Thursday, February 10, 2005

Apple Won't Get Sirius. Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin chats with the leader of the Cult of Mac and gets nowhere. Why not? 6:42:36 PM

Symantec Flaws Found, Fixed. Some thirty-plus applications impacted. It wasn't a particularly enjoyable week for Symantec, after a flaw was found in its anti-virus software that allowed the execution of viral code, instead of the capture of it. The majority of Symantec's antivirus and antispam products were impacted . 6:42:02 PM

Elektro, the Oldest U.S. Robot. Roland Piquepaille writes "If you happen to be around Ohio this coming fall, don't miss an exhibit at the Mansfield Memorial Museum featuring the 7-foot-tall Elektro, the oldest robot in the U.S.. "Elektro is the only survivor of a group of eight robots created by Westinghouse in Mansfield between 1931 to 1940 for several hundred thousand dollars each," according to the article from the Plain Dealer, Cleveland. Back in 1939, Elektro was able to walk, talk, raise and lower his arms, turn his head and move his mouth as he spoke. It used a 78-rpm record player to simulate conversation and had a vocabulary of more than 700 words. It even appeared in a long-time forgotten movie, "Sex Kittens Go to College," also known as "The Beauty and the Robot." Primidi.com has an overview containing other details, references and pictures." 6:40:31 PM

Movie to release DVD within FOUR DAYS of theatrical release : This is of interest as a shift in marketing strategy that could be highly significant. Consider the implications. 6:38:17 PM

FCC Rejects Digital TV Broadcast Rule  Federal regulators Thursday rejected a request by broadcasters to require cable and satellite operators to carry multiple digital channel offerings from local television stations. 6:36:30 PM

Radio Commercials: Don't Just Play Less....Make Them Better. A new survey says commercial-free music is the real draw for Satellite Radio and one of the reasons listeners are leaving traditional radio. Is there anything terrestrial stations can do to counter this? More than you may realize. 6:31:27 AM

RealNetworks makes mobile licensing flexible. RealNetworks has changed its mobile licensing model to provide more flexibility to handset manufacturers and allow software components like RealAudio and RealVideo to be licensed separately, it announced Wednesday. 6:29:29 AM

An Architect's Wet-Cement Dream. Just as termites build castles on Earth, robots could erect skyscrapers on the moon. By Bruce Sterling from Wired magazine. 6:25:35 AM

Air Force Looks at Teleportation Possibilities. Imagine the power of being able to move people and objects through time and space instantaneously. Anyone who's even a casual fan of science fiction knows this... but now, the U.S. Air Force is apparently taking a very serious look at ways to "beam me up, Scotty." Dr. Eric Davis, a theoretical physicist, has investigated the possibilities of teleportation and believes that it's wholly possible, and completely in line with Einstein's theory of relativity. Among the possible approaches are wormholes a la Stargate and the alien craft described in the Carl Sagan novel (and Jodie Foster movie) Contact. As Dr. Davis describes it, "Teleportation isn't dematerialization, which is what Star Trek sci-fi method does. Teleportation is to take the animate or inanimate object and literally move it instantaneously across space time or through dimensions." The Air Force has reportedly spent $25,000 on a preliminary study. Other countries, including China, are supposedly looking at similar teleportation technology and have had encouraging results. Government waste? Hoax? Clever Air Force ploy to recruit geeks? Or pure genius? Maybe someone will be teleported from the future to set the record straight... 6:22:30 AM

A February to Remember for TV and Marketers. For the major broadcast networks, February is bringing the kind of advertising dollars they have perhaps not seen in a month of Sundays. 6:21:15 AM

The Unassociated Press. Wikinews, an experiment in collaborative news gathering, is gaining in popularity. But the central question about the Wikinews effort is its credibility. 6:20:25 AM

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