Circuit Writer Version 5.7

by Jim Scheef

Telephone companies get retroactive immunity or we all die?

Our Congress-people never fail to amaze me. It looks like sufficient Congress-people will cave into President Bush’s fear mongering and pass legislation giving the telephone companies retroactive immunity from lawsuits over their role in the warrantless wiretapping authorized by the Bush administration following the September 11 attacks. The truly unfortunate situation is that these suits are the only wedge available to bring out the truth of the extent of the wiretap programs.

So let me see if I understand where we stand. If Congress does not include retroactive immunity in the FISA reauthorization bill, the President will veto the bill that presently allows him to do whatever it is that he is doing now. So he’d stop doing whatever that is, right? Sure he will! So our President is telling us that he is willing to risk all of our lives in another terrorist attack rather than have the telephone companies tell us about the secret spy programs he has been running to protect us from those terrorists. Do I have that right? The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF.org) is one of the co-lead counsels in many suits against the telephone carriers. EFF is also busy defending your right to use the digital entertainment you buy where and how you wish. They deserve your support.

In case you haven’t noticed, this is a political year. I will try to limit my incursions into politics until we get into the actual campaign – you know, the one that didn’t start fourteen months ago.

Try a new Web 2 application

Remember the Zoho applications I demonstrated at the January general meeting? I used Zoho Show (http://show.zoho.com/public/jscheef/WhatsHot) and Zoho Wiki (http://littlegreenlaptop.wiki.zoho.com/) to make a short presentation on the XO Laptop – a two for the price of one super productivity effort, if I do say so myself!

Now you get to try something right along side me – Zoho Notebook. This is a web-based version of Microsoft OneNote. If you have tried OneNote, you know that it is a fabulous way to take notes and accumulate research material from the web. I intend to see if Zoho Notebook can be as useful and you can to. So far I know only what I read in a quick review. Try it at http://notebook.zoho.com/.

Palm Treo users rejoice

A news item caught my eye and I pass it along. I prefer cell phones that are primarily phones but I know many of you like your smartphones. Apparently many people who purchased the Palm Treo 600 and 650 Smartphone had trouble. In fact, there was so much trouble that there have been several class action lawsuits against Palm, Inc. One of these has been settled. From treocentral.com: “The Palza Action alleges that the Treo 600 and Treo 650's had many defects, including poor sound quality, buzzing, choppiness, speakerphone problems, defective screens, camera problems, MP3 player problems, defective headset jack, SIM card problems, freezes, crashes, and electrical surges. Also alleged is that Palm replaced defective units with refurbished phones that were subject to identical problems.” This settlement covers six actions against Palm. I had no idea so many people could be so unhappy!

Nevertheless, if you are one of these unhappy people, Palm, Inc. will send you a rebate! See www.palzasettlement.com to see if you qualify as sufficiently unhappy to be a part of all this.

Is Wi-Max the next big thing?

Have you heard of Wi-Max? The technical name is IEEE 802.16. To get you bearings on this, Wi-Fi is 802.11. The simple description is Wi-Fi on steroids and HGH. Wi-Max is a service you buy from a provider and currently has two flavors under discussion- fixed and mobile. With a potential range of 30 miles and speed up to 70Mbps (equivalent to wired Ethernet), Wi-Max could be an alternative to buying your Internet access from the cable or phone company. I say ‘could’ because almost no one is even talking about deploying Wi-Max in the US. In parts of Africa, Europe, Central Asia, and the Far East, Wi-Max is already making a difference. In remote areas, Wi-Max can substitute for both data and voice telephone infrastructure. This, of course, is why our telephone carriers consider it such a threat. I was all set to invest in Wi-Max equipment makers before the latest stock market slip. Intel has been pushing Wi-Max for some time and now Motorola is jumping on the bandwagon. Check Wikipedia for basic information and eWeek and other sources for current events. The barriers to entry (spectrum costs and infrastructure investment) in this country will likely prevent Wi-Max from ever becoming real competition to existing Internet access technology (DSL, cable, 3G cellular), but in parts of the world without such incumbent technologies, Wi-Max could be a real winner.

The growing tangle of wires behind your TV

Remember when all you needed to connect your TV was to plug in the power and attach an antenna. In the flat terrain of the Midwest where I grew up, many people used the “rabbit ears” antenna that was built into many televisions. Now you need a degree in Component Connection Technology (an area of advanced study I just created) to buy and set up even a basic high definition “home theater”. The New York Times Circuits section on Thursday, February 7 is a case in point. One of the feature articles is about cables, actually just one type of cable, the HDMI or high-definition multimedia interface. And this article is listed under “Basics”!

The June general meeting is listed as “HDTV/DVD/Home Theater” and your board of directors is working hard to ensure that this program has real answers to real questions. Reading the NY Times article (http://tinyurl.com/3x2k7r) is required reading for video neophytes like me before the June meeting. The board has even prepared a set of questions for the speaker to address and included is the complexity of connecting the various parts of your “home theater”. One of my questions is what are the advantages and disadvantages of the various types of cables? For example, if I want to buy a high-definition DVD player (now that the format war is over) what cables are needed to play movies at HD resolution? The NY Times article touches on this question:

“The cost of a single additional HDMI connection can be significant,” said Dan McCarron, a display product manager for JVC. Mr. McCarron said that unlike other types of connections, HDMI required a special set of microchips to enable its built-in copy protection. “In addition, there’s an HDMI licensing fee that’s paid on a per input basis,” he said.

Note that HDMI includes “built-in copy protection”. What does this mean for different types of source video? OK, the movie studios will prevent you from diverting a video stream from a movie to an unprotected device like a computer where you might make a copy. My understanding is that the DVD player will automatically downgrade the video stream to analog TV “standard resolution” if the target device does not provide the same level of copy protection. OK, so what if the video source is an HD camcorder? Will the video of my granddaughter’s birthday party also be downgraded if I want to edit it before I burn it to a DVD?

HDTV is no longer a simple matter of technology, the legal issues are as tangled as the cables behind the set and more difficult to understand than programming a universal remote control. This is why your digital rights need protecting. Remember the Electronic Frontier Foundation? Check out their website at http://www.eff.org/.