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"Technology is Amazing We Should Learn to Appreciate What We Got Today"
Technology that i think thats Amazing
Computers
Cell Phones
Ipods
Video Cameras
TV
Internet
Electric Heat
Calculators
DVD Players
Cars
Radars
Planes
Smoke Detactor And Carbon Deoxide Detactor
And Much More
My Favorite Technology's and info about them
Computer And The Internet i think are both excellent Tools It Helps Us all Today it helps us process
Reports a Lot Easier And A Lot Faster The Internet We Can Share Information With The Whole World Really Fast and Easy Using
Web Pages We Can Also Play Games on the Computer and as well as talk to friends back in the earlier days We Didint Have Computers
Calculator Im So Glad the Calculator Was Invented In big Math Problems you will have to do a lot
of adding and if you need a number really quick the calculator will help it makes Math Seem a Lot Less Stressful
Cell phones Are a Great Tool We Can Talk to Our Friends When we are not next to each other No Matter
How Far We Are We Can Talk to Our Friends on the Phone Such A Wonderful Invention
Ipods We Can Store Our Music on it And We Can Take the Music on The Go With Us No Matter Where we
go and we can store a lot of songs depending on how much storage you have on your ipod Music Helps Calm us Down
Electric Heater im so Glad a Electric Heater Was Invented it made Getting Heat a Lot Easier you
dont have to Keep on getting logs like you had to do back in the colonial times
Radar A Great Tool That Many People Use to Determine When a Storm Is Going to Hit The Radar Scanns
the Sky And Tells us Where the Storm is Exactly in the Sky Back in the earlier days there
was No Radars Nobody Knew Ahead of time when a Storm Was Coming Like Today
Cars Back in the 1900s There Was Only Wagons For Transportation often it would take Days to get
from one location to a Another Now That We Got Cars Today We Can Get To Many Places In Town Easily As 5-10 Minutes For The
Most Part
Smoke And Carbon Dexoide Detactors im So Glad They been Invented i Feel Safe When there is Smoke
or Something it will warn us that there is smoke in the air or if there is carbon dexoide in the air it will warn us to get
out
There is Always Something New Being Invented
New And Some Old Technology
Pulse Smart Pen – The Smartest Pen On Earth
Smart Board
Smart Board is a Like a Regular Board Only Its Not its a Board That is Computerized you Dont Need
to Use that Old Chalk Anymore you can type things in and it will say on the board exactly what you type in on the computer
Pulse Smart Pen is a Brand new Pen and it is the Smartest Pen in the whole entire world
Evouse Revolotionary Mouse Ensures Easier Computing With Pen Sensor Excellence
The eVouse is a revolutionary wireless laptop
mouse concept that features excellent outlook and two different functions to make computing easier. Aside from using it as
a traditional mouse, this ‘V’ shaped mouse can be used as a pen sensor for particular design works like designing
an industrial entity. The tactile action buttons and scroll offers convenient using and illuminates green light with
Styling Bicycle Focouses of Fashionable Cycling on the Road
The styling concept
bicycle has been designed mainly focusing on aesthetics that may eliminate the prestigious complexity among the users, which
is one of the key reasons of disappearing bicycles from the current roads. The designer has drastically changed the appearance
of a conventional bicycle, making it real sporty, which will surely encourage mass users to ride with pride on the styling
bicy
You'd be hard-pressed to find standards as ubiquitous as SATA, which is used to plug hard drives into
computers. But its success inside the computer chassis turns out to have been a bad predictor of its success outside.
Years ago, SATA allies created a variation of the specification called eSATA that would let people attach hard external hard drives to computers. The big advantage over USB: an eSATA drive reads and writes data just as fast as an internal drive.
SATA caught on widely, but eSATA didn't.
Despite its branding disaster of a name--eSATA stands for External Serial AT Attachment, and AT stands
for nothing in particular--eSATA achieved some measure of success. I for one am glad it exists as a way to give laptops some
measure of storage expandability of desktop machines. But overall, it never built critical mass, and I believe new technologies
that match its speed and exceed its breadth will consign it to obscurity among mainstream computer users.
The nearest competitive threat is the new USB 3.0 "SuperSpeed," which offers transfer speeds of 5
gigabits per second compared to the 480 megabits per second of the currently prevailing version of the multipurpose Universal
Serial Bus technology.
The new USB version is just now assuming the throne after a dangerously long reign by its predecessor.
The first hard drives supporting it are on the market, and soon it will become mandatory in PCs.
In comparison, eSATA offers speeds of 3Gb/sec, but the only thing you can attach with it are hard
drives and optical drives. As a feature on most people's purchasing checklists, it's optional.
In-Stat analyst Brian O'Rourke concludes that eSATA "will remain a niche technology with very limited
growth prospects." The market research firm forecasts that external drives supporting eSATA will drop from 8.5 percent of
the market in 2009 to 7 percent in 2010 in a new report on the matter.
Where eSATA falls short
I thought eSATA had promise--I use it daily and think eSATA is smart for higher-end storage devices such Data Robotics' new Drobo--but my personal experience has revealed difficulties and complications.
The eSATA standard does make sense for higher-end devices like the Drobo S from
Data Robotics. (Credit: Data Robotics)
eSATA's incumbent advantage is that the protocol is no different than regular SATA. All computers
need to support it is an external port.
But the world is moving toward laptops, where that one extra port is precious real estate that could
be used for another USB port or for making a design just that much smaller or thinner. A clever solution on my own laptop
combines a USB and eSATA port into one, but that's more expensive than an ordinary USB port.
A second eSATA problem is inconvenience. On my machines, eSATA drives must be powered up before the
computer boots. For a stationary computer or video recorder, that's not so bad, but since USB has accustomed us all to the
convenience of plug and play, eSATA's finicky nature is a significant drawback.
In my experience the boot-up issue poses problems for some software, rearing its head in particular
when the computer is going to sleep and waking up.
eSATA also got off to a rocky start for me. It's working for me now, but the first eSATA drives I
bought were erratic enough that I just connected them with USB or IEEE 1394, aka FireWire.
But there's another contender besides USB, too: Intel's Light Peak optical connections. Intel hopes Light Peak will be even more all-encompassing than USB, embracing video and network connections
that USB today can't handle.
Why go optical? Transmitting data over copper wires at ever higher speeds poses challenges when it
comes to shielding against electromagnetic interference, and the new-generation USB cables must be shorter than their predecessors
cables to accommodate the faster signaling rates. In comparison, the optical connections of Light Peak hold the promise of
much faster communications----especially considering the how much room optical communications has to grow.
But it's not clear yet how expensive Light Peak will be. I worry the cost could be high enough to
consign Light Peak to another high-end niche, even if optical links are eventually the future.
After all, the industry is littered with interconnect standards that achieved some success but never
made it big: FireWire, Fibre Channel, and InfiniBand.
And now you can add eSATA to the list.
Magnet magic puts phone control in the air
No more fumbling in your pocket to silence your ringing phone in the cinema – a
quick wave of your hand could now suffice. That's thanks to researchers at Deutsche Telekom (DT) in Berlin, Germany, who have
developed software that makes it possible to control a cellphone by moving a magnet around near it. It works on devices with
a compass sensor, now a standard feature of smartphones such as the Apple iPhone or Google's Nexus One.
The DT team's software, dubbed MagiTact, tracks changes to the magnetic field around
a cellphone to identify different gestures by a hand holding or wearing a magnet. The software scans several times a second
for rapid changes in local magnetic fields to ensure that it is picking up on a user's moves, not other magnetic fields.
Using MagiTact a user can turn the pages of an on-screen document by moving their hand
right to left. A sharp patting motion 10 to 20 centimetres above a device's screen is enough to terminate a call. They can
also move their hand behind the device to control the zoom on a map without obscuring the screen.
In early testing, the software recognised volunteers' gestures with 90 per cent accuracy.
TV white space networks tested
The city of Wilmington, N.C., and the surrounding county of New Hanover, N.C., are among
the first communities to test wireless applications using TV white space technology.
The city and county have partnered with TV Band Service and Spectrum Bridge to launch
a new experimental network that uses white space spectrum to provide wireless connectivity to surveillance cameras and environmental
sensors in a "smart city" deployment.
TV white spaces are the unused TV broadcast channels made available by the recent transition
from analog to digital TV. In 2008, the Federal Communications Commission unanimously agreed to open up this unused broadcast
TV spectrum for unlicensed use, despite strong protests from TV broadcasters, who argued using this spectrum could interfere
with their television broadcasts.
The Wilmington/New Hanover network, which uses an experimental license since FCC rules
for white space usage haven't been finalized yet, focuses exclusively on providing monitoring capabilities and data collection
instead of providing broadband access to residents.
Initially, the network is being used for three main applications. The first application
uses traffic cameras at intersections to provide real-time traffic monitoring for the department of transportation to reduce
congestion, fuel consumption, travel time, support local law enforcement, and assist with hurricane and disaster evacuations.
In the second application of the technology, white space spectrum is being used to wirelessly
connect cameras in city parks to police for surveillance. Radios are also set up in city parks to provide free Wi-Fi access
to residents and city workers.
In the third application, the city and county are using the white space network to remotely
monitor and manage wetland areas to comply with EPA regulations. Because these areas are hard to get to, there is no fiber
optic network that can be used to transmit data from sensors in the field. So people go out in boats and canoes to collect
the data from the monitors. Now using the white space network, the data can be transmitted wirelessly.
Eventually, the network could also be used to provide other applications, such as expanded
Internet connectivity for local schools, medical monitoring, and other environmental monitoring, said Rick Rotondo, chief
marketing officer of Spectrum Bridge.
But he admits that using white space spectrum is just one way to offer these wireless
applications. Existing cellular networks are already being used in some places to deliver some of these services today. Some
cities have already tried deploying Wi-Fi for similar applications. And wireless operators, such as Verizon Wireless, promise
that 4G wireless technology will provide these same functions.
But Rotondo says that white space spectrum could provide a cheaper alternative to these
networks.
"We are not saying that white space spectrum will solve every wireless networking problem,"
he said. "It's good for certain applications and certain communities. We think it will be one of many types of wireless networks
that will be used to deliver these and other types of wireless applications."
Indeed, TV white spaces is expected to be a part of the national broadband plan that
the FCC is currently developing and preparing to present to Congress next month. FCC chairman Julius Genachowski has already
expressed interest in using white spaces to deliver alternative broadband access. And he has been encouraging companies to
think creatively about how to use the spectrum.
When the FCC decided to open the spectrum for unlicensed use a little more than a year
ago, it set some preliminary rules for using the spectrum. But it hasn't yet finalized the rules, which means that commercial
products can't be sold, and networks using the spectrum can only be used for experimental purposes. Rotondo expects the FCC
to finalize its rules in the first half of this year.
It's early days for white space use, and the Wilmington/New Hanover deployment is only
the second test bed that Spectrum Bridge has established to test applications for white space networks. In October, the company
set up a network in Claudville, Va., a town with a population of about 900 people. Claudville does not have access to DSL
or cable broadband services. It's only serviced by dial-up Internet and satellite broadband.
The white space network provides connectivity to the local school, which uses a Wi-Fi
router to provide Internet access to students and teachers. The speeds are modest, only about 1 megabit per second, Rotondo
said. But with better radios, speeds could be much faster.
Rotondo said that the Spectrum Bridge networks are simply to show what is possible with
white space spectrum and technology. The company won't be building white space devices and it won't run a white space network.
Instead, it is creating software that can be used by white space products to mitigate interference. Spectrum Bridge has created
a data base that keeps track of available white space spectrum, and it's developed software, which can be used by device makers
to check for available spectrum to avoid interference.
That said, there are plenty of companies interested in building products around white
space spectrum. Motorola, Dell, Google, and Microsoft are among the technology companies that have been lobbying for the use
of white space spectrum. And it's likely some, if not all, will develop products and services that use the spectrum.
Quicken for the Mac: Finally!
A year ago at the Intuit booth
at MacWorld, Quicken founder Scott Cook pressed a CD into my hand. It contained a beta version of the company's long-overdue
update of the Mac version of Quicken, called Quicken Financial Life. Eagerly awaiting its release were Mac users who needed
a personal finance app with some meat on its bones. They were getting frustrated with Quicken's maker, Intuit. The ancient
Quicken 2007, which was the last new version of Quicken for the Mac, was so unloved that you didn't have to look far to find
people running Windows (inside Parallels or VMWare Fusion) on their Macs just so they could use one of the grown-up versions
of Quicken that was available for the PC.
QFL never saw the light of day. It was unloved even inside Intuit. Before the product could make it out of beta, Intuit
bought Mint.com, the upstart online personal financial information company. Mint's CEO, Aaron Patzer (interview), became the
general manager of Intuit's Personal Finance Group, and took as one of his first jobs overseeing the re-creation of Quicken
Financial Life into Quicken Essentials. Features were dropped from QFL, the interface was redesigned, and Patzer made sure
new users could set up the product in 10 to 15 minutes.
Quicken Essentials, the first new version of Quicken for the Mac since 2007, finally ships Thursday, at a retail price
of $59.99.
The app is a modern financial product. It's approachable instead of feature-laden, and in most areas it's very Mac-like.
It's clearly not a Mac port of the Windows version of Quicken that old fogeys like me are accustomed to. It's missing features
like bill payment, and it's no good at tracking investments.
In exchange for its limited feature set, Quicken Essentials gets ease of use. It is very easy to set up if you're starting
from scratch. Once your accounts are hooked in, an Overview page gives you a super-clean Mint-like screen that shows you where
your money is going to and coming from. Patzer says Quicken is very smart about automatically categorizing expenses so you
can identify your habits accurately. It aggregates categorization corrections from other users to continuously improve its
performance (the Windows version, by contrast, uses Yellow Pages lookups).
Like the now-departed Microsoft Money, Quicken Essentials will show you activity in individual accounts or in a combined
ledger with everything. But its real benefit is its budgeting tools. Here again its smart categorization helps a lot: It does
a good job of analyzing your spending habits to help you create realistic budgets, and it has a good, simple screen to keep
track of them.
As I said, Quicken Essentials doesn't do bill payment for you. Patzer says that only 6 percent of Quicken Windows users
use this feature; most people today pay bills either through their banks' online systems or at the site of the companies billing
them. Quicken Essentials is also a miserable product if you want to keep track of investments. You can't even enter investment
transactions manually. Quicken Essentials will download and record your transactions, but you can't see them. You can't get
more detail than current values of your holdings, in fact. There are no historical charts or other forms of analysis. Patzer
says that in 2011, a Deluxe version of Quicken for the Mac may include these features.
There's also no integration with Intuit's consumer tax product, TurboTax.
Quicken Essentials features "the mother of all file converters," Patzer told me. It will read data files from any version
of Quicken as well as from Microsoft Money. But you do need to run old files through an external converter, which I did not
receive in time to test.
The Mint aesthetic is clearly part of Quicken Essentials, and that's good. Patzer told me he's aware that Mint will never
appeal to a large number of users who don't trust a company, even Intuit, to store all their financial passwords on computers
outside of their control. For many of these people, Quicken Essentials is a very good solution. The app is simple, attractive,
and useful. It doesn't overreach and it's not bloated. However, people with complex financial lives may run into walls with
the product.
Slow sales of Pre force Palm to cut forecast
Palm is back on the ropes. The smartphone pioneer slashed revenue forecasts
Thursday because sales of its Pre handsets have been slow.
Palm revised fiscal 2010 third-quarter revenue to $285 million to $310 million,
below company and analyst forecasts. Palm says full 2010 revenue will be "well below" the previously projected range of $1.6
billion to $1.8 billion. Palm's stock fell more than 19% to $6.53.
EARNINGS: What companies are reporting today?
"This is a tough blow for Palm," Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney says.
The Pre received mostly glowing notices upon its arrival in June through
Sprint. It was expected to restore Palm's shine after its flagship Treo smartphones had lost their luster. But the Pre hasn't
become a best seller, nor have the newer Pre Plus and Pixi Plus. Palm unveiled both on the Verizon Wireless network in January.
"Driving consumer adoption of Palm products is taking longer than we anticipated,"
CEO Jon Rubinstein said in a statement. He said Sprint and Verizon remain committed, "And we are working closely with them
to increase awareness and drive sales."
It won't be easy. With Apple, RIM (BlackBerry), Google (Android), Microsoft
and others, competition is only getting fiercer. On Palm's long-term prospects, Dulaney says, "That's a tough call."
Not all analysts are ready to write Palm off. "The company is far from down
and out," says Michael Gartenberg, a partner at the Altimeter Group. "It doesn't take much for a runner to stumble and for
someone to gain some momentum." He says Palm has a decent-size war chest and "tremendous talent," but that it can't afford
to make many mistakes.
What's gone wrong? Palm launched Pre with just one U.S. carrier, Sprint,
and precious few apps compared with Apple and other rivals. Phone supplies were tight. "You have a small window to make an
impact with a new handset," Standard & Poor's analyst James Moorman says.
Dulaney thinks Palm must come out with a new touch-screen-only device and
persuade developers to write apps for its WebOS operating system. "I hope the best for them," he says. "Palm is one of the
hallmarks of Silicon Valley."
Bloom box challenges: Reliability, cost
In the wake of Wednesday's star-studded, feel-good rollout of Bloom Energy's "Bloom box" server,
the start-up now faces the gritty task of delivering products that are reliable and cheap.
Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Bloom Energy held a press event Wednesday morning detailing the Bloom box
fuel cell, which is designed to be stacked into small blocks and housed in a unit about the size of a refrigerator. Luminaries
in attendance included California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, legendary venture capitalist
John Doerr, Google co-founder Larry Page, and top executives from heavyweight companies such as eBay, Wal-Mart, and FedEx.
The combination within the Bloom box of oxygen and fuel creates a chemical reaction, producing electricity.
The box, which promises to deliver generous amounts of power in a small space and to change people's dependency on traditional
power grids--all for less than $3,000 for a future home unit--is already in use at places such as Google, eBay, and Wal-Mart.
Probably the single most fundamental promise made by Bloom Energy CEO K.R. Sridhar at Wednesday's
event was that by starting with a 25-watt fuel cell building block, products can be scaled up from 1kW "home" solutions to
systems delivering hundreds of kilowatts for businesses or communities.
One fundamental challenge is making the ceramic tile reliable.
"It's extremely thin and operates at a wide range of temperatures. The big challenge is thermal
stress," said Tobin Fisher, who co-founded mobile fuel cell company Ardica Technologies out of Stanford University. "All of
these different components heat up and expand at different rates. Over time, they can crack as a result."
Generally, when a system like Bloom's is not working, it can result in a phenomenon called "gas
short," quickly gaining in temperature and losing efficiency, according to Fisher.
Fisher believes companies like Bloom Energy stress-test the technology over long periods of time,
trying to find failures and fix them. Bloom was founded in 2001, and it took the company about eight years to get to the point
at which it can deliver a very limited number of systems to select businesses.
Bloom has an elegant way to deal with failures when they occur, according to Sridhar.
"We have a modular, redundant architecture with hot-swappable technology," Sridhar said on Wednesday,
referring to the same type of design offered by high-end corporate servers, which ensure that when one component, such as
a hard disk drive, goes down, the system remains running.
"If a server were to break in a data center, it doesn't take your data center down. Similarly, if
any one [Bloom Energy] unit has to be serviced, the customer is not going to be out of power," Sridhar said, applying the
server analogy to Bloom boxes, which, indeed, are officially called Bloom Energy Servers.
How Bloom Energy's strategy stacks up:
* One fuel cell (one tile): 25 watts = 1 lightbulb
* Small
box with one stack of tiles: 1kW = 1 home, $3,000 (future product)
* Module: 25kW = small business
* Big box: 100kW = large business, $700,000-$800,000
Low cost, off-the-grid boxes
The low-cost aspect is predicated, to a large extent, on being able
to generate power efficiently, at the point of consumption, off the electrical grid. "You lose about 20 percent of electricity
in transmission and distribution," Fisher said. "So one of the big payouts is, you don't have that distribution [and] transmission
loss."
But most users will still have to pay the going rate for energy going into the box. Biofuels are
being touted as a potential energy source, but for most users, this option is not realistic today. Natural gas (what eBay
is using) will be the most practical energy source for the foreseeable future, according to Fisher.
Bloom claims that customers can expect payback within three to five years on their investment from
the energy cost savings. Sridhar has stated that a box is capable of generating electricity at a cost of between 8 cents and
10 cents per kilowatt-hour, using natural gas. But that's cheaper, in some cases, than only commercial electricity prices.
A goal of Bloom that has been challenged fairly widely already is introducing a 1kW Bloom box for
the home. Although on paper, 1kW sounds very economical, that will not realistically power a home off the grid consistently.
A more realistic amount, critics say, is 5kW.
The hardware itself isn't cheap, either. A home unit is expected to cost about $3,000, while units
purchased by large companies like Google and Fedex cost between $700,000 and $800,000. Bloom stated Wednesday that while the
goal is to eventually expand into small business and residential markets, it is currently focused on producing the more expensive
100kW systems used by Google, Fedex, eBay, and others. No smaller units have been commercialized yet.
The Bloom box also faces a manufacturing challenge. The tiles will be made with "mass-manufacturing
techniques the semiconductor industry developed a long time ago," according to Sridhar. But semiconductor manufacturing is
fraught with its own set of challenges that Bloom Energy will have to overcome, if it begins producing tiles in massive quantities
for a worldwide market--which is the goal.
Olympic notebook: Microsoft exec avoids the penalty box
VANCOUVER--Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop looked up as he delivered a presentation
to his top managers on Microsoft's campus on Wednesday.
As Elop had been speaking, one of those managers, Kirill Tatarinov, had groaned several times.
Stephen
Elop
Stephen Elop shows off his Team Canada jersey.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET )
"Was it something I said," Elop asked Tatarinov, who runs a division that creates business software
for midsize companies.
Sheepishly, Tatarinov confessed that he had been watching the Russia-Canada Olympic hockey game. If
Tatarinov worked for some other bosses at Microsoft, that could have been what is known in Redmond as a "career limiting move."
Luckily, Tatarinov works for Elop, himself a huge hockey fan.
"I respected his choice of priorities," Elop told me. "He didn't take a ding on it at all."
Plus, it was hard to be too mad. Each groan meant that Elop's beloved Canadian hockey team was winning.
"I was more pleased that Canada was winning," Elop said.
Elop even managed to wrap the meeting up a bit early so that he, Tatarinov, and the rest of the team
could catch the action at the nearby Spitfire Grill. When the Russians finally pulled their goaltender after the deficit grew
to 6-1, Elop lovingly put his arm around Tatarinov.
And being the hockey fan that he is, Elop, of course, found his way to Vancouver. In a bold move of
his own, Elop showed up to the USA House on Thursday, hours before the gold medal game, decked out in his Team Canada jersey,
getting quite a bit of ribbing from those at the U.S. Olympic Committee-run pavilion.
Part of the visit, Elop said was business. In a brief meeting Thursday before he headed to watch the
gold medal women's hockey game between Canada and the U.S., Elop noted that he is Microsoft's executive sponsor for Bell Canada--a
major telecommunications customer for Microsoft and a sponsor of the Games. But, he agreed a big part of the trip was also
about hockey.
In addition to that women's hockey game (the outcome of which means I now owe Elop a beer), the Microsoft
executive also plans to attend both the bronze and gold medal men's games.
We did spend a minute or two talking shop. I pressed him on rumors I keep hearing that Microsoft is
working on a version of Office (or some Office applications) for the iPad and iPhone, but Elop slipped the check with a flat
no comment.
He did assure me that those reading Microsoft's move with Windows Phone 7 Series as a move away from
the enterprise are misunderstanding. While the new interface is designed to appeal to consumers more than other versions of
Windows Mobile, he assured me his unit is investing more in software for Windows phones than ever before. "The business division
is more involved than ever before," he said.
A quick recharge
One of the coolest gadgets I've run across in Vancouver is the rapid battery-charging
machine from Samsung. The company has them stationed at venues across the city. The units, which are free to use at the Games,
allow many different types of cell phone batteries to be charged in 20 minutes or less.
A Samsung mobile charging station, one of more than 60 such machines located in various hotels, Olympic
venues, and other spots across greater Vancouver and Whistler.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET)
According to Samsung, the chargers use a processor that detects the battery voltage and applies the
same or slightly higher voltage to increase the rate of charge, allowing for a process that normally takes a few hours to
be done in a matter of minutes.
The Korean electronics giant--and big-time Olympic partner-- has installed a total of 67 charging
stations for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, in hotels, press rooms, athlete's villages, competition venues, and
other locales.
To use the machine, you need only make sure your battery works--it has to do with where on the battery
the conduits are located. Then choose a three-digit pin to secure your battery, pop in the battery, and come back 20 minutes
later to find your once-depleted battery ready for more action. The stations came in particularly handy for me on Tuesday
as I spent the morning covering hockey and then shifted to an evening of writing about figure skating.
Skating at the bar
One of the cool things about the Vancouver Olympics is practically every restaurant
or bar in town is a mini-venue with a contingent of fans as passionate as any lucky enough to have tickets.
Such was the case with Thursday's ladies figure skating finals. I found myself at Character's--a bar
and restaurant on Davie Street.
At one table, a group of Koreans cheered on Yu-Na Kim, a national hero and the points leader after
the short program. One table over, a group of Canadians clapped for Joannie Rochette, their countrywoman who was skating just
days after her mother's death.
The Koreans also cheered for Rochette. "We know about her story," said Seung Yu, who studies English
in Vancouver. Yu and her friends wanted Rochette to get a medal too--just not the gold.
In the end, all were happy, with Rochette getting bronze and Kim, the gold.
"It's quite a heroic performance," Toronto's Dan Fernandes said of Rochette. "A bronze medal means
more than a gold (under other circumstances)."
Lauren Karst, of Bowen Island, British Columbia, said she was also happy because Canada now has 17
medals, equal to its mark for the Torino games, with the country also assured of a medal in curling. "'Own the Podium' worked,"
she said, referring to the national effort to do better on home turf in this year's medal standings.
When good game consoles go bad
Sony's PlayStation Network is on the fritz. Microsoft's Xbox Live network has had its problems. And
there was that one Wii system software update that was turning consoles into pretty looking paperweights.
It's times like this, as we dissect failures in digital entertainment technology, when we have to
ask the question: Is it too soon to blame digital rights management?
Two console generations ago, problems like this would have been inconceivable, or at least wouldn't
have had the kind of domino effect they do today. The current PlayStation bug (which is believed to be due to the inclusion
of trophies in firmware v2.40) affected games, rented movies, and access to both Netflix streaming and the company's online
storefront--all things that continue to work without issue for users of the newer PS3 Slim hardware. You'd simply never get
this kind of problem back when the only thing you could use your system for was to play something off a disc or a cartridge.
Though the main problem is less about progress and more about the security countermeasures put into
place to keep consoles or users from doing something they shouldn't. Using digital rights management has become one of the
easiest ways to do this, though it can also make things more difficult for the consumer.
And while DRM may not end up being the culprit in Sony's snafu, the situation is a startling reminder
of how little control we have over these little boxes that are sitting in our living rooms. That's by design though. All three
of the big console makers (Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo) use various types of security to make sure people do not run downloadable
games or content that they have not purchased. Here's a brief rundown of how they work:
Xbox 360
DRM is attached to every piece of content acquired through Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace.
This includes Xbox Originals, Xbox Live arcade titles, video content from the Zune marketplace, and video game add-on content.
Content licenses are tied to both the console and the user's gamertag. This means you can use that
content on any console, as long as you're signed in with your Xbox Live gamertag. However, you cannot simply transfer content
to a console and play it if you're another user without first using Microsoft's license transfer tool. This can transfer the
license for that content from one console to another, and can only be done once every 12 months. Users also have a strict
30 minutes to start and finish the process before that transfer session expires, and requires doing it again.
There is also a license of sorts attached to game save files. This require a users to be logged in
with their Xbox Live gamertag to load a saved game if it's being run on another console.
PlayStation 3
Despite the whole CD rootkit fiasco a few years back, Sony's PlayStation 3 has one
of the most lenient DRM systems in place when it comes to sharing game content between systems. Users can share a game they've
purchased on the PlayStation store on up to five different PS3 consoles. Though if there is a multiplayer component, all other
copies of it will be locked down when one of those boxes is in use for an online match.
Although this isn't always the case, developers can choose whether or not they can lock a game save
file to a particular user. For unprotected games, this means you can freely swap save files between consoles and user profiles.
Otherwise, it'll be attached to that particular memory medium.
Nintendo Wii
Nintendo's DRM is a tad stricter than Microsoft and Sony's policies. Content that's
downloaded from Nintendo's online store, particularly Wiiware applications or Virtual Console titles are tied to that specific
machine. This means that if that machine is sold off, or if users pick up an additional console, they cannot share or transfer
that content to the newer one and vice versa.
In contrast with Microsoft and Sony, game saves are console- and user-agnostic, meaning you can share
them with other people.
Over the years there have been a number of problems or basic annoyances that have cropped up as a
result of these security measures:
DLC problems on the 360. One of the earliest problems with DRM on consoles popped up on the Xbox 360.
People who had downloaded Xbox Live arcade titles or add-on content for games found they could use it only when connected
to Xbox Live. This was a result of the content license being tied to a previous console. You wouldn't think this would be
nearly as widespread as it turned out to be, but with a large group of users getting replacement units for problematic launch
systems, it wasn't solved until three years after the console's launch, with the aforementioned content license transfer tool.
Different limitations by content type. PlayStation 3 owners who purchase a movie can only download
it once. If they want to back it up, the onus is on them to make a copy to an external device if they want to clear up some
storage on the PS3's internal hard drive. It also means that if users accidentally deletes it, they're hosed, unlike with
games that can be re-downloaded an infinite number of times on up to five different consoles. Microsoft is better about this,
and will let users re-download both purchased movies and games any time.
Inability to share data between machines. As mentioned before, in the case of the user game save restrictions
on the some PS3 titles and the Xbox 360, users are not easily able to uproot their progress in a game and use it on another
user's account. This plays a number of important roles when it comes to tracking a particular user's progress, but it ends
up making it far more complicated to take your data with you. This is even more prevalent in the case of Nintendo's Wii, where
the content is tied to a specific console, and that console only.
So what about a fix?
The good news for PlayStation 3 owners is that a fix is on the way, and they
won't necessarily have to have their machines hooked up to the Internet to apply it. Sony can push it out through the PlayStation
Network. PS3 users can also download the update on to a USB key or memory stick, then run it from the console. Similarly,
Sony is likely to put the fix on all game discs going forward, just as all other console makers do.
What remains unclear is whether the date bug can at all be traced back to some of this system-level
DRM, or if it's simply an issue of the PlayStation's latest features literally being ahead of their time.
Apple trying to store your video in the cloud
Apple's plans for cloud computing go beyond music.
The company's representatives have recently spoken with some of the major film studios about enabling
iTunes users to store their content on the company's servers, two people familiar with the discussions told CNET. That's in
addition to streaming television shows and music.
Apple has told the studios that under the plan, iTunes users will access video from various Internet-connected
devices. Apple would, of course, prefer that users access video from the iPad, the company's upcoming tablet computer, the
sources said. Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said Apple doesn't comment on rumors or speculation.
The news comes a month after Apple spoke to the major record companies about a similar plan involving music. Apple's vision is to build proverbial digital shelves where iTunes
users store their media, one of the sources said. "Basically, they want to eliminate the hard drive," the source said.
By cramming digital songs, videos, and all manner of software applications on computers and handheld
devices, there's some indication that consumers are maxing out hard drives, particularly on smaller mobile devices. That has
led to speculation among Apple watchers that some consumers might slow their purchasing of new content, if they have nowhere
to easily put it.
It's a bit of leap to reach that conclusion, certainly when a stagnant economy might be hampering
sales, but there are some worrisome signs. The NPD Group reported last week that the number of people who legally downloaded
songs dropped by nearly a million, from 35.2 million in 2008 to 34.6 million last year. Screen Digest, a research firm that focuses on
the entertainment industry, on Monday said growth in movie downloads slowed dramatically in 2009, following sharp increases in the two prior years. Screen Digest had projected that total U.S. online
movie sales for 2009 would come in at about $360 million, but the total reached only $291 million, the company said.
Before iTunes users can store their movies and TV shows in Apple's cloud, the company must get the
studios to sign on. This may not be easy. The studios want to make sure that Apple's plans play nice with non-Apple devices
and services.
Hollywood isn't interested in any walled gardens, said James McQuivey, a media analyst at Forrester
Research.
"The studios are very concerned that they're going to get roped into somebody's proprietary platform,"
McQuivey said. "They want a world where consumers have a relationship with the content, and not with the device or the service.
They are in a position to force Apple to go along and make sure that content bought [via] iTunes will play on a Nokia phone.
That is very un-Apple-like."
The upper hand in Hollywood
"Apple would prefer not to do this," McQuivey continued. "But it just
doesn't have the leverage it once did. Apple can't dictate terms or position itself as a digital savior."
The reason that Apple doesn't wield the same power over the film and TV industries that it did with
music is that more players are willing to give the studios what they want.
The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, or DECE, is a consortum of heaving-hitting media stakeholders
lining up to create standards for file formats, digital rights management, and authentication technologies. The group includes
Adobe Systems, Best Buy, Cisco Systems, Comcast, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Lions Gate Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film,
Microsoft, Netflix, Panasonic, the four largest recording companies (Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment,
EMI Group, and Warner Music Group), Samsung, Sony, and Warner Bros. Entertainment.
DECE's goal is to make sure that a movie or TV show bought from Comcast's video service will play
on Samsung devices or on Netflix's service.
Not all the studios have joined. Walt Disney has create a DECE-like service called KeyChest, which
is supposed to be DECE-compatible.
Applying more pressure on Apple is Google, one of its main rivals. Google, obviously, has YouTube.
It's also eyeing some start-ups with cloud technology to beef up its streaming services.
Two weeks ago, sources told CNET that Google had informal acquisition talks with Catch Media, a Los
Angeles company that wants to become a clearinghouse of sorts, in which consumers move media around the Web, and Catch handles
the permissions and licensing.
So what's Apple's answer to the Google threat? Apple is building a new data center in North Carolina
that, according to reports, will be the backbone of its streaming offerings. In December, Apple bought Lala, a struggling music service with an expertise in cloud computing. Google was also trying to acquire
the company, but Apple outbid Google.
The one thing that could help Apple pull away from Google, giving it more clout with the studios and
TV networks, is if iPad catches on with consumers.
The Web-enabled computer tablet, which is due to hit store shelves later this month, features a 9.7-inch display screen and can play
back video in up to 720p resolution, the sources said. If consumers start buying video to watch on the iPad, Hollywood could
soften its stance on standards. But McQuivey says Apple can't create any proprietary formats, at this point.
"Apple can't suddenly make the iPad a closed environment," he said. "Apple is not any position to
refuse to limit its customers' choices. By pioneering (the apps), Apple is stuck doing what's right for consumers."
Science in the public view A good gamble
But even if the LHC run had flopped--and indeed success only came on a third attempt Tuesday--the
project probably would have gained something.
That's because many of the challenges the LHC faces have nothing to do with the formidable technical
obstacles of building and operating a ring 26.7 km in circumference that can observe what happens when two beams of protons
moving at 99.99 percent the speed of light run into each other. It's convincing people that the LHC has value at all.
The general public these days is hardly enthusiastic in general about large-scale science projects
such as the LHC. Indeed, the public doesn't express enthusiasm for any sort of science at all, despite fondness for television,
mobile phones, antibiotics, light bulbs, satellite navigation systems, and other fruits of the scientific method.
Understanding the origins of the universe, the nature of dark matter, the particulars of the elusive
Higgs boson--these LHC challenges leave a lot of people uninspired. It's much easier to fixate on dramatic possibilities such
as the collider spawning Earth-gobbling quantum black holes, a risk (PDF) that persists in public imaginings despite being
soundly rebutted by the American Physical Society (PDF) and other credible sources.
So scientists could be forgiven if they want to leave the ranting mob out of the picture. Why on
earth, then, did they instead offer a live Webcast of the LHC ramp-up?
The hope of good publicity, of course. But the situation is a more complex matter than just letting
people watch a big scientific event.
CERN showed LHC status reports live, including this view of the two proton beams,
represented by blue and red lines, converging at the experimental sites where collisions were observed.
What the LHC did was let people watch a human interest drama. We got to see scientists at the facility
jubilant when the LHC reached its record energy. We saw them pining that they happened to be off duty during the event rather
than at the helm in one of the control centers. We saw them fretting when a problem dealt a temporary setback to the LHC run.
In short, we saw emotion. Scientific results aren't about emotion, but emotion makes people--including
scientists--tick. People who don't understand subatomic physics do understand the narrative of triumph over adversity.
It therefore was arguably even a good thing that there were hiccups on the way to 7 TeV: that pesky
magnet and power supply that messed up the early runs helped to turn LHC's staff into protagonists in a story.
The LHC already had hit several bumps on its way to operation, and CERN, bracing itself for more,
offered the view that it's tough to build something as complicated and original as the LHC. It's a fair point, but public
failures have tarnished the accelerator's reputation, and that imparted more urgency to the very visible events on Tuesday.
Some
of the first tracks of particles created by protons colliding show toward the center of this computer view of an LHC experiment
called Atlas.
The facility operators pulled it off, though. The color commentary from collider and experiment
leaders was sometimes technical, but it didn't take a Ph.D. to understand the charts showing the gradual convergence of the
two beams, a necessary step on the way to proton collisions.
Impressively, they even started showing off early results from Tuesday's proton collisions. "Let
The Physics Begin!" declared one LHC experiment's blog triumphantly upon seeing the spawn of the proton collisions twirling
away through the Atlas apparatus.
Next up for the LHC is a run lasting not a few hours, but 18 to 24 months, an unusually long span
for CERN accelerators but one that will allow LHC to make up for time lost after a big setback in 2008. The run will be at
the same 7 TeV energy level of Tuesday's test.
The vast majority of humanity didn't watch the LHC's Webcast Tuesday and will remain as uninterested
in tuning into the next chapter. But even the primary audience was researchers, students, and technophiles, that's an important
improvement over nobody at all.
There's one more reason the public Webcast was important, though, and it's more subtle than just
the idea of offering the public a story. We, the public, are collectively paying for the LHC, and making the run public meant
the researchers themselves had to keep that fact in mind.
There are plenty of practical barriers between physicists and ordinary people, but too many of them
are gratuitous. I don't expect the public to regain its faith in science anytime soon, but rebuilding the ties between the
public and the researchers, or at least opening the doors, will help the public be more sympathetic and the researchers be
more honest with their ultimate audience.
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