Out of curiosity, did you actually use one of these? It's called a thumb-board. And my 'mutated thumbs' do pretty good on small keyboards like that. My gf has a pager that's roughly the dimensions you said and it works out really well.
Trust me, the 3 letter per numbered pad thing sucks. I have a cell phone that can send/recieve email, and I ended up buying a little keyboard on it. It is sooo much nicer, despite not being very big.
Did Sony actually innovate?
on
New Clie Handhelds
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I'm stunned! I like the swivel job they did with the screen. That's the type of feature this device needs. One thing I hate about my PocketPC is having to lug a seperate keyboard around. With this device, it nicely integrates the two and even gives the unit an extra usability mode. I wasn't expecting this from Sony, they usually put their money into marketing instead of research. Just look at the Playstation 2. *YuCk*
"We of the OS community who disapprove of MS Word as the near-universal medium of exchange should come up with our own document format..."
If you're going to attempt this, let me give you a piece of advice: Don't let what MS did wrong be your guide. Look at what they did right.
In a reply to Black Parrot's post, somebody started immediately with "don't support plugins so there'll be no bloat...". I appreciate the idea, but that's not the right way to start a new file format. What you need to do is make a list of what MS is doing right with the.DOC format, then add into it the ideas of what you'd do to improve it, and then design a format to include all these ideas.
The reason the.DOC format is useful is that it does quite a bit of stuff. It supports all kinds of formatting, it encapsulates things like images, and it's openable on all MS platforms including PocketPC. I can send a.DOC file to just about anybody I know and they have SOME way of opening it, one way or another.
Once you have those features in place and you know how it should look, only then do you start looking at some of the lessons that MS has learned. Here's an interesting question: why is it bloated? What is MS doing? Are they encrypting it? Are they adding a bunch of bits to it that might be activated later? Did they write a function called 'BloatFile($Filename)'?
I think the main reason that Linux isn't gaining much ground as a desktop OS is because people are actively trying to fix problems that they think plague MS os's, but they're not looking at what MS did right! They quickly dismiss the idea that MS created software that people want and just assume that they make crap and stupid people buy it. Well, if you want to make Linux a better Operating System, then look at what MS did right. For example, out of the box, any Windows OS has TONS of drivers going back many years. Nearly all MS written apps have the same or nearly the same interface. Installation is a breeze. (Not having to create a swap partition is nice.) Doing something like 'change the color depth of my monitor' is as simple as clicking your mouse 3 or 4 times. If they'd develop Linux to be more like Windows in this respect, they'd get a lot farther in the desktop market than trying to fix only the flaws they percieve.
People can read text just fine at 12 pixels high. Nobody ever complains about the resolution of dot-matrix signs being too low.
Pictures taken at 640 by 480 look just fine. Sure, they could withstand getting closer to them at higher DPI, but it suffices just fine. The point I'm making is that DPI has little to nothign to do with why people still use paper. The main reason it's still used in the office environment is that there isn't a technological alternative that has all the same requirements. Laptops are harder to set up than taking a notepad into a meeting, and PocketPC's are too small.
I think Microsoft is doing the right thing by pursuing the Tablet PC market the way they are. They're trying to make the Tablet PC as good as paper. If you ever catch their marketing video on it, it portrays people drawing on their tablet with the stylus, highlighting/copying/pasting, etc. I think this is the first step. The second step would be to make it really light and connect wirelessly. The 3rd would be to make it dirt cheap. Get a few of these floating around your office and you'll see a dramatic reduction in paper usage.
Where I work, it's all done on whiteboards. We've even considered buying one of those doohickeys that captures Whiteboard drawings. Paper is not so important, but it is 2nd place with laptops being a distant 3rd.
Where I work, in particular, we need a couple more ingredients in order to become close to paperless: Tablet PC's and roaming wireless capability. Tablet PC's are obvious, the stylus interface would lend itself much better than dragging a laptop to the meeting. Wireless roaming is a little harder to define, though. 802.11 will definitely do the job, but the biggest paper offenders also travel alot. If the tablet could wirelessly get on the internet from wherever the destination is, then I think I could convince some of the people here to adopt it instead of paper.
I'm starting to see wider use of PDA's (mostly Palm Pilots) being used for keeping contact info, but I'm not seeing a whole lot of note taking on them. A couple of us around here drag our laptop to meetings to take notes. This is why I think the tablet idea might work. Despite the simplicity of a laptop, undocking it and setting it up at the meeting seems like such a hassle compared to bringing a notepad.
I know you meant this strictly for the stories posted on the home page, but I just had to say this: Don't ever correct me if you have no difficulty understanding what I'm saying.
One day I typed "you're" instead of 'your' and some jackass corrected me. It's really frustrating to type out a thought out post only to have somebody respond with "Actually, it's your not you're.". It wouldn't have bothered me so much if he had just added that as a P.S. in a post intended to discuss my post.
In any case, I felt this particular thread was as good as any to voice this particular concern. Personally, I'd rather they police the meaning of the headline. That really bothered me when the headline "Microsoft Kicks Sony out of CeBit." Sony let on their own, heh.
I'd like to find independent, non-RIAA music. Preferably, I'd like to pay the artists directly, although I don't mind buying the music from a non-RIAA organization.
Can anybody recommend any good sites or search tips?
If enough people are expressing their desire to have nothing to do with the RIAA directly to the RIAA (i.e. email them...) then they cannot call for Gov't support when they fail. "We had no idea people would hate that we tried to take their rights away!".
They can blame MP3's for the bad economy last year if they want, but they'll have a hard time blaming people for saying 'your service sucks, we're off to find somebody else.'
"Did anyone else notice the appearance of Danny John Jules aka "The Cat" from Red Dwarf?"
That's about the only interest I have in seeing it. I almost saw Tomb Raider because Chris Barrie (Rimmer from Red Dwarf..) was in it. Fortunately Slashdot turned me away from both these movies.
The $14 I saved on that really should go towards the subscription.:)
"Steve Jobs is still the CEO of Pixar. He has an interest in the MPAA just like Disney does. Maybe not to the same extent, but interest nevertheless."
You make a good point, but arguably Jobs had a lot to do with Mac becoming what it is today, a multimedia machine. Heck, they even want you doing video editing using Firewire on their laptops. Remember that commercial with the guy editing videos on a plane?
If this heavy handed legislation passes, Mac's entire product line could be in jeopardy. Even if Steve Jobs is completely cut from Apple, he still has quite a stake in the popularity of the machine.
I have a feeling he'd be tilted more towards Apple than the MPAA, in this case.
The RIAA and the MPAA are enemies of Apple.
on
iPod on Windows
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· Score: 3
I think ordinarily Apple would have sued, but after that comment that Eisner made about Apple's 'Rip Mix n Burn' campaign, I don't think Apple has any intention of doing anything to help either of these industries.
I tell you what, if Apple doesn't attack this product, I would seriously consider getting one. Anything to help them fight the SSSCA. (I can never remember the acronym of the new version. When I pronounce it it sounds like a kid learning how to talk.)
" Windowz dosen't even let me see the underlying processes for crying out loud!"
Ever hear of Task Manager?
"he only thing that I think Windowz is good for is gaming. Just gaming"
I know a lot of 3D artists using 2K and don't have a problem. Some of them are running dual Monitors too, including me. I also have 2 network cards.
"Plus, I don't see why game developers even develop games for Windows"
a.) Easy to develop games for, *nix is not. Bad driver support, too many flavors of *nix. b.) There are MILLIONS of people using Windows. Making games for *nix is not profitable right now. Any game developer'd be better off making games for consoles.
"...and two video cards to control 2 monitors"
Windows 98 does that. Mac did before that. I was using Dual monitors on 98. I use it now on 2k, but according to you using a dual-head card is cheating.
Ever thought about really using the OS before bashing it? Just curious. Doesn't sound like you know anything about Windows. There's a reason that FX houses and Game Companies use 2K to do their rendering. Lightwave and 3D Studio MAX are very popular.
" guess that why all the big animation houses are moving to Win2k...oh wait, there moving to Linux."
This is a hard number to quantify. The really big movie studios are using Linux for the network rendering. Let me reemphasize this, NETWORK RENDERING. This is not the same as actually developing the animation. I think Final Fantasy was mostly developed on Macs and PCs, and sent off to the Linux farm for rendering. This doesn't negate what you're saying, but rather it indicates that OSX and Win2k are useful in this area. It is my understanding that the animators are given the OS they know how to use. It also costs $12,000 per seat to get Maya. Interestingly enough, the desktop machines did rendering overnight as well. (This might have been Shrek.. I watched the making of on both these movies too close together...)
That's a little prohibitive for a medium sized Game Company or Television FX studio. The majority of these two businesses use either 3D Studio MAX or Lightwave. Neither of these two progams are available in Linux. If Win2k was as bad as some of the people here believe, then these companies would sooner buy Maya seats than rely on Win2K to handle their rendering.
Getting back to the topic at hand, MS promised greater stability with Win2k, and they easily delivered that. That's the only point I'm trying to make, if you sift back to the top of this thread, heh.
Heh i got modded down for being a 'Troll'. I honestly didn't mean it that way. Oh well.
"Actually, that might be exactly why they did it. If you look at the results of the survey that they did prior to releasing the distro, the majority of the reponses indicated that they would use it as a hobby instead of for some professional reason"
I remember something along those lines. I think if that was behind the decision to not include things like DVD support, then Sony misinterpreted people a bit. I think the expectation to porting Linux to the PS2 is that a hobbyist would be able to access the entire machine. But it sounds like Sony crippled it, presumably to prevent ppl from exploiting it.
That's kind of the problem with having a company release a product that has it's own interests to protect.
Pity, Sony could have had a really good reputation for being 'hackable' if they had supported it. I might have bought a PS2 just to play with the apps that other people make.
Makes you wonder what the point of it is, doesn't it. What does Sony expect one to do with this kit?
I can imagine a meeting along the lines of "People like ot install Linux on game machines, lets sell them a version!" "Okay, just make sure they can't make games for it. If they want to do that, they must pay royalties."
Makes you wonder if law is too tightly defined, doesn't it. I mean why is the chronological age of 18 such a big deal? In the olden days, it was safe to assume that an 18 year old would have a good understanding of consequences. But is that true today? It seems to me that somebody of the age of 17 that can do coding that Apple would find interesting would understand what he's getting into. What happens 20 years from now when 12 year olds will be able to write programs people want?
Slashdot Mirror
"It seems that there are still plenty of trolls on Slashdot who still think it's as fun as ever. ;)"
You'd think they'd be skilled at it right now. Just like Hollywood, they keep rehashing the same old stuff over and over again.
Out of curiosity, did you actually use one of these? It's called a thumb-board. And my 'mutated thumbs' do pretty good on small keyboards like that. My gf has a pager that's roughly the dimensions you said and it works out really well.
Trust me, the 3 letter per numbered pad thing sucks. I have a cell phone that can send/recieve email, and I ended up buying a little keyboard on it. It is sooo much nicer, despite not being very big.
I'm stunned! I like the swivel job they did with the screen. That's the type of feature this device needs. One thing I hate about my PocketPC is having to lug a seperate keyboard around. With this device, it nicely integrates the two and even gives the unit an extra usability mode. I wasn't expecting this from Sony, they usually put their money into marketing instead of research. Just look at the Playstation 2. *YuCk*
"We of the OS community who disapprove of MS Word as the near-universal medium of exchange should come up with our own document format..."
.DOC format, then add into it the ideas of what you'd do to improve it, and then design a format to include all these ideas.
.DOC format is useful is that it does quite a bit of stuff. It supports all kinds of formatting, it encapsulates things like images, and it's openable on all MS platforms including PocketPC. I can send a .DOC file to just about anybody I know and they have SOME way of opening it, one way or another.
If you're going to attempt this, let me give you a piece of advice: Don't let what MS did wrong be your guide. Look at what they did right.
In a reply to Black Parrot's post, somebody started immediately with "don't support plugins so there'll be no bloat...". I appreciate the idea, but that's not the right way to start a new file format. What you need to do is make a list of what MS is doing right with the
The reason the
Once you have those features in place and you know how it should look, only then do you start looking at some of the lessons that MS has learned. Here's an interesting question: why is it bloated? What is MS doing? Are they encrypting it? Are they adding a bunch of bits to it that might be activated later? Did they write a function called 'BloatFile($Filename)'?
I think the main reason that Linux isn't gaining much ground as a desktop OS is because people are actively trying to fix problems that they think plague MS os's, but they're not looking at what MS did right! They quickly dismiss the idea that MS created software that people want and just assume that they make crap and stupid people buy it. Well, if you want to make Linux a better Operating System, then look at what MS did right. For example, out of the box, any Windows OS has TONS of drivers going back many years. Nearly all MS written apps have the same or nearly the same interface. Installation is a breeze. (Not having to create a swap partition is nice.) Doing something like 'change the color depth of my monitor' is as simple as clicking your mouse 3 or 4 times. If they'd develop Linux to be more like Windows in this respect, they'd get a lot farther in the desktop market than trying to fix only the flaws they percieve.
If they used the numbers 0 or 1 in the documents, then literally they probably could. Afterall, that'd make them digital!
You can also encrypt it like Enron did by cutting it up into tiny packets and randomizing the order.
People can read text just fine at 12 pixels high. Nobody ever complains about the resolution of dot-matrix signs being too low.
Pictures taken at 640 by 480 look just fine. Sure, they could withstand getting closer to them at higher DPI, but it suffices just fine. The point I'm making is that DPI has little to nothign to do with why people still use paper. The main reason it's still used in the office environment is that there isn't a technological alternative that has all the same requirements. Laptops are harder to set up than taking a notepad into a meeting, and PocketPC's are too small.
I think Microsoft is doing the right thing by pursuing the Tablet PC market the way they are. They're trying to make the Tablet PC as good as paper. If you ever catch their marketing video on it, it portrays people drawing on their tablet with the stylus, highlighting/copying/pasting, etc. I think this is the first step. The second step would be to make it really light and connect wirelessly. The 3rd would be to make it dirt cheap. Get a few of these floating around your office and you'll see a dramatic reduction in paper usage.
Where I work, it's all done on whiteboards. We've even considered buying one of those doohickeys that captures Whiteboard drawings. Paper is not so important, but it is 2nd place with laptops being a distant 3rd.
Where I work, in particular, we need a couple more ingredients in order to become close to paperless: Tablet PC's and roaming wireless capability. Tablet PC's are obvious, the stylus interface would lend itself much better than dragging a laptop to the meeting. Wireless roaming is a little harder to define, though. 802.11 will definitely do the job, but the biggest paper offenders also travel alot. If the tablet could wirelessly get on the internet from wherever the destination is, then I think I could convince some of the people here to adopt it instead of paper.
I'm starting to see wider use of PDA's (mostly Palm Pilots) being used for keeping contact info, but I'm not seeing a whole lot of note taking on them. A couple of us around here drag our laptop to meetings to take notes. This is why I think the tablet idea might work. Despite the simplicity of a laptop, undocking it and setting it up at the meeting seems like such a hassle compared to bringing a notepad.
I know you meant this strictly for the stories posted on the home page, but I just had to say this: Don't ever correct me if you have no difficulty understanding what I'm saying.
One day I typed "you're" instead of 'your' and some jackass corrected me. It's really frustrating to type out a thought out post only to have somebody respond with "Actually, it's your not you're.". It wouldn't have bothered me so much if he had just added that as a P.S. in a post intended to discuss my post.
In any case, I felt this particular thread was as good as any to voice this particular concern. Personally, I'd rather they police the meaning of the headline. That really bothered me when the headline "Microsoft Kicks Sony out of CeBit." Sony let on their own, heh.
I'd like to find independent, non-RIAA music. Preferably, I'd like to pay the artists directly, although I don't mind buying the music from a non-RIAA organization.
Can anybody recommend any good sites or search tips?
If enough people are expressing their desire to have nothing to do with the RIAA directly to the RIAA (i.e. email them...) then they cannot call for Gov't support when they fail. "We had no idea people would hate that we tried to take their rights away!".
They can blame MP3's for the bad economy last year if they want, but they'll have a hard time blaming people for saying 'your service sucks, we're off to find somebody else.'
YEah!! Don't give them reason to add MORE to the following DVD's when they're releasd. Make sure the DVD release is a total failure!!!
Your right, all software companies should put less thought into interface design.
"Did anyone else notice the appearance of Danny John Jules aka "The Cat" from Red Dwarf?"
:)
That's about the only interest I have in seeing it. I almost saw Tomb Raider because Chris Barrie (Rimmer from Red Dwarf..) was in it. Fortunately Slashdot turned me away from both these movies.
The $14 I saved on that really should go towards the subscription.
Yet you're posting here...
Who's the lamier. The lame or the lame who posts?
"Steve Jobs is still the CEO of Pixar. He has an interest in the MPAA just like Disney does. Maybe not to the same extent, but interest nevertheless."
You make a good point, but arguably Jobs had a lot to do with Mac becoming what it is today, a multimedia machine. Heck, they even want you doing video editing using Firewire on their laptops. Remember that commercial with the guy editing videos on a plane?
If this heavy handed legislation passes, Mac's entire product line could be in jeopardy. Even if Steve Jobs is completely cut from Apple, he still has quite a stake in the popularity of the machine.
I have a feeling he'd be tilted more towards Apple than the MPAA, in this case.
I think ordinarily Apple would have sued, but after that comment that Eisner made about Apple's 'Rip Mix n Burn' campaign, I don't think Apple has any intention of doing anything to help either of these industries.
I tell you what, if Apple doesn't attack this product, I would seriously consider getting one. Anything to help them fight the SSSCA. (I can never remember the acronym of the new version. When I pronounce it it sounds like a kid learning how to talk.)
I have no idea how it works, but search engines have no trouble finding me pics of nekkid wimmenz. Kudos to whoever invented it!
"As it is, I'll never touch it or even look at the box."
It's hard to appreciate anything if you oversimplify it. Now there are 6.3 million people that think you're an idiot, heh.
" Windowz dosen't even let me see the underlying processes for crying out loud!"
Ever hear of Task Manager?
"he only thing that I think Windowz is good for is gaming. Just gaming"
I know a lot of 3D artists using 2K and don't have a problem. Some of them are running dual Monitors too, including me. I also have 2 network cards.
"Plus, I don't see why game developers even develop games for Windows"
a.) Easy to develop games for, *nix is not. Bad driver support, too many flavors of *nix. b.) There are MILLIONS of people using Windows. Making games for *nix is not profitable right now. Any game developer'd be better off making games for consoles.
"...and two video cards to control 2 monitors"
Windows 98 does that. Mac did before that. I was using Dual monitors on 98. I use it now on 2k, but according to you using a dual-head card is cheating.
Ever thought about really using the OS before bashing it? Just curious. Doesn't sound like you know anything about Windows. There's a reason that FX houses and Game Companies use 2K to do their rendering. Lightwave and 3D Studio MAX are very popular.
The definitive version of Star Control 2 was on the 3DO. I realize that may be virtually impossible to acquire, I thought I should mention that.
Man... those Sierra games sure had character. Damn I hope that genre has a comeback. Both Sierra and Lucasarts knew what they were doing.
I wonder what mixing the Legend of Zelda (64) interface with a Sierra game'd be like....
You don't sign a contract to sell burgers.
" guess that why all the big animation houses are moving to Win2k...oh wait, there moving to Linux."
This is a hard number to quantify. The really big movie studios are using Linux for the network rendering. Let me reemphasize this, NETWORK RENDERING. This is not the same as actually developing the animation. I think Final Fantasy was mostly developed on Macs and PCs, and sent off to the Linux farm for rendering. This doesn't negate what you're saying, but rather it indicates that OSX and Win2k are useful in this area. It is my understanding that the animators are given the OS they know how to use. It also costs $12,000 per seat to get Maya. Interestingly enough, the desktop machines did rendering overnight as well. (This might have been Shrek.. I watched the making of on both these movies too close together...)
That's a little prohibitive for a medium sized Game Company or Television FX studio. The majority of these two businesses use either 3D Studio MAX or Lightwave. Neither of these two progams are available in Linux. If Win2k was as bad as some of the people here believe, then these companies would sooner buy Maya seats than rely on Win2K to handle their rendering.
Getting back to the topic at hand, MS promised greater stability with Win2k, and they easily delivered that. That's the only point I'm trying to make, if you sift back to the top of this thread, heh.
Heh i got modded down for being a 'Troll'. I honestly didn't mean it that way. Oh well.
"Actually, that might be exactly why they did it. If you look at the results of the survey that they did prior to releasing the distro, the majority of the reponses indicated that they would use it as a hobby instead of for some professional reason"
I remember something along those lines. I think if that was behind the decision to not include things like DVD support, then Sony misinterpreted people a bit. I think the expectation to porting Linux to the PS2 is that a hobbyist would be able to access the entire machine. But it sounds like Sony crippled it, presumably to prevent ppl from exploiting it.
That's kind of the problem with having a company release a product that has it's own interests to protect.
Pity, Sony could have had a really good reputation for being 'hackable' if they had supported it. I might have bought a PS2 just to play with the apps that other people make.
Makes you wonder what the point of it is, doesn't it. What does Sony expect one to do with this kit?
I can imagine a meeting along the lines of "People like ot install Linux on game machines, lets sell them a version!" "Okay, just make sure they can't make games for it. If they want to do that, they must pay royalties."
Makes you wonder if law is too tightly defined, doesn't it. I mean why is the chronological age of 18 such a big deal? In the olden days, it was safe to assume that an 18 year old would have a good understanding of consequences. But is that true today? It seems to me that somebody of the age of 17 that can do coding that Apple would find interesting would understand what he's getting into. What happens 20 years from now when 12 year olds will be able to write programs people want?