CRTC

mediacaster A petition calling for the dissolution of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, (CRTC) says the regulator has become a burden on the Canadian public, and should be replaced with a new regulator

Dear Minister of Industry,

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) was created for the purpose of ensuring broadcasting and telecommunications systems serve the Canadian public and ensure that Canadians have a wide variety of options to create and view works of media or communicate across the country and the entire world.

We, the undersigned, believe that the CRTC has become a burden on the Canadian public and are failing to perform their duties in the interest of the Canadian public and that of a fair and unbiased telecom policy.
Scrap the CRTC, petition urges An online petition to dissolve the CRTC . The petition,
 and on Facebook and Twitter, was started Saturday by Mike Lerner, a 23-year-old Ottawa software company employee, who was frustrated by a decision to allow Bell Canada to institute usage-based billing on its wholesale internet customers. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission last week provisionally approved Bell’s request to require independent companies such as TekSavvy and Acanac, which rent parts of its network to supply their own services, to charge customers by how much they download.Independent providers typically offer customers hundreds of gigabytes of usage where Bell’s most popular service allows only 50 gigabytes a month. Smaller providers now say they have just under three months to migrate their customers on to similar usage models. Once those plans are implemented, they say, their services will be indistinguishable from Bell’s. The CRTC, the petition says, is failing in its mandate to protect competition and look out for the interest of Canadian consumers and has for the past three years shown “undue preference in the interest of commercial entities and their preference for traditional business models over competing models that would create competition.” “We, the undersigned, believe that the CRTC has become a burden on the Canadian public and are failing to perform their duties in the interest of the Canadian public and that of a fair and unbiased telecom policy,” it says.Lerner told CBC News the government needs to replace the current regulator with a body that is staffed by people who are in touch with the new technology and competition models being introduced by the internet.”You need some people who have experience with telecom but you also need some people who understand the new types of competition. They just don’t have any experience in that field,” he says. 

Olidata Conte ultraportable

 My, my Olidata — why on Earth have you been depriving our wandering eyes from this beauty for so long? After beingat CES, we’ve heard precisely nothing since… until now, obviously.

At long last, the striking Conte ultraportable has found its way outside of the lab over in Italy, sporting an ultrathin frame, chiclet-style keyboard, a bezel that’s a bit too wide for our tastes, an HDMI output and a price tag starting at just €799 ($1,129). From what we can gather, a few versions of the machine will be available, one of which sports an SU2700 CPU, 13.3-inch LED-backlit display, a 120GB hard drive, 3GB of RAM, Bluetooth, WiFi and a multi-touch trackpad. Another variant is slated to include a Core Solo SU3500 CPU and a 120GB HDD, while yet another gets a Core 2 Duo SL9400 and a 128GB SSD.

Acer Travelmate laptop 6293-6889

Acer Travelmate 6293-6889

CPU: 2.26-GHz Core 2 Duo P8400, Display Size (inches): 12.1" Display, Wide Screen: Yes, Total HD Size (GB): 160GB Hard Drive, Min. Weight (lbs.): 4.6Lbs

Acer Travelmate laptop 6293-6889 CPU: 2.26-GHz Core 2 Duo P8400, Display Size (inches): 12.1" Display, Wide Screen: Yes, Total HD Size

IBM Lenovo Thinkpad R52

IBM Lenovo Thinkpad R52 Laptop Pentium M Centrino 1.86GHz
14.1" XGA (1024x768) TFT
Intel 900 Graphics
512 Meg RAM
40.0 Gig HDD
8x24x24x24x DVD-CDRW Combo
Internal 56k Modem
Gigabit Ethernet
802.11abg Wireless
UltraNav
Secure Chip
6 Cell Li-Ion Battery
AC Adapter
Loaded and Licensed with Windows XP Pro
7 Day DOA Warranty

Qty. 50

$249/per FOB Hong Kong

Boolean Algebra

In 1985, The Science Museum in London(actually an updated version that Babbage designed in 1849) and a printer (also designed by the guy). The calculation section of the Engine alone consisted of 4,000 parts (this more sophisticated design called for a third of the parts required for the first version of the Engine) and weighed 2,600 kg (5,700 lb). It was completed and working in November 1991. Impressively, the machine was accurate to 31 decimal places!

Interesting fact: one of the reasons that Babbage never completed his Difference Engine was that he couldn’t help but to continuously tinker with and improve the design (he came up with the idea for the Analytical Engine even before he could build the Difference Engine). This was probably the first recorded instance of
In 1847, self-taught British mathematician George Boole invented a branch of algebra that dealt with logic. In Boole’s system, logic operations can be boiled down to three steps: union (OR), intersection (AND), and complementation (NOT). Boole’s idea was brilliant – but at the time, it was criticized and completely ignored by his contemporaries.

It was not until almost 100 years later that in 1938, engineer Claude Shannon realized that Boolean algebra could be applied to two-valued electrical switching circuits. Shannon’s work, and by extension, that of George Boole, became the foundation of modern day digital circuit design and was the basis for all digital electronics
In 1941, despite financial hardship and isolation from computer scientists from other Western countries, German computer pioneer Konrad Zuse created the world’s first programmable computer, the Z3, from spare telephone parts.

The Z3 uses 2,000 relays (an electric switch) and was used to design aircrafts. Zuse’s request to create an electronic successor for the machine was denied by Germany as "strategically unimportant." The original Z3 was destroyed in air raid of Berlin, so Zuse built a fully-functioning replica later in the 1960s.

x-box 360 laptop

Probably the king of casemodding, Ben Heck’s (or Benjamin J Heckendorn) latest incarnation of a portable Xbox is this amazing revision 5 laptop of his portable Xbox 360 console. Based on a Gateway 1775W laptop, this one bad mofo portable system is based on a Jasper motherboard, features a built-in Ethernet port, digital push button volume controls, and a flush mounted optical drive.

Other than these, the super-sized Xbox 360 laptop uses a 17-inch widescreen LCD monitor (running at 720p resolution), packs WiFi, USB ports, and memory

But for such a cute (Andrew will hate the word for sure) monster to breath, there’s a better bracket to hold the fans v for improved ventilation

Built-in Ethernet port, finally.
Built-in WiFi adapter, as usual.
Digital pushbutton volume control rather than a clunky knob. Different, better sounding audio amp
Flush-mount DVD door and side panels (such as the memory card slots)
IR sensor for the remote control.
Two user USB ports.
More air holes!
Jasper motherboard.

Cool (Computer, That Is)

(that was your RAM) screamed along at 8 MHz, featured two serial ports and could accommodate one 3.5-inch floppy disc. It ran the Mac OS 1.0, came with a 9-inch black-and-white monitor and sold for a cool $2,500 (the equivalent of $5,000 in today's dollars). The first Apple Macintosh computer goes on sale.

The Macintosh 128K hit the market two days after it was announced to the world in the now-legendary commercial aired during Super Bowl XVIII.

If the spot, directed by Ridley Scott, was a minor masterpiece of commercial zeitgeist, the computer itself was a product of its time -- underpowered and not very easy to use. But it did represent a sea change, a paradigm shift, whichever late-20th century business cliché you care to use.

It was the first to feature a graphical user interface that could be called user-friendly and was the first, with the advent of the LaserWriter printer and Aldus PageMaker, to make desktop publishing a reality.
In a little under three months, Apple sold 50,000 of these babies, not exactly an avalanche.

Specs aside, what was really interesting was the palace intrigue swirling behind the scenes at the corporate mother ship in Cupertino, California. It would play a role in the development of the Macintosh.

Steve Jobs may be celebrated as a minor demigod now, but in the early '80s he was merely a callow co-founder of Apple. Knowing that a grown-up was needed to run the place, Jobs
 the services of John Sculley, then the president of Pepsi-Cola.

Sculley duly arrived but the honeymoon didn't last long. As Apple sales failed to match expectations, Jobs and Sculley fell out, and, as is the wont when two big egos lock antlers, the feuding began. Jobs, who was working on Apple's Lisa project, got dumped from that shortly after Sculley clocked in, so he moved over to the Macintosh. This turned out to be a good thing when Jobs brought Lisa's GUI with him.

He also began plotting to stick it to Sculley and regain the tiller at Apple.

But Sculley had the board of directors' confidence, and when he got wind of Jobs' intrigue he forced a vote on the issue. Jobs lost, then quit, and didn't return until 1996. By then, Sculley was road kill, an unpleasant memory for what had become a struggling company.

Jobs' return to the throne, of course, heralded Apple's resurrection and he's been up on top of Mt. Sinai pretty much ever since, handing down the tablets.