Here is what the display is made of... And here is the last./ story. Come on guys! Don't get my hopes up like that!
As a side note, I was at Epcot and got to see Xerox's Gyricon (now marketed as 'SmartPaper') up close and personal. The only issue was that the person at the booth barely knew how the stuff worked and did not have so much as a magnet to show it change. Someday...
Wow, if we installed one of these in everyones house, we could teleconference with our gym and do exercises in the morning and... wait... something about this is very familiar....
Anyone else ever love the fact that in Trek, phasers could be set to explode... good thing they kept that in mind on this one. Hopefully they don't overheat in a heavy fire fight, eh? Could give new meaning to the term 'friendly fire'. (And I thought depleted uranium rounds where kinda dumb...)
oh, wait... Seriously, the mat is great, but what happens when I accidentally drop my wallet on there, or that zipdisk with tomorrows presentation... Yes, we should all switch to SD's, MMC's, usb dongles, etc..., but until prices of removable media come down a bit, this thing could be dangerous!
Because the ID is embedded in the clothes -- it's an antenna-bearing chip smaller than a grain of rice that's attached to the clothes' labels -- any item returned to the store automatically re-enters the inventory.
So customers should be careful about going back into the store wearing a shirt they already bought? Seriously, how would the system know what valid tags are? The only assumption it can make is that if it's not found in the inventory DB, it's not stolen. I suppose if you're a regular there's no reason to ask for a zip code, if you buy one item with a credit card, the store can track your visits from then on if you wear it. Remember kiddies, plan your wardrobe against your shopping plans... that or cut/rip the damn tag off.:)
Wow, does anyone bother to try software before ripping on it? Here's my $0.02
I do in fact own a Tungsten T. I pulled down the PRC, (134k nice size) Dropped it on my Palm then tried dropping various songs on a tiny 16M SD I have from work. Found out quick that encoding with -b 64 was a no-no (crashed every time, but reset nicely by tapping 'reset' button on error window), but -b 96 works fine. Given this is a beta I can't say too much about the interface (could be a little sleeker)It read the Song title/artist OK. There is an option to blank the screen after 10 or 60 seconds (good) although once it blanks, I can't quite figure out how to get it back on (without stopping it, no so good) For those who don't know, the Tungsten T does have a headphone jack. The stereo worked fine. My only qualm is that the audio is rather muffled. (Not sure if this is Palm or the software.)
All and all, a nice first try. Fix the audio. Add an equalizer. Spiff up the look, and ship it! It is important to note that as an early Tungsten user/developer (I had a demo unit weeks before release) Palm has not, to date, been extremely easy to deal with when it comes to specs and the like. Working with ARM native code is still not very developer friendly. This is the first app I've seen that stresses the audio hardware (and the chip for that matter) and I think credit should be given where credit is due. Bravo for making this an OGG decoder and bravo for the early release. Keep the betas comming! (I myself have a reason to buy that 64M SD now!)
Linux users beware. I was the proud owner of a AcerNote 370. What can I say, it was cheap. Not only were the PC card slots sunk in to the case (sorry folks, no x-jack) but all of the nifty "features" like 0-power sleep mode, were Windoze drivers, i.e. wiping the hard drive and installing Slackware wiped out all those options. You get what you pay for I guess. I wrote Acer, hoping to maybe get some specs on the BIOS hooks so I could hack my own... no go. I would imagine this laptop is the same, with all the features meshed into W2k
Do yourself a favor and jump ship. I just moved to south Mpls and dropped Qwest for Time-Warner. Unlike Qwest, I don't need cable to get broadband. That and my block isn't exactly 'wired'. The bandwith increase is night and day!
Yes, it is switching from one giant soul-less corp. to another, but for me it's cheaper, faster, and more reliable. That and they hooked it up faster than Qwest has ever done so. (Qwest avg 1-3 months per move! where RoadRunner was a few weeks, and most of the wait was for them to wire the neighboorhood!)
I'm currently doing DSL through Qwest, and run Slackware. You can imagine the fun I have with tech support. It's to the point were it's easier to lie and say I'm on Win9x. When I swapped apartments last, it took me a month to get hooked back up. When I was having issues with the modem, I called Tech Support, and started asking configuration questions. It went something like:
Me: I just have a few questions on configuring my modem,
Qwest: OK Sir, is your modem attached to your serial port?
Me: Yup, I'm already at the 'CBOS' prompt.
Qwest: OK Sir, go to Start, Programs, Assess...
Me: Actually I'm on a Linux box, look I've already got minicom up and I'm logged into the modem and it's enabled.
Qwest: Um.... could you hold for a moment sir...
I (finally) found out that everything was correct, they just hadn't set everything up (despite the fact that the modem had trained)
I can just see it now..
Me: I'm having issues with my DSL modem.
MS_Qwest: OK Sir, what is the name of your Passport account.
Me: *sigh*
While I can see where he's coming from, there is a price to pay for aggresively putting your name out to the public. I can't tell you how many times I've seen signs on buildings saying "No Roller Blades", and wondered why any other brand of inline skates were not prohibited. The problem is that SSH has become a generic term. If they were really intrested in protecting it, they prolly should have been more worried a while back.
I'd look at is as a new PR spin. Like saying "We're the real SSH." or maybe "Aren't your servers important enough to to use the original SSH?", or better yet, set yourself apart from the others with a better product, rather than just a name... there's a concept!
I've been on the quest for the prefect set-top box for a while now. My main issue always came down to the fact that any case/box I thought of made to much noise (i.e. fan) or was butt-ugly or was to big. The Indrema seems to be the answer and so I'm currently holding my breath. I'm even prepared to by a developer box and pay the extra $300 or so in case there are apps that Indrema won't bless. (because of potential copy-right sillyness, like storing archived NES/SNES ROMs on the harddrive) I can port/compile them myself.
It already has the web-browsing, MP3 playing, network connection, and sleek case. It just needs someone to port Mame, snes9x, DivX, etc and we're rolling. (HINT HINT HINT) And it's running Linux!! Can you ask for more? Hack a way to patch all your old controllers to work over USB and you can stick all those old consoles in the closet!!
Now all we need is for it to materialize from it's current VaporWare(TM) state....
And don't forget the built in solar cells and the hand crank. That rocks! Now all I need is a solar/hand crank radio/MP3 player (with white LED flash light), with embedded Linux running on a Transmeta chip and I can die happy... or at least visit friends in California. >;^)
Slackware, it's like that comfy pair of jeans that you have in the closet. Sure you could get a new pair, but you've broken them in. I will admit that in a work environment I'll grab the RedHat CD, but that's only because people look at you funny if you start compiling packages. In that environment I'm 'selling' Linux. At home, it's different.
I was showing a couple of MS consultants how to install a program that didn't have an RPM available on a redhat box. I did the 'make install' and then an ldconfig. One asked what the ldconfig was, and they laughed as I explained it... until I told them they'd be rebooting on an MS box at that step... There are people out there that still think anything with a command line is behind the times... But when I go to a W2K box, cmd still works. I think Slackware gets a lot of the same comments from other distrib users that Linux gets from Windoze users. Kinda odd.
I've always wanted change the startup screens on my PC & laptop (mainly so I could be a 1337 #4x0r like those guys (and gals) in 'Hackers') but then I asked myself, when would I see it? I usually only reboot for kernel updates on the PC and my Vaio's suspend mode fixes the issue on the laptop side. I'm not bragging about the stability if Linux, I'm just stating fact, my uptimes at at least 3 months.
Now something that I have thought about that's on my ToDo list (aka project limbo) is a hack to generate a unique terminal font, where the extended characters are remaped to make up 8x8 bit sections of a bitmap of my choice. Then all of my servers that I didn't bother to install X on can have neato non-ascii art penguins at the login prompt on the root console. Then I could gain the fear and respect I crave!
Just to shout out for a bit, in an age where browser source is open (Mozilla) as well as the servers (Apache), if there is a better protocol, implement it! Hell most of what is trendy in HTML is there only because Netscape/Micro$~1 thought they'd throw it in. If you document it, and release working models of the software into the wild, it will get used.
The same thing with DNS entries. The only thing stopping people up to now has been the fact that noone wants to foot the bill for alternative root servers. It makes you wonder if something like the distributed gnutella mentality would work for DNS look ups.
I guess I'm saying ditch this 'they' shit. Do it, and if it's a good idea, or if a ton of people start to use it, you can bet someones going to try and capitalize on it.
The main thing I see standing in the way is the same thing I've seen in any non-profit company, anytime they try something like this it spirals out of scope very fast. A simple web site becomes $30k+ in hardware, internal servers that store _static_ data have to have mirror RAIDed drives (to protect the backups?) It gets out of hand fast, the budget soars, and as the concepts get farther and farther out of the staffs limited scope of knowledge, things seem less and less possible. It's a mess. Until government jobs become more attractive to talented programmers, and comfy IT managers that have been there since before the term 'IT' existed retire, I don't see much happening. Until then, the inflexable infrastructure will remain (can you say COBOL ) and any advancements will be more cruft.
Yes I _used_ to work for government, can you tell?:)
Any one out there catch the price on this one? This is like the ultimate in POS devices!
As for do we need it, think about everytime you dial up someplace and get the typical "Please listen carefully to the following options..." I know I personally would like to just be able to read them as opposed to sitting through all of them as they "may have changed". Another one would be getting bank info. Most banks are still not convinced they should put services on the Web due to security and use the direct dial method.
I'm looking at the site, and the only difference I can see is that the IIIe is $229 and the III is $249. Shaving off $20 makes it affordable? What's missing here?
I own the III and I've never run into a space crunch yet so the RAM is fine. The backlight on IIIx is kinda odd, the glare on the screen is the same, and they replaced the silkscreen buttons, and removed the text by them (A little picture of a house is more straitforward than a button labeled 'Applications'?) I had a friend that bought a IIIx, and after setting it side by side with my III, he returned it for the III. It wasn't worth it.
I'm not to impressed by the new V either. Yah the connectivity is spiff... if you wanna pay for the service (hmm, let's see, cell, phone, DSL... I think I need to tack on another $20, I'm not paying enough for my communications) It's thinner and the lithium-ion battery is neat, but why did they change the case? The power button is in a screwy place and there's no cover. I'm always pocketing mine and can't really live without that feature.
Sadly enough, the III meets all my needs and more. I've read that sales have suffered because many people feel the same. My fear is that 3COM will learn from this, and either start cramming more and more features in, or start using cheaper parts so they break faster. Mine's hit the pavement several times and is fine, I wonder if the newer ones can do the same.
I guess I'll just keep mine until it dies, or until there's something in a newer one I need. I just hope by that time they haven't added color, sound, and 50 other features that suck the battery dry in 2 hours. The people at 3COM need to listen. You have like 70% of the market because of the quality of your existing product. It's simplicity. Don't let creeping featurism ruin your product.
...how much they don't tell us about? Still the thing is that where talking about scientists here, in the scientific community, if you say something can happen, but it's extremely unlikely, you're simply covering all of the bases. Unfortunatly, when Reporter X hears this, they proceed to "expose" this because people have a "right to know" (Or is that the newspaper has a "right to sell issues" I forget.)
Of course this does not mean that I don't think that a bunch of scientists, that usually have little knowledge of what they're actually doing couldn't end up destroying the planet. I just have faith that if they fuck up it'll prolly be huge, with no way out. In which case there's nothing we can do anyway and so it's pointless to worry about.
... BO2K (kinda rolls of the tounge, don't it?) is more pro-WinNT that anti. The people working on it know a lot about the OS and therefore have spent quite a bit of time with it. In the short term it makes M$ look bad, but in the long term it actually improves their product. (That is _if_ they do anything to plug up the holes.)
What's even sadder is that this could all be avoided if M$ was as open as Linux and there was an open envionment for users to say something like "Hey, you gotta problem here, thought you'd like to know." and get a responce. That's not the way it works.
I guess the way I view it is yes, the ethics of giving 'fire' to script kiddeez is somewhat questionable, but as with Melissa and every other stupid hole in M$ software who's more to blame? The person pointing out the way to a wide open back door, or M$ telling everone not to worry, they're getting the most secure system around? Let me tell you that as someone who unfortunately has to put up with an NT network at present, it's a bit disturbing when I read about a hole in NT and see a link to an exploit _days_ before I'm notified by Micro$oft's security mailing list that there's even a problem, and then all they ever do is play it down and point out how rare it is and what little threat it is to my system.
Personally, I say more power to cDc. Somebody has to speak up and sometimes it takes some punk wiping out a network with a keystroke to get the right people to listen. All's fair in code and war. If it's not CNN it looks like somebodies already doing that. Maybe this time they'll learn.
What's with this whole retro-PC thing anyway. I'm starting to see it all over. I'll admit some the the PC stuff goes way over-board, but I don't think this is the way to get back at them.
I guess they're only targeting less than 50% of the population. That's marketing for ya.I'll stick with my mocha, thanx.
I think this guy real problem is organizational, as in the companies he's refering to. There's a little thing in the biz people call scope creep. i.e. If you company doesn't support Palm Pilots, it's out of the scope of the helpdesk. Deal with the vendor.
Personally I live by my Palm. With all the Vendors and contacts I have to track. I laugh every time I get in a race with my manager to find a number. Him in his Franklin and me in my Palm. The fact is that he always looses.
Like everything, the Palm is not for everyone. But after watching my girlfriend snatch mine out of my hand the moment I opened the box and proceed to enter her address, without my assistance, I was amazed. Now my girlfriend is a technophobe, so my only explination is that the fact that it looks like a toy helped it sneak under her panic radar. No wonder Apple wants to get it's hands on this this. (That and I've been in Newton vs Palm debates before.)
Oh, great, now not only will my office be littered with Post-It notes, but now when I do find the one I want, it will have changed on my anyway! Seriously though, from what I've seen, this stuff needs something like a magnetic plate to flip the pixels, so the concept of sticking it to a surface and pulling it off again isn't that far fetched. I imagine a device doctored to look like a hardcover book would work quite well. (I'd buy it.) I imagine to start with though they'll push printers for the stuff and the paper'll be like 20 lb stock. Oh well, baby steps.
Still, 0 glare on my Palm Pilot in direct sunlight would be spiff. Even if it stayed the same size.
Finally something I don't have to stream! OK, as with everyone I liked the sound quality, but I'm not likely to listen often at this pace.
First of all no matter were you are, there usually collages around with mass comm dept, or even a local college radio station. Use them. I'm sure someone would love to have something "hi-tech" like this on their resume. If your spokesperson is not that up on Linux, let them at least be up on radio.
Second, this is news, and it's also Linux news, therefore, if I'm bothering to listen, I'm already somewhat for Linux. So lay off the stability and reliability and overall Linux is better. WE KNOW THAT. I want news. You can slip in some commentary, but focus on reporting the facts, and mabey were they came from.
Oh, and get some music, a kazoo or something. There has to be something to let me know you're done.:)
I listen the news.com's radio feed now and then, granted it's a bit hokey and streaming the same commercial daily gets on my nerves, but there are times when I get home and want to get some info while making dinner or what have you. Streaming audio is the solution to the whole problem of when do you air news. Stream it and I'll decide.
Don't quit on this, you just have a ways to go is all.
All distrib wars aside, I must say this is a big plus for Linux. I work in a shop that has tons of users running WP and terminal access programs on PII's with 128megs of RAM. It's nuts. Give me back the days when a user had a dumb term and all I had to worry about was whether or not it was plugged into the network or not! (Or just plugged in in the case of some users.) If your buying a PC to act as a dumb term, sooner than later someone gets the brilliant idea that they are more than dumb terms and start adding 'functionality' to get 'more bang out of their buck'. You start that and the next thing you know someone's complaining that they are too slow to do something you never ment them to do. (Duh!) So now you're upgrading. (To stay 'current'.) $800 for a PC is _not_ cheaper than a $600 term, not if you try to replace the PC every 3-4 years. Add that to service... on my home PC, I like to fix/upgrade things myself if/when they break, but at work, I've got better things to do than play Dr. with some useless NT box. (That's what vendors are for.:) If it's broke, swap the unit. End of story.
I'm ranting. The point is there is a place for thin clients, we just have to drop this whole "more is more" mentality on the grounds that it's too simple. We're missing something here.
Oh well, perhaps I just miss the old days curled up in the green glow of a WYSE term hacking useless C progs for shits and giggles. Those where the days!
Slashdot Mirror
Here is what the display is made of... And here is the last ./ story. Come on guys! Don't get my hopes up like that!
As a side note, I was at Epcot and got to see Xerox's Gyricon (now marketed as 'SmartPaper') up close and personal. The only issue was that the person at the booth barely knew how the stuff worked and did not have so much as a magnet to show it change. Someday...
Wow, if we installed one of these in everyones house, we could teleconference with our gym and do exercises in the morning and... wait... something about this is very familiar....
Anyone else ever love the fact that in Trek, phasers could be set to explode... good thing they kept that in mind on this one. Hopefully they don't overheat in a heavy fire fight, eh? Could give new meaning to the term 'friendly fire'. (And I thought depleted uranium rounds where kinda dumb...)
oh, wait... Seriously, the mat is great, but what happens when I accidentally drop my wallet on there, or that zipdisk with tomorrows presentation... Yes, we should all switch to SD's, MMC's, usb dongles, etc..., but until prices of removable media come down a bit, this thing could be dangerous!
Because the ID is embedded in the clothes -- it's an antenna-bearing chip smaller than a grain of rice that's attached to the clothes' labels -- any item returned to the store automatically re-enters the inventory.
:)
So customers should be careful about going back into the store wearing a shirt they already bought? Seriously, how would the system know what valid tags are? The only assumption it can make is that if it's not found in the inventory DB, it's not stolen. I suppose if you're a regular there's no reason to ask for a zip code, if you buy one item with a credit card, the store can track your visits from then on if you wear it. Remember kiddies, plan your wardrobe against your shopping plans... that or cut/rip the damn tag off.
Wow, does anyone bother to try software before ripping on it? Here's my $0.02
I do in fact own a Tungsten T. I pulled down the PRC, (134k nice size) Dropped it on my Palm then tried dropping various songs on a tiny 16M SD I have from work. Found out quick that encoding with -b 64 was a no-no (crashed every time, but reset nicely by tapping 'reset' button on error window), but -b 96 works fine. Given this is a beta I can't say too much about the interface (could be a little sleeker)It read the Song title/artist OK. There is an option to blank the screen after 10 or 60 seconds (good) although once it blanks, I can't quite figure out how to get it back on (without stopping it, no so good) For those who don't know, the Tungsten T does have a headphone jack. The stereo worked fine. My only qualm is that the audio is rather muffled. (Not sure if this is Palm or the software.)
All and all, a nice first try. Fix the audio. Add an equalizer. Spiff up the look, and ship it! It is important to note that as an early Tungsten user/developer (I had a demo unit weeks before release) Palm has not, to date, been extremely easy to deal with when it comes to specs and the like. Working with ARM native code is still not very developer friendly. This is the first app I've seen that stresses the audio hardware (and the chip for that matter) and I think credit should be given where credit is due. Bravo for making this an OGG decoder and bravo for the early release. Keep the betas comming! (I myself have a reason to buy that 64M SD now!)
Linux users beware. I was the proud owner of a AcerNote 370. What can I say, it was cheap. Not only were the PC card slots sunk in to the case (sorry folks, no x-jack) but all of the nifty "features" like 0-power sleep mode, were Windoze drivers, i.e. wiping the hard drive and installing Slackware wiped out all those options. You get what you pay for I guess. I wrote Acer, hoping to maybe get some specs on the BIOS hooks so I could hack my own... no go. I would imagine this laptop is the same, with all the features meshed into W2k
I've got my Vaio now, life is much better.
Do yourself a favor and jump ship. I just moved to south Mpls and dropped Qwest for Time-Warner. Unlike Qwest, I don't need cable to get broadband. That and my block isn't exactly 'wired'. The bandwith increase is night and day!
Yes, it is switching from one giant soul-less corp. to another, but for me it's cheaper, faster, and more reliable. That and they hooked it up faster than Qwest has ever done so. (Qwest avg 1-3 months per move! where RoadRunner was a few weeks, and most of the wait was for them to wire the neighboorhood!)
I'm currently doing DSL through Qwest, and run Slackware. You can imagine the fun I have with tech support. It's to the point were it's easier to lie and say I'm on Win9x. When I swapped apartments last, it took me a month to get hooked back up. When I was having issues with the modem, I called Tech Support, and started asking configuration questions. It went something like:
Me: I just have a few questions on configuring my modem,
Qwest: OK Sir, is your modem attached to your serial port?
Me: Yup, I'm already at the 'CBOS' prompt.
Qwest: OK Sir, go to Start, Programs, Assess...
Me: Actually I'm on a Linux box, look I've already got minicom up and I'm logged into the modem and it's enabled.
Qwest: Um.... could you hold for a moment sir...
I (finally) found out that everything was correct, they just hadn't set everything up (despite the fact that the modem had trained)
I can just see it now..
Me: I'm having issues with my DSL modem.
MS_Qwest: OK Sir, what is the name of your Passport account.
Me: *sigh*
While I can see where he's coming from, there is a price to pay for aggresively putting your name out to the public. I can't tell you how many times I've seen signs on buildings saying "No Roller Blades", and wondered why any other brand of inline skates were not prohibited. The problem is that SSH has become a generic term. If they were really intrested in protecting it, they prolly should have been more worried a while back.
I'd look at is as a new PR spin. Like saying "We're the real SSH." or maybe "Aren't your servers important enough to to use the original SSH?", or better yet, set yourself apart from the others with a better product, rather than just a name... there's a concept!
I've been on the quest for the prefect set-top box for a while now. My main issue always came down to the fact that any case/box I thought of made to much noise (i.e. fan) or was butt-ugly or was to big. The Indrema seems to be the answer and so I'm currently holding my breath. I'm even prepared to by a developer box and pay the extra $300 or so in case there are apps that Indrema won't bless. (because of potential copy-right sillyness, like storing archived NES/SNES ROMs on the harddrive) I can port/compile them myself.
It already has the web-browsing, MP3 playing, network connection, and sleek case. It just needs someone to port Mame, snes9x, DivX, etc and we're rolling. (HINT HINT HINT) And it's running Linux!! Can you ask for more? Hack a way to patch all your old controllers to work over USB and you can stick all those old consoles in the closet!!
Now all we need is for it to materialize from it's current VaporWare(TM) state....
And don't forget the built in solar cells and the hand crank. That rocks! Now all I need is a solar/hand crank radio/MP3 player (with white LED flash light), with embedded Linux running on a Transmeta chip and I can die happy... or at least visit friends in California. >;^)
Slackware, it's like that comfy pair of jeans that you have in the closet. Sure you could get a new pair, but you've broken them in. I will admit that in a work environment I'll grab the RedHat CD, but that's only because people look at you funny if you start compiling packages. In that environment I'm 'selling' Linux. At home, it's different.
I was showing a couple of MS consultants how to install a program that didn't have an RPM available on a redhat box. I did the 'make install' and then an ldconfig. One asked what the ldconfig was, and they laughed as I explained it... until I told them they'd be rebooting on an MS box at that step... There are people out there that still think anything with a command line is behind the times... But when I go to a W2K box, cmd still works. I think Slackware gets a lot of the same comments from other distrib users that Linux gets from Windoze users. Kinda odd.
I've always wanted change the startup screens on my PC & laptop (mainly so I could be a 1337 #4x0r like those guys (and gals) in 'Hackers') but then I asked myself, when would I see it? I usually only reboot for kernel updates on the PC and my Vaio's suspend mode fixes the issue on the laptop side. I'm not bragging about the stability if Linux, I'm just stating fact, my uptimes at at least 3 months.
Now something that I have thought about that's on my ToDo list (aka project limbo) is a hack to generate a unique terminal font, where the extended characters are remaped to make up 8x8 bit sections of a bitmap of my choice. Then all of my servers that I didn't bother to install X on can have neato non-ascii art penguins at the login prompt on the root console. Then I could gain the fear and respect I crave!
Just to shout out for a bit, in an age where browser source is open (Mozilla) as well as the servers (Apache), if there is a better protocol, implement it! Hell most of what is trendy in HTML is there only because Netscape/Micro$~1 thought they'd throw it in. If you document it, and release working models of the software into the wild, it will get used.
The same thing with DNS entries. The only thing stopping people up to now has been the fact that noone wants to foot the bill for alternative root servers. It makes you wonder if something like the distributed gnutella mentality would work for DNS look ups.
I guess I'm saying ditch this 'they' shit. Do it, and if it's a good idea, or if a ton of people start to use it, you can bet someones going to try and capitalize on it.
If you build it, they will come.
The main thing I see standing in the way is the same thing I've seen in any non-profit company, anytime they try something like this it spirals out of scope very fast. A simple web site becomes $30k+ in hardware, internal servers that store _static_ data have to have mirror RAIDed drives (to protect the backups?) It gets out of hand fast, the budget soars, and as the concepts get farther and farther out of the staffs limited scope of knowledge, things seem less and less possible. It's a mess.
:)
Until government jobs become more attractive to talented programmers, and comfy IT managers that have been there since before the term 'IT' existed retire, I don't see much happening. Until then, the inflexable infrastructure will remain (can you say COBOL ) and any advancements will be more cruft.
Yes I _used_ to work for government, can you tell?
Any one out there catch the price on this one? This is like the ultimate in POS devices!
As for do we need it, think about everytime you dial up someplace and get the typical "Please listen carefully to the following options..." I know I personally would like to just be able to read them as opposed to sitting through all of them as they "may have changed". Another one would be getting bank info. Most banks are still not convinced they should put services on the Web due to security and use the direct dial method.
This is actually just what I've been looking for.
I'm looking at the site, and the only difference I can see is that the IIIe is $229 and the III is $249. Shaving off $20 makes it affordable? What's missing here?
I own the III and I've never run into a space crunch yet so the RAM is fine. The backlight on IIIx is kinda odd, the glare on the screen is the same, and they replaced the silkscreen buttons, and removed the text by them (A little picture of a house is more straitforward than a button labeled 'Applications'?) I had a friend that bought a IIIx, and after setting it side by side with my III, he returned it for the III. It wasn't worth it.
I'm not to impressed by the new V either. Yah the connectivity is spiff... if you wanna pay for the service (hmm, let's see, cell, phone, DSL... I think I need to tack on another $20, I'm not paying enough for my communications) It's thinner and the lithium-ion battery is neat, but why did they change the case? The power button is in a screwy place and there's no cover. I'm always pocketing mine and can't really live without that feature.
Sadly enough, the III meets all my needs and more. I've read that sales have suffered because many people feel the same. My fear is that 3COM will learn from this, and either start cramming more and more features in, or start using cheaper parts so they break faster. Mine's hit the pavement several times and is fine, I wonder if the newer ones can do the same.
I guess I'll just keep mine until it dies, or until there's something in a newer one I need. I just hope by that time they haven't added color, sound, and 50 other features that suck the battery dry in 2 hours. The people at 3COM need to listen. You have like 70% of the market because of the quality of your existing product. It's simplicity. Don't let creeping featurism ruin your product.
...how much they don't tell us about? Still the thing is that where talking about scientists here, in the scientific community, if you say something can happen, but it's extremely unlikely, you're simply covering all of the bases. Unfortunatly, when Reporter X hears this, they proceed to "expose" this because people have a "right to know" (Or is that the newspaper has a "right to sell issues" I forget.)
:)
Of course this does not mean that I don't think that a bunch of scientists, that usually have little knowledge of what they're actually doing couldn't end up destroying the planet. I just have faith that if they fuck up it'll prolly be huge, with no way out. In which case there's nothing we can do anyway and so it's pointless to worry about.
At least that's my 00000011.
... BO2K (kinda rolls of the tounge, don't it?) is more pro-WinNT that anti. The people working on it know a lot about the OS and therefore have spent quite a bit of time with it. In the short term it makes M$ look bad, but in the long term it actually improves their product. (That is _if_ they do anything to plug up the holes.)
What's even sadder is that this could all be avoided if M$ was as open as Linux and there was an open envionment for users to say something like "Hey, you gotta problem here, thought you'd like to know." and get a responce. That's not the way it works.
I guess the way I view it is yes, the ethics of giving 'fire' to script kiddeez is somewhat questionable, but as with Melissa and every other stupid hole in M$ software who's more to blame? The person pointing out the way to a wide open back door, or M$ telling everone not to worry, they're getting the most secure system around? Let me tell you that as someone who unfortunately has to put up with an NT network at present, it's a bit disturbing when I read about a hole in NT and see a link to an exploit _days_ before I'm notified by Micro$oft's security mailing list that there's even a problem, and then all they ever do is play it down and point out how rare it is and what little threat it is to my system.
Personally, I say more power to cDc. Somebody has to speak up and sometimes it takes some punk wiping out a network with a keystroke to get the right people to listen. All's fair in code and war. If it's not CNN it looks like somebodies already doing that. Maybe this time they'll learn.
... as long as we know you're kidding? (Bambi?)
What's with this whole retro-PC thing anyway. I'm starting to see it all over. I'll admit some the the PC stuff goes way over-board, but I don't think this is the way to get back at them.
I guess they're only targeting less than 50% of the population. That's marketing for ya.I'll stick with my mocha, thanx.
I think this guy real problem is organizational, as in the companies he's refering to. There's a little thing in the biz people call scope creep. i.e. If you company doesn't support Palm Pilots, it's out of the scope of the helpdesk. Deal with the vendor.
Personally I live by my Palm. With all the Vendors and contacts I have to track. I laugh every time I get in a race with my manager to find a number. Him in his Franklin and me in my Palm. The fact is that he always looses.
Like everything, the Palm is not for everyone. But after watching my girlfriend snatch mine out of my hand the moment I opened the box and proceed to enter her address, without my assistance, I was amazed. Now my girlfriend is a technophobe, so my only explination is that the fact that it looks like a toy helped it sneak under her panic radar. No wonder Apple wants to get it's hands on this this. (That and I've been in Newton vs Palm debates before.)
Donncha love micro management?
Oh, great, now not only will my office be littered with Post-It notes, but now when I do find the one I want, it will have changed on my anyway!
Seriously though, from what I've seen, this stuff needs something like a magnetic plate to flip the pixels, so the concept of sticking it to a surface and pulling it off again isn't that far fetched. I imagine a device doctored to look like a hardcover book would work quite well. (I'd buy it.) I imagine to start with though they'll push printers for the stuff and the paper'll be like 20 lb stock. Oh well, baby steps.
Still, 0 glare on my Palm Pilot in direct sunlight would be spiff. Even if it stayed the same size.
Finally something I don't have to stream! OK, as with everyone I liked the sound quality, but I'm not likely to listen often at this pace.
:)
First of all no matter were you are, there usually collages around with mass comm dept, or even a local college radio station. Use them. I'm sure someone would love to have something "hi-tech" like this on their resume. If your spokesperson is not that up on Linux, let them at least be up on radio.
Second, this is news, and it's also Linux news, therefore, if I'm bothering to listen, I'm already somewhat for Linux. So lay off the stability and reliability and overall Linux is better. WE KNOW THAT. I want news. You can slip in some commentary, but focus on reporting the facts, and mabey were they came from.
Oh, and get some music, a kazoo or something. There has to be something to let me know you're done.
I listen the news.com's radio feed now and then, granted it's a bit hokey and streaming the same commercial daily gets on my nerves, but there are times when I get home and want to get some info while making dinner or what have you. Streaming audio is the solution to the whole problem of when do you air news. Stream it and I'll decide.
Don't quit on this, you just have a ways to go is all.
All distrib wars aside, I must say this is a big plus for Linux. I work in a shop that has tons of users running WP and terminal access programs on PII's with 128megs of RAM. It's nuts. Give me back the days when a user had a dumb term and all I had to worry about was whether or not it was plugged into the network or not! (Or just plugged in in the case of some users.) If your buying a PC to act as a dumb term, sooner than later someone gets the brilliant idea that they are more than dumb terms and start adding 'functionality' to get 'more bang out of their buck'. You start that and the next thing you know someone's complaining that they are too slow to do something you never ment them to do. (Duh!) So now you're upgrading. (To stay 'current'.) $800 for a PC is _not_ cheaper than a $600 term, not if you try to replace the PC every 3-4 years. Add that to service... on my home PC, I like to fix/upgrade things myself if/when they break, but at work, I've got better things to do than play Dr. with some useless NT box. (That's what vendors are for. :) If it's broke, swap the unit. End of story.
I'm ranting. The point is there is a place for thin clients, we just have to drop this whole "more is more" mentality on the grounds that it's too simple. We're missing something here.
Oh well, perhaps I just miss the old days curled up in the green glow of a WYSE term hacking useless C progs for shits and giggles. Those where the days!