Re:A Linux-PDA is useless for me without...
on
Linux PDA Part Deux
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· Score: 1
Hear hear. And, while you're at it, build in sync support for Mac OS X--which technically should be in the same ballpark.
With PocketMac it looks like I'm going to be able to sync mail from OS X sooner on a WinCE device than on either Palm or a Linux PDA, and that's just plain wrong.
I ran into serious difficulties in how to make basic changes to the GUI. Dumb things, like the background graphic
While I understand that Mac OS X isn't for everyone, this is just trolling. To change the background graphic, could it be more intuitive than opening "System Preferences", and then selecting the "Desktop" control? From there, you can select one of many backgrounds provided by Apple, or browse for your own graphic. And while you can't change the scroll bars from the basic two colors, you can change the highlight color--again, from "System Preferences", but this time select the "General" control.
Seriously, I don't know how much easier it could be. Do those same Mac users you support call you for support much? I suspect that the problem truly lay in habits formed by your own use--your past experience has informed your intuition, and Mac users, for better or worse, have a different experience base. I wouldn't find my desktop picture control intuitive in any place other than where it is.
Yeah, except that Psion has announced that they will no longer be developing their PDAs.
Intrigued by your link, I went to their site--and lo and behold, due to weak demand, Psion will continue to sell but will stop development on their PDA line.
If this suit by Xerox succeeds, and Palm either goes out of business or becomes more expensive due to licensing costs, perhaps Psion will re-evaluate their position. But, as it is now, it looks like the Psion PDA is dead.
Re:Why not just make cooler running chips?
on
Swaying CPU Fans
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· Score: 1
How about an iMac?
No fan in any of the slot-loading models, all the media playback you can want, etc. Yes, the cheapest new model is $799, but none of the "slot-load" iMacs have a fan, and can be found fairly inexpensively on eBay.
And if the thought of running the MacOS bothers you, you can run Darwin and X Windows, and still use the Firewire and Airport connections. Just pretend it's BSD but in a differently colored box.
What's the half that don't use Windows use? If it's Mac, I'd be interested in helping you find a solution that will meet everybody's needs and cross platforms. Write me. There may be applications and groupware for the Mac that you're not familiar with.
PocketMac, a spin off of Information Appliance Associates, is making a sync product for Macs and PocketPC devices. They are releasing a carbon application, so it will work with both 9 and X. It doesn't require "Windows on the desktop" but I don't expect it was exactly what you were looking for;)
With this product, it looks like it will be possible to sync one's email on a Mac with a PocketPC device sooner than one can do the same on a Palm. So I know which PDA platform just jumped up in my list.
The FAQ on the EnviroMission pages indicates that the goal is to have the temp in the chimney 35C warmer (!) than the natural environment.
So, assuming that the avg temp in Australia is something on the order of 90F, wouldn't this make the temp of the air in the pipe nearly 180 degrees F? Holy smokes.
A pretty thorough guide for OS X peripheral compatibility lives on Apple's site, which should come as no surprise.
From the Apple homepage, click on Made4Mac; this will take you to a searchable index of 3rd party product, both software and hardware. It also lists if said product is compatible with X.
Does Darwin have a kernel panic if you try to boot with a mouse that has more than one button?
I'll assume that you're not a troll, since I prefer to give the benefit of the doubt.
No. I use a MSFT Intellimouse with X, and it works just fine. The scroll wheel even works in some apps; the right mouse button is recognized for the limited contextual menus that X has.
because it doesn't second guess my logical operators, and doesn't replace the searches that I want with ads that were paid for. If I put a string in quotes, goddamit, I want that string, and *not* just some of the words of the string, and not variations of the string. If I put something in parantheses, I want the operator performed on just the strings in the parantheses, and not anything else.
Google rocks because it believes me when I tell it I know what I want. The others don't do that, and so I use Google always.
Google "growing up" and becoming a real business. Why does a real business have to have an IPO?
Right. My wife works for Enterprise Rent-a-Car, the largest rental car company in the US. However, it is also privately held, which allows the principals strong flexibility in their decision making, because it is theirs and theirs alone. Incidentally, it's also a great company to work for, because all of the perks and bennies don't have to be approved by a mass of shareholders--if Mr. Enterprise wills it, it becomes.
I was working in New York, and when I decided to leave and live with the parents for a while in Illinois to save money and escape from general East Coast craziness
Imagine if all the people in the WTC were telecommuting--only the servers would have been destroyed...
While tongue in cheek, decentralizing targets might have a real value. If this escalates to a shooting war, it would be a lot harder for the enemy to stop the economy if they had to target 1 Million home offices rather than a single downtown.
Oh, so that's where the AirPort card slot is in these.
For the humor impaired--yes, I do know where the AirPort card goes. I do believe that the TiBook Engineering team's meeting with Steve Jobs went something like this, however:
Jobs: Wow! That's thin, and sexy! We're going to sell a billion of these! Raises and stock options for everyone! By the way, how do you put the AirPort card in?
TiBook Team: Um, AirPort card?
Jobs: AirPort--and it's Absolutely Vital that the home user be able to install this card by themselves, without fucking anything up--as simple to install as RAM. You've got that in there, right? Otherwise, you're going to be shitting Titanium bricks really soon...
Titanium Team [palming screwdriver]: Oh, right! AirPort! Hahaha, we were just fooling. Of course we have that built in! Too bad we didn't bring a screwdriver to this meeting, we'll show you how to put an AirPort card in at the next meeting! You don't really need two PCMCIA slots, right?
Just because they only 'officially' support Windows, doesn't mean they should alienate the other OSes by not have suitable web-based help.
I am using a Mac to connect to Comcast @ Home--and I can't even read the linked page. My status bar scrolls by, but when it's done I have an empty page. Support for my OS of choice doesn't look good--which means I could be back to dialup, switching to an Earthlink DSL line, and/or rooting for Comcast to fail because they believe a good business model is to alienate one's customers.
Don't get me wrong--I love the service I have now, as it's been unfailing after adjusting my schedule to meet the install tech. He didn't even wince when he saw my Mac--I was prepared to do the configs myself--and he shouldn't have been, as it was as simple as giving me a client ID and setting up my IP to pull DHCP. He even asked if I was using the new "Unix-like Mac OS"--which I wasn't, but that shows more awareness of alternative platform choices than even some slashdotters.
And I never look at the @Home content, as it's a waste of time. If Comcast fails to make their portal Mac compatible, ok. That's even a feature, not a bug. But if they arbitrarily deny ISP access to any but Windows machines, I'll cancel my cable TV service, too--as the only reason that I have that instead of DirectTV is because of my desire for a cable modem.
The thing I really miss is having a group of like-minded tech people around me to discuss stuff with. To bounce ideas off of,
With a laptop, go to a cafe, diner, bar and grill. Go to a club if you can stand the noise and work at the same time. If you need constant net access as a requirement, that could be a barrier, but you could also offer to install their wireless access point and do the maintenance, if they cover the lease of the broadband.
First, he names his computer HAL, after one the most notorious AIs in cinema mythology. Then, Dunietz quotes Bladerunner: "These new entities are going to be more human than human"; BR was actually "more human than human, that's our motto"--and it's worth remembering that the character in BR who smugly utters that line later has his jaw broken and his eyes gouged out by one someone "more human."
Finally, this agency wants to create a perfect human intelligence--and then expect it to be satiated by the duties of a valet? Well, if there's any valets reading Slashdot, my apologies to you--but I think that if this fellow succeeds in creating an intelligence, he'll simultaneously fail in making a content servant. I've known a few entities that have had their intelligence developed for a mere 16 years--and that's meat time--and not a one of them would cherish their days spent doing nothing but "functions as an assistant, doing all sorts of time-consuming chores."
God forbid, in the interest of broadening HAL's horizons, Dunietz reads him "The Prince"...
If everone else is selling bundled systems for $600 and you are selling an unbundled system for $300 I think you would have many customers.
Unless, of course, the $600 system includes 5 games that I want, that retail separately for $100 apiece, include another set of gamepads, and a free 6 month subscription to MSN. Not to mention, I get to pre-order; otherwise I have to wait until late December for the backlog to clear out.
I'm likely to buy extra stuff if I buy an XBox. It's just a matter of MSFT guessing the stuff that they think that I'll buy anyways, and include that in the bundle. $10 says that a bundle package will include Halo--so yes, I would pay $400 for the opportunity to pre-order an XBox with Halo, vs waiting until Dec. to buy an XBox, and then pay $100 for Halo then.
Now, if they make me pay for crap I really don't want, and it's not cheaper after the bundling discount--then they've really hurt themselves, and jepordize the buzz that they depend on. However, I would expect them to be smarter than that--expect the "Family bundle", the "Sim" bundle, and the "FPS" bundle. The latter would include Halo, a memory stick, and 6 months of online gaming. I would pay more for this. I would be willing to pay the same amount as I would if I bought each individually at retail; however, expect a discounted price for the bundle, and the pre-order opportunity thrown in for free.
Insist that all students who take the exam use netscape?
Yes.
Microsoft would insist that everyone use ActiveX plugins--only by demonstrating that their forced obsolence is actually driving away customers will stop this kind of practice. Right now, MSFT takes for granted that you will yield to their wishes; prove otherwise.
Exactly. Since Tribes 2 and Heavy Gear was already on Linux, why not Mac OS X also? About all that we have native on X now is Oni--I would have bought a native Tribes 2 for X in a hot second. And Mac users aren't as afraid of spending money as Linux users--witness Apple's hardware prices.
Say, maybe Apple buys Loki's assets? Move to X to play Heavy Gear, otherwise, play another UT deathmatch in 9?
Well, there are several successful (read: still in business) Mac porting houses. They succeed, mostly, by only porting the most popular of games, and do much better when those games don't also use Direct X. Macsoft is one of the most popular, but there are a few others.
As I mention in a post above, I was sorry to see Loki make no attempt to move to the Mac OS X market; I would've thought that once the work of porting to Linux was done, that they could increase their (paying) consumer base by following through with a port to OS X--although there are technical differences, it would still be easier than the original port. And, as I say, there are a few companies that have succeeded porting Mac titles.
You compare Macs and Linux, and, as it has been said before, Macs are now even closer to Linux since OS X.
As a Mac-gamer, I was hoping for Loki to also port to OS X; once the Linux port was completed, I wouldn't think it to be that much more complicated to make the game run under BSD-based OS X. Although the Mac market is still pretty slim, it's doing better than the Linux game market; at least, Macsoft is still in business, as well as other Mac porting houses. Any one care to speculate why Loki didn't try to broaden their potential customer base by also porting to OS X?
First of all, no mention of Marathon. Didn't that game pioneer the ability to look up and down, rather than just side to side?
Secondly, Bungie has said (repeatedly) that Halo will be coming for the Mac--after the MSFT purchase, Bungie stood on the stage at a Macworld and declared that Halo was still planned for the Mac. It sure as hell had better be.
The TiBook is the same way. If apple is changing, or are going to change their policy, they havent notified the AASP's yet.
Apple Specialists can work on the TiBook. I know, because I work at a specialist, and we do perform warranty reimbursed work on TiBooks. Also, at least Specialists can work on all the PowerBooks--but frankly, if a unit is out of warranty, it's hard to compete against the flat rate service plan that Apple offers for $329, for anything other than a modem. However, it remains true that even Specialists cannot peroform any kind of repair on any of the iBooks, short of changing a keyboard--on the other hand, Apple will send you the mailing box directly to your residence, if you need to have one serviced and you're not close to an Apple Service Provider.
Slashdot Mirror
Hear hear. And, while you're at it, build in sync support for Mac OS X--which technically should be in the same ballpark.
With PocketMac it looks like I'm going to be able to sync mail from OS X sooner on a WinCE device than on either Palm or a Linux PDA, and that's just plain wrong.
I ran into serious difficulties in how to make basic changes to the GUI. Dumb things, like the background graphic
While I understand that Mac OS X isn't for everyone, this is just trolling. To change the background graphic, could it be more intuitive than opening "System Preferences", and then selecting the "Desktop" control? From there, you can select one of many backgrounds provided by Apple, or browse for your own graphic. And while you can't change the scroll bars from the basic two colors, you can change the highlight color--again, from "System Preferences", but this time select the "General" control.
Seriously, I don't know how much easier it could be. Do those same Mac users you support call you for support much? I suspect that the problem truly lay in habits formed by your own use--your past experience has informed your intuition, and Mac users, for better or worse, have a different experience base. I wouldn't find my desktop picture control intuitive in any place other than where it is.
Yeah, except that Psion has announced that they will no longer be developing their PDAs.
Intrigued by your link, I went to their site--and lo and behold, due to weak demand, Psion will continue to sell but will stop development on their PDA line.
If this suit by Xerox succeeds, and Palm either goes out of business or becomes more expensive due to licensing costs, perhaps Psion will re-evaluate their position. But, as it is now, it looks like the Psion PDA is dead.
How about an iMac?
No fan in any of the slot-loading models, all the media playback you can want, etc. Yes, the cheapest new model is $799, but none of the "slot-load" iMacs have a fan, and can be found fairly inexpensively on eBay.
And if the thought of running the MacOS bothers you, you can run Darwin and X Windows, and still use the Firewire and Airport connections. Just pretend it's BSD but in a differently colored box.
What's the half that don't use Windows use? If it's Mac, I'd be interested in helping you find a solution that will meet everybody's needs and cross platforms. Write me. There may be applications and groupware for the Mac that you're not familiar with.
Is there reliable syncing s/w for iPAQs
PocketMac, a spin off of Information Appliance Associates, is making a sync product for Macs and PocketPC devices. They are releasing a carbon application, so it will work with both 9 and X. It doesn't require "Windows on the desktop" but I don't expect it was exactly what you were looking for
With this product, it looks like it will be possible to sync one's email on a Mac with a PocketPC device sooner than one can do the same on a Palm. So I know which PDA platform just jumped up in my list.
The FAQ on the EnviroMission pages indicates that the goal is to have the temp in the chimney 35C warmer (!) than the natural environment.
So, assuming that the avg temp in Australia is something on the order of 90F, wouldn't this make the temp of the air in the pipe nearly 180 degrees F? Holy smokes.
A pretty thorough guide for OS X peripheral compatibility lives on Apple's site, which should come as no surprise.
From the Apple homepage, click on Made4Mac; this will take you to a searchable index of 3rd party product, both software and hardware. It also lists if said product is compatible with X.
Does Darwin have a kernel panic if you try to boot with a mouse that has more than one button?
I'll assume that you're not a troll, since I prefer to give the benefit of the doubt.
No. I use a MSFT Intellimouse with X, and it works just fine. The scroll wheel even works in some apps; the right mouse button is recognized for the limited contextual menus that X has.
because it doesn't second guess my logical operators, and doesn't replace the searches that I want with ads that were paid for. If I put a string in quotes, goddamit, I want that string, and *not* just some of the words of the string, and not variations of the string. If I put something in parantheses, I want the operator performed on just the strings in the parantheses, and not anything else.
Google rocks because it believes me when I tell it I know what I want. The others don't do that, and so I use Google always.
Google "growing up" and becoming a real business. Why does a real business have to have an IPO?
Right. My wife works for Enterprise Rent-a-Car, the largest rental car company in the US. However, it is also privately held, which allows the principals strong flexibility in their decision making, because it is theirs and theirs alone. Incidentally, it's also a great company to work for, because all of the perks and bennies don't have to be approved by a mass of shareholders--if Mr. Enterprise wills it, it becomes.
I was working in New York, and when I decided to leave and live with the parents for a while in Illinois to save money and escape from general East Coast craziness
Imagine if all the people in the WTC were telecommuting--only the servers would have been destroyed...
While tongue in cheek, decentralizing targets might have a real value. If this escalates to a shooting war, it would be a lot harder for the enemy to stop the economy if they had to target 1 Million home offices rather than a single downtown.
We're predicting more casualties than Pearl Harbor.
That's a pretty safe bet. With both towers down, we may have more casualties than Hiroshima. Chew on that for a bit.
Oh, so that's where the AirPort card slot is in these.
For the humor impaired--yes, I do know where the AirPort card goes. I do believe that the TiBook Engineering team's meeting with Steve Jobs went something like this, however:
Jobs: Wow! That's thin, and sexy! We're going to sell a billion of these! Raises and stock options for everyone! By the way, how do you put the AirPort card in?
TiBook Team: Um, AirPort card?
Jobs: AirPort--and it's Absolutely Vital that the home user be able to install this card by themselves, without fucking anything up--as simple to install as RAM. You've got that in there, right? Otherwise, you're going to be shitting Titanium bricks really soon...
Titanium Team [palming screwdriver]: Oh, right! AirPort! Hahaha, we were just fooling. Of course we have that built in! Too bad we didn't bring a screwdriver to this meeting, we'll show you how to put an AirPort card in at the next meeting! You don't really need two PCMCIA slots, right?
Just because they only 'officially' support Windows, doesn't mean they should alienate the other OSes by not have suitable web-based help.
I am using a Mac to connect to Comcast @ Home--and I can't even read the linked page. My status bar scrolls by, but when it's done I have an empty page. Support for my OS of choice doesn't look good--which means I could be back to dialup, switching to an Earthlink DSL line, and/or rooting for Comcast to fail because they believe a good business model is to alienate one's customers.
Don't get me wrong--I love the service I have now, as it's been unfailing after adjusting my schedule to meet the install tech. He didn't even wince when he saw my Mac--I was prepared to do the configs myself--and he shouldn't have been, as it was as simple as giving me a client ID and setting up my IP to pull DHCP. He even asked if I was using the new "Unix-like Mac OS"--which I wasn't, but that shows more awareness of alternative platform choices than even some slashdotters.
And I never look at the @Home content, as it's a waste of time. If Comcast fails to make their portal Mac compatible, ok. That's even a feature, not a bug. But if they arbitrarily deny ISP access to any but Windows machines, I'll cancel my cable TV service, too--as the only reason that I have that instead of DirectTV is because of my desire for a cable modem.
The thing I really miss is having a group of like-minded tech people around me to discuss stuff with. To bounce ideas off of,
With a laptop, go to a cafe, diner, bar and grill. Go to a club if you can stand the noise and work at the same time. If you need constant net access as a requirement, that could be a barrier, but you could also offer to install their wireless access point and do the maintenance, if they cover the lease of the broadband.
At least, that's what I'd do.
First, he names his computer HAL, after one the most notorious AIs in cinema mythology. Then, Dunietz quotes Bladerunner: "These new entities are going to be more human than human"; BR was actually "more human than human, that's our motto"--and it's worth remembering that the character in BR who smugly utters that line later has his jaw broken and his eyes gouged out by one someone "more human."
Finally, this agency wants to create a perfect human intelligence--and then expect it to be satiated by the duties of a valet? Well, if there's any valets reading Slashdot, my apologies to you--but I think that if this fellow succeeds in creating an intelligence, he'll simultaneously fail in making a content servant. I've known a few entities that have had their intelligence developed for a mere 16 years--and that's meat time--and not a one of them would cherish their days spent doing nothing but "functions as an assistant, doing all sorts of time-consuming chores."
God forbid, in the interest of broadening HAL's horizons, Dunietz reads him "The Prince"...
If everone else is selling bundled systems for $600 and you are selling an unbundled system for $300 I think you would have many customers.
Unless, of course, the $600 system includes 5 games that I want, that retail separately for $100 apiece, include another set of gamepads, and a free 6 month subscription to MSN. Not to mention, I get to pre-order; otherwise I have to wait until late December for the backlog to clear out.
I'm likely to buy extra stuff if I buy an XBox. It's just a matter of MSFT guessing the stuff that they think that I'll buy anyways, and include that in the bundle. $10 says that a bundle package will include Halo--so yes, I would pay $400 for the opportunity to pre-order an XBox with Halo, vs waiting until Dec. to buy an XBox, and then pay $100 for Halo then.
Now, if they make me pay for crap I really don't want, and it's not cheaper after the bundling discount--then they've really hurt themselves, and jepordize the buzz that they depend on. However, I would expect them to be smarter than that--expect the "Family bundle", the "Sim" bundle, and the "FPS" bundle. The latter would include Halo, a memory stick, and 6 months of online gaming. I would pay more for this. I would be willing to pay the same amount as I would if I bought each individually at retail; however, expect a discounted price for the bundle, and the pre-order opportunity thrown in for free.
Insist that all students who take the exam use netscape?
Yes.
Microsoft would insist that everyone use ActiveX plugins--only by demonstrating that their forced obsolence is actually driving away customers will stop this kind of practice. Right now, MSFT takes for granted that you will yield to their wishes; prove otherwise.
Exactly. Since Tribes 2 and Heavy Gear was already on Linux, why not Mac OS X also? About all that we have native on X now is Oni--I would have bought a native Tribes 2 for X in a hot second. And Mac users aren't as afraid of spending money as Linux users--witness Apple's hardware prices.
Say, maybe Apple buys Loki's assets? Move to X to play Heavy Gear, otherwise, play another UT deathmatch in 9?
Well, there are several successful (read: still in business) Mac porting houses. They succeed, mostly, by only porting the most popular of games, and do much better when those games don't also use Direct X. Macsoft is one of the most popular, but there are a few others.
As I mention in a post above, I was sorry to see Loki make no attempt to move to the Mac OS X market; I would've thought that once the work of porting to Linux was done, that they could increase their (paying) consumer base by following through with a port to OS X--although there are technical differences, it would still be easier than the original port. And, as I say, there are a few companies that have succeeded porting Mac titles.
You compare Macs and Linux, and, as it has been said before, Macs are now even closer to Linux since OS X.
As a Mac-gamer, I was hoping for Loki to also port to OS X; once the Linux port was completed, I wouldn't think it to be that much more complicated to make the game run under BSD-based OS X. Although the Mac market is still pretty slim, it's doing better than the Linux game market; at least, Macsoft is still in business, as well as other Mac porting houses. Any one care to speculate why Loki didn't try to broaden their potential customer base by also porting to OS X?
First of all, no mention of Marathon. Didn't that game pioneer the ability to look up and down, rather than just side to side?
Secondly, Bungie has said (repeatedly) that Halo will be coming for the Mac--after the MSFT purchase, Bungie stood on the stage at a Macworld and declared that Halo was still planned for the Mac. It sure as hell had better be.
for your earlier troll, Hemos? I wish I could moderate the editors--then my frontpage would be more (+2 Insightful) and less (-1 Troll).
The TiBook is the same way. If apple is changing, or are going to change their policy, they havent notified the AASP's yet.
Apple Specialists can work on the TiBook. I know, because I work at a specialist, and we do perform warranty reimbursed work on TiBooks. Also, at least Specialists can work on all the PowerBooks--but frankly, if a unit is out of warranty, it's hard to compete against the flat rate service plan that Apple offers for $329, for anything other than a modem. However, it remains true that even Specialists cannot peroform any kind of repair on any of the iBooks, short of changing a keyboard--on the other hand, Apple will send you the mailing box directly to your residence, if you need to have one serviced and you're not close to an Apple Service Provider.