Gotta disagree. I *love* the size of the s110. The S20 is significantly large. It depends what you want to use it for, of course, but if size is important, get both into your hands before deciding.
Regarding PC ports, I wouldn't be surprised to see an emulator come out pretty quickly. As long as Microsoft can build into Windows (maybe it's already in XP?) a way to enforce the copy-protection mechanism of the discs, they should have no problem with people without X-Boxes trying to buy and play games for their PC. It just means $100 Microsoft saves on X-Box hardware.
The reasons against are support and development issues. That is, you can make a much cooler game much faster if you know exactly what hardware with what capabilities each user will have. That said, if someone goes out and makes a PC port, and it's recognized that all guaranteed-compatability bets are off (as was the case with Connectix's VGS), then it shouldn't be that hard to write it, and if it sells more X-Box games, then Microsoft probably wouldn't have a problem with it either.
"As for insurance, it was not available to him as an option."
Sure it was, just not with UPS. You've got to choose your shipper based on your needs: UPS for books and clothes, someone else for international stuff that might break.
"Lastly, the packing WAS inspected by UPS before he shipped, and UPS accepted the packing."
Why wouldn't UPS accept the packaging? UPS's decision on whether or not to accept a package is based on whether it could burst or otherwise affect other packages or their own shipping environments. They don't give a damn about what goes on inside your box. As you've noted, UPS accepts no liability. You've really got to think for (and look out for) yourself.
My point is that even with the damage I saw on those boxes, if they were shipped using the same protections that manufacturers use when they ship CPUs and monitors, they probably would have been okay. they certainly would have had less damage than this poor guy experienced.
I suppose it's this insight that got me modded up to 5. If you've got a problem with it, blame the moderators, but don't cuss me out for moderation done to my words, buddy.
"Even if Apple is going to be a pita about this, it does not affect PNG, as the file format itself does not do any compositing, it just stores a 4th "color" called the alpha. So I would not worry about it there."
PNG isn't just a file format. It's an encoding and decoding mechanism. The encoding and decoding treat the alpha channel as an alpha channel, not a 'fourth color'.
Let me get this straight: You put a Powermac G4 tower, an PowerTower Pro, and a monitor all in one box, and expected them to survive?
I don't see how all three would even fit in one box, as the box looks to be the size that a normal monitor (plus copeous styrofoam blocks that the manufacturer uses (hint, hint)) comes in.
Did you just pile them in with some newspaper and think that it would be okay? In general, 'fragile' or not, expect your box to get dropped from 4 or 5 feet a few times in transit. Basically, there should never, ever be direct contact between your valued hardware and the interior of the box.
As for insurance, that's a different issue. I hope you get your money, but it reminds me of a friend who says he wouldn't mind getting hit by a car as long as he had medical insurance. Me, I'd prefer not to have the pain and suffering in the first place.
I know we're all 'rah, rah Linux!' around here, but the question being asked is pretty unbalanced. I don't know firsthand of any large RDBMS Linux implementations, but that's not saying much.
I do know there are a *lot* of large-scale BSD RDBMS systems out there.
It seems a little skewed to put Linux against 'commercial OSes' when BSD isn't a commercial OS, and is arguably better suited to the tasks at hand than Linux.
Use a hammer for a nail, and a screwdriver for screws.
?It's a no-brainer for you, but for the person with the rackmounted AV closet, this is abetter machine.
Basically, I'd want this kind of machine over an iMac if it were around $400, but it won't get to $400 without going through this price point first. I'm happy FOR ONCE to not be the guy on the bleeding edge, and reap the benefits for their expense.
"But some day music will be distributed in downloadable form in a fashion that most people will get their music via downloads and not on physical media. "
More than likely this future where music is distributed electronically will not be one where you pay money, get a download, and then have responsibility over backups.
One of the goodpoints of digital rights management, for all its bad points, is that this future will probably be more along the lines of: You pay money to buy rights to listen to such-and-such. If you lose it in a hard disk crash (if they even let you keep a static version) you still own the rights and can download it again.
It's not like we're talking about unique data files here. If you bought it, it's yours, and if there's one benefit here, it's that you can always download it again.
Either way, the only person whose ass isn't covered is the music pirate.
"And, what happens when the hard drive fails? Will HP replace all the music that I didn't backup? They expect us to backup 40 gigs of music on cdr's? "
Dude, you ripped them from CDs. They're your backup.
Though the price is steep, this does have a great feature set. Everything I looked for is there:
10/100Base-T conectivity
Built-in 56K modem
Ability to tune in internet radio (through Kerbango or wherever)
Ability to mount device on other computers for easy file transfer
Nice on-screen management controls (TiFo-style)
CDDB Support
Ability to burn Audio CDs and MP3 CDs in CD-R or CD-RW
Interfaces with USB-equipped MP3 players directly for filling them with music
Basically this is the box that you feed your CDs into, and it handles all the rest. Later you can grab stuff off via the net, MP3 CD, USB to your player, or Audio CD, (or just play it) and it's just all there.
In fact, the only thing that I really wish were there that I didn't see would be the ability to use it as a net-radio broadcaster with a web interface, so you could listen to your home collection from work or anywhere. Of course, mounting the share across the net would do almost the same thing, but only for one user.
Sure $999 is alot, but it's the first real consumer (read not-geek-targeted) device to tackle all these things. There's probably a market at this price, and once that market's saturated, I'll be there to pick one up for $500.
If things aren't actually moving in most of the shots (ATM or warehouse surveillance cams, for example) then you'll be able to get far better than 100x video compression.
Also, how much a factor is comunication. 1000+ cameras ona LAN or WAN?
Any secondary logging going on here? Any metadata (ATM transactions, notes, etc.) that should be stored along with the media? Do you want to use this data for easier access? Is there any preprocessing (facial recognition)?
You mentioned recall could be arbitrarily slow, but if it's possible to speed it up with only small changes, is it worth it?
Feel free to ignore these questions. Largely I'm just curious about something you probably can't talk about, but then again as a systems engineer, I'd find it difficult to recommend a solution without knowing more factors that could impact on ways I can't think of until I know more factors...
It seems that companies are trying to promote legislation to force the legal system to solve their engineering problems.
Microsoft too succeptable to viruses and other insecurities? Declare such acts as terrorism and then only script kiddies^H*13 terrorists will be breaking into systems.
Digital Rights security mechanisms weak? Make it a federal offense to prove it.
I mean, really: Why even bother with encryption and security? Why not preface all your emails with a header that says "This message is encrypted. Any attempt to break this ROT-26 encryption will be a violation of the DMCA. Informing others how to decrypt this document is similarly illegal."
IIS Web servers can have metatags that say "Despite the fact that Telnet and FTP access is guest-accessible, this is a secured web server. Any intrusion attempt will be considered a terrorist act and will be dealt with accordingly."
Basically it's no different than giving everyone a gun and telling them they no longer have any need to lock their doors at night.
"...and likes to pay for things in stacks of two dollar bills."
This is the mark of a multi-milionaire lifestyle? Eccentric? Yes, but I could go to the bank and use $2 bills instead of $20 yuppie food stamps. doesn't make me a millionaire, any more than using sacabucks.
I'd love to find out more about this. My biggest concern is about latency: Ricochet's network was a 'web network' where APs would route packets amongst themselves until they got to a downlink router that had a hardline to the net. This resulted in 500ms latency, making it unusable for gaming and other realtime activities.
I'm also really curious how lookup tables and downlink load balancing would work in a system like this. If we have 50 AP transcievers, 10 of which are hooked to people's home DSL or cable modem hardlines, how will a router know which one to use to access the greater net? What's to stop one from getting flooded while another goes unused?
I'm sure these answers are easy for those folks with extensive TCP/IP networking experience, but it would be great to filter this knowledge down as the technologies and responsibilities for managing routers is falling into the end user's hands.
Treo: Re:What I'm waiting for in a PDA...
on
iPAQ 3800 In Photos
·
· Score: 2
It's the first PDA-phone I've seen that isn't overly PDA-ish with a phone tacked on (Visorphone) or a phone with a PDA stuffed in (Nokia Communicator, various Qualcomm and Samsung entries).
To all those people talking about measuring transvestites diagonally vs vertically, this is stupid.
The method of measurement is tied to *what* you're measuring. When you measure a television, you measure diagonally. When you measure a person, typically the relevant measure is height.
When you measure a transvestite, you measure length. 8 feet? Ouch.
It's all about publicity. The first thing you need to do is dupe^H^H^H^Hconvince Slashdot editors that your idea is cool, real, and one VC funding round away from changing the world as they know it.
Slashdot Mirror
You can point your computer to whatever DNS server you want. Just point to one in the US.
Gotta disagree. I *love* the size of the s110. The S20 is significantly large. It depends what you want to use it for, of course, but if size is important, get both into your hands before deciding.
This is my geek inventory:
iPod: $399
Canon s110 Digital Elph: $399
32 Meg USB Thumbdrive: $40
Nokia 8290 (or 8260): $99 (with activation)
eTrex GPS: $99
Of course, if you wait until January, ditch the Nokia for a Treo.
Regarding PC ports, I wouldn't be surprised to see an emulator come out pretty quickly. As long as Microsoft can build into Windows (maybe it's already in XP?) a way to enforce the copy-protection mechanism of the discs, they should have no problem with people without X-Boxes trying to buy and play games for their PC. It just means $100 Microsoft saves on X-Box hardware.
The reasons against are support and development issues. That is, you can make a much cooler game much faster if you know exactly what hardware with what capabilities each user will have. That said, if someone goes out and makes a PC port, and it's recognized that all guaranteed-compatability bets are off (as was the case with Connectix's VGS), then it shouldn't be that hard to write it, and if it sells more X-Box games, then Microsoft probably wouldn't have a problem with it either.
"As for insurance, it was not available to him as an option."
Sure it was, just not with UPS. You've got to choose your shipper based on your needs: UPS for books and clothes, someone else for international stuff that might break.
"Lastly, the packing WAS inspected by UPS before he shipped, and UPS accepted the packing."
Why wouldn't UPS accept the packaging? UPS's decision on whether or not to accept a package is based on whether it could burst or otherwise affect other packages or their own shipping environments. They don't give a damn about what goes on inside your box. As you've noted, UPS accepts no liability. You've really got to think for (and look out for) yourself.
My point is that even with the damage I saw on those boxes, if they were shipped using the same protections that manufacturers use when they ship CPUs and monitors, they probably would have been okay. they certainly would have had less damage than this poor guy experienced.
I suppose it's this insight that got me modded up to 5. If you've got a problem with it, blame the moderators, but don't cuss me out for moderation done to my words, buddy.
"Even if Apple is going to be a pita about this, it does not affect PNG, as the file format itself does not do any compositing, it just stores a 4th "color" called the alpha. So I would not worry about it there."
PNG isn't just a file format. It's an encoding and decoding mechanism. The encoding and decoding treat the alpha channel as an alpha channel, not a 'fourth color'.
Let me get this straight: You put a Powermac G4 tower, an PowerTower Pro, and a monitor all in one box, and expected them to survive?
I don't see how all three would even fit in one box, as the box looks to be the size that a normal monitor (plus copeous styrofoam blocks that the manufacturer uses (hint, hint)) comes in.
Did you just pile them in with some newspaper and think that it would be okay? In general, 'fragile' or not, expect your box to get dropped from 4 or 5 feet a few times in transit. Basically, there should never, ever be direct contact between your valued hardware and the interior of the box.
As for insurance, that's a different issue. I hope you get your money, but it reminds me of a friend who says he wouldn't mind getting hit by a car as long as he had medical insurance. Me, I'd prefer not to have the pain and suffering in the first place.
I know we're all 'rah, rah Linux!' around here, but the question being asked is pretty unbalanced. I don't know firsthand of any large RDBMS Linux implementations, but that's not saying much.
I do know there are a *lot* of large-scale BSD RDBMS systems out there.
It seems a little skewed to put Linux against 'commercial OSes' when BSD isn't a commercial OS, and is arguably better suited to the tasks at hand than Linux.
Use a hammer for a nail, and a screwdriver for screws.
Sully is handing toys from the girl's room to her: A ball from Tin Toy, a Jesse doll from Toy Story 2, and others.
The guy behind me stage-whispers to his date: "Look, he's giving her props!"
I couldn't tell if the pun was intentional, or even realized, but it was beautiful either way.
?It's a no-brainer for you, but for the person with the rackmounted AV closet, this is abetter machine.
Basically, I'd want this kind of machine over an iMac if it were around $400, but it won't get to $400 without going through this price point first. I'm happy FOR ONCE to not be the guy on the bleeding edge, and reap the benefits for their expense.
"But some day music will be distributed in downloadable form in a fashion that most people will get their music via downloads and not on physical media. "
More than likely this future where music is distributed electronically will not be one where you pay money, get a download, and then have responsibility over backups.
One of the goodpoints of digital rights management, for all its bad points, is that this future will probably be more along the lines of: You pay money to buy rights to listen to such-and-such. If you lose it in a hard disk crash (if they even let you keep a static version) you still own the rights and can download it again.
It's not like we're talking about unique data files here. If you bought it, it's yours, and if there's one benefit here, it's that you can always download it again.
Either way, the only person whose ass isn't covered is the music pirate.
Actually, it does have 10/100Base-T built in as well. Check out the spec sheet.
"And, what happens when the hard drive fails? Will HP replace all the music that I didn't backup? They expect us to backup 40 gigs of music on cdr's? "
Dude, you ripped them from CDs. They're your backup.
Basically this is the box that you feed your CDs into, and it handles all the rest. Later you can grab stuff off via the net, MP3 CD, USB to your player, or Audio CD, (or just play it) and it's just all there.
In fact, the only thing that I really wish were there that I didn't see would be the ability to use it as a net-radio broadcaster with a web interface, so you could listen to your home collection from work or anywhere. Of course, mounting the share across the net would do almost the same thing, but only for one user.
Sure $999 is alot, but it's the first real consumer (read not-geek-targeted) device to tackle all these things. There's probably a market at this price, and once that market's saturated, I'll be there to pick one up for $500.
If things aren't actually moving in most of the shots (ATM or warehouse surveillance cams, for example) then you'll be able to get far better than 100x video compression.
Also, how much a factor is comunication. 1000+ cameras ona LAN or WAN?
Any secondary logging going on here? Any metadata (ATM transactions, notes, etc.) that should be stored along with the media? Do you want to use this data for easier access? Is there any preprocessing (facial recognition)?
You mentioned recall could be arbitrarily slow, but if it's possible to speed it up with only small changes, is it worth it?
Feel free to ignore these questions. Largely I'm just curious about something you probably can't talk about, but then again as a systems engineer, I'd find it difficult to recommend a solution without knowing more factors that could impact on ways I can't think of until I know more factors...
Wow, 45 days from seeing Carnivore as a horseman of the apocalypse to striving to make a more effective open source version.
It seems that companies are trying to promote legislation to force the legal system to solve their engineering problems.
Microsoft too succeptable to viruses and other insecurities? Declare such acts as terrorism and then only script kiddies^H*13 terrorists will be breaking into systems.
Digital Rights security mechanisms weak? Make it a federal offense to prove it.
I mean, really: Why even bother with encryption and security? Why not preface all your emails with a header that says "This message is encrypted. Any attempt to break this ROT-26 encryption will be a violation of the DMCA. Informing others how to decrypt this document is similarly illegal."
IIS Web servers can have metatags that say "Despite the fact that Telnet and FTP access is guest-accessible, this is a secured web server. Any intrusion attempt will be considered a terrorist act and will be dealt with accordingly."
Basically it's no different than giving everyone a gun and telling them they no longer have any need to lock their doors at night.
Technically, 0.4 is anywhere between 0.35 (inclusive) and 0.45 (exclusive).
"...and likes to pay for things in stacks of two dollar bills."
This is the mark of a multi-milionaire lifestyle? Eccentric? Yes, but I could go to the bank and use $2 bills instead of $20 yuppie food stamps. doesn't make me a millionaire, any more than using sacabucks.
I've heard said that he usually keeps a couple virgin powerbooks in his trunk to give to people he meets who he thinks need to be evangelized.
I'd love to find out more about this. My biggest concern is about latency: Ricochet's network was a 'web network' where APs would route packets amongst themselves until they got to a downlink router that had a hardline to the net. This resulted in 500ms latency, making it unusable for gaming and other realtime activities.
I'm also really curious how lookup tables and downlink load balancing would work in a system like this. If we have 50 AP transcievers, 10 of which are hooked to people's home DSL or cable modem hardlines, how will a router know which one to use to access the greater net? What's to stop one from getting flooded while another goes unused?
I'm sure these answers are easy for those folks with extensive TCP/IP networking experience, but it would be great to filter this knowledge down as the technologies and responsibilities for managing routers is falling into the end user's hands.
Sounds like you'd like Handspring's forthcoming Treo, unless you're married to Microsoft.
It's the first PDA-phone I've seen that isn't overly PDA-ish with a phone tacked on (Visorphone) or a phone with a PDA stuffed in (Nokia Communicator, various Qualcomm and Samsung entries).
To all those people talking about measuring transvestites diagonally vs vertically, this is stupid.
The method of measurement is tied to *what* you're measuring. When you measure a television, you measure diagonally. When you measure a person, typically the relevant measure is height.
When you measure a transvestite, you measure length. 8 feet? Ouch.
"Palm, record new to-do item."
"Ready"
"Remember not to refer to boss as 'dickhead' when talking to you. End recording."
"Note saved."
(later) *Bling,bling* "Reminder: Weekly jerkoff meeting with Dickhead in 10 minutes."
"Um, I thought I told you we bumped that meeting up... Now please apologize to Mr. Cooper."
It's all about publicity. The first thing you need to do is dupe^H^H^H^Hconvince Slashdot editors that your idea is cool, real, and one VC funding round away from changing the world as they know it.