In the second part Kamen talks about how the arm’s control systems were developed, simplifying an 18-degrees of freedom movement space so that it could be controlled almost subconsciously by the user.
Part three is where Kamen talks about his not-for profit scheme to get young people interested in science through robots: “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology” (FIRST); “like sports, nobody ever walks around saying ‘I wanna be second’.”

Interesting stuff, as I said, and the Luke arm seems to have a pretty astounding future ahead of it. I can’t help thinking I would have asked a few more direct questions though. Is the arm dexterous enough for it to let a wearer/user use the toilet? When the Luke arm gets to that level of sophistication—and, more importantly, when its developer/users trust it enough to do intimate tasks like that with it—that’s the point at which I reckon the arm will stop being a science-technology showpiece and really make a difference in people’s lives. Over to you in the comments. [Kara.AllthingsD]

Kevin basically responds that there isn’t enough subsidation in the US.

Mossberg moves onto openness of the networks.

Kevin Martin is saying that both consumers and entrepreneurs want it. So in the last auction, they put a condition in that the spectrum needs to be open to any handset or application. And our willingness to embrace that is important. We’re not completely there yet, so that every major carrier is embracing openness.

Kara: Would you have done this openness thing before Google spoke up?
Verizon: You see in Japan and Korea that what networks can do when open. But in the past, customers wanted to do things like downloading apps to their phones. And that increased as the broadband speeds picked up.

If someone builds a device that isn’t efficient, or uses too much bandwidth, we have to be careful. The shared resource [of the wireless network] is not like a DSL line. (Funny, isn’t that what the Net neutrality enemies are saying is a shared resource, too? B.L.)

Mossberg: Will rates be the same for plans using phones that we didn’t buy from you?
Lowell: They will be the same, but the functionalities might be different, because of your handset. (Obviously —B.L.)

Mossberg: So you’re purely a provider of network services then?
Lowell: Yes.

Mossberg: Let’s talk about cancellation fees. How to you justify charging people US$175-US$200 to cancel plans that have already worked through their subsidisation.
Lowell: We don’t do that anymore, as of a year ago. In Italy, they don’t allow subsidisation for these reasons. We tier our termination fees so that over time they get lower. And we sell all our phones without any subsidies as an option but 98% of the people choose the contract. If subsidies were outlawed, we’d have no problem and no other carriers would, too.

Kevin: It should be declined over time if its a recovering fixed cost. There should be a reasonable amount of time to take your phone/service home and try it out. There’s a 14-day allowance for this. Some people are wondering what restocking fees should be, too.

Kevin on Net neutrality: We have to allow carriers to manage their networks without limiting consumers access to info, but not only info but innovation.

Verizon on Wireless EVDO and 3G vs HSDPA (ATT claimed that EVDO’s roadmap is limited): We study a lot of competitor claims. I’ve got an engineering background and there aren’t a lot of miracles out there. We’re reliable and fast, and we’re not going to relinquish that. (Fluff, didn’t address the competitive question.—B.L.)

Martin: For the first time in 10 years, we enforced the rule that the cable companies needed to open up and that probably contributed to Sony’s news this week in collaboration with the cable companies.

Lowell on Coverage maps: What DB level constitutes coverage? There’s no standard, and I’d be fine if some rules were made. Same with dropped call data. We need those rules before we can get fair comparisons between companies.

D is Done!
[All Things D]

Kara: Why not TiVo tech in TVs, powering everything?
Rogers: Biggest reason is that TVs already have tiny margins. Building them into TVs makes it hard to drive the same pricing. What we are finding is that the TV world is extremely commoditised so they need to do things to differentiate with things like ease of use and those things are bringing us back front and center.

Kara: How do you move away from the rep of a content thief?

Roger: We got around it by saying that no matter what TiVo does, fast forward through commercials is here to stay. They have to deal with it. No way to turn the clock back on this. They need to figure out an ad model that works. Passive watching isn’t going to work against the measurability of the web medium. So that’s what we’re working on. Ads in menus, ads at the end of the show, or doing pause. Somehow you have to get them to click into and measure an ad.

Rogers: Do something to catch someone’s eye. Maybe at the end of the show, which is effective because there’s no interruption. Not everyone will watch your ad, but no one really did before. People changed their channels, went to the kitchen, and it was a lie. We track it by seconds, and its astounding the difference between what people thought watchers were doing with ads.

The broadcast industry has to say that once everyone has a DVR, they have to figure out a way to advertise otherwise they don’t have a business model.

Rogers: The cable companies are interested in getting our software. The box still has a role, though, because we can talk to a customer without an intermediary. It helps us gain leverage on cable companies, because we don’t have to pitch it to them. We’re here as a customer option they can see and compare them boxes to.
Kara: How about the internet content?
Rogers says they do this.
Kara: And people want one box to do this all.
Kara: But who can do that? You’re not in a power position to do this.
Rogers: That’s why the box is important to us.

Rogers also says that cable will be the ones he think will do the box, because they’re already in the position of delivering so much. (Over both broadcast and IP, these days— B.L.)

Rogers also thinks that networks in TV have to avoid the same pitfalls that the newspaper guys are dealing with now vs the web. They need to rethink their models now to avoid dark times.

Rogers on Cable Card: There’s no reason in the world why a cable company can’t just mail it to you. The cable industry sends a guy out and goes into your house, and has a chance to sell you his box, and hasn’t been worked out in a regulatory rules yet.

Rogers on the TiVo/Comcast deal’s delay so far: The actual development time was 18 months, plus 10 months of prep before that. It’s not the box or software, it’s the infrastructure that cable has that has not proven it can support advanced operations. (What’s that mean? Cable has TV and IP, what else do you need?)

Rogers on more video sources: There isn’t a video producing company that isn’t talking to TiVo today. Amazon Unbox isn’t exclusive.

Rogers on getting content around the house: Right now you need additional TiVo boxes, but we’re looking at addressing this need.

[All Things D]

Mossberg asks what’s the difference between your work here and at Microsoft?
Melinda says that there’s a lot of crossover because of advances in tech that aren’t available to the developing worlds. The skill set is very transferable.
Mossberg: What’s the difference between your Foundation and others like it? More money?
Melinda Gates: We can take risks. There’s a market failure for Malaria vaccines, so no one’s done anything on this in awhile. (There’s a traveller’s market, only.) But if we can take on some of that risk and work with the pharmaceutical companies and then distribute through government. We show them that there is a market.

Melinda says they could tap their entire budget by attempting to fix the problems in the education system alone. Their mission is more to help take on that risk which governments cannot in fixing problems.

Mossberg: How do you work with countries with governments that are part of the problem (corrupt, poor) than part of the solution?

Mossberg: Are you applying business principles? More organised than others?
Melinda Gates: We take a very economic and business approach, which doesn’t mean we don’t pay attention to the social issues.

(Bill and Melinda go through a list of diseases and evaluate where they can be most effective.)

Mossberg: Do people tell you how to spend the money?
Bill Carried around a letter in his briefcase for a month about a kid who needed a new liver. It’s hard, but we try to treat all lives with equal value. And the world does not do that. So with that in mind, it’s easier to focus on that.

Melinda: Why does it take 25 years to put a vaccine’s technology in Bangladesh compared to here, today?
There’s no world fund for getting doses to the developing world. There’s a lot of infrastructure problems. And we’ve been adding new vaccines like tetanus and hepatitis. Several million kids die from measles a year, and now its less than 300k. (From the vaccines they’ve helped get out there.)

Bill and Melinda don’t want to do the day to day stuff, but they’ve had a lot of help from people like Bill Gates Senior. She spends a lot of time setting strategy with Bill junior.

Mossberg: Will having Bill around in 30 days full time be annoying? (Jokingly)
Melinda: I knew that Bill wouldn’t wear a tool belt around the house when he retired. He’ll take a sabbatical this summer, he’ll spend a day on special projects at Microsoft that Ballmer wants him to work on, and 2-3 days at the foundation a week. And some time being curious and learning about science, education, etc. We love working on the foundation together and not many days go by at home that we don’t talk about this. Vacations are huge for talking about the foundation, too.

RE education, the US loses a million or so as drop outs. The foundation worked on data measurement. For example, that million only counts senior year drop outs, while it should be measured from freshman year. The other problem is that many graduates aren’t ready for college.

Walt sends his kids to public school. It’s fine, but maybe that’s because of the affluent area.

Melinda: The top 10% of the kids do well in whatever school. The schools track them into their own curriculum. Those parents fight the change and ignore the remainder of the kids. There are parents who demand a better system, but they get no traction because of the money is going in the wrong direction. One of the things they learned is that you can’t just get a good urban school started without working with the city, district and state because the system will just pull it back down. (You can see how these successful people in tech have started applying similarly huge scale system thinking to the education and healthcare system problems —B.L.)

They are focusing in NY with Bloomberg and Joe Klein (who formerly led the case against Microsoft as a monopoly, I believe.) Because they’re willing to be bold and think of things in a business minded way and shut down schools that don’t work and rethink labour incentives. The best teachers are currently not treated well in the current school system.

They can’t change the minds here and make it change long term. They focus on changing the system, so the negotiation can’t happen at the labour level, but has to be the district level.

Questions from the crowd: What’s the time frame?
Melinda: We take this lesson from Microsoft: a long term approach. We’re saving lives today, but we have a long horizon. Once we get an HIV vaccine, we’ll try to distribute. Why not a 200 year perspective on helping the world? They believe that the wealth Bill and Melinda has will be gone in 50 years or so. And Warren Buffet stipulates in his will that 10 years after his death his money needs to be spent out. That’s so that they can give back to people now.

We’re working on banking for people who live on less than $2. As tech goes cheaper, this stuff will make a huge difference in the world.

Q from the crowd: How do you deal with violence in schools going from students to teachers?
Melinda says that comes from facelessness in big schools. She’s seen schools with 3 cop cars in front and 2 metal detectors. You can see the gangs going through schools and once the teachers recognise the kids, the kids act a lot better. Once the teachers know the kids’ names, these things fall into place. She’s seen schools that have fixed this in NY able to lose their metal detectors and graduation rates go up profoundly (up to 78%.)

Done!
[All Things D]

Nathan is talking about some of his patents, like a mini nuclear reactor. It’s safe because most accidents in power plants are caused by human error, so automating this and using different fuels (like spent uranium and depleted rods from big plants) to make things less dangerous. I wish he’d talk more about their inventions but Walt and Nathan don’t think it’s appropriate to talk physics on stage.

Nathan and co. brainstorm ideas and licence patents. Do they troll patent? They haven’t.

They took the entire company to Iron Man to hear the line from the bad guy: “Just because you had an idea doesn’t mean you own it.” He hates that guy!

Walt is asking him about patent problems in tech, where terrible patents are being approved. Nathan says that originally, the patent office wouldn’t approve software. Patents were ignored at first by software people, because speed was more important than “owning”.

Nathan: “It was a good decision; many companies went huge and fair or foul said, hey, we’re going to grow fast and copy everything we can whether it’s patented or not. Big boys play rough.” (Interesting perspective from an Ex Msft guy-B.L.)

By the way, Nathan has very entertaining voices, low and high. He’d be a great audiobook voice actor.

“You have to think that there’s some technology that will take us from today to tomorrow, but there haven’t been. We thought it was 3D, but it was not. No one has done that graphical treatment for office or research. Maybe that’s a failure of imagination but no one has figured that out and I wish we would.”

Mossberg asks about Apple’s Multitouch on the iPhone, where Jobs claimed 200 patents in the device. Nathan suspects that the multitouch in the iPhone was done before, outside of both Apple and Microsoft, by someone who couldn’t pull it off.

Calacanis had an interesting question: Is IV making an unethical land grab for patents? His answer was that he didn’t know how to answer that question, except that people might complain if he has a lot of success, but no one was going to give him back his money. (Fair enough-B.L.)

Guy from Intel asks if an unintended consequence of IV’s patent action and speculation is that big companies would keep extending patents to protect them. Nathan says its BS. Most companies are doing R&D with a little R and a BIG D. They need to put more into the research. If people know they can spin out inventions, like they do divisions, they’ll be more likely to do more research.

“If you’re not doing something that is somewhat threatening to the apple cart, you’re not doing something interesting.”

[All Things D]

Dell, teasingly, says “You’ll see some great stuff from us this year, and 60% more notebook models.
He tends to think they lost focus on the consumer, and consumer products, as we all know, are sexy and business people like em, too. He says its working. Today’s business at Dell is half derived from desktops and laptops, but the other half is from servers, storage and peripherals.

Mossberg: There was a sense that you got not much in industrial design from old Dells. Is that changing?
Dell: We’ve tripled our staff for design focusing on usability and design.
Mossberg: People have always wanted that. Why now?
Dell explains that its less about MHz and GHz now. In the consumer world, fashion is playing a bigger role, people just say they want a red laptop.
Mossberg: Are you trying to broaden the way you sell by going into retail, which is different from the past history. Are you going to open stores?
Dell: Right now, its more important for us to pick the best retailers in the world. It’s more important to be in 13,000 stores than open them.

Mossberg: Can you take products from market to market, say, from India to the US. For example the Asus EEE pc is something you’d sell in emerging markets but now you’ve got them doing very well.
Dell: Yes, but we may put them in China first because of the size of the market.

Mossberg: Are you working more closely with Microsoft with Vista 7?
Dell: Yes, it’s unprecedented. That early engagement is how you create an early ecosystem, create something new.
Mossberg: You’d talked about software as a differentiator between models of Dell and HP. But don’t those craplets, the additional programs can be a problem.
Dell: We have craplet free options on our machines, actually.
Mossberg: How do you feel about Vista?
Dell: Early we had driver support problems but SP1 really changed that a lot. The ecosystem has come around. With the level of engagement at an early level (Windows 7), so we can work on things like multitouch, to make sure we have a stable driver base, etc…
Mossberg: Multitouch is going to be a core of Windows 7. Do you believe it’ll be the new user interface for PCs? Do you believe it’ll replace the mouse
Dell: It’ll complement what we have today, and it won’t replace them in all instances, either.
Mossberg: What about phones? Are you going to make one?
Dell: We’ve got SIM slots in our laptops with 3G. You’ve got 3.8 billion mobile phones going to 5 billion phones in 4-5 years and 1.4 billion internet users going to 2b in 4-5 years. There’s an opportunity there, for devices that sit between the PC and the phone.

[All Things D]

9:47 Mossberg: You didn’t build your own facilities for LCD production and had to buy them from a competitor, Samsung.

Stringer: That was done to leap frog the tech, but that didn’t work. The brand covered us and we were still number one in the US one year. LCDs have a lot of life in them, but we started doing OLEDs a few years ago and we can’t mass produce it, but we’ve got a US$250 model. Mossberg corrects him, the XEL-1. Stringer jokes that it’s US$250 for people in this room (a special deal.) And Mossberg leads him: How big is it? Stringer: 11-inches, but the dreamwork execs love it.

He’s showing a 0.3mm OLED that is thin as a playing card and can be used in a 27 inch TV that will ship soon. But not at reasonable prices.

Mossberg: Is the video game business profitable?
Stringer: The PS3 is building excitement. The model is to lose money on the hardware for a long time and then make money on the software and later the hardware. The PS3 is expensive. We’ll see games in June, not GTA4, that take advantage of the network, too. (Metal Gear)

Mossberg: But don’t gamers want to just play games on these?
Stringer: People are starting to download content, though. The first million customers of the PS3 were gamers, but more people ended up after that being Blu-ray customers and that’s why we won the format war. So we’re on the edge of the…

Mossberg: I thought you won the war with bags of cash?
Stringer: I thought that’s what they did. You read it in the paper. We are not in the check writing competition.
Mossberg: Then I believe it!

Mossberg: Does physical media have a future?
Stringer: You can finally see, using blu ray the number of arabs in Lawrence of Arabia. Digital downloads aren’t matching the detail now. (I don’t know if I agree that its not somewhat close, though-B.L.)
Mossberg: You’re in the PC business. Sales have dropped a bit…
Stringer: Actually we’ve done well, best year ever.
Mossberg: But I’m talking about marketshare. Why are you not the number one in the market?
Stringer: Because we’re high end and expensive.
Mossberg: Is this your strategy?
Stringer: Yes, the less profit the better. (Laughs from the crowd.) The fact that we have a low marketshare, like Apple, doesn’t mean we’re inferior. Our engineers like to try new things, too.
Mossberg: What about craplets on your pc? It loaded all this stuff on my machine I had to uninstall. (He owns a vaio.)
Stringer: I have to evaluate these craplets, and I promise you a craplet review. (Vaio’s have the most craplets of anyone-B.L.)

Mossberg: What about the Walkman phones?
Stringer: We started the trend and have more phones sold than the iPhone. All of this is on the back of music downloads. Nokia’s got that all you can eat system.

Stringer talks about being down on the iPod battle, too, but they’re coming back by his estimation, quoting that a London paper said the audio quality was better.

We’re a giant department store competing with lots of boutiques like Apple (although not tiny anymore) and ebook readers from Amazon. But do we want to invest that much money to compete with the Kindle’s wireless? And we have to deal in millions in millions and prioritise.

Q from Crowd: What about advancing audio?
Stringer jokes, we have two new speakers that are so expensive, it’s mind boggling, and the three people who can afford them love it. He then says its not different from before.

Q Can Sony do software as good as their hardware?
Stringer: The test will be the PS3 network, and we have a lot of software engineers, contrary to popular opinion. They’re well versed at doing firmware, but our software engineers are in vertical silos separate from each other. We’ve knocked down those walls. Firmware is late, but app ware comes early. And you’ll see how we’ve done. (We’ve also taken a lot of American software engineers into the company because they are more flexible, typically.)
[All Things D]

Our own Mark Wilson: “How babies are made.” Can you do better?