And I think it should be politically backed not only by the CBS type of people. This could be a way for talented artists to be paid. For people to download content to their portable music players. And the same technology can be applied to video.
I posted this at GigaOM. This is sounding like it can become a mud fight in the telecom industry. This sounds fun. I’d like it if you could answer these questions I have about the technologies in question:
- Is the winning bid going to be using Mobile WiMAX on this 700MHZ spectrum? Is there any other kind of wireless broadband technology that suits better or worse in that frequency range?
- How will this 700MHZ Mobile WiMAX be different from the one Sprint and Clearwire are building for next year? Can Mobile WiMAX equipment that is made for 700MHZ be compatible with 2500MHZ?
- Can one deploy a 700MHZ network very cheaply by installing FON routers type of 10 dollar small boxes into people’s homes which would take adsl/cable/fiber that people have at home and no matter which provider they use, and broadcast that signal on 700MHZ, maybe Mobile WiMAX down onto the streets and nabourhood? Do you think such approach could automatically be scalable with more than one of such boxes installed per building, with clever bandwidth throttling and users still logging in through a centrally controlled DNS login just as with FON? Could FCC force all ISPs to accept that this FON approach be undertaken?
- If this Flower Box model for a cheap and quick deployment of 700MHZ Mobile WiMAX would work, why isn’t Google suggesting FCC that they can make this happen and guarantee free mobile broadband access to all Americans during a specific limited amount of time, for example 5 years? Could bandwidth quality be guaranteed and be part of the bid? Since I think slow bandwidth could maybe be free and ad-supported while higher prioritized ad-free bandwidth could be available only for a fee.
- Do you know what the status is for what the UHF 700MHZ frequency is going to be used for in Europe and other countries where they also are phasing out the old fashionned analogic terrestrial television?
Let’s get free Mobile WiMAX over the 700MHZ spectrum in every country of the world. That is the UHF radio spectrum that was previously used in every country for analog terrestrial television. Now that we have transitioned to digital terrestrial television, this 700MHZ spectrum is now free and should be used for long range, wall penetrating wireless broadband. Google suggests that it should be Open wireless broadband for all.
I have been trying to figure out if Mobile WiMAX can be deployed using the flower box model. This is what Nicholas Negroponte said at WCIT in May of 2006:
Viral telecommunications is truly important. The whole notion of a
carrier-centric telecommunications system is over. We’re going to move
to what I call a flower box model of telecommunications which is much
more peer-to-peer and in fact everything will eventually be
peer-to-peer.
Where each user shares his home broadband Internet connection using a 700MHZ WiMAX router, just as FON is currently doing with WiFi. I wrote about this initially in the FON forum: http://boards.fon.com/viewtopic.php?p=18398&highlight=#18398
Democratic Senators are finally doing something about the war in Iraq. At least that’s what they are trying to make people think that they are. They have the majority in the Senate by 51-49 seats, so to have an up or down vote on setting a schedule for removing the American from Iraq, they need to force Republicans to simply allow that vote to be made. The American Senate rule says 60 votes are needed to do that up or down vote. So the strategy now is to force Republicans to stay in the Senate floor the whole night. Hopefully they will continue until they get their up or down vote to pass. Then if Bush vetoes it, the Senate can do it again and send it to the president. If Bush vetoes it again, the Senate can do that again. And after 3-4 rounds of vetoing, I think there must be somekind of ground for that president and his vice-president to be impeached.
Cindy Sheehan wants Bush and Cheney to be impeached, she says Bush, Cheney ad the Republicans only went to Iraq for the oil, thus for profiteering from the war:
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Cindy_Sheehan_calls_to_impeach_BushCheney_0717.html
How soon are we going to phase out gas powered cars and replace them with electric cars? It seems from news on the Internet that the technology for electric cars is available now.
And by the way, it would also bring peace to the world and fix global warming if we did that change today.
You can also submit your message to the UK foreign minister at avaaz.org
I’d like to hope that Intel will have a very positive attitude with OLPC going forward. Firstly not to “compete” XO-1 by dumping low volume of Classmate-1. And not dumping EEE-1 in low volumes eigther.
Intel should contribute competing with AMD towards the low power fanless CPU for XO-2, there should be an even lower power CPU than LX-700, with DCON, instant-resume and all perticular innovative and extremely usefull technologies of OLPC integrated, which are not integrated in anyway in Classmate-1/EEE-1. LX-700 type of processor could run Windows XP, so there isn’t an argument for more power unless it can be made for cheaper and by lower power consumption.
Then Intel could provide cheap low power Mobile 802.16e WiMax for XO-2, if they can develop a WiMax Mesh network technology, a low-power WiMax chip that has its own ultra-low power CPU and memory just as the Marvell WiFi Mesh chip of the XO-1. Then it should be researched if WiMax can replace WiFi or if it should be a secondary wireless access to add.
Intel has dozens of other cool things to contribute, but always keeping in mind that the price of XO should decrease towards $50 by 2009.
The High-K/Metal Gate Research and Development, the multiple-cores, the built-in graphics acceleration, lots of other things Intel has knowledge and ressources to make, it should be evaluated which of these technologies can be contributed to lowering the cost and lowering the power consumption.
I believe there are enough people on this planet for all kinds of computers. There will still be alot of people who need to encode videos faster, play new 3D games, process graphics and animations, those people will continue to need the expensive computers. And then there is an enormous untapped market in the developping and in the western world for people who will need very low cost and very low power computers. It’s inevitable now, the upwards spiral in price/power consumption is not applicable any longer. So Intel is welcome to be part of that kind of future, it’s gonna be a fun for everyone, with low margins and large volumes.
Finally, Intel joins the One Laptop Per Child project.
XO-1 will start mass production as planned this September or October and will use AMD Geode LX-700 chips as planned.
The first generation school servers that will be shipped to schools using the XO-1 will use Intel chips.
This is what I think we can expect Intel could provide to the OLPC project:
- Contribute large amounts of R&D to make the successor to the LX-700, it should consume even less power while providing as reliable or more reliable x86 processing.
- XO-2 should integrate DCON better (the technology that can refresh the image on the screen while suspending the main processor most of the time when it’s not needded)
- XO-2 should add low power Mobile WiMax 802.16e as a second wireless technology in the laptop with the WiFi Mesh 802.11s. Unless Mobile WiMax can be made to work in ad-hoc mode as a Mesh thus it could replace WiFi. Intel is said to be very much invested in Mobile WiMax technology. Mobile WiMax in the 700mhz UHF band might be the best solution, and a deployment using the FON flowerbox model would provide free wireless broadband blanketing very quickly and very cheaply for whole countries.
- XO-2 should optimize suspend and resume even more, make it faster, better and more reliable.
- Find a way to add E-Ink technology to the laptop for better readabillity and lower power consumption in e-book mode, possibly as a second rollable screen that can be pulled over the LCD.
- Work towards commercializing OLPC technology in the whole world. Profit made by commercializing OLPC technologies should be used by the OLPC foundation towards lowering the price of the XO-1, XO-2 and XO-3. A result of this might be that we will all be able to buy $200 laptops soon running Linux, lasting 20 hours on a battery, being sunlight readable, integrating Mobile WiMax and WiFi Mesh, providing instant-resume and running the main processor without a fan. It is everyone in the world who needs to use the OLPC technology for lower power computing in terms of protecting the environment.
This is a followup to John C. Dvorak’s column on PCmag.com:
Here’s one thing I’m looking forward to that a pocket product with somekind of GPS built-in and clever Web 2.0 apps would bring:
- Organisation in society and among people so that nobody needs to wait in line ever again.
In this society of consumerism, some people simply don’t question the fact that some coorporations are making a lot of money on them waiting in line. When you wait in line, you are generating frenzy around a product or service, like a magnet, the line tells passer bys that they should also stand in the line if they want to be normal. Normality today is to shut up, not care about politics, and to stand in lines to buy new products from large coorporations. In fact, the product is part of an experience and an event that is designed to attract more customers, to generate more profit.
The iPhone is all about the feeding of consumers with a flashy piece of gadget that has a flashy interface. Is this interface a better way to do consumer electronics? Or is it just a flashy animation that does not improve any aspects of usability, and a product that does not provide any new features? Surely Apple has had the ressources to research during the past couple of years what would be the best way to improve usabillity in consumer electronics? Has Apple mostly spent their R&D to create a flashy experience product but with no improvement in terms of usabillity and functionality?
Would some companies be able to earn even more money if there was a way that everyone could buy products and get experiences without having to wait in line?
Here are more negatives to add on the ones listed at gizmodo.com:
Just as any other Apple product, it’s locked to iTunes, it doesn’t support full DVD quality DivX, XviD, Mpeg2, WMV, AC3, vbr-mp3, RM, Mpeg1, Ogg Theora, GVI.. It only synchs through iTunes, forget about copying some files from a random computer that doesn’t have iTunes installed. No TV-out, no TV-in.
The iPhone being sold in the USA is also locked on an outdated 2G data service plan and Americans are thus forced by law to continue paying for that data service for two years. Minimum price is 2000$ in all. Even if there are 3G, WiMax alternatives already available or imminent, every iPhone owner is forced to stay on a crappy data service network and are forced to keep paying for EDGE for two years even if one quickly gets tired of such a slow bandwidth (after like 5 minutes of browsing on EDGE speed you get sick of it and probably won’t like to do it again ever) Thus this is gonna be just an expensive WiFi browser with an EDGE service plan nobody needs but are forced to pay for.
Also it’s locked so users cannot do VOIP on the iPhone, nor IM and bad Javascript support means a lot of Web 2.0 apps are never going to work on the iPhone.
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