Futurist

There are 391 posts filed in Futurist (this is page 39 of 40).

Raleigh works to woo Google fiber

I got a little ink in this week’s Independent Weekly, discussing the Triangle cities’ efforts to lure Google’s proposed 1Gbps fiber network:

East Raleigh organizer and blogger Mark Turner said the Bring Google Fiber to Raleigh! Facebook group he created the day that Google announced the fiber program now includes more than 600 members and has drawn the support of elected officials. He hopes upcoming Internet conferences in Raleigh will add muster to the effort.

“I see fiber and Internet connection as being almost as vital nowadays as sewer service and water service, as far as building communities,” Turner said. “It would really position us for some long-term growth.”

Google Fiber in WaPo

The announcement today of Google Fiber to the home was covered in today’s Washington Post:

The company said it will build fiber-to-the-home connections to a small number of locations across the country that will deliver Internet access speeds of 1 gigabit per second. It will take bids from municipalities beginning through late March to determine what areas would be part of its experiment. Google said access prices for consumers would competitive and that its network would reach at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people. A source who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the company doesn’t currently have plans to expand beyond the initial tests but will evaluate as the tests progress.

Having one’s city wired for blazing-fast Internet access would be a huge shot in the arm for a municipality. I sure hope it comes to Raleigh!

The gunslinger test

Gunslinger test

Researchers have shown that people move faster when reacting to something than when they perform “planned actions”. The movements that took place when reacting to something took an average of 21 fewer milliseconds than a planned action.

Inspired by Hollywood westerns, scientists at the University of Birmingham (UK) tested this with a simulated shootout. Participants given buzzers and not given a particular signal as to when to buzz their opponent.

Dr Welchman explained that it took around 200 milliseconds to respond to what an opponent was doing, so, in a gunfight, the 21 millisecond reactionary advantage would be unlikely to save you.

“The person who draws second is going to die. They’ll die happy that they are the faster person to move but it’s not much consolation in this context,” said Dr Welchman.

I think this must have been a fun experiment to conduct. Makes me wonder if there is some mental process that gets overridden or short-circuited when reacting to something. Also makes me wonder if we can train ourselves to override this process at will, i.e. consciously put our minds in “turbo mode” when needed.

Snow proves need for better broadband

The snow has already begun falling here in East Raleigh and it may continue for another 24 hours. This is shaping up to be an insane amount of snow and any hopes of hitting the road for work Monday morning may be pure fantasy.

That may leave many Triangle workers stuck at home when they could be working. While some will play in the snow with their families others will try to work from home, firing up their connections to the office. This is when many of them will realize just how pathetic their so-called high speed Internet service is when it comes to upload speed. Those web conferences will crawl. That videoconferencing you hoped to do? It’s buffering … buffering … buffering.

While the major ISPs want to treat their Internet service like a one-way pipe, in reality it takes a speedy connection in both directions to bring the Internet to its full potential. Collaboration suffers when one side has its hand tied behind its back.

Yes, municipal broadband may seem expensive but consider the cost of hundreds of thousands of workers stranded at home, unable to work properly because of 1990s-era Internet policies.

Netflix continues to make cable companies irrelevant

World domination: coming soon

I added a movie to my Netflix queue today and noticed that Netflix tells me this movie will soon be available for streaming. Awesome! I hope Netflix’s entire catalog becomes available for streaming, and soon.

As my friend Tarus said yesterday, all video will eventually be delivered over IP, not broadcast networks or cable systems. The companies that get on this runaway train will be the ones left standing 10 years from now. Those that don’t will be flattened.

Ah, I love the free market.

Netflix streaming with the Samsung BD-P1600

For Christmas, my parents gave us a gift card to apply towards a Blu-ray player that could stream Netflix. I did some research on models this morning and picked out what I wanted: the Samsung BD-P1600. I don’t own any Blu-ray discs and may not ever. All I wanted was a player that would excel at streaming Netflix movies. If it could play discs too, well, so much the better.

I spent the evening playing around with it. How does it perform? Fantastically. On the first power-up, it took several minutes for the system to download an apply a firmware update. After that, though, it’s worked very well. I was stunned at the picture quality when I tried streaming some movies: it’s amazingly good. So much so that I’m not at all surprised now that the big cable companies are shitting bricks over this technology. The writing is on the wall for cable TV: I have 12,000+ titles of movies and television shows available for watching anytime. Why would I want to saddle myself with a costly cable subscription?
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“Premium” doctors

I’ve been thinking more about the MDVIP program that my former doctor ran off and joined. The program is pitched as a way to be seen by your doctor much easier than in a traditional medical practice: for the annual fee of $1500 over and above your other healthcare charges.

What’s been bothering me is the ridiculousness of it all. Why should a patient pay extra for something that the doctor should be doing all along: being responsive to his patients (otherwise known as “customers”)? Why don’t doctors already accept only enough patients that they can comfortably deal with? If you load up on thousands of patients where you can only spend 10 minutes with each, you’re doing it wrong!
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Daylight saving time experiment

This winter I thought I’d try something new: a somewhat altered Daylight Saving time change. The goal is to minimize the impact of the time switch.

My idea is to switch clocks like everyone else but adjust my waking schedule by only 30 minutes, not the full hour. So as I currently wake at 5:45 AM EDT, I will awaken at 5:15 AM EST after the time change. Thus I’ll be waking up effectively 30 minutes later than I do now but the rest of my schedule will match others.

If I were brave I would continue to wake and sleep at the same time I do now but I’m not yet ready to take that on! We’ll see how a half-hour difference goes first.