... and so it begins ...

Remember the Rio? The first commercial MP3 player? Originally made by Diamond Multimedia, most recently made by D&M Holdings.

Well, D&M has decided to drop the Rio line of music players. Apparently they decided that they could not profitably compete against Apple's iPod.

I got an iPod. Yippie!

OK, so maybe this is of no importance to anybody else, but I'm thrilled over this newest arrival to my collection of tech-toys.

I've been wanting an iPod since they were first invented, but various factors prevented me from getting one. At first, it was the small capacity (my music collection is around 40GB. That's what happens when you've been buying CDs for over 15 years and rip them all into your computer.) Then it was the high price for the models large enough. Then (after figuring out how to load a random subset of music into it) it was indecision over what model to buy.

Well, fate made the decision for me this month. Earlier this year, Exabyte (makers of tape drives) ran a "VXA Saved The Day" promotion. You were asked to send in your stories about how their tape drive averted disaster. I told them about how an aberrant disk utility trashed my Mac's hard drive, and how I was able to recover in a few hours thanks to a full system backup on my Exabyte VXA-1 tape drive.

Well, they liked my story and I won an iPod mini (silver color). It arrived in the mail yesterday, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. This is the previous generation mini, which means a shorter battery life (8 hours instead of 18), but with more bundled accessories. Mine came with both USB and FireWire cables, and an AC adapter. (The current model only includes a USB cable.)

I spent a few hours last night hand-picking songs to load into it (in the future, I'll set up iTunes to load stuff randomly, but right now, it's a new toy and I'm playing with it.) A simple audio cable to connect it to the car stereo, and I'm all set to take a road trip without bringing along a box of CDs.

I also noticed a feature in it that I requested from Apple a few years ago, and that hasn't gotten much publicity. The iPod supports a sleep timer. You can configure it to play for a fixed amount of time (15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 1.5 hours, or 2 hours), after which it will turn itself off. Which means I can attach it to the stereo in my bedroom and have it play me to sleep.

At this point, the only question I have (which I'm sure will be answered soon) is how long the batteries will really last on a charge. Apple says that this model will run for up to 8 hours on a charge. Hopefully, they will be right.

C|Net: Info from Intel's Developer Forum

Intel showed off its roadmap for 2006 and 2007 at this year's Developer Forum.

Low power consumption is the big deal for all the new chips:

Current	New
Notebook chips Pentium-M (22W) Low-voltage Pentium-M (5.5W)	Merom (5W) Low-voltage Merom (0.5W)
Desktop chips Pentium 4 (95W)	Conroe (65W)
Server chips Xeon (110W)	Woodcrest (80W)

Follow the link to the C|Net article for all the details.

Interview with John Gruber

John Gruber, owner of the Daring Fireball blog, was recently interviewed by the GUIdebook Gallery. The discussion revolves around the good, the bad and the ugly regarding the Macintosh user interface.

A good read for anybody interested in UI issues.

Orson Scott Card on Weapons of Mass Destruction

Orson Scott Card, along with several science fiction writers recently attended a convention in England to discuss weapons of mass destruction.

The result of the discussion is both reassuring and frightening. Follow the link for the whole story.

Indiana judge outlaws Wicca

Recently, a Wiccan couple filed for divorce. Both parties are continuing their practice of Wicca (a non-mainstream religion that is gaining popularity in some parts of the country.) The judge presiding over the divorce, however, has ordered that their son be "sheltered from the involvement and observation of these non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals."

In other words, the judge ordered the parents to not teach their own religion to their own child. This is clearly a violation of their First Ammendment rights.

This ruling was appealed and upheld. The family is continuing to appeal to a higher court. If they violate the judge's order, the child could be taken away and placed in a foster home.

Before you write this off as an isolated case, consider what precedents this might set. Suppose a judge in the future decides that your religion is not mainstream and should therefore be forbidden from your children? Texas has already decided that the Unitarian church is not enough of a religion to qualify for tax-exempt status. It's not a stretch to imagine a judge deciding to take away the children of Unitarian parents, based on this decision.

Virusses, start your engines

Microsoft's public beta for Vista (their next generation of Windows) has been out for only eight days when someone has already written a virus for it.

Does anybody seriously think Microsoft knows or cares anything about security when things like this can happen?

I do find it a bit amusing that most people haven't bothered reporting this. Apparently everybody just expects Windows to be full of virusses, so one more really means nothing.

PS3 running Mac OS???

This article is an interesting overview of Sony's new Playstation 3, which is expected to ship next spring.

Of particular interest, scroll down to the bottom line where it reads:

Sony is expected to offer optional hard drives for the PS3 with potential memory capacity of 80 or 120 GB. It remains to be decided whether the standard version of the PS3 will come complete with a hard drive. The operating system has also yet to be clarified. The integrated Cell processor will be able to support a variety of operating systems (such as Linux or Apple's Tiger).

I can understand Sony supporting Linux, but Mac OS (Tiger)????

While it may be true (and is likely) that the PowerPC-based Cell processor is compatible-enough with existing PowerPC G3/G4/G5 chips to make it compatible with Mac OS, it takes a lot more than a compatible CPU to make a compatible computer. And Mac OS is closed-source, so the system isn't going to be ported without Apple's say-so.

My guess is that this is Sony's marketing people not understanding what they are writing, but who knows. Maybe Apple will decide to team up with Sony to provide some kind of non-gaming system software for the PS3. I wouldn't expect it, but Apple (at least recently) seems to enjoy doing what the rest of the world doesn't expect.

Alternative creation theory: the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Sounds good to me. Now if only we can force the Kansas schools to teach it.

Brain-dead hotel security violating your privacy

Today, most hotels use the TV as an interactive computer terminal. The TV can be used to make purchases, check out, pay the bill, purchase movies, purchase video games, and a plethora of other services. They also provide a lot of administrative functionality that guests normally don't know about.

Any network engineer with even an ounce of sense would design such a system with encryption in the set-top boxes and a security server in the back-office.

But they're not designed that way. The network involves no encryption whatsoever, and the TV programming is not scrambled in any way. All of the security exists in the set-top box, and nowhere else.

Which means that any person that brings his own TV tuner (like a USB-based tuner attached to a laptop computer) can tune in on all of the TV programs, including the ones you're supposed to pay extra for. And with a little more work, you can access all of the administrative screens, allowing you to view the accounts for everybody in the hotel, set wakeup calls for anybody in the hotel, and even alter some billing records (like movie purchases and minibar usage.)

In the future, when hotels start adding cameras to the TVs (presumably for allowing video-chat features), you'll be able to tap into that as well if they don't wise up and implement a more effective security model.