Sunday, August 26, 2012

Will Jurors Decision Create An iPhone Monopoly?

By deciding that Samsung violated Apple patents, does this create a situation where Samsung, Motorola & other manufacturers say " no thanks"?

This is what Apple wanted, a possible monopoly in the cell phone business. But be careful what you wish for. There is no way one company can make that many phones. That's why Android is on so many different devices.

Jurors are saying it wasn't based on it being Apple. I call baloney on that. The trial probably shouldn't have been held in San Jose. The courtroom in downtown SJ is less than 10 miles from Apple headquarters. You telling me there wasn't a bias?

And the foreman owns patents. So yes, he has experience & understands the law. But he also is thinking about his own position. And I'm guessing these Apple fanboys, err jurors didn't even pay attention to Samsung's own suit against Apple. Hey, they're foreigners. We don't have to pay attention to them.

So in the next couple of years, when everything is a feature (AKA dumb) phone, except for the iPhone, & version 6 costs 1 grand, plus a $100 required data plan, you can thank the jury.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Audio Books & Movies

I just finished watching the Hollywood version of "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo". I had listened to the audio book version several months ago, so I was aware of the plot.

This is a story that involves computer hacking as a plot point. One of the main characters gathers information by hacking computers. Yes, this is illegal & just plain disturbing. But the character isn't what I would call a conventional heroine anyway.

Of course one of the problems with having recently read the book is that it's 600 pages long, & the movie, although it's 2 1/2 hours long, probably covers a third of the book, cuts out several characters & changes the identity of the missing person ( in the book the presumed murdered girl sneaks off to Australia & becomes a sheep farmer, in the Hollywood film she moves to London & assumes the identity of a dead cousin). OK, can't show everything, movie would be 10 hours long.

Other problem is because I listened to the book as an audiobook, I have a certain idea what characters are like or sound like. That is a problem. Plus because the story is cut, some of the hacking stuff is missing although they try to show the tech used to solve the mystery. tech is always an issue in films, because the filmmakers don't seem to really understand how tech works.

Maybe I'm being too picky. I'm just making an observation. Your results may vary.

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Mars Rover On The Web

One of the big science stories right now is the Mars rover Curiosity. This is an important mission for Nasa, but we normal people don't get a lot of info from it. Our TV is loaded with lots of nonsense. Even the Discovery Channel (which you would think would be the place to go) is instead full of gator hunters & gold seekers & shark victims. Ahhh. America. Land of the uninformed.

So what to do? Go to Nasa's website. There are videos & other media about the mission. Plus 128 separate photos taken by either Curiosity or the space orbiter above. Some are black & white, & some have been enhanced with color so one can distinguish certain objects.

This is what tech does for us. there is a Nasa channel, but I'm not sure everyone has it, or if they do, know where it is on their system. But sites like Nasa, or Space.com or even the JPL are good for our own curiosity (yeah, I know).

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Phone Companies Losing Broadband Customers

This story shows people moving from phone based ISP's to cable companies. The reason is the speed. I pay $40 a month for 3 Mbps. The most I can get from AT&T is 6. Meanwhile Comcast offers, I believe 20 Mbps. Of course at a higher price.

But I haven't done it because I subscribe to Directv, & I just know that Comcast would be pressuring me to switch to Comcast for my TV service. I won't do that. I used to have Comcast. Do I really have to tell you why I don't anymore?

I don't need the hassle. Plus, despite the yearly increases, I'm still paying less with Directv than I would with Comcast, or any cable company. So I deal with the low speeds. It was good enough for the Olympic streams, although higher speeds would make downloads quicker. This is why we need more competition, not less.

NBC Attacked Over Olympic Coverage

It's almost expected that American television will screw up any international event. But the closing ceremonies of the Olympics? First they cut out Ray Davies of the Kinks doing a classic song about London "Waterloo Sunset". Then they cut out the group Muse, which was only going to play the official Olympic song. Ooops.

And then they decided they would cut off the closing ceremonies for a horrible new sitcom starring a chimp, rather than broadcast the performance of classic band The Who. Maybe they didn't want people to remember that Who songs are the theme for competitor CBS' CSI shows. 

Yeah, they showed the performance, but at 12 Midnight. Nice job. This on top of simply bad coverage. During the day NBC had 4 different channels going a minimum of 8 hours apiece. But all seemed to be showing the same thing: Volleyball, Beach Volleyball, Soccer & heats in either Swimming or Track. Really extensive coverage. Oh brother.

At least the website had everything. The site is still up. I don't know for how long. I probably watched as much online as on TV. Weightlifting, White Water Canoeing, Wrestling, Judo. Let's see what happens in 2 years at Sochi for the next Winter Olympics.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

NBC Fails At Olympic Video

I'm tired of complaining about video failures but this one is really bad. NBC decided they would stream everything at the Olympics but clearly didn't upgrade their servers to handle the traffic.

Last week, I had no problems watching sports little seen on TV. White Water canoeing/kayaking, weightlifting, fencing. This week however has been awful. I spent two days trying to watch the evening finals in track & field for yesterday. That shouldn't happen.

What was going on? Not just buffering, but a complete failure where the screen would completely freeze up, causing me to open the task manager so I could close the browser. I use Firefox exclusively, but just as an experiment I used IE. It was better but it froze at least once also.

Did NBC not realize how many people would be using the streams? One report says that 5 different events had over 1 million views. That's why there were issues. Go on Google & type in NBC Olympic problems & see how many pages of results come up. This was incompetence clearly. I want to be able to check out sports not seen on my TV, but spending 4-5 hours to watch 2 hours of video won't cut it.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Outlook.com Not Available For Preview

After making a big deal of creating a web based version of Outlook, I wanted to check it out. This is partly because Mozilla has announced there will be no more development of Thunderbird.

So let's check out a web based version of the Microsoft Office e-mail client. Oh, I'm sorry. There is no way to check it out unless you sign up for a Microsoft account first. 

See, this is what I don't understand about companies on the web. Do they not understand that I want to check out the product before I decide if I want to use it? I'm not going to create a Microsoft account just to find out that I would rather just keep my Thunderbird account.

But this seems to be the way the web is being corrupted. Kind of like how I have to sign in through my TV provider to watch Olympic video. Why is that necessary? Answer: It isn't. There are plenty of web sites that want me to register, & I'm just not going to do it. My info is mine, not yours. Kinda like Spotify requiring a Facebook account to listen to music. Really? I can listen to thousands of internet radio stations on iTunes without logging in. I wonder how long that will continue.

So M$ doesn't get me to use Outlook.com because they wouldn't even let me check it out, see what it looks like. Will it be a failure. Who knows. I just know I won't be using it.