Thursday, June 19, 2003

This is a very impressive adaptive optics system for solar astronomy. It is already producing some incredible solar images. 4:05:40 PM     More on the Hatch proposal. I called up our congressional representative's office and asked if he would write a position and what is the position of his (the Republican) party? I kept my tone neutral and will print his response. I suggest that everyone try the same thing. 10:27:48 AM     Science isn't a strong point of the current administration. It is interesting to note that this is an issue of religious belief for some. We know some people who are members of a very conservative christian religion that, among other things, doesn't belief in evolution (the earth was created in six real days according to them). It turns out that global warming doesn't exist for them either (there are strong ties between right wing politics and this religion, so it isn't clear how much of this is polticial). 7:15:14 AM     Cameraphones are popping up everywhere these days and reports are circulating of their use in many areas - reporting crimes to medicine. The medical use is something of a surprise as the image quality isn't good - one wouldn't want this used for primary analysis, but for a consultation is is clearly better than nothing. A (even modest quality) "picture is worth a thousand words" probably applies. These devices seem to have real use and one wonders if they are the drivers for higher bandwidth wireless services or if people will be happy with modest images and lower bills. The growth seems great enough that reports of uses will cease to be newsworthy in the near future. What should be newsworthy is the dialog necessary to define acceptable use - one can imagine proper and improper uses. ____ I wonder how coupled the images from camphones are to regular phonecalls (are people using voice to talk about the images or are they just sending them to someone or posting them somewhere). Is it necessary to tie the camera to the phone or is it merely convenient? Would a camera with a wifi card and some sort of keypad be useful in a fairly dense net of wifi? Will this be something that pushes dual mode (cellular and wifi) camphones? How does battery life play into this as well as acceptable device size? In the near term it seems likely that many devices will emerge. 6:35:42 AM

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