Yeah. This thing has integrated wifi and the sexy Sony design and all, but if you look at the other specs, it pales in comparison to the SL-C7x0 series. 8 MB of RAM? 480 x 320 screen? Please! The C700 has 32MB standard. If you want more, the C750 and 760 have 64MB. And all of them have a beautiful 640 x 480 screen. Only 32 MB of internal flash? The C700 and C750 both have double that. The C760 has a whopping 128 MB. Sony didn't release any detailed info on the processor, but I doubt it can beat the 400 MHZ X-Scale in the Zauruses. 1 Memory stick Slot vs. 1 CF card slot AND 1 SD card slot is a no-brainer. Oh, and Sony tacked on a crappy camera. Big deal. And of course, because this is Slashdot, I have to mention that the Zaurus runs Linux. It is far more hackable than any Sony product will ever be.
Sony did get a few things right. The magnesium case is a nice touch. I feel wary paying over $500 for anything made out of plastic. They also included a keyboard with standard shift and fn keys instead of the strange setup Sharp insists on using. Integrated wifi is just about the only thing the Zaurus was really missing.
I own a Zaurus SL-C750, and it is an excellent machine. Being able to hack and install almost anything on it is wonderful. It has a beautiful screen for surfing the web, hacking on a terminal, and watching movies. Having both CF and SD cards means lots of memory. If you pick up a nice-sized card, you can rip LOTR to avi and watch it on your Zaurus.
Since both of these machines are at the same price point (the C760 is 70,000 yen just like the Sony model; the C750/C700 are actually cheaper by 10,000/15,000 yen), I hope Sharp gives Sony a good kick in the beanbag just for ripping off their design so much. Unfortunately, Sharp isn't cooperating with the Linux community as well as they could be in improving the built-in apps and devloping new software, and they seem to have no interest in releasing the SL-C7x0 series internationally, so I doubt they will compete well against this. If Sony releases it in the states, they can expect a lot of sales. A shame for Sharp and all of the people who own one of these excellent machines.
I have been considering picking up an iPod for a while, but I have been holding out on the hopes that Apple will realize this potential and modify the iPod so that it can be used as a digital locker for not only my MP3s, but my digital photos and movies as well.
Imagine how slick it would be to connect your camera directly to your iPod and download all of your photos. This would be a great feature if you are on vacation for a couple of weeks and you don't want to drag your laptop along.
If this project gets off the ground, maybe we won't have to wait for Apple:)
Do yourself and your parents a favor and change the folder options to single-click open. Then just tell them that their computer is the same as a webpage. You can even set it to highlight folders and files like hyperlinks. Then you just have to worry about them double clicking and opening stuff twice;)
I just got my hands on an IBM T-21 the other day, and the first thing I went to do was repartition the hard drive so that I could dual boot between Win2k and Linux. I was dissapointed to find that IBM's included recovery software (there is no real copy of W2k or Lotus) would not recognize my new partition scheme. Instead, it wanted to reformat the hard drive back to its original setting. Couple that with trackpoint hardware and modems that aren't exactly Linux-friendly, and you start to wonder about Big Blue's touted Linux support. I guess as far as ThinkPads are concerned (and maybe IBM's desktops too), you have to pay more for the model that is actually Linux compliant. Personally, I find it surprising that IBM groups off their products into two distinct categories -- the Linux-firendly hardware and the mixed bags of leftover Windows parts, but I find it even more surprising that the Linux models are usually marked up several hundred dollars in comparison to their Windows counterparts. Considering Linux is a free operating system, you would think IBM would at least be willing to pass the savings on OS licensing fees on to the consumer. Or maybe this is another instance where they are being charged by Microsoft by the PC regardless of whether they ship Windows with the product or not.
What disturbs is that as more and more Universities cash in with corporate sponsorship, students are being looked at more and more as customers by their universities. And I DON'T mean as customers receiving the unviersities' product, their college education, I mean as consumers of the university sponsors' goods.
An example, since I enrolled in the University of Maryland at College Park in 1998, the university has gained endorsements from Pepsi, Rebok, and most recently our school bookstore was bought out by Barnes and Nobles. On top of that, students who live on campus are going to start receiving Comcast cable, and will be billed for it whether they use it or not.
While Katz was bemoaning Universities getting paid for research, I must agree with the numerous other posters who said that this was not the true problem. The true problem is that universities have started to exploit their captive audiences. When you can no longer buy both Coke and Pepsi on campus, and Barnes and Noble is the ONLY store to carry your textbooks, and you can't walk to class without being accosted by numerous people trying to solicit you with credit card offers, there IS a problem. We are starting to lose that free market that our country was supposed to be built on. Certainly, demands for low cost higher education have caused universities to look for alternative sources of income, but people don't seem to realize the impact these corporate sponsors can have. If nothing else, Universities SHOULD be encouraged to make money off of their research rather than resorting to milking the students like cash cows.
I find it rather ironic that you deride the argument constructing abilities of others by posting web pages , when according to that very same link, your argument suffers from the Fallacy of the Undistributed Middle. Granted, Kodak is NOT responsible for the pictures taken with their film, Sony is NOT responsible for what people record with their VCRs (or walkmen for that matter). Nor should they have to be. It is a very convincing argument that service/media providers should not be held responsible for the content of their users, but you fail to establish that Napster should be considered in the same category as these other providers. Napster is different because it not only made its user base aware of the fact that they were committing illegal acts of software piracy, it ENCOURAGED them to do so while it profited from it. This would be like Kodak advertising special, enhanced "Kiddie Porn friendly film" or Sony releasing a dual-tape deck VCR under the advertising "This will really piss off Blockbuster!" 1 month before they went into court. Service/media providers should not be held responsible for the use of their products, but on the same token, they cannot be allowed toencourage the illegal use of their products to boost use or sales. THAT is what seperates Napster from the rest, and inevitably it will be what gets it shut down.
Again, please construct an argument. Napster is a filesystem over which users share files containing sound. It turns out that, given a filesystem, users will share copyrighted sounds. Really not Napster's problem any more than it's Kodak's problem that child pornographers use their film. I am strongly in the camp that says that the use of a medium where monitoring activity is possible should not lead to a mandate to monitor activity. Digital camaras should not be required to transmit their images to the FBI, phone switches should not have pre-installed taps and Napster should not have to monitor it's users file sharing transactions in order to prevent copyright infringement. These are all, as far as I can tell, the same issue: should the medium provider (profit-making or not) be required to sanitize and/or monitor it's usage?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. This thing has integrated wifi and the sexy Sony design and all, but if you look at the other specs, it pales in comparison to the SL-C7x0 series. 8 MB of RAM? 480 x 320 screen? Please! The C700 has 32MB standard. If you want more, the C750 and 760 have 64MB. And all of them have a beautiful 640 x 480 screen. Only 32 MB of internal flash? The C700 and C750 both have double that. The C760 has a whopping 128 MB. Sony didn't release any detailed info on the processor, but I doubt it can beat the 400 MHZ X-Scale in the Zauruses. 1 Memory stick Slot vs. 1 CF card slot AND 1 SD card slot is a no-brainer. Oh, and Sony tacked on a crappy camera. Big deal. And of course, because this is Slashdot, I have to mention that the Zaurus runs Linux. It is far more hackable than any Sony product will ever be.
Sony did get a few things right. The magnesium case is a nice touch. I feel wary paying over $500 for anything made out of plastic. They also included a keyboard with standard shift and fn keys instead of the strange setup Sharp insists on using. Integrated wifi is just about the only thing the Zaurus was really missing.
I own a Zaurus SL-C750, and it is an excellent machine. Being able to hack and install almost anything on it is wonderful. It has a beautiful screen for surfing the web, hacking on a terminal, and watching movies. Having both CF and SD cards means lots of memory. If you pick up a nice-sized card, you can rip LOTR to avi and watch it on your Zaurus.
Since both of these machines are at the same price point (the C760 is 70,000 yen just like the Sony model; the C750/C700 are actually cheaper by 10,000/15,000 yen), I hope Sharp gives Sony a good kick in the beanbag just for ripping off their design so much. Unfortunately, Sharp isn't cooperating with the Linux community as well as they could be in improving the built-in apps and devloping new software, and they seem to have no interest in releasing the SL-C7x0 series internationally, so I doubt they will compete well against this. If Sony releases it in the states, they can expect a lot of sales. A shame for Sharp and all of the people who own one of these excellent machines.
> "How about AI Pachinko."
Even funnier because chinko == penis in Japanese...
That's what I'm talking about.
:)
I have been considering picking up an iPod for a while, but I have been holding out on the hopes that Apple will realize this potential and modify the iPod so that it can be used as a digital locker for not only my MP3s, but my digital photos and movies as well.
Imagine how slick it would be to connect your camera directly to your iPod and download all of your photos. This would be a great feature if you are on vacation for a couple of weeks and you don't want to drag your laptop along.
If this project gets off the ground, maybe we won't have to wait for Apple
Do yourself and your parents a favor and change the folder options to single-click open. Then just tell them that their computer is the same as a webpage. You can even set it to highlight folders and files like hyperlinks. Then you just have to worry about them double clicking and opening stuff twice ;)
I just got my hands on an IBM T-21 the other day, and the first thing I went to do was repartition the hard drive so that I could dual boot between Win2k and Linux. I was dissapointed to find that IBM's included recovery software (there is no real copy of W2k or Lotus) would not recognize my new partition scheme. Instead, it wanted to reformat the hard drive back to its original setting. Couple that with trackpoint hardware and modems that aren't exactly Linux-friendly, and you start to wonder about Big Blue's touted Linux support. I guess as far as ThinkPads are concerned (and maybe IBM's desktops too), you have to pay more for the model that is actually Linux compliant. Personally, I find it surprising that IBM groups off their products into two distinct categories -- the Linux-firendly hardware and the mixed bags of leftover Windows parts, but I find it even more surprising that the Linux models are usually marked up several hundred dollars in comparison to their Windows counterparts. Considering Linux is a free operating system, you would think IBM would at least be willing to pass the savings on OS licensing fees on to the consumer. Or maybe this is another instance where they are being charged by Microsoft by the PC regardless of whether they ship Windows with the product or not.
What disturbs is that as more and more Universities cash in with corporate sponsorship, students are being looked at more and more as customers by their universities. And I DON'T mean as customers receiving the unviersities' product, their college education, I mean as consumers of the university sponsors' goods.
An example, since I enrolled in the University of Maryland at College Park in 1998, the university has gained endorsements from Pepsi, Rebok, and most recently our school bookstore was bought out by Barnes and Nobles. On top of that, students who live on campus are going to start receiving Comcast cable, and will be billed for it whether they use it or not.
While Katz was bemoaning Universities getting paid for research, I must agree with the numerous other posters who said that this was not the true problem. The true problem is that universities have started to exploit their captive audiences. When you can no longer buy both Coke and Pepsi on campus, and Barnes and Noble is the ONLY store to carry your textbooks, and you can't walk to class without being accosted by numerous people trying to solicit you with credit card offers, there IS a problem. We are starting to lose that free market that our country was supposed to be built on. Certainly, demands for low cost higher education have caused universities to look for alternative sources of income, but people don't seem to realize the impact these corporate sponsors can have. If nothing else, Universities SHOULD be encouraged to make money off of their research rather than resorting to milking the students like cash cows.
I find it rather ironic that you deride the argument constructing abilities of others by posting web pages , when according to that very same link, your argument suffers from the Fallacy of the Undistributed Middle. Granted, Kodak is NOT responsible for the pictures taken with their film, Sony is NOT responsible for what people record with their VCRs (or walkmen for that matter). Nor should they have to be. It is a very convincing argument that service/media providers should not be held responsible for the content of their users, but you fail to establish that Napster should be considered in the same category as these other providers. Napster is different because it not only made its user base aware of the fact that they were committing illegal acts of software piracy, it ENCOURAGED them to do so while it profited from it. This would be like Kodak advertising special, enhanced "Kiddie Porn friendly film" or Sony releasing a dual-tape deck VCR under the advertising "This will really piss off Blockbuster!" 1 month before they went into court. Service/media providers should not be held responsible for the use of their products, but on the same token, they cannot be allowed toencourage the illegal use of their products to boost use or sales. THAT is what seperates Napster from the rest, and inevitably it will be what gets it shut down.
Again, please construct an argument. Napster is a filesystem over which users share files containing sound. It turns out that, given a filesystem, users will share copyrighted sounds. Really not Napster's problem any more than it's Kodak's problem that child pornographers use their film. I am strongly in the camp that says that the use of a medium where monitoring activity is possible should not lead to a mandate to monitor activity. Digital camaras should not be required to transmit their images to the FBI, phone switches should not have pre-installed taps and Napster should not have to monitor it's users file sharing transactions in order to prevent copyright infringement. These are all, as far as I can tell, the same issue: should the medium provider (profit-making or not) be required to sanitize and/or monitor it's usage?