Why Nobody Likes a Smart Machine
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We and our machines are about to go through a rocky transition as the machines get smarter and take over more tasks.
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This little OQO  machine is certainly pretty cool.  The biggest problem though is that it doesn't run Linux.  This leaves you with a device heavier than your PDA and all the insecurity and bloat of Windows and with a price tag of only sub $2000.  People don't care what OS their PDA/Handtop runs.  It can run an alternative OS and for the most part consumers don't care.  WinCE hasn't exactly been a stellar market success.  While Microsoft does have significant market share PalmOS, Symbian, and Linux are doing just fine.  Also most of the WinCE devices never have the fit and finish of their Palm and Symbian counterparts.  I don't know where OQO thinks they are going to fit in.  If they were to  ...
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There is something rather antiquated about many of the server clusters used today by engineers, scientists and media fiends. Their high-powered computing machines are often cobbled together over many days
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The age of convenient portable electronics is also the age of annoying rechargers. Every iPod, cellphone, and digital camera needs to be plugged in regularly or the battery dies and is useless.
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Smart phones -- cellphones with a big screen, a keyboard and the ability to run add-on programs -- are not necessarily phones to the people who use them. Their versatility allows them to impersonate the other handheld devices you might otherwise carry around; in reality, any given smart phone may be...
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Many of you can't be trusted with your own computers. Stupidity isn't the problem. It's laziness, mostly, combined with a penny-wise stinginess that resents the $40 price of a good antivirus program.
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Underpromising in order to overdeliver can't make up for sluggish operating results.
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A cadre of unknown designers shapes everyday human-machine interactions. By Andrew Blum from Wired magazine.
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Many technologies may be a waste of time and money, researcher says.
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With BlackBerry pagers and Treo smartphones all the rage, why would anyone need -- or even want -- a pedestrian personal digital assistant?
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The word "smartphones" is misleading, inexact, confusing and obsolete. The general public doesn't know what "smartphone" means, the experts disagree and vendors can't use it. It's time to drop it.
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Disastrous service can turn off customers and investors.
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Can computers get along fine without writers? Word is they just might. [Missing Link]
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When it comes to digital gadgets, Europeans are not impressed by do-it-all devices that play songs and films, keep track of appointments and play video games, a new survey on Monday said.
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BlackBerrys and Bluetooth share an embarrassing trait -- these two uses of wireless technology have remained stubbornly irrelevant to many mainstream users, despite the benefits they might offer and the hype they often get in the press.
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Babies don't come with remote controls or even an OFF switch.  Do the promises made by high-tech baby gadgets set up new parents for increased burnout and disappointment?
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(InfoWorld) - What a world. We have to fight off viruses, zombies, bots, phishing, and on and on. Can you believe how many just plain evil people there are in the world? And what is their point? Simple thievery? To prove they are smarter than the rest of us? And think of all the money that's spent on defending, as best we can, against these miscreants or in cleaning up the mess when they get the better of us? Indeed, what a waste. While viruses have appeared on mobile devices, they are, thankfully, few and far between. Part of the reason for this has been a lack of standardization of software environments on handsets, and part is due to the minimal functionality that is typical on these products. It's hard for the socially challenged to overwrite boot sectors, corrupt data, or otherwise run amok on most cell phones today. Apple's decision to limit local software execution on the iPhone is undoubtedly due, at least in part, to a fundamental fear of hackers. While the Macintosh hasn't been much of a target for the hacker community, the iPhone could be a lot more tempting. There will be far more iPhones than Macs in the world in just a few years. Plus, Apple partner AT&T doesn't need the support headaches that come with having a large number of users jamming its 800 numbers with reports of bizarre symptoms on their iPhones. Regardless, being a Web services guy, I absolutely applaud Apple for moving the Web services art forward a notch or two with a very capable platform that might indeed replace PCs for many of us over the next decade or so. We don't need to run a lot of local code to have a meaningful IT experience while on the go. Of course, the iPhone will be hacked over time, requiring updates and fixes, just as is the case with the PC. There are already reports of hackers working diligently to unlock the phone so that non-AT&T SIM cards can be used, and to avoid cellular activation so that the device would be used only Wi-Fi networks -- with VoFi services, of course. Any programmable device runs this kind of risk, and defending against unauthorized code will remain a challenge for some time to come. Which brings me to a really obscure but very important, shall we say, "opportunity" for hackers. Last year, I wrote about one of the most exciting technology developments in wireless, software-defined radio (SDR). Basically, SDR simplifies radio hardware design by replacing specialized circuitry with software. Among the many benefits of SDR are over-the-air bug fixes, the ability to add new features on demand, and dynamic reprogrammability -- turning, for example, a GSM phone into a CDMA phone or even Wi-Fi or Bluetooth or UWB or whatever on the fly. With so much software at play here, the question has to be asked: Could an SDR get hacked? Suppose someone figures out how to build a virus that quickly spreads to SDR-based handsets, disabling them or using them as jammers or worse? What if those handsets are being used for public-safety applications? This is not to say that hacking is the only vector for wireless disruptions. After all, anyone can use a jammer to disable communications in a local area, and any moron with a reasonable shortwave transmitter can pretend to be an air traffic controller. That fact that we still use an unencrypted, unauthenticated communications protocol for such a critical service boggles my mind. The FCC is rightfully concerned about SDR hacking and has issued new regulations for SDRs that mostly attempt to deal with open source software in SDR applications. There is significant concern that open source software creates specific vulnerabilities that hackers could exploit. I don't think this is very likely for two reasons. First, open source isn't the same as open architectures. Each product vendor would of necessity keep certain elements of their implementation secret, locking out all but the most determined hackers. But secondly, and more importantly, the real issue is how to protect individual phones from ever loading harmful software. We already have pretty good techniques for this from the PC world, and there are many effective approaches to solving this particular security concern. It could even be argued that the technical scrutiny that comes with open source actually enhances security and integrity; the real issue is controlling what software, open source or not, gets onto the mobile device. As I noted in my last column, the big issue with SDR isn't hackers or security: It is the need to lower the power demands of SDR implementations so that they have a prayer of running on batteries. The road to SDR-based handsets isn't at all paved yet, but open source is a relatively minor concern.