mip's scan

Chatango for Your Blog

Thanks to Dave for pointing out this interesting online chat tool that allows you to easily put a free chat tool into your blog.  It's call Chatango and I've implemented it in the lefthand column of mip's scan.  So if I'm online feel free to say hello.  I look forward to your questions. 

$6 Million Dollar Man, Here We Come?

When I was a kid, I loved watching the Six Million Dollar Man.  I always wondered how I could get a good bionic arm like Steve Austin.  It's that childhood interest and my exploration in robotics that made this article an interesting read for me.

Scientists at Pittsburgh University have create a robotic arm that can be controlled via thought. 

...monkeys had tiny probes inserted into their brains and had their limbs restrained - but were then able to manipulate the robotic arm...

Quite amazing that the monkeys were able to control the arm to do things like feed themselves.  Imagine how amazing this would be for people who have lost a limb or the use of their limbs?  To read the complete article, click here.

New PC Security Threats

I don't know about you, but I personally find it so discouraging to find out that our PCs are under constant attack.  It seems that Microsoft has identified a mounting threat that could prove to be unstoppable.

Microsoft Corp. security researchers are warning about a new generation of powerful system-monitoring programs, or "rootkits," that are almost impossible to detect using current security products and could pose a serious risk to corporations and individuals.

It would seem that the hackers are managing to stay one step (or in this case it sounds like many, many steps) ahead of the defences being offered.  This new generation of virus and spyware programs can basically run invisibly. 

PSP UMD Pricing

It's been another of those weeks filled with a ton of client work.  My inbox and reading pile is filled with lots of great stuff for a Saturday read over a nice capuccino. 

So to start.  For those of us following the Sony handheld gaming device, the PSP, the games will come on small cd like discs called UMD (Universal Media Disc).  This discs can will also be sold with movies like today's DVDs.  The question was, how much will they cost.

$19.99-$28.95 price range established for UMD movies

To read the complete article click here.

Further Reading on "The Cell"

oAs per my other posts on the Cell, I throw this out to those of my readers who are interested in finding out more info.  I found a particularily well written article come across my desk as I read the Economist. 

A speed of 256 gigaflops is around ten times the performance of the chips found in the fastest desktop PCs today; the Cell is thus widely referred to as a “supercomputer on a chip”, which is an exaggeration, but not much of one.

To read the entire article, click here. 
As always, I'd love to hear what you have to think.

More on Microsoft Wallop

As you know I've been testing Wallop and wrote about it a short while back.  I continue to use and enjoy this social networking tool from Microsoft and have continued to formulate some thoughts around it.  I was disappointed that upon asking for some info on the direction of Wallop from a contact here at Microsoft Canada - I got no response.  So that's why I was pleased to see Robert Scoble point his readers (me included!) to a great resource.  In his post we get a link to Diamond in the Rough in Redmond which is an article that discuss social networking and the research going on at Microsoft.

Mac OS on A PC?!?

MacDailyNews has got a great excerpt from a Fortune Magazine's interview with Steve Jobs.  What I found most interesting was the following comment by Steve Jobs

"Mac OS X is so solid that Apple is beginning to sell Macs into markets that never before would even consider them, like the military and university supercomputer centers. Most tantalizing of all is scuttlebutt that three of the biggest PC makers are wooing Jobs to let them license OS X and adapt it to computers built around standard Intel chips. Why? They want to offer customers, many of whom are sick of the security problems that go with Windows and tired of waiting for Longhorn, an alternative."

The underlining is my own emphasis on the above quote.  It jumped out at me!  Wouldn't that be a smart move on Apple's part?  There resist to licencing the OS back in the 80's was what let Microsoft rip them off and create their own version of the Mac OS.  Do you think that perhaps Apple might have learned from this past mistake?  I think that the market is right - people have grown tired with what the Microsoft-monopoly has provided and they'd embrace change. 

So three of the big makers are asking Steve Jobs to license the OS.  The more interesting question from my perspective is: How did Steve answer them?

Firefox Threat

I've often been accused of picking on Microsoft with regard to their security issues.  Well to be sure, I am fairly technology agnostic.  And so I wanted to be sure that my readers (especially those of you who are now using Firefox) were aware of a potential threat that has surfaced.

I read about the issue in an article called Bad News About Firefox where the author describes the threat

that can allow the URL displayed in the address bar and the SSL certificate to be spoofed, which means the browser and others are vulnerable to phishing attacks. The flaw affects all browsers built using the open-source Gecko browser kernel. And this time around, Internet Explorer is not vulnerable to the attack.

but more importantly, that there has been no patch issued yet.  Hopefully a patch will be issued and we can get back to surfing safely online.

IBM/Sony/Toshiba Cell

I was talking about the upcoming Cell chip that is to make its first appearance in the PS3 with my close friend John via email.  In a series of 8-10 emails we bounced back and forth the debate as to whether this chip is going to be revolutionary or if its a lot of hype.  I thought I'd put something here, not so much to make a case myself, but perhaps to spark a similar discussion and see what people think. 

But first let me share some interesting details around this processor from other sources on the Web.

Wireless LAN Infrastructure

The latest Unstrung Insider has very specific information about how much a company can expect to spend on wireless LAN  infrastructure. The study says that orders around $100,000 will require that a company spends between $600 and $800 per 802.11a/g access point.

For orders that top out near the $30,000  mark, the per-AP cost will run $700 to $1,000. Professional integration services will tag 10 percent to 30 percent onto the total, the report says.

These are only guidelines: Companies can find cheaper gear or, if they are focused on a particular  feature, may pay a bit more.

In one paragraph, the article  says these prices will remain relatively steady during 2005, but in the next it says that sources report Cisco is "aggressively" cutting the price of its Aironet APs in order to maintain  market share.