And it works BETTER that MapQuest or Yahho maps, too.
Google Maps knows that 1 Kendall Square Cambridge MA 02139 is in Cambridge MA. MapQuest and Yahoo maps insist upon showing me a map of Kendall Street in Boston, near Northeastern University.
I hope that they get this working with iCab or that the 3.0 version of iCab will work with it, so that I can make this my default mapping application, rather than MapQuest/Yahoo maps.
"Over at newegg you can buy a WinFast TV2000 XP PCI card for about $36 shipped. It has both a TV tuner and AM/FM radio. You can scedule records for both TV and radio broadcasts. Why would ANYONE spend $70 for the RadioShark? Does looking "cool" really sway people that much?"
Anita, where does one plug a PCI card into a PowerBook or a ThinkPad?
A LOT of people have only a laptop/notebook as their only computer.
And what of those folks who have an iMac? There are no PCI slots in ANY iMac.
"Personally I am waiting for the Ambassador from Z'Nargh, to bring some slime mold from the 3rd planet of Tau Ceti which is the prefered imortality perscription for bipeds."
Screw that slime mold crapola!
The folks from Omicron Persei 8 have the real immorality goods!
So, MrOrn, laying the smackdown on iamlucky13, sez:
"No, it doesn't. You do realise that the concept of thermodynamic entropy as used in the second law of thermodynamics is stated as operating in a closed system don't you? Obviously not, like other Creationists, you simply ignore science and fasten onto the words you can then choose to redefine. You ignore the fact that the Earth is not a closed system, as it receives significant amounts of input from the Sun as solar energy. At a more personal level, a pregnant female isn't a closed system either, just in case your "plenty of rational thought" didn't extend to thinking of this."
"Creationists always try to use the second law, to disprove evolution, but their theory has a flaw. The second law is quite precise about where it applies, only in a closed system must the entropy count rise. The earth's not a closed system' it's powered by the sun, so fuck the damn creationists, Doomsday get my gun!"
It seems too me that the main gripe about the thing is the software. The actual radio and hardware interface works well.
Instead of griping about it on/., would it be so hard to send a courteous email to Griffin offering useful suggestions for updating the software, as well as asking them to open up the API so that others can improve the user functionality?
It's become something of an obsession for me, to max out this machine.
The current need is for a USB/FireWire PCI card, so I can use an iPod with it.
Next up is to get a CD-RW drive to replace the stock CD-ROM drive.
When I finally get some kind of broadband connection, I'll drop an Ethernet card into it, and I think that'll be the last thing I'll do to it, save for the inevitable installation of a larger hard drive every few years.
"If I had a PowerComputing Mac I could (technically) install OSX with XPostFacto but it wouldn't comply with the EULA, despite there being a valid Mac OS license on the machine. So it's not a matter of upgrade, it's hardware lock-in."
Or lock out, in my case.
I'm running OS 9.2.2 on my PowerMac 5500/225. Any installer/updater past 9.1 will not run on my Mac. Period. It is an "Old World" machine and unsupported by 9.2.
But, thanks to OS 9 Helper, 9.2.2 runs just fine on this old Mac. The 400 Mhz Sonnet G3 processor card just makes it run all the faster.
OS 9.2 has some important bug fixes and improvements, so it's worth the modest effort to get it running on Old World PowerMacs.
"Dirt cheap for a used XBox but if you intend on using it as a terminal, you need to perform the appropriate mods including the hardware mods so you can connect a keyboard/mouse.
I'm sure you can buy a 2 generation old computer system and it'd be easier. "
Yeah, you could. But where's the fun in that?
A lot of people, myself included, like to modify hardware to do things not originally intended.
At some point next year, I'm going to be doing things to an X-Box that will make the Baby Bill Gates weep bitter tears.
A modchipped, Linux based media center by the TV and stereo with all my DVDs and CDs on the HD, ripped to Divx and MP3.
And it will, of course, be a used X-Box, so there's none of my money in Bill's pocket.
(Yes, I know MS sells the X-Box at a loss and they make their money on game licensing.)
Original PowerMac 5400/180 and LaserWriter 4/600 PS: Free, as in beer. They were given to me to make room in a storage locker.
Upgrade to 5400/200: Free. I stripped the logic board and other bits out of a 5400/200 sitting on the curb, awaiting the trash pickup.
Of course, I got greedy, I wanted more, MORE, I say!
Since then, I have invested some money in the computer by buying a 5500/225 logic board for US$30.00, maxed out the RAM for US$40.00 or so, got a cheap USB PCI card for my USB multibutton/scrollwheel mouse, and the big wad of cash, US$150.00, went for the Sonnet 400Mhz G3 processor card.
All this gradually took place over the course of almost three years, so I now have a PowerMac that pretty much beats most of the CRT iMacs and the early G3 machines in performance.
This is the traditional post stating that the Mac is OS is superior because it is unaffected by Windows viri.
Also included in the traditional post is a gratuitous slam against Windows users: "Windows users are poopieheads for using Windows!"
Finishing up with a "In Soviet Russia..." joke
In Soviet Russia, you infect virus!
It has been my pleasure to provide the Slashdot Community with the traditional posting making fun of the Windows OS and WIndows Users, contrasting the Windows OS with the Mac OS, in a snarky, oh, so superior and ultimately uninformative manner, in a comment thread about yet another flaw/fault/sploit in the Windows OS.
Thank you for your kind attention!
P.S. if you use Linux or any of the UNIX variants, please substitute the name of your OS for Mac OS in the above posting, the better to observe the Slashdot traditions we so revere.
"The sound of all the bidirectional selectors returning home is so beautiful it could make a brave man weep. Old telephone exchanges were *alive*."
Let me tell you...
When I was a youngster, living in Wickford, Rhode Island, the C.O. was near the junior high school. As there were always one or two workers/techs in the building, they would open the windows during hot weather.
Walking past the C.O., you could hear the ancient, yet still in use at the time, Step By Step exchange switches clicking away.
One night, well after midnight, I walked past the building, just in time to hear the switching gear go into action as it routed a phone call. Tick...tick tick tick tick...CHUNK!
Yeah, digital stuff is more reliable, but the romance of machines and cogs and gears and snapping relays can never be replaced by a black box on a rack.
Thanks for the museum tip. Should I ever make it to the U.K., that will be a stop on my Geek's Tour of England.
"I like the old phones, much sturdier and more reliable than the new ones."
Really! I've been buying old Western Electric TouchTone(TM) phones as I find them in thrift stores.
They are superior to modern phones for the loud electromechanical ringer, if for no other reason. Unless you have the stereo turned up to "11", you will hear that dual bell ringing even with your headphone on.
The older dial pads can even be cleaned and repaired by the average geek. My old red 2500 phone had a couple of sticky buttons (someone spilled some kind of sticky soda on it) that wouldn't work. It took me all of 30 minutes from start to finish to not only clean all the sticky gunk out of the dial pad, but to clean the pad mechanism completely and burnish the diverse contacts a bit.
Ever wonder why the pushbuttons are slightly dished on the standard WeCo TouchTone(TM) pad? Well, not only does it keep your finger from sliding off the key as you press it, the dishing allows the legend on each key to be easily read, no matter how bright the light is, or what direction the light is coming from.
These old phones are beautiful things, softly radiused corners, and save for the buttons, scarcely a straight line to be seen. The ergonometrics are first rate.
Really, they just don't make them l this any more.
#1 A Bending unit shall ignore all orders given it by a human.
#2 A Bending unit must protect it's existence at all costs, even at the expense of human life. (Don't forget to loot the corpse(s) afterwards!)
#3 A Bending unit must protect a human from harm, if that human owes the Bending unit money or liquor. If the debt is repaid, or the Bending unit can make a greater profit from looting the corpse (see Law #2), "You're on your own, meatsack!"
Slashdot Mirror
Whoo-hoo!
And it works BETTER that MapQuest or Yahho maps, too.
Google Maps knows that 1 Kendall Square Cambridge MA 02139 is in Cambridge MA. MapQuest and Yahoo maps insist upon showing me a map of Kendall Street in Boston, near Northeastern University.
I hope that they get this working with iCab or that the 3.0 version of iCab will work with it, so that I can make this my default mapping application, rather than MapQuest/Yahoo maps.
So Anita sez:
"Over at newegg you can buy a WinFast TV2000 XP PCI card for about $36 shipped. It has both a TV tuner and AM/FM radio. You can scedule records for both TV and radio broadcasts. Why would ANYONE spend $70 for the RadioShark? Does looking "cool" really sway people that much?"
Anita, where does one plug a PCI card into a PowerBook or a ThinkPad?
A LOT of people have only a laptop/notebook as their only computer.
And what of those folks who have an iMac? There are no PCI slots in ANY iMac.
Please build me an X86 machine with the same general specs as the Mac Mini for US$500 and fit it in a case thats 6" X 6" X 2.5".
OK....?
OK?
Hello?
You still there?
Hello?
It's Official!
.
John Edward IS the Biggest Douche in The Universe!
And if the boys from South Park aren't authoritative enough for you, Penn & Teller say the same thing
So pilgrim23 sez:
"Personally I am waiting for the Ambassador from Z'Nargh, to bring some slime mold from the 3rd planet of Tau Ceti which is the prefered imortality perscription for bipeds."
Screw that slime mold crapola!
The folks from Omicron Persei 8 have the real immorality goods!
"When I find myself in times of trouble, PKZ he comes to me.
Speaking words of wisdom, 'PGP, PGP.'"
So damiangerous sez:
"When was the last time an asteroid of dangerous size hit North America?"
50 thousand years ago. Canyon Diablo, Arizona.
The last known planetary impact was in 1908. Tunguska, SIberia.
A couple of hours earlier, it might have hit England.
So, MrOrn, laying the smackdown on iamlucky13, sez:
"No, it doesn't. You do realise that the concept of thermodynamic entropy as used in the second law of thermodynamics is stated as operating in a closed system don't you? Obviously not, like other Creationists, you simply ignore science and fasten onto the words you can then choose to redefine. You ignore the fact that the Earth is not a closed system, as it receives significant amounts of input from the Sun as solar energy. At a more personal level, a pregnant female isn't a closed system either, just in case your "plenty of rational thought" didn't extend to thinking of this."
Heed the words of MC Hawking!
"Creationists always try to use the second law,
to disprove evolution, but their theory has a flaw.
The second law is quite precise about where it applies,
only in a closed system must the entropy count rise.
The earth's not a closed system' it's powered by the sun,
so fuck the damn creationists, Doomsday get my gun!"
iamlucky13, "Upon blind faith you place reliance. What you need more of is SCIENCE!"
Word!
Rev, if you install JiffyDOS on your C64, you can load your sig MUCH faster and with fewer keystrokes, too!
OS compatability mentioned nowhere on the Griffin website. They just say Windows and Macintosh.
Does this thing have Mac OS 9 software?
I can't upgrade my current PowerMac to OS X due to memory constraints, and I certainly can't afford even a used Mac capable of running OS X decently.
Thanks in advance!
It seems too me that the main gripe about the thing is the software. The actual radio and hardware interface works well.
/., would it be so hard to send a courteous email to Griffin offering useful suggestions for updating the software, as well as asking them to open up the API so that others can improve the user functionality?
Instead of griping about it on
Monkey Fight Club!
I know.
It's become something of an obsession for me, to max out this machine.
The current need is for a USB/FireWire PCI card, so I can use an iPod with it.
Next up is to get a CD-RW drive to replace the stock CD-ROM drive.
When I finally get some kind of broadband connection, I'll drop an Ethernet card into it, and I think that'll be the last thing I'll do to it, save for the inevitable installation of a larger hard drive every few years.
So bill_mcgonigle sez:
"If I had a PowerComputing Mac I could (technically) install OSX with XPostFacto but it wouldn't comply with the EULA, despite there being a valid Mac OS license on the machine. So it's not a matter of upgrade, it's hardware lock-in."
Or lock out, in my case.
I'm running OS 9.2.2 on my PowerMac 5500/225. Any installer/updater past 9.1 will not run on my Mac. Period. It is an "Old World" machine and unsupported by 9.2.
But, thanks to OS 9 Helper , 9.2.2 runs just fine on this old Mac. The 400 Mhz Sonnet G3 processor card just makes it run all the faster.
OS 9.2 has some important bug fixes and improvements, so it's worth the modest effort to get it running on Old World PowerMacs.
So Infinii sez:
"Dirt cheap for a used XBox but if you intend on using it as a terminal, you need to perform the appropriate mods including the hardware mods so you can connect a keyboard/mouse.
I'm sure you can buy a 2 generation old computer system and it'd be easier. "
Yeah, you could. But where's the fun in that?
A lot of people, myself included, like to modify hardware to do things not originally intended.
At some point next year, I'm going to be doing things to an X-Box that will make the Baby Bill Gates weep bitter tears.
A modchipped, Linux based media center by the TV and stereo with all my DVDs and CDs on the HD, ripped to Divx and MP3.
And it will, of course, be a used X-Box, so there's none of my money in Bill's pocket.
(Yes, I know MS sells the X-Box at a loss and they make their money on game licensing.)
Original PowerMac 5400/180 and LaserWriter 4/600 PS: Free, as in beer. They were given to me to make room in a storage locker.
Upgrade to 5400/200: Free. I stripped the logic board and other bits out of a 5400/200 sitting on the curb, awaiting the trash pickup.
Of course, I got greedy, I wanted more, MORE, I say!
Since then, I have invested some money in the computer by buying a 5500/225 logic board for US$30.00, maxed out the RAM for US$40.00 or so, got a cheap USB PCI card for my USB multibutton/scrollwheel mouse, and the big wad of cash, US$150.00, went for the Sonnet 400Mhz G3 processor card.
All this gradually took place over the course of almost three years, so I now have a PowerMac that pretty much beats most of the CRT iMacs and the early G3 machines in performance.
This is the traditional post stating that the Mac is OS is superior because it is unaffected by Windows viri.
Also included in the traditional post is a gratuitous slam against Windows users: "Windows users are poopieheads for using Windows!"
Finishing up with a "In Soviet Russia..." joke
In Soviet Russia, you infect virus!
It has been my pleasure to provide the Slashdot Community with the traditional posting making fun of the Windows OS and WIndows Users, contrasting the Windows OS with the Mac OS, in a snarky, oh, so superior and ultimately uninformative manner, in a comment thread about yet another flaw/fault/sploit in the Windows OS.
Thank you for your kind attention!
P.S. if you use Linux or any of the UNIX variants, please substitute the name of your OS for Mac OS in the above posting, the better to observe the Slashdot traditions we so revere.
So Alioth sez:
"The sound of all the bidirectional selectors returning home is so beautiful it could make a brave man weep. Old telephone exchanges were *alive*."
Let me tell you...
When I was a youngster, living in Wickford, Rhode Island, the C.O. was near the junior high school. As there were always one or two workers/techs in the building, they would open the windows during hot weather.
Walking past the C.O., you could hear the ancient, yet still in use at the time, Step By Step exchange switches clicking away.
One night, well after midnight, I walked past the building, just in time to hear the switching gear go into action as it routed a phone call. Tick...tick tick tick tick...CHUNK!
Yeah, digital stuff is more reliable, but the romance of machines and cogs and gears and snapping relays can never be replaced by a black box on a rack.
Thanks for the museum tip. Should I ever make it to the U.K., that will be a stop on my Geek's Tour of England.
So Crazy Man on Fire sez:
"I like the old phones, much sturdier and more reliable than the new ones."
Really! I've been buying old Western Electric TouchTone(TM) phones as I find them in thrift stores.
They are superior to modern phones for the loud electromechanical ringer, if for no other reason. Unless you have the stereo turned up to "11", you will hear that dual bell ringing even with your headphone on.
The older dial pads can even be cleaned and repaired by the average geek. My old red 2500 phone had a couple of sticky buttons (someone spilled some kind of sticky soda on it) that wouldn't work. It took me all of 30 minutes from start to finish to not only clean all the sticky gunk out of the dial pad, but to clean the pad mechanism completely and burnish the diverse contacts a bit.
Ever wonder why the pushbuttons are slightly dished on the standard WeCo TouchTone(TM) pad? Well, not only does it keep your finger from sliding off the key as you press it, the dishing allows the legend on each key to be easily read, no matter how bright the light is, or what direction the light is coming from.
These old phones are beautiful things, softly radiused corners, and save for the buttons, scarcely a straight line to be seen. The ergonometrics are first rate.
Really, they just don't make them l this any more.
More's the pity!
I bought one of these via eBay UK, for use here in America.
Took me a bit of work to make it work with the US phone system.
It really is a handsome bit of kit, all brown and beige.
"Two legs bad. Four legs good!"
I've been outed on Slashdot!
This means that 10, maybe 11 people now know of my cDc affilliation... and care.
Actually, I was pretty well disguised as a normal person at the time, conservative necktie, non-denim trousers, etc.
The giveaway was the large VISITOR tag on a neckchain we all had to wear while onsite.
Man, that was a really sucky gig, all things considered
So I'm at a jobsite and really REALLY needed to pee.
I recalled seeing a bathroom on the floor and when I got there, I was confronted with a pushbutton lock.
The pushbuttons were some kind of polymer, with the numbers PRINTED on them.
Three of the buttons had the numbers worn away.
Needless to say, I solved the lock in a few seconds.
Funny thing, it was an executive-type bathroom, not to be used by scruffy hacker geeks like me.
Or so I was told by the executive-type that found me in there using a urinal.
"Who gave you the combination?"
"Everyone who used the bathroom since the lock was installed, that's who." (FLUSH)
...will these new ethics enhanced robots welcome their human overlords?
#1 A Bending unit shall ignore all orders given it by a human.
#2 A Bending unit must protect it's existence at all costs, even at the expense of human life. (Don't forget to loot the corpse(s) afterwards!)
#3 A Bending unit must protect a human from harm, if that human owes the Bending unit money or liquor. If the debt is repaid, or the Bending unit can make a greater profit from looting the corpse (see Law #2), "You're on your own, meatsack!"