I'm involved in a beta test of a new product from Sonic|Blue, and one of the features I've requested is Ogg support (it probably won't make it into this product, but it is a possibility). I'm not alone in wanting it either, my motion was seconded by another beta tester.
Re:what's it take to get a decent name?
on
lowercase music
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· Score: 1
I think one of the most interesting points made in the article was that it gets people to notice sounds that they otherwise would not. Also, a lot of the focus is on sound design... There's some interesting things there if you're an audio geek. I definitely wouldn't classify this as music to help you focus, it's way too distracting and requires too much concentration...
I have MP3s that I have purchased and even though I share music (mostly DJ mixes + live sets- stuff that isn't available elsewhere), I won't share the music that I've purchased. It's one thing to give away copies of something that you've recieved for free, and a totally different thing to give away copies of something that you've paid for.
Yeah, I've got an older Jornada, I bought it for about $250 or so when they discontinued the model (the thing's a freakin' brick so I hardly ever carry it around anymore). I've been looking into getting a new PDA for a while, and with this announcement, I'll probably wait 'till the new iPAQs come out (and either get one of them or one of the current models if the price is right).
As far as the form factors of the two, yes the Jornada did have mini-laptop types and fold-out models with keyboards. Kinda cool, but honestly, all but the palm-sized models are way too big to carry around in your pocket. If I'm going to have to carry something else, I might as well go for a full laptop that's got more functionality than any palm-sized out there (well, except for the OQO Pocket Computer)
I realize that there's nothing wrong with CF, but CF type I?! Come on now... CF type II has been around for quite a while, isn't much bigger than CF type I, and is much more functional.
Decision: The Compaq iPAQ(TM) Pocket PC, re-named the HP iPAQ Pocket PC, will be our smart handheld platform. The best of the current HP Jornada technology will be engineered into the platform. Jornada products will be phased out of the market in 2002."
Good to know that they were smart about their handheld lines and decided to stick with the iPAQ (not that there was really much doubt, but...). The iPAQs have been on the leading edge of things for a while now, if they would only integrate something more than SD (and *not* CF type I like the Jornadas had) into the unit...
I agree that the value of something isn't related to the production cost. I don't feel that the person who coded a piece of software that doesn't fill anyone's needs should be compensated for their time. I do feel however that if the application is being used by other people, the author deserves to recieve compensation for his work. Maybe I should have worded my argument more along these lines:
If it takes someone 5 hours to produce an application that 500 companies think is worth $5000 (because with their gains in productivity, they will make that money back within a month), why should he sell it for any less?
What I meant by my comment that time spent developing an app is valuable only holds if the app is being used by at least one person. What I said about minimum wage was meant to put time spent on development vs. revenue recieved into perspective. I realize that the minimum wage only applies if you're employed by someone.
Now, I realize that you're taking a risk by developing software on your own without the backing of a compay to pay your wages, but I also feel that there are applications that individuals are willing to code that companies aren't willing to put their time into. I think it's only fair that if the program gets use by people other than the coder, the effort that went into the programming deserves to be rewarded (unless of course the author of the program chooses to give it away).
Think about this for a minute. Time spend developing an app is valuable. That time should be compensated. The market for small shareware apps isn't huge, so the margins have to be if it's going to be profitable. If people feel that the product is worth $10, they will gladly pay for it. If a product that took 200 hours to develop only sells 100 copies that bring in $9 a piece, that's well below minimum wage here in the states. While I guess you could argue that said product was a failure if it only sold 100 copies, certain markets just aren't big enough to support hundreds of thousands of users. Do you consider Lamborghini a failure as a car company 'cause they only sell a few hundred cars a year?
I was browsing some resources for a project and stumbled across an ad for this "ENTERPRISE STORAGE STRATEGIES CONFERENCE & EXPO": http://www.imgevents.com/storage/index.html
November 28-29, 2001 - Boston Park Plaza, Boston, MA
Yeah, but what better way to prevent this sort of crap than to have a few high profile cases where the person commiting the fraud gets nailed hard with thousands of dollars in fines and a jail sentance?
"The other device will join the H3800 line of handhelds. In addition to 64 MB of RAM this high end device will feature a Secure-Digital slot and an active matrix screen that supports 65,536 colors. One feature of the high end device that really intrigues me is that this device is expected to feature voice-command and voice-control software. The possibility of using speech to control a PDA will be a great addition."
The 12-bit color is a slight turn-off, but the form factor of the ipaq has always killed the casiopeia, plus the ROM on the ipaq is upgradable (probably the biggest selling point for me as I have 2 pretty much obsolite CE 2.x devices).
Ripped from the BBC's site (it's struggling to load)-
Tuesday, 11 September, 2001, 12:12 GMT 13:12 UK
Iraq 'shoots down US plane'
Iraq claimed a similar "kill" last month
Iraq says it has shot down a US spy plane over the south of the country.
The official Iraqi News Agency (INA) said the plane was brought down near the port city of Basra.
(The spy plane) was used to provide the American enemy with information concerning our installations, vital sites and our air-defence formations
Iraqi official
"Iraqi anti-aircraft fire in the region of Basra on Tuesday brought down an American spy plane," INA reported.
Maj. Brett Morris, spokesman for a US-British military task force in the Persian Gulf, told the Associated Press the coalition force had lost an unmanned aircraft on Tuesday similar to a US spy plane lost last month.
INA said the plane was shot down at 1130 local time (0730 GMT) and wreckage from the "highly advanced" plane was being collected.
The news agency quoted an unnamed Iraqi Air Defence Command official as saying: "The plane was coming from Kuwaiti territory and it was used to provide the American enemy with information concerning our installations, vital sites and our air-defence formations."
Second plane shot down
If confirmed, it will be the second US spy plane shot down in Iraq in the past two weeks.
Iraq said its forces shot down an unmanned Predator plane in the Basra area, 560 kilometres (350 miles) south of Baghdad on 27 August.
The US Defense Department acknowledged losing a plane at that time but did not confirm the circumstances.
The United States and Britain frequently fly sorties over no-fly zones over north and south Iraq, imposed after the Gulf War.
Iraq refuses to recognise the legitimacy of the zones and has stepped up efforts to shoot down allied planes over the past few months.
Re:Like the radar gun, this is a good idea.
on
Remote Breathalyzer
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· Score: 1
In a perfect world that's how it would work. In reality, a cop on an ego-trip doesn't need to give you a breathalyzer before he knows you're drunk because his machine told him so. Police harassment and invasion of privacy are big deals to me.
Another case- I was on my way home from a club downtown with a friend of mine where we saw a show. Neither of us drank or did anything illegal, but a cop pulled us over and spent a good 10-15 minutes determining that no one in the car had been drinking, and gave my friend a ticket because he had a broken tail-light cover. It was a total case of profiling and harassment. A device like this would only worsen matters.
Re:Like the radar gun, this is a good idea.
on
Remote Breathalyzer
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
How is getting pulled over for something that's not your fault "not so bad"? I personally like to avoid the police as much as I can. Not because I've done anything wrong, but because there are some nasty cops out there who jump to conclusions way too quickly. All it takes is one power hungry-ego tripping cop to make for an extremely unpleasant experience. I understand that most police officers are there to help and are willing to give full assesment to a situation before proceeding, but I've been harassed for things that seemed illegal, but were perfectly legal. For instance- my sister was walking home from school one day and saw some traffic signals and street signs laying in a pile at a construction site. She asked the construction workers what they were going to do with the materials, and they said they were going to throw them away. She grabbed something and brought it back with her, but saw something else that was too big for her to carry at the time. Later, I took her by the site to get the sign, someone called the police on me, and next thing I know I have an officer at my door harassing me. Everything was legal, we got the sign in the middle of the day, etc. But this cop that showed up on my door didn't even ask for an explination. The first words out of his mouth were "Do you want to give those signs back?" I explained the situation very calmly several times to him, each time being accused of being a liar and a theif. Eventually he said "I'll investigate this" and I never heard from him again. The last thing I want is to be accused of drinking because I did a favor to a friend (and the rest of society) by driving someone who's drunk home.
Why not just install these on cars of known offenders? Make them breathe into a device that doesn't let the car start if they don't pass. I know these exist, but they're not used very much. I'd say one offence would be enough and the offender should pay the cost of the installation. There's absolutley no reason for car makers to install them on every car made. I personally wouldn't want to pay the extra $ for something that doesn't apply to me (as I don't drink). It's true that a system like that would be defeatable but that would take 2 stupid people (one being sober and stupid, which is a more rare condition than being drunk and stupid).
I personally think that the government shouldn't do a whole lot to prevent people from doing stupid things that harm themselves, but when their actions affect those around them it becomes a different story.
The storage area is the one place where the iPaq falls short (in my opinion). You can put a sleeve on it that has a CF slot, but the majority of the other CE devices have CF slots built in. If you really need/want to have a lot of data with you, you can get an IBM Microdrive (which come in 1GB, 500 MB and 340 MB sizes). Pop the drive in the CF slot and you've got way more storage any MP3 player in the same size category. Or if you want to be a bit more economical about it, there's always CF flash ram (I've got an 8meg and a 16meg, and I share them between my digital camera and my CE device). The 8meg came with my camera, and the 16meg was about $40...
As for game emulation on the PalmOS... Sound sucks, they're slow, the controls aren't ideal, etc... The PalmOS wasn't designed to be anything more than a PIM...
Sure Palm users can claim 1 month battery life, but how much are you using your device a day? Less than an hour I'd imagine (probably more like 20-30 minutes). If CE users used their devices that little, they could get very close to the same battery life on similar devices (don't even try and compare a black and white, palm V to a beautiful color iPaq). What people totally ignore when they give numbers like that is that it *DOESN'T MATTER!*. You drop your device in its cradle/docking station nightly and the batteries recharge while you sleep. The iPaq uses a Lithium Polymer battery and I've heard real-world battery life ranging from 3-6 hours (for intense, constant multi-media use) to 8-10 hours for PIM functions. In terms of usefulness, there are a lot of gimmicks on CE, but the PIM functionality matches (or excceds) the PalmOS (IMHO).
As far a form factor goes, the iPaq is the slickest looking, and one of the smallest (useful sized) device I've seen. It's only slightly bigger than the Palm V, but the screen is larger, there's a combo speaker/joy-pad on the front, etc...
Yup. That would be me. Of course I can't really complain as I picked up my 430se (16megs of memory, 133mhz SH3 processor, 12-bit color (they claimed it was 16-bit, but there's some limitation that limits it to 12-bit, and there was actually a lawsuit over it all...)) for $250 from Office Depot just as the Pocket PC devices were comming out. I'm stuck with 2.11 but I've still been quite happy with it. Hopefully I'll be getting a Compaq iPaq before long.
As much as I don't like about MS, I've been quite happy with WinCE. If all you want is a planner/organizer a palm will do the job, but if you want multimedia capability the CE devices blow the Palms away hands down. Just to scratch the surface, CE/Pocket PC devices can play MP3 files, video, wav, doom, record audio, emulate a gameboy, etc. If you don't want those features, don't use 'em, but they're available. If you want to do any of those things with a Palm device, you're gonna have to shell out extra cash for an add on module, or you might just be completely out of luck. The Compaq devices all store the OS in Flash-ROM, so you can upgrade/change OS/whatev. I'm sure that you could even run the PalmOS on it if you wanted (I know for a fact that there are emulators for the PalmOS that run within CE but haven't heard about anyone re-flashing an I-paq with the PalmOS)... My only real complaint about CE is that it slows/locks at random times... I'm using an older version (2.11 on an HP Jornada 430se), and from what I've heard 3.0 is quite a bit better. Regardless, it doesn't matter much, as what you're really paying for is the hardware. Now, I'm not really a fan of Compaq for PCs, but their pocket-pc devices are by far the best out there. The vast majority of the complaints I've heard about 'em is that the paint rubs off (which is a valid complaint, but rather petty in the scheme of things). If you absolutley loathe MS, just re-flash the ROM with Pocket Linux...
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I'm involved in a beta test of a new product from Sonic|Blue, and one of the features I've requested is Ogg support (it probably won't make it into this product, but it is a possibility). I'm not alone in wanting it either, my motion was seconded by another beta tester.
I think one of the most interesting points made in the article was that it gets people to notice sounds that they otherwise would not. Also, a lot of the focus is on sound design... There's some interesting things there if you're an audio geek. I definitely wouldn't classify this as music to help you focus, it's way too distracting and requires too much concentration...
I have MP3s that I have purchased and even though I share music (mostly DJ mixes + live sets- stuff that isn't available elsewhere), I won't share the music that I've purchased. It's one thing to give away copies of something that you've recieved for free, and a totally different thing to give away copies of something that you've paid for.
Yeah, I've got an older Jornada, I bought it for about $250 or so when they discontinued the model (the thing's a freakin' brick so I hardly ever carry it around anymore). I've been looking into getting a new PDA for a while, and with this announcement, I'll probably wait 'till the new iPAQs come out (and either get one of them or one of the current models if the price is right).
As far as the form factors of the two, yes the Jornada did have mini-laptop types and fold-out models with keyboards. Kinda cool, but honestly, all but the palm-sized models are way too big to carry around in your pocket. If I'm going to have to carry something else, I might as well go for a full laptop that's got more functionality than any palm-sized out there (well, except for the OQO Pocket Computer)
I realize that there's nothing wrong with CF, but CF type I?! Come on now... CF type II has been around for quite a while, isn't much bigger than CF type I, and is much more functional.
"Smart Handhelds
Decision: The Compaq iPAQ(TM) Pocket PC, re-named the HP iPAQ Pocket PC, will be our smart handheld platform. The best of the current HP Jornada technology will be engineered into the platform. Jornada products will be phased out of the market in 2002."
Good to know that they were smart about their handheld lines and decided to stick with the iPAQ (not that there was really much doubt, but...). The iPAQs have been on the leading edge of things for a while now, if they would only integrate something more than SD (and *not* CF type I like the Jornadas had) into the unit...
Then you must not have read the post at pocketnow. It's got a lithium-polymer battery that lets it run for 14 hours.
I agree that the value of something isn't related to the production cost. I don't feel that the person who coded a piece of software that doesn't fill anyone's needs should be compensated for their time. I do feel however that if the application is being used by other people, the author deserves to recieve compensation for his work. Maybe I should have worded my argument more along these lines:
If it takes someone 5 hours to produce an application that 500 companies think is worth $5000 (because with their gains in productivity, they will make that money back within a month), why should he sell it for any less?
What I meant by my comment that time spent developing an app is valuable only holds if the app is being used by at least one person. What I said about minimum wage was meant to put time spent on development vs. revenue recieved into perspective. I realize that the minimum wage only applies if you're employed by someone.
Now, I realize that you're taking a risk by developing software on your own without the backing of a compay to pay your wages, but I also feel that there are applications that individuals are willing to code that companies aren't willing to put their time into. I think it's only fair that if the program gets use by people other than the coder, the effort that went into the programming deserves to be rewarded (unless of course the author of the program chooses to give it away).
Think about this for a minute. Time spend developing an app is valuable. That time should be compensated. The market for small shareware apps isn't huge, so the margins have to be if it's going to be profitable. If people feel that the product is worth $10, they will gladly pay for it. If a product that took 200 hours to develop only sells 100 copies that bring in $9 a piece, that's well below minimum wage here in the states. While I guess you could argue that said product was a failure if it only sold 100 copies, certain markets just aren't big enough to support hundreds of thousands of users. Do you consider Lamborghini a failure as a car company 'cause they only sell a few hundred cars a year?
November 28-29, 2001 - Boston Park Plaza, Boston, MA
Also, Exabyte has the X200 Tape Library with:
Yeah, but what better way to prevent this sort of crap than to have a few high profile cases where the person commiting the fraud gets nailed hard with thousands of dollars in fines and a jail sentance?
What's next? Microsoft goes after Best Buy/Circuit City/CompUSA/etc. for violating their licenses?
Not exactly true (at least if what I've heard is correct)
9 -Compaq-Readying-New.html
http://www.wincecity.com/articles/2001/9/2001-9-1
"The other device will join the H3800 line of handhelds. In addition to 64 MB of RAM this high end device will feature a Secure-Digital slot and an active matrix screen that supports 65,536 colors. One feature of the high end device that really intrigues me is that this device is expected to feature voice-command and voice-control software. The possibility of using speech to control a PDA will be a great addition."
The 12-bit color is a slight turn-off, but the form factor of the ipaq has always killed the casiopeia, plus the ROM on the ipaq is upgradable (probably the biggest selling point for me as I have 2 pretty much obsolite CE 2.x devices).
Ripped from the BBC's site (it's struggling to load)-
Tuesday, 11 September, 2001, 12:12 GMT 13:12 UK
Iraq 'shoots down US plane'
Iraq claimed a similar "kill" last month
Iraq says it has shot down a US spy plane over the south of the country.
The official Iraqi News Agency (INA) said the plane was brought down near the port city of Basra.
(The spy plane) was used to provide the American enemy with information concerning our installations, vital sites and our air-defence formations
Iraqi official
"Iraqi anti-aircraft fire in the region of Basra on Tuesday brought down an American spy plane," INA reported.
Maj. Brett Morris, spokesman for a US-British military task force in the Persian Gulf, told the Associated Press the coalition force had lost an unmanned aircraft on Tuesday similar to a US spy plane lost last month.
INA said the plane was shot down at 1130 local time (0730 GMT) and wreckage from the "highly advanced" plane was being collected.
The news agency quoted an unnamed Iraqi Air Defence Command official as saying: "The plane was coming from Kuwaiti territory and it was used to provide the American enemy with information concerning our installations, vital sites and our air-defence formations."
Second plane shot down
If confirmed, it will be the second US spy plane shot down in Iraq in the past two weeks.
Iraq said its forces shot down an unmanned Predator plane in the Basra area, 560 kilometres (350 miles) south of Baghdad on 27 August.
The US Defense Department acknowledged losing a plane at that time but did not confirm the circumstances.
The United States and Britain frequently fly sorties over no-fly zones over north and south Iraq, imposed after the Gulf War.
Iraq refuses to recognise the legitimacy of the zones and has stepped up efforts to shoot down allied planes over the past few months.
In a perfect world that's how it would work. In reality, a cop on an ego-trip doesn't need to give you a breathalyzer before he knows you're drunk because his machine told him so. Police harassment and invasion of privacy are big deals to me.
Another case- I was on my way home from a club downtown with a friend of mine where we saw a show. Neither of us drank or did anything illegal, but a cop pulled us over and spent a good 10-15 minutes determining that no one in the car had been drinking, and gave my friend a ticket because he had a broken tail-light cover. It was a total case of profiling and harassment. A device like this would only worsen matters.
How is getting pulled over for something that's not your fault "not so bad"? I personally like to avoid the police as much as I can. Not because I've done anything wrong, but because there are some nasty cops out there who jump to conclusions way too quickly. All it takes is one power hungry-ego tripping cop to make for an extremely unpleasant experience. I understand that most police officers are there to help and are willing to give full assesment to a situation before proceeding, but I've been harassed for things that seemed illegal, but were perfectly legal. For instance- my sister was walking home from school one day and saw some traffic signals and street signs laying in a pile at a construction site. She asked the construction workers what they were going to do with the materials, and they said they were going to throw them away. She grabbed something and brought it back with her, but saw something else that was too big for her to carry at the time. Later, I took her by the site to get the sign, someone called the police on me, and next thing I know I have an officer at my door harassing me. Everything was legal, we got the sign in the middle of the day, etc. But this cop that showed up on my door didn't even ask for an explination. The first words out of his mouth were "Do you want to give those signs back?" I explained the situation very calmly several times to him, each time being accused of being a liar and a theif. Eventually he said "I'll investigate this" and I never heard from him again. The last thing I want is to be accused of drinking because I did a favor to a friend (and the rest of society) by driving someone who's drunk home.
Why not just install these on cars of known offenders? Make them breathe into a device that doesn't let the car start if they don't pass. I know these exist, but they're not used very much. I'd say one offence would be enough and the offender should pay the cost of the installation. There's absolutley no reason for car makers to install them on every car made. I personally wouldn't want to pay the extra $ for something that doesn't apply to me (as I don't drink). It's true that a system like that would be defeatable but that would take 2 stupid people (one being sober and stupid, which is a more rare condition than being drunk and stupid).
I personally think that the government shouldn't do a whole lot to prevent people from doing stupid things that harm themselves, but when their actions affect those around them it becomes a different story.
http://www.premierhazard.co.uk/sirent.html(Java version) http://www.premierhazard.co.uk/sirentnj.html> (non-Java version) The sounds are from Premier Hazard, a licensee of the sound.
The storage area is the one place where the iPaq falls short (in my opinion). You can put a sleeve on it that has a CF slot, but the majority of the other CE devices have CF slots built in. If you really need/want to have a lot of data with you, you can get an IBM Microdrive (which come in 1GB, 500 MB and 340 MB sizes). Pop the drive in the CF slot and you've got way more storage any MP3 player in the same size category. Or if you want to be a bit more economical about it, there's always CF flash ram (I've got an 8meg and a 16meg, and I share them between my digital camera and my CE device). The 8meg came with my camera, and the 16meg was about $40...
As for game emulation on the PalmOS... Sound sucks, they're slow, the controls aren't ideal, etc... The PalmOS wasn't designed to be anything more than a PIM...
Sure Palm users can claim 1 month battery life, but how much are you using your device a day? Less than an hour I'd imagine (probably more like 20-30 minutes). If CE users used their devices that little, they could get very close to the same battery life on similar devices (don't even try and compare a black and white, palm V to a beautiful color iPaq). What people totally ignore when they give numbers like that is that it *DOESN'T MATTER!*. You drop your device in its cradle/docking station nightly and the batteries recharge while you sleep. The iPaq uses a Lithium Polymer battery and I've heard real-world battery life ranging from 3-6 hours (for intense, constant multi-media use) to 8-10 hours for PIM functions. In terms of usefulness, there are a lot of gimmicks on CE, but the PIM functionality matches (or excceds) the PalmOS (IMHO).
As far a form factor goes, the iPaq is the slickest looking, and one of the smallest (useful sized) device I've seen. It's only slightly bigger than the Palm V, but the screen is larger, there's a combo speaker/joy-pad on the front, etc...
Yup. That would be me. Of course I can't really complain as I picked up my 430se (16megs of memory, 133mhz SH3 processor, 12-bit color (they claimed it was 16-bit, but there's some limitation that limits it to 12-bit, and there was actually a lawsuit over it all...)) for $250 from Office Depot just as the Pocket PC devices were comming out. I'm stuck with 2.11 but I've still been quite happy with it. Hopefully I'll be getting a Compaq iPaq before long.
As much as I don't like about MS, I've been quite happy with WinCE. If all you want is a planner/organizer a palm will do the job, but if you want multimedia capability the CE devices blow the Palms away hands down. Just to scratch the surface, CE/Pocket PC devices can play MP3 files, video, wav, doom, record audio, emulate a gameboy, etc. If you don't want those features, don't use 'em, but they're available. If you want to do any of those things with a Palm device, you're gonna have to shell out extra cash for an add on module, or you might just be completely out of luck. The Compaq devices all store the OS in Flash-ROM, so you can upgrade/change OS/whatev. I'm sure that you could even run the PalmOS on it if you wanted (I know for a fact that there are emulators for the PalmOS that run within CE but haven't heard about anyone re-flashing an I-paq with the PalmOS)... My only real complaint about CE is that it slows/locks at random times... I'm using an older version (2.11 on an HP Jornada 430se), and from what I've heard 3.0 is quite a bit better. Regardless, it doesn't matter much, as what you're really paying for is the hardware. Now, I'm not really a fan of Compaq for PCs, but their pocket-pc devices are by far the best out there. The vast majority of the complaints I've heard about 'em is that the paint rubs off (which is a valid complaint, but rather petty in the scheme of things). If you absolutley loathe MS, just re-flash the ROM with Pocket Linux...