Was reading about how this guy gets 120MPG. Was going to submit it to/. but didn't get around to it.
Is the cost of a hybrid versus other ideas worth it? Anyone look into this freezing method?
Great movie with free market touches
on
Serenity Opens Today
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Saw it this morning. I never go to the theater, either. Props to Marcus Theaters in Gurnee. Great sound, great visual focus. Benefit of missing Navy pay day by a day.
Serenity has great Free Market plot lines, just as Firefly did. My "beloved" LRC has some good insight here andhere.
Even the theme song is freedom loving: Take my love.
Take my land.
Take me where I cannot stand.
I don't care, I'm still free.
You can't take the sky from me. Take me out
to the black.
Tell 'em I ain't comin' back.
Burn the land and boil the sea.
You can't take the sky from me. Have no place
I can be
Since I found Serenity.
To bad Whedon's a socialist. Weird.
Maybe we can change that. I'm ready to pay Joss Whedon a nice annual subscription to have him bring Firefly back (web based video, high quality codec) to an online format. Fuck ox and Cable producers. Anyone know of a way to contact him about the idea?
FWIW the movie does feel TV-ish. I'd like to know what it was filmed on and edited on.
Hypothetically, just guessing, no experience, etc:
* If you have any stockbroker customers, ask for referrals for customers needing intense security for telcom. They'll get your name and number out there to those kind of guys.
* Distributors to convenient stores can be excellent customers
* Barbershops with gambling odds newspapers have great customers
In the short and long run, this topic is so political that even my brain runs in circles.
The first problem is the stem cell source. Umbilical cords get around the fetal tissue issue, but that problem will surface until the abortion issue is settled. Aabortion is an "is it murder?" issue. The definition of murder, Constitutionally, is a State right. Federally, the only Constitutional crimes are treason, piracy and counterfeiting. So stem cells are not in the federal domain of control.
Second is funding. Our Congress has no power Constitutionally to fund science. Medical research thrives on competition; in fact there are almost no medical discoveries that can be associated with federal studies. Let different companies compete and more people will be helped or saved.
Thirdly, regulations set up by the FDA on drugs pending approval are holding back many drugs that can help in stem cell use. The FDA is unconstitutional and costs tens of thousands of lives annually in delays. I'd rather leave drug testing and acceptance to UL-like private companies. When drugs go bad, lawsuits control the companies. The FDA has helped no one and prevented no one's death.
We have the free market to thank for so many medical discoveries. Why should we burden new ones with bureaucracy?
The link further in this thread is a good overview. Here's some more information:
The wiki while in dispute, points to others who acknowledge that the AMA runs State Medical Boards. If you query your state's SMB on how they categorize medical schools, they'll acknowledge using the AMA's grading system.
The AMA is a terrible organization, already convicted of violating the Sherman anti-trust act. They've even manipulated dieticians (my step mother), USDA and FDA guidelines and numerous studies regarding new medical therapies.
I have no problem providing stronger encryption communications to my customers. I've helped implement encrypted VoIP before VoIP was a defined term. Some of the shadier "organizations" already employ an incredible amount of geeks -- $100,000 a year cash (for a 20 hour a week job) is hard to say no to.
These laws are a waste of money. A VoIP stream can easily be hidden in a Quake3 online stream played between bots. There's too much information changing hands.
And who the hell are they trying to catch? Drug dealers? Terrorists? Enforcement of either set of laws only creates more people filling in the shoes of those caught.
We're not making a dent in any non-violent crime, why throw more money at a non-problem?
No, but I believe service and price do. Students get wealthier. As the article I point to shows, you don't see many poor bad doctors but you see many lawyers fail. The AMA keeps bad doctors wealthy, the ABA doesn't wield much power.
For 150 years they've lobbied for every item that drives up medical costs. I came across this article about 7 years ago, my first LRC article ever:) Great history of the nemesis I feel is worse than the RIAA, MPAA and DoD combined.
Our medical industry is in the shitter due to the AMA restricting doctor numbers (driving costs up and demand up) and the HMO Act of Congress. Both of these statist mechanism force costs up and quality/safety down.
The freer a business market is to accept competition, the better cost and safety gets.
But the EU and EC are growing, so I believe we'll see more EU+ESA projects.
So many space-socialists here demand public funding of space. "No business would take the risk!!" I disagree. With information needing to be distributed worldwide, satellites are a huge commercial industry. Satellite launches occupy a huge portion of the number of annual launches, and printed launch companies constantly try to decrease cost while increasing safety. The same is not true for NASA and ESA.
We could only wish our medical students in the US needed robots as test patients. Unfortunately there is a monopoly on doctors, and the problem will only get worse.
The AMA is a lobbying organization with complete control (last paragraph) over the number of doctors.
Mexico has not enacted these same licensing restrictions, and surely allows for more doctors who can be used outside the country. Mexicans are well known to send a great amount of income back home.
The downside is that our AMA is working to prevent foreign doctors from coming over so easily. This could mean lower medical prices in Mexico though.
At first dividing up such a huge project between countries seems feasible: you can't build a high rise without variations trades assisting one another.
Then I realized we're talking about multiple governments trying to work together. I see many problems.
First, dividing up a non-profitable project is hard. You know major manufacturing will go to a printed contractor (some friend of the State). Good luck picking who it is.
Also, the political climate changes often. New boondoggles push old ones out. Its hard enough when one State needs to fund it. The amount of money spent here is just to fund a basic feasibility study!
I don't have faith in the EU lasting. I don't have faith in Russia's solvency. I don't have faith in this project.
I say wait it out. Offer a $100M prize for a cheap orbital launcher and companies will climb over each other to get there first.
I think we'll see more privatization now that consumer space travel is imminent. Bookmark this, in 10 years suborbital flight will be well under $25k per passenger.
Re:If it ain't broke, wait, it's broke
on
Palm's Mistakes
·
· Score: 1
You just keep getting more right. Darn it! Haha. I don't want to be right, just want to offer a different (pro-market) perspective!
I think that what happened to Palm is that they didn't quite make the leap from "über-cool geek factor" to "must have accessory for everyman" like Apple's iPod did. How can they? They made an easily mimicked (sp?) product with a fairly generic interface. Apple realized that information dissemination is generic, but the interface IS the only important aspect. Palm's interface mimics a book. iPod mimics nothing.
I don't know what I'd do if Apple's next iPod started running Windows... It can't. I believe MS will gain valuable interface knowledge from the iPod. Apple created the key needed to unlock the mp3 world for the common man. The PDA key is still missing. Hint: its the interface.
You are now a friend. Thanks! If you read some of my previous threads you might not consider me one.
I get blasted often for my free market perspective. I don't think "the free market saves all!!" because I believe the free market destroys a lot of great ideas. But its more a temporary destruction. The market decides what can live based on billions of consumer decisions every minute.
The PDA that succeeds needs a Wow Factor like the one you get every time you use an iPod, not the Wow Factor you get the first time you see a graphics-rich plot-poor movie. That Wow Factor becomes an Ugh Factor upon your second viewing.
Re:If it ain't broke, wait, it's broke
on
Palm's Mistakes
·
· Score: 1
Great post.
The Achilles heel of PalmOS was always HotSynch. The Achilles heel of the PDA is syncing. I believe step 1 in this information society is developing a decent sync protocol. GoogleSync? I'm really disturbed that the information held in devices is considered secondary, the transparent sharing of information between all of a user's information stores is the endgame.
As a PDA, simple is what you want. I disagree. My PDA is my digital manservant. I'd say the masses would prefer transparent adaptability for adding and reviewing the information they need.
As PDAs accrete more functionality, they become more annoying True. But the interface is trying to mimic previous interfaces in a completely foreign form factor. To me, finding a new user friendly mini-interface to add to and view my data is far more important than form factor. Making a 320x240 display mimic a 1280x1024 display isn't the right way. Neither is emulating a paper dayplanner.
But you can buy a good enough PDA now for under $50 You mean a digital dayplanner. A $5 analog item. I would pay $1000 for a digital assistant, easily. But it has to work transparently, quickly and DIRTFT.
. I carry a Treo 600, but I'd rather have a really good phone with basic PDA functions. I hated my Treos, they didn't do anything right. The phone part should be simple: a two way voice transport. The extras kill every phone I've used.
What I'd really like to see a vendor stake out as a position is to be a leader in personal networking. Yes yes yes! But focus on the interface and information exchange. I don't t ink we need multiple physical devices. Virtual devices might be the right direction.
I wouldn't have any rituals to perform to get them synchronized, it would just happen. Yes.
If anybody could do this, it would be Apple, Exactly.
First, every information store needs a connection to a central database. I think this means two things: the development of an ultra low power/low speed receive-and-hold WiFi sub-protocol and the widespread availability of this topology.
10K/s is fine for data, 30K/s for media. Said device (iPod, PDA, Phone) needs to inform the central store that its ready to communicate and what information it needs updates on. Maybe it reports the last time it communicated with the store. The store can review changes since that time, and sync the data.
Now this is fine for a single user's data. Throw a network of users updating the same records off-site, and boom: problems.
We're not ready. That's why syncing is imperfect. When the network is truly everywhere, we can attack the multi-user sync problem. How can on offline user lock the database? I never want a user queried to pick one of two records.
Until that day comes, I don't sync. I backup, but my PDA's store is my only store.
How about all devices dumping storing data entirely? Each user gets a BT data store available to their phone, iPod, calendar, desktop?
That's a great point, and it helps to re-emphasize that no federal project looks very big when individually broken down to cost/person/year. Heck, my town tried passing a referendum that advertised it in cents per day.
$40/year per person is $160 per typical family per year. That's a lot. That's also just a tiny line item on an enormous budget, which makes it even scarier.
Re:If it ain't broke, wait, it's broke
on
Palm's Mistakes
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Good info.
Unfortunately, in the free market, items that cost incredible amounts to develop need an incredible amount of users to bear a profit.
Devices need to work for your fiance before they're accepted by everyone.
The days of 128k memory were truly an alpha stage for the market. The hardware is almost where it needs to be.
The software is still in that alpha stage. The interface needs a breakthrough. The syncing is hit or miss for most.
I feel bad about Palm programmers but the same thing happens in any hardware market with declining numbers, especially when the numbers weren't large to begin with.
I love my MS based system. It rarely crashes, I can browse 3 sites, work in Excel, and still answer the phone without a bog down. I'm also a rarity as others I've met with the same device can't run theirs for more than an hour without a problem.
The PDA market will continue to be in flux for years. The interface pot of gold has not been found. I'm not sure myself where the solution is (less hard buttons, better text input, maybe finger swirls for common app needs?).
Someone has to find it, and soon. My PDA using customer base is about 70% down in 12 months!
I'll keep using mine, keep buying new models and keep finding what works for me. 1 person spending $500/year makes not a market.
Re:If it ain't broke, wait, it's broke
on
Palm's Mistakes
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The 'solution provider' note is a good one. T-Mobile killed off my model based on excessive platform support costs. Mine never gave me trouble but thousands of users did.
As for WiFi, my model has BT, WiFi and GPRS. My GPRS hits about 3.2K/s down and 0.9K/s up. Its perfect for slashdot, news.google, lewrockwell, e-mail, basic FTP and other tasks. WiFi sucks because the battery life is horrible. There's no solution for this yet, but WiFi needs constant polling whereas GPRS' packet based transceiving is more energy efficient.
The upside of using only my GPRS connection is that I don't deal with data bloat. I had DSL since the beta stages, now I'm back to sub-dial-up speeds and ecstatic.
WiFi is useless to me now. No data bloat = no need for high speed anything.
Re:If it ain't broke, wait, it's broke
on
Palm's Mistakes
·
· Score: 1
This is all true. My speakerphone is hit or miss. I hate handsfree headsets and my Bluetooth one hurt my ear.
I may consider getting a BT phone and a BT PDA next time, but having it all together helps tremendously. I can bill for my phone calls without two hands, my integrated networking is a huge convenience, and one fewer charger reduces clutter.
Opening an SDK is smart for a stable platform. Unfortunately these platforms can't be stable enough as there aren't enough users to bring the price of good code testing down.
I don't want anything smaller. In fact, I'd accept a little extra length for a longer (or wider in landscape) view. I'm probably in the minority.
If it ain't broke, wait, it's broke
on
Palm's Mistakes
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I've owned PDA's since the original Newton MessagePad, including every Newton model, numerous Palm Pilots, tons of proprietary junk models, halting with the HP iPAQ h6315 PDA Phone (for now).
The Pilot was doomed from the start. As a basic contacts + calendar + to-do PDA, it was great. I guess that's why it failed: too basic.
In my experience, basic users tend toward basic devices. I'd say nearly 30% of my consulting income for 5 years was helping basic company managers getting their Palms to work. Once they worked (synced, etc), these basic users spent more time navigating the software than using it efficiently. The working install rarely worked for long. My corporate customers hated the software. "Just get it working" was common to hear.
I'd considered teaching users how to really achieve PDA efficiency, but the Pilots that were so plentiful were just not powerful enough and frustrated me. I can't handle spending 30 seconds finding information that took 5 seconds in a paper dayplanner.
Then I started to realize something: people were buying these in a fad fashion. Many used only the calculator or a simple name+phone contact list. Not a renewable market there.
My PDA Phone is great because it is easily customizable, has enough software to give me options, and it has the Internet. But in the hands of a basic user, I'd see them using only the phone part. These devices just don't scream "easy to use."
Apple can turn this market on its head. I don't see them doing it (again), but if there is any market that needs a unique interface, the PDA market is it.
I'm not a pro-Apple guy. My lady has an iPod, I have no Macs. Yet I loved my Newtons. I can still efficiently use them, and basic users loved mine.
The Palm's limited resolution, limited speed, amd limited memory killed it. The market wasn't ready. There were too few customers. The economy of spending millions on the ultimate interface is not there, yet.
The cell phone market will help, as the best interface models get combined with one another. SMS messaging will usher in the perfect mini keyboard someday.
It will take time.
PS The Blackberry has to be a fad fluke. It feels like a Speak 'N Spell.
As a total cost for both programs that has exceeded $250 Billion, you have to wonder what other useful things could have been developed using the same resources.
Yes! What could the individuals that were taxed to pay for this have done with this money? Build 5 million houses? Buy 50 million cars? Each 20 billion meals?
Who knows, because the money didn't enter the economy in an efficient way. It went to cronies with clout who used it in ways that didn't build wealth as it should.
Then I reread the submission and realized the author meant "what would NASA have built if they spent the $250B wisely?"
Answer: they wouldn't use the money wisely. They can't.
More proof that information wants to be free, barring going regulation and taxation.
Here's why we need to keep the ISP free of local, state and federal bondage. You can expect the legal monopoly telcos and cable companies to have more restrictions placed on third party ISPs. Phone calls are a cash cow still.
On the other hand, the cellular companies can probably find wireless VoIP profitable as they're better prepared to add WiFi to existing antenna structures.
This is going to open up cheaper communications, which will give us all more cash in our pockets and more services to make us more efficient in our work and play lives.
I can only hope those with legislative power can keep their dirty paws (and those of their friends) off.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.kfor.com/Global/story.asp?s=3390503
/. but didn't get around to it.
Was reading about how this guy gets 120MPG. Was going to submit it to
Is the cost of a hybrid versus other ideas worth it? Anyone look into this freezing method?
Saw it this morning. I never go to the theater, either. Props to Marcus Theaters in Gurnee. Great sound, great visual focus. Benefit of missing Navy pay day by a day.
Serenity has great Free Market plot lines, just as Firefly did. My "beloved" LRC has some good insight here andhere.
Even the theme song is freedom loving:
Take my love.
Take my land.
Take me where I cannot stand.
I don't care, I'm still free.
You can't take the sky from me.
Take me out
to the black.
Tell 'em I ain't comin' back.
Burn the land and boil the sea.
You can't take the sky from me.
Have no place
I can be
Since I found Serenity.
To bad Whedon's a socialist. Weird.
Maybe we can change that. I'm ready to pay Joss Whedon a nice annual subscription to have him bring Firefly back (web based video, high quality codec) to an online format. Fuck ox and Cable producers. Anyone know of a way to contact him about the idea?
FWIW the movie does feel TV-ish. I'd like to know what it was filmed on and edited on.
iTMS is destroying the RIAA's right to speech:
1. The RIAA can't pat iTMS DJs and Producers to force users to download the hot song of the week.
2. The RIAA can't pay iTMS to list the proper version of the Top 40 Charts.
3. The RIAA can't control which markets get their music, heaven forbid a black consumer getting a listen to Kenny G by accident.
[/kidding]
Hypothetically, just guessing, no experience, etc:
:)
* If you have any stockbroker customers, ask for referrals for customers needing intense security for telcom. They'll get your name and number out there to those kind of guys.
* Distributors to convenient stores can be excellent customers
* Barbershops with gambling odds newspapers have great customers
* Roadway management contractors
I am against any government support of corporations. The debate of full liability versus limited liability is contained in this two Op-Eds:
:)
Pro-limited liability
Pro-full liability
I'm pro-full liability, but the case for limited liability has its positive ideas.
Even if you're not AnCap, they're great articles
Oh boy, an AnCap's favorite topic!
This news, if true and long lasting, is great.
In the short and long run, this topic is so political that even my brain runs in circles.
The first problem is the stem cell source. Umbilical cords get around the fetal tissue issue, but that problem will surface until the abortion issue is settled. Aabortion is an "is it murder?" issue. The definition of murder, Constitutionally, is a State right. Federally, the only Constitutional crimes are treason, piracy and counterfeiting. So stem cells are not in the federal domain of control.
Second is funding. Our Congress has no power Constitutionally to fund science. Medical research thrives on competition; in fact there are almost no medical discoveries that can be associated with federal studies. Let different companies compete and more people will be helped or saved.
Thirdly, regulations set up by the FDA on drugs pending approval are holding back many drugs that can help in stem cell use. The FDA is unconstitutional and costs tens of thousands of lives annually in delays. I'd rather leave drug testing and acceptance to UL-like private companies. When drugs go bad, lawsuits control the companies. The FDA has helped no one and prevented no one's death.
We have the free market to thank for so many medical discoveries. Why should we burden new ones with bureaucracy?
The link further in this thread is a good overview. Here's some more information:
The wiki while in dispute, points to others who acknowledge that the AMA runs State Medical Boards. If you query your state's SMB on how they categorize medical schools, they'll acknowledge using the AMA's grading system.
The AMA is a terrible organization, already convicted of violating the Sherman anti-trust act. They've even manipulated dieticians (my step mother), USDA and FDA guidelines and numerous studies regarding new medical therapies.
I have no problem providing stronger encryption communications to my customers. I've helped implement encrypted VoIP before VoIP was a defined term. Some of the shadier "organizations" already employ an incredible amount of geeks -- $100,000 a year cash (for a 20 hour a week job) is hard to say no to.
These laws are a waste of money. A VoIP stream can easily be hidden in a Quake3 online stream played between bots. There's too much information changing hands.
And who the hell are they trying to catch? Drug dealers? Terrorists? Enforcement of either set of laws only creates more people filling in the shoes of those caught.
We're not making a dent in any non-violent crime, why throw more money at a non-problem?
I hope so. Google will acquire OSTG, Microsoft will acquire Google and Hillary.Gov will acquire Microsoft.
Unfortunately Haliburton secretly owns Hillary.Gov. Glad I invested in tin foil.
No, but I believe service and price do. Students get wealthier. As the article I point to shows, you don't see many poor bad doctors but you see many lawyers fail. The AMA keeps bad doctors wealthy, the ABA doesn't wield much power.
Its not the doctors, its the AMA.
:) Great history of the nemesis I feel is worse than the RIAA, MPAA and DoD combined.
For 150 years they've lobbied for every item that drives up medical costs. I came across this article about 7 years ago, my first LRC article ever
If you saw everything the AMA lobbies against, the RIAA and MPAA wouldn't scare you.
Our medical industry is in the shitter due to the AMA restricting doctor numbers (driving costs up and demand up) and the HMO Act of Congress. Both of these statist mechanism force costs up and quality/safety down.
The freer a business market is to accept competition, the better cost and safety gets.
True. The ESA > 30 years old.
But the EU and EC are growing, so I believe we'll see more EU+ESA projects.
So many space-socialists here demand public funding of space. "No business would take the risk!!" I disagree. With information needing to be distributed worldwide, satellites are a huge commercial industry. Satellite launches occupy a huge portion of the number of annual launches, and printed launch companies constantly try to decrease cost while increasing safety. The same is not true for NASA and ESA.
We could only wish our medical students in the US needed robots as test patients. Unfortunately there is a monopoly on doctors, and the problem will only get worse.
The AMA is a lobbying organization with complete control (last paragraph) over the number of doctors.
Mexico has not enacted these same licensing restrictions, and surely allows for more doctors who can be used outside the country. Mexicans are well known to send a great amount of income back home.
The downside is that our AMA is working to prevent foreign doctors from coming over so easily. This could mean lower medical prices in Mexico though.
Oh, it had to be said:
"I got gonorrhea!" -- Cosmo Kramer
At first dividing up such a huge project between countries seems feasible: you can't build a high rise without variations trades assisting one another.
Then I realized we're talking about multiple governments trying to work together. I see many problems.
First, dividing up a non-profitable project is hard. You know major manufacturing will go to a printed contractor (some friend of the State). Good luck picking who it is.
Also, the political climate changes often. New boondoggles push old ones out. Its hard enough when one State needs to fund it. The amount of money spent here is just to fund a basic feasibility study!
I don't have faith in the EU lasting. I don't have faith in Russia's solvency. I don't have faith in this project.
I say wait it out. Offer a $100M prize for a cheap orbital launcher and companies will climb over each other to get there first.
I think we'll see more privatization now that consumer space travel is imminent. Bookmark this, in 10 years suborbital flight will be well under $25k per passenger.
You just keep getting more right. Darn it! Haha. I don't want to be right, just want to offer a different (pro-market) perspective!
I think that what happened to Palm is that they didn't quite make the leap from "über-cool geek factor" to "must have accessory for everyman" like Apple's iPod did. How can they? They made an easily mimicked (sp?) product with a fairly generic interface. Apple realized that information dissemination is generic, but the interface IS the only important aspect. Palm's interface mimics a book. iPod mimics nothing.
I don't know what I'd do if Apple's next iPod started running Windows... It can't. I believe MS will gain valuable interface knowledge from the iPod. Apple created the key needed to unlock the mp3 world for the common man. The PDA key is still missing. Hint: its the interface.
You are now a friend. Thanks! If you read some of my previous threads you might not consider me one.
I get blasted often for my free market perspective. I don't think "the free market saves all!!" because I believe the free market destroys a lot of great ideas. But its more a temporary destruction. The market decides what can live based on billions of consumer decisions every minute.
The PDA that succeeds needs a Wow Factor like the one you get every time you use an iPod, not the Wow Factor you get the first time you see a graphics-rich plot-poor movie. That Wow Factor becomes an Ugh Factor upon your second viewing.
Great post.
The Achilles heel of PalmOS was always HotSynch. The Achilles heel of the PDA is syncing. I believe step 1 in this information society is developing a decent sync protocol. GoogleSync? I'm really disturbed that the information held in devices is considered secondary, the transparent sharing of information between all of a user's information stores is the endgame.
As a PDA, simple is what you want. I disagree. My PDA is my digital manservant. I'd say the masses would prefer transparent adaptability for adding and reviewing the information they need.
As PDAs accrete more functionality, they become more annoying True. But the interface is trying to mimic previous interfaces in a completely foreign form factor. To me, finding a new user friendly mini-interface to add to and view my data is far more important than form factor. Making a 320x240 display mimic a 1280x1024 display isn't the right way. Neither is emulating a paper dayplanner.
But you can buy a good enough PDA now for under $50 You mean a digital dayplanner. A $5 analog item. I would pay $1000 for a digital assistant, easily. But it has to work transparently, quickly and DIRTFT.
. I carry a Treo 600, but I'd rather have a really good phone with basic PDA functions. I hated my Treos, they didn't do anything right. The phone part should be simple: a two way voice transport. The extras kill every phone I've used.
What I'd really like to see a vendor stake out as a position is to be a leader in personal networking. Yes yes yes! But focus on the interface and information exchange. I don't t ink we need multiple physical devices. Virtual devices might be the right direction.
I wouldn't have any rituals to perform to get them synchronized, it would just happen. Yes.
If anybody could do this, it would be Apple, Exactly.
First, every information store needs a connection to a central database. I think this means two things: the development of an ultra low power/low speed receive-and-hold WiFi sub-protocol and the widespread availability of this topology.
10K/s is fine for data, 30K/s for media. Said device (iPod, PDA, Phone) needs to inform the central store that its ready to communicate and what information it needs updates on. Maybe it reports the last time it communicated with the store. The store can review changes since that time, and sync the data.
Now this is fine for a single user's data. Throw a network of users updating the same records off-site, and boom: problems.
We're not ready. That's why syncing is imperfect. When the network is truly everywhere, we can attack the multi-user sync problem. How can on offline user lock the database? I never want a user queried to pick one of two records.
Until that day comes, I don't sync. I backup, but my PDA's store is my only store.
How about all devices dumping storing data entirely? Each user gets a BT data store available to their phone, iPod, calendar, desktop?
That's a great point, and it helps to re-emphasize that no federal project looks very big when individually broken down to cost/person/year. Heck, my town tried passing a referendum that advertised it in cents per day.
$40/year per person is $160 per typical family per year. That's a lot. That's also just a tiny line item on an enormous budget, which makes it even scarier.
Good info.
Unfortunately, in the free market, items that cost incredible amounts to develop need an incredible amount of users to bear a profit.
Devices need to work for your fiance before they're accepted by everyone.
The days of 128k memory were truly an alpha stage for the market. The hardware is almost where it needs to be.
The software is still in that alpha stage. The interface needs a breakthrough. The syncing is hit or miss for most.
I feel bad about Palm programmers but the same thing happens in any hardware market with declining numbers, especially when the numbers weren't large to begin with.
I love my MS based system. It rarely crashes, I can browse 3 sites, work in Excel, and still answer the phone without a bog down. I'm also a rarity as others I've met with the same device can't run theirs for more than an hour without a problem.
The PDA market will continue to be in flux for years. The interface pot of gold has not been found. I'm not sure myself where the solution is (less hard buttons, better text input, maybe finger swirls for common app needs?).
Someone has to find it, and soon. My PDA using customer base is about 70% down in 12 months!
I'll keep using mine, keep buying new models and keep finding what works for me. 1 person spending $500/year makes not a market.
The 'solution provider' note is a good one. T-Mobile killed off my model based on excessive platform support costs. Mine never gave me trouble but thousands of users did.
As for WiFi, my model has BT, WiFi and GPRS. My GPRS hits about 3.2K/s down and 0.9K/s up. Its perfect for slashdot, news.google, lewrockwell, e-mail, basic FTP and other tasks. WiFi sucks because the battery life is horrible. There's no solution for this yet, but WiFi needs constant polling whereas GPRS' packet based transceiving is more energy efficient.
The upside of using only my GPRS connection is that I don't deal with data bloat. I had DSL since the beta stages, now I'm back to sub-dial-up speeds and ecstatic.
WiFi is useless to me now. No data bloat = no need for high speed anything.
This is all true. My speakerphone is hit or miss. I hate handsfree headsets and my Bluetooth one hurt my ear.
I may consider getting a BT phone and a BT PDA next time, but having it all together helps tremendously. I can bill for my phone calls without two hands, my integrated networking is a huge convenience, and one fewer charger reduces clutter.
Opening an SDK is smart for a stable platform. Unfortunately these platforms can't be stable enough as there aren't enough users to bring the price of good code testing down.
I don't want anything smaller. In fact, I'd accept a little extra length for a longer (or wider in landscape) view. I'm probably in the minority.
I've owned PDA's since the original Newton MessagePad, including every Newton model, numerous Palm Pilots, tons of proprietary junk models, halting with the HP iPAQ h6315 PDA Phone (for now).
The Pilot was doomed from the start. As a basic contacts + calendar + to-do PDA, it was great. I guess that's why it failed: too basic.
In my experience, basic users tend toward basic devices. I'd say nearly 30% of my consulting income for 5 years was helping basic company managers getting their Palms to work. Once they worked (synced, etc), these basic users spent more time navigating the software than using it efficiently. The working install rarely worked for long. My corporate customers hated the software. "Just get it working" was common to hear.
I'd considered teaching users how to really achieve PDA efficiency, but the Pilots that were so plentiful were just not powerful enough and frustrated me. I can't handle spending 30 seconds finding information that took 5 seconds in a paper dayplanner.
Then I started to realize something: people were buying these in a fad fashion. Many used only the calculator or a simple name+phone contact list. Not a renewable market there.
My PDA Phone is great because it is easily customizable, has enough software to give me options, and it has the Internet. But in the hands of a basic user, I'd see them using only the phone part. These devices just don't scream "easy to use."
Apple can turn this market on its head. I don't see them doing it (again), but if there is any market that needs a unique interface, the PDA market is it.
I'm not a pro-Apple guy. My lady has an iPod, I have no Macs. Yet I loved my Newtons. I can still efficiently use them, and basic users loved mine.
The Palm's limited resolution, limited speed, amd limited memory killed it. The market wasn't ready. There were too few customers. The economy of spending millions on the ultimate interface is not there, yet.
The cell phone market will help, as the best interface models get combined with one another. SMS messaging will usher in the perfect mini keyboard someday.
It will take time.
PS The Blackberry has to be a fad fluke. It feels like a Speak 'N Spell.
When I read the submission I said "hell ya!"
As a total cost for both programs that has exceeded $250 Billion, you have to wonder what other useful things could have been developed using the same resources.
Yes! What could the individuals that were taxed to pay for this have done with this money? Build 5 million houses? Buy 50 million cars? Each 20 billion meals?
Who knows, because the money didn't enter the economy in an efficient way. It went to cronies with clout who used it in ways that didn't build wealth as it should.
Then I reread the submission and realized the author meant "what would NASA have built if they spent the $250B wisely?"
Answer: they wouldn't use the money wisely. They can't.
More proof that information wants to be free, barring going regulation and taxation.
Here's why we need to keep the ISP free of local, state and federal bondage. You can expect the legal monopoly telcos and cable companies to have more restrictions placed on third party ISPs. Phone calls are a cash cow still.
On the other hand, the cellular companies can probably find wireless VoIP profitable as they're better prepared to add WiFi to existing antenna structures.
This is going to open up cheaper communications, which will give us all more cash in our pockets and more services to make us more efficient in our work and play lives.
I can only hope those with legislative power can keep their dirty paws (and those of their friends) off.