Does Anybody Really Know What
Time It Is?
I am thinking and writing about time these days: What it means,
how we measure it, and so forth. Travelling across the earth and
tundra does that, as the miles become reminders that gravity and the
clock rarely work in reverse. China and the continental U.S. are
roughly the same size, but China has only one time zone to the
four-plus of North America.
And then my home server crashes -- www.62chevy.com -- and while
I'm across the world wondering whatever and however, it turns out
it's the power back home and little else and I am thankful for the
little things that go right when it seems they've gone quite wrong.
Sorry if that threw off anyone's plans to find out more about whom
now Mark, Cory and Xeni have collectively given the car keys of
Guestbar blog.
Back to the time: Knowing where you are is now and has always
been a function of knowing the correct time. Ships used rocket
references fired from Greenwich (hence GMT), and now GPS is little
more than a very modern, highly accurate update. The satellites
broadcast their known position and the precise time, enabling
devices below to judge their position relative to the signals
received. These are passive devices, incapable of ratting on you,
unless tethered to some transmitter or other means of communication.
What happens if an enemy broadcasts false or blocking signals on
the GPS frequencies? What effect might this have on GPS equipment in
Iraq? Somehow, someway, unfortunately it seems we may well find out,
and sooner rather than later.
I learned today that the Swiss have watches in use that sample
the music they hear, all the better to help divvy up the pools of
money that compensate rights holders in music for the performance
and broadcast of their songs. And the Swiss are now apparently
levying on photocopy machines, around $30 a year I'm told, to
populate a fund for authors.
I like levies for rights compensation, but not on equipment. I
think the levy needs to be at an appropriate turnstile point in the
delivery chain, and any turnstile that can pick up and leave the
country to avoid paying the levy is not appropriate to the task. I'm
all for levying on digital providers, but that is a subject for
another day, when I am less tired, when time has taken less of a
toll, when I don't have to speak the next day. I am headed for a
Lappish Village to talk to telecom execs and explain to them why I
think they're a good place for levies, and I suspect I will need all
the energy I can muster.
Discuss
posted by Jim
Griffin at 4:16 PM | permalink
Ole Bluetooth, King Harald of
Sweden, Would've Loved This
I am in Levi, Finland, at a meeting where we are talking and
playing and working wireless. I pull out my laptop, fire up the
bluetooth manager to connect with my cell phone to dial up a
connection and ... whoa ... is this slooooow ... where *did* the
connection go ... and just when I am about to give up I see hundreds
of bluetooth devices on my laptop's bluetooth manager! Headsets,
phones, devices, all revealing themselves in low security mode. It's
a shock, as I can hardly believe my eyes. Like looking at a Windows
Networking window at a LAN party or conference, but these are phones
and devices and laptops aplenty. Later I try it in my room and the
same thing happens, with a few less connections but the same effect.
Tempted to play, I quickly put it away, unsure of the laws
surrounding bluetooth hacking in Finland and uninterested in the
inevitable confrontation with someone who might later find out I am
dialing their phone or listening through their headset.
I like being connected. I like being interconnected. But more and
more I am thinking about safe computing, about sending every one of
them a business card, about how you could broadcast PowerPoint info
via bluetooth. The possibilities, for good and ill, are fascinating,
omnipresent and for better or worse they are here and now.
Discuss
posted by Jim
Griffin at 9:06 AM | permalink
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