Handsprings, from my experience are the most reliable PDAs. Everyone I know who has one loves it and never has a problem with it. I'm also prone to playing with PDAs on display in Staples and such, and the Handspring models are always functional. I can't say the same for any other brand. Handspring PDAs are also the most stylish.
I'm in college now. The most useful thing I could get right now would be a PDA with wireless LAN access. If I could read/. in class or on a couch in the SAU it would make my day. Plus, put Tiger Suite PDA on there and I don't even need to go to class.
Software piracy is a spiral of doom. Software developers claim that prices on software are high because of large amounts of piracy. They claim they lose lots of money because of it. People pirate software because it is so expensive. "Back in the day" just about every program was 50$. Adobe Photoshop, which is a standard program that lots of people need costs $584 at www.buy.com. That's well over what most people can afford. It's half the price of an extremely decent computer! Flash MX is $198. If these programs were say 50$, I would buy them. But since I am not a pirate, I have to suffer and not have them on my pc. I am lucky that at college I can go to certain labs and use my school's license, but most people can not. Programs like WS_FTP have the right idea. If you are a business user or a company looking to use the software you have to pay up. But if you are a home user who isn't profiting off of the use of the software, then its absolutely free. If companies like Microsoft, Adobe, and Macromedia provided free licenses, or even cheap sub 100$ licenses to individuals not seeking to profit from the use of the software I guarantee they would see an extreme decrease in piracy. There are those cheap people who wont pay 50$ for a very powerful piece of software, but there are a lot of people like me, college students, who can't afford a 500$ program that they need for a class. Software price increases because of piracy and vice versa. One day it will either end where all software is pirated because nobody can afford it, or all software is cheap(er). In the end it doesn't look good for the developers.
should stick to Java. I mean their ultra sparc processors and hardware are all great. I would love to have an ultra 80 or a sunblade. But Solaris really blows. I mean, it's fast, and stable. They run it in th cs department here. But CDE is crummy. ease of use is horrible. linux may be crappier under the hood, but its shinier on the surface. Sun should stick to making Java. Besides their horrendously expensive hardware its the only other good thing they make.
The fact that there are so many different flavors of linux has its pros and cons which we all know about. But why are they competing against each other? The open source community should be one group of like minded people fighting to make open source a viable alternative to closed source, and making it recognized as such to a large number of people. RedHat should try letting people upgrade from windows to RedHat for free. People who are already using Mandrake or SuSe know what RedHat is like and choose their current distro for reasons such as better hardware compatability, better packages, etc. They aren't going to switch to RedHat. I switched out of RedHat to Mandrake. And I'm planning on trying out SuSe.
I posted this late, so I probably wont get modded up, because people who post early are the only ones who get modded up. But I like to always point out things Japan does right, and has been doing right, that the US has yet to figure out.
I Japan if you buy a book, CD, dvd, anything it has a small paper or cardboard reciept on it. At the point of sale the little slip is tossed into a box. At the end of the day they get a perfectly accurate count of what was sold very easily. If you purchase a cd from somewhere like www.cdjapan.co.jp or buy some imported manga you will probably get this little "recipt" because the people who sold it to you do not count them. It's pretty cool, since they been doing this for a long time.
they've had LED lighting systems for homes and swimming pools for years now. The pedal generators and rechargable batteries are a new idea. But LED lighting systems have been around. However they are quite expensive.
You get a bed of white LEDs in your basement, and you use fiber optics to bring the ligh to different places in your home. Works really well for swimming pools, and is most often used there, because it doesn't bring electricity near the water.
removes your right to judge. I mean seriously. If you aren't an expert or at least very knowledgeable about literature you really don't have a right to say which books are better than others. I'm not saying that you don't have the right to an opinion and a right to voice that opinion. What I'm saying is that if you aren't knowledgeable about something, then your judgement isn't valid. This is why we are having such trouble with laws regarding software, video games, etc. The lawyers, judges, and other people with the power to make decisions aren't knowledgeable enough to make well informed decisions. I mean you got a guy who play 4 very violent games with an extreme lack of plot and then decided games weren't art. Try getting a judge who's played games since he was 2. Someone who knows. When people who were alive before computers retire and the next generation comes into power I'm sure we wont have these stupid problems anymore, because people with power to decide will be more knowledgeable.
I would also like to see if this judge would make the same decision after playing through Final Fantasy 6 or Chrono Trigger.
If he is hosting the site on the school's computer network, well he's probably breaking some of the rules the school puts down for using their computer systems. If he isn't then free speech. I mean it's a LAW school, they should know better than to file stupid lawsuits. I mean it's what they do for a living.
I mean we at RIT used to have ritsucks.com. RIT didn't try to sue the student running it, because he didn't host it on grace.rit.edu (digital unix cluster all students have access to and can host pages on). The only reason it's not there anymore is because he forgot to re-register the domain.
I generally tend to believe that if you attack your critics with lawsuits or threats of some sort then 1 of two things is most definitely true.
1) All the bad things the critics are saying are very true and you don't have confidence that your organization will continue to profit if people find out. 2) All the bad things th critics are saying are horrible horrible lies, but not beyond belief to the point of parody. And you think that people are going to believe them and ruin your organization.
What would be even better would be a cd that was full of open source software for windows. Like WinCVS, emacs, etc. If there isn't enough of it for a whole CD, write more! Most open source software is for our open source operating systems. If we put more open source software out for windows, that is quality, people will use them, because they are free legally. If there are enough quality open source windows programs we can get to the point where people are using like 2 or 3 major open source programs a lot. Like how just about everybody uses WinAmp and AIM/ICQ. What I'm trying to say, and very poorly at that, is we can make some open source programs for windows that will be very frequently used my numerous users. Then we can switch them to linux more easily, because it has all the programs they use every day and more. The biggest fright about switching to linux is that you have to use all new software for everything. All of your beloved programs are gone or different. People tend to find one piece of software for each task and stick with it.
I dont' understand the people who design this stuff. We have the technology, we just don't use it properly. I want a cell-phone sized device that is also a PDA, mp3 player, and digital camera. take a cell phone, replace the numbered buttons with a GameBoyAdvance style LCD screen. Use an IBM microdrive. Companies keep making all of these things seperately very well, but they can't seem to combine them correctly. I'm not going to buy one until they have what I want.
Normally I look down on the professional wrestling. I mean you got a couple guys in underwear grabbin' each other. ewwww. But even though Ventura was/is a wrestler doesn't mean he aint a bad guy. The interesting thing I wonder is advertising free speech? And if advertising is free speech, then wouldn't a video game with an ad in it be free speech? Then wouldn't any computer program with an ad in it be free speech? That could be good and bad the way I see it. Another case of a great idea coming from an unlikely source.
Anyone know anything about places like this in New York? Preferably the Rochester area. I mean there are lots of computer folk up here, but no computer recycling I know of. It would help us out a lot if we could pick up some old boxen for servin' small time stuff.
Is there anywhere that will custom-build me a laptop? I know it will be quite expensive, but as long as the price of the laptop is less than the price of the equally powered desktop plus $750 I would greatly consider it. I'm just one of those my computer my way kind of people.
In my opinion Coolermaster makes the best damn cases I've ever seen. Combine that with an enermax power supply and your in business. The Cooler Master ATC-210 is particularly awesome. You can buy them at a good price from monarch.
http://www.coolermaster.com http://www.xpcgear. com/powersupply.html http://www.monarchcomputer.c om
that Bill Gates declared himself president of the US? I mean seriously. The government is the biggest corporation in the world, it only makes sense that it should merge with the second biggest one.
There's a new invention called the ISBN. Pretty much every book has these numbers on it. There are also numerous websites where you can type in these numbers and gain information about the book. One of these sites you should know, it's called Amazon.com. There's really no used for a CDDB style database unless e-books gain more popularity. Like A LOT more popularity. As for amazon, it's not the only book database, their are others. And you may want to use these others since Amazon doesn't have every book. But it has all the books that matter.
Make sure you teach them how to compile and install software. When I first learned *nix I learned how to navigate the file system, run things, edit files, move things around, etc. But it took me like a week to figure out how to install and set up new software. I remember having the hardest time with it because every single piece of software was different. There was no standard setup.exe or *.rpm all the time. I had to make, make install. And that didn't always work either. That, imho is one of the major differences and difficulties there is in moving from windows to *nix. In windows once you've installed one piece of software you've installed them all.
You have many seperate databases with powerful encryption and a hardware firewall. Have a very short list of places that can get direct access. Those places will only be allowed access to the parts they need. Everyone else in the world goes to one of those places to get their stuff.
So you have the central database. This database has different parts to it. One for financial info, one for government info, one for medical information, etc. In the center is a list of general information like name, address, age, phone #.
Now you have a very small #, less than 20, of people who have direct access to this. Each of these places has access to different sets of information. So if one of them provides credit card verification they have access to only the parts of the financial database they need. Then places like ebay and amazon, and paypal go to them to verify credit cards.
Another group would provide medical information. This group would give doctors offices acces to only medical records of their patients. etc.
Now to make it extra secure everything is encrypted with the strongest encryption available. If someone wants to use less encryption or no encryption, tough. Everything on the drives in the central database is encrypted. Public key encryption is used for transmission of data to providers. New keys are made as often as is practical. Data is re-encrypted on their drives. Then sent to the users who can de-crypt only the parts they need (if for some reason they are accidentally sent something htey shouldn't see) and use the information.
Of course all the standard security measures are taken such as putting the central database in a secure location. Firewalls. IT professionals working their 24/7. The works.
This may not be the most efficient design. It may not be a very specific or detailed design. It may be a design that provides a small group of people with a lot of power. However, it is I believe the most secure design. Make a special law about trying to hack it too, that'll make it even more secure. The only problem I forsee is the constant need to up the encryption because of faster processors and decryption methods, and the constant need for end users to update their keys/certificates.
I don't feel like deleting everything I just wrote, but I just improved my idea. End users create public and private key pairs. When they want to put their information in the central database they type their information into a very secure web form and off it goes, along with their attached public key. Now there is a central database of information that only the owner of that information can easily read. If I want amazon to get some of that information My computer will downloaded it, in encrypted form, decrypt the information I want to tell amazon, encrypt that with amazon's key and send it to them. Excuse my language, but ph33r that. Especially if you gave me the ability to change my key whenever I want.
Only problem, getting home users to make RSA 4096 bit key pairs, or whatever the newest one is. That's security for you. Keep your information on someone else's computer, that's already incredibly secure, but only you can read it. Not even the guy who built the system can see what's in it. Except of course for his own info.
There was a recent slashdot article about how Amazon reset everybody's marketing preferences. After reading this article I went to amazon and reset them all to "don't send me anything unless it's an order confirmation". Just a few days ago I recieved an e-mail from them selling stuff. I followed the unsubscribe instructions and found that, as I thought, was set not to recieve it. I set myself not to receieve it again. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that it was a computer error or something. It hasn't happened again since. It's just kind of annoying that even though I check the box that says don't send me crap ever, that they can reset it at will. So I either keep visiting their site and changing it back (and when I visit their site they sell me stuff/make money). Or I get stuff in my e-mail (which sells me stuff and makes them money). Maybe next time I get something from someone I told not to send me things I'll sue. Just maybe.
One possible strategy.
on
GeekPAC
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
America likes to believe it's #1 in everything. I think that if we showed the senators/representatives and the American people that we are behind everyone else in consumer technology (we ARE ahead in military technology), and that it is because of legislation like the DMCA, that we might start seeing some changes.
If you don't think we're behind you might want to look at some Japanese cell phones http://www.nokia.co.jp or some of those incredibly fuel efficient cars from Europe. I don't have a link for those, but just a normal Fiat is more fuel efficient than an SUV. Gas prices go down! Especially a good idea now with our middle east action.
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Handsprings, from my experience are the most reliable PDAs. Everyone I know who has one loves it and never has a problem with it. I'm also prone to playing with PDAs on display in Staples and such, and the Handspring models are always functional. I can't say the same for any other brand. Handspring PDAs are also the most stylish.
I'm in college now. The most useful thing I could get right now would be a PDA with wireless LAN access. If I could read /. in class or on a couch in the SAU it would make my day. Plus, put Tiger Suite PDA on there and I don't even need to go to class.
Is the best!!!!!
I've still got the installer for the newest version of free PGP for windows. If anyone wants it.
Software piracy is a spiral of doom. Software developers claim that prices on software are high because of large amounts of piracy. They claim they lose lots of money because of it. People pirate software because it is so expensive. "Back in the day" just about every program was 50$. Adobe Photoshop, which is a standard program that lots of people need costs $584 at www.buy.com. That's well over what most people can afford. It's half the price of an extremely decent computer! Flash MX is $198. If these programs were say 50$, I would buy them. But since I am not a pirate, I have to suffer and not have them on my pc. I am lucky that at college I can go to certain labs and use my school's license, but most people can not.
Programs like WS_FTP have the right idea. If you are a business user or a company looking to use the software you have to pay up. But if you are a home user who isn't profiting off of the use of the software, then its absolutely free.
If companies like Microsoft, Adobe, and Macromedia provided free licenses, or even cheap sub 100$ licenses to individuals not seeking to profit from the use of the software I guarantee they would see an extreme decrease in piracy. There are those cheap people who wont pay 50$ for a very powerful piece of software, but there are a lot of people like me, college students, who can't afford a 500$ program that they need for a class.
Software price increases because of piracy and vice versa. One day it will either end where all software is pirated because nobody can afford it, or all software is cheap(er). In the end it doesn't look good for the developers.
should stick to Java. I mean their ultra sparc processors and hardware are all great. I would love to have an ultra 80 or a sunblade. But Solaris really blows. I mean, it's fast, and stable. They run it in th cs department here. But CDE is crummy. ease of use is horrible. linux may be crappier under the hood, but its shinier on the surface.
Sun should stick to making Java. Besides their horrendously expensive hardware its the only other good thing they make.
The fact that there are so many different flavors of linux has its pros and cons which we all know about. But why are they competing against each other? The open source community should be one group of like minded people fighting to make open source a viable alternative to closed source, and making it recognized as such to a large number of people. RedHat should try letting people upgrade from windows to RedHat for free. People who are already using Mandrake or SuSe know what RedHat is like and choose their current distro for reasons such as better hardware compatability, better packages, etc. They aren't going to switch to RedHat. I switched out of RedHat to Mandrake. And I'm planning on trying out SuSe.
I posted this late, so I probably wont get modded up, because people who post early are the only ones who get modded up. But I like to always point out things Japan does right, and has been doing right, that the US has yet to figure out.
I Japan if you buy a book, CD, dvd, anything it has a small paper or cardboard reciept on it. At the point of sale the little slip is tossed into a box. At the end of the day they get a perfectly accurate count of what was sold very easily. If you purchase a cd from somewhere like www.cdjapan.co.jp or buy some imported manga you will probably get this little "recipt" because the people who sold it to you do not count them. It's pretty cool, since they been doing this for a long time.
they've had LED lighting systems for homes and swimming pools for years now. The pedal generators and rechargable batteries are a new idea. But LED lighting systems have been around. However they are quite expensive.
You get a bed of white LEDs in your basement, and you use fiber optics to bring the ligh to different places in your home. Works really well for swimming pools, and is most often used there, because it doesn't bring electricity near the water.
removes your right to judge. I mean seriously. If you aren't an expert or at least very knowledgeable about literature you really don't have a right to say which books are better than others. I'm not saying that you don't have the right to an opinion and a right to voice that opinion. What I'm saying is that if you aren't knowledgeable about something, then your judgement isn't valid.
This is why we are having such trouble with laws regarding software, video games, etc. The lawyers, judges, and other people with the power to make decisions aren't knowledgeable enough to make well informed decisions. I mean you got a guy who play 4 very violent games with an extreme lack of plot and then decided games weren't art. Try getting a judge who's played games since he was 2. Someone who knows. When people who were alive before computers retire and the next generation comes into power I'm sure we wont have these stupid problems anymore, because people with power to decide will be more knowledgeable.
I would also like to see if this judge would make the same decision after playing through Final Fantasy 6 or Chrono Trigger.
If he is hosting the site on the school's computer network, well he's probably breaking some of the rules the school puts down for using their computer systems. If he isn't then free speech. I mean it's a LAW school, they should know better than to file stupid lawsuits. I mean it's what they do for a living.
I mean we at RIT used to have ritsucks.com. RIT didn't try to sue the student running it, because he didn't host it on grace.rit.edu (digital unix cluster all students have access to and can host pages on). The only reason it's not there anymore is because he forgot to re-register the domain.
I generally tend to believe that if you attack your critics with lawsuits or threats of some sort then 1 of two things is most definitely true.
1) All the bad things the critics are saying are very true and you don't have confidence that your organization will continue to profit if people find out.
2) All the bad things th critics are saying are horrible horrible lies, but not beyond belief to the point of parody. And you think that people are going to believe them and ruin your organization.
What would be even better would be a cd that was full of open source software for windows. Like WinCVS, emacs, etc. If there isn't enough of it for a whole CD, write more!
Most open source software is for our open source operating systems. If we put more open source software out for windows, that is quality, people will use them, because they are free legally. If there are enough quality open source windows programs we can get to the point where people are using like 2 or 3 major open source programs a lot. Like how just about everybody uses WinAmp and AIM/ICQ.
What I'm trying to say, and very poorly at that, is we can make some open source programs for windows that will be very frequently used my numerous users. Then we can switch them to linux more easily, because it has all the programs they use every day and more. The biggest fright about switching to linux is that you have to use all new software for everything. All of your beloved programs are gone or different. People tend to find one piece of software for each task and stick with it.
I dont' understand the people who design this stuff. We have the technology, we just don't use it properly. I want a cell-phone sized device that is also a PDA, mp3 player, and digital camera. take a cell phone, replace the numbered buttons with a GameBoyAdvance style LCD screen. Use an IBM microdrive. Companies keep making all of these things seperately very well, but they can't seem to combine them correctly. I'm not going to buy one until they have what I want.
Normally I look down on the professional wrestling. I mean you got a couple guys in underwear grabbin' each other. ewwww. But even though Ventura was/is a wrestler doesn't mean he aint a bad guy. The interesting thing I wonder is advertising free speech? And if advertising is free speech, then wouldn't a video game with an ad in it be free speech? Then wouldn't any computer program with an ad in it be free speech? That could be good and bad the way I see it. Another case of a great idea coming from an unlikely source.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 + Pizza Hut.
Anyone know anything about places like this in New York? Preferably the Rochester area. I mean there are lots of computer folk up here, but no computer recycling I know of. It would help us out a lot if we could pick up some old boxen for servin' small time stuff.
Is there anywhere that will custom-build me a laptop? I know it will be quite expensive, but as long as the price of the laptop is less than the price of the equally powered desktop plus $750 I would greatly consider it. I'm just one of those my computer my way kind of people.
In my opinion Coolermaster makes the best damn cases I've ever seen. Combine that with an enermax power supply and your in business. The Cooler Master ATC-210 is particularly awesome. You can buy them at a good price from monarch.
. com/powersupply.htmlc om
http://www.coolermaster.com
http://www.xpcgear
http://www.monarchcomputer.
that Bill Gates declared himself president of the US? I mean seriously. The government is the biggest corporation in the world, it only makes sense that it should merge with the second biggest one.
There's a new invention called the ISBN. Pretty much every book has these numbers on it. There are also numerous websites where you can type in these numbers and gain information about the book. One of these sites you should know, it's called Amazon.com. There's really no used for a CDDB style database unless e-books gain more popularity. Like A LOT more popularity. As for amazon, it's not the only book database, their are others. And you may want to use these others since Amazon doesn't have every book. But it has all the books that matter.
Make sure you teach them how to compile and install software. When I first learned *nix I learned how to navigate the file system, run things, edit files, move things around, etc. But it took me like a week to figure out how to install and set up new software. I remember having the hardest time with it because every single piece of software was different. There was no standard setup.exe or *.rpm all the time. I had to make, make install. And that didn't always work either. That, imho is one of the major differences and difficulties there is in moving from windows to *nix. In windows once you've installed one piece of software you've installed them all.
You have many seperate databases with powerful encryption and a hardware firewall. Have a very short list of places that can get direct access. Those places will only be allowed access to the parts they need. Everyone else in the world goes to one of those places to get their stuff.
So you have the central database. This database has different parts to it. One for financial info, one for government info, one for medical information, etc. In the center is a list of general information like name, address, age, phone #.
Now you have a very small #, less than 20, of people who have direct access to this. Each of these places has access to different sets of information. So if one of them provides credit card verification they have access to only the parts of the financial database they need. Then places like ebay and amazon, and paypal go to them to verify credit cards.
Another group would provide medical information. This group would give doctors offices acces to only medical records of their patients. etc.
Now to make it extra secure everything is encrypted with the strongest encryption available. If someone wants to use less encryption or no encryption, tough. Everything on the drives in the central database is encrypted. Public key encryption is used for transmission of data to providers. New keys are made as often as is practical. Data is re-encrypted on their drives. Then sent to the users who can de-crypt only the parts they need (if for some reason they are accidentally sent something htey shouldn't see) and use the information.
Of course all the standard security measures are taken such as putting the central database in a secure location. Firewalls. IT professionals working their 24/7. The works.
This may not be the most efficient design. It may not be a very specific or detailed design. It may be a design that provides a small group of people with a lot of power. However, it is I believe the most secure design. Make a special law about trying to hack it too, that'll make it even more secure. The only problem I forsee is the constant need to up the encryption because of faster processors and decryption methods, and the constant need for end users to update their keys/certificates.
I don't feel like deleting everything I just wrote, but I just improved my idea. End users create public and private key pairs. When they want to put their information in the central database they type their information into a very secure web form and off it goes, along with their attached public key. Now there is a central database of information that only the owner of that information can easily read. If I want amazon to get some of that information My computer will downloaded it, in encrypted form, decrypt the information I want to tell amazon, encrypt that with amazon's key and send it to them. Excuse my language, but ph33r that. Especially if you gave me the ability to change my key whenever I want.
Only problem, getting home users to make RSA 4096 bit key pairs, or whatever the newest one is. That's security for you. Keep your information on someone else's computer, that's already incredibly secure, but only you can read it. Not even the guy who built the system can see what's in it. Except of course for his own info.
There was a recent slashdot article about how Amazon reset everybody's marketing preferences. After reading this article I went to amazon and reset them all to "don't send me anything unless it's an order confirmation". Just a few days ago I recieved an e-mail from them selling stuff. I followed the unsubscribe instructions and found that, as I thought, was set not to recieve it. I set myself not to receieve it again. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that it was a computer error or something. It hasn't happened again since. It's just kind of annoying that even though I check the box that says don't send me crap ever, that they can reset it at will. So I either keep visiting their site and changing it back (and when I visit their site they sell me stuff/make money). Or I get stuff in my e-mail (which sells me stuff and makes them money). Maybe next time I get something from someone I told not to send me things I'll sue. Just maybe.
Those be in my top 10 list of quotes be. Maybe someone should tell them to our current president...
But the phones are from Japan as in Jphone
America likes to believe it's #1 in everything. I think that if we showed the senators/representatives and the American people that we are behind everyone else in consumer technology (we ARE ahead in military technology), and that it is because of legislation like the DMCA, that we might start seeing some changes.
If you don't think we're behind you might want to look at some Japanese cell phones http://www.nokia.co.jp or some of those incredibly fuel efficient cars from Europe. I don't have a link for those, but just a normal Fiat is more fuel efficient than an SUV. Gas prices go down! Especially a good idea now with our middle east action.