Slashdot Mirror

This episode of Slashback brings a quartet of deja-vu inducing tidbits for your continuing edification and amusement: SuSE, not just Red Hat, will run on all those fancy schmancy new machines from IBM; DialPad sends a nearly bewildering apology to be-spammed e-mail recipients (bewildering because not enough other companies have done the same); laptops of the non-Transmeta variety; and some more information on optical switching, etc. Brush up on randomness, read at your own risk.

You can put that in your lap and smoke it! (Three from the webpad front) Kazin writes "[G]o and check out www.qbenet.com - they've got a tablet-style laptop thing. A bit pricey ($2900 US), and runs windows, but we can certainly fix the second part."

Strangely, a name that you might recognize from The Soul of a New Machine but might not expect to be selling computers now seems to want some of the webpad action, too. Matthew Peretz writes:

"'Home heating and cooling control giant Honeywell (NYSE:HON) has released a Net appliance based on National Semiconductor's WebPAD reference design.

The $995 device weighs less than three pounds, has a 10-inch LCD touch screen panel and connects to the Internet via a base station that uses a cable or DSL connection. The device can be used with any Internet service provider. It will use a battery that can hold its charge for as long as five hours, the company said.'

You can check out the story and actually see a photo of the thing at: http://www.allnetdevices.com/wireless/news/2000/10/11/honeywell_ships.html"

EdotOrg writes "National Semiconductor is slated to 'release' the Geode WebPAD, come Q4 2000, based on the QNX embedded operating system. It has a web browser (including Macromedia Flash, RealPlayer 7.0), PDF support, an IBM-optimized Java layer, full text anti-aliasing, support for USB, 11 Mb/s wireless, and PCMCIA support. Screensize is 9.5x11.75 inches (800x600), with a touch screen and software keyboard."

When oh when will someone make a webpad with LED backlighting instead of flourescent, though? That would help make a

Shedding light on the subject. ksan writes "I've seen this article on Slashdot and remembered that there is an not old article at EDN Online describing how engineers can switch over 200 THz of a light bandwith using laser tunable diode. It's worth a read to know more about optical communications." Great link.

To err is corporate, to apologize uncommon. FeeDBaCK writes "I recently recieved a newsletter from Dialpad even though I had selected not to recieve mail from them or any of their partners. I just deleted it, as I tend to do with mails that I get which were unsolicited. When I opened my mail this evening I recieved the following e-mail from Linda Crockett, the manager of customer care for Dialpad.

Subject: Apology from the Dialpad Team

Dear Chris,

Thank you for your interest in Dialpad.com. We want to extend our sincerest apology for sending you our newsletter without permission. When you signed up for our service, you indicated that you wish not to receive promotional email from Dialpad or any of its partners. We sent our new company newsletter to all of our users thinking it was more of an informative piece on our services rather than a promotional advertisement from a third party. We now understand this was not in the best interest of all of our users.

Again, we apologize for this inconvenience and will make sure you no longer receive any emails from Dialpad. We encourage you to visit our site and sample the many new products we have recently launched. We hope you continue to use Dialpad to make long distance calls from anywhere in the world to the United States.

Regards,

Linda Crockett

Manager, Customer Care

I applaud Dialpad for showing that they truly care about their users. More companies need to follow Dialpad's example. I know we are all tired of recieving e-mails from various companies and web sites without asking for it. Thumbs up to Dialpad."

Funny, isn't it, that the companies which send me unsoliticed "newsletters" and "company updates" don't get a lot of my business? Sounds like DialPad is exhibiting some of that elusive quality known as enlightened self-interest. And since they have a cool product, it sure would be nice, to to mention smart, for them to release a version for Linux. Sooner or even sooner, telephony will be normal instead of novel.

A Big Blue rising tide floats multiple penguins, or something. An unnamed correspondent points out that in addition to Red Hat, IBM's eServer line and S/390 machines will run other distributions as well, including SuSE. "Here's the link. Goes on to tell you about the eServer's and S/390. Wish I could be posting game company news, too, to show inroads onto the desktop. Guess that will happen with time :-)."