Jan 31, 2005 0
SBC Communications Inc. has agreed to buy former parent AT&T Corp. for $16 billion, creating the nation’s largest communications company and ending the independent run of a firm whose roots stretch back to the telephone’s invention.
So the baby-bell buys its mommy. Funny how things work - AT&T was split up, now it’s almost all back together again.
Jan 31, 2005 0
Geography has never been Katie Kubacki’s favorite subject.
But now the eighth-grader at Lake Elmo’s Oak-Land Junior High finds the material more appealing thanks to a school-provided laptop. Instead of just writing a report about Switzerland, she used the laptop to research the country and make a movie for a project.
“It makes class a whole lot more interesting,” Kubacki said of her laptop.
Kubacki isn’t alone. One year after Oak-Land administrators handed out about 1,200 laptops, students and teachers are still giddy about having a computer they can use in class and at home.
Many residents were angry when the Stillwater school district entered into a five-year, $1.75 million deal with Apple Computer in September 2003, saying they felt the plan was poorly communicated and pushed through too quickly.
“I don’t think people thought it was OK the way that it was done,” said Lu Shaughnessy, a Stillwater resident and parent of four.
But the public controversy appears to have died down, even among former opponents like Shaughnessy.
Computers in school can be an awesome tool for learning and development. I just wish I could have all my students have an iBook each 
Jan 31, 2005 0
I’ve seen a ton of articles around the web lately comparing the Mac mini to the near full size desktop PC. What they fail to compare is the amount of computing power per square inch you get with the mini. So, I decided to take it upon myself to create the fastest PC possible with the size constraints of the mini’s small form factor.
Although it’s a cool idea, it pretty much just proves that Apple did a really good job putting the mini together. Kevin takes just about the smallest PC components, and cannot even fit an optical drive in the case. He also has to cut the heat sink and recommends putting an extra fan in the case, presumably making the mini louder.
Jan 30, 2005 0
Underground programmers hoping to capitalize on the BitTorrent file-swapping community on Friday unveiled highly anticipated software that some peer-to-peer advocates believe could blunt recent legal attacks from Hollywood.
Called Exeem, the software aims to merge the speedy downloads of BitTorrent with the powerful global search capabilities of Kazaa or eDonkey. The first public version of the program was released by a company called Swarm Systems but has been associated with SuprNova, a Web site that, until recently, drew millions of people seeking free content online through the popular BitTorrent software.
The much-talked-about Exeem is finally out in a public version, although still in beta. I guess we’ll find out what it was all about. The major change is that it doesn’t use tracker-servers like BitTorrent. It’s ad-supported which has produced a lot of criticism against Exeem’s creators.
Jan 30, 2005 0
After a two-year hiatus Apple has returned to win the 2004 Readers’ Choice Awards for the brand with the most global impact—a title held by Google since 2002.
It’s hard to imagine a brand having a shinier year than Apple. Notably punctuated with iMacs, iPods and iTunes, Apple’s 2004 presence was felt in the press, in ads and on the streets, with iPod coming to define the word “ubiquitous.” Coupled with strong revenue, Apple reported a net profit of US$ 295 million in the last quarter of 2004 alone and a 2004 overall net income growth of 300 percent. Yes, 300 percent.
At Apple’s core is great innovation, beautiful design and an ability to bring warmth and passion to those who may be completely incurious about technical gadgetry but need it nonetheless to survive in today’s world.
From U2 to “You too?,” the iPod alone sold 4.6 million units in the last quarter, practically doubling sales since its launch. (There are now about 10 million pod-addicts on the planet.) Meanwhile, iMac sales tripled as Apple’s overall computer sales rose by 26 percent over 2003 sales. Music division iTunes became the blueprint for Napster-alternative online music sales. And swanky retail outlets gave Apple enthusiasts a chance to worship or interact directly with the company as well as each other.
However, Apple’s cultural symbolism was not economically symbiotic. Its worldwide computer market share dropped to less than two percent in 2004 to a 1.87 percent share in Q3 of 2004 (down from 2.19% in Q3 2003). The 2004 world leader for market share was Dell at 18 percent, followed by HP at 16 percent and IBM with 6 percent. The small white hope is that iPod’s halo effect will bring more buyers to Apple’s other offerings, which go beyond consumer goods to include servers, WiFi, and software, and include the already-backordered new iPod Shuffle and a sub-US$ 500 Mac.
Jan 30, 2005 0
The founder and chairman of the MIT Media Lab wants to create a $100 portable computer for the developing world. Nicholas Negroponte, author of Being Digital and the Wiesner Professor of Media Technology at MIT, says he has obtained promises of support from a number of major companies, including Advanced Micro Devices, Google, Motorola, Samsung, and News Corp.
The low-cost computer will have a 14-inch color screen, AMD chips, and will run Linux software, Mr. Negroponte said during an interview Friday with Red Herring at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. AMD is separately working on a cheap desktop computer for emerging markets. It will be sold to governments for wide distribution.
Interesting! I’m sure they could do it, but only on a very large volume, I guess.
Jan 30, 2005 0
Activists at a leftist gathering where Microsoft is viewed as a corporate bogeyman urged developing nations Saturday to leap into the information age with free open-source software.
John Barlow, a lyricist for the Grateful Dead, told a gathering inside a packed warehouse that poor nations can’t solve their problems unless they stop paying expensive software licensing fees.
Open source software includes programs that are not controlled by a single company. The software can be developed by anyone, with few restrictions. The best known such software is the Linux operating system, which can be downloaded free from the Internet.
“Already, Brazil spends more in licensing fees on proprietary software than it spends on hunger,” said Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a cyberspace civil liberties group.
Barlow is of course right in that open-source software is free as in you don’t have to pay for it up-front, but there are certainly costs involved with using it, such as training, support etc. What he seemingly failed to point out is perhaps the biggest selling-point of open-source software namely that it is open, i.e. the source-code is openly available.
Jan 30, 2005 0
With a record of 19 wins, 22 losses, and four ties, it’s been a pretty disappointing season thus far for the Boston Bruins. But there’s a bright side — none of the team members are playing hurt. After all, electrons don’t bleed.
The only Bruins on the ice this hockey season are the electronic sort. With the National Hockey League shut down by a management lockout, the players are out of work and the fans are out of luck — except for those willing to accept a digital substitute for their usual quota of icy thrills, courtesy of a cable television network called G4techTV.
Once the lockout began, G4techTV began to fill in the gap with a full roster of virtual hockey games. Using a Microsoft Xbox game console and a copy of NHL 2005 hockey gaming software from Electronic Arts Inc., the game buffs at G4 are playing out every single game on the league schedule — all 1,230 of them — and posting the results on their website (G4techTV.com). It’s a fascinating experiment in virtual entertainment, a chance to test the public appetite for amusements utterly devoid of anything human.
Jan 30, 2005 0
ISAAC RICHARDS didn’t think of himself as a rebel, or a shock to the well-lubricated system of the television industry. He was merely unhappy with the cable box provided by his local operator.
Dismayed by the sluggish channel-changing capability and the sparsely informative program guide, he decided to build a better cable box from scratch. Today, nearly three years since Mr. Richards, a 26-year-old computer software programmer in Willoughby, Ohio, embarked on his quest, hundreds of thousands of do-it-yourself television viewers are using the free software program he wrote, MythTV, to turn desktop personal computers into customized cable boxes, complete with the ability to record shows, surf the Web and strip out unwanted commercials.
The members of the MythTV community, who now do not have to pay monthly fees to rent set-top boxes or digital video recorders, have plenty of more mischievous company in trying to outwit the television industry. Millions of viewers are now watching illegal copies of television programs - even full seasons copied from popular DVD’s - that are flitting about the Internet, thanks to other new programs that allow users to upload and download the large files quickly. And entrepreneurial souls are busily concocting even newer applications, including one that searches the Internet for illegal copies of any television shows you may desire and automatically downloads them to your computer.
These high-tech tricks address desires that have become standard in an age of instant media gratification: the desire to watch what you want, when and how you want it. And they’re turning television - traditionally beamed into homes at the convenience of the broadcast and cable networks - into something more flexible, highly portable and commercial free
It’s true that most of your favorite TV-shows are available for download on the internet, but I wonder if it really hurts the TV/cable companies much.
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