What Sprint desperately needs, right now, is a huge influx of capital. They've got some extremely valuable frequencies, which they are freeing-up in just a few months as they kick people off iDEN/Nextel. These lower frequencies are the difference between Sprint having piss-poor coverage outside of the most dense cities, and them having deep coverage that can really compete with AT&T and Verizon. Sprint's poor cellular coverage is directly related to using the 1.9GHz spectrum, and needing more towers to get equivalent coverage.
Combine those lower frequencies with LTE, and start on a building-spree, and Sprint could put together a respectable LTE network pretty quickly. Consumers haven't really embraced 4G in a big-way, for whatever reason (cost, coverage, power-sucking chipsets, etc), so Sprint isn't terribly disadvantaged just yet.
What's more, they COULD have a huge advantage over AT&T/Verizon right now, if they would leverage WiMax during the LTE build-out... Just start selling CDMA+WiMax+LTE handsets, and let them use the fastest service available, and doing the LTE build-out FIRST in areas that currently lack WiMax. Sprint could have an impressive "4G" coverage map right away, if dual WiMax/LTE phones existed, and Sprint leveraged both to good effect from the start (ie. NOW). Their status as the only carrier who is NOT capping or throttling customers due to data usage would make their 4G service an even bigger selling point.
They could also double-down on this strategy, by using WiMax/LTE for their dumb phones as well, if in a bandwidth-limited form, moving people off of 3G/CDMA that much faster, and putting an end to the need to spend resources to continue expanding their current 3G network, which will soon be getting far less use, no matter what.
Yes, X has been used, but there were a ton of crappy touch-screen devices. IOS and Android took off for a reason, and it's in large part because good decision were made in designing the touch-screen UI.
If your touch-screen interface involves clicking on a scroll-bar or scroll buttons, you've failed... miserably.
Your lease agreement can't stop you from installing an (outdoor) antenna on property you are leasing. My last place was strict about that, too, but several of us had big antennas on our balconies, and the landlord has no ability to stop renters from doing so, per FCC rules which preempt all local laws, regulations, and rental contracts.
Now, if the property you're renting doesn't have any suitable locations to site an antenna, you're still out-of-luck, but not because of any terms in your lease agreement.
If you get hassled about it, print out the full FCC rule, and give it to them, with highlighted passages. Most people depend on the ignorance of those they rule over, and others may just be ignorant, themselves.
"So lets say I don't live in Alaska, but my Metro area still has a station on channel 5. What would you recommend?"
I can't answer that. You didn't say how strong of a signal it is, if you're trying to get other VHF stations, and if so, if it's in the same direction. The short answer is, if it's really strong, you can get away with an antenna not designed for it... If it's weak, you'll definitely need an antenna that does both VHF-lo and VHF-hi. But since we're only a few years past the digital cutover, it's still easy to find full-range VHF antennas.
It really depends on how strong of a signal you've got. I've recomended designing an antenna system around one of the best UHF antennas available, because UHF's shorter range makes reception much more challenging, and because the vast majority of channels are now on UHF. If you go with just about anything else, you'll be sacrificing UHF reception. UHF yagi/corner reflectors like that used in combo antennas are inherently poor performers after the digital transition, as they work best on highest frequencies, and those (52+) are no longer in-use. I've also never looked at combo units seriously because the price of seperate UHF VHF antennas is just as low, and you don't need to compromise... You can even do cool things like pointing the VHF and UHF antennas in different directions, which I've been able to do to good effect a couple times.
If I needed network attached webcams for a short time, then a streaming video player for a short time, then an Arduino for a short time, I might get a Pi. But I can't see that scenario ever happening.
If I need an IP camera, I'll get an IP camera (or an old Android phone). If I need a streaming video player, I'll get one. And I will NEVER expect or desire to have one of the cross over and do the job of the other, cause I want them both.
If I wanted one device to do EVERYTHING, I'd get a PC. A Pi is so low-end that it really won't be able to do more than one of these tasks at a time, and is so horribly limited in expansion capabilities that you'll always be working around its limitations, and spending more money to get things done in the end.
I generally agree with you, but there could be many good reasons to run Android. It's certainly the better choice for touch-screens. And even on a desktop-like system, android apps are designed to be small and fast, while their desktop equivalents are nightmarish resource hogs. Firefox and Chrome are great examples of that. And while the source code of both is open, I've yet to see any lightweght desktop version being forked off.
Android has a number of applications that Linux lacks... Netflix streaming, all manner of games, native Pandora client, Winamp, and untold numbers of others.
Man, what did we do for ensuring we were purchasing quality goods before peer review?
Well, in this case an understanding of the laws of physics would have taken care of it. Anybody claiming 150mi reception of TV signals is a bald-faced liar. The curvature of the earth, and the propagation of the frequencies involved simply makes that impossible in the general case. The standard numbers are 60mi for UHF and 100mi for VHF. It's along the same lines as all those 12v air compressors that claim to produce 250psi... twice what high-end shop compressors are able to produce. They're lying, and once they're lying to you, who knows how many other nasty things they're doing, like cutting corners on build quality.
But to answer your question, we did a few things... First, we shopped at stores we could trust. These days retailers will stock any PoS they think they can make money on, and take no responsibilty for the items they stock, but it doesn't have to be this way, and it wasn't the norm, even just 20 years ago. I personally avoid Walmart, because they intentionally stock inordinant amounts of crap, because they want to advertise a lower price, and don't care that they're screwing their own customers for the sake of a few cents price difference. My favorite retailer is Sears. While they're not perfect, they still have some traditional values and try to stock products that aren't complete junk, and they usually do so at about the same price as the junk dealers like Walmart and Home Depot. Kenmore appliances are nearly as cheap, and put the low-end brands at Home Depot and other to shame in a big way, but for some reason, people haven't wised-up.
Second, there were brands we could trust... It was only 10 years ago or so that well-known brands decided to cash-in their reputation and start selling complete crap. You can see this in cheap HP printers, Levi's, Sony branding on DVD Burners and other devices they don't make, and much, much more. The brands used-to mean something, and people were caught off-guard when things suddenly changed.
These days, I've adopted a dual strategy. I still believe paying more for a good product is eminently good strategy, but I no longer just trust that a given brand is selling high quality products.
Any good antennas you can suggest? Indoor or outdoor would be fine. I would prefer not to have to move it though. Multiple would also be better than having to move one.
First you should go to http://tvfool.com/ and check your address for OTA digital signals.
Note the "Real" channel on the tvfool chart. If it's 7-13, you'd need a VHF-high antenna, if it's 14-51 a UHF antenna will pick it up. If it's 2-6, you're probably in Alaska, and sadly will need an old, full-range VHF-lo/hi antenna.
Any channels that are Green or Yellow will likely work with a simple, cheap, indoor antenna (preferably in your window, facing towards the transmitter). The simplest old indoor antennas seem to work the best... better than more expensive indoor antennas that are tunable or have a useless (for short cable runs) amplifier. Nice long "rabbit-ears" at a 45 degree angle will do a good job for VHF (real: 2-13) channels, while a nice big "loop" antenna will do very well picking up UHF channels.
If you're in the red, or worse, you MIGHT be lucky and receive the station(s) with an indoor antenna with minimal dropout, but at this point, you're probably at the point that you should invest in a roof-top antenna.
VHF is pretty simple, and easier to receive over longer ranges, and around obstacles like mountains, buildings or trees. For antennas, you have a couple choices which are both about equivalent in reception and price (about $40):
For UHF channels, reception is a bit tougher, as curvature of the earth, and any obstacles cause more issues. There's some debate over how the top 8-bay antennas should be ranked, but it's an easy choice when you see one of the contenders costs nearly half as much as the rest:
Now, if you need both UHF and VHF-high antennas, connecting them with a splitter will cause you to lose a significant amount of signal strength. Instead, a purpose-built VHF/UHF splitter/combiner will perform much better. Just about any one will do, but here's a link for an in-stock $2 model:
And finally, if you're going to run the coax a non-trivial length, or if you are going to connect the antenna(s) to a splitter to serve multiple TVs or just multiple tuners (eg. TV+DVR) then you'll get a big benefit out of a mast-mounted pre-amp. The key is to get the lowest "noise" figure you can. There are a range of ridiculously expensive options that will get you a just-slightly lower-noise signal, but once again Winegard is much cheaper, and close enough:
Thanks to FCC regulations, you can put this all up on a mast as high as 12' above your roof line, without anyone being able to require you to get a permit or similar (unless you're in a historic area, or there's serious safety issues like overhead power lines). And if you happen to NEED to go higher to get reception of local stations, they MUST grant your permit request for minimal cost and in a timely fashion.
To deal with the risk of lighting starting fires or blowing up your TV, you need to ground your mast and the coax. A coax grounding block costs about $1, and like your mast, just needs to be wired to metal water pipes, or a grounding rod. Some more advanced coax surge suppressors exist, but I would never forego the simple task of grounding everything first.
That should be all the equipment you need, and the information on tvfool will tell you EXACTLY which d
I couldn't agree more. A TV antenna gets me most of my content, and for the rest (a couple cable shows I watch) Hulu is free, and doesn't even use up a significant chunk of my internet bandwidth.
the Pi can now run the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android
Except the Pi shipped with an ARM11 (ARMv6) CPU, while just about all native Android apps are compiled for ARMv7. So most of the apps people are going to want to run... Multimedia programs, games, Firefox, etc., etc, won't ever work on the Pi, all for the sake of saving $1 rather than upgrading to a non-ancient CPU.
only one is roughly the same size, you can't really install any linux you want on most of them, only one can be run off of AA batteries.
What are you smoking? Except for the old P4 desktop PC, every single one of those I listed can all run on a few AA batteries easily enough, are smaller than a Pi if put to the same use.
By that I mean, the tablet is a bit larger, but if you need a screen for your Pi, then the tablet is then smaller and lower power. The network cameras are far smaller than a Pi plus a webcam.
And while you can to a lot with the hardware you mentioned, it isn't the same as having a small, relatively powerful, piece of generic hardware.
You're right, it's not the same... The custom-purpose hardware does the job BETTER, doesn't require a lot of setup work, and all the while being much cheaper.
Know what bothers me? People like the GP saying something akin to "The Pi uses a proprietary blob! That's bad! Go buy this completely proprietary system instead."
Except that's not remotely what I said...
The binary blob eliminates the fantasy that the Pi is for teaching hardware to kids. When that's gone, you're better off with a PC like the one I listed, which should substantially out-perform the Pi in every way as well.
Meanwhile, I listed a few things which people might want a compact system like the Pi for, and gave cheaper and FAR superior alternatives.
Binary blobs aren't foremost on everyone's top-10 list, but it eliminates "open" as a selling point, which then makes it just another device competing in a sea of cheap hardware.
If you want a smartphone, the Alcatel Venture has comparable specs, and sells for $50, contract-free (and VirginMobile also has some of the cheapest cell plans, too, if you want to sign up).
If you want a desktop, you can usually get a used, mini P4 system (40w idle) for $32 from geeks.com. Better deals are often available from local off-lease PC dealers.
If you want a tablet, Walmart stocks a 7" Pandigital unit for $50.
If you want video streaming and 1080p decoding, the D-Link MovieNite Streaming Player, DSM310 is selling for $38 at WalMart.
If you want network-attached cameras, you can find ethernet and WiFi (g) models with PTZ, built-in mic and speaker, and night-vision for $50, maybe less.
With the Pi needing binary blobs as well, I really see nowhere than the Pi makes sense.
With Amazon's tablet being so much more tightly controlled than most Android devices, it should be much easier for Amazon to change architectures, and just force in-house and other developers to ensure their apps (if native, rather than the 90%+ that are Dalvik) are recompiled and working on the new CPU from day one.
As we saw with the first $100 ICS tablet out of China, MIPS chips can be cheaper while still performing just as well, particularly with China spending good amounts of money to keep developing their Dragon / Loong Soon chip, giving it out-of-order execution, multiple cores, and better performance per-clock (where MIPS has always been ahead of ARM) and giving it away to domestic producers.
So, of all Android tablet producers, why doesn't Amazon try jumping ship to a different CPU?
Way to miss the point. Carlin was the court jester, the only one allowed to mock the King. He was a philosopher who made a living picking out absurdities and presenting them to an audience. He didn't have an "Act", he had a lecture.
No, he had an extreme left-wing rant... That he wasn't a failed comic who was quickly forgotten is a terrible injustice, and absolutely absurd.
How many stories does/. damn-well need on this one single event?/. is NOT A BLOG, and wouldn't work well as one. Be a little more selective in what gets posted to the front page, and you'll have better, deeper discussions and much happier readers.
Tell me one thing (just to determine your particular level of mental illness)... How do you feel about bikes overhauled with electric motors and batteries? How about small gasoline engines?
Rural areas often have no WiFi, no cell coverage and no TV or radio.
Point me to one. You can go to the furthest reaches of Alaska and get (AM/MW) radio. Not to mention things like radio beacons for navigation. I've been to farmland in several states across the US, and I've not seen one where TV/radio is anything but prolific.
And I wasn't suggesting rural farms would be surrounded by WiFi APs like a city, more that a couple farmers would have them installed.
That said, I maintain that any attempt to compare the miles the average cyclist travels to the miles the average car travels is ridiculous.
No. Your stance makes no sense.
If I need to go somewhere, I may be able to choose between a car and a bike, but I can't warp space and make my destination a shorter distance away. Travel time can vary for any number of reasons, but distance remains constant. Your statement that anyone who cycles will move closer to their destination is ridiculous on any number of levels.
If GPS guidance goes down (IE our hardware has a problem), we simply cannot drive the machines.
If true, this is incredibly sad. The lowest-end consumer navigation units can correctly handle positioning and navigation WITHOUT GPS. While GPS is initially used to bootstrap the system, coordinates of every WiFi AP anyone has ever been in-range of has been fed into the system, and will be used if a GPS fix can't be determined, or just because a WiFi fix can be much more accurate. And if you're using an older cell phone without GPS, and a navigation product from the cellular provider, it'll fall-back on the coordinates of the cell towers in-range of your handset.
There are radio signals all around us. It's should be trivial to dump the FCC database to get the exact location and power levels of TV, FM radio, and other broadcasters, and use any trivial TV-tuner chip to determine a solid position fix without GPS satellites. If most cell phones had TV-tuners (a few in the world, have DVB-T) I'd expect this would already be in widespread use.
Having everything rely on GPS, and thus on the budget the US chooses to spend keeping it working, is not a good idea.
Right... Because the US almost exclusively using GPS-guided munitions, being in the process of converting the entirety of civil aviation over to GPS, and more, is a clear indication they're going to just let those GPS satellites fall out of the sky ANY TIME NOW.
If other countries want to waste their money, be my guest, but let's be honest here... Other countries are putting up their own GPS systems for MILITARY reasons, as well as political / nationalism pissing contests.
Slashdot Mirror
What Sprint desperately needs, right now, is a huge influx of capital. They've got some extremely valuable frequencies, which they are freeing-up in just a few months as they kick people off iDEN/Nextel. These lower frequencies are the difference between Sprint having piss-poor coverage outside of the most dense cities, and them having deep coverage that can really compete with AT&T and Verizon. Sprint's poor cellular coverage is directly related to using the 1.9GHz spectrum, and needing more towers to get equivalent coverage.
Combine those lower frequencies with LTE, and start on a building-spree, and Sprint could put together a respectable LTE network pretty quickly. Consumers haven't really embraced 4G in a big-way, for whatever reason (cost, coverage, power-sucking chipsets, etc), so Sprint isn't terribly disadvantaged just yet.
What's more, they COULD have a huge advantage over AT&T/Verizon right now, if they would leverage WiMax during the LTE build-out... Just start selling CDMA+WiMax+LTE handsets, and let them use the fastest service available, and doing the LTE build-out FIRST in areas that currently lack WiMax. Sprint could have an impressive "4G" coverage map right away, if dual WiMax/LTE phones existed, and Sprint leveraged both to good effect from the start (ie. NOW). Their status as the only carrier who is NOT capping or throttling customers due to data usage would make their 4G service an even bigger selling point.
They could also double-down on this strategy, by using WiMax/LTE for their dumb phones as well, if in a bandwidth-limited form, moving people off of 3G/CDMA that much faster, and putting an end to the need to spend resources to continue expanding their current 3G network, which will soon be getting far less use, no matter what.
Yes, X has been used, but there were a ton of crappy touch-screen devices. IOS and Android took off for a reason, and it's in large part because good decision were made in designing the touch-screen UI.
If your touch-screen interface involves clicking on a scroll-bar or scroll buttons, you've failed... miserably.
Your lease agreement can't stop you from installing an (outdoor) antenna on property you are leasing. My last place was strict about that, too, but several of us had big antennas on our balconies, and the landlord has no ability to stop renters from doing so, per FCC rules which preempt all local laws, regulations, and rental contracts.
http://www.fcc.gov/guides/installing-consumer-owned-antennas-and-satellite-dishes
Now, if the property you're renting doesn't have any suitable locations to site an antenna, you're still out-of-luck, but not because of any terms in your lease agreement.
If you get hassled about it, print out the full FCC rule, and give it to them, with highlighted passages. Most people depend on the ignorance of those they rule over, and others may just be ignorant, themselves.
"So lets say I don't live in Alaska, but my Metro area still has a station on channel 5. What would you recommend?"
I can't answer that. You didn't say how strong of a signal it is, if you're trying to get other VHF stations, and if so, if it's in the same direction. The short answer is, if it's really strong, you can get away with an antenna not designed for it... If it's weak, you'll definitely need an antenna that does both VHF-lo and VHF-hi. But since we're only a few years past the digital cutover, it's still easy to find full-range VHF antennas.
One good choice might be: http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.asp?p=HD-5030&d=Winegard-HD-5030-Prostar-1000-VHF/FM-TV-Antenna-(HD-5030)&sku=615798398156
"Is it feasible to use an all in one?"
It really depends on how strong of a signal you've got. I've recomended designing an antenna system around one of the best UHF antennas available, because UHF's shorter range makes reception much more challenging, and because the vast majority of channels are now on UHF. If you go with just about anything else, you'll be sacrificing UHF reception. UHF yagi/corner reflectors like that used in combo antennas are inherently poor performers after the digital transition, as they work best on highest frequencies, and those (52+) are no longer in-use. I've also never looked at combo units seriously because the price of seperate UHF VHF antennas is just as low, and you don't need to compromise... You can even do cool things like pointing the VHF and UHF antennas in different directions, which I've been able to do to good effect a couple times.
No, a Pi can do ONE of those things... at a time.
If I needed network attached webcams for a short time, then a streaming video player for a short time, then an Arduino for a short time, I might get a Pi. But I can't see that scenario ever happening.
If I need an IP camera, I'll get an IP camera (or an old Android phone). If I need a streaming video player, I'll get one. And I will NEVER expect or desire to have one of the cross over and do the job of the other, cause I want them both.
If I wanted one device to do EVERYTHING, I'd get a PC. A Pi is so low-end that it really won't be able to do more than one of these tasks at a time, and is so horribly limited in expansion capabilities that you'll always be working around its limitations, and spending more money to get things done in the end.
I generally agree with you, but there could be many good reasons to run Android. It's certainly the better choice for touch-screens. And even on a desktop-like system, android apps are designed to be small and fast, while their desktop equivalents are nightmarish resource hogs. Firefox and Chrome are great examples of that. And while the source code of both is open, I've yet to see any lightweght desktop version being forked off.
Android has a number of applications that Linux lacks... Netflix streaming, all manner of games, native Pandora client, Winamp, and untold numbers of others.
Well, in this case an understanding of the laws of physics would have taken care of it. Anybody claiming 150mi reception of TV signals is a bald-faced liar. The curvature of the earth, and the propagation of the frequencies involved simply makes that impossible in the general case. The standard numbers are 60mi for UHF and 100mi for VHF. It's along the same lines as all those 12v air compressors that claim to produce 250psi... twice what high-end shop compressors are able to produce. They're lying, and once they're lying to you, who knows how many other nasty things they're doing, like cutting corners on build quality.
But to answer your question, we did a few things... First, we shopped at stores we could trust. These days retailers will stock any PoS they think they can make money on, and take no responsibilty for the items they stock, but it doesn't have to be this way, and it wasn't the norm, even just 20 years ago. I personally avoid Walmart, because they intentionally stock inordinant amounts of crap, because they want to advertise a lower price, and don't care that they're screwing their own customers for the sake of a few cents price difference. My favorite retailer is Sears. While they're not perfect, they still have some traditional values and try to stock products that aren't complete junk, and they usually do so at about the same price as the junk dealers like Walmart and Home Depot. Kenmore appliances are nearly as cheap, and put the low-end brands at Home Depot and other to shame in a big way, but for some reason, people haven't wised-up.
Second, there were brands we could trust... It was only 10 years ago or so that well-known brands decided to cash-in their reputation and start selling complete crap. You can see this in cheap HP printers, Levi's, Sony branding on DVD Burners and other devices they don't make, and much, much more. The brands used-to mean something, and people were caught off-guard when things suddenly changed.
These days, I've adopted a dual strategy. I still believe paying more for a good product is eminently good strategy, but I no longer just trust that a given brand is selling high quality products.
First you should go to http://tvfool.com/ and check your address for OTA digital signals.
Note the "Real" channel on the tvfool chart. If it's 7-13, you'd need a VHF-high antenna, if it's 14-51 a UHF antenna will pick it up. If it's 2-6, you're probably in Alaska, and sadly will need an old, full-range VHF-lo/hi antenna.
Any channels that are Green or Yellow will likely work with a simple, cheap, indoor antenna (preferably in your window, facing towards the transmitter). The simplest old indoor antennas seem to work the best... better than more expensive indoor antennas that are tunable or have a useless (for short cable runs) amplifier. Nice long "rabbit-ears" at a 45 degree angle will do a good job for VHF (real: 2-13) channels, while a nice big "loop" antenna will do very well picking up UHF channels.
If you're in the red, or worse, you MIGHT be lucky and receive the station(s) with an indoor antenna with minimal dropout, but at this point, you're probably at the point that you should invest in a roof-top antenna.
VHF is pretty simple, and easier to receive over longer ranges, and around obstacles like mountains, buildings or trees. For antennas, you have a couple choices which are both about equivalent in reception and price (about $40):
http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.asp?p=Y10-7-13&sku=716079000994">Antennacraft Y10-7-13 100mi 120" VHF-high
or
Winegard YA 1713 100mi 100" VHF-high
For UHF channels, reception is a bit tougher, as curvature of the earth, and any obstacles cause more issues. There's some debate over how the top 8-bay antennas should be ranked, but it's an easy choice when you see one of the contenders costs nearly half as much as the rest:
Winegard HD 8800 8-Bay 60mi UHF
Now, if you need both UHF and VHF-high antennas, connecting them with a splitter will cause you to lose a significant amount of signal strength. Instead, a purpose-built VHF/UHF splitter/combiner will perform much better. Just about any one will do, but here's a link for an in-stock $2 model:
Pico Macom UHF/VHF Band Separator/Combiner
And finally, if you're going to run the coax a non-trivial length, or if you are going to connect the antenna(s) to a splitter to serve multiple TVs or just multiple tuners (eg. TV+DVR) then you'll get a big benefit out of a mast-mounted pre-amp. The key is to get the lowest "noise" figure you can. There are a range of ridiculously expensive options that will get you a just-slightly lower-noise signal, but once again Winegard is much cheaper, and close enough:
Winegard AP-8700 VHF/UHF Pre Amplifier
Thanks to FCC regulations, you can put this all up on a mast as high as 12' above your roof line, without anyone being able to require you to get a permit or similar (unless you're in a historic area, or there's serious safety issues like overhead power lines). And if you happen to NEED to go higher to get reception of local stations, they MUST grant your permit request for minimal cost and in a timely fashion.
To deal with the risk of lighting starting fires or blowing up your TV, you need to ground your mast and the coax. A coax grounding block costs about $1, and like your mast, just needs to be wired to metal water pipes, or a grounding rod. Some more advanced coax surge suppressors exist, but I would never forego the simple task of grounding everything first.
That should be all the equipment you need, and the information on tvfool will tell you EXACTLY which d
I couldn't agree more. A TV antenna gets me most of my content, and for the rest (a couple cable shows I watch) Hulu is free, and doesn't even use up a significant chunk of my internet bandwidth.
Wow, you're quite the idiot, aren't you?
How about $45.50 from Amazon right now:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003JLPWAK/
Except the Pi shipped with an ARM11 (ARMv6) CPU, while just about all native Android apps are compiled for ARMv7. So most of the apps people are going to want to run... Multimedia programs, games, Firefox, etc., etc, won't ever work on the Pi, all for the sake of saving $1 rather than upgrading to a non-ancient CPU.
What are you smoking? Except for the old P4 desktop PC, every single one of those I listed can all run on a few AA batteries easily enough, are smaller than a Pi if put to the same use.
By that I mean, the tablet is a bit larger, but if you need a screen for your Pi, then the tablet is then smaller and lower power. The network cameras are far smaller than a Pi plus a webcam.
You're right, it's not the same... The custom-purpose hardware does the job BETTER, doesn't require a lot of setup work, and all the while being much cheaper.
Except that's not remotely what I said...
The binary blob eliminates the fantasy that the Pi is for teaching hardware to kids. When that's gone, you're better off with a PC like the one I listed, which should substantially out-perform the Pi in every way as well.
Meanwhile, I listed a few things which people might want a compact system like the Pi for, and gave cheaper and FAR superior alternatives.
Binary blobs aren't foremost on everyone's top-10 list, but it eliminates "open" as a selling point, which then makes it just another device competing in a sea of cheap hardware.
If you want a smartphone, the Alcatel Venture has comparable specs, and sells for $50, contract-free (and VirginMobile also has some of the cheapest cell plans, too, if you want to sign up).
If you want a desktop, you can usually get a used, mini P4 system (40w idle) for $32 from geeks.com. Better deals are often available from local off-lease PC dealers.
If you want a tablet, Walmart stocks a 7" Pandigital unit for $50.
If you want video streaming and 1080p decoding, the D-Link MovieNite Streaming Player, DSM310 is selling for $38 at WalMart.
If you want network-attached cameras, you can find ethernet and WiFi (g) models with PTZ, built-in mic and speaker, and night-vision for $50, maybe less.
With the Pi needing binary blobs as well, I really see nowhere than the Pi makes sense.
With Amazon's tablet being so much more tightly controlled than most Android devices, it should be much easier for Amazon to change architectures, and just force in-house and other developers to ensure their apps (if native, rather than the 90%+ that are Dalvik) are recompiled and working on the new CPU from day one.
As we saw with the first $100 ICS tablet out of China, MIPS chips can be cheaper while still performing just as well, particularly with China spending good amounts of money to keep developing their Dragon / Loong Soon chip, giving it out-of-order execution, multiple cores, and better performance per-clock (where MIPS has always been ahead of ARM) and giving it away to domestic producers.
So, of all Android tablet producers, why doesn't Amazon try jumping ship to a different CPU?
You
have
seriously
underestimated
the
scope
of my
complaint
No, he had an extreme left-wing rant... That he wasn't a failed comic who was quickly forgotten is a terrible injustice, and absolutely absurd.
Kittens are legal. Microwaves are legal. Why isn't microwaving kittens legal?
How many stories does /. damn-well need on this one single event? /. is NOT A BLOG, and wouldn't work well as one. Be a little more selective in what gets posted to the front page, and you'll have better, deeper discussions and much happier readers.
Tell me one thing (just to determine your particular level of mental illness)... How do you feel about bikes overhauled with electric motors and batteries? How about small gasoline engines?
Point me to one. You can go to the furthest reaches of Alaska and get (AM/MW) radio. Not to mention things like radio beacons for navigation. I've been to farmland in several states across the US, and I've not seen one where TV/radio is anything but prolific.
And I wasn't suggesting rural farms would be surrounded by WiFi APs like a city, more that a couple farmers would have them installed.
No. Your stance makes no sense.
If I need to go somewhere, I may be able to choose between a car and a bike, but I can't warp space and make my destination a shorter distance away. Travel time can vary for any number of reasons, but distance remains constant. Your statement that anyone who cycles will move closer to their destination is ridiculous on any number of levels.
push human
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If true, this is incredibly sad. The lowest-end consumer navigation units can correctly handle positioning and navigation WITHOUT GPS. While GPS is initially used to bootstrap the system, coordinates of every WiFi AP anyone has ever been in-range of has been fed into the system, and will be used if a GPS fix can't be determined, or just because a WiFi fix can be much more accurate. And if you're using an older cell phone without GPS, and a navigation product from the cellular provider, it'll fall-back on the coordinates of the cell towers in-range of your handset.
There are radio signals all around us. It's should be trivial to dump the FCC database to get the exact location and power levels of TV, FM radio, and other broadcasters, and use any trivial TV-tuner chip to determine a solid position fix without GPS satellites. If most cell phones had TV-tuners (a few in the world, have DVB-T) I'd expect this would already be in widespread use.
Right... Because the US almost exclusively using GPS-guided munitions, being in the process of converting the entirety of civil aviation over to GPS, and more, is a clear indication they're going to just let those GPS satellites fall out of the sky ANY TIME NOW.
If other countries want to waste their money, be my guest, but let's be honest here... Other countries are putting up their own GPS systems for MILITARY reasons, as well as political / nationalism pissing contests.