Get the PIM software right first!
on
Zaurus SL-C860 Review
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· Score: 2, Informative
I've said it before on Slashdot, and I'll say it again: Sharp absolutely, positively needs to have Palm-quality, easily-syncable PIM software on its products before I, a eight-year 100% Linux-at-home user, will buy one to use as my primary PDA. The lack of same is the main reason why I chose to go for a Sony Clie UX50 as my fourth Palm OS PDA in seven years.
My Clie has, thanks to Palm OS's consistent data formats, the entirety of my life for those seven years--college, my first job, and now my second, in two places 2,500 miles apart--within it. I'd have happily migrated the data over to Sharp if the software was equivalent. But it isn't, and so I didn't.
Judd Montgomery has complained on the jpilot (NB - the terrific GPL Palm Desktop replacement I use to sync my PDA with my Linux box) mailing list that he's asked Sharp USA more than once for development units with no success. This is a disgrace.
. . . About six months ago I managed to get a 212 area code number through Vonage, the VoIP provider that Slashdot has covered several times. How did I do it? Persistence; I checked the Web site several tiimes a day until 212 appeared as an area code choice for changing your number to.
Non-New Yorkers likely will have a hard time understanding the importance of having a 212 number (though there's a Seinfeld episode that features the idea) over 646. I'm not even living in Nu Yawk right now, but it's nice to know the 212 number will be available for when I head back home.
Jpilot is the answer. Not only is it a near-perfect replacement for the Palm Desktop, thanks to the pilot-link backend it can do things the latter can't, including synching over Wi-Fi.
I presume that you have a Series 1 TiVo given the 9thtee card. So do I, but since I don't need anything more than daily updates, I use a serial cable to hook mine up to my Linux box (Windows boxes work too). Not bad for $5.
First began using Gopher in 1993. By 1995, the Web had taken over and Gopher was pretty much obsolete. However, Columbia's ColumbiaNet intranet system, obviously based on Gopher, didn't convert to a Web-based system until 1998 or so. So I can say I last used Gopher then.
Back when I depended on a dialup connection, I used xringd. By having the phone line the modem was on ring in a certain pattern, I could command the computer to dial up (using diald). Then a line in/etc/ppp/ip-up.local would mail me the IP address the PPP server assigned the computer (this was before DynIP or DynDNS). I'd then be able to log into the machine. Pretty darn cool for 1996.
While my Netgear MR114 wired router is telnetable (and ftpable, for that matter), my newer WGR614 (which I use as a mere access point to the MR114) is not, alas. That's a pity because the MR114 telnet access allows much more flexible access to the router's settings.
Get a laptop that can do both Bluetooth (either built in, like most PowerBooks, or with a small dongle) and Wi-Fi. Then get a T-Mobile cell phone service and a Bluetooth-enabled phone. Any T-Mobile voice plan of $40 or more comes with free T-Zones access, which gives untimed, unlimited access to ports 80, 110, and 143. If you need ssh and can't tell the daemon to listen to one of those ports, get the $19.99 Unlimited Internet option that gives complete access to all ports. Either way, you get roughly 33.6K dialup modem speeds; not great, but it's accessible anywhere you have GSM phone service and it's free or fabulously cheap compared to other cell providers' networks.
As others have pointed out, this isn't exactly earthshaking news. Now, if people exposed to the meteorite gained the ability to fly or shoot heat rays out of their eyes, that's different.
A couple of months ago I was agonizing over whether to buy a C760 from Japan or a UX50. I went with the latter and have been very happy with my choice so far.
UX-50 advantages:
Magnesium case so tough I really can keep it in the same pocket as my keys.
Tiny size that's smaller than my three previous Palm OS PDAs. In fact, other than in thickness it's about the same size as the Sharp YO-110 addressbook I carried in the early '90s.
Terrific PIM software that lets me use the same addressbook, datebook, todo, and memo databases that I've been using since my first Palm OS device six and one-half years ago.
Built-in Wi-Fi. With the C760 any add-on Wi-Fi CompactFlash card's antenna stub sticks out from the case. It's awesome finding open hotspots in the most unexpected places, like at church and at a coworker's house.
No, Palm OS 5.2 is not a preemptive multitasking OS. Yes, I'd kill for a true command line. 16MB RAM is a little skimpy in this day and age, never mind for a $700 (now $500) PDA, the screen really is a little small, and the lack of a portrait mode is very, very annoying. And maybe I'll even get all these features in a PDA one, but for now the UX50 more than fits the bill.
Low carb diet leads to mystery skin blisters?
on
Hackers On Atkins
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· Score: 2, Interesting
On 24 August I began an Atkins diet and since have been keeping it quite faithfully. (For the record, I'm still in induction, as I plateaued after losing a grand total of 5-6 pounds, but then at 6'1" and 200 pounds I'm not very far from where I should be anyway.)
Beginning the second week of September my back began breaking out in large, symmetrical clusters of red bumps that turned into blisters that contain a fair amount of pus. At first I ignored them figuring they'd go away. However, they haven't. They've steadily worsened the past couple of weeks, and are now spreading to the area below my armpits. A few have appeared on my chest and neck. They all itch like crazy, especially in the initial stages.
I went to my general physician today, who upon seeing my back immediately had me see the head of the dermatology group. The dermatologist was also mystified (enough to summon two of his colleagues for consultation), but has ruled out hives, insect bites (due to the blisters' symmetrical nature), and anything contagious. He figures it's one of a family of conditions with immunological causes ("IPA" was mentioned during the dermatologists' discussions while examining me, I believe), perhaps globules of some kind. We'll know more once results of the biopsy he took comes back later this week and through next week.
Meanwhile, I of course can't help but to speculate on possible causes. I work in an office environment and have not traveled. The only skin problems I've had before are acne and, last year, a diagnosis of tinea versicolor that has long since been completely treated with Nizoral shampoo. I live alone and no one else has used my bedsheets.
The only recent change in my lifestyle has been the Atkins. It's fair to say bacon (especially precooked) is a large portion of my diet right now, along with pepperoni slices, mozzerella string cheese, pork rinds, and almonds. For lunch I have a steak and a salad.
I know ordinary bacon is frowned upon by Atkins devotees due to the nitrate content, but haven't seen any mention of nitrates causing the kinds of symptoms I'm seeing. Is there something else in my diet that could be causing what I am experiencing?
Since I wrote the above, I've gotten off Atkins. The possibility of the diet causing the skin problems was a reason, of course, but it was primarily because I was getting frustrated at not being able to move beyond the 5-6 pound loss plateau in the 6 weeks I was in induction.
The biopsy proved inconclusive. Fotunately, my skin has been clearing up well, with no particular treatment used; the only reminders are dark pigmentation patches in the affected areas, and they'll presumably go away soon. Still, I'd be curious to hear whether others have experienced what I went through.
I used this very tool (but preferred PilOTP) while at my previous job as an equity analyst for a famous investment bank. The bank firewalled *all* outgoing connections except http/https, but did provide an outgoing telnet proxy. Like the original poster, I didn't care whether the firm's IT group spied on the content of my telnet sessions, but did care about the password for my home Linux box getting stored in some logfile. So I dug up an OTP telnet daemon through Google and happily telneted without divulging my password to anyone. Fortunately, my current job lets me ssh out with no trouble.
. . . and even placed an order with an overseas vendor. What stopped me?
The horrible PIM software. I've used three Palm devices since early 1997, and have been able to easily move my calendar and addressbook data from one device to another. In effect, I have a comprehensive record of my life over the past six years in electronic form. I know I could quite easily beam or otherwise transfer the data to the Zaurus, but what good would it do if the PIM software is too clunky to do anything useful? [1]
Lack of Sharp support outside Japan. I don't mean in terms of warranty per se. I mean in terms of things like the non-release of the C700/C750/C760 outside Japan, the recent discontinuation of all Zaurus sales in Europe, rumors that "only three" Sharp US employees are now working on the Zaurus, etc.
Size. I know the C760 is just a little larger than my Sony Clie N610C, but even a little bit makes a big difference when you're talking about your pants pockets.
Thus, I've 95% decided on getting the forthcoming Sony Clie UX50. Smaller than my current Clie and with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, while the Zaurus comes with no wireless built in and even the Socket model, generally agreed the best and smallest Wi-Fi CF card, would stick out a little bit from the case. Why only 95%? Because of the two big flaws in my mind with the UX50 (the tiny physical size of the screen, and the lack of portrait mode), and because the C760's manifold virtues may yet suck me into its embraces.
[1] One thing I've thought about is using Jpilot, which I happily use to sync my Clie to my Linux box, on the C760. Anyone else do this?
The reason I don't know what kind of card I have is that, although I purchased a brand new, shrinkwrapped Radeon 9500 Pro retail box, I noticed that the card looked somewhat different from the OEM (I think Sapphire) 9500 Pro I'd used for a few days previously. Didn't think much of this until I started seeing indications in places like the XFree86 log that the card might be a 9700, instead of a 9500 Pro (I do realize the two cards both use the R300 NE chipset). Also, that Antalus flyby score is meaningfully higher than what Tom's Hardware found for 1280x1024x32 on a much faster system than my two-year old Athlon 1.4GHz. Haven't bothered to crack the case open again since, so until I do I'll happily enjoy the illusion that I somehow ended up with a 9700 for the price of a 9500 Pro.
The driver I use is a binary-only one from a German reseller. They appear to be betas of forthcoming versions of ATi's own drivers. As I have XFree86 4.3.0 this has been a great blessing, as ATi's own Web site only has drivers for XFree86 4.1 and 4.2.
According to the Antalus flyby benchmark in UT2003, my ATi Radeon 9500 Pro card (or is it 9700?) scores 88 in Windows 2000 versus 68 in Linux. Hopefully the gap will disappear, as has on the NVIDIA side, soon.
Re:I think SCO should sue
on
Palmtop NetBSD
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· Score: 1
After having read it on Slashdot a thousand times, what I want to know is this: When and where did the original posting of the above occur?
I saw and played Halo for the PC at E3, where it was set up for six-person deathmatches (with t-shirts given away to winners). I heard a Bungie employee joke that the game was shown to convince people that it actually existed.
Robert Heinlein isn't obscure, of course, but it's surprising that The Past Through Tomorrow (1967), an omnibus collection of almost his entire Future History stories and novels, has been out of print for years. The only source you can get a new copy is from the Science Fiction Book Club.
. . . One day a few years back, while working on the helpdesk hotline Columbia's IT department runs, I got a call from a law professor wanting to report portscan attempts on his office box. I assured him that I had the same thing happen on my personal box connected to the campus network, that they were done by people who were probing the entire Columbia network as opposed to him specifically, and that as long as he made sure to follow security bulletins and upgrade software when appropriate he probably didn't have much to worry about. After the call I mentioned it to my manager, as Unix-savvy faculty is awfully rare in my experience. He nodded his head and said "That's Eben."
No, I'm not talking about the difference between a sendmail root exploit and actually killing someone (though that's important too). In net security, the leading edge of exploit/virus/worm research isn't CERT or Symantec or ISS; it's teenage males without dates in Prague and Ann Arbor and Hong Kong. Thus, security through obscurity doesn't work because it can't encompass enough of the right people in the know.
Research in the hard sciences is different. The UCSF biologists and MIT chemists, the ones who would author the articles in question, are the leading edge. It's not like Saddam's labs are two years ahead of the rest of the world. Being more careful when publishing their research has a real chance of keeping valuable secrets out of the wrong hands.
> States vary a lot is their procedures for > registration. Clearly certain members of Congress > knew that easy registration leads to more voting > and opposed the "motor voter law" that allows > registration at any DMV. (Weak official reasons to > oppose the law, such as concern about voter fraud, > were also offered.)
Those concerns aren't "weak" at all. I even posted to Slashdot a few years ago of my experience when getting my driver's license renewed before I became an American citizen. If I hadn't said anything, I would have been registered to vote right then and there, no questions asked.
Slashdot Mirror
I've said it before on Slashdot, and I'll say it again: Sharp absolutely, positively needs to have Palm-quality, easily-syncable PIM software on its products before I, a eight-year 100% Linux-at-home user, will buy one to use as my primary PDA. The lack of same is the main reason why I chose to go for a Sony Clie UX50 as my fourth Palm OS PDA in seven years.
My Clie has, thanks to Palm OS's consistent data formats, the entirety of my life for those seven years--college, my first job, and now my second, in two places 2,500 miles apart--within it. I'd have happily migrated the data over to Sharp if the software was equivalent. But it isn't, and so I didn't.
Judd Montgomery has complained on the jpilot (NB - the terrific GPL Palm Desktop replacement I use to sync my PDA with my Linux box) mailing list that he's asked Sharp USA more than once for development units with no success. This is a disgrace.
. . . About six months ago I managed to get a 212 area code number through Vonage, the VoIP provider that Slashdot has covered several times. How did I do it? Persistence; I checked the Web site several tiimes a day until 212 appeared as an area code choice for changing your number to.
Non-New Yorkers likely will have a hard time understanding the importance of having a 212 number (though there's a Seinfeld episode that features the idea) over 646. I'm not even living in Nu Yawk right now, but it's nice to know the 212 number will be available for when I head back home.
Jpilot is the answer. Not only is it a near-perfect replacement for the Palm Desktop, thanks to the pilot-link backend it can do things the latter can't, including synching over Wi-Fi.
. . . so, basically, Linux is an operating system that is so hard to install and use that even MIT students need help?
I presume that you have a Series 1 TiVo given the 9thtee card. So do I, but since I don't need anything more than daily updates, I use a serial cable to hook mine up to my Linux box (Windows boxes work too). Not bad for $5.
First began using Gopher in 1993. By 1995, the Web had taken over and Gopher was pretty much obsolete. However, Columbia's ColumbiaNet intranet system, obviously based on Gopher, didn't convert to a Web-based system until 1998 or so. So I can say I last used Gopher then.
Back when I depended on a dialup connection, I used xringd. By having the phone line the modem was on ring in a certain pattern, I could command the computer to dial up (using diald). Then a line in /etc/ppp/ip-up.local would mail me the IP address the PPP server assigned the computer (this was before DynIP or DynDNS). I'd then be able to log into the machine. Pretty darn cool for 1996.
While my Netgear MR114 wired router is telnetable (and ftpable, for that matter), my newer WGR614 (which I use as a mere access point to the MR114) is not, alas. That's a pity because the MR114 telnet access allows much more flexible access to the router's settings.
"Two years" in "southern Mexico"? "White clothes"? You've got to be an RM. (I served in Nevada myself, so it was machine washing all the way.)
Get a laptop that can do both Bluetooth (either built in, like most PowerBooks, or with a small dongle) and Wi-Fi. Then get a T-Mobile cell phone service and a Bluetooth-enabled phone. Any T-Mobile voice plan of $40 or more comes with free T-Zones access, which gives untimed, unlimited access to ports 80, 110, and 143. If you need ssh and can't tell the daemon to listen to one of those ports, get the $19.99 Unlimited Internet option that gives complete access to all ports. Either way, you get roughly 33.6K dialup modem speeds; not great, but it's accessible anywhere you have GSM phone service and it's free or fabulously cheap compared to other cell providers' networks.
Yet another way for a cell phone to crash; now, the graphics card's drivers can get involved!
Yeechang, whose brand new Sony Ericsson T610 has crashed more than a dozen times in the past two weeks
As others have pointed out, this isn't exactly earthshaking news. Now, if people exposed to the meteorite gained the ability to fly or shoot heat rays out of their eyes, that's different.
UX-50 advantages:
No, Palm OS 5.2 is not a preemptive multitasking OS. Yes, I'd kill for a true command line. 16MB RAM is a little skimpy in this day and age, never mind for a $700 (now $500) PDA, the screen really is a little small, and the lack of a portrait mode is very, very annoying. And maybe I'll even get all these features in a PDA one, but for now the UX50 more than fits the bill.
Since I wrote the above, I've gotten off Atkins. The possibility of the diet causing the skin problems was a reason, of course, but it was primarily because I was getting frustrated at not being able to move beyond the 5-6 pound loss plateau in the 6 weeks I was in induction.
The biopsy proved inconclusive. Fotunately, my skin has been clearing up well, with no particular treatment used; the only reminders are dark pigmentation patches in the affected areas, and they'll presumably go away soon. Still, I'd be curious to hear whether others have experienced what I went through.
I used this very tool (but preferred PilOTP) while at my previous job as an equity analyst for a famous investment bank. The bank firewalled *all* outgoing connections except http/https, but did provide an outgoing telnet proxy. Like the original poster, I didn't care whether the firm's IT group spied on the content of my telnet sessions, but did care about the password for my home Linux box getting stored in some logfile. So I dug up an OTP telnet daemon through Google and happily telneted without divulging my password to anyone. Fortunately, my current job lets me ssh out with no trouble.
Use Postfix!
Thus, I've 95% decided on getting the forthcoming Sony Clie UX50. Smaller than my current Clie and with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, while the Zaurus comes with no wireless built in and even the Socket model, generally agreed the best and smallest Wi-Fi CF card, would stick out a little bit from the case. Why only 95%? Because of the two big flaws in my mind with the UX50 (the tiny physical size of the screen, and the lack of portrait mode), and because the C760's manifold virtues may yet suck me into its embraces.
[1] One thing I've thought about is using Jpilot, which I happily use to sync my Clie to my Linux box, on the C760. Anyone else do this?
The reason I don't know what kind of card I have is that, although I purchased a brand new, shrinkwrapped Radeon 9500 Pro retail box, I noticed that the card looked somewhat different from the OEM (I think Sapphire) 9500 Pro I'd used for a few days previously. Didn't think much of this until I started seeing indications in places like the XFree86 log that the card might be a 9700, instead of a 9500 Pro (I do realize the two cards both use the R300 NE chipset). Also, that Antalus flyby score is meaningfully higher than what Tom's Hardware found for 1280x1024x32 on a much faster system than my two-year old Athlon 1.4GHz. Haven't bothered to crack the case open again since, so until I do I'll happily enjoy the illusion that I somehow ended up with a 9700 for the price of a 9500 Pro.
The driver I use is a binary-only one from a German reseller. They appear to be betas of forthcoming versions of ATi's own drivers. As I have XFree86 4.3.0 this has been a great blessing, as ATi's own Web site only has drivers for XFree86 4.1 and 4.2.
According to the Antalus flyby benchmark in UT2003, my ATi Radeon 9500 Pro card (or is it 9700?) scores 88 in Windows 2000 versus 68 in Linux. Hopefully the gap will disappear, as has on the NVIDIA side, soon.
After having read it on Slashdot a thousand times, what I want to know is this: When and where did the original posting of the above occur?
I saw and played Halo for the PC at E3, where it was set up for six-person deathmatches (with t-shirts given away to winners). I heard a Bungie employee joke that the game was shown to convince people that it actually existed.
Robert Heinlein isn't obscure, of course, but it's surprising that The Past Through Tomorrow (1967), an omnibus collection of almost his entire Future History stories and novels, has been out of print for years. The only source you can get a new copy is from the Science Fiction Book Club.
. . . One day a few years back, while working on the helpdesk hotline Columbia's IT department runs, I got a call from a law professor wanting to report portscan attempts on his office box. I assured him that I had the same thing happen on my personal box connected to the campus network, that they were done by people who were probing the entire Columbia network as opposed to him specifically, and that as long as he made sure to follow security bulletins and upgrade software when appropriate he probably didn't have much to worry about. After the call I mentioned it to my manager, as Unix-savvy faculty is awfully rare in my experience. He nodded his head and said "That's Eben."
No, I'm not talking about the difference between a sendmail root exploit and actually killing someone (though that's important too). In net security, the leading edge of exploit/virus/worm research isn't CERT or Symantec or ISS; it's teenage males without dates in Prague and Ann Arbor and Hong Kong. Thus, security through obscurity doesn't work because it can't encompass enough of the right people in the know.
Research in the hard sciences is different. The UCSF biologists and MIT chemists, the ones who would author the articles in question, are the leading edge. It's not like Saddam's labs are two years ahead of the rest of the world. Being more careful when publishing their research has a real chance of keeping valuable secrets out of the wrong hands.
> States vary a lot is their procedures for
> registration. Clearly certain members of Congress
> knew that easy registration leads to more voting
> and opposed the "motor voter law" that allows
> registration at any DMV. (Weak official reasons to
> oppose the law, such as concern about voter fraud,
> were also offered.)
Those concerns aren't "weak" at all. I even posted to Slashdot a few years ago of my experience when getting my driver's license renewed before I became an American citizen. If I hadn't said anything, I would have been registered to vote right then and there, no questions asked.