All Blog Comments

escorte de lux - Full Interview: Hugh McGuire on the Future of Books

escorte de lux — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:38:57 +0000

I love to read books online allot and I also like to go to a library and look for the books I actually like to read. I more read the online books cuz is harder to finish reading them. I finish a paper book in 1-2 days, the electronic edition's takes me like 3-4days. Hugh made allot for both digital and paper edition's. He is a leader.

escorte de lux - Full Interview: Ethan Zuckerman on translation and the multilingual web

escorte de lux — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:33:04 +0000

I have subscribed to Spark’s enhanced podcast via I tunes , i still wait the next interviews.

Derek Lindner - Spark 172 – February 12 & 15, 2012

Derek Lindner — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:23:06 +0000

Hearing the music selections, made me wonder if a music box is binary, from the early invention in 1796 of a cylinder with pegs that trigger a harp comb through the exquisite, http://www.reuge.com/ to the to the hobby diy ditty http://thetrendisnear.blogspot.com/2007/10/music-... Any thoughts Spark community? It was a wonderful, provoking show.

Pete - Spark 172 – February 12 & 15, 2012

Pete — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 22:48:34 +0000

maybe not so fast, Nora....... the arithmetic of communication is changing. If people speak @120 wpm then they hear@120wpm? However they read @400wpm or so. But how fast can one compose. Typing is only say 50wpm for amatuers, but the message content increases with abbreviations, symbols, acronyms, puntuation/emoticons etc.. Short hand need only to keep up to about 120wpm. The problem with asynchronous rate of current handwriting might be more a matter of the expected modern rate of composition is much greater than it used to be? Still, for all that. silence is golden and the less said the better. So..... twitter .... we say less but more often - lol. As far a medium goes...... print allows 100's wpm and A/V adds graphics (a picture is worth 1,000 words? - but is ambiguous without captions or narration - WHICH 1,000 words). Radio - when well edited with skilful interviewers still conveys great content with the added luxury of being the easiest to multitask with?? ....and still for all this does humankind understand each other any beter?

Kristen Haring - Spark 172 – February 12 & 15, 2012

Kristen Haring — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:20:32 +0000

Right -- Morse code is not binary in terms of dots and dashes, but in terms of the system underlying those symbols. Morse conveyed information by toggling electricity on and off. As you have written, a dash represents a telegrapher sending three pulses of electricity in a row (a long tone), followed by a period in which a pulse is not sent. The example we used in the show was letter "A": symbolized by dot-dash in Morse code, by 10111000 in binary numerals, or by PKPPPKKK in knitting.

Kristen Haring - Spark 172 – February 12 & 15, 2012

Kristen Haring — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:09:06 +0000

Thanks very much for this suggestion! I will check it out.

Kristen Haring - Spark 172 – February 12 & 15, 2012

Kristen Haring — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:07:24 +0000

Though quipu were not created in a binary fashion, Gary Urton has written a binary analysis of them (_Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records_, 2003). The choice to interpret the quipu as binary, in my opinion, reflects our contemporary association of binary systems with powerful information technology.

Pete - Spark 172 – February 12 & 15, 2012

Pete — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 20:28:00 +0000

Careful when comparing binary and Morse Code. The terms bits and bytes are used when discussing the code but they assume that 0 and 1 compares with a dot and a dash? Actually it is short tone, long tone and NO tone. The more accurate binary analogy is that a dot is a tone followed by no tone and a dash is three tones together. "S" is more like 10101 than just 111 and "O" is more like 11101110111. Actually the concept is more recently called variable length bytes - important when data conduits are restricted. Samuel Morse, the resourseful man he was, visited a typsetters office and notices the most commonly used letters had had the largest containers so gave them the shortest code! Interesting show.

Brad - Frustration 2.0: Why Can't I Watch TV Online? I'm Canadian!

Brad — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:49:17 +0000

idk if anyone has seen or said anything but a bill was passed monday and more are on the way read the articles and if you agree sign the petition. also im not sure how legit it is a friend told me about it http://openmedia.ca/StopSpying

Jenny - Spark 172 – February 12 & 15, 2012

Jenny — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:45:13 +0000

This inspired me to create a Morse Code knitting chart: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/morse-cod... Love the idea!

Russell McOrmond - Full Interview: Limor Fried on Open Source Hardware

Russell McOrmond — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:00:58 +0000

In the late 1980's I had an Apple II clone that came with schematics at the back of the manual. I worked as a repair person for Commodore computers, and most of their line of computers had full schematics easily available. Nearly all the integrated circuits (ICs) in the Apple II clone, the Vic-20's and Commodore 64's were off-the-shelf components where the logical layouts were publicly available in easy to obtain books (I had shelves of these types of books). The 6502 processor internals wasn't detailed, but all the internal interfaces and the public instruction set was fully documented. We now have FPGA and other technologies that allow us to custom create devices far more complex than the computers of those days. It is also much easier to have small runs of custom designed chips built -- meaning if the design allows modification you can build nearly everything you want. The physical ability to do these things is moving up the stack all the time. What is having a hard time keeping up is the legal regimes which grant excessive goverment granted monopolies on the simplest of things (patents on things which are inadequately novel or unobvious) -- and where these monopolies are disabling citizens from engaging in their own design and building of their own technology. The presumption that you need large top-down organizations granted extensive monopolies by government in order to incentivise innovation is extremely outdated.

Russell McOrmond - Full Interview: Limor Fried on Open Source Hardware

Russell McOrmond — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:50:58 +0000

Great interview. When Limor was talking about how makers are the next generation from when people tinkered with their cars, I remembered when I gave a eulogy at my fathers funeral in 2009. He was an auto mechanic, and I never got a drivers license and never owned a car. At first glance people might think this made us different, but I treated computers as something to tinker with (hardware and software) from a young person up to present day. In fact, I am part of a movement to try to keep tinkering legal, given there are companies and other interests who want to make it illegal for owners to tinker with their own computers. The most threatening policy at the moment is so-called "technical protection measures" TPMs which are applied to computing hardware, and where under "copyright" law it becomes illegal for the owner to remove TPMs applied by previous owners (primarily the manufacturer). It may seem like "copyright" law is off-topic to an interview about makers, but that is because TPMs are off-topic when it comes to copyright law. It is sad that copyright law is being abused to justify infringing the property rights of technology owners. (See our petition for those who want to get involved http://c11.ca/petition/ict ) P.S. Semi-related, but I hope that CBC is making a lot of money for all those Apple advertisements that are added before every MP3 file for the feeds. It makes me cringe when I hear them given Apple is one of the lead companies (along with Sony) in seeking to legalize and legalize their infringement of technology property rights.

a_driscoll - Help Us Out! Music Overload

a_driscoll — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:33:58 +0000

The local public library has lots of FREE new & "new-to-you" music in many genres. Check it out! Anne Driscoll

NoraYoung - Spark 172 – February 12 & 15, 2012

NoraYoung — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:18:26 +0000

I loved that too, as was perhaps obvious from my reaction. I just need to slow down!!

Justen - Full Interview: Limor Fried on Open Source Hardware

Justen — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:30:55 +0000

Nice, thanks for the interview. @JLB: we're finally getting to the point where creating open source ICs is possible at the hobbyist level (if not manufacture, at least design), so hopefully that will turn around this decade. To some extent it's also an issue that, due to economic realities, it's not possible to have a garage workshop of the kind my grandfather (an electronic engineer) had - and that's holding us back a lot. If it weren't for makerspaces my kid would never have the opportunity to go out and hack on little electronic gadgets the way I did when I was young (but of course, thanks to makerspaces, we're turning that around too).

Mark - CBC Radio launches iPhone app

Mark — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:38:52 +0000

Is there a way to restrict the app to using wifi only to avoid accidental data usage?

JLB - Full Interview: Limor Fried on Open Source Hardware

JLB — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 14:24:33 +0000

In the past, hardware was open source. Manufacturers provided schematics and you could build your own, with modifications, if you wanted. Tubes and discrete transistor products were exceptional for this. Integrated circuits removed a lot of the options.

mace - Spark 166 – December 18 & 21, 2011

mace — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 07:27:34 +0000

Another great episode, thanks Nora+team :) @hayskelly hoorah for bikes!

Tawnya Sutherland - Outsourcing Your Life

Tawnya Sutherland — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 01:12:03 +0000

Learn all you'd ever want to know on how to outsource to a "Virtual Assistant" at http://www.VAnetworking.com

mike hansen - Help Us Out! Music Overload

mike hansen — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 22:55:22 +0000

It all depends on what you call new music? If you are searching for adventurous music that stretches boundaries may i suggest The Wire from the UK. it scope is global and genre crossing. It explores improvisation, electro-acoustic to experimental hip hop and outside pop. http://www.thewire.co.uk/ This can take you to a world of music you may never be able to discover elsewhere. I will also say that they search for excellence in music making. Mike Hansen