Another hack in the wall

This story about a kid hacking the iPhone to work on networks other than AT&T (not the first hack by a long run) shows to me that there is a big demand for unlocked phones. I really have to wonder why device manufacturers insist on entering into exclusive agreements with carriers like this. Sure, in the USA AT&T has become the "Monster Bell" of the market (although for whatever reason no one seems to be suggesting it be blasted into baby-bells again this time around) but there are still millions of us out there not with AT&T, and a world market of GSM phone users that is even bigger.

The economics for the carriers obviously make sense - not only do they get to leverage hot new phones to attract customers, they get to use them to lock in customers who would otherwise defect for reasons of crappy service, higher pricing etc. Basically these deals are clearly anti-competitive ammunition that do nothing but hurt customers. I say that the FCC should outlaw subsidized equipment deals - if customers want to be locked into a company they can easily sign up for a fixed contract (which carriers seems to want to force us to anyway) and all the subsidies should be wiped out passing on the true savings back to the customer in low monthly bills.

Thinking about this brings to light one possible advantage of these deals for equipment manufacturers - by lowering the perceived cost of phones it encourages churn in the equipment market. If we all paid the true, several hundred dollar price of a phone then we might pause to think before upgading every year. Environmentally I think its bad to encourage this behavior - its the Japanese syndrome of replacing all your appliances every year for the latest thing, with all that equipment ending up in landfills. Again, I say that we should all be paying an unsubsidized price for equipment - when people truly want something they will pay a full premium price for it, witness the iPhone. It would also remove pressure on device manufacturers to be constantly innovating in the "style" department instead of actually focusing on improving functionality and performance with fewer better new devices.

Okay, rant over - I'll hang up now.

Asus gets it - less is more

Thank you Asus, I think you get it - a cheap, small, low power, reliable laptop. Can't wait to find out how long the battery lasts. Now if you could just make the screen and keyboard optional I'll buy one of those as well for use as a home server (as one of the commenters already pointed out).

Eureka - SDVO ADD2/MEC

It took me a while but I finally discovered that there is something called SDVO ADD2/MEC which is an Intel standard for digital output from a graphics processor and is supported by their G33 and older onboard graphics chipsets (G965 etc.). I'd seen those acronyms (SDVO = Serial Digital Video Output, ADD2 = Advanced Digital Display 2nd gen, MEC = Media Expansion Card) in G33 mobo specs but didn't really figure out what it was all about.

So basically you can get a PCIe card that just adds a DVI port or even an HDMI or HDCP port to your board using the built-in graphics processor. So it occupies a graphics slot but that's fine - the question is where to get one. Searching for ADD2 and SDVO in the usual places didn't turn up any likely suppliers - most search engines think SDVO is a mistyping of SDIO...

But I have since stumbled on this list of SDVO cards from X.org which is also good because it means that the Linux people are looking at SDVO and making sure the X server supports these cards - which it apparently does. So far the only cards I've found for sale and in stock in the US are the HP and Lenovo ones which go for about $35 - a bit much for adding a single DVI port! I can see why people would want to get one on the motherboard in the first place.

No 1080 DVI output for Intel DG33TL

UPDATE 5/23/08 - see comments below that indicate it should actually support 1080p.

Just when I thought I'd identified the ideal motherboard for my new "homebrew" PC Minimx I noticed a problem. Reading the product guide for the Intel DG33TL motherboard I spotted this:

"The DVI port supports only DVI-D (digital only) displays. The maximum support resolution is 1600 x 1200 at a 60 Hz refresh rate. The DVI port is compliant with the DVI 1.0 specification."

Rats! That really bites because it means I can't do 1920x1080 output for my new 24" LCD monitor using a digital connection -all my 1080i HDTV content would be squished and then upscaled to display it. The alternative is to use a VGA cable which seems to defeat the point of having digital everywhere, sigh... But this is confusing because elsewhere in the product guide it says the GMA 3100 graphics controller it uses:

Supports flat panels up to 2048 x 1536 at 75 Hz refresh (when in dual-channel
mode) or digital CRT/HDTV at 1920 x 1080 at 60 Hz refresh (with ADD2/MEC)

So does that mean they just stunted the video output capability through the DVI port? The technical product specification says the same thing so it doesn't seem like its an error.

This probably means I'll have to either go back to the Gigabyte G33M-S2H solution (which adds HDMI audio output), wait for G35 chipset solutions to arrive (so far no clear successor on that front), or try a P35 chipset board with discreet graphics card (more expensive and more power hungry).

Grown up applications of the social network - not just your teenagers web page

Ultimately this system of social network nirvana I described can be used for extremely powerful non-social applications. An example would be to create a global trust network which would be the basis of a person to person credit system and cashless transactions and loans.

Yes folks, its a dirty secret that banking and credit systems exist purely because of the notion that people lack the information to trust each other with any reliability and therefore must rely on agents like banks and credit card companies to centralize trust. The "credit card tax" you pay of 50 cents plus several percent whenever you purchase something is a direct consequence of that. Now I know you are saying "but I always pay cash" or "but the merchant pays that" but the basic fact is all those merchant fees add up and to maintain the level of profit they need to stay in business merchants have to increase their prices. That's because they are not allowed to charge a different price for credit cards - a nice deal that those credit companies must have helped get pushed through state and federal laws.

Yes, there are small companies and person to person transactions where you can negotiate a low price for cash, but my experience is in most "developed" countries you don't - its not even an option in all those hundreds of billions of dollars of online trade.

So this credit knowledge makes credit card companies and banks the hub of all human economic activity - taking a several percent slice of the pie with it (not to mention the interest and fees they get). Companies like Visa transact tens of trillions of dollars of business each year with just a few thousand employees and cream off that percentage each time, just think about it...

But, if we decentralize trust information then we can enable anyone to figure out how much they trust anyone else and arrange person to person credit terms for transactions - either directly or by an efficient transaction by transaction contract with a third party who guarantees the payment based on the trust parameters. Using a third party is an indication that this can be the basis of person to person transaction without any cash changing hands between the two parties, but only by indirect connections. That is A wants to buy from C and they don't know each other but both know and trust a mutual connection B. A gets B promise to pay C and B vouches to pay A so they can do a deal. A will have to pay B and B will have to pay C. This system can expand to include with arbitrarily complex connections between two parties eg. A buys from Z via B, C, D, E, F, etc. It is something that is already being implemented by the Ripple Project, but the one thing we don't need is yet another network that all users have to join - their trustworthiness should be just another facet of their own social network so that Ripple and other systems an easily be implemented on top of existing technology - Ripple is an financially based social network application.

If you don't believe that such things are possible just ask yourself what money really is? If you haven't already studied economics then you may not have realized that even paper money is just an IOU from a bank and that transactions between people are just exchanges of IOUs. All those IOUs ultimately come from governments, so why is it only governments that get to issue IOUs? Why couldn't individual people do it? Well that's exactly what others are starting to realize - see "Money as IOUs in Social Trust Networks & A Proposal for a Decentralized Currency Network Protocol".

Given the current financial woes of this country caused by failures in current systems where entities (lenders and creditors) really screwed up their trust calculations, and a few individuals managed to make bad decisions that really diluted the trust worthiness of this country (hence the huge slide of the dollar) that end up effecting everyone. Hopefully anyone should see that there really is no need to centralize all these decisions an create huge points of failure and gives light to a system where unilateral decisions by government and its institutions will have much less impact on the financial lives of individuals, and the cost of payments and transactions between them will be far lower. This is exactly what is described in the paper "Payment as a Routing Problem".

And that is just one example of how a social networking system could be utilized, the real list is endless...

From social networking hell to nirvana

First there was postal mail, then there was the telegraph, then there was the telephone, then there was the telegram, then there was telex, then there was fax, then there was email (with at least three distinct addressing schemes UUCP, X400 and SMTP), then there was the web site (leaving out a few precursors), then there was instant messaging, then there was VoIP virtual phone numbers, and then...

You get it, a never ending set of ways to communicate with people with disparate standards, capabilities and addressing schemes and seldom with backwards or forwards compatibility.

And now there is a whole meta level of communication methods piled on the "web site" layer - the social networking site. The idea is that we create a communications network merely by being linked with the people we know. Most of the time the "communication" is completely passive - the network of links just exists, no data other than its existence (pure meta data) flows. Occasionally that connection is used to send a real message - usually via some out of band method such as email. They call this phenomenon "social networking".

My problem is that social networking seems thus far to be an entirely proprietary field so just like my example above there is a never ending list of social networks I must join, and even more frustrating those that I join are probably related to my "social status" or demographic. First there was Friendster ostensively for everyone (with patience), then there was Tribe.net for the hip 20-something crowd, then popular with teens we got MySpace, then Facebook for students and alumni of all ages, then LinkedIn for "professionals" , then... well you get the picture.

So currently I'm in my very own social network hell with an identity on Tribe, LinkedIn and Facebook, and before that I briefly had one on Friendster. I decided Friendster while interesting as a concept and probably one of the first of its class was useless to me - and really, really slow, I got out before they removed the "delete account" option (great way keep your user count high!). To some extent you could include Digg, Flickr and Del.icio.us as social networks of sorts, however for these the social part is mostly an add on or necessary but not sole part of the concept, as such they giving me far more utility. But now I'm actively trying to avoid joining yet more networks without feeling rude to those that invite me.

And oh goodness, I just realized I have a Orkut membership too (which I actually asked for, thanks Dave) but I only know one other person on it, since the other 99.99999% of members seem to be Brazilian so it isn't really much use to me.

Plus there are all kinds of other ad-hoc social networks being built around blogging sites and communities (with multiple contributors and authorized commenters), web forums and groups (phpBB, Yahoo Groups, Google Groups), mailing lists and chat groups - of which I also belong to many.

Can anyone else see the massive and unnecessary redundancy, inefficiency, and complexity of all this? I mean to me it is crying, nay SCREAMING for a better solution, but all we seem to get is more and more proprietary reinventions of the wheel (I guess they still can't figure out what color it should be...) that just add to the problem.

The problem is that really I am only one person and I have only one network which is defined by me. So why do I have to join a dozen different sites and continue joining new ones as fashion dictates? These become hip and cool for a year or two and then they either go out of business, or something else comes along and they are just abandoned. Why can't I just have some meta-network tool that automatically joins me onto any new social network, and automatically remakes all my connections on that site.

Of course it just seems silly that the later idea might be necessary in the first place, which points to the real solution which is to have a well defined standard that defines connections between things and use that as a basis for ALL other social networking sites, products and features. They are just applications layered on top of the network infrastructure just as web sites are layered on HTTP and HTTP is layered on TCP etc. Those things in the network don't have to be just people either - they can be organizations, places, events, shared occupations, mindsets, etc. Early in Friendster people created bogus user identities for things like BART and Muni lines (Bay Area public transport) and people would make those bogus users their friends - Friendster didn't like that for some reason and went about removing all non-people entities, but their popularity belied a demand for non person to person networking.

Anyway, I believe the definition of such a system would be important as the invention of HTTP/HTML websites in the history of the Internet. Obviously there are huge privacy issues to solve because all that network information should be under my control, not some third party (a big problem with current systems which are probably doing a lot of mining of the connection information, either overtly like LinkedIn or covertly like MySpace and Facebook). So I should get to define my network and when someone wants to trawl my network, or some portion of it I should be the one to grant or deny permission for that operation, and the extent of it. And when someone wants to integrate my network with theirs by making a connection there should be a mutual permission exchange required, just like doing a private transaction on the web via SSL.

Cell phone silliness - SNAFU

Because I travel to the UK on a fairly regular basis - once or twice a year - I have an unlocked GSM phone and get a UK pay-as-you-go SIM card while I'm there. That works fine except UK carriers will deactivate a pay as you go SIM card if it is not used for 6 months and if you get a new SIM card every time it costs you about 10 pounds which is currently about $20. It's not the end of the world but it is a hassle to have to change number each time you visit and cough up $20 more than necessary.

So I figured I'd make an effort to keep my UK SIM alive by using it every three months which is apparently the ONLY way to do it. So last night my reminder goes off and today I stick in my SIM and send a text (which turns out to cost 50p or $1). I managed to get back into my T-Mobile UK online account and verify that they'd logged my text and charged me but I noticed I'm down to only 3 pounds and change credit so I decided I'd try and top up my account so next time I arrive I can make calls without running around to top up the phone first.

Do you think I could do that?

Computer says no...

The problem is you can only top up online if you have a credit card registered first. But you can only register a credit card with a UK address - I actually called T-Mobile and verified that. I do have a UK credit card but it has a US address, and I do have access to a UK address to use but I don't have a UK credit card for that address.

So the helpful T-Mobile UK customer rep (well I'm pretty sure he was in Bangalore) tells me that I can top up via a voucher. But guess what, the only way to get a voucher is to be in the UK and buy one at a store. "Well" he suggests, "you can buy them before you go to the US and use them there". Hmmm, check my caller ID dude - I think you'll see I'm already in the US.

I think you can guess the conclusion is there is no way at all for me to top up my account from the US short of applying for a UK credit card using my brothers address (which is probably fraudulent) or mailing my top up card to my brother, having him buy a voucher and then sending me the info by email.

UPDATE 8/10/07 - I have since discovered that you are supposed to be able to buy a voucher without a top up card, you then have to call in with a 12-digit PIN printed on the voucher. So I theory I can get a friend or relative in the UK to buy a T-Mobile voucher and email me the number so I can call in. I may try this before I return again.

Why aren't people getting the message - the TV is dead!

I just don't understand why I still keep seeing articles like this that talk about doing computer stuff on a TV and why people haven't realized the concept of a "TV" is dead and was laid firmly to rest with last century. Think about it, the modern flat screen "TV" is basically a flat screen computer monitor with some extra analog inputs, maybe a tuner and perhaps some crappy speakers hung on the side. The irony is those features that set it apart before are now the ones that any modern user is least likely to use.

Speakers are obsolete because almost everyone will have some bling-bling 5.1 or 7.1 surround system hooked up. The tuner is obsolete since almost no one I know does anything other than watch cable or satellite via the appropriate external tuner box, perhaps with an intermediate TiVo or PVR box. And all those analog inputs are usually hooked up to big fat monstorously (pun intended) overpriced set of $100-$200 a pop gold plated cables that are completely obsoleted by a single skinny HDMI digital cable that can be had for $20 or less.

So what is that "TV" then?

Well it's what the rest of us call a computer monitor and I wouldn't use it as anything else driven with pure digital signals sucked straight from my hard drive. This is no secret to the home theater PC (HTPC) crowd, they've been doing it for years, ever since the first tuner or video capture PCI card showed up. I've been doing it myself for over a year now since a tiny USB HDTV tuner box arrived in my home. I get a couple of dozen channels of broadcasting in perfect digital goodness, and more are showing up each day. Where before I had fuzzy, low resolution and ghosted ATSC analog TV images I now have glorious 720p and 1080i digital signals.

Because all that digital content goes straight to my hard drive via software at 5, 10 or 20mbps I never again have to sit my bum in front of the idiot box when some advertising psychologist thinks I should. No sooner than the bits hit the disk my computer is analyzing the content to mark all advertising content so at my leisure I can hit a single button and skip the entire mind numbing commercial break. TiVo users eat your heart out, because that's right I don't even have to press fast forward and try to guess when the flashy splashy ads are done - with software like "Beyond TV" all it takes is "one click".

So while every company and his dog was building devices to get our digital content streamed onto the family TV I was picking out a nice 1920x1080 resolution monitor for my computer and listing the old and heavy Sony TV on Craig's List. That same computer easily hooked up to a projector for watching movies on the really big screen, and it also shared all its files so I could watch them via software alone on any PC in my house, or even over the internet to my laptop anywhere in the world. And because a perfectly decent computer sound system only costs a couple of hundred bucks and requires a single digital cable for input I didn't need to make any monster donations for audio cables. In fact via the magic of WiFi and a cheap box like the Sondigo Sirocco I don't even need cables at all to take sound to any room in the house that has a receiver with any kind of audio input.

And you know what the best part of all this is? Beyond the initial cost of the tuner
($150 from pcalchemy.com), the (optional) PVR software ($64 from pcalchemy.com) and an (optional) indoor/outdoor medium-range HDTV antenna ($40 from pcalchemy.com) I get all those channels of digital goodness and a heck of a lot of flexibility (more than TiVo will every have) for just $0 per month. That's right - zero dollars per month. No cable bills, no TiVo subscriptions, no nothing. Sure I'm not getting 500 channels of sports I'll never watch - it is just the local channels but that is actually all a lot of people want anyway, plus there are many extra local channels only on HDTV that many will not see on cable, plus the quality is amazing. All major network TV shows are now in HD including the sports when its on and there's no extra charge!

Since I have access to all the movies I could ever want via NetFlix I have no need for the movie channels or pay per view stuff. Since I've started consuming media on my terms, and without in your face commercials I've become a patient person and can happily wait the months it takes for some shows from HBO or other pay channels to show up on DVD along with the rest of my NetFlix content.

The upshot of all this is that I no longer have a TV-centric view of the world, as many are still adamant that we must. I don't worry about how everything will plug into some huge 72 inch monster that consumes my home like the elephant in the closet consumes hanging space. TV content revolves around me - when I want it, how I want it and where I want it. And every other kind of media I need from music, to video, to photos and web pages just fly around from computer to computer like so many bits in the wind, just as the Internet designers intended it.

Bourne Ultimatum, or Bourne Reality?

I went to see The Bourne Ultimatum yesterday, no doubt helping it romp to a new box office record. Well that's another 110 minutes my life that fairly flew by, but I have to say it was a rather enjoyable 110 minutes. Being a scientist and technologist I have to say that it was a pleasant change to watch a movie like this where the least believable aspect of the movie was the stunts.

Yes, it was an unwritten but clearly defined subtext of this movie that all the technological marvels that kept the bad guys on Bourne's tail were basically an amalgam of all the well known spying technologies we already know are out there and being used. More to the point the idea that the government might actually have a group wielding them as it did in the movie is no longer any surprise at all.

Covert renditions and killings, assassins (aka "assets") in every city, waterboarding, brain washing, ubiquitous phone and Internet taps, tracking by GPS and RFID location - all plausible and feasible if not actually demonstrable. Eight years ago we might have scoffed at claims of the government doing such things, now it all goes down easily just like the blue pill, so easily in fact that I'm sure more than a few in the audience were feeling good about rooting for the anti-government hero Bourne exactly because they empathized with his plight as their plight.

As we progress technology is making everyone fiercely aware of their own "digital identity" and their impending lack of anonymity in all but mental activities (and even possibly not those thanks to brain scanning advances) and how tenuous their control of identity actually is. In eight years time when they are no doubt already remaking the Bourne trilogy (you'll notice that remakes now come sooner and sooner) what superhuman stunts Bourne will have to pull to flee his pursuers.

Holy smokes Bat Man its the G-Phone!

Okay so I admit it, I'm not a big Apple fan, I think you should have guessed that by now. I mean I don't wish them any ill will, and they do "think different" as do their customers, but really under the glossy single button UI they are just as proprietary as Microsoft and if Microsoft was called "Orange" that would be more obvious.

It was great that Apple went to Intel hardware for lower prices and higher performance, but other than enabling Windows compatibility via Boot Camp and virtual machines it didn't really do much for the consumer. And it was great that they ditched their proprietary OS and went with a Unix based one but again it didn't do a lot for their customers who seldom peek at the command line.

Now if they built all their stuff on top of Linux that would be impressive - they could probably teach Ubuntu a thing or two - and it is my theory that one day Apple will switch to Linux and have an Apple Linux Distro with some level of open source for previously proprietary Apple bits. Apple-ix could be five or ten years off, but I think it will happen one day.

Anyway, lets just say that when the iPhone came out I wasn't that excited. Its only impact for me would be that it will spur other phone makers in some new directions (as MacOS has done for other sexy-UI wannabe OSes). Other than the UI and the usual tip-top Apple industrial design the iPhone really wasn't much to write home about and was defficient in several important technical areas (3G, A2DP audio, 3rd-party development, text input etc. etc)

But today I've read that Google is working on a phone - it could be a hyped up rumour, one that's been circulating for a while - but given what Google has been doing with bandwidth acquisition, voice technology acquisition, mobile applications development and what I learned from interviewing with Google (yes, I'm a Google reject!) it seemed inevitable they would do something like that.

Quite frankly I'm happy and I'm far more excited about the potential of a G-Phone launch than I was over the iPhone, even more so that their preferred carrier might be T-Mobile in the USA. I am somewhat confused about the alleged carrier preference in the light of their recent announcement of a partnership with Sprint and WiMax 3G, but pleased that they are smart enough to see a global business launching a phone must go with a GSM based phone solution. (Hmmm, maybe it will be a hybrid where 3G access is via WiMax from a different carrier - the best of all worlds).

However as someone on Digg pointed out, why can't Google just sell the phone unlocked and let customers choose their own carrier? Well I think the reason(s) is:

a) they want to avoid supporting their devices
b) they have no bricks and mortor distribution chain for selling them (unlike Apple)
c) they make big bucks by partnering with a carrier

In Google's case I think they can probably make more bucks without a carrier as they can then scoop every cent of ad revenue instead of doing some revenue sharing deal - and I'm open to arguments that Google is such a gorilla that it wouldn't need to give up any revenue - carriers would be falling over themselves to partner no matter what the cost. An underdog like T-Mobile has most to gain from such a partnership and hence would be willing to give up the most.

However a), the issue of customer support, would kill Google if they don't partner with someone because Google has almost ZERO customer support for any customer who is bringing them less than a million dollars revenue per year. Okay so I picked up number out of the air there but basically with the rate Google make money - last count over $10 million per day - and their limited people resources it is just not worth their while speaking to you, an average Google user, when your Gmail account is busted, your ad-words ads are screwed up or if your gPhone is malfunctioning, that has to be someone else's problem - preferably someone with call centers standing by in Bangalore - or anywhere but Mountain View where support time costs $100 per hour or more. So John and Jane Doe consumer don't want to buy their phone direct from Google any more than they'd want to get their appendix removed by WalMart - both transactions might be possible but the customer service afterwards if something goes wrong will suck.

As to the choice of T-Mobile? Well they do have very good customer service (for a mobile carrier) and in the US at least they are very much the underdog. That means they will be a smaller market place to beta test the technology (and boy does Google love to beta-test) and that Google will be able to extract a sweeter deal from them. Besides I would not be at all surprised if Apple extracted some agreement from AT&T that prevents them selling - more fool AT&T if they did really agree to such a clause! T-Mobile also doesn't have a 3G network rolled out nationally but soon will do so, and they also have good ties back to Europe via their ownership by Deutsche Telekom and of course association with T-Mobile in the UK (although my experience is the two operate very autonomously to the point where my T-Mobile USA data and WiFi hotspot plan gives me no benefits at all when I'm in the UK).

One final point - if this report is true then I'm really psyched that this will be a Linux based phone - I can only hope that its some partnership with Ubuntu (since Google use that internally) and their new mobile Ubuntu distro. It would be completely awesome (gosh did I really just type "awesome"?) to have a completely open Linux based development platform available for the mobile space. Exactly what Google needs to have primed and ready to go with a rich set of Google and third party apps when they launch their own 700Mhz based service...

Now the only thing I'm left wondering is just how much they will charge for the phone and service? Since there is a deal with a carrier in the offing this doesn't sound like the completely free ad based service people have talked about - no carrier would want to cannibalize its own revenue to partner with an eventual competitor in the mobile space.

Maybe it will cost exactly the same as the current service offered by that carrier, or may it will be a pure data only service, with voice only via VoIP based Google chat. I'd be up for that - given that T-Mobile's all you can eat data only plan is cheap ($20 a month or $30 with WiFi hotspots) I think that would be a good thing, hopefully I could get my Gizmo VoIP client running on the G-Phone and just do my own thing - exactly as Google seems to plan for 700 Mhz spectrum services.

Bring it on Google - if you get it right I might even go stand in line for one, now there's a thing!

On the road to a new PC - All hail Minimax!

It looks like my plans to get a new PC to replace my circa 2001 top of the line "Minime" system are finally taking shape. I've pretty much decided to not get an off the shelf Dell system even though I was very pleased with my previous two Dell purchases. That decision is mostly because I've been thinking too much about system power consumption, fretting that I wouldn't be able to get the latest lower power G-0 stepping Q6600 processor, worrying about how efficient the PSU would be, and from there well it all spiraled out of my control to the point where I didn't want Dell to make all those decisions. Now I've decided tocustom build my new machine which I'll call "Minimax" in honour of its design goal to consume less power and deliver more performance.

So today I spotted a Toms Hardware review of Intel G33 chipset motherboards which really educated me on some issues relevant to my new PC search. This chip set includes a pretty powerful integrated graphics processor, the GMA 3100 which in and of itself is more than plenty for my home theater/HDTV requirements. It also supports all front side bus speeds, processors and memory configurations I could care about, and will care about in the near future (it is 45nm Penryn compatible) and because it has integrated graphics there are a good number of MicroATX format boards. MicroATX works for me because I'd like something small than the standard "mini-tower" size, but I'm not really interested in a cube or HTPC format case - to my mind they compromise too much on the airflow side and tend to run everything hotter than it needs to be.

Another thing the Tom's review told me was power consumption of a complete system (sans monitor) based around each of the three boards they reviewed. I was pretty impressed to find all boards came in under 90W at idle (and one at only 76W thanks to a less capable power regulator) which compared to the 138W of Minime is impressive. In fact even fully loaded after 90 minutes none of these systems came close to the 174W that Minime uses - the most power hungry came to 150W - barely more than Minime at idle! Now granted the system was using only a 1.8Ghz E2160 dual core processor (not Core2) which has an idle power of around 8W, but even adding another 16W for a Q6600 G-0 stepping chip that's still pretty good. And if I want I can choose one of the higher spec dual cores (up to around 2.4Ghz per core) without bumping up the idle power at all.

Now a good deal of the power saving in that total system is undoubtedly due to the integrated graphics and I've now decided that is a good thing. I really don't play games that often and gaming boards get better and cheaper all the time - if I ever feel like getting into gaming then I can easily add a graphics card later on. A motherboard with onboard graphics also saves me money because my current graphics card is AGP based and hence useless in a modern PCI Express system (I can probably still sell it for $50 on eBay).

So of the boards that Tom's Hardware reviewed I was most attracted to the Gigabyte GA-G33M-S2H which has an outstanding set of ports - basically everything I really wanted and some. I'm wondering why on earth people are still building motherboard with only an analog video connector? Whatever the rationale I was really pleased the Gigabyte board had DVI-D not to mention analog VGA and HDMI. In addition it has the S/PDIF optical out that I need because my tuner lacks coax S/PDIF or discret 5.1 inputs, and the mobo also has eSATA for adding "good as internal speed" external drives - great for high capacity backup, and last but not least it has gigabit ethernet (although that is standard with the G33 chipset).

Unfortunately for me the article also talked about the forthcoming Intel G35 chipset that supersedes the G33 by using the new Intel GX3500 graphics adapter. This adds full HDVD/BluRay support, hardware 3:2 pulldown correction, WM9 decoding support (good for movies), DX10 compatibility and better 3D performance - although I've since read that the DX10 compatibility will be a while coming because it is dependent on software drivers that may not be ready until 2008. Oh well, I've no real need for Dx10 now, but having that extra performance may further delay the day when I'm tempted to get that extra power hungry graphics card for occasional gaming sessions (ummmm, Unreal Tournament 3....)

So I'm really thinking that I should wait for the G35 to appear and find an appropriate board based on it. The thing is those boards are out there in the pipeline - I've already discovered there is going to be a GA-G35M-DS2R board from Gigabyte - there's an Italian video on YouTube that shows one at Computex 2007 (in Taiwan) and a photo or two of the board out there as well. I haven't managed to locate specs but if its a straight G35 upgrade of the Gigabyte GA-G33M-S2H then its probably exactly what I want, the only question then is when? If its Q3 as promised I'll be happy, but then again Q3 is almost over and there is no sign of it on sale yet.

I've also found a set of photos of new motherboards that indicate what the competition is up to with G35 chipset boards. So by the time I ready to buy I may have to also consider some of the following G35 boards:

• Albatron PXG35
• Asus G35
• Biostar G35D2-M7
• ECS G35T-M
• FoxconnG35M-S
• Jetway G35DAG-PB
• MSI G35

The only major manufacturer I can think of that's missing in that list is Abit. I'm just hoping the selection of ports available on those systems will make my choice pretty much a no-brainer. From the photos available it seems that few if any of them include DVI-D or even HDMI - I just don't get that...

Now while I wait for G35-Mobo-mas to arrive (Christmas for G35 motherboards) I just have to figure which quiet micro-ATX case and energy efficient power supply to get, and then choose between a Core2 Duo or Core2 Quad processor. Oh decisions, decisions. Fortunately on the processor side the longer I can wait the cheaper it will be!

ePassport double whammy

I just love it when the Ministry of Bad Design delivers me a double whammy perfect for LDTT - ePassport readers are not only susceptible to buffer overruns when reading image data from the passport, they also decrypt data on the passport using a time limited certificate - but since passports have no concept of time (they are dumb data stores) the expiration of that certificate is meaningless.

The short time limited certificates were obviously used to get around the problem of certificate revocation since otherwise you'd need a way to revoke the certificate in use by the reader if it fell into the wrong hands. However the issue of the passport itself being oblivious to time means that any valid certificate is effectively valid for life - until that is they embed a clock into your passport.

As for the buffer overrun exploit - I'd love to be behind Lukas Grunwald when he crashed the passport reader, I'm almost certain the officials would just look at the blue screen and start waving everyone else through until someone fixed it - assuming Grunwald hadn't figured out how to do the reprogramming exploit to let everyone through anyway. You see once you have a machine to make the decisions for you people will start ignoring any physical evidence in front of them to the contrary - the no fly list SNAFUs demonstrate that clearly. So a reprogramming exploit is a very dangerous thing indeed and it will give security people the perfect alibi of "well the machine said he was okay so I let them through". Good bye common sense, hello Skynet...