter particle, the antiproton, has potential not merely to detect cancer, but to effectively treat it.

At CERN, researchers have been studying how antiproton beams interact with living cells. As expected, antiprotons strip electrons off atoms in the cells, a process called ionization. The process rips the host molecules apart, killing the cell they are in. If the energy of the antiproton beam is chosen carefully, it can be aimed precisely at a tumour within a human body.

A proton beam could be used for ionization just as well, but when the particles in an antiproton beam eventually come to a stop at the focus, they drift until they collide with ordinary protons. This collision results in the annihilation of both particles in a matter-antimatter reaction, releasing a huge amount of energy (in the context of a single cell)....which is much more effective at killing selected cells than simple ionization.

CERN scientists estimate that routine clinical application of matter-antimatter annihilation to cancer treatment should be a reality in 10-15 years.

The folks over at Motley Fool often have some sage advice for investors. Alyce Lomax of MF believes that TiVo, the company, is still quite viable and not in as bad a shape as some pundits would have you believe:

"Competing DVR products from a company like Comcast, easily accessible with service fees bundled onto a bill that already comes every month, could stunt TiVo's growth. However, right now it seems there's no need to panic; TiVo's got a whole lot of people evangelizing it, and the DirecTV deal provides a great deal of comfort. It still brings millions of potential subscribers to the table, who may very well all talk up the power of TiVo."

I really wish the cable operators would adopt TiVo-powered DVRs instead of the clunky devices like the Scientific Atlanta 8000 that some currently offer. While tech junkies are usually pretty fickle since they want the latest and greatest, I've yet to come across someone who had TiVo and then got rid of it for something else. I'm sure it's happened, but it's definitely not very common (yes, TiVo is that good).

I remember when watching Lorne Greene battle Cylons was a weekly feast for my 9-year-old senses. The original Battlestar Galactica series, which aired 1978-1979, was high-quality science fiction...at least that's the way I remember it. Sure, it got pretty bad the last several episodes, but hey, don't most shows?

Well, SciFi, the cable channel, has been touting the new Battlestar Galactica, its two-part mini-series that picks up 40 years after the previous series ended...sort of. It's a bit complicated, and no quick summary could accurately describe the relationship between the two series, but it's enough to say that the premise is pretty much the same: humans are good guys, Cylons are bad robots that humans once created, and now the Cylons want to kill all the humans. SciFi's website described it thusly:

Forty years after the Cylon Wars, humanity's deadliest enemies have reemerged with a vengeance. In a sudden, devastating nuclear attack, the Cylon robots — who have now taken human form — wipe out billions of people. Only a ragtag fleet of Colonial forces is left to shepherd humanity's few survivors to safety.

Anywho, the second of the two-part mini-series played yesterday and I have to admit to enjoying it. The action was pretty good, the acting was better than the original show (not hard to do), and the special effects were top-notch. There's a pretty nice, long review of both episodes at the UGO Battlestar Galactica Hub. SciFi is showing both episodes back-to-back this coming Sunday (Dec. 14, 2003), so catch it if you can.

My buddy Dan generously bought me a Brando Workshop screen protector for my Tapwave Zodiac. I don't generally use screen protectors for two reasons: first, they always seem to reduce the quality of the display (something I'm pretty picky about), and second, I never seem to keep a device longer than 18 months or so, and I rarely seem to damage the screen. But, I thought, hey, might as well try it out.

I'm glad I did. Unlike most other screen protectors I've seen, the Brando is a very rigid piece of clear plastic with an electrostatic cling treatment added to one side. It seems pretty tough, is reusable, and even washable. It installs really easily due to its rigidity and did so with a minimum of air bubbles. Once I squeejeed those few out, I was impressed: I couldn't really tell that a screen protector was installed.

Brando offers screen protectors for just about every PDA, it seems. Check out their website and you'll see what I mean. At $12 apiece, they're anything but cheap screen protectors. But from what I've seen so far, my hunch is that just one will last a very long time. And after all, $12 is far cheaper than the cost of replacing your device's screen.

If you're like me, you've got a remote control for your TV, DVD, PVR, video, stereo, satellite, and other sundry electronic boxes....12 at the last count. Universal remotes? Cumbersome IR programming, new remotes which turn out to be incompatible, the need to switch modes from TV to DVD to stereo....I'd just about given up.

Until now. The Harmony Remote by Intrigue Technologies is a universal remote with a difference - well, three to be exact - and promises to herald in a new era of clickophile nirvana.

Advantage one: A scroll wheel aids navigation through different modes, and aids in accessing stored preferences, viewable via a small LCD screen at the base of the unit. This makes the Harmony ergonomically a joy to use.

Advantage two: Instead of having to switch control modes by electronic box (TV, DVD, stereo), the Harmony uses macros to organize functions by activity: "Watch TV", for example, turns on and controls your TV, cable/satellite and speakers. "Listen to CD" turns on and controls your amplifier, speakers, and CD player. "Play a DVD"....well, you get the picture.

Advantage three: The Harmony Remote is the first Internet-programmable universal remote. Connect the Harmony to your computer via USB, and you can tap into a growing online database of tens of thousands of remotes. Everyday new remotes are being added, thanks to Harmony's online user community. You simply select the remotes you want mimicked, and download to your Harmony....no more IR mating rituals to teach your universal remote new tricks. Oh, and you can download TV listings as well.

The reviews have been ecstatic. One user enthused: "My mother-in-law, a 77-year-old woman raised on an island mountain farm without electricity, got it working within seconds. And her techno-hostile daughter, my wife, declares the Harmony the first gadget I've brought home that actually does something useful."

All this adds up to the Harmony being possibly the one remote worth fighting over.

I had a strange thought the other night. What will happen when virtual actors and actresses become more common and the studios that develop them start seeking copyright protection for their creations?

This thought was partly motivated by the 2001 movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which was completely CGI. It was heralded as a breakthrough in computer-generated people. Admittedly, breakthrough or not, the people were still pretty obviously computer-animated.

A more recent movie that I thought about when pondering this question is S1m0ne, which I didn't see. IMDB explains the plot as "A producer's film is endangered when his star walks off, so he decides to digitally create an actress to substitute for the star, becoming an overnight sensation that everyone thinks is a real person." Unlike Final Fantasy, the digital actress in S1m0ne was actually a live actress.

So what happens if a studio creates a recognizable character that looks convincingly like a human. Does it, or can it, hold a copyright on the look of that actor or actress? Would that copyright prevent another studio from using an actor, either digital or fleshy, that looks similar to the copyrighted one?

Looking into this, it seems there are several precedents for this copyright to be possible. A terrific example is what happened to the comic book character Howard the Duck (HTD), shown above, in the 1970's. Basically, HTD looked somewhat like Donald Duck, a prized possession in Disney's vast collection of intellectual property. According to this story, "How the Duck Got His Pants", Disney forced Marvel Comics to alter HTD's look significantly, forcing not only his body to change, but to also garb him differently (pants were added to his character to differentiate him from Donald, who never wears pants [perv!]). Disney's claims were backed up by a long-standing copyright on the look of Donald Duck.

So, let's say I create Dan Magnum, a digitally rendered actor who appears in a movie. I expect him to be a big hit, so I copyright him. His movie is huge and he's suddenly very popular. Could I restrict other movies or TV shows that have characters that look like Dan Magnum? What if the other characters are real people?

Let's say that Dan Magnum always wears a signature piece of clothing. Could I restrict other characters in movies and TV shows from using that same piece of clothing if there's a chance that those characters could be confused with Dan Magnum? From the Howard the Duck precedent, it seems that I could. But, this type of protection could never be realistically achieved if a real (human) actor was the star.

All this is very troubling. If an animated duck can be copyrighted, what's keeping a human from being copyrighted? Cartoon ducks have only so many degrees of freedom that we can manipulate to differentiate one from another, but lifelike humans have many, many factors. How many of those can a copyright cover?

I am not a lawyer, but this issue seems ripe for both abuse and proactive consideration. And I hope it gets addressed before it gets abused. Given the history of US copyright legislation, however, my guess is that it will be abused both before and after serious attention gets paid to it.

You have just bought a new Palm OS5 device, and you are excited about all possible things you can do with your new device. It kind of brings back memories of your childhood when you got a new toy for Christmas. Well, just like the Christmas gift, such excitement will soon wear off, and you start to find certain faults with your device. Well I have heard so often from my readers that they are not happy with the way the texts look in their devices. In other words, some people do not like the way the default font looks in their device.

Why are violins from the 17th-18th centuries generally considered superior in sound quality to modern instruments?

Theories range from the craftsman's skill, to special varnishes, to the storage or drying of the wood, or the use of wood from old structures.

Now, researchers from Columbia University have a new theory - climate.

The study, published in the journal Dendrochronologia, proposes that the superior tonality of instruments from this era can be explained by the climate in Europe in the 70 years from 1645-1715 AD.

This period - known as the Maunder Minimum - was characterized by less intense solar radiation and a sharp decline in temperature. The long winters and cool summers produced wood with a slow, even growth - properties ideal for producing high-quality boards. Additionally, narrow tree rings from slow growth tend to increase wood density and thus the strength of instruments.

Antonio Stradivari, the famous violinmaker, was born one year before the Maunder Minimum. The only wood available to Stradivari and other violinmakers of the era were from trees that grew during the Maunder Minimum...providing one more critical difference to the tone and brilliance of the famous violins.

A colleague at work and I often have a discussion where we come to radically different perspectives on enjoying music. He's an audiophile and I'm a...well...I guess you could call it a portaphile.

To him, being the audiophile that he is, the quality of the sound is what matters most. His highly sensitive ears can detect even slight degrees of compression in digital sources and he can easily tell the difference between mid-level and premium speakers.

For him, nearly any type of audio compression scheme is unacceptable, since it results in the loss of sonic detail and clarity. Moreover, easily toting his music along with him is almost impossible, since even the best small headphones don't have the sound reproduction capacity he demands.

To me, I desire portability over every other aspect. I'm not unhappy with FM-quality sound if I can listen to it where I want, when I want, and how I want to. I just can't hear the difference between, say, two MP3 files encoded at 128 kbps and 192 kbps. But then, I don't often listen under optimal conditions -- while working (over computer speakers), while mowing the grass, while driving, etc. Listening to music is rarely something I do as my sole activity (and I bet that's pretty much like most folks).

The good news is that there are a lot of lossless digital audio formats out there to choose from, including Monkey's Audio, the Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC), WavPack, and Lossless Predictive Audio Coder (LPAC). Supposedly, a lossless version of Windows Media Audio (WMA) is also on its way (oh, goody). A good overview of these formats can be found a modatic.net.

However, that still doesn't help with the headphone problem -- Mr. Audiophile still has a hard time easily toting around an enormous over-the-ear headset. Another technology, known as bone conduction, may help here. Bone conduction basically sends sound waves directly through the skull instead of transmitting them through the air to the eardrum. While most small earphones have little problem with high-frequency sounds and the upper end of the audible spectrum, bass is almost always pretty bad. That's where bone conduction comes in -- solid bone carries low frequency (bass) sounds better than air, so sound reproduction could benefit significantly.

So, while there's a distinct trade-off of sound quality versus portability today, that may not be the case for much longer. Better software and better hardware, and innovations in both, might permit Mr. Audiophile to take his high-quality experience with him and might let me, the "portphile," begin to appreciate better quality sound without losing the portability I crave.

A new report spotlights a daring experiment to combat brain tumors. Researchers from the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center have merged the cancer-killing properties of poliovirus with a genetic element from the common cold to produce a anti-cancer agent that rapidly killed cancer cells in laboratory cultures and in animals.

The key to success was disabling the poliovirus' ability to kill brain cells while retaining its ability to kill cancer cells in the brain. To do this, the team swapped a critical genetic element from the common cold "rhinovirus" - which doesn't affect the human brain - with the corresponding genetic element from the poliovirus.

"We made a drug out of a virus by engineering its destructive abilities from a foe into a friend," said Matthias Gromeier, M.D., who led the team. "The rhinovirus acts as the trigger that activates gene expression, but the genes being expressed - the silver bullets in the gun, so to speak - are all from the poliovirus [which] kills the cancer cells quickly and efficiently."

Tests in mice and primates confirm that the modified poliovirus kills brain tumor cells but doesn't affect normal motor neurons. The therapy is promising because it doesn't carry the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation, and can be introduced directly into the tumor.

Testing of the new viral agent in humans should begin within two years.

When I was 10, I started saving all my allowance for one thing: an Intellivision. Launched in 1979, this was the first 16-bit gaming console. Given its superior graphics, 16-bit architecture, and (ahem) innovative disc controllers, Mattel Electronics thought it would compete favorably with the Atari 2600.

Unfortunately, I don't think it did. While the gaming experience was, IMO, arguably better than most anything on the Atari system, the price for the Intellivision was about double the Atari, with games being generally harder to find and almost always a bit more expensive. You just can't argue with tens of millions of consoles being sold. There's an interesting history of the Intellivision here.

While the merits of the Intellivision's controller design were hotly debated (either you loved 'em or you hated 'em), the Intellivision had some kick-ass games. Some 125 titles were released for the platform. One of my favorites was Sea Battle, which was best played as a head-to-head strategy/action ocean warfare game. Utopia was a really fun and innovative game -- possibly the true grandfather of modern governance simulation games, such as SimCity and Age of Empires.

So why am I writing about the Intellivision? Well, today, while doing some holiday shopping, I saw the Intellivision 25 (pictured) being sold in a Bed, Bath & Beyond (of all places) for the mere price of $19.99. Basically, you plug the Intellivision 25 directly into your TV -- all the electronics and memory for the whole game are contained in the controller! It has 25 games pre-loaded on it.

If you want more information on the Intellivision 25, or on Intellivision in general, check out the www.intellivisionlives.com website. It is chock-a-block full of good info and, if you were among the few, the proud, the Intellivision owners, may bring a tear of reminiscence to your eye. One of the interesting pieces of info on that site about the Intellivision 25 unit says this:

"Unlike the Jakks Pacific Atari 10-in-1 video game that looks like the joystick controller of the Atari 2600, the Intellivision 25 unit bears no resemblance to any part of the original Intellivision. It is based on the Techno Source TV Play Power technology, which means what they are doing is having NES hardware emulate an Intellivision. It really looks like a Dreamcast controller more than anything else. Just as well. I've always thought that the original Intellivision 16-position thumb-pad controller must have been designed by someone with an utter hate and contempt for humanity. The nice thumb stick and D-pad lets me finally enjoy playing some of these great games that the original controller made less than fun."

So, did I pick one up for the low, low price of twenty bucks? Nah, I passed...here's why. First, you can't play against anyone. Second, neither of my two fav games were included. Had it had Sea Battle or Utopia and provided a means for playing against someone, I would have bought two. Reviews over at Amazon.com are generally pretty bad.

Eventually, I hope that somebody sees fit to make an Intellivision emulator for Palm OS so I can enjoy Sea Battle on my Zodiac...now that would rock.

ExtremeTech has a nice round-up of high-def DVRs that they expect to see at the CES in January. The models include a couple from Scientific Atlanta, including the 8000HD (which I discussed in this blog entry) and 8300HD, as well as two DVRs from Motorola. Interesting stuff...and none too soon!

According to the CNET Digital Living Gear Envy wrap-up, Palm OS devices are much more lusted after than Pocket PCs.

Of the top 5 "all-time most loved" gadgets, two ran on the Palm operating system: the Samsung SPH-i500 smartphone and the Sony CLIE PEG-UX50. None of the top 5 ran on Windows Mobile.

However, one of the "all-time least loved" devices was a Pocket PC, the HP iPaq H4350, which had votes of "53% left / 47% loved."

I hope Microsoft and the Windows Mobile OEMs keep coming out with new hardware, because it pushes Palm OS licensees to continue innovating and coming out with the best and most interesting devices (at least according to BusinessWeek).

My long journey is nearly at an end. For the past four years my wife and I have been looking for a new home. This started off as a list generated on my old HP 200LX capturing all the things we wanted our new place to have. Keeping that list always at hand, we concentrated mostly on pre-owned homes since I think it's silly for developers to continue swallowing up the beautiful farmland to build subdivisions when the MLS sites are full of great places that are already built. We went through lots of realtors, spent our Sundays going to open houses and did plenty of driving around checking out neighborhoods.

Oddly enough our searches kept leading us back to a very private street only a mile or so from our current abode. We looked at every house that became available there, but there was one house we loved that never went for sale. One fateful day last January our realtor marched up and knocked on the door of that house and got an impromptu tour of the place. She was giddy on her return and said "YOU JUST HAVE TO SEE THIS PLACE!!!" Since the owner (a home builder) was planning to move in the coming months, we did just that a few weeks later. We were smitten. But the house never went for sale due to delays in the construction of his new place.

Finally on October 15th, the house was listed. We went through it again the next day, made our offer and in just a few days we had a signed contract. A whirlwind of activity ensued which is why you have not heard much from me. I've done more painting, plumbing, and repairing in the last month than I want to do in the rest of my lifetime. Our current house is on the market and is in nice shape for a hopefully quick sale. And this leads me to the title of this little treatise...

The new house is perfect in every way except for one. It was built in 1995 when running lots of RG-59 and POTS cable was the norm. There isn't a Cat 5 or RG-6U drop in the whole place and to make matters worse, almost every space is finished with drywall. There is not much access for snaking wires though I do have a plan after studying blueprints until my eyes are sore.

I am going to attack this with the future in mind. I know that gigabit ethernet will be the norm rather than the exception in a year so my Cat 5e runs will have all four pairs pushed down. I cannot imagine life without my DirecTiVo so most of my cable runs will be pairs of RG-6U quad shield. I will probably upgrade my wireless access point from 802.11b to g. I have my eyes on a shiny new Apple Powerbook. I'm sizing up the built-in TV cabinets for DLP rear projectors. This place will be high and tight when I'm done with it.

My one grey area right now is with wiring architecture. I think the overly finished aspect of this place will preclude the use of the massive wire bundles that make up most structured wiring systems. I do want to have a central "wiring closet" where I can house my router, switches, amplifiers, wire terminations, video and audio distribution, etc, etc. If you have any experience in "old work" retrofit using the lastest wiring technologies, I would love to hear about it.

I'll try to keep this blog informed of my progress in what will be a labor of love. And please help Craig out with his HTPC as I will be doing another one of those pretty soon.

According to the latest article in the Register, Microsoft is planning to charge for its FAT file system. The FAT file system is widely used in most digital cameras, video camcorders, and PDA's. So, the memory card manufacturers need to license the FAT file system in order to produce their cards. So, mostly likely they will pass the additional cost to, guess who, us the consumers, and we have to pay MS our hard-earned cash. I understand that patent holders need to be compensated for their innovation, but why do I feel queasy in my stomach? Perhpas that's because it's another Microsoft's attempt to dominate the computing industry or simply to pad their chest? You tell me.

If you want to read more about this, check out the Microsoft web page on the FAT file system license, and here is the pricing structure they propose:

Microsoft offers a commercially reasonable, nonexclusive license so that other companies can use the FAT file system in their own products. Currently, Microsoft offers two specific types of licenses:

A license for removable solid state media manufacturers to preformat the media, such as compact flash memory cards, to the Microsoft FAT file system format, and to preload data onto such preformatted media using the Microsoft FAT file system format. Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit with a cap on total royalties of $250,000 per manufacturer.
A license for manufacturers of certain consumer electronics devices. Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit for each of the following types of devices that use removable solid state media to store data: portable digital still cameras; portable digital video cameras; portable digital still/video cameras; portable digital audio players; portable digital video players; portable digital audio/video players; multifunction printers; electronic photo frames; electronic musical instruments; and standard televisions. Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit with a cap on total royalties of $250,000 per licensee. Pricing for other device types can be negotiated with Microsoft.

Nikon just announced the D70, a new interchaneable-lens digital SLR camera. Nikon also plans to release a new DX Zoom lens (designed for digital cameras) to match the D70. The D70 is priced at $999, and both camera and lens are scheduled to go on sale in the spring of 2004.

Nikon has been feeling the heat since Canon released its low-end digital SLR, the EOS Rebel, selling at $899 this year.

Well competition is great for consumers, and looks like we will have a nice selection of low-end digital SLR's to choose from starting next year. Kudos to Nikon.

About two years ago, I decided to build a proof-of-concept MP3 server (I've documented that project in this blog entry, so I won't repeat the details here). However, the current machine, a lowly AMD Duron 750 MHz w/ 128 MB of RAM, is well beyond its useful life in that capacity. For example, starting up Real One Player with our 10,000+ song MP3 database takes nearly two minutes. So, it's time to start thinking about what will, and should, replace that starter system.

I'd like the new machine to be more of a home-theater PC -- something that can perform as an MP3 server (at the very least) as well as possibly handle TV recording and other multimedia functions. Ideally, it could record HDTV signals, but I'll admit that I haven't looked hard enough yet to see if any home media software permits that functionality. I'd also like the new machine to come up out of the basement and live in the family room nearer the rest of the home a/v setup.

Now, it seems I have two primary form factors to consider. The first is the attractive option of the small-form-factor (SFF) case, like the AMS eCube bare-bones system I discussed last month. The second option would be the full-sized HTPC case that looks like a stereo component, such as is pictured above.

The SFF has basically just one advantage -- its size. I could fit it into our entertainment armoire fairly easily. Because it's small, it can also be easily schlepped from one place to another. I'm not sure how often I'd want to do that with an HTPC, but you never know. The disadvantages of the SFF are several: they have limited expandability (usually one PCI slot and one AGP slot), they often run hot, and they're often loud (because they don't have much, if any, sound baffling). Plus, most don't blend well with an all-black home A/V setup.

The component case has a few advantages. It looks good, it's heavily baffled (so it's really quiet), and it has plenty of space for expansion since it's a full-sized horizontal case. The main disadvantage is size -- I'm just not sure I can fit another full component into our entertainment center without displacing something we already have (I'm thinking the cassette deck could go -- I don't remember the last time we used it -- but the wife would not easily see the wisdom in that).

Cost is pretty much a wash. A new SFF would run close to $300, which is about the same for a good component case plus motherboard. All the rest of the innards would be the same for both systems.

So, right now, I'm not sure what I'm going to do -- do you have any advice or recommendations? I'm all ears at this point. Oh, and of course, I'll be posting my progress as time goes on here on GearBits.

New Scientist is reporting that the largest prime number yet was just found using a distributed computing system consisting of over 200,000 computers.

The new prime is 6,320,430 digits long (yes, so I won't be publishing it here). The result is a victory for the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) project.

Math news is usually pretty rare, but late 2003 has had a couple neat stories. Beyond the new prime story above, we also were tantalized by the partial solving of Hilbert's 16th problem by Swedish PhD student Elin Oxenhielm.

Jumping on the online music service bandwagon (which is starting to get fairly crowded), HP has announced that it will launch its service, along with a new MP3 player, at the January 2004 Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

I'm all for competition, but do we really expect hardware makers to offer the best music service? Apple is somewhat of an exception, since it produces the entire customer experience. But Dell and HP are just box makers...what do they know about music services?! Needless to say, I'm underwhelmed with anticipation.

In a press release today, Scientific Atlanta and Time Warner Cable-Green Bay (Wisconsin) announced availability of the Scientific Atlanta 8000HD to TWC-GB cable customers.

"Scientific-Atlanta announced today the availability of its integrated dual tuner high-definition digital video recorder set-top solution. The new Explorer® 8000HD™ High Definition Digital Video Recorder (DVR) will deliver two highly compelling video services – the control and convenience of a Digital Video Recorder and stunning High Definition Television (HDTV) video with digital surround sound. The industry leader in the deployment of DVRs and high-definition television service, Time Warner Cable is now initiating the deployment of HD/DVR set tops in its Green Bay Division, which serves over 150,000 customers in northeast Wisconsin." [read more]

I sincerely hope that the 8000HD is a more robust and better engineered product than its Explorer 8000 (shown), which has ticked off as many users as it has pleased. Personally, I'm hoping the HD TiVo is a dual-tuner box...otherwise, the 8000HD, despite its potential headaches, will seem a somewhat compelling and competitive alternative.

Mitch has been playing with a photo-editing utility called Neat Image. He likes it a lot.

"It uses camera-specific filter settings to remove much of the digital noise in a picture. If you zoom into the processed photo and compare it to the stock photo, you will see much less evidence of the red, blue and green noise that infests digital pictures. It works nicely."

Forbes magazine has an interesting story discussing why wireless (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular) may be the only saving grace for what we now know as the PDA.

"So far, handhelds with chips to help users connect wirelessly to the Internet or to their other gadgets are in the minority of handhelds sold. This year, only about 15% of PDAs sold include wireless capabilities; Todd Kort, an analyst at research firm Gartner, predicts that the number will double next year because of the cheaper, more battery-efficient wireless chips on the horizon. Kort predicts that corporate customers wanting to keep their workers wirelessly plugged into the office will help prop up handheld sales for the foreseeable future, though he still doesn't forecast growth for handhelds as a market in general."

While I don't generally give much credibility to most of what the likes of Gartner have to say about things, this is one opinion I agree with. Unwired PDAs are likely to be as high-growth (and high-profit) as bargain calculators are now.

One comment in the article that may perhaps be more contentious was made by Paul Saffo, a research director for the Institute for the Future:

"Even if, as a consumer, you don't care about Palm, you should," said Saffo, the futurist. "Without [PalmOne], we're all marching lockstep with AT&T and Microsoft. As consumers, I think we should all buy a Palm even if we don't use it -- just to keep the diversity out there."

So, is wireless the life extending technology for PDAs, or can something else do it? Or, are we likely to see them die out regardless in a few years?

As an academic researcher, I study how technology can be used by organizations and businesses to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of what they do. This line of investigation often leads me to think about how we, as users, have many of the same issues that corporations do. That is, how should we purchase, implement, and use various technologies to bring about the best personal results for ourselves?

Companies have a lot of techniques at their disposal that help them measure their existing and potential technology decisions: time-and-motion studies, return-on-investment (ROI) assessments, business process re-engineering...the list goes on and on.

However, the tools available to Joe User (you and me) are much more limited. Granted, you and I don't have corporate boards we need to answer to in order to justify our technology investments (although spouses might serve the same purpose). But, is there any less reason that we shouldn't be able to systematically examine how we individually use and apply personal and mobile technology, and then strive to make better investments? Does it not seem reasonable to want to get the most bang (in terms of usefulness and enjoyment) for our technology buck?

What I'd like to see is a set of software tools. The first type of tool would probably be PC-based, and it would help us analyze our cellular use and develop a cellular profile. For example, I suspect that about 85% of my mobile minutes are spent on data calls, but I don't really know that for certain. It could actually be 50% -- I just don't know. Understanding this aspect of my usage would help me decide what kind of device(s) I should be looking for (data-centric, voice-centric, or mixed?).

The second type of tool would be an application, or family of apps, that I can run on the various devices I use. It would give me a breakdown of how I operate my devices. For example, how often do I turn on each device? How long is each device on each time? How much time do I spend doing different things (e.g., using PIM (personal information management) functions, browsing the web, listening to music, playing games, etc.)? Again, knowing all this in a more thorough and systematic way would help me determine what kind of device(s) I should be looking at.

Finally, the third type of tool I want is a comprehensive decision-assistance tool. This could, and perhaps should, be a web-based tool. It would include information on all the various handhelds, phones, and related devices (MP3 players even, maybe). Then, by entering in my personal usage information (from the above tools), this app would determine which devices best fit my user profile.

Of course, that assumes I'm a mature technology user and that my current actual usage best suits what I need to do. If someone wants to change how they use their devices, this type of tool would help with that as well (need to do more mobile email? no problem).

In short, I'd like to see this happen. Will it happen? Most definitely not, for no one person would benefit enough from doing it to produce it all, and it might require the assistance and/or blessing of way too many device makers for such a project to be feasible. So, is there a subset of this dream, a whittled-down core concept, that would still be useful? Possibly...I'm still thinking about that.

A few days ago, I wrote a brief article about my new combo gadgets -- not one gadget but a combination of two gadgets. I now use the Sony Ericsson T610 and the Palm Tungsten T3 instead of the Handspring 180.

There has been a lot of noise in the industry about the proliferation of smartphones and the bleak prognostication for the stand-alone PDA device. I for one do not believe it's going to happen. Yes, I have to agree that carrying one device is much more convenient than carrying two devices, but what if you have to compromise how you work in order to do carry one device. To me, that is not an ideal solution and so far not acceptable.

Having separate devices offers certain advantages that all-in-one devices cannot. Each device can be selected for its features without making compromises. Also what happens if you want to replace one device in your chain? Well, you can simply replace one without replacing the other.

I do however believe the key to carrying separate devices is integration. If you want the separate cellular phone and the PDA, then both need to be seamlessly integrated that it feels like you are using one device, not two.

After having used the Tungsten T3 and the Sony Ericsson T610, I can now tell you this is one combination that offers the seamless integration and simplicity.

In a new article, Brighthand's Steve Bush says he has changed his ways. While he has long been a proponent of using two devices (a PDA and a phone), he is now a convert to using a smartphone. His new device, which I assume was a gift from Microsoft, is a Motorola MPx200 Smartphone.

The one task that Steve does not mention at all is entering text into the device. While the Microsoft Smartphone is a pretty nifty concept, since it has neither a touchscreen nor a thumb-keyboard, it doesn't allow for much, if any, text entry (short of the old-fashioned numpad-multiple-press approach). It has predictive word guessing, but if it's the same as on the Pocket PC, that's of minimal help.

So, my hunch is that Steve uses his phone/PDA as a phone first and a data-viewing device second. My personal use precludes this device since I enter a lot of data directly into the device (new contacts, appointments, to do lists, etc.). I just can't imagine having to tap out 2-2-8-8-9-9-9-0-2-2-7-7-7-3-3-2-3 just to get "buy bread" when 9 key pushes is all that's needed on a thumbboard.

This just goes back to illustrate (yet again) that we've yet to see the "perfect" device for a majority of users. Or have we? Perhaps such a device is merely just the simple cellular phone without any data stuff on it -- at least here in North America, that seems to be what the vast majority prefers.

I was browsing through various open source groupware solutions and came across TikiWiki 1.8. TikiWiki describes itself as the following:

Tiki CMS/Groupware (aka TikiWiki) is a powerful open-source Content Management System (CMS) and Groupware that can be used to create all sorts of Web applications, Sites, Portals, Intranets and Extranets. TikiWiki also works great as a Web-based collaboration tool. TikiWiki is a multi-purpose package with a lot of native options and sections that you can enable/disable as you need them. It is designed to be international, clean and extensible. TikiWiki incorporates all the features present in several excellent wiki systems available today plus a lot of new features and options, allowing your wiki application to be whatever you want it to be--from a simple wiki to a complex site for a whole user community with many intermediate steps.

While I haven't tested it out extensively, TikiWiki looks like it could be a terrific solution for small, distributed groups needing a flexible and open platform to facilitate networked communication and teamwork. Another impressive aspect is the skinnability of TikiWiki, as several customized installations demonstrate.

So, have any of you tried TikiWiki out recently? If so, what's the verdict? Are you using it still, or was it scrapped and/or replaced with something else?