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English health experts are warning that over-use of the Blackberry for texting can lead to thumb pain.
Seriously. (My daughter failed to identify this anime nanny, but it's Hisu, Princess Allura's nanny on Voltron: Defender of the Universe. I was surprised, too -- I thought she had the cast list memorized.)
Fortunately, we have some other unofficial health warnings, from the home office:
Nicholas Negroponte is getting all sorts of attention for his plan to sell Linux PCs to the developing world at $100/each. (The picture is from the EnGadget story.)
It sounds great, in theory. Although, as EnGadget notes, most people in those parts might prefer mobile phones, and they're already cheap as chips. (As we noted last week, literally.)
Negroponte might respond he's bringing poor people the full world of the World Wide Web with his cheap box, but if it's the Web you want you need connectivity, not just a box, and getting to fiber in Niger is a little more difficult than getting to it from, say, Atlanta. (Or Abidjan for that matter.)
But there is one more big problem with this "great futurist's" vision.
It's practically here already.
Continue reading "Negroponte's "Cheap PC""
Has Microsoft, and its ecosystem, built planned obsolescence into PCs so as to force upgrades?
I know this is tinfoil hat territory, but hear me out. (The tinfoil hat on the left is being modeled by Elizabeth Kramer of Pleasantville, NY, daughter of the blogger Kathlyn Kramer.)
In theory the MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) of all PC hardware extends not years but decades. There is no theoretical reason for an old machine to stop working, and refuse repair.
Yet that's just what is happening here.
It started a year ago. My 6 year old Windows 98 machine started acting up, refusing to boot, and Scandisk just wouldn't complete. A big part of the problem, I concluded, was the Norton security system I had installed.
But PCs were cheap so I changed it out. I got me a new Windows XP set-up for about half the price I'd paid for the original box back in 1998, and felt like I'd gotten off cheap.
Continue reading "Tinfoil Hat Time"
Texas Instruments is using only 40-bit cryptography on the RFID chips it sells for car locks, RFID tags, and things like toll booth passes.
What this means, according to students at Johns Hopkins, profiled this week in The New York Times, is that the codes aren't hard to break.
There are caveats. You have to get a few inches from the car you want to steal to get the code. Then you have to spend time breaking the code and making your own key, which only lets you hotwire the vehicle. But the whole thing can be done in an hour, the students said, and the required technology could easily be put into a device the size of an iPod.
What does this mean?
Continue reading "RFID Insecurity: TI Liable?"
This is the kind of story that warms the cockles, and hopefully makes today's Friday dog blogging feature make some sense. (Dogs are colorblind.)
Ray Girvan brought us the story of Adam Montandon, who has invented a device that lets the color blind "see" what they're missing, by translating the colors into sound.
It goes by the name of the Eyeborg (Adam's an inventor, not a marketer). It takes a picture of the scene with a digital camera, then translates the colors to sound with a computer program.
Best of all, the first one cost under $100 (well 50 pounds) to make.
But here's the really cool part.
Continue reading "How The Colorblind Can Hear What They're Missing"
Per our story yesterday on the musical potential of cellular automata, Mooreslore reader Lindon Parker pointed us to Chaosynth, a synthesizer design from Eduardo Reck Miranda designed around them.
Script Kiddie Jeffrey Parsons, who adapted the Blaster Worm to go after Microsoft's Windows update site, was sentenced to 18 months in a low security prison.
Prosecutors had asked for about three years.
Continue reading "Script Kiddie Draws 18 Months"
Alan Reiter reports that Nokia will put cameras of at least 1 megapixel in fully half the phones it ships this year.
If the last several months proves anything, it is that there are many ways to grow in the cellular business. (Birthdaycraftsandsupplies.com offers a fine selection of Pinatas. Ask them to bring back the dollar sign one to the right. Don't you agree it looks cool?)
For instance:
Continue reading "Different Routes To Cellular Growth"
Assuming SBC does swallow AT&T (no doubt for less than BellSouth was offering earlier) would provide important lessons. (The image is from FreeBSD developer Greg Lehey, and was originally produced in 2002.)
First and foremost, it would be the murder of a great company by the government. It was government that broke up AT&T in the 1980s, and it was government that made AT&T non-competitive in our time.
Second, of course, it means that business tributes to the U.S. government are even more important than previously imagined. If the government can murder the nation's largest company (albeit over time and in chunks) it means no company is safe from a rapacious government, regardless of party. (Is is coincidence that AT&T was forced to divest during the Reagan Administration, and killed under Bush II? Check the campaign contribution files for the answer to that one.)
But wait, there are more lessons.
Continue reading "Lessons From SBC-AT&T"
Word that mobile phone makers (and some networks) want to embed WiFi and VOIP into phones brings up a crucial point about the VOIP market, and about how technology works in general.
There are two major threads of VOIP software out there. Most, like Vonage, work along a standard. Then there's one who doesn't.
But that one is Skype.
Guess which of these two "standards" leads?
Skype. By a bunch. This puts another twist into the whole discussion of VOIP, and VOIP-cellular in general. Because there are multiple models to choose from:
Continue reading "VOIP Phones Get More (Choices, Money, Profits)"
NOTE: This is part of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.
The America Diaspora is a sequel to The Chinese Century.
One big difference between IBM and Microsoft today is that, while both are filled with "high bandwidth" people, those at IBM seem to have a greater creative freedom.
Here's an example. It's a great little piece by IBM engineer Paul Reiners about turning Stephen Wolfram's cellular automata into music, using Java.
This presses all kinds of buttons for me. I'm a Wolfram fan. I like open source (and IBM is still rumored to be working on an open source JDK). I like music. I love the link between science and art. And the idea of an engineer learning to play music (or tap dance) is also attractive. Something else to think about is how Reiners pushed most of his links into a resources sub-head at the bottom of the story.
Now where does this take us?
Continue reading "The Music of Wolfram Spheres"
The Elliott Wave people ask, "Is the Greater Fool Era Ending?"
Answer: No.
Here is proof. Strategy Analytics has recently published another of those truly loony market studies, this one claiming that mobile phone operators will lose $12 billion from broadband wireless over the next several years.
It's nonsense because its premise is false, namely that those profits are out there to lose.
Yes, it's possible that if WiFi and WiMax didn't exist that all broadband revenues would go to cellular. It's also true that if freeways didn't exist all inter-city traffic would be by railroad. But that does not mean I impute a loss of billions to the railroads.
Continue reading "Another Greater Fool Study"
In the U.S., the only excuse for regulating TV content is based on spectrum scarcity. Spectrum is scarce, it's licensed, and because of that there is a public interest test, which the agency sometimes uses to crack down on content.
Absent the excuse of spectrum scarcity, the only grounds for regulating TV content are based on the First Amendment. (The Hayes Office, which kept movies chaste for decades, was private regulation, not public.) This is not an absolute. Any conservative will tell you "obscenity is not protected," citing chapter and verse, calling in Ashcroft's Dogs of War.
The point is this is not the case outside the U.S. In England, for instance, TV content is regulated because, well, it's powerful. Thus dangerous. And so Oftel, the U.K's new "super-regulator," is sniffing around regulating the Internet.
Fortunately some there have a Clue.
Continue reading "Why Regulate TV?"
Gary Wolf has a piece at Wired which had me shaking my head for some time.
Several folks have pointed me to it. It's an imagined memo, dated three years into the future, after Linus Torvalds has supposedly gone to work for Mr. Bill Gates.
The idea behind the imagined memo, something I've written about extensively recently over at ZDNet's Open Source, is based upon building a Linux desktop suite. Wolf's point, apparently, is that Microsoft moving to Windows isn't that far-fetched, that Steve Ballmer doesn't get it, and that Gates has the imagination to listen to the market rather than the yes-men in Redmond.
Well, yeah. But so what? Ain't gonna happen.
Continue reading "Oh No, Mr. Bill"
Steve Stroh pointed me to a John Perry Barlow piece (that's Barlow, at right, from his blog) illustrating the power of the medium as few stories can.
It seems that Barlow was recently jolted by a random Skype phone call from Vietnam. He got to know the caller well because she shared a wireless broadband connection with some neighbors. Thus he was able to talk with her, see her work, see her photos, to learn all about her, without leaving his desk in New York. Then he got a similar call from China, and later one from Australia.
Here's the bottom line:
One doesn't get random phone calls from Viet Nam or China, or at least one never could before.Skype changes all that. Now anybody can talk to anybody, anywhere. At zero cost. This changes everything. When we can talk, really talk, to one another, we can connect at the heart.
And there's more after the break.
Continue reading "An Intimate World"
Earthlink is teaming with SK Telecom of Korea to offer mobile phone service using the Verizon and Sprint networks.
Over at eWeek, Peter Coffee offers a security analysis called Always-On Applications Should Mind Their Manners. (I haven't read this book, but if you travel a lot you might want to pick up a copy.)
By Always-On, of course, he doesn't mean what we mean here. He's talking about background programs that run whenever the computer is being used, such as security programs.
Coffee compares these programs to your staff. They're going around your PC doing their thing, and that's useful. But if employees aren't prepared to be interrupted by a higher-priority task, if they won't take direction in other words, you fire them.
Software programs don't always work that way. They have their own schedules to keep, and giga of hertz to go before they sleep. And giga of hertz to go before they sleep.
It's a good point. If programs are living in your memory they should be well-mannered. But I'd like to extend that point.
Continue reading "Better-Mannered Applications"
I wrote this for the GreaterDemocracyblog, but I'm also posting it here, because I can.
The software you have on your PC determines what you can do with it. The software a campaign or political movement uses reflects what it can do.
The biggest mistake Howard Dean made in his 2004 campaign wasnt his attacks on Gephardt, and it wasnt the scream. It was his softwares failure to scale the intimacy, to give the 1 millionth, or 10 millionth, campaign participant the same features, and the same sense of belonging, given the 10th and 100th.
Throughout the campaign, and even to this day, Dean and his Democracy for America have relied on Movable Type as their interface with supporters. MT is a good product, but its interactivity is limited. You enter an item on the blog, and comments flow from it in a straight line.
Continue reading "Open Source Campaigns"
There may be a simple, quick, easy, and cheap answer to any problems from alleged mobile phone radiation.
Dr. Lawrie Challis says a simple ferrite bead, as small as 1 cm. in diameter, would do the trick, cutting radiation to the head down to almost nothing.
Of course, implementing the solution would be to admit to a problem. Admitting the problem would open up immense liability.
Thus does the cure become its own worst enemy.
I happened upon a sad case recently, a man named Jeff V. Merkey. (The image is from ScienceaGoGo, a great site for science lovers of all ages. The article is about how stress can be good for you.)
Merkey was once chief scientist at Novell, so hes not dumb. But hes also, well, a bit unusual.
From what I have seen I'd say hes paranoid (but I'm not a psychiatrist, and I didn't sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night). He sees enemies everywhere (including on this blog), and always shoots his mouth off before asking questions.
He also has a rather cramped, and to my mind paranoid, view of copyright. (This is something I have real experience writing about.) He allegedly tried to hide his own work from his employer, Novell, leading to a 1997 lawsuit and a 1998 settlement. (That's public record.)
He hasnt changed. My story was his claim that all of Linux is dirty, filled with copyrighted material, and that the only way to protect it is with a clean version (that he writes) and a new license (that hes having written). To make everything crystal clear (to his mind) he wants the Cherokee Nation to oversee the licensing scheme. (He says he's a Cherokee.)
Continue reading "Jeff vs. Merkey"
The significance of WiFi-cellular roaming doesn't lie in cutting voice costs. (The picture, by the way, comes from Novinky, a Czech online magazine, a story about DSL.)
The significance of WiFi-cellular roaming lies in Always On applications.
Think about it. Cellular channels are relatively low in bandwidth, WiFi channels are high in bandwidth.
Now, you're wearing an application, like a heart monitor. When you're at home, or in your office, this thing can be generating, and immediately disgorging, tons and tons of data, detailed stuff that may be fun for your doctor to analyze later.
Continue reading "The Future of Roaming"
I have talked about this before, but now everyone else is talking, too. So we will, again. (The picture, by the way, is of a single-chip radio from two years ago, a "mote" from Cal Berkeley. The link is very worthwhile.)
What does it mean for TI to make, and Nokia to sell, a complete cellular phone on a single chip? For one thing, it means phones can be one-chip cheap.
Right, cheap as chips.
Continue reading "What A Single Chip Phone Means"
The Administration has begun its campaign against Iran through infiltration (which it denies) and by trying to cut Iran's arguments off the Internet. (Picture from CNN.)
This is an immense favor, both to Iran and to the neighboring Arab world. It forces Iran to seek alternate Internet server access for its arguments, and it will. Maybe these will be in Bahrain or Dubai (I'm guessing the former). Maybe they will be in the Ukraine. Or Russia. Or China.
Continue reading "Bush's Great Favor"
Two new Symbian (Nokia etc.) phone viruses, Gavno.a and b, masquerade as patches and render phones completely useless. Meanwhile an IM virus, Bropia.a, downloads a Trojan to infected Windows Messenger and MSN Messenger clients, which includes a keylogger and a IM spam (or SPIM) program.
A "blogger" named "Oscar" has dozens of blogs on Blogger, which seem to have no purpose other than to to churn out spam. (Like the image? It's from Rhetorica, which was talking at the time about comment spam.)
Blogger does have some fine features for the spammer. You can set it to e-mail everyone on a list whenever the blog is updated. So if you're a "master spammer" all the little spammers get the updated script simultaneously.
New entries also act as "RSS spam," as in this example, "Oscar's" cell phone "blog."
Google, which owns Blogger, is either blind or willfully complicit to what's going on here. (I'm guessing blind. It's a big virtual world out there, and Google does try to get things right.)
The more significant point is that what's going on is the systematic destruction of RSS as a medium for conveying thought. Already it's becoming impossible to maintain a "keyword" RSS feed. By that I mean that if I tell Newsgator, "send me everything on cellular," I'm going to get a lot of junk, not just from Oscar, but from direct sales sites, resume sites, and "wrap" sites, which place their ads around other sites' content and broadcast it via RSS. (What I need, Newsgator, is a way to create keyword-searches while at the same time blacklisting specific URLs -- then I wouldn't be able to write items like this one.)
But that is not all, oh no, that is not all. Because wherever crooks go unmolested, honest businesses are going to follow.
Continue reading "Spam Blogging"
In all the great sci-fi written about Saturn's moon Titan, no one (to my knowledge) imagined a world where liquid methane carves the land as water does here. (The NASA image comes from Resa.Net.)
But that's just what Europe's Huygens probe has shown us.
It's a flammable world, but a beautiful one.
Here's the "money quote" from mission director Jean-Pierre Lebreton. "There are truly remarkable processes at work on Titan's surface and in the atmosphere of Titan which are very, very similar to those occurring on Earth."
Which leads to some nasty environmental speculation.
Continue reading "Space Truth Stranger Then Fiction"
I've been re-reading the last in Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series, called Homeward Bound, and I'm once again struck by the similarities between the U.S. military in Iraq and the Lizards of the story.
The Lizards (not to give the story away) invade Earth i 1942, at the height of World War II. They have the weapons of 2000, Earth has what it had. The overall theme of the piece (which has now run into its seventh 500-page book) is human ingenuity vs. reliance on technology.
I don't know what they're thinking with this latest battle robot. (The picture, which I'm confident betrays no military secrets, is from the BBC.) But I'm pretty certain we're going to have some captured, disabled electronically and then grabbed under covering fire. The wireless link between the operator and the bot is the weak link.
And what happens then?
Continue reading "Bush's Robot Army"
Guillaume Tena of Harvard is being threatened with the charms of a French jail cell for having written-up a list of flaws in a French anti-viral product three years ago.
Tegam International, which makes something called Viguard, called Tena a "terrorist" after he published his analysis of their product in March 2002 and a French court is apparently dumb enough to take the claim seriously.
Now, Tena's no angel. Tegam says he was once a virus writer himself, credited with (among other things) Happy99, the first e-mail virus. But, they admit, he went straight and is now on the side of the angels. (This assumes, of course, that there are angels at Harvard.)
UPDATE: Tena writes to say that reports he's a virus writer are false, that they were started by Tegem and picked up by the media without questioning it. "Cite a credible source if you have one," Tena writes. "This article is now on the web for eternity. Please do something about it."
I have no independent source, other than press reports, to indicate Tena has so much as a parking ticket to his name. Absent evidence, I shouldn't spread rumors, so this is being reposted with my apologies.
So why should angels (or Yalies) support him?
Continue reading "Shoot the Messenger"
In response to concerns over Verizon's cuting-off e-mail service from Europe, which we reported on here, the world finally got a response yesterday.
It was pure nonsense. Totally non-responsive. PR cow-excrement. They changed the issue from cutting customers off from Europe to the anti-spam problem, pulled some standard boilerplate off a shelf, and they think we'll eat it.
Those who like to read such things should click below. All I'll say is they just don't get it. Or, as Alice Kehoe told Dave Farber's list, "Ah yes, a carefully formulated and rational plan of action ... right up there with, 'if I shut my eyes, Mama can't see me taking these chocolates.'"
Continue reading "Verizon Blows You Off"
NOTE: The following was published as the lead item in my newsletter, A-Clue.Com, today. You can subscribe here.
Continue reading "HearthStone"
NOTE: This is the beginning of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.
CNN is getting all huffy today about something called an "Evil Twin." (They are not, unfortunately, talking about the game available from Gamez. Rated T for Teen. )
This is an 802.11 base station put in by a crook aiming to steal your cookies, and your money.
I don't want to minimize the potential threat. The scam is pretty easy to install. Just put in your own log-on screen in front of all access and throw all the malware you want in return -- a keylogger, or a program that grabs saved password files from the browser. It could work.
But not for long. Here's how you can keep yourself from being victimized, and how the cops (if they have half a brain) can catch this creative garbage in-the-act:
Continue reading "Stopping The Evil Twin"
The last pigeon messaging station in the world, in Cuttack, Orissa, India, is closing, a victim of cell phones and e-mail.
Toshiba's much-hyped Ubiquitous Viewer may be the most over-rated story of the year.
The software basically allows a cellular phone client to take over a remote PC. Sounds great. But it requires a broadband cellular connection (which few phones have), or Bluetooth (in which case why not just sit down at the PC).
Assuming it does work, and it does get used, it's like the story of the dog that chased the car and finally caught it. What's the dog going to do now?
Yet there are some lessons here:
If Bill Gates succeeds in his latest mission, to convince Brazil's President (right) that Windows is better than Linux, he should be ready for a mid-career job change.
To the State Department.
Brazil isn't going to open source because they hate Windows, or Gates. They're going toward open source for rational, even reasonable reasons. With open source, Brazilians control their own code base. With Windows, Gates does.
Continue reading "Gates' New Career"
Attention CitiCorp shareholders. Your company is burning money, wasting it to no purpose other than stupidity and selfishness.
Click below to read all about it.
Continue reading "CitiMortgage Stupidity"
Last year, while working as an (eventually unpaid) analyst, I told some Intel executives they needed to embrace a "platform" strategy for their product.
My call was ignored. The junior executives I was writing for could afford to do that. I was just an analyst.
Fortunately there was a larger bullhorn, that of incoming CEO Paul Otellini (left, from, UC Berkeley) and now Intel is embarking on precisely the strategy I called for.
What does it mean?
Continue reading "Intel's New Look"
I have been singing the good news about Moore's Law for many years now. It spurs productivity, it spreads knowledge, it increases the rate of change across the board, etc. etc.
But there is a dark side to all this that most who write on technology don't talk about. (The image is from Youngstown State University in Ohio.)
That's what I call Moore's Inverse Law of Labor.
Simply put, Moore's Law makes large productivity gains absolutely necessary. To compete in a Moore's Law world, you have to continually replace people with technology, and move folks' time into more productive tasks, or they fall behind.
This is true for individuals, for business, for government, for nations. It has very profound implications for all of us.
Let's think about some of them:
Continue reading "Moore's Inverse Law of Labor"
Over the last few weeks I've read a lot of commentary about the recent mobile phone health scares.
Much of it follows the industry line. Even on blogs, the tone seems dismissive. Case not proven, nothing to see here, move on.
But that's the wrong attitude to take. (The ostrich came from a financial planning site.) It's ignorant on how easy it would be to address valid concerns, and even improve the product at the same time.
What seems to matter is the power of the wave hitting your head, the distance between sensitive tissue and high frequency waves, and the duration of exposure. Stick a high-powered microwave brick next to an ear for 10 years or more, it seems, and something's going to fry.
But Moore's Law of Radios shows we don't need that much power. We're better off without it. Frequencies are used most efficiently when you have a lot of very low-power devices -- this lets you put more traffic in less space.
As I've said before, separating the handset from the headset can also work wonders, not just from a health standpoint but from a user interface standpoint. A close friend of mine has had a Bluetooth headset on his ear for some weeks, and now he's hot to replace his phone with something that has more functionality, more expense, that's more like a PDA. This should be good news for the industry.
But by sticking our heads in the sand, by dismissing reports of health effects out of hand, rather than addressing what we can now, the industry is setting itself up for a nasty fall, and many unhappy jury returns.
But here's what is worse.
Continue reading "Don't Dismiss Mobile Health Concerns"
Intel has apparently decided the market opportunity for Wi-Max as a backhaul to 802.11 is too small for its taste, and thus a "mobile WiMax" aimed at displacing 3G mobile networks is necessary.
Uh, necessary for who?
Necessary for Intel to get out its WiMax investment, maybe. But a mobile DSL replacement faces some enormous hurdles:
Continue reading "Can Intel WiMax Win?"
Mobiledia reports Siemens will announce the closure of its mobile phone unit on January 27 if it doesn't find a buyer by then.
Does your cell phone help you pick up attractive women? (Or men?)
Well, it might if you subscribed to Dodgeball, a social service for mobiles whose founders, Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert, talked to our own Russell Shaw (right) recently.
The idea is that you and your friends subscribe to Dodgeball, then text your location to one another at night, so you can get together. (And if they have friends with them, and those friends are attractive, voila!)
Absolut Vodka sponsored a "nightlife channel" on the service last year, like a traditional media buy, so Dodgeball members could associate the brand as a "friend." (Beats having an AA sponsor, I guess.) Now they're looking to make more money from things like Premium SMS and applications.
Continue reading "Taking Dodgeball Past Monday Morning"
Motorola calls it Seamless Mobility. IEEE people call it Pervasive Computing. For the last two years I've been calling it Always-On.
Same thing, really. In discussing this with Motorola spokesman Paul Alfieri recently, once thing was crystal clear.
They get it.
A few quick corrections to our most recent post on the MS1000. You can build applications that run in flash on the device, that don't depend on the PC. The device is wide-open to applications through its OSGI-based Linux software core.
Now, you want to make some money?
Continue reading "The Always On Era Is Here"
It's that simple.
Google has a huge amount of data, spread over many international locations. And there are many people in, say, France, who might want to query data held elsewhere, say, in the U.S.
As Google's translation services grow, this becomes more likely.
Google's telecommunications bills must already be extraordinary, in order to handle this traffic.
If Google had its own dark fiber network, it could light that fiber and drive those costs to the ground.
Then the fiber would be open to other applications, such as:
Continue reading "Why Would Google Want Dark Fiber?"
Verizon, the second-largest phone network in the U.S., and the second-largest wireless operator, has decided it will no longer offer Internet service.
The question is what the Internet and its users will do in response (if anything).
The company's decision was made public this week in the form of a unilateral halt to all deliveries of e-mail from Europe by default based on a claim this is an anti-spam measure.
The claim is laughable since far more spam traffic moves from the U.S. to Europe than the other way around, thanks to real European statutes requiring opt-in and the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act, which legalized many types of spam.
But there is a larger point.
An Internet Service Provider, by definition, provides service to the entire Internet. This is usually put in the fine print of Internet service contracts. Will Verizon now modify its contracts, or simply ignore them?
Continue reading "Verizon Halts Internet Service"
UCLA scientists have linked rat muscle cells to silicon chips creating self-powered robots.
Hartmut Neven, who does research in computer vision at USC, dreams of using cameraphones to build a database that would essentially Google the world.
Take a picture of a painting and get an audio recording, through your phone, all about it. Take a picture of a restaurant and get a review.
There's even a sound business model for such a plan. But, as Google's local service illustrates, there's also one big hurdle toward creating it.
Continue reading "Googling The World"
I recently wrote in high praise of Motorola for the MS1000, calling them The Kings of Always On.
The following does not detract from that call. Motorola has come closer to building an Always On platform (as I envision one) than anyone else.
But there are still a few things they could easily add:
Continue reading "What Motorola Is Missing"
Samsung is getting a little ahead of itself.
Phones you dial by twirling them around, phones with hard drives, phones that take dictation. Phones that play movies, phones with intelligent vibrators, phones with VOIP.
And what do they get for all this effort? Profits for the quarter were actually down, with the phone and flat panel units taking the blame.
What's wrong with this picture?
Continue reading "Samsung Ahead of Itself"
One of the dumbest things a company can do is pay big bucks for a domain name. (That's CSpan's flower, by the way.)
What does eBay mean? What does Amazon mean? For that matter, what does Google mean? They mean what they have become. There was no intrinsic value to the name when it was purchased.
So why should picturephone.com be worth $1 million? There's no good reason. The fact that the company which owned the name changed its name so as to sell-on the old name is proof of this.
Continue reading "A Rose By Any Other Name"
Panix.Com has apparently had its domain hijacked.
Panix, a 16-year old ISP in New York, told its users that ownership of the domain was apparently moved to Australia, the DNS records were moved to the United Kingdom, and its e-mail was directed to Canada.
This should be a matter for criminal prosecution.
Continue reading "Panix Attack"
Some journalists are bloggers, but not all bloggers are journalists.
A blogger is a journalist if they act like a journalist. When anyone researches a story and broadcasts the results on a blog they are a journalist.
When a blogger doesn't identify their role, you should treat them as a journalist until they indicate otherwise. Don't tell them something you don't expect to see published. Give them all the information you would any other journalist.
Journalism, in other words, is a process. It's not defined by a paycheck. It's defined by what you do. UPDATE: A new Gallup poll shows that only 5% rate journalists "very high" in honesty. Would bloggers do worse?
All this is prelude to reporting a contretemps Slate reported about The Wall Street Journal. Apparently when Dean campaign chairman Joe Trippi and aide Zephyr Teachout first approached bloggers MyDD and DailyKos in 2003 it "was explicitly to buy their airtime" in the words of Ms. Teachout (right and above, the one without the hat).
The bloggers weren't told this. Markos Moulitas (Kos) and Jerome Armstrong (MyDD) thought they were being treated as consultants, and consulted. Neither wrote anything on their blogs to disqualify the work as journalism.
Click below to see the rest of the story.
Continue reading "Who's A Journalist, and the Tragedy of the Dean Campaign"
I'm delighted to welcome a new sponsor to Mooreslore -- Earthlink Wireless.
I have a long relationship with Earthlink. I covered their CEO, Garry Betty, as far back as the late 1980s, when he was with Hayes Microcomputer. I have used Earthlink DSL service for years. I followed the rise of Mindspring in Atlanta, and their former CEO, Charles Brewer, is now building Glenwood Park, an an award-winning development near my home.
Earthlink moved to Atlanta after the original company, which was based in California, merged with Mindspring and named its CEO, Atlantan Betty, as its leader. (I wanted them to rename the whole thing MindLink, but I'm over it.)
Check them out.
The Bee Watcher-Watcher watched the Bee Watcher.
He didnt watch well. So another Hawtch-Hawtcher
had to come in as a Watch-Watcher-Watcher!
And today all the Hawtchers who live in Hawtch-Hawtch
are watching on Watch-Watcher-Watchering-Watch,
Watch-Watching the Watcher whos watching that bee.
Youre not a Hawtch-Watcher. Youre lucky, you see!!!
Dr. Seuss's "Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?" is as subversive now as it ever was, and always finds a new context.
Today the context lies in the proliferation of cameras, which seem to be watching us, all the time, and whether our "privacy" means we should turn them off.
With every Hawtch-Hawtcher out watching each other, does privacy really exist?
The answer may surprise you.
Continue reading "Seuss and Brin"
NOTE: This is the beginning of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.
What about security? How do you stay safe?
Where's the best place to learn the art of network security?
My guess is it's an online gambling site.
Most such sites are based in either the UK, the Caribbean or Australia. Because of U.S. legal pressure they were already in the forefront of isolating traffic geographically, at the ISP level. Also because of U.S. pressure, they are frequently on their own when it comes to defending their business interests. (UK police, however, are apparently cooperative.)
All this means that, if you're into security, this is an opportunity.
Continue reading "Where To Learn Net Security"
A Gallup survey of fliers shows 68% want the ban on cell phone use in the air to stay, despite the lack of valid safety concerns.
Count me among them.
Stan Gibson feels Gartner's acquisition of the Meta Group is an anti-trust problem.
Consulting is not like other businesses. There is always ease of entry. (I'm available -- just write. And I'm very good.)
But the fact is that the technology consulting business is shrinking. Technology is getting easier to understand. Demand is down.
Meta couldn't keep up so they got out for what they could get. Good for them.
Continue reading "Nonsense On Consultants"
Researchers in Ohio have developed a complete Always-On heart monitoring system.
This is big stuff, a real "killer app." I lost my best teacher ever, Dick Schwarzlose, to a heart attack last year, an attack that could have at least been treated had his doctor known it was coming.
Hundreds of thousands of men and women die each year from sudden heart attacks which are not detected, but most of these people were known to be at risk based on factors like their blood pressure and cholesterol levels. (Heck, I'm at risk for those reasons.)
If this solution can be productized and delivered with, say, the client monitor and communications hidden inside an Under Armour shirt (wicks away the sweat and looks wicked cool), then many lives can be saved, and many middle-aged men can look marvelous at the same time.
Details follow:
Continue reading "A Complete Always-On Medical System"
Sometime in the distant, distant past, an animal like my dog Blackie apparently ate some other animals like the chickens we used to keep in the backyard, and it was good.
Proof comes in the form of some fossils from China, which indicate that our common attitude of the mammal-dinosaur relationship (mouse-like things hiding in the nooks and crannies of the dinosaur world) needs some major revision.
I may catch a lot of flak for using the word tsunami in that headline. (Innocent restauranteurs in South Africa are already catching such flak.)
But I use it deliberately. I know over 150,000 people died in the tragedy. I do not minimize it. But if the electromagnetic waves from mobile phones are as dangerous to health as recent studies indicate, then how many preventable deaths are we looking at some years down the road, from brain cancer? Given the enormous numbers of phones out there today, and the incredible use being made of them, I'd say 150,000 potential deaths is a rather low estimate. Assuming, that is, that the danger is as bad as alarmists are saying.
Note that I use the word preventable. Because a few product changes, in a market where most people keep their equipment for barely a year, means all this potential damage is, indeed preventable.
To wit:
STB announced the MPB 4000, a rechargeable battery for mobiles phones with a display showing how much power it has.
This is Stratton Sclavos.
Sclavos has made a career of buying high and selling low. He bought Network Solutions at the peak of the bubble, and sold it for a fraction of its value. He personally tried to corrupt the DNS with his idiotic SiteFinder "service."
Why he is still occupying a seat of power instead of a cardboard box on the street is beyond me. On merit that's what he deserves. Few people have destroyed more equity in their careers, few have been poorer public stewards of resources. Yet there seems no movement in that direction.
Continue reading "Why Does This Man Have A Job?"
Along with all their other implications, the mass adoption of mobile phones represents the first step in the single-chip era.
If you look inside the guts of your phone you are unlikely to find a big honking circuit board. (The circuit board illustration is from Sciencetechnologyresources.com.) Instead you will find one, two or three single chips performing major functions in an integrated way.
This is happening across-the-board in technology. We've gone from circuit boards in the 1980s to modules in the 1990s, to single chips. Just as early IBM PC add-in board producers created "multi-function cards" to assure a price worthy of retail distribution 20 years ago, so chip makers today put multiple functions on many chips, creating entire systems no bigger than a finger-nail.
Continue reading "Invisible Technology"
Spammers and phishers have responded to increased law enforcement by launching a program of terrorism.
Continue reading "DNS Terrorism"
There's a good discussion going on at Dave Farber's list today, following a Declan McCullagh article that claims the U.S. is doing fine in broadband. (Image from Mystro Satellite of Canada.)
Declan's point is that it's available. Critics point out that it's slow, expensive, and more people have it in other countries than here.
The question they're all asking is, how can the situation be improved.
The correct answer is one word.
Continue reading "The Broadband Answer"
Microsoft has finally stirred to life in the digital music arena.
Microsoft is usually a day late and a dollar short when it comes to innovation. But it brings so many OEMs and software developers to the party that it usually overwhelms its opponent. Microsoft was a half-decade or more behind Apple in GUI development during the 1980s, but today it has over 90% of the market, and Apple has about 3%.
We can argue the why of that later. Frankly, given the size of Microsoft Research I find it remarkable that the company finds itself in the same situation it did when Gates and Jobs (and I) were all so green together. The point is that Gates once again has Jobs in his sights, and the question is whether he will succeed in toppling the iPod.
Will he?
Continue reading "The Giant Stirs In Digital Music"
The Six Apart-LiveJournal merger is not a roll-up.
Roll-ups happen when there is an established way to make money at something. No one has really found a way to make a reliable dollar from blogging.
Not that people aren't trying. There are tons of new blogging programs out there, tons of new file types to blog, tons of new blogs (of course) and tons of new paradigms.
It's an industry in the process of discovering itself.
Here's the short-form. Roll-ups are about money. Without money, mergers are about people.
From reading the statements of the principals, this merger is what I call a "team-building" exercise. The VCs behind Six Apart (the company that owns Movable Type) are trying to build a winning team. That's one of them over there to the left, Joi Ito.
Let me explain.
Continue reading "Last Word on the SixApart-LiveJournal Merger"
The latest airport fad is the mobile phone parking lot, where those picking up passengers can hang out, free, and wait for a call so they don't loiter close to the gates.
Thanks to The Common Scold (aka Monica Bay) for the heads-up.
Motorola has launched a very Clued-in strategy to push Always-On applications.
It is to use the mobile phone as a remote control.
The idea is that you sync the phone to your home using a verison of the old Palm cradle, then control home automation applications remotely using the phone.
This is clever in many different ways:
Continue reading "The Phone as Remote"
NOTE: The following was published in this week's edition of my free e-mail newsletter, A-Clue.Com. You can get on the list here.
The triumph of liberty in the 20th century was basically a technological triumph. It was Moore's Law that did it. Moore's Law, and all its antecedents, changed the rules of the economic game, of the power game, and the balance between rulers and the ruled.
Moore's Law, the idea that things get better-and-better faster-and-faster, means that trained minds are the key to economic growth. Willing hands, the key to economic growth in the industrial age, matter far less than they did. Chains may keep trained hands working. They don't do so well with trained minds.
In America the result, as Dr. Richard Florida (left) wrote, was the rise of a new "Creative Class" that could dominate societies and drive economic growth. These were people, accused of wealth and guilty of education, whose values were intellectual and meritocratic, and (perhaps most important) were capable of economic satiation. Creative people have, on the whole, risen through Maslow's "hierarchy of needs," and are in search of self-actualization, not food or even luxury.
Continue reading "The Great Race"
Sometimes big news turns out to be small.
Sometimes small news turns out to be very big.
Here's an example of the latter. It's word that MPEG-LA has combined all the DRM patents for mobile phones and begun offering them at $1/phone (plus a cut of all revenue). The patents are all endorsed as industry standards by the mis-named Open Mobile Alliance (because its proceedings are about as open as a grand jury).
As with all such news, there's good news here and bad news.
A few years ago Jackson, Mississippi was the center of the telecom universe.
That's because it was the home of Canadian-born Bernard Ebbers . He married a Mississippi girl, Linda Pigott. On such chances does history turn.
Ebbers launched a long distance outfit called LDDS in the early 1980s and turned it into a classic "roll-up," buying other companies (usually for stock) and managing to the numbers.
Eventually he named his monstrosity Worldcom.
The result was the MCI scandal.
Roll-ups usually end this way.
Continue reading "Roll Up Begin Again"
I don't mind the copyright industries making their arguments.
I do mind their hiding their sponsorship of it. And I also mind their forcing this on kids, claiming that industry propaganda is "education."
Continue reading "Bait, Switch, Propagandize"
Security problems have been found with versions of all Mozilla products, including the Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail client.
The problems to not affect the latest builds of any of these products, so users are advised to update.
Industry Brains has begun selling ads inside RSS feeds of publishers stories, starting with CMP Media. The Business Software Association is among the early buyers.
NOTE: This is the beginning of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.
But before I collapse let me hit a few high points.
Im sure you read the big news, about the contract we won for the Virgin Tsunami Warning Network. Of course it wasnt written as a contract, but a donation.
Thats Branson genius in action.
Yeah, I met him. At the press conference announcing the UNs acceptance of Virgin Mavericks donation, over at the Technikon. He smiled a little broader when he saw my badge. It read, Dana Blankenhorn, VM.co.za, JoBurg.
Youll never believe what he said then. So this is the famous Dana Blankenhorn Ive heard about.
Yeah, right.
Over at Many-2-Many we have a fascinating post, called Fukuyama's Penguin, speculating on why Chinese isn't better-represented in online contributions.
This got me to singing:
Many too many have stood where I stand
Many more will stand here too,
Why isn't there more Chinese here? There are many reasons:
And so millions-upon-millions of people are now on their way to that something else. You and I cannot imagine the lives they live, just off the 15th century, coming upon the 19th and seeing all around them the 21st.
There's a quote from my online novel The Chinese Century that is relevant here. It's an an imagined speech from Jiang Zemin, given near the top of Shanghai's Oriental Pearl Tower. NOTE: The following quote is fictional:
Continue reading "Many Too Many"
It's not cholesterol that makes your heart go phlooey. It's what cholesterol sets in motion. (The illustration represents conclusive proof that Yale does indeed have a heart.)
What cholesterol seems to do is set in motion the creation of a protein, called C-reactive protein, that in turn creates systemic inflammation. Everything's revved up to deal with cholesterol (or some other threat), but this in turn leads to long-term weakness that results in death.
So next time you get your blood checked, have them look for how much of this protein is in there. The good news is the same statin drugs that drop cholesterol also work here.
Oh, and put down that doughnut.
For the last year I've been harping here on the subject of Always On.
The idea is that you have a wireless network based on a scalable, robust operating system that can power real, extensible applications for home automation, security, medical monitoring, home inventory, and more.
As I wrote I often came back to Motorola and its CEO, Ed Zander. They would be the perfect outfit to do this, I wrote.
Little did I know (until now) but they did. A year ago.
It's called the MS1000.
The product was introduced at last year's CES, and re-introduced at various vertical market shows during the year. It's based on Linux, responds to OSGi standards, and creates an 802.11g network on which applications can then be built.
At this year's CES show, Motorola is pushing a home security solution based on the device, with 10 new peripherals like cameras and motion sensors that can be easily set-up with the network in place, along with a service offering called ShellGenie.
Previously the company bought Premise, which has been involved in IP-based home control since 1999, and pushed a version of the same thing called the Media Station for moving entertainment around the home.
What should Motorola do now? Well, the platform is pretty dependent on having a home PC. The MS1000 could use space for slots so needed programs could be added as program modules. They need to look at medical and home inventory markets, not just entertainment and security.
But they've made an excellent start. And from here on out everyone else is playing catch-up.
Oh, and one more thing...
Continue reading "Kings of Always-On"
Andrew Orlowski overstates the case a little. Storage is not the new chips.
But the humble hard drive, the spinning aluminum platter called a "Winchester" by some of us old-timers, now dominates the storage scene. And the father of that technology was Al Shugart.
This era is Shugart's Revenge. (Buy his new book here.)
This is something of a surprise to some futurists. After all, optical storage is really cool. Imagine getting a half-gig, or several gig, or dozens of gig on the same CD form factor, and usually backward-compatible at that?
What was unexpected with hard drives was that they would become hardened and mobile. We were used to thinking of them as being fairly unwieldy and fragile, hidden away on our desktops, requiring that we treat our laptops like human newborns.
But they did become sturdy, and tiny, and thus mobile. Now they can go anywhere you go. And in the case of some products, like the iPod, they literally define the category (although you can also make an iPod with flash memory).
There's one other point to make about this golden age of storage.
Continue reading "Shugart's Revenge"
The most dangerous word in telecommunications today is bundling. (This is the kind of bundling we're talking about by the way, the kind represented by this shrinkwrap machine, from the good people at Pierce Packaging Equipment.)
All the carriers are doing it, more and more. The cable company wants to bundle Internet service for you. The phone company wants to bundle mobile service, Internet, and maybe a dish (so you won't need the cable company).
The deals go by names like "triple play," and it's getting worse, as Time Warner aims to become a Sprint re-seller simply so it can offer a "quadruple play" of phone, Internet, cable and mobile. BellSouth already offers something like this, and SBC wants to add TiVo-like services to its bundle.
What can be wrong with this, especially when they're offering a bargain price on the bundle? (Some are, while others are just stressing the "convenience" of having one bill.)
Continue reading "Bundling Up Against Cold Competition"
At CES mobile phones (cellular to you and me) are no longer certain what they want to be.
Are they cameras? Are they PDAs? Are they going to be expandable? Will they be for games, for instant messaging, for fashion, what?
Normally, after a show like CES, the market would make those decisions. Some products would sell well, others would sell poorly, and next year we'd see copycats of the former, then scratch our heads trying to remember the latter.
Not in this case.
Continue reading "Phones Breaking the Mold at CES"
In a great little piece about Kodak's coming WiFi camera, the EasyShare One, Glenn Fleischman delivers a Clue about T-Mobile's coming strategy.
Continue reading "T-Mobile's Strategy: 802.1X"
As a struggling artist I'm always on the look-out for new ways to make money. (That's Paul and Stan of the Housemartins singing for their supper in 1984, from an Australian fan's site.)
Once I had a Web site and made it run, made it race against time. That was in the 1990s. Since the new millenium dawned, I've been in buddy-can-you-spare-a-dime mode.
I can laugh about it since my sainted spouse has a good job and shows no signs of leaving (she likes my cooking). But it would be good for the old ego to be something other than a kept man, y'know? (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)
I've tried many things. I was a highly-respected market analyst for a time but the firm turned out the be a scam that took a year of my pay off to Chapter 7 of the bankruptcy code, opening again under a new name. I've done some columns, I've had some freelance gigs, and Corante has gotten me some scratch working for ZDNet.
For most bloggers the choices are stark. They can get a few quid from Google AdSense, they can try BlogAds, they can stick Amazon affiliate links everywhere of put out a begging bowl. It's all busking.
You want to know the latest? I'm gonna make you click for it.
Continue reading "The Old Dough-Re-Me"
When editor Nick DePlume is served with his copy of Apple's lawsuit against his site, ThinkSecret.Com he should ask for an extra copy...on thick stock he can frame.
That's what I would do in his shoes.
If you haven't heard, Apple Computer Corp. gave DePlume's little site the best diploma a journalist could get the other day -- a lawsuit. Rival journalists put up a headline that Apple was "running out of patience with rumour mill web sites."
But if these are just rumors, if there is no truth to them, why the legal paper? Hmmmm? Who needs to file papers to squelch lies? (And we'll know the truth one way or another in a week or two anyway.)
So what's Apple up to? According to ThinkSecret:
Continue reading "ThinkSecret's Diploma"
When UTStarcom announced it had a "WiFi Phone" (right) no one noticed.
Now that Vonage says it's putting its name on the thing, the carrier world is up in arms.
As usual the press is being plain silly. This is not a threat to mobile carriers because WiFi, as yet, offers no real mobility. And that's just not likely to happen because most WiFi connections are not networked.
Continue reading "Long Live The Monthly Subscription"
Om Malik reports that Six Apart, which owns Movable Type, will buy LiveJournal later this month, giving Six Apart 6.5 million users.
Leslie Cauley of USA Today has a cogent story today on something I've written about for ages, the Bells' continuing efforts to keep you from getting broadband. (The image is called Cracked Glass Bell. It's a 1998 digital print by artist Stephen Linhart.)
For a decade now the Bells have been using the promise of fiber to keep other competitors from serving an underserved market. As Cauley notes Americans pay more for less bandwidth than people in other industrial countries.
Cauley's story covers the entire struggle very quickly, making it a good primer for those who haven't heard my lecture. And Cauley helps readers understand the key to breaking the Bell bottleneck -- competition.
Let's look briefly at all the competitors the Bells have stopped (without delivering anything worthwhile) over the last several years:
Continue reading "Crack The Glass Bell"
How many lives would have been saved had people been warned about the giant tsunami off Sumatra? (Image from Thinkquest.com.)
Not all of them, obviously.
This was a once-in-a-lifetime event, a 9.0 quake (and remember the Richter scale is logarathmic) close to land that shifted the seabed 10 feet, displacing megatons of water in a wave that spread outward at 500 kph.
Banda Aceh was too close to the epicenter to use a warning, even if it came as the quake happened. (The quake hit the town, too, so there actually was a warning of a sort.) But the resort town of Phuket in Thailand could have gotten maybe 15 minutes warning, long enough for most swimmers to reach high ground, and Sri Lanka could have gotten even more warning. (It's what happened there that seems most tragic, since they barely felt the quake and could have have had over an hour's warning of the wave.)
The key to giving warning isn't having a seismometer. You can build a good seismometer for $34 that will could have detected the Sumatra quake from your living room.
Chris Davies offers a fine dissent on open source spectrum today.
If you look at his example it even looks compelling.
There are problems with power management, with computing requirements, and with wave attenuation in the open spectrum idea. But the problem isn't inherent in the spectrum proposal of Kevin Werbach (left), and the solution isn't to sell spectrum to the highest bidder. That doesn't really deal with the problem.
The problem is two words: real estate.
Continue reading "Dissing Open Spectrum"
On the whole, yes. (And that's him on the right, yeah.)
The evolution of mobile devices is going to center on the phone. WiFi is not a competitor, but a complementary technology. Most of what we'll need, we have.
But the word missing from this excellent piece is -- application.
I don't mean application in terms of a computer program. I mean application in terms of use in daily life. How are we going to adapt these devices to the way we live so we have all we need -- both in terms of computing and connectivity -- and an easy way of using it?
The big problem with Russell's vision is that, if everything's based on the present networks and the present devices, the future is controlled by carriers. And carriers are stupid (even when their networks are not).
So things won't evolve that way.
This reads like a contradiction in terms, doesn't it?
Blogging is instant publishing. Part of the idea is that you're getting a raw feed.
But in fact most blogs are edited. Because most blogs are produced with words.
You don't need Microsoft Word to edit a blog. I am editing this in the blogging window. But for most people, coherence requires a bit of editing. You need to step back, put things in a proper order for the reader, and link what you've gotten so it makes sense as a story told, rather than a story experienced.
You can see this clearly when you see the liveblog of an event. Last year's conventions are a bad example. Because the stage happenings were broadcast there was no need to type what was said and put it out. Bloggers reverted to their normal role there of looking for "inside" stories, and wound up as near-clones of their "big media" counterparts, only without as many sources. They edited on-the-fly to create coherence.
What does this say about other types of blogging, using bigger files like audio (audblogging), mobile phones (moblogging) or video (vidblogging).
Continue reading "Editing Blogs"
Today marks the end of my first Insta-novel, The Chinese Century.
It's been a trip.
Some 26 companies have joined to begin the process of bringing a faster successor to coming 3G mobile networks to market. The new network would have "true" broadband speeds.
NOTE: This Table of Contents will be continually updated as new chapters are placed online.
Continue reading "The Chinese Century: Table of Contents"
NOTE: This is the conclusion of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.
For some time interest in Buckminsterfullerene, the unique form of carbon created at my alma mater, has focused on Buckytubes, not Buckyballs.
A Buckyball is a single carbon-60 molecule, shaped like a tiny soccer ball. If you don't cut off the ends, and instead extend the shape into a tube, you have a molecule of almost limitless size, and with enormous strength. A space elevator, as I conceive it, is basically a circled Buckytube that reaches from a point at the Equator to geosynchronous orbit, so that a cab coming up one way is matched by one going down.
But in the short run that's science fiction. There is a lot of proof-of-concept work to do before you can really go after the money, and there we're talking of billions-and-billions.
What Buckminsterfullerene needs, more than anything, is a profitable market that will spur further development.
And now it has found one.
Continue reading "Back To Balls For Bucky"
My mom (the Tillie of the headline) has been near-blind since the late 1970s. It has been, in some ways, a blessing, giving her new friends, new perspective, and a more positive attitude toward life.
But it's still near-blindness. So I'm always on the look-out for new gadgets she might use to live more freely.
And here's one. (The image is from a release at 3G.co.uk.) From Korea, it's a Samsung "helper phone." Keep the 5 key depressed (it's the one in the middle, so easy to find) and you'll get operator assistance with difficult calling tasks.
As regular readers here know, I'm a big Stephen Wolfram fan.
Wolfram is a genius. His ideas for using the real power of computing for science are first-rate. His Mathematica program is a vital tool. He has succeeded as both a scientist and entrepreneur, a trick I've only seen pulled off one other time, by architect-developer John Portman.
But just as Portman eventually over-reached, with his One Peachtree Center (right), so has Wolfram, I'm afraid, now that I've gotten his A New Kind of Science.
NOTE: For those who don't remember, Portman had to hock everything to build his One Peachtree masterpiece. Tom Wolfe fictionalized it but as with Citizen Kane the truth may have been even a bit better.
Wolfram's problem was he didn't hire a ghost writer. His book is brilliant, but it's terribly overwritten. He doesn't know how to put a period at the end of a sentence. He writes on a college level where high school would do.
For those of you who miss Steve Stroh, have no fear. He's just gone back on his own, the way he likes it.
You'll find him regularly at Broadband Wireless Internet Access news. Thanks to his experience here he's an even better, faster reporter than he was before.
Good luck, Steve...and stay in touch.
With Sprint's pending acquisition of Nextel I'm already hearing about T-Mobile needing to sell out and leave the marketplace so we can have a nice little oligopoly, everyone guaranteed profits and customers guaranteed nothing. (It's the American way.)
But T-Mobile isn't in nearly as much trouble as the idiots think. Their marketing puts rivals to shame. They've hired Catherine Zeta-Jones as spokeswoman and successfully pushed the Sidekick-II in celebrity-filled ads that star rapper Snoop Dogg. (I couldn't find a picture of Snoop for you -- is that so wrong?) They're letting gadget makers lead, but making sure their own brand still gets top-billing. It's the best of both worlds.
Gadgets and marketing make a good start. (The Sidekick ads feature its data applications, giving them a leg-up on the market's future growth.) What else can T-Mobile do that's clever?
NOTE: This is part of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.
Moore's Sin is, simply, the horrific pollution caused by chip manufacturing since the 1960s. (The picture is from a professor's page at the University of Lviv, in the Ukraine, a democratic republic.)
Reuters today discusses this in terms of New Mexico, home to two Intel plants outside Albuquerque that make Pentium chips. But the problem is industrywide and worldwide. It's baked into the system. The fact is that etching chips requires the use of caustic chemicals that pollute the air and water.
What can be done about it?
Continue reading "Moore's Sin, Moore's Fund"
NOTE: This is part of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.
When my lovely wife took her present job, many years ago, she said she was happy to be working with programs that actually did something.
She works in transaction processing. Back then each time her program ran her company made a nickel. It's a service business.
The point today is she was way ahead of her time. Still is. Let me explain.
Continue reading "Programs That DO Something"
NOTE: This is part of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.


text:
|Men's Soccer To Hold Open Tryouts
|Written by Brandon McGinnis
|Tuesday, 24 July 2012 19:12
Appalachian State University men's soccer head coach Matt Nelson announced that the program will hold walk-on tryouts on Aug. 21 at the Ted Mackorell Soccer Complex. The tryout is scheduled for 6 a.m. and participants must bring a signed Certificate of Physical Capability CLICK HERE. Students must also have a physical within the last 365 days and results
|Share This Article:

subset: commoncrawl


text:
9420 State Road 16
Pralle Center
Onalaska, WI 54650
Phone: 608-783-0100
March 18, 2011
Turn in your used games and receive Best Buy gift cards to use on ANYTHING in store!
April 23, 2010
Get your products faster and avoid shipping charges by using in-store pick up at our location! Please go to the customer service counter located at the front of our store to pick up your ordered items. Look for the blue in-store pick up sign and our dedicated staff will have your items ready for you.
July 2, 2014
Products, pricing, services and promotions vary by store. Store pickup is the only option for in-store clearance and open box. Markdowns are taken from regular prices. Regular Price listed for in-store clearance reflects the current BestBuy.com regular price. Regular Price listed for open box reflects current non-sale store price for the item in new condition. In-store clearance and open-box inventory is limited, and rainchecks are not available.


text:
Armada products can only be shipped within the U.S.
(based on 2 reviews)
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Great jacket
By City girl
from Seattle
About Me Trendy/Stylish Dresser
Best Uses
Comments about Armada Isis Jacket - Women's:
I wore this all winter as a coat. It looks really cute with street clothes, roomy but not bulky, so I would wear a hoody underneath and I was perfectly comfortable in 25-45F temps. It's really just a shell, there's no padding, but the material is so great that it keeps out cold wind and rain. I also wore it snowboarding and it kept me plenty warm and dry. I wanted a shell that covers my butt, which it does. Some may find it a little long for snowboarding, it falls mid-thigh, feels almost like wearing a dress.The hood fits over the helmet which I love.
Bottom Line Yes, I would recommend this to a friend
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Stylish function
By Lambie
from Denver, CO
About Me Classic Dresser
I always get compliments on this coat!Could be warmer, but I just layer underneath!


text:
O'Neal heads to court for injuries to 7-month old
Fri, 2015-05-22 05:00 News Staff
By LYNETTE SOWELL
Cove Leader-Press
"Everybody starts somewhere," theold cliché goes. It's meant to tell us not to despise small beginnings, another cliché. There's some truth to both sayings, especially in business.
My hero Leon Hale, a former longtime Houston Chronicle columnist and current Facebookblogger and tweeter, never fails to prompt a story in my mind.
The Noon Exchange Club of Copperas Cove met on September 25, 2015. Noon Exchange President Dennis Ayres called the meeting to order. Board Member Dr.


text:
October 13, 2015
More than half of parents worry about vaccine safety when it comes to their kids.
A new university of michigan report says fifty-four percent of parents worry about serious side effects.
However, ninety-percent believe vaccines are a good way to protect their kids... And eighty-eight percent follow their doctor's vaccine advice.
The researchers say parental concern has led some to postpone vaccines in their kids... Or forego them all together.
The researchers believe when parents refuse vaccines, they're putting their children at risk for potentially life-threatening diseases.
The study also found one in five parents believe vaccines cause autism, despite several previous studies discrediting that theory.
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text:
ACUPUNCTURE the ancient Chinese needling art , as an art within the scope of practice of Chiropractic doctors (some use the nauseating term of Chiropractors which I dislike intensely), may be put in jeopardy by Senate Bill 1314 in Texas.
Although I have written on Chinese
Now, I have seen SOME so-called
"acupuncturists" who are acting as if they are purists, and say that
Chiropractic doctors
I have authored many nationally published
articles on topics like Medical Training During the Sung Dynasty, Qigong,
Chinese traditional herbal therapy (A Pharmacy in Your Cupboard), and
So, if these so-called acupuncturists do not
measure up to my standards, I don't care if those Chiropractic doctors
that are practicing acupuncture legally at this point, fail to measure up
to THEIR standards or not.
Thus, I urge ALL Chiropractic doctors, whether
they practice the needling art or not, to do all they can to oppose SB
1314, and also, to sign my petition at:
keywords = acupuncture, texas ,
chiropractors, needling, moxibustion,


text:
Finally, someone else cares about your gigantic feet.
Ride designers know you're out there cursing snowboard boot makers for not accommodating your gigantic feet and they have an answer to your problem. The Bigfoot Men's Snowboard Boot starts at size 16 to provide you with mountain-destroying comfort.
- IN2GRATED construction cuts weight and trims down the profile of the boot so you can combat toe-drag. The removable liner is molded inside the shell to create the best overall fit and lessen the packing out effect
- INTUITION Support foam liner is a high-density and supportive foam that can be formed by the heat of your own foot over a few days of riding or removed and done in a shop—professional like
- External J bars add extra ankle and heel hold for less slippage
- Traditional shell lacing provides a secure and classic way to tighten up your boots
- 3D Formed Dual Density EVA underfoot support uses a soft layer and a hard layer for a winning combo of comfort and support
Share your thoughts
What do you think of the
Ride Bigfoot Lace Snowboard Boot - Men's
? Share a...
Which bindings will fit these boots in a...
Which bindings will fit these boots in a Size 16? I can't seem to find any......


text:
Being Special: The Rise of Super Clubs in European Football
- First, clubs do not become super by just producing better versions of the same products (a successful football team). Instead, over time, these clubs produce more complex, higher-value, globally consumed products.
- Second, clubs become super by accumulating new capabilities (or know-how) over time, manifest in new skills and people accessed through a range of 'catalyst capabilities' that source the skills. The catalyst capabilities include engagement mechanisms (through which skills are located and contracted), capital, infrastructure, and adaptive leadership.
- For instance, all of the clubs started with generalist players and managers but gradually employed specialist players and managers. This has led to the clubs now having large and highly diversified playing and non-playing personnel. The catchment area of this talent has also grown, with skills increasingly sourced from other countries and professions and sectors (showing that skills needed to be super come from a broad community).
- The engagement mechanisms through which new 'skills and people' were found are impressive. They include factors outside of the clubs' control—like economic and political and legal changes that fostered the mobility of skills and people. They also include club-specific global scouting mechanisms, internal football academies, and networks of feeder clubs. Commercial linkages have also helped engage new business skills.
- Capital matters in all cases, and is manifest in both direct contributions of money and in the more general support of paying customers and sponsors willing to contribute to club coffers. Capital sources have diversified and became more complex over time in all the super clubs.
- Infrastructure capabilities also matter a great deal. Super clubs started out with small, locally accessible stadiums where they met, trained, played, and did everything else. Over time, however, the stadiums grew in size, were connected to transportation infrastructure that allowed greater accessibility beyond the local community (through regional roads and trains and even international airports) and added properties to allow for separated match, training, development, and business activities.
- A set of supporting capabilities inside and outside the clubs has also proved vital to foster the emergence of the more complex production in these clubs. These are called 'adaptive leadership' capabilities and manifest in clear actions of people in club and local government leadership—to respond to threats and opportunities, learn from other experiences, promote new vision in the face of opposition, establish formal and informal negotiation mechanisms and partnerships, and more.


text:
A Moment of Simple Justice - Vaccines
Polsinelli Podcast - Telephone Consumer Protection Act and Consequences for Corporations
Government's Health Care Fraud "Cash Cow" Keeps Mooing
Investment Management Update- 2014 Election Impact
Trial by Jury: Why It Matters in a Democratic Society
Busy Days For Voting Rights Advocates, Thanks to SCOTUS
Polsinelli Podcast - Republicans Gain Control of the U.S. Senate - How That May Impact Health Reform
Karl Rove's Efforts to "Buy" Courts Harmed America, Says Legendary Attorney
Crisis at the Border Shows Problems in US Immigration Law
Are Criminal Laws the Right Response to Revenge Porn?
Why Does BigLaw Have So Few Black Partners?
Aquila on M&A: Dealmaking is Back
Schoenbrod: SCOTUS Ruling Helps EPA Deal With a "Stupid Statute"
ATL Law School Rankings: All About The Jobs
What Comes Next in Derivatives Regulation?
A More Perfect Union: Why Punish Russia for Crimea?
Only in DC: Ethics Rule Permits Non-lawyers to Own Law Firms
How a Reluctance to Deport Pop Stars Strengthens US Immigration Policy
Law Prof: The Clean Air Act Needs a Reboot
Is Punishment Dead in America?
Since 1950, U.S. veterans have been unable to make claims for medical malpractice committed in military hospitals. This seemingly unfair rule was decided in a U.S. Supreme Court case referred to by the Plaintiff's name,...more
Dear President Obama:
On March 1, 2010, the undersigned five survivors of medical negligence and family members had the honor of meeting with the White House Office of Public Engagement about the issue of medical...more
The federal "debt commission" proposals have a variety of features that would allegedly make medical care more affordable by hurting victims' right to financial redress if they are hurt by the ongoing epidemic of hospital...more
According to an update of the National Practitioner Data Bank released recently, fewer medical malpractice payments were made on behalf of doctors in 2009 than any other year on record. This contradicts claims by some that...more
Tort reform is not the answer — that's the headline of an editorial in the Des Moines Register. The editorial lays out the arguments in favor of tort reform as a way to save money on health care, but comes to this...more
Today's Dallas Morning News has an editorial regarding medical testing that is relevant to the current health care debate. In my experience, "excessive" medical testing has more to do with medical professionals wanting to...more
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text:
The study appears online Dec. 12 and in the January 2012 print issue of Pediatrics.
Dr. Rachel Y. Moon, director of academic development for the Goldberg Center for Community Pediatric Health at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., said that "preemies up to six months of age may be at higher risk for SIDS because their baroreflex is not as good and not as stable."
Do your best to eliminate any SIDS risks that are within your control, said Moon, who is a national expert on SIDS. "It is critical to try to give these babies every advantage they can get," she suggested, which includes placing them on their backs to sleep on a firm surface without blankets or anything that will cover their face. "Don't use pillows or bumper pads," she said. "Sometimes parents think they are doing the right thing, but they are unintentionally placing their infant in a more dangerous situation by surrounding him or her with pillows to keep them safe."
More information
First Candle has more on SIDS.
SOURCES: Rosemary Horne, Ph.D., deputy director, Ritchie Centre, Monash Institute of Medical Research, Clayton, Victoria, Australia; Rachel Y. Moon, M.D., director, academic development, Goldberg Center for Community Pediatric Health, Children's National Medical Center, Washington, D.C.; Dec. 12, 2011, Pediatrics, online
|Copyright©2010 ScoutNews,LLC.
All rights reserved


text:
- About
- Vegetable Gardening
- Projects
- Plant Propagation
- Gardening Resources
- Digital Services
Friday, October 30, 2009
October in the Garden
7 comments :
Thanks for the tour, Dave, and the useful little sidetrip to your rooting instructions. Good info.ReplyDelete
That greenhouse is just looking great!ReplyDelete
A lot of useful information packed in one post! Thank you1ReplyDelete
Love the riding reel mower, Dave. Great idea!!!! And your greenhouse and plants look great. Love that heuchera!!!ReplyDelete
Hi Dave, my 'Dale's Strain' didn't do so well this year. I think it got alittle too much sunshine. I moved it to a shadier spot so hopefully it recovers and bounces back next spring. I love the burgundy foliage of your Shasta Viburnum and the greenhouse is looking great. :)ReplyDelete
I use Dusty Miller as a white accent in my garden and love how it lasts and lasts. I let the Celosia grow this year. Last time I planted any was 1994. Even with saltwater flooding we had seeds that remained viable year after year. I think Celosia will take over the world in multi-color!ReplyDelete
I really like that variety of Dusty Miller. It reminds me of something Christmasey in the garden what with the way it's shaped and its silver coloring.ReplyDelete
I love strawberries but find it too labor intensive to have a patch (I blame this on the aging process).
Thank you for reading The Home Garden. Please feel free to comment on the posts, ask questions, offer suggestions, or just say hi!
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text:
These game hens would be delicious served with mashed potatoes and sautéed greens.
YIELD: Makes 2 servings
- 2 1 3/4-pound Cornish game hens, giblets removed
- 2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter, melted
- 1 8-ounce can crushed pineapple in juice, drained
- 1/2 cup pure maple syrup
- 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
- 3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- Chopped fresh parsley
Preheat oven to 350°F. Arrange game hens, breast side up, in 13x9x2-inch metal baking pan. Brush hens with butter and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake uncovered 25 minutes.
Meanwhile, whisk crushed pineapple, maple syrup, lemon juice, mustard and soy sauce in medium saucepan to combine. Baste hens with some of pineapple mixture. Continue roasting until meat thermometer inserted into thickest part of thigh registers 180°F, basting occasionally with more pineapple mixture, about 45 minutes.
Transfer roasted game hens to serving platter. Tent with aluminum foil to keep warm. Scrape pan juices into remaining pineapple mixture. Bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium and simmer until pineapple sauce is reduced to 2/3 cup, stirring occasionally, about 8 minutes. Sprinkle hens with chopped fresh parsley. Serve hens warm, passing pineapple sauce separately.
my notes
Nutritional Info
- Calories2,007
- Carbohydrates80 g (27%)
- Fat124 g (191%)
- Protein138 g (277%)
- Saturated Fat38 g (191%)
- Sodium1,185 mg (49%)
- Polyunsaturated Fat23 g
- Fiber2 g (8%)
- Monounsaturated Fat52 g
- Cholesterol832 mg (277%)


text:
Study found correlation was strongest for those under 65
SUNDAY, May 30 (HealthDay News) -- People who wake up frequently during the night to urinate are at an increased risk of death even after accounting for chronic conditions that are known to cause the problem, two new studies show.
The findings, scheduled to be presented Sunday at the American Urological Association's annual meeting in San Francisco, suggest that frequent urination at night, or nocturia, is a predictor of mortality in adults of all ages rather than just the elderly, and that other unrecognized medical conditions may be contributing factors.
In the first study, researchers at the New England Research Institutes in Watertown, Mass., examined the health records of nearly 16,000 men and women aged 20 and older, and found that those who woke up to urinate two or more times a night had a higher risk of mortality than those who made less than two nighttime bathroom trips. The association between nocturia and mortality remained even after adjusting for coexisting conditions, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and was stronger in those aged 20 to 64 than it was in those aged 65 and older.
"In the younger age group, those who reported having nocturia had roughly twice the risk of mortality as those without, while in the older age group nocturia increased the risk in the range of 20 to 30 percent," said study author Varant Kupelian, a research assistant at the New England Research Institutes.
Kupelian and colleagues examined records from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III) conducted between 1988 and 1994, as well as death certificate data in the National Death Index through Dec. 31, 2000. In the study group of 15,988 men and women, the prevalence of nocturia was 15.5 percent among men and roughly 21 percent among women, and increased rapidly with age.
Kupelian said the greater risk of mort
|Copyright©2010 ScoutNews,LLC.
All rights reserved


text:
- 800.878.7323
On Order
New Trade Paper
Currently out of stock.
available for shipping or prepaid pickup only
This title in other editions
Other titles in the Treatment Manuals for Practitioners series:
Treating Suicidal Behavior: An Effective, Time-Limited Approachby M. David, Phd Rudd
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
This manual provides an empirically supported treatment approach for suicidality that is specifically tailored to today's managed care environment. The authors present an innovative framework to help the clinician rapidly determine and accomplish essential treatment goals, taking into account the severity, chronicity, and diagnostic complexity of the patient's symptoms. Carefully structured, yet flexible enough for the realities of day-to-day practice, the treatment model offers guidance on treating all aspects of suicidal behavior. It is fully compatible with current standards of care and uniquely designed for maximum effectiveness in the time-limited setting.
Grounded in a comprehensive model of suicidality, this volume describes an empirically supported cognitive-behavioral treatment approach. The clinician is guided to assess suicidal behavior and implement interventions tailored to the severity, chronicity, and diagnostic complexity of the patient's symptoms. Provided are session-by-session guidelines and clear-cut strategies for defusing the initial crisis; reducing suicidal behavior; restructuring suicide-related beliefs; and building interpersonal assertiveness, distress tolerance, problem solving, and other key skills. A special chapter covers risk assessment. Enhancing the book's utility are tables, figures, and sample handouts and forms, some of which may be reproduced for professional use.
About the Author
M. David Rudd, PhD, is Professor of Psychology and Director of Clinical Training at Baylor University. He also maintains a part-time private practice. Dr. Rudd received his doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin and completed postdoctoral training at the Beck Institute in Philadelphia. He is the author of over 60 articles and book chapters.
Thomas Joiner, PhD, is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Psychology Clinic at Florida State University. He completed his doctoral training at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Joiner has authored over 100 articles and book chapters in the areas of depression, eating disorders, and suicidality.
M. Hasan Rajab, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Texas A&M Health Science Center. Dr. Rajab completed his doctoral training in biostatistics at Texas A&M University. He is the author of several articles addressing a range of issues in methodology and biostatistics.
Table of Contents
I. Establishing a Foundation for Treatment
1. What Do We Really Know about Treating Suicidality?: A Critical Review of the Literature
The Available Literature: A Limited Database
A Critical Review of Intervention Studies: Do Simple Procedural Changes Make a Difference?
Implications for Clinical Practice
A Critical Review of Treatment Studies: An Emerging Trend for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Implications for Clinical Practice
The Therapeutic Relationship in Treating Suicidality: Attachment, Hope, and Survival
Implications for Clinical Practice
Unanswered Questions: The Challenge Awaits Us
2. A Cognitive-Behavioral Model of Suicidality
Existing Theoretical Models of Suicidal Behavior: A Brief Overview
Static and Dynamic Variables Predicting Suicidality
Application of Theory and Empirical Findings in Treatment: The Problem of Limited Clinical Relevance
Basic Assumptions of Cognitive Theory and Therapy: Implications for Suicidality
The Essential Requirements for a Cognitive-Behavioral Model of Integrating Empirical Findings and Ensuring Clinical Relevance
The Suicidal Mode as a Cognitive-Behavioral Model of Suicidality: An Elaboration and Specific Application of Beck's Theory of Modes and Psychopathology
Defining the Suicidal Mode: Characteristics of the Various Systems
Completing the Suicidal Mode: Individual Case Conceptualization
Implications of the Suicidal Mode for the Organization, Content, and Process of Treatment
Theoretical Flexibility of the Suicidal Mode for Psychotherapy Integration
The Therapeutic Relationship in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: Three Fundamental Assumptions
3. An Overview of the Treatment Process
Completing the Clinical Picture: Understanding Severity, Chronicity, and Diagnostic Complexity
Identifying Treatment Components
An Overview of the Goals for Each Treatment Component
An Overview of the Steps in Treatment Planning
Understanding the Treatment Process: Treatment Components and Corresponding Levels
Defining the Component Levels
Symptom Management Component
Cycling through Components and Levels
The Role of Medications
Skill-Building Component
Personality Development Component
Variation in Therapist Role
A Clinical Example of Acute Suicidality: The Case of Mr. E
Monitoring the Treatment Process
Process Tasks and Markers
Provocations and Resistance in the Therapeutic Relationship: How a Clear Organizational Framework Helps
Quantifying Change: How to Measure and Monitor Change in Treatment
Treatment Withdrawal and Noncompliance
Ensuring Treatment Fidelity
Termination: When, Why, and How
Interpersonal Process Groups and Booster Sessions
The Role of the Treatment Team
The Need for Long-Term Care in a Time-Limited World
II. Assessment and Treatment
4. Treatment Course and Session-by-Session Guidelines
The Beginning of Treatment: Sessions 1-4
Sessions 5-10: Symptom Management, Cognitive Restructuring, Reducing and Eliminating Suicidal Behaviors
Sessions 10-19: Emphasis on Skill Building
Sessions 19-20: A Shift Toward Personality Development and Longer-Term Treatment
5. The Evaluation Process and the Initial Interviews
Risk Assessment Goals: The Importance of Establishing a Baseline for Ongoing Monitoring
Treatment Conceptualization and Consent: Setting the Stage
The Use and Role of Psychometric Testing
Establishing the Therapeutic Relationship
6. Assessing Suicide Risk
Distinguishing between Risk Assessment and Prediction: Defining the Nature of Clinical Responsibilities
The Importance of Precise Terminology: Saying What We Know and Knowing What We Say
Essential Components of a Clinical Risk Assessment Interview
Tips on Eliciting Information on Intent and Self Control
Risk Categories: Baseline, Acute, Chronic High Risk, and Chronic High Risk with Acute Exacerbation
Rating Severity: A Continuum of Suicidality
Clinical Documentation and the Process of Risk: The Concept of Risk Monitoring
The Role of Chronicity and Time in Risk Assessment
Clinical Decision Making, Management, and Treatment
Ongoing Monitoring of Treatment Outcome and Evaluation
The Persistence of Suicidal Thoughts: A Potentially Misleading Marker of Treatment Outcome
7. Crisis Intervention and Initial Symptom Management
Keys Tasks of Crisis Intervention
Ensuring the Patient's Safety
Self-Monitoring during Crises
Teaching the Patient to Rate Discomfort: A Self-Monitoring Task
Completing the Suicidal Thought Record
Depicting the Suicidal Cycle: The Suicidal Mode in Action
Using Mood Graphs
Improving Distress Tolerance and Reducing Impulsivity: The Importance of Repeatedly Emphasizing That Bad Feelings Do Not Last Forever
Targeting Source Hopelessness: A Different Kind of Problem Solving
Symptom Matching: Improving Level of Functioning over the Short Term
The Importance of Structure: Providing a Crisis Response Plan
8. Reducing and Eliminating Suicide-Related Behaviors
Identifying Behavioral Targets in Treatment: Understanding the Suicidal Mode
Distinguishing between Suicidal Acts and Instrumental Behaviors
Dealing with Mixed Messages
Identifying the Suicidal Cycle
The Process of Behavioral Change: Reducing and Eliminating Suicidal Behavior
Inhibiting the Suicidal Cycle during Crisis States: Late-Cycle Intervention
Substitute Behaviors and Purposeful Hypervigilance:Early-Cycle Intervention
Shaping Behavior: A Process of Gradual Change
Exposure-Based Strategies: Role Playing, Cue Exposure, and Behavioral Rehearsal
Contingency Management and Treatment Success
Targeting Treatment Disruptions
Provocation(s): The Currency of Interpersonal Relatedness in Suicidality
Handling Provocation in Treatment
The Evolution of Hope and the Elimination of Suicidal Behavior: A Few Concluding Words
9. Cognitive Restructuring: Changing the Suicidal Belief System and Building a Philosophy for Living
Private Meaning and the Suicidal Belief System: The Role of Automatic Thoughts and Intermediate and Core Beliefs
A Straightforward Strategy for Cognitive Change
Dealing with Poor Motivation and Treatment Noncompliance
Building a Philosophy for Living: Change and Acceptance as New Rules
Prevailing, Facilitating, and Compensatory Modes in Chronic Suicidality: Developing Adaptive Modes and Acknowledging Personal Qualities and Characteristics
The Therapeutic Belief System: Therapy-Specific Beliefs
Outlining the Therapeutic Belief System
The Therapeutic Belief System of the Therapist Treating Suicidality: Monitoring Thoughts, Feelings, and Behaviors in Treatment
Evaluating the Relationship: Patience, Determination, and Consistency
10. Skill Building: Developing Adaptive Modes and Ensuring Lasting Change
Conceptualizing Skill Deficits in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Suicidality
Targeting Skill Deficits
A Model for Problem Solving: Learning to Identify, Evaluate, and Pursue Alternatives to Suicide
Emotion Regulation Ability: The Art of Feeling Better When Suicidal
Distress Tolerance
Interpersonal Skills: Learning to Be Assertive, Attentive, and Responsive
Anger Management: Early Identification, Appropriate Expression, and the Importance of Empathy, Acceptance, and Forgiveness
Skill Building and Personality Change: One and the Same?
Changing Interpersonal Process: Integrating Group Treatment
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text:
A friend of mine was trying to purchase a new smart phone. With great anticipation of acquiring a new gadget (that he had to have), the experience soon soured as he became confused and then frustrated. Eventually, he just gave up and left without buying.
This made me think, instead of making the choice easier, are some brands actually over-complicating the buying experience and causing decision fatigue?
In the example of the phone retailer, my friend was progressively worn down with a myriad of choices, add-ons and information overload. It got to the point where he just couldn't make a decision. He left the store unsatisfied and disillusioned.
As retailers and service providers continue to complain that times are tough, I am increasingly baffled why they effectively impose unnecessary obstacles to purchase.
It reminded me of this infographic that appeared in Fast Company's Co.Design to highlight how difficult the simple task of purchasing a remedy for a headache in a chemist can be.
Cliff Young, Founding Editor of Co.Design explains "Just 10 years ago, getting something for a headache or a cold at the drugstore was a simple enough affair: Ibuprofen or Acetaminophen? No longer: Drugstore aisles are now an eye-melting maze of choices, with products advertising everything from time-release to gel-caps to flavours to different dosages."
Young's point is that, "An innovation process that started with the original intention of offering better products leads to an overall product experience that's horrible."
It is certainly a powerful and confronting graphic. It makes you stop and think. If it is really that hard just to buy something for headache, is it any wonder my colleague gave up trying to buy that smart phone. Maybe he is now searching for some paracetamol.
For brand managers, if you haven't done so recently, take a fresh look at how many choices customers have to make before they buy your product.
Is your brand promise compelling and clear? Are all your brand assets such as packaging, stores and communications designed to build confidence in the purchasing of your product or service? Are your personnel helping make the decision easier or contributing to buyer fatigue?
A brand experience audit and strategy to remove the obstacles that discourage your customer could make a significant difference to sales.
If you'd like to have a chat on how to make it easier, not harder to choose and purchase your brand, I'd love to hear from you.
Michael Hughes
Director of Brand Strategy
Tags: and corporate branding, Brand Agency, brand architecture, brand assets, Brand Communication, Brand Communications, brand communications agencies Melbourne, Brand Design, brand designer, brand developers, brand developers Australia, brand developers Melbourne, Brand DNA, Brand Experience, brand guidelines, Brand Identity, brand identity agencies, brand identity designers, brand identity designers Melbourne, Brand management, Brand Personality, Brand Strategy, brand-designers-Melbourne, brand-development, brand-marketing, branding strategy, buyer fatigue, buying process, corporate identity, corporate identity design, Corporate Image, creative agencies, creative agencies Melbourne, Creative Agency, creative agency Melbourne, decision fatigue, Graphic Design Melbourne, Melbourne brand designers, Melbourne Brand Strategy, Michael Hughes, online branding, online branding agency, professional services brand, professional services branding, professional services branding agency, retail brand agency, retail brand strategy agency, retail branding, retail branding agency, retail catalog agency, retail catalogue agency, retail strategy, retail strategy consultants, retail-brand, specialist retail brand agency, Truly Deeply, Visual Language, web site branding, web site branding agency


text:
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Megamur said:
there's still a strange input lag with Doomsday that makes movement feel sluggish, regardless. I disabled vsync and the 35 MHz vanilla input, but there's still an odd delay that makes it feel like I'm moving underwater. Not sure what that's all about. Oh well.
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Last edited by XCOPY on Jul 3 2015 at 00:35
Last edited by XCOPY on Jul 3 2015 at 00:36
XCOPY said:
I did set the renderer profile to vanilla, refresh-rate-maximum to 35 and deactivated everything in the input menu, mouse seemed way more responsive, like in most ports. Capping FPS to any value between "<monitor refresh rate> - 10" and "<monitor refresh rate> - 1" seems to be a valid workaround as well.
My senses aren't very sharp, but I noticed I was aiming slightly better and bouncing less in corridors.
If I set the game to a lower tic rate (settics), is it supposed to trigger the function (in any button) instantly?
Last edited by DaniJ on Mar 15 2014 at 18:46
DaniJ said:
Todays Build 1171 (1.14 unstable) includes the workaround for the non-working vsync issue on Windows. Disabling vsync now works for me on my Windows dev system.
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Friends, Foes & Founding a University
'Ed Walsh is one of the most dynamic, challenging and infuriating figures in Irish public life. His story is utterly complelling' Fintan O'Toole
Ed Walsh returned to Ireland in 1970, a young man in a hurry, to set up an institute of education. He found a decaying mansion on a riverside site, gathered talented young people and secured funding from the World Bank and European Investment Bank to build what became the University of Limerick. Along the way, Ed made powerful enemies as he challenged official cant, traditional academics and clerical humbug. This is an inspiring, frank and often funny memoir by a passionate educational leader. Memoir published by The Collins Press, 2011