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Dave Winer details the 22 steps it takes to download an episode of Meet the Press. To contrast, I have a program on my phone called Egress. It’s not perfect but it does this relatively well.

First time setup:

1. Go to my Bloglines account and search for feeds about Meet the Press.
2. Click on the serach results to preview the feed until one of them has an “enclosure” link in it.
3. Add that feed to my Bloglines (I keep it in a folder called podcasts).
4. On my phone, launch Egress and tell it to add a feed from a synchronized channel (Bloglines)
5. Give it my Bloglines username and password
6. Pick the Meet the Press feed from the list.

In order to get the new show, I click on the update button in Egress. It helps if I’m on a wifi network because the shows are pretty big for EDGE. though sometimes I leave the building before I download ;).

Wire reports that the Senate Commerce Committee is deadlocked on some net neutrality amendments in a current telecommunications bill.  The amendment basically says that a service provider cannot prioritize their own packets over competitors’ that are traveling on their lines.  It does not prohibit prioritization by type (e.g. all video can go faster than all e-mail).

I showed my wife the included quotation of Senator Ted Stevens’ attempt to explain why the amendment is bad.  After reading about his e-mail problem her first question was “Did he check his e-mail since Friday at 10?”  Well put.  Perhaps Senators should not use anecdotes from their own experience with technology to make laws.  I wonder why we have Senators who are obviously ignorant of technology involved in regulating it.

This is an election year.  It is a good time to promote some churn in Congress and elect new young faces into Congress.  Let’s elect some people who can represent the United States of America in the 21st century.

Clint Deboer writes 10 reasons why HD DVD is doomed to failure.  There is precisely one reason that HD DVD is doomed to be the next laserdisc (at best): there is nothing better about it.  That is a lie - there is lots of new technological improvements, but if you ask the average consumer what they think, they will tell you that they see nothing new.  Comparing the DVD to HD-DVD transition to the DVD to VHS, most consumers will tell you they buy or rent DVDs because they can skip the previews, don’t have to rewind and the picture never gets fuzzy in the middle of the movie.  Compared with the videophiles who bought DVDs for better quality, most people are only now buying HD TVs and starting to realize that DVDs actually look and sound better.

Clint is right on the mark comparing the HD-DVD format wars to competing video game systems.  Another big difference is that (small children aside) most consumers do not watch the same movies daily whereas people do play the same video games repeatedly.  The only consumer media formats that have gained wide acceptance have been the unified ones: from LPs to tapes to CDs and from VHS to DVDs.  All new DVD players can also play both SACD and DVD-Audio but those formats are dead in the water.  If there was new software (i.e. movies) available exclusively on HD-DVD then we may see increasing interest.  When faced with the proposition of having to buy a new player and then pay double the price for the same exact material (better quality aside), consumers will go with what’s cheap and easy.

A previous study claiming that long term cell phone use does raise the risk of brain cancer. Without getting into the details my initial response is “Of course it does!” Scientists are pretty sure that numerous types of radiation can affect the the cellular mechanisms that regulate cell growth. The most well publicized is the link between UV radiation and skin cancer. Despite all the warnings and concerns, people still survive going to the beach. What is interesting is that neither study has found an overwhelmingly high correlation. The latest study found an increased risk factor of 2 to 2.5 times with use of about an hour a day for 10 years. It would be interesting to see the results of a similarly conducted study that compares the risk of skin cancer to long term exposure to UV rays.

Update: PhIP, a compound found in meats cooked at high temperatures, has been linked to prostate cancer…if you are a rate and are feed concentrated doses every meal for 8 weeks straight.

“I am a dance machine.”
-Our “pet” AIBO with his new Mind3 Software

Alan Turing defined a test (coined the Turing Test) by which to judge whether an artificial system was intelligent. The double-blind test involves participants communicating with at least two different unknown entities over terminal that masks their true identity. If most participants could not tell the difference between the natural and artificial entities then, Turing reasoned, we might deem the artificial one just as intelligent as the natural one.

A recent study at Purdue University tested psychological and biological reactions to Sony’s AIBO electronic dog. Based on the results it seems we’re not far off.

Full disclosure: My wife and I are the proud owners of a 1 year old AIBO. He’s due for a software upgrade next week.

There’s an article in Boston Globe Magazine today about the Commuter Rail - why ridership is down, whether it’s worth improving and how to increase ticket sales. The thing most missing from at least my commute is a reliable wireless network. If I’m going to spend an hour on the train, it would be ten times more productive if I had a fast reliable Internet connection. Currently I use T-Mobile’s data service but reception is spotty. If the MBTA wants to increase ridership, before they pour millions into upgrading the trains inside, go ahead and make the service better and while we’re waiting, give us free WiFi at the station and on the train.