For Android hackery:
The Nook Color is interesting in that it has a microSD card slot that it will boot off of, and the bootloader is not locked (does not require signed files to boot). So, you can actually carry around a wallet of microSD cards with different operating systems and leave the built-in firmware untouched. I'm not sure I know of any other Android tablets that are this flexible out of the box. I've got one, and ran Froyo on it before B&N updated the stock firmware to Froyo, ran Honeycomb on it, run CM7.1 on it, and expect to run CM9 (ICS) on it "soon", all without modifying the stock firmware at all.
(Oh, and some of these new kernels have activated the Nook's internal bluetooth hardware, present on the chipset but ignored by Barnes & Noble. I've used a bluetooth keyboard with my Nook Color. And yes, I've also sideloaded the Kindle Android app this way.)
The Fire has no external media slots but also lets you replace its kernel, so if you're willing to stomp all over internal storage, it's just about as hackable as the Nook Color. (Slightly less, since you have to "jailbreak" or "root" it in some way to get started, and that involves holes that might be closed. The Nook Color can, by design, just boot off microSD with no need to compromise the stock software to do it.)
The Nook Tablet requires signed flies to boot, so it's harder to completely replace the whole OS. There are hacks you can do, but they're of a different order than what you can do on the Nook Color or Kindle Fire.
For content:
Kindle Fire wins if you're locked into Amazon. IMHO, Nook (Tablet or Color) wins if you're not.
The Nooks support the B&N store, but also have Adobe's DRM built into their firmware, and also use EPUB as their native book format. So, you can for example buy books from the University of Chicago Press ebook shop and read them directly on your Nook alongside B&N content. You can take an EPUB file generated by doing "Save As..." from "Pages" and read it on your Nook. You can take the DRM-free EPUB or PDF files from O'Reilly books, write 'em to a microSD card, and read 'em on your Nook. You can use any of the Adobe-DRM-protected EPUB or PDF books lent by public libraries via providers like "OverDrive".
The Nooks also already have Netflix and Hulu+ and some other content services. DRM-free MP3 and AAC files will play. (And you can sideload Amazon's own app store too. That's unambiguously legal. Sideloading Google's app store isn't unambiguously legal in all cases.)
(Oh, and the color LCD Nooks also have hardware volume buttons, the lack of which I've heard more than one Fire user complain about.)
What you lose are Kindle-exclusive books, your existing Kindle library, Amazon's video streaming, and some integration with Amazon.
All that said, if you're willing and able to manually strip DRM and convert file formats, you can go back and forth between the DRM systems and between MOBI and EPUB. If you're willing to do that, I guess it mostly comes down to hardware differences (number of buttons & card slots, a contest Nook wins) versus direct coupling to vendor ecosystem (a contest Fire wins).
]]>One of the biggies is DNA analysis. The gear to do it keeps getting smaller and cheaper and faster. Sure, people already talk about how this will be used by insurance companies, and there was GATTACA, but I am talking about taking it farther than that.
Imagine a day when it fits in a signet ring and can work via a few skin cells, so you can surreptitiously analyze someone's DNA via a handshake. Imagine a handshake being able to identify you if you're in the database, but identify your family members and ethnicity and certain traits (like propensity for certain addictive behaviors and how broccoli tastes to you) even if you're not in the database.
The other biggie is combining Paul Ekman's work with improved technology. Experts in his techniques can already do something eerily close to mind-reading if you don't understand how it works, by paying attention to involuntary fleeting microexpressions and other involuntary and poorly-controllable muscular action that corresponds with internal traits. Combine this with, for example, thermal imaging, so you can tell which regions of the face have increased blood flow, and you're getting even closer to a real lie-detector, and that's without the work that's also been going on in the realm of literal mind-reading via MRI. It seems likely (to me) that the day will come when truly reliable lie detection is a fact of life.
Forget the big-brother government side of that: can you imagine a meeting between a business and a vendor rep during which the vendor rep was being reliably monitored for falsehoods and evasions? Or a speed-dating setup where all parties were monitored that way?
And of course I'm sure there are related areas of research that I haven't heard anything about.
It seems possible to me that within the time frame Charlie is talking about, we may have more than one technological change that results in radically more transparency in the world, for good and bad. Just think, what would today's American politics look like if it were literally impossible for anyone on a TV news program to get away with a lie or evasion? What would happen to marketing?
And what happens to anonymity when everyone who shakes your hand or brushes against you in a crowd might just have snagged your DNA sequence, timestamped and geotagged it, and uploaded it to a public database overlayed on something like "Google Earth"?
Fun times ahead!
(And for the record: I'm American, Gen-X, born in 1968. Charlie would probably consider me a nutball conservative. Many Americans would consider me a nutball elitist liberal, except for the ones who'd agree with Charlie. And I did really enjoy the Douglas Coupland novel.)
]]>When I wake up, my phone is talking to my home wifi, NATed behind an access point that has a static IP address. As I start going to work, at some point I'll walk out of range of that, and glom onto AT&T's network, where I'll stay during my bus ride. At some point I'll get to my workplace, and the wifi signal strength from my employer will get strong enough, and I'll get a DHCP-assigned address from their dynamic pool, right on the internet without NAT or significant firewalls.
When I go out for lunch, I might remain on my employer's network if I pick a venue close enough (we have a lot of buildings locally), or on AT&T, or maybe on the Starbucks network if for example I pick the sandwich shop next-door to them.
And then in the evening, the morning routine is reversed. On my iPad, similar flitting about happens, but without the AT&T bits as I am not willing to pay for a data plan for my iPad. (It's fine if I can only use it when there's wifi around, or, in an "emergency", I can tether it to my phone.)
But it's probably fine, as long as the rejection notice contains enough information for me to know what's going on. I bet if I hit my "back" button, the forms will contain all the stuff I typed in, and I can reload the page and hit "submit" again and it'll be fine. Right?
(If not, maybe I'll just make a point of only accessing your stuff via a VPN under my own control. That'd fix it all for sure.)
]]>So, there's this concept of the autograph book, in which one collects autographs of famous people. I've got one, but it's an Autograph Book of Thoth.
I've got a Book of Thoth tarot deck, and I get famous people to sign individual cards that I associate with them. So I've got Graham Chapman on "The Fool" (he spoke at my university before his death, and this deck was in my pockets at the time, and that's how my tradition started). I've got Robert Anton Wilson on "The Wheel of Fortune", I've got Alton Brown on the "Art" (as in "artisan") card (covered with alchemical symbols), and I've got Neil Gaiman on "The Moon".
(Interesting story behind that last one, too. Presented him with three cards I thought might fit him, and explained that unlike many of the other people who've signed, he understood Tarot well enough to pick for himself. He loved that, but then further suggested that we let the cards pick by shuffling and drawing. "The Moon" came up, and then we both geeked for a moment about how well it fit. And by the way, Alton Brown similarly geeked about how appropriate the art card was, and recognized at least some of the alchemical symbols before I pointed them out to him.)
But I've missed chances to get many more signatures. I don't carry the whole deck around with me anymore.
]]>I suspect better would be really outstanding eye tracking. You're right that the finger is way too big and imprecise for placing text cursors, but I suspect it's fine for indicating that you wish a text cursor to be placed. If you could look at the spot you want the cursor to go and touch the screen vaguely near that spot... the device uses your finger to figure out your intent, but uses your visual attention to figure out the details.
(Of course, a bunch of function keys or a command key would be even better than touching the screen in this case. If command-g means "go where I mean", no need to take your hands off the keyboard.)
]]>The reason you reminded me of him is the reason he was brought out of retirement from time to time. He was one of the people who knew how to do work on the ELF radio systems that were so important to the Navy. This was an extremely low bandwidth mechanism, but it has the advantage of penetrating seawater. So, all they'd ever send out on it was "hey you, submarine, message incoming, so poke an antenna up through the surface please". The bandwidth was too low for much more than that, but that one use gave it critical importance.
(See the connection?)
(Some day I should tell you about the test my laser-enthusiast buddies came up with for determining the quality of a beer.)
]]>(Those are: Apple's DRM that they used to use for iTunes and still use for video and apps, and Microsoft's DRM that they use on the XBox game console.)
The problems I've had with Audible DRM:
1) It's scoped to a computer, not to a user account on the computer. So the very first time you activate Audible content on a Macintosh, if you're logged in as a non-admin user who can't store the machine-scoped credential, it doesn't work quite right. Do this as an admin user (even if the account only temporarily has admin privs) and you're fine. Most user won't notice this.
2) The newer 2nd-generation AppleTV devices don't support its DRM, so I can't play it back on them unless I use AirPlay to stream them from a device on which it does work. It works on every other device I have that I want to listen to audio books on. The built-in audio features of every iPod ever made (plus iPhone and iPad) support the DRM, but there's also a standalone iOS app and an Android app, and these have some advantages in terms of managing your audio book library.
Of course YMMV, particularly if you don't use the same mix of devices as me (these days, mostly MacOS/iOS with a little Android... and with Linux on servers, but that doesn't interact with audiobooks). But my understanding is that their Windows software is pretty decent and even includes the option to burn the books to a CD-R to listen on a CD player. Haven't tried it myself. If you use Linux on the desktop I do not know what your options are.
I've been a satisfied Audible customer since May of 2003, when I bought my first book there -- a book which I can still re-download at will today. It's definitely my preferred source for audio books, when there's no DRM-free alternative.
(And the book I bought back then is one I've listened to every year since. It's a collection of Poe stories and poems, read by Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone. Yeah. I play it aloud in my office every Halloween.)
]]>1) The best possible outcome for a wish. 2&3) held in reserve
If we absolutely must pick a different wish this time, I guess I'd have to go with:
1) Justice. 2&3) held in reserve
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