"The run should now settle the DWFTTW (downwind faster than the wind) debate that has been raging for some time on the Internet about whether or not such a feat was possible."
You're new to the internet, aren't you, son? No amount of reality can end an internet debate.
Back in '99, I moved across town and wanted to keep my phone number. I called PacBell a month in advance to schedule the move. "No problem. Just let me know which day you'd like it done and we'll take care of it." So the day comes and I go to the old house. No dial tone. I toss the phone in the car and take it to the new house. No dial tone. Well, maybe the internal wiring's messed up. I was moving into a geek house so there's no telling what fantastic wiring kludges had been imposed on the wiring. I plugged my phone directly into the TNI (Telephone Network Interface) on the side of the house. Nothing. There's my number written on the socket's cover but no dice. So I whipped out my analog GTE cell phone and called Pac Bell. "Oh, I'm sorry. We ran out of lines in that area. We're going to have to dig a trench and lay some new lines. It shouldn't take more than 30 days." "Why didn't your inventory show that you were out of lines back when I scheduled the installation?" "How could we know we were out of lines until we went out to hook up your line?" Wow. So she thanked me for choosing Pacific Bell and hung up.
My GTE contract was up so I shopped around for the best plan that would cover my monthly calling. Ended up with a plan that gave me 180 peak minutes and 600 minutes of off-peak (started at 6pm back in those days) for around $30 bucks/month. And calling my family would now be a local call! Called Pac Bell and told them to cancel the installation. I was going cellular. "I'm sorry to hear that. Thank you for choosing Pacific Bell." A week or so later, I got a call apologizing for the accidental cancellation of my installation order for three phone lines. After explaining that I never had that many lines to cancel and that the cancellation of my ONE line was not a mistake, she thanked me for choosing Pacific Bell and hung up.
Some things really don't need to be proven. Sometimes, you can just apply a bit of simple logic to determine whether an idea is plausible.
Though, maybe I should propose to my boss that we experiment with my salary. If he increases it, I think I'll receive more money. But, just to be sure, we should do a proof of concept thing. Say a 50% bump just to try it out and see if it really works. If that works, we can do a 200% bump and let it run for a few years. If I'm still getting more money 5 years from now, we'll have proven the concept.
Today, it's the 250 giggers. Tomorrow, 200. They will ALWAYS try to reduce the impact of the most prolific users. If they manage to get 99.9% of their customers under 250 gigs, they'll drop the limit to 200 gigs. Then 150. Then 100.
Meanwhile, maybe you start streaming HD movies from Netflix and watch your favorite TV shows on Hulu instead of paying $15/month for your DVR. Your 15-22 gigs a month starts going up. Eventually, your increased usage will meet their decreased level of acceptable use. Next thing you know, we'll be like Australia or England.
Sprint/Clear seem to be implying that they won't have a 5 gig limit but I haven't seen an actual promise. Only implications that the 5 gig limit imposed by 3G providers won't be an issue with their 4G service. It's being marketed as a replacement for home broadband which is something that was never done with 3G. I'm cautiously optimistic.
A company that hasn't produced a discrete graphics card in over a decade (I'm pretty sure I remember seeing an Intel graphics card once. Back in the 90s.) is going to continue to not produce discrete graphics cards. Wow. Stop the presses. Has Ric Romero been alerted?
For #3, It's no more gambling for a bad/new player than for a good/seasoned player. The fact that they're bad at poker doesn't change what poker is unless we're getting into a "cat in the box" thing here where actions/observation determine the outcome.
For #4, I think Full Tilt is onto something with their new Rush Poker. They'll never come right out and say that this new method greatly reduces the possibility of cheating because that would acknowledge the fact that cheating among players is very possible in standard games. But, in Rush Poker, each table is created on the fly from a pool of players for each new hand. So there's no way to get several of your buddies seated at the same table unless you happen to randomly be seated together but then you won't have time to do anything about it because you're only there for one hand then you're moved to a completely new table with a new group of players. It has kind of a "crack heads on meth drinking Red Bull" feel because it moves so fast but it definitely cuts down on the potential for cheating among players.
As for cheating on the server side, I'm all for regulation. Bring those servers onto US soil with independent oversight and auditing.
Yes, people could still get to offshore sites and try to avoid taxes, no problem. But, if iTunes has shown us anything, it's that people are willing to pay a premium price for a product that's trusted and easy to use.
Online poker should be a freakin' DREAM for the government. There's no hiding your activity. Every deposit is logged. Every transfer is logged. Every withdrawal is logged. It should be the easiest thing in the world to tax accurately and efficiently. Way easier than the bajillion card rooms scattered all over the country. And it should be easy to spot and flag problem "gamblers". As I just said, everything is logged. Mine the data and use it to reach out to those people.
So they retrieve their data from the school network using their laptop that's registered with the IT department. Now there's a link. Maybe nobody uses it now but that access is logged. A few years down the road, someone takes those logs and matches the data requests to the MAC registry and "presto".
Heck, 10 years ago, I my cable subnet kept getting scanned. I traced the IP to a local university. Reverse DNS said the IP was named montana-port108.dorms.university.edu. I sent a message to the IT department with logs showing the activity, explaining that it was originating from the Montana dorm. The port was in a 2-bed dorm room. The IT department checked the MAC of the device connected to that port to determine which of the two residents was responsible and nailed the kid. Who had been busted for port scanning in the past. One little set of numbers led me right to the guy's location. While I turned it over to the university to handle, I also had friends in the IT department who would have been glad to tell me which room that port was in. Heck, a little research might have turned up a publicly available network schematic that would give me the information.
My point is that it only takes one tiny little link to connect people to this "anonymous" data. The pieces of information needed to make the link will exist. If you think nobody will bother to connect the dots, you don't know college IT geeks. Someone will do it just to see if it can be done. Heck, they'll probably get a grant to do it. The only ones who might be safe are the kids who go to a public library (not the university library!) to access the data. Someplace where their identity can't be tied to the equipment used to access the data. But how many kids are going to be that careful? Best to avoid the necessity of such precautions by avoiding the situation entirely.
Kids, DO NOT DO THIS!!! Ever! For any reason! Holy shit, do you have any idea how crazy this is? There are sooooo many ways this information could be used against you, both now and in the future that I could type for hours without even scratching the surface.
Once you give this data away, you can't take it back. You can't control it. You will have no way to know where it goes or who has access to it.
Berkeley students, you should be out marching and protesting right now. Your protests should make national headlines by Friday. Get to it!
Apparently you didn't understand his claim. His claim was that a 20" monitor would provide greater resolution than a 1080p TV. The highest resolution 20" panel you'll find at Best Buy or NewEgg has a resolution of 1920x1080. Exactly the same as a 1080p TV. There also seems to be some confusion about the use of multiple TVs as monitors. They're exactly the same. If you can connect 3 20" 1920x1080 monitors to your computer, you can connect 3 37" (or 52" or 60") 1920x1080" monitors to your computer. Going with a larger display does not limit the number of displays that can be connected.
You're comparing apples to oranges when all you have are oranges.
Psst. I'll let you in on a little secret. These TVs you speak of...They're LCD monotors! A 37" 1920x1080 "TV" works exactly the same as a 20" 1920x1080 "monitor". You can hook up as many "TVs" as you have display ports on your computer. Your video card(s) can't tell the difference. But don't tell anyone! It's [apparently] a secret.
That's exactly how I used to use a 3 CRT setup back in the day. Code in the middle, debug on the left, reference material/email/chat/misc. on the right.
The things you say don't make sense. 3 20" monitors will not give you "much higher resolution". At best, they'll give equal resolution. Assuming you buy 3 1920x1080 20" monitors and not 3 1680x1050 20" monitors. Because a 1080p monitor's resolution is 1920x1080.
As for looking "absolutely horrible", I suggest you try it before you bash it. I've been using a 37" 1920x1080 LCD as my primary monitor for years and it's freakin' awesome. Hooks up via DVI (with HDCP support). I sit back about 3' from the display and I love it. In fact, I can lean waaaaaay back in my chair and still read the text without the slightest bit of eye strain. And games look great.
3 of them would make an awesome life-size environment for a flight simulator.
Sprint's 4G is really clear.com's service and they have made strong implications of unlimited service. Clear's site goes so far as to bash the concept of the 5 gig limit of most 3G providers. They market the service as a broadband replacement for home use.
If this turns out to be true, my Verizon 3G data package is going to be in serious jeopardy next fall. (Assuming clear/sprint roll out coverage in my area by then.)
Is/. trading places with The Onion? WTF is this crap doing on the front page. Doesn't anyone know the difference between hundreds of miles and tens of thousands of miles? That's like the difference between a road trip to Tijuana and a road trip to Tierra del Fuego.
I'm also torn. On the one hand, I hope this gives gaming on Mac and Linux a boost. On the other hand, I've had my steam account suspended without warning or explanation. Crazy thing is I'd only set me up the Steam to get Counterstrike because my new roommate played and said I just HAD to join. I played it maybe half a dozen times then stopped. Then Bioshock was released and I figured I'd get it thru Steam. Unable to log in. Unable to log in. Finally, I found out my account was suspended. Nobody ever told me why, despite a number of requests for an explanation. I went through the process of unscrewing my account (take a picture of your key with this code written above it) and my account was turned back on with all content available but they still refused to explain why it was shut off in the first place.
So I'm very wary of online distribution. Of course, now games require online activation and verification every time they start and some require a constant connection to a validation server even for single-person offline play so it's not like buying physical disc makes any difference. Pretty soon it'll get to the point that I don't even bother to open the box. I'll buy it then download the pirated version that just lets me play the damn game already. Then I'll wonder why I'm paying $50-60 to be treated like a criminal and I'll skip the purchase altogether and just steal it.
There have always been plenty of takers among the employees and the giveaways provide a big morale boost. If we ever have a surplus of functional equipment, it'll certainly go to a non-profit. But a lot of the time the employees turn right around and give them directly to someone they know who desperately needs a computer. Much of what we give away to employees ends up with some neighbor's nephew's friend who's parents couldn't afford even the most basic eMachine.
Nope. I don't buy it. I bought my netbook because it is small, light, and can run a full-featured OS. I wouldn't trade it for a 6 pound 15" laptop at any price. Heck, my company's about to offer a batch of recently-retired laptops to employees for free and I'm totally uninterested. Power is way down on my list of priorities for portable computing.
If I was a developer, video editor, graphic designer, or did anything else that required heavy lifting by the CPU or GPU, obviously my needs would be different. But I use the netbook for email, surfing, word processing, remote access, etc. A netbook does all of these things just fine and fits on a seatback tray far better than any 15" (or, God forbid, 17") laptop.
Also, I think it's misleading to say that netbooks "do less" than larger portable computers. I have Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit loaded on my netbook. Anything that runs in that environment will run on my netbook. It may not run as fast as a laptop with an i5 or i7 processor and it's certainly not practical to try to run Crysis on it but nobody with two brain cells to rub together buys a cheap netbook or notebook to run games. A $350 notebook won't handle Crysis any better than a $250 netbook. However, they'll both chug through productivity applications just fine. So why lug around an extra 4 pounds of computer?
The things you say about selection and price don't match what I see. There are a crap-ton of Atom N270-based netbooks. There's always one model or another on sale for well under $300. As long as you don't plan on running OSX, it really doesn't matter which model you buy because the specs are nearly identical. N270 CPU, GMA950 GPU, B/G wireless, 10/100 wired, SD/MS slot, 3 USB ports, VGA and/or DVI/HDMI port, 3 USB ports. I just threw out an ad from a company selling a refurb for $199 and new for $230. It doesn't matter if there are two brands or a dozen. It's the same basic device.
There are a few oddballs out there like the Sony P series and Acer's C2S-based 11.6", some old-school Asus models and some Everex/Sylvania/whatever VIA-based systems from the pre-Atom days but the configuration I described is the standard, commodity netbook. And there are a ton of them.
And I think this is one of the things contributing to the decline in sales. Everyone who needs or wants one has one. It's cheap so people don't have to save up for a year or two to obtain one. And there's no reason to replace it because nothing's changed since the Atoms first hit the market. Same processor, same graphics, same screen, same everything.
I'll admit I didn't read the entire summary. Too many of them wordy things. But there are pan/tilt tripod heads. Gotta be some that can be controlled thru the entarwebs. Or MacGuyver a camcorder to the pan/tilt mechanism of his existing camera.
I have a 3CCD camcorder with a USB webcam mode. The image is stupid-high quality. Of course, it wasn't cheap and that's not why I bought it but it's a nice added feature. Just about any mini-DV type camcorder will produce a better quality picture than any webcam and many of them are in the $100-200 range. Find one with a webcam mode and you're set.
Green Card Lottery 1994 May Be The Last One! THE DEADLINE HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED.
The Green Card Lottery is a completely legal program giving away a certain annual allotment of Green Cards to persons born in certain countries. The lottery program was scheduled to continue on a permanent basis. However, recently, Senator Alan J Simpson introduced a bill into the U. S. Congress which could end any future lotteries. THE 1994 LOTTERY IS SCHEDULED TO TAKE PLACE SOON, BUT IT MAY BE THE VERY LAST ONE.
PERSONS BORN IN MOST COUNTRIES QUALIFY, MANY FOR FIRST TIME.
The only countries NOT qualifying are: Mexico; India; P.R. China; Taiwan, Philippines, North Korea, Canada, United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland), Jamaica, Domican Republic, El Salvador and Vietnam.
Lottery registration will take place soon. 55,000 Green Cards will be given to those who register correctly. NO JOB IS REQUIRED.
THERE IS A STRICT JUNE DEADLINE. THE TIME TO START IS NOW!!
For FREE information via Email, send request to cs...@indirect.com
---------
I also remember the day AOL flipped the switch on usenet access. Ugh.
Slashdot Mirror
"The run should now settle the DWFTTW (downwind faster than the wind) debate that has been raging for some time on the Internet about whether or not such a feat was possible."
You're new to the internet, aren't you, son? No amount of reality can end an internet debate.
"Thank you for choosing Comcast!"
Hah! That's the monopoly mentality.
Back in '99, I moved across town and wanted to keep my phone number. I called PacBell a month in advance to schedule the move. "No problem. Just let me know which day you'd like it done and we'll take care of it." So the day comes and I go to the old house. No dial tone. I toss the phone in the car and take it to the new house. No dial tone. Well, maybe the internal wiring's messed up. I was moving into a geek house so there's no telling what fantastic wiring kludges had been imposed on the wiring. I plugged my phone directly into the TNI (Telephone Network Interface) on the side of the house. Nothing. There's my number written on the socket's cover but no dice. So I whipped out my analog GTE cell phone and called Pac Bell. "Oh, I'm sorry. We ran out of lines in that area. We're going to have to dig a trench and lay some new lines. It shouldn't take more than 30 days." "Why didn't your inventory show that you were out of lines back when I scheduled the installation?" "How could we know we were out of lines until we went out to hook up your line?" Wow. So she thanked me for choosing Pacific Bell and hung up.
My GTE contract was up so I shopped around for the best plan that would cover my monthly calling. Ended up with a plan that gave me 180 peak minutes and 600 minutes of off-peak (started at 6pm back in those days) for around $30 bucks/month. And calling my family would now be a local call! Called Pac Bell and told them to cancel the installation. I was going cellular. "I'm sorry to hear that. Thank you for choosing Pacific Bell." A week or so later, I got a call apologizing for the accidental cancellation of my installation order for three phone lines. After explaining that I never had that many lines to cancel and that the cancellation of my ONE line was not a mistake, she thanked me for choosing Pacific Bell and hung up.
Haven't had a land line since.
Some things really don't need to be proven. Sometimes, you can just apply a bit of simple logic to determine whether an idea is plausible.
Though, maybe I should propose to my boss that we experiment with my salary. If he increases it, I think I'll receive more money. But, just to be sure, we should do a proof of concept thing. Say a 50% bump just to try it out and see if it really works. If that works, we can do a 200% bump and let it run for a few years. If I'm still getting more money 5 years from now, we'll have proven the concept.
Today, it's the 250 giggers. Tomorrow, 200. They will ALWAYS try to reduce the impact of the most prolific users. If they manage to get 99.9% of their customers under 250 gigs, they'll drop the limit to 200 gigs. Then 150. Then 100.
Meanwhile, maybe you start streaming HD movies from Netflix and watch your favorite TV shows on Hulu instead of paying $15/month for your DVR. Your 15-22 gigs a month starts going up. Eventually, your increased usage will meet their decreased level of acceptable use. Next thing you know, we'll be like Australia or England.
Sprint/Clear seem to be implying that they won't have a 5 gig limit but I haven't seen an actual promise. Only implications that the 5 gig limit imposed by 3G providers won't be an issue with their 4G service. It's being marketed as a replacement for home broadband which is something that was never done with 3G. I'm cautiously optimistic.
A company that hasn't produced a discrete graphics card in over a decade (I'm pretty sure I remember seeing an Intel graphics card once. Back in the 90s.) is going to continue to not produce discrete graphics cards. Wow. Stop the presses. Has Ric Romero been alerted?
For #3, It's no more gambling for a bad/new player than for a good/seasoned player. The fact that they're bad at poker doesn't change what poker is unless we're getting into a "cat in the box" thing here where actions/observation determine the outcome.
For #4, I think Full Tilt is onto something with their new Rush Poker. They'll never come right out and say that this new method greatly reduces the possibility of cheating because that would acknowledge the fact that cheating among players is very possible in standard games. But, in Rush Poker, each table is created on the fly from a pool of players for each new hand. So there's no way to get several of your buddies seated at the same table unless you happen to randomly be seated together but then you won't have time to do anything about it because you're only there for one hand then you're moved to a completely new table with a new group of players. It has kind of a "crack heads on meth drinking Red Bull" feel because it moves so fast but it definitely cuts down on the potential for cheating among players.
As for cheating on the server side, I'm all for regulation. Bring those servers onto US soil with independent oversight and auditing.
Yes, people could still get to offshore sites and try to avoid taxes, no problem. But, if iTunes has shown us anything, it's that people are willing to pay a premium price for a product that's trusted and easy to use.
Online poker should be a freakin' DREAM for the government. There's no hiding your activity. Every deposit is logged. Every transfer is logged. Every withdrawal is logged. It should be the easiest thing in the world to tax accurately and efficiently. Way easier than the bajillion card rooms scattered all over the country. And it should be easy to spot and flag problem "gamblers". As I just said, everything is logged. Mine the data and use it to reach out to those people.
So they retrieve their data from the school network using their laptop that's registered with the IT department. Now there's a link. Maybe nobody uses it now but that access is logged. A few years down the road, someone takes those logs and matches the data requests to the MAC registry and "presto".
Heck, 10 years ago, I my cable subnet kept getting scanned. I traced the IP to a local university. Reverse DNS said the IP was named montana-port108.dorms.university.edu. I sent a message to the IT department with logs showing the activity, explaining that it was originating from the Montana dorm. The port was in a 2-bed dorm room. The IT department checked the MAC of the device connected to that port to determine which of the two residents was responsible and nailed the kid. Who had been busted for port scanning in the past. One little set of numbers led me right to the guy's location. While I turned it over to the university to handle, I also had friends in the IT department who would have been glad to tell me which room that port was in. Heck, a little research might have turned up a publicly available network schematic that would give me the information.
My point is that it only takes one tiny little link to connect people to this "anonymous" data. The pieces of information needed to make the link will exist. If you think nobody will bother to connect the dots, you don't know college IT geeks. Someone will do it just to see if it can be done. Heck, they'll probably get a grant to do it. The only ones who might be safe are the kids who go to a public library (not the university library!) to access the data. Someplace where their identity can't be tied to the equipment used to access the data. But how many kids are going to be that careful? Best to avoid the necessity of such precautions by avoiding the situation entirely.
Kids, DO NOT DO THIS!!! Ever! For any reason! Holy shit, do you have any idea how crazy this is? There are sooooo many ways this information could be used against you, both now and in the future that I could type for hours without even scratching the surface.
Once you give this data away, you can't take it back. You can't control it. You will have no way to know where it goes or who has access to it.
Berkeley students, you should be out marching and protesting right now. Your protests should make national headlines by Friday. Get to it!
Apparently you didn't understand his claim. His claim was that a 20" monitor would provide greater resolution than a 1080p TV. The highest resolution 20" panel you'll find at Best Buy or NewEgg has a resolution of 1920x1080. Exactly the same as a 1080p TV. There also seems to be some confusion about the use of multiple TVs as monitors. They're exactly the same. If you can connect 3 20" 1920x1080 monitors to your computer, you can connect 3 37" (or 52" or 60") 1920x1080" monitors to your computer. Going with a larger display does not limit the number of displays that can be connected.
You're comparing apples to oranges when all you have are oranges.
Psst. I'll let you in on a little secret. These TVs you speak of...They're LCD monotors! A 37" 1920x1080 "TV" works exactly the same as a 20" 1920x1080 "monitor". You can hook up as many "TVs" as you have display ports on your computer. Your video card(s) can't tell the difference. But don't tell anyone! It's [apparently] a secret.
That's exactly how I used to use a 3 CRT setup back in the day. Code in the middle, debug on the left, reference material/email/chat/misc. on the right.
The things you say don't make sense. 3 20" monitors will not give you "much higher resolution". At best, they'll give equal resolution. Assuming you buy 3 1920x1080 20" monitors and not 3 1680x1050 20" monitors. Because a 1080p monitor's resolution is 1920x1080.
As for looking "absolutely horrible", I suggest you try it before you bash it. I've been using a 37" 1920x1080 LCD as my primary monitor for years and it's freakin' awesome. Hooks up via DVI (with HDCP support). I sit back about 3' from the display and I love it. In fact, I can lean waaaaaay back in my chair and still read the text without the slightest bit of eye strain. And games look great.
3 of them would make an awesome life-size environment for a flight simulator.
You don't "accidentally" collect samples of payload data. That's just absurd.
More like "without up or down".
Sprint's 4G is really clear.com's service and they have made strong implications of unlimited service. Clear's site goes so far as to bash the concept of the 5 gig limit of most 3G providers. They market the service as a broadband replacement for home use.
If this turns out to be true, my Verizon 3G data package is going to be in serious jeopardy next fall. (Assuming clear/sprint roll out coverage in my area by then.)
Okay, but we're taking your car.
Is /. trading places with The Onion? WTF is this crap doing on the front page. Doesn't anyone know the difference between hundreds of miles and tens of thousands of miles? That's like the difference between a road trip to Tijuana and a road trip to Tierra del Fuego.
I'm also torn. On the one hand, I hope this gives gaming on Mac and Linux a boost. On the other hand, I've had my steam account suspended without warning or explanation. Crazy thing is I'd only set me up the Steam to get Counterstrike because my new roommate played and said I just HAD to join. I played it maybe half a dozen times then stopped. Then Bioshock was released and I figured I'd get it thru Steam. Unable to log in. Unable to log in. Finally, I found out my account was suspended. Nobody ever told me why, despite a number of requests for an explanation. I went through the process of unscrewing my account (take a picture of your key with this code written above it) and my account was turned back on with all content available but they still refused to explain why it was shut off in the first place.
So I'm very wary of online distribution. Of course, now games require online activation and verification every time they start and some require a constant connection to a validation server even for single-person offline play so it's not like buying physical disc makes any difference. Pretty soon it'll get to the point that I don't even bother to open the box. I'll buy it then download the pirated version that just lets me play the damn game already. Then I'll wonder why I'm paying $50-60 to be treated like a criminal and I'll skip the purchase altogether and just steal it.
There have always been plenty of takers among the employees and the giveaways provide a big morale boost. If we ever have a surplus of functional equipment, it'll certainly go to a non-profit. But a lot of the time the employees turn right around and give them directly to someone they know who desperately needs a computer. Much of what we give away to employees ends up with some neighbor's nephew's friend who's parents couldn't afford even the most basic eMachine.
Nope. I don't buy it. I bought my netbook because it is small, light, and can run a full-featured OS. I wouldn't trade it for a 6 pound 15" laptop at any price. Heck, my company's about to offer a batch of recently-retired laptops to employees for free and I'm totally uninterested. Power is way down on my list of priorities for portable computing.
If I was a developer, video editor, graphic designer, or did anything else that required heavy lifting by the CPU or GPU, obviously my needs would be different. But I use the netbook for email, surfing, word processing, remote access, etc. A netbook does all of these things just fine and fits on a seatback tray far better than any 15" (or, God forbid, 17") laptop.
Also, I think it's misleading to say that netbooks "do less" than larger portable computers. I have Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit loaded on my netbook. Anything that runs in that environment will run on my netbook. It may not run as fast as a laptop with an i5 or i7 processor and it's certainly not practical to try to run Crysis on it but nobody with two brain cells to rub together buys a cheap netbook or notebook to run games. A $350 notebook won't handle Crysis any better than a $250 netbook. However, they'll both chug through productivity applications just fine. So why lug around an extra 4 pounds of computer?
The things you say about selection and price don't match what I see. There are a crap-ton of Atom N270-based netbooks. There's always one model or another on sale for well under $300. As long as you don't plan on running OSX, it really doesn't matter which model you buy because the specs are nearly identical. N270 CPU, GMA950 GPU, B/G wireless, 10/100 wired, SD/MS slot, 3 USB ports, VGA and/or DVI/HDMI port, 3 USB ports. I just threw out an ad from a company selling a refurb for $199 and new for $230. It doesn't matter if there are two brands or a dozen. It's the same basic device.
There are a few oddballs out there like the Sony P series and Acer's C2S-based 11.6", some old-school Asus models and some Everex/Sylvania/whatever VIA-based systems from the pre-Atom days but the configuration I described is the standard, commodity netbook. And there are a ton of them.
And I think this is one of the things contributing to the decline in sales. Everyone who needs or wants one has one. It's cheap so people don't have to save up for a year or two to obtain one. And there's no reason to replace it because nothing's changed since the Atoms first hit the market. Same processor, same graphics, same screen, same everything.
I'll admit I didn't read the entire summary. Too many of them wordy things. But there are pan/tilt tripod heads. Gotta be some that can be controlled thru the entarwebs. Or MacGuyver a camcorder to the pan/tilt mechanism of his existing camera.
I have a 3CCD camcorder with a USB webcam mode. The image is stupid-high quality. Of course, it wasn't cheap and that's not why I bought it but it's a nice added feature. Just about any mini-DV type camcorder will produce a better quality picture than any webcam and many of them are in the $100-200 range. Find one with a webcam mode and you're set.
Green Card Lottery 1994 May Be The Last One!
THE DEADLINE HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED.
The Green Card Lottery is a completely legal program giving away a
certain annual allotment of Green Cards to persons born in certain
countries. The lottery program was scheduled to continue on a
permanent basis. However, recently, Senator Alan J Simpson
introduced a bill into the U. S. Congress which could end any future
lotteries. THE 1994 LOTTERY IS SCHEDULED TO TAKE PLACE
SOON, BUT IT MAY BE THE VERY LAST ONE.
PERSONS BORN IN MOST COUNTRIES QUALIFY, MANY FOR
FIRST TIME.
The only countries NOT qualifying are: Mexico; India; P.R. China;
Taiwan, Philippines, North Korea, Canada, United Kingdom (except
Northern Ireland), Jamaica, Domican Republic, El Salvador and
Vietnam.
Lottery registration will take place soon. 55,000 Green Cards will be
given to those who register correctly. NO JOB IS REQUIRED.
THERE IS A STRICT JUNE DEADLINE. THE TIME TO START IS
NOW!!
For FREE information via Email, send request to
cs...@indirect.com
---------
I also remember the day AOL flipped the switch on usenet access. Ugh.