This seems to be a case of hyper sensitivity over Michelle Obama’s recent comments regarding childhood obesity. Mrs. Obama basically said:
- My Doctor said that my daughter’s Body Mass Index (BMI) wasn’t looking healthy
- I began controlling my family’s meal portions and asked kids to be aware of when they’re full
- I substituted water bottles for sweet drinks in their lunch
- Limited their television to get them to be more active
- Didn’t make a big deal about any of this because they were only minor changes and we just did them
- Doctor was shocked at the dramatic improvement of my daughter and I replied that we only made small changes
- We can all make these small changes too and be healthy
As a parent myself, I listened to her interview and found my self nodding my head up and down because everything she said was sage advice for any parent. But a few hypersensitive people picked up on this and Drudge Report had the headline of “MY FAT DAUGHTERS” being attributed to Michelle Obama. It’s almost as if they’re mad about something Mrs. Obama didn’t say but they’re imagining that she said it.
Laura Collins Lyster-Mensh of the F.E.A.S.T (and organization that combats eating disorders) freaked out as if Mrs. Obama had done infinite harm to the first daughters. Now I don’t want to make light of eating disorders, but it is totally irrelevant to anything Mrs. Obama’s said. Mrs. Obama did not call her daughters “fat” and she is not putting them on some anorexic diet. Mrs. Obama isn’t some stage mother screaming at her daughter in public that she’s too heavy. She put them on a healthier diet with some minor adjustments after she listened to her doctor’s warning and got great results.
Eating disorders are a real problem, but it can go both ways. Too much food (especially junk food) is just as bad and unhealthy as too little food. Being a skeleton is really bad for someone’s health but so is being really obese. Americans of European decent are about 4 centimeters shorter than their European counterparts because they’re eating too much junk food so they’re growing more horizontally than they are vertically. The first lady’s message is exactly what the country needs to hear.
The bottom line is that we can’t freak out every time someone says we need to moderate our junk food intake. Save your criticisms for the stage mom Laura, Mrs. Obama is giving the right advice on diet and exercise for children.
Google is beta testing HTML5 for video playback on YouTube, and my initial impressions of the technology are not good at all. A few months earlier, I couldn’t get Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Google Chrome to run HTML5 video. I am able to get the latest version of Chrome to render the video, but the results look terrible in its current stage.
Figure 1: YouTube HTML5 beta interface
As you can see in Figure 1, the rendering is horrible compared to Figure 2 in Adobe Flash mode. The image scaling looks like it merely using pixel duplication rather than something decent like cubic interpolation much less something good like Lanczos3. That’s why the image looks extremely blocky and pixilated. There’s no apparent support for 480P, 720P, or 1080P either.
Figure 2: YouTube Flash 10 interface
In Figure 2, we see a mature Flash 10 interface with much nicer quality image rendering as well as higher resolution support. This isn’t to say that there’s fundamentally something wrong with HTML5, just that the current implementation on YouTube has a long way to go before it can replace Flash. This is a major issue for iPhone/iPod/iPad users and Steve Jobs is throwing his whole weight behind HTML5 and has no intention of supporting Adobe Flash.
There’s good reason not to like Flash as it is very buggy and full of security holes that expose its host operating system to nasty malware attacks. Furthermore, the performance of Flash on many laptops and nearly all netbooks is horrible short of having a really fast laptop with rarely deployed dedicated graphics hardware. Microsoft Silverlight (which has been beta tested on iPhone) performs much better on similar hardware than Adobe Flash so there’s a possibility that HTML5 mode might also perform better. But until the implementation becomes much more mature and capable, HTML5 doesn’t even appear to be worthy of being beta.
Update – Google ETF is actually $550 on top of the $180 you already paid! So if you pull out early, you’ll have to pay $730 total!
I know Justin was impressed with the business model Google’s new Nexus One phone, but I really don’t see how it’s any different. You can buy the phone from Google for $529 without a carrier subsidy, or you can pay $179 with a T-Mobile subsidy. You buy the phone directly from Google, but how’s that any different than buying an iPhone directly from Apple?
Furthermore, it seems that Google isn’t very honest about the Early Termination Fee. It’s actually $350 if you break the contract early but Google advertises a $200 ETF. Verizon honestly advertises a $350 ETF and they’re being persecuted by some members of the FCC and by the so-called consumer advocacy groups who haven’t made a peep about Google’s misleading advertising or the $350 ETF. Why such an obvious double standard?
The Nexus One is made by HTC and it seems to be fairly impressive with an 800×480 OLED display and a 1 GHz ARM processor. But according to Michael Arrington, it only gets 1.5 hours of battery life when he games with the display at full brightness. That’s pretty pathetic considering the fact that a full size laptop gets more than that.
The FCC’s Chief Technologist Jon Peha says that the FCC doesn’t know how the NPRM should be defined and they are seeking answers. This may help explain why these business models are critical to innovation.
Figure 1: Which “enhanced” Internet models will the FCC NPRM prohibit?
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! This post is going to change as things get updated.
Updated 11/22/2009
Anyone who has ever tried to get wireless BlueTooth A2DP working in the last three versions of Windows will come to the following conclusion. Getting A2DP stereo BlueTooth needs to be WAY easier in Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7. Getting basic BlueTooth connectivity working for wireless mice or keyboards is fairly painless and easy because everything just works out of the box after you plug in a BlueTooth adapter into your computer, and you’re tricked into believing that everything is already working and installed. Trying to get low quality monophonic headset audio working is hard enough and trying to get A2DP high quality stereo working is a royal pain. This is something that’s amazingly simple on any modern cellular phone but it almost seems like rocket science in Windows.
The first thing you’ll notice in any recent version of Windows when attempting to connect a BlueTooth headset is that it will ask you for a bunch of drivers. Scanning the Internet or local hard drive won’t yield any results, and you’re left scratching your head wondering what happened and why the headset doesn’t come with any drivers. But as it turns out, you need additional drivers for your BlueTooth adapter to make any of this stuff work.
On my Lenovo X200, I downloaded the latest BlueTooth drivers compatible with Vista or Windows 7 here only to find out that only low quality 8-bit monophonic audio is supported. I had to search the Internet to figure out that I needed the WIDCOMM BlueTooth drivers from Broadcom, and Broadcom BlueTooth chipsets are very common though there are others on the market and you’ll need to get drivers from the chipset manufacturer. The driver install was fairly automated, but it took a LONG time to install and it required a reboot. I also had to connect and disconnect the A2DP headset and reconnect to get it working, but it worked beautifully when it did and sound quality was amazing.
Now my problem is that I need to find functional A2DP drivers for these super mini USB 2.0 BlueTooth dongles I got from DealExtreme.com for $2.36. Bluesoleil for Windows version 6 worked fine with this cheap adapter, but Bluesoleil costs $30! There’s just no way I’m paying $30 for a set of drivers to run a $2 dongle. You’re much better with a jWIN JB-TH101 which comes with A2DP drivers and it’s smaller. It’s only $10 if you can pick it up at a Fry’s store and avoid shipping charges. Getting it online might double the price due to shipping. I have a nice little IOGear GBU421 which comes with drivers but I used the Broadcom WIDCOMM drivers but it might cost you $20 with shipping.
And here’s a parting tip. I bought this amazing BlueTooth to 3.5 mm stereo jack adapter (includes a microphone as well) for $13. The cheap plastic earphones are lousy but you don’t have to use them and it’s worth it even without any earphones. More importantly, having the ability to connect your own high quality earphones is even more important.
Many of use suspected that there were ulterior motives behind Net Neutrality regulations, but we never thought it would be this blatantly underhanded. I had a chance to speak with one of the biggest experts on Internet peering William Norton and it was an eyeopener for me. The resulting article below has some very interesting revelations.
FCC NPRM ban on Paid Peering harms new innovators
The current FCC NPRM would prohibit paid peering agreements and harm small content providers while ensuring Google’s dominance on content distribution. Google is big enough to get free peering, but the NPRM would force their competitors to pay more for inferior transit access.
There’s an old adage in the IT world that no one ever gets fired for buying IBM. The problem was that it never said anything against firing IBM, especially if they botch things badly.
Litl LLC is apparently selling a new hardware-crippled netbook for $700. I just want to know what they’re smoking when ultralight laptops with dual-core processors are selling for $400.
The story that the new BitTorrent client uTorrent 2.0 is “network friendly” is making the top headlines on the Web and mailing lists. The only problem with this story it that it has no actual data to back up its assertions. I took the time yesterday to run some tests on the new uTorrent 2.0 beta build 16850 which supports the new “friendly” BitTorrent UTP. Based on my initial testing, the claim that the new BitTorrent client is network friendly appears to be false.
