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Backlash against free internet calls:

MANY of the phone companies that own the wires connecting people to the internet are gearing up to block free phone calls that use voice over internet protocol (VoIP) technology.

The online edition of IEEE Spectrum, the house journal of the US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, says phone companies in France, Germany, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have announced they will block VoIP calls on their networks.

New software from Narus of Mountain View, California, will help them do it. Called IP Platform, it can detect VoIP’s characteristic data packets, allowing the phone company to block or de-prioritise them. This either stops the call entirely or makes it sound awful, and the companies hope this will drive people back to paid-for phones.

Well, thankfully there are others who think differently: Does Open-Source Software Make The FCC Irrelevant? - and - ‘4G’ Leapfrogs Next-Gen Wireless

Power Companies Enter the High-Speed Internet Market:

“I would never go back now that I have this,” said Mr. Hofstetter, who often works from his home office in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Cincinnati. He pays $30 a month for the service from Current Communications, an Internet service provider, which uses the power lines run by Cinergy, the local utility in Cincinnati. That cost is about $15 cheaper than comparable Internet access from either Cincinnati Bell or Time Warner Cable.

The Current service can be piped into any electrical outlet in Mr. Hofstetter’s home, with no reduction in speed even when he, his wife and their three daughters are online at the same time. All that is needed is a baseball-size jack that plugs into the wall and is connected to a computer with an Ethernet cable.

Known as broadband over power line, or B.P.L., the service is poised to challenge the cable and phone companies that dominate the high-speed Internet market. Instead of burying cables and rewiring homes, B.P.L. providers use the local power grid, which means that any home with electricity could get the service.

I would love to discuss the future ramifications of this rollout, I am completely swamped with Meat Space though. If you aren’t familiar with B.P.L. read the whole thing (it’s short) as well as the corresponding Wikipedia entry.

Pillows - a hot bed of fungal spore:

Researchers at The University of Manchester funded by the Fungal Research Trust have discovered millions of fungal spores right under our noses - in our pillows.

Aspergillus fumigatus, the species most commonly found in the pillows, is most likely to cause disease; and the resulting condition Aspergillosis has become the leading infectious cause of death in leukaemia and bone marrow transplant patients. Fungi also exacerbate asthma in adults.

The researchers dissected both feather and synthetic samples and identified several thousand spores of fungus per gram of used pillow - more than a million spores per pillow.

Fungal contamination of bedding was first studied in 1936, but there have been no reports in the last seventy years. For this new study, which was published online today in the scientific journal Allergy, the team studied samples from ten pillows with between 1.5 and 20 years of regular use.

Each pillow was found to contain a substantial fungal load, with four to 16 different species being identified per sample and even higher numbers found in synthetic pillows. The microscopic fungus Aspergillus fumigatus was particularly evident in synthetic pillows, and fungi as diverse as bread and vine moulds and those usually found on damp walls and in showers were also found.

Nothing sounds more sexy and refreshing than knowing a colony of microscopic fungi defecate on your epidermis each night. Really puts “SSDD” in a different light.

Would you swallow this camera-in-a-pill?:

Endoscopy is a generic term for minimally invasive surgery of any part of the body. Instead of a colonoscopy, which can make you feel very uncomfortable, with endoscopy surgery, very small instruments, such as cameras, are inserted through small incisions to operate with minimal damage to healthy areas. But until now, these cameras were out of control after you swallowed them. According to New Scientist, this is no longer true. Italian researchers have designed a new camera-in-a-pill which can move or stop according to what your doctors want to see and which is radio-controlled. Human trials should begin soon.

Here is how current cameras operate, according to New Scientist:

Existing camera capsules designed to take images of the intestine cannot be controlled externally, so they simply drift through the gut along with everything else. “It’s like watching the view from a train window,” says the bot’s developer, Arianna Menciassi of the Sant’ Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy. “If you see something of interest, there’s no way to turn back and get a better look.”

I seem to recall watching an old Disney sci-fi-esque movie from the ’60s that involved shrinking a crew of medical doctors, smaller than the size of blood cells - ala ‘Honey, I Shrunk the Kids‘ style. Their mission was to use some kind of “laser” technology to destroy some damage that was inhibiting a colleague’s brain (you would think that in the age when you could safely shrink a human to the size of a cell the technologists would also be able to insert a little robot which could do the same task).

The contrived white-knuckle drama involved the cliché Dr. Sparty Pants, who rashly left the miniaturized vessel (note: not only was the crew shrunk to microscopic proportions, but so was an entire mini-sub). He was randomly attacked by some white antibodies, though it was probably a hate crime because he was old and bald.

Anyways, everyone else escaped via the patients tear duct and were remagnified (sic), biggie sized or whatever the proper term is. So therefore don’t do drugs, stay in school.

Numerous academic and commercial endeavors have been undertaken to develop practical AI applications which can “think” like human beings (i.e. they can understand both abstract and concrete meanings).

Among others, one project that has garnered attention over the past few years is Cyc. The developers created an online submission tool in which any Joe can submit a nugget of truth or piece of wisdom into its database. Overtime this database has grown to hundreds of thousands of facts and concepts which can be queried for various uses (its technical engine reportedly has ties with the semantic web via OWL).

My thoughts: as original as projects like Cyc sound, I believe that general purpose search engines from Yahoo, MSN or Google will ultimately accomplish the intuitive ‘human-like’ cognitive abilities that projects like Cyc set out to do, first. If the modus operandi is a bastardized use of the Law of Large Numbers, not only do these firms have larger amounts of resources (financial, human capital, etc.) but they have an ever increasing user base that continues to add concepts, constructs and pithy fortune cookie factoids into their ginormous databases every second of every day (note: there are other methods for creating AI, not just statistical averages).

Perhaps with enough data mining we can one day figure out where Jimmy Hoffa really is.

Google finally released a beta of an RSS reader today. It has the slick clean interface like usual, however I find it lacking a couple of features:

I actually like the scrollbar on the left-side that Bloglines provides to navigate through the feed list quickly. With the GReader I manually have to click each time I want to go up or down (including Page up/down), rather than having the ability to slide the scrollbar (although there is a short-cut key for quick navigation).

Also, I like the item preview display that Bloglines has (GReader simply has headlines which you must click on for further information - no blurb).

In addition, perhaps organizing via newsfeed could be added as an option as well (currently only relevancy and date are the duo left to the task).

Layout issues aside, I was able to import my OPML file within a few seconds– everything else seems responsive as well. The keyboard shortcuts are nice too, probably addictive in the long run. It also has the obligatory ‘tag‘ creating ability article labelization (sic).

I am sure it will only be a few months until we see it integrate seemlessly with Blogger (an ‘InstaBlogThis’ feature over the horizon?).

I give it a B-. There is a dicussion of the service up at Google Groups.

Yet another speech:

As an organization One Army promotes itself as a gentleman’s organization. What does that mean though? Do we have soft hands? Do we gallop around on horses, saving women from rabid dogs? Do we annunciate our words with an English accent?

There is an old proverb that defines genius as “an infinite capacity for taking pains,� and the same description would serve to define a gentleman. The real gentleman is one who leaves nothing to chance. It is not enough to make sure one’s clothes are smart, of the finest cut and quality, and in immaculate order. After all, there is one’s physical appearance to consider.

They do not publicly display doo-rags, jerseys, wife-beaters or grills. They are well-groomed, orderly and chiseled.

There was an English comedian in the 1930s who described himself as “Billy Bennett – Almost a Gentleman.� The concept is outrageous. One cannot be almost a gentleman. One either is, or one isn’t. One cannot be almost a gentleman. Standards are set, and must be kept up. It is better not to try to appear to be a gentleman if one is likely to fail to make the grade.

A gentleman does not pretend to be one in private and then a womanizer in public. They are consistent without reservation.

A gentleman is always thoroughly decent, always instinctively does the right thing. When one is a gentleman, one makes sure all the women and children are safely in the lifeboats while one goes down with the ship. One never maltreats a horse or betrays a friend. One knows when a lady desires company and when she wishes to be left alone. He does not hound them, stalk them or slip them ‘roofies.’ One is always polite, even in the face of arrogant rudeness on the part of lesser mortals.

In a word, a true gentleman is classy.

Two movies portraying these traits:
An Officer and a Gentleman; Scent of a Woman

Note: some content referenced via Bernhard Roetel’s, Gentleman’s Guide To Grooming And Style, p. 8

Over the past few years the term nanobots has become a staple of bleeding-edge research. Over the last few days several news releases have dealt with this wave of applicable technologies in terms of theoretical implications in the medical field, insurance risks for businesses and actual production of said concepts.

- Via Fighting Aging, Robert Freitas and Ralph Merkle’s latest collaboration - like the Nanomedicine volumes, part of the groundwork for the future of nanotechnology - is now available for free online:

With 200+ illustrations and 3200+ literature references, [Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines (KSRM)] describes all proposed and experimentally realized self-replicating systems that were publicly known as of 2004, ranging from nanoscale to macroscale systems. The book extensively describes the historical development of the field. It presents for the first time a detailed 137-dimensional map of the entire kinematic replicator design space to assist future engineering efforts.

Via BetterHumans,

Scientists and insurance experts have concluded that five near-market nanotech manufacturing processes pose fewer risks than common processes such as oil refining—and some are as benign as making wine or aspirin.

Their study compares the risk of making quantum dots, carbon nanotubes, buckyballs and two types of nanoparticles with the risks of making six commonplace products—silicon wafers, wine, high-density plastic, lead-acid car batteries, refined petroleum and aspirin.

- Via ScienceDaily,

“Essentially, we’re forming artificial solids from artificial atoms — about 10 times larger than real atoms — whose properties we can fine tune on the quantum level,” said Drndic, an assistant professor in Penn’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. “Artificial solids are expected to revolutionize the fabrication of electronic devices in the near future, but now we are only beginning to understand their fundamental behavior.”

Artificial solids, in general, are constructed by specifically assembling a number of nanocrystals, each composed of only a few thousand atoms, into a closely packed and well-ordered lattice. Previous researchers have demonstrated that quantum dots can be manipulated to change their physical properties, particularly their optical properties. In fact, the blue laser, which will soon be put into use into commercial products, was a result of early research in changing the colors of quantum dots.

Two years later, my QoS dream enshrined in 802.11e finally becomes a reality. WLAN quality-of-service specification approved:

The standards board of the full IEEE approved the 802.11e specification for publication in late September, according to Geri Mitchell-Brown, Wi-Fi strategist at SpectraLink, a maker of voice over Wi-Fi systems. The standard is a set of technologies for prioritizing traffic and preventing packet collisions and delays, which should improve the experience of users making VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) calls and watching video over wireless LANs.
[...]
The 802.11e specification allows packets to gain priority by defining four traffic classes, each with its own queue. By default, they would be for voice, video, best-effort and background, said Ben Guderian, vice president for market strategies and industry relations at SpectraLink. The definitions of the four classes could be changed from the default. To identify the class of each packet, the standard uses markers similar to ones used in wired Ethernet, he added. Seeing those markers, an access point could give voice packets top priority for transmission, followed by video, and so on, he said.

It has been all of 3 days since I last mentioned anything about Google. Today is a quick discussion of Google Print.

What this endeavor is in a nutshell: Google is financing a book-scanning operation of material found at Stanford, Harvard, University of Michigan, Oxford and the New York Public Library. All books, including those that are copyrighted, are included in their databases which can be accessed just like their normal web query tool we have grown accustomed to using. In addition, those little text ads on the side will be displayed each time your search hits a keyword someone paid for (e.g. economics, basketball, Britney Spears).

When Google first announced the library portion of the project, two large organizations cried foul. The first was not a surprise, brick-and-mortar publishers. In fact, the Author’s Guild was so upset that it has actually filed a lawsuit to prevent Google from displaying any information from copyrighted books (here is Google’s non-PR speak response). Due in part to these legal concerns, Google stopped scanning copyrighted texts in August, however it will resume scanning in November. The intervening weeks is a time period in which Google has requested that any publisher or writer that wishes to opt-out of the program can do so by simply filling out this form.

The other organization that went up in arms was various nation-states from Europe, most notably France. In April, several uber nationalists such as Jacques Chirac suggested that Google’s actions will invariably bias the scope of material found online to the Anglo-Saxon variety, “Google’s plans have rattled the cultural establishment in Paris, raising fears that the French language and ideas could be just sidelined on the worldwide web, which is already dominated by English.”

This past September, Google announced that it had begun working with various non-English European publishers to participate in this program.

Despite these accommodations, today the Europe Union and various other regulatory bodies announced they are funding an initiative to place the same material online at tax payers expense (versus financed privately via Google).

To add to this helter-skelter trail, Yahoo announced yesterday that it will be working with the University of California, the University of Toronto and various other Archiving services (such as the Internet Archive) to scan and provide access to books in the public domain (it is called the Open Content Alliance).

There is a catch however. Whereas Google will scan every book and allow users to search each text (although you cannot read the entirety of the book unless otherwise permitted by the author or publisher — similar to Amazon’s Search-Inside-The-Book feature), Yahoo is realistically only going to be able scan approximately 15% of the content available in these libraries. Another oddity in Yahoo’s approach is that it will allow anyone to index the text they scan (mining via metadata like RSS), including Google (whereas Google is relatively closed and proprietary). That raises an unanswered question mark in terms of a business model for Yahoo (perhaps they will use it as a tax write-off).

Incidentally O’Reilly Media is opening up their volumes for free access via Yahoo’s book-scanning project — which is odd considering that Tim O’Reilly sits on the advisory board at Google and has publically endorsed Google Print.

So where does that leave you, Mr. Internet User? I think this digitazation movement can be seen almost unanimously as a win-win situation (sans the operations subsidized via taxes). This will enable people from every walk of life to find information that would otherwise be left to obscurity: it is empowering. And on a personal level, it is a fantastic resource to have on hand as a graduate student working on research projects (Google Scholar is also a great service).

A couple of notes surrounding this much-ado-about-nothing “crisis.”

First, “performance-enhancing substances” (more on the ambiguity of those later) do not improve the technique, form, ability or talent level of an athlete such as Barry Bonds. You may be juiced, but that does not mean you are any better at making contact or swinging properly. Nor will ‘roids make you a smarter base-runner or better web-gemmer. All of these require continuous practice (’use it or lose it’), meticulous studying and raw athleticism. In these terms, steroids can not make you a better ball player.

I am not denying the fact that these ‘illicit’ drugs can dramatically improve your strength, but if you can not make contact with the ball in the first place, it does not matter how big or strong you are (e.g. one of the reasons bodybuilders do not regularly sign contracts with professional sport teams is their lack of athleticism, uncoordination (sic) and meat-head intelligence level).

Previously, I have made the case that any kind of food is in truth, a ‘performance enhancing substance‘ as it enables the body to energize and operate at non-dying levels (e.g. catabolic versus anabolic and all that jazz). So an “athlete” that consumes a Subway sandwich on a regular basis may perform better than someone solely eating Ramen and pickled pigs feet.

The second issue I have with this “crisis” is the involvement of blowhards like Senator John McCain. Why on earth does someone or anyone at the “national level” need to hold witch-trial hearings over an issue that should only be dealt with between, players and management? Should Microsoft be investigated for its lack of transparent steroid policy (I can totally see pale-skinned geeks juicing up like Jose Canseco)? What about IBM, Oracle or Apple? Perhaps the reason for Google’s relatively spectacular success has to do with our friendly vein-seeking hypodermic needle.

Did steroids cause “terrorist” attacks on American soil? Did steroids cause the Nipponese attack on Pearl Harbor? Did steroids cause the sinking of the Titanic?

What exactly is the nefarious boogey-man that necessitates such a bellicose outcry?

I blame dihydrogen monoxide for the looming crisis surrounding illicit usage of political punditry. Expect a press release and 535 subpoenas shortly.