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PalmPilot as fetish
Croaker writes "Hmm-the PalmPilot as a fetish object? This article makes a pretty interesting case that, since people are pushing the Pilot to do things that are really outside its simple, elegant design, that it's more of a fetish symbol than
tool " Interesting account of Palm experiences.
This concept keeps coming up - the idea that being more accessible means you have to make yourself available to whomeever wants you whenever they want you. But frankly, it's just not true.
Most of us have figured out by now that when the phone rings in the middle of dinner, you let the machine pick it up. Or you use CallerID to screen. The only way technology will control our lives is if we choose to let it.
When I go home on Friday, I read my alphanumeric pager but have no compunction about ignoring anything that is not important enough to interrupt my day off. Likewise, my employer knows that something had better be on fire if I am getting work calls at home.
So, with a little common sense, don't bring the whole kit and kaboodle with you when hiking in the mountains, or learn to say "No" to whomever is bugging you while on vacation.
-- Raven
Ohmigawd you have to write on the Newton with a 'special' stylus!!! How unlike the perfectly _ordinary_ stylus on the Palm.
In a way it's too fsking bad that Garry Trudeau apparently reached the height of his cultural influence with the Newton...he singlehandedly set the state of the art back a decade or so, because it's the first damn thing _any_one mentions when they mention the Newton, or handwriting recognition in general.
No 1.0 technology could stand up to that sort of ridicule, and it showed: no one but Apple and a couple of others tried to even enter the field.
The Palm, while it _is_ a neat hack, has exactly one thing, it's size, going for it. It gets around the handwriting recognition curse by not offering any.
You have to letter (not write) things in one letter at a time, in a made-up alphabet.
Even my aged Newt 100 lets me write anywhere on the screen, and if I use it in _letter_ recognition mode, it recognizes my handwriting pretty damn well.
In it's final incarntion, the Newton handwriting recognition was fast and nearly flawless. Too bad Apple's not doing anything with the technology...
It's ironic, too that one of the things the author faults the Palm for, it's tiny little screen, is one of the things everyone raves about: 'it's small enough to stick in my pocket!'
I have a perfectly good reason for perusing the personal ads. I'm doing a study on why 90% of the people in personal ads describe their perfect evening as 'Moonlit walks on the beach' despite the fact that their ideal evening consists of watching rental movies. This is serious scientific research. The idea that I read the personals in the hope that I'll find an ad along the lines of: "SWF 25 - perfect feet, seeking pale, unhygenic, poorly hung geek with sloppy coding practices for foot worship and other podophiliac amusements." is absurd. Really. I mean it. Would I lie?
--Shoeboy
P.S. Before anyone calls the cops, note that I said podophile not pedophile. There's a big difference.
I'm not sure that you could top the original display of perfection...
"Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll
Jon focuses on the tiniest most esoteric use of what is simply "a personal robot" and writes a whole article about nothing while missing the greatest potential use of his 'bot idea. It would be like an inventor in the 1800s proposing a new creation, the electric motor, exclusively for use in vibrating dildos; totally missing a vast and more useful set of applications of such an invention.
I am unable to remember phone numbers. I spend a lot of time on the road (systems engineer). Traffic is brutal in Silicon Valley, so a lot of the time on the road I spend making and taking phone calls.
a) paper dayplanner -- don't make me laugh, sucks for so many reasons, but lack of backup and search capability top the list.
b) keep my laptop with me and open it on the passenger seat. Worked for a while, but it's slow and heavy, screen can't be read in bright sunlight, and battery life is about an hour.
c) keep my pilot with me and open it on my lap. Look up phone numbers. Jot notes and to-do's. It beeps when I'm supposed to be on a scheduled call and gives my the dial-in and access numbers.
"Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll
That's precisely why I have a sports car... 2 of them.. and a big old boat for a work car. I have them because I wanted them.
:)
Not that I would buy an SUV, personally I have no reason... but if you choose to, so be it. And I'll see ya in the rear view mirror..
Karnal
I have a custom leather top and rubber bottom case for my 3x. Does that mean my Palm is a 'top' or a 'bottom'? I know several times it has whipped me into submission when I failed to keep a scheduled appointment or complete a task.
My Palm's name is Harry.
And of course, any fetish has accompanying pictures: the ill-fated "Simply Porn" ad campaign
Still, it says something interesting about technology that we are expected to adapt to its needs rather than the other way around
This is such a specious argument. Learning to write on paper is adapting to technology. Learning to type and use a mouse is adapting to technology. Learning to drive is adapting to technology.
Until someone comes up with the perfect IUI ( Intuitive User Interface - an AI that can speak and hear and interpret pointing, head waggles, and other gestures), we will ALWAYS be adapting to technology.
Are you suggesting that a niche-appeal cartoonist is single-handedly responsible for the Newton's failure in the market? That's just sad.
Besides, if you bring 1.0 to the market and sell it at a premium, people WILL fling dung at you and stay away in droves. Is this Garry Trudeau's fault too?
It stands for Stupid Useless Vehicle or Stupid Ugly Vehicle, depending on your POV.
So overkill is okay? Efficiency is a secondary consideration? This from the the same crowd (Linux users) that like to brag about being able to host a website on their 486 DX2/66 while the Windows NT boys need Pentium Pros/2's to see decent performance?
I always thought Slashdot was frequented by people that were into using the right (command-line, GUI-less) tool for the job?
*sarcasm added for effect
I wrote a 4 frame grayscale movie of bevis and butthead headbanging for the TI-85. This was before ZShell was officially released. I came up with the way to do grayscale when the screen only could show B&W and Dan Eble wrote most of the ASM code. Dan's work eventually led to the creation of 4 and 16 shade libraries that ASM developers could use just as if the screen were a 2/4 bit display! All the TI-Calcs use this method for grayscale.
Next I wrote a generic wireframe 3D rendering library. Scale+Rotate+Translate objects in the world, specify camera angle & position, then draw it. It was probably the only programming project I ever did that I thought would become popular. Then some asshole spammed it all over usenet and the Calc-TI/Graph-TI/Zshell mailing lists claiming he wrote it (Coz it was so 31337) I abandoned because of it and the library died, sadly.
GoRK
It's kind of ironic that this man believes that Graffiti represents some kind of milestone in human slavishness towards computers. As a kid in the 1960's, I used to watch endless This Is Your Future documentaries, all which assumed that the crooked looking alphanumerics that you see on the bottom of your personal checks were going to be how all printed media was going to look....about the year 2000. While "computer literacy" (for want of a better, less anachronistic, term) was trumpeted as the greatest thing since sliced bread, the specifics usually boiled down to learning to read the patterns of punched cards, which, along with the binary system, would slowly render our fusty old Roman alphabet and decimal arithmetic obsolete.This would be necessary, since even quite modest homes would own a computer, or at least a terminal, and it would be simply more convenient to apply the same system to everyday life than to demand anything more of the machine.
Well, it's true that quite modest homes own computers, and microwave ovens, too. But I wonder out loud how many of you could read an 80-column card, or for that matter have used binary arithmetic outside of technical life. (Note: Playing NIM as a sucker bet doesn't count.) Truth is, the history of computing since that time has been one of progressively increasing "user-friendliness"--we don't have to (personally enter the source code for every program we want to use, struggle with huge decks of potentially slippery cards, worry about paper tape chad, deal with large rolls of newsprint, keep our silicon friends--and ourselves-- in large glass climate-controlled boxes in order to work, READ TYPE THAT LOOKS LIKE THIS, etc.) The fact that the Palm only reads Graffiti isn't so much a experienced butler's demand from an aquiescing employer as it is the pleading of a newly hired counterman at Mickey D's to please, please, decide what you want before ordering, and to do so in English. Experience will come in time, and with it, a degree of sophistication. Till then, I suppose, we'll all be patiently having to explain that the Number 4 Supersize is a double quarter pounder with cheese, with large fries and drink.
teleny, friend of cats.
Believe me, I'm not jealous. I don't own a car at all, I don't want to own one. I just think it's stupid to spend a great deal of money on something that not only is unecessary but also degrades my quality of life by polluting the air, wasting space and make idiots feel like they are invicible while they control 2 tons of hurtliing steel.
Sorry, it's a sore spot with me.
matthew reilly
Some of us have had our asses saved by programming a TI-81 to iteratively solve Fourier series on tests that we could not do by hand...
and nobody was the wiser
-------------------------------END--COMMUNICATION
I believe that was the original definition of hacker. Hack it to shreds to find out what you can do with it.
--- Join my team at www.dcypher.net $10,000 to the winning computer #147 "Homebuilt Computer Users"
...except when the screen is 160x160 pixels, which is not big enough to hold a long sentence.
I tried writing long pieces on my Pilot, and found it to be more difficult and challenging than writing on something with a larger screen (such as vi on anything VT100-sized). The lack of context means that you have to mentally keep track of what you've written more than a few lines ago, otherwise you end up paging back and forth a lot, as well as omitting and/or repeating things.
If you don't need portability, use your desktop. If you want the best in functionality (and ease of use) to portability ratio the Palm wins hands down. (palms down?)
Admiral Yamamoto
It's called OmniRemote.
http://www.pacificneotek.com
I have owned a palm pilot, and in my honest (and unedumikated) opinion they are nothing more than a little gizmo for wannabe-geeks and "busy" CEO's. They do not have any interesting features to them, the display is rivaled by a C=>64 and it's ugly! ... a bulky little thing to stuff in any pocket, I simply do not see what the fuss is... down with the Palm Pilot, back with the Newton - the last message pad was what 167mhz?
Umn - call me crazy (everybody else does), but nobody lumps big trucks with SUV's. I consider a double cab truck a big truck, not a SUV. Stop projecting your insecurities about your vehicle and let the rest of us ./
slashdot username - at - email.domain.name
I've got the original USRobotics Pilot 5000 with a 1meg Pro upgrade. It's been my loyal friend for a few years now. I cried when I cracked its casing trying to yank the stylus out one day. Its screen is scraped all to hell, and the back memory panel falls off every chance it gets. I've been through about 12 styluses and will be on #13 soon.
Pilot lovers, do not dispair. Do not be afraid to be a Pilot lover. Times will change, people will begin to accept you. Remain loyal to your 5000's those of you who love the youngest of the Pilots, they will be loyal to you.
Join NAMPLA!
I was addicted to mine for about 18 months. The fractals programs were cool as hell...
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
The Palm Personal was on sale for a pretty low amount on the clearance rack at the local Office Depot, I'd just been back-paid three months of GI Bill benefits for courses I'd paid for already, and the job I had during last school year sometimes involved being a desk nomad. Worse, sometimes I wasn't given anything to do. I just sat, waiting for a phone to ring.
So I bought the Palm knowing, before I had it out of the box, that I was going to download a doc reader and Go. The four hour stretches at an alien desk became a little more tolerable, and I eventually converted some db's we used at that place into JFile format, so I could free myself of needing to scamper up three flights of stairs and down a hall to get at information I needed from time to time.
Sure, it's easier to get a book from the library or bring a magazine, and a nicely indexed printout of the sort of information I needed would have worked. Packing my old GameBoy (which kept me entertained many a night of radio watch while I was in Korea) would have provided the games. But like I said: it was on sale, I had the money, and it's useful without me bending my brain to make it so.
An ex-military note: I would never have used a Palm while in the Army. Some young staff officer had a Newton and a custom holster that he wore around Brigade HQ, and he was the only time, as a junior enlisted soldier, that I ever saw officers break down and poke fun at a brother officer in front of the enlisted. Plus, I'm sure I would have tried to drag it along on a jump or out into the field and smashed it.
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mphall@cstone.nospam.net
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mphall@cstone.nospam.net
"A horse laugh is worth a thousand syllogisms"
I *need* my Palm.
I *need* my SUV, for the interior room, and the occasional ability to handle rough terrain/bad snow days, and the ability to crush Honda Civics that get in my way.
I do agree that 99% of SUV-drivers don't *need* SUVs, and would probably be much better off with a minivan or AWD subaru or volvo station wagon. But don't assume all SUV drivers are of that ilk.
As for your demographics estimate for the Palm, what doctor with a flashlight handed you that number? With the increasing whizz-bangedness of the computer age, the author of the article is way behind the curve. I am now expected to have all of this information at my fingertips, and though pocket spades is nice, the "basics" of what the Palm is intended to do are a necessity for an airhead like me to do my job. It also made my wallet MUCH thinner, as it is no longer used as a carrier for dozens of misc. sticky-notes.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I have a cel phone. *I* pay the bill. It's *my* convenience. Same with my home phone. Just cause I have a phone doesn't mean I have an obligation to answer it (no matter what ASSumptions others make) It takes a while to get over the twitching caused by an unanswered phone, but once you get past that, it's pretty cool.
If you pack your satellite uplink communications device in the mountains, you have no one but yourself to blame. When I'm off the clock, I'm off the clock. If I don't feel like carrying my cel phone or pager, I don't.
Yup, I've missed out on a party or two. Darn. That woulda happened if I didnt have these toys.
Oh, and I love my Palm connecte device.. but if I want to run FreeCell on it, I do. Guess who paid for it?
Restrictions are prohibited. Be well, get better.
Ah, sexbots. Something to replace your palm and your Palm Pilot.
---
Have a sloppy night.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
COOL!!!! Where do I find this????
a picture is worth a thousand words, and a gesture is worth a million. By itself, your post is meaningless, but by posting this message twice with different line breaks you show a degree of lameness (is that a word?) that mere words are not sufficient to describe. I'm not sure if you are really lame, or if you are a poetic genius of unprecidented brilliance. I'm sorry that this is totally offtopic, but this little pair of posts aroused such a degree of pity in my breast that I had to comment. It was pure poetry.
--Shoeboy
Then I tried using it. I don't know if it is because it's Wince, whether I am a dyed-in-the-wool Franklin addict, or the state of the art isn't quite there yet, but the result was the same; I have never been more disorganized in my life. Since I couldn't use it as an organizer, it became a lame game machine, doing nothing but sucking up time. Worse, I can't hack it. I'm not buying a compiler for it, I can't find a Perl interperter for it, and you can't replace hardware boards. It's now sitting in the trunk of my car.
Part of what bugged me is that I can't set it up the way I want about it. The reason I stick with a dead-tree planner is that paper is infinitely hackable. The Wince box forced me to plan its way, which had nothing to do with the way I do things.
The other problem stems from the fact that a PDA is not an island. You need to sync it up with desktop stuff. That's well and fine by itself, but how good is the desktop stuff? The only thing I would consider would be the Pilot/Franklin Software combo, but the Franklin Planner desktop software is Windows-only.
The PDA technology just seems too limited and immature to help me. I figure it does help others, but it just doesn't work for me. I'll check the field out in a few years, but for now I am using dead trees until the twisted sand can do better.
--The basis of all love is respect
Not true! I bought my first Palm in February of this year, basically because I could afford to shell out the US$150 for a Palm Pro. It was stolen about 3 weeks ago, and I was RUINED!! Ruined, I tell you. Then a co-worker sold me his old Palm III, and now I go to dept. meetings and we all beam away just as though all of us had had Palms all along...
Once you get into using them, they become great PDA's, and you really learn to love 'em.
Plus also, you can write cool programs, play games, everything. Palms are so great that those who use them recognize each other as a fellow traveler. Yeah, I'm sure that there are some Wired-readin', coffee-drinking, fast car drivin' marketroids out them with 'em, but those are the only people who care about that kind of crap.
Veteran Palmists will get a kick out of you enjoying your new nerd-o-tron...
I wish they used formats like CF for memory..it would make it so much easier to upgrade. And I don't care what anyone says..grafitti sucks..period. Jot is a lot more intuitive/closer to my own chicken-scratch
I was born with a couple of pals... err... palms I mean.
My weapon of choice. At my high school everybody was forced to buy a G as a freshman, but I was the only kid who even bothered to learn how to program it. But it was cool because then all my friends really appreciated all the stuff I made it do.
:-)
Once I started writing progams for it that didn't fit in the machine, I bought a GX. Those were the good old days, ripping through Riemann sums, turning the television on in the middle of class, playing Christmas carols on the internal speaker (I actually wrote one piece that required 4 HP's to play in harmony), playing Baballe (this phat 3d game where you were a ball on a moving and changing set of planks), looking at a grayscale picture of Pamela Anderson in the middle of sex ed....
No joke, I stayed up until 4 or 5 the night before my Honors Physics exam writing programs that made all the problem sets unbelievably easy. The calculator would ask you questions in plain english then use its own logic to find the answer for you. I finished the whole test in 15 mins and got a perfect score. The teacher didn't have any problems with this because he realized that if I knew the material well enough to write the programs I deserved the grade.
Then I defected to Ti with my purchase of the TI-89. Good calculator (very nice screen), but I never had the time to really play with it, college essays and all. I still miss the HP.
I, too, could put to good use any spare palms
When I was in high school I sold my '67 Mustang and bought a 48K Apple][+ with an ancient hard drive called a tape recorder and a black and white tv. I went from babe magnet to shunned geek overnight.
I remember one of those chicks asking me what you could do with a computer. She made a stupid sexual joke when I replied "anything." and I suppose, in hindsight, she had foresight.
What's my point? Oh yea.. Palms are kind of geeky right now, and they won't get you laid like a Stang was meant to do, but they will, in ten years time, evolve into something that will. Apple][+'s and other devices of the time have evolved into easy-to-use multimedia powerhouses that allow one to meet babes anywhere on the planet.
I remember reading about a silly little Japanese toy. I can't remember what it was (is?) called but it is sort of a little pager sized short range two way communicator device that was designed, like virtually everything man has ever devised, to get you laid. You input specs for your mate into the thing, i.e. tall, non-smoker, likes movies, etc., and when two of these litte electronic mating calls are within range, the devices will alert each wearer that there is either a match or a no match within ass-slapping-boob-grabbing range.
So what do we use palms for you ask? It is instinct and evolution. Palms are dinosaurs by tomorrows standards but they will evolve into something you fasten into a little hole you poke through your earlobe. They will function as the electronic mating call only much more powerful.
SUV=stupid ungainly vehicle
Tops are from Mars, bottoms are from Venus.
>also degrades my quality of life by polluting the air
/. settings to see all and know all. Only the closed minded who filter their WORLD will not see this, but they're a lost cause anyway. Choosing to only look at the better parts of reality won't improve reality.
To really believe this kind of bullshit thinking would require everyone worldwide to abandon all technology (to avoid offending your air or water or whatever in any way). And even then, you'd bitch about how so-and-so shouldn't have another kid because it'll consume more of the world's food and starve you just a tiny bit more. Sorry, but all things operate at the expense of other things. That's fucking reality. My goal is to make sure I and my line not on the latter side of this equation at all costs.
A true altruist would have no choice but to kill himself immediately. Just by existing, you're one of us, adding to global entropy, only you're too stupid and self-richeous to admit it.
Moderators go ahead and score this to -1 but everythig I said is true, and said truth will still be here for all who open their eyes and
Sorry, I am a geek and I actually prefer reading on paper because it is so impossible to read anything lengthy off a screen of any sorts, let alone one that is green and only 2"x2"!!!
The sad thing for me is that the Palm get so much
press of this type. It's not like they invented a
new concept or anything!
I was doing most of this kind of stuff on a Psion
(an Organizer II LZ) back in 1989, FFS! Palm just
took an existing product/concept and refined it -
and now the converts are becoming zealots!
PDAs are great, sure. They can be life-changing.
But Palm != PDA.
Psion did it first, and for my money, still do it
best.
Liam P. ~ "Intelligence is a lethal mutation." (me)
That's fine, if you don't mind the fact that it has no non-audible way of notifying you. (i.e. it just utilizes the Palm's beeping, there is no vibration-emitting device)
> To really believe this kind of bullshit thinking
> would require everyone worldwide to abandon all
> technology
If people used technology responsibly, this wouldn't be a problem. It's the application of the technology that is the issue.
> Sorry, but all things operate at the expense of
> other things. That's fucking reality.
The *reality* is we are not living in a sustainable manner. Can you really argue that at our current rate of consuption (for your bloated SUV's, supersized houses, useless material goods) that we would not run out of natural resources?
> My goal is to make sure I and my line not on the
> latter side of this equation at all costs.
That's a wonderful attitude, sir. "Stick it" to everyone else before they "stick it" to you. I believe that human kind's task in the next century will be to harmonize with nature and to use technology for the betterment of all people, not for the fulfillment of selfish desires and greed. Yes that sounds "flowery" and half the time I can't believe it comes out of my mouth as I normally take the cynical approch.
If you look at today's problems and make an educated guess as to thier impact on the future, you need to ask yourself what kind of legacy are we leaving for future generations?
Even my mom likes it, and she thinks most technogadgets are dumb.
"There are some people who, if they don't know, you can't tell 'em." - Louie Armstrong
>That's a wonderful attitude, sir. "Stick it" to everyone else before they "stick it" to you.
Yep. It's worked for billions of years. It's why we're all here. It's the way all life works. It's the way life will continue to work. Who do you deign to be to say what has worked since the Earth formed is wrong. How arrogant. You are a speck in history. The dinosaurs screwed over countless of species to extinction. When the climate shifted, mammals started to do the same, and now it's our turn. Someday it'll be out turn to die too, but not without a fight. Tell me what percentage of all know species are extinct today? Are we doing anything wrong? Nope. We're just following the natural order.
hehe
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Well I saw a guy with a rubber case on his and he was trying to fit it all in his mouth.
So, yes, thats probably a fetish.
maybe they were trying to avoid the Slashdot Effect?
Its definitely funny, mainly because i've tried the same things with my now dead Psion3a, i even wrote a ~8000 word story on a long road journey once.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
For those who want to read the article, he re it is.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
The palm pilot will never replace the secretary's box.
I find that the undertones of the article scream out one large fact. The author is in denial of his geek-hood. I mean come on every geek on the planet knows its much better to read an article on a screen of some sort rather than a smashed together ex-tree (paper).
If you haven't figured it out already, here's a working link.
I've never seen such a hideous 404
The dates, memos, address book, and all that are handy, but the ability to read hypertext documents anywhere has been a great asset.
i love my palmpilot (III, even though V looks cooler, it's way more $$$, and no significant improvements.) but i find that even a $200 piece of technological marvel can help me improve my time management skills. sure, it's great for email and phone number tracking (especially, when you're double booting into NT and linux, and can't have one address book :-(
/. right now ;-)
:-)
but the "to do" list, and the calendar don't help me at all. i just can't stick to them...even modern technology can't make me STOP being a slacker....
i'm sure i'm not the only one. come on, you're wasting time reading
-iGor (pronounced like iMac
I used to be with it Then they changed what it was Now what I'm with isn't it and what's it seems weird and scary to
Using that definition, I guess there are a lot of us who have duct-tape and WD-40 fetishes...
And all of you running Linux PPC on your iMac: You've got an iMac fetish. Actually, that last bit seems pretty plausible. Running Linux on a big translucent butt-cheek...
Prolly so...I know *I* get turned on by *my* palm...
---
Put Hemos through English 101!
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Why the heck do people get palm's? Just to waste money on something they don't need? Hey moderators don't -1 this, i really want to know why people get them.
Back in tech school I programmed a number guessing game into my HP-11C that would end up getting passed around the room during boring lectures. I got a second HP-11C a few years ago at a swapmeet. It's not as powerful as my upgraded HP-48SX but it's a nice package.
I think that this is simply a tribute to geekdom.
Taking an object, in this case a Palm Pilot, and seeing exactly how much stuff you can make it do is not anything new. I'm sure there are tons of you who spent HOURS programming something on a TI or HP calculator... something totally worthless no doubt, but just to see if it could be done.
If it wasn't for people who constantly strain and push whatever systems their on, then there would be little incentive for advancement.
On that note, anyone have a spare pilot they want to send me
>How many people that own one actually have driven it [SUVs] on anything but pavement?
So what? I hope you're not suggesting that people be forced in any way (by the gov't or by peer pressure) to buy only what they need and not what they want. People work hard to earn money and use some of it for totally unnecessary luxuries. What's the problem. This is normal behaviour. If a single guy wants to buy, and can afford a 10 bedroom house and 3 SUVs, is that a problem for you? Should anyone but him be involved in the decision?
Or maybe you're just jealous of the folks in the big SUVs because you can't afford one yourself? Hmmmm?
for beaming, HotSyncing, possible LTR.
I'll be your cradle if you're into PDA.
Send picture of Palm Connected Device.
I should go home. I must be missing PalmOS Night at the fetish bar or something.
Notice his style!
The article mentions Pilots are between $200 and $300...interestingly, though, the 2 meg Palm III is now down to about $160 new, via buy.com.
I think the most interesting application I've heard of for a Pilot is the adjunct to the TV remote control program that will let you control a Furby. I should try that sometime.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I knew you could.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I can't speak for others, but my Palm III has proven very useful to me. I'm not very organised by nature, but the Palm eliminates some of the most grievous aspects of this. I no longer run all over the place frantically looking for a scrap of paper with a phone number/assignment/address/whatever scrawled on it, for instance, and the little Datebook is good for noting important and not-so-important events weeks or months ahead of time. I've never been able to use a calendar very religiously.
It may have a lot to do with the "gadget factor" -- the Palm is versatile and fun to use (PocketChess and MineHunt fill long minutes at work when things are slow), and so I keep it with me, unlike bulky and unentertaining paper planners (the pens to which I am always losing!).
Whatever the reason, the Palm does what I need: keeps a fair amount of basic personal data at my fingertips, beeps to remind me of important things, entertains me once in a while, and helps a bit with procrastination (it's harder to ignore if it's harder to forget, and it's fun to click the box on the "To Do" List and make an item disappear!).
Just my experience. I'm a satisfied customer. I also kind of like that programming for the Palm is like programming in earlier days of yore: programmes get measured in kilobytes and processor speed must be taken into account. Tight code has virtues all its own.
Your obedient servant,
Anonymous Coward
New Fetish: Lonely Hackers Getting Perverse Pleasure From Using Palms for Unintended Purposes!
I think the palm sucks. Sue me now!
It sucks because:
1. Its 16Mhz, what the hell did you expect?
2. It has not HTML web browser? Sheesh.
3. Its too small.
4. It has a low res screen.
5. I don't like it.
6. It doesn't have more then 4MB ram.
7. It can't support thousands of colors.
8. It isn't made by the evil empier.
Is anythink her slander? I don't think so.
Oh, any by the way... Steve Case is fat, and US Robotics should be making thoose little toys that follow lines- not palms. Too bad 3Com bought em.
C`mon ppl! let's stop this... ;) buy it and use it...very usefull
palm is real working horse...
i use it to save many little things
and do many of little work...
credit card numbers,phone numbers,bank pins,
and all other you can save in palm...
so it's not a doll,or fetish object...
not for me!! i use it in my day work...
PalmV rulez
thing in knowledge hands...
This got a score of 2 WHY?
couldn't you just take a book with you? I mean, they have these big buildings now where there are lots of books, and they let you rent them *for free* there called "librarys" and you should look into it. much nicer then the little 160x160 screen of the palm pilot :)
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
So, I'm used to reading entire books on the Palm IIIx and I love this beast a lot. But what's next? Why does the thing run at such a ridiculously low processor speed? What is wrong with more memory or maybe a little mass storage card, stick, sliver or whatever? Why can't I dictate to the thing for hands free note taking?
The PP is nice but it ain't state of the art. It has some growing to do. And no, the VII isn't largely in the right direction. I want real full Internet access, not to pay through the nose for some speciality Internet services including even a per byte charge! Is this the third Millenium or what?
> It's worked for billions of years. It's why we're
> all here. It's the way all life works. It's the
> way life will continue to work.
Yes, yes... survival of the fittest. I'm familiar with this theory. What you have forgot is humans have evolved to the point where we can determine when our base, primal behavior serves to our detriment.
> The dinosaurs screwed over countless of species
> to extinction. When the climate shifted, mammals
> started to do the same, and now it's our turn.
So, we are the same as dinosaurs? Now you throw evolution out the window... humans are (to our knowledge) the most intelligent species yet to inhabit the earth. The dinosaurs died out because they couldn't adapt their behavior or to changes in the environment. Humans the last time I checked are pretty adaptable. Most importantly, humans are also capable of great compassion and love and it's because of this that we do change our behavior and attitudes. Mr. T-Rex most definitely does NOT fall into this category. OTOH, humans are capable of great cynicism and bitterness which leads you down the road to becoming a person resistant to change. I don't know you as a person but you seem to fall in the latter category.
> Are we doing anything wrong? Nope. We're just
> following the natural order.
One can argue that there truly is no right or wrong and on this basis your statement isn't inherently wrong. However, it is a statement of a five sense human. If you can't see it, touch it, smell it, taste it, hear it--to you, it doesn't exist or is not possible. Yes we have observed many species die out over the ages and many more evolve into what they are today. Strangely, a species called "Human" came out of nowhere in evolutionary terms. Once we learned to walk on our hind limbs and found how well our hands were suited for making and using tools, it was a very short amount of time that we lost our hair and our brain mass tripled.
We have become masters of our environment, shaping and forming it to our needs and liking. Increasingly, anything we can imagine, we can turn into reality--almost God like. Is it the "natural order" that we reverse engineered the laws of physics and harnessed the power of the atom? Is it the "natural order" that we have unlocked the secrets of DNA and now hold the keys to life itself? What makes humans so special? Yet you insist that when we rape and pillage the planet, we aren't doing anything wrong, we're just following the "natural order". I say again, this is a statement of a five sense human.
Maybe its time we as a species acknowledge something larger than us--call it the "Cosmos", call it "The Source", even call it "God". I don't think our place in the universe is to sit here on Earth and slowly self destruct. You may want to consume and destroy and wrap it up with pretty paper and a bow called self delusion. You may even think it's your "right". At the rate we are going now, we are going to hit a brick wall and it will probably happen in my lifetime. With 5-6 billion humans that you now share this planet with, people who think like you will have to put their selfish desires away or it will be YOU who will go the way of the dinosaur.
Palm aces size AND battery life.
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
I refused to believe the palm-as-fetish thing at first, but then I noticed the following 2 items in the Seattle Weekly personal ads -
Case 1
Men Seeking Men:
GWM 35 fit, attractive seeks same for vigorous palm action.
Case 2
Men Seeking Women:
SWM, College student - 24 Tired of staying home on friday nights having sex with my palm. Looking for older woman for cheap meaningless fling.
The evidence cannot be denied.
--Shoeboy
"Real Hackers"** run PIM software on their trusty HP-48.
** Not really, of course, if you want to think otherwise, of course.
There are maybe a few thousand people in the world that actually need a Palm Pilot. I firmly believe this to be true. Just like there are maybe a few thousand people in the world that actually need to create PowerPoint presentations. Its all about the *perception* of being important and/or productive and 'cool'. Its just like the so-called Sport Utility Vehicles. How many people that own one actually have driven it on anything but pavement? I love technology, but I hate 'overkill' technology. And thats what the Palm Pilots are. For most people, a paper notebook would be better.
Who needs Palm Pilots? You know, Katz article on sexbots neglects other uses for these devices, namely as a vessel into which other once separate features could be built. Just think, they could assume the tasks of your palm pilots, cell phones, voice mail, pagers, notepads, phonebooks,... heck even your secretary, all in addition to their original purpose. What a wonderful way to legitimize these things. The introduction of these bots, minus the sleaze upgrade, would further help to legitimize them into society. They would become genuinely useful tools. I think this usage would make the sexbot aspect of bots really quite secondary. Of course I suppose your 'bot will need a full fare plane ticket if you plan to take her/it with you, unless you plan to stuff her into the overhead compartment, or check her as baggage. But at least you don't have to break your back lugging her about. She's motile! This isn't all as sick as it sounds, is it? (*wry grin*)
Its all over...why didn't someone tell me? My IIIx is arriving on Monday! How could they do this too me? :)
I agree with the author: the Palm enthusiast craze is reminiscent of the early PC world. And they are ultra-cool. Heck, PalmChess is enough of a reason to own one.
BTW- All geeks should seriously think about picking up a Palm. They are almost requisite geek gear. The III's are really cheap right now, so you can jump on the boat for not much dough. Seriously, if I had waited much longer to get a Palm, my LUG probably would have kicked me out...
--Lenny
I was going to make the obvious palm and fetish joke, but then I saw this part.
"Magazines that specialize in what might be called business erotica, such as Fast Company and Wired, often describe such futuristic moments in rapturous, almost orgasmic tones."
Can't top that.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I'm glad somebody got it. maybe if i'd added a "first post" at the end it would have been the perfect last line? -Lisa
I'm a surgical resident - I can't tell you how useful this little tool is for saving patient data, operative logs, important phone, pager #'s , antibiotic data and all sorts of other crap - like when my cases are scheduled. Basically 85% of the residents in my program have one of these because of those reasons and because it keeps our lab coats from overflowing with paper junk. Plus I can sit and play a game or take care of some other stuff when I'm waiting for anesthesia to finish putting the pt. under.
..........FULL STOP.
Doesn't this article apply to technology in general? It wants to extend a bit of truth to unabomber-manifesto proportions. Still, I imagine there are more than enough anal editors, middle managers, and meddlesome cow-orkers to abuse a geek's wired-ness.
I confess: I have a Palm organizer and a Nokia cellphone. Both have changed my lifestyle in subtle yet profound ways: the organizer let me let go of the little yellow stickies that always seemed to hide when I most needed their help (and let go of the frustration that ensued); it gave me the scheduled ammunition to tell people "no" -- I have the same 24 or so hours in a day as everyone else and now have a handle on how I use my 24; and it became another little burden to carry around. However, it's there for me to use as I need.
Unfortunately, choosing the progressive, cellphone-is-my-only-phone stance was not the best choice for me. It made me a perpetual resource for others: I'm always on, always available, always ten digits away. It's so convenient, yet so frustrating. Even my beautiful girlfriend complained that every time she calls, I answer. Everyone needs time "unplugged," whether we geeks admit it or not... she was irked that my continual availibility made her feel intrusive. Fortunately, I'm finding a balance by using the "silent" mode more and refusing calls at inopportune times. IRL, have you ever been momentarily ignored while your conversation partner takes a call? It's a silent compliment to refuse the call, apologize for the interruption, and continue with the conversation.
[mental note: it's uncool to get a call from clueless customers while mugging at ALS]
I enjoy being a geek, and I don't regret my early-adopter tendencies. But even geeks are social animals -- I'm working to find a balance between being wired and having privacy.
How do you manage your connectedness?
rm
Hey, when I used to collect musical lyrics and put them on my web site.. it was a fetish. By then lyrics.ch had popped up as leo went down. We all remember that.
The fetish part of it is the consistent, driving to go further, with something. In this case, people are trying to drive thier palm's (yes you momo's.. they've been renamed a year or two back) to do more. It's not a geek thing.. it's a motivational thing. I'm a psych minor.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
I feel like a geek for *not* having one. Now, if I got one, I'd just be a wannabe. -Lisa
I feel like a geek for *not* having one.
Now, if I got one, I'd just be a wannabe.
-Lisa
>Its just like the so-called Sport Utility Vehicles.
>How many people that own one actually have driven it on anything but pavement?
I wish the media would stop lumping "sport" and "utility" together. I keep hearing the media ranting on about how SUVs are just a yuppie gas guzzler and are more likely to kill (the other) people in a collision. I drive a big 4-door double cab truck because I actually need it to have room for passengers and to HAUL stuff (lumber, cement, pianos, sofas) not as part of my job but for whatever personal need arises (and they arise often). My truck is not a "sport" vehicle and I resent being classed with show-offs who are going to end up getting heavy gov't-mandated restrictions placed on my vehicle. The media and everyone need to separate the U from SUV when they make broad sweeping statements and really think about who they're talking about.