Not sure that the psion.net service is going to be free, free, free in the US - you'll probably still have to sign up with an ISP - In the UK it's likely to be a free ISP where you pay call charges only.
London Times - Erk - it is available in the rest of the UK you know. We're not just one big city. Geographic politic aside I tend to take anything technology based that is printed in The Times with a large pinch of NaCl - they do not have the most rigorous checks in place when it comes to the quality of their IT journalism. For a weekly round up of the Times' PC faux pas' try reading Need To Know (www.ntk.net) the UK's cyber diatribe in one easy to swallow caplet (Not sugar coated does exactly what it says on the tin.) M@t:o)
The video phone portion is not the most important.
on
Wireless Video Phone
·
· Score: 1
I've been giving a lot of thought to this - what with Orange (I've been a customer of theirs for 3 years now) launching a PDA cum hands free phone cum digital camera cum video phone cum wireless net access terminal next year.
The videophone is a great gimmick - I'll be able to see my otherhalf on the phone - probably no-one else because not that many people will buy them.
However it's not the main reason I'd buy one - my palm pilot makes a great organiser - but it cant connect to the net without a phone connected by a lead or pointing directly at it. Yeah bluetooth would be nice but it's a fair while off yet.
I want a machine that will give me information when I want it - not stuff I've already filed away or synced with the device - but anything I want. Train times when I go visit my mum, travel information if I'm stuck in a traffic jam, a street map when I'm on my way to a friends. Yeah the display will be small but I'll still be able to make sense of the information.
Orange are promising to make fast and easy wirefree internet access a reality - they should, within the next two years, be able to bill based on data throughput - untill then they're offering uncompressed speed of 28.8kbps wirefree - faster than my first modem - heck even GSM's basic 9.6kbps is faster than my first modem.
I think that with the right design and spin these devices will become powerfull tooles - enabling people to get things done quicker and easier without reliance on data collation before the event - this is what is going to revolutionise internet access.
That'd be why the up and coming Orange PDA and cellphone is also a hands-free video phone.
This is along the lines of the groovy communicator thingies in Earth Final conflict, Camera Top Left, WinCE (I know but hey - I want to be one of the first people in the world with a mobile video phone;o) PDA with screen and handwriting organisation.
Internet access will be so easy - no plugging phones in or making sure that your Palm III is in direct line of sight of your Motorola L7089 (Got one of them - nice phone - cant wait to bring it to america to test the 1900 service) - just hit the internet service you want and the phone will connect - and with no analogue to digital conversion it will be a blindingly fast connect.
I think that PDAs and phones should merge - I will also see about keeping a seperate phone for when I dont want to lug a PDA around - hopefully Orange will give people a second sim linked to the same account.
Sorry but isn't the handwriting recognition in this Grafiti - mine certainly uses grafiti - and Grafiti was around in a wierd HP organiser with a square 160 by 160 display which flipped over - palmtop style device with a near 260deg hing so it can fold back on it's-self and be used as a hadwriting driven device...
I received my second batch of moderator points today - I noticed it while reading the article regarding trolls and karma points.
Reading down further and re-reading the moderator guidelines I set my viewing level to -1 and was quite surprised by some of the messages - hardly constructive criticism.
I guess this just goes to show that the karma points and decent moderators are definately needed.
Anyway - I'm going to pop off and read through as much as possible to see if there are any decent comments that I can rate higher.
Take care and post me some decent comments to moderate guys;o)
Actually I only have a 15" trinitron monitor shared between 2 PCs, my Faltmate has a 17" monitor. This plaes besides the 20" widescreen set in my bedroom and the 32" widescreen set in the lounge.
Next up for the lunge is either projector, gas plasma or at a push a rear projection set (but I might have trouble getting something *that* big up the stair to the flat.
I'm gald to see that these guys are using the VideoForLinux2 API in amongst this as I really hate to see a duplication of effort in what are minor applications. (Whatever any of you say Running DVD videos on a PC is pretty minor - most people - like myself will have a DVD deck to view DVDs on - I also have 2 DVD Rom drives and a creative labs DVD decoder board though;o)
One thing I would like to see is region independance - both the creative card and the DVD deck I have are region free since I ship DVDs in from the States due the the 1. Crap prices in most UK stores (19ukp seems about average) 2. Dreadful release timetable - we seem to get releases way after video and way way after America gets the DVDs.
Out of insterest is there any legal requirement for these boards to support Macrovision - which I believe is only available as a licensed chipset - and if so is that a global requirement or is it per country?
No need to search you - Paint Shop Pro does have a license - the original author pens so himself when his contact at Unisys says the a license has been awarded to Jasc.
Thgat sounded fun - does anyone know of any shows to be held in Europe this or next year. I'd seriously like to go - see what is happening in person rather than just look at pics and read third party reports. Oh - Do I have to put First Post or is that for sad geeks? I am a sad geek? OK First Post.
Actually I copped out and now have all the pre requisite seperates but acheiving a similar goal is still a bit of a dream for me. Let me outline how I would do it.
Apologies if this seems a little UK oriented but thats where I am so that all I can advise on.
First of all - and most importantly - Get a decent Dolby Digital amp/receiver. I have the Sony STR 925b - It's a great box with 4(5?) video inputs, lots of audio inputs - including a seperate 5.1 input and it drives my current setup brilliantly. You cant skimp on this as in my recommendation this is going to be doing all of the audio out work.
PC - I'd be tempted to go with a Gateway box in the UK - simply because they're reasonably well built now and they're very quiet - youd don't want 10 minutes of fan noise while you're watching 2001;o)
IF you can get one - the older style Creative Labs DVD Kits are great - you can easily overcome the reion coding and macrovision and they have composite and svideo out as well as coaxial SPDIF
Sound card - Go for the best card you can with SPDIF out - most domestic sound cards introduce noise in or after the digital to analogue conversion - remove the conversion to the receiver and you remove a lot of the noise - this is very important if you plan on using the machine as a CD transport as well - try not to use the machine as a CD player as the audio transport within a PC is, again, too noisy.
Get decent speakers - I cant stress this enough - I've got a pair of Kef Q35s as the fronts - I hope to upgrade these to 55s or higher and then put the 35s as rears - these are great AV speakers - not THX but a great sounds and more than adequate for music too - they also do a matching centre and bookshelf style sets suitable as rears - here for more info.
For video in and out I dont have much advice - I've got a hauppage card which performs great - on win98 ironically - but nothing for video out.
I would definately recommend a radio requency keyboard and mouse - you dont want IR because it limits you to line of sight and it's interrupted by people etc - Logitech do a nicely styled kit for around £100
That's all I can think of about now - drop me an email if you want.
Hopefully this decision is giong to be made across the board of Dell's operations and not be restricted to the North American market.
I have to say that although it's only a good thing it would be nice if manufacturers paid a little more lip service to the european market - we only have a few vendors who are willing to install Linux and they have not yet reached the same sort of size or recognition that VA and Penguin have - for a company such as Gateway or Dell or any large high street aware brand to bring Linux into Europe on their pre-installed range can only do good - not only for Linux but also for their own image.
Oooh I think we need to sit down and think about this one don't we.
1 - Alan's statistics are for lines of debugged code - I.e. code which has been checked and fixed. Not total lines of code.
It's easy to write lines of code but to write lines of code that are debugged is a hard job - why do you think windows 93 never shipped.
2 - The Linux kernal is the core of the Operating system. to create functionality you have to add in Apache, X Windows, FTP Server, User programs, Multimedia extensions, setup routines, easter egs, network utilities, network daemons blah blah blah.
I think you'll find that if you strip the kernel from Linux and you string the excess tat from NT you have a much closer comparison to make.
Sorry but that's bull. In the UK mainland virtually all phonelines are given a clear 64k path through te BT network - if they weren't 56k connections wouldn't work - in fact we'd still be sitting around at 28.8k or lower. The only time a home highway user actually uses more switch capacity is when they make 2 calls at once - and then it's just the same as having 2 phone lines which many people now have.
I placed the CD in the drive and booted, I took all the defaults and added all the networking otions for my LAN. Within minutes I had a fully working graphical operating system that was configured for everything but Internet access.
Installed were an office suite and a copy of word Perfect, Netscape and a multitude of configuration tools.
Connection to the Internet via a modem takes 3 minutes to setup - configuration with an ISDN adapter took a little longer (But no longer than it took me to get it going with NT)
I rebooted once and the machine now stays up. Were I installing NT I would have gone through 3 reboots for the OS Install, 2 for the isdn installation, 1 for the video card.
1 Free ISPs in the UK aren't sticking it to the consumer in any other way. The calls to the ISP I use (UUDial you'll know it as PIPEX Dial in the UK) cost exactly the same as those to Freeserve - the first free ISP.
2 The costs of international circuits may be cheap but the costs of high speed circuits in the UK aren't. The typical maximum monthly charge for internet acces here is £10+vat (17.5%) a month. If calls to ISPs were to be unmetered there would be a far greater uptake of the internet and more people would stay online for longer - taking up more dial in lines and taking up more bandwidth - at the same time the UK consumer would be loathed to see price increases.
3 The country's industry is not shooting itself in the foot. The country's near national telephony monopoly is keeping its market closed.
Either that or it's based on the new Psion units - they looks seriously cool with full colour screens and pen interface. I like the leather strips they look like they'll use. Seriously mean looking units.
Slashdot Mirror
M@t :O)
London Times - Erk - it is available in the rest of the UK you know. We're not just one big city. Geographic politic aside I tend to take anything technology based that is printed in The Times with a large pinch of NaCl - they do not have the most rigorous checks in place when it comes to the quality of their IT journalism. For a weekly round up of the Times' PC faux pas' try reading Need To Know (www.ntk.net) the UK's cyber diatribe in one easy to swallow caplet (Not sugar coated does exactly what it says on the tin.) M@t :o)
I've been giving a lot of thought to this - what with Orange (I've been a customer of theirs for 3 years now) launching a PDA cum hands free phone cum digital camera cum video phone cum wireless net access terminal next year.
:o)
The videophone is a great gimmick - I'll be able to see my otherhalf on the phone - probably no-one else because not that many people will buy them.
However it's not the main reason I'd buy one - my palm pilot makes a great organiser - but it cant connect to the net without a phone connected by a lead or pointing directly at it. Yeah bluetooth would be nice but it's a fair while off yet.
I want a machine that will give me information when I want it - not stuff I've already filed away or synced with the device - but anything I want. Train times when I go visit my mum, travel information if I'm stuck in a traffic jam, a street map when I'm on my way to a friends. Yeah the display will be small but I'll still be able to make sense of the information.
Orange are promising to make fast and easy wirefree internet access a reality - they should, within the next two years, be able to bill based on data throughput - untill then they're offering uncompressed speed of 28.8kbps wirefree - faster than my first modem - heck even GSM's basic 9.6kbps is faster than my first modem.
I think that with the right design and spin these devices will become powerfull tooles - enabling people to get things done quicker and easier without reliance on data collation before the event - this is what is going to revolutionise internet access.
M@t
This is along the lines of the groovy communicator thingies in Earth Final conflict, Camera Top Left, WinCE (I know but hey - I want to be one of the first people in the world with a mobile video phone ;o) PDA with screen and handwriting organisation.
Internet access will be so easy - no plugging phones in or making sure that your Palm III is in direct line of sight of your Motorola L7089 (Got one of them - nice phone - cant wait to bring it to america to test the 1900 service) - just hit the internet service you want and the phone will connect - and with no analogue to digital conversion it will be a blindingly fast connect.
I think that PDAs and phones should merge - I will also see about keeping a seperate phone for when I dont want to lug a PDA around - hopefully Orange will give people a second sim linked to the same account.
The future's Bright - The future's Orange .
Sorry but isn't the handwriting recognition in this Grafiti - mine certainly uses grafiti - and Grafiti was around in a wierd HP organiser with a square 160 by 160 display which flipped over - palmtop style device with a near 260deg hing so it can fold back on it's-self and be used as a hadwriting driven device...
Correct me if I'm wrong - I know you will...
I received my second batch of moderator points today - I noticed it while reading the article regarding trolls and karma points.
;o)
Reading down further and re-reading the moderator guidelines I set my viewing level to -1 and was quite surprised by some of the messages - hardly constructive criticism.
I guess this just goes to show that the karma points and decent moderators are definately needed.
Anyway - I'm going to pop off and read through as much as possible to see if there are any decent comments that I can rate higher.
Take care and post me some decent comments to moderate guys
Actually I only have a 15" trinitron monitor shared between 2 PCs, my Faltmate has a 17" monitor. This plaes besides the 20" widescreen set in my bedroom and the 32" widescreen set in the lounge.
:o)
Next up for the lunge is either projector, gas plasma or at a push a rear projection set (but I might have trouble getting something *that* big up the stair to the flat.
M@t
One thing I would like to see is region independance - both the creative card and the DVD deck I have are region free since I ship DVDs in from the States due the the
1. Crap prices in most UK stores (19ukp seems about average)
2. Dreadful release timetable - we seem to get releases way after video and way way after America gets the DVDs.
Out of insterest is there any legal requirement for these boards to support Macrovision - which I believe is only available as a licensed chipset - and if so is that a global requirement or is it per country?
No need to search you - Paint Shop Pro does have a license - the original author pens so himself when his contact at Unisys says the a license has been awarded to Jasc.
Thgat sounded fun - does anyone know of any shows to be held in Europe this or next year. I'd seriously like to go - see what is happening in person rather than just look at pics and read third party reports. Oh - Do I have to put First Post or is that for sad geeks? I am a sad geek? OK First Post.
Apologies if this seems a little UK oriented but thats where I am so that all I can advise on.
First of all - and most importantly - Get a decent Dolby Digital amp/receiver. I have the Sony STR 925b - It's a great box with 4(5?) video inputs, lots of audio inputs - including a seperate 5.1 input and it drives my current setup brilliantly. You cant skimp on this as in my recommendation this is going to be doing all of the audio out work.
PC - I'd be tempted to go with a Gateway box in the UK - simply because they're reasonably well built now and they're very quiet - youd don't want 10 minutes of fan noise while you're watching 2001 ;o)
IF you can get one - the older style Creative Labs DVD Kits are great - you can easily overcome the reion coding and macrovision and they have composite and svideo out as well as coaxial SPDIF
Sound card - Go for the best card you can with SPDIF out - most domestic sound cards introduce noise in or after the digital to analogue conversion - remove the conversion to the receiver and you remove a lot of the noise - this is very important if you plan on using the machine as a CD transport as well - try not to use the machine as a CD player as the audio transport within a PC is, again, too noisy.
Get decent speakers - I cant stress this enough - I've got a pair of Kef Q35s as the fronts - I hope to upgrade these to 55s or higher and then put the 35s as rears - these are great AV speakers - not THX but a great sounds and more than adequate for music too - they also do a matching centre and bookshelf style sets suitable as rears - here for more info.
For video in and out I dont have much advice - I've got a hauppage card which performs great - on win98 ironically - but nothing for video out.
I would definately recommend a radio requency keyboard and mouse - you dont want IR because it limits you to line of sight and it's interrupted by people etc - Logitech do a nicely styled kit for around £100
That's all I can think of about now - drop me an email if you want.
M@t :o)
Hopefully this decision is giong to be made across the board of Dell's operations and not be restricted to the North American market.
I have to say that although it's only a good thing it would be nice if manufacturers paid a little more lip service to the european market - we only have a few vendors who are willing to install Linux and they have not yet reached the same sort of size or recognition that VA and Penguin have - for a company such as Gateway or Dell or any large high street aware brand to bring Linux into Europe on their pre-installed range can only do good - not only for Linux but also for their own image.
Come on guys - remember we're over here.
Oooh I think we need to sit down and think about this one don't we.
1 - Alan's statistics are for lines of debugged code - I.e. code which has been checked and fixed. Not total lines of code.
It's easy to write lines of code but to write lines of code that are debugged is a hard job - why do you think windows 93 never shipped.
2 - The Linux kernal is the core of the Operating system. to create functionality you have to add in Apache, X Windows, FTP Server, User programs, Multimedia extensions, setup routines, easter egs, network utilities, network daemons blah blah blah.
I think you'll find that if you strip the kernel from Linux and you string the excess tat from NT you have a much closer comparison to make.
Sorry but that's bull. In the UK mainland virtually all phonelines are given a clear 64k path through te BT network - if they weren't 56k connections wouldn't work - in fact we'd still be sitting around at 28.8k or lower. The only time a home highway user actually uses more switch capacity is when they make 2 calls at once - and then it's just the same as having 2 phone lines which many people now have.
Hello Mr. BT - I'd like to dictate to you what equipment you place in your exchange.
Hello Mr. Customer - go swivel.
Yesterday I installed Caldera Open Linux 2.2.
:o)
I placed the CD in the drive and booted, I took all the defaults and added all the networking otions for my LAN. Within minutes I had a fully working graphical operating system that was configured for everything but Internet access.
Installed were an office suite and a copy of word Perfect, Netscape and a multitude of configuration tools.
Connection to the Internet via a modem takes 3 minutes to setup - configuration with an ISDN adapter took a little longer (But no longer than it took me to get it going with NT)
I rebooted once and the machine now stays up. Were I installing NT I would have gone through 3 reboots for the OS Install, 2 for the isdn installation, 1 for the video card.
M@t
1 Free ISPs in the UK aren't sticking it to the consumer in any other way. The calls to the ISP I use (UUDial you'll know it as PIPEX Dial in the UK) cost exactly the same as those to Freeserve - the first free ISP.
2 The costs of international circuits may be cheap but the costs of high speed circuits in the UK aren't. The typical maximum monthly charge for internet acces here is £10+vat (17.5%) a month. If calls to ISPs were to be unmetered there would be a far greater uptake of the internet and more people would stay online for longer - taking up more dial in lines and taking up more bandwidth - at the same time the UK consumer would be loathed to see price increases.
3 The country's industry is not shooting itself in the foot. The country's near national telephony monopoly is keeping its market closed.
Either that or it's based on the new Psion units - they looks seriously cool with full colour screens and pen interface. I like the leather strips they look like they'll use. Seriously mean looking units.
I'd like to see Zeus web server running on Linux in this test.
Zeus doesn't rock, it shakes continents. Go to www.zeus.co.uk and see for yerself.