I think the image quality differences are a big deal only to a very small segment. The difference between VHS's "good" and BetaMax's "great" is lost on most people. good is good enough. people will opt for lossy "compression" for the sake of more content (witness the MP3 format's success.) consider that even with vhs most people will record at whatever level gives them the longest record time, sacrificing quality.
Ask the average tivo owner what quality level they select for their seinfeld reruns. VHS won because it gave people more of less, in a way. Just like McDonalds makes money hand over fist serving "food" that would make a french chef gag.:)
no kidding. I can see how some admins would not be patching their boxes on a regular basis (given that ms patches have an unfortunate possibility to wreck your server or application). but I really cant think of any good reason to have a naked production SQL server visible from the internet. wtf??
no kidding. given that multiplatform was a goal from the start of the project, how could they have messed this up so badly? the aurora toolset wont EVER be available for mac, since it was deemed too difficult to port (WAY after the fact).
This must be a project management failure of immense proportions... how can anyone so totally miss a goal? Even a 10 minute discussion at project start to rule out unportable APIs, formats and approaches could have avoided such a mess. christ, even the game files were put onto the cd in a non-portable format, you have to download the data off the net or copy from a windows install?? geez.
playing whack-a-mole with the tech spammers use to send spam just won't work. as long as there is money to be made, spammers will simply switch tactics to continue raking in the cash. The analogy with "copy protection" is quite accurate: consider the escalating "war" against satellite tv encryption. All that can really come of that is lots of expense for everybody, lots of collateral damage, and of course, still lots of spam.
the real key is to take the money out of being an annoying spammer, without infringing on free-speech rights. If it becomes a legally actionable item to sue the businesses being advertised in spam (note: not the SPAMMER, but whoever they are pimping), then no business will pay a spammer to do their work. Solicited, traceable commercial email can be excepted from such laws, as well as political/news/whistleblower related speech (just as they are in other sectors of life). This keeps some of the potentially useful "anonymity" aspects of the current email system, while greatly reducing the incentive to spam.
what about overseas spam? well, there's not much that can be done (or should be done) about businesses and servers that have no presense in the US. but if those businesses spam in the hope of getting US customers, then they must have a presense here. That means bank accounts, credit lines and other assets that can be seized. Thus, overseas based spam that hits US citizens' mailboxes will most likely be mistaken. And judging by the spam I receive, if all I received was international spam designated for the citizens of some OTHER country, I'd be very happy indeed.
Not to mention, filters and other tech could be applied at this point to cath foreign-language foreign-charset mail and >/dev/null it.
Laws can't kill spam. nothing can. but it can greatly reduce it, without forcing everyone to install complicated filters, maintaining giant databases of offenders, and upgrading infrastructure to handle it all. Then I can run my secured private mailserver (dynamic ip, static hostname courtesy zoneedit.com) and not become collateral damage myself.
I think they will continue to spend just as much money on research. they just wont *release* new tech unless competition forces them to.
they may have the technology right now that doubles or triples current performance, but why play that card now? keep the tech in reserve, and let it roll out at a "natural" moore's law rate in order to keep the investors happy.
if motorola should happen to shock the world and release a 4 ghz multicore G5 running with 800mhz DDR RAM (we can dream, can't we??), then intel can roll out whatever they have in reserve a bit earlier.
Remember, Intel is run by businessmen, for businessmen. Technology to them is only a means to generate cash.
the desire for tabs will disappear completely once a person learns how to use the Window menu, Minimize and the dock, and command-`.
while the arguments against tabbed browsing are elegant and theoretical, you have to come down to the user level reality at some point. I've told lots of my (non-technical) friends about mozilla and how cool it is, and they really didn't give a rats ass. I told them about tabs, and they still didn't. internet explorer was good enough. Even some of my technical friends didn't really care enough to switch.
then I SHOWED them tabs in action. google search: open in new tab, superfast navigation, don't lose your place. Everyone who saw this was floored. Then I showed them how to bookmark a set of related tabs.
After the tabset bookmark demo, they ALL switched to mozilla. 100% adoption rate among very non technical people based on a 60 second demo. (I have a "daily" bookmark that in one click simultaneously opens slashdot, arstechnica, google, nytimes.com and news.google.com.) No long mouse travel times to the dock or the "windows" menu. no need to remember keyboard command combos. no need open a menu to find a hidden list of windows.
Since I work as a computer consultant, I've had a chance to run this demo on about 80-90 people in the past year. Apple would do well to listen to real users and not to textbooks.
You can continue to cite all the theory about the equivalency of quad-clicking through window menus, but in my experience tabs are a "killer app." I know I won't use safari if it doesnt have tabs, and I'm not alone. there's something right about tabs!
no kidding. this "detailed preview" offers zero useful information about how the game plays. the writing is some of the worst I've encountered:
The purpose here was to expediently observe these base cultures' histories in, as the manual states, "an effort to gain insight into their own dilemma" (Page 23). The goal was to reproduce the elements that led to the Elder Civilizations' conflict on a smaller scale. Whether such research led to discoveries sought by the Orions is unknown. What is known is that these pain-staking efforts would lend rise to no less then five distinct races. Two of these, the Klackon and Psilon, are playable civilizations in MoO3. Another race, the Humans, adamantly rejected suggestions that they too would found their origins within the universal petrie-dishes of Orion whims.
the purpose of this article is to expose the base underworkings of a twisted syntactical constructive that passed the a spell checker, but no passing the whims of sensibility-making.
it's just page after page of ridiculous race backstory. for great justice, does anybody have any idea how the game PLAYS? is it 3d? what are the new weapons and ships like? do you still have a cool movie clip that plays when you fire that mega planet destroying weapon? Do you have to let battles between large fleets run overnight because the engine bogs down?
if you are running an app remotely via x11, in the absence of other configuration, you copy will come out on the SERVER's default printer, which may not be anywhere near the actual user. So if your cubicle is on the 8th floor and the server is in the basement, you have some work to do as an administrator, auto setting default print queues based on users. The problem becomes more difficult when the printer type is unknown in advance (i.e. telecommuting users connecting from their home pc). Telecommuting is a BIG reason why businesses go with remote app hosting like this, and why bandwidth usage actually matters.
More specifically, what if the home user has a Qwezbit SuckJet 9000 Win-Printer attached to their parallel port, and there's no linux driver? Citrix offers some interesting solutions to all these problems. It's not so easy to make a remote app work EXACTLY like a local app to general users. You have to take that into account when choosing what to use.
right now this might compete on the ultra-low end (i.e. places that could never have afforded Citrix system pricing anyway.)
crossover office costs about $1000 for a server license, plus about $40-$47 per user (not including Office licenses.) not bad, considering that to do a Citrix implementation you need:
Citrix base server license pack
per concurrent user citrix user license
NON CONCURRENT windows 2000 TSCAL per connecting device (this one gets lots of people and it's enforced by the server)
windows 2000 server license
office license per user
somewhat savvy citrix geek to install it all and make sure your other apps work in a multi user environment. but the average biz would probably need a linux geek to setup crossover anyway, so it's sort of a wash on this point.
but for all that, a Citrix setup gets you pretty good print support (what happens when Joe User hits the print button while on crossover office?), low bandwidth ICA protocol, client drive mapping, client com port/parallel port mapping, and for extra bucks per user, pretty slick load balancing.
places that skip the citrix bit and go with bare w2k terminal services (not recommended if you have the means) might want to look at this instead, since bare 2k term servers have most of the same problems.
exactly! all distributions are identical. there is no such thing as good or bad. Just the other day I installed GhettoDistro and it reformatted my pet cat. I thought "wow, that's neither good nor bad, it's just not what I need right now." Somebody somewhere probably installs GhettoDistro every day just because it is *so* good for their own special needs.
As you get run over by the bus with a drunk driver, recall the words of wisdom that say "nothing is good or bad, people just have different needs."
You applied the latest kernel security patch from your villa on the Mediterranean. It (the patch, that is) broke your Foozbit Gigabit ethernet, and now X/VNC/whatever is useless. You now have to cut your vacation short and say goodbye to the ladies on the nude beach, fly back and fix it yourself.
I, on the other hand, did the same via a remote KVM over IP solution. When the patch hosed my system, I just logged back in via the kvm, booted into single user mode and backed out the patch.
The ladies here, by the way, say hello. Though they don't really remember your name anymore.;)
you assume that if the usps had taken over electronic messaging, that we'd have anything that looks like what we have today.
the usps might have killed email *as we know it*, by putting massive investment behind things like the ECOM system described in the article--a special hookup for big companies to transmit documents to the usps, which would then print out the document on the far end and deliver it "within two days."
If that had been deemed "good enough," email via smtp for "free" might never have gained the critical mass necessary to become a killer app of the Internet. Like it or not, the utility of the Internet was greatly improved when AOL's 20 million signed up and saw that messages could be delivered to friends within seconds, for no additional charge.
(if you don't believe that the "Internet is Everywhere" phenomenon that AOL et al created helps geeks and oldtimers alot, consider how hard it was to get any kind of software patch in 1993.)
So now we may have to deal with spam, but there are ways to fight that legislatively. and I REALLY like the internet the way it is, without a giant, antiquated Government agency holding it back.
from time to time my company offers security scanning and consulting services. before doing ANYTHING to a system we get extensive permission from top management (NOT just the IT monkey) and we notify their ISP.
"free security scans" are NOT welcome by anyone. Management types (IT and non-IT) cannot distinguish them from "real" hack attempts. CYA extensively or don't rattle the locks. 'Nuff said.
get tinkertool (search versiontracker.com for it). install it, then tell it to disable antialiasing for fonts smaller than, say 10 pts. then come back to the 1.1b promised land!
Then boot X and get ready to pull the plug fast if your monitor starts making sizzling sounds as it is driven out of spec.
Of course, unless you have an Nvidia card, in which case you must rot-13 the entire XF86Config file. I can't believe people say X is hard to use, or that anyone is stupid enough to "misuse the program." There is obviously no problem here.
Re:My Biased Opinion...
on
Perl & XML
·
· Score: 3, Funny
absolutely. while not knowing who "larry bagina" is, what he is doing or who he is doing it for, FortKnox is right on target in setting mr. bagina straight.
it's rare that someone so completely ignorant of requirements, methods, or even the people involved can give such insightful comments to wayward programmers. FortKnox, you are gold indeed. Tell me, do you think I should use java in my project?
FYI: there is NO source for accurate, unbiased information. All information you receive from others (especially from journalists) is inherently biased in some way. Consider that even "accurate" information is still subject to selection and "errors of omission." given that this is the case, it is your job as an intelligent reader to find the bias and extract what useful information you can.
the worst sources are the ones that seem to be "fair," because they tend to make you less alert to the bias that inevitably exists.
mine does all of that. The only provider-specific piece is the insta-isp from verizon (my provider). I setup a ppp session to dial #777 with a verizon default password/user id, and I get an ip address in about 4-5 seconds. Sprint has a similar deal with a different magic number. Qwest may have it too, but you may have to dig for it.
You can still setup a regular isp to dial into if you have a modem-providing isp account. the phone comes with apps that do take advantage of all of that: check out the call log app and the messages app. it comes with eudora too.
voice recognition is a separate app, I just train it as usual for each phone number. I train it for "FriendHome" and "FriendCell," no problems so far. it doesnt save the train data in the addressbook, which is great since it lets me use AddressPlus, a far superior app. the best way to get to the voice trainer is by closing the flip and navigating the menu, IIRC.
the minute counter rocks, get it free here. You can even tell it what kind of plan you have (weekend minutes, daytime minutes, what day of the month the minutes reset, etc) and it will keep track of how many minutes you have left.
the call logging app is also comes with it. it tells you incoming/outgoing calls and the number if available. it can also tell you if a call was a data call or regular voice.
do some web searches and find the wave-ringtones converter. You can set ringtone/category mappings in Preferences. Check it out man, your 6035 rocks!
what integration features do you feel are lacking? the phone works as a modem for the palm, so you can run your browsers/telnets/whatever as well as PQAs. You can tap on a phone number in your address book to immediately dial the number. You can stuff it into your cradle and use it as a regular modem off your laptop.
Incoming calls are caller-id'd to your address book so you can see who is calling. You can set different ringtones based on addressbook category, so you can immediately tell if your boss is calling vs your girlfriend. You can download.wavs and convert them to ringtones.
the incoming and outgoing call history and length is available to any palm app--I got a nifty third party freeware program that keeps track of total minutes used each month.
It comes with a palm version of eudora that can seamlessly dial on demand. vindigo/avantgo can all dial on demand as well and sync via the internet.
you can use your own isp, or the network provider's magic # to get an ip within 5 seconds.
incoming sms messages are available to any palm app. The kyocera development kit allows anyone to integrate jog dial or phone support into their app (addressplus, a third party addressbook, used this dev kit to add tap dialing to their product.)
you do realize that NPR is not produced by the government? npr is a non profit group that receives some government funds, but is primarily funded by listener donations and grants.
and if you've ever listened to npr (it is apparent that you haven't) you would know that they can be hardly characterized as "pro government." NPR is a refreshing change from the ClearChannel top 40 crap. As always, it is up to the listener to determine what the reporters bias is (and there is ALWAYS a bias). NPR just happens to provide more information to be sifted than your average ClearSuck station. Good stuff, if you are intelligent enough to extract information.
by the way, as soon as you started bragging about your "130 IQ", you lost. IQ tests are meaningless if you know anything about "intelligence testing".
Slashdot Mirror
I think the image quality differences are a big deal only to a very small segment. The difference between VHS's "good" and BetaMax's "great" is lost on most people. good is good enough. people will opt for lossy "compression" for the sake of more content (witness the MP3 format's success.) consider that even with vhs most people will record at whatever level gives them the longest record time, sacrificing quality.
:)
Ask the average tivo owner what quality level they select for their seinfeld reruns. VHS won because it gave people more of less, in a way. Just like McDonalds makes money hand over fist serving "food" that would make a french chef gag.
no kidding. I can see how some admins would not be patching their boxes on a regular basis (given that ms patches have an unfortunate possibility to wreck your server or application). but I really cant think of any good reason to have a naked production SQL server visible from the internet. wtf??
no kidding. given that multiplatform was a goal from the start of the project, how could they have messed this up so badly? the aurora toolset wont EVER be available for mac, since it was deemed too difficult to port (WAY after the fact).
This must be a project management failure of immense proportions... how can anyone so totally miss a goal? Even a 10 minute discussion at project start to rule out unportable APIs, formats and approaches could have avoided such a mess. christ, even the game files were put onto the cd in a non-portable format, you have to download the data off the net or copy from a windows install?? geez.
cat > /devfs/rantconf
./configure --'really care about easy to use linux'='that is well designed for usability' &
it's ALL about philosophy to Everyone. nobody should
^D
make -DFLAGS 'remember that GPL idealism is more important than' EOF>>
software, interoperability, or even working cut-and-paste.
EOF
perl -MCPAN -e 'force install Train::Grandma with XFree86.conf';
# system("thanks");
playing whack-a-mole with the tech spammers use to send spam just won't work. as long as there is money to be made, spammers will simply switch tactics to continue raking in the cash. The analogy with "copy protection" is quite accurate: consider the escalating "war" against satellite tv encryption. All that can really come of that is lots of expense for everybody, lots of collateral damage, and of course, still lots of spam.
/dev/null it.
the real key is to take the money out of being an annoying spammer, without infringing on free-speech rights. If it becomes a legally actionable item to sue the businesses being advertised in spam (note: not the SPAMMER, but whoever they are pimping), then no business will pay a spammer to do their work. Solicited, traceable commercial email can be excepted from such laws, as well as political/news/whistleblower related speech (just as they are in other sectors of life). This keeps some of the potentially useful "anonymity" aspects of the current email system, while greatly reducing the incentive to spam.
what about overseas spam? well, there's not much that can be done (or should be done) about businesses and servers that have no presense in the US. but if those businesses spam in the hope of getting US customers, then they must have a presense here. That means bank accounts, credit lines and other assets that can be seized. Thus, overseas based spam that hits US citizens' mailboxes will most likely be mistaken. And judging by the spam I receive, if all I received was international spam designated for the citizens of some OTHER country, I'd be very happy indeed.
Not to mention, filters and other tech could be applied at this point to cath foreign-language foreign-charset mail and >
Laws can't kill spam. nothing can. but it can greatly reduce it, without forcing everyone to install complicated filters, maintaining giant databases of offenders, and upgrading infrastructure to handle it all. Then I can run my secured private mailserver (dynamic ip, static hostname courtesy zoneedit.com) and not become collateral damage myself.
I think they will continue to spend just as much money on research. they just wont *release* new tech unless competition forces them to.
they may have the technology right now that doubles or triples current performance, but why play that card now? keep the tech in reserve, and let it roll out at a "natural" moore's law rate in order to keep the investors happy.
if motorola should happen to shock the world and release a 4 ghz multicore G5 running with 800mhz DDR RAM (we can dream, can't we??), then intel can roll out whatever they have in reserve a bit earlier.
Remember, Intel is run by businessmen, for businessmen. Technology to them is only a means to generate cash.
the desire for tabs will disappear completely once a person learns how to use the Window menu, Minimize and the dock, and command-`.
while the arguments against tabbed browsing are elegant and theoretical, you have to come down to the user level reality at some point. I've told lots of my (non-technical) friends about mozilla and how cool it is, and they really didn't give a rats ass. I told them about tabs, and they still didn't. internet explorer was good enough. Even some of my technical friends didn't really care enough to switch.
then I SHOWED them tabs in action. google search: open in new tab, superfast navigation, don't lose your place. Everyone who saw this was floored. Then I showed them how to bookmark a set of related tabs.
After the tabset bookmark demo, they ALL switched to mozilla. 100% adoption rate among very non technical people based on a 60 second demo. (I have a "daily" bookmark that in one click simultaneously opens slashdot, arstechnica, google, nytimes.com and news.google.com.) No long mouse travel times to the dock or the "windows" menu. no need to remember keyboard command combos. no need open a menu to find a hidden list of windows.
Since I work as a computer consultant, I've had a chance to run this demo on about 80-90 people in the past year. Apple would do well to listen to real users and not to textbooks.
You can continue to cite all the theory about the equivalency of quad-clicking through window menus, but in my experience tabs are a "killer app." I know I won't use safari if it doesnt have tabs, and I'm not alone. there's something right about tabs!
additional meaning of "impress" from dictionary.com:
impress
tr.v. impressed, impressing, impresses
1. To compel (a person) to serve in a military force.
2. To seize (property) by force or authority; confiscate.
so "impressing US sailors" in this instance means "capturing US sailors and forcing them into the British Navy."
no kidding. this "detailed preview" offers zero useful information about how the game plays. the writing is some of the worst I've encountered:
The purpose here was to expediently observe these base cultures' histories in, as the manual states, "an effort to gain insight into their own dilemma" (Page 23). The goal was to reproduce the elements that led to the Elder Civilizations' conflict on a smaller scale. Whether such research led to discoveries sought by the Orions is unknown. What is known is that these pain-staking efforts would lend rise to no less then five distinct races. Two of these, the Klackon and Psilon, are playable civilizations in MoO3. Another race, the Humans, adamantly rejected suggestions that they too would found their origins within the universal petrie-dishes of Orion whims.
the purpose of this article is to expose the base underworkings of a twisted syntactical constructive that passed the a spell checker, but no passing the whims of sensibility-making.
it's just page after page of ridiculous race backstory. for great justice, does anybody have any idea how the game PLAYS? is it 3d? what are the new weapons and ships like? do you still have a cool movie clip that plays when you fire that mega planet destroying weapon? Do you have to let battles between large fleets run overnight because the engine bogs down?
totally dude. I mean... why spend $100 for networked audio when you could buy a $300 audiotron that does the same thing?
and you're right on about it not being open source. Until I can download the actual hardware for free, I'm sticking with my trusty Audiotron distro.
if you are running an app remotely via x11, in the absence of other configuration, you copy will come out on the SERVER's default printer, which may not be anywhere near the actual user. So if your cubicle is on the 8th floor and the server is in the basement, you have some work to do as an administrator, auto setting default print queues based on users. The problem becomes more difficult when the printer type is unknown in advance (i.e. telecommuting users connecting from their home pc). Telecommuting is a BIG reason why businesses go with remote app hosting like this, and why bandwidth usage actually matters.
More specifically, what if the home user has a Qwezbit SuckJet 9000 Win-Printer attached to their parallel port, and there's no linux driver? Citrix offers some interesting solutions to all these problems. It's not so easy to make a remote app work EXACTLY like a local app to general users. You have to take that into account when choosing what to use.
crossover office costs about $1000 for a server license, plus about $40-$47 per user (not including Office licenses.) not bad, considering that to do a Citrix implementation you need:
- Citrix base server license pack
- per concurrent user citrix user license
- NON CONCURRENT windows 2000 TSCAL per connecting device (this one gets lots of people and it's enforced by the server)
- windows 2000 server license
- office license per user
- somewhat savvy citrix geek to install it all and make sure your other apps work in a multi user environment. but the average biz would probably need a linux geek to setup crossover anyway, so it's sort of a wash on this point.
but for all that, a Citrix setup gets you pretty good print support (what happens when Joe User hits the print button while on crossover office?), low bandwidth ICA protocol, client drive mapping, client com port/parallel port mapping, and for extra bucks per user, pretty slick load balancing.places that skip the citrix bit and go with bare w2k terminal services (not recommended if you have the means) might want to look at this instead, since bare 2k term servers have most of the same problems.
exactly! all distributions are identical. there is no such thing as good or bad. Just the other day I installed GhettoDistro and it reformatted my pet cat. I thought "wow, that's neither good nor bad, it's just not what I need right now." Somebody somewhere probably installs GhettoDistro every day just because it is *so* good for their own special needs.
As you get run over by the bus with a drunk driver, recall the words of wisdom that say "nothing is good or bad, people just have different needs."
You applied the latest kernel security patch from your villa on the Mediterranean. It (the patch, that is) broke your Foozbit Gigabit ethernet, and now X/VNC/whatever is useless. You now have to cut your vacation short and say goodbye to the ladies on the nude beach, fly back and fix it yourself.
;)
I, on the other hand, did the same via a remote KVM over IP solution. When the patch hosed my system, I just logged back in via the kvm, booted into single user mode and backed out the patch.
The ladies here, by the way, say hello. Though they don't really remember your name anymore.
you assume that if the usps had taken over electronic messaging, that we'd have anything that looks like what we have today.
the usps might have killed email *as we know it*, by putting massive investment behind things like the ECOM system described in the article--a special hookup for big companies to transmit documents to the usps, which would then print out the document on the far end and deliver it "within two days."
If that had been deemed "good enough," email via smtp for "free" might never have gained the critical mass necessary to become a killer app of the Internet. Like it or not, the utility of the Internet was greatly improved when AOL's 20 million signed up and saw that messages could be delivered to friends within seconds, for no additional charge.
(if you don't believe that the "Internet is Everywhere" phenomenon that AOL et al created helps geeks and oldtimers alot, consider how hard it was to get any kind of software patch in 1993.)
So now we may have to deal with spam, but there are ways to fight that legislatively. and I REALLY like the internet the way it is, without a giant, antiquated Government agency holding it back.
Here's my RPM dependency graph, along with additional text to get past the lameness filter.
_
/ \
\_/
from time to time my company offers security scanning and consulting services. before doing ANYTHING to a system we get extensive permission from top management (NOT just the IT monkey) and we notify their ISP.
"free security scans" are NOT welcome by anyone. Management types (IT and non-IT) cannot distinguish them from "real" hack attempts. CYA extensively or don't rattle the locks. 'Nuff said.
get tinkertool (search versiontracker.com for it). install it, then tell it to disable antialiasing for fonts smaller than, say 10 pts. then come back to the 1.1b promised land!
amen. I mean, really, all a user needs to do is kill X, run vi, edit /etc/X11/fubarity/XF86Config, scroll down, add a
/dev/tty/Fubaritybuffer = 800^$%^600 @ 76q
Screen
fb=/dev/null.
Then boot X and get ready to pull the plug fast if your monitor starts making sizzling sounds as it is driven out of spec.
Of course, unless you have an Nvidia card, in which case you must rot-13 the entire XF86Config file. I can't believe people say X is hard to use, or that anyone is stupid enough to "misuse the program." There is obviously no problem here.
absolutely. while not knowing who "larry bagina" is, what he is doing or who he is doing it for, FortKnox is right on target in setting mr. bagina straight.
it's rare that someone so completely ignorant of requirements, methods, or even the people involved can give such insightful comments to wayward programmers. FortKnox, you are gold indeed. Tell me, do you think I should use java in my project?
FYI: there is NO source for accurate, unbiased information. All information you receive from others (especially from journalists) is inherently biased in some way. Consider that even "accurate" information is still subject to selection and "errors of omission." given that this is the case, it is your job as an intelligent reader to find the bias and extract what useful information you can.
the worst sources are the ones that seem to be "fair," because they tend to make you less alert to the bias that inevitably exists.
mine does all of that. The only provider-specific piece is the insta-isp from verizon (my provider). I setup a ppp session to dial #777 with a verizon default password/user id, and I get an ip address in about 4-5 seconds. Sprint has a similar deal with a different magic number. Qwest may have it too, but you may have to dig for it.
You can still setup a regular isp to dial into if you have a modem-providing isp account. the phone comes with apps that do take advantage of all of that: check out the call log app and the messages app. it comes with eudora too.
voice recognition is a separate app, I just train it as usual for each phone number. I train it for "FriendHome" and "FriendCell," no problems so far. it doesnt save the train data in the addressbook, which is great since it lets me use AddressPlus, a far superior app. the best way to get to the voice trainer is by closing the flip and navigating the menu, IIRC.
the minute counter rocks, get it free here. You can even tell it what kind of plan you have (weekend minutes, daytime minutes, what day of the month the minutes reset, etc) and it will keep track of how many minutes you have left.
the call logging app is also comes with it. it tells you incoming/outgoing calls and the number if available. it can also tell you if a call was a data call or regular voice.
do some web searches and find the wave-ringtones converter. You can set ringtone/category mappings in Preferences. Check it out man, your 6035 rocks!
damn that's the funniest thing I've seen on slashdot since the wakka wakka post!
what integration features do you feel are lacking? the phone works as a modem for the palm, so you can run your browsers/telnets/whatever as well as PQAs. You can tap on a phone number in your address book to immediately dial the number. You can stuff it into your cradle and use it as a regular modem off your laptop.
.wavs and convert them to ringtones.
Incoming calls are caller-id'd to your address book so you can see who is calling. You can set different ringtones based on addressbook category, so you can immediately tell if your boss is calling vs your girlfriend. You can download
the incoming and outgoing call history and length is available to any palm app--I got a nifty third party freeware program that keeps track of total minutes used each month.
It comes with a palm version of eudora that can seamlessly dial on demand. vindigo/avantgo can all dial on demand as well and sync via the internet.
you can use your own isp, or the network provider's magic # to get an ip within 5 seconds.
incoming sms messages are available to any palm app. The kyocera development kit allows anyone to integrate jog dial or phone support into their app (addressplus, a third party addressbook, used this dev kit to add tap dialing to their product.)
how, exactly, is integration lacking?
you do realize that NPR is not produced by the government? npr is a non profit group that receives some government funds, but is primarily funded by listener donations and grants.
and if you've ever listened to npr (it is apparent that you haven't) you would know that they can be hardly characterized as "pro government." NPR is a refreshing change from the ClearChannel top 40 crap. As always, it is up to the listener to determine what the reporters bias is (and there is ALWAYS a bias). NPR just happens to provide more information to be sifted than your average ClearSuck station. Good stuff, if you are intelligent enough to extract information.
by the way, as soon as you started bragging about your "130 IQ", you lost. IQ tests are meaningless if you know anything about "intelligence testing".