Category: Note to Self

Twist and Turn

~ rbonini

I think I’ll point you to a BBC op-ed piece that talks about the new technology of spintronics (lo-and-behold, there is a Wikipedia article. Honestly, is there anything that is not in that wiki? But I digress).

Quote:

“If you think about the spin of a particle, such as an electron, it can point up or down or at any superposition of the two; partially up or partially down,” said Professor Awschalom.

Each of these different “superpositions” can represent an almost infinite number of combinations of ones and zeros.

“You can store an almost infinite number of bits of information in one particle space,” he added.

This almost limitless number of possibilities would also pave the way for advanced computer processing, such as is needed in quantum computing.

“The spin of a particle is a very natural particle for quantum information processing,” said Professor Awschalom.

 

I’m used to reading about major conflicts between classical and Quantum physics, but can anyone give me more info about the “superpositions” part of this theory – I’m having trouble getting my head around it?

This is the explanation from Wikipedia:

Spintronics is the ability to change or influence the rotation of an electron.

Electrons have the basic properties of spin, charge, and mass. That the electron has superposition (being everywhere) at the same time, where theory states you can only know certain values but not simultaneously, one pair is momentum and position, and the other is energy and time. Electrons have 2 spin states +spin up and -spin down which are usually found in paired electrons. No two electrons can occupy the same quantum state. Spin up and spin down states of fermions have different energies depending on whether or not the spin states are aligned with the magnetic field or not. Electrons absorb photons quantum energy to change valence orbits, and they lose spin coherence by colliding with mutually resonant photons frequencies causing the electron to spin flip by energy transfer through mutual spin-orbit coupling and photon emission.

 

I’m still having trouble getting this (the superposition article in Wikipedia isn’t much help either).

WHS Update: Dell Customer Service

~ rbonini ~ 2 Comments

Well, yesterday I ordered  1Gb in new memory for my Windows Home Server from Dell. I intend to install a Tv Card and SageTv and get more bang for my buck out of said server, thus the new memory.

Since I was lazy, I originally got a Dell PowerEdge SC440 for Whs to run on.

However, the memory I ordered yesterday was/is incompatible with the SC440 (this being despite the fact that I went to Memory Upgrades for the SC440 on Dell’s Website). So Dell Helpfully called to inform me of the fact.

Within minutes, the old order was canceled and the new order submitted and the earth once again revolved on its axis. Easy as pie.

Well, not quite. The new memory is not quite twice the original amount I paid- once again blowing the budget out of the water.

Nevertheless – congratulations to Dell.

So I’ll need to wait slightly longer than anticipated for the TV card.

I’ve not decided between:

Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T 500 – Dual Digital Freeview TV tuner

and 

Hauppauge WinTV HVR4000 – True HD TV tuner – Quad mode (Analogue, Digital, Satellite both DVB-S and HD DVB-S2)

(For those outwith the British Isles, Freeview is our version of free-to-air digital TV)

In typical fashion, the first is half the price of the second.

Not exactly Media Centre Edition, but the whole idea here is to the extend functionality of the Server – which spends most of its day idiling (truth be told, its only really busy between noon and 3pm when it backs the pcs up and SyncToy moves files to to the server). Though, Ill have to fiddle around with the backup times once the Sage is Installed.

And second, the Current PVR is hopelessly deluged with recordings that are usually watched weeks later (its only got 100GB of space).

And third, finally, I’d rather keep the recordings for than delete the everytime the space runs out.

I’ll keep you posted.

And kudos to Dell, again. for their customer service (and I don’t really mind the extra costs as a result 🙂 )

My Take on DRM

~ rbonini

OK, DRM is the ugly duckling of technology. No one likes it. And the reason is that it comes between us and our media.

Now I don’t mean coming between you and sharing your library over the Internet. That’s clearly a violation of copyright, among rather a lot else.  For the uninitiated in this argument, Scott Adams explains:

But obviously there has to be a limit. After I published my first best-selling book, The Dilbert Principle, within days it had been illegally scanned and was widely available on the Internet for free. Technically speaking, it wasn’t theft. But I still lost something. I (and my publisher) lost the ability to decide if, when, and how to publish as an e-book. You can’t compete with “free and immediate.”

From a legal standpoint, taking a creator’s right to control distribution of his art is not “theft.” It’s just “taking something that used to legally belong to someone else and making it your own.”

 

Fair enough? Ok.

However when media is bought (DVD’s, CD’s) its ours to watch in any way we see fit. usually this means popping a DVD into the drive to watch, either on your PC or HDTV.

For music I generally rip all my CD’s the moment I get them and keep them on my server. that way I can listen to my tracks from any TV within my house. I don’t do sharing (Scott Adams and his theory of cognitive dissonance to the contrary).

My point is that we should be able to do the same with DVD’s. Let me rip my collection to my server and watch them on any network PC.

Ahh, I hear you say, there is no guarantee that said DVD’s and music won’t find their way on to the Internet. True. This gets to the meat of my argument ,err, post.

DRM is too restrictive in the sense that it prevents even legitimate use of DVD’s. Lets change DRM from a content-oriented perspective to a network- oriented perspective. DRM should be focused on ensuring that content that has been ripped for legitimate use does not find its way out the home network.

Content owners fail to distinguish between ripping for legitimate use and ripping with malicious intent.

To implement such a network-oriented DRM, an arbitrary standard is required. The standard cannot be biased to  individual Studio’s or Record Labels.

The standard should define

  • a technical means of ensuring that copyrighted data is identified as it travels through the network
  • a technical means of determining the ultimate destination of packets of copyrighted data as they are requested over a network
  • a technical means of ensuring that copyrighted data is stopped either at the gateway or at its source (see above)
  • a technical means of identifying data across the various formats in general use

As far as an actual implementation of such a system, the technology is already there. Microsoft’s WMA format already supports allowing media to play only when there is a license installed. The licensing system simply has to be extended to cover the whole network.

How about a licensing server, then? The receiving media player simply checks the the packets of data and queries the server to ensure that its allowed to play the file/packet.

I’m sure Linksys and the rest of the router manufacturers will get in on the game and build checking routines into their gateways and routers.

As far as determining the destination at the beginning of a file copy operation, its up to Microsoft and Apple to implement this at the OS level.

Once the means to ensure that the spirit of the law is enforced is in place, then we can think about a law change (even here in the UK DVD ripping is a bit of a gray area).

Shel Isreal needs help

~ rbonini

Shel’s engaged in a new project to, in his words:

I have 60 days to produce three anecdotal research reports on The Americas; Asia Pacific and Europe-Mediterranean-West Asia and I need your help.

A report on what?

Here’s what I am doing.  I am trying to answer a single, overwhelming question: “What is going on in the world with regard to social media? I am looking for useful statistics, but those are often outdated before they are published as we learned with the book.

And Shel needs our help on this project:

I suggested to Mike that we conduct and report on this project, transparently, online on this site in the same way Robert and I wrote Naked Conversations. If the book had magic, had not come from the research or the actual writing.  It came from the collaboration we had shared with the blogosphere.  Bloggers gave us leads. They corrected the facts.  They let us know when we were making valid points and when we had gone over the top.

I proposed that we do the SAP Global Social Media Research on this blog, in collaboration with the blogosphere, that we do it transparently and that what we find we share on this blog. This, as far as I know, would differentiate it from any market research and the process in itself would become an example of thought leadership.

…

I want your stories.  For those of you who started reading this blog after the book was published, I interviewed most of the people in a Q & A style and posted them on this site.  Then other people left comments.  Those interviews got incorporated into chapters.  Early versions of the chapters were then posted and we received more comments before finalizing the chapter.

So, please start those cards and letters coming now.  If you have a story that reveals something about blogging, blogging trends in any country of the world please let me know.  SAP is more interested in business than consumer, but what people are doing is  valuable in that it shapes  all markets. You are encouraged to leave a comment here.  If you are shy you can email me at shelisrael1@gmail.com.

 

I’m looking forward to seeing this unfold ( I missed this the first time around with Naked Conversations). I fully intend to participate.

Well, what are you waiting for?

Scoble, Facebook and Zoho

~ rbonini

I’ve just been reading Scoble’s latest post. Its a long rant about Facebook (and maybe Social networking in general).

Now I don’t use any Social Network (Gasp!Say its not So! 🙂 )and its mainly because I prefer handling my friendships the old fashioned way – face to face. Any contacts go either on my phone, Outlook (Another gasp!! Outlook? OUTLOOK??? 🙂 )or Gmail.

But that’s not the point of the post.Its abut contacts in general. Outlook doesn’t do any sort of tagging. Gmail has tags. But not to the degree that Scoble suggests:

Let me define different behaviors for each tag. “LOVER” tag might go into one page with a password, for instance, that isn’t publicly available. That way Maryam and I could use a social network to send sweet nothings back and forth (I can’t use any of these networks for THAT kind of social networking). “BUSINESS ASSOCIATE” could have a form that includes why I care about that person, business wise. So I could put Fred Wilson there, add that he’s a VC, add his blog, add his Twitter account, etc.

Which is pretty clever.

They say genius is lightning across the brain. And as I read the above paragraph, a tool to do the job jumped instantly to mind –Zoho Creator.

Raffic Aslam, of Zoho, left this comment to my last Zoho post:

Dear User,

Thanks for your compliments )

I hope you would have checked out our scripting language – Deluge, which helps users to build powerful applications easily. I request you to try out Deluge Script and share your valuable thoughts.

Check out Deluge Scripting Video here –
http://static.zoho.com/creator/v2/collateral/delugescript/index.html

Thanks Again
~Raffic Aslam

 

The link is actually to a video of said scripting language in action, which you can view below (thanks to YouTube):

Its quite incredible. So this whole post is essentially a note to self reminding me to have a crack at this problem the next time I have a free afternoon. It’ll be more of a mashup than anything, but its a good idea to test Creator’s limits on.