I was surprised by the fact that the designer of the Pringles can was male. Women can get their hands in. I thought it was a sinister trick to ensure only a woman can eat the bottom half of the can.
Of course, the real reason for Symbian's existence as a mobile phone OS is that the original consortium members (Nokia etc.) were petrified of Microsoft moving into the phone business and making a commodity out of the hardware in the same way they have done in the PC world. Nokia didn't want to become a DELL. The whole Symbian effort (post-Psion) was a defense against Microsoft. The technical qualities of the OS were secondary.
This was bound to come undone once the incumbent phone manufacturers had nullified the Microsoft threat. Symbian has always been hanging by a political thread.
Motorola, rightly or wrongly, decided some time ago that Microsoft were no longer a problem, and went Linux. Apple's decision to stay away from Symbian indicates that they aren't scared of Microsoft in the phone arena.
Only time will tell if the Microsoft defense is being dismantled prematurely. Meanwhile, at Redmond, they are probably smiling at all this.
An interesting article but one should be wary of dismissing a silver bullet on the basis of poor application.
My own experience of some of these bullets (UML, agile methods, etc.) within an organisation is that they get a small enthusiastic following who push it so far, implement maybe 20% of the technique then lose interest or regress under deadline pressure. They don't follow the bullet far enough to draw proper conclusions.
I'm cynical about most bullets, but some catch the imagination. I'd just like to see one of them, just once, properly implemented.
Incidentally, this isn't just an engineering article. Management suffers from the same tendency towards managerial silver bullets (and the same poor application). I guess many professions do.
I have to agree. Probably the best Si-Fi series I have read. I too am suprised at the lack of support for it here.
I want a farcaster house. I quite fancy a living room in New Zealand and a bathroom on a floating raft in the Pacific. Actually, I'd like a farcasting toilet that dropped it's contents in Bill Gates' bedroom. Except he'd be the one controlling the farcasters.
IMHO it takes about 6Mbps to transmit a very good qualiy digital image. 802.11b can do 11Mbps, which (allowing for MAC/PHY overhead) can probably support a single monitor. 802.11a can do 54Mbps, and is another story.
It's a bit nasty running an 802.11b network alongside bluetooth equipment, though.
You could probably ditch bluetooth and have this "concept PC" work using its own 802.11b network.
I would like to see two "concept PC's" running side-by side with overlapping wireless LAN's, though.
They would be using up each others bandwidth.
I can't see how you'd run an whole office full of these PC's on wireless LANs. They would just fall over each other.
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I was surprised by the fact that the designer of the Pringles can was male.
Women can get their hands in. I thought it was a sinister trick to ensure only a woman can eat the bottom half of the can.
The Warcraft "brand" began with the original Warcraft in 1994.
Of course, the real reason for Symbian's existence as a mobile phone OS is that the original consortium members (Nokia etc.) were petrified of Microsoft moving into the phone business and making a commodity out of the hardware in the same way they have done in the PC world. Nokia didn't want to become a DELL.
The whole Symbian effort (post-Psion) was a defense against Microsoft. The technical qualities of the OS were secondary.
This was bound to come undone once the incumbent phone manufacturers had nullified the Microsoft threat.
Symbian has always been hanging by a political thread.
Motorola, rightly or wrongly, decided some time ago that Microsoft were no longer a problem, and went Linux.
Apple's decision to stay away from Symbian indicates that they aren't scared of Microsoft in the phone arena.
Only time will tell if the Microsoft defense is being dismantled prematurely.
Meanwhile, at Redmond, they are probably smiling at all this.
Quite. Brilliant.
I think we've invented a new adage.
An interesting article but one should be wary of dismissing a silver bullet on the basis of poor application.
My own experience of some of these bullets (UML, agile methods, etc.) within an organisation is that they get a small enthusiastic following who push it so far, implement maybe 20% of the technique then lose interest or regress under deadline pressure. They don't follow the bullet far enough to draw proper conclusions.
I'm cynical about most bullets, but some catch the imagination. I'd just like to see one of them, just once, properly implemented.
Incidentally, this isn't just an engineering article. Management suffers from the same tendency towards managerial silver bullets (and the same poor application). I guess many professions do.
I have to agree. Probably the best Si-Fi series I have read. I too am suprised at the lack of support for it here.
I want a farcaster house. I quite fancy a living room in New Zealand and a bathroom on a floating raft in the Pacific. Actually, I'd like a farcasting toilet that dropped it's contents in Bill Gates' bedroom. Except he'd be the one controlling the farcasters.
You aren't allowing for compression.
IMHO it takes about 6Mbps to transmit a very good qualiy digital image. 802.11b can do 11Mbps, which (allowing for MAC/PHY overhead) can probably support a single monitor. 802.11a can do 54Mbps, and is another story.
It's a bit nasty running an 802.11b network alongside bluetooth equipment, though.
You could probably ditch bluetooth and have this "concept PC" work using its own 802.11b network.
I would like to see two "concept PC's" running side-by side with overlapping wireless LAN's, though.
They would be using up each others bandwidth.
I can't see how you'd run an whole office full of these PC's on wireless LANs. They would just fall over each other.
You aren't going to connect that monitor up at 2Mb anyway. 802.11b could handle it.