LISTEN To This Issue.
            Give your eyes a rest!

Quote of the Week.
            On the growth of wireless Internet.

The Copy Conundrum.
            First it was MP3s and audio, and now it's DivX and DVDs, and more. 
            Changing another industry's rules!

So When Will It Happen?
            A look into our future history.

Big Brother Update.
            Want every Web page you visit to be logged for lawyers to subpoena?  
            This was already happening to one million of us.

Tidbits...
            On the Road Towards Star Trek.
            Not Bad, For A Young'n.
            CPU Update.

A Diamond Is A Girl's (and Boy's) Best Friend!
            Diamonds on the outside, and (eventually) diamonds on the inside!

About "The Harrow Technology Report"  

 

LISTEN To This Issue.

Do you prefer to let your ears do the work of keeping you in-touch with, and thinking about where technology is taking us?  If so, "The Harrow Technology Report" is also available in an audio-on-demand, Web-based, MP3 version. 

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So, if you wish, just click on the following link to listen to this issue!  http://www.TheHarrowGroup.com/articles/20020218/20020218.mp3 .

 

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Quote of the Week.

 

"Wireless Internet usage is on the rise:

The number of U.S. wireless data subscribers will grow from 5 million in 2000 to 84 million in 2005.

And business customers will lead the growth:

In the corporate world, the ranks of wireless Internet users will grow from 2.6 million in 2000 to 49 million in 2005."

Source: IDC
Oct. 19 Business 2.0
http://www.business2.com/articles/web/0,1653,18018,00.html?ref=cnet

 

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The Copy Conundrum.

 

A few years ago the PC became powerful enough, and Internet connections became fast enough, that MP3 compression changed the rules for the music industry.  Suddenly, CD-quality music files were small enough to share, with the result that the entire music distribution industry was quickly "Napsterized,"  Legal efforts to the contrary, it seems unlikely that "music" will ever be able to return to "business as usual." 

But it's not going to end there -- the trend towards more powerful PCs, higher-speed networking, and larger hard disks has not only continued, but accelerated, resulting in a growing (and valid) concern that "Napsterizing" the world of DVD video will be next.  (http://www.sfgate.com/technology/expound/) 

This isn't idle speculation.  Using well known tools available over the Internet (5,000+ hits on a Google search), it's easy (if not painful - more in a moment) to use programs such as "SmartRipper" to "rip" the video from a personally-owned DVD movie into a large (five-gigabyte) ".vob" file.  That file, now on hard disk, has exactly the same quality as if it was played from the DVD. 

But of course you couldn't store too many of them, so enter programs such as "NeoDivx," which can compress a five-gigabyte .vob file into about a half-gigabyte of better-than-VHS-quality video!  It uses the "DivX" compression method, which is an implementation of the new MPEG-4 standard.  Essentially, DivX is to video as MP3 is to audio. 

It really does work, although the pain I mentioned is that even with today's powerful commodity systems, it can take three to six hours(!) to compress a full length movie.  (See -- all of a sudden that idling 1.5 GHz system has to work HARD and LONG to accomplish this task, and its multi-gigabyte disk can easily get overrun with just a few of the huge .vob files.) 

The magic, though, is that we can now store hundreds of DivX-compressed movies on our hard drives.  And soon, we'll be able to pack around 40 full-length movies into the tiny 20 gigabyte pocket disk drive that we discussed last issue!  (http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/20020204/20020204.htm#_Toc273408)  Suddenly, as with audio before it, video becomes easy to store, and very portable. 

Too portable, perhaps, since DivX files are quite small enough to be downloaded from the Internet in less than an hour at typical cable modem speeds through peer-to-peer successors to Napster.  Which presents a very real and significant problem to the copyright holders who should and must be compensated for their work -- otherwise, there will be little new work worth watching!

Some say that the answer is to ban DivX, or to attempt to shutter sites that contain copyrighted DivX files.  Another approach, as described in the Feb. 4 News.com, is that the movie industry is trying to come up with a new copy protection scheme to foil these activities (http://news.com.com/2100-1023-828449.html).  The problem is, when we're talking about the Internet with its world's worth of technical talent, such technological attempts have been akin to tilting at windmills.  Indeed, we're soon going to be seeing a lot more of DivX since it's recently been licensed to companies like Germany's Fraunhofer Institute (one of the companies behind MP3), The Jim Henson Company, and the Broadway Television Network (expect to see Broadway-On-Demand!)  (http://news.com.com/2100-1023-829247.html?tag=dd.ne.dht.nl-hed.0) 

Technology ALWAYS moves forward -- typically far faster than some would like. 

 

But There's More!

For example, "ripped" and compressed DVD movies aren't the movie copyright holders' only problem.  As described in a Feb. 5 Wired News article (http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,50225,00.html), a Web site in Taiwan (http://www.movie88.com/movie88/enmovie/index.php) is now offering real-time streaming video of hundreds of Hollywood films for $1 each, with the first five movies free! 

There's even a free "movie of the day" on the home page, so you can check out the quality (far less than DVD, but "acceptable," considering that it's coming from the other side of the planet and is available "on-demand".)  According to the Feb. 7 ZDNet News (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-831413.html),

"It's a commercial video-on-demand service that's comprehensive and easy to use. And it works. With the [Hollywood] studios' film services still in development, that's a dangerous combination of features."

For yet another example, SonicBlue, maker of the ReplayTV Digital Video Recorder (http://www.sonicblue.com/video/replaytv/replaytv_4000.asp), has a new model that will allow someone to send a recorded TV program to fifteen other people over the Internet! (http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/feb2002/nf2002026_6277.htm)

These technological advancements (rightfully) have movie content owners up in arms (and in court), and very worried, because my guess is that especially for streaming movies, the legal issues in preventing or stopping this type of activity, which can easily take place between countries, given the geographically-neutral world of the Internet, are less than straightforward.  Even if Taiwan does eventually enforce compliance, I suspect there are many countries that could host such content with no international treaty obligation to even attempt to comply with other countries' copyrights.

 

The Changing Of The Rules.

The marriage of the PC plus the Internet is changing a LOT of rules, and those relating to intellectual property are very high on the list.  Content owners deserve to be reasonably paid for their work; that's in all of our best interests.  But the, er, "copy cat," is very much out of the bag, as evidenced by the music industry's so far fruitless attempts to stuff it back in. 

I don't know what the "right' answer is, but working WITH customers to give them what they so clearly want (instant access, portability, and reasonable prices), in a way that does fairly compensate the copyright holders, would seem a better road to success. 

For everybody!  Consider that in the 1980s, the movie industry went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to ban the VCR, yet according to the Feb. 6 BusinessWeek Online, it's a good thing for them that they failed -- because 46% of the studios' income is now derived from video rentals -- twice the percentage that they make from the box office! 

In any event, these new technologies, like the VCR before them, will not go away.  And they've now moved into the realm of DVDs. 

It just doesn't pay to frustrate your customers -- they ALWAYS do seem to find other ways to get what they want...

 

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So When Will It Happen?

 

If you've been reading these musings for some years, you may have noticed that I rarely offer specific predictions as to exactly when a technology, or an innovation, or a product, will hit the shelves.  There are so many variables that can affect the outcomes that instead of offering dates, I try to keep us aware of and educated about the technologies and trends themselves.

But some people, such as Ian Pearson and Ian Neild of BTexact Technologies (an offshoot of British Telecom), use the information available from many sources (including The Harrow Technology Report, I'm pleased to say), plus their own expertise, to assign probable dates to significant technological events.  And the results can be very interesting and instructive.  Consider these few examples:

-         2003 - first synthetic organic life form.

-         2005 - computers that write their own software.

-         2006 - first artificial electronic life, and first organism brought back from extinction.

-         2010 - highest earning celebrity is synthetic.

-         2015 - machine use of human-like creativity

-         2020 - electronic life form given basic rights, and insect-sized robots banned in gardens due to effects on wildlife.

Ian and Ian's timeline offers many, many more examples in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Biotechnology, Business & Education, Demographics, Displays, Energy, the Environment, Home & Office Technology, Living in a Cyberworld, Machine Senses, Materials Sciences, Computer Electronics, Robotics, and more.  They offer a thought-provoking walk through our possible future history. 

The paper is available at http://www.btexact.com/white_papers/downloads/WP106.pdf .  May you find it as thought-provoking as did I.

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I'd like to understand your interest in The Harrow Technology Report, how you make use of it, and the value you feel it provides to you, your career, and to your company.

Please send your comments to me at  Jeff@TheHarrowGroup.com  .

I look forward to hearing from you!

 

And, if you know of other folks who might find value in "The Harrow Technology Report," I'd appreciate your letting them know that they can subscribe at http://www.theharrowgroup.com/signup.asp .

Jeff Harrow

 

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Big Brother Update.

 

Are you among the .8 million or so users of Digital Video Recorders (DVR), those hard disk-based devices that allow you to pause and replay segments from live TV broadcasts? 

(They do this by recording the broadcast in real time onto the hard disk, and then simultaneously playing the recorded broadcast back to you off of the disk.  That way, you can pause, or move back and forth anywhere within the broadcast that has already taken place without restriction, and later continue watching the rest of the live broadcast, which has continued to be recorded onto the disk.) 

There are undeniable benefits to these capabilities, but a Feb. 5 Boston Globe story by Hiawatha Bray (http://digitalmass.boston.com/news/printer_friendly/globe_story.html?uri=/dailyglobe2/036/
business/Britney_Spears_was_the_big_winner_for_Super_Bowl_replays_using_TiVo-.shtml) reminds us that we also lose something, when outside vendors have access to what TV shows we watch, and how we watch them. 

It seems that at least one vendor, Tivo, was able to analyze the Super Bowl viewing pattern of its DVR users (using the data connection that the DVR uses to update its program guide, I assume).  They found that it wasn't the football plays that enticed most viewers to replay and analyze in slow motion -- it was the commercials -- especially Britney Spears' Pepsi commercials!

That's good news for Britney, and it's certainly useful information for advertisers.  And, since Tivo says they never associate personally identifiable information with the users' activities, it may not be a significant invasion of privacy.  This time.  But as we open a digital window into our homes and into how we live our lives, the potential for abuse is certainly there. 


Unfortunately, More.

Unfortunately, another Big Brother event has just come to light which affected a LOT of people.  According to the Feb. 13 SiliconValley.com (http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/2661735.htm), cable Internet provider Comcast has just disclosed that it has been,

"...recording the Web browsing activities [each page visited] of each of its 1 million high-speed Internet subscribers without notifying them of the change."

Comcast says its been doing this to improve its network operations, using this information to instruct its proxy servers to record the most popular Web pages.  They said that they "...[do] not use the information to build profiles of online consumer behavior... -- [they do]not match a subscriber's identity to the numeric Internet address they use online."  But privacy advocates say that by merging two databases, they could.

Comcast goes on to say that they "...absolutely [do] not share personal information about our customers... we have the utmost respect for our customers' privacy."  But, "Experts said Comcast's own records of online activity would be available to police and the FBI with a court order, and to lawyers in civil lawsuits..."

Even assuming that this practice is intended for benign purposes, that's a vast cache of personal information that can be easily subpoenaed...

At least one Congressperson, Ed Markey , has suggested that this practice could be in violation of Federal law (http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2002/02/13/comcast-privacy.htm).

 

They Saw The Light.

Sometimes, the bright light of public scrutiny can have a significant and immediate effect.  Just two days after Comcast's activities came to light, they have announced that they "...would no longer store data that would enable it to track individual subscribers' Internet surfing habits." (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/14/technology/14PRIV.html?todaysheadlines) 

Score one for the good guys.
 

Take Care.

As these two incidents demonstrate, as a society, we should all be taking care that any such access into our homes and businesses and personal lives is clearly disclosed in advance, that it's opt-in, and that we have substantive legal recourse if our personal information is exposed, even if by accident. 

It would, after all, be a shame for 1984 to come to pass, twenty years late...

 

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Tidbits...

 

·        On The Road Towards Star Trek -- Only four months ago we were finding out that the "obviously" science fiction idea of teleportation was real, initially for instantaneously teleporting information about the "spin" of a photon or of an electron, and later for teleporting the state of "a million million cesium atoms." (http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/20011008/20011008.htm#_Toc526918749) 

Well, Scotty is still calling and scientists are heeding his cry, as demonstrated by reader John Hudock who points us to the Feb. 2 New Scientist -- it describes a promising theory that may lead to the ability to quantum-entangle (a prerequisite to teleportation) "...absolutely any kind of particle," including large molecules!  (http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991888)

We can't put this theory to the test -- yet -- and of course it may never pan out.  But then again, there have been far stranger theories that have eventually been implemented to create the things we now take for granted every day.  And wouldn't this one change a LOT of rules...

·        Not Bad, For A Young'n -- With the Web still less than ten years old, the latest government figures, described in the Feb. 4 Edupage, tell an impressive tale:

"The U.S. Commerce Department will release a report concluding that 54 percent of the national population -- 143 million -- were using the Web as of September, a 26 percent gain over the year before...  About 2 million new users came aboard every month in 2001, according to the government report. E-mail, the most popular online activity, was regularly used by 45 percent of the population, a 10 percent increase over 2000."

Certainly shows the power of a good idea!

·        CPU Update -- Two items of note this issue.  The first, brought to our attention by reader Dave Ward and others, is that Intel recently described a laboratory chip representing the core elements of a microprocessor, which runs at 10 gigahertz, at room temperature! (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/04/technology/04CHIP.html?ei=1&en=
776852c91b26fa21&ex=1014424086&pagewanted=print) 

This isn't yet a full Pentium, and it is a long way from the lab to the store shelf, but in line with predictions that we've seen before from Intel, this seems to be a good indication that 10 gigahertz processors may well be commonly available by around 2008 - 2010.  (And if you don't think you could possibly utilize such a fast chip, consider the video compression example earlier in this issue -- a 10 gigahertz CPU might reduce the compression time from five hours to one.)

Second, most desktop CPUs, such as the Pentium and Athlon, are 32-bit processors (they generally manipulate data 32-bits at a time).  But for some tasks, a larger data and address space can yield a significant performance benefit, which is the reason behind the high-end "64-bit" chips, such as Alpha, Itanium, and UltraSPARC II .  Moving these "server chips" forward, Intel has just described their second-generation of the Itanium family, code-named McKinley, which demonstrates just how many computing elements can be packed into one (large) chip (technical details are at http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020204S0026):

How many?  A Pentium 4 contains 42 million transistors -- the 64-bit McKinley contains 221 million transistors! (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-828474.html).

Of course McKinley chips won't come cheap -- it's estimated that it costs Intel about $50 to produce a Pentium, while each McKinley chip (due to its huge 464 square millimeter die size) might cost $300 to produce.

But it is nice to know that if we DO need the power of 64-bit computing, it will be there.  And don't forget that although 64-bit computing is generally unnecessary for today's desktop applications, our desktops have ALREADY migrated from 8-bit, to 16-bit, to their current 32-bit processor architectures over time.  So could a 64-bit future be any less likely...?

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A Diamond Is A Girl's (and Boy's) Best Friend!

 

Finally, the idea of artificial diamonds is nothing new; artificially created industrial diamonds have been around for decades.  But new work by University of Saskatchewan physicist Akira Hirose (http://www.usask.ca/alumni/alumnisite/publications/green_white/issues/current/1010794177.shtml), brought to our attention by reader David Robertson, may eventually scatter diamonds where even the most fashion-resistant nerd would appreciate them -- at the heart of the semiconductors that power our future computing devices.

Diamonds, it seems, have certain characteristics that would make them an ideal replacement for silicon, such as diamond's ability to channel heat away so much faster than silicon can, which could allow chips to shrink to one-tenth the size of equivalent silicon chips.

Of course there is one little snag in this jeweled-chip ointment -- the need for "n-type" diamonds (diamonds that have an abundance of electrons), which don't seem to occur in nature as do their complementary "p-type" diamonds (which have a scarcity of electrons, or an abundance of "holes" -- take your pick).  Yet both types are needed to make diamond-based transistors.

Which brings us to Hirose, who is experimenting with "plasma furnaces" to heat methane and hydrogen (and this and that) to 10,000 degrees C, hoping to generate those slippery n-type diamond semiconductors.   And that could well turn out to be every computer users' best friend.

Of course, that doesn't stop some people from wanting diamonds in their cell phones RIGHT NOW, and Motorola is quite willing; they produce a few rather special-order (http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5101607,00.html) diamond-encrusted cell phones!  The only "problem" is that these decorative-only diamonds are on the OUTSIDE...

On the other hand, if you're into such things but your taste runs more to gold and platinum, competition is on the way in the guise of Nokia's new high-end "Vertu" brand. 

The precious metals on these stylish "statement" phones are real, as are their $20,000 price tags.  Each.  Now there's a status symbol...

 

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