Pandora™ is a free music service that learns what type of music you like. You tell it a few songs or artists you like and begins playing similar songs. Specifying about a dozen song titles, rather than artists, allows you to narrow the music selection really well. To refine it to your tastes you can rate each song you like with a thumbs up and songs you don't like with a thumbs down. After about an hour of learning it does a spectacular job of choosing music you'll like.

You can also share your taste in music with others. For example, I've created Augur Radio on Pandora. Have a listen...if you dare.

If you're using the Mozilla Firefox web browser then drag this Pandora™ Mini link to your toolbar to create a button that will popup the Pandora player in a small floating window.

Labels: technology

The new Gateway FPD2185W is a really nice 21" widescreen (16:10 ratio) high definition HDTV/computer monitor with a retail price of $599.99. It allows one to connect up to 5 video sources at once and switch between them; it has one each of DVI/HDCP, VGA, Component Video (YCbCr/YPbPr), Composite RCA, and S-Video ports. The monitor allows picture in picture between any two of the ports.

I quickly discovered one important thing about this monitor. You really need to have a video card that supports the monitor's native 1680x1050 resolution or one of the other resolutions listed in the manual (1680x1050, 1440x900, 1152x864, etc). Something like a cheap nVidia GeForce4 MX400 works fine. The monitor seems to automatically scale the image to fit the screen. At lower resolutions the auto-scaling in the monitor causes irritating color bleeding and smudging of the picture. Interestingly, I've noticed that my HDTV box runs the monitor at 1920x540 at 60 Hz (with the 1080i HDTV setting).

The monitor also has proprietary Windows-only software which claims to rotate the desktop when the monitor is rotated from landscape into the portrait configuration. It would be really nice if one could read the rotation sensor and do the same on Linux using xrandr (X resize and rotate). I was unable to find any sensors listed on the USB port. So maybe the signal is sent down the cable via the DDC line? I haven't a clue.

The monitor even supports the insane, pointless, trivially defeatable, extraordinarily inconvenient, and surprisingly expensive HDCP copy-prevention specification required by certain high definition video equipment and future PCs that will be running Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system.

Labels: technology

So, the US Copyright Office is considering requiring registrants to use proprietary technology found only in Microsoft Internet Explorer on Microsoft Windows. Why? Well, because they are. I've seen no explanation as to why this is even a consideration. It's simply crazy. And it is not a technical requirement. Anything that they could possibly need to do can be done without proprietary Microsoft technology. Anyone who claims otherwise is an ignorant fool trying to hide their ignorance. I don't care how much more convenient for the programmers proprietary Microsoft technology might be. It's still a proprietary single-vendor technology; which, by the way, almost certainly violates Federal regulations which forbid the government from relying on single-vendor technology.

Let's contrast this with a similar situation in the real world. Let's say you want to apply for a driver's license. So, you go to the license branch and stand in a queue for 2 hours. It's your turn and the clerk greets you in English and then proceeds to ask you dozens of questions in Swahili. The clerk is quite confused as to why you don't understand his questions. You calmly, as possible, explain that you don't understand what he is saying. The clerk looks at you strangely and explains to you in English that you'll need to come back once you've learned Swahili. You see, typically, the government agencies in the US will speak to you in a commonly accepted intermediate language such as English or Spanish. The reasoning is thus: you can be assured that approximately everyone in the US speaks at least English, Spanish, or both. There are exceptions but the expectation is that anyone who plans to stay in the US and interact with the government will speak one or both languages. In a similar vein, anyone who provides web services is expected to speak one or more of the standardized languages defined by the World Wide Web Consortium. If you choose not to speak those standardized languages then don't be shocked when many people have no clue what you're saying.

At best, 90% of personal computers can run Microsoft Internet Explorer. Just under 10% of the US is completely unable to use Microsoft Internet Explorer because it only works with the Microsoft Windows operating system. Some, possibly significant, portion of that 90% is unable, due to security restrictions, to use those features in Internet Explorer that the US Copyright Office has proposed. If you consider all web-enabled devices (computers, phones, PDAs, etc) you've suddenly reduced your numbers to 50-60% of devices being able to access this government service.

At the very best it would be an inconvenience. At the worst it would exclude several important segments of the population. And it would prevent all segments of the population from using this service on anything other than a full blown personal computer running Microsoft's proprietary Windows operating system.

Labels: technology

Google stock is now valued higher, in fact much higher, than any other media company in the world. They are worth more than Time-Warner, Viacom, or any other company.

And let me tell you why... Google Video. More specifically Google Video Upload. Google Video allows you to upload movies that you have the right to distribute and optionally charge people to watch those movies. Google Video will also allow you to search through freeze frames of key moments in all programs and read the closed captioning. Right now the video subscription service is not publicly accessible. But if this reaches full potential then TV will be dead. Maybe not right away or even soon. But eventually TV will be dead. And Google owns it. Google's not just thinking outside the box. Google invented the box, put all the other media companies into the box, and are throwing the box away.

Envision 5 years down the road. You have a slightly faster broadband service than you do now. You have a HDTV. But instead of a digital cable or satellite TV box you have a Google Media Center. It would be some sort of Linux-based media player like TiVo or the D-Link DSM-320. It knows what types of shows you like and spends 24 hours a day searching Google.com for the types of shows it knows you like and downloading them. Instead of having a rigid TV guide you can ask it for specific types of programming.

But this programming isn't just big movie and TV studio productions. You and your closest friends can download and watch the video of your wedding that you uploaded to Google Video service. Or you could watch your nephew's baseball game from last week that cousin Lou recorded on his DV camera. Lou might even be syndicated by some local sports news agency because he's the only person who bothered to record the game. You will be able to subscribe to Podcast-type video productions and video-blogs. Cool, eh?

In fact, there may be no big movie or TV studio productions in the Google system for quite a long time. But that doesn't even matter, really. Right now there are some absolutely outstanding HDTV-quality weekly TV shows being produced under Creative Commons licenses and distributed via systems like BitTorrent. Particularly technical shows about computer technology but also other tyes of shows. You may soon find yourself watching programs that are streamed out to the world with something like Broadcast Machine.

Here are just a few examples of excellent quality "independent" films and programs legally being distributed by their authors via BitTorrent and similar means:

1. Star Wars: Revelations
2. Systm
3. The Broken
4. From the Shadows

There are also some outstanding Podcast (Radio-style) programs that I like:

1. This Week in Tech (Former cast of The Screensavers on TechTV)
2. LUG Radio (Linux Questions/Answers, Interviews)
3. And literally thousands more in the Podcast.net directory...

Labels: technology

BitTorrent harms no one. BitTorrent is a file sharing protocol. BitTorrent was designed to allow one or more people to share a very large data file with many times more people and much faster than would otherwise be economically feasible. BitTorrent is used extensively, as intended, by authors and third party distributors to distribute completely legal copies of CDs, Videos, software and all manner of data files. BitTorrent has been a huge boon to spreading Free Software and Creative Commons content around the world.

The MPAA may not think they care all that much about Free Software. However I would remind them that many of their members rely totally on GNU and Linux for the production rendering of their movies and to a large extent for their graphics workstations. That precious Star Wars movie, some insider pre-released illegally, wouldn't have been possible without the Linux render farms used to produce it. BitTorrent also facilitates the spreading of some amazing Star Wars Fan Films. I'm sure the industry officially disapproves of such unorthodox things as Fan Films made by mere amateurs but George Lucas seems to like them.

MPAA complains that BitTorrent is facilitating the copying of movies. So what? Everything that could ever possibly be used to copy data files can facilitate the copying of a movie. Are we to restrict the use of everything to the point that no one can accomplish anything, good or bad? MPAA people should stop screaming like a 2 y/o who has had their favorite toy stolen and act like reasonable human beings.

The USA, last I checked, is still a free country. Freedom includes the freedom to make bad choices and break the law. The US Constitution, and amendments, put into place all sorts of rules which limit the ability of the government to detect when someone is breaking the law. This is by design. Why would they have done that? Because they know the government can be insane and most assuredly wrong. But also to discourage the government from wasting public tax money trying to put the public in prison for silly things. However, once someone has been caught breaking the law then the legal process kicks in and the public gets to decide. The MPAA should perhaps focus on prosecuting those who are distributing, or leaking internal copies of, their precious movies and not attack the system by which it is delivered. Because the only way the industry could ever succeed in stopping illegal copying of movies is to deliver the entire world backward in time 70 years. Sadly, I think that's where most of them live in their minds.

Trying to tarnish the reputation of BitTorrent harms everyone and could never prevent anything. It gives the MPAA a worse reputation than they already have. Case(s) in point: every other file sharing program they've managed to ban hasn't reduced the amount of file sharing. If anything sharing of their movies has increased despite their best efforts. I'd expect that they've simply driven it so far underground they can barely even see it.

In summary:

1. BitTorrent is good. Very good, in fact.
   
2. Sharing the movies owned by people who don't permit sharing is bad.
3. Share and watch movies only by people who do permit sharing.
4. Lousy, overpriced movies are not worth the risk.
   
5. MPAA needs to evolve into a more tolerant life form before it kills itself.
6. Find a friend. Go get a milk shake and talk. Reality is far more interesting than any movie.
   

Labels: technology

Well, as of today I have 50 Google Gmail invites. So if any friends or family want a Google Gmail account then let me know. Gmail is a fairly neat email service. Especially if you get a lot of mail or subscribe to busy mailing lists. I use it to read through mailing lists that get thousands of messages per day.

I don't use Gmail to send email only because it doesn't support PGP encrypted signatures. I always send email with an encrypted signature to prevent someone from forging email from me. If there's not a valid PGP signature then it is almost certainly not from me. My public PGP key is published to the keyservers. So, the validity of a given email can be checked automatically by an email program that supports PGP.

Labels: technology

Wow, I got the most amazing mouse pad today and it is only $15. It is an Allsop Metal Art Mousepad. It is a textured charcoal-colored (Teflon?) mouse pad on a heavy steel base with non-skid rubber on the bottom. If you ever have trouble with your mouse then definitely buy one of these. The surface is sticky for a mechanical mouse and textured for an optical mouse. I'm truly impressed.

I also got a Kensington PilotMouse Optical 3-button to replace an ailing IBM optical mouse. I really would have preferred the 5-button version but I'll take what I can get. It seems pretty nice but I think I'll miss having a thumb button.

Labels: technology

So, does anyone have 6 LVD SCA hard disks they want to donate? Nah, didn't think so...

Anyway, I finally have an actual server rather than some mess of parts that act vaguely like a server. That will take a load off of my workstation.

So, what will the machine do? Top priority is the SWISH-E daily build and all the services eating away at my workstation resources. I haven't thought far beyond that.

Disk space is a major shortcoming. I have about 500 MB free. But, the machine has 6 (empty) LVD SCA slots in the front. Maybe I'll find some used 9 GB disks at a computer show or something. Who knows. New SCA disks are way beyond my shoestring budget, though. I'd like to get 6 disks and create a mirrored LVM array. I'd have no hot spares but at least there would be redundancy. Another option would be to install an IDE RAID card and move the LVM storage from my workstation. There's no redundancy there, though.

I am having a problem with the machine freezing after about 15 minutes when running in multiprocessor mode. The memory tests good with memtest86. Not sure if it is kernel related or what. I've tried various combinations of apic/noapic, nohlt, acpi=off, apm=off and none make any difference. Uniprocessor mode runs perfectly. So, I'm stuck running on one CPU until I find the problem. The only oddity I notice is that CPU0 and sometimes CPU1 show disabled on the front panel when the machine is frozen. When I got it the CPU0 fan was damaged. (I borrowed a fan from another machine to get it running.) So there's a small chance that CPU is damaged. I don't see any way to boot or run the machine from CPU0 in uniprocessor mode to test it. I guess I could swap the CPUs around...

Oh, yeah, Matt suggested that I name it Hagrid since it resembles a lumbering half-giant.

Labels: technology

So, I needed a schematic or at least an IC pinout to fix a problem with my junky $10 iRock FM Stereo transmitter. (Yes, instead of throwing it away and buying a newer, bigger, better one I spent 10 minutes and fixed it.) Well, the designers sanded off the part numbers of the components to "prevent" repairs. This is common practice with cheap electronics to get you to buy a new one. I've dealt with more than a few devices whose engineers thought they would be clever: satellite receivers, VCRs, etc.

So, I checked the FCC database. The iRock device itself (FCC ID: O5U FMLINK) is actually a rebranded Kima Link-It made by Akoo. No shock there... I bought mine as a factory refurb from Tiger Direct. Only thing in the FCC EAS are a couple of photos, some vague test information, and a botched confidentiality request. I was hoping they slipped and let the part number through in their internal photos. They usually do and it looks like they did at first... Well, until someone caught the mistake and tried to get their photos made confidential which isn't allowed. So they replaced the photos with altered (read blurry) versions.

As a last ditch effort, I counted the number of pins on the IC... 22 pins... A somewhat unusual number of pins for an IC. So I entered "FM IC 22 pin" into Google and sure enough the second hit was a Rohm BH1415f Wireless Audio Link IC (first hit being an AM/FM dual band version) which matched the iRock FM IC pinout perfectly. And, as usual in cheap electronics, the entire device itself is taken largely from the application notes supplied with the IC itself. Also, they cleverly use a Maxim MAX619 charge pump to increase the 2.5-3VDC from the two AAA cells up to the 5VDC required to power the FM transmitter component. Have I ever mentioned that I really like charge pumps?

So, once again, thanks go to Google.

Labels: technology