It's because of of the balkanized cell coverage in the United States. We're so pissed off at Sprint, Cingular, T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon and whoever else is trying to hawk their latest "digital" network that our phones never seem to work when we need them. We don't know if our "SMS" messages are going to be received on the other networks reliably. Hell, we don't even know if our phone is going to ring sometimes in our own house.
Personally, I don't care too much about my phone being able to take pictures or surf the Internet or play MP3's. I'm disappointed in Handspring trying to go the "integrated" Treo phone route-- I would have rather seen them make a larger, "steno" sized PDA and "think outside the pocket." But that's another rant-- back to the phones and SMS. If perhaps, cell companies made the "AIM" messaging (not SMS) completely transparent instead of sending it to special codes that you have to remember, it would change American's usage patterns of "SMS."
I bought the Motorola TimePort because it's supposedly GSM compatible. I think that T-Mobile even has "proprietized" that with some kind of "American" GSM.
T-Mobile (VoiceStream) even abandoned trying to provide multiple numbers per phone-- something that I would have found intensely useful for a small business. The reason? American's didn't understand the bills and contested them constantly. We suck.
I could get a $60 adapter to turn my TimePort into an FM radio walkman... but I don't think I'll be doing that anytime soon... [insert ClearChannel rant du-jour]. I'd still rather have a dedicated device for that task.
I have seen the integrated device fad come and go and come and go-- and no one ever seems to realize, that to suceed you need to build something that does a small domain of things VERY WELL to last. My Visor Platinum does a PDA's job very well, and I won't be upgrading it until something new comes around that isn't trying to do everything at once, poorly. Cell companies should be concentrating on doing one thing very well: replacing your land line with better pricing, services and coverage.
I'm still waiting for that magical docking box that allows me to dock my cell phone and provide a dial tone to the rest of my house. I'd gladly pay $100 for that box and dump Verizon's land lines.
Lilo needs money to run the network. You still have to pay for the server and bandwidth for the IRC traffic and web. I haven't seen a solicitation on the network myself (I haven't been on it in a long time) but to say that the money is just going into Lilo's pocket is completely unfair. Running an IRC network is a pain in the ass and having every open source project create it's own service is just going to sap some productivity from whatever programmer has to find a place to host the server, keep people from hacking it, etc. etc. etc.
I think having a service like this is a bargain here, and people aren't realizing it.
Seriously consider using something like Tagged Message Delivery Agent, it covers just about every feature on your list, but no 4-digit codes for people to fiddle with-- they just reply to the reply to. Since 99% of all spam has a bogus return address, this works very well. I installed it Monday, and after some testing found it to be quite nice. I don't think I'll have much work to convince my associates at work to adopt it. We're all so sick of getting spam.
You can configure TMDA to create an automatic whitelist for people so you don't have to manually add people to it. I'm so happy with it that I no longer munge my e-mail addresses anymore. And I haven't even gotten into using the self-destructing e-mail address features yet.
I noticed it in the CompUSA store yesterday (Gaithersburg, MD)-- in a theft-control case. Which I took to be an excellent sign... when someone wants your operating system bad enough to steal it, you must be doing something right.:)
This comment should not be construed as an endorsement of CompUSA.
It is worth it. I subscribed and I read Salon
nearly everyday. No ads anywhere, and it's comparable to a magazine subscription. If you really want to-- you could even print out a version on acid free paper and keep it like a magazine.
If Wired News online were to improve their
coverage I could see myself paying a subscription to them as well. But Wired News seems to be spread somewhat thin for the last year or so. I get the magazine at least. I would certainly love to be able to read the online version without the frame/banner at the bottom.
Re:Sorry, but that counter is total crap
on
Linux Turns 10
·
· Score: 1
I never said it would be accurate.:) And I haven't found any "new numbers" that mean anything well enough to update the counter's settings. Everyone admits that it's near impossible to count the actual number of Linux users because Linux can be installed in so many different ways. Maybe it's 120,000,000. Maybe it's 15,000,000. No one really knows for sure.
Linux Userbase Counter Projects 60M Users
on
Linux Turns 10
·
· Score: 1
...on 25 Aug 2001. Granted, it's a projection,
based on estimates and guesses, but it's interesting that it happens to roll-over 60,000,000 on 25 Aug 2001.:)
I had a chance to play with the keyboard last night, and as hardware, it's a pretty nice device. The PalmOS drivers however have a lot left to be desired-- probably the most critical problem is the infrared beaming support is disabled while you're using the keyboard. On my Visor Platinum, it defeats the purpose of using the HalfKeyboard while I'm using the IrCOMM modem with my Nokia phone.
This flaw is going to keep me from buying it.
But in general, I think that the keyboard format could be something everyone adopts because of it's low learning curve-- compared to true chording keyboards.
_______
I actually have one of these things sitting on my desk but I haven't had a chance to sync the software into my Visor to use it. I wish that it had a PS/2 cable also so I wouldn't have to wait until I get home.
In Q3A, I already use my left-hand on the keyboard
for actions, so I don't foresee any kind of problems with gaming there.
I also type approximately near 80WPM with two hands, I don't foresee having much trouble getting my left-hand to do alone.
This is a nice compromise between chording keyboards and QWERTY-- I can't find a "standard-standard" for chording anywhere so I've avoided trying to get hardware like that. The Happy Hacking Keyboard I've seen has squeezed down the size of the keys (and rearranged a few) so much that I found it to be a real pain to use.
One thing I noticed about the HalfKeyboard was the "reversal" of the phantom hand keys--
;lkj
ASDF
This is kind of related to DaVinci's
backwards handrighting and the fact that keys are placed like that I think is going to make it easy for me to pick up.
_______
They're sore about all this incredibly innovative software being released under the GNU Public License that they can't take, tweak, and release as a product!
After all, I'm pretty sure that Microsoft is an entity founded on a copy of BASIC that someone else wrote and gave away-- before the GNU Public License existed.
Damn straight they're going to attack this as soon as possible, probably by finding some smaller corporation to test the waters for them. They'll pay for the lawyers. They'll pay the lobbists to tell the lawmakers in states all across the nation that GPL'ed software should not be trusted. They'll plant fear uncertainty and doubt by confusing people about free software. They started doing it in Europe, it'll be a matter of time before they do it here. We need to start telling our lawmakers that this software has potential to save billions of dollars of taxpayers money.
Watch for MSN to start filtering content that points to obviously Open Source software projects.
It's going to be interesting times...
Or maybe I'm just paranoid...
_______ computers://use.urls.People use Networds.
If you do that, then you tie yourself to the hardware too closely and when they decide to make a new frobnitz that'll make doing Distributed Net's blah-blah-challenge run 75% faster, you'll be SOL.
What you want to do is, identify that little bit of core CPU intensive code that is doing the majority of the work and seeing if you can code it in a way that the chip will do it most efficiently.
I can foresee future Crusoe's with little bits of DSP hardware doing FFT's when it morphs some code that does that kind of or, or something like that. You should be getting the idea...
Stop it with the native stuff. Save the native stuff for when you're on an island with a hot polynesian babe. Then you can go native.
_______ computers://use.urls.People use Networds.
Yes, it is. Above.net uses it to blackhole ALL packets to IP's listed in the RBL. I have experienced this personally in the censorship of Steve Forbes' 2000 Presidential campaign site.
_______ computers://use.urls.People use Networds.
Unfortunately, I am behind Above.net which I believe does subscribe to the BGP RBL-- not something my ISP (Capu.NET) can change... During 1999-2000 MAPS RBL blocked Steve Forbes' campaign website so I couldn't get to it from home, something I found highly dubious. I've known that MAPS RBL has been Censorware for a long time now.
Whatever good MAPS RBL could have acheived has been lost with its Ivory Tower administrators who slash and burn netblocks with no accountability. "It's to fight spam" sounds more and more like "What about the children!?" to me from the MAPS people. They have made it an excuse to fuck with people's livelihoods. Pardon mon Français. That's how I feel.
_______ computers://use.urls.People use Networds.
The diagonal resolution is 800 pixels-- why not hold the display at an angle and scroll through the web page so you see the complete 800-pixel width of your web page at the middle of the screen (along the diagonal). I don't think I've ever seen any PDA do this.
I should patent this idea-- but I'm sure that my home network connection would be DoS'ed because of it.;)
I won't attempt to draw a PDA in ASCII tilted at an angle, but I think you can get an idea of what I'm getting at here.
This UI idea Copyright (c) 2000 Simon Janes, released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. If theres "prior art", I'll happily concede credit to the original inventor.:)
They say that everyone makes stuff to scratch and itch, and I'll bet you're wondering what mine was: It was listening to you people bitch and moan about this particular web-pad not being 800x600 or 1024x768!;) _______ computers://use.urls.People use Networds.
I second the CapuNet recommendation, they have treated me very well, and the only outages I've had with them were because of a generator screw-up at a colo facility they were in the process of moving away from and some kind of ATM problem that Covad had (haven't gotten the details about that yet) that screwed up just about all DSL connections in the Washington D.C area one Sunday. I believe the outage lasted about 5 hours.
Things have been so nice with CapuNet, I'm getting the itch to upgrade my 192/192 connection to something peppier.:) _______ computers://use.urls.People use Networds.
Remember when Apple stuffed the MacOS licensing genie back into the bottle?
Motorola had something like $100M worth of "StarMax PowerPC Computers" built and ready to go when Apple did that. I don't think Motorola is too happy about them using PowerPC. I don't think anyone would want to supply anything to Apple after getting backstabbed like that. _______ computers://use.urls.People use Networds.
...which is a pretty good book, it explained better what cryptography's effects on society are than the quick "Its NAZI Magic!" gloss given in the movie U-571.:)
My personal opinion is the telecommunications monopolies are quashing quantum communciations technology because it would obliterate the need for wires.
Governments probably worry about it as well, maybe even more than the telcoms. _______ computers://use.urls.People use Networds.
the Library of Congress over some kind of fat pipe's worth of bandwidth a second?
Does this mean now that I can send the contents of the Library of Congress over a 14.4 kbps dialup in one minute?:) _______ computers://use.urls.People use Networds.
Essentially, what "would happen" is that the megacorp threatened by the warez distribution would convince a judge that there was reason to believe you were pirating their works. The judge would allow discovery, and you would be forced to decrypt the materials yourself.
That's why whatever encryption algorithm that is developed for this "purpose" has to be able to decode the "legal stream", which would usually be something like 4 hours of edited videotape of baby throwing up, baby falling down, baby giggling, baby making wah-wuh noises, baby messing diapers, baby whizzing in papy's face as he changes the diapers, baby....:) (Yes, I speak of decryption to a possible alternative "clear text"...)
Note that I have no plans whatsoever to do much of anything with DVD... but I'll have the DVD consortium understand this... my purchases of DVD's have slowed down tremendously because of this crap, and I don't ever intend on playing DVD's on my computer! _______ computers://use.urls.People use Networds.
This won't be the case for Transmeta's Crusoe, if Intel can't field a mobile chip that will last 4-9 hours on a single battery charge, Transmeta will have their Lunch and Martini too. The price won't matter.
This is a clear case of a distruptive technology changing the marketplace in laptops and mobile devices. Intel's lost this market if Transmeta can ramp up manufacturing. IBM's going to make them, and they didn't say exactly who they were dealing with in Taiwan, did they? (Might be more fabs overseas cranking theses baby's out.)
I was going to get a Sony VAIO a while back, but I was waiting to see what Transmeta was going to do. Now I'm waiting for Crusoe based products instead of Intel based products because I really want that battery life. _______ computers://use.urls.People use Networds.
The alcohol will probably evaporate faster than the TM processor will use.:)
That'll be real fun, when we can pop a alcohol cart into the Crusoe powered webpad and not have to worry about changing any batteries in it for a couple months.
We may not have all the cool stuff people thought we would have in the year 2000, but we're certainly hell-bent on making it happen. _______ computers://use.urls.People use Networds.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I don't care too much about my phone being able to take pictures or surf the Internet or play MP3's. I'm disappointed in Handspring trying to go the "integrated" Treo phone route-- I would have rather seen them make a larger, "steno" sized PDA and "think outside the pocket." But that's another rant-- back to the phones and SMS. If perhaps, cell companies made the "AIM" messaging (not SMS) completely transparent instead of sending it to special codes that you have to remember, it would change American's usage patterns of "SMS."
I bought the Motorola TimePort because it's supposedly GSM compatible. I think that T-Mobile even has "proprietized" that with some kind of "American" GSM.
T-Mobile (VoiceStream) even abandoned trying to provide multiple numbers per phone-- something that I would have found intensely useful for a small business. The reason? American's didn't understand the bills and contested them constantly. We suck.
I could get a $60 adapter to turn my TimePort into an FM radio walkman... but I don't think I'll be doing that anytime soon... [insert ClearChannel rant du-jour]. I'd still rather have a dedicated device for that task.
I have seen the integrated device fad come and go and come and go-- and no one ever seems to realize, that to suceed you need to build something that does a small domain of things VERY WELL to last. My Visor Platinum does a PDA's job very well, and I won't be upgrading it until something new comes around that isn't trying to do everything at once, poorly. Cell companies should be concentrating on doing one thing very well: replacing your land line with better pricing, services and coverage.
I'm still waiting for that magical docking box that allows me to dock my cell phone and provide a dial tone to the rest of my house. I'd gladly pay $100 for that box and dump Verizon's land lines.
Lilo needs money to run the network. You still have to pay for the server and bandwidth for the IRC traffic and web. I haven't seen a solicitation on the network myself (I haven't been on it in a long time) but to say that the money is just going into Lilo's pocket is completely unfair. Running an IRC network is a pain in the ass and having every open source project create it's own service is just going to sap some productivity from whatever programmer has to find a place to host the server, keep people from hacking it, etc. etc. etc.
I think having a service like this is a bargain here, and people aren't realizing it.
I'm sorry. I'm sick of it. Thank God it's not something that everyone celebrates for every time-zone like New Years. [Mod this Redundant.]
Seriously consider using something like Tagged Message Delivery Agent, it covers just about every feature on your list, but no 4-digit codes for people to fiddle with-- they just reply to the reply to. Since 99% of all spam has a bogus return address, this works very well. I installed it Monday, and after some testing found it to be quite nice. I don't think I'll have much work to convince my associates at work to adopt it. We're all so sick of getting spam.
You can configure TMDA to create an automatic whitelist for people so you don't have to manually add people to it. I'm so happy with it that I no longer munge my e-mail addresses anymore. And I haven't even gotten into using the self-destructing e-mail address features yet.
I noticed it in the CompUSA store yesterday (Gaithersburg, MD)-- in a theft-control case. Which I took to be an excellent sign... when someone wants your operating system bad enough to steal it, you must be doing something right. :)
This comment should not be construed as an endorsement of CompUSA.
If Wired News online were to improve their coverage I could see myself paying a subscription to them as well. But Wired News seems to be spread somewhat thin for the last year or so. I get the magazine at least. I would certainly love to be able to read the online version without the frame/banner at the bottom.
I never said it would be accurate. :) And I haven't found any "new numbers" that mean anything well enough to update the counter's settings. Everyone admits that it's near impossible to count the actual number of Linux users because Linux can be installed in so many different ways. Maybe it's 120,000,000. Maybe it's 15,000,000. No one really knows for sure.
...on 25 Aug 2001. Granted, it's a projection, based on estimates and guesses, but it's interesting that it happens to roll-over 60,000,000 on 25 Aug 2001. :)
I had a chance to play with the keyboard last night, and as hardware, it's a pretty nice device. The PalmOS drivers however have a lot left to be desired-- probably the most critical problem is the infrared beaming support is disabled while you're using the keyboard. On my Visor Platinum, it defeats the purpose of using the HalfKeyboard while I'm using the IrCOMM modem with my Nokia phone. This flaw is going to keep me from buying it.
But in general, I think that the keyboard format could be something everyone adopts because of it's low learning curve-- compared to true chording keyboards.
_______
In Q3A, I already use my left-hand on the keyboard for actions, so I don't foresee any kind of problems with gaming there.
I also type approximately near 80WPM with two hands, I don't foresee having much trouble getting my left-hand to do alone.
This is a nice compromise between chording keyboards and QWERTY-- I can't find a "standard-standard" for chording anywhere so I've avoided trying to get hardware like that. The Happy Hacking Keyboard I've seen has squeezed down the size of the keys (and rearranged a few) so much that I found it to be a real pain to use.
One thing I noticed about the HalfKeyboard was the "reversal" of the phantom hand keys--
This is kind of related to DaVinci's backwards handrighting and the fact that keys are placed like that I think is going to make it easy for me to pick up._______
Watch the Trailer and MARVEL as how similar the AOL logo and the Colossus logo are. ;)
_______
I'll bet that there's a couple anceint Linux boxes that I installed in 1995-1996 running 1.0.9 still running somewhere out there. :)
_______
They're sore about all this incredibly innovative software being released under the GNU Public License that they can't take, tweak, and release as a product!
After all, I'm pretty sure that Microsoft is an entity founded on a copy of BASIC that someone else wrote and gave away-- before the GNU Public License existed.
Damn straight they're going to attack this as soon as possible, probably by finding some smaller corporation to test the waters for them. They'll pay for the lawyers. They'll pay the lobbists to tell the lawmakers in states all across the nation that GPL'ed software should not be trusted. They'll plant fear uncertainty and doubt by confusing people about free software. They started doing it in Europe, it'll be a matter of time before they do it here. We need to start telling our lawmakers that this software has potential to save billions of dollars of taxpayers money.
Watch for MSN to start filtering content that points to obviously Open Source software projects.
It's going to be interesting times...
Or maybe I'm just paranoid...
_______
computers://use.urls. People use Networds.
You do not want to write to a native Crusoe!
Not not not not not.
If you do that, then you tie yourself to the hardware too closely and when they decide to make a new frobnitz that'll make doing Distributed Net's blah-blah-challenge run 75% faster, you'll be SOL.
What you want to do is, identify that little bit of core CPU intensive code that is doing the majority of the work and seeing if you can code it in a way that the chip will do it most efficiently.
I can foresee future Crusoe's with little bits of DSP hardware doing FFT's when it morphs some code that does that kind of or, or something like that. You should be getting the idea...
Stop it with the native stuff. Save the native stuff for when you're on an island with a hot polynesian babe. Then you can go native.
_______
computers://use.urls. People use Networds.
Yes, it is. Above.net uses it to blackhole ALL packets to IP's listed in the RBL. I have experienced this personally in the censorship of Steve Forbes' 2000 Presidential campaign site.
_______
computers://use.urls. People use Networds.
Unfortunately, I am behind Above.net which I believe does subscribe to the BGP RBL-- not something my ISP (Capu.NET) can change... During 1999-2000 MAPS RBL blocked Steve Forbes' campaign website so I couldn't get to it from home, something I found highly dubious. I've known that MAPS RBL has been Censorware for a long time now.
Whatever good MAPS RBL could have acheived has been lost with its Ivory Tower administrators who slash and burn netblocks with no accountability. "It's to fight spam" sounds more and more like "What about the children!?" to me from the MAPS people. They have made it an excuse to fuck with people's livelihoods. Pardon mon Français. That's how I feel.
_______
computers://use.urls. People use Networds.
I should patent this idea-- but I'm sure that my home network connection would be DoS'ed because of it. ;)
|\_________|
|_\ _______|
|__\_______|
|___\8_____|6
|____\0____|4
|_____\0___|0
|______\___|
|_______\__|
|________\_|
|_________\|
`----------'
<--- 480--->
I won't attempt to draw a PDA in ASCII tilted at an angle, but I think you can get an idea of what I'm getting at here.
This UI idea Copyright (c) 2000 Simon Janes, released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. If theres "prior art", I'll happily concede credit to the original inventor. :)
They say that everyone makes stuff to scratch and itch, and I'll bet you're wondering what mine was: It was listening to you people bitch and moan about this particular web-pad not being 800x600 or 1024x768! ;)
_______
computers://use.urls. People use Networds.
Things have been so nice with CapuNet, I'm getting the itch to upgrade my 192/192 connection to something peppier. :)
_______
computers://use.urls. People use Networds.
Motorola had something like $100M worth of "StarMax PowerPC Computers" built and ready to go when Apple did that. I don't think Motorola is too happy about them using PowerPC. I don't think anyone would want to supply anything to Apple after getting backstabbed like that.
_______
computers://use.urls. People use Networds.
Just a minor 'plaint. S'right?
_______
computers://use.urls. People use Networds.
My personal opinion is the telecommunications monopolies are quashing quantum communciations technology because it would obliterate the need for wires.
Governments probably worry about it as well, maybe even more than the telcoms.
_______
computers://use.urls. People use Networds.
Does this mean now that I can send the contents of the Library of Congress over a 14.4 kbps dialup in one minute? :)
_______
computers://use.urls. People use Networds.
Note that I have no plans whatsoever to do much of anything with DVD... but I'll have the DVD consortium understand this... my purchases of DVD's have slowed down tremendously because of this crap, and I don't ever intend on playing DVD's on my computer!
_______
computers://use.urls. People use Networds.
This is a clear case of a distruptive technology changing the marketplace in laptops and mobile devices. Intel's lost this market if Transmeta can ramp up manufacturing. IBM's going to make them, and they didn't say exactly who they were dealing with in Taiwan, did they? (Might be more fabs overseas cranking theses baby's out.)
I was going to get a Sony VAIO a while back, but I was waiting to see what Transmeta was going to do. Now I'm waiting for Crusoe based products instead of Intel based products because I really want that battery life.
_______
computers://use.urls. People use Networds.
That'll be real fun, when we can pop a alcohol cart into the Crusoe powered webpad and not have to worry about changing any batteries in it for a couple months.
We may not have all the cool stuff people thought we would have in the year 2000, but we're certainly hell-bent on making it happen.
_______
computers://use.urls. People use Networds.