Jaya and Bengt started on their First Lego League team this weekend. We got the standard parts and the competition mat but won't get the challenge for a couple weeks. They are very excited but will it will be very challenging to build and program the robot to complete the tasks. I am allowed to provide guidance but not solutions.

Cons
* Lots of dropped calls. This might force me to try and downgrade back to Mobile 5.
* Less battery life. I used to get 3-4 days on a charge, but now get only 2-3.

Pros
* Faster.
* All the organizer apps (Task List, Calendar, etc.) are much better.
* On a related note, the new Google Maps Mobile has a new feature where it determines your location based on cell tower presence. Since my phone does not have GPS, this is very nice.

DMCA was passed 10 years ago today and Wired has an interested take on its first decade in force.

This story about amateur rocketeers demonstrates pure American ingenuity and the human desire to explore and expand our knowledge. That being said, I am certain the government will shut them down sooner or later.

CingularAT&T is offering a free upgrade to Windows Mobile 6 for Blackjack 1.0 owners. I am applying the upgrade now and will report back after I have used it for a while.

I have been following Ghost Sites for at least 10 years now. Along with Yahoo and ESPN, it is probably the site I have been regularly visiting over the longest period of time. Steve Baldwin, the curator, has decided to move on due to a variety of reasons. His blog will still be in my feed reader but I will always enjoy reading of the ghost sites of the web.

Bill Gates has "retired" from Microsoft. The end of an era, perhaps. I've often wondering why Gates and Microsoft get such a bad rap. They certainly played hardball but in my opinion most of their competitors created their own problems and/or couldn't keep up. That is the beauty of free enterprise. A small company can come up with great products, cut even better deals and make a fortune. The PC industry grew so fast so quick just because of brilliant people like Gates (and many others), not because the government was there to control what came with our operating systems. Microsoft may be on the downturn, but its rise will be one for the history books. Mr. Gates created enormous wealth, let's sit back and watch him use it.
Here is an Then & Now shot of the classic early MS pic.

FLOPS (floating point operations per second) are one way of measuring raw computing power.
Techreport has a review of a three-way SLI graphics card system. This system has 1.7 teraflops just in the graphics subsystem, not counting the CPU. This configuration would cost around $2,000 just for the graphics cards. A lot for a PC these days, but peanuts compared to the old days.
According to Wikipedia, in 1961, a single FLOP would cost you over $1,000. As recently as 2000, a $1,000 buys you a gigaflop; a billion-fold increase in cost efficiency.
With Moore's Law alive and well, who can tell what the future will bring.

Then

Here is how you used to have to move 5MB of storage:



Courtesy of Snopes

Now

Compare that with today's 8GB thumb drive:


Courtesy of Newegg

I was never an Amiga user but an fascinated by its tale. It is a classic story of a superior technology that gets ruined by bad marketing and incompetent executives.
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/amiga-history-part-5.ars