Technolotics #22 – Mintback Mountain

Technolotics - An antique show about technology

https://garethstack.com/content/audio/technolotics/22_technolotics.mp3

Listen: Episode 22
Watch: Youtube
Feed: RSS

Notes

Granny Apple in the News

Will Disney buy Pixar, and make Steve King?

After days of speculation the Telegraph are reporting that the deal will go ahead
Jobs will be largest Disney shareholder
But will he have any power – Roy Disney failed to save animation at disney despite 1% of shares
What of Pixar, can its independent spirit survive?

Jobs invites microsoft to make their own iPod. As this week mine dies.

Implication is they need to produce a competing music store
My guess? – Jobs is feeling the heat to increase iTunes store pricing, and feels a big no. 2 would spread the load
If MS had a licenced DRM platform, then Apple might open up fairplay
Apple matters speculates Apple owns the markey + the invitation is bait

Links:

MSNBC – Disney in talks to buy Pixar
Telegraph – Disney buys Pixar
The Rise and Fall of Disney in the Modern Era – account of Roy’s attempts to save Walts company from Eisner et al
Apple Matters – Jobs to Gates, bring it on!

Wasted Business Opportunity

My stickies – Tagged web notes – **When I first saw these I thought – ah one of those genius, why didn’t I think of it ideas – but is the market to saturated?

Then I realised they haven’t yet implimented the obvious thing – web stickies aren’t a del.icio.us style folksonomy – although the site suggests they intend to
Heads up to anyone with excellent coding skills looking for a business opportunity – produce a whiteboard collaborative / quasi-collaborative RSS syndicated folksonomy notation system – lacking the limitations of del.icio.us (bland interface, no private bookmarking)

Links:

My Stickies

Firefox 2 on the Way

The alpha version of the worlds best browser is due next month
New Features to include:

Tab & Interface enhancements – e.g.: Saving open tabs on close, history of each tab, tag based bookmarks
Smoother RSS Integration – integrated viewer, everything is feeds
Offline support of web apps – ‘supercookies’
Unifed smoother search – (combination of all engine output?), search cache history
Better antiphishing / security

What would you change? – Media plugin crashes, better popup blocking, better conversion of javascript open window commands to tabs, replacement of bookmarks with del.icio.us etc (by default), update without reset
Links:

PC Pro Article
Official FF Roadmap

Cringley’s 2006 predictions

Bob Cringley’s predictions for last year were down on his usual average 66% – and he calculates generously
Apple

Will lose in their streaming case versus Burst.com
The new Intel Macs will support XP and Apple will start stealth competion with Microsoft
Boxed X will work on Wintel machines
.Mac online storage goes to a terabyte

Google

2006 is merely preparation for a big push in 2007
New products and services will be announced and another public offering of shares to boost the warchest.
Wont release a PC or OS

Links:

iCringley 2006 Predictions

Al Gore compares wiretapping to Martin Luther King Surveillance

Al Gore – who since failing to convince the American people of anything but his inadaquacy has become an amazing speech writer (or hired some)
compared Bush’s warrentless mass wiretaping to J. Edgar Hoover’s surveillance of the black leader

who vowed to “take him off his pedestal.”, and blackmailed him in an attempt to induce suicide
Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA) partly introduced in reaction

Bush’s indescriminate automated wiretapping illegal (under FISA) & unconstitutional
Gore brings indeterminate detention without warrant, extraordinary rendition and torture of prisoners – examples of Bush regiemes disregard for constitution
Deeper Questions: Unitary executive – enslavement of judicial and legislative branches, perceptual war, imperialism
Calls for an investigation by Senate and Congress, Special counsel should be appointed by Attorney Gen to investigate presidental abuses of power
Meanwhile bob cringley downplays the illegality and importance of the Bush wiretaps
Links:

The Raw Story – commentary and text of speech
iCringley on Wiretaps

Googleblogger: Google defies the US government

Google is fighting a subpoena to hand over some of the information in its database to help “fight pornography”.
Google is fighting the subpoena on justification of request grounds

Commentators speculate – dont be evil, and commercial access to database grounds

Microsoft and yahoo have already surrendered data to the request
FBI is seeking to resusitate anti-porn laws already ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme court
Child Online Protection Act – would have forced every site to age check adults using their services

effectively useless because non-us sites would not have to comply
emphatically dangerous because there is no anonymous free method of confirming such identity
Additionally your obscenity is my art – new anti porn laws are already being used to curtail free expression

Links:

International Herald Tribune – Google refuses to hand over search records
CBS – Feds Seek Google Records On Porn

Media Pimp

Francis’ Pimp

A photograph of the world’s first ‘Bug’. A moth that got caught in a relay in an early computer system [1]
Watch out ladies the Hoff is single again. Check out this music video of The Hoff singing Hooked on a Feeling. [2]

Gareth’s Pimp

The Socratic teaching method – useful for anyone who’s had to give a lecture [3]