Talk about an invasion of privacy, here's something kinda scary:
In Finland, if anyone sees your license plate number (e.g. if you drive on the road), they have the right to find out who you are and the municipality in which you live. All you have to do is call the registration center, and they'll tell you who owns whichever license plate you read off to them. But hold on, it gets better.
Finland's largest mobile operator, Sonera, has linked into the registration database and now offers you a service, whereby you send a text message to number 16400, with the body of the message reading FIND AUTO XYZ-123 (the license plate number), and it returns a text message containing the owner of the car's information. Hold on, it gets even better.
After getting their name, you can turn around and use the same service to get their mobile phone number. Just send and SMS to 16400, with the body of the message reading FIND HARRI HIRVI (or whatever his/her name is) and it'll return and SMS to you with their mobile phone number.
Needless to say, there's just a *wee bit* of potential for abuse with this system. Like, some old pervert sees young chick driving, calls her up on her mobile phone and says "I'm watching you" or some crap, and follows her home. Or you cut someone off in traffic and they decide to find out who you are and harass you for the next ten years. Or something.
Fortunately, though, I haven't yet heard any real horror stories of this kind of abuse.
Re:Possible MS Project Names
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Microsoft Freon
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Does it still use that crummy 16-bit Dragonball-powered Palm OS 4.1? It just seems more and more obvious that, while Palm OS is good at enabling basic PDA functionality, it's a technological dead-end. Handspring's tied to software which was never built around wireless data transfer (hence no GPRS) and can't multi-task (no can listen to your MP3s while still being able to receive calls).
Unless they price these things really, really cheap, they're in line to get absolutely stomped by Symbian and Pocket PC 2002 Phone Edition.
Speaking of PPC2KPE, a review of the first device to market running it (codenamed Wallaby) can be found here. Now THAT's a device to drool over!
There are a gazillion exceptions (think child pornography, nazi propaganda, copyright...)
Since when has nazi propaganda been illegal? In fact, since when has any propaganda been illegal? I shudder to think if the day when it is, lest the US Government try to make the distinction between good and bad propaganda for the people.
I still believe that if P2P apps allow us do it for free, we'll keep using that.
Re:And how are they supposed to measure this?
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More on MPEG4
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I agree with you 100 percent.
In the the armpit of the Western World, otherwise known as Tacoma, Washington, you're constantly bombarded with the most offensive, tasteless and ridiculous (often animated) billboard signs. They even have this absolutely !!!HUGE!!! TV billboard which peeks over I-5, causing serious distractions to both North and South-bound traffic. (Advertisers can get away with it because it sits on an Indian reservation.) It's just insane!!!
Finland, on the other hand, has so few billboards it feels like you're in a different world. And the few that are up are only about 5 feet off the ground, usually sitting about 30 meters away from the road, have wood frames, and NO neon noise printed on them.
Wouldn't surprise me one bit if those godawful billboards in the US are one of the contributing factors to road rage... =)
Hate to break it to you, but i-mode is not a network protocol like GSM (which is a TDMA variant). i-mode is an application framework (including the cHTML browser) that runs on top of Japan's PDC network. You're confusing two fundamentally different things.
Aside from that, though, you're right, we're pretty much on par with what's available in Japan. The Ericsson T68 in particular is a very nice phone. It's even upgradeable and you can install Ericsson's XHTML browser when it becomes available. The T68i will be announced this week, and it'll have MMS as well as video playback capabilities.
I use a Nokia 9210, and my major gripes with that it are 1) Size 2) No GPRS 3) No tri-band 4) No Bluetooth. Even though mine costs more (and I work for Nokia), I gotta admit that, pound-for-pound, yours is the best handset out on the market right now. Until the T68i comes out, that is =)
Actually, you're off on two counts. There are both open PPC implementations sold by third parties (reference designs were created by IBM/Motorola), and Apple's reliance on their toolbox ROM isn't an issue with NewWorld Macs.
I'm sure the issues surrounding Open Firmware et al will keep Mac OS X confined to native Mac hardware until Apple decides otherwise.
High-Altitude Platform Systems are one of the three different delivery mechanisms defined by the 3GPP for next-generation mobile services. The systems being designed around them go well beyond this weather baloon business.
It's amazing how little press these systems have received so far, since it would take hundreds of well-placed terrestrial towers or thousands of miles of buried fiber to provide similar coverage and capacity.
That's funny... I've got OS X running now with IE and terminal open and have got zero pageouts... maybe somethin's funky with your system (like you're running Classic)?
Powered by a 500MHz TM5400 Transmeta Crusoe processor with 128MB of PC133 SDRAM, and a Midori Linux operating system based out of a 32MB Compact Flash card, the AquaPad is the definition of a low-footprint device.
This one caught my eye. My first question is: Why would the device need 128MB RAM, four times the amount of ROM? Does Midori Linux really need that much room to maneuver? Just seems a bit excessive, to me, since Mac OS X is about 20 times larger, yet requires significantly less that 128MB (without pageouts) with a bunch of apps open.
In order to create a successful wireless platform, you're going to need 3 vital things:
1: Good hardware. Handspring doesn't have it. They've got a 33Mhz 16-bit Motorola Dragonball processor. It can (slowly) serve the most basic mobile data needs (email, instant messaging), play a couple of neat little games, and be a pretty effective organizer, but that's about it. Palm OS devices are stuck at 8 or 16MB's of total capacity, which sure as hell means you won't be storing any large files (movies, MP3s, etc) on it. They need modern hardware, like an ARM-derived platform, to overcome these inherent limitations. (I know, I know, Palm says it's working on it, but that was supposed to materialize how long ago now??) 2: Good software. The Palm OS is an old, creaky 16-bit rag that maxxed-out its potential back in '98. Memory isn't protected, there is no support for multi-tasking, and just getting color on that thing was a chore and a half (you still find it only on the most expensive devices). You need a modern 32-bit OS like Symbian's EPOC (or even Pocket PC 2002) to do these things natively. Along with a modern OS comes support for faster, better hardware (both Symbian EPOC and Pocket PC run on ARM-derived RISC processors), and more storage space (like IBM microdrives). 3: Decent network support.The Treo has network connectivity tacked-on as an afterthought. Again, this is the Palm OS's fault, not Handspring's. Back in the day, the Palm OS just wasn't designed to be doing the job it's doing now. But other mobile operating systems were built around this stuff, and can handle wireless network protocols natively. Microsoft's Smartphone platform (code-named Stinger) is set to be deployed in GSM and CDMA networks all over the world next year, and Nokia's 9210 (running on EPOC) will be in both the European/African/Asian and American GSM markets. It'll be pretty simple to add GPRS/EDGE (and then UMTS) support to the device because that's what it was designed to do.
I applaude Handspring for forging ahead, but they've inhereted a real huge (possibly fatal) liability from Palm with that ancient operating system.
All the next rev needs is Java, integrated GPS, color screen and old Nintendo/Atari emulation. Now *that* will be a great... ahh... err... phone?!
OK pal, I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. Want to make piles and piles of monay? Make an Atari/Nintendo/Arcade emulator for this thing, right here.
Nokia will sell millions upon millions of 9210 (9290 in the Americas) Communicators. You know what everybody with a Communicator wants? Exactly the same thing you do: Games. Good ones. There are a few good ones coming out for the 9210 (Like Virtually Board Snowboarding), but a lot of people would like to play some great old Atari/Nintendo/Arcade games on it. Surely some Slashdotter can come up with an EPOC app that'll do it, right?
Release it as open source if you want, or charge 5 bucks for the thing. (If just a few thousand people buy it, well, you've got yourself a new car.) I mean sheesh, MAME is open source, isn't it? How hard could it be to compile it with the Nokia/EPOC dev tools?
You, Sir, are incorrect. It does nothing at all to the file after you copy it to the player. The phone plays both AAC and MP3, it doesn't convert one filetype to another.
Anyway, it would be false advertizing on the part of my employer, if it did.
I actually work for Nokia, and work near the designer who created its outer shell. (Got to see it last Winter). I never liked the phone myself, the screen's too small, and the keyboard makes the shape a bit awkward for me personally.
Anyway, to end the controversy: Much like the Nokia Music Player, the 5510 plays both AAC (the proprietary, "secure" filetype) and MP3. The MP3 player is NOT crippled in any way. You copy the file from your PC to the player and that's that. (It holds 64MB, just like the regular Nokia Music Player).
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In Finland, if anyone sees your license plate number (e.g. if you drive on the road), they have the right to find out who you are and the municipality in which you live. All you have to do is call the registration center, and they'll tell you who owns whichever license plate you read off to them. But hold on, it gets better.
Finland's largest mobile operator, Sonera, has linked into the registration database and now offers you a service, whereby you send a text message to number 16400, with the body of the message reading FIND AUTO XYZ-123 (the license plate number), and it returns a text message containing the owner of the car's information. Hold on, it gets even better.
After getting their name, you can turn around and use the same service to get their mobile phone number. Just send and SMS to 16400, with the body of the message reading FIND HARRI HIRVI (or whatever his/her name is) and it'll return and SMS to you with their mobile phone number.
Needless to say, there's just a *wee bit* of potential for abuse with this system. Like, some old pervert sees young chick driving, calls her up on her mobile phone and says "I'm watching you" or some crap, and follows her home. Or you cut someone off in traffic and they decide to find out who you are and harass you for the next ten years. Or something.
Fortunately, though, I haven't yet heard any real horror stories of this kind of abuse.
What about "Palladium"? Oh, wait...
Unless they price these things really, really cheap, they're in line to get absolutely stomped by Symbian and Pocket PC 2002 Phone Edition.
Speaking of PPC2KPE, a review of the first device to market running it (codenamed Wallaby) can be found here. Now THAT's a device to drool over!
Since when has nazi propaganda been illegal? In fact, since when has any propaganda been illegal? I shudder to think if the day when it is, lest the US Government try to make the distinction between good and bad propaganda for the people.
I still believe that if P2P apps allow us do it for free, we'll keep using that.
In the the armpit of the Western World, otherwise known as Tacoma, Washington, you're constantly bombarded with the most offensive, tasteless and ridiculous (often animated) billboard signs. They even have this absolutely !!!HUGE!!! TV billboard which peeks over I-5, causing serious distractions to both North and South-bound traffic. (Advertisers can get away with it because it sits on an Indian reservation.) It's just insane!!!
Finland, on the other hand, has so few billboards it feels like you're in a different world. And the few that are up are only about 5 feet off the ground, usually sitting about 30 meters away from the road, have wood frames, and NO neon noise printed on them.
Wouldn't surprise me one bit if those godawful billboards in the US are one of the contributing factors to road rage... =)
Aside from that, though, you're right, we're pretty much on par with what's available in Japan. The Ericsson T68 in particular is a very nice phone. It's even upgradeable and you can install Ericsson's XHTML browser when it becomes available. The T68i will be announced this week, and it'll have MMS as well as video playback capabilities.
I use a Nokia 9210, and my major gripes with that it are 1) Size 2) No GPRS 3) No tri-band 4) No Bluetooth. Even though mine costs more (and I work for Nokia), I gotta admit that, pound-for-pound, yours is the best handset out on the market right now. Until the T68i comes out, that is =)
I'm sure the issues surrounding Open Firmware et al will keep Mac OS X confined to native Mac hardware until Apple decides otherwise.
There are G3 upgrades for Amiga users?!? I mean, if they can emulate a G3 iMac running faster than 233Mhz then, wow, I had no idea!
Really?!?
It's amazing how little press these systems have received so far, since it would take hundreds of well-placed terrestrial towers or thousands of miles of buried fiber to provide similar coverage and capacity.
That's funny... I've got OS X running now with IE and terminal open and have got zero pageouts... maybe somethin's funky with your system (like you're running Classic)?
This one caught my eye. My first question is: Why would the device need 128MB RAM, four times the amount of ROM? Does Midori Linux really need that much room to maneuver? Just seems a bit excessive, to me, since Mac OS X is about 20 times larger, yet requires significantly less that 128MB (without pageouts) with a bunch of apps open.
1: Good hardware. Handspring doesn't have it. They've got a 33Mhz 16-bit Motorola Dragonball processor. It can (slowly) serve the most basic mobile data needs (email, instant messaging), play a couple of neat little games, and be a pretty effective organizer, but that's about it. Palm OS devices are stuck at 8 or 16MB's of total capacity, which sure as hell means you won't be storing any large files (movies, MP3s, etc) on it. They need modern hardware, like an ARM-derived platform, to overcome these inherent limitations. (I know, I know, Palm says it's working on it, but that was supposed to materialize how long ago now??)
2: Good software. The Palm OS is an old, creaky 16-bit rag that maxxed-out its potential back in '98. Memory isn't protected, there is no support for multi-tasking, and just getting color on that thing was a chore and a half (you still find it only on the most expensive devices). You need a modern 32-bit OS like Symbian's EPOC (or even Pocket PC 2002) to do these things natively. Along with a modern OS comes support for faster, better hardware (both Symbian EPOC and Pocket PC run on ARM-derived RISC processors), and more storage space (like IBM microdrives).
3: Decent network support.The Treo has network connectivity tacked-on as an afterthought. Again, this is the Palm OS's fault, not Handspring's. Back in the day, the Palm OS just wasn't designed to be doing the job it's doing now. But other mobile operating systems were built around this stuff, and can handle wireless network protocols natively. Microsoft's Smartphone platform (code-named Stinger) is set to be deployed in GSM and CDMA networks all over the world next year, and Nokia's 9210 (running on EPOC) will be in both the European/African/Asian and American GSM markets. It'll be pretty simple to add GPRS/EDGE (and then UMTS) support to the device because that's what it was designed to do.
I applaude Handspring for forging ahead, but they've inhereted a real huge (possibly fatal) liability from Palm with that ancient operating system.
They don't make 'em anymore, though.
OK pal, I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. Want to make piles and piles of monay? Make an Atari/Nintendo/Arcade emulator for this thing, right here.
Nokia will sell millions upon millions of 9210 (9290 in the Americas) Communicators. You know what everybody with a Communicator wants? Exactly the same thing you do: Games. Good ones. There are a few good ones coming out for the 9210 (Like Virtually Board Snowboarding), but a lot of people would like to play some great old Atari/Nintendo/Arcade games on it. Surely some Slashdotter can come up with an EPOC app that'll do it, right?
Release it as open source if you want, or charge 5 bucks for the thing. (If just a few thousand people buy it, well, you've got yourself a new car.) I mean sheesh, MAME is open source, isn't it? How hard could it be to compile it with the Nokia/EPOC dev tools?
Anyway, it would be false advertizing on the part of my employer, if it did.
Anyway, to end the controversy: Much like the Nokia Music Player, the 5510 plays both AAC (the proprietary, "secure" filetype) and MP3. The MP3 player is NOT crippled in any way. You copy the file from your PC to the player and that's that. (It holds 64MB, just like the regular Nokia Music Player).