A Student at the Technical University of Hamburg is doing a survey Neuros Community Members

I'm a masters student at TUHH, Technical University of Hamburg. As
part of my master’s thesis, I am carrying out a survey to better
understand your experience and expectations with regards to the
organization of Open design projects.
Your opinion as Neuros OSD user and community member is very important
to me!
That's why I'm inviting you to fill out my survey. Answering the
questions may take about 8-10 minutes.

Mashable recently posted an article With Google TV Looming, Can the Boxee Box Prevail? It was almost rhetorical because Mashable clearly can't see how it will. I tend to agree with them, but I'll take it one step further. Why would we want dedicated hardware of any kind at this stage? Lets assume that Google TV will run on a PC as we've speculated. Let's further guess that the Google TV hardware will cost $200.

Steven Johnson wrote an interesting provocative article in the NY Times about whether or not Apple's success should make us re-think the "gospel that an open web will win." My gut tells me that openness will win in the end (I guess no one would be surprised by this view).

It's been rumored for years but now it does appear closer at least as discussed in the NY Times. What does Google's presumed entry into this space mean for consumers? For the LINK? For the OSD3? Will Google be able to open the TV? How open will it be? Post your thoughts on what it means.

Fernando sent the below message to the Neuros list, and its just another reason why an x86 (with a powerful CPU) continues to make sense for the LINK.  Until the world becomes more standards based, as a manufacturer, we'll continue to need to be flexible to keep our customers from having to deal with these headaches.  That means x86 and having enough space CPU cycles to be able to deal with some inefficiencies in the system.

I wrote previously about Innovation following Infrastructure and this is basically the other side of that coin. I recently was introduced to the pedal-a-watt device its a device that turns your bike into a stationary bike with resistance provided by a generator that actually puts power into your home electric lines, offsetting some of what you use. Its a neat little thing and as someone that uses a stationary bike with a very noisy fan, I was excited to get one.

Many years ago, my forth grade teacher gave us an assignment to write a recipe about how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The next day, she took each set of instructions and showed how, without using any judgment, each set of instructions would fail to produce a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. If the recipe said spread peanut butter on one side of the bread and then put the pieces together, she would put the peanut butter on the outside of the bread.

"Chicago was the place where all the classic games were made, because you could acquire all the parts that were necessary from local manufacturers" said Steve Kordek (who gave the world two-flipper pinball). It's a quote from the Feb '10 issue of Chicago Magazine. I'm sure it's something that went unnoticed by most readers, but I winced the second I read it. Why? Because 50 years later, Neuros moved its manufacturing (and a lot of the engineering) to China for largely the same reason.

The concept of an open home gateway is one of the least noticed and most important of the components of a national broadband plan, and I believe the US is at a critical crossroads. Please join Neuros in supporting a proposal for an open home gateway by voting or commenting on the FCC Post we submitted. The open home gateway is a standard that would mandate the cable companies deliver a box that other devices can integrate with in a seamless way.

On one path is an incredible opportunity:
to help close the digital divide,
to create an entire ecosystem of connected TV that allow a freedom of communication that can quickly reach virtually all citizens,
to create entire new industries for the US to pioneer

I recently received this message from defectivebydesign.org:

The MPAA is pressuring the FCC for the authority to cripple recording devices so Hollywood could shut off the video outputs on your cable box, DVR, or other recording device when particular movies or shows come on. If granted, people who wanted to watch those movies would have to buy special defective by design devices subservient to remote "Selectable Output Control," and a dangerous precedent would be set for even more control in the future.

Please tell the FCC to keep Hollywood's restrictions out of your living room: http://www.defectivebydesign.org/mpaa-drm-tv
Thanks for taking action!

Its pretty obvious to me that whenver you create "interfaces" of any kind that are open and available to all, innovation and experimentation and even entrepreneurship thrive. When you created a giant sealed off infrastructure of any kind, only the giant verticals that created them can modify them and things just naturally stagnate. It's pretty widely understood that big entities aren't good at innovation, so why would the FCC even consider shutting off an interface like the analog outputs that allow some level of experimentation (such as Neuros and others are doing).

The piracy argument is so weak here its just hard to justify. Its clear that effectively none of the p2p content available has been generated from analog recordings from set-top boxes, etc. Its just a big red herring to justify the fact that they simply want more control. Let's face a simple reality, innovation is mostly bad for entrenched interests, it changes things, and change is undesirable if you are doing well with status quo. And that's fine, I have no problem with doing whats best for your shareholders. But the fact that these folks have the gall to lobby a government entity to fight something that seems obviously a help to innovators is shameless to me. Can anyone dispute that this helps innovation or that innovation is vital to our national interests?