..I don't understand.. How can a greyscale PDA offer only 6 to 8 hours of use?.. I'm willing to put up with 8-10 hours on an ipaq with colour screen, video playback etc.. but for a simple monochrome organizer, why would you not go with something that has battery life for weeks?
christ, your web comic is fucking terrible. maybe you should get some fake fan sites going for it.
No no, you misunderstand - That website *is* a fake. It's sponsored by Jesus Chrysler Auto Dealers in sunny downtown SanAntonio Texas, although to keep controversy to a minimum I'm not aloud to tell you that..
Well sure, there's the unpaid work, long hours, impatient co-opers & uncooperative PayPalers - but hey, you get the admiration of hundreds of geeks once they get their toys.
Perhaps if it was a coop for an internet enabled coffee maker?
..Unfortunately, I was not involved in any of the organisation of the webplayer effort, that was our savior, Jake and his army of trained monkeys boxing and shipping them out. From what I understand, Jake contacted the distributor (boundless) and said, 'hey, if I wanted to buy about 400 hundred of these, how much would you give them to me for?'.
We used the now Yahoo-swallowed eGroups.com to organize the purchase quantitiy and price, and Jake kept a database on his website that was the official orders.
The one caveat was that this whole process took about 3 months- There were delays getting an agreement with boundless, delays on getting PayPal to release the funds to Jakes new account, etc, etc..
From what I understand, there was talk of putting together a FAQ outlining some of the problems we ran into, things to avoid, etc.. Anyone else from the coop here to confirm this?
Well, as someone who got a couple of virgin webplayers through the webplayer-coop, I can say that this provides great oppourtunity for device hackers.. The problems with these devices is that they are too limiting, too expensive, or have horrible service agreements attached. When they inevitably fold, you can get them for a small percentage of what they are worth, and use them for dedicated MP3 player, browsers, email terminals, etc.etc..
..Fake your fans.. The thing is though, if this works, isn't it because there is a fan base out there? or potential for one?
I mean is a movie like the Mexican really going to make money just on marketing hype alone? I mean, this wouldn't work right? People dont like to go see crap..
I guess that clears *THAT* up.. Obviously you can't chat on Napster or swap files other than MP3's.. unless of course you were to use wrapster or some such insidous software. After all, everyone knows that napster could *never* be used to distribute underage porn
Hm. Well that first diagram on the page looks like some new age/ societies of the mind mesh illustration, and I cant figure out if the 'The world as seen by the sentient computing system' is creepy or just funny, it looks a bit too much like some sort of Quake office shooter.
..Oh.. and that 'bat' tracking device looks kind of big and lumpy, especially if you've allready got a high batman factor to your belt. Wouldn't it be more convenient if they just implanted tracking chips in your neck?
Although this is true, its kind of like saying 'linux sucks', 'MacOS sucks', etc etc.. The base winCE does definately suck compared the palm OS, but there is a lot more possibility there. Using plugins like Jimmy's Landscape you can turn the os on its side and use it width-wise. Since I started using transcriber for input, my WPM has probably doubled, and nothing beats listening to mp3's, while browsing the web at 320x240 colour all in a device the size of a palmIIIc.
For people who allready have an ipaq, you can add more storage using cf or pc cards with the add-on sleeves. For some reason, compaq made the add-on sleeves fat and ugly for this slim nice device, so there are lots of people out there doing modifications to 'slim' the sleeve - the nicest I've seen is this one at mobility.wox.org
I don't know about you, but I have a hard enough time finding anything in the 200 gigs on my system. Signal to noise, signal to noise.. Scanning tv & radio sounds like more noise than signal to me.. eventually *everyone* will have the oppourtunity to be employed by the CIA to sort through this data..
..Meanwhile there's a pirate-factory out there pumping out copies of Suzanne Somners 'Thigh-B-Gone' workout tapes on an assemblyline with Macrovision intact. Why? because Macrovision doesn't eliminate the ability to copy the video signal, just the ability to copy it on consumer grade equipment.
Sure, we can all go out and buy our $40 boxes to make our new $200 DVD players to work, or better yet a brand new room-size television. but why the hell should we have to, when it is unneccesary from a technological viewpoint and does nothing to stop illegal mass-duplication?
Yes, my TV predates VCR's and DVD's, oddly enough though they all work with the good old NTSC signal which predates any and all A/V equipment I have. In fact, for a while I was running my DVD through an even older Beta VCR BECAUSE it predated Macrovision, and therefore worked fine!
I ended up finding an old radioshack RCA-to-CATV converter at a garage sail for a couple of bucks.. they can still be bought new for around $40. Just make sure you keep buying things to be able to use their technology properly, it keeps the economy going.
Apparently Macrovision puts 'bursts' between the visible frames that are beyond the 'legal' NTSC signal. The autogain circuitry in the VCR gets tricked by this signal, hence the dimming down to black effect.
Well, If this is anything like Macrovision, you need to get all that hardware compliant.. I can see getting the major manufacturer to get together and install limitations on those home CD recorders (non-pc based), but won't this limitation have to be hardware installed on all those no-name burners as well?
Macrovision sucks bad by the way. When I first tried to run a signal from a DVD to my TV, I had to go through my VCR (really old TV, no RCA inputs).. The Macrovision signal would f*ck with the signal level coming through the VCR, and it didn't matter that I wasn't trying to *copy* the DVD, it wouldn't let me watch it. What sort of complications would this introduce to audio CD's, and *WHY* would people purchase new hardware that is less reliable? Shiny new packaging?
news.cnet.com also has an interview with Alich. That is damn hillarius. He must have said " I love" about 20 times. " I love devices", "I love XP", " I love win200" , " I love lin... err "
..but did he say "I LOVE YOU"?..Talk about your innovations!
In Nike's world 'Sweatshop' *IS* an innapropriate slang term.. They prefer '3rd world employment opportunity'.. try fitting *THAT* on the side of your shoe..
...I dont know about you, but until they come up with some sort miraculous processor that creates 'little' or 'no' heat, Fans are damn important! I've got about thirty of them of various sizes with a 5 foot radius of my head, and the ones that buzz, die or otherwise suck (as opposed to blow?) are the bane of my existence.
Lets hear it for the fans!..but lets *not* hear it for the lawsuits..
I always thought that if you left the safety of your monitor's glow, you'd wither up and blow away.. This is impressive, I wonder if they have to wear protective clothing.
..that a 'consortium' of software and hardware manufacturers are working on 'copy protected' hard-drives that send burrowing nanomites into your brain if you try to make illegall copies of the latest Nsync MP3.. of course if you are collecting Nsync MP3's the nanomites may not be able to get much of a foot-hold in your grey matter..
Hmm.. So Sega is supposedly having problems with people trading ISO's of dreamcast games, and they want to try to lock gamers into a subscribe and play model? Now how long till some one hacks a network connection to your desktop box, so you can act as server, store all 350 games & trade them over your DSL?
I would be *very* suprised if sega went through with this.
Slashdot Mirror
..I don't understand.. How can a greyscale PDA offer only 6 to 8 hours of use? .. I'm willing to put up with 8-10 hours on an ipaq with colour screen, video playback etc.. but for a simple monochrome organizer, why would you not go with something that has battery life for weeks?
Thats it- Dibs on the patent!
christ, your web comic is fucking terrible. maybe you should get some fake fan sites going for it.
No no, you misunderstand - That website *is* a fake. It's sponsored by Jesus Chrysler Auto Dealers in sunny downtown SanAntonio Texas, although to keep controversy to a minimum I'm not aloud to tell you that..
Well sure, there's the unpaid work, long hours, impatient co-opers & uncooperative PayPalers - but hey, you get the admiration of hundreds of geeks once they get their toys.
Perhaps if it was a coop for an internet enabled coffee maker?
..Unfortunately, I was not involved in any of the organisation of the webplayer effort, that was our savior, Jake and his army of trained monkeys boxing and shipping them out. From what I understand, Jake contacted the distributor (boundless) and said, 'hey, if I wanted to buy about 400 hundred of these, how much would you give them to me for?'. We used the now Yahoo-swallowed eGroups.com to organize the purchase quantitiy and price, and Jake kept a database on his website that was the official orders.
The one caveat was that this whole process took about 3 months- There were delays getting an agreement with boundless, delays on getting PayPal to release the funds to Jakes new account, etc, etc.. From what I understand, there was talk of putting together a FAQ outlining some of the problems we ran into, things to avoid, etc.. Anyone else from the coop here to confirm this?
Well, as someone who got a couple of virgin webplayers through the webplayer-coop, I can say that this provides great oppourtunity for device hackers.. The problems with these devices is that they are too limiting, too expensive, or have horrible service agreements attached. When they inevitably fold, you can get them for a small percentage of what they are worth, and use them for dedicated MP3 player, browsers, email terminals, etc.etc..
Bring on the collapsing niche market!
..Fake your fans.. The thing is though, if this works, isn't it because there is a fan base out there? or potential for one?
I mean is a movie like the Mexican really going to make money just on marketing hype alone? I mean, this wouldn't work right? People dont like to go see crap..
Oh.. Wait.. Nevermind..
.. Can they help me find my keys?
I guess that clears *THAT* up.. Obviously you can't chat on Napster or swap files other than MP3's.. unless of course you were to use wrapster or some such insidous software. After all, everyone knows that napster could *never* be used to distribute underage porn
And this is legally different from (Slashdot sacred cow)Napster *HOW*?
Oh.. I mean other than Napster not necessarily being a "home shopping network for pedophiles and child pornographers,"
Here we have 'safe harbour' in action..
Hm. Well that first diagram on the page looks like some new age/ societies of the mind mesh illustration, and I cant figure out if the 'The world as seen by the sentient computing system' is creepy or just funny, it looks a bit too much like some sort of Quake office shooter.
..Oh.. and that 'bat' tracking device looks kind of big and lumpy, especially if you've allready got a high batman factor to your belt. Wouldn't it be more convenient if they just implanted tracking chips in your neck?
Although this is true, its kind of like saying 'linux sucks', 'MacOS sucks', etc etc.. The base winCE does definately suck compared the palm OS, but there is a lot more possibility there. Using plugins like Jimmy's Landscape you can turn the os on its side and use it width-wise. Since I started using transcriber for input, my WPM has probably doubled, and nothing beats listening to mp3's, while browsing the web at 320x240 colour all in a device the size of a palmIIIc.
For people who allready have an ipaq, you can add more storage using cf or pc cards with the add-on sleeves. For some reason, compaq made the add-on sleeves fat and ugly for this slim nice device, so there are lots of people out there doing modifications to 'slim' the sleeve - the nicest I've seen is this one at mobility.wox.org
I don't know about you, but I have a hard enough time finding anything in the 200 gigs on my system. Signal to noise, signal to noise.. Scanning tv & radio sounds like more noise than signal to me.. eventually *everyone* will have the oppourtunity to be employed by the CIA to sort through this data..
..Meanwhile there's a pirate-factory out there pumping out copies of Suzanne Somners 'Thigh-B-Gone' workout tapes on an assemblyline with Macrovision intact. Why? because Macrovision doesn't eliminate the ability to copy the video signal, just the ability to copy it on consumer grade equipment.
Sure, we can all go out and buy our $40 boxes to make our new $200 DVD players to work, or better yet a brand new room-size television. but why the hell should we have to, when it is unneccesary from a technological viewpoint and does nothing to stop illegal mass-duplication?
Yes, my TV predates VCR's and DVD's, oddly enough though they all work with the good old NTSC signal which predates any and all A/V equipment I have. In fact, for a while I was running my DVD through an even older Beta VCR BECAUSE it predated Macrovision, and therefore worked fine!
I ended up finding an old radioshack RCA-to-CATV converter at a garage sail for a couple of bucks.. they can still be bought new for around $40. Just make sure you keep buying things to be able to use their technology properly, it keeps the economy going.
Apparently Macrovision puts 'bursts' between the visible frames that are beyond the 'legal' NTSC signal. The autogain circuitry in the VCR gets tricked by this signal, hence the dimming down to black effect.
Well, If this is anything like Macrovision, you need to get all that hardware compliant.. I can see getting the major manufacturer to get together and install limitations on those home CD recorders (non-pc based), but won't this limitation have to be hardware installed on all those no-name burners as well?
Macrovision sucks bad by the way. When I first tried to run a signal from a DVD to my TV, I had to go through my VCR (really old TV, no RCA inputs).. The Macrovision signal would f*ck with the signal level coming through the VCR, and it didn't matter that I wasn't trying to *copy* the DVD, it wouldn't let me watch it. What sort of complications would this introduce to audio CD's, and *WHY* would people purchase new hardware that is less reliable? Shiny new packaging?
..but did he say "I LOVE YOU"?..Talk about your innovations!
Well thankfully it is availiable in two closed-source formats..
Jonah should have ordered bliss shoes..
In Nike's world 'Sweatshop' *IS* an innapropriate slang term.. They prefer '3rd world employment opportunity'.. try fitting *THAT* on the side of your shoe..
...I dont know about you, but until they come up with some sort miraculous processor that creates 'little' or 'no' heat, Fans are damn important! I've got about thirty of them of various sizes with a 5 foot radius of my head, and the ones that buzz, die or otherwise suck (as opposed to blow?) are the bane of my existence.
..but lets *not* hear it for the lawsuits..
Lets hear it for the fans!
I always thought that if you left the safety of your monitor's glow, you'd wither up and blow away.. This is impressive, I wonder if they have to wear protective clothing.
..that a 'consortium' of software and hardware manufacturers are working on 'copy protected' hard-drives that send burrowing nanomites into your brain if you try to make illegall copies of the latest Nsync MP3.. of course if you are collecting Nsync MP3's the nanomites may not be able to get much of a foot-hold in your grey matter..
Hmm.. So Sega is supposedly having problems with people trading ISO's of dreamcast games, and they want to try to lock gamers into a subscribe and play model? Now how long till some one hacks a network connection to your desktop box, so you can act as server, store all 350 games & trade them over your DSL?
I would be *very* suprised if sega went through with this.
But it has been enough to cover the costs of eight staff members.
And the internet connection, and, oh, beer. An essential part of Linux development.
You mean the beer's not free?