Related link: http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/20050414/index.html
Tom’s Hardware Guide has an article on In-Car Infotainment, including a detailed video of my Mac Mini installation into a Dodge Caravan (a MacMiniVan!).
It’s a good video; you get to see how the in-dash Mac Mini install is wired up.
Related link: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/0,39023165,39187609,00.htm
“Because of the Internet, you can have thousands if not millions of individuals around the world share information about whether that invention actually took place years and years ago. You’ll find volunteers and others interested in a public inspection of patents. The technology [currently] exists for that.”
“We are saying that the granting of it, inspection of it, challenge, and post grant should be enhanced to take full advantage of new technologies and also the brain power of people around the world to make sure it is truly new things that are coming out.”
-Jim Stallings, vice-president, intellectual property and standards, IBM
Interesting and practical - he suggests that it isn’t just the responsibility of the patent office; that it should be the responsibility of the academic community and others.
I think I agree. What shall we call the collaberative site where people go to evaluate patents? WikiPatenta? WikiPriorArtica? IsThisPatentNovelOrNot.com?
Related link: http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/research/recording_head/pr/PerpendicularAnimation.…
Good flash movie about promoting Hitachi 10x’ing the size of their hard drives with higher-density storage. Styled like “I’m just a bill” or similar 80’s public service announcements. Cute.
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Related link: http://www.digitaldivide.net/articles/view.php?ArticleID=378
Simple hack using Skype as an audio interviewing and archive tool. Instead of needing phone interview recording hardware (which you might not have) you can use computer tools (which you have in abundance).
I’ve always been interested in approaches for home-grown creation of media, but A/V media in particular. Conventional radio/TV media channels have already had to take notice of blogs. My hope is that podcasting and videoblogging will expand to the same level of penetration as blogs have.
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Related link: http://news.com.com/Teachers leave grading up to the computer/2100-1032_3-565936…
Article on a neat product for sale that automates grading of essays in school. Nifty. Took him 6 years. Yikes.
I’m investigating some similar themes for a Ph.D. thesis.
Tags: artificial intelligence
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Related link: http://carhacks.org/
If you need a daily dose of information about in-car computers and computing (like I do), or want to help provide one, i’ve just kicked off carhacks.org and I’m looking for contributors (contact damien@robotarmy.com).
The site is tracking what’s going on in the car computing space from all angles: computer-like features going into the car; entertainment features such as satellite radio going into the into the car via computers; Mac Minis going into the car, iPods going into the car, Playstations and PSPs installed in the car, and pretty much anything that looks, smells, or acts like a general purpose computer in the car.
I’ve completed work on the upcoming book Car PC Hacks and I really believe 2005 is going to be the breakout year for in car computing (of course, I’m biased…)
Related link: http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2005/04/06/sprint_ceo_predict…
I was consulting for a company a while ago that was predicting this - and now it seems like it’s going to go mainstream. Once you have flat fee data over your mobile phone, why not use a Vonage or a Skype over that link? And the first cell provider to dodge that bullet by embracing it will hopefully not cannibalize their own per-minute-billing business.
You down with VOIP? Yah, you know me.
Related link: http://www.streamingmedia.com/east/program/session.asp?id=729
I’m delivering an all-day tutorial on the first day of the Streaming Media East Conference (Monday, May 16, 2005) and I’ll be covering Windows Media streaming in depth. Like O’Reilly conferences, the Streaming Media conferences have a very high signal to noise ratio (i.e. few vendor pitches, only actual do-ers are there). It’s actually a very interesting time with MPEG-4, Windows Media, and the evolution of High Def DVD and media standards(*), so if you’re interested at all in net video I recommend it.
* (For the record, I actually don’t think standards are as important anymore because dvd players are pretty much general-purpose computers and can download any “new” codec that comes along - it’s more a matter of licensing, and the vendors are often actually happier to be able to sell bits after the fact (and have longer to optimize them) then to have to burn them into silicon before they’re fully baked.
If you missed my earlier blog on the “death” of MPEG-4 and rise of Windows Media, check it out. )
Do you think the Internet is a viable delivery mechanism for moving pictures?
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Related link: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/03/30/EDGN1BV…
Mandatory meds
For a kid who grew up with the DARE program (Drug Abuse Resistance Education, aka “drugs are really expensive”) I’m amused that we gave up on drug abuse prevention and now we’re on the road to making drug use mandatory.
“[There has been] an unprecedented call for mandatory mental-health screening of schoolchildren in [the] recent budget. Violating the rights of parents to just say “no” to psychiatric diagnosis and treatment of their children, this idea originated in the New Freedom Commission.” (from the article linked)
(Link to the President’s benign announcement speech of the New Freedom Commission)
Dystopian Cynicism
Putting on my cynical dystopian commentator hat, I guess I have several comments:
The Great Psychopharma Blamestorm
The interesting thing to watch is the massive blamestorm visible on the horizon. The FDA is already backing away (with warning labels) from potential liability suits for all the crazy/dead children cases that are pending for antidepressants. While there were a bunch of cases against Prozac in its early days, one of the weaker cases got dismissed and that was used as a sort of domino to knock down the others in a clever defense strategy.
Lately, though, there has been an notable increase in Columbine-like activity and a groundswell of increasingly critical public attention. I wouldn’t be surprised if the FDA eventually finds a link between aggressive and destructive activity towards OTHERS (not just suicidal) and antidepressants. I can see the headlines now:
“Guns, pot, and steriods don’t kill people - adolescents on meds do!”
Or,
“With kids like these, who needs terrorists?”
One of the greatest catalysts for change in the USA is the powerful combination of dead children, grieving parents, and lawyers.
I imagine lawsuits will first go after deep-pocketed pharma manufacturers, and may possibly try to make the government/FDA share some liability. When that starts to happen, the government will launch inquiries, and pharama may pass the buck to the authors of the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), and the scientists who develop diagnostic procedures and categories.
Adolescent Psychosis and Science
Nowdays, kids “go crazy” and kill innocent people at an alarming statistical rate. There’s some sort of epidemic (contagious?) psychosis, and the real crazy thing is: THEY’RE ALL ON MEDS WHEN THEY DO IT. Clearly we haven’t applied the best medical/scientific technology to the situation, otherwise we’d have it under some control, just like AIDS or any other epidemic. And I think we all agree that it takes more than D&D or 3D video games to make somone psychotic.
I long for the good old days in the 80’s when kids just robbed their grandmas to pay for their crack addictions, or maybe a half dozen gang members might shoot each other.
Although a very controversial idea, I’ve had drug legalization advocates argue to me that that no one goes crazy and kills people on pot or even other “dangerous” street drugs. While I can’t agree with that, I can hardly agree with how it’s being addressed now. Some of my favorite musical artists (Kurt Cobain, John Lennon) have been victims of ineffective pharma - and a friend of mine from P2P days (Gene Kan) was also tremendously un-helped by our primative technology in this area.
I’m very hopeful that the best minds among us will get to the bottom of the recent exponential increase in adolescent psychosis. I hope our brightest scientists can quickly discover what sort of mosquitos are spreading this mental malaria.
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