Are they really talking freedom, though?
on
Freedom or Power?
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· Score: 1
Hmmm... Seems to me that the scenario being described is more restrictive than the current situation. Right now, we all have the freedom to choose open source solutions or to stay with closed source solutions. I'm not sure I am happy with someone exercising their power over the software industry and removing that choice by dictating that all software needs to be free.
First a little note on the way that BT and 802.11 work:
802.11b is a direct sequence spread spectrum technology, which means that it uses a set channel for a particular base station or network.
Bluetooth is a frequency hopping spread spectrum technology, so it hops around the whole 2.4GHz spectrum available to it (varies by country) and if it encounters interference, it moves on.
Because both technologies work in the ISM Band (Industrial, Scientific and Medical), it is very noisy, so they both use interference robustness. This coupled with the differences in the usage of the spectrum mean that it is very easy to create overlaid BT PANs and 802.11b LANs which don't cause unnecessary interference.
Aside from that, BT is useful for some very simple reasons:
It is cheap (when they say $5 chipsets, that is really the target in about 12 months time) - WLAN can't reach the same pricepoints because of the complexity of the technology and because it won't reach the same volumes as BT (if BT penetrates even 10% of the phone market, it is more than the whole WLAN market!)
It is very low power - 802.11b uses too muc power for phones or PDAs
It includes automated device and service discovery, which 802.11 doesn't. This makes it ideal for non-technical users.
It works with a huge variety of devices (PDAs, PCs, printers, cameras, phones).
It can do a lot more than cable replacement - think more of automated P2P service provision between intelligent appliances.
And the killer apps: BT printers and BT phones for now. Wait until next year for some really interesting uses of BT!
Over here in Europe, punctuation outside quotation marks is the norm: English only diverged in the 16-17th century, but now common usage British English has, in many cases, gone back to the Romance standard of punctuation outside quotes.
So... It's not wrong. You're just being British!;)
Apparently tests in the UK had shown that emergency vehicles equiped with one of these new sirens could get to their destination faster (people knew where the sound was coming from and were better at getting out the way), and the number of secondary accidents was reduced (people crashing whilst looking for the emergency vehicle, etc).
I was living in a town where they tested this. Sure, secondary crashes caused by people looking for the ambulance went down, but as an ambulance goes past you going "Neee Naaa FART", the driving skills to avoid crashing due to laughter are amazing!
The community aspect lets you learn by playing
on
The Blender Book
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· Score: 1
While it's true that Blender is difficult to get used to, you can learn to use it by playing around with it due to the excellent Blender user community. I've just started with it and I've found that most difficulties I've come across can be solved by searching the Q&A and tutorial databases.
Making Blender more user friendly wouldn't hurt, but once you've acclimatised by mucking around a bit, you can start creating some quite complex, attractive models.
One of the changes happening in the corporate computing space is the e-PC concept (HP's e-PC, Compaq's iPaq, etc...), where alongside the smaller, quieter boxes, they're removing the PSU (HP's is actually the PSU from their notebook range). What this does is reduce the catastrophic failure rate (PSUs fail a lot and having them outside the machine reduces down time), reduces noise since with less heat generated there's no internal fan and extends component lifetimes (less dust in the machines due to less reliance on air flow for cooling).
Tis doesn't really apply to the "dual 1GHz processor 1GB RAM, 4x30GB 10krpm SCSI" crowd, but for a lot of users, these smaller e-PCs are an attractive alternative, being more reliable and less intrusive.
Don't forget, though, that noisy PCs have other uses. In my case, any troublesome infants from visiting couples are ceremoniously placed in the computer room during dinner. Most pretty instantly fall asleep from the hypnotic noise of the fans!
I've used RedHat for a long time, but I'd much rather use KDE than Gnome (I don't like the style of the GUI and it has some annoying inconsistencies which KDE doesn't). I like Mandrake's approach in that they're pretty up to date (I'm using this for notebooks and desktops, so features are a lot more important than a server installation), they use RPM (which makes my life easier since it's becoming the de-facto standard, it seems) and they're very KDE friendly... I'm starting to get the feeling that it's time to move to a different distribution.
How easy is it to do an upgrade from, say, RH7 to Mandrake 8? I've yet to find conclusive evidence that it works well and I don't want to do a clean install (mostly due to laziness: Any extra time needed would be a big inhibitor).
When you move into a broadband world, the small ISP can't compete with the telcos which are selling them the infrastructure. The Telcos know that they need to be on both sides of the market, infrastructure and service provider, and already own the customer relationship so even big ISPs may find it very difficult to compete with the average behemoth of a telco.
However, when it comes to this sort of service, as long as the "evil corporation" provides the right level of service, I'm not worried. The bad ones will lose out since unsatisfied customers can always walk (I'd rather pay a touch more for a quality service than put up with a cheap, bad one). Even big telcos now have competition: It just takes one to differentiate on quality...
This is the problem with the Open Source movement at the moment. Extremists are, naturaly, the vocal ones, which is what is caring off a lot of users. RMS has an opinion which is part of the spectrum of Open Source opinions, but I agree with a lot of comments which show a lack of patience with his hardline views.
I like Linux, I believe in a lot of the concepts of Open Source, but I emphatically believe that should someone want to bring a quality solution to the market and ask for payment, maybe even keep the source hidden, there is nothing worng with that at all. I would be happy to enjoy that software, assuming it meets the quality level I am used to with Open Source software.
Open source has its place in creating high quality software, just as closed source has its place in incentivising companies wishing to protect their ideas to bring products to market.
RMS: He's worth listening to, but he isn't the only guiding light of the Open Source movement.
If the masses started stealing from the shops (I'd imagine that shop thieves outnumber the people who copy music) that wouldn't suddenly mean that we can start demanding the government to get rid of the laws punishing theft, does it?
Still, the French government are not going about this the right way. It's like putting a tax on all items in shops to refund the shopkeepers for lost revenue from theft! Doesn't get more stupid than that!
So as the day comes closer, I thought I'd check how much more I'd be paying next week:
Audio Casettes: $0.26 each
Video Casettes: $0.40 each
Minidiscs: $0.68 each
CD-R(W)s: $0.68 each
DVD-R(W): $3.54 each!!!!
...and they're even charging a tax of 2.20F ($0.31) on removable memory dedicated for audio (i.e. Memory Sticks).
They're splitting the tax on audio products 25% studios, 25% artists and 50% author's unions with the video product tax being distributed equally between the three (33.3% each). Anyone in the know care to comment on the fairness of this?
This has effectively doubled the price of a CD-R (used to be about FRF 5 each, now they're FRF 8.70) so even though I actually prefer to buy the original (nicer to have and less hassle), I think I'll probably be copying CDs as a matter of principle (to catch up on lost time, too!)
Anyway, its really easy to get hold of CD-Rs elsewhere (I'll have to check duty free in Heathrow next time I'm there), so you have to wonder how effective this will be fore those who are actually doing the large amounts of copying. Wonder how many websites I can find that sell CD-Rs cheaper than I could buy them before, anyway...
The thing with USB 2.0 is that Intel, the major PC manufacturers and the existing USB peripheral manufacturers are backing it. That's an awful lot of marketing $$$s and a lot of development $$$s already tied up in the standard. What this means is that USB 2.0 is going to be a lot more successful in the non-professional world than predicted.
Take a look at USB 1: Even after Microsoft's completely hashed up support for it in Win95, it's already reached a point where a wide range of devices are available: They're cheap, easy to use and do the job. Everything that was promised.
Where did it go wrong? OS support! Now, Windows2000 finally gives us a Windows OS where USB really works, Linux is getting there and even Apple (the fathers of FireWire) have excellent support for it (better than Windows IMHO). This is the right environment for USB 2.0 to actually make USB useful by making it fast enough.
For those of us that prefer FireWire, I feel sure that some enterprising company will develop a USB 2.0 to FireWire converter and just because USB 2.0 appears doesn't mean all those 1394 PCI cards will disappear!
One of the reasons for the price of the 7110 dropping so much is that the networks are realising the opportunity WAP has as a way of getting those call times up.
What does this mean? Subsidisation... One of the best ways of kicking GSM off, then of getting mobile data going and now WAP...
I don't know if I'd go for the Siemens since by the look of it it seems to be based on Siemens' proprietary s/w. However, both PalmOS and WinCE devices now have WAP microbrowsers. Try:
Palm (you need an 8MB machine) WAPman from The Edge Consultants
Since I got my 7110, I started finding more and more uses for WAP... Simple things, such as checking the TV schedules, doing a quick weather check, or to get directions when I'm lost. If I want to do anything more complex, though, I use my PDA (sometimes a Palm, sometimes a PocketPC... depends on the mood!) and using IR, connect on to WAP sites using my phone as a GSM modem.
What's the point? I like to be able to do things like cut & paste when I'm on my banking site, or to read news pages more comfortably than on the screen of my phone (very useful when I'm in a country where I can't understand the news on TV!)
Even nicer, though, is the fact that since the PDA has more local processing power, loading and manipulating pages is even faster than on the phone.
So, to finally answer your question, using a PDA to access WAP sites does make sense. First of all, WAP lets you use GSM's 9600bps to the max, and the PDA lets you use that the most comfortable way!
Roll on GPRS - I want that 115kbps with WAP v2!
David -- Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
WML is actually a lot more than simply a cut down version of HTML. While it is true that gateways exist to take HTML pages and turn them into WML, WAP in reality does a lot more than that.
First of all, WML is designed for presenting data on unorthodox screen sizes, and uses a "card" system to show pages on a small screen. It is a lot more efficient, but more limited at present, than HTML.
Secondly, the WAP gateway takes this WML content and compiles it, so that it is firstly much smaller, and secondly it executes on the client device much faster (remember, most mobile phones aren't yet endowed with Pentium III Xeon performance!)
This together makes WAP that much faster and better suited for use over a wireless connection than HTML.
A company called Gric.net offer worldwide roaming if you have an account with one of their affiliated ISPs. These are the ones they have in the UK:
Atlas Internet Limited
CommUnity
Compulink Information Exchange Ltd.
Easynet Group Plc.
FDD Ltd
Hiway Communications Ltd.
Internet For Business
Internet Network Services
Japan Globe
Nildram Ltd
PSINet UK Ltd
Pavilion Internet Plc
Technocom Plc
U-Net Ltd
They also have an impressive set of national and local US ISPs to dial in. I've used Gric to dial into other ISPs across Europe using my Easynet France account. Worked very well, though you naturally have to use dynamic IP.
The other thing to think about is the architectural differences of the chipsets.
For example, at present, the Athlon chipsets support 100MHz SDRAM (negating part of the advantage of a 200MHz FSB), and they don't have the volume to justify 200MHz SDRAM from the RAM manufacturers, but both the Intel 820 and 840 support Rambus (dual channel 3.2GB/s in the case of the 840). In memory intensive applications, this alone can make an appreciable difference.
If you're looking for a CE device, make sure you look carefully at the competition. The Compaq isn't the best one on the market: Both the HP Jornada 420 and the Casio E-100 are better devices, IMHO.
The Casio is the fastest of the current lot and has a simplified user interface on top of CE. Trust me, that makes a big difference and brings the Casio close to the usability of the PalmPilot.
The HP is a touch smaller and comes with some very useful software (such as an explorer, so you can navigate compact flash cards).
Just becasue they all run CE doesn't mean they are the same - it's well worth checking out the competitive specs to make sure you buy the right device.
Yet another good use for VMware... Not only can I use MS Office (about the only MS package I have some respect for), but I can synchronise my Jornada without any problems.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm... Seems to me that the scenario being described is more restrictive than the current situation. Right now, we all have the freedom to choose open source solutions or to stay with closed source solutions. I'm not sure I am happy with someone exercising their power over the software industry and removing that choice by dictating that all software needs to be free.
802.11b is a direct sequence spread spectrum technology, which means that it uses a set channel for a particular base station or network.
Bluetooth is a frequency hopping spread spectrum technology, so it hops around the whole 2.4GHz spectrum available to it (varies by country) and if it encounters interference, it moves on.
Because both technologies work in the ISM Band (Industrial, Scientific and Medical), it is very noisy, so they both use interference robustness. This coupled with the differences in the usage of the spectrum mean that it is very easy to create overlaid BT PANs and 802.11b LANs which don't cause unnecessary interference.
Aside from that, BT is useful for some very simple reasons:
It is cheap (when they say $5 chipsets, that is really the target in about 12 months time) - WLAN can't reach the same pricepoints because of the complexity of the technology and because it won't reach the same volumes as BT (if BT penetrates even 10% of the phone market, it is more than the whole WLAN market!)
It is very low power - 802.11b uses too muc power for phones or PDAs
It includes automated device and service discovery, which 802.11 doesn't. This makes it ideal for non-technical users.
It works with a huge variety of devices (PDAs, PCs, printers, cameras, phones).
It can do a lot more than cable replacement - think more of automated P2P service provision between intelligent appliances.
And the killer apps: BT printers and BT phones for now. Wait until next year for some really interesting uses of BT!
DS
So... It's not wrong. You're just being British! ;)
I was living in a town where they tested this. Sure, secondary crashes caused by people looking for the ambulance went down, but as an ambulance goes past you going "Neee Naaa FART", the driving skills to avoid crashing due to laughter are amazing!
While it's true that Blender is difficult to get used to, you can learn to use it by playing around with it due to the excellent Blender user community. I've just started with it and I've found that most difficulties I've come across can be solved by searching the Q&A and tutorial databases.
Making Blender more user friendly wouldn't hurt, but once you've acclimatised by mucking around a bit, you can start creating some quite complex, attractive models.
DS
One of the changes happening in the corporate computing space is the e-PC concept (HP's e-PC, Compaq's iPaq, etc...), where alongside the smaller, quieter boxes, they're removing the PSU (HP's is actually the PSU from their notebook range). What this does is reduce the catastrophic failure rate (PSUs fail a lot and having them outside the machine reduces down time), reduces noise since with less heat generated there's no internal fan and extends component lifetimes (less dust in the machines due to less reliance on air flow for cooling).
Tis doesn't really apply to the "dual 1GHz processor 1GB RAM, 4x30GB 10krpm SCSI" crowd, but for a lot of users, these smaller e-PCs are an attractive alternative, being more reliable and less intrusive.
Don't forget, though, that noisy PCs have other uses. In my case, any troublesome infants from visiting couples are ceremoniously placed in the computer room during dinner. Most pretty instantly fall asleep from the hypnotic noise of the fans!
DS
I've used RedHat for a long time, but I'd much rather use KDE than Gnome (I don't like the style of the GUI and it has some annoying inconsistencies which KDE doesn't). I like Mandrake's approach in that they're pretty up to date (I'm using this for notebooks and desktops, so features are a lot more important than a server installation), they use RPM (which makes my life easier since it's becoming the de-facto standard, it seems) and they're very KDE friendly... I'm starting to get the feeling that it's time to move to a different distribution.
How easy is it to do an upgrade from, say, RH7 to Mandrake 8? I've yet to find conclusive evidence that it works well and I don't want to do a clean install (mostly due to laziness: Any extra time needed would be a big inhibitor).
DS
They are unfriendly towards the people they depend on (programmers, etc.)
They are very reserved and secretive (there's a reason the PC s dominant over the Mac).
They are prone to lash out bizarrely (as witnessed here).
They invoke shaky claims to justify their behavior.
They are prone to grandiose statements.
Now which one of those doesn't apply to MS?
Let's have them BOTH committed!
DS
No... Regions 1-6 and 8 cover the whole world, so region 7 must be reserved for mankind's imminent push into space... Now that's forward looking!
When you move into a broadband world, the small ISP can't compete with the telcos which are selling them the infrastructure. The Telcos know that they need to be on both sides of the market, infrastructure and service provider, and already own the customer relationship so even big ISPs may find it very difficult to compete with the average behemoth of a telco.
However, when it comes to this sort of service, as long as the "evil corporation" provides the right level of service, I'm not worried. The bad ones will lose out since unsatisfied customers can always walk (I'd rather pay a touch more for a quality service than put up with a cheap, bad one). Even big telcos now have competition: It just takes one to differentiate on quality...
I like Linux, I believe in a lot of the concepts of Open Source, but I emphatically believe that should someone want to bring a quality solution to the market and ask for payment, maybe even keep the source hidden, there is nothing worng with that at all. I would be happy to enjoy that software, assuming it meets the quality level I am used to with Open Source software.
Open source has its place in creating high quality software, just as closed source has its place in incentivising companies wishing to protect their ideas to bring products to market. RMS: He's worth listening to, but he isn't the only guiding light of the Open Source movement.
Wow, maybe I'm being an extremist!
If the masses started stealing from the shops (I'd imagine that shop thieves outnumber the people who copy music) that wouldn't suddenly mean that we can start demanding the government to get rid of the laws punishing theft, does it?
Still, the French government are not going about this the right way. It's like putting a tax on all items in shops to refund the shopkeepers for lost revenue from theft! Doesn't get more stupid than that!
DS
...and they're even charging a tax of 2.20F ($0.31) on removable memory dedicated for audio (i.e. Memory Sticks).
They're splitting the tax on audio products 25% studios, 25% artists and 50% author's unions with the video product tax being distributed equally between the three (33.3% each). Anyone in the know care to comment on the fairness of this?
This has effectively doubled the price of a CD-R (used to be about FRF 5 each, now they're FRF 8.70) so even though I actually prefer to buy the original (nicer to have and less hassle), I think I'll probably be copying CDs as a matter of principle (to catch up on lost time, too!)
Anyway, its really easy to get hold of CD-Rs elsewhere (I'll have to check duty free in Heathrow next time I'm there), so you have to wonder how effective this will be fore those who are actually doing the large amounts of copying. Wonder how many websites I can find that sell CD-Rs cheaper than I could buy them before, anyway...
DS
The thing with USB 2.0 is that Intel, the major PC manufacturers and the existing USB peripheral manufacturers are backing it. That's an awful lot of marketing $$$s and a lot of development $$$s already tied up in the standard. What this means is that USB 2.0 is going to be a lot more successful in the non-professional world than predicted.
Take a look at USB 1: Even after Microsoft's completely hashed up support for it in Win95, it's already reached a point where a wide range of devices are available: They're cheap, easy to use and do the job. Everything that was promised.
Where did it go wrong? OS support! Now, Windows2000 finally gives us a Windows OS where USB really works, Linux is getting there and even Apple (the fathers of FireWire) have excellent support for it (better than Windows IMHO). This is the right environment for USB 2.0 to actually make USB useful by making it fast enough.
For those of us that prefer FireWire, I feel sure that some enterprising company will develop a USB 2.0 to FireWire converter and just because USB 2.0 appears doesn't mean all those 1394 PCI cards will disappear!
One of the reasons for the price of the 7110 dropping so much is that the networks are realising the opportunity WAP has as a way of getting those call times up.
What does this mean? Subsidisation... One of the best ways of kicking GSM off, then of getting mobile data going and now WAP...
Palm (you need an 8MB machine)
WAPman from The Edge Consultants
WinCE
ezWAP from Ezos
Since I got my 7110, I started finding more and more uses for WAP... Simple things, such as checking the TV schedules, doing a quick weather check, or to get directions when I'm lost. If I want to do anything more complex, though, I use my PDA (sometimes a Palm, sometimes a PocketPC... depends on the mood!) and using IR, connect on to WAP sites using my phone as a GSM modem.
What's the point? I like to be able to do things like cut & paste when I'm on my banking site, or to read news pages more comfortably than on the screen of my phone (very useful when I'm in a country where I can't understand the news on TV!)
Even nicer, though, is the fact that since the PDA has more local processing power, loading and manipulating pages is even faster than on the phone.
So, to finally answer your question, using a PDA to access WAP sites does make sense. First of all, WAP lets you use GSM's 9600bps to the max, and the PDA lets you use that the most comfortable way!
Roll on GPRS - I want that 115kbps with WAP v2!
David
--
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
WML is actually a lot more than simply a cut down version of HTML. While it is true that gateways exist to take HTML pages and turn them into WML, WAP in reality does a lot more than that.
First of all, WML is designed for presenting data on unorthodox screen sizes, and uses a "card" system to show pages on a small screen. It is a lot more efficient, but more limited at present, than HTML.
Secondly, the WAP gateway takes this WML content and compiles it, so that it is firstly much smaller, and secondly it executes on the client device much faster (remember, most mobile phones aren't yet endowed with Pentium III Xeon performance!)
This together makes WAP that much faster and better suited for use over a wireless connection than HTML.
David
- Atlas Internet Limited
- CommUnity
- Compulink Information Exchange Ltd.
- Easynet Group Plc.
- FDD Ltd
- Hiway Communications Ltd.
- Internet For Business
- Internet Network Services
- Japan Globe
- Nildram Ltd
- PSINet UK Ltd
- Pavilion Internet Plc
- Technocom Plc
- U-Net Ltd
They also have an impressive set of national and local US ISPs to dial in. I've used Gric to dial into other ISPs across Europe using my Easynet France account. Worked very well, though you naturally have to use dynamic IP.Take a look at www.gric.net.
David
The other thing to think about is the architectural differences of the chipsets.
For example, at present, the Athlon chipsets support 100MHz SDRAM (negating part of the advantage of a 200MHz FSB), and they don't have the volume to justify 200MHz SDRAM from the RAM manufacturers, but both the Intel 820 and 840 support Rambus (dual channel 3.2GB/s in the case of the 840). In memory intensive applications, this alone can make an appreciable difference.
If you're looking for a CE device, make sure you look carefully at the competition. The Compaq isn't the best one on the market: Both the HP Jornada 420 and the Casio E-100 are better devices, IMHO.
The Casio is the fastest of the current lot and has a simplified user interface on top of CE. Trust me, that makes a big difference and brings the Casio close to the usability of the PalmPilot.
The HP is a touch smaller and comes with some very useful software (such as an explorer, so you can navigate compact flash cards).
Just becasue they all run CE doesn't mean they are the same - it's well worth checking out the competitive specs to make sure you buy the right device.
Yet another good use for VMware... Not only can I use MS Office (about the only MS package I have some respect for), but I can synchronise my Jornada without any problems.