No, I am not a solid state chemist, but I can read the part of the article that state "clear diamonds", as opposed to the part of the article that said "yellow diamonds."
If you are stating that the article is false and that there are no such things as "clear diamonds," then I, and the author, stand corrected. If this part of the article talks about "clear diamonds" produced by Apollo Diamond using the chemical vapor deposition method is not really talking about "clear diamonds," then I apoligize. My bad.
Read the article. You're nickel or iron information is only true for one method of production. The article states gas plasma produces perfect diamonds. The only flaw is that they are flawless. I would guess it would be trivial to create some flaws if people stopped buying them out of "too-pefect" complaints.
Re:mod parent up - nice explanation
on
Diamonds & the RIAA
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· Score: 0, Redundant
No, don't mod it up. They obviously didn't RTFA. They address every single one of those issues in the article.
Satellite transmission are a limited resource. They cost money to produce. Without being reimbursed for their service, the company would go out of business and then there is no service at all. You don't seem to find anything wrong with that, and that's fine, but I don't think having laws that are prohibitive of any kinds of services like these are logical. Sure, they meet some bizarre communist ideals, but the reality is that someone has to pay for the production, it can either be those that value the service and then purchase it, or we can just tax everyone for everything, whether they use it or not.
I doubt any of us are trying to change your opinion, we are just making sure that people with immature concepts of property rights aren't the only ones speaking.
How is a cell phone user not a subscriber? They pay for the service of receiving phone calls. If the tower blanket transmits to a cell phone users, it is broadcasting in all directions, but only the single paying subscriber can use that signal. It is exactly the same issue.
Let me setup a scenario for you then. If a river that feeds water to a major city, the only method of getting fresh water to the city, crosses your property, do you have the right to reroute all of the water to another area away from the city?
According to your model of property rights, any 'thing' that is on your property, you control all of it. It seems this would be a very short sighted view of propety rights.
Additionally, what if there was a oil deposit on your land that spanned across to another tract of land. Let's say you start to drill for oil, but a large company comes in a drill faster on the adjoining land. They then extract all of the oil before you can drill. According to your model, they are in the right, because they only took the oil that was on their property, they can't help it if the oil just keep filling in underneath their pumps.
I would think such a limited view of property rights might be nice to believe in but it would be completely impractical.
"I don't expect a comic book to win the Nobel prize in Literature."
Art Spiegelman's Maus has won the Pulitzer. I won't be suprised when others win some major awards too. Nor will I be suprised if Spirited Away wins an Oscar, it is quite deserving.
And Miyazaki in particular deals with very serious issues in most of his movies. Your statement that anime is just "films by geeks for geeks" shows how little of his works you've actually seen.
Well, I won't get into the ethics of debt here, but I will state that from an economic standpoint, the ability to borrow and lend is an economic advantage. Credit allows us to have a greater standard of living than if we paid cash for everything because we purchase things at today's prices, instead of the higher prices of tomorrow. If you save a dollar today, it's not worth as much tomorrow, if you borrow a dollar today, it's easier to pay off tomorrow.
The interesting thing is that I'm willing to guess that you keep money is an interest earning checking account and/or savings account. So, you're partaking in the 'credit game' from one side, but advocating that all other people don't take part in it. Seems slightly lop-sided to me.
"I know a lot about economics and your arguments are simplistic. We are going through a job loss that will wreck our economy. 17 million H1-B's have come to this country since 1990, millions of other jobs are being shipped offshore."
Yes, my arguments are simple. I don't deny that. I used the simple theory because it doesn't seem that there are many people here that understand that. If you'd like I can use advanced economic theory and further cloud the issue with fact. Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson? Stolper-Samuelson? Rybczynski? I'll get into these if you'd like, but it seems a bit of overkill. Besides, sure lots of jobs leave the country every year. But lots of jobs come into the country every year. And every year tons of jobs are created here. It is not my understanding that total jobs in the economy has declined yet.
"What about the gross inflation of the dollar that makes my wages 20x what they are in the 3rd world. What about the sweatshop conditions that exist in 3rd world countries."
That's neither here nor there. Items cost 20x here as what they do there. So wages 20x higher are needed. As jobs flow to foreign countries, the net wealth of their economy goes up and then goods begin to cost more there. In the end, they will catch up to us and then begin to have jobs flow to other countries that are behind them. In the end the flow of non-location specific jobs will tend to go where labor is cheap. But that doesn't negate the fact that we still will have jobs and some just won't be able to leave here.
"A couple does not equal 8 million."
Nor does 8 million equal the number of jobs created in the US. We create more jobs than we lose.
"I gave my job to charity, bullshit let them help themselves."
They are helping themselves. They offer the same product at a lower cost. Want to compete? Lower your price. If you can't afford to do that, then get out of the business. If you want to stay in business doing that, then you need to move where your costs are as low as theirs are.
"In the last two years we have lost millions of jobs, credit default is at an all time high, the stock market has lost 40% of its value with no end in sight. 40 billion dollar credit deficit that no one cares about. We are currently experiencing a wage and goods deflation."
And created millions of jobs. Yeah, the credit industry does suck. No end in sight? No ones cares about the deficit? I do. Deflation? Are you even literate?
"Have you been to Silicon Valley lately. Look who is at the free clinics. Yea former IT workers. this is exacty what will happen."
Well, of course it will, if you put all your eggs in one basket and have no other skills. Diversify my friend. An economy that relies solely on a tech sector is a risky venture, as the late 90's has taught us. But in the long run, everything balances out. Then again, in the long run, we're all dead.
Agian, please enroll in an economics course and take the time to learn the concepts. Even if they don't have an absolute advantage (costs less in $ to pay them), jobs will go to were the comparitive advantage is (costs less compared to other things in the economy).
The American economy is not going to collapse anytime soon from losing some tech jobs to India. America excels at certain fields and we are much better off focusing on those areas. If an American entrepeneur believes he can make more money in America hiring American workers to program code, he will. If he believes he can make more money hiring them to provide financial advice, he'll do that instead. If he believes that he can make the most money hiring them to make entertainment and media content, he'll do that.
There are no signs that America is going to collapse any time soon. Life may not be million dollar mansions and BMWs in every drive way, but I think indoor plumbing is here to stay.
As always, I'm amazed at how a website full of intelligent people misses some of the basic concepts of economics and the modern world. Take the time to learn comparitive advantage. It holds true so often that it's almost as reliable as gravity. If it's cheaper to do it elsewhere, they'll do it there. When it gets cheap to do it here, they'll do it here. It doesn't necessarily have to be cheaper in real dollars, but in a comparitive sense. Workers can make more money doing other things in the US, so they do.
If you actually look at the numbers for the economy, it is not doom and gloom, we're in a decent position. America is great at some things and not at others. Fine, let others do those things and we'll do our thing. So we lose a couple jobs here and there to foreign markets. Bonus for them, it helps out their under-priveledged populace. We add jobs in America at a rate that most nations in the world can only dream about.
I doubt that anytime soon we'll all be sitting in cardboard boxes, penniless, with no avaiable jobs and wondering why every job in America is overseas. It's just not going to happen.
I need to have you talk to my old Philosophy professors then. They had NO problem at all telling me I was wrong...all the time...about just about everything.
You know, after having been in college for WAY too long, I've had my share of both natural sci, social sci, liberal arts, performing arts and technical classes. I've seen grade inflation in *every* field and engineering is NOT exempt from this. This paper may not study that or come to that conclusion, but trust me, after explaining to third year engineering students how to use a Texas Instruments calculater, the grade inflation is apparent.
The thing that amazes me is that in almost every class I had that was a science field, at some point in time we had to explain the scientific method and how to write a research paper. How do you get into college and pass ANYTHING if you don't know those concepts?
Yeah, I tried that dock menu for iTunes for a bit, but I like just being able to glance at it without having to make any gestures to get information. I really like the 'tiny' iTunes window that uses only the three buttons and the track display. Having that in the corner of the window with information or the graphic equalizer is nice. Gotta admit, I'm a sucker for eye candy.
Hmm...how to explain my window usage. I tend to have between 6-10 windows open at any given time, ranging from page source, references, current work and entertainment. I also have an iChat window open, sometimes the iChat buddy list, a clock on the desktop, maybe a couple BBEdit windows and a terminal window.
Now, if I add another element to the desktop, say an iTunes window, I find that I sometimes want to shrink the browser windows some to squeeze the iTunes display into the lower left corner. With tabs, I can drag one window and all of my windows change size together. Without tabs...that's 6-10 seperate drags and window selections.
With the widescreen resolution of the TiBook (or sometimes TiBook with a second monitor spanned), I don't run fullscreen because it would waste a huge amount of space on the side of the screen. I like to be able to just look at the screen and view applications without having to maximize it or bring it to the front (eg. iTunes naming song, aClock time, iChat buddy list) When spanning monitors, not a problem, but with one screen it starts to get cluttered and tabs have provided me with a way of grouping things together to minimize that clutter.
I do like your idea that related to palettes in Photoshop. The ability to 'stack' is essentially all I really use tabs for. Additionally, the ability to grab all of a applications windows at once and resize would be great.
I think an interesting addition to this is the fact that while yes, tabs truncate the titles after the first four or five are opened, it is not the case that the titles become unrecognizable. I find that even with only the first three or four characters availble I can still identify each tab very quickly. I don't think in the year+ that I've been using tabs I've ever not been able to identify a tab.
Twirlip, had to give you some props. After our tabs discussion in a different thread I've really been paying attention to my usage of them. You were right about a couple of things.
I think that the 'window' menu option has some distinct advantages over tabs. Mainly, the target size for the mouse. By making the 'window' menu border the top of the screen, mousing to it is more accurate than a menu floating in the middle of the open window.
Also, the command-w conflict bugs me a lot now. I tended to use the 'close tab' button, so command-w didn't bother me, but after thinking about it, it's a serious conflict.
The point of resizing windows though is an interesting one. At 1280x854, full-screen is out, tabs are the way I've found to manage all the windows without having to resize/drag each individual window when I move a new object/window to the desktop. Resizing each individual window seems overly time consuming.
While I do agree that the window cycle achieves some functionality, it seems that it is likely that a user will have to click more than once to get to the window they want. With tabs, its one click away.
Anyway, not sure how to meld these battling worlds. Like you said, it seems like a window manager problem. If there were a way to enhance the 'window' menu to provide some of the functionality of tabs, I'm be much more in favor of that.
You can check out the Rollercoast Database to find out how Steel Force ranks. If you sort by height only in the US and only steel tracks, Steel Force is listed as the 21st highest. Admittedly, some of the taller coasters are not the same style. Both the Millenium Force and the Magnum at Cedar Point are taller, so CP has two coasters taller than Steel Force. But if you go with the only east coast, Steel Force gets beat by several coasters in New Jersey and Mass.
I have a high end CRT sitting here right next to my TiBook and the TiBook's LCD I find to be of more quality than the CRT. I run dual monitor all the time and I much prefer to use the LCD on the TiBook for work than the CRT. The CRT becomes tool bars, iTunes, iChat, a clock, and maybe a telnet window if I'm logged in to my email account.
Refresh rate is a concern with CRT's, high-end or not, especially with certain lighting scenarios. Like it or not, even the highest refresh rates will be apparent to some people's eyes; mine most importantly.
Twice too expensive still. I've held them and they're still not rugged enough for my taste. Plus, there's no Bluetooth built in, nor is there any way to include it via a SD card. Practically doesn't accomplish anything that I can't do with a $15 used Palm from 4 years ago.
I was one of the early adoptors of PDA's. My US Robotics Professional model served me well for many years. I upgraded to a Handspring Visor last year, but after many technical problems, I have since left the PDA world.
Here's why. The PDA market has gone in a direction that is completely wasteful in my world. Color screens? Why would I need to color me phone number list? mp3 support? That is what my iPod is for. While Bluetooth will be nice for sync-ing the information, almost all other 'connectivity' devices are too much.
Prices have gone from 'too high' to 'outrageous'. I just want a durable device that I can keep in my pocket, ease of data entry, well planned UI, and a game or two to pass time.
I don't need video editing. I don't need movie playback. I don't need web browsing. I don't need IM features. I don't need SD or PCI cards. I dont' need high res screens. I don't need 90% of the crap they are trying to sell me (yeah, sure, it would be nice, but for $400 you can get laptops these days off eBay that do more for less.)
With as much as tech has progresses in the last several years, a well built, basic planner with Bluetooth connectivity, decent memory, and relatively easy interface shouldn't cost more than $50-$75 bucks.
I'm honestly thinking of finding an old Palm/US Robotics/3Com Professional because it did everything I wanted (ok, no Bluetooth, but work with me here)
Stop trying to feed me my home entertainment system/computer/media center/gaming console in a cigarette pack size case. We're not there yet and that's not what I'm buying a PDA for. I want the PIM features without the bloat for cheap. That's it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but how many Libraries of Congress would fit in there?
No, I am not a solid state chemist, but I can read the part of the article that state "clear diamonds", as opposed to the part of the article that said "yellow diamonds." If you are stating that the article is false and that there are no such things as "clear diamonds," then I, and the author, stand corrected. If this part of the article talks about "clear diamonds" produced by Apollo Diamond using the chemical vapor deposition method is not really talking about "clear diamonds," then I apoligize. My bad.
Read the article. You're nickel or iron information is only true for one method of production. The article states gas plasma produces perfect diamonds. The only flaw is that they are flawless. I would guess it would be trivial to create some flaws if people stopped buying them out of "too-pefect" complaints.
No, don't mod it up. They obviously didn't RTFA. They address every single one of those issues in the article.
Damn, good thing I downloaded it yesterday. Fried my TiBook this weekend, had to reinstall everything. Guess in the nick of time too!
Satellite transmission are a limited resource. They cost money to produce. Without being reimbursed for their service, the company would go out of business and then there is no service at all. You don't seem to find anything wrong with that, and that's fine, but I don't think having laws that are prohibitive of any kinds of services like these are logical. Sure, they meet some bizarre communist ideals, but the reality is that someone has to pay for the production, it can either be those that value the service and then purchase it, or we can just tax everyone for everything, whether they use it or not.
I doubt any of us are trying to change your opinion, we are just making sure that people with immature concepts of property rights aren't the only ones speaking.
How is a cell phone user not a subscriber? They pay for the service of receiving phone calls. If the tower blanket transmits to a cell phone users, it is broadcasting in all directions, but only the single paying subscriber can use that signal. It is exactly the same issue.
Let me setup a scenario for you then. If a river that feeds water to a major city, the only method of getting fresh water to the city, crosses your property, do you have the right to reroute all of the water to another area away from the city?
According to your model of property rights, any 'thing' that is on your property, you control all of it. It seems this would be a very short sighted view of propety rights.
Additionally, what if there was a oil deposit on your land that spanned across to another tract of land. Let's say you start to drill for oil, but a large company comes in a drill faster on the adjoining land. They then extract all of the oil before you can drill. According to your model, they are in the right, because they only took the oil that was on their property, they can't help it if the oil just keep filling in underneath their pumps.
I would think such a limited view of property rights might be nice to believe in but it would be completely impractical.
Art Spiegelman's Maus has won the Pulitzer. I won't be suprised when others win some major awards too. Nor will I be suprised if Spirited Away wins an Oscar, it is quite deserving.
And Miyazaki in particular deals with very serious issues in most of his movies. Your statement that anime is just "films by geeks for geeks" shows how little of his works you've actually seen.
Well, I won't get into the ethics of debt here, but I will state that from an economic standpoint, the ability to borrow and lend is an economic advantage. Credit allows us to have a greater standard of living than if we paid cash for everything because we purchase things at today's prices, instead of the higher prices of tomorrow. If you save a dollar today, it's not worth as much tomorrow, if you borrow a dollar today, it's easier to pay off tomorrow. The interesting thing is that I'm willing to guess that you keep money is an interest earning checking account and/or savings account. So, you're partaking in the 'credit game' from one side, but advocating that all other people don't take part in it. Seems slightly lop-sided to me.
I'm not sure if you're being humorous or not, but that is one reason why we have no need to fear never having jobs.
"I know a lot about economics and your arguments are simplistic. We are going through a job loss that will wreck our economy. 17 million H1-B's have come to this country since 1990, millions of other jobs are being shipped offshore."
Yes, my arguments are simple. I don't deny that. I used the simple theory because it doesn't seem that there are many people here that understand that. If you'd like I can use advanced economic theory and further cloud the issue with fact. Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson? Stolper-Samuelson? Rybczynski? I'll get into these if you'd like, but it seems a bit of overkill. Besides, sure lots of jobs leave the country every year. But lots of jobs come into the country every year. And every year tons of jobs are created here. It is not my understanding that total jobs in the economy has declined yet.
"What about the gross inflation of the dollar that makes my wages 20x what they are in the 3rd world. What about the sweatshop conditions that exist in 3rd world countries."
That's neither here nor there. Items cost 20x here as what they do there. So wages 20x higher are needed. As jobs flow to foreign countries, the net wealth of their economy goes up and then goods begin to cost more there. In the end, they will catch up to us and then begin to have jobs flow to other countries that are behind them. In the end the flow of non-location specific jobs will tend to go where labor is cheap. But that doesn't negate the fact that we still will have jobs and some just won't be able to leave here.
"A couple does not equal 8 million."
Nor does 8 million equal the number of jobs created in the US. We create more jobs than we lose.
"I gave my job to charity, bullshit let them help themselves."
They are helping themselves. They offer the same product at a lower cost. Want to compete? Lower your price. If you can't afford to do that, then get out of the business. If you want to stay in business doing that, then you need to move where your costs are as low as theirs are.
"In the last two years we have lost millions of jobs, credit default is at an all time high, the stock market has lost 40% of its value with no end in sight. 40 billion dollar credit deficit that no one cares about. We are currently experiencing a wage and goods deflation."
And created millions of jobs. Yeah, the credit industry does suck. No end in sight? No ones cares about the deficit? I do. Deflation? Are you even literate?
"Have you been to Silicon Valley lately. Look who is at the free clinics. Yea former IT workers. this is exacty what will happen."
Well, of course it will, if you put all your eggs in one basket and have no other skills. Diversify my friend. An economy that relies solely on a tech sector is a risky venture, as the late 90's has taught us. But in the long run, everything balances out. Then again, in the long run, we're all dead.
Dear Anonymous Coward,
Agian, please enroll in an economics course and take the time to learn the concepts. Even if they don't have an absolute advantage (costs less in $ to pay them), jobs will go to were the comparitive advantage is (costs less compared to other things in the economy).
The American economy is not going to collapse anytime soon from losing some tech jobs to India. America excels at certain fields and we are much better off focusing on those areas. If an American entrepeneur believes he can make more money in America hiring American workers to program code, he will. If he believes he can make more money hiring them to provide financial advice, he'll do that instead. If he believes that he can make the most money hiring them to make entertainment and media content, he'll do that.
There are no signs that America is going to collapse any time soon. Life may not be million dollar mansions and BMWs in every drive way, but I think indoor plumbing is here to stay.
As always, I'm amazed at how a website full of intelligent people misses some of the basic concepts of economics and the modern world. Take the time to learn comparitive advantage. It holds true so often that it's almost as reliable as gravity. If it's cheaper to do it elsewhere, they'll do it there. When it gets cheap to do it here, they'll do it here. It doesn't necessarily have to be cheaper in real dollars, but in a comparitive sense. Workers can make more money doing other things in the US, so they do.
If you actually look at the numbers for the economy, it is not doom and gloom, we're in a decent position. America is great at some things and not at others. Fine, let others do those things and we'll do our thing. So we lose a couple jobs here and there to foreign markets. Bonus for them, it helps out their under-priveledged populace. We add jobs in America at a rate that most nations in the world can only dream about.
I doubt that anytime soon we'll all be sitting in cardboard boxes, penniless, with no avaiable jobs and wondering why every job in America is overseas. It's just not going to happen.
I need to have you talk to my old Philosophy professors then. They had NO problem at all telling me I was wrong...all the time...about just about everything.
You know, after having been in college for WAY too long, I've had my share of both natural sci, social sci, liberal arts, performing arts and technical classes. I've seen grade inflation in *every* field and engineering is NOT exempt from this. This paper may not study that or come to that conclusion, but trust me, after explaining to third year engineering students how to use a Texas Instruments calculater, the grade inflation is apparent.
The thing that amazes me is that in almost every class I had that was a science field, at some point in time we had to explain the scientific method and how to write a research paper. How do you get into college and pass ANYTHING if you don't know those concepts?
Yeah, I tried that dock menu for iTunes for a bit, but I like just being able to glance at it without having to make any gestures to get information. I really like the 'tiny' iTunes window that uses only the three buttons and the track display. Having that in the corner of the window with information or the graphic equalizer is nice. Gotta admit, I'm a sucker for eye candy.
Hmm...how to explain my window usage. I tend to have between 6-10 windows open at any given time, ranging from page source, references, current work and entertainment. I also have an iChat window open, sometimes the iChat buddy list, a clock on the desktop, maybe a couple BBEdit windows and a terminal window.
Now, if I add another element to the desktop, say an iTunes window, I find that I sometimes want to shrink the browser windows some to squeeze the iTunes display into the lower left corner. With tabs, I can drag one window and all of my windows change size together. Without tabs...that's 6-10 seperate drags and window selections.
With the widescreen resolution of the TiBook (or sometimes TiBook with a second monitor spanned), I don't run fullscreen because it would waste a huge amount of space on the side of the screen. I like to be able to just look at the screen and view applications without having to maximize it or bring it to the front (eg. iTunes naming song, aClock time, iChat buddy list) When spanning monitors, not a problem, but with one screen it starts to get cluttered and tabs have provided me with a way of grouping things together to minimize that clutter.
I do like your idea that related to palettes in Photoshop. The ability to 'stack' is essentially all I really use tabs for. Additionally, the ability to grab all of a applications windows at once and resize would be great.
I think an interesting addition to this is the fact that while yes, tabs truncate the titles after the first four or five are opened, it is not the case that the titles become unrecognizable. I find that even with only the first three or four characters availble I can still identify each tab very quickly. I don't think in the year+ that I've been using tabs I've ever not been able to identify a tab.
Twirlip, had to give you some props. After our tabs discussion in a different thread I've really been paying attention to my usage of them. You were right about a couple of things.
I think that the 'window' menu option has some distinct advantages over tabs. Mainly, the target size for the mouse. By making the 'window' menu border the top of the screen, mousing to it is more accurate than a menu floating in the middle of the open window.
Also, the command-w conflict bugs me a lot now. I tended to use the 'close tab' button, so command-w didn't bother me, but after thinking about it, it's a serious conflict.
The point of resizing windows though is an interesting one. At 1280x854, full-screen is out, tabs are the way I've found to manage all the windows without having to resize/drag each individual window when I move a new object/window to the desktop. Resizing each individual window seems overly time consuming.
While I do agree that the window cycle achieves some functionality, it seems that it is likely that a user will have to click more than once to get to the window they want. With tabs, its one click away.
Anyway, not sure how to meld these battling worlds. Like you said, it seems like a window manager problem. If there were a way to enhance the 'window' menu to provide some of the functionality of tabs, I'm be much more in favor of that.
You can check out the Rollercoast Database to find out how Steel Force ranks. If you sort by height only in the US and only steel tracks, Steel Force is listed as the 21st highest. Admittedly, some of the taller coasters are not the same style. Both the Millenium Force and the Magnum at Cedar Point are taller, so CP has two coasters taller than Steel Force. But if you go with the only east coast, Steel Force gets beat by several coasters in New Jersey and Mass.
I have a high end CRT sitting here right next to my TiBook and the TiBook's LCD I find to be of more quality than the CRT. I run dual monitor all the time and I much prefer to use the LCD on the TiBook for work than the CRT. The CRT becomes tool bars, iTunes, iChat, a clock, and maybe a telnet window if I'm logged in to my email account.
Refresh rate is a concern with CRT's, high-end or not, especially with certain lighting scenarios. Like it or not, even the highest refresh rates will be apparent to some people's eyes; mine most importantly.
Actually, no.
Twice too expensive still. I've held them and they're still not rugged enough for my taste. Plus, there's no Bluetooth built in, nor is there any way to include it via a SD card. Practically doesn't accomplish anything that I can't do with a $15 used Palm from 4 years ago.
I was one of the early adoptors of PDA's. My US Robotics Professional model served me well for many years. I upgraded to a Handspring Visor last year, but after many technical problems, I have since left the PDA world.
Here's why. The PDA market has gone in a direction that is completely wasteful in my world. Color screens? Why would I need to color me phone number list? mp3 support? That is what my iPod is for. While Bluetooth will be nice for sync-ing the information, almost all other 'connectivity' devices are too much.
Prices have gone from 'too high' to 'outrageous'. I just want a durable device that I can keep in my pocket, ease of data entry, well planned UI, and a game or two to pass time.
I don't need video editing. I don't need movie playback. I don't need web browsing. I don't need IM features. I don't need SD or PCI cards. I dont' need high res screens. I don't need 90% of the crap they are trying to sell me (yeah, sure, it would be nice, but for $400 you can get laptops these days off eBay that do more for less.)
With as much as tech has progresses in the last several years, a well built, basic planner with Bluetooth connectivity, decent memory, and relatively easy interface shouldn't cost more than $50-$75 bucks.
I'm honestly thinking of finding an old Palm/US Robotics/3Com Professional because it did everything I wanted (ok, no Bluetooth, but work with me here)
Stop trying to feed me my home entertainment system/computer/media center/gaming console in a cigarette pack size case. We're not there yet and that's not what I'm buying a PDA for. I want the PIM features without the bloat for cheap. That's it.