Maybe I should have said "the predictability of the scoring system". The way I worded it made it sound like the downfall of western civilization:)
LED's come on much quicker than filament bulbs, so those racers who've become experts at timing their starts from when the filament of the green light just begins to glow are having all kinds of problems adjusting to the instant-on of LED.
Most racing leagues are points based, with all of the top finishers at any given race getting some kind of points. So it's possible to miss a race and still maintain a points lead if you're consistent elsewhere.
Since some tracks have made the switch and others not, the consistency of racers winning at certain tracks and not others has changed.
Sure, it's still about who crosses the finish line first, but the LED trees have changed the predictability of who wins where.
How have advances in sports technology enhanced your own performance and enjoyment of sport?
As a sports fan, the greatest advancement in technology has to be TiVo. I'd say my viewing and appreciation of sports has increased at least by a factor of 3 with the convenience of "automatic" time shifting and TiVo's powerful review abilities.
I now understand what "delayed offsides" is in hockey, "tail braking" is in motorcycling, and why the move from filament to LED starting bulbs on drag racing tracks is throwing the scoring system into chaos.
Linux PCs will pass Apple in desktop market share next year
That's likely true, it may pass Apple in market share, but I dont see Apple's market share decreasing to meet that prognostication. Linux's primary growth in the home market is on secondary Intel machines as users continue to upgrade hardware and are looking for a use for the older boxes. The Linux rally cry of "it works great on older hardware" is working.
I'd be curious to see a statistic of how many of those new Linux boxes see more than a few weeks of use before being obsoleted by people disenfranchised because they can't find Network Neighborhood, get streaming audio working under Mozilla, figure out how to print under CUPS or apply their generous experience of Outlook filters to Evolution.
"Handspring did not include Bluetooth into this device, but because of the SDIO slot it is an option in the future. Handspring told us that they are working with 3rd party companies to extend all the powers of the Treo to the Bluetooth card. This includes not only data synchronization like most cards, but the ability to use Bluetooth headsets, or act as a Bluetooth modem for a PC or Mac. Adding a Bluetooth SD card to the Treo 600 family will cost around $100 to $150. The current Palm branded card does not work with OS 5."
I urge for the day i can walk into a room with a bluetooth keychain and have my pre-programmed computer automatically turn the lights on and start playing music ala Minority report. We *HAVE* the technology to do all this, why the hell are hardware manufacturers kicking their damn heals so much?
I'd disagree, the solution's already there with very popular off-the-shelf hardware. All you need is:
Wheras Palm's current money-losing strategy seems to be:
1) Create successfull company
2) Buy another company with attractive software/assets
3) Mis-manage company into ground
4) Close company
They should balance out rather well, I'd think...
Couldn't you just transfer the file(s) via your favorite IM program? Since you're both inside the same firewall, you should be able to direct connect, bypassing the IM servers and such, no? Since it's for LAN gaming, you're not transferring terrible secure documents, right?
So before I go and scope one of these out on E-Bay - will the off-the-shelf unit (with the Rage 128) play back most video formats in full screen (TV res - not 1024x768) at a watchable framerate? How's one get video and 5.1 out?
if you want to save money and have a robust, simple, solution
Don't underestimate the importance of this paragraph. It's one thing to have your desktop machine, which you futz around with constantly go on the fritz, but when you've had a really long shitty day and just wanna sit down and veg in front of a home-made Futurama marathon, the last thing you want is a blank screen with no clue what's going on.
The UI on the T68 is miserable! I'm in love with bluetooth and the feature set, but the slow/badly organized menu system and just general un-intuitiveness are really getting on my nerves. The UI's so bad, you missed that the T68 has most of the PDA features, including contact management, datebook w/alarms, to-do list, and notepad.
If this is supposed to be an unattended SAMBA server for no more than 1 or 2 clients at a time, you should be able to easily get away with a P200 box. I highly recommend also getting ATA100 controller (which you'll likely need to see the larger drives anyway).
Such machines can easily be found (with NIC & RAM) for under $25 on Ebay (although shipping's usually more than the PC). Try cruising the local garage sales or putting the word on the street you're looking for an old Garage Shelf Space Taker-Upper and you might just get it for free from someone who's just happy it's out of their garage and not in landfill. Heck, if you're the kind of person who would rather roll your own than buy, you've probably already got a few of these machines collecting dust and should already know all of this anyhow.
Another $15 for the ATA controller and $100 for a 120gb drive (some larger drives are often bundled with the controller, YMMV) and you're good to go for way under $275.
And if you really enjoy this kind of thing, pick up an HD44780 display (~$20 on EBay + $10 on wiring bits from RS or Frys) and run LCDProc so you can just look at the box to see if it's crashed before hauling out the spare KB and monitor.
The reason we're forced to put up with our insane tax laws is because the people who write them are allowed to pay outside firms to do their taxes for them.
I'm convinced that if members of our congress were required to prepare their own taxes, the tax forms would consist of "In 2002, you made $X from all sources of income. Please send a check for $Y to:...."
Imagine, if you will, a personalized avatar or something that can interact with you and perhaps assist you in your daily endevours (with a touch of attitude?)..
Top 10 phrases spoken by cell-phone avatars:
10. "No, I dont know the way there, why dont you just stop and ask directions?"
9. "You really need to clean out your pores."
8. "Just because I'm small enough to fit in your mouth doesn't mean you have to actually show everyone."
7. "How would I know where the charger is?"
6. "Hooweee, when yo' mamma sees yo' bill, she gonna whup yo' ass!"
5. "an-NUN-ci-ate!"
4. "Elf is about to die. Hah! Get it? Bah, kids these days."
3. "Whoa dude, that is NOT an earpiece!"
2. "What, you think I enjoy being that close to your crotch?"
And the Number One phrase spoken by cell-phone avatars....
I have yet to see an install of the aforementioned distros install successfully (and by that I mean see all my hardware) on any machine I care to throw at it. BeOS however (and MS, but that goes without saying)
Actually, that goes with saying. I'm suprised you've been that lucky with Windows that you've never had to install any device drivers on any of your machines.
As a counterpoint, I've got 6 different home-kludged PC's currently and have installed Windows and various linux flavors on all of them in the past year. Only one has worked completely (sound, X11 at the correct resolution, network, storage, mouse) with the "out of the box" OS install, and that OS happened to be Mandrake 9. That particular piece of hardware was actually one of the worst for Windows, I had to manually install network, video, and sound drivers to get it up and running properly.
That being said, 2 of the machines I gave up on completely with linux, having never figured out how to get sound or X11 properly working. I'd never had to give up on a Windows install (although getting drivers onto the machines was sometimes pretty painful).
Holy cow, a tongue-in-cheek (and wholly incomplete) comparison of the GB vs G3 made the front page of/.! Is it April 1 already?
If I'd known it was that easy to get that kind of exposure, I woulda started submitting things months ago!
I agree. One of the larger roadblocks to greater TiVo adoption is educating the consumer as to why it's so damn cool.
Most people I talk to have no clue just how cool time-shifted recording and season passes are, and it's hard explaining why TiVo does it better than their VCR. With the advertising might of AOL/TW, they may just be able to educate the masses about PVR's and even though that'll help sell AOL devices, it'll help the market overall.
What's with the alarmist "It's got unhealthy stuff in it!" rants about fuel cells? It's not like NiCad or LiIon batteries are a good nutritional supplement and all that wildlife friendly either, folks.
I'm not totally up on HTTP and such, but why is it a royal pain? Assuming the user is going to download all 3 ISO images one way or another, what's the issue if he grabs them using 6 streams in 1/6th (roughly) of the time, or in one stream for the full stretch? It's still bandwidth being eaten. I guess it boils down to time versus users.
the AT has a small "silence" between tracks... not an issue for some music, but for albums like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon there are segways between songs. It's such a trivial issue to properly buffer the data I'm amazed that this problem exists... does it still?
I hate to point out the obvious, but why not re-rip the album as one track? Nobody in their right mind would Shuffle Play DSotM or WYWH or any number of other "concept albums", so why even bother breaking them into individual tracks? Maybe one or two songs on most of these stand well enough alone to rip seperately and having them duplicated elsewhere shouldn't be that much of an issue.
One thing to add - I'm not sure if this still applies (I was told this in the mid 90's), but in California, Pay Phones have 'priority' over other phones in case of emergency. This means that if there's some major catastrophy (IE - earthquake for us CA folk), the phone in your house may not get a connection, but the pay phone usually will.
This is, of course, dependent on the connection. If you buy one from EBay and stick it in your house, you'll get the same busy signal as the rest of us while the china falls from the cupboards.
Just something to note when the stuff hits the fan.
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LED's come on much quicker than filament bulbs, so those racers who've become experts at timing their starts from when the filament of the green light just begins to glow are having all kinds of problems adjusting to the instant-on of LED.
Most racing leagues are points based, with all of the top finishers at any given race getting some kind of points. So it's possible to miss a race and still maintain a points lead if you're consistent elsewhere.
Since some tracks have made the switch and others not, the consistency of racers winning at certain tracks and not others has changed.
Sure, it's still about who crosses the finish line first, but the LED trees have changed the predictability of who wins where.
As a sports fan, the greatest advancement in technology has to be TiVo. I'd say my viewing and appreciation of sports has increased at least by a factor of 3 with the convenience of "automatic" time shifting and TiVo's powerful review abilities.
I now understand what "delayed offsides" is in hockey, "tail braking" is in motorcycling, and why the move from filament to LED starting bulbs on drag racing tracks is throwing the scoring system into chaos.
That's likely true, it may pass Apple in market share, but I dont see Apple's market share decreasing to meet that prognostication. Linux's primary growth in the home market is on secondary Intel machines as users continue to upgrade hardware and are looking for a use for the older boxes. The Linux rally cry of "it works great on older hardware" is working.
I'd be curious to see a statistic of how many of those new Linux boxes see more than a few weeks of use before being obsoleted by people disenfranchised because they can't find Network Neighborhood, get streaming audio working under Mozilla, figure out how to print under CUPS or apply their generous experience of Outlook filters to Evolution.
"Handspring did not include Bluetooth into this device, but because of the SDIO slot it is an option in the future. Handspring told us that they are working with 3rd party companies to extend all the powers of the Treo to the Bluetooth card. This includes not only data synchronization like most cards, but the ability to use Bluetooth headsets, or act as a Bluetooth modem for a PC or Mac. Adding a Bluetooth SD card to the Treo 600 family will cost around $100 to $150. The current Palm branded card does not work with OS 5."
While not required, cursive is the standard for a signature.
I'd disagree, the solution's already there with very popular off-the-shelf hardware. All you need is:
- One of these phones
- Something running This OS
- A Bluetooth Adapter
- Some software like this and this
And your dream has come true...Wheras Palm's current money-losing strategy seems to be: 1) Create successfull company 2) Buy another company with attractive software/assets 3) Mis-manage company into ground 4) Close company They should balance out rather well, I'd think...
Because my ISP doesn't support IMAP or do any spam filtering and I'd like to access all of my substantial read email remotely from anywhere?
I am open to suggestions....
Couldn't you just transfer the file(s) via your favorite IM program? Since you're both inside the same firewall, you should be able to direct connect, bypassing the IM servers and such, no? Since it's for LAN gaming, you're not transferring terrible secure documents, right?
Knees? Sounds like someone needs to get out more...
The idea is that you use your Bluetooth enabled cell-phone (which would always be within the short range) to access the net.
So before I go and scope one of these out on E-Bay - will the off-the-shelf unit (with the Rage 128) play back most video formats in full screen (TV res - not 1024x768) at a watchable framerate? How's one get video and 5.1 out?
Don't underestimate the importance of this paragraph. It's one thing to have your desktop machine, which you futz around with constantly go on the fritz, but when you've had a really long shitty day and just wanna sit down and veg in front of a home-made Futurama marathon, the last thing you want is a blank screen with no clue what's going on.
The UI on the T68 is miserable! I'm in love with bluetooth and the feature set, but the slow/badly organized menu system and just general un-intuitiveness are really getting on my nerves.
The UI's so bad, you missed that the T68 has most of the PDA features, including contact management, datebook w/alarms, to-do list, and notepad.
Such machines can easily be found (with NIC & RAM) for under $25 on Ebay (although shipping's usually more than the PC). Try cruising the local garage sales or putting the word on the street you're looking for an old Garage Shelf Space Taker-Upper and you might just get it for free from someone who's just happy it's out of their garage and not in landfill. Heck, if you're the kind of person who would rather roll your own than buy, you've probably already got a few of these machines collecting dust and should already know all of this anyhow.
Another $15 for the ATA controller and $100 for a 120gb drive (some larger drives are often bundled with the controller, YMMV) and you're good to go for way under $275.
And if you really enjoy this kind of thing, pick up an HD44780 display (~$20 on EBay + $10 on wiring bits from RS or Frys) and run LCDProc so you can just look at the box to see if it's crashed before hauling out the spare KB and monitor.
I'm convinced that if members of our congress were required to prepare their own taxes, the tax forms would consist of "In 2002, you made $X from all sources of income. Please send a check for $Y to:...."
And we'd still have audits...
Top 10 phrases spoken by cell-phone avatars:
10. "No, I dont know the way there, why dont you just stop and ask directions?"
9. "You really need to clean out your pores."
8. "Just because I'm small enough to fit in your mouth doesn't mean you have to actually show everyone."
7. "How would I know where the charger is?"
6. "Hooweee, when yo' mamma sees yo' bill, she gonna whup yo' ass!"
5. "an-NUN-ci-ate!"
4. "Elf is about to die. Hah! Get it? Bah, kids these days."
3. "Whoa dude, that is NOT an earpiece!"
2. "What, you think I enjoy being that close to your crotch?"
And the Number One phrase spoken by cell-phone avatars....
"Stop looking at me and watch the #@$@#$ road!"
Actually, that goes with saying. I'm suprised you've been that lucky with Windows that you've never had to install any device drivers on any of your machines.
As a counterpoint, I've got 6 different home-kludged PC's currently and have installed Windows and various linux flavors on all of them in the past year. Only one has worked completely (sound, X11 at the correct resolution, network, storage, mouse) with the "out of the box" OS install, and that OS happened to be Mandrake 9. That particular piece of hardware was actually one of the worst for Windows, I had to manually install network, video, and sound drivers to get it up and running properly.
That being said, 2 of the machines I gave up on completely with linux, having never figured out how to get sound or X11 properly working. I'd never had to give up on a Windows install (although getting drivers onto the machines was sometimes pretty painful).
Holy cow, a tongue-in-cheek (and wholly incomplete) comparison of the GB vs G3 made the front page of /.! Is it April 1 already?
If I'd known it was that easy to get that kind of exposure, I woulda started submitting things months ago!
I agree. One of the larger roadblocks to greater TiVo adoption is educating the consumer as to why it's so damn cool.
Most people I talk to have no clue just how cool time-shifted recording and season passes are, and it's hard explaining why TiVo does it better than their VCR. With the advertising might of AOL/TW, they may just be able to educate the masses about PVR's and even though that'll help sell AOL devices, it'll help the market overall.
What's with the alarmist "It's got unhealthy stuff in it!" rants about fuel cells? It's not like NiCad or LiIon batteries are a good nutritional supplement and all that wildlife friendly either, folks.
I'm not totally up on HTTP and such, but why is it a royal pain? Assuming the user is going to download all 3 ISO images one way or another, what's the issue if he grabs them using 6 streams in 1/6th (roughly) of the time, or in one stream for the full stretch? It's still bandwidth being eaten. I guess it boils down to time versus users.
I hate to point out the obvious, but why not re-rip the album as one track? Nobody in their right mind would Shuffle Play DSotM or WYWH or any number of other "concept albums", so why even bother breaking them into individual tracks? Maybe one or two songs on most of these stand well enough alone to rip seperately and having them duplicated elsewhere shouldn't be that much of an issue.
This is, of course, dependent on the connection. If you buy one from EBay and stick it in your house, you'll get the same busy signal as the rest of us while the china falls from the cupboards.
Just something to note when the stuff hits the fan.
That'll be good timing, it'll take that long before consumers figure out which standard will be the safe one to buy.