Voice Clarity: Excellent Display: Bright, Clear, Readable Camera: You won't be taking any family photos with it. Battery Life: Excellent Weight: Very Light
The keys ARE small, but they are spaced apart nicely, so unless you are andre the giant, I think one can get used to it.
As far as cellphone UI's go - this will be my seventh cellphone and it is the best I've used to date. The graphics, sounds and layout are very good and easy to navigate.
One of the things I like best is an IMAP/POP compatible e-mail reader/writer. While writing an e-mail is damn near impossible, reading is quite easy. You can configure multiple e-mail accounts, and can even use your own server for sending your picture messages and such (via e-mail). I have ATT and found that it was taking them a half hour to deliver a 20KB e-mail.
It also supports Java applications such as games and other things. The load time for Java based applications leaves something to be desired, but once it's running, it's good.
One thing of note is the speed, or lack thereof of the GPRS network it's simply slow.
The phone also supports, Bluetooth, and IR as a primary means of connecting to other devices. Turning it on, and off is very easy. As is connecting to compatible devices.
something about standards these days - they don't seem to ever live up to what they are really needed for. Take XSL for instance, a good start, but there are still some real problems. XML, hard to screw up. wep for example completely fails at any sort of security, we have to count on ipsec to provide secure connections. funny how though, there are no standards on authenticating a private tunnel based on a username and password. HELLO, radius is no longer acceptable. but as such for all the standards based goodness out there - there is no solution. How about an objct query language, no standard at all. XPATH is being used, but should it? probably not. How about the IETF, moving ever so quickly for IPV6? Or the w3c - moving to make HTML not such a damn cluster skroo, oh wait we'll need to wait until 2100 for that.
Standards - seem to be a real damn waste of time. Since they get you 90% there - but then let a brutha down on the most important parts.
had any idea what they were doing on the web - they would have a plan in place for geographic redundancy of server hardware, and a fail over plan in the event that an IP address group was attacked. But of course - they don't, why? they are ass clowns. WHOOT! Long live Linux, cough, ahem, BSD.
Yes... the fact that these peeps get all exceited when the word "Linux" is attached to something. which was my point when i posted that.:-) OpenBSD is the bomb. I bet this linux distro doesn't send daily security and status reports.
I've also used the IPSEC and Tunneling features of OpenBSD,it took a weekend to create the machine, install the OS and configure the FW and IPSec rules. I'd never done it before - says alot about the quality of the OpenBSD's warez.
Cutting costs. The state probably wants to guard against lazy contractors, as they should. Why would the contractors object to being tracked if they weren't doing their job? Also, knowing the location of the plow would allow them to direct plows more effectively.
This sort of tracking is already done by mobile advertsing vehicles. They have a GPS installed to ensure that they are travelling their designated routes.
I just bought a new phone today... while I was in the wireless store, a man came in asking to switch from cingular to ATT. The lady at the counter said "we need a bill from cincular". The reason she said, was that the phone number is case sensitive. In the event that the phone number is not entered into their system correctly, the request to port the fellows request for porting will fail. He elected to go ahead and take his chances.
If that is the case... then your number has not been "ported" to you new provider. Your old handset belongs to the old carrier - thus if you receive calls there then that doesn't sound like it's been fully moved. Might want to double check that.
The guy that posted that crap - was carrying the desktop flag, so I responded as such.
mozilla is fast(tho ugly, imo), galeon is fast(and has tabs and gestures), and opera is very fast(having tabs and gestures). i dont at all know what you mean about that.
Mozilla is OK, not fast. But how about that 20 Meg download. No really, we are just parsing HTML here - not launching the space shuttle. Safari, OS X's web browser is about 2 megs, and remarkably renders things exceptionally well. IN fact I believe Konqueror/KDE is using parts of safrai. Opera is not really good software...
they buy them because they are pretty
Tell that the chemist I talked to on a train who had a G4 powerbook. He uses OS X because it gives him the power of a Linux/Sparc/Unix/SGI/Irix platform with a very useable interface and one in which applications and solutions can be developed with reasonable finish in a reasonable amount of time.
no, the fact that it is free and will run on any piece of hardware you have makes it exempt from working perfectly on all of those platforms. can osx install on a sun?
This is *no* excuse. End of story. If Linux wants to play with the big boys they need to get their crap together.
one more thing. how come osx is bsd now? isnt that a whole lot more like linux than os9? how is it that linux wants to be like osx? seems to me that mac decided that open source *nix(bsd, sorry) was the way to go and rewrote teh whole os to be like them.
The reason for choosing BSD was clear. It gave them a tried and true platform to build a proprietary GUI. It was a smart decision. Apple is in the business of User experience, not building OS's. In addition the BSD license allowed them to do so without giving into the communist requirements of the GPL.
Finally, you are right: Linux has it's place. Right now there are a bunch of idiots running around saying Linux for everything!!! The fact of the matter is that it's not really good for everything. Nor is OS X, or WinBlows or Sparc or HP or IRIX or SGI or BLAH BLAH BLAH there are too many to list. Each has it's strenghts and weaknesses it's up to us to choose when and where it is appropriate to deploy such things. More importantly, it's not about us as in Geeks Programmers and Technology people, it's about who uses these machines and software.
Technology needs to "just work" we aren't there yet - but it's getting better.
Props - you hit the nail on the head man. It was an intelligent post. The/.ers that read it don't get the fact that there is no reason to be messing with boot loaders and/dev/hda0 in this day and age.
when you start your argument off like a moron, it automatically discredits anything else you may have to say. he didn't really have much to say - the paragraph he quoted is EXACTLY why Linux is not on every desktop.
You've got to sacrifice a little ease of use for a ton of usability in Linux. You must mean flexibility. There is NOTHING "useable" about messing with boot loaders.
Linux is a very powerful OS in the right hands. OS X is less then par in that area, although it is extremely easy to use. Linux is just as good as the next *nix or BSD. It's not better, or worse. As far as OS X goes, it is also equally as powerful as Linux, and I'd say more so considering that it has a very coherent set of development tools available for it AND it is extremely easy to use. Clearly you have not spent any length of time using OS X.
Oh, BTW, using "then" instead of "than" tends to "discredit anything else you may have to say."
The intents of both OSes are different. As it stands now, Linux is an OS X wannabe. Linux wants to have a nice UI, Linux wants to run games, and Linux wants to have a web browser that isn't slow as balls or, how about iTunes?
But try installing two different versions of a Mac OS while keeping two separate boot loaders on two separate partitions on your computer and see how easy it is. While I'm sure this can be done, HELLO - why on earth would you need to?
Hate to tell you, but it wouldn't have been any easier to do what he did even if it was with a mac operating system. Are you KIDDING ME? Have you installed OS X? Honestly it doesn't get any easier than OS X.
Sun was correct in saying that his was a very special case. And this is no damn excuse. Special cases should be accounted for, and corrected! Just because it is Linux does NOT MEAN that it is magically exempted from NOT WORKING CORRECTLY.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but if the reviewer went out and bought Windows, he'd have no spam filtering at all. If he bought ANY of these other products, he still has to go and get additional software and install it. I don't see how an upgrade is any harder or less geekier than installing an entirely new application.
This isn't about windows or redhat. This is about the maturity of some OSS projects. While technically mature, SpamAssisin, at least the version he had appeared to be more difficult to install. Coupled with the lasck of telephone support, he had issues, and that, is a completely fair end user experience.
Also, the notion of an "Upgrade" for open source, and a commercial product are completly different.
If he's not comfortable being on the "bleeding edge", then why would he be going out and buying brand-new commercial software in the first place?
The commercial software that was pruchased came with telephone support which was used when he installed another one of the commercial products on RedHat. Generally speaking commercial software's goal is to give you access to the latest technical advancements, while making it easy to use. Also called, ease of use, it is a staple of successful products, and defines the have's and the have nots. I can only think of an exception to this: Crystal Reports, which is the best marketed product that is completely incapable of delivering.
I'm not grading the review or even justifying it, notice I'm focusing on the fact that he stated reather objectively, that SpamAssasin was hard to install and that it didn't work as well. All of the OSS people get their panties in a knot, but the fact of the matter is, OSS software, for the most part requires a little more willingness to get under the hood. If OSS is to win it needs to be as good as the "products" that it competes against. That's all there is to it.
While his review was perhaps not scientifically conducted. I think there was a point to be made with the SpamAssasin blurb.
Notice that he deliberately took a standard install from RedHat 9, something some IT person (Not a tr00 g33k) might buy at CompUSA. He then tried to install the provided product. Clearly, a tr00 g33k would go and download the latest release, but keep in mind that not everyone is so comfortable with being on the bleeding edge - I believe that this was a point he tried to make. There is also the perception that the release provided with a "product" such as RedHat 9 will be up to the same standards as the OS.
While it's true the latest version has default rules and whatnot - it's quite likely that his older, more out of date version does not. In fact, going briefly to the spamassin home page the links for the 2.5 and 2.4 release documentation are broken.
The point to be made was: OSS needs to be more buttoned up. Notice that he said that he had no trouble installing redhat 9. That's becuase the installer is rather good.
Not really. The only DVD's encoded at a rate that come close to the transmission speed of 802.11b are the Superbit encoded titles. These DVD's have a bit rate of ~ 10 Mb/sec.
Yes, but you are in the minority. You see, your time is valueable enough that you don't spend it scouring Kazaa for free music. Essentially you find the cost of a CD to outweigh the cost of your time spent dilligently looking for the music on Kazaa.
Those that have surplus time, and enjoy music will find that it's a good use of time (and their money) to search Kazaa for the music they are looking for.
Those that don't have surplus time, will buy the CD, becuase the cost of a 14.99 CD will be a better use of that persons resources (time/money).
The whole DRM issue is really about economics. If the CD's were cheap enough - then people would spend their time buying CD's and doing other things with the time that they spend searching Kazaa for the latest album.
In some cases, Kazaa can provide something that can't be purchased such as an unreleased single, in which case, to those that are looking for that unreleased single, Kazaa and the time spent finding something that can't be bought - is worth it. That particular situation will never truly be rectifed. The issue with "stealing" of albums can be, by lowering the price of each CD to a point where piracy is no longer worth the effort of turning to Kazaa.
"recently added a bluetooth keyboard and mouse to their line of products"
Yes, and that's about the only application for bluetooth that has emerged on the market. It's the "industry standard" wirless keyboard and mouse protocol now. Yes, yes all of you people with the bluetooth laptops and cellphones would argue that you can surf the web with the two together. That will not last.
The wi-fi chipset is getting to be as small and low power as bluetooth, which is why bluetooth has seen such a lag in adoption. This trend will continue as becomes more cost effective and feasible to put wi-fi in devices that wern't able to accomidate it in the past.
Admittedly, wi-fi is overkill for small devices but it's better to have one ubiquitous type of network/standard for devices,computers, networked sensors, etc. etc. instead of "personal area networks". Leaves me with an image of a bunch electronic things orbiting around a person.
It comes down to this; any device that would be considered "better" with wi-fi, will eventually have it. The keyboard is an excellent example, does the keyboard improve with the addtion of wi-fi? Not really. Does your cellphone improve with wi-fi? You betcha'.
cannot be correct. or if it is, it includes the cost of the construction of the facility, all hardware associated with networking the cluster, and providing it power. Even at 20,000 a piece, generous for a 2 proc box, the cluster should cost in the neighberhood of 12 Million for the machines. Apple is cool but, boys and girls lets not get carried away.
Slashdot Mirror
No they aren't. In fact most scientific research papers are available starting at at least 30 dollars.
Go try to find more than an abstract on the latest Fusion research...
Voice Clarity: Excellent
Display: Bright, Clear, Readable
Camera: You won't be taking any family photos with it.
Battery Life: Excellent
Weight: Very Light
The keys ARE small, but they are spaced apart nicely, so unless you are andre the giant, I think one can get used to it.
As far as cellphone UI's go - this will be my seventh cellphone and it is the best I've used to date. The graphics, sounds and layout are very good and easy to navigate.
One of the things I like best is an IMAP/POP compatible e-mail reader/writer. While writing an e-mail is damn near impossible, reading is quite easy. You can configure multiple e-mail accounts, and can even use your own server for sending your picture messages and such (via e-mail). I have ATT and found that it was taking them a half hour to deliver a 20KB e-mail.
It also supports Java applications such as games and other things. The load time for Java based applications leaves something to be desired, but once it's running, it's good.
One thing of note is the speed, or lack thereof of the GPRS network it's simply slow.
The phone also supports, Bluetooth, and IR as a primary means of connecting to other devices. Turning it on, and off is very easy. As is connecting to compatible devices.
something about standards these days - they don't seem to ever live up to what they are really needed for. Take XSL for instance, a good start, but there are still some real problems. XML, hard to screw up. wep for example completely fails at any sort of security, we have to count on ipsec to provide secure connections. funny how though, there are no standards on authenticating a private tunnel based on a username and password. HELLO, radius is no longer acceptable. but as such for all the standards based goodness out there - there is no solution. How about an objct query language, no standard at all. XPATH is being used, but should it? probably not. How about the IETF, moving ever so quickly for IPV6? Or the w3c - moving to make HTML not such a damn cluster skroo, oh wait we'll need to wait until 2100 for that.
Standards - seem to be a real damn waste of time. Since they get you 90% there - but then let a brutha down on the most important parts.
had any idea what they were doing on the web - they would have a plan in place for geographic redundancy of server hardware, and a fail over plan in the event that an IP address group was attacked. But of course - they don't, why? they are ass clowns. WHOOT! Long live Linux, cough, ahem, BSD.
Yes... the fact that these peeps get all exceited when the word "Linux" is attached to something. which was my point when i posted that. :-) OpenBSD is the bomb. I bet this linux distro doesn't send daily security and status reports.
I've also used the IPSEC and Tunneling features of OpenBSD,it took a weekend to create the machine, install the OS and configure the FW and IPSec rules. I'd never done it before - says alot about the quality of the OpenBSD's warez.
No, it has been used as a "hardend" firewall.
Has been doing this for a long time...
Cutting costs. The state probably wants to guard against lazy contractors, as they should. Why would the contractors object to being tracked if they weren't doing their job? Also, knowing the location of the plow would allow them to direct plows more effectively.
This sort of tracking is already done by mobile advertsing vehicles. They have a GPS installed to ensure that they are travelling their designated routes.
i'm a little slow today. what the hell kind of explanation is "case sensitive" phone number???
I just bought a new phone today... while I was in the wireless store, a man came in asking to switch from cingular to ATT. The lady at the counter said "we need a bill from cincular". The reason she said, was that the phone number is case sensitive. In the event that the phone number is not entered into their system correctly, the request to port the fellows request for porting will fail. He elected to go ahead and take his chances.
If that is the case... then your number has not been "ported" to you new provider. Your old handset belongs to the old carrier - thus if you receive calls there then that doesn't sound like it's been fully moved. Might want to double check that.
There are two camps here:
Linux as a server, Linux as a desktop.
The guy that posted that crap - was carrying the desktop flag, so I responded as such.
mozilla is fast(tho ugly, imo), galeon is fast(and has tabs and gestures), and opera is very fast(having tabs and gestures). i dont at all know what you mean about that.
Mozilla is OK, not fast. But how about that 20 Meg download. No really, we are just parsing HTML here - not launching the space shuttle. Safari, OS X's web browser is about 2 megs, and remarkably renders things exceptionally well. IN fact I believe Konqueror/KDE is using parts of safrai. Opera is not really good software...
they buy them because they are pretty
Tell that the chemist I talked to on a train who had a G4 powerbook. He uses OS X because it gives him the power of a Linux/Sparc/Unix/SGI/Irix platform with a very useable interface and one in which applications and solutions can be developed with reasonable finish in a reasonable amount of time.
no, the fact that it is free and will run on any piece of hardware you have makes it exempt from working perfectly on all of those platforms. can osx install on a sun?
This is *no* excuse. End of story. If Linux wants to play with the big boys they need to get their crap together.
one more thing. how come osx is bsd now? isnt that a whole lot more like linux than os9? how is it that linux wants to be like osx? seems to me that mac decided that open source *nix(bsd, sorry) was the way to go and rewrote teh whole os to be like them.
The reason for choosing BSD was clear. It gave them a tried and true platform to build a proprietary GUI. It was a smart decision. Apple is in the business of User experience, not building OS's. In addition the BSD license allowed them to do so without giving into the communist requirements of the GPL.
Finally, you are right: Linux has it's place. Right now there are a bunch of idiots running around saying Linux for everything!!! The fact of the matter is that it's not really good for everything. Nor is OS X, or WinBlows or Sparc or HP or IRIX or SGI or BLAH BLAH BLAH there are too many to list. Each has it's strenghts and weaknesses it's up to us to choose when and where it is appropriate to deploy such things. More importantly, it's not about us as in Geeks Programmers and Technology people, it's about who uses these machines and software.
Technology needs to "just work" we aren't there yet - but it's getting better.
Props - you hit the nail on the head man. It was an intelligent post. The /.ers that read it don't get the fact that there is no reason to be messing with boot loaders and /dev/hda0 in this day and age.
Yo d00d.
when you start your argument off like a moron, it automatically discredits anything else you may have to say.
he didn't really have much to say - the paragraph he quoted is EXACTLY why Linux is not on every desktop.
You've got to sacrifice a little ease of use for a ton of usability in Linux.
You must mean flexibility. There is NOTHING "useable" about messing with boot loaders.
Linux is a very powerful OS in the right hands. OS X is less then par in that area, although it is extremely easy to use.
Linux is just as good as the next *nix or BSD. It's not better, or worse. As far as OS X goes, it is also equally as powerful as Linux, and I'd say more so considering that it has a very coherent set of development tools available for it AND it is extremely easy to use. Clearly you have not spent any length of time using OS X.
Oh, BTW, using "then" instead of "than" tends to "discredit anything else you may have to say."
The intents of both OSes are different.
As it stands now, Linux is an OS X wannabe. Linux wants to have a nice UI, Linux wants to run games, and Linux wants to have a web browser that isn't slow as balls or, how about iTunes?
But try installing two different versions of a Mac OS while keeping two separate boot loaders on two separate partitions on your computer and see how easy it is.
While I'm sure this can be done, HELLO - why on earth would you need to?
Hate to tell you, but it wouldn't have been any easier to do what he did even if it was with a mac operating system.
Are you KIDDING ME? Have you installed OS X? Honestly it doesn't get any easier than OS X.
Sun was correct in saying that his was a very special case.
And this is no damn excuse. Special cases should be accounted for, and corrected! Just because it is Linux does NOT MEAN that it is magically exempted from NOT WORKING CORRECTLY.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but if the reviewer went out and bought Windows, he'd have no spam filtering at all. If he bought ANY of these other products, he still has to go and get additional software and install it. I don't see how an upgrade is any harder or less geekier than installing an entirely new application.
This isn't about windows or redhat. This is about the maturity of some OSS projects. While technically mature, SpamAssisin, at least the version he had appeared to be more difficult to install. Coupled with the lasck of telephone support, he had issues, and that, is a completely fair end user experience.
Also, the notion of an "Upgrade" for open source, and a commercial product are completly different.
If he's not comfortable being on the "bleeding edge", then why would he be going out and buying brand-new commercial software in the first place?
The commercial software that was pruchased came with telephone support which was used when he installed another one of the commercial products on RedHat. Generally speaking commercial software's goal is to give you access to the latest technical advancements, while making it easy to use. Also called, ease of use, it is a staple of successful products, and defines the have's and the have nots. I can only think of an exception to this: Crystal Reports, which is the best marketed product that is completely incapable of delivering.
I'm not grading the review or even justifying it, notice I'm focusing on the fact that he stated reather objectively, that SpamAssasin was hard to install and that it didn't work as well. All of the OSS people get their panties in a knot, but the fact of the matter is, OSS software, for the most part requires a little more willingness to get under the hood. If OSS is to win it needs to be as good as the "products" that it competes against. That's all there is to it.
While his review was perhaps not scientifically conducted. I think there was a point to be made with the SpamAssasin blurb.
Notice that he deliberately took a standard install from RedHat 9, something some IT person (Not a tr00 g33k) might buy at CompUSA. He then tried to install the provided product. Clearly, a tr00 g33k would go and download the latest release, but keep in mind that not everyone is so comfortable with being on the bleeding edge - I believe that this was a point he tried to make. There is also the perception that the release provided with a "product" such as RedHat 9 will be up to the same standards as the OS.
While it's true the latest version has default rules and whatnot - it's quite likely that his older, more out of date version does not. In fact, going briefly to the spamassin home page the links for the 2.5 and 2.4 release documentation are broken.
The point to be made was: OSS needs to be more buttoned up. Notice that he said that he had no trouble installing redhat 9. That's becuase the installer is rather good.
Serialization.
>Microsoft knows full well that an XML schema >cannot be patented.
Perhaps that is true, but how about a patent on "A mechanism for distributing document files via XML" or some such nonsense?
Not really. The only DVD's encoded at a rate that come close to the transmission speed of 802.11b are the Superbit encoded titles. These DVD's have a bit rate of ~ 10 Mb/sec.
Funny... then all those appliacation on your hard drive don't work anymore.
Yes, but you are in the minority. You see, your time is valueable enough that you don't spend it scouring Kazaa for free music. Essentially you find the cost of a CD to outweigh the cost of your time spent dilligently looking for the music on Kazaa.
Those that have surplus time, and enjoy music will find that it's a good use of time (and their money) to search Kazaa for the music they are looking for.
Those that don't have surplus time, will buy the CD, becuase the cost of a 14.99 CD will be a better use of that persons resources (time/money).
The whole DRM issue is really about economics. If the CD's were cheap enough - then people would spend their time buying CD's and doing other things with the time that they spend searching Kazaa for the latest album.
In some cases, Kazaa can provide something that can't be purchased such as an unreleased single, in which case, to those that are looking for that unreleased single, Kazaa and the time spent finding something that can't be bought - is worth it. That particular situation will never truly be rectifed. The issue with "stealing" of albums can be, by lowering the price of each CD to a point where piracy is no longer worth the effort of turning to Kazaa.
What he meant to say was "You don't need perfect code for security, just perfect security for your code".
"recently added a bluetooth keyboard and mouse to their line of products"
Yes, and that's about the only application for bluetooth that has emerged on the market. It's the "industry standard" wirless keyboard and mouse protocol now. Yes, yes all of you people with the bluetooth laptops and cellphones would argue that you can surf the web with the two together. That will not last.
The wi-fi chipset is getting to be as small and low power as bluetooth, which is why bluetooth has seen such a lag in adoption. This trend will continue as becomes more cost effective and feasible to put wi-fi in devices that wern't able to accomidate it in the past.
Admittedly, wi-fi is overkill for small devices but it's better to have one ubiquitous type of network/standard for devices,computers, networked sensors, etc. etc. instead of "personal area networks". Leaves me with an image of a bunch electronic things orbiting around a person.
It comes down to this; any device that would be considered "better" with wi-fi, will eventually have it. The keyboard is an excellent example, does the keyboard improve with the addtion of wi-fi? Not really. Does your cellphone improve with wi-fi? You betcha'.
cannot be correct. or if it is, it includes the cost of the construction of the facility, all hardware associated with networking the cluster, and providing it power. Even at 20,000 a piece, generous for a 2 proc box, the cluster should cost in the neighberhood of 12 Million for the machines. Apple is cool but, boys and girls lets not get carried away.
Here. Here. Good adivce.