] In a stunning victory for hardware makers and television
] buffs, a federal appeals court has tossed out government
] rules that would have outlawed many digital TV receivers
] and tuner cards starting July 1

HURRAY! As Roger Waters might say, "the tide is turning"

Court yanks down FCC's broadcast flag

Hosted by Bill Butler, Scott Kozicki and Tim Moses, this show aims to discuss new and interesting technology on a weekly basis. This show is based in Nashville, TN.

Bill and Tim were founders of Telalink, which was one of Nashville's first ISPs in the early 90s. Bill now runs Butler Networks (www.butler.net) and Tim runs Monster Labs (www.monsterlabs.com)

Scott was founder of BlueStar, an early DSL provider in the southeast headquartered in Nashville. Scott is currently the CTO for American Healthways (www.americanhealthways.com)

Tech Tuesday

] FOCUS Enhancements expects to sample UWB chip-sets in the
] third quarter of 2005 and modules containing UWB
] chip-sets later in the year. Performance expectations are
] anticipated to range from 880 Megabits per second (Mbps)
] at 8 meters to 37 Mbps at around 40-plus meters.

This could get interesting. I'm stuck on whether I should just use Cat5 to bridge all my audio/video/data/IR traffic in my house, or start up a company that builds a wireless alternative. I don't think WiFi has the bandwidth and QoS to drive anything other than highly compressed VoIP and/or SD video, but it's EVERYWHERE and the chipsets are dirt cheap. However, UWB looks to be the winner, but has a loooong way to go for must haves like encryption and QoS.

a dilemma.

FOCUS Enhancements Demos Wireless, Ultra Wideband Transmission of High-Def TV Streams

] VoIP testing service solutions provider Empirix is
] showing its Hammer On-Call for VoIP infrastructure and
] applications test service. This is a flavor of
] Hammer-On-Call%u2019s carrier level solution service.

blogged for reference on the Teleworking project.

A VoIP sub-trend few people are talking about

] In the course of preparing the second edition of 802.11
] Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide, I noticed
] several myths that repeatedly popped up in popular
] wireless coverage that I'd like to debunk.

Great list of common misunderstandings for WiFi networks. The softest one is that remote access techniques aren't optimal as security standards. This is only true in certain circumstances and equally untrue in others. I think RADIUS and LDAP backends to things like LEAP, 1X, and WPA are almost required if you're going to manage authentication and authorization tokens in a sensible way.

O'Reilly Network: Top Ten 802.11 Myths of 2005

] Put briefly, it's a WWAN (Wireless Wide Area Network)
] router. In more human terms, it's a compact little box
] that gets data from cellular towers and re-shares it for
] multiple computers to use.

hmm.. I was thinking of getting a Junxion box, but I might build me one of these instead.

EVDO StompBox Project

] "We sprung it on the engineers one day," he said,
] recalling their surprise at how small it was at the time.
] "There were only eight guys in the room. Cooper said
] 'Anybody who doesn't believe this can be done, leave the
] room.'"
]
] No one did. But it was another 10 years and a total of
] $100 million in development costs before the phone was
] officially unveiled in 1983 %u2014 the delay resulting
] mostly from the need to build towers and infrastructure

another great example of how 'innovation' doesn't come quick or easy. Now, the US market for cell communiatons produces over $73B in revenue each year and is growing nearly 20% per year still.

First cell phone was a true 'brick'

] Moving from vertical processes to a horizontal business
] structure sounds like a great idea. There's just one
] problem: who's going to make sure everything works
] together?

Who's in Charge of the Architecture?

] The Federal Advisory Committee on Civil Procedure is
] evaluating a series of 'e-discovery' rules that will
] change the way litigation handles electronically stored
] information for the federal courts. Included in this is
] proposed Fed. R. Civ. P. 37 which would exempt parties
] from sanctions for electronic evidence destroyed in a
] 'routine operation of the party's electronic information
] system.

you'd think that storage and backup vendors (EMC, Veritas, HP, etc) would go the opposite direction with this. It seems silly that in one hand, the tech industry is telling its customer base to increase document retention and that "storage of this data is trivial cost" but backing such an ominous move.

Slashdot | Proposed Federal Rules On E-Document Destruction

] British company Intelligent Energy today unveiled ENV,
] the world's first purpose-built, fuel-cell motorbike -
] ahead of any of the world's leading automotive companies.

Interesting design, but I think this is probably the absolute LAST market that should be thinking about fuel cells or alternative energy sources. Most motorcycles get upwards of 50mpg, and even though they emit far more hydrocarbons than cars do, they are far more efficient in generating power for the weight, fuel consumption, and exhaust that's generated.

Target the home and industrial power markets first, then the automotive market. It'll be 20+ years before light transport such as motorcycles would even be culturally accepted, much less practical.

World's First Fuel Cell Motorcycle Unveiled