It would seem to me that any phone that has good text messaging ability (good keypad, etc.) would be ideal. The only problem I see is in regards to not having to pay for voice service.
Do you happen to have a source on the film festival thing? I'm well aware of the accusations of plagiarism regarding Kimba/Simba and many different scenes. I visit a couple anime forums and have seen several threads on this topic and this film festival incident was *never* mentioned.
A lot of ultraportables are in the $2k US range. It's not just for the cool factor, there is always a cost for miniaturization. The ULV chips are the biggest one, they are fabbed & binned for extremely low leakage current. The smaller hard drives cost more per unit of storage. Smaller optical drives are more expensive too. Tighter tolerances and higher strengh materials needed for a more compact case are also a factor.
I can imagine that 256MB may be the smallest capacity of that memory type that's still in mass production, and it probably doesn't cost any more to get. One may as well take advantage of economies of scales.
Go back to the early pieces on OLPC: how many people kept saying that (Nick) Negroponte was either deluded or lying about the cost, and that by the time it came out, the OLPC would cost almost exactly what a cheap laptop with Windows cost? Surprise -- that's exactly what happened.
A cheap Windows notebook costs $175? Or am I missing something else? There aren't many notebooks under $500.
Linux used to be able to operate in small spaces with low power requirements, the same with Windows, NT4 was very compact and stable. The problem comes in when you start adding all the unnecessary eye candy and comprehensive desktop environments.
Maybe that puts a personal face on the debacle, but it would still lead the argument to something more negative than libel or slander, that being a curtailing free speach.
I think Neil deGrasse Tyson was onto something about Pluto though, it's mostly a ball of ice that would turn into a comet if it were to ever come as close to the sun as Jupiter is. The fact that it orbits at an angle well outside the ecliptic was another problem in why Pluto didn't fit the planetary sequence very well.
Gas giants can exist closer to the sun without problems, as witnessed by the discovery of "hot jupiters".
It may be a non-planet, but none of the Kuiper belt objects have been studied yet, and Pluto is a start.
I wish the astronomy groups would get their adjective usage right, or at least consistent. A dwarf planet is somehow not a planet, but a dwarf star is a star. Sol is a dwarf star, so does that make it not a star? That sort of dissonance makes calling Ceres a planet seem sensible in comparison. Anyway, I support the notion of not calling Pluto a planet, I'm just disappointed that they had to odd twisting of words to do it.
I didn't realize I could get a 10% discount on a new iPod by trading in my old one. If my current one ever breaks, I will keep that in mind.
Right now, that's at most, $35. If it's just one part that's bad, you can usually sell it on eBay or part it out and make more than that. Replacement hard drives are very expensive. Replacement screens and logic boards cost money too. If it's a dead battery, with many models, that can be replaced for $20 or so and 15 minutes of time. I've yet to replace a battery, but despite the naysayers, the main iPod (all generations) and original nano are all easy to get into. The shuffles, minis and 2nd gen nanos I haven't tried yet.
Some people have a lot more of a problem with Microsoft's business practices than their products. I think I might be among them, at least, while there is significant room for improvement, I don't think their products are all as bad as detractors say they are.
You gave VB as an example, and when I've programmed in it, it didn't seem so bad in my opinion. I think what gave it a bad rap is more that programmers were using it improperly and causing problems.
Keep in mind that Apple bought from both Motorola and IBM at the same time for a long time. Buying from both Intel and AMD at the same time would not be so bad. I'm sure the software will work. Some people have made AMD systems work with the hackintosh software. The drivers and such might not be optimized for the chips that's in a typical AMD system, but it does work.
Apple might be getting a generous exclusive deal to get better chip prices. For a while, AMD had some serious production constraints, and Intel doesn't have that problem as often.
Back when there were consumer tape backup systems, all the programs had an option to verify the tape, which I always had it do. I never had any problems doing a restore.
Right now, I just backup to a local separate array and a remote array. When something went bad, I did lose a week's worth of my work because I didn't back up often enough, but that's far better than losing everything.
How long until an ethically-challenged company DoS's their competition?
I think it has been done or attempted. The name escapes me right now. The few details I remember was that the owner or a manager asked an employee to do it, the employee did it and then the management denied ever asking.
geeks to hang out will be overrun with the next generation of corporate shills and OSS zealots. I've been called both by my friends at different points in time.:)
That's unfortunate. It is and has been an atmosphere where you get accused of being what you are not, I think it's sad that replies resort to that rather than actually respond properly to a statement.
I've found that I can't breathe a word against Linux without some sort of venom spat at me, and the same went for saying anything against Apple as a corporation. At times, the same goes with saying Microsoft actually does something right on occasion, in my opinion.
It's not a good argument, I think it's more an argument based on a tech religion, ideology or insecurity than anything resembling a good argument.
Burning coal emits mercury into the atmosphere too, among other nasty things. Last I heard, a CFL has a lower net mercury effect than the burning of coal to light the equivalent number of incandescents over the equivalent life of a CFL.
The often-stated problem is not being able to just walk out with a unit. In general, I just don't think the type of people that are willing to go to the mall are the type that want to order and get it a few days later.
Commoditizing notebook parts such as boards depends on commoditizing form factors. A tower case doesn't matter because you can give generous room to everything. As such, there was only one real form factor, ATX. It was more or less a one size fits all, with only some variation on tower height depending on how many drive bays you want. Just one major case factor was easy to deal with. I can think of a need for maybe five major form factors needed for notebooks. There's only so far you can go, I've never seen such a compact device have an industry standard form factor where you can swap all parts in between just about any brand. I think that ATX/BTX may be the end of that line. I can't even say that it's realistic. An AMD-based system and an Intel-based system would likely have different board arrangements with respect to memory, chipset and CPU, affecting the arrangement of the cooling system as well. Maybe it can be done, but given how cookie-cutter the desktop industry became, maybe I'd rather not.
Replacement panels aren't that hard to come by, I know someone that replaced the panel in his Toshiba by looking up a part number on the panel itself and found a supplier that sold that panel. Panels are usually used by more than one maker and more than one model. It's easy to find parts on eBay too.
While servers and workstations with Linux were offered successfully, the difference is that consumer computers with Linux has been tried a few times and failed every time. If a megacorp such as Walmart finds they couldn't push Linux on the desktop, then why do you still hold such hope? I know HP has offered a notebook with a Linux option, that option was eventually removed. I know there are others.
If they start selling Linux, that is to their advantage.
Yes, it is to their advantage from the viewpoint of the 1% of the consumer PC market that demands it. Linux hasn't been to the advantage of a consumer PC maker any time it's been tried, what has changed since the last time? Linux servers probably sell pretty well, but that's a different game.
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It would seem to me that any phone that has good text messaging ability (good keypad, etc.) would be ideal. The only problem I see is in regards to not having to pay for voice service.
Do you happen to have a source on the film festival thing? I'm well aware of the accusations of plagiarism regarding Kimba/Simba and many different scenes. I visit a couple anime forums and have seen several threads on this topic and this film festival incident was *never* mentioned.
A lot of ultraportables are in the $2k US range. It's not just for the cool factor, there is always a cost for miniaturization. The ULV chips are the biggest one, they are fabbed & binned for extremely low leakage current. The smaller hard drives cost more per unit of storage. Smaller optical drives are more expensive too. Tighter tolerances and higher strengh materials needed for a more compact case are also a factor.
I can imagine that 256MB may be the smallest capacity of that memory type that's still in mass production, and it probably doesn't cost any more to get. One may as well take advantage of economies of scales.
I think the iBook design predates the RoHS requirements.
Go back to the early pieces on OLPC: how many people kept saying that (Nick) Negroponte was either deluded or lying about the cost, and that by the time it came out, the OLPC would cost almost exactly what a cheap laptop with Windows cost? Surprise -- that's exactly what happened.
A cheap Windows notebook costs $175? Or am I missing something else? There aren't many notebooks under $500.
Linux used to be able to operate in small spaces with low power requirements, the same with Windows, NT4 was very compact and stable. The problem comes in when you start adding all the unnecessary eye candy and comprehensive desktop environments.
Doesn't standard Open Office use a lot of Java too? I thought it was heavily Java based.
Maybe that puts a personal face on the debacle, but it would still lead the argument to something more negative than libel or slander, that being a curtailing free speach.
I think Neil deGrasse Tyson was onto something about Pluto though, it's mostly a ball of ice that would turn into a comet if it were to ever come as close to the sun as Jupiter is. The fact that it orbits at an angle well outside the ecliptic was another problem in why Pluto didn't fit the planetary sequence very well.
Gas giants can exist closer to the sun without problems, as witnessed by the discovery of "hot jupiters".
It may be a non-planet, but none of the Kuiper belt objects have been studied yet, and Pluto is a start.
I wish the astronomy groups would get their adjective usage right, or at least consistent. A dwarf planet is somehow not a planet, but a dwarf star is a star. Sol is a dwarf star, so does that make it not a star? That sort of dissonance makes calling Ceres a planet seem sensible in comparison. Anyway, I support the notion of not calling Pluto a planet, I'm just disappointed that they had to odd twisting of words to do it.
I didn't realize I could get a 10% discount on a new iPod by trading in my old one. If my current one ever breaks, I will keep that in mind.
Right now, that's at most, $35. If it's just one part that's bad, you can usually sell it on eBay or part it out and make more than that. Replacement hard drives are very expensive. Replacement screens and logic boards cost money too. If it's a dead battery, with many models, that can be replaced for $20 or so and 15 minutes of time. I've yet to replace a battery, but despite the naysayers, the main iPod (all generations) and original nano are all easy to get into. The shuffles, minis and 2nd gen nanos I haven't tried yet.
Some people have a lot more of a problem with Microsoft's business practices than their products. I think I might be among them, at least, while there is significant room for improvement, I don't think their products are all as bad as detractors say they are.
You gave VB as an example, and when I've programmed in it, it didn't seem so bad in my opinion. I think what gave it a bad rap is more that programmers were using it improperly and causing problems.
Keep in mind that Apple bought from both Motorola and IBM at the same time for a long time. Buying from both Intel and AMD at the same time would not be so bad. I'm sure the software will work. Some people have made AMD systems work with the hackintosh software. The drivers and such might not be optimized for the chips that's in a typical AMD system, but it does work.
Apple might be getting a generous exclusive deal to get better chip prices. For a while, AMD had some serious production constraints, and Intel doesn't have that problem as often.
Back when there were consumer tape backup systems, all the programs had an option to verify the tape, which I always had it do. I never had any problems doing a restore.
Right now, I just backup to a local separate array and a remote array. When something went bad, I did lose a week's worth of my work because I didn't back up often enough, but that's far better than losing everything.
How long until an ethically-challenged company DoS's their competition?
I think it has been done or attempted. The name escapes me right now. The few details I remember was that the owner or a manager asked an employee to do it, the employee did it and then the management denied ever asking.
geeks to hang out will be overrun with the next generation of corporate shills and OSS zealots. I've been called both by my friends at different points in time. :)
That's unfortunate. It is and has been an atmosphere where you get accused of being what you are not, I think it's sad that replies resort to that rather than actually respond properly to a statement.
I've found that I can't breathe a word against Linux without some sort of venom spat at me, and the same went for saying anything against Apple as a corporation. At times, the same goes with saying Microsoft actually does something right on occasion, in my opinion.
It's not a good argument, I think it's more an argument based on a tech religion, ideology or insecurity than anything resembling a good argument.
I agree. It's a lot like the creative process, brainstorming, and then narrowing down your options based on whether or not they fit the circumstances.
I don't think it is as bad as you think.
Burning coal emits mercury into the atmosphere too, among other nasty things. Last I heard, a CFL has a lower net mercury effect than the burning of coal to light the equivalent number of incandescents over the equivalent life of a CFL.
Internet 3 will probably be a series of nano tubes. Every few seconds, the nano tubes will flip direction so that data can be sent the other way.
I don't think there is filtering done on the backbone, save for China, has this been known to happen? All filtering seems to be done at the last mile.
The often-stated problem is not being able to just walk out with a unit. In general, I just don't think the type of people that are willing to go to the mall are the type that want to order and get it a few days later.
Commoditizing notebook parts such as boards depends on commoditizing form factors. A tower case doesn't matter because you can give generous room to everything. As such, there was only one real form factor, ATX. It was more or less a one size fits all, with only some variation on tower height depending on how many drive bays you want. Just one major case factor was easy to deal with. I can think of a need for maybe five major form factors needed for notebooks. There's only so far you can go, I've never seen such a compact device have an industry standard form factor where you can swap all parts in between just about any brand. I think that ATX/BTX may be the end of that line. I can't even say that it's realistic. An AMD-based system and an Intel-based system would likely have different board arrangements with respect to memory, chipset and CPU, affecting the arrangement of the cooling system as well. Maybe it can be done, but given how cookie-cutter the desktop industry became, maybe I'd rather not.
Replacement panels aren't that hard to come by, I know someone that replaced the panel in his Toshiba by looking up a part number on the panel itself and found a supplier that sold that panel. Panels are usually used by more than one maker and more than one model. It's easy to find parts on eBay too.
While servers and workstations with Linux were offered successfully, the difference is that consumer computers with Linux has been tried a few times and failed every time. If a megacorp such as Walmart finds they couldn't push Linux on the desktop, then why do you still hold such hope? I know HP has offered a notebook with a Linux option, that option was eventually removed. I know there are others.
Bullshit, dell is just as good as anyone else ... they use the same components as hp and ibm. Hell everything has broadcom now.
Using the same chips alone doesn't mean that the entire systems have comparable build quality, if that's what you are implying.
If they start selling Linux, that is to their advantage.
Yes, it is to their advantage from the viewpoint of the 1% of the consumer PC market that demands it. Linux hasn't been to the advantage of a consumer PC maker any time it's been tried, what has changed since the last time? Linux servers probably sell pretty well, but that's a different game.