my new favorite site. Started by the guy who wrote the book (literally) on hacking Tivo, this site is for posting info on hacking ANYTHING. Yes kids, 2600 has finally grown up and become a useful tool for everyday life.

mehack

] A robot for "printing" houses is to be trialled by the
] construction industry. It takes instructions directly
] from an architect's computerised drawings and then
] squirts successive layers of concrete on top of one other
] to build up vertical walls and domed roofs.

Read my lips. 30 hour work week.

New Scientist -- Robot Builder could 'print' houses

No, officers, we're computer scientists and engineers.

Be sure to check out the photos and video.

Robot Race Is Giant Step for Unmanned Kind

] According to ScienceBlog, the U.S. Office of Naval
] Research, trying to keep friendly armies in Iraq from
] accidentally blowing each other to smithereens, is
] helping create software that connects instant messaging
] (IM) with machine translation (MT). The result: Chat
] software to be used in Iraq that automatically translates
] your messages into the correct language of the reader,
] called the the Coalition Chat Line - it's 'getting rave
] reviews from U.S. and allied-coalition personnel.'"

Very interesting... The actual article is slashdotted out, so I'm linking them instead for the time being...

Slashdot | Navy Unveils Polyglot Chat For Iraq

]
] It was pointed out to me the other day that the
] ICANN/NTIA/Verisign root zone file contains a previously
] undiscussed top level domain.

Whack...

Where Did the .Root Top-Level Domain Come From?

It concludes with a series of observations and recommendations for policy action and further research.

The most interesting recommendation here is that copyrights should last about as long as patents.

Evolution Scenarios for Future Networking Technologies and Networks

The WSJ requires that you pay them to access their articles online. For the most part that makes them irrelevant in the blogosphere. However, occaisonally a copy lands in your lap anyway.

In today's WSJ George Gilder Blames the Telecom Act of 1996 for all of the present economic problems in the US. He claims that because of the unbundling regulations, RBOCS have no profit motive to deploy advanced services. As a result, they've stopped investing, which has led to a 95% drop in the Market Capitalization of the Telecom Equipment industry, and various effects reverberating through the economy. Gilder even goes as far as to blame offshoring on this.

I don't buy it. I think his argument is over the top. In 1992 I needed more bandwidth, and my friends needed more bandwidth. I would spend all night downloading files off of BBSes. And the RBOC would show up at the PSC and argue that nobody wants ISDN. There is no market for all this digital stuff, blah, blah, blah... The telecom act of 1996 is what forced the RBOC to make ATM circuits available to my DSL provider so that my apartment can be connected to the internet. And I don't need more bandwidth. If my computer was downloading movies all night I'd be demanding better services. But its not and I'm not, and this has nothing to do with the RBOCs.

The telecom equipment market has slowed because the infrastructure was built out ahead of demand. Building more infrastructure isn't going to fix the problem. Korea has more broadband penetration because their urban social structure finds more use for it (in particular, online gaming). If we think we need more bandwidth we need to prove it with applications first. And we can't, and the reason is the content industry. The people who produce things like movies aren't shuffling them down the pipe because they are afraid, and not because there isn't a market. Of course, this isn't going to start with universal studios. Where are the independents? Why can't I download the latest Sundance winner? There ought to be a lot of pent up demand for that as good documentaries can be very hard to find IRL. Same thing for cult films. But, of course, even if this stuff was available its unlikely that it would be sufficiently cheaper then just flat out buying a DVD that it would be an attractive alternative to netflix.

So thats where we sit. I don't think the rbocs are gunning to setup fiber in my loop. I'm just not stressing the DSL that I have. People looking to generate business in the telecom industry should be focued on applications, and not policy. This isn't a constant. I've been significantly on the other side of this debate in the past. This is a reality of the present. In the future things will be different. Nortel and Lucent ought to invest in things that people use the internet for, like consumer VOIP. They ought to be working on generating the demand that will ultimately resucitate their core businesses.

] The fact that this modem connection is used to provide an
] unofficial tally is of little solace given that, from what I've
] read, the memory card with the official tally is plugged into
] the machine when it places the phone call.

Hey, I got one on Politech. Of course, there is a typo...

[Politech] Replies over electronic voting machines, Diebold, and security

As big pharmaceutical companies have become even larger, they have concentrated on drugs with blockbuster potential rather than devote time to drugs with smaller markets.

[Hmmm ... Where have I heard that story before?]

I bet Norah Jones is popular at biotech firms, both as inspiration and as consolation.

Is Biotechnology Losing Its Nerve?

] Now we're faced with a "Godzilla vs. Mothra" battle,
] where the Internet -- and its users -- will likely take
] the brunt of the collateral damage.

Best Quote on Verisign v. ICANN