This journalist is nothing like the guy from the WSJ who gave the device such a bad rap. This guy mentions vi and ping in his review. He also tries it with 802.11b, which is where I believe this device really becomes a killer app.
He claims 4-5 hours with 802.11b, which I thought was more than I remember hearing.
Being a Java programmer, lots of options really open up for making this device do useful things. There are lots of really cool projects you could do, from controlling your server remotely, managing, and may be streaming your MP3's, run remote X sessions, etc. The thing is basically, as he says, a handheld computer which is not in the same league as most PDA's.
Amazon has them for $439 and change: Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 (affiliate link, so ya know)
This device is on the list of toys, or tools, I want to get. It is good to see the prices are coming down toward a point I may consider purchasing one, even though I (as of yet) don't have a real useful purpose for it. It's still over $500 equipped with 802.11.
In New York State, an "EZPass" must be in a special bag for it not to be read. Looks like an anti-static bag and it may be, I don't know.
I know people who have tried to get the thing to not be read (to get a reciept in order to expense tolls for work) and without the bag it is very hard to "hide."
The poor design of the system means it can screw you at times if you don't do what is the expected traffic pattern. I was told once at the toll booth getting on that since my EZPass had been read, I was unable to turn around and must now get on the truway going the wrong direction and proceed to another exit or be faced with a $30 fine for illegal U-TURN. Problem was an accident closed the on ramp for the direction I needed to go.
(I turned around at the next "NO U TURNS" turn around to go the direction I needed to once I had though out how the system worked and knew the turn would not be "detected" by the crappy EZPass system.) Also, it takes at least 24 hours for a credit on your pass to work at most ramps.
The system in NYS sucks technically. I am quite worried about it being used for speed enforcement purposes and such.
I have compiled a list of books I think should be on every web developers bookshelf. While I don't cover perl (I'm a PHP/JSP guy), if you are interested in this topic, you may find my page of interest. (http://www.starvingmind.net/tech.jsp)
For the Perl/Java tech argument. Well designed java pages can be just as fast, or faster then poor perl cgi's, and vis versa. I too have seen very slow JSP/servlet's. JSP's should not be programmed the same way as a language like PHP or perl in many cases, it will be slow. Perl ranks third for me, but not totally off the charts.
I for one would argue JSP based development makes more sense for most sites, due to development productivity, and language functionality. And as I said before, a well design Java site can execute as fast or faster than some perl CGI sites. PHP ranks right behind JSP's in my mind, since they don't provide as much functionality, although they are very fast for simple things.
Perl should be a tool in your developer's toolbox, although I believe PHP or JSP's are in most cases a better tool for the job of making dynamic web sites.
The fine calls for the company to pay the maximum penalty of $11,000 per violation.
The FCC is also issuing citations to more than 100 businesses which used Fax.com, warning that they too could be liable to pay the maximum fine if they continue to send unsolicited faxes.
$11,000 per violation? That's a lot. This will make people think twice before doing it. I especially like how the advertisers may be held liable if they continue as well, although I don't think they should only be punished if they continue the practice. They knew what they we buying for their advertising dollar, or at least they should have.
I have posted this on slashdot before, but the comment fits the article.
They will hate me for putting this idea into people's minds...but everyone I explain this to gets a kick out of it, so here goes.
1. Take 5 sheets of black construction paper. 2. Scotch tape them into a single 5 sheet long sheet. 3. Place start of "page" into fax machine. 4. Dial the "recipient". 5. Watch sheet start going into the fax machine with glee. 6. Once out the other side, Scotch Tape beginning of "sheet" to end of sheet forming a giant black loop. 7. Giggle like a teenage girl and show your co-workers. Trust me, the showing co-workers step is needed for the full satisfaction. Choose co-workers carefully. 8. You Are Done! Not only that, but the recipient is now out of ink or toner.
Not that I have ever done this...but I know someone who has done this to someone who kept sending them spam faxes.
I hold no responsibility for your actions yada yada...
Not only is that half my weight, but who in the world has a cupholder in their car to hold that?
Seriously, I just want a stardard size coffee cup that will fit perfectly in a "standard car cup colder". A standard cupholder may be another issue.
I drink coffee on the way to work. I pass three places that sell good coffee (ok at least.) All three have different dimension cups. My Acura only fits 20oz cup very well.
One of the major warranty problems I see in commercial software is the lack of a requirement for a commercial software vendor to fix bugs that impact the customer. With Open Source software, the customer has the ability to fix the problem on their own. (Either themselves, or through contractors.) That is the major difference. Another question, is who really owns GPL'd software? Is it Mr. Public Domain? Ok, let all get together an sue Mr. Public. In Open Source, the customer actually takes over more ownership of the software than in most commercial licenses. Don't believe me? Try to distribute MS Office in mass quantities and see what happens. Then look at Mandrake, a RedHat "core" user.
The rules are different. The end user product is different. It is like leasing a car which must be fixed at a certain dealer vs. buying a car you can take to any mechanic.
What better use could a device like this provide than streaming video over it's 802.11b connection? Not sure why I would want they but it sounds like a good idea.
Anyone have expierience with battery time using a 802.11b connection for something like that? I keep getting more and more reasons I want one of those SL-5500 things. I would probably only use it for each of those reasons once though...
From this information, the post office never even came close to "owning" email. They considered offering it as a service.
A much better analogy is: "What if the Postman owned the first hotmail" Tons of variations which are closer to reality exist, but hotmail sums it all up in a sentence everyone would understand.
The word "owned" is very misleading, and not supported in the article. They almost owned email as much as they own package delivery today. (Think UPS and FedEx)
This was on other sites yesterday. Isn't that scary that that is considered "old" now adays?
Some reported didn't understand the difference between a "Sun Project" and a Sun employee working on the OpenOffice project. Simple as that. Good news is the publicity made by the mishap sped development along quite it bit as thousands of new users and developers tried the app for the first time.
Through "the media" I alway have gotten the impression that Stallman was steadfast to the idea that IP is always wrong, but I guess maybe his media converage is not very broad when it comes to his view.
Those comments changed my views on him quit a bit. I went from hating all his views before he even opened his mouth to not quite being sure where he stands. This at least has made me backpedle. Now I am not sure what to think. I have an open mind about him again.
Lets hope they can prove there are other, less annoying advertising models that work!"
The only for of advertising I feel works is highly targeted ads, be it in print, tv, or online. That is why google makes money. (they do, right?) They can target ads to be things user actually may want to see, imagine that!
Make users see a big annoying ad. Let them remove that ad by letting them take a survey. Promise to never email them or sell their address, unless the user opts in to a specific thing. Highly target ads from then on, which are less in people's face, using the information gathered. That is my subscription for web site advertising success.
When software of Linux can be installed as a user account, rather than root I usually do that. Many end user applications don't require root access for install if you don't run the default "make install". After I start getting "cruft", I add a new user, and start using my workstation as that user, reinstalling software as needed.
Servers don't have as much installed application (or they should not), so cruft is not as much of an issue.
I am on my third user account on Linux laptop workstation. My first account has a gnome config from hell, thanks to a few too many hard poweroffs. Gnome works fine as other users, I don't know how to fix it for that account. My second account just become to cluttered with crap, and I found it easier to create another account rather than clean up.
Each time I switch, I login with my origional user id, with my home dir mapped to whatever my current account is. chmod the other homes so I can still access them as needed and everything works great.
It's an easy way to bring a desktop workstation back to life. BTW - I use kde now, and it doesn't seem to have the same 'cruft' problems I had under gnome. Gnome would lock the station solid on my, forcing hard power cycles. Each time my envirnment would get worse.
I know his words are a little out of context, but that's already covered enough here, so I won't go into that part of things...moving on...
I am the first to admit I don't totally understand the different 64 bit chipsets, that being said it comes as not suprise to me AMD has some advantages over the i64 offering. AMD has been blowing Intel away recently on many different performance levels. Intel has lost their quality advantage. Remember when people were taking a big chance buying an AMD machine back in the 486 days, or at least everyone thought so. You never hear about that now. A lot of the articles today tout the per megehertz speed advantage AMD holds over Intel. The gap has been so large lately AMD does the fake mghz labeling thing so comsumers can compare on a more apples to apples basis.
Maybe Intel's time has come and the monopoly is on the verge of being broken. I for one would welcome it.
In the future, when editing (you guys do that...right?) Please replace the NFS in this usage with "Number Field Sieve". (That's what this is talking about, right?)
You are confusing all the unix file sharing people. This is like when talking about IP addresses with people who work more with "I"ntelectual "P"roperty.
In the past, I believe I have heard an AutoDesk executive comment on this in an interview about piracy. While I am sure it may not be their official position, they commented about be light on enforcement of piracy in the educational arena (for students that is) since it was getting users hooked on the software who would be legit professional users of the product after getting out of school.
It seems like many companies (at least the smart ones) have a love hate relationship with the education piracy topic. In the Java world at least, I am seeing many companies get what I believe is the best license. Free to use for development etc. but production rollout of the product or the output of a product needs a commercial use license. I know at least the Resin servlet container and Oracle's Java IDE are like that.
This product seems to me to be useless for any site that provides access to database information through dynamic pages.
Seeing how most web sites who would be in the market for a product like this have "advanced" sites, I would argue this product has a very small potential customer base.
Popular Science really did their homework with this one, which is not unusual for them. (I used to subscribe.)
I found it scary the one of the ID software guys said people were using hooks in their software they didn't know existed. Either he doesn't know what he's talking about, or ID needs some code review. If the games really do have hooks like that they don't know about, that's all the more interesting.
This sounds to me like a Marketing droid who knows jack about this stuff saying it will be a fast processor on a platform that is built for network games and applications.
Based on the other comments, that may be the closest thing to the truth from that article.
The name for this technology is "grid" (formerly called "cell") and appears to be targeted squarely at the possibilities of parallel and distributed computing over the internet.
I may be off on some wacko train of thought, but here is my economics lession for today for slashdot.
1. Capacity doubles every 100 days 2. Demand doubles every 356 days (estimate based on msnbc quote a couple nights ago) 3. "Customer" cost stays the same, helping to keep demand growing at a pace well below capacity growth. (Have you priced T1's recently? In my area, they are $1500/month)
Supply = way up Demand = about the same
You do the math. An "supplier implosion point" is bound to be reached following that supply/demand/price curve.
Slashdot Mirror
This journalist is nothing like the guy from the WSJ who gave the device such a bad rap. This guy mentions vi and ping in his review. He also tries it with 802.11b, which is where I believe this device really becomes a killer app.
He claims 4-5 hours with 802.11b, which I thought was more than I remember hearing.
Being a Java programmer, lots of options really open up for making this device do useful things. There are lots of really cool projects you could do, from controlling your server remotely, managing, and may be streaming your MP3's, run remote X sessions, etc. The thing is basically, as he says, a handheld computer which is not in the same league as most PDA's.
Amazon has them for $439 and change: Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 (affiliate link, so ya know)
This device is on the list of toys, or tools, I want to get. It is good to see the prices are coming down toward a point I may consider purchasing one, even though I (as of yet) don't have a real useful purpose for it. It's still over $500 equipped with 802.11.
-Pete
In New York State, an "EZPass" must be in a special bag for it not to be read. Looks like an anti-static bag and it may be, I don't know.
I know people who have tried to get the thing to not be read (to get a reciept in order to expense tolls for work) and without the bag it is very hard to "hide."
The poor design of the system means it can screw you at times if you don't do what is the expected traffic pattern. I was told once at the toll booth getting on that since my EZPass had been read, I was unable to turn around and must now get on the truway going the wrong direction and proceed to another exit or be faced with a $30 fine for illegal U-TURN. Problem was an accident closed the on ramp for the direction I needed to go.
(I turned around at the next "NO U TURNS" turn around to go the direction I needed to once I had though out how the system worked and knew the turn would not be "detected" by the crappy EZPass system.) Also, it takes at least 24 hours for a credit on your pass to work at most ramps.
The system in NYS sucks technically. I am quite worried about it being used for speed enforcement purposes and such.
-Pete
I have compiled a list of books I think should be on every web developers bookshelf. While I don't cover perl (I'm a PHP/JSP guy), if you are interested in this topic, you may find my page of interest. (http://www.starvingmind.net/tech.jsp)
For the Perl/Java tech argument. Well designed java pages can be just as fast, or faster then poor perl cgi's, and vis versa. I too have seen very slow JSP/servlet's. JSP's should not be programmed the same way as a language like PHP or perl in many cases, it will be slow. Perl ranks third for me, but not totally off the charts.
I for one would argue JSP based development makes more sense for most sites, due to development productivity, and language functionality. And as I said before, a well design Java site can execute as fast or faster than some perl CGI sites. PHP ranks right behind JSP's in my mind, since they don't provide as much functionality, although they are very fast for simple things.
Perl should be a tool in your developer's toolbox, although I believe PHP or JSP's are in most cases a better tool for the job of making dynamic web sites.
-Pete
The fine calls for the company to pay the maximum penalty of $11,000 per violation.
The FCC is also issuing citations to more than 100 businesses which used Fax.com, warning that they too could be liable to pay the maximum fine if they continue to send unsolicited faxes.
$11,000 per violation? That's a lot. This will make people think twice before doing it. I especially like how the advertisers may be held liable if they continue as well, although I don't think they should only be punished if they continue the practice. They knew what they we buying for their advertising dollar, or at least they should have.
-Pete
I have posted this on slashdot before, but the comment fits the article.
They will hate me for putting this idea into people's minds...but everyone I explain this to gets a kick out of it, so here goes.
1. Take 5 sheets of black construction paper.
2. Scotch tape them into a single 5 sheet long sheet.
3. Place start of "page" into fax machine.
4. Dial the "recipient".
5. Watch sheet start going into the fax machine with glee.
6. Once out the other side, Scotch Tape beginning of "sheet" to end of sheet forming a giant black loop.
7. Giggle like a teenage girl and show your co-workers. Trust me, the showing co-workers step is needed for the full satisfaction. Choose co-workers carefully.
8. You Are Done! Not only that, but the recipient is now out of ink or toner.
Not that I have ever done this...but I know someone who has done this to someone who kept sending them spam faxes.
I hold no responsibility for your actions yada yada...
-Pete
Two articles posted in a row to depress me.
-Pete
Not only is that half my weight, but who in the world has a cupholder in their car to hold that?
Seriously, I just want a stardard size coffee cup that will fit perfectly in a "standard car cup colder". A standard cupholder may be another issue.
I drink coffee on the way to work. I pass three places that sell good coffee (ok at least.) All three have different dimension cups. My Acura only fits 20oz cup very well.
-Pete
I agree with RedHat, here is my reasoning.
One of the major warranty problems I see in commercial software is the lack of a requirement for a commercial software vendor to fix bugs that impact the customer. With Open Source software, the customer has the ability to fix the problem on their own. (Either themselves, or through contractors.) That is the major difference. Another question, is who really owns GPL'd software? Is it Mr. Public Domain? Ok, let all get together an sue Mr. Public. In Open Source, the customer actually takes over more ownership of the software than in most commercial licenses. Don't believe me? Try to distribute MS Office in mass quantities and see what happens. Then look at Mandrake, a RedHat "core" user.
The rules are different. The end user product is different. It is like leasing a car which must be fixed at a certain dealer vs. buying a car you can take to any mechanic.
-Pete
What better use could a device like this provide than streaming video over it's 802.11b connection? Not sure why I would want they but it sounds like a good idea.
Anyone have expierience with battery time using a 802.11b connection for something like that? I keep getting more and more reasons I want one of those SL-5500 things. I would probably only use it for each of those reasons once though...
What's the killer "keep using it" app for these?
-Pete
From this information, the post office never even came close to "owning" email. They considered offering it as a service.
A much better analogy is:
"What if the Postman owned the first hotmail"
Tons of variations which are closer to reality exist, but hotmail sums it all up in a sentence everyone would understand.
The word "owned" is very misleading, and not supported in the article. They almost owned email as much as they own package delivery today. (Think UPS and FedEx)
-Pete
There are more screenshots, but again, have patience with and mercy on the connection!
That's never a good sign on a site slashdot links to. I saw one blury screenshot (stopped the page load after a couple minutes.)
That server's toast for sure. Anyone have a higher bandwidth mirror of the screenshots?
-Pete
This was on other sites yesterday. Isn't that scary that that is considered "old" now adays?
Some reported didn't understand the difference between a "Sun Project" and a Sun employee working on the OpenOffice project. Simple as that. Good news is the publicity made by the mishap sped development along quite it bit as thousands of new users and developers tried the app for the first time.
-Pete
Through "the media" I alway have gotten the impression that Stallman was steadfast to the idea that IP is always wrong, but I guess maybe his media converage is not very broad when it comes to his view.
Those comments changed my views on him quit a bit. I went from hating all his views before he even opened his mouth to not quite being sure where he stands. This at least has made me backpedle. Now I am not sure what to think. I have an open mind about him again.
-Pete
Lets hope they can prove there are other, less annoying advertising models that work!"
The only for of advertising I feel works is highly targeted ads, be it in print, tv, or online. That is why google makes money. (they do, right?) They can target ads to be things user actually may want to see, imagine that!
Make users see a big annoying ad. Let them remove that ad by letting them take a survey. Promise to never email them or sell their address, unless the user opts in to a specific thing. Highly target ads from then on, which are less in people's face, using the information gathered. That is my subscription for web site advertising success.
-Pete
When software of Linux can be installed as a user account, rather than root I usually do that. Many end user applications don't require root access for install if you don't run the default "make install". After I start getting "cruft", I add a new user, and start using my workstation as that user, reinstalling software as needed.
Servers don't have as much installed application (or they should not), so cruft is not as much of an issue.
I am on my third user account on Linux laptop workstation. My first account has a gnome config from hell, thanks to a few too many hard poweroffs. Gnome works fine as other users, I don't know how to fix it for that account. My second account just become to cluttered with crap, and I found it easier to create another account rather than clean up.
Each time I switch, I login with my origional user id, with my home dir mapped to whatever my current account is. chmod the other homes so I can still access them as needed and everything works great.
It's an easy way to bring a desktop workstation back to life. BTW - I use kde now, and it doesn't seem to have the same 'cruft' problems I had under gnome. Gnome would lock the station solid on my, forcing hard power cycles. Each time my envirnment would get worse.
-Pete
I know his words are a little out of context, but that's already covered enough here, so I won't go into that part of things...moving on...
I am the first to admit I don't totally understand the different 64 bit chipsets, that being said it comes as not suprise to me AMD has some advantages over the i64 offering. AMD has been blowing Intel away recently on many different performance levels. Intel has lost their quality advantage. Remember when people were taking a big chance buying an AMD machine back in the 486 days, or at least everyone thought so. You never hear about that now. A lot of the articles today tout the per megehertz speed advantage AMD holds over Intel. The gap has been so large lately AMD does the fake mghz labeling thing so comsumers can compare on a more apples to apples basis.
Maybe Intel's time has come and the monopoly is on the verge of being broken. I for one would welcome it.
-Pete
In the future, when editing (you guys do that...right?) Please replace the NFS in this usage with "Number Field Sieve". (That's what this is talking about, right?)
You are confusing all the unix file sharing people. This is like when talking about IP addresses with people who work more with "I"ntelectual "P"roperty.
-Pete
In the past, I believe I have heard an AutoDesk executive comment on this in an interview about piracy. While I am sure it may not be their official position, they commented about be light on enforcement of piracy in the educational arena (for students that is) since it was getting users hooked on the software who would be legit professional users of the product after getting out of school.
It seems like many companies (at least the smart ones) have a love hate relationship with the education piracy topic. In the Java world at least, I am seeing many companies get what I believe is the best license. Free to use for development etc. but production rollout of the product or the output of a product needs a commercial use license. I know at least the Resin servlet container and Oracle's Java IDE are like that.
-Pete
This product seems to me to be useless for any site that provides access to database information through dynamic pages.
Seeing how most web sites who would be in the market for a product like this have "advanced" sites, I would argue this product has a very small potential customer base.
-Pete
Popular Science really did their homework with this one, which is not unusual for them. (I used to subscribe.)
I found it scary the one of the ID software guys said people were using hooks in their software they didn't know existed. Either he doesn't know what he's talking about, or ID needs some code review. If the games really do have hooks like that they don't know about, that's all the more interesting.
-Pete
This sounds to me like a Marketing droid who knows jack about this stuff saying it will be a fast processor on a platform that is built for network games and applications.
Based on the other comments, that may be the closest thing to the truth from that article.
-Pete
Instead of using a mouse or game controller, players might wave their hands in front of a Web cam, showing what they want to do through gestures.
Sony...where half the fun of a game is watching someone else try to play it.
-Pete
The name for this technology is "grid" (formerly called "cell") and appears to be targeted squarely at the possibilities of parallel and distributed computing over the internet.
Imagine a bewolf cluster of those! Oh wait...
Someone had to say it!
-Pete
If I didn't know better I'd say that's what Compaq's, or was it old ALRs (remember them?) did when hardware wasn't right.
A string of varying beeps. This was years ago, don't know if any recent hardware still does it.
Tech support: Hold the phone close to the system board so I can hear it.
That was funny.
-Pete
I may be off on some wacko train of thought, but here is my economics lession for today for slashdot.
1. Capacity doubles every 100 days
2. Demand doubles every 356 days (estimate based on msnbc quote a couple nights ago)
3. "Customer" cost stays the same, helping to keep demand growing at a pace well below capacity growth. (Have you priced T1's recently? In my area, they are $1500/month)
Supply = way up
Demand = about the same
You do the math. An "supplier implosion point" is bound to be reached following that supply/demand/price curve.
-Pete