GregWilde.com

Droid Update

On 02.18.10, In Technology, By Greg

My original post about the Droid was 2009-11-06. Three months into Droid and time for an update. The good news is that ones life can be divided into BD and AD, before Droid and after Droid. But not without some complaints of course. The camera is really slow, which means you are going to miss some opportunities. It is really easy to accidentally activate functions unintentionally.

These are the apps I use in order of most frequent:

Phone and contact lookup with integration to maps
Maps, especially with the traffic layer turned on
Music – listen to books on mp3
Gmail
Calendar to look up appointments, etc.
Sportstap – keep track of you teams
TED – view outstanding 18 minute videos from the TED conferences
CardioTrainer – uses GPS to track walking workouts.
Radar Now – show weather radar arond your GPS location
Trapster – avoid speed traps and photo enforcement cameras
WaveSecure – to locate Droid if misplaced, and erase everything if stolen
Wifi Analyzer – check on your wifi signal
Droidlight – use camera flash as a light
Google Goggles – scan business card to add to contacts
PageOnce – track financial accounts

The Space Debate

On 02.04.10, In Politics, Society, Technology, By Greg

Steven Weinbeg received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979 and the National Medal of Science in 1991. He teaches in the physics and astronomy departments of the University of Texas at Austin. He has some important observations about space exploration funding in today’s Wall Street Journal, some of which are quoted below. It is gratifying to be able to report anything that the current Obama administration is proposing that would move us in the right direction and this is one.

One of my sons, Mark, worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory JPL in Pasadena, CA during the summers of 2004 and 2005. JPL is a NASA contractor and lead center for the robotic exploration of the solar system. JPL has done far more with it’s tiny budget than the massive NASA manned programs to improve life on earth.

What about Hubble? Weinberg notes:

It is true that astronauts made a large contribution to astronomy by servicing the Hubble Space Telescope. But if Hubble had been put into orbit by unmanned rockets instead of the Space Shuttle, so much money would have been saved that instead of servicing a single Hubble we could have had half a dozen Hubbles in orbit, making servicing unnecessary.

The Mars rovers were dispatched by JPL, and they did an incredible job, as noted by Weinberg here:

It is difficult to get reliable estimates of the cost of sending astronauts to Mars, but I have heard no estimate that is less than many hundreds of billions of dollars. The cost of sending Spirit and Opportunity to Mars was less than $1 billion.

Weinberg concludes:

The only technology for which the manned space flight program is well suited is the technology of keeping people alive in space. And the only demand for that technology is in the manned space flight program itself.

Want a reason to upgrade to Windows 7 ?

On 02.03.10, In Technology, By Greg

In a presentation yesterday, a McAfee representative stated that security experts thus far have not found a way to modify the “Operation Aurora” zero-day exploit of IE to overcome the defense represented by the combination of Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) and Data Execution Protection (DEP). DEP alone is not sufficient. DEP is available in XP, but ASLR is not (from Microsoft). ASLR is available in Windows 7.

Quoting Wikipedia:

Operation Aurora was a cyber attack conducted in mid-December 2009 and continuing into early January 2010. The attack was publicly disclosed by Google on January 12 in a blog post. In the blog post, Google said the attack originated in China. The attack was aimed at dozens of other organizations, of which Adobe Systems, Juniper Networks and Rackspace have publicly confirmed that they were targeted. According to media reports, Yahoo, Symantec, Northrop Grumman and Dow Chemical were also among the targets.

By some counts, there were 34 firms affected. The Intellectual Property (IP) in each case was different. For example, it appears that a large amount of IP from an oil company was taken by the Chinese during this period. The property in question was bidding data on oil leases off the coast of Africa. The competition is China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).

Your kids will thank you for this budget

On 02.01.10, In Politics, Society, By Greg

The Wall Street Journal reported just now that President Barack Obama proposed a $3.8 trillion budget for fiscal 2011.

The budget plan calls for nearly $1 trillion in tax increases on upper-income families — largely by allowing Bush-era tax cuts to expire. Banks, bankers and multinational corporations would face new fees and levies. And oil companies would lose $39 billion in tax breaks.

In all, the president’s budget would add $8.5 trillion to the federal debt through 2020, pushing the debt as a percentage of GDP to 77%, up from 53%.

If you are opposed to the budget (except perhaps for the tax breaks on oil companies), let your representatives know. They think you don’t care about your kids and grand kids.

Tagged with: Budget • Government • Taxes

Outlet Malls – Outlets for What?

On 01.25.10, In Society, By Greg

Smartmoney has an article that shows how far retailers have adapted to outlet malls. Salient points:

For most retailers, outlet malls have become clearance centers
Some retailers are stocking the “gaps” in lines at outlets with “outlet-only” merchandise, not marketed through other channels
Less overstock is available these days and much of that is going to TJMaxx, sample sales, and charity

Apple’s Tabla Rasa

On 01.25.10, In Technology, By Greg

Tabula rasa (Latin: blank slate) refers to the notion that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that their knowledge comes from experience and perception.

We will soon know much more about the new Apple Tablet, on January 27, only two days from now. It could be entertaining to predict what sort of design Apple will announce and find out how far off I am once revealed. If I were designing a new Apple Tablet, this is what I would specify:

Thin…very thin…like an 8.5×11 paper pad.

11″ touchscreen.

SSD – Solid State Drive…no moving parts, low power consumption.

Inspired by the existing Mac Air notebook computer.

Multiple USB connections and Firewire.

4GB RAM, Intel low power processor.

Non-replaceable battery.

Mac OS-X Touch software.

Improved software for handwriting recognition.

WiFi and maybe WiMax.

Data plan for Internet access and media downloads, this time from Verizon Wireless.

Speakers, microphone, and camera(s).

All software in the iTunes library that works for iPhone will work for tablet device.

Tagged with: Apple • eBooks • hardware • Tablet

PeerGuardian 2 and Logitech Vid

On 01.19.10, In Technology, By Greg

If you use PeerGuardian 2 (PG2) and Logitech Vid, you will notice that PG2 blocks NebuAd, Inc at 66.151.151.20:5062. It turns out that this IP address actually belongs to SightSpeed, Inc. Logitech bought SightSpeed on Oct 29, 2008. Because of the nature of the videoconferencing service provided by SightSpeed, one can see that it is necessary for the workstation to check in with a SightSpeed server on a regular basis in order to be able to answer in incoming video call. That’s because most firewalls are configured to block incoming protocols and ports except responses to outgoing http, https, ftp, etc requests.

So far I can’t see an advantage of Vid over Skype.

If anyone knows why PG2 would associate NebuAd (now defunct) with SightSpeed, please leave a comment.

Also, If you see any significant advantage of SightSpeed/”Logitech Vid” over Skype, please leave a comment.

Tagged with: comparisons • Logitech • NebuAd • PeerGuardian 2 • SightSpeed • video

The Authority and Motivation to Act Decisively

On 01.04.10, In Politics, By Greg

The Christmas Day Airliner Attack and the Intelligence Process (Stratfor)

“A process that says that in a war against radical Islamists, an elderly visitor from Iceland is as big of a potential threat as a twentysomething from Yemen might satisfy some ideological imperative, but it violates the principle of common sense and blocks the authority and the motivation to act decisively.”

“…given the level of effort and cost involved in terrorist protection throughout the world, successful systems for distributing intelligence and helping identify potentially significant threats are long overdue. The U.S. government has been tackling this since 2001, and it still isn’t working. But, in the end, creating a process that precludes initiative by penalizing those who do not follow procedures under all circumstances and intimidating those responsible for making quick decisions from risking a mistake is bound to fail.” -George Friedman, January 4, 2010

The Obama administration has worked diligently since taking office in January 2009 to undermine the Intelligence community both in tools and in morale. There is no limit to the number of surprises we will endure until removed from office. How could any FBI or CIA employee admire a buffoon like Janet Napolitano.

Snowball Fight!

On 01.01.10, In Humor, By Greg

The following animation was created by Gregory Jr. and features the entire family:

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About Droid

On 11.06.09, In Technology, By Greg

I have upgraded to Motorola Droid from what is now an antique. I’ve only had it for a few hours. I was surprised at how heavy it is. I was also surprised at how small the keys are on the slide out keyboard. I decided to add the desktop docking station and so far I’m glad I did. It’s convenient. Syncing with Google was a total no-brainer. I’ve been receiving notifications of new emails and calendar events.

Nice feature: instant maps from Google for your contacts that include addresses. Very nice indeed.

You may want to compare features with the Apple iPhone. See Mashable article for comparison chart.

I have been accidentally hitting functions and activating searches more often than I thought. Since I carry the Droid in my pocket, the keyboard slides out slightly sometimes and that activates the “droid groan,” a robot-sounding “droid.”

I was not reimbursed for this review. I’ll add comments as I begin adding features.

Tagged with: Droid • iPhone • Motorola