Slashdot Mirror

Unless, of course, he's got one of these.

single digit reports, all in one country

Except that their are also reports of iPhones exploding in the the Netherlands and Belgium, plus, apparently, the UK and the US, but you're right, it is just a "localized" problem and probably not Apple's fault.

What??? Mac users are gay?

Are these gay? http://www.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/steve-jobs-3g-iphone1.jpg
Is this gay? http://images.businessweek.com/mz/04/44/0444_20innova.jpg

iDon't think so, troll!

Maybe check this link out:

Video demo of Nokia n800 running Android in VMware

More info, including this video, can be found at this link:

Nokia N800 runs Android in VMware: Video Demo

Look, it's not worth arguing with you if you're not going to listen to reason. Go find one of those laser projectors they demo on an 8.5x11" sheet of paper and try projecting on 10' wall. If the only problem was pixellation, it would be no problem to scale the thing up. We're VERY good at modulating lasers and scanning displays. That's CRT tech.

If you flash a light at someone it does very much look dimmer, in proportion to it's duty cycle. That's how LED dimmers work. Look it up. Don't forget that your eye sees on a logarithmic scale. What you perceive as a 2x decrease in brightness is actually much more than that. That's why the "tail" of the moving laser pointer doesn't look as dramatically dimmer as it should. But it DOES look dimmer.

No, you don't need it to be 5 million times as bright as a laser pointer. Laser pointers are pretty freaking bright. You can get away with much less. Plus the ones demoed so far have been pretty dim at 8.5x11" size, which requires orders of magnitude less power. Even so, why do you suppose Mitsubishi would develop a 100 mW laser diode for projectors if they could just use a regular old 5 mW one? And why does their LaserVue TV suck down 135 watts ? Why doesn't it work on a couple of AA batteries like my laser pointer?

Hey, but don't let me stop you. Get some venture capital and go build your 15' capable cell phone projector. You should sell a billion or so of them!

First of all, I don't advocate tracking of people against their will, no matter what their age. My solution is not only cheap, but exceeding difficult to use without the child being aware of it, so I don't mind sharing it:

option 1:
http://www.instamapper.com/diy.html

option 2:
http://www.slashgear.com/open-gps-tracker-based-on-cheap-prepaid-phone-0340035/ (more work, but potentially cheaper)

Just stash it in their backpack.

Saw this just today, not quite the specs you stated, but closer than 640x480
http://www.slashgear.com/kopin-golden-i-wearable-computer-headed-for-production-1944260/

I don't know if it'll have enough juice to run photoshop, but Asus is releasing an EEE tablet.

I handed them the nice little instruction book filled with pretty pics that came with the motherboard. The only question i got was "How do you tell which screws go where?"

Smart kids.

Computers really are pretty simple to work on now, most folks would just rather pay some guy like me than DIY.

I think PCs have pretty much always been easy to assemble, the hard part being drivers, which is still a problem Linux has with some hardware.

As for MSFT owning the Netbook market, is Acer and Toshiba good enough sources?

Ok, yes it's good enough. I don't keep up with the market, I have no interest in netbooks period, and didn't know what it was like.

And you cite CnR, but CnR is now owned by Xandros and the Linux community HATES Xandros

Again I was unaware. I said CNR came installed on my Linux PC, the distro installed was Linspire and they created it. And some in the community also hate Linspire. Personally I didn't know that 'til after I got it. My Windows PC I used was crapping out on me and I couldn't afford to spend much on a new PC. While looking around I saw this PC in a store selling for $250 with a $50 mail-in rebate. So I ended up buying one. Other than when the motherboard had to be replaced, it was still under warranty, I didn't have a problem with it. Well, I did. It didn't come with enough RAM or large enough an HDD so I also got more RAM and a second larger HDD. Even with those added the price was still lower than a Windows PC.

So while you got lucky that CNR came with yours I sincerely doubt you will see many main stream distros support it in the future.

There are 9 clients for different distro, two being RedHat and Ubuntu. So while distros may not include it it can be installed.

How is taking the laptop to the bozos at Geek Squad supposed to help? WTF?

WTF? is right. When did I say anything about taking the laptops to the Geek Squad? The only tyme I mentioned them was when I said I took my NT4 PC to them so they could install the Windows update Microsoft would not let me download.

Bye

Falcon

I handed them the nice little instruction book filled with pretty pics that came with the motherboard. The only question i got was "How do you tell which screws go where?" which was a simple "Look at the threads of the hole and compare them to the threads of the screw" but other than that they were good to go. Computers really are pretty simple to work on now, most folks would just rather pay some guy like me than DIY. As for MSFT owning the Netbook market, is Acer and Toshiba good enough sources?

And you cite CnR, but CnR is now owned by Xandros and the Linux community HATES Xandros for daring to sign up with MSFT so they could get access to the APIs they needed for their server product to support AD and Exchange. So while you got lucky that CnR came with yours I sincerely doubt you will see many main stream distros support it in the future. Just look at the hatred that Novell has gotten and most of the Zealots LIKE Novell when compared to Xandros. So pretty much anything Xandros gets its hands on will be dropped because the "free as in freedom" types will have a living shit fit.

As for the PHB, I'm sure the state will have SOME say in it. After all I'm sure the foundation will be getting tax credits for this charitable contribution, which is worth exactly squat if nothing in the entire school system can actually support the thing. After all, the teachers are going to have to be able to provide educational materials for it, the schools are going to have to set up some sort of system for repairs, all of this means it had better work with what they have or be easy to support or their "free" laptops could bankrupt the system. And both MSFT and Apple have a history of "giving away" systems at reduced or no cost to education to get their foot in the door. I still have my server 2K3 and Office 2K3 discs around here somewhere from when I was in school.

As for you being old enough to remember the Trash80, I still got my Vic20 in the closet. that ain't the point. The point is that before the GUI most folks had little to no interaction with PCs. And I seriously doubt that the folks who are in charge of "tech" in SC have any experience with anything other than Windows. I live in the rural south and even most of the admins are "clicky clicky" Windows jocks. Here you can't give Linux boxes away, because five seconds after you give them the machine they are heading to Walmart to pick up some cheap Lexmark printer or a CD in the software aisle and they'll be bringing it back to you the next day because it is "broke" because it doesn't run Windows. This is why I quit selling cheap Linux boxes and this is the mindset that you have to deal with.

How is taking the laptop to the bozos at Geek Squad supposed to help? WTF? You're gonna tell all those poor kids to shell out $150 just to be told "buy a better computer dude"? The point is XP SP3 right NOW sucks up more than 3GB of HDD, out of the box. That number ain't gonna get smaller as time goes on, its gonna get bigger. Take an AV from 9 years ago and run it. See how small the memory and CPU footprint is? Now run the latest Norton, which is what schools use. See how quick it turned your P4 into a 386DX? THAT is the problem. These laptops are probably gonna be 1GHZ with MAYBE 16GB of flash space,and if they are lucky 1GB of RAM. If they give them those laptops with XP home and they ain't locked down worse than any BOFH they are gonna be spambots before the first week is out. After all, we are talking about kids here. Kids fuck up, kids go where they ain't supposed to and do dumb shit. That is part of growing up.

But running Windows on those specs means you better know what the hell you are doing. They will also need an on access AV and antispy, that costs serious resources that these things ain't got to spare. And it will only get worse as more and more malware flood the net. The antiviru

Somewhat off-topic, but Amazon's about to announce the Kindle DX with a 9.7" screen, maybe tomorrow: http://www.slashgear.com/amazon-kindle-dx-images-leak-97-inch-e-ink-screen-0542772/ This is almost the size of the printable part of an 8.5x11 page, so this is pretty cool. I hope the resolution and refresh speed are up to par.

10% is indeed BS.

Even the most Apple biased browser stats I've looked through top it out at 8.3%, the more objective sites put it at around 4%. The thing is, even most Mac users I know use Firefox rather than Safari.

I don't even think Apple has 10% of computer market share which makes the claim even more unlikely unless there is some specific reason Mac users are more likely to be internet users than Linux or Windows users are. See here:

http://www.slashgear.com/apple-os-x-market-share-drops-in-feb-as-vista-use-rises-0236001/

See also SlashGear's writeup or Legit Reviews coverage at least until the /. effect allows Linux Devices some breathing room.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_4
"Max CPU clock 1.3 GHz to 3.8 GHz"

http://www.slashgear.com/intel-35ghz-core-2-duo-e8700-quietly-introduced-2631907/
"Intel has quietly updated its Core 2 Duo range with a new processor, offering higher performance than most of its other dual-core CPUs. The 3.5GHz Core 2 Duo E8700 has 6MB of cache, a 1,333MHz front-side bus, and a 65W TDP, and is built using 45nm technology as with the other recent Wolfdale chips."

This means my USB Christmas tree would flash ten times as fast!

Not to mention my USB chicken foot or USB mouse with a real scorpion in ...

The real success of USB is as the universal source of a convenient five volts, with data as a secondary consideration. Look at all the buckets of incredibly weird crap you can get from China - the USB Christmas trees, the chicken foot flash drive, the mouse with a scorpion in ...

USB 3.0 plans to take the voltage down to 4 volts. This move must be resisted at all costs!

OK, Apple has the patent on this from almost 2 years ago. See here. :)

Doesn't look like there's much that's more novel in the MS "invention" in this case, unless I'm missing something about their implementation.

Only problem is that Apple has the patent on this from almost 2 years ago. See here.

Doesn't look like there's much that's more novel in the MS "invention" in this case, unless I'm missing something about their implementation.

huh? i drop blu-ray disks into my ps3 and its playing within a few seconds. you're smoking crack.

That's true. It was able to load "Men In Black" in only 43 seconds, which is nearly twice as fast as some other Sony gear. It might still take a while to load "Iron Man" the first time, but that's only because it's upgrading its firmware. In all, the PS3 is much better than your average cheap DVD player which can't even upgrade its firmware or run a cool virtual machine to keep you from stealing all your content, at least for another couple of months.

China has already mandated USB charging for all new mobile phones

I thought this was going to be the first fuel-cell based laptop.
Especially after reading how a fuel-cell the size of a regular battery can operate a cell phone for 2,700 hours of talk-time.

Or they could wear one of these, thanks for reminding me of it.

This fits in well with the rumors of a slim version of the PS3 in the works. See here for more details.

Wii Power Glove :-)

Someone beat you to the punch. http://www.slashgear.com/wii-power-glove-092860.ph p/

http://tinker.it/now/2007/02/28/multitouch-table-e xperiment/

        * 1 panel of plexiglass 8mm thickness
        * 2 strips of IR LEDs (18 LED per strip)
        * 2 sheets of tracing paper
        * 1 projector
        * 1 mirror
        * 1 analog camera sensitive to IR light
        * 1 IR filter for the camera
        * 1 computer

The traking was done using vvvv. http://vvvv.org/tiki-index.php

==============

Also See:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/01/build-your-own- multi-touch-table/
http://www.slashgear.com/make-your-own-multitouch- projected-table-284137.php

Which is why this product is truly the pinnacle of human-computer interfaces.

Uh, how about the LG KE850?

And the linux guys already have the multi-finger stretchy fingerpointing stuff.

And Cisco has the iPhone name already, so Apple basically only innovated:
* the advertising (the lawsuit with Cisco got them more free publicity than they could ever afford to pay for)
* the lockin with iTunes at the expense of making it EDGE instead of much faster 3G (but which then would use Real),
* the lockin with Cingular, which costs my brother $120 a month for pretty well basic features.

You mean like the TuxPhone?
http://www.opencellphone.org/index.php?title=Main_ Page

Or the FIC Linux phone that SlashGear talked about last month?
http://www.slashgear.com/fic-linux-cellphone-can-i t-capture-the-imagination-of-the-open-source-commu nity-072392.php