Technology, Innovation & Telecomm

Wow.

Still, I have to say that I’m not terribly surprised, given that Borland has made similar bone-headed moves in the past (who can forget the more-innocuous-yet-still-stupid “Inprise” name change?). Having said that, perhaps their selling of the tool-sets will help those products. They’ve seemed to be faltering in their IDE focus in recent years, so perhaps things will improve under another owner. I sure hope so, since I’ve been a devotee’ of their various products for a lot o’ years.

I love C++ builder and was a Delphi user for a long time. And I can’t tell you how many different products I developed using Turbo Pascal… I truly, truly hope that this move doesn’t end up killing either Borland OR their IDE development tools. I kinda still have a soft spot for Philippe Khan…

I will be doing my best to update the site to the latest version of WordPress. It seemingly supports quite a number of enhancements, not least of which is better support for comment spam blocking. As my previous post mentioned, I’m receiving an inordinate number of posts from the stupid folks who love to bring you things like free poker, Russion porn, real-estate, and other such unwelcome crap. With any luck, the changes will begin to slow some of that. Time will tell.

So, if things appear goofed up for a bit, hang in there. I’ll get things running soon enough!

It’s indeed been a long time since I posted. I’m a slacker. What else can I say?

Meanwhile, I’ve been busy.

Let’s see:

1. We finally got our living room and front spare bedroom along with the hallway completed. I’ve posted a few times about some of my efforts to get that all complete. It was a long haul, but the only remaining work is really hanging pictures.

2. I’m back to working on my Ham Radio project. I’ve been developing a product for use by mobile Hams and looking forward to having something ready soon.

3. The keyboard player at the church we attend, moved to Texas. He and I always worked well together: He on the keys and myself on the drums (at least that’s how I see it!). We recorded the last two services while he was here and I’ve been mixing, editing, etc. We may yet have an album to give to visitors, members, etc.

4. While we’re talking about church music points, one of our members wrote the Christmas musical for the kids. It’s based on the “Infomercial” skits that the folks on “Who’s Line Is It, Anyway?” do all the time. The notion is that they’re selling a collection of some of the best songs adapted to Christmas the Christmas theme. We used karaoke tracks for some popular songs from te 70’s and 80’s and recorded vocals from some of our singers. The words were coopted to meet the needs of the program. It was a hoot! The mixes came out excellent and folks want copies to play. What a blast.

5. I’ve done some traveling for work so that has also held up other activities.

6. Christmas is here for all intents and purposes and I’m not ready. No surprise there.

So, I’ll begin (again!) to try and do more regular posting. We’ll see how that goes, but since I’m off work until Jan 3rd, maybe I can get some writing in.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Years!!

Todd

I’ve been watching the fight between Apple the and “music industry” for a while now. Apple claims that the .99 price-point is ideal and the industry folk want more flexibility. What “more flexibility” means is subject to much speculation. It appears that it means that they want to raise the prices for most of the individual songs and so I must admit that I’m astounded.

To me, .99 is at the very top end of what I think is reasonable for a song. I download from iTunes here and there and I think that overall, it’s an ok price to pay. Truthfully, I think the price should be closer to .75 - .80 but I’m guessing that ain’t happening any time soon.

The record industry continues to whine about piracy and the price of albums and the lackluster sales they’ve been experiencing. How about this:

1. The industry has been sued at least twice in the last 20 years or so for price-fixing. They’ve lost at least one of those cases. Have you seen the price of CD’s? I don’t see the costs to the consumer going down… What other industry has been able to hold the price of something as commodotized as CD’s so artifically high for so long?

2. Millions and millions of songs have been sold through iTunes. That’s simple proof that folks in general are NOT thieves as the RIAA would have you believe. At a minimum, it shows that people have a point where they feel something is a fair price. Exceeding that causes behavior like cessation of purchases, added piracy (not good), sharing, etc.

3. What a deal for the record companies. Post a song or two or a whole album to the iTMS site and watch the money roll in. No distribution. No printing costs. No CD pressing cost. No promotional costs. Yet with all that, they feel the need to demand more.

4. Throughout the music-watching world, the general agreement is that the quality of what’s being produced is dropping steadily. Why should we pay $15-$18 for what often turns out to be one or two songs that we actually like? Funny too, the record companies are actually complaining about the ala-cart ability to sell individual songs! The gripe follows the “we can’t sell the whole album that way and so we lose money” path. Ridiculous. Unless I *really* like an artist, I don’t risk $15 on a handful of possible crap. They should be happy to sell any of a lot of that stuff… You want to sell a whole album? Make a whole album of quality material.

So, you can see that I lean toward the iTMS model. I think it works. I think it shows the value of consumer choice. I think it beats the snot out of the “subscription” model that disables your ability to listen if you stop paying your dues.

Side point: I have heard rumors here and there about iTunes taking the subscription approach. If they take that path exclusively, I will no longer be a subscriber. If I pay for it once, I want access to it always.

So, I’ll continue to watch and to keep my eye on the indie market. There’s a lot of high-quality stuff out of the mainstream that can be had in a reasonable fashion. Keep your eyes on self-produced and other independently-created materials.

Is iTunes perfect? Probably not, but it has certainly shown what can be done in an age where highly-granularized choice for a fair outlay is highly desirable.

-Does this stuff burn you?
-Do you think the iTunes model works?
-Does the record industry have a point about rasing the price of songs?
-Do you like the subscription model for music download?

Do tell!

My company develops various testing products, particularly aimed at the telecom and cable industries. We have a number of DSL-related products as well and resultingly, we are members of the DSL forum. It always helps to have representation in the industries in which you play, wouldn’t you agree?

So, there’s a meeting of the DSL forum in Philly this week. Myself and about 3 other colleagues are attending. If there’s anything of resounding interest, I’ll post about it. Otherwise, I’ll produce some form of wrap-up post afterword.

Stay tuned.

Up front, I’ll state that I’m an amateur radio operator (”Ham” radio if you prefer). My grandfather was one, having gotten his first license in 1933. He and so many others have a long history of lending invaluable assistance in the most trying of disasters. For example, he was once stranded in a make-shift communications center during a blizzard in the 70’s, dispatching help to the far reaches of the county. That was one of many such situations where his license was put to effective community service over the nearly-seventy years that he held it. That kind of service continues with Ham Radio operators today in the aftermath of the Katrina disaster.

While Ham radio is very much the same as it has been since its beginning, with it’s low-tech Morse Code and Single-Sideband voice modes, one thing it is *not* is irrelevant. I’ve seen numerous articles that have declared it nearly-dead, virtually-useless and no longer needed in our “Internet Age”. Tell that to the woman who wasn’t sure that her elderly aunt was even alive, who then found out through the services of the Ham Radio community that she’s well and where she’s now sheltered. Or ask the 15 people trapped on the roof of a house if Amateur Radio was useless to them when they couldn’t get through to 911. They were able to call relatives in other counties who were in turn able to contact the Red Cross…who called an Amateur operator to make contact with someone in New Orleans — who got help to them. Hardly irrelevant, wouldn’t you say?

No, Ham Radio isn’t typically high speed. It’s often not bleeding-edge. But, just how much does that matter when you find that your loved ones are ok and safe? What’s the ability to get desparately-needed services where they belong worth? How many human lives would it take to make Ham Radio “relevant”?

During this most recent catastrophy, a Motorola representative stated that “Something is better than nothing, that’s right, but ham radios are pretty close to nothing.” I wonder if he’d feel differently if he and his family were trapped on a roof… Maybe someone should ask him how much of his gear was overwhelmed by the demands of Katrina.

So, kudos to all the Hams around the world who have assisted with this and other disasters through the years!

tdw - W8LEV

BTW: My grandfather’s call sign was W8LEV and he was the only person to ever have it. He held that call from the time he was 18 years old, until he died. I am honored and fortunate to have been able to take his call sign when he passed away. It’s my intention to hold it until I pass as well. With any luck, a loved one will take it too!

I’ll be in Kansas City most of this week. I’ll be travelling with a co-worker to a customer out there to begin field-testing a package I’ve developed to allow them to do bulk firmware downloads to the many test heads they’ve purchased from the company I work for.

It was my first significant experience developing a scripting language. I built an interpreter that has a number of purpose-built features and a variety of general-purpose features. It was a blast, since I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time. It isn’t the prettiest language, but it fits the bill and helped me to learn a ton about language internals and some of the issues surrounding the things that separate various programming languages.

Meanwhile, let’s hope the tool helps the customer accomplish what they need to…!