Re:As comps and phones collide, who's # Pad wins?
on
The Ultimate Phone/PDA?
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· Score: 2, Funny
Some keyboards allow to take out invidual keys and rearrange them. If you want some fun, rearrange your work buddy's num pad in phone-style order: He/She will have no idea what's going on since the key layout "looks right", trying to reinstal drivers etc...:-)
The best thing about VNC is the multitude of supported OS's, in my opinion. Mac, Palm, WinCE... you name it. When I'm on the go slow connection support is nice, but if I can't use it, well...
I was in the same position a few months back and tried out the Yahoo Shopping Consumer Reports. I thought, basically, "this information is difficult to find and 3 bucks is ok for a well researched overview". Guess what - the report was not only subpar, but contained numerous factual errors and was already 6 months old. I asked my money back, but they didn't agree. Talk about false advertising.
Anyway, they removed the "Notebook Computers" report shortly afterwards. So: Don't buy info online without a money back guarantee.:-(
It's a self-extracing zip, so you can decompress it on any platform with your favorite unzipper. For Mac, Linux and Solaris, you might try out Stuffit Expander.
Your server should send pictures in a format that the browser says he understands - if you haven't found out yet, every time a browser asks for something from your webserver, it sends a list of formats it understands, including picture formats.
That's why neighbor networks need to interconnect more with each other and run servers on these "city networks". Once a certain limit has been reached, the big corps need you more than you need them and such contracts can be rewritten.
Well my Yahoo account is a bit broken: I can't delete "My Yahoo"-modules and edit my bookmarks. I mailed them about 10 times so far, the always replies and never fixed it in the past 4 months now. You know what the fun part is? Since today I can't access my account options to opt out of this stuff... funny:-(
How to use doubleclicks better in an upcomming gui
on
Apple Wants Your Input
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· Score: 1
On MacOS, when you click the window of an application in the background, this click just brings the application to the front. On Windows, this click already performs an action in the target window.
This leads to the following usability / speed problem in Windows: Whenever the user wants to bring up a window to the front to get some work done with it, he has to click into an area where the click does no harm. In Internet Explorer e.g., these "save areas" are the title bar, parts of the menu bar without menu items, the content area as long as it's not a link, and the taskbar. This "search for a save place to click" takes away a lot of time, which is why many users use alt+tab to switch between apps on windows.
On the mac this search takes less time because - the user is sure that the first click will just bring up the window and - the clickable space to perform this action is bigger (fitt's law...) And on the mac, bringing a window to the front and immediately selecting an action doesn't take more time, since you can simply doubleclick...
Well, almost. Apple has made the mistake that doubleclicks are not recognized in these circumstances. There is a timelag between your first click and the app coming to front, and whatever you do during this switching is discarded from the event queue. If they are planning on improving their gui (or if you're working on your own gui), this is something to consider.
Better than saving "bit stripes" would of course be to save your data encrypted.
The quota problem could be solved by bringing money into the system: if you give space and cycles to others you get $, if you need them you pay (like proposed in the article). So if you need no space for 6 months and then a lot of it, you might just use up your money you earned for giving space during this time.
Apart from that, I think the most important factor for success of such a system is that apps you are running for others stop immediately when you need your machine: No "virtual memory shuffling around" or "this program is programmed badly, you need to way 2 seconds until we shut it down".
Well it doesn't work like that, you can't just pay the artist and are done, because the artist hasn't paid the recording costs by himself: this bill has been paid by the recording company.
9 out of 10 recorded albums are not sold enough to cover the recording costs. So the 10th album has to be a big hit and cover for the other 9, making recording companies some sort of "venture capitalists".
Who knows, if an artist would have to pay recording costs and marketing by himself, would you really be listening to him now?
The Palm was designed with the intention of not having windows to focus the user on the task at hand. Since the user can jump to another program at any time without losing data, this is actually an advantage. Plus, all these windows controls would just take a lot of screen estate away.
> What about a real file system?
The Palm has some sort of a file system, but it's hidden from the user, because the user is not interested in defining a filename everything he wants to save a note. If you need to transfer your files to a, there are utilities to help you with it.
Such a device would not be a big problem to the content industry: Once it would take off, the device could be forbidden simply for "stimulating piracy", basically the same reason that shut down Napster.
BUT if a device is very general (like a PDA) and this functionality is solved with software from another party that you have to add manually, nobody could stop such a thing.
Actually, it's the 3th time: The 3.5 inch floppy drive in the old SE and Mac II were also called Superdrive, since they could change between CAV (the PC way) and CLV (the Mac way) and therefore also read PC disks.
I wonder if greyscale pictures could be achieved at blinkenlights.de by rapidly flashing pixels on and off? The Specs say that you can get as short as 1 millisecond for one frame!
If the government is going to lay the infrastructure (I think comparing it to the Interstate system is a valid analogy), then how much would it really cost to lay fiber to every little hamlet across millions of square miles of these great United States?
Well, if I build a shack in the middle of the desert and decide to live there, the US has no obligation of building a road up to my house. They start to build a road when many people live together (and the building cost may eventually be devided among the tax money from the people there).
And note that technically, a road doesn't goes to your house but lies between all the houses in your neighborhood, while you build the last few feet by yourself. Something similar may be appropriate for a gov-built internet, too.
Slashdot Mirror
Some keyboards allow to take out invidual keys and rearrange them. If you want some fun, rearrange your work buddy's num pad in phone-style order: He/She will have no idea what's going on since the key layout "looks right", trying to reinstal drivers etc... :-)
Offtopic: Yes.
Man, you posted this same article 19 times. What do you think this is here? Spam Central?
This has already been discussed before.
Been there, done that
And image using Nextlink Bluespoon wireless headsets to listen to your mp3s - each headset weights only 10 grams, yet runs for 8 hours - crazy!
Btw: If you have questions about this headset, head over to this forum, where one of the creators regularly answers questions.
If you don't mind paying for such a program, I would recommend Sawmill for this task.
The best thing about VNC is the multitude of supported OS's, in my opinion. Mac, Palm, WinCE... you name it. When I'm on the go slow connection support is nice, but if I can't use it, well...
I was in the same position a few months back and tried out the Yahoo Shopping Consumer Reports. I thought, basically, "this information is difficult to find and 3 bucks is ok for a well researched overview". Guess what - the report was not only subpar, but contained numerous factual errors and was already 6 months old. I asked my money back, but they didn't agree. Talk about false advertising.
:-(
Anyway, they removed the "Notebook Computers" report shortly afterwards. So: Don't buy info online without a money back guarantee.
It's a self-extracing zip, so you can decompress it on any platform with your favorite unzipper. For Mac, Linux and Solaris, you might try out Stuffit Expander.
Your server should send pictures in a format that the browser says he understands - if you haven't found out yet, every time a browser asks for something from your webserver, it sends a list of formats it understands, including picture formats.
If you don't speak japanese, use the fish!
Wouldn't it be cool to have a distributed database with advertising timecodes for this?
So the first person watching the Simpsons marks up the ads and everyone else can just zip right through it...
That's why neighbor networks need to interconnect more with each other and run servers on these "city networks". Once a certain limit has been reached, the big corps need you more than you need them and such contracts can be rewritten.
Well my Yahoo account is a bit broken: I can't delete "My Yahoo"-modules and edit my bookmarks. I mailed them about 10 times so far, the always replies and never fixed it in the past 4 months now. You know what the fun part is? Since today I can't access my account options to opt out of this stuff... funny :-(
On MacOS, when you click the window of an application in the background, this click just brings the application to the front. On Windows, this click already performs an action in the target window.
This leads to the following usability / speed problem in Windows: Whenever the user wants to bring up a window to the front to get some work done with it, he has to click into an area where the click does no harm. In Internet Explorer e.g., these "save areas" are the title bar, parts of the menu bar without menu items, the content area as long as it's not a link, and the taskbar. This "search for a save place to click" takes away a lot of time, which is why many users use alt+tab to switch between apps on windows.
On the mac this search takes less time because
- the user is sure that the first click will just bring up the window and
- the clickable space to perform this action is bigger (fitt's law...)
And on the mac, bringing a window to the front and immediately selecting an action doesn't take more time, since you can simply doubleclick...
Well, almost. Apple has made the mistake that doubleclicks are not recognized in these circumstances. There is a timelag between your first click and the app coming to front, and whatever you do during this switching is discarded from the event queue. If they are planning on improving their gui (or if you're working on your own gui), this is something to consider.
Better than saving "bit stripes" would of course be to save your data encrypted.
The quota problem could be solved by bringing money into the system: if you give space and cycles to others you get $, if you need them you pay (like proposed in the article). So if you need no space for 6 months and then a lot of it, you might just use up your money you earned for giving space during this time.
Apart from that, I think the most important factor for success of such a system is that apps you are running for others stop immediately when you need your machine: No "virtual memory shuffling around" or "this program is programmed badly, you need to way 2 seconds until we shut it down".
Henry Wu: You are saying that a group of animals, entirely composed of females, will breed?
Ian Malcolm: No, I am merely stating that uhh... life finds a way.
Well it doesn't work like that, you can't just pay the artist and are done, because the artist hasn't paid the recording costs by himself: this bill has been paid by the recording company.
9 out of 10 recorded albums are not sold enough to cover the recording costs. So the 10th album has to be a big hit and cover for the other 9, making recording companies some sort of "venture capitalists".
Who knows, if an artist would have to pay recording costs and marketing by himself, would you really be listening to him now?
> What about a real window system?
The Palm was designed with the intention of not having windows to focus the user on the task at hand. Since the user can jump to another program at any time without losing data, this is actually an advantage. Plus, all these windows controls would just take a lot of screen estate away.
> What about a real file system?
The Palm has some sort of a file system, but it's hidden from the user, because the user is not interested in defining a filename everything he wants to save a note. If you need to transfer your files to a, there are utilities to help you with it.
Such a device would not be a big problem to the content industry: Once it would take off, the device could be forbidden simply for "stimulating piracy", basically the same reason that shut down Napster.
BUT if a device is very general (like a PDA) and this functionality is solved with software from another party that you have to add manually, nobody could stop such a thing.
Actually, it's the 3th time: The 3.5 inch floppy drive in the old SE and Mac II were also called Superdrive, since they could change between CAV (the PC way) and CLV (the Mac way) and therefore also read PC disks.
I wonder if greyscale pictures could be achieved at blinkenlights.de by rapidly flashing pixels on and off? The Specs say that you can get as short as 1 millisecond for one frame!
If the government is going to lay the infrastructure (I think comparing it to the Interstate system is a valid analogy), then how much would it really cost to lay fiber to every little hamlet across millions of square miles of these great United States?
Well, if I build a shack in the middle of the desert and decide to live there, the US has no obligation of building a road up to my house. They start to build a road when many people live together (and the building cost may eventually be devided among the tax money from the people there).
And note that technically, a road doesn't goes to your house but lies between all the houses in your neighborhood, while you build the last few feet by yourself. Something similar may be appropriate for a gov-built internet, too.
Word on the street is that Apple is working on a similar device: Video, Windows Compatibility on Tap for iPod
if www.segway.com doesn't work, try www.segway.com.edgesuite.net