I'd really like to be able to take my iBook (or any networked laptop, really) into a public place with the AirPort card turned on and have it not only pick up a base station signal, but every once in a while send out a signal over the wireless card to see if there are any other non-base-stationed wireless cards present that might want to hook up for a small wireless mini-LAN. This sounds like the kind of thing Rendezvous would be a great start for. It'd be a good way to meet people, too. Set up your machine with a little program that does the 'ping' for other machines and advertises whatever it is.
Ping. iBook, OS 10.2, anyone around?
It'd be like combining Wardriving with those weird "Beep if someone you'll consider hot is nearby." things they were selling in Japan a while ago.
Re:First they came for the Indians...
on
Shop Till It Drops
·
· Score: 2
The reason the Automat and other automated vending solutions more advanced than what you'll find on college campuses nationwide now is pretty easy to notice once you do a little thinking about what the world was like when they were introduced, and what the world is like today.
People suck now. When the Automat first came around, people -liked- talking with other people, it was -nice- to meet the neighbors.
But now, people suck. Who wants to deal with people? Screw people!
Oh god. If you think Battlebots is WW(F/E)ified, then run in fear from "Robot Wars: Extreme Gladiators" or whatever the hell it's called on TNN. Last night, a friend of mine said it was on. I said it was pretty weak, he said "So?" and we both watched it anyhow.
Repeatedly I was proven -exactly- how right I was in the first place. Every bot was a really pathetic contestant compared to the ones on Battlebots, and the hosts... My god. The only way I could describe it was as Battlebots without the class. The bots sucked, the fights were -boring- as hell and the only bright spot - surprisingly - was Mick Foley formerly AKA "Mankind" doing the post-fight interviews. He also got to tell the teams who won, which was a nice touch too. As an interviewer, his major problem was screwing up the name of a bot, and still using the facial expressions you'd expect from a wrestler. He did, overall, provide a -much- better interaction with the builders. Less fluff.
I think Battlebots needs to hire Foley, and the rest of "Robot Wars" can just go suck eggs. Even the contestants sucked. One kid looked like Brian Dennehy's "Mini-Me" and the guys who won the show all acted like wanna-be Foleys. Sad. Very sad.
I suspect Bruce won't be able to reply here for legal reasons (though he maybe able, we'll see) but he's definitely reading, I think we can all guess that. HPaq is going to be increasingly difficult to work with in the future, by any guess I think I can make. They're bigger, they're badder, more bloated, and they're aiming at a much more demanding and volatile market so any "advantage" they can use to squash appearance of failure or flaw is going to be rapidly pounced upon before they suffer the fate of any large star that runs out of power. The DMCA is just today's big stick. Will they bring out a bigger one later?
Does this cause Bruce to reconsider his employer? Only Bruce knows. Does this cause us to want him to make a statement by resigning or taking some other action? I suspect so. But I don't want to see the community pushing him toward a decision that isn't in his best interests. I think we just need to sit back and wait, to see what happens next.
My suspicion is that it's actually not the real Milky Way Galaxy in the entirety, but only a few thousand stars and phenomena. Our "observable" galaxy. The friend who pointed me to this site said it was 24,000 or so.
Apple won't make Apple machines commodity items. Period. They might move to an x86 (or more likely a 64 bit architecture) core, but they'll only work with Apple systems. Why? Because that's how Apple makes money. They don't make money on the monopoly tie-ins, they don't make money on the OS. They make money on hardware, just like a Dell or a Gateway with style and a sense of personality.
Sure, Jobs is a megalomaniacal asshole a lot of the time, and yes, Apple's as bad as Microsoft in many ways (worse in a few), but despite it all they make good hardware. Hell, even Microsoft makes good mice.
If there's an architecture change, however, this is going to be an absolute pain in the ass for developers. Everything will either need to be compiled again and resold, or it'll all run slower on an emulation layer. Having just gone through that pain with OS X migration, I suspect Apple would have to kiss -everyone's- ass to get them to bother doing it again within the next two years.
Apple's in a very tenuous spot right now, and I'm not sure if they're aware. They're just starting to get some developer approval for X, the OS is just barely coming into maturity, and they've decided to charge a rather high (for Apple users) price for the OS loaded with new features when the current one isn't even working acceptably fast compared to the OS it replaced. They're alienating old-time users, and some recent pre-"Switch" switchers like myself are starting to think the whole give-Jobs-a-chance thing was a real waste of effort because the company just doesn't treat users well.
Dumping "rumor" reporter admissions to MWNY, killing iTools and going pay, charging $129 for OS X.2... It just hasn't been a good month to be an Apple owner. I just hope Jobs realizes this and does something to show us his company gives a shit about the actual buyers.
Though for all Apple's flaws, I -do- like my iBook. It works. Just... a bit slowly.
As the first keynote I've watched, I have to say I was impressed with how well it came off. Jobs had a few glitches along the way with some of the new feature demos, but recovered nicely. There're a lot of people saying Apple's so bad for charging for "what was free" but the thing is, they're doing what had to be done. iTools cost them money, and a pretty substantial chunk I'm sure. And.Mac will actually do nothing but improve the iTools featureset. iCal, five times the storage space, and iSync could make.Mac quite useful to a lot of people. I'm not one of them yet, but I definitely respect the effort they've gone to. Yes, I'm a bit upset that they're taking away my email address - and wouldn't be too surprised if they turned around and let people keep the email addresses for nothing if people complain enough - but I won't get pissed off.
And $100 a year isn't a bad price, considering the integration you get. One service to offer all those features, rather than five services and a mishmash of programs to do it.
And even though $129 seems a bit of a shock for 10.2, it really isn't a point upgrade so much as it is a rewrite level. Compare 10.2 to 7.5, if you're familiar with Mac history. 10.2 gives you a whole new rendering layer for new Mac machines, a hell of a speed boost from the reports I've heard, and several new features like iCal, iSync and Rendevouz. I'll probably pay for it. I -would- like a $49 upgrade for 10.1 owners, but I think Apple's probably feeling enough of a financial pinch not to do that.
I think the part of it all that would be most respected by Slashdot readers is the fact that open standards were touted quite loudly. SyncML and Rendevouz (zeroconf) primarily. They might not be opening up as much as we want in some areas, but at least when they're moving in a new direction they look like they're trying to make the best of it.
And I've decided people who push for open sourcing -everything- in OS X, or porting to x86 are just idiots with no business sense. That would kill Apple's income. 'nuff said.
Back when it looked like I was getting a job I applied for (sigh) I had thoughts of taking a wireless approach myself. Take a P166 or faster laptop (Cheap) with a CD-ROM drive and a WiFi card and an FM transmitter plugged into the headphone jack.
Then I'd take another WiFi card, drop it into my Newton 2100, run a network from that to the laptop, VNC from the Newton to the PC and run control of things from there.
Probably can be done for under $500 and could be set up to facilitate some pretty kickass wardriving with an antenna on the trunk.
As far as I'm concerned, power is a minor concern and the bigger problem would be mounting the Newton to the dash properly.
The best way for a company to sponsor a project would be to host it and make the developers happy with their involvement. Ad banner crap won't do it, but http://www.osdesktop.cnn.com with a website that simply credits CNN (or whoever) with supporting and backing the project will.
Inject the advertiser/supporter's name in a small, readable watermark on a default background. Include an application with some actual usable value with the software that makes people want to keep it around. Like a CNN news ticker integrated into the desktop in a nice and unobtrusive manner. Or a weather map, or a schedule listing. If the company is less media oriented, sponsor a distribution. It might cost a little more, but the results would be more worthwhile, and people won't be recompiling to kill anything.
1. Microsoft loses money per machine. 2. If the BIOS was flashed, you wouldn't be able to run any XBox content on it. So no games network. 3. What developer licenses? That's the whole point of circumventing the OS on it.
My bet comes down to two possibilities. Geek (Or geeks) who want to kick MS around for a little bit, or a competitor that simply wants to see Microsoft lose money like Sony. I kinda doubt Sony would go that low, even if I do think its a great idea.
Actually, Cloudmark is the company created by one of Napster's founders and it takes advantage of Razor, the software mentioned in other replies to this post. The link is here and they're actually doing pretty well at sorting my spam for me. Unfortunately, they only work with Microsoft Outlook right now. But it's a start.
This makes me think. Monday, I interview for the job of "Technology Coordinator" at a local school system, with a pretty significant chance of getting the job. If I do, I'll probably have to spend a day looking at the EULA's on products in order to properly judge compliance.
This makes me consider the possibility of doing exactly what was suggested, taking the EULA to the city legal department and asking them what they think about some of the clauses in it and whether or not they're anything objectionable to the city.
One concern is mild paranoia - the state of Maine has an agreement to issue Apple iBook laptops to 7th graders as well as faculty. Could this kind of clause be exploited to cause compatibility issues between the Microsoft backend systems and the laptops people will be using, particularly in the media areas? I fear it could be, and wonder if there could be a way to use the "We've got to watch out for the -children-!" crap to the advantage of the user for once.
This all assumes I get the job, but I'm hopeful.:)
Wasteland was by no means Mac-only. In fact, this is the first I've heard of a Mac version existing at all. It was available for the Apple II, the Commodore 64, and then the IBM PC. I had the latter two versions.
Year after year, we've seen this happen. Games that either aren't released, or just don't live up to the hype. "Best of Show" at E3 seems to be no indication of whether or not a game will actually be much good. It shows that it's a game that's likely to push a few hardware envelopes, but what does it mean for actual gameplay?
I prefer getting my game news from sources that refuse to give a verdict on a game until they've had the final shipping version out of the box and played on it for a few days, at least.
New Nokia T1, smallest cellular phone ever! Just stick this fan-cooled battery in your cheek so it won't burn your skin, change it every day, and talk gingivitis away!
And just imagine the new acronyms they'd be coming out with. Portable Lightweight Audible Query Using Electronics, voice activated to!
Get PLAQUE implanted and never miss a phonecall again!
How about that guy who keeps claiming Stephen King is dead? If there's a gathering in Bangor, Maine where I'd be going, maybe we can get King himself to come give that schmuck a few "Troll"'s upside the head.
Hell, I just traded my Palm IIIc with someone for a Newton MessagePad 2100. Even with an old Newton, I should be able to network wireless or wired, and will be able to run VNC on a screen much larger than a Palm or Pocket PC device. Of course, it is only 16 grayscale, but that should be plenty for actual -business- use.
From what I've seen on eBay, the Newton's value is quite understated. $50-180 for a MessagePad 2100 with varying quality and addons.
You should see some of the small firewire drives that're available out there now. I've seen a few different models specifically designed to match the look and feel of Apple hardware like the Powerbook Titanium that're so small they'll easily fit in your shirt pocket.
Plus, there's a chance you could even use an iPod with one of these things. iPods are simply another tiny firewire drive that happens to play music. In fact, you can even -boot- a Mac from one of them.
Some friends and I are trying to get something akin to The Onion started up, but unlike them we'll take submissions from readers. Granted, we're not quite up to par with The Onion yet, but we don't have a great photo-doctoring budget or many writers yet. We try and put up at least one brief article every day or two, and have only been at it for around a week.
I'm hoping people might be interested enough to check it out and possibly contribute.:)
Gee, and I thought it was a bargain for a monochrome iPaq I could listen to MP3's, handle my contacts on, and maybe put Linux onto someday. Gotta love the 3135 models.:)
Of course I noticed. But what they've got out now works just fine for what I need. When they change that, I won't use it. Duh. I'm not going to skimp on efficiently using what I have now because they're probably going to fuck it up later on down the road. When they fuck it up for my uses, I'll stop using it. Easy. Simple.
Hell, I'd have encoded it all to OGG format if there were actually a decent iPaq player, but since there appear to be technical reasons why the ARM 206Mhz processor won't handle it, I'm stuck with MP3 or WMA.
Uhh. The issue isn't whether or not I have a player, it's whether that player can use the 96Kbit WMA files I encoded my stuff into so I could get the most efficient use out of the iPaq with only 128M of storage before I got the iBook. If I want my music efficiently on both machines, I now have to keep it encoded twice which is a pain in the ass. That was the entire point of my post, which most people who actually know how to put 2+2 together without equaling 3 probably understood.
If you're going to be a smartass, at least be a halfway intelligent one.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd really like to be able to take my iBook (or any networked laptop, really) into a public place with the AirPort card turned on and have it not only pick up a base station signal, but every once in a while send out a signal over the wireless card to see if there are any other non-base-stationed wireless cards present that might want to hook up for a small wireless mini-LAN. This sounds like the kind of thing Rendezvous would be a great start for. It'd be a good way to meet people, too. Set up your machine with a little program that does the 'ping' for other machines and advertises whatever it is.
Ping.
iBook, OS 10.2, anyone around?
It'd be like combining Wardriving with those weird "Beep if someone you'll consider hot is nearby." things they were selling in Japan a while ago.
The reason the Automat and other automated vending solutions more advanced than what you'll find on college campuses nationwide now is pretty easy to notice once you do a little thinking about what the world was like when they were introduced, and what the world is like today.
People suck now. When the Automat first came around, people -liked- talking with other people, it was -nice- to meet the neighbors.
But now, people suck. Who wants to deal with people? Screw people!
Oh god. If you think Battlebots is WW(F/E)ified, then run in fear from "Robot Wars: Extreme Gladiators" or whatever the hell it's called on TNN. Last night, a friend of mine said it was on. I said it was pretty weak, he said "So?" and we both watched it anyhow.
Repeatedly I was proven -exactly- how right I was in the first place. Every bot was a really pathetic contestant compared to the ones on Battlebots, and the hosts... My god. The only way I could describe it was as Battlebots without the class. The bots sucked, the fights were -boring- as hell and the only bright spot - surprisingly - was Mick Foley formerly AKA "Mankind" doing the post-fight interviews. He also got to tell the teams who won, which was a nice touch too. As an interviewer, his major problem was screwing up the name of a bot, and still using the facial expressions you'd expect from a wrestler. He did, overall, provide a -much- better interaction with the builders. Less fluff.
I think Battlebots needs to hire Foley, and the rest of "Robot Wars" can just go suck eggs. Even the contestants sucked. One kid looked like Brian Dennehy's "Mini-Me" and the guys who won the show all acted like wanna-be Foleys. Sad. Very sad.
Agreed. Wesley was annoying as hell most of the time.
But the one that for some unknown reason got on my nerves the most was Yar.
... I think I need to change my underwear.
Anyone got a cigarette?
I suspect Bruce won't be able to reply here for legal reasons (though he maybe able, we'll see) but he's definitely reading, I think we can all guess that. HPaq is going to be increasingly difficult to work with in the future, by any guess I think I can make. They're bigger, they're badder, more bloated, and they're aiming at a much more demanding and volatile market so any "advantage" they can use to squash appearance of failure or flaw is going to be rapidly pounced upon before they suffer the fate of any large star that runs out of power. The DMCA is just today's big stick. Will they bring out a bigger one later?
Does this cause Bruce to reconsider his employer? Only Bruce knows. Does this cause us to want him to make a statement by resigning or taking some other action? I suspect so. But I don't want to see the community pushing him toward a decision that isn't in his best interests. I think we just need to sit back and wait, to see what happens next.
My suspicion is that it's actually not the real Milky Way Galaxy in the entirety, but only a few thousand stars and phenomena. Our "observable" galaxy. The friend who pointed me to this site said it was 24,000 or so.
Apple won't make Apple machines commodity items. Period. They might move to an x86 (or more likely a 64 bit architecture) core, but they'll only work with Apple systems. Why? Because that's how Apple makes money. They don't make money on the monopoly tie-ins, they don't make money on the OS. They make money on hardware, just like a Dell or a Gateway with style and a sense of personality.
Sure, Jobs is a megalomaniacal asshole a lot of the time, and yes, Apple's as bad as Microsoft in many ways (worse in a few), but despite it all they make good hardware. Hell, even Microsoft makes good mice.
If there's an architecture change, however, this is going to be an absolute pain in the ass for developers. Everything will either need to be compiled again and resold, or it'll all run slower on an emulation layer. Having just gone through that pain with OS X migration, I suspect Apple would have to kiss -everyone's- ass to get them to bother doing it again within the next two years.
Apple's in a very tenuous spot right now, and I'm not sure if they're aware. They're just starting to get some developer approval for X, the OS is just barely coming into maturity, and they've decided to charge a rather high (for Apple users) price for the OS loaded with new features when the current one isn't even working acceptably fast compared to the OS it replaced. They're alienating old-time users, and some recent pre-"Switch" switchers like myself are starting to think the whole give-Jobs-a-chance thing was a real waste of effort because the company just doesn't treat users well.
Dumping "rumor" reporter admissions to MWNY, killing iTools and going pay, charging $129 for OS X.2... It just hasn't been a good month to be an Apple owner. I just hope Jobs realizes this and does something to show us his company gives a shit about the actual buyers.
Though for all Apple's flaws, I -do- like my iBook. It works. Just... a bit slowly.
As the first keynote I've watched, I have to say I was impressed with how well it came off. Jobs had a few glitches along the way with some of the new feature demos, but recovered nicely. There're a lot of people saying Apple's so bad for charging for "what was free" but the thing is, they're doing what had to be done. iTools cost them money, and a pretty substantial chunk I'm sure. And .Mac will actually do nothing but improve the iTools featureset. iCal, five times the storage space, and iSync could make .Mac quite useful to a lot of people. I'm not one of them yet, but I definitely respect the effort they've gone to. Yes, I'm a bit upset that they're taking away my email address - and wouldn't be too surprised if they turned around and let people keep the email addresses for nothing if people complain enough - but I won't get pissed off.
And $100 a year isn't a bad price, considering the integration you get. One service to offer all those features, rather than five services and a mishmash of programs to do it.
And even though $129 seems a bit of a shock for 10.2, it really isn't a point upgrade so much as it is a rewrite level. Compare 10.2 to 7.5, if you're familiar with Mac history. 10.2 gives you a whole new rendering layer for new Mac machines, a hell of a speed boost from the reports I've heard, and several new features like iCal, iSync and Rendevouz. I'll probably pay for it. I -would- like a $49 upgrade for 10.1 owners, but I think Apple's probably feeling enough of a financial pinch not to do that.
I think the part of it all that would be most respected by Slashdot readers is the fact that open standards were touted quite loudly. SyncML and Rendevouz (zeroconf) primarily. They might not be opening up as much as we want in some areas, but at least when they're moving in a new direction they look like they're trying to make the best of it.
And I've decided people who push for open sourcing -everything- in OS X, or porting to x86 are just idiots with no business sense. That would kill Apple's income. 'nuff said.
Bah. In my opinion, the most secure OS ever used on most desktops was DOS. :)
Back when it looked like I was getting a job I applied for (sigh) I had thoughts of taking a wireless approach myself. Take a P166 or faster laptop (Cheap) with a CD-ROM drive and a WiFi card and an FM transmitter plugged into the headphone jack.
Then I'd take another WiFi card, drop it into my Newton 2100, run a network from that to the laptop, VNC from the Newton to the PC and run control of things from there.
Probably can be done for under $500 and could be set up to facilitate some pretty kickass wardriving with an antenna on the trunk.
As far as I'm concerned, power is a minor concern and the bigger problem would be mounting the Newton to the dash properly.
The best way for a company to sponsor a project would be to host it and make the developers happy with their involvement. Ad banner crap won't do it, but http://www.osdesktop.cnn.com with a website that simply credits CNN (or whoever) with supporting and backing the project will.
Inject the advertiser/supporter's name in a small, readable watermark on a default background. Include an application with some actual usable value with the software that makes people want to keep it around. Like a CNN news ticker integrated into the desktop in a nice and unobtrusive manner. Or a weather map, or a schedule listing. If the company is less media oriented, sponsor a distribution. It might cost a little more, but the results would be more worthwhile, and people won't be recompiling to kill anything.
1. Microsoft loses money per machine.
2. If the BIOS was flashed, you wouldn't be able to run any XBox content on it. So no games network.
3. What developer licenses? That's the whole point of circumventing the OS on it.
My bet comes down to two possibilities. Geek (Or geeks) who want to kick MS around for a little bit, or a competitor that simply wants to see Microsoft lose money like Sony. I kinda doubt Sony would go that low, even if I do think its a great idea.
Actually, Cloudmark is the company created by one of Napster's founders and it takes advantage of Razor, the software mentioned in other replies to this post. The link is here and they're actually doing pretty well at sorting my spam for me. Unfortunately, they only work with Microsoft Outlook right now. But it's a start.
This makes me think. Monday, I interview for the job of "Technology Coordinator" at a local school system, with a pretty significant chance of getting the job. If I do, I'll probably have to spend a day looking at the EULA's on products in order to properly judge compliance.
:)
This makes me consider the possibility of doing exactly what was suggested, taking the EULA to the city legal department and asking them what they think about some of the clauses in it and whether or not they're anything objectionable to the city.
One concern is mild paranoia - the state of Maine has an agreement to issue Apple iBook laptops to 7th graders as well as faculty. Could this kind of clause be exploited to cause compatibility issues between the Microsoft backend systems and the laptops people will be using, particularly in the media areas? I fear it could be, and wonder if there could be a way to use the "We've got to watch out for the -children-!" crap to the advantage of the user for once.
This all assumes I get the job, but I'm hopeful.
Wasteland was by no means Mac-only. In fact, this is the first I've heard of a Mac version existing at all. It was available for the Apple II, the Commodore 64, and then the IBM PC. I had the latter two versions.
Year after year, we've seen this happen. Games that either aren't released, or just don't live up to the hype. "Best of Show" at E3 seems to be no indication of whether or not a game will actually be much good. It shows that it's a game that's likely to push a few hardware envelopes, but what does it mean for actual gameplay?
I prefer getting my game news from sources that refuse to give a verdict on a game until they've had the final shipping version out of the box and played on it for a few days, at least.
New Nokia T1, smallest cellular phone ever! Just stick this fan-cooled battery in your cheek so it won't burn your skin, change it every day, and talk gingivitis away!
And just imagine the new acronyms they'd be coming out with. Portable Lightweight Audible Query Using Electronics, voice activated to!
Get PLAQUE implanted and never miss a phonecall again!
How about that guy who keeps claiming Stephen King is dead? If there's a gathering in Bangor, Maine where I'd be going, maybe we can get King himself to come give that schmuck a few "Troll"'s upside the head.
Hell, I just traded my Palm IIIc with someone for a Newton MessagePad 2100. Even with an old Newton, I should be able to network wireless or wired, and will be able to run VNC on a screen much larger than a Palm or Pocket PC device. Of course, it is only 16 grayscale, but that should be plenty for actual -business- use.
From what I've seen on eBay, the Newton's value is quite understated. $50-180 for a MessagePad 2100 with varying quality and addons.
You should see some of the small firewire drives that're available out there now. I've seen a few different models specifically designed to match the look and feel of Apple hardware like the Powerbook Titanium that're so small they'll easily fit in your shirt pocket.
Plus, there's a chance you could even use an iPod with one of these things. iPods are simply another tiny firewire drive that happens to play music. In fact, you can even -boot- a Mac from one of them.
I'm hoping people might be interested enough to check it out and possibly contribute. :)
Domination News Network News for The Next Ruling Class(tm)
$150 is too much? :)
:)
Gee, and I thought it was a bargain for a monochrome iPaq I could listen to MP3's, handle my contacts on, and maybe put Linux onto someday. Gotta love the 3135 models.
Of course I noticed. But what they've got out now works just fine for what I need. When they change that, I won't use it. Duh. I'm not going to skimp on efficiently using what I have now because they're probably going to fuck it up later on down the road. When they fuck it up for my uses, I'll stop using it. Easy. Simple.
Hell, I'd have encoded it all to OGG format if there were actually a decent iPaq player, but since there appear to be technical reasons why the ARM 206Mhz processor won't handle it, I'm stuck with MP3 or WMA.
Uhh. The issue isn't whether or not I have a player, it's whether that player can use the 96Kbit WMA files I encoded my stuff into so I could get the most efficient use out of the iPaq with only 128M of storage before I got the iBook.
If I want my music efficiently on both machines, I now have to keep it encoded twice which is a pain in the ass. That was the entire point of my post, which most people who actually know how to put 2+2 together without equaling 3 probably understood.
If you're going to be a smartass, at least be a halfway intelligent one.