My old Sony 43" projection T.V. gave up the ghost this month. It developed a green crescent in the upper left hand portion of the screen. I replaced it with a 50" Vizio HDTV. I will post some comments on the Vizio in time , after I get used to it.

Jerry pornelle

Jerry Pornelle hasn't changed.
Here's a great story I heard him tell on the TWIT podcast.

He was in mocow at a science fiction convention. He met these guys who were writing the PARAGRAPH handwriting recognition program. They asked him for a sample of his handwriting to test the pgm with. He gave them fifty pages from his notebook.

Microsoft bought PARAGRAPH. So now if you use a windows tablet pc, and your handwitings like jerry pornlle, you will do well.

RAZR is by motorola. Nothing really special in my opinion. Just a thin standard cellphone. Works really well as a cellphone but that's all it does. Don't think it has a web browser.
Never thought a web browser on a cellphone mattered but its super useful. Because people don't have to write special apps to run on the phone. They just write apps to run in a browser. Much easier for pgmrs.

One big bugaboo with cellphones. The big four - cingular, verizon, sprint, t mobile - are scared to let apps run on their phones. Why? I think viruses. So the innovation really hasn't happened yet on cellphones.

Also - linux hasn't happened on cellphones. Palm has been saying for YEARS they're gonna do linux on cellphone. But so far its basically talk. I think the day of reckoning is fast approaching for palm. Seceral upstart taiwanese outfits are nipping at palms heals. And one of them - H.T.C. Has the blessing of microsoft.

Return of newton?

The return of newton is to mac fans as a beatles reunion is to rock fans. I heard a rumor on the latest MacCast podcast that apple may introduce an iPhone. That has been rumored for a long time.

But now they are talking about two iPhones. The other is a smart phone; I.e. Qwerty keyboard, calendar, email, and maybe iChat for mobile phones.

FW:

Did you ever listen to Black Sabbath in the 70's?

I was over at a friend of my sister's - Alfred Fizicaro.

He pulls out this album. It has this dark cover - some black castle against
a purple sky.

And this weird black witch chick is standing there in the rain or something.

He pulls out the record and puts it in the turntable - "LISTEN TO THIS MAN"!

This is like 1971 - way before FM radio had really caught on.

So there was no way I would have ever heard this music.

I am so relieved! In the fall of 2006 there was this big Sony battery recall. I thought my Mac iBook was going to be affected. I kept waiting for it to explode any day. Tonight I figured I better get busy and fill out the form on the Apple.com web page to get the battery swap process going. Lo and behold when I typed in my computer's serial number and the serial from the battery their system says my battery isn't one of the infected batteries!

Yeehaww