Slashdot Mirror

I know this doesn't quite fit the request but MIDs are probably a good solution. Packing full Windows or Linux you can run Putty or SSH as you would from your desktop. Most MIDs are not phones Willcom in Japan has a MID phone so it won't be so long until the US has something similar. Then again, if you have a MID with good wireless coverage why would you need a phone?

If you've tried every antenna and extender on the market today with subpar results, HD Communications is apt to become your new best friend. The outfit has just revealed its HD26200, a "complete outdoor wireless network bridge in the 802.11b/g unlicensed 2.4GHz band that sells for only $318." Said device bridges wireless internet between two locales up to 5 miles apart without requiring a single RF cable, being that both Ubiquiti network radios are powered over Ethernet. If you're looking for the catch, the bridge does require a direct line of sight between the two locations, but the firm is reportedly looking to expand its non-line of sight family by the summer's end.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/22/318-wifi-network-bridge-connects-two-locations-up-to-5-miles-ap/

Not quite a mirror, but you can read about it on Engadget

http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/05/urinal-game-banned-by-killjoy-belgium-police/

Damn dude, don't give anyone any ideas.

Yeah, let's not forget screens (a friend has dozens of these, which thusly account for thousands of dead pixels), batteries or any of the other components, really.

Hardware failures are common and it wouldn't be a real problem if (1) Apple's harware wasn't so homogeneous, so that when a few users have a problem, others will probably follow and (2) Apple didn't send blindfolds (glossy, shiny, but still blindfolds) to anyone who complained, claiming the warranty is of one year only when my country's laws clearly state that it lasts 2 years if the product was sold here, regardless of who made it and where.

On a sidenote, they're so picky chosing the right RAM byte by byte that I've been waiting for a replacement for a stick for 2 months. It's not my computer and it's not regularly used, but still...

Search engines are not THAT tough to build. Technologically, it's within their grasp. But people just don't WANT to do business with MS. Without a captive market, customers and would-be partners take their business elsewhere.

And if Microsoft wants Yahoo! because of the eyeballs that will be a problem for them. It's easy for people to switch to another search engine or email provider. I've heard a few people say that if MS does acquire Yahoo! they'll switch, though I use mostly Google for searching I use Yahoo! for email and for the groups and I will switch.

Their most successful/innovative product is XBox, and they lose money on every single one that ships. The joke of it is, by the time they reach the break even point it will be time to upgrade the hardware and start losing money again.

MS has reached the break even point on the XBox, for the second quarter they've made profits, $89 million this last quarter.

On the desktop, I predict Apple will do the best job capitalizing on the Vista meltdown. Linux will rule the cheapie subnotebooks and everything below that in the food chain, along with the server world. MSFT will be stuck in the middle, sandwiched between Linux on the low end and Apple on the high end.

"Apple dominates sales for PCs above $1,000".

why do they insist on likening anything with a display and controls to playing a video game?

We all know how much Jobs likes the education market, so according to the Wall Street Journal he did a very magnanimous thing and offered OS X up to Nicholas Negroponte for his $100 laptop for developing nations. But not even bothering to discount the vast technical difficulties with getting OS X to run on this kind of machine, Negroponte and his team apparently canned the whole idea because OS X is a closed-source OS, and they believed it fundamental to their system to use only totally open, completely modifiable software. Yep, this all sounds about right to us. Jobs gets positive PR, Negroponte & Co. get to up their cred; win-win all around! -- Endgadget

"Pistorius' lawyers countered with independent tests conducted by a team led by MIT professor Hugh M. Herr that claimed to show he doesn't gain any advantage over able-bodied runners."

At least they can be reused as excellent chess computers. I'd say it will take a long time until such flaws are history. Personally I wouldn't support any closed-source solution and even OSS should be tested for an extensive period of time before I'd trust it. Till then I'll stick to voting by mail in case online voting becomes mandatory (which is possible and easy in the country I live in).

Might sound like a contradiction, but online votes might be even safer in the long run. It's not like paper votes are more secure per se - we just have more experience with it. A centralized system which encrypts everything up to one institution on top might be easier to control than all those humans reporting from polling places. But the current systems work differently and as I said I have doubts that there'll be an electronic system I'd trust.

DIY projector http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/17/how-to-build-your-own-hd-projector-part-1/

No Sarbanes Oxley only applies to Apple

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/21/the-20-ipod-touch-upgrade-really-for-legal-reasons-or-not/

Ideally I would like to use uTorrent, but since there is no Linux version, you can either use wine to run uTorrent, or use Azureus with its RSS import plugin. There is a promising new client and server application that essentially does what we are looking for http://swarmtv.nl/ but it's still in alpha. There is a good engadget article that shows you how to set Azureus up to download these torrents http://www.engadget.com/2004/11/23/how-to-broadcatching-using-rss-bittorrent-to-automatically/ After that you just need the cron job and maybe a shell script to serve up your completed mp4 files to uShare.

Is it me, or does the mouse look like it's designed to be used with a specific hand? Whether it's right or left I don't know...but example..

I indulged myself and picked up a Razer Lachesis mouse not long ago and it's pretty much symmetrical. I'm a right-y, so I don't *need* to pay particular attention to these things but do they produce two versions, one for right-handed people and one for left? Or what?

You know, the really reputable company, they would never cripple their products. I wonder what all the conflict is about this time. Surely theyd never back out of opening the spectrum.

That's a long time for MS to wait. If the Asus prediction is anywhere near correct, there'll be a whole lot of people learning that Linux isn't just some command line based geek OS.

When did I say that Apple makes touchscreen notebooks? "Multitouch" simply means that a touch-based input system (in the case of Apple notebooks the trackpad) has suport for you using more than one finger/stylus/whatever to make inputs. My Santa Rosa MacBook Pro uses the trackpad as a two-dimensional scroll wheel when I use two fingers - that would be the rudimentary approximation. The MacBook Air (and, as far as I know, newer MBPs) allows stuff like resizing windows by performing a pinching motion on the trackpad.

Before you tell me that "true multitouch requires a touchscreen": I'm certainly not the only one who considers this to be multitouch.

It doesn't have hands yet, but it works. You even step into the boots with your feet in the same way Ripley did in Aliens.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/25/sarcos-military-exoskeleton-becomes-a-frightening-reality/

• ASUS TM-210 Black 0.6mm SECC MicroATX Mini Tower Computer Case 300W Power Supply $54.99
• GIGABYTE GA-G31M-S2L LGA 775 Intel G31 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard $66.99
• Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 Allendale 2.4GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80557E4600 - Retail $119.99
• SUPER TALENT 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model T800UX2GC5 $37.99
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250310AS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM $59.99
• LG 20X DVD Burner Black SATA Model GH20NS10 - OEM $24.99
• APPLE Mac OS X v10.5.1 Leopard - Retail $109.99
• TOTAL: $474.93 (plus shipping)

Of course, I'm not saying the Psystar "hackintosh" is a better value than the Mac mini. In fact, I think the Psystar is a piece of crap when it's running OS X (no fan speed control and not update-able). It's kind of ridiculous to compare the two, but I guess we're "forced" to since Apple doesn't offer a headless desktop Mac with desktop (not notebook) parts. At least the Mac mini works like it's supposed to.

However, the current article says the loud fan problem seems to be caused by incompatibilies between the motherboard/case fan controller and OS X (and maybe the hacked EFI). If the same motherboard/case was used with Windows, it would surely be much quieter.

Um, Sure, openBSD is secure, until you install anything other than the limited subset it comes with. and even without that, they have a couple of security fixes a month from what I remember when on the mailing list. As for OS-X, I don't see how having a huge hole in safari can be classed as "secure". Note that in that competition, it took allowing the install of random third party software before the windows box was compromised. The apple one was compromised by just going to a website.

So, please, hate on Microsoft all you want, just try do it with actual facts.

If you're going to insult a culture do it intelligently... That being said, yes there are many fakes all over the world.

Personally I like Creative players more than iPods (I traded my 30 Gig IPod Video for my sister's creative Zen Touch, better sound quality).

An mp3 player is a very cheap general processor or audio processor some simple UI software and a flash disk, they are increadibly over priced and their ergonomics and ui are a matter of preference, people aren't that different and if iPod's appeal to 70% of north American's then yes it's likely that they'll appeal to a similar percentage in other cultures, but it's not necessarily so.

Personally I think the iPod succeeded in North America because of poor competition, in Korea Samsung doesn't have much competition.

Koreans have a slightly lower average income . However, lower costs of: living, social services and prices mean that the average Korean can buy more products, and Samsung's $4-600 mp3 players are wildly successful there.

Korean commercialism is something of an oddity, my Korean ex. was adamant that regardless of income level Koreans prefer KIA vehicles, which north americans consider unacceptable.

Not bad, but a little expensive. According to this, the battery lasts a week and has it's own wall wart. I suppose you could charge it up at night, like you do your cell phone and the limited display area is responsible for that good battery life.

Do you get a lot of use out of it without a matching earbud? My first thought was, "If I get a call I actually want to deal with, I'm going to have to pull the phone out anyway." An earbud would take care of that problem but that adds even more to the $400 cost of the watch. Was the $400 worth it to begin with?

Can you make it work with a Neo1973? The device is capable of much more than Sony gave it. It could do everything the Spot does and more if it would really talk to a smart phone. The Neo1973 also takes care of privacy issues - I'd never put my contact information into a non free phone hooked up to companies that are asking for immunity to wiretapping crimes.

In case you wondered what drives Google are using: http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/18/massive-google-hard-drive-survey-turns-up-very-interesting-thing/

I must confess I wonder what would happen if an accident happened to the various chip fabs, how far that would set us back technologically. I hope that they aren't all in East Asia.

Perhaps what is necessary is a book containing the bare minimum to enable us to recover digital information. I suspect that flash would have remarkable longevity if you only write once, and store it in an enclosed nitrogen atmosphere with a dessicant sachet. Sandisk looks to be bringing out some sort of 100 year archival quality flash. It's not 1000 years, but it's a step closer.

If we had a collection of books detailing exactly how to go from stone-age to creating keyboards, monitors, computers (even a primitive computer), and then everything else is stored on flash, I suspect that could be useful. An alternative might be storing a few LCD screens, a few keyboards, a few completely solid state computers and a few solar panels in your basement for just such an occasion, and put ALL the info onto digital. That way if TSHTF you just put up your solar panels. Maybe you'd need a book detailing how to make a generator for when the solar panels eventually fail, which you could then hook up to a water mill.

A major concern with printed word is density. Libraries are large and vulnerable. It's rare to discover a forgotten library as such. It's much more common to uncover a scroll or book. I'd suggest that my "civilization in a suitcase" would be much more useful, fairly inexpensive and likely to survive barbarians if there was enough redundancy. I think the cost would not be much more than an order of magnitude though. An Eee PC, an airtight bottle, a few 16Gb flash disk, some dessicant, a generator construction manual, some solar panels... probably not more than $600. You'd probably have to resolder solid-state caps on the board though.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/27/sandisk-secretly-concocting-read-only-memory-for-archival-use/

Are you suggesting that Fujitsu took the very simple AES encryption process and is for some reason storing extra data alongside it on the platter? I don't think my assumption was naive, I think you are either absurdly paranoid or trying for a straw man argument.

For a complete audit, yes, you would want to take the drive physically apart and make sure that it didn't store something stupid in eeprom or a cache as well as the platters, but you would also need to do the same for the keyboard, keyboard controller, motherboard, RAM, CPU, etc.

Handling of keys is always problematic, but hardware based systems potentially pass the key through much less hardware than software based systems. It is nearly inconceivable to create a software system where the key isn't at least stored in main memory and the CPU.

I guess you are right in a way, we won't have full security in Fujitsu's security until we break down their hardware and get the complete details for all the chips and the way that every part is manufactured...

Of course we won't get software encryption security until we break down our WHOLE COMPUTER and get the same data for every chip from every company. I'm sure glad you are sure every last component of your computer is fully secured.

Meant to say (in the first para, but repeated the rest anyway...):

"That would NOT be a problem if Flybook were prevalent at an affordable unit cost and consumer price (instead of US$2900), AND if it could rotate 90 degrees...:"

http://www.flybookus.com/flybook_vm.php

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/12/dialogues-flybook-vm-laptop/

http://www.engadget.com/2006/06/08/flybook-vm-laptop-with-airline-friendly-telescoping-screen/

Oh and check this one out:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/04/14/clio-nxt-unleashed-on-duke-university-kind-of/

Doesn't resolve the issue for developers, but...

Meant to say (in the first para, but repeated the rest anyway...):

"That would NOT be a problem if Flybook were prevalent at an affordable unit cost and consumer price (instead of US$2900), AND if it could rotate 90 degrees...:"

http://www.flybookus.com/flybook_vm.php

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/12/dialogues-flybook-vm-laptop/

http://www.engadget.com/2006/06/08/flybook-vm-laptop-with-airline-friendly-telescoping-screen/

Oh and check this one out:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/04/14/clio-nxt-unleashed-on-duke-university-kind-of/

Doesn't resolve the issue for developers, but...

Meant to say (in the first para, but repeated the rest anyway...):

"That would NOT be a problem if Flybook were prevalent at an affordable unit cost and consumer price (instead of US$2900), AND if it could rotate 90 degrees...:"

http://www.flybookus.com/flybook_vm.php

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/12/dialogues-flybook-vm-laptop/

http://www.engadget.com/2006/06/08/flybook-vm-laptop-with-airline-friendly-telescoping-screen/

Oh and check this one out:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/04/14/clio-nxt-unleashed-on-duke-university-kind-of/

Doesn't resolve the issue for developers, but...

That would NOT be a problem if Flybook were prevalent at an affordable unit cost and consumer price (instead of US$2900):

http://www.flybookus.com/flybook_vm.php

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/12/dialogues-flybook-vm-laptop/

http://www.engadget.com/2006/06/08/flybook-vm-laptop-with-airline-friendly-telescoping-screen/

Oh and check this one out:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/04/14/clio-nxt-unleashed-on-duke-university-kind-of/

Doesn't resolve the issue for developers, but...

That would NOT be a problem if Flybook were prevalent at an affordable unit cost and consumer price (instead of US$2900):

http://www.flybookus.com/flybook_vm.php

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/12/dialogues-flybook-vm-laptop/

http://www.engadget.com/2006/06/08/flybook-vm-laptop-with-airline-friendly-telescoping-screen/

Oh and check this one out:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/04/14/clio-nxt-unleashed-on-duke-university-kind-of/

Doesn't resolve the issue for developers, but...

That would NOT be a problem if Flybook were prevalent at an affordable unit cost and consumer price (instead of US$2900):

http://www.flybookus.com/flybook_vm.php

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/12/dialogues-flybook-vm-laptop/

http://www.engadget.com/2006/06/08/flybook-vm-laptop-with-airline-friendly-telescoping-screen/

Oh and check this one out:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/04/14/clio-nxt-unleashed-on-duke-university-kind-of/

Doesn't resolve the issue for developers, but...

what's the fun in that? And everyone knows that Microsoft's ability to warm things up and catch things of fire or blow them up is legendary.

http://www.waxingamerica.com/2008/01/atts-u-verse-in.html
http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/16/atandt-u-verse-batteries-going-supernova/
http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/triple-play/att-uverse-batteries-exploding.asp
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/23/xbox_blaze/

and others including this latest. And what fun is it to post in a computer tech rag about a toaster burning down a home? When Microsoft does it, there's something about it which makes you wonder why they are in the tech industry at all. They are not very good at security, lose money on everything but monopoly leveraged products and their hardware and software does a nice job at adding to global warming( whatever that is ). IMO.

LoB

You mean like this?

Fondle, smack, close enough, right?

My prediction is that Skype will not only become more popular but also more profitable. Their savior will come in the form of the new mobile computing platform. UMPC or MID + 3G/3.5G/4G/WiMAX + Skype.

Once battery life increases (atom) and mobile networks improve, techies will quickly adopt this platform as their primary phones but they'll still need to make and receive calls to others with PSTN phones.

My prediction is that Skype will not only become more popular but also more profitable. Their savior will come in the form of the new mobile computing platform. UMPC or MID + 3G/3.5G/4G/WiMAX + Skype.

Once battery life increases (atom) and mobile networks improve, techies will quickly adopt this platform as their primary phones but they'll still need to make and receive calls to others with PSTN phones.

It seems that the PS3 40 GB consumes only half of what you said (135 Watts, see http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/30/40gb-ps3-features-65nm-chips-lower-power-consumption/).

So you can go and buy a second PS3.

Sorry, I was thinking of the "Tivo Series 3". Apparently they have removed their heads from their asses since then and decided to offer a unit that costs less than a small car.

What's the trade-off though? What did they leave off of the "Tivo HD" that was in the "Series 3"?

I may have to reconsider them if this "CableCard" thing actually works and isn't just another chance for Comcast to screw you.

I bet most TiVo users have only one tuner though, and just have their analog cable plugged right into it. Seriously, I bet at least 75% of them.

This news image over on engadget has got to be one of the creepiest things I've seen in a while.

My only complaint is that I wish the speakers were moved and the screen enlarged into the spot they are now.

I guess you should have waited, then.

The blurb about terrorism concerns and remote detonating bombs sounds like more pointless scare-mongering with no increase in security.

I find that the contrast ratio of pure white on pure black is still too high, I favor white on grey rather like the way slashdot's "Reply to This" button looks. However having seen a friend's Kindle which uses reflected light, I find that the tradition black text on white background to be the most comfortable. I look forward to the day when there are full color, 60 FPS, reflected light monitors.

I seem to recall tons of issues rather recently.

The phrase you forgot there is "legal customer" not just regular customer.