Having something that operates a bit like a wii controller combined with a universal remote.
Imagine pointing the wand at your receiver and giving an upward flitting motion and the receiver bumps up the volume. or flick to the right and it changes stations or goes to the next track. Twirl it in a circle clockwise to turn on or counterclockwise to turn off etc.
And would only react to the device you point at. (might have to establish separate gestures for nearby components etc)
The most awkward thing with USB is its "peer-to-host" design. Having to buy a wonky double-A usb cable with a bubble in the middle, and install special software, to use it to connect two computers together for filesharing is silly.
I personally think it's s shame that Apple hasn't supported firewire better, but they are shifting away from it and to the networking port for things like system migration and file copying, which is probably the foresighted thing to do, now that making a NAS has become trivial. It's very possible that 10 years from now sales of external hard drives will have fallen below sales of NAS boxes. It overcomes the initial limit of external FW/USB drives being attached to only one computer at a time, and removes yet another cord from the computer. That will be what buries firewire, not USB.
I think this is going to be the problem.... each session needs the entire screen, or a good hunk of it anyway. (if you have a large display or multiple displays) If you want as the article suggests, 15 sessions, you're going to have to go with something akin to tabs.
I have several tab groups in my bookmark bar, and I can go to one of them and select "open in tabs" and it immediately open 4-10 pages in one window, each in its own tab. So I can have three windows open, with a total of over 20 tabs, and be manageable. As I check a given forum, I just close its tab etc, whittling things down until all the tabs are gone.
the "hard drive" is the beige box sitting on the floor. And the "computer" is the heavy thing you look at on the desk. (be careful when telling them to bring in their "computer" for service) After about two weeks of taking phonecalls for support you come to understand this. After awhile, you also come to understand that some people believe electronics can work without power or while switched off also. I watched someone here almost short out their brain when a caller asked if the computer had to be turned on to burn CDs.
One of these callers is a professor at our local university. assume nothing.
That's what we really need.... another article bashing Windows Vista
That wasn't Windows bashing, that was Microsoft bashing. Not only did windows get #1, the zune got #2. Ouch, double-play.
But in fairness, they both deserved their respective spots.
I think they could have made a top-20 or top-30 pretty easily too. Several other subjects come immediately to mind like web-apps, OLED screens, broadband-over-wireless (or BBOPL for that matter), telecommuting, computer home automation, eco-friendly pc manufacturing, etc.
I was in full agreement with all the items they brought up until I got to firewire. You could tell the author has had little or no exposure to it. It's only major downfall if you want to call it that, is that very few windows pcs come with it by default. For the people that can use it, it's very handy for streamed raw video, high speed data transfer, and occasionally in unexpected places like networking and scanners.
Calling USB the "firewire killer" is almost laughable. I ran some tests recently on drive IO speeds on a variety of interfaces here, including IDE, SATA, firewire 400, firewire 800, and watched firewire 400 drill USB480 into the ground on a consistent basis. Insert a hub (since USB is not chainable) and the speed gets butchered even worse. Considering that (for whatever silly reason) windows pcs don't come with it and have such a large market share, and manufacturers are still making products that use firewire as an option or the only interface, there's obviously an advantage to it over USB.
Since there is currently no video-over-usb standard, all sorts of bad things result from a usb only camcorder. USB is not designed to be peer-to-peer, it's peer-to-host, and that severely limits its application and what works naturally with it. I don't even see why the author made a blanket comparison between the two, since mass storage is the only use they really share. Though nowadays high end scanners can use USB480 which is a good thing.
It won't pull up the story right now but I recall reading it. Apparently he got some illness and it led to some very specific brain damage, (by fever?) and prevented him from ever being able to sleep again. The article said he used the nighttime over the course of several years to dig a pond to raise fish to supplement the family's income. You'd think this guy would be the subject of intense research by a variety of groups, civilian and military alike?
credit card companies (banks) watch account habits and WILL call you if you do something weird. My manager got a call last year from his bank asking if he was in the USA. There was someone at an atm in hong kong in the process of trying to guess his pin number.
They don't verify anything really, they just plain cancel the card and will send you a new one with a new number. There's no reason for them to verify you ARE who you are, they're more interested in verifying the OTHER guy ISN'T you and cutting it off ASAP. Since they have your number and you're agreeing with them there's a problem, they don't need any more incentive.
May 15 13:37:00 mydomain postfix/smtp[384]: E91D1242E9AA: to=, relay=shrike.dti.ad.jp[202.216.228.218], delay=2, status=bounced (host shrike.dti.ad.jp[202.216.228.218] said: 550 5.1.1... User unknown (in reply to RCPT TO command)) May 15 13:37:01 mydomain postfix/qmgr[27465]: E91D1242E9AA: removed
hmmm... to=
I wonder how they expect THAT to work. (yes I did put in my email address on the ipod) I'm sure that's supposed to be in the FROM.
I bought an ADATA 16 gb flash drive when they first came out, and it worked great. It wasn't a "double wide", but was pretty thick and long. The computers I work on require small width due to some of their USB ports and I don't want to have to carry around a 4" usb jumper cable.
When my cat hid it, I bought another which turned out to be defective and I never was able to get a replacement. (at the time they cost over $130)
I bought a lexar firefly 8 and used that until they came out with a 16, which I now have.
The firefly is thin, not wide, short, has an easy to see activity light, and the lanyard attaches to the CAP, meaning it's not necessary to untangle yourself from it to plug it in. (and it leaves the noisy cap swinging around banging into things to remind you that you are about to forget your flash drive in the back of the machine you're walking away from) It's the only flash drive that I know of that has the lanyard attachment on the cap which is a great feature.
My only complaint is I wish it had a write lock switch. I don't have to work on viris-ridden windows boxes, but if I did, that would unfortunately be a requirement.
For example, if you compress CO2 (and chill it) it turns to a solid and doesn't simply explode if let out of its container. It has to thaw to change state.
Matter crushed in a pulsar etc is commonly described where a teaspoon of the stuff would weigh as much as a dumptruckload of granite. That doesn't explode either, it's just been crushed on a nuclear level. (electron shells collapsed)
But it's common for reactions to work better under pressure. So even if the stuff was prone to expansion, you'd probably want to keep it compressed once you got it that way.
The next battle, as I understand it, will be trying to sign up for an iPhone without giving an SSN. I've heard it can be done, but, sometimes take a number of tries before finding the salesperson/mrg that will do it.
It's got to do with a credit check. You need to surrender your SSN for the normal credit check, and they use the results to determine your deposit. Very few companies will do an alternate (less informative/reliable) check that does not require your ssn.
Without the credit check, you can still get a phone, 100% of the time. You will just have to pay a very large deposit, the largest possible for people that have horrible credit. Anyone that tells you that your ssn is required to get an iPhone is out of touch with reality.
This is true of any of the places that are not authorized by law to require your ssn. So same applies to the others that are often brought up, such as utilities, and pretty much always applies to calculation of a deposit or interest rate.
Then doesn't it come down to worst-case-scenario money? If they spent $0 on it, and at worst, make $0 from it, why spend $$$ on lawyers to shut it down?
This looks like they stand to make between $0 and $$$ on it. How does that justify spending any money to shut it down?
Obviously not useful to relay cell phone to wifi but a good thing to carry in the laptop bag. Not much larger than a power adapter, you plug it directly into the wall and run a line to the ethernet and it gives wifi. Also has a printer and a stereo port but probably not useful in this case. Heck of a lot cheaper than the MiFi too, $99
I was just thinking about this and it actually does make sense. The law considers the inside of your car to be an extension of your home, and thus private property. But where you car is parked, and the outside of your car, are not. So unless they jimmy the door and stash the gps inside the car, they haven't trespassed. Though it definitely gets murky if they are under your hood from below planting it up under the hood, where they likely would.
It'd be the same thing as someone placing a directional mic outside your house out on the parking between the sidewalk and the street, aimed at your house. They're observing your public behavior, from a public place, which does not and should not require a warrant.
That's the logic behind it. But as I said, I consider stashing something up in the undercarriage of your car to be something that can be challenged. If that's ok, can they tap into your car (battery) power to power it? Are they allowed to open your hood? transmit from your FM antenna? Lots of questions. If challenged, I bet it will come down to you are not allowed to do anything with the car beyond attaching a bug with zipties by crawling under the vehicle.
Re:Would be nice if it were true...
on
Apple Eyeing EA?
·
· Score: 1
I remember the good ol days on the Apple II when a lot of the best games were EA. Skyfox was very nice, but there were literally dozens of others. Though they also had some of the most advanced copy protection on the market at the time. (19 clock cycles anyone?) So I wonder how that will fit in with today's DRM?
Apple has been wanting to make a solid break back into the gaming market for years, one of their main problems with switchers has long since been "but there aren't any games for mac are there?" Buying EA (or at least acquiring controlling interest) would easily be worth it to break that perception.
Even for MS, this is surely shoveling the BS to astonishing new heights.
I think they'd be better off just not commenting on it at all, rather than trying to completely BS us. At these levels all it's doing is insulting our intelligence. Really, who wouldn't cough up their coffee if they had someone trying to say that to them with a straight face?
Slashdot Mirror
I've ran into people that made it halfway through high school without being able to read. It happens.
Having something that operates a bit like a wii controller combined with a universal remote.
Imagine pointing the wand at your receiver and giving an upward flitting motion and the receiver bumps up the volume. or flick to the right and it changes stations or goes to the next track. Twirl it in a circle clockwise to turn on or counterclockwise to turn off etc.
And would only react to the device you point at. (might have to establish separate gestures for nearby components etc)
I'd buy that.
The most awkward thing with USB is its "peer-to-host" design. Having to buy a wonky double-A usb cable with a bubble in the middle, and install special software, to use it to connect two computers together for filesharing is silly.
I personally think it's s shame that Apple hasn't supported firewire better, but they are shifting away from it and to the networking port for things like system migration and file copying, which is probably the foresighted thing to do, now that making a NAS has become trivial. It's very possible that 10 years from now sales of external hard drives will have fallen below sales of NAS boxes. It overcomes the initial limit of external FW/USB drives being attached to only one computer at a time, and removes yet another cord from the computer. That will be what buries firewire, not USB.
I think this is going to be the problem.... each session needs the entire screen, or a good hunk of it anyway. (if you have a large display or multiple displays) If you want as the article suggests, 15 sessions, you're going to have to go with something akin to tabs.
I have several tab groups in my bookmark bar, and I can go to one of them and select "open in tabs" and it immediately open 4-10 pages in one window, each in its own tab. So I can have three windows open, with a total of over 20 tabs, and be manageable. As I check a given forum, I just close its tab etc, whittling things down until all the tabs are gone.
the "hard drive" is the beige box sitting on the floor. And the "computer" is the heavy thing you look at on the desk. (be careful when telling them to bring in their "computer" for service) After about two weeks of taking phonecalls for support you come to understand this. After awhile, you also come to understand that some people believe electronics can work without power or while switched off also. I watched someone here almost short out their brain when a caller asked if the computer had to be turned on to burn CDs.
One of these callers is a professor at our local university. assume nothing.
That's what we really need.... another article bashing Windows Vista
That wasn't Windows bashing, that was Microsoft bashing. Not only did windows get #1, the zune got #2. Ouch, double-play.
But in fairness, they both deserved their respective spots.
I think they could have made a top-20 or top-30 pretty easily too. Several other subjects come immediately to mind like web-apps, OLED screens, broadband-over-wireless (or BBOPL for that matter), telecommuting, computer home automation, eco-friendly pc manufacturing, etc.
I was in full agreement with all the items they brought up until I got to firewire. You could tell the author has had little or no exposure to it. It's only major downfall if you want to call it that, is that very few windows pcs come with it by default. For the people that can use it, it's very handy for streamed raw video, high speed data transfer, and occasionally in unexpected places like networking and scanners.
Calling USB the "firewire killer" is almost laughable. I ran some tests recently on drive IO speeds on a variety of interfaces here, including IDE, SATA, firewire 400, firewire 800, and watched firewire 400 drill USB480 into the ground on a consistent basis. Insert a hub (since USB is not chainable) and the speed gets butchered even worse. Considering that (for whatever silly reason) windows pcs don't come with it and have such a large market share, and manufacturers are still making products that use firewire as an option or the only interface, there's obviously an advantage to it over USB.
Since there is currently no video-over-usb standard, all sorts of bad things result from a usb only camcorder. USB is not designed to be peer-to-peer, it's peer-to-host, and that severely limits its application and what works naturally with it. I don't even see why the author made a blanket comparison between the two, since mass storage is the only use they really share. Though nowadays high end scanners can use USB480 which is a good thing.
http://digg.com/general_sciences/Man_in_Vietnam_hasnâ(TM)t_slept_in_33_years._2
It won't pull up the story right now but I recall reading it. Apparently he got some illness and it led to some very specific brain damage, (by fever?) and prevented him from ever being able to sleep again. The article said he used the nighttime over the course of several years to dig a pond to raise fish to supplement the family's income. You'd think this guy would be the subject of intense research by a variety of groups, civilian and military alike?
Turns out it's patented, by a fun stealth patent.
What's a "stealth patent"?
credit card companies (banks) watch account habits and WILL call you if you do something weird. My manager got a call last year from his bank asking if he was in the USA. There was someone at an atm in hong kong in the process of trying to guess his pin number.
They don't verify anything really, they just plain cancel the card and will send you a new one with a new number. There's no reason for them to verify you ARE who you are, they're more interested in verifying the OTHER guy ISN'T you and cutting it off ASAP. Since they have your number and you're agreeing with them there's a problem, they don't need any more incentive.
apparently slashdot convulses if you put a greater than in your text...
May 15 13:37:00 vftp postfix/smtp[384]: E91D1242E9AA: to=(GREATERTHAN)signup-noreply@serversman.com>, relay=shrike.dti.ad.jp[202.216.228.218], delay=2, status=bounced (host shrike.dti.ad.jp[202.216.228.218] said: 550 5.1.1 (GREATERTHAN)signup-noreply@serversman.com>... User unknown (in reply to RCPT TO command))
May 15 13:37:01 vftp postfix/qmgr[27465]: E91D1242E9AA: removed
log on my mailserver says:
May 15 13:37:00 mydomain postfix/smtp[384]: E91D1242E9AA: to=, relay=shrike.dti.ad.jp[202.216.228.218], delay=2, status=bounced (host shrike.dti.ad.jp[202.216.228.218] said: 550 5.1.1 ... User unknown (in reply to RCPT TO command))
May 15 13:37:01 mydomain postfix/qmgr[27465]: E91D1242E9AA: removed
hmmm... to=
I wonder how they expect THAT to work. (yes I did put in my email address on the ipod) I'm sure that's supposed to be in the FROM.
y'know if you'd just all use BASH none of this would be a problem.
it just means there are few malware developers who think it's worth their time.
Because scammers are only interested in BIG payoffs, and would rather go hungry than to merely rip off a minority?
Last I checked, scammers aren't picky about who they take advantage of. They take advantage of anyone they can, every chance they get, however minor.
I bought an ADATA 16 gb flash drive when they first came out, and it worked great. It wasn't a "double wide", but was pretty thick and long. The computers I work on require small width due to some of their USB ports and I don't want to have to carry around a 4" usb jumper cable.
When my cat hid it, I bought another which turned out to be defective and I never was able to get a replacement. (at the time they cost over $130)
I bought a lexar firefly 8 and used that until they came out with a 16, which I now have.
The firefly is thin, not wide, short, has an easy to see activity light, and the lanyard attaches to the CAP, meaning it's not necessary to untangle yourself from it to plug it in. (and it leaves the noisy cap swinging around banging into things to remind you that you are about to forget your flash drive in the back of the machine you're walking away from) It's the only flash drive that I know of that has the lanyard attachment on the cap which is a great feature.
My only complaint is I wish it had a write lock switch. I don't have to work on viris-ridden windows boxes, but if I did, that would unfortunately be a requirement.
wow, never saw that coming
Depends on if there's an atomic or state change.
For example, if you compress CO2 (and chill it) it turns to a solid and doesn't simply explode if let out of its container. It has to thaw to change state.
Matter crushed in a pulsar etc is commonly described where a teaspoon of the stuff would weigh as much as a dumptruckload of granite. That doesn't explode either, it's just been crushed on a nuclear level. (electron shells collapsed)
But it's common for reactions to work better under pressure. So even if the stuff was prone to expansion, you'd probably want to keep it compressed once you got it that way.
The next battle, as I understand it, will be trying to sign up for an iPhone without giving an SSN. I've heard it can be done, but, sometimes take a number of tries before finding the salesperson/mrg that will do it.
It's got to do with a credit check. You need to surrender your SSN for the normal credit check, and they use the results to determine your deposit. Very few companies will do an alternate (less informative/reliable) check that does not require your ssn.
Without the credit check, you can still get a phone, 100% of the time. You will just have to pay a very large deposit, the largest possible for people that have horrible credit. Anyone that tells you that your ssn is required to get an iPhone is out of touch with reality.
This is true of any of the places that are not authorized by law to require your ssn. So same applies to the others that are often brought up, such as utilities, and pretty much always applies to calculation of a deposit or interest rate.
Then doesn't it come down to worst-case-scenario money? If they spent $0 on it, and at worst, make $0 from it, why spend $$$ on lawyers to shut it down?
This looks like they stand to make between $0 and $$$ on it. How does that justify spending any money to shut it down?
Lawyers are a lot easier to find though, they're even registered.
Obviously not useful to relay cell phone to wifi but a good thing to carry in the laptop bag. Not much larger than a power adapter, you plug it directly into the wall and run a line to the ethernet and it gives wifi. Also has a printer and a stereo port but probably not useful in this case. Heck of a lot cheaper than the MiFi too, $99
But you're forgetting, there'd be a lot less poor innocents such as the OP being served if there weren't so many lawyers to begin with....
Considering lawyers as the answer is clouding your vision that they are also the cause.
It's a common situation to be in, "What's the answer to x? More x!". No. The answer is "NO x."
I was just thinking about this and it actually does make sense. The law considers the inside of your car to be an extension of your home, and thus private property. But where you car is parked, and the outside of your car, are not. So unless they jimmy the door and stash the gps inside the car, they haven't trespassed. Though it definitely gets murky if they are under your hood from below planting it up under the hood, where they likely would.
It'd be the same thing as someone placing a directional mic outside your house out on the parking between the sidewalk and the street, aimed at your house. They're observing your public behavior, from a public place, which does not and should not require a warrant.
That's the logic behind it. But as I said, I consider stashing something up in the undercarriage of your car to be something that can be challenged. If that's ok, can they tap into your car (battery) power to power it? Are they allowed to open your hood? transmit from your FM antenna? Lots of questions. If challenged, I bet it will come down to you are not allowed to do anything with the car beyond attaching a bug with zipties by crawling under the vehicle.
I remember the good ol days on the Apple II when a lot of the best games were EA. Skyfox was very nice, but there were literally dozens of others. Though they also had some of the most advanced copy protection on the market at the time. (19 clock cycles anyone?) So I wonder how that will fit in with today's DRM?
Apple has been wanting to make a solid break back into the gaming market for years, one of their main problems with switchers has long since been "but there aren't any games for mac are there?" Buying EA (or at least acquiring controlling interest) would easily be worth it to break that perception.
Even for MS, this is surely shoveling the BS to astonishing new heights.
I think they'd be better off just not commenting on it at all, rather than trying to completely BS us. At these levels all it's doing is insulting our intelligence. Really, who wouldn't cough up their coffee if they had someone trying to say that to them with a straight face?