Will Linux For Windows Change The World?

Isn’t this just another way to have virtual machines inside windows?  I can do that now with VMWare so I don’t see what all the fuss is about.

 

Now what would be cool is MS Outlook for Linux!  Where is that at? 

[Slashdot]

Robots May Fight for the Army

Cool!  I wish I had a packbot! 

A Massachusetts company is working on a new generation of robots that would help American soldiers in battle. The machines won't look anything like the Terminator, though. By Mark Baard.

[Wired News]

Your Wish Is Its Command

Two please… Need them now. 

The FDA gives Cyberkinetics the green light to begin clinical trials on a brain-computer interface involving implants. Chips placed beneath paralyzed patients' skulls could allow them to command a computer to act -- merely by thinking.

[Wired News]

Bit Torrent question

I was *just* talking about this with TechnoD and Bill “needs a nickname” Odom. J

Here is the post: 

Bit Torrent and the ability to download everything in one click (is this the end of Direct TV, Tivo and the music business?!).

Used BitTorrent a little bit when it first came out and was a bit underwhelmed. It didn’t work, there weren’t a lot of places to find files, etc.

I decided to take another look at it when a designer friend of mine was telling me that he has the latest version of every single piece of design software on his Mac compliments of bit torrent (yes, I know it’s wrong… not the point I’m trying to make, the point is coming :-).

Part I: I installed bit torrent and immediately noticed an amazing new trend (prob. not new to all of you) of people posting dozens of albums in one RAR file for download. Huge file sizes in the 500 to 4,000 meg size range. The last season of seven seasons of Southpark, every Nirvanna album and here is another file with every Howard Stern radio show from March in one file.

In one click you grab one really well organized, clean and deep sets of files—scary.

Part II: A couple of month ago I got the Gateway Connected DVD player. For $195 it connects via WiFi to my desktop and I can hit the My Music or My Videos button on the remote control and pull up those directories on my hard drive (in the other room).

Part III: Today I moved into my new apartment in Santa Monica and was faced with the standard $100 month cable/dish bill and I’m thinking “dang, I only watch less then a half dozen TV shows and they are all here on bit torrent… maybe I should save the $1,200 a year and just download the shows and watch them via my Gateway Connected DVD player?”

The Point/Question: How soon before you’ll be able-with one click-download every prime-time TV show or last year’s top 500 CDs in one click?!

(Note: This is not a trick question, I have yet to find a file containing that much content—however, I did find a file with last weeks top 100 singles that someone put together in one nice package).

[The Digital Music Weblog]

[Marc's Voice]

Music executives want to see more expensive online music sales

Let me sum it up.

<soapbox>
Make crap music with only one good song on the CD and singles are going to sell better than the whole CD.

 

I can’t listen to just one song off of “The Wall” by Pink Floyd.  It’s just not possible.  I find myself already humming the beginning of the next track.  But try to listen to any of the pop music out there all the way through and you will be track hopping before you get half way through the CD.  Some people say that it’s our cultures built in ADD tendencies but I say it’s just crap music.
</soapbox>

 

 

Prices are going up. It's common to find albums selling for $14 online as opposed to that originative $10 mark, and the music industry is finding that selling singles online hurts the bottom line.

[Ars Technica]

Robo-Cars Make Cruise Control So Last Century

Interesting read.  If I were able to let the car drive me to work I could get an extra half hour of sleep… or maybe read more blogs. 

As cars become more in touch with surroundings and able to act autonomously, drivers are on the brink of the Jetsons age.

[New York Times: Technology]

VMWare VirtualCenter

 New coolness from the folks at VMWare.  You can read all the whitepapers at their site but the light came on yesterday when we started talking about blade servers.  If one VMWare ESX 2.01 can handle 10 VMs and you have 8 blades in a rack taking up 4U you can get 80 servers into 4U!!!  Granted you have to couple this with SAN space but most datacenters already have a SAN so it’s not a big issue.  When you think of the other things that make this handy…  You have 79 less network wires, keyboard, mouse and fiber…  And the new term “VMotion” and templates mean that you can add machines to the environment or move them around at ease.

 

Once again the folks at VMWare have put the M into PFM!