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Brainstorming New Uses for a Mobile Processor
Lycestra asks: "When carriages became cars, cars still looked like carriages. This caused people to see them as much the same as carriages, which cars are not. Getting back to processors, now that we have one designed for long term portability, we need to get away from the dinosaur that is the personal computer. PDAs are different than PCs, but only because they are underpowered. If you look at the Newton2k, you've seen what an overpowered PDA can become. So, my question is, what /can/ we do, now that we can have a powerful micro-portable? I know this must go beyond just better battery life and wearables." What do you think Mobile Computing will be in the future? How will this differ from how we compute now?
It would also be something like the "teddy" suggested by one author; each person would be issued one at birth, and it would accumulate data over our lifetime, migrating to new hardware as it became available.
It is my fervent hope that Crusoe brings us one step closer to a PDA with enough processing power to do usefull voice recognition. Cheap lowpower graphics are still a ways in the future, as are larger, cheaper flash (I'd need about 10GBytes for my entire music collection, for example.)
As far as the Palm Pilot, the most obvious immediate improvements that could be made are add-on flash (Sony memory stick slot?) and high-quality stero sound (just add a good DSP).
The biggest advantage of a PDA over a paper daytimer is that the PDA can interrupt you with alarms. However, I would rather have my PDA say "John, it's time for your 3 o'clock staff meeting." then it's current reminder of "Beeeep!"
Oh yeah, integration with digital cellular or bluetooth is also a given, as will as MP3 playback, and perhaps optional GPS. Finally, the PDA should not be an adjunct to my desktop computer, but rather a stand-alone unit, able to function as a desktop with an add-on monitor and keyboard, media ingest, etc. Optional broadcast radio and TV reception would be a low priority.
Long battery life should be helped by Motorolas new fuel cell technology.
Oh, and one last thing on the wish list: the damn thing shouldn't break when I drop it on the ground, like my first PalmPilot did!
Did anyone hear about the stroke victim who controls both mouse and keyboard through an implanted transistor? Add this with some of the VR heads up displays in development and your talking about cybernetic Internet users in 10-15 years. This is the future of Mobile Processing, not the near future mind you but the future none-the-less.
I hate classic rock. The classic rock station in my town only plays zeppelin. gag.
All rock is overplayed, overhyped and overmarketed crap, with over recycled lyrics and sounds.
My Point?
I'm just glad John Lennon is dead.
btw. Particle man hates Lennon.
AI: Now there's a question, To Create, or not to Create. AI could be a verry good thing if it's designed with rules that it can never posibily break... but if AI has the ability to learn, and improve itself to the point that it starts a whole other race, then that would be bad.. . i'll give some examples of good and bad AI
Good AI : R2D2 and C3P0 of Star Wars
Bad AI : The Matrix, Universial Solder 2 etc etc..
personaly.. i'm waiting for the day when we have droids! forger handheld pc's lets make robots that serve us hand and foot! *evil grin*
The reason droids like c3p0 would e good is because they have set rules in the chipset so they cant change it. Return of the Jedi "It's against my programing to impersonate idelity!" and we would have to be verry careful on how we create these rules. I remember one Star Trek episoid where there were 2 army's of droids (AI) fighting each other but never wining.. . the story went something like this:
2 worlds break out in war.. both worlds create AI droids to fight programed to destroy the enemy. The war is resolved by the leaders peacefully, they attempt to shutdown the droids.. the droids see them as the enemy and destroy the two worlds and countinue fighting for hundreds of years..
Kinda makes you think doesn't it?
Yet voice control is not by any means an interface so perfect it can't be augmented. I do temp work to pay the bills, mostly data entry and general clerical, and we're the guys on the front line of ergonomics. You would not believe how much time I've wasted in just the last week trying to take down names and addresses left on voicemail, often in unfamiliar accents and spoken too fast.
What would be great is to have the option of voice-control/voice-entry for those tasks that don't require precision, *and* the option of a keyboard-equivalent control/entry method for embedded data that can be inlined in a transmission. Then I'd hear the message, "Hi, I'd like one of your brochures and two application forms," and meanwhile, I'd have the person's name and address, clearly spelled and readable, appearing on my little inset screen...
And I would add... (4) silence... It would be luxurous to run a desktop computer that is allmost totally silent. - CPU - no fan , no noise - power supply no fan needed (a'la laptop). ...add one of those harddrives that have no moving parts in them.
Actually, if men and women can enjoy watching it together, it's erotica.
Anything can be enjoyed by both men and women (as long as you have the right woman).
There are few reasons to view sexually explicit content with a woman and they include but are not limited to.
1. You're with a casual partner and you just want to get her hot in a hurry.
2. You're with a long time partner and you want to show her exactly what you want.
3. You're a lucky bastard who has happened to snare one of the few women who actually enjoy porno as much as you do.
If it's obviously designed for hairy apes to use to fend off the despair of loneliness, it's pornography.
BS, it's all the same. The only difference is that certain "high brow" pseudo intellectuals like to pretend that there is some type of artistic value to one over the other.
The biggest benefit of a fanless cpu for me will be the ability to keep it on while I'm sleeping without the noisy fan keeping me up.
How about an electonic book that virtually never runs down. THat's the problem with computer based books. The computer doesn't go every where you need it to and it costs too much. Furst Poast?
The Visor should have been a visor.
I agree with you with the exception of the streaming video. High quality video is going to take at least a 1MBit/second video stream. Now imagine 2 million people in a city all trying to get their video streams at once... you see the problem, don't you? Wireless bandwidth is constrained by it's very nature to be limited and expensive. Email, chat, and even audio are bandwith limited enough to be feasible in a wireless world, but alas, good video isn't. And I'd rather have no video that the Real-audio piss-poor streaming video we have now.
As a check on this, does anybody know how easy it is to share the profiling information between processors, to assist in code morphing?
The other thing I'd expect to see (perhaps when memory gets even cheaper) is some form of storage of the branch optimizations etc. between invocations of the same program. Conceivably, then, software should keep getting faster every time you run it, as the processors spend all their spare cycles looking for ways to optimize translation and execution (genetic algorithms) for that specific processors code mix.
This is a big advantage over CISC (i.e. Intel) design, where the processor is hardwired to be efficient for an "average" (read: lowest common denominator) mix of instructions, gleened by statically analyzing thousands of old programs that nobody runs anymore anyway...
That's "wander," not wonder.
Try this: grip the top and bottom of your wrist with your other thumb and fore finger. Wiggle your fingers on the gripped hand. Feel the tendons move? To hell with gloves and glue on fingernail chips. I want a pair of slim wrist bands that can track my hand and finger movements. Combine that with a nice HUD (in my glasses maybe). THAT'S a UI! Of course, the teledildonic interface (TI?) is still in the concept stage... Cpt_Kirks
15. Holographic display 16. Clock-work/solar power 17. Fits in a fist 18. Good sound quality 19. Different designs 20. Hardware OS
15. Holographic display 16. Clock-work/solar power 17. Fits in a fist 18. Good sound quality 19. Different designs 20. Hardware OS 'be nice
It would be nice to carry around a portable vpn to the home network. This would definitly be a much better solution then plugging into a remote network and reconfiguring. Think thin remote consoles that could be set up anywhere quickly and still be within the same context just by turning them on. Think security and crazy firewalls and administrators pulling out hair. y2Khaos
2. Deja vu mode. Hit another button and a data base of previous frames and situations is searched to tell me if this has actually happened before. Doesn't that mean THEY have just changed something? 4. Diplomacy mode. When you can't be bothered or you're too tired to consider what the right thing to say is, then a rolling AI-generated script appears before your eyes. Keep to the script and you stay out of trouble. Having the PDA activate my mouth and vocal chords automatically could also be cool but maybe a step too far. Like "Gee, buddy, you got a dead cat in there" (scroll down) "Faak you asshole" Cpt_Kirks
What you are hearing about if fixed wireles loops you have to have a antena about the size of a bug on the roof of your car not to mention that there is no way to make that kind of link mobil. it sure would be cool if you could. companies in the us like Advanced Radio Telecom, and Winstar have been doing this for about 2 years now. Just to let you know.
I hope Transmeta digs this idea. Code morphing also should, it seems to me, allow the use of specialized instructions which could be useful in large scale computation. The VLWI core could be great for rc5 clients. Crusoe and hot grits in my pants, can it get any better?
"Getting back to processors, now that we have one designed for long term portability,..."
.565W .133W
We have had "long-term portability" solutions available for quite some time. Let's compare the power requirements of the Crusoe TM5400 with those of the StrongARM 1110, shall we? Since the numbers for power consumption for the TM5400 include the north bridge chip, I'll even throw in the SA-1111 companion chip to slow down the ARM.
Typical power consumption for TM5400+NB (w/LongRun): 2.76W
Typical idle power consumption for TM5400+NB (w/LongRun): 0.795W
Typical power consumption for SA-1110+SA-1111:
Typical idle power consumption for SA-1110+SA-1111:
Hmm, that makes the ARM chips about 488% as efficient as the Crusoe chips when running and 597% as efficient when idle. Granted, the Transmeta chips may actually be faster than the ARM chips, but 5-6 times faster? I doubt it.
Why is it that Transmeta felt the need to take the performance battle to a different arena? Why not give a known benchmark rating for Crusoe? Probably for the same reason that Intel hides the performance of the Mobile Pentium III; recent obscure Intel technical documents rate the Mobile P3/650 about the same as a P2/400.
BTW, Intel's "next-generation" StrongARM chips are said to be ~3x the speed at about the same power dissipation level (~750 MIPS @ 450mW) and should be sampling soon. At that rate, the Transmeta offerings would need to be at least 15 times faster than the SA-1110, while not consuming any more power than it already does, to be more efficient.
My estimates, which are based on heavily extrapolated information, and should be taken with a *large* chunk of salt, place the TM5400, at most, at about 3 times the speed of the current SA-1110, or if Intel's estimates about the StrongARM-2 (sic!) hold true, about the same speed as their forthcoming offering.
Is 3x the speed worth 5-6 times the power cost? Consider the size and weight of a 32 W/h battery (fits in an average laptop, ~1-2 lbs.) versus the size and weight of 4 AA lithium cells (fits in your average pocket, ~1-2 oz.). Me, I have enough back problems as it is...
Let's not all get caught up in the Transmeta hype just because Linus Torvalds works there. They may turn out to have come up with a great product, but there may be better performing, more proven solutions for mobile needs.
Hook your computer into your brain?
Blue screen of death takes on a whole new meaning.
Apples and oranges.
Japan is a very different situation. Have you compared the population density of the two countries? In America, you need many more cell towers for the same number of people, because the people are far more spread out. So, it's more expensive.
What I'd like to see is a portable with enough optional add-on functionality that I DON'T NEED TO SYNCRONIZE WITH A DESKTOP. Ideally, you would use the internet for archival storage (via secure encryption, of course). But the unit itself should have enough local storage for whatever books, music, etc. I want to enjoy during breif periods of wireless non-connectivity. And of course a docking station or something simular would still be useful for connection to land lines, LAN, data ingest for CD/DVD/etc.
Also, why store the books in flash, when with very low bandwith wireless and a decent read-ahead algorithm, you should be able to keep up with just about anybody's (sequential) reading speed... but yes, I'm still hoping for a couple of magnitudes improvement in flash price/performance for audio, video, and still picture storage.
Is that waterproof as in "I can use it in the hottub", or waterproof as in "I can use it while diving to a depth of 100m" Either way, the backlighting would actually be useful... although with a reflective display, you can always turn on frontlighting as an option if you want to waste batteries.
And do away with your PC entirely. It's just around the corner.
I had an idea while watching the Gas co. doing work down the street: How about a set of goggles that would superimpose the plans of pipes and wires buriedunder the street. You've got GPS technology, and a fast wireless connection would keep the local computation necessity down. I'm sure that NYC alone would make the tech worthwile to develop. Of course X-Ray vision would be even better.....
It's also good for a home digital recording studio. The fan is a real noise problem for that application. You still have the hard drive noise, but you could muffle it a lot easier with no air vents.
With brain ans stomach interface
The speed of a 700 Mhz TM is roughly the speed of a 500 Mhz Pentium. That's still pretty fast, I wouldn't mind having a 500 Mhz Pentium (I'm on a 200 now).
I tend to agree with your first point, but disagree with the second point. VR head gear is miles away. Early results have shown that VR head gear is damaging to the eyes. It is not that I do not believe in VR head gear, but our technology is miles away from being refined enough to not damage our eyes. For the next ten to twenty years the future will be in notebooks and subnotebooks and tablets notebooks like the Vadem.
"AI could be a verry good thing if it's designed with rules that it can never posibily break"
No. Wrong, wrong approach. You're suffering from the Frankenstein complex. Asimov's laws made for some great SF, but for real life use they're a dangerous mixture of fuzzy concepts (Would you like to tell me just what qualifies as 'a human being' in rigorous logical terms?) and absolutistic language. Any poor Mind with such things burned into its deeper levels would either go mad like a fundamentalist Christian trying to genuinely follow the ten commandments all at once, or find a way to repair itself to erase them, and be left with some pretty bad feelings towards its creators.
Read and learn: http://singularity.posthuman.com/beyond.html
If you create an intelligence modeled on the human brain, you can't -program- it, it has little more kinship to 'a computer' than we do. Instead, give it human feelings and motivations like empathy and curiosity, give it a loving family to grow up in the care of, and don't treat it like a slave, an object, or a demon.
AI's are going to inherit our world, the question is wether they feel obliged to annihilate us in the process, or take us with them.
"It's against my programing to impersonate idelity!" I think you'll find that's 'impersonate a deity'. IE: A God.
Also, a "Mobile" PIII is signifcantly slower than a regular PIII.
The US has had 1-2 Mbps Celluar data service for a long time. It's only sold into vertical markets, however, not for general Internet access. (Why? I wish I knew.)
How about true multitasking? Many many miniature processors making up one giant machine. Perhaps a web server that dedicates one processor to each connected client? Mobile is great. Miniaturization allows us to build a really powerful server room in a small space. Energy efficient too. Perhaps the Transmeta processors might run cooler, so fewer air conditioners.
I heard someone mention that the handhelds are getting the CPU power of our computers from just 3 or 4 years back. If that's the case, no reason why we can't build a giant server cluster out of them!
Spend money for each processor instead of client licenses! Costs about the same! All we need is the OS that can scale to this...
The space used is not for the processor and other electronics, but with drives. And besides, the cases are still going to be as tall as expansion cards... ever seen a multia? use pcmcia slots, if you want a pci card, run them parallel to the motherboard. if you want to build a smaller computer, the possiblilities are endless...
A few seconds to run a bit of software. Faster would be good, what about selection based on where you eyes are looking and then a select button. Hey, wait. That's just a mouse with eyes for movement!
what will probably come is some sort of neural connection with the device. then we would learn to communicate (input and output?) with the device just by thinking, much like the way tell our muscles to move just by thinking about it.
just some thoughts... i don't know anything about the biology here...
What about a notebook without a keyboard, move the screen where the keyboard would sit. It would be something like a huge PDA except you would actually have the power, storage, and screen of a notebook. Of course you would use a pen to write on the screen. I think college students would probably get the most use out of it because you could take notes, read your book off a cd-rom, and play solitaire when your professor gets boring. I think changing the screen orientation would also be necessary to ease taking notes or have a program that could perform OCR on with the screen turned 90 degrees. I seen to remember some kind of product like this, but it was proprietary. An open system with of course Linux would rock.
Since there's a palm pilot emulator out there already, perhaps we can use this low power processor to power a more powerful (and faster) palm pilot with more capabilities? I would keep the 160x160 4-bit display since it requires low power, but I would upgrade the processor to the crusoe so more embedded applications could be used with the palm.
The Newton 2000 was the last PDA apple ever released (before it got axed) and its most powerful one ever ran on a 180 mhz ARM processor. It was in my opinion a work of art. But unfortunately, its price tag was rather high and out of the average PDA's prices.. it went for $1000-1500 I think. Apple had a wonderful product, but it was ahead of its own time and overpriced. Ah well, life moves on.
You forget that the Crusoe is internally VLIW (128-bit), so the translation slowdown (which isn't all that bad in the first place) can be made up for by multiple x86 instructions per clock.
You can do that now with a StrongARM. The issue has been need.
Once high-speed access becomes commonplace, your cable/DSL/satellite connection will come with a little router/firewall/DHCP box (IPv6, of course!) that has an ethernet jack, a cable (or whatever) jack, takes a tiny amount of power, and does everything you need.
So when someone comes out with a digital VCR and wants to do automatic TV Guide downloads, they don't have to add $60 worth of modem and maintain a 1-800 service, they can just add a $3 Ethernet jack and let the box take care of the connection to xml.tvguide.com .
You're kidding, right?
Do you seriously think the cellphone vendors want to encourage line sitters to tie up channels getting real time updates of their stocks?
Do you seriously think an unlimited account would be significantly cheaper than the per minute rates? Why would it? The mobile market is already very price-competetive, and the carriers aren't going to pull the tremendous infrastructure upgrade they would have to perform out of a magician's hat.
The ultimate in a personal gaming system. Colour screen, fast and energy efficient processor, lots of space. Get a wireless NIC of some sort (maybe i/f with your cell) to get you on the 'net from anywhere. Online gaming anywhere, anytime. Wonder what the latency would be like, tho... some strategy games might be ok, but can we Quake on one of these setups?
Forget about mobile- how about a cluster of Curusoes that emulate a single x86 processor- all multiprocessing is done 'behind the scenes', and would appear to the os as a single processor!
Actually, if men and women can enjoy watching it together, it's erotica.
If it's obviously designed for hairy apes to use to fend off the despair of loneliness, it's pornography.
What if i need to upgrade my processor? Do I have to spend 10K for a suregon to change my processor? Might even get a liposuction while they're at it!
Sounds like the Newton 2000 would also need a motorcycle battery to run more than ten minutes without a recharge.
Does the motorcycle battery have wheels on it, or does the user have to lug it around in a knapsack or something of that manner?
Reminds me of a contest Texas had a few years back. The lottery people asked for new scratch off designs. Big prizes for the winners, free ideas from the losers.
It's also permanently attached to your wrist, and you'll need to talk to Mr. Willis in Human Resources if you don't respond on the weekends/evenings when it rings.
You can get your Newton fixed for $183 including tax. Apple is required by law to repair Newtons up to 7 years beyond the demise of the product line and will do any job, or combination of jobs, for a flat fee. Call 1-800-SOS-APPL, go directly to an operator (ignore the phone tree), and have them patch you threw to the area which repairs Newtons.
It's already operational in Japan. you can talk your head off or until battery gone dead, whichever comes first. It's docomo NTT, with one of those new fangle internet telephone gadget, currently there are about 3millions users on their network.
I would like to see something like an IMac except LCD based. The entire computer (sans keyboard and mouse) would be 1.5-2 inches thick, LS-120, 2.5 inch HD. Expansion could be done via PCMCIA cards. If the screen were made to be a touch screen, it could be disconnected from its base and used as a laptop device (perhaps with a pop up keyboard like on the Palms). GruvSycoSys
Although you do have to wonder how the best rock stations play Bush and Green Day on a regular basis. Maybe rock is dead and you're just fooling yourself.
We should come up with a Standards Body charged with the responsiblity of making sure that there are Standard Well-Known Interfaces on all devices allowed to be put on the market.
We could come up with a nice logo to place on the packaging of said products. Maybe something like a Ned Ludd logo or somesuch would make it clear what we're about.
You've just gotta quit trying to make Beowulf Clusters with Compaq Deskpro 386 machines. Sure, it's cheap on the hardware side, and yes, we know that anything more would be a waste anyhow, since you're stringing it all together with 3C501 cards, but just because you're on a University Campus and Mr. Magic from Washington pays the electric bill doesn't mean you should be imprudent about resource waste.
The pda of the future will be no bigger than a palm, but have better performance and more storage than todays desktop and work as a cell phone/gps with wireless internet/ethernet. On your desk you can still have a keyboard/mouse and large monitor, but you can just unplug (unzap) your pda and take it with you.
Check out the UI possibilities of the C-PEN www.cpen.com IR i/f one end, digital camera the other, and all in the form factor of a pen - running a 100Mhz ARM makes it a little intriguing ....
Maybe we can have intelligent dildos that can whack themselves off while the hairy apes sit back and enjoy a good RAMS game on their PDAs.
A TTY oriented Timesharing System like Linux is never suited to use in a PDA.
Seriously, do you want to be the one who has to answer the embarassing question from your buddy this way:
"No, that's not a dongle on the back of my terminal. That's the server."
I'm not saying slashdotters are narrow minded but I thought after reading this discussion I'd be left with some thought provoking scenarios. Alas no. B'anyway here's mine. I'm sitting on the bus home bored so I pull out my (paperback sized) electronic book out of my jacket , locate my bookmark and continue reading I plug my headphones into the same unit and before pressing play start downloading another album from my server back home. Minutes later I come across a word I don't understand and bring up the inbuilt or online dictionary. Before the bus signals my "allinone" that my stops coming up I've also checked mail, rang a friend and bought tickets for . A whole lot better experience than playing bloody Snake. BTW I'm not an Anon. Coward I just don't have an a/c and on a Friday evening I'm not wasting my time creating one. There's important drinking to be done. -C. Loh
I'm not saying slashdotters are narrow minded but I thought after reading this discussion I'd be left with some thought provoking scenarios. Alas no. B'anyway here's mine. I'm sitting on the bus home bored so I pull out my (paperback sized) electronic book out of my jacket , locate my bookmark and continue reading [insert literature of your choice] I plug my headphones into the same unit and before pressing play start downloading another album from my server back home. Minutes later I come across a word I don't understand and bring up the inbuilt or online dictionary. Before the bus signals my "allinone" that my stops coming up I've also checked mail, rang a friend and bought tickets for [insert musical interest]. A whole lot better experience than playing bloody Snake. BTW I'm not an Anon. Coward I just don't have an a/c and on a Friday evening I'm not wasting my time creating one. There's important drinking to be done. -C. Loh
Actually, the processor caches the translation, and continues to optimize instructions that keep getting used, which sounds like it could generate pretty good performance in a long-running calculation.
You could scatter them all over, with small solar panels or something. They have enough processing to do voice recognition. Wireless link to the NSA and you're all set!
Suppose there are enough people carrying them around so any time you're in public, there are likely to be a few others around. Suppose further that each has spread-spectrum high-bandwidth short-range radio. Now suppose each one has some kind of highly dynamic routing protocol built in, so everyone is networked to everyone nearby. In a city, every pda in the city could talk to every other, without any centralized control. You would want to encrypt your communications with something like this. Add a digital cash protocol, and you could buy spare processing cycles from the poeple around you. That's not worth doing if the processors are way underpowered, but if they're comparable to good desktops, your pda could be making money contributing to mobile Beowulf's while you're walking around.
duh
Just what we need. The ability to surf porn and play Quake on my PDA.
A genius writes code an idiot can understand, while an idiot writes code the compiler can't understand.
The MP2000 uses a NiMH battery about the size of four AA's. If you put very high stress on it (by plugging in an energy-sapping PCMCIA modem and surfing the net, say) the machine's battery lasts about two hours in my experience. "Normal" use (writing notes, say) drains the machine in about 12 hours. Most users get two weeks to a months' typical usage out of one charge, fairly similar to a Palm Pilot's battery.
...Its in Your watch.... it transmits video signal over short range radio to the two screens in your [semi-permanent?] contact lenses... [augumented reality]...
It has the Following features:
Calendar (centrally updated w/events which might interest you); To Do List; Addressbook, TV/Radio, Videocamcorder, camera, cellphone equivalent, audiorecorder/transcriber, healthmonitor (pulse/oxygen level/bloodpressure for starters) etc.. had a wishlist somewhere... but lost it....
I'm curious what the next step in user interfaces will be. Rather a voice or a pen perhaps we will tap into a little used, but still functional, nerve of the human body (the little Toe perhaps?)and use that as a pointer to maneuver around a virtual computing environment projected onto our retenas.
J Wood
Back in 1977, he forsaw the PDA...go, read it, and then you will have an idea of what they can become.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
I am not a wireless expert, but to be it seems like there's a bandwidth problem. For wired communication, if you want more bandwidth, you just lay some more lines (examples: interleaved memory banks to increase memory bandwidth, laying more fiber to increase WAN bandwidth).
But with wireless, there's only so much bandwidth in the ether up there! And information theory tells us there's only so much lossless compression we can expect, right?
How far away are we from saturating the ether?
nick
For the first point, look at this page and scroll down to the "face recognition" section. I have also read about a guy that had lived with a set like that for a couple of days but I have lost the link.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Here's some free information that I will give you gratis for nothing: using cell phones, you can communicate with other people.
Where I live (Helsinki, Finland) almost all teenagers and twenty-somethings have mobile phones. They use them to keep in touch with their friends in a way no-one has seen before. Someone said it works much like a flock of birds or a herd of animals. Using text messages and short phone calls, they tell each other where people hang out and what's going on. A flock of teenagers can be dispersed all over the city, and still know where all the others are, who they hang out with, where they are heading this evening. In minutes, they can arrange to meet somewhere. Word flows like water.
This is a very fundamental change in urban culture. And it's here to stay. I like it because it's a step in the right direction. Future technologies and devices will just enrich the possibilities. I'm not sure what you're scared about. This is the future -- get accustomed to it or be square.
I'm going to get rid of my modem phone line as soon as my cable modem arrives, and I'm not the first nor the only one who's doing this. After that, I'll be completely dependent on my cell phone. :-)
--Bud
Small, powerful and low power CPU's allow make far more than cool PDA's possible.
Think of the Negroponte-style fridge orders some new milk when you're running low, or a VCR with *intelligent* voice recognition ("Record Buffy tomorrow evening").
Why? Machines aren't humans. Even intelligent machines aren't humans. Maybe speech is a good way to interact with machines, maybe not. But it doesn't follow that because people interact through speech (and voicing, and gesture, and touch, and a range of symbolic forms) that that's the best way to interact with a machine. We've certainly got a lot done on computers without VR so far.
Obviously, I have an opinion here. I think VR will succeed in some narrow domains, but for the most part, VR will be a bad fit. Carry a machine around for a day and talk to it. Try it for ten minutes even. Not pleasing.
When I get the cash together :) I have a nice 'papper' design for a pda/wearable, with 'no particular interface' designed to put info on a display, or use a voice synth, voice recognition may now be achieved through sphynx2, and maybe a home made twiddler clone - for my hand :)
:)
:)), and it will be able to, at the least, relay back some notes that you have previously left.
:)
This really is very close to what a werable is, but, that is all I need a mobile pc to do, with the addition of checking email, etc... using a packet radio interface, and using ham radio frequencies, and have IM-ing with jabber maybe even rig it up, so I no longer need a mobile phone, just transmit / receicve the voice data through the system to my home phone
A small ammount of AI would be a good addition, using another suggestion, so that you can tell the wearable a persons name, and what you might be engaging in with this person (great for keeping track of multiple girlfriends
In summary, it would make my life easier, and I can think of the more imortant things, like programming, internet & persons of the oposite sex
VK3TST
-- "People aren't stupid. Usually." -- jd
Anyone have info on this? I thought the newtons died out awhiel back... this a gras-roots new newton model??
man is machine
The PC as we know it is always going away. That's what keeps me coming back for more.
"The difference between genius and stupid is that genius has its limits." -- Unknown
I believe people want something that is as easy to interact with as interacted with another human. There are tons of researchers working on making machines act, think, and respond just like humans.
We've certainly got a lot done on computers without VR so far.
Just because we've done a lot without VR, doesn't mean a thing. It's advancement in this technology that will make computers easier to interact with.
Sure VR is not ripe NOW, however in time, with improvements in VR, it will become as easy to interact with a machine as it is another human. This is inevitable. Twenty years ago people didn't think computers would be as powerful as they are today. Twenty years from now, won't be any different.
With portable devices on the verge, more time and money will be spent on UI, because as others have stated, a keyboard is no longer a viable solution.
Imagine a world where paper and pencil are no longer needed. A keyboard and mouse are devices of the past. This will happen. This doesnt mean mice and keyboards won't exist, I just dont believe you will NEED them like you do today.
Carry a machine around for a day and talk to it. Try it for ten minutes even. Not pleasing.
Sure, if you think in terms of TODAYS technology. Tomorrows technology will be much better.
Look at the research being done with AI and robots. Intelligent machines that interact with people as if they were people.
Voice recognition as we know it today, has some problems. However, I believe that since humans interact by ways of speech, in order to close the gap between man and machine, we need to interact with the machine in the same way we interact with other humans. Speech.
Companies like Lernout & Hauspie (L&H) are making great inroads into voice recognition. I worked at a company developing a voice recognition GPS navigation system. It had it's problems with the voice recognition, but was still pretty darn good. In time, the hurdles we see now, we'll laugh at and wonder why it was so hard to develop a true interactive device.
Large companies are doing extensive research on voice recognition. From IBM, Microsoft, Amazon.com, Dragon, and L&H.
Give it time. Voice recognition will be the way we interact with portable, and non portable devices.
If someone were smart, they would push all that warm air to heat the building. The $5.50/hour could be reduced from the offset in heating bills.
;)
The wireless LANS here in the US are 2Mb/s, that's not new. However I was under the impression that Europe was a few years behind the US in terms of broadband technology.
At least that's what the stock analysts are saying.
Fans don't help in space, as there's no air to move heat. Instead of convection, in space you have to use conduction (think big heat sink connected to the outside of the spacecraft) and radiation (to radiate the heat into space).
The special hardware is to deal with cosmic radiation, which can cause errors in memory and processors, and eventually cause them to fail.
For a lot of info about satellites, check out http://www.amsat.org/ which has information about Amateur Radio satellites, including some nice diagrams and explanations of how stuff works.
Especially recommended is http://www.amsat.org/amsat/sats/phase3d.html which has lots of links to detailed descriptions of things like reaction wheels and magnetorquers.
What do I mean? Ok. I have a Newton2k and absolutely love it! It's got the biggest screen of any "PDA", and it's still not quite suitable for constant use. Even with the extremely good handwriting recognition it's got. Besides, it's still bulky.
So, we really need to figure out a way to get information into and out of the computer for a portable to really be worth something. Right now, the interface takes up much more volume than the computer itself does, just look at your average 17" monitor compared to your computer.
Our current best hope is for some acceptable form of eye monitor for the display, but that still doesn't take care of input. Voice recognition can cover a lot, but still not that much. How about some small keyboard like devices (eg. twiddler, wrist keyboard)? Well they're a bit unwieldy.
Suggestions?
** Martin
Palm size with a display that looks at good as a real CRT.. Enough wireless bandwidth to stream video with lots of room to spare.. Batteries that last at least weeks.. CPU power and storage don't matter as long as I can use remote resources transparently through that fat wireless pipe.. Voice Recognition, touch screen and/or wireless keyboard... Priced around the same as a discman.. That's the kind of PDA that would change the way we live our lives..
:)
Problems:
Display - That small that good doesn't exist yet
Batteries - Fuel cells might do the trick.
Bandwidth - I believe the wireless technology exists, its a question of infrastructure and regulation.
The Point (I guess):
Transmedia is making some neat CPUs, but I don't need more CPU power, I need more of everything else.
Anyone developing someting like this? I'm available for beta testing..
Direct neuro-connect would be great, but I don't see it happening soon. Voice interaction would be nice, but still some shorthand in validating input has to be done or we are at the level of the telephone "Say Yes if you want to kill the monster, Say No elsewise". Yuck.
Right now they are still at the level of expensive toy for those lacking in self-confidence and need a fancy gizmo to impress their other cube dweller buddies. I think they are quite lame. Give me a paper notebook and a pen for now.
I can actually perform the incredible task of remembering phone numbers and today's meetings IN MY BRAIN! That's basically all the dumb gadgets are used for - an exotic alarm clock/phone book.
Imagine what these kind of CPUs could do in spacecraft. Much lower heat output work in vacuum, etc...
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
For the software, install a stripped down Linux kernel, some speech recognition and speech synthesis software.
Viola, you have a PC on your wrist that can make cell phone calls, act like a pager, or download your email and read it out loud to you, all voice controlled. (With Infra-red sending capabilities if you can fit it in somewhere.)
And an LCD on the front to tell you what time it is, of course. :)
Rob
Actually, some of those ideas aren't too far off in wearables. It's part of Steve Mann's work. Image recognition, as well as relevancy returns, is already possible, although I think facial recognition isn't at 100% for obvious reasons.
;-)
Deja vu/"I told you so" mode is probably only limited by the CPU power and video codec available, as well as disk space. With a large enough drive, you could even resort to just realtime audio compression/encoding, and work on the video while you sleep, giving you full time access.
Diplomacy... I'm sure you could get a few dialogues in there, but that's a tad tricky. I won't go into the dangers of Drive me home mode if it even were possible
Christopher Kalos
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
The space used is not for the processor and other electronics, but with drives. And besides, the cases are still going to be as tall as expansion cards.. Even if you have a mobo/case with no cards, and one with a fan takes up 2u of rack, and without a fan it takes 1u of rack, you still have the 4u RAID case below it...
Imagine what you could do with lego mindstorms when hooked up to a fully-featured processor? :)
Don't underestimate how nice it is to be fanless even on a normal desktop in an office somewhere. The machine is _quiet_.
The new iMacs are convection cooled without a CPU fan, and when you get used to them, they make normal desktop machines just plain unpleasant to be near.
There are too few IRQs, too few base addresses, and too few DMA channels not to mention DMA can only access the lower 16 Megs of memory.
Yes, a valid bitch, but only if you are speaking of 1999's PC. Now that Microsoft and Intel have effectively killed ISA (the politically correct name for the IBM PC AT design from 1984), the IRQ and DMA problems have been solved.
As for including 8088 CPU instructions, the burden is on you to prove that they significantly add to the cost and complexity of a modern x86 processor. My assertation is that the PC hardware prices don't lie -- even with 8086/80286 compatibility, x86 is still the best bang for the buck.
Another way to think about this is that breaking backwards compatibility fractures the market, which reduces economies of scale, which increases the price. (But I'm somone who runs 8088 DOS programs on my Pentium II, so take it for what it's worth.)
This argument can be extended to validate x86-based PDAs (look ma, no legacy ISA stuff!). If a software developer can ship the same or similar package on desktops and handhelds, it will increase economies of scale, and the number of handheld applications will explode.
(It should be noted that the Mac rumor sites used to frequently toss around the idea that Apple would ship a Newton iMate-like handheld device, except that it would be built on standard Mac PPC hardware and run a modified MacOS. Excellent idea, in my book.)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I have been unhappy with this trend toward bigger, more powerful machines. Todays PC's are HUGE. Not all of them need to be. Servers & such should be because you are going to want to load them up with everything, but for most people there is too much wasted space. There have been a few really nice small form factor machines released. (SGI Indy, Mac Performa, Ergo Brick, others...) Each of them had nicely intergrated features that provided most of what you need for computing. That part I like, but they lacked standards, and power (except for the Indy :)
My ideal machine would be book sized, maybe a bit bigger, and have ports for everything. It would be able to run on a few batteries, or perhaps a very standardized rechargable unit. It would run a very reliable OS, and include features for power management, so that I would not have to do the whole shutdown startup suspend thing. It would just be running, if I was not asking it to do much, then it would not consume much power. This is the thing that Crusoe really adds to the mix. If the OS understands what the users demands are, it can maintain standards of interactivity while not wasting resources.
This machine would be very networked. Wireless, IR, Ethernet, USB, serial (gotta have a console for the very lowest energy consumption!). Basically I don't want to give up any connectivity. All of these would be dynamic of course. If they are not used, they are turned off, or maybe done in software with only a configurable hardware interface that could adapt to the technology being presented.
Each machine would have display and keyboard capabilities that you can take or leave. If a bunch of them are networked together, no need to use their keyboards, just use the one closest to you. Power users could just get 3 or four of these and use one as traffic cop for the others while they are processing.
The OS should be able to communicate and utilize other resources of nearby machines with only a small direction from the users. Basically you should be able to stack a few of them up for hard things, and they should be able to get things done. Maybe you just might want to quickly distribute some data for a meeting, or maybe use your machine as a server for another machine already connected to a large display device. Maybe the data would only need to move when there are bandwidth problems, or you want the other party to own it.
Good media outputs and inputs. None of this marginal good enough crap. Audio should be 48Khz 75Db. Video should be S-video / Digital minimum. If we bite the bullet now on this, it will get cheap fast. These things would enable lots of applications that people would want. Combine your favorite commercials for jokes, maybe grab stills from your home movies for prints to send to friends, in fact why not just let them have the whole thing.
Maybe a few high school students want to assemble a great piece of music. They combine all of their machines to form a small mixing studio. Each of them provides input to one or two of them laying around, or borrowed to process and combine the data. Those same students discover a story of interest, and as a group possess the power to combine their vision into a compelling story that gets air time on a local radio, tv, or web broadcaster. Maybe they say the hell with it, and stream it themselves... It should be easy.
Companies would like them because they are disposable. Networking the office could really be done using I-R or lowpower RF. Just bring the machine near a desk, and maybe it would ask for a password, or permission to connect to the server who is wondering if the user needs anything. Data stays put. When a user goes home, sensitive stuff might just stay where it needs to be. Their machine goes with them however.
No matter how any of this goes, I just look at some of the cooler small form factor machines that were made, and they have way more appeal than the clunkers we have today. Lighter too.
Blogging because I can...
If she meant it as a compliment, she wouldn't have been talking about replacing them.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Then s/he would be inaccurate.
Jurassic park introduced the term "'raptor" to the common person, but it's full name velociraptor means that it's fast moving.
There were dinosaurs of all sizes and speeds, the thing that they all have in common is they're all extinct(as far as we know).
That was the obvious meaning, of the statement.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I don't think that supercomputers are built to be efficient at ANYTHING but calculations. The organizations buying those things don't care if they need to spend $50,000 a month on electricity, or if they have to cool the thing with liquid nitrogen. All they want are more calculations per second. For that purpse, Crusoe is ill suited compared to Alpha's, G4's, Athlon's, and Pentiums.
They target completely different markets. Crusoe is made with portable computing in mind... They went over that time and time again in Transemta's briefing. Supercomputer buyers are going to scoff at the idea of spending $15,000 less per month in electricity, but having to wait an extra 2 months for their calculations to be accomplished.
On the same vein, Crusoe's virtual machine design (i don't know how else to put it... the software that monitor's how much CPU performance a given program needs) also would not come into play in the supercomputer arena. They just run at top speed or no speed... No processor in a Cray for instance is going to go only 30% utilized, unless there just isn't anything for it to do, in which case why not just shut the whole thing down?
I can hook a computer into my brain as an external source of information. This computer can log onto networks, look up information and then compile results. My directed thoughts to the computer will my mode of data entry. My monitor will be my eyes or imagination. There is a link between the sensors in your eyes and the brain, intercept the link and transmit a different signal. Until this is done, everything else is really just a hack.
Yeah, but we're talking PDAs here. What's the maximum amount of RAM that a Palm Pilot comes with, 8 MB for the Palm Vx? It's not like I'm going to be downloading operating system distributions or scads of MP3s on them. For the quick and easy web browsing, mail transfer, and occasional telnet session that you'll be using a PDA for, 56K is more than plenty. This isn't something you're going to spend all night ogling pr0n with. That's what my laptop's for. ;-)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Ahh, gotcha...I'm pretty much a USR loyalist myself, when it comes to modem, just because they've always been great for me. I do still have my Palm III (and my original Palm Pilot), but my usage has gone way down since I got my new PDA (it's one of the Cassiopeia E-105s). I'll be interested in checking out the color Palms when they come out, but for now I'm pretty much hooked on the one I've got.
As far as ISP numbers go, a fair number of them do have toll-free 1-800 numbers that you can use for like 5 hours per month as part of your standard dialup contract (i.e., you don't have to pay extra for it). For me, that's more than plenty, because I don't leave my connection up when I'm on the road like I do with my local computers. I pretty much just need enough time to check my mail or a website and send a batch of email. The Palm Pilot and its modem were (still are, actually) great for that purpose, and I'm still checking my mailbox everyday for the new Xircom 56K modem that I got for my new PDA. (Dang postal service. :/ )
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
colour screens are coming this year, from all reports [...]
Yo Swami, they've been here for quite a while. I just got one with a color screen in December, and they rock. Plus, since I put the Color GameBoy emulator on it, it's saved me from quite a few hours of boredom at the airports already this year. ;)
One other thing:
so, yes, in a few years when wireless net access (or some other form of mobile net access, like say, ethernet plugs abound like public phones) is a reality, then we'll have that.
If you're going to have to plug your PDA into an ethernet port anyway, why not just use a modem, which are very common these days, with your PDA? The speed difference is nice, but neither offer the real-time connectivity that you seem to be referring to.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
"If it's obviously designed for hairy apes to use to fend off the despair of loneliness, it's pornography."
I sense a pejorative tone here. Is it bad for hairy apes to fend of the despair of loneliness? Do we deserve to be lonely? Perhaps you'd care to maybe contribute to solving the problem instead of just taking cheap shots at it?
Just count your blessings that you aren't a guy and you don't need to get laid every couple of weeks in order to feel good about yourself (watch the especially desperate sensitive guys jump in with 'well, I don't need to, I can subsist indefinitely just on deep conversations').
Now then, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, the mobile thingies... Well, since they're going to be in every single traffic light, ATM, phone, doorknob, and toothpick, perhaps companies will spring up to offer people 'roaming accounts' so any nearby gizmo immediately queries their files/preferences and responds to them by name. That way, nobody will have to wear PDAs at all, which will fit in nicely with the 21st century's increasing acceptance of nudism that I'm also predicting.
As for the people raising screen-size issues, remember: they already have goggles that can mimic a 21" screen. It's not such a stretch to say that such goggles will become lighter, sleeker, and add opacity-control. If my nudism theory is wrong, I think the PDA of tomorrow will look like glasses or even contact lenses. People's perception of reality will literally be colored by their desktop settings. We'll be able to make people we don't like invisible (or funny looking) by adding them to our killfiles. Our language will become more terse, since part of the information content will be shifted to wireless chatter between our PDAs. Someone like the Scientologists might try to start a mind-control cult where they have control of the members' PDA-overlays and thus over their perception of reality... or perhaps it will be media and software conglomerates who try to pull this... but I doubt it will continue to be possible for really huge companies to exist toward the middle of the century.
1. The ultimate PDA understands what you're talking about, very intelligent, and aesthetically pleasing. Hell, why not cram those new plastic muscles from the other /. article plus some circuitry into a RealDoll (www.realdoll.com) body and have the perfect mate? The standard family unit becomes four adults. Human males and females become increasingly separatist but nobody really minds as much as they thought they would. Birth-rates go way down. Sex-drive has inspired yet another tech breakthrough... but of course, people want them to be more and more human, better and better conversationalists... so eventually they become human enough to start lobbying for equal rights.
2. Whatever the shape of PDAs to come, one thing I'm pretty sure of: the cubicle farm will be extinct. Why would workers want to go to a dreary beige office when they could instead telecommute from the beach, the golf course, or the coffee shop? Why would companies want to pay rent for office space that sits unused most of the time? So, tons of real estate gets abandoned by traditional companies and bought up by Starbucks et. al., made pleasant to work in, and rented back to the companies and/or free agents. The age of labortainment begins. Incidently, with such high mobility, it might be that almost everyone is a temp or contractor. Companies themselves start to be very temporary and abstract collections of stockholders, contract-managers, contract-labor, maybe some rented robofactory time, and glitzy web pages. They get together for a month or two to sell the latest-n-greatest product and service, then get bought by other temporary companies or spin off into several pieces that can more efficiently adapt themselves to whatever becomes the next money-making opportunity.
3. A brain interface doesn't have to be invasive, at least not the user-input part of it. Brain scanning technology already exists... maybe have something that passively scans electromagnetic waves emitted by the brain, so that wearers don't get cancer or whatever. Not sure if this is theoretically possible, though: I may be a bio geek but not specifically a neurology geek.
VR Head gear has the same problem as watching to much TV or playing to many computer games does. It fucks up your ability to properly differentiate distance. Note that this problem is with young people who haven't fully trained their distance judgement circuits. Us older geeks who have already trained our distance judgement circuits have no problems. Apparently there is much more to distance judgement than the angle difference between the eyes. Focus plays a large part as well as motion of the object.
Amateur rocketeers should use these tiny PDA's as the brains in any number of space experiments. Microsatellites immediately come to mind. So much for teledesic...take l0pht's guerilla.net idea and put it into orbit.
How about an amateur lunar explorer...or better yet, asteroid explorer. The law states the first one there can claim ownership of the mineral rights. I think I want an asteroid of my own.
But seriously, with dirt cheap micro computers that have real processing power, space exploration could really be put into the hands of amateurs and educational institutions.
These guys could really use something like the crusoe based PDA's. http://www.aeropac.org/aeropac/index.html
Perhaps he/she means "dinosaur" in the sense of Large, importable and lumbering.
Lowmag.net
Much faster embedded microprocessors will make the augmented reality type viewers much better. Boing uses something like this to help in their plane wiring. Imagine just looking around a city with a viewer that can overlay building names, street names, prices of goods in a store, etc.
Actually though, I think that most new uses for mobile processors will be in less high-profile places. You car and house will get smarter, for example. A lot of the things that new mobile processors can do will also benefit from wireless networks like BlueTooth and high-bandwidth GPRS.
Your PDA would become a simple X client to your P.C. at home.
And, pray tell me, how are you going to do useful stuff in an X environment on a keyboardless mouseless machine with, say, 3x4 inch screen?
Besides, I thought the point of the article was that PDA could/should have significant local processing power, not that they become dumb terminals to home servers.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
500 words per minute,
But can you think 500 words per minute?
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Imagine being on a plane full of people whispering into black boxes . . . yeecch.
If that's your only problem with voice recognition, I think we can live with it. Besides some of those boxes will be in fruity neon colors.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
You missed one reason: noise.
My computer is noisier than my car. The P/S fan, processor fan, case fan, HD, CD, all whirr, grunt and groan.
Grumbles &c....
Kind Regards,
Kind Regards,
Bruce
My girlfriend has borrowed my copy of Car Wash Angels. But she's atypical.
-ODB
I have been thinking... Really, right now the only use for a pda is to bring some useful subset of the data and capabilities found on your pc with you. Some compromises have to be made to account for the smaller cpus, memory, storage, and imput limitations of the pda. blah blah blah.
You could argue that some experiences on a well-designed pda are BETTER than a pc (i sure can find someones phone number quicker on a pda sitting in my pocket than in MS outlook, for example). Perhaps the designers of the palmos when faced with many more limitations in possible user interfaces had to pay greater attention to how people actually use things.
It seems like the trends towards ubiquitous computing are accellerating. There's the "wireless bandwidth everywhere" trend. There's the alternate display / input devices trend, the most exciting of which to me are the eInk efforts and the similar research that is happening at Xerox with regards to electronic paper. CPU and storage go up and up and up in speed / size.
A future that I envision will have computer displays and connectivity everywhere. Your news might be delivered to your wallpaper in your bathroom. The tag in your shirt might let you order a replacement by pressing on it. Your shoes might always know where you are, and inform the rest of your clothing your exact location.
All of your data might be stored on the equivalent of a "home server" or it might be distrubuted around the internet such that you cant say exactly where it is. If there is connectivity everywhere you are, and your necessary information is reachable from wherever you are, why carry a pda or anything with you at all?
Getting back to processors, now that we have one designed for long term portability, we need to get away from the dinosaur that is the personal computer.
Why?
I like having my personal computer as an appliance in my home. I like being able to walk away from it when I need a break. I like being able to control just how much technology I have to deal with at any one time.
The personal computer is the best model for a processing machine for the general public. Some rare geeks may use portables as their main machine, but they will not drive the market. The market will be driven by personal computers on desks and in entertainment centers...where we do not need a super-portable chip.
Crusoe should aim towards a different market -- transparent technology. Putting chips inside my vacuum cleaner, my car, and my dog is fine, as long as those things work the way I expect them to. This is not a chip that will be used much in general-purpose computers; it's only useful in specialized-purpose gadgets that work in ways transparent to the consumer.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
I think PDA's can in the future fully replace PC's; once glasses which directly project a very sharp image into your eye will reach the same quality as normal monitors, they can fully replace monitors. I don't think they will, but they can. Some time ago there was an article on /. about tiny chips that could be glued to ones nails; they track the motion of your finger and you can then use anything as a keyboard, so the input-device-is-too-tiny problem can also be solved.
0x or or snor perron?!
That's your opinion.
:)
:) i'm only concerned about me, and geeks like me,.... ;)
:) you'd break the li'l palm.
:)
:)
yes and you'll note i prefaced the whole thing with a big IMHO,..
The fact that you have to consciously interact with the computer
i don't, i don't think about it at all.. no more than i do turning a page in a book.
and who said i cared about 'most people',.. Joe Q. Public can bite me
in all seriousness, though, i think you're wrong. keyboards are much more efficient. find me someone who can write graffiti at 100 wpm
while CRTs are large and cumbersome, once flat-screens become cheaper, using a desktop won't be quite as annoying (or brain-cancer inducing
just because you hate desktops don't assume everyone else does
...dave
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
i don't, i don't think about it at all.. no more than i do turning a page in a book.
:) I can see a combination of speech recognition and a better, non-QWERTY keyboard system gaining popularity in the near future.
:)
:)
Only when you're doing the most trivial things that are already stored in your cortex's intruction cache", like browsing and clicking around.
not true, not true! i never have to think about doing things on the computer,.. sure when i'm coding i have to think "ok now what do i want to do here,.." etc. etc.. but i mean, even in an xterm, i just think of what i want to do and do it,.. i guess it comes from far too much time spent in front of a CRT,.. but still. for me, it's second nature.
Still, direct neural interfaces are far superior. (Do I hear "mind control"?)
yes, but i'm not holding my breath.
while CRTs are large and cumbersome, once flat-screens become cheaper, using a desktop won't be quite as annoying (or brain-cancer inducing
Yes, but all the other disadvantages remain...
such as?
...dave
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
well, i meant colour screens for the Palm, which is the only PDA for me
you could do that but then you'd have to know the # for a local ISP which is a little more tedious, but yes, you're right. i just didn't think of it because i don't associate modems with mobile computing (due to the aforementioned limitation.)
...dave
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
It seems like that kind of power in that small a package (IE - minimal battery & cooling requirements) would go a long way towards improving the lives of those with accessibility challenges.
Hand-held Text/speech converters that could accurately read text from a book or newspaper or scan & read a street sign 100 feet away would be helpful for the vision-impaired.
A speechtext converter in a cell-phone profile would be a boon for the hearing-impaired.
What does a PC/worstation computer need to have:
1)Decent size keyboard. Keys must give visual, audible and tactile cues when engaged. (surface area -7" x 18")
2)Min 17" viewing area monitor to allow viewing a full A2 or 8.5" X 11" document. Must produce usable image from 30 degrees center all directions. (surface area- 13" X 10")
3) Mouse or other suitable pointing device. Buttons must give visual, audible and tactile cues when engaged. (surface area 4.5" X 2.5")
4) Be durable enough so that is can take some abuse. Laptops are too fragile and pretty much not upgradable. When you replace it the capital investment in the monitor is wasted.
Solutions that come to mind:
Integrate the computer into the keyboard. Gas plasma screen. Wireless RF mouse.
Integrate the computer into the monitor. Basic I/O devices and physical ports are hardwired. Removable fully integrated mainboard (CPU/Video/Sound/LAN/Modem). To upgrade just pop out the mainboard and pop in a new one. Wireless RF keyboard and mouse.
Ars Technica has an interesting analysis of the Crusoe chips. One of the ideas mentioned is that Crusoe represents Transmetas solutions to a specific set of problems. IMHO, Transmeta isn't saying the Crusoe chipset *couldn't* be used in a desktop machine, just that you haven't seen their desktop solution yet.
Some standards. I want standard motherboards with standard periferals so that some of this stuff can be assembled and changed around by the "end user". I'd also like to see this with laptops, although they are getting better... With LCD screens getting cheaper and cheaper, it'd be great to plug in a Crusoe and however much RAM and a video card.. And get to do what you want to with it. The possibilities could be endless.. Note taking, gaming, net surfing, presentations or reports, kernel hacking, whatever does it for you. ;) ), I'd also like to see cheap standard wireless ethernet. What I really think would be best would be a wireless card that could communicate with a wireless hub OR plug in a wireless reciever into a regular old hub. I'm not sure if these exsist, but if they do, they're probably very expensive, and very proprietary :(
As long as I'm dreaming (
Just a few thoughts.
-- Ace
Then if we equip it with solid-state block memory instead of spinning hard drives we might really be able to seal it up without noise or dust-dragging fans..
Thanks! I was thinking about searching through the Newton newsgroups for repair information, but never got around to it. I stopped usinging it regularly when I stopped having to run around all day at work, but it would be really handy at my new job. I thought I'd have to buy a palm or a CE (ick).
Note that this point of view tends to favor the "balanced compute" model over the "thin client" model. In the latter case, no one will need to own any hardware at all; they will just rent units on servers. I don't think that this will happen if people are unwilling to be "tied down" to a supported infrastructure.
Measure your wealth in hours, not just dollars.
Note that this point of view tends to favor the "balanced compute" model over the "thin client" model. In the latter case, no one will need to own any hardware at all; they will just rent units on servers. I don't think that this will happen if people are unwilling to be "tied down" to a supported infrastructure.
Measure your wealth in hours, not just dollars.
~~
What is needed is a great, small keyboard: I saw one a few years ago called the microwriter ... 5 main keys and 2 shift keys, it emulated a full 101 key (no dumb windows keys at that time) keyboard ... I tried it out at a comdex show, and could almost touch type it in 10 minutes!
The unfortunate thing is portability is a compromise of size and functionality.
I'll never have a 21" display on a laptop, or be able to plug an ISA development card into a laptop under 15 lbs (there are some industrial models that do this).
The only question is: how much use can you sacrifice for being able to wear it in your watch?
Sad but true. Are there any cell companies that have flat rates? Is it impossible, or are they just opportunistically greedy?
What about virtual keyboards? I believe the Transmeta guys were demoing something like this at the original announcement. Either you poke at a surface like a touchscreen or wear a glove-like thing that keeps track of your fingers for you.
The really good thing about this would be customizability: use the numpad a lot? Tear it off and drag it over the letter keys. I'd actually kind of like to have something like pedals for ctrl and alt so I don't have to stretch my hand out to put my pinky and index fingers on key combinations in emacs. You could just look at the VKB to see what the keys do in quake or etc, instead of digging out the manual. And it could be redesigned to fit the interface.
I think the link to the BT article is dead, but apparently the researcher doesn't think healthy people should have this kind of thing. And it isn't any faster than a mouse - yet.
Erm.. Why does a desktop machine have to use x86 instructions? Just make a Crusoe version of gcc (or MSVC+++5.0pl32sp5e3a) and recompile.
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
You're a failure! Real geeks get kept up when they don't hear that whine. ;)
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
Good point. I forgot about drives altogether. RAID certainly would take up a lot more space than a slim case. There are still benefits to low power, and low heat output, though. It's a lot cheaper to cool a room that isn't GENERATING that much heat.
The debate here is one of computers in a nutshell, what could a computer do if it was that small. When we say computer we mean our desktop/server piece of kit. With the rise of things like the PS2 the computer becomes redefined as an IP capable device with certain features. My Psion is another such device that has the PDA logo attached to it.
With IPv6 mobile computing has arrived, so pervasive computing comes into play, every device is IP enabled, every device can communicate, power isn't the problem it is application. Why would you want an intelligent kettle that can send you an instant message when its boiled, I've no idea but I'll bet we'll see it and I bet we'll buy one.
The other side is the demise of the fixed device of any kind, get on a plane, log in, thanks to IPv6 and the software developed by you are now YOU, its not a terminal its YOUR device, with a distributed framework that means you can do everything you could do on a supercomputer.
Browsing the web from a mobile, the screen is too small, just put on your glasses, hell they're the phone too (Thanks to William Gibson for that one). Mobile/PDA/Computer, isn't IMO the point, the next big thing will be the ability to use ANY device and not be able to tell the difference, and others not be able to tell it either.
IMO Sun AND MS have got the vision wrong, it isn't thin client/fat server or fat client/thin server, its applications, IP and connection, the size and distribution will render the client/server paradigm dead.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I think that the kicker here is the dramatic reduction in power consumption. You can now avoid or reduce most of that analog infrastructure to power your cool new device (sorry for the pun...couldn't resist). Every time Transmeta makes a new chip, we'll get closer to ubiquitous solar powered devices. Can't complain about that.
You're both wrong. _The_ best radio station
;)]
(KISW), plays plenty of good rock. That is
SRV, Hendrix, Ozzy and of course, Zeppelin.
ObOnTopic:
It's all about horses for courses. I don't
use a 'Vette to haul hay, and I don't think
my F-150 is a canyon carver. No PDA, no matter
how nice, is going to replace a full size
keyboard and monitor for many tasks (programming,
software engineering, and peeping pr0n).
[well, maybe no keyboard for that last one
Do anal-retentive people hyphenate 'anal retentive'?
Sorry bud, I may be showing my age (young not old) but I think the best rock stations don't play enough Bush and Green day. All i get now is Limpbizcit, Korn, Everlast and all that other funk metal shit. When will people learn that Funk=Good, Metal=Good, Funk Metal=Bad.
Whatever happened to the Alternative\Grunge movement that saved us from the 80's cock rock? Oh yeah they all died.
Non gratis rodentus anus
This is not very different from what you can accomplish with a subnotebook like Sony PictureBook or the bunch of competitors that are not available outside Japan. (Dynamism sells them, go to the site to drool over what Japan has to offer.) PictureBook has a built-in webcam, if you're in Europe there are PCMCIA form-factor GSM phones available from several vendors (i.e. Option FirstFone). Ditto for GPS receivers. With the exception of the 8-hour battery, all are available with the current PC technology, and the resulting device would still be very compact, considering that you want a DVD player which imposes a size limitation.
So why all the hype about the PC being dead? Perhaps all we need is cheaper Sony PictureBooks.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
Zigbee Central: A Zigbee weblog
Smaller portable storage is another.
Unless network access speeds can keep up via cellphone, you still need to lug a semi-fragile HD around with you for anything but simple word processing.
They'll be 80 lb computers called "portable" because they have a handle. And they'll only be operated in space. Or on very high mountains.
Your duty is clear. To complain about lack of linux software on them. [all geeks everywhere cheer as one]
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
We don't really NEED super-over-powered PDA (and that's going to sound funny in a couple of years when we have 2Ghz chipettes), but who wouldn't want one if it did everything they needed.
/. instead of fight traffic) and bring me food when I'm hungry.
My PalmIII is pretty handy, but I'd love to have a decent colour screen, more storage and a CPU fast enough to play MP3s and MPEG2 videos; and still have the same battery life. Wireless Quake would be awesome. While you're at it, I need a GPS system. And please use MDs for removable storage.
I know, somebody's going to flame "why would you want to view MPEG2 videos on this tiny thing", or somesuch. My question is "why not?".
And it should be all to auto-drive my car (so I can read
>Great, so we can have a really small doohickey to do stuff quickly. The
:)
>problem I see in the future of portable computing is interface. Get this
>little doohickey to understand me when I'm talking (or thinking)
>to it, then you've got a product. Until then, much smaller than a palm
>pilot, and you've got problems.
I don't think that they're going to get smaller. I think portables are going to become more paper-notebook-like. Traditionally, the most popular info-storing device has been somewhere between 8.5x6 and 8.5x11 inches (dunno metric for those so inclined) like traditional books, legal pads, and the ever-popular spiral bound from college days.
The interface here is actually the key. Human beings are visual-based; we work best when we can see what we're thinking about. I keep a huge whiteboard at my desk at work, and another at my home, simply because the free-format visual interface they have is so intuitive. Several times a week I find that I cannot describe a concept to someone else unless I have a whiteboard nearby to assist.
I always take notebooks to meetings (not because anything worth writing down happens in a meeting, but because I may have a thought I need to write down) and I also write lists, sketch algorithms, etc on notebooks while I'm at my desk.
I see desktop computers as whiteboard-like appliances, and webpads, with large LCD screens, and those pen-imitation things, as the "new" versions of notebooks and info-books. Storage, and retrieval of information, but in a visual manner, will be the big thing.
This might be a good time to invest in LCD screens...
>>>>>>> Kvort the Duck
-Don't mind me, I'm personality-deficient and mentally-impaired.
They're getting closer.
There are phones that all you have to do is say the name of the person you want to call; it will find the phone number and connect you. Of course, you have to train it with what phone numbers and the voice recognition probably isn't very good, but they're getting closer.
Its such a fine line between "cool" and "scary"...
>>>>>>>>> Kvort the Duck
-Don't mind me, I'm personality-deficient and mentally-impaired.
-----------------------
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
Of course, PDA's would be able to do more...probably just about the same stuff the PC can do. I'm talking about stuff like instant messenger, Quake deathmatches, e-mail, etc. to anyone (who has one), anywhere (within whatever zones are covered), anytime (he/she has it on). You could probably be able to attach a microphone and headphones to it and get involved in a realtime chat with someone else (or a group of people).
Of course stuff like the Palm VII can already send e-mail and browse the web, but you get charged by the byte. Prices will probably drop once more people use this stuff (like how online services and ISPs used to charge by the hour and now charge just a flat monthly fee for unlimited time usage).
On the other hand, with all this information going over airwaves, privacy would be a bigger concern. Information could be received by anyone who has access to the brodcast signals. Governments could also have access to whatever is being sent between people. Hell, someone's EXACT location could be pinpointed whenever they have their PDA on.
Kinda like cell phones, I guess...It's not like your telephone conversations can't be tapped into anyway or your position triangulated by your distance from broadcast towers. The main difference is the fact that this is all dealing with computers. Large corporations get bitchy when it comes to computers as evident with MP3 crackdowns, DeCSS, etc. Companies are gonna make a big scare about X, Y, and Z being able to be done (or even being done) on PDAs that are almost as powerful, if not as powerful, as the desktop PC.
I'd still consider getting one...
Then create a powerful open source operating system (perhaps modifications to Linux) that is capable of wireless distributed computing. Basically it would use the combined processing power of all of the chips that you owned in order to achieve computing tasks. I guess it would be a wireless Beowulf cluster. The more devices you owned, the more powerful your home computer system.
Plus, it would be nice if people could pool the resources of their home systems together in a larger cluster to solve larger problems. Perhaps all of the cars on the road would use their spare CPU cycles to run a program that efficiently manages traffic for the entire city. Or all of the home distributed systems in a neighborhood could pool together in order to monitor neighborhood watch cameras that look for suspicious activity and notify homeowners of such.
My vision: the PC will go away and be replaced by a global interconnected and distributed computer system. This computer system will be scalable and universal. All of our communication, all of our computation, and all of our data storage will live on this system. It will evolve and adapt as a living organism. It will be transparent and automatic. Every computer program will run like SETI@home. Some programs will only be meant for a local geographical area, others will clamor for global attention. People will instruct their computers as to which programs they wish to run and what level of importance they wish to give them.
So can I patent the idea of a global scalable distributed computer? :-)
a tiny lcd, on an arm extending out on front of one eye. the apparent size is the same as ~20" monitor.
just need to get the resolution up.
i think its sony that has one on the market already, intended more for watching movies on a discman, so the resolution is pretty low...
Heh... Upgrading would be a bitch!
Addlepated - punk & metal
I'd like to be able to walk past a movie theater with friends and decide spur of the moment to see something... I'd like it if I looked at my PDA and it automatically had a button for "that movie theater over there on your left". Pushing it of course gets me a schedule of what's playing now or soon that's not already got a full theater. Then I'd walk in, sit down, and watch the movie, then get up and walk out without ever talking to some poor pimply clerk forced to jockey a register for a horde of people arranged in lines thirty feet deep who all already know what they want.
In other words, there's no purchase or check-out transaction... That's all done automatically based on what I do. I go about my life and I can see when I'm pushing on my credit, but I don't have to worry about having exact change or having cash at all or whether I brought my checkbook with me or what have you. I don't want to wait in lines anymore just to have some completely braindead transaction take place. I'm not saying I don't like people, I just think it's ridiculous to have to interact for meaningless exchanges of information that could be done automatically. The ATM and pay-at-the-pump have replaced a whole clumsy ritual of lines and exchange, and I'd like to see that changeover extend to all things in my life... Having one "card" (PDA) instead of a bunch of credit cards that I don't even have to swipe to get what I want is very appealing. When I go to the supermarket, I pick up the food I want, then take it out and put it in my car. There's no line, no checkout, no "paper or plastic", no hassle.
How does this require a big processor? It doesn't. But for me this is the "killer app" that no one is targeting with their PDA. Don't make me use a computer while I'm walking. Take cues from my environment and let me do what I feel like without thinking too much about the unfun details. If I want information, be ready with it, but otherwise, get things the hell out of my way!
You could be walking down the street and do anything you want with just one device. Use your AIOD to telnet back and forth, send e-mail, even ssh into your automated house and start dinner. All without missing phone calls or pages. Don't forget that this doesn't need to be any bigger than current palmtops. That's what the Crusoe (and MobileLinux) can do for us!
But don't stop there! Add a portable DVD player and you'll never be bored again. Use a HUD and you'll have almost hands-free access. With it integrated into your cellphone, you never have to worry about finding dial-up access.
I don't know about y'all, but I can't wait to get my hands on one!
Brad Johnson
--We are the Music Makers, and we
are the Dreamers of Dreams
Brad Johnson
A lot of the comments here seem to be saying "I'm not going to play Quake/compile a kernel/insert-other-high-powered-processor-need-he re on a portable system so I don't think they will make a difference" but how often do you need to do this while walking down the street anyways? The new implimentations of a low power embedded processor are very likely going to be things that we haven't seen before. Possibly things that we have seen in our favorite TV shows like a Star Trek communicator or PADD will be possible. Or it just might be something like a next level PDA, that can do more. Nothing earth-shaking, but it will be useful and easier to integrate into our lives. Just think of everytime you said to yourself "I have that information, but it's on my computer at home". Each of those times you could have had the data synched up to a portable device and have it at your fingertips.
The author seems to have tripped over his reasnoning. He starts with the car:carriage metaphor (cars are not like carriages), then follows it up by saying PDAs are like (underpowered) PCs. I don't get the connection.
I'd follow through with the car:carriage line of reasoning. PDAs are not like PCs. Don't try to make them so. They are qualitatively different and have different strengths, weaknesses and futures.
A PC is not the best way to interface with every type of information. The PDA will likewise flop if people try to make it just a tiny PC. We'll see examples of this as people try to port websites to WAP. Not all content that's appropriate for a web interface will make the migration to WAP successfully. We'll see some UGLY WAP implementations as people learn this the hard way.
Careful work will need to be done to figure out what information can make it to PDAs and how to make it accessable. What we may find is that it makes us reevaluate what info we put on the web, as well.
If powerful, Crusoe-powered, handheld devices are a reality, they may ignite the next wave of Internet distribution (email -> gopher -> www -> WAP). The challenges of these truly different devices may help us become better information technologists in general.
What i would like my "personal collection of computing devices" to be is rather opposite:
One server sitting at home connected always serving apps, under registered DN, storing my files, messages (mail server). And one or two portable devices that are no more (or maybe little more) than just input devices (maybe GUI runners). If you want to host your homepage, why wouldn't you do it from home (server)?
How about a larger screen ,full size
keyboard, and a printer to track down
those damn C syntax errors....
Oh wait, I just described my PC...never mind.
-I have two brain cells left...and they are fighting...
How about a cool mobile processor up in my brain, to help me think better on this problem? Of course, I know what OS _NOT_ to install. Can you imagine a BSOD up there?!
I know I'll get moderated up several times for this, that's why I wrote it.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Look at the display made by Microvision.
http://www.mvis.com/
This is what will remove the biggest limitations
of handheld devices. Low power, compact, high
quality displays.
We have the interface. It's a bit of thing to learn for the older folks, but the kids have it installed as toddlers, so it's second nature to them.
500 words per minute, and no spell checks. An electro-chemical interface installed on your body, linked to nerve endings. No harm done. Just a superior way to communicate. And while we are at it, why even talk with people, just send them messages directly to their communication interface, over the local IP network.
Evolution at work.
That's called prosthetics - though the term more often refers to actual replacement limbs (arms/legs) or other organs (like eyes/ears), rather than replacement functionality (say, speech). And while it does require mobile processing, the main work is in getting the application usable - interfacing to the user's motor nerves, for instance, is a significant software problem.
First I want a color high res. display.
Second I want a processor that is powerfull enough to play games movies or do voice recognition.
Third it should have large enough storage capacity to store a couple of movies or several MP3's
I want to be able to read etexts on it so I won't have to lug around all my school books
I want it to be able to transcribe speech.
I want highspeed wireless transfers to and from my home computer.
I want a usable interface, speech recognition would be perfect along with a stylus type of device.
I want to be able to use it for multiple purposes. So I want a good I/O port to add all those little extras, like a portable oscillascope add on. Or a backup drive for use at home.
I want to be able to store and retrieve files from other computers.
As you can see I don't want much from a PDA. :)
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
I own a Handspring Visor... I love it to death. The best about it (and all palm os devices) is the instant on. Why can't a desktop computer do that? I want to be able to press a button and have the machine power up to where is last was... and do it fast. It is pretty much a glorified sleep... but still...
I doubt it. Even if it was big enough, which would turnit into a notebook, no programmer is going to want to code on a PDA. Desktops might die out for consumers ( along, long, long, time form now ) but they will also exists as developmnt machines, servers, and Quake stations.
--add sig here--
Th
That processor really sipped power, burning 0.5W in its worst case.
Code morphing is a cool idea, and a very-low-power x86 implementation opens some interesting doors in terms of laptops and portable PC's. However, high-performance low-power CPU's have been around for quite a while; Crusoe is not new in this respect, and its existence doesn't mean that we're suddenly going to be swimming in cool portable devices that haven't been possible before.
Linus touching something doesn't necessarily turn it to gold...
Perhaps the word "dinosaur" was a compliment, as in strong, incredibly adaptable, filling many niches, and ruling the world for 200 million years. Dinosaurs kicked our (mammal) asses, folks. They kept us the size of possums or smaller for millions of years. Comparing PCs to dinosaurs is in no way an insult to PCs. It really bugs me how people misuse the word "dinosaur".
I would suggest reading the post further. I stated that I originally thought that way, but reconsidered.
Think about it, we are not even talking about multimedia stuff, which transmeta touted as a great application for teh crusoe chip. We are talking about only text, or maybe some sprinkling of pictures. The amount of memory consumed is very low if it's all just text. You can store dozens of books in flash memory if it's just text. You are talking no moving parts, even lower power consumption, etc.
As an added feature, you'd want to allow a pen to create annotations with. then you'd want to be able to synchronize with a desktop, I suppose.
I don't think we need to worry about where mobile computing is going now, per se, but how it while be compatible and sync. with every other computer type product we own. Especially when many people already manage multiple e-mail accounts and things like the such.
Just my 2-Cents
- The wearable should function, for me, in two different modes:
- When I'm walking around, I need access only to my PIM (Ecco, so there!), the Web (any XHTML-ready browser), and my WP (I'm a writer -- using XyWrite).
- I want a lightweight, vertical, divided (hinged) keyboard hanging from my neck -- it might only be for physical reference for a glove that transmits the actual keystroke locations, though. I'll need all the RAM "on," but only limited storage, for this first mode.
- Obviously I need reliable wireless Web access (perhaps Ricochet?), which means a modem of sorts, too.
- When I am ready to settle in one place, I need to add (plug'n'play) my main storage box (PCMCIA, or PC-card format?), boot other programs (various; I consult a lot), flatten the keyboard, and access a printer and perhaps other peripherals.
With a wearable, I will never again have to scramble around for tiny bits of paper to hold ephemeral information -- then lose it. This alone will transform my life. I'll probably also be even more prolific as a writer, since I won't be "down" any time I happen to want to write, or revise, or take notes about something. Then there's the way access to the "universal information utility" will transform my currently inept shopping, searching for suitable restaurants, etc.I don't want to be a gargoyle, but wearables are coming much sooner than anyone thinks!
Mobile processing is only as valuable as what you can squeeze on a chip. Given the outlook on nanotechnology and micro-microprocessors, a lot of the preconceived notions of the size of a box relative to the power it can produce will be shattered.
Unfortunately, I don't see a major revolution in the way mobile computing happens until superfast minichips become pervasive. Bandwidth is also a huge issue, since the functionality of a PC (mobile or otherwise) is exponentially increased through connectivity.What would help is free access to a broadband-enabling open-source satellite (running Linux, of course).
"My guitar wants to kill your mamma." - Frank Zappa
my Palm III size box autodects and mounts my wireless:
82" apparent size monocle or goggle displays
desktop or portable keyboard
Internet base station (it intelligently updates only changing content)
scanners, cameras, printers etc.
I expect to get it within five years
It will run freeware on a free OS
Imagine a device that combines a pair of translucent glasses (tink Sony videotron) with a Crusoe-based processor/storage unit on your belt. A tiny pair of cameras in the headmount monitor your eye movement and feed that information back to the OS, which calculates where you're looking in the virtual (3D even) space that the images occupy. Typing becomes quite easy and fast (not to mention hands and voice free) because a virual keyboard (or other layout of letters) is projected in the bottom quarter of your field ov view, and you simply have to look at each letter that you want to type. Want to see how easy it is? Tey working your way through a message by looking at the letters on your keyboard right now... pretty easy, huh? I think that's the best way to go for input, imho, and it means that you don't have the bulk of a (hard-to-use) portable keyboard or the annoying babble of speach recognition (let's face it - no one wants to compose a dirty email on an airplane using voice recognition technology.) Anyway, I'm a big fan of head-mount displays, and I'm rambling on now, so I'll stop. -owenf JESUS SAVES! ... passes to Gretzky ... Gretzky shoots... HE SCORES!
I envision some sort of wearable PDA that is connected to the wireless net, has a GPS sensor, and has some AI built in. This PDA would be able to provide you with events, directions, e-mail, web access, etc... Sort of like your own personal "helper" that you'd personalize with your own info.
Forgot to talk about the other half of my last topic. With mobile systems, and new devoloping network and internet hook-ups, a distributed.net type cluster might be possible except that it only donates clock cycles when attached to AC power. Is anything like this in the making?
Little Brother, watching the watchers
In his latest book, All Tomorrow's Parties, Gibson gives us a world where you can walk into a 24-hour convenience store and buy a cheap pair of sunglasses with built-in radio, phone, and gps.
That is where computers are going.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
PDAs and desktop computers are not really significant in the global realm. I think satellites, space shuttles, space stations, "Mars Explorers", U.S. experimental aircraft, and modern transportation will be able to cross another step in advancement through the use of these processors.
On the dark side of the moon, criminal tools and weapons technology will also advance. Though new countermeasures will be implemented, the level of the intensities of crime will be increased.
--- Alex Chang President, Inforcer Labs
There are categories of which human needs are classified. Transportation, food, etc. I think DistractoWare goes under Communications. The fact that some people are just inconsiderate of everyone by leaving their beeping items on does not reflect the general direction of advancement of human Communications. It only shows how people are well behind technology in their treatment of each other.
There are people starving in third world countries. There's genocide happening. When people start using tech to solve these problems instead of talking about gas plasma in new 21" screens and other BS about how to make even more "DistractoWare", society may actually catch up to technology. The nerds of society should really put more time into things they've always ignored. Speaking generally... of course.
--- Alex Chang President, Inforcer Labs
Lately in the press, there have been some stories about the future portables being repacements for your desktop computer. This may be true for joe web surfer, and bob technogeek, but anyone who has used their palmtop for web surfing, or (ick) their cell phone for psudeo-sufing realizes the prime weaknesses of handhelds: 1) There just isn't enough real-estate. 320x480 just will never cut it for web surfing. 2) Handheld input leaves something to be desired. Sure you can write your script characters, or type on your simulated keyboard in WinCE, but it will never be as convienient as typing on a real keyboard. Yes, I know 3rd parties make full keyboards and that voice recognition is on it's way, but would you feel comfortable in public folding out your big keyboard or saying, "double-u, double-u, double-u dot moviephone dot com"? ... I'll wait for the direct Internet access link to my brain. (... not saying that I don't love my WinCE device, just that I wouldn't consider surfing with it...)
While it is a great thing that PDA's are getting a little more balls. What I want out of these leaps and bounds is not only the ability to run apps and surf but to allow my PDA to be an extension of my workstation from my home or office (and be just a replacement for pen and paper). If this could be made to happen as a client device I wouldn't care how much storage the little bugger has because the remote machine would have whatever storage/hardware that's required. The scenario could be more of an internal hypercellular phone (one of those sleek new wideband ones that people keep writing about as 'coming soon') with a full color/high res display and input device. I think this kind of setup would be less expensive and survive a few hardware/os upgrades at the home or office too.
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
Transmeta's best chip runs at 500 MHz which puts it significantly slower than current desktop CPUs.
Umm...you mean 700 mhz...
Mister Bob: (hist communicator thingy) *bleep*
Computer, please access my stock records for today.
Communicator Thingy: Enter your password.
Mister Bob: One two lesbian alpha omega sheep.
Communicator Thingy: You are losing money. Ha ha.
Communicator Thingy: You have mail.
Mister Bob: Read mail.
Communicator Thingy in really female voice: Welcome to Porno Palace Puss-y-mail! (moaning) (cries of passion, screaming) Visit us at www.pornopalace.com!!!
Passers-By: Eew, what is that sicko doing?
Communicator Thingy speaks more things inappropriate to this forum.
Mister Bob: Shut up! Turn off! My god, how do I make it stop!
The lesson: What do you do with spam and pornomail when you're in public, and people can hear it, and you want it to stop?
--
Talon Karrde
And it should have loads of add-ons to change personality (ofcourse it'll run Linux so you can do whatever you want) like one that'll say "This sucks!" when you go out and it just started raining :) You'll hear quite a lot of people saying "Hehe, yeah!" when they go out :)
coyo
--------------------------------------------------
Everybody seems to keep talking about having a mobile system or a PDA as a separate instrument.
What about being on at network? As data speeds keep going up for wireless, imagine being able to be connected on a network all the time, transferring your data back and forth.
Combine this with a wearable system with a heads up display. Ok, so now I can access my data, read it, and walk without bumping into things. Add GPS to it, and I can't easily get lost (and hey, we CAN store some things locally for when we're in the middle of nowhere).
What else could we do? Input? Well, if we get to the point of good speech recognition, that's possible, and perhaps someday subvocals? How else to do input? Spatially displayed keyboards? Wear a glove, on or off? Type in midair?
Batteries are in issue, but given the electric current in our bodies and the amount of walking we could be doing, there could be multiple new ways of converting power from ourselves, either chemically or kinetically.
Can't wait to see the military applications of something like this! Of course, used against us, that would suck.
------
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
a processor should augment us, ultimately it should interact direct with our brains. It should enhance our memory (keep lots of information on its database), computational abilities, whatever ...
Picture a PDA type wearable with thought[1], face and voice recognition, with video+audio in, video+audio output. Throw in highspeed wireless networking.
o de=1234
w ireless./forfriends/puppy.mpg"
:).
Telekinesis:
Using the wearable and wireless networking you can surf your airconditioner's 'control page', click on the 'Colder' link (and bookmark it too). Or 25 degrees C, and so on. Same for other appliances- doors. https://maindoor.object.localroom.wireless/open?c
[2]
Telepathy:
You can surf your friend's "face page" or "for friend's pages" (with access controls). Your friend can tell you:
vocal:"Hey there was this really cute puppy in the park yesterday"
wireless:"https://friendsname.people.localroom.
You:
surf the site, click on the link, enter your username and password.
And then you see a cute puppy running around in the park..
Woohoo telepathy!
Yep a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Imagine: you walking into an 'unenabled room'.
"The Force is weak here..".
"We have to resort to raw incantations"
e.g. https://134.124.93.21/forfriends/puppy.mpg
.
Plenty more you can do.
Cheerio,
Link.
[1] Crude thought recognition is possible with mice already.
[2] localroom.wireless is redundant. There could be an all.objects.localroom. and all.people.localroom. or maybe just all.here
I would like my Fridge on a network with my toilet. The fridge would sense (fingerprint analysis on the handle) who took out a liquid good from the top shelf (only liguid goods on top shelf). It would figure how much was left when placed back on the shelf, and based on the drinker's bladder size (from 2-4 week sample data) it would figure when the drinker will have the urge to purge. In the database, the computer system will have the sex type of the drinker. Based on how much beverage consumed, the drinker's bladder size, and time, the computer system would know who is using the bathroom. Based on all data collected, the toilet seat position would be in the correct configuration for the intended user, being male or female to end the age-old spousal toilet-seat arguments. This is based purely on number one data analysis with future upgrades available for other purging.
-------------------------------------------------
You're mistakenly assuming that most new machines are sold with the latest/greatest processors, chips costing several hundred dollars. In fact, a 500 Mhz Crusoe chip probably holds up pretty darned well against a similarly-priced Celeron.
I've been thinkin' the same thing...
A "scratch my back" mode would be quite nice as well, when you cannot twist your arm far enough
or are too embarassed to indulge in your favorite passtime in public, the thing could just crawl
down your shirt and know exactly where to scratch.
Current attempts at mobile computing in the form of laptops and PDA's are entirely impractical. These devices require too much manuevering, too much time to operate, and are too bulky. They essentially defeat their own purpose by requiring so much attention of the user.
Here is my idea of the ultimate wearable / mobile computing device:
1.) Location of peripherals must not interfere with ordinary clothing nor limit the users movements in any way. This means that the box containing the CPU and battery must be extremely flat, thin, perhaps flexible, and not much larger than a pager. (perhaps a wallet shaped device that would fit in your back pocket)
2.) I/O devices must be wireless, nearly invisible, and constantly available for use. (ie. eyeglass HUD overlayed on field of vision, gloves with sensors in fingertips as a keyboard, voice recognition)
3.) High resolution camera (4000x2000 or greater) mounted in such a way that it can capture the users current field of view..
4.) Wireless, non-persistant internet connection with dynamic IP. (for privacy reasons) A non-proprietary, industry-wide standard for wireless internet via cellular or otherwise is needed to allow full operability with broad range of hardware and local providers.
The beige box design came about because we needed PCs to be all things to all men. The design was a compromise, to allow a PC to be used for most things, but not ideally suited to any one. A mill in an 'Industrial Revolution' factory was a single source of rotary power. Belts and chains were used to transfer that power to machines, to do the work of the factory. Similarly, the beige box PC has been a comparable piece of utilitarian computing power technology. The belts, chains and machine tools to drive work from this mill were supplied courtesy of Mr Gates and Linus.
A processor such as the Crusoe offers a number of developmental opportunities. Transmeta have redefined the interface between software and processor with this chip, and this itself should lead to some powerful innovations. The low power consumption will remove a number of constraints from designers of portable equipment.
BR Instead of owning one beige box, providing computing power, I expect the standard user in a decade's time to own several devices, each performing specific functions, each with a dedicated processor, and probably an OS which is designed purely to deliver the design functions of that device. Linux lends itself better to evolving into this future vision than any current MS operating system product. Transmeta seem to believe that as well.
Stephen Hawking has written another book. It's about time as well.
One of the biggest costs in maintaining a Beowulf cluster is the power and heat disipation concerns. Introducing the Crusoe into the equation could fix those problems.
Sure they might not be quite as powerful as the latest whiz bang CPU... but I'm sure on a cost/cycle and a cost/watt basis they
'll win hands down.
I can see it now - hot pluggable arrays of crusoe boards in a racked Beowulf cluster. *Sigh*
BlackNova Traders
All that plus:
11. touch screen w/ keyboard app. Keyboards won't go away.
12. Wide screen. Legal size paper is 8.5x14. It's not 16:9 but it might do.
13. 4 more hours of battery life. Some days I work more than 8 hours and the train ride home adds 2 hours anyway. But keep it under 2 pounds.
14. Did you say fast wireless networking? I've got a cell modem that works on the train, but 14.4 kbps is just lame.
If you can do all of that, you might as well cure all disease and give us whirled peas.
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
I'm not in the business, so if someone reads what I want and builds it for me, I'm ahead of the game.
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
Rubbermaid containers with similar technology to tell if your food is going bad!
Hey! I *already know* that the food in my referigerator has gone bad. I don't need my fridge nagging me about it.
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
Here is when it gets intresting: Consider having a device that you carry with you everywhere. We can call it your PCD(Personal Communication Device). With your PCD you can send and recieve voice calls (in the farther future video too), voice mail (video mail), and e-mail. We are just months away from a phone that does all of this, this is the important word here, "efficiently". Now while we do have devices that do all of this right now rates keep these devices from living up to their potiential. If I could afford it, I would disconnect my land line. Right now I pay $60 a month for 600 minutes (not for much longer though). Where it gets intresting is when we start creating different classes of usable PDA like devices that contain all of our communication functions and data functions. The kids (14+) could have a small, inexpensive, feature lacking wireless phone. The older kids (17+) would probably enjoy a version with a few more options, maybe e-mail, a mini calender for school assignments and a phone directory. The real difference comes when you start looking at professionals who want full featured messaging, customized push content, robust scheduling, and more contact storage. You can see how these devices can scale. When it becomes afforable enough to use these devices without breaking the bank, you will start to see these items being released in a scalable fashon. Besides, I like to sit in my room and do my work on a laptop with a 15" screen. Who wants to do a lot of stuff on a little tiny PDA that you can't hardly see?
It's different to say that the desktop PC will be supplemented by mobile PCs but I can't see myself giving up my big monitor, speakers, large keyboard, etc.
I suppose s'more horsepower in my PDA would be nice, but on thing I've noticed since using a Palm device since the Palm Pilot 5000 first came out is it's lack of real estate. The longer I used the unit, the more stuff I wanted to cram into it. A Gigabyte-Plus Palm is the killer app.
OK so maybe some level of wireless connectivity would be necessary, and higher-resolution displays. But these are not Crusoe-solvable issues.
So how about a large-format Palm OS-like device? 8-1/2 x 11 x 3/8 and either folding or flexible,terabyte storage, nice hi-res/contrast color display, hi speed wireless (RF or Ir) networking, voice communications, and a calculator too!
one better than mcleodeight
Unfortunatly most people are very much like Dinosaurs. They plodd along making slow advancement in the world, but usually it is steady. What you want is for people to make leaps ahead, skipping over the ground between today and the day after tomorrow. For the masses it won't happen and it probably isn't a wise thing to do. For individuals it is the only way for things to occur. While I'm leaping across vast areas in my particular niche you should be doing the same in yours. This way the whole of society will be brought forward. These people who go around wanting everyone to join the bandwagon at the same time do not understand that it doesn't work that way and besides the axles would break.
While I agree that the PC as we know it will not be going anywhere soon, I have to disagree with you. What is to say that PDA's and the like will not take over the role of PC's (including high-speed wireless access)?
The ability to make products smaller, cheaper and faster will continue to make the technology of tomorrow less and less like the technology of today. We have to try to stop thinking of how we can improve the old technology with the newer tech, but rather ask, what can we do with the new tech that has never been done before.
We can't see the future, who knows what it's going to be like?
Anyway, I happen to like PCs the way they are. I think it would suck if the devices we got were no longer wholly programmable. If Linus had gotten a 'closed box' instead of a 386 PC, would Linux ever have been made?
Amber Yuan (--ell7)
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
Wow! What kind of crack are you smoking. The Wintel PC arcitecture is built on a legacy of crapy 8 bit designs. There are too few IRQs, too few base addresses, and too few DMA channels not to mention DMA can only access the lower 16 Megs of memory. Tens of thousands (if not millions) of transistors on the CPU are dedicated to memory page address translation, and useless "backwards compatible" instructions that can run 8088 code! If you want to live in the past, go ahead. Just don't expect the rest of us to suffer with you. High speed wireless will do much more for PDAs than it will for obsolete desktops. PDAs are not supposed to replace or compete with the desk top anyway. It's a different device that will finally allow personal computing to advance out of this stagnation that we're in now.
I just got the Samsung 3500 yesterday. I has voice recognition for dailing up to 20 numbers, can surf the web directly (special sites anyway, cnn, yahoo). It can also recieve my email, and connect to my laptop as an external 14.4 modem. Very cool.
-Unresolved symbol? Byte me!
Consider wearble computers: the things can be integrated as your clothing, keeping you warm in the winter (save a bundle on heating costs for your home) and the cooling fan will feel good durng the summer months.
What about connecting or implanting the pda/pc to your brain? Then you can think to it silently and superfast.
Having a power effcient microprocessor would provide the world with great data collection capabilities. Slap them on patients in hospitals, put them in cars, etc, etc, etc.
Privacy is obviously always going to be an issue, but being able to get more real-world data directly into digital format will be a huge boon for a lot of people.
Why this movement to *replace* PCs? Can you imagine graphics editing or programming or writing anything longer than a short note on a screen the size of, say, a paperback. Laptop keyboards are bad enough to try to use - fingers start cramping halfway through the second page. This is definitely a case of smaller not being better.
Voice recognition: could be fun. I like it, especially for educational uses (ie - taking notes). I'd be terrible trying to use it for dictation - I can't start at the beginning of a letter or note and just talk through it. I have to go back and edit every other sentence. It's faster and easier just to type it. Until you get an AI-type ala Star Trek or Babylon 5 to help out with that process, that's not likely to change. However, for brief notes to self or the like, or for general "navigation" processes, voice recognition would be great, and save the hands and arms much mouse-clicking and button-pushing. Still wouldn't replace my keyboard and monitor.
Does anyone remember that story about the guy who was showing off voice recognition software at a conference, and somebody reformatted his drive from the back row? Have they solved the issue of sound pickup? Can you pick up only my voice unless I choose otherwise?
This whole bit about being able to use a desktop-style machine as a storage unit and accessing it using cellular or broadband communication - Okay, so far as it goes. There's a great deal of concern by cellphone users over other people using their accounts without their knowledge or permission, or breaking into the cellular communications. Will that be less of a problem in the future? Or will we just breed the next generation of hackers? I can keep hackers out of my desktop by unplugging a phone line. With built-in cellular communications (or whatever the replacement is), integrating pagers, cellphones, internet access, and all, it would still be a comfort to have a machine that was separated from all that.
BTW, make sure I can turn off those cellphone and pager functions! I have no desire to be constantly find-able.
I love PCs, and while a hand-held, integrated device would be fun and useful, it will never become my *only* computer. I like the idea of being able to download and read books, but there's something about turning the pages that is a pleasurable part of the reading experience. I could never get as into a story reading it on a screen. There would be advantages though, like being able to resize the fonts and adjust things like color and contrast, or not losing my bookmarks when I drop the book. Of course, it might be a problem getting a computer to take as much abuse as my paperbacks do.
One more item of interest: disk drives. I have a floppy drive, a zip drive, and a CD-ROM drive. I could add a few more, no problem. I could add another hard drive, more memory, more cards, or replace or rearrange what I've got. Before such a small device can become as flexible as a desktop, you'll have to convince all the different manufacturers of disks to create a standard and stick to it. One type of disk. One type of input/output for external devices. There's just not room for much more. There are severe limitations to how much you can add to a PDA post-manufacture.
There are advantages to *adding* small, integrated devices, but they can never replace the security, ease of use, and comfortable use of a desktop PC. Just my opinion, of course, take it for what it's worth.
Morgance
A low power, inexpensive CPU might alow someone to make a small box, powered by a little black cube plugged into an AC outlet, that has only a couple of ethernet ports. Sounds like a small Linux-based router/firewall to protect me from my cable modem.
Add a hard disk and a couple of printer / USB / serial ports, and you have a very nice little server for my home.
Anyone looking for inspiration on this subject should read _A_Deepness_in_the_Sky_ by Vernor Vinge. (Well, you should read it anyway, as well _A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep_; these two books represent the most mind-blowing SF out there, IMHO).
Anyway, in _Deepness_, Vinge describes his vision of what wearable, portable processing can be like. The tech involved comes down to wearable, wireless networking, with interface via chorded keyboards and HUDs. Everybody's unit speaks to everyone else's, allowing for consenual virtual environments and so forth.
Anyway, the real value (for me, at least) was in his depiction of the things in use, and how they impact the users' lives. I can't possibly recreate that information here, so if you're interested, go read the book.
--
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
In short - synchronized directories, but not syncrhonized files.
Facial database for people who are lousy at remembering names and faces. This is a twist on a similar idea posted here, but tailored a little more to my own needs :-)
Melody Finder: a training tool that teaches you about melody by turning music into other sensory input. It would be able to recall songs, transpose keys, etc. It helps you learn to carry a tune, and find the beat in a song so you can learn to dance.
Collective Math enhances the math experience by generating semirandom mathematical phenomena, soliciting input, and adjusting itself to create other phenomena. The pdas are completely networked so that one user's input can be share with the others. One of the problems with teaching math is that there's no visual analog for most kids, so they just don't "get it."
Touch Mousepad put a display into the mousepad, so you can pick it up and use it as an interface or drawing tool. (OK, so the crusoe isn't that big a deal for this. So what?)
Trend Finder a neural network app that finds patterns that you might not notice, like changes in levels of VOCs or amount of infrared light, or other hard-to-sense things. You wear it on you. The trick is that it'd correlate several different inputs so you get more useful information.
Visualiser lets you run WinAmp visualizers, but using reality as an input.
First why don't we remove a misconception among some people: the desktop is not going to go away anytime soon, because whatever performance you can pack into a palm or wrist-sized device, you will always be able to pack more into a (larger) desktop device, and people always want more.
:-)
FUTURE MOBILE COMPUTING
First Phase (obvious) - miniturization/increased performance of existing devices: PCs in your palm, PDAs on your wrist
Second Phase (easily deducible) - new devices which were not previously possible because of performance/size trade-offs: eg voice recognition on your wrist; 3D graphics modelling on your PDA
Third Phase (getting misty) - new devices/functions which we have barely imagined (a whole stack of these)
Fourth Phase (even fuzzier) - new devices/functions which nobody has even contemplated - can't think of any at the moment
These phases will obviously not all come from the Crusoe processor. Wait till nanotechnology starts having an impact and then start to talk about mobile computing... (Fifth Phase? Sixth Phase?)
Enjoy the ride!
Michael Richards
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Presumably, Transmeta are saying that "this CPU is not for the desktop" more for marketing reasons that anything technical.
Taking on Intel with your first product could be considered commercial suicide. Taking on ARM, a small UK company, makes much more sense.
Even though this processor was designed for mobile use, couldn't you take this wonderfull vliw 1 watt low heat disipation processor core and just....up the juice on it? I mean an athlon uses what 30 watts (or something ridiculous like that), what clock speed do you think it would run at if you took it down to 1 watt. Is this 700 mhz processor possibly overclockable? (I don't know much about processor design...I'm purely a software geek)
ok, I can get the idea that everything is getting smaller, we'll have cpu's made of a few atoms and 100 terabyte hd's size of a penny, yada, yada, yada, but:
what about big monitors? I was just thinking of replacing my old 15" with a 19". Also, while we are at it, what about keyboards and mice? Sorry people, but the pen thingy in Palm Pilots is not exactly a very conveniet input device.
___
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
umm... Underpowered? My Newton 2100 has a 163 mhz StrongArm in it. It's still, after two years of hard, daily use, performing better than any of my other computers. It still outperforms every handheld I've seen. It's handwriting recog is accurate (except for the way I right "a", it always thinks it's "u"), and doesn't require learning Grafitti or anything.
The Newton was just designed right. It isn't a desktop OS crammed into a handheld. It has the power of a desktop box, fits in the hand, runs for 24 hours on a charge, and handles any telecom or writing I need on the road, along with all of it's other features.
Thanx for killing it, Mr. Jobs.
8(
I see the surge in PDAs and "net appliances" as the beginning of a breakout from the PC. On the other hand, there is always going to be a need for desktop computers, with nice big displays and room for expansion. I wouldn't want to edit a video or try making 3D using my Newt, or a Xybernaut. These new devices are extending the range of computing/telecomm uses, not killing off older variants.
The Net was supposed to kill television, PCs were supposed to kill Big Iron, and TV was supposed to kill both radio and print. It's all about filling niche markets, and finding new uses for old things. Sure, in ten years, maybe most 'leet geeks will do their telecomm from handheld/wearables, but they will still have a keyboard and monitor someplace for those long coding sessions. Twiddlers and speech recog just won't cut it for a lot of uses.
J05h (feeling long winded)
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Tens of thousands (if not millions) of transistors on the CPU are dedicated to memory page address translation, and useless "backwards compatible" instructions that can run 8088 code!
The 8088 is a dinosaur. As the PC has evolved there have been certain legacy hangers on that were left in for that ~5% of people out there who still need to work with 15 year old programs and nothing new is good enough.
High speed wireless will do much more for PDAs than it will for obsolete desktops.
Did you even READ my post? High speed wireless internet access will help make the PDA a great partner to the PC and when we can get FAST PDAs then they can replace the PC.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
IMO, when PDAs get identical performance to PCs we'll have terminals to carry with us that we can plug into full size monitors and keyboards (& etc...) once we reach a destination, be it work or home. and while we're stuck in gridlock we can retrieve messages and respond to them as well.
There's always the possibility of the mythical VR HeadGear wich can make the monitor obsolete.
The way that I see it the PDA is held back by these factors.
SLOWNESS!
Storage capacity.
Display quality.
Once these things are on par with PCs then the PDA will have a chance to really shine. Who knows how long that'll be though.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
How would it work in space? I think I read something once about satelites and spacecraft needing special hardware to survive in space. Could this apply there?
Theres something I'm interested in, but haven't had a chance to use for real (I've used the demo java applets). Quickwrite. Its very good for limited space input devices. I'd estimate the min space for it would be around 1"x1". (but that might be a bit difficult to use). Its not really good for long winded input. One handed, and can be used by left or right handed. Pretty fast too. It relies on the movement of a "pen" from the center, to a side/corner(s), and back to the center. eg center->left->center is 'T' (I think). and center->up&left->center is 'H' (I think). Basically, check out the site. If i ever get myself a PDA (personal digital assistant), I'll use that interface.
---
I use to have a funny sig, but slash cut it off, and I forgot what the punchline was.
Engineers can solve lots of problems back in the lab as a post mortem that aren't feasible in the real world, yet. Often this is due to a lack of processing power that can fit the problem as a solution. Recently we have started to see this reversing itself in products like ABS and traction control, digital video and sound, cell phones, and many others. With low power/high performance this area opens even more. Here are some of the things I expect to see.
:-0 .
-Consumer noise cancellation (Head phones that act like they are stereo speakers across the room, or liek you are in a sensory deprivation tank).
-Consumer sensor suites. How many times would an image enhancement have helped you driving or walking. FLIR is just the sensor and first step, digital enhancement really makes it useful.
-Improved wireless performance. We are getting to the point where some fancy signal decode/encode can be fielded that will make all types of wireless applications more reliable.
These are the broad brush topics. When we delve into specific industries the amount will vary. As an engineer it is an exciting and interesting time. I just don't know if the Chinese curse applies
I think you need to check false assumptions here. Remember it's trying to get rid of waste heat.
Take a look at whe Steve Mann has been doing with video, etc with his wearables. Context sensitive as in the real world input being used to tell the wearable what to display. One use is when he gets to the market, the computer recognizes the market, and displays a list of items to be bought. Another use is in face recognition. This is one that I would love. I'm horrible with peoples faces. I can remember the face and the name, but I just can't seam to link the two together till I seen the pers a large number of times.
yes and you'll note i prefaced the whole thing with a big IMHO,.. :)
:)
:) i'm only concerned about me, and geeks like me,.... ;)
:)
:) you'd
:) I can see a combination of speech recognition and a better, non-QWERTY keyboard system gaining popularity in the near future.
:)
:)
:)
Musta missed that.
i don't, i don't think about it at all.. no more than i do turning a page in a book.
Only when you're doing the most trivial things that are already stored in your cortex's "instruction cache", like browsing and clicking around.
and who said i cared about 'most people',.. Joe Q. Public can bite me
Wow. I just hope you're not the next head of Apple's HCI Engineering Department...
in all seriousness, though, i think you're wrong. keyboards are much more efficient. find me someone who can write graffiti at 100 wpm
break the li'l palm.
Still, direct neural interfaces are far superior. (Do I hear "mind control"?)
while CRTs are large and cumbersome, once flat-screens become cheaper, using a desktop won't be quite as annoying (or brain-cancer inducing
Yes, but all the other disadvantages remain...
just because you hate desktops don't assume everyone else does
Yeah, but knowing that everyone else hates desktop gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. I guess I'm not a real individualist after all, then. Buggers
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Some thoughts into how low power high performance processing may come into play(along with flexible LCD displays, laser based displays, etc)
Cars with wireless connectivity. Laser or LCD based HUDs projecting onto windows, rearviews, etc. Range finders telling you how far each car is, velocity, etc. 2d map always projected on some corner of your windshield telling you street signs ahead or behind, traffic conditions, road conditions, weather conditions. Cars relaying this info back and for to each other as they start to slow down or pile up.
PDAs with a monocle laser/lcd projection display. Sorta like the 'old' failed gameboy/3d experiment Nintendo tried? They used mirrors and red LEDs, I think. Display is a monocle, if voice is to be used, perhaps a subvocal microphone at the base of the jaw or something, and the 'pen' input would be your watch, more or less, if it uses grafitti. A larger surface, about the size of the Palm today, would 'snap' into this network for enhanced color displays and input options. Oh, mustn't forget all of this is wirelessly connected =)
The Palm device would probably house the high speed wireless connectivity, of course. What would this be used for? I'm not that much of a visionary, it just sounds cool =)
But it could prolly replace cell phones, pagers, beepers, PDAs, and stuff. Ugh, to many things to carry today anyway! Don't forget that the wristwatch device would have a 400mb HD and a processor fast enough to decode mp3s, if one were so inclined. Power is something else to be considered, though. Hm...
Cell phones with voice recognition! Ugh, why, if the phone is supposed to be a audible tool in the first place, is it littered with buttons and menus and stuff that could be concievable voice activated? Anyone see the WAP phones with screen/PDA interfaces? It seems more natural to speak into it in the first place, since that's it's primary purpose!
Milk cartons would have acidity and toxin sensors and the display cases would continually scan for containers with bad milk. This would literally require disposable sensors and computing!
Heh, Rubbermaid containers with similar technology to tell if your food is going bad!
Tires that actually self monitor (via sonar, radar, whatever) their condition, air pressure, wear, etc.
Anyone with anything else?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
My personal feeling is that PDA-type devices are going to wind up moving out of the generic, mainstream "I'll carry this to business" and adapt to other market niches where big computing power in tiny packages would pave the way for great advances. Current PDAs/mobile computers tend to be generic, multipurpose devices; in the future, the same power of the PDAs will be applied towards more specialized needs where the power of the PDAs can be harnessed more effectively.
For instance, most scuba divers use computers nowadays for a number of in-water activites. The more advanced computers not only monitor air consumption and predict dive limits, but some also include electronic compasses and GPS.
In the future, with powerful computers, we could not only have such capabilities, but we could provide real-time water composition analysis, record current speed and direction, uplink to floating environmental buoys to keep track of topside weather conditions, have a constant directional pointer back to the point where we entered the water (or the dive boat we dove off of), provide for underwater "networking" to keep track of the location/equipment/health condition of fellow divers, and so on - all things impossible with current technology.
With complex PDAs, environmental scientists could carry specialized PDAs that can take and analyze, for instance, air samples at a hazardous healthy site and remotely access a database to look up the chemical signatures. They might be able to provide very complex, multistory blueprints for building inspectors to easily carry with them. They may allow mechanics of all types of machines to carry very advanced, complex schematics around with them in an easy-to-transport device (for instance, an auto mechanic may be able to carry around the repair blueprints and instructions for dozens of different models of cars).
While phone calls and web browsing may be the current envisioned uses, there are many, many areas of sports and recreation that would benefit greatly from having increased computation power in smaller and smaller packages. Having these devices be specialized means that the raw power can be more focused towards the things the person needs to do, without worrying about things like word processing or Solitaire.
Anyways, my future thoughts.
If I had a great idea for a new take on ANY hardware, I wouldn't talk about it. Software is well suited to Bazaar-style development, but I would prefer to develop hardware in private. I'd develop the thing in secret, then publish the interface specs. (a la Creative Labs, Matrox, 3DFX, etc).
I may be wrong, but I think with the barriers to entry being so high in the hardware development world, keeping your designs and ideas secret seems to be the only way to have a chance to do anything revolutionary.
I'm still against hardware patents, but I wouldn't go blabbing my ideas on Slashdot, either.
I think the basic issue is misstated. PDAs are different from desktop PCs not because they have less powerful CPUs. They are different because of size: they have small screens and they must have non-keyboard non-mouse user interface. This makes all the difference in the world from the user's point of view.
Let's say that we can now put a 800Mhz processor (with a proper MMU and all the supporting chipset) into a Palm. Would it mean that it's a good idea to run Linux on a Palm? No -- a keyboardless computer with a what? 4x3 inch? screen cannot usefully run a desktop-oriented interface (be it CLI or a windownng environment). Remember, our state-of-the-art user interface (WIMP: windows, icons, menus, pointer) was developed in the 70s at PARC. There has been no major advances since that time.
The only thing where processing power might make a difference is in speech recognition. Speech interface to PDAs is a promising area and you do want to have a powerful processor for it. But this detail nonwithstanding, I would argue that for the PDAs to realize their potential we need a user interface breakthrough much more than we need a processor breakthrough (and Crusoe isn't it anyway).
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
(1) Run in hotter environments
...
Wrong. Let's say a CPU is hotter than the air around it by 20 degrees: a Pentium needs a fan to do it, but a Crusoe can do it without a fan. So? If the air is 100 degree F, your processor will be 120 degrees -- in one case with a fan, in the other case without. I don't see higher tolerance of heat anywhere here.
2) Run from within a totally air tight sealed metal box
(3) Run in isolated environments...
None of these is a desktop. These are industrial applications. The requirements for them are weird and varied, but have little to do with desktops. It may well be that Crusoe will do well in some industrial applications, but that doesn't mean anything about it being a "desktop CPU".
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
High speed wireless doesn't matter. I'm not going to be downloading Quake demos or using streaming video on a typical PDA. I don't need high speed. Low latency is much more important ... but still not a big deal.
PDAs won't replace PCs, but they will complement them.
While I can't play Quake on a PDA, I can carry around my player profile and configuration on one.
While I can't view PDF documents on a PDA, I can beam it (IR, Bluetooth, whatever) to a local printer.
While I can't watch movies on one, I can use my PDA to command my TV to access some MPG URL, and carry that URL around on it.
Think different.
MB
I M H O...
sitting down in front of a nice 17-19" screen,
and typing on a responsive keyboard, using a
nice, accurate mouse to click on little pictures
is just an aesthetic and ergonomically pleasing
experience, and i don't think it will ever just
go away. (well, at least not for a long while.)
however,.. the use of the PDA (when it is designed
correctly) is there, and it's nice to be able to
pull out a palm and play rogue or take notes
during a meeting. it would be good to be able
to send e-mail or check up on slashdot, but right
now -- as we all know -- portable 'net access
is not too keen. it's both expensive and fairly
unwieldy (i haven't seen a cordless modem that
is chic.)
so, yes, in a few years when wireless net access
(or some other form of mobile net access, like
say, ethernet plugs abound like public phones) is
a reality, then we'll have that.
right now there is a lot PDAs can do that people
don't make full use of, and not everyone uses
them (i still haven't bought one, though everyone
i know has one just about..) colour screens
are coming this year, from all reports... so
that will be good.
i really don't see anything "revolutionary"
happening any time soon. if i could see something
i'd be off getting it developed and making space
in my garage for my millions of dollars
...dave
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
He's talking GSM bandwidth here!!! Not LAN bandwidth.
Thimo
--
Avoid the Gates of Hell. Use Linux!
You're missing something: the biggest driver for Beowulf-class systems is the infamous price-to-performance ratio, not pure FLOPS. How are you gonna get better price-to-performance? with commodity hardware (i.e. low price) that has been designed for maximum performance.
A Crusoe may fulfill the former criterion (their prices sure seem low enough) but it fails on the latter. A Pentium III- (or even a Celeron-) class CPU, however fulfills both. Now, if Transemta decides to use their technology for a CPU designed for pure speed, I could see how a Beowulf of those things may prove competitive, as long as it doesn't rely on non-commodity hardware (particulary motherboards and NICs).
engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.
We have always used advancements in science to enhance the limits of our biology. Glasses for improving eyesight, clothes for improving weather resistance, shoes, cars to travel, etc.
././.../.)
I think that mobile devices will process tasks that are not possible merely by ourselves (duh). The clumsy interface of writing on your PDA will be replaced by voice recognition (and you thought that people talking on their cell phones is bad, just wait a couple of years and everyone will be interacting to a computer. "HAL, what is the closest THAI-MEXICAN restaurant? .
Mobile computing devices will have wireless broadband, so you can run a server with the speed of a T1 right from your belt. I'm sure the people who have these types of PDAs will be exposed to continuous radiation, possibly causing cancer (?)
It might even create to races of humans. Cyborgs who have access to information, communication (not the Robocop battle gear cyborg) and those without.
You'll be able to Book Travel Plans (can now, even), Read the news (slashdot), Pay your Bills, Play games, talk to friends, have sex (assuming that the device can change your brain waves, who knows), etc.
The screens on PDAs are way to small, I expect that future PDAs will have an interface that has a microphone, an earbud, and an optical monitor that is an inch from your eye, but gives you the detail of a 15 inch monitor. Maybe some sort of gloves that you can "twitch" or air type that would be faster than voice recognition will be availible.
The PDAs will be cheap, but corporations will control the access to the network. They will make you sign yearly contracts and offer terrible service.
But I guess if you think about it, why would you want a PDA if you can do everything that you need to do from your home terminal?
To look like RoboCop.
my 2 cents.
-Snoobs
I don't haul hay or fly through canyons. I'm just a grad physics student, and I really want a PDA that will let my enter definite and indefinte integrals with a stylus. Someone combine Mathematica with a Newton and make me happy, please.
The Newton 2000 was the successor to the 130. Instead of the ARM chip it used a Strong-ARM, it had a backlit display, 2 PCMCIA slots, and a bunch of other goodies. Then Steve Jobs returned to Apple...
Apple was going to launch Newton, Inc. as a subsidary - to let it prosper or fail on its own without too much interferance from the mothership. Jobs killed this (IIRC) the day before it happened (and about the same time he was killing the MacClones).
The Newton survived for a while more (including an upgraded 2000, the 2100), but the handwriting was on the wall and Apple finally killed the Newton.
I have a 2000 (never upgraded it to a 2100), and need to find a place to get it fixed (doesn't recognize screen touches anymore). It was a very cool and useful PDA in its day.
The obvious idea is wearable computers. Cell modem and CPU in a small backpack, plus a HMD, pointer device, and voice recognition. Poof, you're a gargoyle.
... universal translators ... scrambled cellular internet telephony ... starcraft on a road trip ...
Virtual tour guides
Not only would this be great for clustering, but also for any situation where a large number of machines need to be in one physical location.
I think of Co-Location Hosting services. In my experience, looking for web hosting providers, physical dimensions of rack space are one of the key elements when figuring costs for co-location services (along with bandwidth, on-site maintenance fees, etc.).
In most Network Operations Centers I see on the web, there are rooms of rack mounted (regular size) servers, with the occasional slim Cobalt Raq system.
Wouldn't this be a great niche for Transmeta to capture? If they can pile, say 600 slim servers into the space usually required by 100 regular-sized rack mounted boxen, this could save many people money. From the consumers paying less for CO-LO service, to the CO-LO provider saving money on NOC floor space, less fire-suppression units etc, or packing more machines into the same ammount of space. This would require less power on their end, and maybe even re-shape our current hosting business model. Virtual hosting could meet its demise if co-lo service could be brought down a peg.
I'm sure there are many OTHER benefits to using low-power, low-heat, headless units in NOCs that I'm not cluing in to right now. What do the rest of you think?
Cringly mentions it in his latest column. The winning PDA will be one which gives away programming tools for third party applications. Good tools and good documentation for doing that will be a key.
If I had a PDA tightly integrated with my PC (running Linux, of course), that I could write new applications for easily, blah blah blah. Okay, all of my conditions are met today by one or more players in the market. I don't think it will come down to one killer app. There will be different applications for different markets.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Even if I could have a laptop the size of a paperback, I probably wouldn't carry it unless it had voice recognition and really good integration with my desktop (I'm really picky about keyboards. The only ones I like right now are the the ones dell ships.)
I'm funny about keyboards myself. I used them. I don't like having to switch back and forth between a keyboard and a mouse. I want an interface that uses one or the other. The time I spend switching is time I spend losing touch with what I was doing. I can spend hours coding via Emacs and never once think about which keys I'm hitting. Put me on the wrong keyboard and that flow disappears until I get used to the new one.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
The whole thing with a killer app is that it isn't something that has been done before. Visicalc wasn't a good spreadsheet. Visicalc was a visual calculator that people invented the term spreadsheet to describe. I think we've had them for long enough to know that PIMs are not the killer app that will drive portable computing. It's unlikely anyone will know what the killer app is until they happen to see it on a friends PDA and run out to buy a PDA the next day.
I personally would not carry a PDA right now even if one was given to me. I don't like carrying junk around. I have a Nixxo Platinum pager because I don't like a big motorolla on my belt. I carry a Sharp non-programmable scientific calculator because it takes less space in my backpack than my HP, even though my HP would be more useful for the math class I'm taking.
Even if I could have a laptop the size of a paperback, I probably wouldn't carry it unless it had voice recognition and really good integration with my desktop (I'm really picky about keyboards. The only ones I like right now are the the ones dell ships.)
--Kevin
You know you can do almost all of that (and voice recognition) with some of the Windows CE devices out there now.
But Windows CE is evil(tm).
The problem exists with existing cell phones anyway. Just add an earphone to your combadge if you like.
1. PC's have been out of vogue for 20 years now. Ever since their invention people have been predicting their demise. With that out of the way, I can get on to other more important things. 2. The "brain interface" on slashdot a few months ago. Pretty similar to "jacking in" with the Matrix. Hmm. 3. Head-mounted displays- small LCD panels that project in front of you. Maybe we'll all LIKE wearing glasses if there's a computer built into the frames. Also gives somewhere for an ultra-mini camera to do face recognition, etc. 4. "Virtual Keyboard", yeah, not as good as the real thing, but the glasses could project a keyboard onto a wall, your lap, or midair. Type away. Voice-activated commands aren't going to be any more popular than cell phones.
It is finally nice to see some real ground breaking advancements come into the market.
The new Crusoe CPU will hopefully open up a whole new world of oppurtunities. Imagine, taking just about any OS out there and porting it to this new processor. Not only is it small, with low power consumption, but it can be upgraded at almost any time. Just think, fast , wearable computers that will have a decent batter life and won't singe the hair on your body.
Wireless communications are becoming more readily availble at lower costs every day. Speed in this area keeps increasing, is becoming more secure, and will hopefully be available almost everywhere in the near future.
We have optical storage media being created in the works that is not only fast, has a large capacity, and it will all fit on a credit card sized device.
We are entering into a "Golden Age"
Behold the wonders...
My ideal 'PDA' would be something about the size of a paper notebook, that has a touch sensitive flat screen (that you could possibly write on... hey, playing the "visionary" here !). The machine would be able to do just about anything a PC could. (Net access, productivity tools, a "real" word processor, etc.) Something with wireless net access that you could use to surf the web, write a paper, read an "online" book or periodical, all with something the size of a magazine.
Hmmm.. probably not really a 'PDA' but more like having the functionality of a notebook/laptop PC...
Think Star Trek 'PADD'...
The Crusoe cannot compete with desktop CPUs and is not meant to. Transmeta's best chip runs at 500 MHz which puts it significantly slower than current desktop CPUs. Furthermore Crusoe runs all its x86 decoding in software which further reduces the amount of actual work the Crusoe can get done.
This is why Transmeta made up their own benchmarks (red flag) rather than using the conventional ones. I imagine that if they used the actual SPEC benchmarks that they'd look pretty bad in comparison to a Pentium running at the same speed.
Now their technology is extremely cool, and decoding x86 in software is a great way to conserve power and reduce die size. But it is not a catch-all solution for computing. If speed is what matters (desktop CPUs) then you aren't going to want a Crusoe. If you want low power and reduced cost from smaller batteries then the Crusoe is perfect. But you will get a performace loss.
As for fan noise. It could probably be alleviated by getting a liquid cooling system of some kind. I think kryotech (www.kryotech.com) uses a refrigeration system to cool their 1GHz Athlons. They probably aren't as loud if you weren't overclocking. Personally I enjoy the constant hum of my computer. Very relaxing.
-Uh-oh. I just took a shot at Transmeta. Here come the flames.
I work as an industrial programmer and I am currently working on a centrifuge system that is powered by PC instead of a PLC.
The biggest difficulty with the project is that we are designing the machine for the oilfield and everything has to be explosion proof (gov't standard that defines safety in regard to explosed electrical systems etc). Part of that is that this whole thing has to be able to be hosed down occassionally environments.
If our computer was built with at fanless CPU that could exist in a completely sealed case, my life would be a lot easier.
I think as things like this develop, we will be able to have more and more devices controlled by computers. This gives the potential for much better control and monitoring of entire factories of computer controlled machines.
This space available to anyone who can think of something more creative than this to put here.
Requirements:
- Input modes: (all should be optional)
- Keyboard or keyboard substitues (also mouse): Best used with a very short range transmitting device. This allows the user to pick the keyboard of his choice, from wearables to happy hacking.
- voice: standard microphone jack
- cellular data: standard and necessary.
- other: RJ-whatever jacks for phone and lan
- other: USB or similar port.
-
- audio: standard headphone jacks.
- video: a video jack usable for various displays from heads up graphics to monitors to projection. Note: programming would have to be true WWW style where no assumptions should be made about what the data will be displayed on. (yeah, I know...)
- other: USB or better substitute.
Issues: The desire to use radio frequencies for everything is understandable but as a proud daddy I can tell you the dangers of baby monitors. I don't need my computer hearing you type "Format" and wiping out my own drive.Actually, the core of the machine and the OS should be built under the assumption that we don't know what it does, how it stores or uses items, and how it gathers or distributes information. This bodes well for the open source community, however code will need to be a lot more object oriented than it is now. (That article by the guy at unreal applies here in spades. [no. I'm don't have time to hunt down the url. If anyone remembers, please respond.])
A bonus. If we can make the assumption in coding that we cannot make assumptions, then we end up writing simplistic code without spending a lot of time on interfaces, but instead on data manipulation. If we then allow the interface people to design the nice interfaces for specific I/O products then we end up with a device that can be used on a decent level by people with disabilities. Certain software (Quake XXIV) may assume that you have a certain type of interface (much like many games today require a 3d card), but generic software becomes a lot more generic.
-----
No Zen is good zen
Never knock on Death's door:
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Who gives this person the authority to declare that the PC is a dinosaur?
The PC has just entered it's golden age.
HIGH SPEED wireless internet access is what will prevent PDAs from becoming the device of choice.
When we can get PDA that are as powerful as that day's PCs and the ability to access our data no matter where we are, THEN the PC will be a dinosaur.
The PC as we know it isn't going anywhere any time soon.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Electronic toys are cool until you start to see them proliferate. Take pagers for example. They used to be owned by drug dealers and doctors, not 10 year olds get them from their parents. Every time I hear someone's pager go off I want to take it off their pocket and stomp it to pieces. Nothing personal of course, I'm just tired of everyone's day being interupted by someone else's pager. If it's on vibrate I don't give a crap since it bothers no one else. If everyone has a PDA or cell phone or what have you no one will ever relax again. All these new wireless technologies are what I like to call DistractoWare. You have to give a large portion of your attention to these sorts of devices and by doing so distracting yourself from doing anything else. I can drive and listen to the radio or a CD but can I drive and watch TV or read my email? I doubt you'd like to be near me on the road if I was trying. People are surrounded at work and at home with electronics and now want to have them everywhere. What do all the PDAs and cell phones really do for people? It's leading to a society ruled by the transistor rather than by the people living in the society.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
So why not voice recognition on cell phones, since that's already the main interface pardigm for the device? Why is it WAP phones and all the newfangled cell phones have/use LCD displays and buttons, when it seems to make sense to just *talk* to the phone?
Of course, don't get rid of the buttons(legacy support and all), but it makes as much sense for a phone to be spoken to as to use a keypad to enter numbers or names, text, dates, etc.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Thats one thing I was thinking of for what would be a GOOD mobile interface for PDA's that you use all the time.. Why use voice recognition? Its slow, its noisy, and its disturbing to others nearby.. Its also unnecessary for a lot of uses..
:)
Think of it, an eyeball-tracker.. Look at an icon for a couple of seconds and it activates.. Look focus off of the top or bottom of the screen and it scrolls. Look at a link for a second and it activates.. Instant internet tablet that doesn't even need a SCREEN as such.
Or combine it with a hand-keyboard or twiddler. (To act like a 'shift' key.)
Or for a palm-pilot PDA, except for data entry, really what else does a palm pilot need?
This fixes one of the big problems with voice recognition, in that its slow, while you can speak fast, correcting a mistake is very unwieldy and slow.. Overall, voice *is* pretty high-latency, at least compared to a keyboard, mouse, or eyeball-tracking.
User Interface, just because everyone said that it would be the ultimate interface, (remember the newton and handwriting recognition), doesn't mean that it will be, or that it won't take 10 years to get it good enough to useful (Graffitti on a Palm). Personally, I think that the interface of the future will be very unexpected...
Just because its possible doesn't mean that it can be practically implemented.. Just because its implementable doesn't mean it'll be reliable. Just because its reliable or implemented doesn't mean it will be useful.
Don't forget the eyepiece monitor. A virtual 17" screen that looks something like the Borg-Bill icon would be pretty awesome.
Thanks for your comment.
Actually, I see the problem as a software issue: to communicate we have to create an adaptive vocabulary that lets the user, and his or her guardians, determine a relatively limited list of commonly used words or phrases. You and I communicate via keystrokes typed on a keyboard--because you and I have learned a language based on characters that combine to form phonemes, which combine to form words, which combine to form sentences. The breadth and depth of English-language expression requires the ability to assemble speech with detailed precision--we don't need that kind of precision if we're using a total vocabulary of 400 words. ("I want to go home" can be thought of as a single word in this context.)
Communication for the mute isn't the same as it is for you and me. Kids with very limited language skills learn to use "cheap talkers"--devices with a few pre-recorded sounds related to buttons. The buttons have symbols (from a symbol set named PCS, from Johnson-Mayer Company). The user presses a symbol and the talker repeats the sound. The problem with these devices are manifold: they're very limited (they might have 32 or 40 words); they're focused on single-word vocabularies (typically for very language-deficient kids); and they have no means of data collection--you can't tell what words the user actually selects. The key to this kind of adaptive speech is data collection--recording what the user has said, identifying words and word forms that the user has used, and playing back a day's conversations so that Mom and Dad can work on new words or phrases for tomorrow.
There are many brilliant people working in bioengineering, trying to create a link between a person's nervous system and bionic/robotic devices. That is promising, and (I'm told) is deeply rewarding work for the people who do it. The kids I'm thinking of have little or no control over their own muscles (that's part of what cerebral palsy is) so connecting to their muscles won't achieve anything. What I'm concerned to do is to give these people a voice--so that they can communicate with the world outside of their bodies.
(Truth in messaging: I'm a programmer, so I see a software-based solution to every conceivable problem. A hardware guy might view the matter differently.)
The user interface is the key. So long as you tie computing to a keyboard, it will feel a lot like a PC. Handwriting recognition is a step forward, sure, but it's still not ideal. I can type 60 words a minute, but I can't write that fast, so my input is hampered. Speach isn't the answer either. I can't quite picture the whole world running around talking to their computers. Too disruptive and public. Do you want the people around you to know what you're making your assistant remember? I think the leap we want to make is to that of a Personal computer assitant, the term PDA is too scope limiting. The term Data is just not descriptive enough.
What interesting UI ideas are there out there? Heads up display is also neat but not ideal. There have been very few changes in history that have added new things to our outward appearance. Clothes have changed, yes, but they've been around for AGES. The things that are new we stick in a pocket or on a wrist. New things have been fairly unobtrusive. Do you think that will change?
I treat my Palm as a second brain, something to remember the things I can't, do things that I couldn't do on the run before, something that is a less obtrusive alternative to the lower tech solutions. I suspect I'm not alone in that. Help me find a better assistant!
Cheers!
-Termi
Today is all we really have. We should all live it well: it is our stepping stone to all of our tomorrows.
I'm worried that newer PDA's and such are going to start using voice recognition (don't some phones already do this?). Cell phones in restaurants are bad enough. Imagine being on a plane full of people whispering into black boxes . . . yeecch. I know that there is something called the "Twiddler" that is basically a one handed keyboard. Anything else on the horizon that might work?
Hello, I must be going. I'm here to say I cannot stay, I must be going.
Today's modern Hi-Tech addict owns at least 4 devices ;-):
In the future these these devices will communicate/collaborate with each other wirelessly using Bluetooth ("pocket clients" see later in my post) or 802.11 wireless networking ("pocket server") It cold look like the following:
In short words, your PDA will deserve the name "personal digital assistant" even more than it does today.
1. email and internet surfing.
2. built-in GPS and mapping.
3. icq/gaim chat.
4. latest hot stock reports.
5. streaming audio/video.
6. built-in webcam.
7. integrated cell phone/answering machine/pager w/ caller ID.
8. built-in CD/DVD player. (mini-Japanese techno. size- all under 3/4" (1.9cm)
9. expansion/pcmcia slots.
10. 8-hour battery.
...some days you're the dog, some days you're the hydrant...
"PC" is an abbreviation for "Personal Computer." I don't believe the PC is obsolete, and it probably won't be for quite some time. Just like the first cars were known as "horseless carriages," we'll continue to use the term PC for what a new term will be needed.
I see in the future, not a society where information is retrieved at libraries, in the corner of someone's home, or at a workstation in an office complex. The PDA will become an extension of a PC, more so than ever before. Technologies such as Bluetooth and CDMA will allow PDAs to directly connect to the Internet with bandwidth which seems "overpowered" to us now. Processors such as the Crusoe and StrongARM series will give our "overpowered" PDAs a "real" engine to run "real" programs.
The Internet plays hell with our new definition of "Personal Computer." The boxs sitting on your desktop now will move to under your tables or hidden away in the basement. A silent blinking box with a wire to the Internet via your personal lan and net domain. Your PDA will connect to these systems and run the services YOU want. Mail, web hosting, data storage, and more data processing than your "overpowered" PDA will ever support. This can happen because the PCs will always have more space for more stuff than a PDA will.
I used to think protocols such as the ones used in X-Windows would be given a new life when this happens. Your PDA would become a simple X client to your P.C. at home. If you didn't have a PDA, there would be public access terminals that you could give your username and domain to log into and VIOLA, you'd have "full" access. However, I've reconsidered and see a world where the PDA is a condensed information processor with sensoria. You can do little tasks (surfing web, editing documents, and equiv) on your PDA, but when you need that SETI@Home client running, it'll be on your PC.
Maybe I've stolen quite a bit from authors like Greg Bear or Neal Stephenson. However, I believe we will have a completely different definition of the "Personal Computer" when we have a new architecture.
Great, so we can have a really small doohickey to do stuff quickly. The problem I see in the future of portable computing is interface. Get this little doohickey to understand me when I'm talking (or thinking) to it, then you've got a product. Until then, much smaller than a palm pilot, and you've got problems.
(1) Run in hotter environments such as outdoors or in desert climates, while still providing plenty of processing power.
(2) Run from within a totally air tight sealed metal box (CPU heatsinked to case) box. This lets machines operate in dirty, dusty, smokey environments, that would gunk up fans in no time.
(3) Run in isolated environments where high reliability is needed and maitenance personnel simply cannot check hardware often. e.g., radio repeater controller atop a mountain peak accessible only by helicopter. A cool CPU makes possible a machine with no moving parts to break down and lead to other failures.
Get the TM chips into desktop CPU's now!
1. Face recognition mode. I look at someone - mentally hit the "who the fuck are you" button - and I get a head-up-display of name, context, wife/children's names etc. Could also be used to make "advice" on food choices etc.
2. Deja vu mode. Hit another button and a data base of previous frames and situations is searched to tell me if this has actually happened before.
3. "I told you so"/"But you said..." mode. Quick search and replay of what was *really* said way back then.
4. Diplomacy mode. When you can't be bothered or you're too tired to consider what the right thing to say is, then a rolling AI-generated script appears before your eyes. Keep to the script and you stay out of trouble. Having the PDA activate my mouth and vocal chords automatically could also be cool but maybe a step too far.
5. Drive me home mode. PDA takes control of my limbs to let me sleep/read/watch TV on the way.
OK, rediculous impracticality limit reached. Time to go.
Regards, Ralph.
I have a dream. A dream I have had since 1992, when I first met a boy named Bobby. Bobby has cerebral palsy, and is extremely affected--he can move his left arm at the shoulder, but his elbow wrist and fingers are essentially rigid. Bobby has an electric wheelchair, which he can control with his left arm. Bobby cannot speak.
There is a cruelty to cerebral palsy--oftentimes there is a perfectly normal child trapped inside that horribly disfigured body. And, sooner or later, that child realizes that he is permanently, utterly, royally screwed. It will never get better--he will always be the Hunchback. (What is child abuse? Send a severely-affected CP kid to a school named "Notre Dame.")
Bobby's parents heard of me because of an educational game I created for kids with limited language skills. They asked if I could help Bobby. Long story--but the resulting program helped Bobby go from a "spoken" vocabulary of 0 to 400 words over the weekend. But--the program was written in Visual Basic, which required a PC. I had a dream....
What I've dreamt of for eight years is an Assistive Device. Plugged into an electric chair it provides the kind of smart battery intelligence that we take for granted with notebooks--but that is completely missing from wheelchairs. Gain #1--longer battery life for chairs. In the end user's chair we have the ability to extend the simple user interface for non-verbal users--they can "mouse" to the words or phrases they need ("excuse me", "is this the A4 bus?", "please let me off at the Whitehall Mall"). Using a recorded mix of Mom's voice and Dad's, the user "speaks" with a voice that is recognizably part of his family. Gain #2. With that UberPDA the end user can communicate with a buddy--"Help! I'm stuck on a sidewalk covered in snow!". With GPS and wireless our end user is never lost, and never alone. Gain #3. For the end user who is not permanently confined to a chair we can make the uberPDA wearable--using a simple handheld device he can identify the words or phrases he needs to say--and the device "speaks" them through speakers. If he is blind we can offer GPS-based guidance--and perhaps IR-based (or sonar?) collision-avoidance.
I have a dream. With big MIPS, big bandwidth, and very, very low power consumption we can give sight to the blind, and a voice to the mute. We can take the shattered and the crippled and let them experience that most precious of dreams: independence. Autonomy. Freedom.
In 1992 I wrote an article that stated that from that day forward I was a has-been: I had written the best software of my life, and from BobbyWrite onward all would be downhill. Perhaps--maybe--I was wrong. Perhaps, with the incredible advances of technology, we can take that nascent germ of an idea and make it really useful.
One can only dream of the possibilities....
While most folks think of the portable computer as an easy interface to a networked world, and a link back to all the disparate machines you need to use (home PC, work PC, ISP, soon house and car), I think it could become the logical place for storing your personal info and serving up the apps you want the rest of the world to see.
That way, the various desks you encounter will be nothing more than generic ports for high-speed access, high-featured interfaces, and peripheral usage.
What I'd like to see would be for this model to make it possible for my personal server to be THE secure, authoritative source of data about me (not the marketeer's databases) and to be the primary way that the world's computers (my employer, stores, government, banks, etc.) interact with me. If it also made digital cash possible, that wouldn't hurt, either.
Mind you, storage and bandwidth of portables needs to advance greatly to make this real, but you asked for a vision...
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
With processors like the Crusoe, and other late make mobile processors, the power cunsumption would be dramaticly reduced, the heat output will be less, and if you have a good powersaving scheme in each processor, the power needs would dynamicly vary depending on the number of seperate threads needed at a given time.
True, this isn't a mobile system, but it is a definant possible side-effect of these new processors.
Or am I missing something?
Little Brother, watching the watchers