NOTE TO SELF:
Always check the expiry date of milk before buying it.
So, yesterday I bought a gallon of yummy strawberry milk only to take a sip full of some solid particles in it. Upon looking at the cap, it turned out that the milk had officially gone unfit to drink 5 days ago!
I don’t blame Harris Teeter though. This was just a sign that I need to switch to a brand that people actually buy before it starts rotting in the store fridge.
😉
I have been talking about the idea of using an in-built GPS system in cars to track them for a long time. Turns out that is indeed going to become a reality with the Government announcing grants to develop such systems.
Their main premise is that such a deployment would allow them to setup a mechanism of “value pricing” for cars using public infrastructure like bridges etc. I am not sure if that’s the only true use of such a promising technology. As usual, privacy advocates are going to be up in arms about this, but I wouldn’t agree with them.
Let’s see where this goes!
I installed Google Local for Mobiles on my Sony Ericsson S710a a couple days ago. The best part about this service is that it is a 100kb Java program that actually installs in your cellphone. This means that you don’t need to use the browser or type in any obscure URLs when you need to find the nearest Indian restaurant!
It is noteworthy that this service is completely free of cost, unlike the $4 a month that Mapquest charges for a similar service. You can also look at satellite pictures of your destination or the route much like the full-blown Google Maps service.
Personally, this service doesn’t have much appeal to me other than helping find the phone numbers of various businesses while on the road. I am quite content with my Garmin StreetPilot C330 GPS device. Although the StreetPilot has millions of points of interest on its hard drive, replete with phone numbers, there are instances when I am unable to find the restaurant of my choice or a working phone number. This is when the Google service on my cellphone would help me. It is faster than using Google.com, and I can easily connect to the business by clicking on the contact number directly from within the software!
I tried it tonight, and was impressed by the fact that it stores recently searched addresses and locations for future use. One thing I would like to see is more phones with GPS technology built in so that you do not have to input your current location manually!
Lawyers love patents. Engineers crave patents. Businessmen have mixed feelings. Visionaries hate them.
Patents are an amazing concept. They give a new meaning to ideas and their conceptualization and ownership. I think the American intellectual property preservation/regulatory system is the mainstay of its hitherto tremendous technological lead, as well as the entrepreneurial spirit at the academic as well as corporate level.
Software patents have always been the cause of huge debates. Almost no academic personality likes them. Open source developers disdain them wholeheartedly, citing innovation stagnation as a reason to not enforce them. From a theoretical point of view, software patents do not make much sense. Software is an idea expressed in a language. As such, it is more of a literary work than a process. At the same time, it is not entirely a piece of literary work as software more often than not helps achieve something. It is a means to an end to some real life problem. As such, software patents fall under a gray area, and some descretion is to be observed when enforcing patent rules.
For example, I think it is very logical to patent an encryption algorithm because an algorithm is actually a process. It is unique, and actually is an innovation that has the potential to change the computing/tech world for years to come. On the other hand, patents like that protecting the “innovation” of one click purchasing are pretty darn stupid…in my opinion. Are we actually celebrating innovation by granting such patents?
I came across this great webpage at MIT discussing the good and the bad about software patents. It is surprising what kind of ideas are being patented as software innovations in the present times. This is some sort of reverse evolution.
At the same time, I feel that we need to congratulate companies like Microsoft and IBM that actually use their patent portfolios to fortify their innovative endeavors rather than stymie creativity by others. For personal developers and open source projects, these big “patentors” hardly pose any roadblocks.
Patents are the artillery of big companies. That is the only way they can mark boundaries in this extremely volatile industry. In a way, software patents also help overall innovation in the form of diverse products from different companies. Patent attorneys remain happy, too.
I just hope that some sort of system is developed that inhibits false/stupid/ridiculous patents from being considered, much less filed.
Just came across this gem of a piece on the Internet. It appears that BellSouth, one of the biggest ISPs in North America, is now looking at increasing its revenue by forging deals with web companies that would allow the latter to pay a premium to get increased throughput/QoS on BellSouth’s network. The article has done a good job of non-objectively citing the bad effects of such a paradigm move.
I have mixed feelings about this proposal. On the outset, it sounds rather unnecessary to me. Why would a large scale network operator bother about such a deal when they could just as well deploy a high speed IP network that essentially guarantees unlimited bandwidth to every user and/or service. We all know that where there is bandwidth, there are users, so it seems naturally plausible that BellSouth wouldn’t be spending a lot of money on deploying a network that would only have optimal utilization during the peak times. Not to mention that hardware costs have fallen down drastically over the last 5 years.
We all know how the ATM networks fared. I am not going to get into a debate here, but it would suffice to say that ATM was a “dreamy” technology that never actually found its niche, except in low bandwidth ADSL networks. The telcos realized long ago that trying to mould voice capabilities into IP networks was a better strategy than vice versa, not to mention that the ATM networks still needed a bridge to other non-ATM networks in the form of a protocol, which is IP. ATM proponents couldn’t win their case for higher QoS to certain types of traffic in the face of better network management using a conventional network protocol like IP on typical packet networks.
Why then are the same telcos trying to FORCE a tiered service mechanism on an already capable and extendable technology? I think the true motivation is increased revenue potential from growing Internet media companies that are willing to spend any amount of capital to procure readers (contributors) to their websites. But then another question pops in my mind. How much of a throughput boost would a website really need to make me visit it more frequently than its rival? Clearly, even on current “equal opportunity” networks, it appears that we have identical performance from nearly every website.
Thus, it is clear that the main beneficiaries of such a model would be companies that provide packet latency-sensitive services like gaming, media streaming, or delay-sensitive communications. The example of Google.com loading slower than some other company’s website is hence uninformed, unless the provider actually does something to degrade Google’s throughput to the former’s subscribers. This would be shady on so many levels I can only imagine the lawsuits.
In essence, BellSouth wants to earn some kind of royalty from “Internet media companies” in lieu of carrying their “signals” over the network. Much like traditional pay-per-view on TV. Does this signify the gradual acceptance of the Internet as an evolved form of the conventional media outlets? I can see this being the trend, with more and more people looking at blogs for news and opinions, and also using the Internet to set up an interactive communication envelope around their lives. I have been foreseeing this interactive world for quite some time now, and now it seems entirely easily possible.
This brings me to the point where I wonder if it’s really right to question an ISPs decision to earn increased revenue in this manner. Personally, I feel there is no problem as long as the independant and “democratic” aspect of my Internet experience remains the same.
I just got back from a week long Thanksgiving vacation in Florida with my sister and brother-in-law. I have to say, Disney World is a very unique place on Earth, and I truly enjoyed my 5 days there. We had a good hotel, a good rental car (Mercury Grand Marquis), and an awesome weather to complement the long needed vacation.
I drove for more than a thousand miles on this trip, passing through North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia to reach Florida, and I have to say that I prefer driving in NC the most out of all of them. True, NC doesn’t have good well-maintained roads, but I feel that more drivers in NC drive by the book than in the states I passed by.
There was absolutely no adherance to posted speed limits wherever I went to in the Orlando and Kissimmee area. A lot of the times I got weird stares because I was going “slow” at about 50 mph in a 40 mph limit. To a great extent, traffic was similar to that of Mumbai around the theme parks with people changing lanes like crazy or tailgating closely.
I think I saw all of 2 cop cars in a week. On the other hand, there were Crown Vics with flashing lights all over the place as soon as we entered Georgia. No one was speeding. Same in SC and NC.
So, there, Florida has one more attraction for you. The opportunity to drive your V10 race car super-aggressively as you head down to Disney World to meet your favorite princesses and animals!
I plan to make a small web page/site about my trip pretty soon!
Today, I implemented three major changes in the blog. Firstly, I upgraded the core to WP 1.5.2. Secondly, I have started using the Google AdSense program just to see how much money I could potentially make with it, and last but not the least, I have added Bayesian comment filtering to help me cope with comment spam. Recently, I had been getting about 60 spam comments on a daily basis. I hope the new plugin helps alleviate these issues.
UPDATE: I messed up and now all the images on my blog are gone forever! 🙁
Remember my post about using GPS to catch criminals? Well, I talked about the possibility of using advanced technology to monitor vehicles in that post. Turns out that the UK is actually rolling out such a system. It is based on a technology known as Automatic Number Plate Recognition.
The system will maintain a central database containing information about all cars, and would be linked to various other TV channels, radio services, and surveillance systems. “The primary aims claimed for the system are tackling untaxed and uninsured vehicles, stolen cars and the considerably broader one of denying criminals the use of the roads.”
This is a revolutionary system that could redefine the concept of surveillance. Good job, Britain.
Check out http://www.rexfeatures.com/features/516925/ to see what the world’s ugliest car looks like!
I have recently started to observe that more and more blogs are increasingly smothered with ads and commercial links these days. So much so that they repel me from reading the content on those particular blogs. I think this is a very sad trend for the blogging community, and I am quite sure that most of the bloggers participating in these gawdy link exchange programs get a very marginal boost in their earnings/readership. If you are one of those bloggers, I hereby request you to please do something about it.
I don’t care if you have the best opinion blog on the Internet if it is so flashy and ugly looking that my eyes start to bleed. The best way to increase readership is to post good original content rather than depend on banner and ad exchanges. And, don’t even get me started on those multiple pane Google Adsense ads that some bloggers so enthusiastically flaunt. If you are going to do something like that to your blog, at the very least please customize the ads so that they don’t stick out from the rest of your website.
You are killing everyone’s Internet experience by making your website annoying to look at. Do not sell your opinion for cheap, and thanks for reading my rant!