Absolutely lovely, now when my girlfriend wants attention when im on the computer all she has to do is lie naked on me and i'll se her naked body as a keyboard:)) Now all we need is a mouse like this and we can perform the JEDI MOUSE TRICK.
I guess that will take care of that whole tactile feedback issue that a few other posters have noted.
carnegie mellon university set up campus-wide wireless back in the day. they also had a campus $1 movie theater which I regularly took advantage of. Believe me it was pretty fucking annoying when the guy in front would fire up his laptop to go browse the web or IM (CMUers will remember zwrite) someone.
wireless access has its benefits...movie theaters are not the time and place for it.
Talk about bad sportsmanship though. Even if MS had good intentions (ha!) there's no way anybody's going to say 'Go MS!'
I agree about bad sportsmanship even though I pretty much believe MS was technically in the right.
MS is a relative newcomer to the gaming world, and really should play the politics game a little better. I would have expected MS, being a mature company itself, to show a bit more courteousy. After all, no one likes to hear about any tension at these sort of events.
And I know Sony can be a bully too, but little anecdotes like these become significant.
And here's an aim conversation that I had with a friend immediately after we read the article:
MrSahala: here's the BS MrSahala: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-861947.html jeffjm ann: i bet it wasn't a company decision MrSahala: wasn't MS decision? jeffjmann: i bet the vp moron thought he was being badass MrSahala: yeah probably MrSahala: power trip MrSahala: he probably went back to bill g talking about how cool it was to be a badass. jeffjmann: and bill g proceeded to rape his ass with an xbox controller MrSahala: bill should give him a bitch slap and fire him jeffjmann: yeah jeffjmann: i bet he's an mba and it was his idea of schmoozing. MrSahala: dude it was textbook "strategic"
Only once you've done all these things can you really start the process of Making Music. Contrast with "rounding up a bunch of friends and starting to play".
Keep in mind that in the former you are able to produce all aspects of the track on your own, without intervening on other peoples' times. This is not necessarily a good thing -- getting immediate feedback from musical peers is a highly creative experience.
Why not combine the "rounding up a bunch of friends" into your production? I work with another fellow DJ to churn out tracks, and we each work on different portions of tracks on different computers (plus headphones) with one central computer for sequencing it all together.
The Caveo card's execution is superb, but its concept isn't foolproof. For example, a thief (perhaps knowing how the card works) could simply eject the whining card and toss it into the Hudson.
I find the bolded part above a bit distressing. When I started readinga bout the Caveo card I assumed that the card becomes physically secured to the machine by some means or another. I imagined that there would perhaps be a short cable to the anti-theft jack that seem to exist on all new machines.
Imagine a car alarm on the exterior of a car, where a thief could just rip the blaring siren off and ditch it while driving away. Not that car alarms are 100% effective, but at least it's a somewhat pain in the ass to disable by comparison.
This also brings up another problem with laptops. PCMCIA cards in general are quite easy to remove, especially those wireless cards which protrude a good half-inch or more out of the PCMCIA slot. Ethernet and modem cards are relatively cheap these days, but wireless cards, hard drives, video input devices, and other toys are not. Even batteries and internal hard-drives are easy to grab, and they can bring in some good cash. A good crook could clear out a few thousand dollars worth of hardware in about 10 minutes, all inconspicuously since these things are quite pocketable.
Anyway, after using a notebook for quite some time and having one stolen at the office while I took a nap (all nighters suck) I would say the most cost effective theft-detterrant for the machine is the combo-lock/key notebook cable. They're a lot cheaper, more reliable to arm, and look more secure than the $100+ fancy alternatives proposed in the article above. I would argue that a cable-locked notebook looks like a serious pain in the ass to mess with, since it entails snippers and the like. I think the products mentioned in the NYtimes article might be good only when combined with a cable lock, but definitely not alone.
So does anyone know of ways to physically secure PCMCIA devices?
Is privacy a huge concern? Would this be any more of a privacy intrusion than someone walking around with a networked laptop doing google searches (and other lookups) on everyone?
Personally I think it would be more of a social intrusion, as in "ugh...it's that white faced geek again". Sorta like when wireless ethernet hit my old college campus (cmu.edu) and people started checking email in the middle of a movie (as in, an annoyingly bright view of someone's window manager).
Nonetheless it has its cool factor, although I would look at some of the more productive applications.
I think the real problem is that most people are way too lazy to learn even a slight variance in what they do, let alone a huge one like change their OS:
luser: Where's Word?
Lazy? I may be mistaken, but why the hell shouldn't they be lazy about things that aren't important to them? Whether it's about document formats or operating systems, business computer users generally don't care about things that are outside the scope of their expertise.
While it would be great for Joe Salesman to lay down some banter about how much he loves Linux and using non-MS open file formats, I'd rather he just focus on his own work and be a great salesman.
They just want it to work, and don't give shit about petty geek stuff.
Re:In 10 years you'll be glad your Mac runs Linux
on
Linux on the iMac G4
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· Score: 2
Try running Windows ME or 2000 on a Pentium II 200 with 48 MB RAM.
Don't discount Windows too much. I bought some old thinkpads with Pentium I MMX 233mHz processors and 96 megs of ram and threw win2k on them. They run great. With a few orinoco cards these machines are great for browsing the web and doing word processing while sitting on a couch. I don't find any OS to be too much of a hog on hardware compared to heavy applications like Photoshop 6 or games. In fact I found Win2K to be a better OS for older hardware than 95, 98, or ME, which all seem to flake out randomly.
The format has had so much market penetration, it won't be easily replaced...
Yeah tell me about it...I produce my own tracks (mostly house music), I have a hard time sending out anything but.mp3 files. What's even worse is when people ask for stuff in RealAudio or WMA for streaming purposes. I lose so much quality (especially hi-hat loops and some portions of the basslines) that I have to re-do some of my tracks so you can actually hear certain portions.
Have you been to any other major Asian city? The problem isn't so much gum, as it is people spitting in the streets. That's the reason behind the gum laws in Singapore. One person spits out their gum or just spits, no big deal. Many, many people do it... ewww..
You are misinformed. While sanitation and cleanliness is some of the common reasons for banning gum, the primary incident that caused gum to be banned is because of the MRT (subway). I believe singapore would have been willing to put up with gum as a public nuisance, but apparently disposed chewing gum on subway doors caused them to jam and cause huge delays, affecting the whole city.
Then you end up with something like those revolting open air urinals on the streets of Amsterdam
The Dutch have a great history of being very practical. It's a well known fact that men tend to not mind pissing outdoors on the way home from the bar. Yes, I'll do it in an instant if I really have to go. Having open air urinals is not nearly as bad as guys pissing on doorsteps or walls.
But then again I suppose you have a problem with Amsterdam allowing prostitution, shrooms, and marijuana (in coffee houses only, of course).
Agreed. It is a fantastic airport. It's always a pleasure to fly through there. I have found, however, that the 802.11b access is quite lacking compared to, say, the Austin airport. First of all I could not find any way to connect using WiFi. No networks came up when I did a scan, even in "designated areas". Furthermore, when I went to the computer center to get some help they tossed me a plastic bag with a wireless card, a cd, and printed instructions. The instructions were pretty much for installing the drivers only... no help on actually finding an AP, etc. Of course I had my own wireless card so hardware and drivers were not an issue. The help desk person didn't know anything about wireless access, so I ended up just plugging into the RJ-45, which admittedly was fine with me.
I was only there twice in early january, so maybe the problems may have been solved, but accessing the wireless lan is not nearly as easy as when I am waiting for a plane in austin.
I haven't skimmed through the article yet, but this is probably why they put it out in the open, simply because they're allowing other people to find uses for it.
Mr Swordboy (or shall I call you Mr Rogers). Can you send us the scripts/custom software you used to implement this. I'm sure you'd love to share them with us, since you're sharing everything else with your nearby neighbors. After all you're such a nice local neighborhood guy.
What's that? You can't find the backup software/scripts that you put together because of a hard drive crash? Oh...but it must be backed up on the PC belonging to the miltf next door. Wait, she doesn't have it either?
Seriously now...it's as somewhat good idea but there are a few details that need to be ironed out before you start charging any more than a cup of coffee for your brilliance. My opinion is that you're a great vaporware developer. Sorry, I'm being an asshole.
Re:This gets me hyped.
on
Portable GameCube
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Actually this reminds....
About 2 years ago in my last semester of college I got pretty deep into a few RPGs for the PSX. Since this was back in the let's-recruit-every-college-grad-that-knows-Java days, I had to fly out to job interviews every other weekend, which seriously hampered my game playing progress.
(hey, it was senior year...time to goof off a bit)
I had this great idea of taking my PS along and playing during the evenings in those nice hotel rooms they put me up at (now of course they fly you out 5 minutes after the last interview). I mean the alternative would be...what, going out and drinking? So I embarassingly packed my PS along in my carry-on bag, which I'm sure the x-ray peeps would love today -- "can you turn that on please?" -- and tried to hook it up to the TVs in hotel rooms. So apparently a large number of hotels really do not like their guests bringing their own electronics. It was a repeated nightmare trying to get physical access to the back of a TV, and in some cases they did a great job making sure the original cables could not be easily unplugged (plastic boxes screwed in around the plugs, etc) for the use of other devices. There were a few times when I had to dig out the swiss army knife i never otherwise use to really go to work, sometimes wreaking havoc on the cable TV setup -- all for my gaming habit/addiction. And I never stayed at a hotel with TVs with convenient RCA plugs in the front.
But I guess the point of my lame story is that it's sometimes a pain in the ass to assume that just because there's a TV, you can play your XBox/PS1/PS2/N64. It's more worth it to just get a Game Boy with Harvest Moon, or maybe even go out at night in a new city (imagine that).
More components to perform more functions... the problem with this is there are more points of failure for your mobile gaming experience. If one component gets (broken / lost / stolen), you're out of luck.
I don't think the issue of the system being "broken/lost/stolen" is particularly as relevant as the intent of the GameCube itself. While this monitor add-on seems cool and the GameCube is packaged in a cute little box with a lunchbox handle, I really don't think it's something that is meant to be truely portable.
It's in a different class entirely from a "real" integrated portable gaming device, such as the Game Boy advanced or NeoGeo pocket. I can keep my GBA in my pocket for the 10 minute ride in a train or bus, while this thing seems to be mainly targeting the back of a family mini-van on a long road trip. Even with the nice neat snap on monitor the Cube will still require time for set-up and pack-up every time it's played. But I guess for long plane trips or car rides this possible.
As mentioned in the IGN article this monitor add-on really is intended for a niche market, which is probably why Nintendo didn't come out with one themselves even though the concept has been around for quite some time (PSOne, etc).
People living outside of cities don't necessarily have to drive in. If this thing were made light and portable enough, commuters could take the IT down to the train station, hop on, then cruise on down to the office.
Some (not all) train lines in the UK and Europe have allowed bicycles for years, but because bikes are bulky not everyone uses this service. The IT could be a convenient replacement.
As another/. poster mentioned, we can expect this to drop down in price if it catches on, perhaps from industry/business purchases.
I for one am interested simply because unlike cars you are engaging with your surroundings. Most people in the US drive down to the local corner shop just to get a pack of cigarettes. It may sound stupid, but when you drive you miss out on all the little interesting details in life that you catch when you simply walk. Since distances between residences and commercial areas tend not to be walkable, this could be an interesting compromise.
The asktog article makes a valid point, but I believe this focuses entirely on new users.
Have you guys ever seen a visual design artist with 4+ years of experience using Photoshop? The maniacs NEVER use menus. They have one hand on the mouse, and the other hand on the left side of the keyboard whipping up CTRL, ALT, and SHIFT keyboard combinations. I know one guy who busted out his Windows Start button so that it wouldn't get in the way.
By contrast, I'm a pretty novice Photoshop user (I'm a developer), and in my case a mouse is definitely faster than all the inane key-combinations. By sitting and watching said graphic designer, however, I've managed to pick up some of his keyboard tips, and I have noticed an increase in productivity. I've become more focused on the task and less so on the navigation.
Photoshop key combos are a good example of what Jakob Nielsen refers to as accelerators. The mouse is the primary interaction tool, but the keyboard provides accelerators for more efficient use.
I couldn't agree more about this. I gave up my Palm III and a Pilot (way back in the day) to family members in high school simply because it was a bit too thick.
This new entry looks promising, and it's pretty sexily designed as well. Sony's computing line seems to be creating a bit of dedicated following simply because of design. And hey... it matches my shiny, and thin, Sony discman.
Since I've been out of the Palm world for a while now, I was curious about this Documents to Go feature. It's basically a document viewer and editor that lets you peek and mess with Office and Lotus files. I don't believe most people will be actually editing files on such as mall screen and with limited input devices. I think, however, that most business people would be glad just to be able to read files they use/created on the desktop.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess that will take care of that whole tactile feedback issue that a few other posters have noted.
wireless access has its benefits...movie theaters are not the time and place for it.
Writing a review... fucking hell.
I agree about bad sportsmanship even though I pretty much believe MS was technically in the right.
MS is a relative newcomer to the gaming world, and really should play the politics game a little better. I would have expected MS, being a mature company itself, to show a bit more courteousy. After all, no one likes to hear about any tension at these sort of events.
And I know Sony can be a bully too, but little anecdotes like these become significant.
And here's an aim conversation that I had with a friend immediately after we read the article:
Utter, utter bullshit. I know it's a powerful and flexible app, but intuitive it is not.
Keep in mind that in the former you are able to produce all aspects of the track on your own, without intervening on other peoples' times. This is not necessarily a good thing -- getting immediate feedback from musical peers is a highly creative experience.
Why not combine the "rounding up a bunch of friends" into your production? I work with another fellow DJ to churn out tracks, and we each work on different portions of tracks on different computers (plus headphones) with one central computer for sequencing it all together.
I find the bolded part above a bit distressing. When I started readinga bout the Caveo card I assumed that the card becomes physically secured to the machine by some means or another. I imagined that there would perhaps be a short cable to the anti-theft jack that seem to exist on all new machines.
Imagine a car alarm on the exterior of a car, where a thief could just rip the blaring siren off and ditch it while driving away. Not that car alarms are 100% effective, but at least it's a somewhat pain in the ass to disable by comparison.
This also brings up another problem with laptops. PCMCIA cards in general are quite easy to remove, especially those wireless cards which protrude a good half-inch or more out of the PCMCIA slot. Ethernet and modem cards are relatively cheap these days, but wireless cards, hard drives, video input devices, and other toys are not. Even batteries and internal hard-drives are easy to grab, and they can bring in some good cash. A good crook could clear out a few thousand dollars worth of hardware in about 10 minutes, all inconspicuously since these things are quite pocketable.
Anyway, after using a notebook for quite some time and having one stolen at the office while I took a nap (all nighters suck) I would say the most cost effective theft-detterrant for the machine is the combo-lock/key notebook cable. They're a lot cheaper, more reliable to arm, and look more secure than the $100+ fancy alternatives proposed in the article above. I would argue that a cable-locked notebook looks like a serious pain in the ass to mess with, since it entails snippers and the like. I think the products mentioned in the NYtimes article might be good only when combined with a cable lock, but definitely not alone.
So does anyone know of ways to physically secure PCMCIA devices?
Um...speak for yourself.
Personally I think it would be more of a social intrusion, as in "ugh...it's that white faced geek again". Sorta like when wireless ethernet hit my old college campus (cmu.edu) and people started checking email in the middle of a movie (as in, an annoyingly bright view of someone's window manager).
Nonetheless it has its cool factor, although I would look at some of the more productive applications.
luser: Where's Word?
Lazy? I may be mistaken, but why the hell shouldn't they be lazy about things that aren't important to them? Whether it's about document formats or operating systems, business computer users generally don't care about things that are outside the scope of their expertise. While it would be great for Joe Salesman to lay down some banter about how much he loves Linux and using non-MS open file formats, I'd rather he just focus on his own work and be a great salesman.
They just want it to work, and don't give shit about petty geek stuff.
Don't discount Windows too much. I bought some old thinkpads with Pentium I MMX 233mHz processors and 96 megs of ram and threw win2k on them. They run great. With a few orinoco cards these machines are great for browsing the web and doing word processing while sitting on a couch. I don't find any OS to be too much of a hog on hardware compared to heavy applications like Photoshop 6 or games. In fact I found Win2K to be a better OS for older hardware than 95, 98, or ME, which all seem to flake out randomly.
Ah...anonymous coward. I actually do have a serious reply to this, but I'll save it for someone who has more than half an identity.
Yeah tell me about it...I produce my own tracks (mostly house music), I have a hard time sending out anything but .mp3 files. What's even worse is when people ask for stuff in RealAudio or WMA for streaming purposes. I lose so much quality (especially hi-hat loops and some portions of the basslines) that I have to re-do some of my tracks so you can actually hear certain portions.
You are misinformed. While sanitation and cleanliness is some of the common reasons for banning gum, the primary incident that caused gum to be banned is because of the MRT (subway). I believe singapore would have been willing to put up with gum as a public nuisance, but apparently disposed chewing gum on subway doors caused them to jam and cause huge delays, affecting the whole city.
http://www.sfgate.com/examiner/bondage/BOND-23960. html
Then you end up with something like those revolting open air urinals on the streets of Amsterdam
The Dutch have a great history of being very practical. It's a well known fact that men tend to not mind pissing outdoors on the way home from the bar. Yes, I'll do it in an instant if I really have to go. Having open air urinals is not nearly as bad as guys pissing on doorsteps or walls.
But then again I suppose you have a problem with Amsterdam allowing prostitution, shrooms, and marijuana (in coffee houses only, of course).
Changi International rules in general, actually.
Agreed. It is a fantastic airport. It's always a pleasure to fly through there. I have found, however, that the 802.11b access is quite lacking compared to, say, the Austin airport. First of all I could not find any way to connect using WiFi. No networks came up when I did a scan, even in "designated areas". Furthermore, when I went to the computer center to get some help they tossed me a plastic bag with a wireless card, a cd, and printed instructions. The instructions were pretty much for installing the drivers only ... no help on actually finding an AP, etc. Of course I had my own wireless card so hardware and drivers were not an issue. The help desk person didn't know anything about wireless access, so I ended up just plugging into the RJ-45, which admittedly was fine with me.
I was only there twice in early january, so maybe the problems may have been solved, but accessing the wireless lan is not nearly as easy as when I am waiting for a plane in austin.
...31337
I haven't skimmed through the article yet, but this is probably why they put it out in the open, simply because they're allowing other people to find uses for it.
What's that? You can't find the backup software/scripts that you put together because of a hard drive crash? Oh...but it must be backed up on the PC belonging to the miltf next door. Wait, she doesn't have it either?
Seriously now...it's as somewhat good idea but there are a few details that need to be ironed out before you start charging any more than a cup of coffee for your brilliance. My opinion is that you're a great vaporware developer. Sorry, I'm being an asshole.
About 2 years ago in my last semester of college I got pretty deep into a few RPGs for the PSX. Since this was back in the let's-recruit-every-college-grad-that-knows-Java days, I had to fly out to job interviews every other weekend, which seriously hampered my game playing progress.
(hey, it was senior year...time to goof off a bit)
I had this great idea of taking my PS along and playing during the evenings in those nice hotel rooms they put me up at (now of course they fly you out 5 minutes after the last interview). I mean the alternative would be...what, going out and drinking? So I embarassingly packed my PS along in my carry-on bag, which I'm sure the x-ray peeps would love today -- "can you turn that on please?" -- and tried to hook it up to the TVs in hotel rooms. So apparently a large number of hotels really do not like their guests bringing their own electronics. It was a repeated nightmare trying to get physical access to the back of a TV, and in some cases they did a great job making sure the original cables could not be easily unplugged (plastic boxes screwed in around the plugs, etc) for the use of other devices. There were a few times when I had to dig out the swiss army knife i never otherwise use to really go to work, sometimes wreaking havoc on the cable TV setup -- all for my gaming habit/addiction. And I never stayed at a hotel with TVs with convenient RCA plugs in the front.
But I guess the point of my lame story is that it's sometimes a pain in the ass to assume that just because there's a TV, you can play your XBox/PS1/PS2/N64. It's more worth it to just get a Game Boy with Harvest Moon, or maybe even go out at night in a new city (imagine that).
I don't think the issue of the system being "broken/lost/stolen" is particularly as relevant as the intent of the GameCube itself. While this monitor add-on seems cool and the GameCube is packaged in a cute little box with a lunchbox handle, I really don't think it's something that is meant to be truely portable.
It's in a different class entirely from a "real" integrated portable gaming device, such as the Game Boy advanced or NeoGeo pocket. I can keep my GBA in my pocket for the 10 minute ride in a train or bus, while this thing seems to be mainly targeting the back of a family mini-van on a long road trip. Even with the nice neat snap on monitor the Cube will still require time for set-up and pack-up every time it's played. But I guess for long plane trips or car rides this possible.
As mentioned in the IGN article this monitor add-on really is intended for a niche market, which is probably why Nintendo didn't come out with one themselves even though the concept has been around for quite some time (PSOne, etc).
Some (not all) train lines in the UK and Europe have allowed bicycles for years, but because bikes are bulky not everyone uses this service. The IT could be a convenient replacement.
As another /. poster mentioned, we can expect this to drop down in price if it catches on, perhaps from industry/business purchases.
I for one am interested simply because unlike cars you are engaging with your surroundings. Most people in the US drive down to the local corner shop just to get a pack of cigarettes. It may sound stupid, but when you drive you miss out on all the little interesting details in life that you catch when you simply walk. Since distances between residences and commercial areas tend not to be walkable, this could be an interesting compromise.
It's not that hard to learn computer languages compared to human languages.
Use the language that is right for the job...
I (original poster) have a hard time using the human language of English
Have you guys ever seen a visual design artist with 4+ years of experience using Photoshop? The maniacs NEVER use menus. They have one hand on the mouse, and the other hand on the left side of the keyboard whipping up CTRL, ALT, and SHIFT keyboard combinations. I know one guy who busted out his Windows Start button so that it wouldn't get in the way.
By contrast, I'm a pretty novice Photoshop user (I'm a developer), and in my case a mouse is definitely faster than all the inane key-combinations. By sitting and watching said graphic designer, however, I've managed to pick up some of his keyboard tips, and I have noticed an increase in productivity. I've become more focused on the task and less so on the navigation.
Photoshop key combos are a good example of what Jakob Nielsen refers to as accelerators. The mouse is the primary interaction tool, but the keyboard provides accelerators for more efficient use.
The Palm lines also have a vibrating alert.
Check out the Palm m505
As for funky alarms, The Palm m505 also has a vibrating alarm, as well as a flashing LED. So Sony isn't the first on this.
Since I've been out of the Palm world for a while now, I was curious about this Documents to Go feature. It's basically a document viewer and editor that lets you peek and mess with Office and Lotus files. I don't believe most people will be actually editing files on such as mall screen and with limited input devices. I think, however, that most business people would be glad just to be able to read files they use/created on the desktop.