Slashdot Review - SDR News

AT&T Degrades Service for 2G Phones
Wimax in Chicago in 2009 ?
Microsoft Goes After Fake Software

SDR News is a Daily (M-F) Technology Podcast with Tech News Highlights from Slashdot, Digg and Reddit

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What’s in Store this Week at CES

by Andrew McCaskey
TechPodcast Network

There is going to be lots of video later in the week. Here’s what to expect in the Techpodcast Network coverage of CES.

I arrive in Las Vegas Monday 1/5 ,followed up shortly by Jeffrey Powers of Geekazine podcast. We will be getting our initial set up done on Tuesday, and as soon as Todd Cochrane from Geek News Central arrives on the Redeye flight from Honolulu we will begin to get organized, credentialed and staked out. Andy Brown will join us from Chicago, and we’ll be ready to go.

We have two big pre-show events, beginning Tuesday night - the CES Unveiled and then on Wednesday the Pepcon reception. These are both “Press Only” events where we will get an advanced peek at some of the products that will be revealed for the first time at CES. A lot of the information will be embargoed - in other words we will be shooting video but will not be able to release it until the official opening of the CES show on Thursday.

There will be as many as three channels of video active at various times during the week, and all at the site at SDRNEws.com.

All will be announced on Twitter @axmc

TPN Backchannel. This is the real story of the behind the scenes activities at CES - what it is like to cover the show as a podcaster. If you thought SDRNewsroom was reality TV you will see that it is super professional compared with the backchannel. You will meet the team and we will punch up video as quickly as we can to realtime, depending on where we are, what bandwidth we have, and what we have to report.

SDRNewsroom - streaming live when and where we can. Most of the time we will be using the EVDO and embedded SDRNewsroom chatroom. This channel will go up and down, but will be recorded for later playback.

TPOD: The formal product interviews, our TPN Pick of the Day and product selection.

I will record a backchannel and may also fire up a live session of the SDRNewsroom on the arrival in Las Vegas Monday night, some initial backchannel video. I will be announcing live sessions on Twitter, so if you follow axmc , geeknews and geekazine you will be in the know as far as the latest on our full up TPN coverage of CES

Typical Backchannel from CES2008

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Be sure to sign up for our upcoming roundtable. We will be using GoToMeeting. Also, be sure to check out GoToMeeting. Why? Because you can hold meetings right over the Net — from anywhere. Plus, you can hold all the meetings you want for one flat rate. To get your free 30-day trial , visit www.gotomeeting.com/techroundtable.

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SDRNews SDR2008-12-30 TV to the Next Level

Administrator — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 04:18:19 +0000

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WorldTV to Aggregate TV Content
Solar Energy on Highway Right of Way
Online News Overtakes Newspapers

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WorldTV - Television to the Next Level

by Andrew McCaskey
Here’s What’s After HDTV

WorldTV is the first articulation of the vision of television in the 21st Century. While Video on Demand (VOD) will, in the words of the commercial from fifteen years ago, give you access to every movie, show and commercial ever made, WorldTV will give you access to the realtime universe of video. And it’s going to be big. They have 100,000 channels in the works right now, and once they get rolling, it’s going to be millions more.

It is, of course, searchable and configurable content, much of it user generated, but all configurable into an IP based stream or set of content selections that combine broadcast television, games, sporting events, news, entertainment into your personalized video environment. And, with the advent of HD quality camcorders / direct to disk or to SD/CF card, a lot of it will be HD content - not produced by current media or entertainment, but produced and shared worldwide.

Our family Christmas videos are being shared via Seesmic to family members on the other side of the world. And as soon as that content can be put up on the family room flatscreen through an easy WiFi based client in the screen itself - without a set top box or computer requirement, you can bet that we will be in line for a set.

That’s the only driver that the television display manufacturers have to put some planned obsolescence into the system, and get the 720p 42inch Plasma replaced with a 52 inch 1080p, and then replaced again. Going to 120 Hz or 240 Hz frame rates is not going to grab anyone but videophiles - and until OLED’s brilliant hues come out of the stratophere, that is not going to do it. There are, however, about 40 million Baby Boomer grandparents coming online that want to tune into their worldTV.

I am going to be on the lookout at CES.

Robot Cyclist
Uploaded by DiagonalView

Bicycle Riding Robot

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SDRNews SDR2008-12-29 Money Well Spent on Broadband

Administrator — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 07:19:36 +0000

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$44Bn Broadband Investment Plan
Texting Secrets
Genetic Engineering at Home

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Broadband Investment for Real !

by Andrew McCaskey
Far More than a ‘Two-Fer’

The incoming administration’s broadband investment stimulus plan outline was just announced - and while we are throwing away $Billions on all sorts of schemes for economic stimulus, this is one $44Billion package that has the marks of something that makes sense. It would be money well spent.

Fiber is the preferred technology - not that continued investment in other technology is impossible, just that accelerated depreciation and government encouragement is going to flow to the medium that provides a competitive level of speed - not by US standards, but by world standards. If the infrastructure does not provide 20MPS up and 20 Mbps down, it does not qualify for the investment tax credit. The demand side is not neglected either - The plan directly provides tax credits to incomes below $60,000 with children for braodband access - $180 per year for broadband service and up to $200 for rounters and wireless access points.

The bulk of the money will go for a grant program to directly encourage rural broadband investment. All told, more than 3 millions jobs can be created over three years by the combination of investments for supply and demand of broadband in the United States.

In addition to jobs for construction and capital equipment, the infrastructure, built into every school in the country would be inplace to support other major initiaitives in health care and telemedicine. it is truly as essential to the economic competitiveness of the US as the Interstate Highway System of the 1960’s.

The biggest advantage of this plan ? The fact that this investment is paying forward and visibly investing in infrastructure and programs that are clearly the future - not salvaging or patching up the troubled industries of the past.

Solo Stonehenge Reconstruction

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SDRNews SDR2008-12-23 Merry Christmas from SDRNews

Administrator — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 06:19:16 +0000

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Intel as Electric Battery Company
EEsor Granted Patent
YouTube now 26 Percent of All Searches

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Merry Christmas from SDRNews

by Andrew McCaskey
Two Christmas Gifts for SDRNews Listeners

It’s a day or two early, depending upon what part of the world you are listening - and I want to be among the first to wish you a Merry Christmas. This has been a memorable year for the podcast, and with the best of holiday goodwill, I want to thank you for listening and encouraging the growth of the podcast in 2008 we have made the shift from SlashdotReview to SDRNews, officially adding in coverage of materials from a number of sources, including Slashdot, Digg and Reddit - moving towards a simple daily report on highlights from the world of tech news, business, and government regulation.

The wrapping is not the best, but I hope that you will try out and enjoy two gifts for the New Year: Two new SDRNews podcast editions that may meet your listening needs, and hopefully be of interest to friends and colleagues around the world.

SDRNews7 - a condensed version of the podcast in seven minutes of airtime. One of the things that some of our original listeners said that they missed was the ten minutes/ plus or minus ten seconds of the SlashdotReview format, back when we had the optional music selection at the end of each day’s program. That’s the objective of SDRNews7 - to give you a few minutes back each day in a more concise format and catch most of the stories that we have on the main site and program.

SDRNews-HL , the Headline and Commentary edition is a bit different. It’s structured as a headline list of the Top Stories that you will find on the site, plus whatever notes or commentary that I might have on the stories that we have featured in the previous night’s production. These will go up on the server in the morning, presumably after I have had some time to think about things and read the comments that I wrote the night before.

Thanks again for your faithful listenership.

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SDRNews SDR2008-12-22 Movie Madness and Piracy

Administrator — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 04:31:12 +0000

Digg Financials Not Good
RIAA Stops Suing Fans
3d Graphics in 1859

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Movie Madness by MPAA

by Andrew McCaskey
Lets’ Force our Customers to Piracy

Did you have a movie on your Netflix queue or AppleTV/iTunes bookmark that you meant to see like Michael Clayton or Charlie Wilson’s War ? Look again, it has disappeared. It’s a part of a 49 year old agreement that’s one more example of dinosaur media.

TV Has a License to Kill Movies on the Net. That’s the CNET report, dating back to 1959. Over the years, it has morphed into a well organized hierarchy. First, box office release, then cable pay per view and airlines. Then DVD to retail, followed by DVD to physical rental like Blockbuster or the Mom and Pop video. Then broadcast television. The deal is that the television industry negotiated exclusive rights during the “broad cast window” .That was the deal in 1959 when CBS locked up “The Wizard of Oz” broadcast rights for close to forever.

When the broadcast window opens, the studios don’t send out minions to pull DVD’s off retailer shelves. The Mom and Pop Rentals are safe. The difference is Netflix and iTunes are not treated as retailers, but rather as broadcast competitors. That means that when the date rolls over, the switch gets thrown, and those files get pulled from online distribution. After all, broadcasters have paid the movie industry billions of dollars over the past fifty years and online downloads don’t even add up to rounding errors, right now.

That would be LEGAL online distribution - like iTunes/AppleTV, Amazon/Tivo and the Roku/Netflix box. What’s a consumer to do ? Those movies are still available without the long trek to the video store, parking, hassle, returns. As close as your home broadband connection. And now to make it even easier, Foxtorrent or BitFox puts it right at your fingertips as a Firefox extension.

It’s still wrong. It’s still piracy - but when an industry works to stymie legitimate customers who want to do the right thing, it doesn’t sound like good business. Those rounding errors are going to add up when you train an entire new generation to steal your product.

Tom Canavan - Security CMS Expo

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SDRNews SDR2008-12-19 In Line for Battery Dollars

Administrator — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 05:29:52 +0000

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Reselling MP3s - Digital Goods Markets
Used IT Equipment in Style
Battery Makers and Federal Dollars

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This one Should be in Line

by Andrew McCaskey
One That Should Be There

Here’s one industry that should be at the public assistance line: A consortium to insure that the US has the capability to not only perform basic research and invention of the batteries needed for automotive, wind, solar and other energy sources (and sinks) but the manufacturing capacity to carry it through.

The Obama Administration could not find a better, more highly visible and politically savory initiative for announcement before the end of January. A concerted effort to pull together a variety of researchers, National Laboratories and leading manufacturers to act as the sole target for Federal money offers the best of both worlds: A way to demonstrate decisive action politcally, and a way to focus the aspirations and skill development of workers on jobs that have a future.

The other benefit that such public involvement would bring would be some serious light on the entire subject of energy storage for vehicles. Earlier this year there were a series of articles on the “ultracapacitor” storage cells from EEstor, a Texas startup with heavy funding and links into major defense contractors. The only trouble is, their page is “Under Construction, and if they are making introductions in 2009 as promised, they need to get cracking.The internet abounds with crackpot schemes to run automobiles on water, as Snopes Debunks Various Water Fuel schemes. Some government oversight, funding, and credibility will go a long way towards some serious progress.

{sharethis}

Carbon Nanotube Loudspeaker

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SDRNews SDR2008-12-18 Apple’s Narrow Window

Administrator — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 05:47:14 +0000

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PS3 Supercomputer Cluster
Enterprise Moment for Apple
Molecular Memory 10 Atoms Thick

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Apple’s Narrow Enterprise Window

by Andrew McCaskey
How Narrow is the Window ?

Apple’s foray into the enterprise is going to be short lived. While Vista stumbled and corporations refused to go along with the business as usual upgrades in hardware and OS changes as they had since the days of Windows 3.1, Apple made several bold moves. It may still not be sufficient to crack the enterprise in a meaningful way.

Two masterful moves on Apple’s part positioned them for possible success in the general business realm, beyond the realm of creatives and similar pockets around the corporation. First, the move to the Intel platform from PowerPC removed both physical and psychological barriers that removed some hostility from IT types. Secondly, the virtualization of Parallels or dual boot capabilty of Boot Camp reduced the risk by allowing the machines to run XP (or Linux) without risking legacy applications or productivity tools such as the MS Office suite.

On the home front, Mac’s continued their assault at the high end of the consumer marketplace. Likewise, the sleek MacBook Pro became the executive status symbol - and even Walt Mossburg of the Wall Street Journal proclaimed the Windows Laptop of the Year to be… the MacBook. The iPhone’s smashing introduction if not adoption by the Blackberry crowd further established Apple (no longer Apple Computer) as a serious contender.

It is Good Fortune. And, it’s all going to end soon. The economy, cloud applications, netbooks and competition are going to stop Apple’s enterprise march dead in its tracks. Enterprise IT is still going to slow roll adoption, and hope for Windows 7 to provide what Vista has not.

It’s not over for Apple, though: As millions of professionals leave those corporations in layoffs, bankruptcies, and forced retirements - they turn to their home computers and find, to their surprise that the Apple is a perfect fit for their new life. The Enterprise just moved back home.

Visualization of Graphene

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Late Episode - and the Reason Why

Administrator — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 15:41:53 +0000

Too Many Moving Parts

I am finally getting the hang of this Mac OSX thing. And find that for all of the smooth convenience and performance that the MacBook Pro allows, things get really strange as the disk fills up close to the edge.

Most listeners know that I have gradually been moving my operation to the Mac platform. I became a switcher due to aggravation with malware maintenance on XP boxes and personal experience with Vista. My first toe into the water was a Black Friday ASUS laptop machine from Walmart - the most expensive computer I have had since the Compupro 816, once you figure in time. Three trips for warranty repair, motherboard replacement and now it seems to be more or less functional.

But I digress. The production process for SDRNews is about 2/3 OSX, 1/3 XP, with scripts on the Mac side and a few manual process details. Plus some back and forth between machines for audio files. It usually proceeds smoothly, until I get very tired and late into the early morning hours.

Publishing the HP Magic Giveaway last night put me well behind the power curve in prep and recording of the regular episode. Then around 1:30 - I went to publish the episode, and could not log in to the underlying Wordpress database. Alternate login - no luck. Getting panicky - time for a call to GoDaddy support to look for unusual activity in logfiles. Nothing found. No luck login on Firefox or Safari. No luck resetting password. It’s approaching 2:30am.

I finally attempt login on an old Dell - XP Home and Firefox. The login proceeds slick as can be.

I get the episode posted (although with some manual steps that put the wrong filename in place in the enclosure field) - and that is what causes the delay

So - with the audio and video from the CMSExpo safely stashed on external Firewire drives, I have set out to get things in order on the MacBook Pro. There is about 5GB left on a 100GB drive, and the combination of OSX swap files and Protools scratchpad - OSX is gracefully dying.

It just had a senior moment, but was too polite to tell me it was sick.

A good old XP box would have served up the Blue Screen of Death weeks ago. Maybe that would have salvaged a few hours of sleep.

SDRNews SDR2008-12-17 HP Magic GiveAway Winner

Administrator — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 07:57:34 +0000

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CAN-SPAM Turns Five
Experts Say Switch Browsers
Injectable Bone

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HP Magic Giveaway Winner Announced

by Andrew McCaskey

Matthew’s entry was selected by rank order of a sequence of all valid entries compiled using the tool at Random.org

He will be contacted during business hours tomorrow Dec 17, using contact information supplied with his entry. He has 24 hours to meet the requirements of BuzzCorps, Inc who is conducting the promotion of behalf of Hewlett Packard and Microsoft.

Thanks to all who prepared an entry in the Award Giveaway promotion, and to listeners who followed the program.

Please have a look at some of the other entries at the Listener Tab, and if those individuals or organizations are in your community, consider supporting them in some way.

SDRnews.com HP Magic Contest

HP Magic Giveaway

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SDRNews SDR2008-12-16 Google Edges Net Neutrality

Administrator — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 06:02:13 +0000

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So Secret We Forgot
Google and Net Neutrality
Open Source and the Economy

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Neutral Edges for Google

by Andrew McCaskey
Policy versus Practice

There is nothing like a Net Neutrality bombshell (Google Walks Away from Net Neutrality !) to stir up the blogosphere on an otherwise depressing newsday. It’s far more entertaining than RIAA Sues Deaf-Mute, a topic that could have kept bloggers enthralled for most of a week, just a few short years ago. The Wall Street Journal’s article on Google was lengthy and detailed, noting that both Microsoft and Yahoo have quietly stopped their Net Neutrality efforts as they made business alliances with Telcos. It was an interesting spin on a topic that’s near to the heart of every podcaster, especially video podcasts

The only problem is, the article focused on non-news. Google caches content in edge based Content Delivery Network (CDN) boxes. CDN boxes are co-located with ISP’s and serves up content really fast. Google would like to do more of that. They probably will cut deals to do so.

What the article did was take this topic and present it as a policy change - which Google quickly denied. It was a good treatment on the story, and places some of the PR activities on the other side - telcos cryng the blues about Google not ‘paying their share of bandwidth costs” into perspective.

The refreshing facts seem to be that regardless of how policy appears to be headed, so far the practice is - for those who can afford it - to invest in edge servers, positioned with respect to demand. That is regulation by Practice, not by Policy.

We need the perspective that “all that is not forbidden is permitted”, instead of “all is forbidden except that which is permitted” . The net needs to be open enough by Policy that what needs to be done, gets done in Practice.

10 Minute Scrum