yes, they look for stego, as a "Hacker Tool"

[Major Variola (ret)]

At 02:43 AM 8/15/04 +0200, Thomas Shaddack wrote:
>On Sat, 14 Aug 2004, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
>> It was disturbing that, as the bottom fell out of telecom, and
handsets
>> became commoditized, faceplates and ringtones were highly profitable.

>> Faceplates are at least made of atoms.  There are several lessons
there,
>> from economic to sociobiological (if there's a difference), none of
>> which are terribly pleasing in my aesthetic.
>
>Care to elaborate further, please?

I found it troubling that the tech was becoming commoditized, since this

disturbs the innovation that I find attractive.   OTOH cheap products
are nice.  And commoditization is the end-game for tech anyway.

Selling ringtones (static bits, not even a service) struck me as
oldschool as selling music, enforced in this case by proprietary
cellphone
"standards".

That "personalization" features were lucrative I found to be a comment
on human nature.  Or human-teens' nature.
Since I tend to have an engineer's aesthetic, which
I take to be fairly spartan/functional, as well as believing that
personalization should
be done by the person desiring it, I found mass-market faceplates
kind of silly.  But then I don't own any Nike baseball caps or Coke
t-shirts to express myself.  I am un-Amerikan, clearly.  There is
something
I clearly don't "get".  Herd mentality, perhaps.

Besides, the phones should be covered in conformal photocells to trickle
charge them.

>> Fortunately the whole PDA vs. cell vs. camera vs GPS vs. smartcard vs

>> MP3 player vs. email-pager etc bat-belt [1] frenzy will resolve in a
few
>> years, and perhaps some of the Linux based solutions will not be
>> involuntary citizen-tracking devices and will support privacy of data

>> stored, and in transit, including voice data.  And free ring tones
:-)
>> All that's needed is one of the hardware-selling companies to start
the
>> process, making money off the atoms, and possibly Sharp's Zaurus (?)
>> already has?
>
>Or buy an Enfora Enabler GSM/GPRS module, add a Gumstix module with
>built-in bluetooth, slap in a suitable display and keyboard, eventually

>add a GPS receiver, and we're set. All features and security modes we
can
>imagine, and then some.

I liked the Handspring's modularity, but don't know how they did in the
marketplace.  I do think that the cell makers have a decent enough
market
share to take over the PDA/camera/email etc. market, and they know
that and are working on it.  I read recently that in 5 years only pros
will
own digital cameras that do nothing else.  Similarly with GPS, PDAs, MP3

renderers & recorders, calculators, authentication tokens, smart cards,
etc.
How much extra does a hifi
audio ADC or DAC cost than an 8 Khz telecom one?   Why not let users see

their location, even if its only triangulated and not satellite based?
Non-volitile memory is only getting cheaper, smaller, with less power
requirements or awkward properties like page-based access.

>Preventing spatial tracking is difficult though, as we're dependent on
the
>cellular network for staying online. Though if the given area has wifi
>mesh coverage, it could be easier. (And if the device becomes widely
>popular, the handsets can serve as mesh nodes themselves - but that's a

>song of rather far future.)

Yes, but a nice Heinleinian corollary.

>> Perhaps there's a biz model in buying a 3-D color prototyping machine

>> for $40K and setting up a custom faceplate biz for the integrated
gizmo
>> of the near future. Hmm, with freedom-enabling software being
>> distributed on the side, it sounds like a Heinlein novel...
>
>Why not? :) Isn't the main purpose of science-fiction (at least its
>certain kinds) to be the inspiration for the future?
>
>On the other hand, perhaps it's cheaper to just get a bulk supply of
>"blank" faceplates and hire an artist with an airbrush and a talent.
>
>It's also possibly easier (and cheaper) to make the parts in more
>classical way, eg. by casting them from resin. The rapid prototyping
>machines so far usually don't provide parts that are both nice-looking,

>accurate, and with suitable mechanical properties at once.

I was thinking there are too many models to keep the things in stock
on a little beachside storefront; and you could add custom textures
with a prototyping machine.  Its also possible I'm enamoured of 3D
printers
which have no place right now in making consumer products.

>> [1] Batman (tm) wore a belt with too many gizmos.  Some
widget-fetishist
>> friends/early adopters are similarly afflicted.
>
>There is nothing like "too many" gizmos! (Well, you could call such
>situation "almost enough", but never "too many".)

Aesthetics and convenience.  OTOH when your Everything Gizmo dies,
you are seriously out of luck.  Much like when your combo
fax/printer/copier/scanner
power supply dies, you have zero functionality, instead of the degraded
functionality
you'd have if each were a separate machine.  And sometimes the
integrated
gizmo does nothing very well, eg early cell-phone cameras.  But
integration
(done well, and reliably) does sell.

My $50 prepaid cell phone does voice recognition.
Its the 21st century, and I want my Dick Tracy watch now!
And it better run Java, or Python, damnit!

(I was impressed that the Zaurus PDA can be a web server, BTW.)