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July 21, 2004
Oh, please. A patent for playing with a cat using a laser pointer. Vital details below.
Click to enlarge
Here's just some of this very silly patent:
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Method of exercising a cat
Abstract
A method for inducing cats to exercise consists of directing a beam of invisible light produced by a hand-held laser apparatus onto the floor or wall or other opaque surface in the vicinity of the cat, then moving the laser so as to cause the bright pattern of light to move in an irregular way fascinating to cats, and to any other animal with a chase instinct.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to recreational and amusement devices for domestic animals and, more particularly, to a method for exercising and entertaining cats.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Cats are not characteristically disposed toward voluntary aerobic exercise. It becomes the burden of the cat owner to create situations of sufficient interest to the feline to induce even short-lived and modest exertion for the health and well-being of the pet. Cats are, however, fascinated by light and enthralled by unpredictable jumpy movements, as for instance, by the bobbing end of a piece of hand-held string or yarn, or a ball rolling and bouncing across a floor. Intense sunlight reflected from a mirror or focused through a prism, if the room is sufficiently dark, will, when moved irregularly, cause even the more sedentary of cats to scamper after the lighted image in an amusing and therapeutic game of "cat and mouse." The disruption of having to darken a room to stage a cat workout and the uncertainty of collecting a convenient sunbeam in a lens or mirror render these approaches to establishing a regular life-enhancing cat exercise routine inconvenient at best.
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Look up the rest of this patent at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (external link).
July 20, 2004
Q. Why is America so far behind the world with things like SMS and full color screens?
A. Our marketing people aren't as hip and we've had technology and regulatory problems.
I think short message service is part of conventional cellular, IS-136 (internal link), just as it is with GSM (internal link). But text messaging's popularity started on its own overseas, with no carrier seeing its potential or working to develop it. The wireless industry instead put its time into developing WAP (internal link), only to have that ignored and customers instead choosing a service they really liked: SMS. The same thing happened in wireline. The telcos favored ISDN, took over fifteen years to bring it out, then watched it get overtaken by DSL (internal link) in less than two years. They couldn't get out ISDN at all, now they can't deploy DSL fast enough. At least overseas operators recognized the SMS trend when it started, American marketing did not. We now watch what the Japanese and Europeans do with services, then follow.
If not with services, America still leads with technology. CDMA is The Future and our wireless companies developing transmission schemes are first class. But aside from marketing, why do we lag with services and handsets?
America has been behind the world ever since it went digital. The FCC required conventional cellular to handle even the oldest analog mobile, so IS-136 had to incorporate new features while working with legacy models. IS-136 had to be a digital or analog system when needed. That made it tough to compete with GSM which was all digital from the start, with no old phones to accommodate. We were still working on improving the Studebaker, trying to put a new tail pipe on it, while the Europeans were working on a flying car.
In America, while GSM was gaining subscribers around the globe, the FCC did not allocate frequency space for GSM/PCS for years later than it should have taken. GSM can also change service more quickly because it is a smart card system. The SIM or subscriber information module (internal link) stores customer info on an easily changed card . . . Arrrgh! I could write about this stuff for hours. I will stop now, perhaps more tomorrow.
July 19, 2004
Operator Services Inward Codes
Q. We are an operator services department. How do we get updated inward codes for assistance through other carriers? We have some codes but most are outdated and do not work. We tried to buy a list from AT&T but they won't sell. Is this the only way?
Smarty Jones replies . . .
A. I can't provide you with the Inward codes themselves but can offer a probable explanation of the difficulty you're having. I hope it's not too discouraging or long winded. First, AT&T considers the other carriers as competitors, they no longer consider themselves a corporate citizen in the public interest, and that's probably why they will not sell you inward routing codes. In today's environment I suppose that can be understood. [Continues here (internal link)]
July 12th through the 16th, 2004
I'll not be working on the website this week. Too many things to do around my house and at my parent's place. But I will continue to answer my e-mail so please send comments or questions and I will respond.
July 8, 2004
Communicating with clothing
France Telecom and designer Elisabeth de Senneville are working on clothing with electronic displays enabled by wireless technology. The prototype screen removes and runs four hours on a charge. Although some public good may come from this I suspect advertisers will promote it. Perhaps one could lower their cellular bill by wearing a Pepsi Logo on their shirt. Or perhaps ads would change depending on where the subscriber went. Since gambling and porn drive most new development on the net I await to see what those industries do with this new toy. Click on the images below.
From the press release:
"The screen is connected to a mobile phone via a Bluetooth link, so drawings and animations can be sent by MMS to another user with the same equipment. Thanks to a dedicated embedded software application, the mobile can be used as a remote control to activate the screen's functionalities: adjust the brightness, select the image or text to be displayed, enter text, draw simple animated visuals, download animations from the Internet, etc. A more sophisticated animation editor has been produced to allow professionals to market their own animations, which will be online and downloadable via the Internet from a mobile phone."
July 5, 2004
And you thought your cellular bill was expensive
Coast to coast telephone service began in 1915. (internal link) Professor Michael Noll, writing in Signals: The Science of Telecommunications, [1990, Scientific American Library] says a three minute call cost $22.20. That's $411.47 in 2004 dollars. That adjusted figure comes from this easy to use Cost-of-Living Calculator: http://www.aier.org/cgi-aier/colcalculator.cgi (external link)
July 2, 2004
The ugliest cell site of the month. Click to enlarge. Geoff Fors' friend Ray sent him this image from Jordan above the Dead Sea. Israel is in the distance. Geoff says, I think this site uses a microwave MUX to transfer traffic to the actual switch, as far as I know. There is a highway below the site and the site serves that highway corridor, which is a route to Iraq and Saudi. Israel can be seen across the water. No plants, weeds, or anything green. The armed guard lives inside and cooks his food on a propane stove right next to the battery rack (!). At the time the photo taken, the temperature was about 120 degrees. (45+C) It's probably one of the few air conditioned living spaces in Jordan.
July 1, 2004
Geoff Fors (internal link) checks in with quick comments on television and movies showing old-style car telephones: Click on this link for more information on pre-cellular phones. (internal link)
Tom: I wonder how many movies and TV shows feature vintage mobile phones.
"Sabrina" with Humphrey Bogart -- Prop/totally fake lowband MTS phone, in fact two of them side by side in his limo with an antenna which looked like it belonged on a tank in Iraq.
Mannix -- had a white MJ series head in his Mercury (?) convertible operated in the MTS mode. Seemed to be accurate in portrayal.
Cannon -- Had an RCC or Radio Common Carrier, (not Bell) head in his Lincoln, seem to recall his using MTS format when making calls.
Hawaii 5-0 -- Wo Fat, Chinese agent, used a Motorola MJ phone on board a yacht while holding a kidnapped child for ransom. McGarrett traced him through the ship to shore operator, curious because the MJ is a Bell car phone.
Earthquake (movie) -- Charlton Heston's K-5 Blazer has a lowband antenna and a GE Progress Line DTO series MTS head mounted on the dash. Early scenes show the head and Heston making calls. TV versions are edited and the scene has been cut out (drat...)
Superman serial (B&W 1953 era version) -- Perry White has a MTS phone in his car. A real one, not a prop, labeled "Mobile Radio Telephone, West Coast Electronics." I have one in my collection, minus the head and cables.
Banacek -- Had a fake mobile phone in his Packard and also the limo. Limo prop was usually a Trimline princess style. Later limo phones were black MJ heads and accurate.
Jerry Lewis movie (title forgotten, about a little girl and her chauffer (Jerry) --The Rolls Silver Cloud limo has a VHF highband MTS phone with rear seat extension head above the rear seat, appears to be the rare ITT KH- series MTS phone.
Live and Let Die -- James Bond--starting scene has CIA driver taking Bond into NYC in a Chevrolet sedan which has a Motorola "MTS" pre-MJ head, which the driver uses to answer a call, as I remember. Driver is shot enroute and the car wrecked, but the head no doubt escaped unscathed.
Twilight Zone -- (1966)--Blackmailer driving a 1966 Chrysler Imperial sedan uses a black MJ control head to receive calls from victim.
Ironside -- Had an MJ head in his second generation van. His first generation truck seems to be parked in various Monterey locations with a load of parking tickets plastered to it and a chicken coop built into the rear.
That leaves a bunch of other movies whose titles I can't recall, including some Doris day films with just handsets showing, other films with briefcase phones, and so on and so on . . .
Geoff
June 30, 2004
And then there were none?
Nortel Networks announced yesterday they were selling their manufacturing facilities to Signapore's Flextronics. Even if Nortel's factories in Calgary and Montreal remain open Nortel will no longer own them. The last major North American telecom manufacturer thus stops production, having outlived its great counterpart, Western Electric, by two decades.
Northern Electric, then Northern Telecom, then Nortel, then Nortel Networks, at first made telephone gear for the Canadian market and then much later for the rest of the world. Regulatory concerns did not kill manufacturing, economics did. Never-the-less, it recalls for me the quote by Myers on the death of Western Electric over twenty years ago:
"On January 1, 1984, the Western Electric Company, then older than the telephone itself, ceased to exist (Hochheiser 1991, 143). On that day of court ordered divestiture, the Bell System was broken into seven regional operating companies (the Baby Bells) and a more compact AT&T. AT&T retained the long-distance part of the business, its venerable research organization (Bell Laboratories), and its manufacturing operations (which could no longer have exclusive supply arrangements with the operating companies). A newly created AT&T Technologies, Inc. assumed the corporate charter of Western Electric and continued making 500-type, 2500-type, and Trimline telephones under the AT&T Technologies label for several years at plants in Indianapois and Shreveport. However, to become competitive in the market, AT&T shifted residential telephone manufacturing to the Far East, beginning in Hong Kong in late 1985, Singapore the following year, and later in Bangkok and elsewhere. Thus ended U.S. production of rugged electromechanical telephones, and though phones similar to the 500-type, the 2500-type, the Princess, and the Trimline are still made to-day, they are products of the modern electronics age, rather than a bygone culture."
