Coyotos Secure Operating System

Coyotos Secure Operating System via Slashdot

I see this kind of thing all the time, and not just in software. "Blah is broken; we need to totally rewrite/rerelease/throw-out the old version of blah!" I'd like to quote Joel on Software here:
[They made] the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make:

They decided to rewrite the code from scratch.

Don't throw away, reuse! I was a big fan of this theory in '99-2000 when I was the CTO of a company and yet when the VCs came in and said throw it all out, I did! Never again (he says with ominous sounds in the background).

To the point at hand, as an intellectual exercise, this new "secure" operating system is interesting. But you will have no users of it except in very limited custom applications, you will have no apps for it and, more importantly, the time spent designing this operating system from scratch would be much better spent on securing (either in code, or through procedures) existing operating systems. Linux, MacOS, Windows XP, etc etc all have the ability to be far more secure than you would ever need, and the only reason they are or are not is because application vendors need a little insecurity or else it would be brutally hard to run ("You just double-clicked an application that has not be dual signed by two trusted parties, would you like to run it?")

Future Proof Stereo

Good night!

Uh, this monster is called the "Future Proof" stereo. It costs $4k. I can guarantee 2 things.

1) If you buy this, there will be something else that comes along that you will need an adapter for. This device has swappable boards, so you can add that new adapter right in and you're safe.
2) You will never use more than 30% of the connections on here. Additionally, you will never need to swap out the board.

Number two seems kind of odd, but I can say it with 99% accuracy. Yes, there's the outlier in every population, but, trust me, you do not need it. Further, if you did the math, I guarantee if you bought a $1500 receiver, then waited until you really could not attach some device, and bought a new $1500 receiver at that time, it'd be cheaper and better quality overall. Buy what you need, not what you think you need!

D

Next Generation Console Hype Machine Begins

PS3 and Xbox 2

I found another article here:

TIMEasia.com Business: Sony Plays for the Big Stakes: "Here's the world Kutaragi envisions: from your mobile phone, you send an e-mail telling the machine to turn up the air-conditioning at home. 'Welcome home,' it purrs when you open the front door; it then puts your video e-mail on the TV monitor. You command the [console] to download the movie you want and play it 30 minutes later. Mid-film, you stop to cue up a video game featuring the movie's main characters. Then you e-mail a virtual friend you met online who also likes this game; you face off against each other. "

Oops, that's about PS2 and from 2000. Look at how many of those things you can do today... none. Here's what I guarantee about the Xbox++, Gamecube++, PS++... it will have more processing power, more memory and will have some kind of game pad type device that you will use to control "video games". Anything else you read about this stuff now is worthless.

One thing that's kind of bad for Nintendo and Sony, however, is this quote:


Microsoft had delivered development kits to EA, said Mr Armes, but he said the company was still waiting on Sony and Nintendo to send kits.

Wow, that's really really bad. If this is the case, I am not sure how either of those consoles will be able to launch by the end of the year, and even if they do, I have no idea how they are going to have launch titles from any third parties. Eleven months is practically nothing when you talk about developing games on these types of platforms.

Entry level audio

E-MU 0404 Digital Audio System

I've always wanted to compose music. Actually, it's a recent passion of mine to attempt any sort of artistic expression (painting, writing, music, etc), but computerized music, that should be right up my alley! The really cool thing about this very cheap and very effective card is that it's virtually no cost to get started. The only problem is that this takes actual talent with instruments in order to make it work. I guess I'll be stuck working with ReBirth, which is great, but without some kind of vocals, it really leaves the entire exercise flat.

The Stock Market Bounce From Bush

TigerHawk

This is how weird the rancor on both sides has become. Maybe not become, maybe it was always this way, but now it's just obvious to everyone thanks to the web.

Nonetheless, the author says that the NYTimes understates the rally. While it is true that the rally could have been portrayed as bigger, the stats on Bush's rally is exactly correct. I do not know if they used all rallies equivalently (all windows were looked at from the day before election day to one week post election day), but again, the data is correct and labelled correctly. Yet because it does not portray Mr. Bush as positive ENOUGH, the author warns about believing the numbers/the Times. I would love people to just attempt to tone it down a little bit. I wonder if you fold in the results from January, would this individual be just as pissed?

Google's Billion-Dollar Idea

Fool.com: Google's Billion-Dollar Idea [Motley Fool Take] January 3, 2005

Now THIS is a billion dollar idea. Rather than sitting flat footed, waiting for the ads in the newspaper to have an effect, you could look at Google as dynamic demand generation. You have too many of x, you trigger an ad for x on Google. You have no more y, drop all your ads for y on Google. All tied in together to your systems. There's an elegance there that is difficult to overstate.

This is just the start though. There's a ubiquity to Google that I think a lot of people are missing. Remember, with ~1100 randomly sampled individuals, you're able to get a pretty good picture (95% accurate) of the US population as a whole. Mind you, that's truly random, and that's asking totally neutral questions, but that's the picture. If you increase the n, and reduce the amount of questions, you're able to get the same picture. Google roughly sees a hojillian people a day, but the sample is fairly biased. That said, if they saw x amount of people asking about laptops, or y amount of people asking about how to fix your basement using your patching trowel, and you could track those to an area, CompUSA or Home Depot would LOVE to know about it. Just-in-time the inventory request and simultaneously trigger an ad and you could have the extra items you need within a day or so, just as the people with the requests begin to associate your name with their need. It's quite remarkable.

Funhaler

Gizmodo : Funhaler via Gizmodo

This is an awesome device to make using an inhaler fun (well, fun-ish I suppose, since if you're using it, you're having an asthma attack). Especially cool is it uses basic marketing and toy principles (colors and spinning wheels = fun) combined with a basic device to encourage kids to use it and/or not make them look like pariahs.

I’d love to see this kind of strategy more often… imagine, an in-car breathalyzer that allows you to play Mario Kart before you drive (or while you’re waiting to sober up) or a blood sugar measure that plays Snoop whenever you measure. The basic philosophy is to make things that people normally find painful into tolerable by leveraging the design from other devices that are already addictive. Now if they could only invent a lifecycle machine that feels like a massage…

Drillsaw

via Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools

Man, for $12, I'd be crazy NOT to buy this. Or, alternatively, I'd be crazy TO buy it since I'd likely feel the need to use it and, while the rational for usage would be solid, allowing me to be the user of said tool would surely invite disaster. Still neat though...

D