What Star Trek character are you?

Here's mine:

Your results:
You are Geordi LaForge

Geordi LaForge 80% Jean-Luc Picard 80% Chekov 65% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 55% Mr. Scott 55% Uhura 55% Will Riker 55% Deanna Troi 55% James T. Kirk (Captain) 55% Spock 52% Data 50% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 45% Beverly Crusher 35% Worf 25% Mr. Sulu 10%

You work well with others and often fix problems quickly. Your romantic relationships are often bungled.

Click here to take the "Which Star Trek character are you?" quiz...

The next generation of TV

I just ran across this article from Canon (see above link.)

All TV technologies have some key problems with them:

• CRTs are heavy, use a lot of electricity, and have a practical size limit. The largest widescreen CRTs I know of are 34". The largest 4:3 aspect CRTs I know of are 40". This is a nice size, but is small compared to what other technologies can provide.
• Internal projection systems (CRT, DLP or LCD) can go to huge sizes, but there are brightness problems. Images tend to dim-out if you watch the screen from an odd angle. CRT-based projectors often suffer from burn-in, so they create problems for video games and those TV channels (like news channels) that have tickers and static images on-screen for extended periods of time. Replacement projector bulbs (for DLP and LCD units) can be expensive.
• External projection systems (LCD and DLP) can be projected to humongous sizes, but you need a place to put the screen, and the projector needs an unobstructed view of that screen. Lenticular screens (that give you maximal brightness) tend to dim-out when seen from odd angles. And replacement projector bulbs can be expensive.
• Plasma screens look great, but they can suffer from burn-in. They also tend to lose their brightness and/or focus after a few years. Considering how expensive these screens are, I can't see myself ever buying one. (But if you want to give me one for my birthday, I won't refuse to use it.
• LCD screens look great (and modern units don't have the off-angle fading and color distortions that were a problem in the past), but they can be very expensive. Especially at very large sizes.

Well, canon has solved these problems with their SED technology.

SED can be thought of as the successor to CRT technology. A traditional CRT has a screen coated with phosphors that glow when hit by an electron beam. An electron gun at the back of the tube beams electrons at the phosphors to light them up. Deflector magnets bend the beam so it can hit more than just the phosphors directly in front of the beam. Circuitry manipulates the deflectors so the beam scans over the entire phosphor-surface 60 times per second (or faster, depending on the refresh rate), producing the image.

This is the reason CRTs can't get much larger than they are now. When the screen gets larger, you need more distance between the electron gun and the screen, since the deflectors can only bend an electron beam so far before it loses focus. Increasing the distance from the gun means you need more electricity (since the beam has a longer distance to travel), and it means the TV will get larger.

With SED, they eliminate this problem. Instead of a single electron gun, producing a beam, there are millions of micro-size electron-emitters. One for each pixel. Since each one beams its electrons straight ahead, there is no need for deflector magnets, and no need for a great distance between the emitters and the phosphors. The result is a screen with all the brightness, color definition, and off-angle quality of a CRT, but completely flat, and with lower power consumption. And there is no technical reason why SED panels can't be made as large as plasma screens - which means pretty much any size the public will be willing to buy.

I can also see these replacing LCDs as the display of choice for computers. Especially for graphic professionals. Large flat screens without all the contrast and color issues that professionals have with LCDs.

This tech is still experimental, so I don't know when we'll see commercial products, but hopefully it will be soon. This seems to me that it will end up being the best of all worlds (unless you want the wall-filling image size of an external projector, of course.)

'Kosher' Phone

The Washington Post reports that Mirs, an Israeli cell phone company, is selling a "kosher phone". This is a cell phone where most modern features (like cameras and text messaging) is disabled, and where immoral phone numbers (like sex lines) are blocked. The communities in Israel that this is being marketed towards see this as a good thing - allowing the convenience of cell phone usage without inviting the commercial world into the community.

In some respects, they are right, but I ultimately see this as a bad move.

The way I see it (and I have been a cell phone user for years) is that the phones don't bring anything into your life that you don't explicitly go looking for in the first place. I have never received a call from a sex service or from any other immoral business. The only way these phones can be used for immoral activity is if the owner goes looking for it (for example, by dialing the number of a phone-sex service.)

I would like to believe that the people buying the kosher phones could be trusted to not go looking for immorality without requiring a board of rabbis to tell them what numbers can and can not be dialed. And if a person considers himself unable to avoid this kind of immorality, why would he buy the kosher phone in the first place? To show off to the neighbors? (Actually, maybe there is some truth to that...)

Now, it might make sense of these families are buying the phones for their children. Kids sometimes go looking for immoral content, either out of curiosity or as a form of rebellion against their parents. In my opinion, however, blocking systems like this are a meaningless façade. Sure, a kid with a kosher phone won't be able to dial a sex line. But if he is rebellious, he will simply find a different avenue for his rebellion - like buying pornographic magazines, or getting his own phone that his parents don't know about. Technology may be able to make immorality inconvenient, but it can not do a thing about what's in a person's head.

A better concept

All this being said, I think there is a place for a "kosher phone", but not the device Mirs is selling today.

My kosher phone would be based on a modern cell phone, with all the bells and whistles. It would have a camera, text messaging, video service, etc. It would also come with an array of Jewish features to make use of this technology. For instance:

• An address book pre-loaded with "dial-a-shiur" services, so you can learn Torah from anywhere at any time.
• A similar feature using text messages - a daily mini-drash that can be delivered automatically into the phone (or e-mail box) every morning.
• Torah-study chat-rooms, where Torah is discussed 24 hours a day by whoever wants to connect. (Moderated by rabbis, of course, to prevent the discussions from straying too far off-topic.) This could be text, voice or video.
• A calendar pre-loaded with the Jewish holidays, yahrtzeit-tracking capability, and software to compute the times for prayer, fasts, etc.

Note that none of this involves blocking anything. It trusts the owners to actually practice the morality they preach if they want to keep objectionable content off of the phone. I think that most people can be trusted with this responsibility, and those that can't be trusted have problems that a restricted phone won't cure.

As the Lubavitcher Rebbe said on many occasions, technology is not something that should be avoided or banned. It is something that should be made holy by using it for kosher purposes.

Windows Vista - train wreck on ice

A disgruntled Microsoft employee calls for the termination of Microsoft's top brass, due to Vista's repeated schedule slippage.

More interesting are the numerous comments (hundreds) that follow. Many of them are from Microsoft engineers complaining about all kinds of horrible things. Microsoft is clearly a Dilbert company. And I now feel a lot better about my company (which isn't even close to this disaster.)

And I'm very happy I didn't accept Microsoft's job offer back in 1998!

New toys

I got several new geek toys this week.

First and foremost is a new monitor. I bought a Dell 2405FPW. This is a 24" widescreen LCD monitor. It has dual inputs and seems to play nice with KVM switches. It is attached to my Mac G4, Mac Quadra, Windows PC and Linux PC. It also has a built-in USB hub and memory card reader. Native resolution is 1920x1200. See the photo (to the right) for an image of it hooked up to everything.

I am very pleased with Dell here. I placed my order on Tuesday. The charge went through that night. I received it Friday afternoon. This is with the free UPS-ground shipping. The monitor includes both VGA and DVI cables, so I didn't have to buy either - which is great, since I'm using both inputs. The total cost, with tax and a 5-year warranty came to $880.

The second new toy is a PlayStation 2. Once I learned that the PS3 will be delayed at least until November, I decided to go and buy a PS2. I don't want to wait over 8 months to play Katamari Damacy in my living room!

The new PS2 consoles are small!. (See the image to the right. Note the size of the DVD in the drive and the controller.) Sony isn't kidding when they say it is 75% smaller than the original PS2 console. When I took it out of the box, my first impression was "this is it?". Significant changes from the original PS2 are:

• Different DVD drive. This one is top-loading instead of tray-loading
• No mechanical power switch. Only the electronic power switch.
• No expansion bay. So the hard drive add-on doesn't work
• No network expansion port. Instead, Ethernet is built-in. According to Sony, the North American models also include a modem, but mine didn't. So they must be shipping two different models to the US. (Or Sony's web site is wrong, which is also possible.)
• If you use a multi-tap, you need a new model. Previous ones are incompatible.
• The vertical stand is different, because of the new case-shape.

I still have to buy the Component video cable and an optical audio cable, to make the system complete, but it seems to work well. I played Katamari Damacy for many hours tonight (from about 7:00 until 3:00am, so I'm just a bit wired right now. )

And now it's time for bed. Tomorrow's a day with nothing to do but laundry, so I've got plenty of time to play with my new toys.

"Indy 4" Script Ready

In an interview with a German magazine, Harrison Ford says that the script for the fourth Indiana Jones movie is finally ready to go.

I hope this means they can start shooting soon. I really want to see this one on the silver screen

Rats. No PS3 until November

Until today, Sony had been telling the world that the PlayStation 3 would ship this spring - meaning any time between now and June. The rumor mill, however, was saying that there's no way they can meet this date.

Well, Sony now agrees. The official word is now "November". We hope.

Apparently, the console itself is ready to go, but the PS3 is supposed to double-up as a player for Blu-Ray Disc movies (Blu-Ray Disc, or BD, is a high-definition successor to DVD). Unfortunately, the BD standards body hasn't yet nailed down all the specifics of the copy protection tech that BD will use. Sony can't ship a BD drive without the final protection code, or the drive won't be able to play BD movies (expected to ship soon after BD is officially released to the world.)

Personally, I think this is a cop-out. If they have the BD drive working for data discs and are waiting on copy protection schemes, they should be able to ship it now and release a firmware update later on. I don't think it would be that terrible for them to ship a PS3 that can't play BD movies without a firmware update that they can release when BD movies actually become available.

I was going to wait for the PS3 in order to have a console to play Katamari Damacy on, but I'm not going to wait until November, and maybe later if the BD people create even more delays. So, it's time for me to go get a PS2 now, and that PS3 purchase will be delayed indefinitely (until some must-have game comes out for it.)

Oh well. Such is life.

How to set up a new broadband connection

Moving from dial-up to broadband is a great thing. You can do things that would be impossible on dial-up connections, like video conferencing, movie downloading, and a great many other things. But if you're not careful, it can also be a nightmare. Being connected to the internet at high speed 24 hours a day makes it an attractive target for hackers and the malware they use.

But with a little bit of precaution, these problems don't have to happen. Here are a few tips for making the transition to broadband quick and painless.

1. Get a router. A consumer-grade gateway router doesn't cost much (often under $100). A router provides several features that help enormously.
   • NAT. Short for Network Address Translation. A broadband service provider typically provides only one IP address, which will only allow one computer to connect to the internet. NAT is a facility that allows multiple computers to share that one address. You can have an entire network of PCs all connected to the router (either directly or with a hub). The router will assign a private IP address to each computer and will translate all their addresses to the one address assigned by your ISP. It also tracks connections and remembers which computer created each one, allowing them all to access the internet at the same time. If you have more than one computer, this feature is an absolute necessity.
   • Firewall. When NAT is being used, a packet coming in from the internet could be sent to any one of your computers. If the packet is part of a connection that one of your computers initiated, the router will know which one to send it to. If the packet is not part of an established connection, however, it won't know where to send it, and the packet will be dropped. In other words, computers on the internet can not create connections to your computers. Although this can not prevent all hacking attempts, it will block a very large percentage of them.

     Because of the firewall benefits, I recommend that you NEVER attempt to connect to the internet without a router. Without a firewall (hardware or software-based), a Windows PC can be hacked in as little as four minutes.

2. Make sure your operating system software is up to date. On Windows XP, this means you must install Service Pack 2, and apply any high-priority updates that have come out since. (And there are a lot.) You should apply these as soon as possible, if they're not already installed. If you can't take the time to download Service Pack 2 (it is a very large download), you can order it on a CD for free. For the rest, you can visit http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ with Internet Explorer to install the updates.
3. Make sure you have an anti-virus package installed and kept up to date.
4. A software-based firewall, like the one that comes built-in to Windows XP Service Pack 2, is a good idea in addition to the firewall features you get from a router.
5. If you plan on setting up a wireless network, make sure your hardware (router and interface cards) support WPA2 encryption. Older encryption standards (like WEP and the original WPA) are much less secure. As a matter of fact, WEP security is so insecure that a hacker can crack it in only an hour or two.

Jerry Falwell comes to his senses? Maybe?

Jerry Falwell, Baptist preacher and political lobbyist, seems to have changed his mind about trying to convert Jews to Christianity, and is now against the practice.

Assuming this isn't some trick or political double-speak, then it is a good sign, since Falwell is well respected in the Evangelical Christian world.

Let's hope this is indeed a sincere change of heart.

Now this is a great invention

A tie, with built-in in attachment points for an iPod nano.

Unfortunately, I don't own a nano (a mini would be too heavy for a tie) and I don't wear ties. Otherwise, it's a wonderful invention.