2003-01-19»
Hear me speak words out loud»
If you're stuck for anything to do tomorrow (Monday) evening, may I suggest
stumbling toward the Silicon
Valley World Internet Center in Palo Alto, CA for around seven? I'm
speaking to the Software Development Forum's International SIG entitled "Divergence:
How European and American tech markets are growing apart and what kind of
headache that gives me in the morning.". I'm writing the presentation now,
and if I don't start editing soon, it'll be about Roombas, Warblogs, 802.11b, Wired UK,"Moore Or Less's" Law,
First Tuesday, Opera, Bulgaria,
Googlism, and the Sunnyvale Corn
Palace. $15 if you're not an SDForum
member or a student, but don't worry
- I won't see a penny of it.
2003-01-15»
Eldred Lore»
On this sad day, at
least somebody knows how to follow the
instructions and stole that
book.
It's not all Jobs you know»
Apple's done a sterling job popularising and now extending wireless use
among computer users recently. But they've had a long history of doing the
same thing. Back in 1995, when precious few people were considering the topic,
they were lobbying the FCC to set aside some unlicensed
space for data comms. Here's a report from the EFF
newsletter of the time:
Apple's petition states:
"The NII Band would promote the full deployment of a National
Information Infrastructure ("NII"), extending the effective reach of the
NII by making possible high-bandwidth access and interaction throughout a
limited geographic area -- where mobility is key -- both on a
peer-to-peer,
ad hoc basis and through wireless local area networks. Moreover, it would
provide for unlicensed, wireless, wide area "community networks"
connecting communities, schools, and other groups underserved by
existing
and proposed telecommunications offerings.
(The irony is that the frequency that Apple successfully lobbied for is, I
believe, the same frequency that 802.11a now lives within. And 802.11a is the
standard that Apple has pretty
much killed by supporting the speed-bumped 802.11g in its Airport Extreme.
Turned out that 2.4Ghz was good enough.)
2003-01-14»
Slashdotting the vote, part 2»
The STAND campaign is beginning to
be picked up by
the media. We've swung the vote from 2:1 support to nearly 2:1 against in
four days.
I'm interested in seeing how the government replies to this. Officially,
the consultation is just that, a consultation. The Home Office civil servants
are still very insistent that there are no official government
proposals on ID cards yet.
That position, unfortunately, was belied by Lord Falconer's (and Downing
Street's) own press
release in December that said:
Public support is growing for the government's proposals on entitlement cards.
The response so far to a public consultation on the scheme shows a two-to-one
split in favour of the plans.
... which, really, is why STAND got involved. Public consultations aren't
referenda; but if you want to puff them up as such, you do have to live and
die by the numbers. There's no groundswell of support for ID cards, and the
government knows it. There might be, if they actually engaged the
public in a discussion. But that's hard, and central government really have
less experience in doing that than you'd hope. They're also, admittedly, often
not in the best place to do so. Who ever trusts a government document? The ID
card doc tried very very hard to be an impartial, depoliticised document, and
it fell over for two reasons. Firstly, and most crassly, because Falconer
decided to politicise it. And secondly, and more subtly, because one of the
interested parties in creating an ID card is the civil servants themselves.
With all the objectivity in the world, that interest leaked through every page
of the consultation doc.
In other news, Alan Mather, who works for the e-envoy (Britain's Minister
for The Bleepy Things), has
spotted STAND for the first time. "I didn't come across them during the
RIP hoo-ha.", he says, which is funny, because I'm pretty
sure we started
it. Hi, Alan!
2003-01-13»
When Sucky Interfaces Attack»
A friend of Rupert Goodwins fell and broke his leg while skiing in the Alps
over Christmas. The good news: he could still reach and activate his mobile
phone to call for help. The bad news: it was a
Microsoft Smartphone.
The next time I looked at the phone it appeared to have turned itself off --
so I tried switching it on again. When it eventually came to life I could not
get it to dial -- a closer examination revealed the legend 'Radio off'
displayed very legibly on the SPV's excellent screen. No amount of menu
searching let me find anything that would turn the phone's radio back on. At
this point I remember making a few comments about the dubiousness of Bill
Gates' parentage. I eventually managed to flag down a passing skier who let me
use her Nokia phone (which switched on immediately) to call for help. Later
analysis revealed that the problem arose because of the SPV's implementation
of the ON/OFF button.
