GIF and JPG each do something quite well. GIF is well-suited for the rendering of static elements with a relatively small palette, like webpage design elements. It doesn't support photo-realistic images, but that's OK - a GIF can make a very small, efficient file that can load quickly. And it's been supported since the earliest days of the Internet.
JPG compliments GIF by providing a way to display high-quality photo images, and you can control the size of the rendered file by deciding how much you're willing to discard. Again, it's supported by every editor and browser, and it's been around since the beginnning.
PNG is a superior format to GIF from a technical perspective, and it's not encumbered by the LZW patent. However, from the perspective of most mainstream users, it doesn't solve a problem that actually affects them (they don't know or care about the Unisys patent issue), it isn't perfectly supported by all mainstream browsers and servers in use today, and it's a johnnie-come-lately to the standards wars.
Like it or not (I think it kinda sucks), most web developers seem to do things one of three ways: if they need small static elements they use GIF, for photos they use JPG, and if they need fancy-schmancy stuff they use Flash. And nobody worries whether or not platforms other than Windows with the latest IE can render their site, anyway. So maybe PNG will slowly become more common - it is a better format for the most part than GIF is, and pretty much all current browsers and servers (going forward - not some of the older versions that are still in use) support it pretty well out of the box. Really, what matters most is the bottom line (especially once the LZW patent is dead) - can PNG produce a better browsing experience for a site's users? If it can, it'll get used. If not, then it's dead.
And that's when they transfer you to "their supervisor" - who's back here in the US and actually knows the product.
But the call center full of untrained people in India with computer screens guiding them? They're fine for about 99% of the clueless users out there who don't realize that the answer is in the documentation.
Your house, though, was a "work for hire". So unless you didn't pay the carpenters, it belongs entirely to you.
Of course, if you managed to take posession of the house without paying them, they'd get a lien placed against the house, but that's almost besides the point.
Freelance writers generally work on a "work for hire" basis, as do other professions where the end result is a product (tangible or not) turned over to you. In most cases, though, studio photographers don't do that unless you specifically arrange it - they retain the copyright even though it's really a work for hire that you commissioned. That's why places with photo gear generally won't let you reproduce things like wedding photos, school portraits, and such without a release - even though you paid for it all you bought were the prints, not the rights.
Anyhow, just to bring this back to where we started, regardless of who owns the tools you use, the rights to what you do at work generally belong to the employer. I'm not a coder, but if I were developing code for my own purposes on my TiBook and brought it into work to give me a chance to work on my project during downtime, my employer could argue that they hold the rights. If I do the work at home that's a lot less likely to stand.
What I really wonder about is how that would affect a teleworker. Ideally, though, your employer would recognize the value in letting you officially contribute back to the community and render the point moot.
Bingo. It's not that he invented palm computers, it's that he invented the Palm computer. And his major contribution (besides Grafitti, which I still use on my Newton) was the realization that what people needed was a small, simple, relatively inexpensive device that could simply keep track of the essentials and perform quickly. That led Palm to produce a device that was far less capable than it's competition, but better at what it did do. And it functioned as an extension of your desktop rather than as "yet another gadget". Hawkins was already in a good position to observer the failures that had come before, but he still had to figure out what people might actually buy.
Newton, wonderful as it was (and still is), was too big and too expensive for most people, and though the HWR was actually pretty good people didn't have the patience to go through the learning curve. Zoomer was simply a "me too" counterpart, and the MagicCap devices (the Sony is the one I remember best) were basically Newton-sized devices with pretty animation and a goofy cartoon interface - almost like MS Bob for portable devices.
Palm was the first company that Got It as far as what consumers would actually want, which is how they've been able to dominate the class for so long. PDA's did turn out to be huge, just like John Sculley said they would be - just ten years later than he hoped.
Indestructible? You must be thinking of some other company named SyQuest - because all the SyQuest drives I ever saw sucked big-time. Using Winchester technology in a cartridge with unreliable sealing technology was a recipe for disaster on a regular basis. Iomega Jaz drives were a little better, but not that much - their advantage was size and speed compared to SyQuest. Zip drive media was pretty good, though - it was the drives that were cheaply made and relatively unreliable.
The most reliable drives I ever remember seeing were the old Iomega Bernoulli drives. I used to have two of the 90 meg drives that I used to move files between home and work. So I usually had a couple of cartridges in my briefcase. One time, in a pinch I had to use a Bernoulli cartridge as an ice scraper on my car's windshield.
The cartridge did the job effectively. And I continued to use it for data afterwards.
Handspring doesn't bring much to the table compared to Palm in the patent area, I think. I suspect the purchase is more based on getting a complementary product line (the Treos), a low-end brand name less goofy than Zire, and a bunch of skilled hardware engineers.
Donna Dubinsky wasn't a developer - she was the "Professional Manager" that was brought in to run Palm during the early startup days. She, along with Jeff Hawkins (the fellow who essentially invented the Palm computer) and Ed Colligan (an early Palm marketing head) were the three core people who left to found Handspring. They took a few other engineers with them when they left.
In the last year or so, Handspring stopped building standalone organizers (the core Palm hardware business) and bet the company on wireless communicators using the Palm OS, to mixed results (popular acceptance, critical praise, but losing money because the adoption rate wasn't fast enough). With Handspring, Palm gets some new expertise in building phone/PDA devices that they lacked (despite the i705 and Tungsten W, this wasn't a Palm strength), to complement their existing lines of organizers/networked wireless devices. Now they can compete in all three categories directly - standalone organizers, Bluetooth/WiFi organizers, and cellphone/2.5g/3g organizers.
What products are dead out of this? I'd guess all the existing standalone devices from Handspring die, but they're already on the way out now anyway. At some point, the Handspring brand replaces the Zire brand for the low end. And the Handsprig Treos push out the Tungsten W, while the i705 dies a quiet death.
I'll stick with my existing 3 devices - a Tungsten T (the everyday pocket device for me), my Zaurus 5500 (when I want wireless or I don't have the space to transport a real computer), and for sentimental value my Newton Messagepad 2100. I don't think anything will come out of this merger for at least a year or two that would compel me to swap out any of the handhelds I own.
I've read (and I believe) that the behaviors you see in a cat "playing" with it's prey are simply instinctive behaviors. It's making sure the prey is dead after killing it by (ideally) breaking it's neck. It's not rage, it's simply hunting instinct. No "emotion" as we understand it really factors into it.
When the cat brings you a dead critter? Well, that means the cat likes you, but not the way you think. basically, that's the cat's way of saying "I've tried to teach you how to hunt, you don't seem to get it, so if I bring you thins maybe you won't starve. But get off your duff and start killing your own food!"
It's obvious, as least to me. Regardless of whether you love Apple or hate Apple (I'm a fan), Apple survives because of their integrated platform. The reason Apple waited to introduce iPod for Windows wasn't because of an inability to produce - it was because Apple wanted to initially use iPod as a value proposition to sell more Macs:
"See this iPod? Isn't it cool? Don't you want one? Well, you can, but only if you have a Mac..."
It's the same with the iLife apps, and initially with the music store. If you want get the benefits, then you have to buy a Mac. Not coincidentally, Macs have gross margins far higher than comparable commoditized PC's. Duh.
What analysts in general just seem to Not Get At All is that Apple plays a different game from the other PC makers. All other PC makers let Microsoft tell them what to make and sell. They add Intel's latest tech, package, and market. There's virtually no engineering difference between a white box, a Dell, and an IBM. were Apple to split off a hardware company to market Wintel boxes, they'd be generic boxes with nice industrial design, but nothing to differentiate them from Dell. Given that Dell is cheaper, Apple'd be roadkill in a hurry.
And the newly split-off Apple software company? Yeah, they'd get loads of OEM software contracts. I'm sure they'd ship on every Dell within months. Just like it worked out for Be.
In other words, it'd go over like a fart in church. A complete disaster. Short-term, it might bump up the share prices, but within a couple of years you're looking at the death of Apple. They can't go head-to-head with Microsoft, because Microsoft could crush them in a heartbeat. Apple has 4.5 billion in cash? Microsoft generates that kind of profit every quarter. It's no contest.
The only way Apple can thrive is to continue selling computers that are different, and therefore not commoditized. Sure, they could have gone into licensing 18 years ago. They blew it. Get over it, analysts - that dog don't hunt nowadays. If Apple converts to Intel/AMD, they now compete more directly with Wintel - even if they keep the Mac itself proprietary. That's because the frame of reference is now common. Af Apple sells Wintel boxes, they get crushed by Dell. If Apple sells software for generic Intel, they get crushed by Microsoft. it's not pretty either way.
The best option at this point to end all this speculation is probably taking Apple private, and then just keep making the products they're making - just work towards closing the speed gap (the PPC970 can't come fast enough!) and price the high-end machines a little more competitively. Keep coming out with neat products. In this economy, just treading water is a victory of it's own right now.
Well, hopefully they stick to three for a while;-)
Seriously, it's a Good Thing that PalmOS has become as portable as it now is - different processors are best suited for different applications, and if you run on a particular platform, then there's a possibility that your OS gets selected for that use.
Dragonball, OMAP, and XScale aren't bad for starters. Though OMAP and XScale are members of the ARM family, and the software is probably pretty much compatible.
Sure, handheld/embedded devices will outsell PC's over time. That falls into the Bleeding Obvious category of statistic. Duh.
What the key question here turns out to be is this: What is a PC? If, by "PC", you mean monolithic desktop/laptop systems that use X86-compatible processors and run Microsoft Windows, well, then it's a no-brainer. That means Linux desktops will chip away at that, MacOS will chip at that, every Palm sold hits that figure - not to mention the WinCE devices. If a PC is defined as any sort of desktop/laptop general computing device - well, that takes the plot line out a lot farther.
The other thing to consider is that palmtop operating systems (CE, Palm, etc.) are penetrating ever-farther into the realm of consumer devices. So it's not an outrageous concept - but I don't think CE as an OS will ever pass Windows by itself. No friggin' way.
Will the combined sales of organizers, MP3 players, cellphones, DVR's, and other devices that can get and benefit from a useful embedded OS pass the sales of traditional X86 "PC's"? I'm sure of it.
But by the time this comes to pass, your MP3 player may well have more computing firepower than your desktop does today. And then PC's would likely be the niche devices.
As Gorbie probably recalls, my father used to own a photoretouching shop in New York, back in the pre-Photoshop era (until the late '80s). I worked there on and off whenever I was out of school.
I can say with authority that Christie Brinkley had a _very_ hairy lip back then. In fact, she was rather fuzzy in general. She was still pretty darned cute, though.
My more serious comment is that the ease of computerized retouching is part of the reason we need to be vigilant that our actual news photography isn't "enhanced" in any way. When retouching was something that companies like my father's did, it was a slow, expensive process involving large prints and airbrushing. The technical and artistic barriers were high enough that it was mainly reserved for expensive advertising campaigns and removing the likenesses of folks who'd been purged from the Politburo.
Now it's a trivial skill - and that much more likely to be used inappropriately.
... include such lovely items as supporting the 'rights' of grown men to molest under-age boys (ie. NAMBLA). Yeah... you'll have to forgive me if I fail to become overly enthusiastic when the ACLU jumps on board these days.
They don't support NAMBLA's activities or endorse the content of their message, just their right to actually hold and advocate an unpopular view in public. An actual link to their statement on NAMBLA is here. I'm a straight married male with a young son. The prospect of someone's actually doing something bad to him someday horrifies me. I am disgusted by NAMBLA. But they have a fundamental right to their view and message, however unpopular or disgusting.
The ACLU defends groups and activities on all sides of the political spectrum. They have defended the American Nazi Party, NAMBLA, peace protestors, evangelical churches, and Ollie North. They stand for a principle, not a slice of the political spectrum, and they are consistent in that.
And in these times, we need the ACLU more than ever. It looks like nobody else is really interested in standing up for the Constitution - including the government.
In my house, we have "real" systems in just about every room (two Macs, a P4, a couple of Athlons, and assorted other stuff), but I use a Mini-ITX system as the server to run it all. I'm using the Eden-533 processor in a Cubid case, with an external DC power supply, no floppy, and a laptop hard drive. It runs fanless, and the only thing you ever hear from it is the occasional chirp out of the hard drive.
I run e-Smith Linux on it, which is based loosely on Redhat, but tuned specifically to be a SOHO server. No video issues because it only uses text mode - I do all the admin either from the console or through the web interface. It makes a powerful little server.
My old home server was a Flex ATX system that was almost as small (one of the old "Book PC's"), but it had the loud fan on the built-in PS, plus a CPU fan for the Celery 366 I ran in it. And from an airflow perspective, it was all cramped up inside. It was slower, hotter, and louder than the ITX, even though the form factor was almost identical.
As I mentioned above, I have plenty of computers that are more powerful, but the speed is fine for most routine purposes. I'll always keep a high-octane PC around for gaming and such, and I still use Macs a decent amount, but I suspect I'll buy more Mini-ITX systems down the road for the computers that'll just handle the basics. They're smaller, use less juice, and you don't realize how great silent operation is until you have it.
If this technology makes it's way into the standard cable network, then it's a sales feature for cable vs. satellite. TiVo becomes, in effect, the "premium option" for consumers, much as it is now.
If the cable companies want to charge more for it, though, then it may steal some sales from TiVo, but it's more likely that folks will avoid it entirely. I actually think that if some form of digital VCR/on demand technology makes it into the cable network by default, it'll be a bonus for TiVo.
Think about it. Right now, one of the toughest things for TiVo is just explaining it to people. If some TiVo-like capabilities become available by default to everyone, then TiVo actually has something to relate their product to. They can say, in essense, "Mystro isn't bad. But when you want the real thing, try TiVo". That has some potential.
By the way, I explain TiVo to folks by saying "I don't watch any particular network anymore. I watch the TiVo channel, and it knows what I want and shows it to me when I want it, automatically". It seems to work as an explanation.
I've found a few (again, at Home Depot) that are small enough to fit even the tighter tolerance fixtures. But you can only get them up to 75 watt equivalence - the 100 and 150 are just too big.
What I'd like to see is a 3-way CF bulb that's reasonable in size. They're too tall for most lamps.
I did have one problem with 10.2.4 on my TiBook (fall 2001) - my Olympus D3000 camera won't connect anymore since the update (no problems on my wife's iMac 17", though - so I'm using it there for now). No problems with battery life that I've noticed, though I usually operate tethered. The couple of times I've had the TiBook off it's leash, the discharge curve seemed normal - roughly 25% discharge in an hour. That's about what I've gotten since Jaguar. It sucked power much worse under 10.1x.
I'd say this probably isn't the timeliest of book reviews, however well-written it is (the review is very good, the book, outstanding). This book was first published in the fall of 2000, and fiction has a relatively short shelf life. Most of the people who would be interested in this book have probably already read it.
His other two "major" novels, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys were also first-rate. His current effort is for younger readers, it's called Summerland. It's on my "to read" list.
We have a spare bedroom upstairs that's the full "geek room" for the house. It's just decorated with white walls, curtains (provided by my wife), a pair of daylight fluorescent bulbs in a wall fixture, and a couple of framed photos of the Vineyard. For furniture, there's two desks, one with my Windows gaming box, and one with my Powerbook. I also have a nice wooden bookcase, a magazine basket, and a relatively ugly metal shelving unit that holds my server, network switch, and a couple of other computers that all share a monitor and setups via a KVM switch. The closet used to keep a lot of tech junk, but was renovated by me into a clothing closet last year.
Then down in the cellar we have my workshop and a rec room. It's a big open layout that's kinda subdivided into three rooms by painting different colors and themes. One third is just pretty much open space, with a closet and some storage items. One third is my workbench, along with my tools storage, another PC setup (a simple, but nice-looking PC workstation unit and a comfy leather chair), along with our exercise gear (a weight machine and bike). I can work out, build stuff, or geek in peace.
Then there's the third "room", which is a pseudo-living room. There's a small area rug, an old sofa and loveseat with slipcovers, our old 27" TV with an old DVD player, and we use a lobster trap as a coffee table. The walls around that portion were painted by a friend of my wife's - she painted an underwater themed mural on the two walls that enclose the area, with a blue paint and rocks, seaweed, and fish painted in. It looks really cool and separates the section. Lighting is a mix of stuff - there's lamps around for individual use but overhead shop fluorescents throughout if needed.
Basically, paint is the key, I think. You can do some really neat stuff with paint that can dress up a room or change it's mood entirely. Good quality furniture is a must, too - it should be unobtrusive and not cheap-looking. Hide as many wires as you can, also.
Yeah, it's about the same size, but it might be even smaller without the camera hardware. If the T68i were just a smidge smaller, I could easily toss it in the pocket of just about anything. As it stands, it won't fit in enough stuff that I usually use the belt case or a jacket pocket. It'd be handy if it could fit in a jeans pocket easily.
I'm also not sold on the utility of still cameras in phones for the average user. I do see commercial applications for it (realtors, for instance, or insurance appraisers), but I don't think still photos are a killer app for mobile phones - especially at the quality they can shoot. The thing I like about Bluetooth is that it lets you combine products that do individual tasks well, rather than try and cram everything into one device. As a PDA, for instance, my T68i is fine for reviewing stuff that's been synced to it. But browsing information is a pain when there's a lot of it, it has limited storage, and data entry is awful. But my Palm does that stuff all really well. Since my Palm and T68i can essentially operate as a linked device via Bluetooth, I can deal with the strengths of each separately. I prefer that approach.
What might be a nice feature once 3G is more widespread is lo-res video in phones. If it's simple to use, it could be pretty popular. All I think you'd need to be "good enough" is 5-10 fps, I'd think. At lo-res (like 120x120), that's not a ton of bandwidth.
Then I got a T68i last fall. Now I have a Bluetooth adapter for my Mac, a Jabra Bluetooth headset, and a Palm Tungsten T. Amazingly, it all Just Works together. I can sync the Mac to both the Palm and the T68i, use Bluetooth to copy themes and ringtones to the phone, leave the phone buried in my pocket and use the Palm to dial it (I keep more of the database in my Palm than I do in the phone - I only keep the 50 or so most likely numbers in the phone), and just use the Jabra to talk.
Once set up, Bluetooth is actually pretty neat stuff. Personally, it's now a feature I will look for going forward in phones, computers, and accessories.
This new T610 phone looks interesting, but I'm not sold on cameras in my phones. I'd rather save the size and go small.
No problems on my TiBook - like virtually all updates, it took around 2-3 minutes to optimize, then the reboot proceeded as normal.
A typical reboot on my TiBook (667) takes around a minute and a half - 30 seconds to shut down, and a minute to come back up. Most of the reboot time is the initial checks and spinning bars at boot. It's usually about 15-20 seconds from the appearance of the startup dialog box to desktop.
I go into too much detail here, I know, but this update was utterly routine - in fact, all my updates have been. This TiBook has been running OS X since I bought it in the fall of 2001, starting with 10.1, and I've applied all patches to it pretty much as they've been released. Never had a problem yet.
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GIF and JPG each do something quite well. GIF is well-suited for the rendering of static elements with a relatively small palette, like webpage design elements. It doesn't support photo-realistic images, but that's OK - a GIF can make a very small, efficient file that can load quickly. And it's been supported since the earliest days of the Internet.
JPG compliments GIF by providing a way to display high-quality photo images, and you can control the size of the rendered file by deciding how much you're willing to discard. Again, it's supported by every editor and browser, and it's been around since the beginnning.
PNG is a superior format to GIF from a technical perspective, and it's not encumbered by the LZW patent. However, from the perspective of most mainstream users, it doesn't solve a problem that actually affects them (they don't know or care about the Unisys patent issue), it isn't perfectly supported by all mainstream browsers and servers in use today, and it's a johnnie-come-lately to the standards wars.
Like it or not (I think it kinda sucks), most web developers seem to do things one of three ways: if they need small static elements they use GIF, for photos they use JPG, and if they need fancy-schmancy stuff they use Flash. And nobody worries whether or not platforms other than Windows with the latest IE can render their site, anyway. So maybe PNG will slowly become more common - it is a better format for the most part than GIF is, and pretty much all current browsers and servers (going forward - not some of the older versions that are still in use) support it pretty well out of the box. Really, what matters most is the bottom line (especially once the LZW patent is dead) - can PNG produce a better browsing experience for a site's users? If it can, it'll get used. If not, then it's dead.
And that's when they transfer you to "their supervisor" - who's back here in the US and actually knows the product.
But the call center full of untrained people in India with computer screens guiding them? They're fine for about 99% of the clueless users out there who don't realize that the answer is in the documentation.
Your house, though, was a "work for hire". So unless you didn't pay the carpenters, it belongs entirely to you.
Of course, if you managed to take posession of the house without paying them, they'd get a lien placed against the house, but that's almost besides the point.
Freelance writers generally work on a "work for hire" basis, as do other professions where the end result is a product (tangible or not) turned over to you. In most cases, though, studio photographers don't do that unless you specifically arrange it - they retain the copyright even though it's really a work for hire that you commissioned. That's why places with photo gear generally won't let you reproduce things like wedding photos, school portraits, and such without a release - even though you paid for it all you bought were the prints, not the rights.
Anyhow, just to bring this back to where we started, regardless of who owns the tools you use, the rights to what you do at work generally belong to the employer. I'm not a coder, but if I were developing code for my own purposes on my TiBook and brought it into work to give me a chance to work on my project during downtime, my employer could argue that they hold the rights. If I do the work at home that's a lot less likely to stand.
What I really wonder about is how that would affect a teleworker. Ideally, though, your employer would recognize the value in letting you officially contribute back to the community and render the point moot.
Bingo. It's not that he invented palm computers, it's that he invented the Palm computer. And his major contribution (besides Grafitti, which I still use on my Newton) was the realization that what people needed was a small, simple, relatively inexpensive device that could simply keep track of the essentials and perform quickly. That led Palm to produce a device that was far less capable than it's competition, but better at what it did do. And it functioned as an extension of your desktop rather than as "yet another gadget". Hawkins was already in a good position to observer the failures that had come before, but he still had to figure out what people might actually buy.
Newton, wonderful as it was (and still is), was too big and too expensive for most people, and though the HWR was actually pretty good people didn't have the patience to go through the learning curve. Zoomer was simply a "me too" counterpart, and the MagicCap devices (the Sony is the one I remember best) were basically Newton-sized devices with pretty animation and a goofy cartoon interface - almost like MS Bob for portable devices.
Palm was the first company that Got It as far as what consumers would actually want, which is how they've been able to dominate the class for so long. PDA's did turn out to be huge, just like John Sculley said they would be - just ten years later than he hoped.
Indestructible? You must be thinking of some other company named SyQuest - because all the SyQuest drives I ever saw sucked big-time. Using Winchester technology in a cartridge with unreliable sealing technology was a recipe for disaster on a regular basis. Iomega Jaz drives were a little better, but not that much - their advantage was size and speed compared to SyQuest. Zip drive media was pretty good, though - it was the drives that were cheaply made and relatively unreliable.
The most reliable drives I ever remember seeing were the old Iomega Bernoulli drives. I used to have two of the 90 meg drives that I used to move files between home and work. So I usually had a couple of cartridges in my briefcase. One time, in a pinch I had to use a Bernoulli cartridge as an ice scraper on my car's windshield.
The cartridge did the job effectively. And I continued to use it for data afterwards.
Handspring doesn't bring much to the table compared to Palm in the patent area, I think. I suspect the purchase is more based on getting a complementary product line (the Treos), a low-end brand name less goofy than Zire, and a bunch of skilled hardware engineers.
Donna Dubinsky wasn't a developer - she was the "Professional Manager" that was brought in to run Palm during the early startup days. She, along with Jeff Hawkins (the fellow who essentially invented the Palm computer) and Ed Colligan (an early Palm marketing head) were the three core people who left to found Handspring. They took a few other engineers with them when they left.
In the last year or so, Handspring stopped building standalone organizers (the core Palm hardware business) and bet the company on wireless communicators using the Palm OS, to mixed results (popular acceptance, critical praise, but losing money because the adoption rate wasn't fast enough). With Handspring, Palm gets some new expertise in building phone/PDA devices that they lacked (despite the i705 and Tungsten W, this wasn't a Palm strength), to complement their existing lines of organizers/networked wireless devices. Now they can compete in all three categories directly - standalone organizers, Bluetooth/WiFi organizers, and cellphone/2.5g/3g organizers.
What products are dead out of this? I'd guess all the existing standalone devices from Handspring die, but they're already on the way out now anyway. At some point, the Handspring brand replaces the Zire brand for the low end. And the Handsprig Treos push out the Tungsten W, while the i705 dies a quiet death.
I'll stick with my existing 3 devices - a Tungsten T (the everyday pocket device for me), my Zaurus 5500 (when I want wireless or I don't have the space to transport a real computer), and for sentimental value my Newton Messagepad 2100. I don't think anything will come out of this merger for at least a year or two that would compel me to swap out any of the handhelds I own.
"This Slashdot article was brought to you by the letter 'P', and the number '2'. Because we're sure it'll get posted twice..."
I've read (and I believe) that the behaviors you see in a cat "playing" with it's prey are simply instinctive behaviors. It's making sure the prey is dead after killing it by (ideally) breaking it's neck. It's not rage, it's simply hunting instinct. No "emotion" as we understand it really factors into it.
When the cat brings you a dead critter? Well, that means the cat likes you, but not the way you think. basically, that's the cat's way of saying "I've tried to teach you how to hunt, you don't seem to get it, so if I bring you thins maybe you won't starve. But get off your duff and start killing your own food!"
It's obvious, as least to me. Regardless of whether you love Apple or hate Apple (I'm a fan), Apple survives because of their integrated platform. The reason Apple waited to introduce iPod for Windows wasn't because of an inability to produce - it was because Apple wanted to initially use iPod as a value proposition to sell more Macs:
"See this iPod? Isn't it cool? Don't you want one? Well, you can, but only if you have a Mac..."
It's the same with the iLife apps, and initially with the music store. If you want get the benefits, then you have to buy a Mac. Not coincidentally, Macs have gross margins far higher than comparable commoditized PC's. Duh.
What analysts in general just seem to Not Get At All is that Apple plays a different game from the other PC makers. All other PC makers let Microsoft tell them what to make and sell. They add Intel's latest tech, package, and market. There's virtually no engineering difference between a white box, a Dell, and an IBM. were Apple to split off a hardware company to market Wintel boxes, they'd be generic boxes with nice industrial design, but nothing to differentiate them from Dell. Given that Dell is cheaper, Apple'd be roadkill in a hurry.
And the newly split-off Apple software company? Yeah, they'd get loads of OEM software contracts. I'm sure they'd ship on every Dell within months. Just like it worked out for Be.
In other words, it'd go over like a fart in church. A complete disaster. Short-term, it might bump up the share prices, but within a couple of years you're looking at the death of Apple. They can't go head-to-head with Microsoft, because Microsoft could crush them in a heartbeat. Apple has 4.5 billion in cash? Microsoft generates that kind of profit every quarter. It's no contest.
The only way Apple can thrive is to continue selling computers that are different, and therefore not commoditized. Sure, they could have gone into licensing 18 years ago. They blew it. Get over it, analysts - that dog don't hunt nowadays. If Apple converts to Intel/AMD, they now compete more directly with Wintel - even if they keep the Mac itself proprietary. That's because the frame of reference is now common. Af Apple sells Wintel boxes, they get crushed by Dell. If Apple sells software for generic Intel, they get crushed by Microsoft. it's not pretty either way.
The best option at this point to end all this speculation is probably taking Apple private, and then just keep making the products they're making - just work towards closing the speed gap (the PPC970 can't come fast enough!) and price the high-end machines a little more competitively. Keep coming out with neat products. In this economy, just treading water is a victory of it's own right now.
And you have the beginings of the Longhorn development project.
Well, hopefully they stick to three for a while ;-)
Seriously, it's a Good Thing that PalmOS has become as portable as it now is - different processors are best suited for different applications, and if you run on a particular platform, then there's a possibility that your OS gets selected for that use.
Dragonball, OMAP, and XScale aren't bad for starters. Though OMAP and XScale are members of the ARM family, and the software is probably pretty much compatible.
Sure, handheld/embedded devices will outsell PC's over time. That falls into the Bleeding Obvious category of statistic. Duh.
What the key question here turns out to be is this: What is a PC? If, by "PC", you mean monolithic desktop/laptop systems that use X86-compatible processors and run Microsoft Windows, well, then it's a no-brainer. That means Linux desktops will chip away at that, MacOS will chip at that, every Palm sold hits that figure - not to mention the WinCE devices. If a PC is defined as any sort of desktop/laptop general computing device - well, that takes the plot line out a lot farther.
The other thing to consider is that palmtop operating systems (CE, Palm, etc.) are penetrating ever-farther into the realm of consumer devices. So it's not an outrageous concept - but I don't think CE as an OS will ever pass Windows by itself. No friggin' way.
Will the combined sales of organizers, MP3 players, cellphones, DVR's, and other devices that can get and benefit from a useful embedded OS pass the sales of traditional X86 "PC's"? I'm sure of it.
But by the time this comes to pass, your MP3 player may well have more computing firepower than your desktop does today. And then PC's would likely be the niche devices.
As Gorbie probably recalls, my father used to own a photoretouching shop in New York, back in the pre-Photoshop era (until the late '80s). I worked there on and off whenever I was out of school.
I can say with authority that Christie Brinkley had a _very_ hairy lip back then. In fact, she was rather fuzzy in general. She was still pretty darned cute, though.
My more serious comment is that the ease of computerized retouching is part of the reason we need to be vigilant that our actual news photography isn't "enhanced" in any way. When retouching was something that companies like my father's did, it was a slow, expensive process involving large prints and airbrushing. The technical and artistic barriers were high enough that it was mainly reserved for expensive advertising campaigns and removing the likenesses of folks who'd been purged from the Politburo.
Now it's a trivial skill - and that much more likely to be used inappropriately.
They don't support NAMBLA's activities or endorse the content of their message, just their right to actually hold and advocate an unpopular view in public. An actual link to their statement on NAMBLA is here. I'm a straight married male with a young son. The prospect of someone's actually doing something bad to him someday horrifies me. I am disgusted by NAMBLA. But they have a fundamental right to their view and message, however unpopular or disgusting.
The ACLU defends groups and activities on all sides of the political spectrum. They have defended the American Nazi Party, NAMBLA, peace protestors, evangelical churches, and Ollie North. They stand for a principle, not a slice of the political spectrum, and they are consistent in that.
And in these times, we need the ACLU more than ever. It looks like nobody else is really interested in standing up for the Constitution - including the government.
In my house, we have "real" systems in just about every room (two Macs, a P4, a couple of Athlons, and assorted other stuff), but I use a Mini-ITX system as the server to run it all. I'm using the Eden-533 processor in a Cubid case, with an external DC power supply, no floppy, and a laptop hard drive. It runs fanless, and the only thing you ever hear from it is the occasional chirp out of the hard drive.
I run e-Smith Linux on it, which is based loosely on Redhat, but tuned specifically to be a SOHO server. No video issues because it only uses text mode - I do all the admin either from the console or through the web interface. It makes a powerful little server.
My old home server was a Flex ATX system that was almost as small (one of the old "Book PC's"), but it had the loud fan on the built-in PS, plus a CPU fan for the Celery 366 I ran in it. And from an airflow perspective, it was all cramped up inside. It was slower, hotter, and louder than the ITX, even though the form factor was almost identical.
As I mentioned above, I have plenty of computers that are more powerful, but the speed is fine for most routine purposes. I'll always keep a high-octane PC around for gaming and such, and I still use Macs a decent amount, but I suspect I'll buy more Mini-ITX systems down the road for the computers that'll just handle the basics. They're smaller, use less juice, and you don't realize how great silent operation is until you have it.
I liked it so much, I emailed a link to my whole group!
(whoops...)
If this technology makes it's way into the standard cable network, then it's a sales feature for cable vs. satellite. TiVo becomes, in effect, the "premium option" for consumers, much as it is now.
If the cable companies want to charge more for it, though, then it may steal some sales from TiVo, but it's more likely that folks will avoid it entirely. I actually think that if some form of digital VCR/on demand technology makes it into the cable network by default, it'll be a bonus for TiVo.
Think about it. Right now, one of the toughest things for TiVo is just explaining it to people. If some TiVo-like capabilities become available by default to everyone, then TiVo actually has something to relate their product to. They can say, in essense, "Mystro isn't bad. But when you want the real thing, try TiVo". That has some potential.
By the way, I explain TiVo to folks by saying "I don't watch any particular network anymore. I watch the TiVo channel, and it knows what I want and shows it to me when I want it, automatically". It seems to work as an explanation.
I've found a few (again, at Home Depot) that are small enough to fit even the tighter tolerance fixtures. But you can only get them up to 75 watt equivalence - the 100 and 150 are just too big.
What I'd like to see is a 3-way CF bulb that's reasonable in size. They're too tall for most lamps.
I did have one problem with 10.2.4 on my TiBook (fall 2001) - my Olympus D3000 camera won't connect anymore since the update (no problems on my wife's iMac 17", though - so I'm using it there for now). No problems with battery life that I've noticed, though I usually operate tethered. The couple of times I've had the TiBook off it's leash, the discharge curve seemed normal - roughly 25% discharge in an hour. That's about what I've gotten since Jaguar. It sucked power much worse under 10.1x.
I'd say this probably isn't the timeliest of book reviews, however well-written it is (the review is very good, the book, outstanding). This book was first published in the fall of 2000, and fiction has a relatively short shelf life. Most of the people who would be interested in this book have probably already read it.
His other two "major" novels, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys were also first-rate. His current effort is for younger readers, it's called Summerland. It's on my "to read" list.
We have a spare bedroom upstairs that's the full "geek room" for the house. It's just decorated with white walls, curtains (provided by my wife), a pair of daylight fluorescent bulbs in a wall fixture, and a couple of framed photos of the Vineyard. For furniture, there's two desks, one with my Windows gaming box, and one with my Powerbook. I also have a nice wooden bookcase, a magazine basket, and a relatively ugly metal shelving unit that holds my server, network switch, and a couple of other computers that all share a monitor and setups via a KVM switch. The closet used to keep a lot of tech junk, but was renovated by me into a clothing closet last year.
Then down in the cellar we have my workshop and a rec room. It's a big open layout that's kinda subdivided into three rooms by painting different colors and themes. One third is just pretty much open space, with a closet and some storage items. One third is my workbench, along with my tools storage, another PC setup (a simple, but nice-looking PC workstation unit and a comfy leather chair), along with our exercise gear (a weight machine and bike). I can work out, build stuff, or geek in peace.
Then there's the third "room", which is a pseudo-living room. There's a small area rug, an old sofa and loveseat with slipcovers, our old 27" TV with an old DVD player, and we use a lobster trap as a coffee table. The walls around that portion were painted by a friend of my wife's - she painted an underwater themed mural on the two walls that enclose the area, with a blue paint and rocks, seaweed, and fish painted in. It looks really cool and separates the section. Lighting is a mix of stuff - there's lamps around for individual use but overhead shop fluorescents throughout if needed.
Basically, paint is the key, I think. You can do some really neat stuff with paint that can dress up a room or change it's mood entirely. Good quality furniture is a must, too - it should be unobtrusive and not cheap-looking. Hide as many wires as you can, also.
I figure the Internet's total traffic breaks down like this:
30% Pr0n
30% MP3 trading
20% Spam
10% Warez
10% Everything else
I might be a little low on the Pr0n and spam percentages, though...
Yeah, it's about the same size, but it might be even smaller without the camera hardware. If the T68i were just a smidge smaller, I could easily toss it in the pocket of just about anything. As it stands, it won't fit in enough stuff that I usually use the belt case or a jacket pocket. It'd be handy if it could fit in a jeans pocket easily.
I'm also not sold on the utility of still cameras in phones for the average user. I do see commercial applications for it (realtors, for instance, or insurance appraisers), but I don't think still photos are a killer app for mobile phones - especially at the quality they can shoot. The thing I like about Bluetooth is that it lets you combine products that do individual tasks well, rather than try and cram everything into one device. As a PDA, for instance, my T68i is fine for reviewing stuff that's been synced to it. But browsing information is a pain when there's a lot of it, it has limited storage, and data entry is awful. But my Palm does that stuff all really well. Since my Palm and T68i can essentially operate as a linked device via Bluetooth, I can deal with the strengths of each separately. I prefer that approach.
What might be a nice feature once 3G is more widespread is lo-res video in phones. If it's simple to use, it could be pretty popular. All I think you'd need to be "good enough" is 5-10 fps, I'd think. At lo-res (like 120x120), that's not a ton of bandwidth.
Then I got a T68i last fall. Now I have a Bluetooth adapter for my Mac, a Jabra Bluetooth headset, and a Palm Tungsten T. Amazingly, it all Just Works together. I can sync the Mac to both the Palm and the T68i, use Bluetooth to copy themes and ringtones to the phone, leave the phone buried in my pocket and use the Palm to dial it (I keep more of the database in my Palm than I do in the phone - I only keep the 50 or so most likely numbers in the phone), and just use the Jabra to talk.
Once set up, Bluetooth is actually pretty neat stuff. Personally, it's now a feature I will look for going forward in phones, computers, and accessories.
This new T610 phone looks interesting, but I'm not sold on cameras in my phones. I'd rather save the size and go small.
No problems on my TiBook - like virtually all updates, it took around 2-3 minutes to optimize, then the reboot proceeded as normal.
A typical reboot on my TiBook (667) takes around a minute and a half - 30 seconds to shut down, and a minute to come back up. Most of the reboot time is the initial checks and spinning bars at boot. It's usually about 15-20 seconds from the appearance of the startup dialog box to desktop.
I go into too much detail here, I know, but this update was utterly routine - in fact, all my updates have been. This TiBook has been running OS X since I bought it in the fall of 2001, starting with 10.1, and I've applied all patches to it pretty much as they've been released. Never had a problem yet.