Al Hoang

I love reading Freedom to Tinker. It covers lots of different high level happenings that could affect the large scale of one’s right to tinker with the stuff they own. This
time Professor Felton covers radios. He gives a very niec sum up here:

Smart radios are a sleeper technology. They’re being developed right now; they’ll have a huge impact; but they’re not getting anywhere near the attention they deserve.

Smart radios rely on computer processing power, rather than simple analog circuits, to extract information from the electromagnetic spectrum. This simple idea has profound implications for wireless communication, implications that we are only just beginning to understand.

The implications of using software (since general purpose hardware is so powerful these days) to handle radio signal processing is really huge. I remember working on the analog stuff back in college and going, ‘Can’t I play with this on the computer and not pay a huge sum out of my pocket?’ (Back then the answer was no)

Freedom to Tinker’s Post

I saw th eMacworld 2004 Keynote and it wasn’t that bad. Some nice improvements to iLife but the most disappointing thing is the iPod. JonBert sums it up quite nicely for me:

The iPod mini is more of a question-mark. $249 for 4GB? Sure it’s smaller, and comes in different colors, but as it is it would need to be under $200 to stop registering on the Lame-o-meter

You tell em JonBert. The price sucks, I don’t care how small and cute it is. I understand the prices on the componetns isn’t cheap but I’d rather buy one of these things with the understanding it can die at anytime in a couple of years and I can just buy a new one and toss the old one. When you have to put $250 each time that sucks.

JonBert laying the smack

Macworld on Macworld

PCs integrating more with the TV? “You will be assimilated”, anyone?

I’ve seen photos of Windows Media Center but never actually tried it. Is
anyone actually using it? The ability to integrate with a remote control sounds
quite useful. The ability to get all the viruses Windows does, doesn’t. The
ability to use many of the media Codecs for Windows sounds VERY nice. The
fact it might blow up like Windows does at weird times and probably has crappy
bootup times like a PC doesn’t.

Of course the Open Source community is pushing forward Linux. Me?
When I sit in front of the TV, I really want a remote to control the TV since
it’s been many yaers since I’ve HAD to walk to the TV/VCR to make it
change channels/play/stop/etc

Link to Story

Gee, that’s a way to put yourself through college. Teach the computer NON-savvy Professors how to use a computer.

Except for one thing… does this cause strife when the student gets graded by that teacher later on?

Paul Dame possessed the knowledge and Willard Morgan the willingness to learn it. It was a classic teacher-student relationship — except for one thing: Dame is an undergraduate at the University of Vermont, and Morgan a lecturer.

Link to Story

This is really cool. Only need a web browser.

Hmm that’s interesting. Forensic Science in High Schools. Definitely interesting.
One thing to note even thought it is getting more popular it seems that the field
itself is not a growth field so people aren’t just going to get in because lots of more
applicants are availalbe. It will just magnify the competition for the available spots.

Link to Story

When it comes to Open Source development GCC is the king in the compiler area (unless you work with some other language…. and even then…). Awhile ago I found lcc however it’s license is restritive if you want to develop commercial software. This I think has prevented its wider adoption.

However, once of the places I leave my virtual self on told me about TenDRA. Best of all it looks like it has a much more liberal license than GCC.

Here’s an announcement from the Mailing List

— A very nice set of tools, some serving as stand-alone crown/bsd
licensed replacements for GNU tools. Check out sid in
particular.

Definitely sounds interesting! Although it seems the TenDRA project has a sub-fork which I’m still reading and trying to understand but hopefully it leads to faster progress.

The original branch of TenDRA

New branch focusing on ANDF technology

What the heck is ANDF?

Looks like my Alma Mater ended up in the press again (the bad side). This link was forwarded to me by a friend of mine.

Obligatory Excerpt:

Postdocs are neither students nor faculty, so their roles, rights and responsibilities in a university are often undefined, governed more by convention than policy. This often leaves postdocs at the whim of domineering advisors, but also can find advisors facing distrustful and frustrated postdocs.

Here’s another passage that was fascinating

Across the country, the difficult working conditions of postdocs have been getting some attention lately. As the number of people getting doctorate degrees outpaces the number of tenure-track faculty positions, the number of postdocs has been rising, and people are spending much longer in these types of positions.

…

The number of postdocs coming from other countries has increased dramatically over the past 15 years. According to a National Science Foundation study, the number of foreign postdocs in science and engineering rose by 8,000 from 1988 to 2000, while the number of U.S.-citizen or permanent-resident postdocs rose by only about 1,500

I don’t have anymore info besides what the article says so it’s hard to know about the specific case mentioned. However, those numbers in the second passage quoted lead to many other questions. Who are rising into the postdoc ranks mainly? Does anyone have an idea of the ratio of native citizens versus influx of non? Also, what happens with many of the foreign postdocs? Are there numbers that show the rate that they decide to settle and stay in the U.S.?
If anyone has an idea about those numbers that’d be great to know.

Link to Story

Stumbled across this one. It’s all writings no pictures about one lady’s tale of being a porn store clerk. Not sure if it is true or not but it definitely is an interesting read.

Obligatory Passage:

I don’t think there should be any shame in masturbating, but I do think there should be shame in expecting someone with whom you are not very, very close to deal with a wad of your spooge

All I can say is… ewwwwww.

Link to Stories

The Blog I found the link from

I got curious about what the channel allocation plan for 802.11 (Wi-Fi) is. After alway choosing a random channel that is not the same as any other nearby WiFi point I beacme curious to see what the channel plan is. After some googling around I dug up a channel plan on the net. If you know what channel plans are you can just skip the next paragraph and read on. Otherwise…

WHAT’S A CHANNEL PLAN?

If channel plan doesn’t make much sense. What happens is when you’re given a range of frequences you can broadcast on. You end up segmenting the range of frequences into a set. So for example 802.11 for the U.S. covers 2.412Ghz – 2.462Ghz frequency range. Now in theory you could just things wherever you want but it makes sense to put them in intervals that gives the best multiple for the range you have. Once you have those set of intervals, most people seem to find it a pain in the butt to refer to them as the interval 2.412 – 2.417. Hence the creation of a channel map. For the interval I just mentioned, in 802.11 parlor that is Channel 1. (Actually the above could be slightly wrong if 2.412 is the center frequency for Channel 1 but the general idea is the same). So now we can just say channel 1 or 4 or 8 and people can reference the channel map and figure out what’s what. This works for TV as well. Of course the tricky thing is most folk don’t know where to find this channel map most of the times as this data might be floating around SOMEWHERE but it’s usually not under an easy name to find unless you’re a RF junkie.

I ALREADY KNOW WHAT A CHANNEL PLAN IS, SHOW ME THE MONEY

Now that I’ve given a brief overview of what a Wireless Channel Plan here’s the channel plan for 802.11 and the countries which can use which set of channels. Thanks to this link for the channel map.

Link to where I got the channel map. Many thanks!!

This is a little old but I think it’s worth a read. O’ReillyNet interviews Cory Doctorow.
I found this quote rather poignant and to the point:

But one thing you discover in the technology world, especially in free software, is that being a good programmer and being a good person are not necessarily correlated, or at least being a good programmer and being a person with whom other people want to spend a lot of time, who has good hygiene and good social skills, are not correlated.

Corey Doctorow wrote a really nice Sci-Fi Novel called Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. It’s freely available under the Creative Commons License. If you’re a Sci-Fi Fan I highly suggest taking a look or even better reading it for yourself.

Link to Interview

“Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the Women” -Conan the Barbarian

Just click on the picture for the link to the thread. It’s pretty funny if you ask me.

I saw a thread on ArsTechnica’s bulletin board about What are You
Learning Now.  I thought it was a neat thread and a nice break
from all of the language wars, how do I…, choose a devel. 
environment for me, etc threads that show up on their Programmer
Section.

Here’s the link:
  Comments (0)

One of the really generous things Bruce Perens is doing is
offering his name on a set of books on various Open Source topics and
making sure those books are available under an Open Publication License
which allows anyone to download the sources or something like a PDF.

One of the really annoying things is that finding a nice
definitive link to where to download these books is a PITA to find on
Google and most places that mention it.  You end up often
getting redirected to Amazon or the Publisher’s Book Purchasing Site
and coaxed into trying to buy it.  So for all of those wanting
a link… here you go.

 http://www.phptr.com/perens

P.S. Sorry about the crappy formatting but this rich text editor that
pops up when you try to edit an entry in Mozilla or IE really ticks me
off as it adds all these extra tags and features I have no idea how to
turn off.  View HTML source gives a half-baked view of
it.   This stupid editor is worse than Front Page
imo.   If someone knows how to turn this off in Manila I’d be
really happy to know how.

Tim O’Reilly is definitely one guy moving the fast lane. For awhile now he’s been covering how websites such as Amazon.com and eBay are beginning to look more like an application rather than just a site that lets you buy books or sell stuff online. They offer many other services on top of their base services which you can access via many Web Services APIs and blah blah blah.

You can find more of Tim’s writing on this here and here.

In many ways Tim is quite right about this becoming a paradigm shift. However, one has to wonder if this is eventual and how will the players turn out? To create a web services as an application first of all you need to be able to AFFORD to keep running your service. This requires lots of other ancillary-seeming things such as a web server, an application framework to hold all of yotur web services, an Internet connection, power, machines to run all of these thiings. And MOST importantly, data of some sort.

This in my opinion puts out a lot of smaller players from being able to consistently compete in this web services as an application game. The costs will eventually bleed you to death on those side parts and large companies are easily able to throw money to provide many of those other parts. And providing the web service isn’t necessarily going to get you money unless you charge for it. But then you need to offer a service people are WILLING to pay for and at the current moment many of these services as applications are dirt cheap to outright free. That doesn’t leave great margins for competing unless you have another core business that you can make money on to fund your ventures into this new territory. Obviouslly O’Reilly Associates doesn’t ahve to worry about this from the business point. They make money on books. So does Amazon.

So I ask… where does the small guy fit into this? I don’t see it. If you’re a small business you’re scraping buy and staying lean and hungry most of the time unless you’re in the growing phase. But that’s a different story.

If you’re a small business and you DON’T have core competencies in building these web services as an application paradigm I seriously doubt you’ll be able to afford:

• The system builders to buidl you a system
• The programmers involved to program the customizations for the system
• The maintainers to maintain whatever you’ve built and keep it tracked to your core competency very well

Prove me wrong here. Sure, Open Source tools are free and the aspiring person can just d/l it and try getting started. But once you hit that thorn you’re so screwed because every minute you’re spending trying to fiddle with getting a system built into place you’re losing time on your business unless you’re willing to lose sleep which will affect your bottom line eventually.

For now I only see web services as an application for the bigger players or people with enough money to just throw around