MaisonBisson

Mobile Carrier Wireless Networking, Take 2

I took a long look at mobile wireless data service back in September. Now, Engadget says: They’re currently test-marketing a new wireless data plan called Mobile Media that costs fifteen bucks a month (the same as Sprint PCS Vision) and gives you unlimited data usage and access to their new streaming video service […] Assuming […] » about 300 words

Reader Report: PIE iPod Input Adapter

A reader, Mike, wrote in to reccomend the Precision Interface Electronics aux input adapter to connect the audio from my iPod to my Scion’s factory head unit. I don’t know if you ever found a solution to connecting your iPod to your Scion head unit, but if not, you can use this adapter to add […] » about 300 words

Pictures of the Warren Rocket

Warren is blessed with a rocket. It was once an intermediate range ballistic missile, but it’s basically the same rocket that launched America’s first astronauts Allen B. Shepherd and Gus Grissom into sub-orbital space. It’s enough to be proud of, anyway. RoadsideAmerica.com has a story on our rocket, but it’s based on reader reports and […] » about 300 words

The Christian Right and the Sanctity of Marriage

lquilter.net pointed me to an interesting entry at NewDonkey: The Christian Right and the Sanctity of Marriage As we all know, the Christian Right has now made defense of the institution of marriage, as defined as a union of a man and woman, not only its top political priority, but the very touchstone of Christian […] » about 400 words

Missiles Are The New Fashion

DefenseTech reported today that “Russia is leaning more and more on its nuclear weapons, as its conventional military falls into the toilet.” Elsewhere at DefenseTech today was a link to ArmsControlWonk, which leads to news that the US isn’t working with the IAEA. This isn’t good. The AP, via DefenseTech is reporting Speaking at a […] » about 700 words

Russian Battle Station Polyus

DefenseTech reported, some time ago, on the old USSR’s Space Battle Station (or, communist Russia’s answer to Reagan’s star wars program). More pictures are in a forum at Militaryphotos.net. Called Polyus, it was ridiculously huge — as with all things Russian. Sadly, (from a purely scientific perspective) DefenseTech reports “it couldn’t get itself into a […] » about 200 words

US Senate On Porn

I’ve been reading the archives at lquilter.net, where I stumbled across this amusing yet scary entry: …On the First Amendment side of things, Wired has a great new story explaining how recent Senate Commerce Committee, Science, Technology & Space Subcommittee hearings have shown that Internet porn is the worst scourge this nation has seen since […] » about 300 words

Shock Tanks

Gizmodo alerted me to these shocking remote control tanks. For 50 bucks you get two remote control tanks with which you and a pal will do battle. It’s a game of “maneauver and fire, evade,” or something like that, with the additional carrot that if you hit your opponent’s tank, he or she will get […] » about 200 words

Dog Sled Racing

Justin at the start of his four-dog sled race in Meredith, New Hampshire. The video of Justin’s finish is also online. Snow started falling early Friday and continued through Saturday morning. It’s the heavy, wet snow you get when the air is still warm. The frost isn’t deep and there are still-soft patches of ground […] » about 200 words

Cool TVs and RC Aerial Photos

Gizmodo went gaga for Plus Minus Zero, a little electronics shop in Japan where “they hand-design a selection of products, then contract the production of the units out for a limited run.” The post includes a picture of one of their products, an LCD television that looks like one of those classic tube TVs from the 1960s.

Then Gizmodo linked to this radio control aerial photography discussion board with some great pix. The point I need to remember to make to Cliff is that all the photos were taken from electric RC planes, not the noisy and messy gas burning type.

Bush On Tape

Cliff over at Spiralbound.net posted the video of Bush flipping the bird. It’s not as exciting as I’d hoped, but it’s on video.

Then there’s the Dubya Movie. It’s a fantastic mashup of old Don Kotts movies, but that’s already giving too much away. Go watch it, you’ll laugh.

A Night At The Hip Hopera

I’m not really sure how to describe The Kleptones and their album A Night At The Hip Hopera, but I can tell you how I found it. Disney sent takedown notices to those who were mirroring the work, raising the ire of the Copyfight community. You see, The Kleptones are really quite good, but their […] » about 200 words

States Rights

LQ wrote at lquilter.net about looming challenges to federalism i’ll be interested to see how the conservative, pro-federalism, pro-states’ rights, GOP-run government (and the conservative intelligentsia which carries their theoretical water) handles some of the upcoming challenges to federalism: medical marijuana laws state & regional initiatives on global warming: for isntance, California’s mandatory cap on […] » about 500 words

Flickr Random Selection

Email Is For Dinosaurs in South Korea

A South Korean newspaper is predicting the death of email.

A poll conducted […] on over 2,000 middle, high school and college students in Gyeonggi and Chungcheong provinces in October revealed that more than two-thirds of the respondents said, “I rarely use or don’t use e-mail at all.”

It seems email just isn’t fast enough for these wippersnappers.

…it’s impossible to tell whether an addressee has received a message right away and replies are not immediately forthcoming. […] “The new generation hate agonizing and waiting and tend to express their feelings immediately,” said Professor Lee. “The decline of email is a natural outcome reflecting such characteristics of the new generation.”

Engadget, which tipped me off, asks “Do they even have postal service in Korea anymore?”

What about statistics? The country’s top webmail service saw a greater than 20% decline year over year this October, while the nation’s No. 1 communication firm saw SMS transmissions skyrocket over 40% up in the same period.

Thanks also to SmartMobs for the info.

Lycos-Europe’s Spam Plan

SmartMobs reports that Lycos is planning to raise the cost of spam with a gentle DDOS attack. Yes, gentle. Lycos-Europe is distributing a free downloadable screensaver called Make Love Not Spam that directs a low-intensity distributed denial of service attack (DDOS) at URLs contained in spam messages. The BBC article quoted at SmartMobs reports: Mr […] » about 300 words

WiFi Seeker, Finder, Detector Roundup

Handtops.com has published a WiFi Seeker, Finder, Detector Roundup. The five models they reviewed include: Smart ID WiFi Detector – WFS-1 PCTEL WiFi Seeker Kensington WiFi Finder Plus Hawking Technologies WiFi Locator – HWL1 Canary Wireless Digital Hotspotter – HS10 My favorite, and it’s not based on any experience with any of these products, is […] » about 200 words

The War On Fair Use

Somebody somewhere, probably a lawyer in the entertainment industry, has a list titled “rabid fair use advocates” and David Rothman is near or at the top. Not that I mean that as a criticism, or that Mr. Rothman would take it as such. It’s just a likely fact. Today, however, I’m playing a game by […] » about 300 words

ENCompass for Digital Collections and Resource Access

We’re looking at ENCompass for Digital Collections and Resource Access here. It’s an expensive product, but has a lot of interesting and useful features.

Some sites we looked at in the demo today included New Zealand National Library, UT Dallas, and Alabama Mosaic.

Bloody Saturday in the Soviet Union: Novocherkassk, 1962

I had a long conversation with my brother about communist Russia last night. It’s not really an area I can talk about, execpt that I’d recently read enough to make me look semi-smart. My reading was of Samuel H. Baron’s Bloody Saturday in the Soviet Union: Novocherkassk, 1962. Review From Library Journal: Baron (history emeritus, […] » about 400 words

Robert Berger’s WiFi Will Beat Up Your WiMax

From WiFi Networking News: WiMax Hype, 802.11 Reality

Wi-Fi will out evolve and deliver connectivity at costs dramatically lower than WiMax. WiMax / 802.16 is just starting on its path to evolution, has a much smaller base of innovators and chipset growth volume. Wi-Fi is already far along on its core learning curve, has an easy order of magnitude larger base of innovators / investors and chipset growth volume. WiMax hype will sputter out to reality of a niche backhaul and rural marketplace, Wi-Fi/802.11 will evolve and grow into many more realms and dominate the Local Area Network (LAN) / Neighborhood Area Network (NAN) / Metro Area Network (MAN).

Berger’s conclusion is based on the history and development of earlier, wired networking technologies, where Ethernet is the clear winner. He reminds us that “Token Ring, then 802.12 AnyLAN VG, then ATM” were all once considered leading technologies that would replace lowly Ethernet, but didn’t. Today, 802.11 products are shunned by wireless carriers, but their spread and market dominance will be hard to beat by WiMax and 802.16.

http://db.isbn.nu/mt3/mt-tb.cgi/2755

iPod Integration Kits Proliferate for Home and Car

MacNN reports the Sonance iPort will ship later this month, which must mean next week. Anyway, the iPort is a wall mounted dock that hides all the cables — audio, firewire, dock, others — in the wall. The MacNN story includes nice pictures of the unit, including the beauty shot and a view of the […] » about 500 words

falljuahinpictures

fallujapictures (soon to be at falljuahinpictures.com) posts pictures too sad or scary to appear in most newspapers or even on this site.

Geolocation Stumbling Block: GeoURL Host Down

A an old John Udell piece at InfoWorld hints at GeoURLs, but the GoeURL site is down, and has been for a while. The concept sounds interesting: you mark pages with coordinates, then use GIS to map those pages to geographic locations, finding pages and people of interest along the way.

To join GeoURL, you add this kind of metadata to your homepage:

I got interested in this sort of thing (geolocation) a while back, and I haven’t quite given up.

Update: Bjørn is right, GeoURL is back and I should have updated this post ages ago. Look here for more about geolocation on MaisonBisson. …And Bjørn’s website is worth a look too.

Copyright Czar Cometh?

David Rothman at TeleRead echoed the following:

“Buried inside the massive $388 billion spending bill Congress approved last weekend is a program that creates a federal copyright enforcement czar.” – Lawmakers OK antipiracy czar, via CNET.

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a bunch of stuff I would have emailed you about