Then pity me, because I have a second-gen iPod with all of its horribly short eight hours of battery life.
And I still have all eight hours of its horribly short battery life.
There have been exactly two times since I've owned it -- over two years now -- that I've wished battery life were longer, and the main reason for those is that my DC/AC inverter in my car won't charge the iPod while it's playing without subjecting the stereo to a huge buzzing noise.
People are not typically away from a power source -- and listening to their iPod continuously -- for longer than eight hours (now 12-15 depending on model).
Here's a suggestion that you might find livable, and IIRC, iCab incorporates this into its bookmark engine...
Institute a bookmark checker (like the WDG's Link Valet) and when a bookmark comes back 404, flip a metadata status flag to "broken," and notify the user. Make it extra-smart and have it follow auto-redirects and set a metadata flag to "redirected" and fill in a field "redirected URL" and then prompt the user to set this URL as a new URL for that bookmark.
As I said, iCab does the former (at least somewhat), though the latter half is wishful thinking right now.:)
Camino (and maybe other Moz-based browsers, but Camino is the only one I use regularly) already does this, at least in part. The example you gave will get tossed to Google's search, which is in most cases sufficient to fix the typo with one click.
It won't, however -- nor do I think it should -- fix misspellings that are valid domain names. There's a big difference between whitehouse.com and whitehouse.gov, and by golly, when I want pr0n, I don't want to see Dubya because my browser assumed I meant the dot-gov site. Likewise for duat.com and duats.com -- two separate systems, one letter different. Etc.
I really like the way Camino does it, but there's certainly room for improvement.
The mini is too small (storage-wise) for me, but I'd love something about halfway between the Photo and the mini. Actually, I'd love a mini with a 20 GB drive or better, but that's not happening any time soon.
1) Eight hours (first-gen) to 12 hours (current) is hardly "poor." If it gets people through their day -- which it does -- it's good enough. Sure, only having to charge it every other day would be nicer, but MOST people simply don't need 12 hours of battery life.
2) Again, how many people -- Slashdotters excluded -- do you know who give a rat's asshole about Ogg or FLAC? Thought so.
3) No EQ? WTF? It has EQ. Did you not see the "EQ" part of the settings? Gapless playback I'll give you, though.
4) FM, eh, who cares? I haven't found a halfway decent FM station other than NPR in probably five years. Commercial radio in the US is atrocious. Voice recorder: here's a hint. Go to www.belkin.com and quit yer bitchin.
5) More expensive because the UI kicks the ass of everything else out there. And not all that much more, really -- we're talking $50-100 more for the most part, and on the low end, if you shop around, as little as $20-30. You get something for that, too. Besides the UI, you get a case (granted, not a great case, but most don't even include that).
Complain about its lack of "geek appeal" all you want, but several million of your fellow geeks -- along with several million others who aren't -- think your complaints are baseless. Like it or not, it's the millions of non-geeky people who form the majority of the market, and a player that provides features only one or two percent of the already-small "geek" market will use is never going to be an iPod killer.
Which is exactly what the grandparent was talking about in the first place.
No offence, but I don't think your new PDA is going to TRULY be the "new PDA" until someone starts offering them in the United States.
You *can't get* a P800/900/910 here on any sort of carrier plan. You can buy an unlocked one for about $800, but if I'm spending $800, I might as well buy three Treo 650s. Seriously. Until the price comes down a bit, it just isn't worth it, and that won't happen until US carriers start picking them up as subsidised (read: $299 with a contract) fones.
It annoys me as much as the next guy, because I really want one, and I would agree with you except that without the US market, calling *any* device "the next [big thing]" is a stretch at best.
What's the point of a "black hole" in the GPS system?
How big is this "black hole" going to be?
Inertial navigation has improved to the point that a well-designed missile could actually have a GPS map of where the black hole starts, calibrate its position in the inertial nav system immediately before hitting the black hole, and still be accurate to a target within the black hole within a few hundred feet, assuming the black hole wasn't too big. (Five hundred miles might be considered "too big.")
Five-hundred-mile "holes" in the GPS coverage around important targets -- and you just KNOW that when the government gets involved, ths stupidest things turn into "important targets" * -- would reduce the usability of GPS to near-zero. Heck, there wouldn't be any GPS coverage east of the Mississippi anywhere in North America, except maybe on the eastern shores of Hudson Bay.
It would be pointless to do such a thing, because technology is good enough that there are plenty of ways around it, and it would cause a lot more grief for innocent users of the system than it would save. If it really came down to it, methinks the US and EU would be better off shooting down each other's satellites.
* American pilots, you know what I'm talking about here. Permanent "T"FRs over Disney World? Little TFRs popping up out of nowhere any time there's a gathering of more than a couple thousand people? Imagine these turning into giant "black holes" in the GPS coverage.
Human pilots will NEVER be redundant until navigation gets a whole lot better.
Right now, the US is beginning the deployment of WAAS, a ground-based complement to the GPS system that will allow for precision approaches (though not, I'm told, with enough precision to use auto-land) to airports that are not otherwise served by precision approaches.
The EU is still in the talking-about-it stage, so claiming that the GPS system is inferior because of something it can't *currently* do is a load of crap. The EU's system can't *currently* do anything but make legislators run their mouths.
By the time the EU's system gets fully deployed and operational, the US will have WAAS operational across most of the US, making the two systems comparable.
Now, how is the EU going to make their system better? As far as I'm aware, the plan is for 24 satellites (plus a few backups), the same as the US system. This won't improve satellite availability (the receiver will still only be able to see six satellites at any one time, and will still need four to determine a position solution), and it won't improve outage prediction or compensation for such outages. Something tells me neither the FAA nor the JAA are going to allow either system *by itself* to auto-land aircraft without the aid of a WAAS-like system, and it's HIGHLY unlikely that the use of all 48 (both systems combined) satellites will be approved simply because of the possibility that someone's government is messing with the signal.
The enemy uses some technology you don't like, or don't want them to have, you attack the source of that technology.
It's just that now, you don't attack on the enemy's own territory, but rather you attack something in orbit.
So yeah, the US is perfectly within its rights to say "We'll shoot down satellites being used against our interests," and the EU has the exact same right.
The worst part is even the article summary here is almost exactly the same:
It's funny. Laugh. | Posted by simoniker on 5:37 Thursday 29 July 2004 from the horses-are-so-yesterday dept. Mirkon writes "The Register is carrying a story on an example of how technology is making sports better: Segway Polo. The San Francisco Bay Area Segway Enthusiasts Group has instructions on how to build a mallet (PDF), and a video clip of Segway Polo in action (MOV). A revolutionary device, indeed."
Compare to today's:
It's funny. Laugh. | Posted by timothy on 18:03 Saturday 11 December 2004 from the keeping-it-real dept. ctwxman writes "Sure you've got a Segway - now what? How about Segway Polo from the Bay Area Segway Enthusiasts Group? Yes, they do fall off from time-to-time, though they're getting better! Spectators are welcome for the two events each month in San Fransisco. Be there and be square."
IE on the Mac is a horrid, horrid abomination of a browser. The only worse browser features-wise is Opera.
IE for the Mac has several outstanding security issues (sorry, but I don't have current links) that will never be resolved because Microsoft has terminated development of IE. Good riddance, I say. It wasn't EVER a competitive browser on OS X, and it's hardly competitive on OS 9.
To answer your other question, well, yeah, Mac IE is less dangerous that Win IE because of its lower level of OS integration, but they're both still pretty crappy browsers compared to what else is out there.
Schuey still makes fewer mistakes than his competitors.
That's why he's on top of the podium every damn weekend, and they aren't.
It also proves that driver skill, not simply the engineering department at the manufacturer, is the ultimate and deciding factor in F1, just as it's (almost) always been.
I think this says that most of the drivers have reached a skill level where the only deciding factor in a race is the car.
Perhaps.
But that doesn't explain Valentino Rossi's success on two wheels, seemingly independent of manufacturer.
I suspect if Schuey were tossed into a competitor's ride, he'd *still* run away with the title. After all, Barrichello is driving essentially the exact same car, yet he doesn't win even half the races Schuey does. Nor would most other drivers in F1, if given the opportunity.
That right there is precisely why robots haven't taken over yet. They've yet to match the NI (as opposed to AI) of a human driver, and within the next 25 years, probably won't.
When motorsport becomes a question of which team hired the best programmers, it will cease to be interesting and popular.
I've seen that before, and I think it's highly entertaining, but one thing about it has always bothered me...
It has been proven that as little as one pound of dough can be used to suffocate a mouse.
Are there studies on this? Would it really take a whole POUND of bread dough to suffocate a mouse? I think I could probably accomplish it with as little as a tablespoon with sufficient motivation and some thick gloves...
Dunno if it's confined to the PPC/Mac OS 9 version of iCab -- I rather doubt it is -- but it definitely got hijacked on iCab 2.9.8 on Mac OS 9.2 on a beige G3.
(I woulda tested on the OS X box, but it's getting a new screen in Texas right now...)
If one or two greyed-out menu items in a whole application are disabled for vague reasons, this is NOT a primary factor inhibiting usability of computers.
Solving this minor "flaw" will require a lot of resources that could be better allocated elsewhere.
Not that Tog would know anything about where to better allocate them. I think this latest rant has proven beyond all doubt that he's simply talking to hear himself roar now.
It looks to me like this is precisely as you presume -- RSS/XML METAR feeds.
I glanced through the NOAA site but didn't see a forecast portion in either the RSS or XML for a randomly chosen airport.
And here I was hoping this would allow Meteorologist to finally divest itself of that horrid abomination of Weather.com data.:-\
Maybe partially...
Not that an RSS METAR feed would be entirely unwelcome to this pilot, though. Someone just needs to come up with a decent software product to wrap it in, and figure out how to push it to a cell fone...
Slashdot Mirror
You have a right to wear a party mask in public???
Not in Georgia, unless it's Halloween...
I think this is based on the KKK law mentioned by your other respondent.
p
No dice (0130 EST). Toss me an e-mail if you don't mind. ;)
p
For those of us who weren't reloading /. every 30 seconds during the few minutes it was up, could you maybe post a link to what used to be there? :)
TIA
p
Then pity me, because I have a second-gen iPod with all of its horribly short eight hours of battery life.
And I still have all eight hours of its horribly short battery life.
There have been exactly two times since I've owned it -- over two years now -- that I've wished battery life were longer, and the main reason for those is that my DC/AC inverter in my car won't charge the iPod while it's playing without subjecting the stereo to a huge buzzing noise.
People are not typically away from a power source -- and listening to their iPod continuously -- for longer than eight hours (now 12-15 depending on model).
Exception, meet Rule.
p
I applaud Real for working to give their customers the most choice
Are you also applauding Real's decision to bring their music store to the Macintosh and Linux platforms?
You know, in the name of choice.
p
Here's a suggestion that you might find livable, and IIRC, iCab incorporates this into its bookmark engine...
:)
Institute a bookmark checker (like the WDG's Link Valet) and when a bookmark comes back 404, flip a metadata status flag to "broken," and notify the user. Make it extra-smart and have it follow auto-redirects and set a metadata flag to "redirected" and fill in a field "redirected URL" and then prompt the user to set this URL as a new URL for that bookmark.
As I said, iCab does the former (at least somewhat), though the latter half is wishful thinking right now.
p
Camino (and maybe other Moz-based browsers, but Camino is the only one I use regularly) already does this, at least in part. The example you gave will get tossed to Google's search, which is in most cases sufficient to fix the typo with one click.
It won't, however -- nor do I think it should -- fix misspellings that are valid domain names. There's a big difference between whitehouse.com and whitehouse.gov, and by golly, when I want pr0n, I don't want to see Dubya because my browser assumed I meant the dot-gov site. Likewise for duat.com and duats.com -- two separate systems, one letter different. Etc.
I really like the way Camino does it, but there's certainly room for improvement.
p
iPod "mezzi," perhaps? :)
The mini is too small (storage-wise) for me, but I'd love something about halfway between the Photo and the mini. Actually, I'd love a mini with a 20 GB drive or better, but that's not happening any time soon.
p
1) Eight hours (first-gen) to 12 hours (current) is hardly "poor." If it gets people through their day -- which it does -- it's good enough. Sure, only having to charge it every other day would be nicer, but MOST people simply don't need 12 hours of battery life.
2) Again, how many people -- Slashdotters excluded -- do you know who give a rat's asshole about Ogg or FLAC? Thought so.
3) No EQ? WTF? It has EQ. Did you not see the "EQ" part of the settings? Gapless playback I'll give you, though.
4) FM, eh, who cares? I haven't found a halfway decent FM station other than NPR in probably five years. Commercial radio in the US is atrocious. Voice recorder: here's a hint. Go to www.belkin.com and quit yer bitchin.
5) More expensive because the UI kicks the ass of everything else out there. And not all that much more, really -- we're talking $50-100 more for the most part, and on the low end, if you shop around, as little as $20-30. You get something for that, too. Besides the UI, you get a case (granted, not a great case, but most don't even include that).
Complain about its lack of "geek appeal" all you want, but several million of your fellow geeks -- along with several million others who aren't -- think your complaints are baseless. Like it or not, it's the millions of non-geeky people who form the majority of the market, and a player that provides features only one or two percent of the already-small "geek" market will use is never going to be an iPod killer.
Which is exactly what the grandparent was talking about in the first place.
p
Sucks to be wrong, eh buddy?
p
No offence, but I don't think your new PDA is going to TRULY be the "new PDA" until someone starts offering them in the United States.
You *can't get* a P800/900/910 here on any sort of carrier plan. You can buy an unlocked one for about $800, but if I'm spending $800, I might as well buy three Treo 650s. Seriously. Until the price comes down a bit, it just isn't worth it, and that won't happen until US carriers start picking them up as subsidised (read: $299 with a contract) fones.
It annoys me as much as the next guy, because I really want one, and I would agree with you except that without the US market, calling *any* device "the next [big thing]" is a stretch at best.
p
Here's one to think about...
What's the point of a "black hole" in the GPS system?
How big is this "black hole" going to be?
Inertial navigation has improved to the point that a well-designed missile could actually have a GPS map of where the black hole starts, calibrate its position in the inertial nav system immediately before hitting the black hole, and still be accurate to a target within the black hole within a few hundred feet, assuming the black hole wasn't too big. (Five hundred miles might be considered "too big.")
Five-hundred-mile "holes" in the GPS coverage around important targets -- and you just KNOW that when the government gets involved, ths stupidest things turn into "important targets" * -- would reduce the usability of GPS to near-zero. Heck, there wouldn't be any GPS coverage east of the Mississippi anywhere in North America, except maybe on the eastern shores of Hudson Bay.
It would be pointless to do such a thing, because technology is good enough that there are plenty of ways around it, and it would cause a lot more grief for innocent users of the system than it would save. If it really came down to it, methinks the US and EU would be better off shooting down each other's satellites.
* American pilots, you know what I'm talking about here. Permanent "T"FRs over Disney World? Little TFRs popping up out of nowhere any time there's a gathering of more than a couple thousand people? Imagine these turning into giant "black holes" in the GPS coverage.
You're not a pilot, are you?
Human pilots will NEVER be redundant until navigation gets a whole lot better.
Right now, the US is beginning the deployment of WAAS, a ground-based complement to the GPS system that will allow for precision approaches (though not, I'm told, with enough precision to use auto-land) to airports that are not otherwise served by precision approaches.
The EU is still in the talking-about-it stage, so claiming that the GPS system is inferior because of something it can't *currently* do is a load of crap. The EU's system can't *currently* do anything but make legislators run their mouths.
By the time the EU's system gets fully deployed and operational, the US will have WAAS operational across most of the US, making the two systems comparable.
Now, how is the EU going to make their system better? As far as I'm aware, the plan is for 24 satellites (plus a few backups), the same as the US system. This won't improve satellite availability (the receiver will still only be able to see six satellites at any one time, and will still need four to determine a position solution), and it won't improve outage prediction or compensation for such outages. Something tells me neither the FAA nor the JAA are going to allow either system *by itself* to auto-land aircraft without the aid of a WAAS-like system, and it's HIGHLY unlikely that the use of all 48 (both systems combined) satellites will be approved simply because of the possibility that someone's government is messing with the signal.
p
Well, that's sort of the idea of war.
The enemy uses some technology you don't like, or don't want them to have, you attack the source of that technology.
It's just that now, you don't attack on the enemy's own territory, but rather you attack something in orbit.
So yeah, the US is perfectly within its rights to say "We'll shoot down satellites being used against our interests," and the EU has the exact same right.
p
You clearly haven't used the Mac version of Opera.
Go download it, and tell me I'm wrong.
p
Compare to today's:
Blah.
p
In a word, yes.
IE on the Mac is a horrid, horrid abomination of a browser. The only worse browser features-wise is Opera.
IE for the Mac has several outstanding security issues (sorry, but I don't have current links) that will never be resolved because Microsoft has terminated development of IE. Good riddance, I say. It wasn't EVER a competitive browser on OS X, and it's hardly competitive on OS 9.
To answer your other question, well, yeah, Mac IE is less dangerous that Win IE because of its lower level of OS integration, but they're both still pretty crappy browsers compared to what else is out there.
p
You've lost the important point...
Schuey still makes fewer mistakes than his competitors.
That's why he's on top of the podium every damn weekend, and they aren't.
It also proves that driver skill, not simply the engineering department at the manufacturer, is the ultimate and deciding factor in F1, just as it's (almost) always been.
p
I think this says that most of the drivers have reached a skill level where the only deciding factor in a race is the car.
Perhaps.
But that doesn't explain Valentino Rossi's success on two wheels, seemingly independent of manufacturer.
I suspect if Schuey were tossed into a competitor's ride, he'd *still* run away with the title. After all, Barrichello is driving essentially the exact same car, yet he doesn't win even half the races Schuey does. Nor would most other drivers in F1, if given the opportunity.
That right there is precisely why robots haven't taken over yet. They've yet to match the NI (as opposed to AI) of a human driver, and within the next 25 years, probably won't.
When motorsport becomes a question of which team hired the best programmers, it will cease to be interesting and popular.
p
I've seen that before, and I think it's highly entertaining, but one thing about it has always bothered me...
It has been proven that as little as one pound of dough can be used to suffocate a mouse.
Are there studies on this? Would it really take a whole POUND of bread dough to suffocate a mouse? I think I could probably accomplish it with as little as a tablespoon with sufficient motivation and some thick gloves...
Ah, the important questions in life.
p
You forgot one...
In Soviet Korea, grandmothers welcome our now-formerly AIM-using petrified Natalie Portman-naked-in-hot-grits overlords.
Or something.
p
Dunno if it's confined to the PPC/Mac OS 9 version of iCab -- I rather doubt it is -- but it definitely got hijacked on iCab 2.9.8 on Mac OS 9.2 on a beige G3.
(I woulda tested on the OS X box, but it's getting a new screen in Texas right now...)
p
You've managed to miss the point entirely.
If one or two greyed-out menu items in a whole application are disabled for vague reasons, this is NOT a primary factor inhibiting usability of computers.
Solving this minor "flaw" will require a lot of resources that could be better allocated elsewhere.
Not that Tog would know anything about where to better allocate them. I think this latest rant has proven beyond all doubt that he's simply talking to hear himself roar now.
p
Tape/glue a cow magnet to the inner surface of your chin fairing.
It should have about the same result.
p
It looks to me like this is precisely as you presume -- RSS/XML METAR feeds.
:-\
I glanced through the NOAA site but didn't see a forecast portion in either the RSS or XML for a randomly chosen airport.
And here I was hoping this would allow Meteorologist to finally divest itself of that horrid abomination of Weather.com data.
Maybe partially...
Not that an RSS METAR feed would be entirely unwelcome to this pilot, though. Someone just needs to come up with a decent software product to wrap it in, and figure out how to push it to a cell fone...
p