xkcd: Angular Momentum

Angular Momentum

– 妳在做什麼?

– 我在原地反時鐘旋轉。
– 每轉一圈,搶走地球旋轉的角動量。
– 讓它的自轉慢一點。
– 拉長夜晚,使白天晚點到來。
– 讓我有多那一點點時間待在這裡 …
– … 和你在一起。

我超愛這張圖片。

可是腦中的物理告訴我當她停止旋轉的時候,因為角動量守恆,地球的轉速會立刻回復。

這想法算是我個人的左右腦衝突吧。

Apple MobileMe

While everyone is excited about the new iPhone 3G, or depressed because of the fact that it won’t be available in Taiwan for a year or so, what WWDC keynote really caught my attention was, instead, the new web service that would eventually replace .Mac – Apple MobileMe platform.

It’s funny to see how the software giants response the “access my personal (mail|calendar|todo…) anywhere” question. Microsoft’s answer to that is an Exchange Server with it’s special client, i.e. Outlook, on desktops and mobiles. It’s a very classical software company approach, which evolves building everything for every purpose. Google, instead, as a company providing web service, build their services on websites – wherever there is a device, there is a browser, services on browsers are indeed, accessible anywhere.

Apple’s approach is MobileMe. MobileMe works with native applications, from Outlook to Mail.app to iPhones – so it works like an Exchange Server. What’s more, MobileMe can be access via browsers anywhere – so it also works like Google Apps. Apple is bring the two worlds together under one platform – if you are willing to pay and get vendor lock-in-ed, it would “just work”, as Jobs puts it.

Of course, the two worlds is already merging, with or without Apple. Google Android will be available later this year, and Microsoft Exchange Servers are featuring web access a long time ago (with their dumb ActiveX object though). But no one had ever get this right from the start with completed features.

MobileMe is not officially started yet; no one knows whether it will really do what it claims. I am glad that all the companies are thinking like a web right now. It’s web! It’s about clients and servers, and accessability! We are at the turning point or history – in a decade or so, when we look back, we will never recognize how we handle our information today.

手機網路連線與網路中立性

試想以下虛構情境:

H*NET 即日起修改寬頻上網計費方式,只上WWW逛網站(HTTP)的話,連線每月只需要 200 元,若要開 MSN 要再加 100,要連 FTP 加 200,要連 P2P 的話… 每個月加500,其中部份金額會補償給 IFPI。

我不知道在台灣網路中立性這件事情是誰管啦(電信總局?),但是如果在美國有公司敢這樣計費的話,大概會立刻被鄉民+鄉民找來的國會議員罵到臭頭。

不過呢,最近看到ijliao長輩提到這件事,再加上我之前用自己手機的研究,讓我想到一個問題:手機目前用不同APN做不同計費方式,是不是違反了網路中立性?

感覺很符合前面 H*NET 的架設情境呀:我的台哥大手機,用 mms APN 上線的話只能開手機瀏覽器跟 Opera Mini (連線方式要選 HTTP),要用 MidpSSH 或是 eBuddy 等需要 socket 連線程式,Java 程式連線方式就一定要改成 APN 是 internet 的那個。兩個 APN 的計費方式不同,一個適用吃到飽,另一個會無限計價。

當然我也知道他們為什麼要這樣計費啦(因為如果有一天有人寫出了 JavaME 的 VoIP 程式那他們的語音業務就倒了),但是我還很質疑這樣弄的正當性。

最後的小小抱怨:Sony Ericsson 的手機不能幫每個 Java 程式指定個別的連線方式,要改只有一次適用所有程式的選項。害我為了 eBuddy 在兩個連線設定之間切來切去的,想省錢就不能用手機上 MSN 真是辛苦。