Brian's Brain
<p><img alt="Brian Dipert" hspace="6" align="left" border="0" src="/contents/images/_brian_s60.gif" /><em>EDN</em> contributor Brian Dipert exposes, analyzes and<br />opines on diverse topics in technology.</p>
Wednesday's Quote Of The Day: Google's Chrome OS On Openness
From Senior Vice President of Chrome, Sundar Pichai regarding today’s Chromebook news, 57 minutes (and a few seconds) into today’s Google I/O keynote…and also noted as curious by TechCrunch’s MG Siegler: Of course as you developers, we want to make sure you can completely jailbreak these devices. So my partners may not want to say it, but these devices have a full jailb ...... Read More
Comments (0)Wednesday's (Other) Video Of The Day: Google I/O Conference Day 2 Keynote
It’s a two-fer…following up yesterday’s heads-up… ...... Read More
Comments (0)Wednesday's Video Of The Day: See Apple (And Google) Sweat Regarding Privacy
Opening statements from yesterday’s session of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, which queried Apple and Google representatives regarding mobile privacy (as I previously discussed here), with thanks to The Loop for the heads-up: PDF transcripts of testimony provided by Apple, Google and other session participants can be accessed here. ...... Read More
Comments (0)Intel's Z68 Express: Sandy Bridge-Tailored Core Logic With SSD Finesse
Back prior to the start of CES 2011, my Intel Sandy Bridge processor coverage focused primarily on the CPU architecture, admittedly giving comparative short shrift to the companion ‘Cougar Point’ H67 Express and P67 Express chipsets. A glance at the respective system block diagrams: will reveal one reason for my lack of chipset enthusiasm; although they derive from a common silicon ...... Read More
Comments (1)Tuesday's Video Of The Day: Google I/O Conference Day 1 Keynote
With thanks to Slashgear for the heads-up: Also check out both my and Mike Demler’s Twitter feeds for live commentary. ...... Read More
Comments (0)Motorola's Xoom and RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook: Giving Flash Memory Firmware-Fueled Product Immaturity A Look
As I mentioned in last Friday’s writeup, I spent last Tuesday afternoon co-moderating (with iFixit’s Kyle Wiens) a teardown of the Nintendo 3DS portable gaming console. For those of you who were unable to be in attendance, I’ll post the video of the event when it’s available (as I did with Kyle and my earlier Microsoft Kinect teardown at DesignCon). To tide you over unt ...... Read More
Comments (8)Monday's Quote Of The Day: Zombie Marie Curie
Wise words from today’s particularly bizarre (but always recommended) XKCD strip: You don’t become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process. A close second: Avoid radium. Turns out it kills you. ...... Read More
Comments (2)Syncing Personal Data: Apple's Self-Serving Actions Expand The Gotchas And Errata
Monday and Tuesday, I was at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose. And Wednesday morning, I spent several frustrating hours re-plumbing my PIM (personal information manager) setup, prior to a looming next-day and Apple-mandated upgrade-or-shutdown edict. As regular readers may recall, I’ve long used Spanning Sync to bridge the copies of my calendar and contacts data residing on Apple ...... Read More
Comments (6)Thursday's Quote Of The Day: Modern-Day Memento Mori
From writer extraordinaire Cory Doctorow, via the equally extraordinary Make Magazine intermediary: I’m often puzzled by how satisfying older technology is. What a treat it is to muscle around an ancient teletype, feeding it new-old paper-tape or rolls of industrial paper with the weight of a bygone era. What pleasure I take from the length of piano roll I’ve hung like a banner from ...... Read More
Comments (3)Thursday's Video Of The Day: Snowmobile (And Rider) Dommage And Demise
Speaking of head-mounted extreme sports POV video cameras…a few weeks ago, I shared a video of a backcountry skier who fell backwards off the summit of Mt. Shasta. Courtesy of Wired, here’s a clip of a French snowmobiler with a helmet-mounted camera, who loses it right at the summit of his motorized mountain ascent: Quel dommage! ...... Read More
Comments (1)Intel And Seagate: Silicon Transistor And Magnetic Storage Density Maintain An Impressively Steady Improvement Rate
Two fundamental technology breakthroughs in two days; these are the times that tech editors dream of! I’ve in the past drawn a correlation between Moore’s Law (named for Intel’s Gordon), a forecast of the pace of single-chip transistor integration increase over time first made in 1965, and the rate of capacity growth over time (said another way, cost-per-capacity) for both mag ...... Read More
Comments (6)Wednesday's Quote Of The Day: On Mobile O/S Diversity Versus Consolidation
From Google’s eminently quotable Tim Bray, honorably removing his Android-centric hat before speaking: There are a lot of factions on the field. But my heart’s on my sleeve; Developers are my tribe and I think, by and large, that what’s good for them is good for consumers and for the Internet too. I think a multi-platform world is best place for my tribe; but too many platform ...... Read More
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