Brian's Brain

The latest case study in my longstanding Network Neutrality scrutiny and coverage comes in two different implementations, albeit both from the same service provider. In late July, Comcast was verbally spanked (albeit not fined) by the FCC on a 3-2 vote for discriminatory throttling of Bittorrent traffic, although the legality of the FCC's action is debatable (and the lack of a corresponding fiscal pe...Read More

Following up on yesterday's coverage, Google's now claiming that the egregious wording in the end user license agreement for its new Chrome browser was 'all a big mistake' and that the company is:

Working quickly to remove language from Section 11 of the current Google Chrome terms of service. This change will apply retroactively to all users who have downloaded Google Chrome.

Right. The browser's been in development for two years, and the company still did an inadvertent last-minute copy-and-paste rush job on the EULA for it. Ahem. More likely, the uproar caused Google to backtrack on its o...Read More

As a few of you may have heard, some obscure little company in Mountain View, CA called Google ;-) released the Windows XP/Vista-specific (Linux and OS X also planned) beta Chrome version of a new open-source browser called Chromium on Tuesday, one day after a 38-page website-hosted comic strip explaining the concept, aspirations and implementation accidentally (or not) went live. After waiting a few hours, wherein I monitored various websites' RSS feeds to see if any showstopper bugs had been uncovered, and after just-in-case backing up my VMware-managed Windows XP Pro SP2 virtual ma...Read More

Continued from 'Telecommuting And Public Transit: Personal Insights And Troubling Stories'...

Somehow, we made it through Saturday with only a few delays and unusual incidents. On Sunday morning, train crews reported a potentially suicidal individual along the tracks in Hayward, slowing service on the San Jose end, but not shutting down the railroad. Police were called to investigate. The rest of Sunday was uneventful.

Then it started again Monday, July 21. The first two trains operating between Oakland and Sacramento (#518 from Oakland and #521 from Sacramento) encountered an errant vehicle driven onto the tracks- not at a crossing- and blocking both main tracks. Train traffic was stopped, delaying hundreds of folks. Only after a tow truck removed the vehicle and Union Pacific ...Read More

As long-time readers already know, I've worked from home-based offices ever since I started writing for EDN in January 1997. On balance, telecommuting has been a great experience; I don't miss getting dressed in workplace-appropriate clothing (as I type this I'm wearing an old, grungy t-shirt and sweat pants, with no socks or shoes on my feet...and no, I didn't shave or take a shower this morning, either) or a lengthy, expensive commute, nor do I pine for cubicles of years and employers past.

Nothing's all-good, though...unless, of course, you're the rare individual who puts into practice a profound acceptance of things-as-it-is. Working from home can be quite socially isolating; I didn't realize how much I enjoyed 'water cool...Read More

Last week, I had quite a thrill. It wasn't cheap. But it was free...well, except for my taxpayer contribution to it.

On the way back home from my customary early morning first walk with the dog, I noticed my across-and-down-the-street neighbors standing in their driveway. The neighborhood is normally pretty dead at 6AM, so when they waved me over I decided to see what was up. They're satellite fans (for professional reasons, among others...note the location of the Americas editorial office...) and, as it turns out, they were waiting for the International Space Station (which isn't, I know, technically a satellite...and yes, I also know, isn't a NASA-only program) to pass overhead.

I'm not sure which of the ...Read More

The latest in a series...

10 days ago, when I last held forth on this particular topic, we'd figured out at least one reason why my VHF reception was so poor...my supposed 'consistent gain through the entire DTV channel spectrum' Antennas Direct ClearStream 2 was in fact fundamentally a UHF-only unit. The Winegard YA-6713 VHF antenna that KTVN had brought over is unfortunately out of production, and its YA-1713 successor is undesireably oversized for my diminutive abode. However, I also discovered ...Read More

From one television-related controversy to another...

Shure continues to be the a particularly vociferous critic of the White Space dynamic UHF-and-VHF spectrum usage pitch, seizing on any testing hiccup, big or small, (curiously, however, this information isn't on Shure's website) as a blanket condemnation of the technology. At the same time, the company continues to turn a blind eye to the reality that most of its UHF and VHF wireless microphone customers are operating their equipment without having first obtained the necessar...Read More

DVB-H (digital video broadcasting for handhelds) advocates were, judging from the amount of 'hate email' I subsequently received, quite dismayed at my analysis of the technology's current status and future fortunes in part 1 of a two-part mobile television article series published back in February:

Even though DVB-H now has the EU’s blessing, it remains questionable whether DVB-H can achieve widespread adoption. DVB-H employs unique broadcast spectrum and unique protocols, and today’s comparably pervasive DVB-T-only equipment cannot, therefore, tune in DVB-H. Its feature advancements over DVB-T include time slicing for power reduction. IP (Internet Protocol) d...Read More

Delivering Olympics video coverage online may not have been quite as lucrative for NBC as originally hoped, but it'd be silly to conclude that Internet-based content distribution is a passing fad. Consider, for example, that traditional television viewing is an increasingly geriatric activity, or that an estimated 12 billion videos were served up online in May alone. As such, here's the latest-and-greatest in the ...Read More

One in a series of posts…

It's a funny thing…back in mid 2005 (online supplements here), I could barely get Intel to acknowledge the presence of discrete GPUs in the PC platform, far from admit to their validity as a supplement to the primary CPU. Contrast this past cynicism with the two-weeks-back SIGGRAPH optimism that accompanied Intel's unveiling of the first details of its coming-within-a-year Larrabee media processor. I attended the em...Read More

One in a series of posts…

Back in late March, for subsequent publication in late May, I wrote regarding Intel's Atom microprocessor:

Perhaps the biggest question on the company’s road map for the remainder of the decade is the degree to which Atom will cannibalize Intel products in a manner that is fiscally unattractive to Intel, instead of broadening the overall x86 market at the expense of competitors, such as ARM, as Intel hopes.

That was, as it seemingly has turned out (and if I do say so myself), quite a prescient observation. A month back during the ...Read More

One in a series of posts…

Several weeks ago, we found out Micron's initial product plans for the NAND flash memory silicon flowing out of its partnership fab network with Intel. Tuesday was Intel's turn to inform, and the company was in top form during a dedicated briefing to an overflowing crowd of journalists and analysts in a large conference room.

Like Micron, Intel plans both SLC (single-level-cell) and MLC (multi-level-cell) SSD variants, the latter in both 2.5" and 1.8" form factors. For now, like Micron's competitive offerings, they'll be manufactured on 50 nm lithography-based silicon, with a next-generation roadmap to ...Read More

One in a series of posts…

Greetings from San Francisco; I've been here since Monday evening. Innumerable 1:1 meetings, group technical sessions and keynotes stretching from early morning to late night the past few days, coupled with the inevitable need for at least a few hours' sleep per night, have delayed my coverage of this august yearly industry forum. But don't worry; you can expect plenty of catch-up commentary in the days to come!

I'll begin by providing some thoughts on Nehalem (i.e. Core i7), Intel's next-generation micro-architecture (coming on the heels of today's Core micro-architecture-based ...Read More

The latest in an ongoing series…

Near the beginning of the report I filed after KTVN chief broadcast engineer Jack Antonio's first visit to my home office several weeks ago, and in spite of the abundance of reception data we did collect at that time, I said:

I'll apologize upfront that, due to limited schedule availability on their part, we were unable to measure the signal strength coming from my Antennas Direct ClearStream 2 antenna.

Antonio revisited my place last Friday morning, accompanied this time by KTVN engineer Stev...Read More