The future of video cameras

So, we're getting ready for a trip and really don't feel like lugging our Sony mini-DV camcorder along with our digital camera. Everyone's talking about the Flip Mino, so that would be a possibility. Then again, our still camera has a movie mode, with the same resolution as the Mino (640x480), except that it has a 12X optical zoom, better optics, and a better sensor. It doesn't have much in the way of video compression capability, storing its video as MJPEG (just a sequence of JPEG compressed frames), which means that videos require 1GB per 10 minutes or so. But that's not such a big deal these days. Even though it is discontinued and Konica Minolta is no longer in the camera business, there was a firmware update that allows it to use 2GB SD cards. A quick trip to Costco, and we have enough storage for our trip.

So, it seems that we're on the threshold of major change, not just in laptop computer mass storage, but also in video cameras. For those who need more than a cell phone or Mino -- and who aren't professionals -- what's the motivation behind getting anything other than a good digital camera with video capability? Pretty much every digital camera out there supports at least 640x480, or standard definition. They certainly have the sensors to capture HD. Flash memory prices will be low enough within the next couple years that it will really not make any sense to buy a hard drive camcorder. The only remaining question will be: do you really need to shoot 10 hours of video before the next time you'll be able to dump the video to a computer or DVD burner?

IEEE Spectrum: Video Viewer

Here's a very interesting video of the CMU autonomous vehicle they've been developing for the Army. I have mixed feelings about this.

• The chasis is very impressive. This thing would be great at a monster truck rally.
• I don't want to be anywhere near this thing when its gun is loaded. Not based on my assessment of how formidable it will be, but rather how reliably it will function. Shades of ED-209 from "Robocop".
• I wonder how vulnerable this vehicle would be to very primitive countermeasures, like a guy with a can of spray paint.

Get by with a little help from your (non-Windows-using) friends

Seems that a lot of digital picture frames are shipping with a Windows virus pre-installed. This is very convenient; it eliminates all of the hassle of connecting to the net and waiting for infection.

Seriously, and as John Gruber pointed out in Daring Fireball, here is one general approach to avoiding Windows viruses (quoted from the article linked above):

Deborah Hale at SANS suggested that PC users find friends with Macintosh or Linux machines and have them check for malware before plugging any device into a PC.

Single point of failure?

Do people really rely on a device that can fail, nationwide, if someone screws up a software upgrade at a single location in the country (apparently the reason for the April 2007 Blackberry outage)? A quick perusal of Google indicates two outages last year and one in 2007. And this is supposed to be a device better suited to corporate use than an iPhone?

Sun going the way of Silicon Graphics

So, now that Sun Microsystems has changed their ticker symbol from "SUNW" to "JAVA", they've agreed to be a Windows OEM. I remember when Silicon Graphics started shipping Windows on their machines; I thought, "Why bother buying an SGI machine anymore?" By shipping a commodity OS on their hardware, they are instantly placing themselves in direct competition with the other PC server vendors. The only two places they can compete are hardware and price. And they're big losers in the price wars. Contrast that strategy with Apple's. While there may be some small differences in hardware or price between Apple and Windows server vendors, the big differentiating factor is the software.

Whatever happened to originality?

Meizu multi angle
Originally uploaded by stiber

It doesn't seem that anyone's even trying anymore; they just rip off whatever they want. Even if some say that there are signifcant differences with the iPhone.

Then again, just about every portable device that makes sounds has buttons arranged in a circle around a central button, so maybe this isn't really all that new.

Improvements in CS enrollment coming

As the linked article shows, new enrollment in CS continued its decline last fall, but just barely. Degrees granted, of course, lags the new enrollment trend by at least four years. Anecdotally, I see enrollments trending sharply up this comming fall, which is just what would be expected from previous patterns in engineering enrollment.

Bill Gates eats his cake

Bill Gates was in Washington today to testify in front of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. In his testimony (PDF), he said:

A top priority must be to reverse our dismal high school graduation rates – with a target of doubling the number of young people who graduate from high school ready for college, career, and life – and to place a major emphasis on encouraging careers in math and science.

He also said:

College and graduate students are simply not obtaining science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (“STEM”) degrees in sufficient numbers to meet demand. The number of undergraduate engineering degrees awarded in the United States fell by about 17 percent between 1985 and 2004.

Unfortunately, he then goes on to say:

...the terrible shortfall in our visa supply for the highly skilled stems not from security concerns, but from visa policies that have not been updated in over a decade and a half... I personally witness the ill effects of these policies on an almost daily basis at Microsoft. Under the current system, the number of H1-B visas available runs out faster and faster each year... Barring high-skilled immigrants from entry to the U.S., and forcing the ones that are here to leave because they cannot obtain a visa, ultimately forces U.S. employers to shift development work and other critical projects offshore.

So, on the one hand, Bill Gates wants more Americans to seek technology careers. On the other hand, he wants the ability to hire more immigrants. From a potential student's point of view, these seem contradictory goals, the latter reducing the attractiveness of such careers by decreasing pay and security and therefore decreasing the number of students who might want to major in technology fields. From Bill's point of view, they are entirely consistent: increase the supply of labor to drive down its cost. (Boy, I hate sounding like Lou Dobbs.)

Oh, and in case you thought Bill's point of view was purely that of a disinterested philanthropist, he also lobbied for tax breaks for his and similar companies.

Topics: technology careers, politics.

More about student podcasting

Adrian comments (link from title) on my musing about incorporating podcasting into my classes. He has a very good point:

I have a ’sustainable teaching’ rule. Which is that if the use of a technology, or methodology, leads to more assessment or teaching load, then it probably isn’t a good idea... Rather than have students interview me, I’d get a group, let’s say four, to do research around idea n, and they are to then have a structured conversation about the idea.

Too often I (and perhaps others?) tend to think of teaching as me, rather than the students, doing something. That is clearly not the case. Like anything else, we only have so much time we will devote to teaching; more time on X means less time on Y. For those of us making the transition from "old style" teaching to newer approaches, the change in viewpoint involves spending more time in course, assignment, project, infrastructure, etc. development and less time as the center of in-class attention.

On the legal front, it appears that posting podcasts so that they are accessible by individuals outside the classroom may be problematic. The solution I've found is authentication supported by UW's web servers (access lists are updated nightly by the Registrar's office) and the rss2html.php script to generate an HTML view of the podcast feed (since podcatching clients won't be able to subscribe to the restricted-access feed).

Academic podcasting

I've been interested for a while now in how "distance learning" technology could be used for something a bit more inventive and valuable than just a hyperlinked textbook, self-grading exercises, and canned lectures. Adrian Miles at vlog 3.0 has an interesting post (linked from title above) about educational podcasting, or "profcasting": use an interview, or conversational, model. I like this; one of my favorite podcasts is In Our Time, from BBC Radio 4.

I suppose I could require each student in a class to prepare for and conduct a high-quality interview of me, or do small-group conversations, on a specific topic in the course. I'd of course have to get everyone's written agreement to use recordings beyond the classroom (i.e., non-commercial distribution rights). OK, time to contact the university lawyers (or get someone else to contact them...).

Topics: academia, podcasting.