The only true 3G in the United States is Ricochet...which I used at a true 80-250kbps. However, clueless executives and a little company called Aerie Networks have done a remarkably good job of killing that off, and we'll probably never see it again.
Too bad. The mesh design of Ricochet was a boon to rescue and police efforts in New York, since many microcell nodes can go down without debilitating the network. With 3G, lose a couple of cell towers and everyone's suddenly got curiously-shaped handheld vibrators instead of phones. The bitrate of 3G sucks if you happen to be doing anything except sitting less than a half-mile from the tower, too.
I'll be impressed when Verizon and the other cellcos decide to offer real mobile broadband at flat-rate pricing: all you can eat (datawise, that is) whenever you want for $50.00 a month in a given service area, like Ricochet did just before running out of cash and going tits-up. Instead, they'll nickel-and-dime people who need more than 14.4k in the field.
Yes, I was a user. It rocked 95% of the time. It even worked on Caltrain from all the way from San Jose to Burlingame towards the end.
Quicktime is a movie and, to a lesser extent, audio format.
NO.
QuickTime is a time-based architecture for working with objects and events. It's also an authoring environment. Nothing constricts QuickTime to working only with video, animation, or audio. It is not simply a 'movie' format. If you really believe this, I urge you to read some of the technical documentation on Apple's developer site.
QuickTime can handle a number of media formats through extensible codecs.
Products like Director and Flash have always made Apple a little nervous, even as they've brought users to the platform. .
Re:Already approaching from the wrong direction
on
64kbps @ 40,000 ft.
·
· Score: 2
Pulling cables through a pre-existing airplane has to be expensive.
Not to mention heavy. I wouldn't be surprised if the fuel and maintenance costs (condensation is a huge problem on aircraft) over the lifetime of the installation cost more than the actual installation itself.
You could make a nicely-shaped heat pipe with this stuff, tranferring heat from say, a processor to the outside of the case easily. I'm sure hardware and environmental engineers will have a ball with this stuff if it can be produced relatively inexpensively.
Talk about ColorSync to any pro (and I do mean pro, not corner shop) printer and you'll get laughed at.
"
Pros like Joseph Holmes, Richard Seiling, Galen Rowell and shops like Pictopia?
Granted, I'm talking about RGB->RGB workflow, but ColorSync works just as well going to CMYK. What would you rather do - waste time tweaking stuff ny hand (Eye)? Have fun, but I'll make sure to avoid your shop - I tend to like repeatable results from my printer.
Re:Manual length and Macs vs. PC
on
Macintosh Clustering
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I don't think this comment is insightful at all, but hey - I don't have moderator points today, so I'll argue.
The fact that the manual is shorter - VASTLY shorter in this case does in fact imply that accomplishing a task is easier.
Here's the skinny: Human factors. A one-page PDF is easier to scan and reference than a 200-page text file without references or pointers. If references an pointers are added along with a TOC, then scanning for specific instructions becomes much easier.
Comparing a 200-page document written by programmers to a one-page document made possible by a more graceful GUI and architecture, and written by professional tech writers is ludicrous. Less instructions to accomplish the same task = easier. Plain and simple.
Honestly, I'm surprised. Yes, it's easier on Mac OS X - the company spent millions of dollars developing and refining an imperfect GUI that succeeds in bringing more transparent administration to a machine.
Whoo. That's not tough.
If linux is to make further inroads (and I by all means wish Apple luck in the same) against Microsoft in the server arena, contributors must work towards this goal. It's the interface, stupid! I don't care how many geeks' grannys can send e-mail from the command prompt, but the MCSE-in-a-box crowd aren't going to go for it if it isn't simple to set up. Reading a 200-page howto isn't going to cut it, especially with the level of technical writing skill out there....
As much as people will probably bash it here, it's groundbreaking in a lot of ways.
The industrial design proves that you don't have to put a computer in a box. As consumers get used to having their electronics packaged their way, this type of talent will become more and more important.
Witness the 'shabby chic' home decoration that's become the rage among new boomers. They want things familiar and comfortable, not boxy.
"Many people" may be bringing their computers into the living space to use as media players, but that doesn't mean that they are well-suited to that task.
Remotes? An optional, kludgy addition to a computer.
Sound quality? I'd rather not use stereo miniplug -> RCA jacks for sound, thanks. But that's what's on the majority of PCs.
Video quality? Acceptable, I'm sure, but what about the aforementioned remote control of all thos nifty features?
Stick with components - replace or upgrade pieces as needed - just like with your PC.
"I got an external usb drive for $248 for an 80G unit. It's the cheapest, fastest, least hassle way of backing up your data."
Except for a FireWire drive.
I backup my PowerBook G4 to my desktop G4 each night by plugging in a 6-pin FireWire cable, mounting the PowerBook's drive on the desktop. Then I use the desktop machine as a backup server of sorts. At around 2 a.m., an AppleScript finds the files on the PowerBook that were changed that day and backs them up, to a drive in the desktop machine, directory structure intact. I'm sure folks can put together similar home-baked solutions for Windows or Linux.
I think FireWire or IDE disks are cheap enough these days that it's silly NOT to invest in them for casual or incremental backups.
As far as external storage goes, FireWire's much faster than USB, and when I modify 2+GB of image files a day, the speed is nice to have.
It may strike you as odd, but I can easily connect my older SCSI-based scanner (four years old, not seven) to the SCSI card in my G4, and I connect my BetterLight digital scanning camera back to my PowerBook G4 with a SCSI PCMCIA card.
SCSI still works on Macs - and IDE can work in older Macs as well. All you need is a $50.00 card!
Hunh?
When I had System 6 software, the vast majority ran in System 7 with no modification or update required.
When I had 68k software for my Mac IIci in 1994, the vast majority ran on PowerPC with no modification or update required.
When Apple moved from System 7/8/9-based Mac OS to Mac OS X, guess what? The vast majority of my modern System 7/8/9 applications still run just fine - albweit with some GUI inconsistencies.
How is this breaking compatibility every few years? About the only thing I can't use from my old Macs are memory and NuBus cards!
The ability to move large amounts of data on small, easy to carry devices is going to have a lot more consumer penetration than some of the other geek-fantasies will.
That must be why Ricochet took off so fast./sarcasm
Interesting that everyone here concentrates comments on this wireless bandwidth bonanza without realizing that this "450kbps" won't be available very often to the end-user, if ever.
Ricochet had an interesting idea: use lots of $1500.00 wireless repeaters/routers per square mile, all feeding to ONE moderately expensive and central wired access point per 30sq. mile area.
This reduced the cost of the network per kilobyte to something vanishingly small, compared to the infrastructure, frequency use and bandwidth costs of setting up hundreds of 3G base stations in a place like L.A.
Ricochet used free spectrum in the ISM and WCS band, and it used and re-used that spectrum efficiently with a pseudo-random hopping algorithm that further insulated user data from prying eyes.
Pity that Ricochet is dead. I was getting 120-250kbps on a pretty regular basis after the network was fully constructed here in San Jose. Paying a $49.95 FLAT rate, for 128kbps or better service guaranteed 80% of the time a connection was active.
Now, here come the Cellcos with a slower, limited rollout, pay-per-packet service, and everyone calls it a panacea. Bandwidth is not guaranteed, and will be spotty over metro areas for years to come, while Ricochet covered 20 million solidly after one year.
The march towards mediocity continues, apparently.
MacFixIt is one of the largest and most-respected Mac sites on the Internet. It's also probably saved Apple tens of thousands of dollars in support costs due ot the help posted on that site everyday.
Try $ millions. When I worked at Apple, web sites like this were alternately reviled and respected for the legions of users that did not call the support centers when problems were discussed and solved at MacFixit, Macintouch, etc.
At the same time, we were easy to get riled up when those same sites broke stories about the odd Apple product defect.
We cared about them enough to impose sanctions against them nearly from day one of their rule and to condemn their destruction of antiquities.
But I guess THINKING before you post isn't on your to-do list today, is it?
Yes, the U.S. could be a LOT better at telling other countries to get on the ball when it comes to human rights - but I've found that the people who want us to intervene in this manner are also the same ones who scream loudest when U.S. businesses 'destroy' local customs and traditions through factory farming, factory work, etc.
You can't have it both ways. We either interfere or don't!
Interesting post - but someone already paid for the Ricochet deployment, while 1xRTT and other 2.5-3G technology has yet to be deployed, rolled out, paid for, etc.
With voice revenues thinning, I doubt the cellcos will be able to subsidize all this data buildout with voice. They lost that critical mass months ago.
Ricochet may be back, and with only 8.5 million and paltry operational costs (as long as the circuits stay up, the Ricochet NOCs can be run by TWO people), it'll take nothing for them to begin making money and possibly deploying the.5mbps Ricochet that was under development once upon a time.
Then there's the National Semiconductor Ricochet chipset that was almost done....
Slashdot Mirror
The only true 3G in the United States is Ricochet...which I used at a true 80-250kbps. However, clueless executives and a little company called Aerie Networks have done a remarkably good job of killing that off, and we'll probably never see it again.
Too bad. The mesh design of Ricochet was a boon to rescue and police efforts in New York, since many microcell nodes can go down without debilitating the network. With 3G, lose a couple of cell towers and everyone's suddenly got curiously-shaped handheld vibrators instead of phones. The bitrate of 3G sucks if you happen to be doing anything except sitting less than a half-mile from the tower, too.
I'll be impressed when Verizon and the other cellcos decide to offer real mobile broadband at flat-rate pricing: all you can eat (datawise, that is) whenever you want for $50.00 a month in a given service area, like Ricochet did just before running out of cash and going tits-up. Instead, they'll nickel-and-dime people who need more than 14.4k in the field.
Yes, I was a user. It rocked 95% of the time. It even worked on Caltrain from all the way from San Jose to Burlingame towards the end.
NO.
QuickTime is a time-based architecture for working with objects and events. It's also an authoring environment. Nothing constricts QuickTime to working only with video, animation, or audio. It is not simply a 'movie' format. If you really believe this, I urge you to read some of the technical documentation on Apple's developer site.
QuickTime can handle a number of media formats through extensible codecs.
Products like Director and Flash have always made Apple a little nervous, even as they've brought users to the platform. .
Not to mention heavy. I wouldn't be surprised if the fuel and maintenance costs (condensation is a huge problem on aircraft) over the lifetime of the installation cost more than the actual installation itself.
"1/10th less irritating than a Jon Katz article."
You could make a nicely-shaped heat pipe with this stuff, tranferring heat from say, a processor to the outside of the case easily. I'm sure hardware and environmental engineers will have a ball with this stuff if it can be produced relatively inexpensively.
"ColorSync is there for home users.
Talk about ColorSync to any pro (and I do mean pro, not corner shop) printer and you'll get laughed at.
"
Pros like Joseph Holmes, Richard Seiling, Galen Rowell and shops like Pictopia?
Granted, I'm talking about RGB->RGB workflow, but ColorSync works just as well going to CMYK. What would you rather do - waste time tweaking stuff ny hand (Eye)? Have fun, but I'll make sure to avoid your shop - I tend to like repeatable results from my printer.
I don't think this comment is insightful at all, but hey - I don't have moderator points today, so I'll argue.
The fact that the manual is shorter - VASTLY shorter in this case does in fact imply that accomplishing a task is easier.
Here's the skinny: Human factors. A one-page PDF is easier to scan and reference than a 200-page text file without references or pointers. If references an pointers are added along with a TOC, then scanning for specific instructions becomes much easier.
Comparing a 200-page document written by programmers to a one-page document made possible by a more graceful GUI and architecture, and written by professional tech writers is ludicrous. Less instructions to accomplish the same task = easier. Plain and simple.
Honestly, I'm surprised. Yes, it's easier on Mac OS X - the company spent millions of dollars developing and refining an imperfect GUI that succeeds in bringing more transparent administration to a machine.
Whoo. That's not tough.
If linux is to make further inroads (and I by all means wish Apple luck in the same) against Microsoft in the server arena, contributors must work towards this goal. It's the interface, stupid! I don't care how many geeks' grannys can send e-mail from the command prompt, but the MCSE-in-a-box crowd aren't going to go for it if it isn't simple to set up. Reading a 200-page howto isn't going to cut it, especially with the level of technical writing skill out there....
As much as people will probably bash it here, it's groundbreaking in a lot of ways.
The industrial design proves that you don't have to put a computer in a box. As consumers get used to having their electronics packaged their way, this type of talent will become more and more important.
Witness the 'shabby chic' home decoration that's become the rage among new boomers. They want things familiar and comfortable, not boxy.
Baseball teams belong to leagues.
Lawyers are legal professionals.
"Many people" may be bringing their computers into the living space to use as media players, but that doesn't mean that they are well-suited to that task.
Remotes? An optional, kludgy addition to a computer.
Sound quality? I'd rather not use stereo miniplug -> RCA jacks for sound, thanks. But that's what's on the majority of PCs.
Video quality? Acceptable, I'm sure, but what about the aforementioned remote control of all thos nifty features?
Stick with components - replace or upgrade pieces as needed - just like with your PC.
With in-car MP3, XM and Sirius are headed for the same landfill that Iridium and Ricochet are in, namely, great technology that solves no problems.
What a waste!
Now if someone could just get my trash bin to the street on Wednesday mornings without my involvement...that would be weinning technology.
Except for a FireWire drive.
I backup my PowerBook G4 to my desktop G4 each night by plugging in a 6-pin FireWire cable, mounting the PowerBook's drive on the desktop. Then I use the desktop machine as a backup server of sorts. At around 2 a.m., an AppleScript finds the files on the PowerBook that were changed that day and backs them up, to a drive in the desktop machine, directory structure intact. I'm sure folks can put together similar home-baked solutions for Windows or Linux.
I think FireWire or IDE disks are cheap enough these days that it's silly NOT to invest in them for casual or incremental backups.
As far as external storage goes, FireWire's much faster than USB, and when I modify 2+GB of image files a day, the speed is nice to have.
It may strike you as odd, but I can easily connect my older SCSI-based scanner (four years old, not seven) to the SCSI card in my G4, and I connect my BetterLight digital scanning camera back to my PowerBook G4 with a SCSI PCMCIA card.
SCSI still works on Macs - and IDE can work in older Macs as well. All you need is a $50.00 card!
Hunh? When I had System 6 software, the vast majority ran in System 7 with no modification or update required.
When I had 68k software for my Mac IIci in 1994, the vast majority ran on PowerPC with no modification or update required.
When Apple moved from System 7/8/9-based Mac OS to Mac OS X, guess what? The vast majority of my modern System 7/8/9 applications still run just fine - albweit with some GUI inconsistencies.
How is this breaking compatibility every few years? About the only thing I can't use from my old Macs are memory and NuBus cards!
'any other application with which I've associated the decoder for the Sorenson-encoded movies'.
You really don't have any idea how Macs or QuickTime work, but you presume to criticize them?
*sigh*
That must be why Ricochet took off so fast. /sarcasm
Interesting that everyone here concentrates comments on this wireless bandwidth bonanza without realizing that this "450kbps" won't be available very often to the end-user, if ever.
Ricochet had an interesting idea: use lots of $1500.00 wireless repeaters/routers per square mile, all feeding to ONE moderately expensive and central wired access point per 30sq. mile area.
This reduced the cost of the network per kilobyte to something vanishingly small, compared to the infrastructure, frequency use and bandwidth costs of setting up hundreds of 3G base stations in a place like L.A.
Ricochet used free spectrum in the ISM and WCS band, and it used and re-used that spectrum efficiently with a pseudo-random hopping algorithm that further insulated user data from prying eyes.
Pity that Ricochet is dead. I was getting 120-250kbps on a pretty regular basis after the network was fully constructed here in San Jose. Paying a $49.95 FLAT rate, for 128kbps or better service guaranteed 80% of the time a connection was active.
Now, here come the Cellcos with a slower, limited rollout, pay-per-packet service, and everyone calls it a panacea. Bandwidth is not guaranteed, and will be spotty over metro areas for years to come, while Ricochet covered 20 million solidly after one year.
The march towards mediocity continues, apparently.
It's Windows specific.
Happily using MS Office v.X for OS X along with Outlook for Exchange on a Macintosh. No virus here.
I'm not sure what a kitten kaboodle is. Is it used to ferry kittens around? Is it used for storing unused kittens?
A kitten kaboodle sounds like something plastic and cute that wizened old women buy at PetSmart.
Try $ millions. When I worked at Apple, web sites like this were alternately reviled and respected for the legions of users that did not call the support centers when problems were discussed and solved at MacFixit, Macintouch, etc.
At the same time, we were easy to get riled up when those same sites broke stories about the odd Apple product defect.
format c:
Yeah. It still works under Windows 2000, as far as I can tell.
For those of us in Santa Cruz, LUG has a whole other meaning.
I call bullshit.
We cared about them enough to impose sanctions against them nearly from day one of their rule and to condemn their destruction of antiquities.
But I guess THINKING before you post isn't on your to-do list today, is it?
Yes, the U.S. could be a LOT better at telling other countries to get on the ball when it comes to human rights - but I've found that the people who want us to intervene in this manner are also the same ones who scream loudest when U.S. businesses 'destroy' local customs and traditions through factory farming, factory work, etc.
You can't have it both ways. We either interfere or don't!
Interesting post - but someone already paid for the Ricochet deployment, while 1xRTT and other 2.5-3G technology has yet to be deployed, rolled out, paid for, etc.
.5mbps Ricochet that was under development once upon a time.
With voice revenues thinning, I doubt the cellcos will be able to subsidize all this data buildout with voice. They lost that critical mass months ago.
Ricochet may be back, and with only 8.5 million and paltry operational costs (as long as the circuits stay up, the Ricochet NOCs can be run by TWO people), it'll take nothing for them to begin making money and possibly deploying the
Then there's the National Semiconductor Ricochet chipset that was almost done....
You really don't have any idea what you'e talking about, do you?