I think only a few people will want their main computer to be running the home theatre. After all, the computer's main tasks are Internet, games and word processing.
However, more and more households get more than one computer. This way, the second computer (which is 'only' 450 MHz) can be running the stereo, the fridge, etc; while the gigahertz beast can use all its powers on the latest games.
Another option is buying new computers to run household equipment. What would you need? A slow processor wil do just fine, but a fast graphics card is nice for DVDs, and a good sound card is also essential. The hard drive can be very small, unless you plan to store lots of MP3s. The peripherals (monitor, keyboard,...) are unimportant, as the system can be remotely operated. (Perhaps even a stereo-like control panel will be developed.) These stripped-down computers will have to be silent and good-looking to fit into the living-room. (Well, anything could fit into my living-room, but that's another story.)
So, the pioneers start using old computers for running home theatres etc. To meet the demand, the industry then develops cheap PCs tuned for this very purpose. How's that for a prediction?
Until I upgraded my computer, I still had Windows 95 on it. When I replaced the 300 MHz K6-2 processor with a 450 MHz one, I was surprised to see that Windows did no longer run.
The problem was well-known; K6-2 processors of above 350 MHz were incompatible with Windows (or surely, it's the other way around?). A patch was available, but guess what? It only applied to Windows 95 release 2 or later. We poor souls still running the very first Windows 95 release were left in the dark.
After throwing out Windows, the following years were a happy multiboot-story of Linux, BeOS, FreeBSD and DR-DOS. Windows is not missed, other than the occasional urge to play Need for Speed again;-)
Wow, I just found out you can do that in Konqueror/KDE as well. Mighty cool!
There's got to be a market for it
on
Clockless Chips
·
· Score: 1
Intel tried this, and created a chip that was Pentium compatible, but ran three times faster than conventional processors, consuming half the power. It never made it out of the labs, though.
Now, imagine such a processor made today, and marketed towards geeks! It'll be the cool thing to have.
Nice points, but what did you mean by this: Versatility of an iPaq, batteries of a Palm (rechargeable is best)/em>
The Palms (and the Psion) use little power, that's why the batteries can last for months. And a PDA that can use standard AA/AAA batteries is a huge plus in my book, since I travel a lot. Of course I use rechargeable batteries, but when I sit on the boat/plane/bus/train and the batteries run out, I can just switch to a fresh set. When I'm abroad, I can buy batteries everywhere, but I can't plug in my charger everywhere.
What I've seen earlier on Linux PDAs is often something like 'Look, I can run xclock on this!'. People tend to forget that a PDA's interface is something entirely different than on a desktop.
Refreshing then, to see the well thought-out Qt/Embedded GUI on this one. And one of the images even shows an Opera icon! I've used Opera a long time on my Psion 5mx, and it blindingly fast (this nice PDA only has a 36 MHz processor). The recent announcement of Opera on Sharp's Linux PDA Zaurus is another plus point for Opera. Way to go!
Prior art? That would be the works of Sergei Produkin-Gorskii, who used filters to create colour images from B&W slides almost 100 years ago. As pointed out in the article, Slashdot has already covered this impressive merit.
Perhaps more interesting than the voice technology is the actual chip, which is able to store 8 bits in a single EEPROM cell instead of the usual 1 bit. This is achieved by a multi-voltage technique. 256 voltage levels of course give 8 bit capacity. Voila, the actual size of the chip is potentially reduced to an eight of conventional technology.
No. You can shoot more with digital. Get that? Digital is ahead TODAY in capacity. Also, with film, you have to worry about how many shots you've got before having to swap cartidges. With digital, you can go a lot longer before swapping memory cards.
Yes, you can store unlimited amounts of pictures, but you don't. The key point of Jayne West's degree is that the delete button is used far too often (and far too soon).
Oh please. I've got a consumer-grade digital camera that'll shoot over 1000 medium-res pictures without swapping storage. How long ago was this written?
And you think your average news paper editor will be happy with your medium resolution pictures? Lower resolution is nice for viewing on screen, but in print, you need much higher resolution. Until recent digital developments, digital photography simply couldn't compete with traditional film. Then you want to go back a couple of years just to more pictures in useless low quality?
Anyway, the point of the article is that photographers take over the editor's role. On-site, the photographer selects which pictures to send to the paper, which to store and which to delete. There are two bad things here:
The paper only gets the pictures the photographer thinks are good (but they get them faster than with conventional film, that is good).
Far fewer images are stored in the archive. With film, you store it all -- perhaps something will turn out useful many years later? If just the 'good' (in the photographer's subjective sense) images gets stored, you might miss out on a lot.
Of course there are advantages to digital photography, but don't forget that conventional film photography has advantages as well.
Nokia already has PDA based models, first the 9110 Communicator, later the Symbian (Psion/EPOC) based 9210 Communicator. Nokia works closely with Symbian on creating this kind of mobile PDAs.
Psion PDAs (from the Series 3 in 1991, maybe even the Organiser/Organiser from the 80s) used solid state disks. There were two variants, the RAM-based fast (and expensive) with a battery backup, and the flash based with more capacity at a lower price. Capacities ranged from 256 KB (or perhaps 128?) up to 8 MB, and each PDA could accomodate two disks, expanding the built-in memory of only 256 KB (later 512 KB -> 2 MB) Psion's SSDs were never used by other manufacturers, and with the Series 5 (1997), Psion went for the industry standard Compact Flash instead.
... and Psion hasn't? The original Psion Organiser (1984, regarded as the first PDA ever) had a sturdy design, and the Organiser II was/is widely used in tough environments. Later, the Psion HC (~1990) and Workabout (~1995) appeared. The Netpad is just the latest incarnation of Psion's long tradition of industrial PDAs.
The development of Psion's personal products is even more interesting, but Psion has unfortunately decided not to develop this product line further. Let's hope some other company takes up the glove and produces PDAs using Symbian's EPOC operating system(s).
The photographers' got this right: Nice, spacy backpacks with well thought-out solutions. The interior typically consists of walls fastened with velcro pads, to exactly accomodate your camera equipment (maybe 2 SLR bodies, 4-5 lenses, a flashgun and all kinds of extra gadgets).
And another important thing: Photographers' backbacks don't look expensive - they don't scream 'Steal me!'.
And of course much of the colour correction can be made with the projectors as well, varying light intensity and so on. I'd like to see how the pictures looked like in the original three-gun projector, though.
I do have a Russian camera myself, although it's 'much' newer: 1963... Very fun to use!
You'll be able to perform much of the same 'photoshopping' with the three light guns that forms the image. Varying the light levels will help achieve the right contrast and appearance.
However, it'd be very interesting to see how these images look using the original technique.
I mean to say that 10 years ago, such technology as to make a palm would be many times larger, but also very delicate likely.
Well, 10 years ago Psion launched the Series 3, the first of a long and successfull range of PDAs. The basic design was kept through the later 3a, 3c and 3mx models, the last appearing in 1998.
The Series 3 was a PDA with keyboard, equipped with lots of software, such as word processing, spreadsheet and programming. The Series 3a (1993) was a much improved model, and was almost unchanged until the 3mx of 1998.
In 1997, Psion launched the Series 5; a bit larger, but much more modern. In 1999, the Revo appeared, which again resembles the original Series 3. An overview of the history of the Psion PDAs can be seen at http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk/historyofpsion.htm.
Psion's story shows that making things smaller isn't necessarily a goal. PDAs today aren't any smaller than the PDAs of 1991, and that's because they would get almost unusable.
Have a look at the Organiser models at the same page - this is what a PDA looked like in the 80's.
(Unfortunately, Psion never really gained a foothold in the American market. They've got a large market share in Europe.)
Also, don't forget that the amount of mouse movement you use for gestures is equal or GREATER then the distance that you would move your mouse to click on an icon!
You never tried Opera, did you? The mouse movement required is minimal compared to going all the way to the top of the screen, clicking back, and then going back down to continue surfing.
Sure browsing with the keyboard is nice (and Opera is well-known for having great capabilities in this respect). But some people prefer the mouse, and what's wrong with providing easy mouse navigation as well?
Far from everything is on the net yet (nice rhyme!), especially not other things than computers and technical stuff. Geeks are used to find everything for free, but things don't work that way. Once you try to find info on non-computer stuff, all you find is amatuerish websites with little useful info. Try finding piano lessons or good darts tips. You'd be better off at your local library.
BIOS? Well, BeOS does this. There are two handy functions in the BeOS API:
int32 is_computer_on(void) Returns 1 if the computer is on. If the computer isn't on, the value returned by this function is undefined.
double is_computer_on_fire(void) Returns the temperature of the motherboard if the computer is currently on fire. If the computer isn't on fire, the function returns some other value.
Yeah, lots of cool stuff around. I'm concerned about the usability though, and there seems to be no (or very few) mentions about the specific needs of the PDA platform.
Linux on a PDA isn't all about squeezing the desktop environment into a tiny computer. I have a Psion 5mx myself, and I'm constantly amazed at all the nifty touches. The screen is fully utilized-the menu is for example only visible when you use it. When you don't, you sure don't want to throw away those pixels.
No open-source GUI I've seen addresses the PDA specific issues. Gnome or KDE on a PDA would require a lot of tweaking. Psion has 15 years of experience in making handhelds-how can Linux possibly catch up?
It's an honest question, I'd really like to see good Linux-based PDA GUIs, but until now it all seems too focused on the "cool" features.
Well, Linux needs a good user interface (although I don't believe it should bet all on one horse). Integrated system administration is also great and helps creating a consistent work environment.
However, Linux benefits greatly from the competition between the distros and between the GUIs. A nice, cross-distro administration interface would be much better than every distro creating its own variant. This is wishful thinking, but if such a project was started, don't you think it could succeed?
Slashdot Mirror
Oh no! The stereo crashed!
Blue Screen of Death three times during Titanic -- a sure way to make your girlfriend leave you.
Perhaps there are better alternatives than Windows for a system that's just supposed to be working 24/7? ;-)
I think only a few people will want their main computer to be running the home theatre. After all, the computer's main tasks are Internet, games and word processing.
However, more and more households get more than one computer. This way, the second computer (which is 'only' 450 MHz) can be running the stereo, the fridge, etc; while the gigahertz beast can use all its powers on the latest games.
Another option is buying new computers to run household equipment. What would you need? A slow processor wil do just fine, but a fast graphics card is nice for DVDs, and a good sound card is also essential. The hard drive can be very small, unless you plan to store lots of MP3s. The peripherals (monitor, keyboard, ...) are unimportant, as the system can be remotely operated. (Perhaps even a stereo-like control panel will be developed.) These stripped-down computers will have to be silent and good-looking to fit into the living-room. (Well, anything could fit into my living-room, but that's another story.)
So, the pioneers start using old computers for running home theatres etc. To meet the demand, the industry then develops cheap PCs tuned for this very purpose. How's that for a prediction?
Until I upgraded my computer, I still had Windows 95 on it. When I replaced the 300 MHz K6-2 processor with a 450 MHz one, I was surprised to see that Windows did no longer run.
The problem was well-known; K6-2 processors of above 350 MHz were incompatible with Windows (or surely, it's the other way around?). A patch was available, but guess what? It only applied to Windows 95 release 2 or later. We poor souls still running the very first Windows 95 release were left in the dark.
After throwing out Windows, the following years were a happy multiboot-story of Linux, BeOS, FreeBSD and DR-DOS. Windows is not missed, other than the occasional urge to play Need for Speed again;-)
Wow, I just found out you can do that in Konqueror/KDE as well. Mighty cool!
Intel tried this, and created a chip that was Pentium compatible, but ran three times faster than conventional processors, consuming half the power. It never made it out of the labs, though.
Now, imagine such a processor made today, and marketed towards geeks! It'll be the cool thing to have.
Nice points, but what did you mean by this: Versatility of an iPaq, batteries of a Palm (rechargeable is best)/em>
The Palms (and the Psion) use little power, that's why the batteries can last for months. And a PDA that can use standard AA/AAA batteries is a huge plus in my book, since I travel a lot. Of course I use rechargeable batteries, but when I sit on the boat/plane/bus/train and the batteries run out, I can just switch to a fresh set. When I'm abroad, I can buy batteries everywhere, but I can't plug in my charger everywhere.
Konqueror/Embedded should run quite nicely on this one. That wasn't too hard to port, I've heard.
Of course, it looks like the Yopy already has a very nice web browser, Opera (you see the icon?)
What I've seen earlier on Linux PDAs is often something like 'Look, I can run xclock on this!'. People tend to forget that a PDA's interface is something entirely different than on a desktop.
Refreshing then, to see the well thought-out Qt/Embedded GUI on this one. And one of the images even shows an Opera icon! I've used Opera a long time on my Psion 5mx, and it blindingly fast (this nice PDA only has a 36 MHz processor). The recent announcement of Opera on Sharp's Linux PDA Zaurus is another plus point for Opera. Way to go!
Prior art? That would be the works of Sergei Produkin-Gorskii, who used filters to create colour images from B&W slides almost 100 years ago. As pointed out in the article, Slashdot has already covered this impressive merit.
Perhaps more interesting than the voice technology is the actual chip, which is able to store 8 bits in a single EEPROM cell instead of the usual 1 bit. This is achieved by a multi-voltage technique. 256 voltage levels of course give 8 bit capacity. Voila, the actual size of the chip is potentially reduced to an eight of conventional technology.
No. You can shoot more with digital. Get that? Digital is ahead TODAY in capacity. Also, with film, you have to worry about how many shots you've got before having to swap cartidges. With digital, you can go a lot longer before swapping memory cards.
Yes, you can store unlimited amounts of pictures, but you don't. The key point of Jayne West's degree is that the delete button is used far too often (and far too soon).
Oh please. I've got a consumer-grade digital camera that'll shoot over 1000 medium-res pictures without swapping storage. How long ago was this written?
And you think your average news paper editor will be happy with your medium resolution pictures? Lower resolution is nice for viewing on screen, but in print, you need much higher resolution. Until recent digital developments, digital photography simply couldn't compete with traditional film. Then you want to go back a couple of years just to more pictures in useless low quality?
Anyway, the point of the article is that photographers take over the editor's role. On-site, the photographer selects which pictures to send to the paper, which to store and which to delete. There are two bad things here:
Of course there are advantages to digital photography, but don't forget that conventional film photography has advantages as well.
Nokia already has PDA based models, first the 9110 Communicator, later the Symbian (Psion/EPOC) based 9210 Communicator. Nokia works closely with Symbian on creating this kind of mobile PDAs.
Psion PDAs (from the Series 3 in 1991, maybe even the Organiser/Organiser from the 80s) used solid state disks. There were two variants, the RAM-based fast (and expensive) with a battery backup, and the flash based with more capacity at a lower price. Capacities ranged from 256 KB (or perhaps 128?) up to 8 MB, and each PDA could accomodate two disks, expanding the built-in memory of only 256 KB (later 512 KB -> 2 MB) Psion's SSDs were never used by other manufacturers, and with the Series 5 (1997), Psion went for the industry standard Compact Flash instead.
... and Psion hasn't? The original Psion Organiser (1984, regarded as the first PDA ever) had a sturdy design, and the Organiser II was/is widely used in tough environments. Later, the Psion HC (~1990) and Workabout (~1995) appeared. The Netpad is just the latest incarnation of Psion's long tradition of industrial PDAs.
The development of Psion's personal products is even more interesting, but Psion has unfortunately decided not to develop this product line further. Let's hope some other company takes up the glove and produces PDAs using Symbian's EPOC operating system(s).
The photographers' got this right: Nice, spacy backpacks with well thought-out solutions. The interior typically consists of walls fastened with velcro pads, to exactly accomodate your camera equipment (maybe 2 SLR bodies, 4-5 lenses, a flashgun and all kinds of extra gadgets).
And another important thing: Photographers' backbacks don't look expensive - they don't scream 'Steal me!'.
And of course much of the colour correction can be made with the projectors as well, varying light intensity and so on. I'd like to see how the pictures looked like in the original three-gun projector, though.
I do have a Russian camera myself, although it's 'much' newer: 1963... Very fun to use!
You'll be able to perform much of the same 'photoshopping' with the three light guns that forms the image. Varying the light levels will help achieve the right contrast and appearance.
However, it'd be very interesting to see how these images look using the original technique.
I mean to say that 10 years ago, such technology as to make a palm would be many times larger, but also very delicate likely.
Well, 10 years ago Psion launched the Series 3, the first of a long and successfull range of PDAs. The basic design was kept through the later 3a, 3c and 3mx models, the last appearing in 1998.
The Series 3 was a PDA with keyboard, equipped with lots of software, such as word processing, spreadsheet and programming. The Series 3a (1993) was a much improved model, and was almost unchanged until the 3mx of 1998.
In 1997, Psion launched the Series 5; a bit larger, but much more modern. In 1999, the Revo appeared, which again resembles the original Series 3. An overview of the history of the Psion PDAs can be seen at http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk/historyofpsion.htm.
Psion's story shows that making things smaller isn't necessarily a goal. PDAs today aren't any smaller than the PDAs of 1991, and that's because they would get almost unusable.
Have a look at the Organiser models at the same page - this is what a PDA looked like in the 80's.
(Unfortunately, Psion never really gained a foothold in the American market. They've got a large market share in Europe.)
You never tried Opera, did you? The mouse movement required is minimal compared to going all the way to the top of the screen, clicking back, and then going back down to continue surfing.
Sure browsing with the keyboard is nice (and Opera is well-known for having great capabilities in this respect). But some people prefer the mouse, and what's wrong with providing easy mouse navigation as well?
Far from everything is on the net yet (nice rhyme!), especially not other things than computers and technical stuff. Geeks are used to find everything for free, but things don't work that way. Once you try to find info on non-computer stuff, all you find is amatuerish websites with little useful info. Try finding piano lessons or good darts tips. You'd be better off at your local library.
BIOS? Well, BeOS does this. There are two handy functions in the BeOS API:
Returns 1 if the computer is on. If the computer isn't on, the value returned by this function is undefined.
Returns the temperature of the motherboard if the computer is currently on fire. If the computer isn't on fire, the function returns some other value.
You'll find the functions in the Be Book.
Yeah, lots of cool stuff around. I'm concerned about the usability though, and there seems to be no (or very few) mentions about the specific needs of the PDA platform.
Linux on a PDA isn't all about squeezing the desktop environment into a tiny computer. I have a Psion 5mx myself, and I'm constantly amazed at all the nifty touches. The screen is fully utilized-the menu is for example only visible when you use it. When you don't, you sure don't want to throw away those pixels.
No open-source GUI I've seen addresses the PDA specific issues. Gnome or KDE on a PDA would require a lot of tweaking. Psion has 15 years of experience in making handhelds-how can Linux possibly catch up?
It's an honest question, I'd really like to see good Linux-based PDA GUIs, but until now it all seems too focused on the "cool" features.
Well, Linux needs a good user interface (although I don't believe it should bet all on one horse). Integrated system administration is also great and helps creating a consistent work environment.
However, Linux benefits greatly from the competition between the distros and between the GUIs. A nice, cross-distro administration interface would be much better than every distro creating its own variant. This is wishful thinking, but if such a project was started, don't you think it could succeed?