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Assorted CES Gizmos
Frank Buckheimer writes "The CES 2003 show in Las Vegas will give us some pretty nice introductions of some brand new products." Other submitters sent in news about a "Mini PC" the size of a paperback book, and a spiffy digital sound projector. mbstone writes "Bill Gates announced a line of MS wristwatches that receive email, stock quotes, sports scores, etc. by FM radio. Gates claims it's a 'whole new product concept that was completely incubated by Microsoft Research,' but it's really just a reprise of the Seiko MessageWatch -- mine became just a watch, sans atomic time, as of 12/31/99 when Seiko called it quits. Once bitten, twice shy. Has anybody proposed an open standard for such gadgets so that new wristwatch-data-service providers can enter the market when the old provider leaves?"
It probaby has some sort of scary homing device on it...
-Henry
--- #@$DF@#2%@^%3^&*$%FRHG%%[NO CARRIER]
I think you just did...
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
I hate paper documents... besides being wasteful of trees, any notes you take normally have to be typed up and recorded for quality purposes (like ISO). Give me a mini-PC or tablet PC anyday.. I'll even sometimes lug around a laptop.
In regards to the MS watch? Who needs that when you carry around a cell phone with the same thing or a PDA with the same thing.
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Free your mind.
And it probably runs XP, needs 512M of RAM and a P4 processor, burns your arm, keeps shitty time, locks up, is riddled with security holes, and will end up the target of some crazy project to hack in and boot linux on it.
If I understand the concept correctly, these watches are only receiving data, not sending. So basically, it's a mini-pager. Is this revolutionary?
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You may like my a cappella music
If you think that being able to receive stock quotes and sports scores on your watch is cool, then pleas, kill yourself.
Bill Gates announced a line of MS wristwatches that receive email, stock quotes, sports scores, etc.
Microsoft: Now we know where you wanted to go today!
or perhaps:
Microsoft: At least the BSOD's are smaller now.
Although the article says that the sound projector sounds great, I severely doubt it.....
Each of the 254 little speakers works off a helix of plastic that expands or contracts on an electrical signal. Because the speakers are small, they do not do bass frequencies - which means you'd need a seperate bass speaker, and for home cinema, a subwoofer also, or some combined bass / subwoofer device.
The original idea of 1ltd for the digital speaker didn't include 5.1 channel support. It was just going to be a digital hi-fi speaker, but now they're using extra computer processing to send beams of sound which you're supposed to bounce off the walls of the room to make it sound like there's speaker behind you. This is a recipe for disaster because bounced sound sounds bad, and not all rooms have walls suitable for bouncing sound. And rooms with walls that are suitable, will actually sound bad, beacause of the resonances bouncy rooms set up.
This technology will fail.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
So exactly how does this differ from a full powered 3G_UMTS_imode_etc phone ? They offer all that AND phonecalls, so I would give this a big ZERO for innovation.
My guess is that MS Research has been watching too many "Inspector Gadget" reruns.
The CES is in town. Prepare to work double shifts! Young men will venture forth from basements across the country, paying big bucks in order to be deflowered by you. Dress like a 'booth babe' and score big!
Older nerds will scrape your gullet with their rough beards, then tearfully confess that they're married, and this is the first time they've cheated on their homely wives. Laugh in their face, then go get some more geeks!
Sell, sell, sell, ladies! This is your time! And don't fall for that "I can get you out of here, and set you up with your own adult website line." The first bitch that gives me that shit will hear it from the side of my cane.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Once bitten, twice shy.
:D
dude i wouldnt worry about you hitting another y2k
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
> Vulcan hopes it will attract mobile computer-users willing to
> pay for wirelessly transmitted movie trailers and other content
Is there no point at which shame kicks in? Who where these people raised by? While I do realize that some people will pay $10 for a movie they don't intend to see just to see an anticipated trailer preceding it, $1500 for trailers seems just a tad over the top. Like there is nothing else well-heeled geeks could do with a wireless computer except watch trailers--TRAILERS, mind you, not movies. Because we certainly couldn't bring ourselves to invite global piracy and the resulting collapse of society by offering actual movies online.
TechNews.com's Cynthia L. Webb surveys the media coverage of CES in her daily column today.
How is this `mini pc' different than the Toshiba Libretto? It looks to be around around the same size (judging from the picture), and the Libretto ran windows, just like the mini pc, so ...?
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Built-in DTM, Digital Time Management.
I can just see people buying these, trying to use it outside their home time zone, and being greeted with a message stating that the EULA on the watch only allows it to be used in one time zone.
Seriously, this seems another indication that when it comes to consumer products, Microsoft has no clue what people want. The X-Box is still #3 and losing them money, and Bob was an unmitigated disaster. Do they really think that Joe Six-Pack wants and needs something like this?
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
The data will be beamed over FM radio airwaves to the gadgets, wherever they are. Consumers will pay $120 to $300 for the watches and perhaps $99 more a year for the data service.
Once the frequency is know, anyone with a shortwave will be able to pick-up the information. Of course MS could have it sent digitized and encrypted, but how long until that gets hacked? Could this be the precursor to DRM for radio?
Leave it to M$ to get the Dick but not the Tracy.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
...Microsoft has announced:
1) A wristwatch pager that supports 'push' data streams a la Pointcast (c. 1996); and
2) A 'mini-PC' that has the same form factor (and probably fewer features) than Apple's late Newton device (c. 1993).
If releasing ten year old technology isn't innovation, I don't know what is!
Doesn't it seems like the market is being cluttered with a variety of devices that do essentially the same thing? PDAs already do this, my old cell phone delivers text alerts, hell my old pager did it as well, the tablet pcs will facilitate this...its just same content, different devices.. I already have one of these given to me by my employer, its much more convenient than a clunky watch, plus, sprint gives us unlimited data on our montly plan... As far as MS goes..All of these devices center around their "software as a service" plan, which integrates into your .NET wallet which will efficiently handle this (-_-)
Solid!
If they start broadcasting FM data signals with weather/stock quotes/whatever, can anyone legally pick them up, decode and use?
Or would you be violating some sort of law if you created your own device to 'hijack' the signals?
And if the latter, is it even legal to 'encrypt' a transmission in the FM range? I thought it was licensed by the FCC solely for public broadcasting?
What's the legal status of FM/AM/VHF/UHF? I thought it was a 'you can use this frequency but anyone can hear your broadcasts' range?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
"A man with one watch always knows what time it is. A man with two is never sure."
Just imagine a Beowulf cluster of MS watches.
Not that it'll matter anyway:
"Excuse me, but could you tell me the time?"
"Well, I'd like to. Really I would. But the EULA on my watch says that its output is a trade secret and covered under DMCA copyright protection. At the very least if I told you I'd have to kill you."
The Dick Tracy watch didn't turn out quite the way we imagined when we were kids, did it?
KFG
I noticed in this article in Wired news that the agreement last month that supposedly paves the way for HDTV to be broadcast on cable will force DVRs to only allow the programs recorded to be watched within 90 minutes of being recorded!
Several other tech companies have tried this and failed. Will MS learn from history?
1.) The Apple/John Sculley watch --- Your own watch fires you every hour.
2.) The IBM watch -- They had a $35M marketing budget, and forgot to ship the watches to their distributors.
3.) The Xerox watch -- The Xerox executives decided that people don't want watches, they want photocopiers. Project scrapped.
4.) The Compaq watch -- "Sorry, we discontinued that watch. It's your problem now."
5.) Dude, I'm getting a watch!
Q: How important is Spot toward the goal of ubiquitous computing, where there are smart devices everywhere?
A: It will really make people think. [If] you can get the instant message on your wrist, people will start to think, "Gosh, this information is everywhere." And it's not just text. We can download a program that understands smiley faces and whatever you want. You could even have some specialized symbols that are just for you. So I think it's a big milestone in that.
Way to push the envelope, Mr. Gates.
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. -Oscar Wilde
I'm very skeptical of these kinds of devices. For example, how many people really want stock quotes on their watches? Is there real value in that? How is a stock ticker on a watch significantly better than a stock ticker on a PDA or cell phone? Also, beyond the cool factor, how important is atomic time to Joe Sixpack? Let's face it, if it isn't significantly better, then only technogeeks will care about it. It'll die a quick death. But wait, there's more. The other factor is this. Even if the product is significantly better in terms of functionality, if the usability sucks then uptake of the product in the market could be minimal. IMHO there are many strikes against these products becoming mainstream products any time soon.
1. More on usability: webword.com (Disclaimer: This is one of my web sites.)
2. Bell Labs Reports on Progress Towards "Dick Tracy" Watch
3. Check Out a Watch Dick Tracy Would Envy
4. IBM stuffs Linux into "Dick Tracy's watch"
5. A User Interface Toolkit for a Small Screen Device
6. Is Timing Ripe for Wrist PDAs?
How to Download YouTube Videos
If the DoD shuts down the Global Positioning System, I will look like an asshole ;)
And now they expect me to buy one just because it does, uh, one heck of a lot less than my cell phone does? My watch is my phone and I hardly ever need to look at it. There are watches everywhere these days. you can't walk or drive around Lisbon for very long without seeing one of those crappy watches that also say the temperature... it's a "public service" excuse to throw more advertising in our face since each of them is basically a tall metal pole with a big ad-rotator on top. I wish I could live in a world where business people would at LEAST be honest about their greed instead of trying to look like they're some sort of benefactor. *sigh*
You see, on the mini PC you'll be able to see trailers on the full and glorious 5.8" screen with sound coming over a crappy little piezo speaker.
Try matching *that* technology on your desktop or home theater.
It's a brave new world.
KFG
Vulcan hopes it will attract mobile computer-users willing to pay for wirelessly transmitted movie trailers and other content.
Who is actually going to pay for advertisements? Do the companies really think they'll be making money from trying to convince people to go see their movies so they can make money? Not a business strategy I'd invest in.
Find me in ~/.sig
The Microsoft Watch - it watches you!!!
Never attribute to stupidity what can be construed as a monopoly preservation tactic.
Well the try everything approach worked for Edison. He did coin the phrase "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." Though then Tesla came around and royally pissed him off. As everything Tesla tried worked.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
The mini-pc has been possible for over 6 years.. it's called the PC-104 form factor.
Embedded systems and engineering have used these ultra-mini pc's for years... just like tablet computers they are nothing but really old ideas being redone by someone today and touted as revolutionary... BAH.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
From the businessweek interview: ...
Q: How does the Spot stack up in terms of other innovations that have come out of Microsoft Research?
A: Well, Microsoft Research has contributed so many innovations to so many products that I will get myself in trouble very quickly if I start ranking or comparing.
Why is it that each time you ask MS what innovations they have done, you get no real answer?
Funny interview anyway. For once, slashdotters should read the article.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
...while developing the MiniPC:
"You know, we're just not making enough money selling software. Let's get way into hardware, that's where the _real_ margins are."
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
The MS wristwatch takes a licking and keeps onIRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL *** Address 8012abce has base at 80100000 - tick.exe
I think we've hit a plateau culturally. This is the cutting-edge, next generation of technological advancements: a wristwatch? Where's the great leap of technology? Are we that stagnant?
And yet, I realize that this is somewhat inherent in our marketing trade shows. Since the early World's Fairs, we marveled at a picture of a future we could only dream of, now we marvel at item-rehash, and spins of the same-old-technology. It reminds me of the car shows, where a beautiful new designer car is rolled out under the bump-bump music, ballons, and half-naked girls, and yet, it's a car, whose technology innards were invented in the 1950s.
So whose to blame for all this crap? I blame patents (and their extension thereof). But what good is it to complain about something without at least looking at solutions. My solution is thus: patents should only extend as far as a multiple of the current technological turnover.
Let's assume a late victorian-era inventor who invents some new whirly-gig. The invention is no small feat: precise forging and machining of parts, new alloys, highly-specialized techniques; all not to be repeated anytime soon due to the flow of information, barriers to entry, etc. Let's say the whirly-gig is a product of immense mass-appeal. The market loves whirly-gigs! How long should our inventor be able to keep a right to that intellectual property? Let's say, just for grins, 20 years. Now let's say that during that 20 years, the whirly-gig is refined, better, faster, cheaper, smaller, more features, an instruction manual in chinese; all the things associated with progress. However, at the 20 year mark, a new inventor, inspired by the whirly-gig's mass appeal, and astitute to it's inner workings, takes part of this design, and makes a toodle-doo. The toodle-doo is the first truly global product. Germans, French, English, Australians, they all love it. It spawns new products, new trade, international cooperation. But what if the patent had been granted for 40 years? Well we could assume at some point that the whirly-gig would become so cheap and affordable that it would be like selling some sort of commodity product like pencils. At some point, the manufacturing costs would become burdensome for a product at the end of it's life cycle and we'd see for perhaps say the last eight years of the patent, the same old product again and again and again. Change the colors, add some bells and whistles, but beneath it all, just a plain old tired whirly-gig.
I believe in the patent process, I believe it's made us a great country, and yet I fear we are now in the business of protecting whirly-gigs for at least a generation more to come. When I see the latest slew of gadgets, I wonder to myself: 'Will our posterity sit in some future tradeshow and watch Bill jr. show off a neato-wristwatch?'
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
--the only market I can see for the watches is to help increase some box vendors sales "buy the new belchdata2003 turbo PC, get this nifty watch *free* with purchase" like they do with printers now.
I've owned a watch that picked up Radio One in stereo.
I've owned a watch that stored all my phone numbers.
I've owned a watch that told me the room temperature.
I've owned a watch that took my pulse.
I've owned a watch that let me change the channels on the TV.
Internet? On a watch? With a Velcro strap, a non-scratch face and digital analogue hands? Nah, no thanks Casio.
...I think I get one with a built in camera instead.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
You are correct.
While it is possible to create reasonable amounts of bass using a sufficient number of small transducers, the 'real' advantage of big woofers is generally their long throw. A good woofer can have a clean displacement of several millimeters, while these small transducers cannot, without causing extreme distortion.
[The transducers don't use the helix method, as far as I can tell. They look like the same ones used in consumer audio systems by Harman and Creative Labs. The helix stuff is a different technology they're hyping.]
As for all of the 'beaming' claims, it's a load of nonsense. There may be vague lateral effects possible with this, but a phased array has to be much, much larger than the wavelengths its generating to create any substantial beam steering. Quite telling is that there isn't a shread of data available anywhere on their website or published reports.
Traditional "3D Audio" systems are a much better bet - far cheaper, and I'll bet they work as well as this (which isn't saying much).
1Limited is a VC backed company, and do not have any reasonable prospect of becoming profitable. Thus, they have to rely on hype to convince investors to keep propping them up.
Does anyone else find these offerings utterly tepid compared to Apple innovation the day before?
Bill gates announces a recylced idea for a Nerd watch that shows sport scores, headlines. The debut the smartScreen, a 1500$ screen-only that hooks to your compute by wi-fi but cant play movies or mp3s, then they announce that anyone who already bought was is out of luck since that they will be changing the specs to use 802.11a to get better bandwidth for movies. then an oversized so-called "video" ipod that also cant show DVD movies, for more bucks than a ipod.
The only thing I thought was interesting was that they decided to go with 802.11a and not 802.11g
I dont know much about these standards except what Jobs said. 802.11a is dead, because it is not backwards compatible with 802.11b hotspots whereas 802.11g is.
How is it possible that one company can lead the entire market year after year going back all the way to the taming of dynamic memory. While the other company can lead the bussiness world and innovate nothing.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It's hard to say. The news clip doesn't say much.
My watch (see it here) can send and receive pages, although typing on it involves a whole lot of keystrokes(!).
I know I'm bordering on almost an ad here, but I think the watch is really a great deal. $50, includes one year of skytel service, and a voicemail box.
Once you get it, go to mobile.yahoo.com, and click on the alerts tab. It's pretty easy to customize it for weather, stock, news, and sports alerts. I normally don't like dinner interruptions, but 15 seconds to read the Illini score at half-time is well worth it. I suppose there are non-entertainment purposes for the pager too, but I haven't used them yet!
If you're a bargain shopper, you might want to wait. The regular price on these has been as low as $40 before, and I got mine for $32.50 using a coupon code (which is now expired). Watch your favorite bargain hunting page for new coupon codes.
Free unix account: freeshell.org
Microsoft announced that to prevent piracy they will be assessing $100 to anyone who has a wrist even if the MS wristwatch is not intalled. The BSA has proposed challenge audits, in which all persons hanving one or more wrist must be able to document thay have paid the $100 wrist- site liscence or that they have purchased a MS wrist watch.
"it is just to easy for someone to remove the watch from the wrist and install it on another Wrist" said a microsoft spokes person, " that is a violation of the EULA".
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Has everyone forgotten the Toshiba Libretto? This new thing seems only marginally larger.
cut off both wrists, but the BSA said i had record of having had wrists, and then assessed me an extra penalty for having tried to cover them up...
DON'T BUY IT THEN. ARE YOU FUCKING STUPID? There is always one idiot on EVERY story saying 'well, I don't want this'. Shut the FUCK UP then!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A39647
One of the most pointless inventions known to mankind (Although we still think that they are a pretty neat idea). Although we already had a perfectly good way of telling the time we thought that we ought to invent anouther one just because we can. If it had stopped their it would only have been mildly pointless but no. The people who made these watches decided that they sould have lights, oh and an altimeter, and air pressure function and oh it should do all this at 1000m under water and with a series of musical alarms whist telling you the time in 50 countries. What mankind failed to realise is that situations which REQUIRE knowing your altitude and the time in bangladesh and Paris whilst 100m underwater in the dark to the tune of the national anthem, are quite rare..
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A183476
For hundreds of years, clocks, pocket watches and most recently wrist watches have been elegantly ticking off the seconds with style, grace and perhaps most importantly an ever increasing degree of accuracy.
Analogue watches (especially the expensive ones with sweeping second hands) are testimony to human kinds mastery of materials, art and science.
Digital watches are not.
I have resisted the urge to mention that man thinks these ugly things
"a pretty neat idea" -
Ooops.
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Oh he goes on and on and on about digital watches. I wish I could find that quote about how Humans are the only species that things digital watches are a good idea.
Oh, about half-past Blue-Screen...
The bashing isn't because it's Microsoft (well, ok, not primarily) but because the product being suggested is not only ludicrous (build a cellphone into it and you might have something, but just something that gives you stock quotes in the middle of nowhere with nothing you can do with them?) but the inventors are acting like they think it's a good idea.
When a co-worker of mine covered his PC in leopard skin fir, we all thought it was hillarious. When Apple released Aqua, we thought it sucks. Aesthetically, there's little difference between the two, but there's a difference between someone doing a one-off thing that's intended to be taken lightly, and a multi-million dollar corporation betting their food money on pretty pictures.
Likewise, an IBM researcher showing off how he has Linux running on a watch is in an entirely different universe to Microsoft selling watches that show the MSFT stock price.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Oh, sure. The manufacturing sector should suffer because you want to use the same technology for more than a few years. Where would our world economy be if we didn't replace (every few years) all our LPs with 8-track tapes, our 8-track tapes with cassettes, our cassettes with CDs, our CDs with music DVDs, etc. And that's just how music listeners help to maintain world economic growth. Get with the program!!! :-)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
"And it probably runs XP, needs 512M of RAM and a P4 processor, burns your arm, keeps shitty time, locks up, is riddled with security holes, and will end up the target of some crazy project to hack in and boot linux on it."
.conf file. It'll burn your arm anyway since Linux users prefer AMD processors. It'll also be completely security hole-free since it has no features to exploit.
Could be worse, it could be a Linux watch. The time would be undecipherable, you'll have to flash the ROM when somebody writes the am/pm upgrade, and to set the watch you have to edit an obscure
(It's a joke, laugh.)
I love the irony of two slashdot articles in a row, where one talks about Apple's Rendezvous, and the next talks about Microsoft's new 'Spot' wristwatch thingy. Apple's product is useful, open-sourced, and can provide benefits beyond Mac owners, since devices can communicate without a Mac or any Apple products at all. Contrast this with the Microsoft announcement: a clunky, expensive watch that will cost at least $100 year in service fees.
Apple Press Release
Microsoft Watch Article
But there is something more going on here. Apple is returning to its roots, and to computing's roots, by giving away software in order to sell hardware. Microsoft sees the "free software" writing on the wall, and is desperately trying to sell hardware and services. Who's going to win?
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
Are pagers ludicrous ideas?
Do they suddenly become ludicrous when they're on your watch instead of on your belt?
Or does the insanity begin when they stop giving phone numbers, and go fully alphanumeric?
Anyway, my point isn't about the usefulness of the technology. To you, it's useless. To me, watches are the gold standard of information, once only vaguely available to humans, becoming so widely deployed that the very nature of life was shifted. (Look into some of the sociological implications of the clock. They're not minor.) Attaching more context than the mere time of day seems quite apropos to this form factor -- provided it can be efficiently displayed.
Furthermore, watches happen to be, by far, the most energy efficient products in the world of consumer electronics. Owners of the Timex Beepwear complained that their watches died after three whole months! Leave your Palm alone for a week, and you've got a corpse -- and look how much love the Palm gets!
Dead batteries yield little data.
Bah. My point is that anti-Microsoft bigotry contributes nothing of value to the discussion. We both agree that a watch that informs you of Microsoft's stock price -- and nothing else -- is quite useless. But I suspect it does a little more.
People can have different opinions -- you hate Aqua, others are so attached to it that they port it to other systems whether Apple likes it or not. But your dislike of it at least comes from how it looks, not the fact that it's another crime against humanity by Apple Computer, Inc. Can I say the same about your reaction to the watch?
--Dan
In Europe it is called RDS. Every (or almost every) car radio can pick up RDS. RDS is a one way digital broadcasting system used to disseminate information about traffic jams, and other news. Now some radio stations are using it to broadcast the name of the song that is currently playing.
Is it clever? Absolutely. Is it original? The only trick now is to get FM stations to broadcast more content.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
I wouldn't doubt it's running MS-DOS so there might be more to your wise crack than meets the eye.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Because the two companies run on completely different philosophies. One is run on the philosophy of coming up with new things that are cool and interesting. A desire to make something new. The other is run on a philosophy that dictates that money is the bottom line.
One, as a company, preaches innovation. The other, touts innovation, but preaches dollars. Of course, I could get into the whole Apple doesn't make the big bucks because they don't want to argument, but I'll save that for another time.
Bite my yammer.
...the size of a paper-back?...
well the phone book is a paper-back book. so are many very large tech manuals.
"And where the heck do you think YOU'RE going today?"
Big Brother is watching you (ouch!)
(Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Gates Clones)
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
If you want something today, get a mini laptop from Fujitsu, Sony, or Dynamism.
No, not one of those hokey Fossil Palm-companions (190k my ass), but the first full fledged watch-sized PDA.
It has no wireless connection (other than the IR port), but honestly it seems pretty neat so far. It comes with a useful selection of programs, seems to be of sturdy construction, and comes with a nice GPL'ed SDK. Right now I'm just enjoying it for it's geek-factor, but it seems potentially useful too.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
I had a pager and a cell phone. My cell phone's battery lasted a day. My pager's battery lasted several months. Guess which one people could depend on reaching me with?
This is ridiculous. We've got metric shit-tons of bad ass technology coming out of CES right now (Did you see the new Casio Exilim? 3Mpix, 3x Zoom, damn near flat!). But all people here can do is bitch about Gates' new toy.
I don't think you claim practical arguments without actually seeing the thing in use. We at least had screenshots for Aqua!
--Dan
On the plus side, you could use the current time and date in a calculation to do sorta-cool time-based stuff; one example that HP gave was an application that did a real-time, continuous calculation of the lightspeed signal delay of a space probe on its way to Mars.
On the minus side... who needs to do that sort of stuff on a regular basis? And the watch was huge (1.6" x 1.8" x 1/2"), weighed 6 oz (almost 1/2 lb.!), and used a battery-eating LED display just when LCD's were becoming common. The thing had two sets of batteries... one that powered the clock and another that powered the display, and was typically replaced every 3-6 months. HP actually sold a gadget that held spare batteries and could be used to unscrew the case for replacement. The keys were tiny and recessed, requiring a stylus, which HP thoughtfully engineered into the watchband.
Finally, of course, HP had no idea how to distribute the thing. They tried to sell it through jewellers, but botched the job, since they had no idea how the watch business worked. The watch retailed for as much as $800... and don't forget, these were 1978 dollars... you could buy a Rolex for less!
Not surprisingly, they didn't sell well. By 1981, they had given up, and blown out the remaining inventory to HP employees at hugely discounted prices. Alas, I was a mere part-timer, and in any case arrived too late to buy one.
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
Microsoft announced that to prevent piracy they will be assessing $100 to anyone who has a wrist even if the MS wristwatch is not intalled. The BSA has proposed challenge audits, in which all persons hanving one or more wrist must be able to document thay have paid the $100 wrist- site liscence or that they have purchased a MS wrist watch.
"it is just to easy for someone to remove the watch from the wrist and install it on another unlicensed Wrist" said a microsoft spokes person, " that is a violation of the EULA". He went onto hint that the forthcoming "palladium wristwatch that once implanted..err.. I mean worn, cannot be removed, only upgraded from a 'trusted' member of the collective."
Not even the all-powerful reality distortion field of steve Jobs could make a data-watch seem like a major research achievement, or even new, or even something you would want touching your arm. (they are as stylish and practical is a pocket protector).
It seems to me that this has got to be an all time low point for announcements of innovation in consumer electronics. Why? Maybe its because of the down turn in the tech-market means new products are not being developed. Another possibility is that microsoft's moves into hardware production(x box,phones) and Hardware specification (palladium, watches, media player, smartScreens) is having a chilling effect on the electronics industry. Recently they (allegedly) tried bankrupt a phone maker and move his technology to a competitor. Shades of stacker and all the other software companies microsoft co-opted, ruined then bought their technology.
There is little doubt that MS stifled innovation in software. Just the fact that jobs could tweak an open source project to tripple the speed of a web browser over IE, when IE has had a clear field to innovate for five years or more, speaks volumes about the MS stifle field. How could apple even dream they could technologically beat MS in the Power point market, but they did. What is MS doing with its 90% market share besides sitting on it, and creating palladium to keep it?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
You could use a receiver that phase locks to the carrier and compares the received carrier phase to a local reference oscillator. If you know your geographic location, you can compensate for propagation delay. i've seen atomic clock based timing systems that used LF receivers to check the accuracy of the system against signals broadcast by timing and navigation services such as WWVB and Loran.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
"Hey buddy, got the time?" "Hold on, gotta reboot my watch...."