via CamWorld - XBox Economics

The XBox hardware has been estimated to cost Microsoft $320 to $400 to build in 2001. They have been selling the box for $299, and this month they have dropped the price to $199 to keep up with Nintendo and Sony. Even after six months of cost reduction, they may still be losing $100 on each XBox sale. Nobody knows how much Microsoft is really losing, but they have confirmed that they are selling the hardware at a loss. Will they really be able to make up all of these losses with software sales?

via Brian - Consensus at Lawyerpoint: Hollywood Wants to Plug the "Analog Hole"

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filed the "Content Protection Status Report" with the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, laying out its plan to remake the technology world to suit its own ends. The report calls for regulation of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), generic computing components found in scientific, medical and entertainment devices. Under its proposal, every ADC will be controlled by a "cop-chip" that will shut it down if it is asked to assist in converting copyrighted material -- your cellphone would refuse to transmit your voice if you wandered too close to the copyrighted music coming from your stereo.

The report shows that this ADC regulation is part of a larger agenda. The first piece of that agenda, a mandate that would give Hollywood a veto over digital television technology, is weeks away from coming to fruition. Hollywood also proposes a radical redesign of the Internet to assist in controlling the distribution of copyrighted works.

This three-part agenda -- controlling digital media devices, controlling analog converters, controlling the Internet -- is a frightening peek at Hollywood's vision of the future.

Please make sure you go and read the whole article. It makes chilling reading. My students, in particular, should be greatly concerned as this will directly impinge on their future professional careers. The consequences of these proposals being adopted are just too awful to contemplate. A wee thought experiment: imagine if the (equivalent) of these proposals had been in place fifty years ago. Do you think we would have had the innovation and consumer products we now currently enjoy? Would the Intentent have ever got out of the research labs?

To quote Brian - "Holy Shit!"

WeblogsInEducation(at)SchoolBlogs.com : The Holy Grail

Discussing the pros and cons of various software may been a pleasant time-filler but it should never become a quest for the edublogging 'Holy Grail'. That will only lead to a lack of application on the educational frontline. As some commentators have pointed out, teachers are not interested in the intricacies of the software itself. They want to see what it delivers in terms of teaching and learning. They will been convinced by a body of evidence that weblogging might be worthwhile for classroom use. The conviction among teachers that it may be worthwhile will be converted into classroom implementation not by perfect software, but by blogging educators who are willing to exert an influence in their own environments. The revolution is not software driven but rather led by educators who are comfortable with their own choices of imperfect software and who will provide a positive sphere of influence for those around them.

Amen. Perfectly put. A thought provoking article that deserves to be read by everyone with an interest in the use of weblogs (and content management systems) in education. The paragraph after the one cited above can be summed up as 'use what you know and are comfortable with'. It looks like I'll be involved in a project at the local school in September under the auspice of Extreme Learning (XL) and since I'm most comfortable with Conversant that is what I'm suggesting the school use.

WeblogsInEducation(at)SchoolBlogs.com : The Next Step

Outsiders complain about the teaching profession being resistant to new developments. However, I think teachers are just numb' to change. They are so used to hearing the latest 'theory' or the latest decree prescribed from the educational establishment, that they are automatically sceptical of even the best new ideas. Consequently, teachers will not be convinced by words alone when it comes to the potential of weblogging in education.

It looks like my nephew Tim has beaten me to www.smeed.net ;-) What you might call a minimal web presence!

Some of my work colleagues nipped out to see the Queen on here walkabout in Glasgow. Would you like to work with any of these people ;-)?

via hbwt - MacCentral | One school's cost of going Wintel

Jon Udell: Conversant and the art of the press release

Conversant, by the way, is interesting in ways that are orthogonal to Radio. It's a server-based product, not a desktop product, and is useful for all the reasons that any featureful and scriptable groupware-and-document-management system is. So now that I've got the story straight...congratulations, Seth!

Derek has a new toy - powazek » log » it's here. I'm envious. One of those would look good on my empty desk doncha think ;-)?

Big Brother is back on the box. The viewing public get to nominate the first two contenders for eviction next Friday. It's an absolute certainty that Jade will get one of the nominations. She's sooooo annoying!! Even when the cameras are on the others you can hear her whiny voice droning on in the background. She never stops. Ugh! Seems I'm not the only that thinks so since she's currently lying last in popularity in the online poll.

Bringing rapid-fire photos to digicams - Tech News - CNET.com

NuCore's design allows images to be processed much more rapidly, meaning the user can squeeze off many more photos of quick-moving subjects. The first still camera to use the company's signal processors--the Lumix DMC-F7 from Panasonic--can shoot five frames a second. Typical digital cameras need up to a few seconds between shots.

In his Support Your Neighborhood Developer piece Brian Carnel eloquently expresses what is my POV too. He rounds off with:

"Winer's silence is a bit puzzling from someone who relentlessly champions small developers. Microsoft buys a couple companies with "great developer communities" and that's news, but someone releases an amazing piece of software built on top of Winer's platform and it's a non-event. What's that about."

Maybe there's a hint in this snippet from Scripting News?

"On the other hand, I totally agree that we have no obligation to point at anything."

Most of the Conversanteers have picked up on the fact that Conversant has largely been ignored by the very person they would have expected to pay it some attention. We've had our say but IMO there's little to be gained in wringing our hands any further. Whilst it would have been nice to have had a link from a high-traffic site like Scripting News, Conversant can make its own way in the world.

Unless one of the BigPubs picks up on the anomalous behaviour of the developer that shall remain nameless, I believe the best course of action for the Conversanteers is just to use every opportunity to sing its praises. It'd be rather too negative and lame to hang a publicity campaign on a "it is worthy but it's being ignored" ticket. I can think of someone else - who shall remain nameless - that regularly uses such a tactic and I wouldn't want to emulate that person.

So, no more whining and whinging from me. Time to move on and boost Conversant positively and proactively.

PS There's some deliberate WebBlagging in this post. Can you spot it!? ;-)

via HtP - Washtech.com | Open-Source Fight Flares At Pentagon - Microsoft Lobbies Hard Against Free Software

David Davies is becoming Conversant ;-)

"Started using a new piece of software today. For the time being I'll be running Conversant alongside Radio on my home iMac. I'll post pertinent observations here but so far both systems seem to happily coexist."

Welcome aboard David. Looking forward to hearing how you get on. One response I have is that if you dedicate Radio as a server and forgo Radio's own unique, CPU sapping, functionality - i.e. Macrobyte has sorted out what to do shut off all of Radio's 'features' - then you do end up with *exactly* the same performance in Radio and Frontier.

You will find Macrobyte and the rest of the Conversant community to be more than willing to help.

David C-T managed to catch a Dave Winer: Pressure to Point posting:

Well, it was here: http://scriptingnews.userland.com/pressureToPoint and it was on the Scripting News home page, but it's been deleted from both locations (no problem - Dave W.'s editorial policy has always been clear that he can do this - it may resurface - who knows?

But as he points out it was deleted soon after. David C-T did quote from the original piece and that's still in his article along with his comments - which I wholly endorse.

In fact, none of the observations about the lack of linking started untl the day after the launch of Conversant. Normally, DW likes to be one of the first to link to things - especially it it's related to his products. I don't think the observations can be construed as pressurisation and, as David, points out, were generally expressions of bemusement rather than coercion.

Curious for sure.

Extreme Computing 2002

NTK and Mute magazine present a gigantic village fete for the 21st century, an off-the-radar cyber jumble-sale, an all-day celebration of do-it-yourself technological unusualness.

From home-made robots to retro video games, from japanese junk food to community wireless networking - if it's outside the mainstream, you can come along and check it out and most likely buy a piece of it to take home.

There's a programme on Channel 4 that's just finished - Daisy Daisy :

Motivational speaking is a huge industry in the States. Daisy Donovan has just four days to learn from the best speakers around and come up with a inspirational seminar of her own. Can she cut it as the new guru in town?

It was just a scam and they even went to the trouble of setting up the Discover Daisy Joy website. What was fascinating was how gullible the public were.

Eagle-eyed Richard - who maintains the [Dragon Data Archive] - noticed the Dragon 64 and the prototype Dragon Alpha that have pride of place on one of my office shelves. He's just sent me an e-mail detailing some of the new additions to the Dragon Data Archive. We'll hopefully get together soon to document all the other Dragon stuff that's scattered around the office.

via hbwt - Enter SSH Passphrases at Login and Store them in your MacOS X KeyChain