* Posts by Timo

415 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Sep 2007

Page:

Drink diet pop all the time? Look forward to VASCULAR DEATH

Timo
Mushroom

probably because people think diet pop is safe

I've known a ton of people that will drink loads of the stuff every day. A couple of people would drink nearly a case each.

Telly makers failing to turn punters on to smart TV

Timo

link to Economist article

Cracking up:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/01/flat-panel-displays-0

or maybe here

http://www.economist.com/node/21543035

Timo

doesn't match the expected product lifecycle

I replace my TV's about every 10+ years. Partially because of cost, but mainly because TV's have never needed to be replaced more frequently.

But with all this IPTV and Smart stuff it could mean swapping out the "Smart" parts to keep up with where the industry is going at any point in time, possibly yearly. Of course the TV vendors would want you to toss the whole thing but that isn't going to happen, thus this article appears here. I have no plans to replace my TV every year or two just to get "Smarter than the last Smart TV (tm)" bits.

It is far better to have some general-purpose computer where the IPTV bits can be defined by software. Even the Xbox/PS3/Wii is a relatively general-purpose computer compared to the miniscule processor the TV vendors probably use. Worst case we pick up a new client device (Roku, WD TV Live) for $100 or less. I'd add that adding IPTV to the Xbox is nearly free as it is added on top of an existing machine for no new outlay. Certainly didn't cost me anything to add a Netflix channel on our Wii. A HTPC would be similar if not even more flexible.

The Economist had an article recently about LCD TV's, where every vendor loses money on the panels, and the base TV models, so they have turned to these integrated "Smart TV's" to try to gain some margin leverage. But this isn't going to work for all the obvious reasons stated by all the posts here.

Symantec 'fesses up: 'Code theft worse than we thought'

Timo

release it open source for the white hats now

If the black hat / hackers have it, then you can bet they'll be working to exploit it. Why not release the code to everyone, so that the community could give Symantec a fighting chance at fixing it? I'm no fan of their software, being bloated and all, but they're going to be eaten alive by the hacker world. They'll be completely outnumbered, if not outgunned too.

One other possible outcome is Symantec releases their code, and real coders take one look at it and laugh. "You did what here????"

Microsoft carves up Wi-Fi into White Spaces

Timo

I bet it is "carrier aggregation"

The other big Wireless Broadband technologies (EVDO, LTE for sure) have the ability to do "carrier aggregation" which operates pretty much how you describe. Take data traffic, and split it up to carry across the multiple carriers operating in different frequency spots. I think on the wired side it is called "bonding" where you glue a few pipes together to make one virtually larger pipe.

Apple, Amazon and Google take lazy punters hostage

Timo

people are lazy - make money off of them!

When you see the number of people throwing money into these app stores they're either (a) paying you to take a shortcut because they are hard-pressed for time or just plain LAZY/stupid, or they're rewarding themselves "because I'm worth it".

The trick is to keep it below their pain point. It seems that Apple has done a superb job of figuring out how much people will pay for music and apps. Any more than that and people might be motivated to find an alternative.

Using phone-tracking tech? 'Fess up now, urges expert

Timo

very simple solution - for the malls etc

The lawyers will just have the mall owners post a disclaimer in very tiny text at the entrances "tracking technology might be in use at this mall." They probably don't have to tell you if they have it deployed or activated. They might be using it, they might not be, but at least they're covered either way.

In the US this happened when the people with peanut allergies managed to get food packaging changed. I bet they really wanted to know exactly which products should be avoided which contained peanuts. But everyone realized that this opened up the liability gate, so the lawyers slapped "might contain peanuts" on nearly EVERY PRODUCT just to be safe. So... that does not appear to have worked out so well.

SEVENTY-FIVE wirelessly charged devices will demo at CES

Timo
FAIL

seems completely pointless

These things just seem completely pointless to me. Most of the objects that need to be charged all have to have the power puck + some cord to attach to said device or some other adapter at a non-trivial cost. Yes I know this is the first gen issue to try to get around the chicken/egg situation but it just makes the solution look silly.

Also, for the manufacturer/vendor it means that you have to build a receiver into EVERY DEVICE, and that must cost much more than a micro-USB jack. Pretty hard to justify when they're interested in pinching pennies over many million devices. You might posit that a major phone vendor would implement their own version of this as a way to break the chicken/egg situation, but the product cost will still be the deal-breaker.

Also for the consumer, rather than own one or two chargers you're paying time and time again to re-buy this on each device you want to use.

I know "powermat" et al would want you to believe otherwise, but I reckon this one will always be a non-starter.

Kodak heading to Chapter 11

Timo

@ TheOtherJola - they tried

Kodak did try to fill out their photo portfolio, but failed, pretty miserably, as evidenced by their poor returns. About what you'd expect from a bunch of chemistry people who wandered into the field of photography.

Kodak's desktop software ("Kodak Image Gallery" or something like that) came out in the early 00's. Did a decent job pulling in pictures and presenting them. Achilles heel? Not possible to export the gallery meta-data to another computer, you know, as in migrating to a new machine. Also braindead on handling imports of duplicate snaps. Whoops. Picasa handily took over when it came out. So cross Kodak off of the data storage and archiving possibilities.

Kodak's digital cameras were also laughable. We had what was probably a second-gen one. 3.1 Megapixels, gave good picture quality. Live-view did not exist, slower than ages to focus and take a picture, and the thing ate batteries like mad and was picky about them on top of it. We hated it so much we went back to using film.

So Kodak, rather than think they were in the picture business, building a whole portfolio around their chemicals and their processing systems, should have built chemical-processing solutions for any other industry. They were probably also scared to death to invent or commercialise a product that would disrupt their chemistry business.

A Brief History of Virtualisation, now on Kindle

Timo
Coat

I thought virtualisation was supposed to save me money?

And then you go throwing me a book to buy. That's the consulting type answer - if you can't really fix stuff, there is at least a slice of money to be made in playing along.

I'll get my coat.

Steve Jobs' last design: New Apple HQ pics

Timo

Siri, open the window please!

I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that.

Hollywood siren invented key phone tech TRUE

Timo

CDMA does not use Fast Hopping

CDMA, WiFi, and other similar spread-spectrum technologies don't use frequency hopping. They employ pseudorandom direct sequence spreading to smear their bits out over a much wider band. Not sure what is left using fast frequency hopping, bluetooth, and maybe the first couple spins of early 802.11 used it but the later ones surely don't.

I suspect that frequency hopping was easier to conceptualize and came first, then followed by the mathematically challenging direct sequence methods.

For your reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency-hopping_spread_spectrum

How digital audio ate itself ... and the music biz

Timo

MiniDisc

I went to a "launch party" for the MiniDisc when it came out in 1992 or so. They had hired Ken Pohlmann, who is a respected audio writer, to explain the lossy compression (minidisc had 5:1 fixed compression.) The audio geeks in the room sputtered to think that bits of music would be tossed out. That all ended when they did a demo playing the CD version, the MiniDisc version, and then by subtracting the MiniDisc from the CD they were able to play only the stuff that was lost. On a challenging piece there was almost nothing there. I was amazed. Ken's message to the crowd then was that it was only the first-gen encoder and that the way that perceptual codecs worked they could improve the encoder and all of the players would be able to handle it.

One of Ken's big ideas was that if the music could be preserved in compression, then to imagine going the other direction instead of minimizing space and/or runtime, to maximizing the amount of music quality that could be packed into a standard 74-minute CD. That never really took hold, did it. I'm not sure you could get a 5x improvement over CD quality although 24/96 was one of the last attempts at it.

It is also a damn shame that Sony's content side screwed over their devices side and prevented the MiniDisc from being one of the better recordable and transportable data formats. The best at the time were Zip Discs which were completely awful. The MiniDisc might have owned the market, and the audio version may have benefitted.

Pass the wine, dear. Yes, that papier-mache thing

Timo

boxes of wine - high class

We've been able to get boxes of wine here on the left side of the pond for some time. Although they're not the finest they are still drinkable and great for cooking where you may only need a cup of something white. I most recently scored 3 liters/litres of red Spanish wine for about $USD 15 that took up much less space than it would had it been 4 bottles, and the waste when done was almost nothing. In theory since the wine bladder collapses as you drink it there is less chance of exposure to air so it stays fresher and lets you pour a glass at a time.

Vintners sometimes try to stretch the comfort zone of the public, so we'll see some of these advances with juice boxes of good wine, etc. They'll get there eventually.

Dealer bosses jailed for flogging fake Cisco kit

Timo

There are ways to fix this, if they want to fix it.

Cisco could kill the counterfeit market for their hardware if they dropped the prices of the boards. They'd then need to move toward a software business and/or use licensing to enable the hardware. Imagine if they were to get most of their revenue from "software licenses", they wouldn't even care if you bought your cards from somewhere else - counterfeit or second-hand, as you'd have to pay them to get them unlocked in the cage.

Pay-by-mobe app spells doom for impulse buyers

Timo

tools

One more shiny shiny new thing that makes it easier to separate a fool from his money. Micropayments are awesome too - they're only a quid or so... but after a few hundred of those it adds up to real money.

Netflix, Amazon ink video streaming deals with Disney

Timo

The media companies are catching on... slowly

I don't waste much money on Disney stuff, in fact we try to waste as little as possible. But do love Netflix streaming-only. If Disney stuff gets loaded onto Netflix then we'll probably be watching a lot of it at my house, and I would assume that Disney would get a few coins from it. That is an increment to Disney's revenue, although not nearly as much as they want (but aren't getting.)

Google TV receives (much needed) upgrade

Timo
FAIL

Maybe they got the first half of succeed right

Suck. Not sure how they can be a media player when they don't have any of the content that you'd normally be looking to get "over the top." Youtube seems like a distant third or fourth choice, and you could do that much easier with any of your other existing devices.

RIM stands, staggers, falls again

Timo

I remember when RIM came out and everyone carried two phones

When the first blackberries first came out everyone carried their blackberry for work, but then also carried around another phone for voice as the performance of the blackberries were completely terrible. That seemed to fade after a while, but now I'm noticing that people are carrying a Blackberry as well as an iPhone or Android phone. This time for access to the data and apps I bet.

I'll bet that all it would take is some enterprise-grade iPhone controls and people would drop their Blackberry in a second. These guys have nowhere to go but farther down.

Facebook games teach teens bad habits

Timo
Go

Easy

Isn't everyone that is on facebook for more than an hour a month a wierdo?

Boffins crack smartphone Wi-Fi for greater battery life

Timo

other technologies build this in from the start

Digital cellular technologies like GSM and CDMA all knew about this user device battery drain problem when they were designing the network standards. In CDMA it is called "slotted mode", where the network and handset agree how often to send out notifications. By doing that at prearranged times it allows the handset/chipset to drop into deep sleep for a second or so, and only wake up for milliseconds at a time to listen for its name to be called. Tremendous savings in battery power.

It seems that Wi-Fi didn't built it in, so these guys had to find a way to duct-tape one into it?

Sprint joins US feds in anti-AT&T lawsuit

Timo
Facepalm

Sprint really is that thick

Man that company is so lost. If T-Mobile gets bought up by ATT, then there will be one less competitor in the "low price" and/or "value" segment, leaving much more room to Sprint to maneuver. ATT and Verizon will raise their prices, and then Sprint's "value" play will be even better differentiated from the two major players.

Or the other way to look at it, is that everyone wants Sprint around, if only to be the disruptor in the market. They keep VZ and ATT honest. Not that anyone would actually want to use Sprint service.

Google abandons tradition to bring you this Important Voucher

Timo

This place reminds me of Priceline.com

Priceline.com was the darling of one of the previous web hysteria/bubbles. Now they're not much more than an average travel website. Expect the same for Groupon. I don't think the savings work out very well for the consumers either, what with most of our friends having not used a deal before it expired. Won't have to get burned too many times for people to shy away from the DEALZ OMG.

(Remember when you could bargain for gas on Priceline?)

Apple girds loins for 'obscene iPad sales surge'

Timo

Sure, people want iPads

but they'll also show you there is a market for $99 versions from HP.

I think the iPad is too expensive, so an (and)Roid version at the same price is still too much.

Probably going to get flamed for this, but Androids will have to take a discount to sell. An Android version would have to be at least $100 less, if not closer to half the price of an iPad in order to get people to switch their buying decision. That cheaper slab might also find a few of us cheapskates. Selling all of the products at the same price just helps to steer everyone to Apple.

Facebook Deals dumped

Timo

Not the "engine room"

More like the "boiler room", the sweatshop type places where they stuff the pump-and-dump type of financial salesmen.

Mobile operators: US quake proves we need more spectrum

Timo

spectrum scarcity = solve one problem, create a bigger one

This idea of spectrum scarcity is really a load of crap in the US. There are other ways to get around a capacity problem, shrinking the size of the cells being the best way to do it, not the first choice though from the business/cost perspective. You did do a good job of highlighting that there are loads of spectrum already assigned that are not built upon.

The other problem with the current batch of existing spectrum, is that the spectrum is so fragmented that not much of that "real estate" is very appealing to the operators or the vendors. Sure, it is technically possible to build a network in some of these bands, but it will be a one-off semi-custom thing and the cost to develop/deploy will be much higher. Adding more spectrum to the mix will only make it more fragmented. When you are talking device/mobile market the "efficiencies of scale" really require that you work in tens of millions of handsets, if not hundreds of millions. Completely the opposite of a fragmented marketplace.

I've seen so many of these network schemes that are stuck at the starting phase. The spectrum exists, but not the equipment, NOR the handsets, and the price that would need to be paid in order to get the vendors off the fence wrecks the operator's business model. Guaranteed non-starter.

Boffins shine 800Mbps wireless network from flashlight

Timo

redux of the first wireless network

I was at a european business school, and their wireless network was an infrared version of this. And that was 10 years ago. I don't think they got anything close to 800 Mbps though. Maybe closer to 800 kbps. Needed special cards for the clients... and line of sight.

Microsoft boffins propose cloudy home furnaces

Timo

maybe not

With all of the rain we've been getting in the Chicago US area, some people have gotten FEET of water in their basements. I'd take a rack or two but it better be waterproof!

Energy scavenger eats leftover wireless signals

Timo

isn't this how those experiment kit radios worked?

If I'm not mistaken, the "cats whisker" type radios that we built as kids from the box of electronic experiment kits did not use batteries, which means that they harvested AM radio signals to drive a speaker.

And many of today's passive RFID tags are powered by the reading signal.

The fact that the GT team captures spurious signals appears to be the only part of this that hasn't been already done before.

PayPal teaches Androids to swap cash

Timo
WTF?

I agree

This thing is absolutely perfect for those times when cash is just too convenient, and when credit cards work too well. I've never needed to plug in my cash or credit cards to recharge either.

The real reason most source is closed? Open is hard

Timo

PHB and loss of control

It seems to me that the boss doesn't like the idea of you and your code potentially having two masters. They like to think that they're the only ones who should be telling you what to do and how to do it. That and the legal weenies will always find some excuse to retain control.

Oracle seeks 'billions' with Google Android suit

Timo

will want to buy popcorn for this drama

When you have those two companies, Oracle the sociopath, and Google the disruptor, playing against each other it will be neat to see what happens. I will bet that Google with their love for screwing up everyone's business model just to see if they can do it may now turn their attention to creating some free Oracle substitute. They could turn a few of their high IQ's onto it and probably get it done in a week or two.

Best Buy gives big boxes the boot

Timo

for people who don't know how to use the internet

My impression of Best Buy here in the states is that the place is made for people who have never heard of the internet or are too stupid to use it. Or maybe it is for people who can't wait for Amazon to ship the cheap stuff.

I haven't been in one in at least a year and even then it was to cash in a gift card that someone gave me. I hate their pushy sales people and their slimy upsell for the extended warranty. I suspect everyone else hates those things too.

Google sued over – yes – Android location tracking

Timo

Cake and (have) eaten it too

People don't want to disclose their location to Google, but then they're expecting that Google will give them back incredibly useful things like TRAFFIC, and location-based "what is around me right now" type info.

FFS people, no entity (public nor private) has the money to deploy sensors in every inch of road to provide traffic info. They can barely get the crap to work on expressways. This is where Google had the insight to turn the phones into remote sensors. This is a participatory activity - the quality of the data goes up the more samples that are provided!!!

I do agree that it is a lot of data to feed the Goo-bot. But, YOU'RE NOT GOING TO GET A MAP SHOWING YOU AT THE CENTER UNLESS YOU CAN TELL THEM WHERE YOU ARE!!!!!

Death threats against 'worst song ever' YouTube teen

Timo

and the music industry wonders where sales have gone

when they've turned their business into cashing in on the latest fad. If they don't get their sales in 15 minutes then it is too late.

there is not really much worth buying out there Much of the music sounds great the first 100 times you're forced to hear it and after that you want to take an icepick to your ears.

SF fire dept lost computer password during massive blaze

Timo
Thumb Up

actually a good exercise of the backup/fallback system

We've all been to too many places where the computer system has failed and everyone is just completely, utterly helpless.

At least these guys can remember how to do things the "old way"!!! You'd much rather them do that than stand around with a house on fire waiting for the damn box to reboot, or wait on hold for technical support.

MythBusters: Savage and Hyneman detonate truthiness

Timo

they did overclock a CD drive

a long time ago they did test the myth that a CD would self-destruct if spun too fast, that being the logic of why you didn't get ever faster optical drives. They couldn't get a stock drive to spin a disc to pieces, so employed a woodworking router to do it (at 20k RPM or something). The shrapnel that resulted stuck in all kinds of things.

Nexenta: The fastest-growing storage start-up ever?

Timo

tried the community version

Tried NexentaStor community version - I aspired to build a ZFS-based NAS for home, with snapshotting and all that good stuff that ZFS brings. But Sun/Oracle's abandonment of Open Solaris rattled my confidence and I gave up.

That and the thing almost worked. Documentation is at worst incorrect/outdated and non-existent at best. There wasn't enough critical mass in the forums/wiki's to be self-supporting.

I suspect the paid versions have to be better but would it kill them to write stuff down once in a while?

Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty

Timo

bring on jaywalking

if the entire city is so congested... that traffic doesn't move... then isn't it relatively safe to cross in the middle of a block? Voila your pedestrian problem is solved, and then you can take out some of the crossing lights. Duh, wait, then the congestion problem would be solved too, but screwing up the possibility for jaywalking.

TiVo calls time on ageing set-tops

Timo

think TiVo may be stuck here

I have a 2nd gen TiVo box, and have been paying $12.95 a month for the service for nearly 5 years now. They've been hammering me with emails to get me to upgrade, but I'm not too interested (I probably should be interested but find that I am watching less and less "TV").

I completely understand why they're trying to get people to upgrade and/or lock in to another service plan. But if they pushed me to make a move, it would probably be to abandon the TiVo altogether, not to upgrade. I guess in this case if they are not billing subscribers then they really have nothing to lose. 9 years seems like they've been generous with support.

iPhone crashes car stereos, Toyota warns

Timo
Jobs Halo

time to get a new car - <sarcasm warning>

If the iphone crashes your car, you're driving the wrong one. And a Kia Soul isn't fancy (nor overpriced) enough to be worthy of transporting an iPhone.

Go buy a new one that is more compatible. It isn't that big of a deal.

sent from my iPhone.

Fanboi king hails Apple 'love affair with open web'

Timo

yes they have benefited from the Web

Apple has benefited from the Web, in that people can buy Apple equipment and still manage to attach to the same internet and conduct their "work" - which could be:

1. buying stuff on Amazon

2. burning cycles on FecesBook

3. twittering about something

4. googling stuff

5. blogging their life history, which nobody will read

6. commenting in web forums

Note that this list is basically what 95% of people do with any brand or type of computer (PC/Mac/Linux/Sun/Etc).

In the past, with a lot of stuff tied to Microsoft's programs (everything's a Word doc, or Excel, etc emailed around) that was an additional barrier to acceptance of Apple products. Sure Apple can build a walled garden for their products, and life will go on for the majority of the population that doesn't own Apple stuff. It is more beneficial to Apple that the majority of the people let them tag along.

LightSquared gets satellite waiver

Timo

expect the lawyers to appear on this

What LightSquared has accomplished here amounts to a "whitewashing" of their spectrum, effectively removing regulatory requirements for a satellite network. Expect a few lawsuits against the FCC and LightSquared from other current mobile operators. They paid dearly for their spectrum, and will probably offer to pay more for LightSquared's spectrum. Or at least that is what they'll claim.

Silicon to stop next-gen powerline standards war

Timo

Agree with Unexpected Bill - why the high price?

Really I think the price is what puts most people off from using powerline networking. Why does it have to cost upwards of USD$90 retail to get a pair of these devices? WiFi wins by a huge margin on price alone, even disregarding the mobility/nomadicity it offers.

I currently use powerline networking at my house to connect my entertainment center equipment into the rest of my home network, where a WiFi link was flaky at best, and where it appears near impossible to pull cat5. It works spendidly, getting close to the rated 85 Mbps without any noticeable problems. I'd use more of it, and recommend much more of it as well, if the price was competitive.

Enraged wives hand Pakistani polygamist vicious shoeing

Timo

logistics question

If the population is generally 50/50 ratio of men to women, and then a few men go out and get many wives, doesn't that screw up the dating/marriage ratio?

Every man that has 4 wives also in effect creates 3 bachelors?

Wiseguy ticket scalpers used botnets to outwit Captchas

Timo

another point

Not sure why Ticketmaster would even care from a financial standpoint. Sure it makes the average guy hate them just that much more, but at the same time, Ticketmaster may have sold more tickets than they expected, and then captured more "convenience fees FFS" than they might have. The scalpers then take on the financial risk that they'd be able to sell the tickets.

Timo

Cloud computing!

Maybe the marketers will latch onto this... and call it cloud computing! What a brilliant way to get around a bunch of the fraud checks - distributed networks of computers.

I still don't understand why ticket sellers and/or venues don't go to an auction model - rather than set the prices and hand a fair chunk of profit to scalpers.

LightSquared lights up first bird

Timo

nice distraction

Don't confuse yourself here - the satellite is more to whitewash the spectrum than it is about actually providing service. They got the spectrum on the cheap as it has these rules of a satellite play.

If they attempted to waive the satellite requirements then all of the rest of the carriers would sue the FCC for changing the rules.

Great and Good honour the designer of world's first laptop

Timo

Heavier than lead

We had one of these in a van full of test equipment to collect data when we drove around to make improvements to the cellular networks. That thing took a beating for years. I just remember how impossibly heavy it was, with the thick magnesium case. Also got impossibly hot without overheating. And that was back in 1991.

To collect location data we had that navigation system that used a compass and wheel sensors. It was long before GPS had been invented. Cannot remember the name of that. People thought we were with the FBI or something with all of those antennas and screens.

Google punts free in-flight Wi-Fi for holiday travelers

Timo

great sampling opportunity

So Google will stump for WiFi, and they'll get to sample what people do if they have free WiFi on a plane.

I imagine if Google figures out that there is something there that they can make margin on (ie they'll make more money on ads than it costs to provide the service), then we may see a lot more inflight shoulder surfing courtesy of Google.

Page: