Comcast is experimenting with a new technology to recognize the person in the living room, and schedule programs and/or advertisements accordingly. They will install some sort of camera on the set top box which will recognize the person from body features (Comcast claims they will not have face recognition).

Bruce Schneier says how one needs a different mindset to be security-conscious. He contends it is innate, and cannot really be taught, although some effort is on at the University of Washington.

Do I need to spell out what I fear? Privacy, fortunately, doesn’t require as much of an innate talent as security, but it does require a lot of common sense. Given Comcast’s recent dealings vis a vis Bit torrents, I am afraid I’ll have to say “No, thanks” when they come to me with that wonderful feature of customized TV programs, and of course, customized advertisements. It’s not because I have anything to fear, but the mind boggles at the kind of misuse that kind of technology can be put to. Imagine someone viewing what I am doing in the privacy of my living room in real-time. In no time, I will be expected to behave in whatever manner is deemed “acceptable” at the time. But wait, that’s not the worse part. Who’s stopping anyone in law enforcement from hijacking the camera feed? Umm, did you say they need a court warrant, and if one is issued, there is sufficient evidence anyway? Right.

Why don’t we worry enough about our privacy? Is there any sociologist explaining the phenomenon? The way things have been going, if Comcast does come up with the camera plan, I am afraid a majority of us will just welcome it.

Interesting times are ahead, my friends.

[Links via Slashdot.]

iPhone SDK is already controversial.

I am not sure what to make of Apple’s tactics. At some level, I find it unfair that Apple won’t allow any competitive software to run on the iPhone; at the same time I wonder why should Apple play the altruist–it has an opportunity here to make money, so make it. Good for Apple, good for Apple’s stockholders.

Apple anyway has a history of being closed platform. It is only recently that it moved to Intel, till then the Mac was a big beautiful box. With that kind of background, it is no wonder they guard the iPhone so zealously. However, I wonder if Apple is not missing a trick by blocking Sun’s Java VM port for the iPhone. It seems, with the kind of restrictions Apple has put in place for developers using the SDK, that the only kind of software it is willing to allow are pure applications. No software that can even remotely be construed as a framework/enabler-of-other-software is going to be allowed. Smart move, I guess, as far as protecting one’s turf goes. A large part of Apple’s user base has also been supporters of the open software movement. It is actually very interesting how Apple always comes out smelling of roses in spite of its notorious antipathy towards any kind of competition. It will be interesting to how they react to this very restrictive SDK. I personally don’t find anything wrong with monopolistic practices, as long as no coercion is involved; but I am not sure right now.

This kind of tactics has always invited regulators’ wrath. Let us see what lies in store for Apple.

Interesting times are ahead, my friends.

Quite a few Blu-ray related stories doing the rounds.

1. Price of Blu-ray players shoots up. An entry level model costs around $150 more than it did before Toshiba officially backed out of the high definition video standard war. With HD-DVD out of the way, Sony’s Blu-ray becomes the de-facto standard in the high definition market. With no competitor, it was expected Blu-ray players would cost more. It has happened, and a new equilibrium has been reached.  Now that the world has settled on Blu-ray as the standard for high definition, I am waiting for a lot more manufacturers to start making Blu-ray players. Those who were undecided which technology to back don’t have to worry about that anymore.

2. Sony’s PS3 has been selling a lot more pieces than Xbox360, partly because of the supply problems faced by the Redmond Giant. Guess what is going to happen now that PS3 remains the only console to support Blu-ray?

3. Microsoft has decided not to include Blu-ray player in Xbox-360, instead it is going to focus more on Xbox Live, the online service around Xbox. It thinks users can download movies from the Xbox Live store, and thus wouldn’t need a Blu-ray player.

4. GTA-4 is due for release next month. We had Halo-3 in the fall, now GTA this semester, what’s lined up for next fall?By the way, EA has just issued a hostile takeover bid for Take-two-the publishers of GTA.

Interesting times are ahead, my friends.

Big day tomorrow. NBC and News Corp’s Hulu will be out of private beta. Till now, only those with invitations had access to the site. I am going to sign up as soon as it opens up. Techcrunch has the lowdown.

In addition to the promoters, Hulu boasts an impressive array of content providers which include the other big house, Time Warner group. Plans are afoot to rope in others. I wonder what this means for grainy videos on Youtube.  Sure, Hulu is not going to host any user-generated content, but a lot of Youtube’s viewers are those looking for the latest episodes of their favorite shows. What about broadcasters (e.g. CBS) who post contents from their shows on their Youtube channel?

Interesting times are ahead, my friends.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Many high schools now have very tight, overly strict attendance policies. I came from a school district where the most classes you could miss (on block scheduling) were 6 in a semester or you had to get a waiver. Often times, people skipped because they felt too tired to go to school or because they slept through their alarms.

So why not start school later? My friends and I would have missed fewer days of school if school hadn’t started at 7:25. That’s for sure! Compounding the issue of an extremely early starting time, the school district’s policy was that once you missed 15 minutes of class you were counted absent. Therefore, students who were running late in the morning because of oversleeping often didn’t come to school at all because once they give you an absence for one of your classes that day, what is the point in coming at all? You may as well use the day to catch up on studying or shoot the breeze.

Some people would argue that this just means that students need to go to bed earlier. My personal experience is that if you have to get up between 5 and 6 in the morning, you will be exhausted no matter what time you go to bed. For me, going to bed at 9 didn’t even help.

When you wake up exhausted, there usually isn’t a point in going to school anyways. Most likely you’ll just sleep through what the professor is saying. I got quite good at sleeping, or perhaps more accurately I should say resting, with my eyes open so that no one would know. I think my high school experience would have been more academically enriching if I had been more awake to pay attention to it. Overall I think student grades would rise if school started later. I think classroom participation would increase greatly, and that students would be more likely to go home at the end of the day feeling that they had really learned something. Obviously, all of this would better prepare high school students for life and college. I know I learn a lot more in college than I did in high school partly because I am now fully aware when I am in class.

The only problem I can see with this idea is that it will make it harder for students to find jobs. If school districts begin to start their high schools later, then most likely they’ll extend the school day to avoid losing time. This will lower the availability of the student to work because they’ll have to start their jobs later. To me the obvious solution would be to cut out the unnecessary junk that is taught in schools and just make the school day a little shorter, but I know that probably won’t happen. So what is more important?