So Gizmodo has a brief piece on a new Portable DirecTV Receiver that has been introduced by Samsung. The unit appears to be about the size of a portable DVD player, but no word on whether it even has the capabilty to run on batteries (I would guess not). One thing that is really not clear from the writeup is how you actually get the satelite signal — is there some external antenna? do you still need clear southern exposure? The answers to those last questions might make it a bit less 'portable'.
Just think, you could combine this with some built in Tivo-like PVR capability and you have a pretty powerful combination.
So
Hidden in the announcements from Apple regarding new Intel-based Macs is the detail that they are now supporting the 802.11a wireless networking standard. Here are some of the details from TidBits:
802.11a was declared dead by Steve Jobs back in Jan. 2003 when he introduced AirPort Extreme, and it seemed rather dead at the time. The advantage of 802.11a is that it has no backwards compatible mode with the older, slower 802.11b standard.
802.11b and g work in the 2.4 GHz band, and 802.11b runs at a maximum of 11 Mbps of throughput, or a net of about 5 Mbps. 802.11g has a maximum 54 Mbps, or a net of about 20 to 30 Mbps depending on add-ons and other factors.
The reason that the lack of compatibility with 802.11b is an advantage is that a network that sports both b and g adapters has worse performance than a g-only or any 802.11a network. The older “b” devices bring down the whole network, reducing the amount of shared airtime available for faster transmission.
802.11a has emerged in corporations and universities as a preferred tool for deploying voice over IP (VoIP) whether for campus calling or Internet telephony (VoIP to a gateway out to the public switched telephone network).
I can definitely attest to the sleep deprivation part. There have been a few really long plane flights (New Zealand, South Africa, Thailand) combined with time zone shifts and minimal sleep that have left me struggling to do simple things like calculating the gratuity to add to a bill or to maintain any sense of direction once we are on the ground. A good nights sleep does quite a bit toward addressing this.
So
I really enjoy the World Wide Words web site. A recent entry is struggling with a familiar issue: how does one define 'web 2.0'. Unfortunately (and not surprisingly) they don't have much more success than others who have tried.
That aside, I find the site fascinating — but, I have always been interested in linguistics and word origins. For example, you can find out why the abbreviation for pounds is lb, and whether the word shot (as in a shot of whiskey) has anything to do with cowboys buying liquor with bullets.
So
I received an email from the creator of SearchFox a day or so ago stating that SearchFox would be ceasing operations as of January 25, 2006:
SearchFox Users, Thanks for all your help in making SearchFox what it is. We have enjoyed providing this service, and hope that you have enjoyed using it. Please export all of your links and an OPML file with your RSS sources before the site shuts down. In accordance with our privacy policy, we will delete all personal information on January 25 after we shut down the services. Esteban Kozak
I am very sorry to hear this as I had been using SearchFox as my sole newsreader for several months now. The user interface was clean and easy to use, but the feature that I liked the best was how it would notice what I read and prioritize subsequent feeds so that (more often than not) what I wanted to read was at the top of my river of news.
I guess now I need to find the second best online news reader available. Google's offering is just horrible, Bloglines (which I started with) is still pretty feature poor and Rojo really needs to do some work on usability. Interestingly, many of the features being requested by users of Rojo would, if implemented, make it on par with SearchFox. Any suggestions on online feedreaders that you are happy with?
So
If you are prone to getting annoying telemarketing calls, you might want to try the Counterscript.
The Direct Marketing sector regards the telephone as one of its most successful tools. Consumers experience telemarketing from a completely different point of view: more than 92% perceive commercial telephone calls as a violation of privacy.
Telemarketers make use of a telescript – a guideline for a telephone conversation. This script creates an imbalance in the conversation between the marketer and the consumer. It is this imbalance, most of all, that makes telemarketing successful. The EGBG Counterscript attempts to redress that balance.
If you are highly motivated, you can send in the results of your counterscript so that it can be tabulated.