Brad Ideas

Robocars & More

Here's an idea I had years ago and tried to promote to some of the earliest wireless companies, such as Metricom, without success. I just posted it on Dave Farber's IP list, so I should write it up again for my own blog...

Can giant companies, especially monopolies, ever get it right? Listen to this litany of the efforts to move my phone service, and get DSL.

Well, I am going to get a bluetooth cell phone shortly and so I got a headset and dongle to use on my laptop, where I also make VoIP calls.

I was shocked, flabbergasted to find that the bluetooth headset profile only transmits audio at telephone quality 8khz sampling rate. So even plugged into my laptop for hifi (didn't think I
would ever need to use that term again) recording, it sounds like a telephone, and likewise for
playback.

Why? Why? Why?

This week I will be doing some demos of Voxable, my system that combines VoIP, presence and all sorts of cool stuff I won't be writing about in the public blog to create a new user interface for the phone that is both as modern and internet as it can get while also being a reflection of the ancient interface for the phone that was lost.

Who could possibly imagine wanting spam? Well, I just read that in the USA, 100 million trees are felled every year for junk mail. 28 billion gallons of water used to process the paper. And 350 million dollars spent to throw it out. That doesn't include I presume the other costs, including postage and wasted time, this is just the paper part of it.

For many the guest bed has for years been the sofabed. But they are usually terrible beds, with too-thin mattresses that get lumpy. People are moving more towards inflatable beds they put on the floor or a stand. On the floor of course is not comfortable either.

I wrote earlier this week on the discovery that people were blacklisting sites with email autoresponders. More thought and debate on the issue has led to a number of thoughts over how to solve the issues around autoresponders, in particular the concern that they will respond to messages with forged From addresses.

We risked running low on fuel today, and saw the car sputter briefly while going up a hill. Made it to the gas station fine, in fact with a gallon to spare, it seems.

Today many universities are doing video of their lectures, and making it available on the campus LAN (or older campus cable TV.) In some cases students are not going to class, but many just find it a useful addition.

I suggest an application where students, while watching the lecture, could press keys on their computer synced in timestamp with the video. They don't need to be online, they just need a modestly good clock. Buttons like "This is important, review this for the final." Or even comments like "I already know this" and "I'm lost."

I learned a couple of days ago my mail server got blacklisted by spamcop.net. They don't reveal the reason for it, but it's likely that I was blacklisted for running an autoresponder, in this case my own custom challenge/response spam filter which is the oldest operating one I know of.

I've written before about the desire for a new universal dc power standard. Now I want to rethink our systems of household and office power.

These systems range from 100v to 240v, typically at 50 or 60hz. But very little that we plug in these days inherently wants that sort of power. Most of them quickly convert it to something else. DC devices use linear and switched mode power supplies to generate lower voltage DC. Flourescent lights convert to high voltage AC. Incandescent bulbs and heating elements use the voltage directly, but can be designed for any voltage and care little about the frequency. There are a dwindling number of direct 60hz AC motors in use in the home. In the old days clocks counted the cycles but that's very rare now.

On top of that, most of what we plug in uses only modest power. The most commonly plugged in things in my house are small power supplies using a few watts. Most consumer electronics are using in the 50-200w range. A few items, such as power tools, major appliances, cooking appliances, heatters, vacuum cleaners and hairdryers use the full 1000 to 1800 watts a plug can provide.

So with this in mind, how might we redesign household and office power...

One particularly interesting argument seen in the Underwatergate scandal is the one that the NYT, by revealing the existence of warrantless wiretaps on international communications lines, compromised national security.

Reporters asked how that can be. After all, surely the bad guys knew the U.S. had the ability to perform surveillance on them, and has a secret intelligence court, and was presumably getting lots of secret warrants to watch them, and was furthermore watching them overseas without being subject to the 4th amendment.

I've written before about automatic self-driving cars, both their risks (overregulation due to fear of their use by terrorists) and possible driving forces (oil companies excited by people taking longer trips) and more.

Generally, except for a few specialized applications (such as the automatic parking lot) such cars, if they are to be used where people or cars that may not under network control are present, must start with a basic ability to avoid accidents. In a vigourous debate with friend Charles Merriam last night, the question came up about where the value will lie. Charles is a big proponent of worrying first about crash-avoiding cars.

Right now we all pay from $250 to $500 per year, and often much more, for insurance to cover the risk of accidents. Of course, that's just the financial cost, and financial proxies for suffering, so the real value we would put on an accident resistent car might be much higher. Perhaps $5,000 to $10,000 over the life of the car.

That seems like a highly lucrative market on its own. While the self-driving car has many other long term merits (because you can do other work while moving, and you don't have to park it, and it can appear on demand as a taxi for you) we should be very close to financially justifying the accident-avoiding car today...

The AP reports that the DoJ is going to investigate the Underwatergate "leak" to the New York Times. Many of course wish they would investigate the program instead, but since the AG was involved in it, that's difficult.

But this puts forward the complex problem of how to deal with, and stop, illegal classified programs. Because they are classified, they lack many of the checks and balances that exist for other government operations. Indeed, it is suspected that many programs get classified entirely or in part in order to avoid scrutiny.

I was visiting a senior citizen today who rarely leaves her house due to lack of mobility. Like many her age, she is not connected to the net, nor interested in it. Which makes the following idea a challenge.

Could we design a really engaging game/online community for seniors? Especially those who have had to give up much of their old community because of infirmity? They don't want to slay monsters like in Evercrack or Warcraft. They won't build objects like in Second Life.

Here's a festive idea for a robotics company -- a giftwrapping robot, able to take a standard, not particularly fragile rectangular box and perfectly giftwrap it.

This might be a viable product for online stores that offer giftwrapping options, but I think one decent market would be malls at Christmastime. Aside from making money charging for wrapping, it would be an attraction (expecially in Japan where they love gifts) that brought in shoppers. I suppose some might worry it could deprive the charities that sometimes do giftwrapping in malls of a fundraising opportunity.

All the shipping companies today support very nice package tracking with web interfaces that let you see your package move through all the depots. Some day they might even send you an alert when it's half an hour before delivery.

However, more than a few times I've wished for something else -- package redirection, either at the behest of the recipient or the shipper. I talked earlier about my Addresscrow system, which would let you change your alias to mean different addresses as you move around, but this is more than that.

A lot of new developments in the warrantless wiretap scandal. A FISA judge has resigned in disgust. A Reagan-appointed former DoJ official calls the President a clear and present danger. And the NSA admits they have on rare occasions tapped entirely domestic phone calls, because sometimes people calling to or from international cell phones while those phones are in the USA would see the traffic go overseas and come back again. I have made such calls to Europeans and Australians visiting the USA.

Seeing as this scandal seems to be revolving around the tapping, without warrants, of signals over the undersea telecom cables, I propose we call it Underwatergate.

It's long, but I can strongly recommend the transcript of today's press briefing on the NSA warrentless wiretaps. It's rare to see the NSA speak about this topic.

One can read a fair bit between the lines. The reporters were really on the ball here, far more than one usually sees.

Particularly interesting notes include: