After reading the Slashdot article, here is my opinion:

Another reason why Apple getting in to the E-book trade is bad for consumers. If I recall correctly, Apple is the reason Amazon went to the Agency model as well. Above all else, the two companies, Apple and Amazon, are not wholly at fault here. The publishing industry has been strong arming the companies since day one of e-book readers and software hitting the market.

As consumers, stop and ponder this for longer than a second. How much does it cost to make a book, warehouse it, ship it, and sell it at vendors, then collect the profit? Ok, now think about this, how much does it cost to create a digitized version of said book, store the digitized copy, sell it via ecommerce sites such as Amazon, and collect the profits? A whole heck of a lot less than a dead tree version of the same book.

This is the music industry fighting to keep an out of date business model in use all over again, except this time it is the publishing industry. There is no way a digital version of a book should cost anywhere near the same amount as dead tree version. Yet the publishing industry would have consumers purchase digital versions of books at prices somewhere between the soft cover copy and the hard cover copy of a dead tree version.

I recently visited the Kalamazoo Valley Community College and decided to enroll in the school’s two-year transfer program which is designed for those seeking a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science degree from Western Michigan University. As long as my grades are kept up, which I have no doubt in my abilities, my new course work at KVCC will transfer directly to WMU once completed. The time it takes to complete this part of the degree will depend on how many credits transfer from Baker College and the other schools I have attended.

The only drawback now will be the lack of time to attend classes in a full time role since I will now have to attend a true classroom unless some of the required courses are offered as web-based courses which means the degree could take a bit longer than expected to complete. However the advantages outweigh this drawback. Some of the advantages are the credit hour cost is a bit over half the amount of Baker College, the degree is fully accredited and will be recognized if I want to advance my academic studies past the Bachelor level, and finally……

No more draconian participation policies which in the past could drop my grade by up to two grades if the facilitator (the teachers/profs. really are not there to teach) did not feel the participatory posts I wrote on the Blackboard system were quality material even if I aced all homework, projects, quizzes and tests within the course! Besides the Blackboard system (do not get me started on this system and its company’s Google Search Results, Blackboard patent lawsuits), the participation policies are the policies I disliked the most since points were assigned for participation based on the facilitator’s opinion.

I have only had approximately six (6) hours to play with it but I already love it. Want a wonderful device with Bluetooth 2.0, WiFi 802.11b/g, and of course 1xRTT/EVDO built in. It is also a Wndows Mobile 6 Professional device, although Verizon saw fit to remove the Live integration for some reason, most likely due to their continuous need to profit from their subscribers in every way possible. As I play with my new gadget further, I will post up a more detailed review.

Although I have had it now for quite some time, I never reported on my other interesting gadget I obtained through a deal on eBay. I have always been interested in embedded Linux devices, especially the Sharp Zaurus series of PDA devices. When I first saw a new Sharp Zaurus SL5000 I immediately fell in love with the PDA and its hidden slider keyboard concept. However, I never got around to purchasing one or its upgraded siblings the SL5500 and SL6000. Then I came across an eBay auction for a Sharp Zaurus C860 PDA. Although Sharp discontinued the Zaurus line in the US, they continued to develop the line in Japan for quite some time and came out with a PDA line which resembled tiny convertible tablet notebooks. Here is a picture of the C860.

It is a very hackable device and there is an excellent following on the Internet which is still developing, upgrading and pushing the limits of what these devices are capable of. Although the device only runs a 400MHz processor is is more than capable of playing multimedia files, surfing the Internet, running office suite tasks (i.e. word processing, spreadsheets), developing code, hacking, and even running security audits.

I kind of get why there are not very many four-year engineering degrees online yet, and even then, technology in simulation software is catching up and allowing almost anything done in labs for four-year engineering degrees to be done via a workstation now. With that argument out of the way, it seems to come down to investing the time and money into setting up the online degree for such a small return as mentioned in the April, 2003 Prism article “Can Distance Education be Unlocked”. So why is there such a lack of online Computer Science degrees?

I would much rather attend a school which has a standard degree recognizable by any accredited institution. It appears my search will continue in seeking true, online Bachelor of Science degrees in either Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering or Computer Science. So far the only other school I have found offering this has been University of North Dakota and unfortunately their lack of communication turned me off of them the first time I was accepted and planned to attend. However, if they are still the only ones out there, I may have to re-apply. One would think in this day and age, more schools would be offering accredited engineering and science degrees online.

Davies, K. (2007, June). 23andMe: The Google Genome Connection. Bio-IT World, 6(5), 6.

Enter Sparkfun’s nifty PIC programming tutorial and a lazy Saturday afternoon and I finally had success programming the PIC16F628. Next up, I’ll be attempting the same process with an Atmel AVR MCU. Watch here for future MCU projects!

What does one get when a projecter, laser pointer, and computer are crossed? A light-based graffiti system to tag buildings. Watch the following video to get a better idea of what exactly this system does, then go download the how-to and source code for the project!

How-to page and source code link