Increasingly true it would seem:

Imagine a work world with no commute, no corporate headquarters and perhaps not even an office in the physical world at all.

For Bob Flavin, a computer scientist at IBM; Janet Hoffman, an executive at a management consulting firm; and Joseph Jaffe, a marketing entrepreneur, the future is already here. Link—>

Pocketables relates their experience with a new Sony laptop which resonates with my earlier post entitled Swearing of Sony.   They found 8 gig worth of bloatware installed by Sony on the device!  Link —>

For those asking, here is a diagram showing how my home studio is set up (Download the PDF to zoom - homestudio.pdf)

Overview:

iMac 24″ - Runs all web apps for audio input (Skype, iTunes, GarageBand, etc.) and encodes ShoutCast stream via NiceCast

Stanton Mixer receives the following inputs:
Heil PR40 Mic, Sirius Radio, XM Radio, Pioneer CD deck, iMac Audio

Stanton Mixer outputs to:
Marantz audio recorder, Stanton headphones, Apple HiFi (serving as studio monitor), and Rolls PreAmp

Rolls PreAmp - Amplifies signal into iMac line in

M-Audio Keyboard - MIDI controls for GarageBand

Drobo - USB storage

I’ve finally eliminate the last remaining Windows machines in my office.  As of this week, my audio PCs (three of them) have been replaced with a single iMac that is handling the encoding of my ShoutCast stream will all audio looped through my Stanton mixer.  Now maybe I can do those podcasts that Tanji and Bazerghi keep asking about.

Doesn’t this defeat the purpose of a unified number? When you sign up it is to have one number for life that you can put on business cards, etc. Now they are killing mine…

We are sorry to inform you that your GrandCentral number (703) 552-xxxx will need to be changed as of August 25, 2007. As part of our beta testing, we are continually evaluating different solutions and partners to create the best quality service possible. Unfortunately, a very small number of users have been assigned numbers that are not performing to our quality standards and are being replaced with higher quality services. To ease the transition to a new number, we have already added (703) 942-xxxx as a replacement number to your account. Both of these numbers will ring your GrandCentral account until the 25th of August, at which point only the (703) 942-xxxx number will remain active. Your login and everything else regarding your account will remain the same, including all your settings, voicemails, and contacts. If you have any questions or would like to request a different number, please reply to this email and we’ll do our best to accomodate you.

Update:  I sent an email to GrandCentral expressing my frustration.  I was impressed when one of the founders of the company replied:

Matt,

I sincerely apologize for this inconvenience. I certainly understand your frustration and share it, but this is partly out of our control. The carrier who provides us with your number is stopping servicing this number and none of the other carriers we use can port it, otherwise we would have done it. We’re working on making sure this does not happen again in the future.

Thanks for your understanding and i hope we can keep you as a customer.

Vincent

Interesting article in the NYT about an academic that proposes that we are living in a computer simulation.  Interestingly, I wrote a paper looking at that same concept in 1993 (email me if you want a copy).  I took it one step further and argued that such a reality, or lack thereof, was perfectly supported by several Eastern philosophies.

But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.  Link—>

I am currently on travel in Amman, Jordan.  Prior to my departure, I contacted AT&T to see if they had an international data roaming plan for the iPhone similar to the one I have had for Blackberry devices for several years.  With my Blackberry devices, I paid a flat fee for unlimited international data on my device (no tethering, etc).  However, AT&T offers no unlimited international data plan for the iPhone.  Instead, I was offered a data plan that caps out at 20meg per month and then charges for incremental data after that.

After three days of use only checking my mail (no web browsing, no stock or weather checking) I had reached the 20meg mark which resulted in me turning of the email checking on the phone and eliminating one of the key functions of the phone for the remaining 7 days of my stay.

As an business user that travels internationally, I can’t recommend the iPhone over the Blackberry to those that require international email on their phone.  AT&T needs to release an unlimited data plan or at least implement reasonable rates for incremental data used internationally so customers don’t wind up like this guy.

Funny pic from Boy Genius Report

The first time I’ve missed BlackHat in years and they cover something terrorism related….

Neal Krawetz, a researcher and computer security consultant, gave an interesting presentation today at the BlackHat security conference in Las Vegas about analyzing digital photographs and video images for alterations and enhancements.

Using a program he wrote (and provided on the conference CD-ROM) Krawetz could print out the quantization tables in a JPEG file (that indicate how the image was compressed) and determine the last tool that created the image — that is, the make and model of the camera if the image is original or the version of Photoshop that was used to alter and re-save the image.  Link—>

This terror campaign, which has been waged during the past six months, has left a trail of dead and injured, and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars’ damage. The terrorists belong to a militant group bent on overthrowing the government. But they will never be arrested or charged for their crimes because they have committed them away from the reach of the world’s law enforcement agencies, in the virtual world known as Second Life.  Link —>