Hardware

Skype Mobile Phones and the Bleeding Edge

Keith — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 11:53:47 -0600

'3' (the mobile operator) in the UK have released a Skype based handset.

This is interesting for couple of reasons:

Firstly it is another attack on the 'voice as a commodity' differentiator; voice calls made through Skype to another Skype user become free.
Secondly it reflects the confidence (or desperation) in 3's business model; Voice has been king for so long in telecoms that some find it hard to imagine anything else driving ARPU (Average Revenue Per User).

A Commercial Brain to Computer Interface

Keith — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:04:42 -0600

Brainwave** sensors aren't really anything new - the phenomenon of post-synaptic potential has been observed and measured since 1885 (although back then the electrode was applied directly to an exposed brain), and EEG (electroencephalogram) machines have been around in various forms of usefulness for at least 30 years.

However there is a new technology that seems to be capable of measuring post-synaptic potential without the need for messy gels, skull scrapings, caps, or even wires of classical EEG.

The new laptop

Keith — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 18:07:50 -0700

I have a new laptop! It is the Mac that I was promising to get a few weeks ago. [big sloppy grin]

So far I am loving it - all the goodness of Unix in a pretty and usable shell. "Numfar: Do the dance of joy!"

Actually, the transition has been easier than I was expecting, and despite making sure that I could set-up boot-camp (the ability to dual boot into Windows) , I haven't needed to once. I haven't even bothered to install it.

On NOT choosing Windows Vista

Keith — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 10:20:18 -0700

Whatever you may think of Windows Vista there are two things you do have to give it:

It is very pretty
It really does advance the Windows platform

However it also, in my opinion at least, contains quite a few downsides which one of these days I might even get around to detailing, but they include: licensing, security, DRM, process and memory management, user permissions, etc. In any case, I have decided that despite being a owner/user of Windows for more years than I care to count Windows XP will probably be the last version of Windows I will own.