This Old Blog

On June 9th the Internet Tablet OS 2006 edition Beta was announced on maemo.org . What follows is a quick review of some of the features. Remember when I said Nokia might be good for Linux ? If this beta is any indication then I might have been wrong. Let me state up front that once installed, you can't revert back to an earlier version of the software (or at least I can't). The clock is fixed again. It was broken in the May 2006 release, being off by -3 hours. Now it behaves correctly. I still find the world view a waste of an application. At the very least they could draw the cities of the world on the map. WiFi networking has changed. If an application such as the web browser is started and there is no WiFi connection, then a connection will be automatically made from the collection of WiFi connections that the connection manager already knows about. The flip side is that if the application is closed then the WiFi connection is closed. I'm assuming this is so that bat...

Tuesday, May 30th - Back to Salem We enjoyed the Monday evening in Salem so much we went back to really look around Tuesday. So we got on the road in the morning and headed back over to Salem. This time we parked along Derby Street, across from the Custom House. The girls split up from us, and we went our separate ways for most of the day. Megan and Lauran went up the street to the House of the Seven Gables. Before they got there they hit In A Pig's Eye for lunch and then Ye Olde Pepper Candy Co. for some sweets. Then they went across the street to the House and took the tour. Judy and I wondered around the surrounding streets, looking at the Scale House, the Narbonne House, the Hawkes House, and the Derby House. We also wondered around and just looked at many of the surrounding residences, just enjoying the look of the architecture. Judy and I also checked out the Orientation Center next to the Friendship of Salem. While there Judy picked up a small monograph about the Friendship....

Monday, May 29th - To Salem and back Tewksbury I slept in late that morning until about 10am. I got up and checked on the girls. Lauran was sleeping the sleep of the innocents. She was out on the sofa while Megan was back in the second bedroom. Judy was also snoozing pretty heavily, so Megan and I went out to forage for breakfast for the family. We found a local store and picked up some supplies: break, peanut butter, grape jam, nachoes, salsa, stuff from the basic food groups. We paid for our groceries and headed back to Judy and Lauran. When we got back everybody got up and had a very late breakfast. Lauran was still zoned out from here staying up since Friday, and Judy's joints were really bothering her. Megan and I wanted to do something, so we decided to go see the new X-Men film. Spoilers Jean Grey is alive but comes back as Phoenix, the 'bad' girl. Phoenix kills Cyclops when Cyclops first finds her at Alkali Lake (Megan says good riddance to him). Frasier looks good...

We got up at 5 am Sunday morning. We'd worked like crazy until midnight Saturday cleaning, packing, and generally getting ready to fly up to Boston. I'd even loaded up the van Saturday night so the only thing Judy and Megan had to do was flop in the van for the trip to the airport. And it was a good think I had. It still took 30 minutes to get everybody up and out the vehicle. It was at that point out next door neighbor Chuck showed up. I'd talked him into driving the van back to our house, and then coming back next Sunday to pick us up. We'd looked after his house many times when he and his wife went on long trips. We got to the airport around 6am, checked in, and went out to the gate. We sat around waiting for the flight to board. We were finally in the air around 7:50 am. Even though the flight was through Delta we flew up on a Song 757. What was interesting about the 757 flight was the in-flight entertainment system. Behind each seat headrest, right in front of th...

Let's start off with an article in CNN's Technology section, " Making cell phones simple is hard ." The article's primary thrust is that the cellular operators want people to buy more sophisticated handsets so they can sell more expensive data services, and thus make more money. The simple voice-as-business model just doesn't work for the cellular operators any more, so they have to convince buyers to pay for downloaded music, email, and streaming video services. The biggest threat to this? Push back from a lot of customers who just want simple, reliable, and easy-to-use mobile telephones that deliver high-quality voice. And by the way, you can count me in as part of this crowd. The process of cramming ever-more functionality onto cellphones has made the cellphones ever-more difficult to configure and operate. Tiny screens, deeply layered menus, and the confusing user interface force many users to set up just the basics and then leave the rest of it alone out...

In spite of all the stonewalling, when Dell's numbers fell last quarter, the handwriting was really on the wall. Dell could no longer be a sole-source Intel shop. The business market had voted with its pocketbook, and Dell lost. Dell's first quarter net income slipped 18%. Note that this win is servers only. According to the article, Dell also said it would be building new servers using Intel's Woodcrest, which will be Intel's start of a long-awaited march back into competitive parity with AMD. I'm a decades-long fan of Intel. I've owned Intel stock since 1988 when I was given my first 12 shares. I've watched Intel stock split 6 times since then. Those 12 modest shares alone have grown to over 400 (not including other purchases over time). In spite of my Intel stock investment I've purchased AMD hardware over Intel. I've built three home systems over the past four years using nothing but Athlon XP 32-bit chips. All the hardware was purchased from New...

By Andy Borowitz Days after receiving an 18-page letter from Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President George W. Bush called the lengthy missive “an act of war” and demanded that Iran halt its production of long letters at once. At the White House, aides said that writing a letter of such length to President Bush, who is known for his extreme distaste for reading, was the most provocative act Mr. Ahmadinejad could have possibly committed. “Everyone knows that the last book the president read was ‘My Pet Goat,’” one aide said. “Expecting him to read an 18-page letter is really asking for it, and that Iranian dude must have known that.” According to those close to Mr. Bush, the president was infuriated upon receipt of the 18-page letter and asked aides if it was some kind of joke. The president then demanded that the letter be boiled down to a one- or two-page format, or possibly adapted to a DVD version, just as he had ordered for news reports on Hurricane Katrina. ...