Even those flat CRTs make quite a difference vs. the sort I have (which didn't look so bulgy before all the others looked so flat...)
Wall to ceiling sounds like a cool idea; if projectors weren't so expensive, I'd like to try an XGA/SXGA projector as a primary display. That takes a darkened or at least dim room with current projectors though...
It is cool news, I agree. And Slashdot's search engine is not perfect, but it has gotten much better. Here's the search I should have done before posting my dupe;)
That movie is where the line comes from; people tend to either love it or hate it, but it made me laugh for hours / days. Not everyone finds Ben Stiller funny, but (particularly in that movie) I do. Owen Wilson, too.
The cost of decent equipment affordable to the serious hobbyist is crazily low, thanks to various economies of scale happily interacting.
For $2000 (price of a mid-level PC just a few years ago), you can have a decently (though minimally) equipped home studio consisting of a digital multitrack recorder, a passable mic pre-amp and a mic or two. And that's with new equipment, and probably with some change. For far *Far* less you can record yourself by other means (eBay, local classifieds, a few hours of studio time...) So it's possible --if you have some musical ability, and live in a country where these optimistic figures apply! -- to record your own Greatest Hits, even package it on CDs, make your million dollars... except:
Being able to *record* decent quality doesn't mean record companies don't matter -- it's just that "recording industry" is a misnomer. The various things which make up that "industry" could better be thought of as a big weird system of legalese + marketing + other forms of influence.
The "recording industry" postures as the *source* of music, and as standing up for the musicians whose work ends up being filtered through it. That might be true of most individuals involved, too; I can't really believe that Satan himself secretly heads all the big record companies, and does it because he hates all musicians. But it's not a secret that the reason record companies, including their high-priced studios and high-priced studio engineers, marketeers, etc, exist is to, hopefully and eventually, make some money.
I'm sure many if not most of everyone below the esoteric upper management level (where people float between companies seemingly on the basis that they've... held high positions at the other companies) is involved in the music industry out of interest and some level of appreciation, if not passionate devotion. It just happens that music filtered and packaged that way (bad contracts, glitzy promos, airplay freebies, reviewer massaging) is not the *only* sort of music worth listening to. There's lots of good music available through the music industry system, though. All I'm saying is that if the "industry" dried up and blew away, it would not be the end of *Music* -- just a particular, not-always-good approach to its selection and propagation.
Khalid wrote: "So basicaly what you are saying is that Microsoft is allowed to integrate whatever it suits them into their dominant OS and bastardised it the way they want !? because the mighty market will sort this out !?"
Well, Yes, sort of -- but not because it's Microsoft, just because software makers should be free to include / exclude what they'd like. If Microsoft (or Apple for that matter, who do a better job of it) want to include movie-editing software (or a copy of The GIMP) along with their OS, then Great, Fine, Lovely, as long as they respect the wishes of the coders who made the software they include. If Sun were the dominant player, and they decided that an automatic solar horoscope generator was an important part of their OS, same thing. Red Hat, ditto.
If the U.S. government would like to do something about fairness wrt Microsoft (and they should), I propose that the government declare that they will not trade coercively collected public (tax) dollars for software from which the public cannot fully benefit, nor audit for efficiency, security and other concerns. That is, I suggest we require that publically bought software be made available under licenses which require available, reusable source code. (GPL works, so does BSD or a number of others.) The U.S. federal government is the largest single customer that Microsoft has, and iirc the various states (as a group) together make up the 2nd-largest.
"That what's the antitrust case was about !"
Well, among other things. I don't have to agree with the DOJ case, though. I have my own reasons for disliking certain Microsoft software, and I don't like all of their business practices -- but I don't want bureaucrats of any stripe deciding what's "appropriate" for Microsoft or anyone else to provide me in a piece of software, or under what terms.
"This is great. I love it. I hope they tear a swath of destruction across your beloved Linux vendors. It's only fair, since you all cheered him on when he went after MS."
No, not everyone.
I think that the DOJ case against Microsoft was motivated mostly by envy, greed, misunderstanding, spite and grandstanding. I think it sets a horrible precedent for allowing the government to decide matters which should be left to the market. (Trivial example: like whether and to what degree a web browser should be entangled with an operating system). I am not a fan of Microsoft software, and I don't think tax dollars should be used to pay for source-secret software, but I don't think Microsoft is evil.
Microsoft has done some things I think are bad, some of which are worthy of legal remedies, but that's beside the point I'm making here, which is that there is no single "pro-Linux" viewpoint on the Microsoft persecution / prosecution in which Boies was involved.
It's almost worse when you can get *some* radio, but it's annoying radio. Driving in West Texas is like that. (Not all the time, but... with enough time, "not all" can still mean quite a bit;))
Cracker Barrel (which is of course not in plentiful supply in the utter boonies, yet) has an insidious, effective plan to make sure you consume their maple syrup: rent (actually, sell but with an easy sell-back plan) audio books.I think it's about $2.50, if you return a tape within one week. It's worse than the addictive chemical in the Colonel's chicken.
Especially since they have had the Simpsons and Futurama, two of the only shows I often enjoy:)
However, I was thinking things more of the When Cops Attack, World's Scariest Whatevers, etc.
But the idea that no one would be able to tell shit from Shinola in the absence of Giant Media Conglomerates as currently constituted, struck me as pretty silly:)
with a wireless bridge, like the ones that linksys makes. Maybe others do too, but the the linksys ones I've seen on sale for (iirc) about $70, which is not much different from current pricing on wireless PCMCIA cards...
a) talk-show time-shifting is what I'd like this for, too:)
b) some of us like Art Bell / heirs to be late for insomnia cure. Best way to dream about aliens...
c) I'd really like such a recorder to have a CD writer either included or attachable, so shows could be offloaded. With a CD-RW and ogg format for files, talk radio in particular could put *many* hours on one disk.
c') Of course, since there is not (yet!) a portable hardware player that will play ogg files from CD-RW, this is still pide-dreamish, but not a complete pipe dream...
What's cool about this idea (to me) is that it actually has the great thing about many modern hotel keys (the ones with little holes, or mag strips), which is reprogrammability, but without the major hassles (specialized equipment to punch holes or re-stripe a card).
With a system like this, you can provide time-bounded access -- the petsitter can come by while you're gone part of this week, but her code might not be on the approved list for, say, 1 a.m. next Saturday night. Not that it would stop a real burglar, but all security systems are a series of intentional nuisances to bad guys. This way, there's no "spare" key floating around to be lost and worried about.
Plus you can send someone who needs to come by when you're not there (that petsitter, or the neighbor you've asked to check up on things) to open the door a "key" as a JPG file; they print it out, and it's their open sesame, at least at the times you've set them as welcome.
Since I like to think of houses as cell walls (hey, metaphors are meant to be reversed and amplified!), this lock system really resonates with me.
You're right that things other than raw capacity affect hard drive prices, but my experiences so far with Computer Rennaisance have always left me amazed at how high their prices are, and closer to the 10X price difference the parent post to yours mentioned.
Once in a while, there's been something I wanted, and I let convenience win (I'm there in the store, and CompUSA doesn't seem to carry laptop-sized hard drives, and I need it RIGHT NOW TODAY), but usually, I've been disgusted by the prices and politely left. Prices on their used stuff, (sometimes quite beat-up seeming) are often no better (especially counting discounts) than the new, much-better counterpart products you might get at any large computer retailer or office store of the CompUSA / Best Buy / OfficeMax etc variety. In addition, I've found the sales guys there, while some of them are nice enough, are often ignorant of the stuff they're selling, and will happily deny that their prices are in any way odd. Also, the CR stores (three in total) where I've ever been for any reason have been badly organized; two of them could not tell me over the phone whether they had what I needed, and said I'd have to come in; it turns out that the first of them *did* have what I wanted (a laptop drive), but "misspoke" when telling me the price; after driving 1/2 hour, the price had jumped $50. Did I buy it? Yes (had to replace a crashed drive), but not happily.
(Note that I've only been in a few of these places, in Maryland and Tennesee -- maybe some CR locations are much better. I hope so -- it seems like they brand the *name*, and individual stores are themselves responsible for how good / mediocre they actually are. It *should* surprise everyone that the individual store's websites are so spotty.)
Especially when laptops are not your preferred computing device!
I bought a little USB light (Target has them, GE brand, for $10 now, instead of the $20 when I bought my first one) for whenever I use my laptops. I don't *need* a light to pick out keys individually, but it does help even if getting one's hands in teh right place sometimes.
This is true even with nice big clicky keyboards -- I have my older USB LED stalk-thing plugged into a USB hub to cast a small pool of light on my real keyboard as well, for the same reason. It doesn't take much, but when the sun goes down as you are not noticing, it helps.
I have specifically wished for lighted keyboards for just this reason, and I applaud Apple's design team for this. Not that I can afford a powerbook right now.
The others you name (M1A1, M14) as well as the Ruger Mini-14 and related weapons are all based on the Garand action, and are therefore sometimes referred to as Garands as well.
The Springfield M1A1 is a very nice-looking rifle, if you have the money for it. (I have never fired any of these, but for the money I am very tempted by the Ranch Rifle or Mini-14...)
hey wrote: "The less storage, the more ogg makes sense. If you have a full sized CD, then I think it there is little to recommend using ogg because you can store plenty of music in MP3 format."
Depends what 'plenty' is:)
Especially in the car, the more the merrier -- I'd like have as many hours of reasonably high-quality sound as I can on a single CD-R. You're right that it's even more crucial when storage space is small to start with, but I'd like (for instance) to be able to use ogg files (all on one CD-R) rather than cassette tapes when I listen to endless episodes of CarTalk or whatever. Audiobooks, too -- some of them run very long, and the fewer disks involved, the better.
That's "would *not* disable any other features inherent to a given device" of course.
Sigh.
timothy
inclusion of ogg, not exclusion of [x]
on
Make Ogg Portable
·
· Score: 1
Yes, electronics margins can be very thin (look at the cost of an iPod vs. the cost of the included hard drive sold separately), but the cost of adding ogg to a portable player I would guess to be well under $5 in bulk. (Yes, that number is grabbed randomly, but I have heard people talk about figures from $0.50 to $2.00, so I hope it's safe;)).
And contrary to a few of the other comments here already, this doesn't mean "basing one's business on Ogg" -- it just means making it an available feature. If no one ever uses it, it would be a bad idea, but it would disable any other features already inherent to a given device. That is, an MP3 player with ogg capability added in (from iRiver?!:)) will still be an MP3 player to anyone who ignores the Ogg part of it.
Considering all the little-used formats which seem to be crammed into the chips on even the lowest-grade DVD players (percentage wise, not that many people use VCD/SVCD, and I'll bet heavily that most people's MP3-capable DVD players have never been used for that purpose), adding ogg seems like a no-brainer.
Even if it's only included to make the feature list look better, I'll take it!;)
I saw the A/V Cooler Master case at the CompUSA at Snowden Square in Columbia MD yesterday morning.
One of those little shuttle cases is more appealing to me, though... more transportable, for one thing. But I can see the fetish appeal of black, same-width stereo gear;)
But they don't grab me -- yet -- when what I want is unmetered wireless access per se. Sure, it may be *bandwidth* limited (hey, even 28.8 would make me grudgingly satisfied, 56K would be groovy, 128 or higher would be pleasant like punch), but what I *don't* want are a) roaming charges and b) per-minute costs for calls or data.
Yes, I'd pay $100/month flat. Even $150. *Maybe* even $200, once enough LEO sats / dirigbles / solar planes / (whatever) are circling to provide coverage that is at least all over North America.
A few places I'd like to be able to communicate (voice and data) from:
- friends' apts and houses in cities I don't live. - Big Bend National Park (far West Texas) - chair lifts in Utah - my favorite chinese buffet - a tube floating down the Guadalupe River
Now, it's true there are times that I would *not* like to communicate from these places -- this list is just a few examples of places which I'd like to be able to visit without being tied to a long cord. Batteries have gotten smaller and better, there's plenty of processor in the Zaurus and other handhelds to use the Web, send email, etc -- it's just the communication infrastructure that isn't yet as far as necessary to make this possible.
Long-range 802.11 stuff is getting impressive, but I so hold out hope for the balloon / satellite option, because I doubt the guadalupe mountains are going to be convered otherwise.
I happen to like Linux more than other OSes right now, but you've named the key point. I like documents I can open anywhere, and OpenOffice / Mozilla / a few others (like AbiWord, which I like but have had little use for lately) are making this feasable.
File formats rule the (computer) world. It doesn't -- or wouldn't -- matter much if everyone used MS Word, if it was being used to edit completely open file formats, and ditto excel, etc etc.
Doing a google search for "plain text" + "Microsoft word" yields some fun rantiness on this topic.
Slashdot Mirror
at least vs. convexity! (the current state).
...)
...
Even those flat CRTs make quite a difference vs. the sort I have (which didn't look so bulgy before all the others looked so flat
Wall to ceiling sounds like a cool idea; if projectors weren't so expensive, I'd like to try an XGA/SXGA projector as a primary display. That takes a darkened or at least dim room with current projectors though
timothy
see this previous comment :)
;)
It is cool news, I agree. And Slashdot's search engine is not perfect, but it has gotten much better. Here's the search I should have done before posting my dupe
timothy
I'm happy for 19" CRTs to be considered small -- anyone who would like to give me an LCD or nine, I take all sizes, even little tiny 17-inchers.
:)
Looking forward to the day that 42" plasma TVs are also small
timothy
That movie is where the line comes from; people tend to either love it or hate it, but it made me laugh for hours / days. Not everyone finds Ben Stiller funny, but (particularly in that movie) I do. Owen Wilson, too.
"What is this, a center for *ants*?!"
timothy
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0196229
Der-ek Zoo-land-er
timothy
The cost of decent equipment affordable to the serious hobbyist is crazily low, thanks to various economies of scale happily interacting.
...) So it's possible --if you have some musical ability, and live in a country where these optimistic figures apply! -- to record your own Greatest Hits, even package it on CDs, make your million dollars ... except:
... held high positions at the other companies) is involved in the music industry out of interest and some level of appreciation, if not passionate devotion. It just happens that music filtered and packaged that way (bad contracts, glitzy promos, airplay freebies, reviewer massaging) is not the *only* sort of music worth listening to. There's lots of good music available through the music industry system, though. All I'm saying is that if the "industry" dried up and blew away, it would not be the end of *Music* -- just a particular, not-always-good approach to its selection and propagation.
For $2000 (price of a mid-level PC just a few years ago), you can have a decently (though minimally) equipped home studio consisting of a digital multitrack recorder, a passable mic pre-amp and a mic or two. And that's with new equipment, and probably with some change. For far *Far* less you can record yourself by other means (eBay, local classifieds, a few hours of studio time
Being able to *record* decent quality doesn't mean record companies don't matter -- it's just that "recording industry" is a misnomer. The various things which make up that "industry" could better be thought of as a big weird system of legalese + marketing + other forms of influence.
The "recording industry" postures as the *source* of music, and as standing up for the musicians whose work ends up being filtered through it. That might be true of most individuals involved, too; I can't really believe that Satan himself secretly heads all the big record companies, and does it because he hates all musicians. But it's not a secret that the reason record companies, including their high-priced studios and high-priced studio engineers, marketeers, etc, exist is to, hopefully and eventually, make some money.
I'm sure many if not most of everyone below the esoteric upper management level (where people float between companies seemingly on the basis that they've
timothy
Well, Yes, sort of -- but not because it's Microsoft, just because software makers should be free to include / exclude what they'd like. If Microsoft (or Apple for that matter, who do a better job of it) want to include movie-editing software (or a copy of The GIMP) along with their OS, then Great, Fine, Lovely, as long as they respect the wishes of the coders who made the software they include. If Sun were the dominant player, and they decided that an automatic solar horoscope generator was an important part of their OS, same thing. Red Hat, ditto.
If the U.S. government would like to do something about fairness wrt Microsoft (and they should), I propose that the government declare that they will not trade coercively collected public (tax) dollars for software from which the public cannot fully benefit, nor audit for efficiency, security and other concerns. That is, I suggest we require that publically bought software be made available under licenses which require available, reusable source code. (GPL works, so does BSD or a number of others.) The U.S. federal government is the largest single customer that Microsoft has, and iirc the various states (as a group) together make up the 2nd-largest.
"That what's the antitrust case was about !"
Well, among other things. I don't have to agree with the DOJ case, though. I have my own reasons for disliking certain Microsoft software, and I don't like all of their business practices -- but I don't want bureaucrats of any stripe deciding what's "appropriate" for Microsoft or anyone else to provide me in a piece of software, or under what terms.
timothy
"This is great. I love it. I hope they tear a swath of destruction across your beloved Linux vendors. It's only fair, since you all cheered him on when he went after MS."
No, not everyone.
I think that the DOJ case against Microsoft was motivated mostly by envy, greed, misunderstanding, spite and grandstanding. I think it sets a horrible precedent for allowing the government to decide matters which should be left to the market. (Trivial example: like whether and to what degree a web browser should be entangled with an operating system). I am not a fan of Microsoft software, and I don't think tax dollars should be used to pay for source-secret software, but I don't think Microsoft is evil.
Microsoft has done some things I think are bad, some of which are worthy of legal remedies, but that's beside the point I'm making here, which is that there is no single "pro-Linux" viewpoint on the Microsoft persecution / prosecution in which Boies was involved.
timothy
It's almost worse when you can get *some* radio, but it's annoying radio. Driving in West Texas is like that. (Not all the time, but ... with enough time, "not all" can still mean quite a bit ;))
Cracker Barrel (which is of course not in plentiful supply in the utter boonies, yet) has an insidious, effective plan to make sure you consume their maple syrup: rent (actually, sell but with an easy sell-back plan) audio books.I think it's about $2.50, if you return a tape within one week. It's worse than the addictive chemical in the Colonel's chicken.
timothy
Well,
;)
- tabbed browsing, and
- type-ahead find
- decent mail client built in (now with spam filtering, albeit early stages)
- image blocking built in
And nearly 100 other things that Mozilla has but IE does not.
I complain when I'm stuck at a computer with nothing better than IE.
However, since you're trolling, I'll stop here
timothy
Did you know that? :)
"Secret" SIDs aren't really secret, and to paraphrase Rob, "they're in the code, use 'em."
timothy
Especially since they have had the Simpsons and Futurama, two of the only shows I often enjoy :)
:)
However, I was thinking things more of the When Cops Attack, World's Scariest Whatevers, etc.
But the idea that no one would be able to tell shit from Shinola in the absence of Giant Media Conglomerates as currently constituted, struck me as pretty silly
timothy
Like the FOX Network.
timothy
with a wireless bridge, like the ones that linksys makes. Maybe others do too, but the the linksys ones I've seen on sale for (iirc) about $70, which is not much different from current pricing on wireless PCMCIA cards ...
timothy
a) talk-show time-shifting is what I'd like this for, too :)
...
...
b) some of us like Art Bell / heirs to be late for insomnia cure. Best way to dream about aliens
c) I'd really like such a recorder to have a CD writer either included or attachable, so shows could be offloaded. With a CD-RW and ogg format for files, talk radio in particular could put *many* hours on one disk.
c') Of course, since there is not (yet!) a portable hardware player that will play ogg files from CD-RW, this is still pide-dreamish, but not a complete pipe dream
What's cool about this idea (to me) is that it actually has the great thing about many modern hotel keys (the ones with little holes, or mag strips), which is reprogrammability, but without the major hassles (specialized equipment to punch holes or re-stripe a card).
With a system like this, you can provide time-bounded access -- the petsitter can come by while you're gone part of this week, but her code might not be on the approved list for, say, 1 a.m. next Saturday night. Not that it would stop a real burglar, but all security systems are a series of intentional nuisances to bad guys. This way, there's no "spare" key floating around to be lost and worried about.
Plus you can send someone who needs to come by when you're not there (that petsitter, or the neighbor you've asked to check up on things) to open the door a "key" as a JPG file; they print it out, and it's their open sesame, at least at the times you've set them as welcome.
Since I like to think of houses as cell walls (hey, metaphors are meant to be reversed and amplified!), this lock system really resonates with me.
timothy
You're right that things other than raw capacity affect hard drive prices, but my experiences so far with Computer Rennaisance have always left me amazed at how high their prices are, and closer to the 10X price difference the parent post to yours mentioned.
Once in a while, there's been something I wanted, and I let convenience win (I'm there in the store, and CompUSA doesn't seem to carry laptop-sized hard drives, and I need it RIGHT NOW TODAY), but usually, I've been disgusted by the prices and politely left. Prices on their used stuff, (sometimes quite beat-up seeming) are often no better (especially counting discounts) than the new, much-better counterpart products you might get at any large computer retailer or office store of the CompUSA / Best Buy / OfficeMax etc variety. In addition, I've found the sales guys there, while some of them are nice enough, are often ignorant of the stuff they're selling, and will happily deny that their prices are in any way odd. Also, the CR stores (three in total) where I've ever been for any reason have been badly organized; two of them could not tell me over the phone whether they had what I needed, and said I'd have to come in; it turns out that the first of them *did* have what I wanted (a laptop drive), but "misspoke" when telling me the price; after driving 1/2 hour, the price had jumped $50. Did I buy it? Yes (had to replace a crashed drive), but not happily.
(Note that I've only been in a few of these places, in Maryland and Tennesee -- maybe some CR locations are much better. I hope so -- it seems like they brand the *name*, and individual stores are themselves responsible for how good / mediocre they actually are. It *should* surprise everyone that the individual store's websites are so spotty.)
timothy
Especially when laptops are not your preferred computing device!
I bought a little USB light (Target has them, GE brand, for $10 now, instead of the $20 when I bought my first one) for whenever I use my laptops. I don't *need* a light to pick out keys individually, but it does help even if getting one's hands in teh right place sometimes.
This is true even with nice big clicky keyboards -- I have my older USB LED stalk-thing plugged into a USB hub to cast a small pool of light on my real keyboard as well, for the same reason. It doesn't take much, but when the sun goes down as you are not noticing, it helps.
I have specifically wished for lighted keyboards for just this reason, and I applaud Apple's design team for this. Not that I can afford a powerbook right now.
timothy
"I think you mean an M1 Grand (30-06) ..."
:) (Typso are everywhere!)
...)
"Garand"
The others you name (M1A1, M14) as well as the Ruger Mini-14 and related weapons are all based on the Garand action, and are therefore sometimes referred to as Garands as well.
The Springfield M1A1 is a very nice-looking rifle, if you have the money for it. (I have never fired any of these, but for the money I am very tempted by the Ranch Rifle or Mini-14
timothy
hey wrote: "The less storage, the more ogg makes sense. If you have a full sized CD, then I think it there is little to recommend using ogg because you can store plenty of music in MP3 format."
:)
Depends what 'plenty' is
Especially in the car, the more the merrier -- I'd like have as many hours of reasonably high-quality sound as I can on a single CD-R. You're right that it's even more crucial when storage space is small to start with, but I'd like (for instance) to be able to use ogg files (all on one CD-R) rather than cassette tapes when I listen to endless episodes of CarTalk or whatever. Audiobooks, too -- some of them run very long, and the fewer disks involved, the better.
timothy
That's "would *not* disable any other features inherent to a given device" of course.
Sigh.
timothy
Yes, electronics margins can be very thin (look at the cost of an iPod vs. the cost of the included hard drive sold separately), but the cost of adding ogg to a portable player I would guess to be well under $5 in bulk. (Yes, that number is grabbed randomly, but I have heard people talk about figures from $0.50 to $2.00, so I hope it's safe ;)).
:)) will still be an MP3 player to anyone who ignores the Ogg part of it.
;)
And contrary to a few of the other comments here already, this doesn't mean "basing one's business on Ogg" -- it just means making it an available feature. If no one ever uses it, it would be a bad idea, but it would disable any other features already inherent to a given device. That is, an MP3 player with ogg capability added in (from iRiver?!
Considering all the little-used formats which seem to be crammed into the chips on even the lowest-grade DVD players (percentage wise, not that many people use VCD/SVCD, and I'll bet heavily that most people's MP3-capable DVD players have never been used for that purpose), adding ogg seems like a no-brainer.
Even if it's only included to make the feature list look better, I'll take it!
timothy
I saw the A/V Cooler Master case at the CompUSA at Snowden Square in Columbia MD yesterday morning.
... more transportable, for one thing. But I can see the fetish appeal of black, same-width stereo gear ;)
One of those little shuttle cases is more appealing to me, though
timothy
Cameras are nice, so are built-in GPS devices.
But they don't grab me -- yet -- when what I want is unmetered wireless access per se. Sure, it may be *bandwidth* limited (hey, even 28.8 would make me grudgingly satisfied, 56K would be groovy, 128 or higher would be pleasant like punch), but what I *don't* want are a) roaming charges and b) per-minute costs for calls or data.
Yes, I'd pay $100/month flat. Even $150. *Maybe* even $200, once enough LEO sats / dirigbles / solar planes / (whatever) are circling to provide coverage that is at least all over North America.
A few places I'd like to be able to communicate (voice and data) from:
- friends' apts and houses in cities I don't live.
- Big Bend National Park (far West Texas)
- chair lifts in Utah
- my favorite chinese buffet
- a tube floating down the Guadalupe River
Now, it's true there are times that I would *not* like to communicate from these places -- this list is just a few examples of places which I'd like to be able to visit without being tied to a long cord. Batteries have gotten smaller and better, there's plenty of processor in the Zaurus and other handhelds to use the Web, send email, etc -- it's just the communication infrastructure that isn't yet as far as necessary to make this possible.
Long-range 802.11 stuff is getting impressive, but I so hold out hope for the balloon / satellite option, because I doubt the guadalupe mountains are going to be convered otherwise.
timothy
I happen to like Linux more than other OSes right now, but you've named the key point. I like documents I can open anywhere, and OpenOffice / Mozilla / a few others (like AbiWord, which I like but have had little use for lately) are making this feasable.
File formats rule the (computer) world. It doesn't -- or wouldn't -- matter much if everyone used MS Word, if it was being used to edit completely open file formats, and ditto excel, etc etc.
Doing a google search for "plain text" + "Microsoft word" yields some fun rantiness on this topic.
timothy