John K. Davis, Independent Distributor, SendOutCards

Generally Speaking...

General Wesley Clark's opening gambit on the Internet is a Weblog-savvy site that should make all the other candidates except Howard Dean envious:

Official Clark '04 Campaign Blog: Generally Speaking...

• There will be posts from the Blog Team who work among the campaign staff headquartered in Little Rock, AR
• Posts from Wes Clark, Jr. (the General's son)
• Regular guest bloggers and influential bloggers will be stopping by.
• There will also be regular posts from the General himself.

Killing HAL

Do you remember listening as HAL spoke his dying words in the movie 2001; A Space Odyssey? The machine knew he was dying. He could feel it.

“Attorney Dr. Martine Rothblatt filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to prevent a corporation from disconnecting an intelligent computer in a mock trial at the International Bar Association conference in San Francisco, Sept. 16, 2003. The issue could arise in a real court within the next few decades, as computers achieve or exceed the information processing capability of the human mind and the boundary between human and machine becomes increasingly blurred.”

Government Mandate

The Defense Department expects to issue a statement in the next few days calling on suppliers to adopt the new version of EPCglobal by 2005. This will give another boost to RFID and simultaneously increase passionate outrage by privacy activists.

Last Q Game

Janet and I are enjoying the last Padre game at Qualcom Stadium.

CWSL Seats

Right to left it is Lera, Steve, Janet and John. California Western School of Law is hosting the Dean, Associate Dean and their spouses at today's game.

Emerging Technologies Conference

The Emerging Technologies Conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this week was packed with presentations about future technologies.

CyberInsecurity

The Internet flattens power structures. A report by the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) is creating quite a furor. The report titled "CyberInsecurity: The Cost of Monopoly; How the Dominance of Microsoft’s Products Poses a Risk to Security" is a damning indictment of the software giant.

One of the authors was fired today by his employer, @Stake, where he worked as Chief Technology Officer for the security consultant. Many online news services have refused to run stories about the report. Respected voices around the Internet are wondering if a conspiracy to stop dissemination of the report is afoot. One of the few independent organizations to review the paper is The Register and they conclude that the report's "arguments are stronger and more complex than the headlines might suggest."

E-paper

E-paper, or e-ink, has been in development for a few years now. The economy may have slowed introduction of this emerging technology to consumers, but we can expect to see a few of the new products soon.

One of the “problems” with the technology is its relatively slow refresh capability--no video. This will not prevent quick acceptance of the devices that will use e-paper, but it is something that has been getting a lot of R&D attention. Now an announcement from Philips Research asserts that a solution has been found:

Wierdness

Things are a little weird these days. Janet and I gave our living room furniture to Goodwill to make room for the new couch, loveseat and chair we purchased five weeks ago--the new items will be arriving in a week, or so. We watched a movie last night while having a picnic on the living room carpet.

My need to move to the next phase of being a Technology Advocate also adds to the weirdness because I'm not really sure yet what I'm going to do, what technology, which product(s) or service(s), organization(s) or idea(s) I will promote and represent. I am going to focus on something new, it is not clear yet what it is.

And something weird is happening with my Weblog new entry email distribution notice. For reasons that are not clear, when I post a new entry to the blog, each notice is replicating itself in cyberspace and recipients get multiple copies of the notice in their email inbox. My Internet Service Provider, domain nameserver host and blog service are all working on the problem but no one has any insight into the situation yet. I disabled the notification process until this gets resolved.

Tire IQ

The progression of RFID inspired applications is at that exciting time when many are having aha moments and extending the technology into new corners of utility. A good example is what is happening with car tires. Michelin started embedding RFID chips into its tires some time ago. Other tire manufacturers have followed.

Now, in an announcement I read at the Automotive Design and Production website, comes an article about Siemens VDO Automotive and Goodyear extending RFID functionality to incorporate tires into the vehicle's local area network. They have created the Tire IQ system. More than a tire pressure monitoring system, Tire IQ effectively "wires" the tires into a vehicle’s electronic network, providing information on tire performance in addition to monitoring air pressure and temperature.