America currently has the fastest and most widespread microcellular data network commercially deployed.
It's called Ricochet. And you don't need a buggy phone, just a rechargeable external modem or PCMCIA card. 128kbps...you'd need nine or ten cellular connections tied together for that kind of speed!
Currently getting 260kbps - fast enough for streaming video. Outside, in a county park. And I don't have to rely on someone's 802.11 base station or pay per-minute charges to MegaCellCo.
I'm using a flat-rate mobile TCP/IP based wireless system at speeds of up to 350kbps, and at nominal speeds of 128kbps.
It's called Ricochet, and if you're one of the 50 million people that the Ricochet networks covers, you could nhave speeds that surpass what 3G promises today. The cool part is that it's mobile, so I can use it on the train or put my Novatel Merlin PCMCIA card in my iPaq and take it to the baseball game.
3G=Big deal. Untold billions spent already for spectrum and NO infrastructure yet.
I'd rather pay $75.00 a month for high-speed mobile access in 15 U.S. cities, with no per-character or per-minute charges. I get my high-speed access of 128kbps with speed bumps coming and 3G proponents get to twiddle their thumbs!
The problem is, the graphic arts aren't that different from every other market. They demand slickness, and they pay a high margin, so if you have a slick enough product, you can retreat there for awhile. But they aren't a large enough niche to maintain a company.
Yeah, no company larger than Apple could retreat into this space.
Except for Adobe.
Think before you post.
If you want to thank the people responsbile for HyperCard, start with Bill Atkinson.
Legend has it that he was looking for a way to organize content for a presentation, and whipped up the majority of the code over a long weekend. Nothing like Persuasion or PowerPoint existed at the time.
I have no idea about the vercity of this story though.
Last time I checked, no version of Windows shipped with a DVD decoder and player.
Gosh, I have an awfully tough time watching DVDs on my Linux box too.
But you just want to bust on Apple, so I guess it's OK.
I have a Ricochet 128kbps modem in my iPaq pocket PC. It lets me surf the internet, watch video, etc. at 128kbps+.
But I guess Palm users are still stuck with the happy-crappy CDPD technology.
Not busting on Palm or Palm users, but I like having mobile broadband in the palm of my hand. Until Palm offers some sort of high speed connectivity and a real web browser, it won't be for me.
The 'blank screen' provision is there to comply with Apple's DVD consortium license. The 'direct screen blast' as you call it is a measure taken to avoid copying as well. The Ziva decoder chip in the first Apple DVD decoder cards for PowerBooks uses Zoomed Video (a PC card standard), which bypasses main memory and writes directly to VRAM. There's no speeding that up by using a 'bluescreen' method as you imply.
Don't go telling me I'm mistaken, since I know the guy who wrote the software in the first place.
While some CD players will play the "Safeaudio" CD's, I can almost guarantee that some of them won't. New Mac's for example have digital USB speakers. There is no way for new Mac's to play CD's except by ripping the audio off of them. It is perfectly legitimate for the people who own these systems to buy the "protected" CD's and return them as defective.
What the fuck are you talking about?
The new macs play audio digitally; without converting the digital information to analog - but this doesn't mean you can't listen to CDs on these machines without 'ripping the audio off of them'.
Digital signal for USB speakers, analog signal for headphones/conventional speakers. No ripping required.
"Think of it; 32 or 64 megs of RAM suddenly loses all meaning when you have a fast connection to a hundred gigs! Put this technology on an iPaq and just see what happens!"
My Novatel Wireless Merlin card and Ricochet subscription give my iPaq access to the entire internet at 128kbps anywhere I go at up to 70 m.p.h. in 14 major metro areas.
Think of the possibilities, indeed. This type of service already exists.
How expensive is it to rely on a "mobile wireless" system that only works in one part of one city?
It's worth $25.00/mo. to this mobile professional. I'd rather have 128kbps in 14 major cities across the U.S. than 1.5Mbps in part of a city on the east coast.
''The network is initially intended to be fixed wireless,'' meaning a computer sitting on a desk, says BB2W CEO Paul Adams, ''but when there's enough network coverage, we'll be able to support mobility.
- it's a lot cheaper than Ricochet which is only 128Kbps for their $70 something a month service. Granted - Ricochet has a network that works now, but their financials aren't looking too good....
I'll grant you, Ricochet costs about $75.00/mo. But it has a lot that this system doesn't.:
Ricochet covers 48 million people in 14 population centers - literally hundreds of municipalities. The system referenced in the article covers...part of Boston.
Ricochet is shipping today - at a price that business people with legitimate business needs are happy to pay.
Ricochet is available as a 4-oz. external device with a 6hr. battery life, or as one of two different PC cards. The service in the article requires two external antennas and a transciever inside the car. So much for "true mobility".
Ricochet uses two slices of free spectrum - 900-915MHz and 2.4GHz - as well as the 2.3GHz licensed spectrum, owned by Metricom, the developer of Ricochet. That's a lot more spectrum than available to the Broadband2wireless system. What happens when B2W devices run into interference?
Ricochet seems to be a much more reliable service for mobile professionals. It's available today in several markets, is protected by patents, and has a backup plan in the 2.3 GHz spectrum. B2W is just a copycat applying LAN technology in a microcellular architecture.
Well, if you live in one of the covered areas, you can have an experience like the Boston vaporware...TODAY. At 70m.p.h. In your car, on a train, in the coffeehouse, in your house, wherever, whenever 128kbps mobile wireless internet access...
No shit. Whoever replied to this accusing the author of being a troll is a little close-minded.
Napster is a User Interface disaster. This bar of rectangular buttons stretching across the screen? god fobid I don't have a 1024 pixel screen, or I'm screwed and have to _scroll_ to see buttons?
What a joke.
Also, the fact that Napster users can't:
-Resume partial downloads
-search across Napster servers
-Customize the Napster interface
-Connect to Napster servers automagically (stupid "Not Conected to Server! message annoys the hell out of me).
means that this software has a long way to go before it reaches commercial quality.
The fact that this software hasn't matured any further despite it's long 2.0 beta period seems to indicate that either something else is consuming their development efforts or that the staff at Napster/Bertelsmann is truly inept.
Really - no one would ship software that sucks this badly and dare to charge for it.
I don't get this whole WAP = Wireless internet hype. It's a phone. It's got a tiny screen, it is hell to navigate, and it is SLOW. For less money than the typical WAP junky pays every month, I have wireless and mobile (up to 70 mph!) 128kbps TCP/IP connection via Ricochet.
WAP and the things it makes possile may be a cool service, but I'd rather download the.mp3s and preview the entire disc wirelesslybefore buying it.
I use a Ricochet 128kbps wireless modem to connect to Napster and download music. I just pulled down an 8MB file in a few minutes, wirelessly, listened to it, and decided that the album wasn't for me.
Go ahead and use this impulse-buying tool if you want, but Ricochet is a lot more useful for those of us who don't wish to spend money indiscriminately every time the record companies say boo.
Like releasing Office 98 (parity with X86 Office, legitimacy for Mac users), Outlook and IE 5, and later this year, Office 2k for the Mac? It's been reported many times that the Mac business unit is one of the most profitable parts of Microsoft, and releasing Office for the Mac only increases the legitimacy of Apple's OS and married hardware.
Apple and Microsoft != success at the cost of the other - not even in the operating system arena.
put linux on that box with ingos real time patches for 2.2 so you can do soft real time scheduling, dump uncompressed 30fps video stream on the hard drive, tune the hard drive with the following options (if IDE) hdparm -c1 -d1/dev/hda and if your card is AGP, turn on the framebuffering. then you should be able to play the entire video stream without too many problems.
Oh, that's easy. How about I just launch my player application and watch it instead of futzing with the computer?
Oh, so Jetta owners are advised that a new Beetle would really go great with their full-sized sedan? Gotcha.
No, it compliments the Jetta within the Volkswagen car line. Want a fun, quirky car with room for four? Get a New Beetle. Need a fun car with room for four that has more utility? Get a Jetta.
Oh forget it. We're hopelessly off topic anyway...
Try to be accurate. The New Beetle isn't a substitute for the Jetta. It is a compliment to the Jetta. In other words, the Jetta is still sold, and I've seen plenty of people who aren't New Hippies driving them.
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America currently has the fastest and most widespread microcellular data network commercially deployed. It's called Ricochet. And you don't need a buggy phone, just a rechargeable external modem or PCMCIA card. 128kbps...you'd need nine or ten cellular connections tied together for that kind of speed!
Here's the Ricochet web site.
Currently getting 260kbps - fast enough for streaming video. Outside, in a county park. And I don't have to rely on someone's 802.11 base station or pay per-minute charges to MegaCellCo.
I'm using a flat-rate mobile TCP/IP based wireless system at speeds of up to 350kbps, and at nominal speeds of 128kbps.
It's called Ricochet, and if you're one of the 50 million people that the Ricochet networks covers, you could nhave speeds that surpass what 3G promises today. The cool part is that it's mobile, so I can use it on the train or put my Novatel Merlin PCMCIA card in my iPaq and take it to the baseball game.
3G=Big deal. Untold billions spent already for spectrum and NO infrastructure yet.
I'd rather pay $75.00 a month for high-speed mobile access in 15 U.S. cities, with no per-character or per-minute charges. I get my high-speed access of 128kbps with speed bumps coming and 3G proponents get to twiddle their thumbs!
Wasn't he in that bad 70's movie about a Soul Brother who gets bitten by a vampire?
Oooohhhh...I thought you said BLACKULA!
The problem is, the graphic arts aren't that different from every other market. They demand slickness, and they pay a high margin, so if you have a slick enough product, you can retreat there for awhile. But they aren't a large enough niche to maintain a company. Yeah, no company larger than Apple could retreat into this space. Except for Adobe. Think before you post.
It's so funny to hear geeks complain about shit no one else cares about - and stuff that could be easily fixed by, um, a name change.
Here are some hints:
Wasn't that easy?
Tomorrow we'll learn how to differentiate a sports car from a stodgy sedan - by name alone!
Legend has it that he was looking for a way to organize content for a presentation, and whipped up the majority of the code over a long weekend. Nothing like Persuasion or PowerPoint existed at the time.
I have no idea about the vercity of this story though.
802.11 is nice, but just isn't nearly as versatile as Ricochet. I'd rather wireless at 128-250kbps all over town than 2-3Mbps 300 feet from my house.
I'd rather be wireless at 128-250kbps all over L.A. and the Bay Area than 2-3mbps at coffee shops and my office.
Last time I checked, no version of Windows shipped with a DVD decoder and player. Gosh, I have an awfully tough time watching DVDs on my Linux box too. But you just want to bust on Apple, so I guess it's OK.
But I guess Palm users are still stuck with the happy-crappy CDPD technology.
Not busting on Palm or Palm users, but I like having mobile broadband in the palm of my hand. Until Palm offers some sort of high speed connectivity and a real web browser, it won't be for me.
The 'blank screen' provision is there to comply with Apple's DVD consortium license. The 'direct screen blast' as you call it is a measure taken to avoid copying as well. The Ziva decoder chip in the first Apple DVD decoder cards for PowerBooks uses Zoomed Video (a PC card standard), which bypasses main memory and writes directly to VRAM. There's no speeding that up by using a 'bluescreen' method as you imply.
Don't go telling me I'm mistaken, since I know the guy who wrote the software in the first place.
What the fuck are you talking about?
The new macs play audio digitally; without converting the digital information to analog - but this doesn't mean you can't listen to CDs on these machines without 'ripping the audio off of them'.
Digital signal for USB speakers, analog signal for headphones/conventional speakers. No ripping required.
My Novatel Wireless Merlin card and Ricochet subscription give my iPaq access to the entire internet at 128kbps anywhere I go at up to 70 m.p.h. in 14 major metro areas.
Think of the possibilities, indeed. This type of service already exists.
How expensive is it to rely on a "mobile wireless" system that only works in one part of one city? It's worth $25.00/mo. to this mobile professional. I'd rather have 128kbps in 14 major cities across the U.S. than 1.5Mbps in part of a city on the east coast.
''The network is initially intended to be fixed wireless,'' meaning a computer sitting on a desk, says BB2W CEO Paul Adams, ''but when there's enough network coverage, we'll be able to support mobility.
I'll grant you, Ricochet costs about $75.00/mo. But it has a lot that this system doesn't.:
- Ricochet covers 48 million people in 14 population centers - literally hundreds of municipalities. The system referenced in the article covers...part of Boston.
- Ricochet is shipping today - at a price that business people with legitimate business needs are happy to pay.
- Ricochet is available as a 4-oz. external device with a 6hr. battery life, or as one of two different PC cards. The service in the article requires two external antennas and a transciever inside the car. So much for "true mobility".
- Ricochet uses two slices of free spectrum - 900-915MHz and 2.4GHz - as well as the 2.3GHz licensed spectrum, owned by Metricom, the developer of Ricochet. That's a lot more spectrum than available to the Broadband2wireless system. What happens when B2W devices run into interference?
Ricochet seems to be a much more reliable service for mobile professionals. It's available today in several markets, is protected by patents, and has a backup plan in the 2.3 GHz spectrum. B2W is just a copycat applying LAN technology in a microcellular architecture.http://www.ricochet.com
Oh, nice try.
Ever heard of Open Firmware? Didn't think so.
Try looking beyond the end of your nose sometime.
No shit. Whoever replied to this accusing the author of being a troll is a little close-minded.
Napster is a User Interface disaster. This bar of rectangular buttons stretching across the screen? god fobid I don't have a 1024 pixel screen, or I'm screwed and have to _scroll_ to see buttons?
What a joke.
Also, the fact that Napster users can't:
-Resume partial downloads
-search across Napster servers
-Customize the Napster interface
-Connect to Napster servers automagically (stupid "Not Conected to Server! message annoys the hell out of me).
means that this software has a long way to go before it reaches commercial quality.
The fact that this software hasn't matured any further despite it's long 2.0 beta period seems to indicate that either something else is consuming their development efforts or that the staff at Napster/Bertelsmann is truly inept.
Really - no one would ship software that sucks this badly and dare to charge for it.
WAP and the things it makes possile may be a cool service, but I'd rather download the .mp3s and preview the entire disc wirelessly before buying it.
I use a Ricochet 128kbps wireless modem to connect to Napster and download music. I just pulled down an 8MB file in a few minutes, wirelessly, listened to it, and decided that the album wasn't for me.
Go ahead and use this impulse-buying tool if you want, but Ricochet is a lot more useful for those of us who don't wish to spend money indiscriminately every time the record companies say boo.
Like releasing Office 98 (parity with X86 Office, legitimacy for Mac users), Outlook and IE 5, and later this year, Office 2k for the Mac? It's been reported many times that the Mac business unit is one of the most profitable parts of Microsoft, and releasing Office for the Mac only increases the legitimacy of Apple's OS and married hardware.
Apple and Microsoft != success at the cost of the other - not even in the operating system arena.
Oh, that's easy. How about I just launch my player application and watch it instead of futzing with the computer?
that's why Mac users buy Macs. they work.
No, it compliments the Jetta within the Volkswagen car line. Want a fun, quirky car with room for four? Get a New Beetle. Need a fun car with room for four that has more utility? Get a Jetta.
Oh forget it. We're hopelessly off topic anyway...
Try to be accurate. The New Beetle isn't a substitute for the Jetta. It is a compliment to the Jetta. In other words, the Jetta is still sold, and I've seen plenty of people who aren't New Hippies driving them.