Screw the price - less than $400 is hardly unreasonable, considering the number of overpriced yet poorly designed PDAs on the market. I'm mostly interested in whether it will be completely crippled by DRM, or whether that will be restricted to the built-in viewer, and whether I would be able to install third-party (eg, iSilo) and open-source apps.
(CF support would be nice too, but c'mon, this is Sony...)
I've read dozens, on a Palm IIIxe (160x160), a Handera 330 (240x320), and a Sony SJ33 (320x320). Yet the latter is the least comfortable to read on because of its smaller screen area.
It's also a real pain in the ass to setup and maintain with a dynamic IP and a firewall/router (ie, for 95% of users), requiring the user to search through text config files (even though it has preferences accessible through the gui, the most important setting is missing) to input the IP address and the use of dyndns or whatever since it only likes static IPs. I gave up fairly quickly, and I'd expect anyone else who doesn't have extensive sysadmin experience to do the same.
The fact that it was dog slow (I never even got the index site loaded to see what was on it) the only time I got it working for a while is a relatively minor flaw.
Actually, while they were clearly intended for comparison with Intel, AMD said they were for a Thunderbird (IIRC) of equivalent megahertz. And the benchmarks were often less than generous, though the newer Athlon 64 seems to be doing much better than equivalently rated Prescotts.
Anyways, if Intel can get away from clock-speed ratings, I hope it can get away from 100 watt processors. Where are the quiet and efficient Pentium M desktop systems? Some companies are designing motherboards for them, but there isn't anything easily available. I'm typing this on a 1.3GHz Celeron system (the 1GHz VIA C3 was just a little too slow, crippled by its tiny cache and weak FPU...I'm using the same near-silent heatsink setup as before, and getting 38 degrees versus 32), but a Pentium M would be ideal for a quiet but powerful general-purpose system.
2)Then the employee should either tell the manager and get it corrected, or face the consequences of falsely billing extra time. (And if he actually worked the extra minutes by mistake, maybe he could just leave earlier some other day.)
As someone who is Canadian, I'd appreciate info on what positions the other parties have on these issues (copyright law/cd-r tax). Has anyone heard anything from the Conservatives or NDP?
Sure, no problem. After all, I don't download music. Now how about they pay me back the hundreds of dollars they've taken (stolen) from me in levies on CD-Rs for backups?
Yeah, kinda like how certain other companies and industries have to pay crippling tariffs to the U.S. for years before it is finally ruled that this was a violation of free trade/NAFTA/whatever, but the Americans get to keep the money to subsidize their industries and go on to do the same thing again, and again...
It all ends up as heat eventually - unless you use it to drive an endothermic process or store some of the energy. Most of the joules used by a computer would probably be heat from resistance, etc. and any light, sound, and whatnot produced should wind up as heat pretty quickly, too.
Some of Le Guin's books are both literature and excellent stories, and some of her stuff - as pointed out earlier - is written by Skippy. Earthsea is one of the former, and could be very good if SciFi doesn't screw it up.
Doomsday Book is an earlier work of Connie Willis and certainly has weightier subject matter, though I enjoyed both books immensely. From the prologue:
"And lest things which should be remembered perish with time and vanish from the memory of those who are to come after us, I, seeing so many evils and the whole world, as it were, placed within the grasp of the Evil One, being myself as if among the dead, I, waiting for death, have put into writing all the things that I have witnessed. And, lest the writing should perish with the writer and the work fail with the laborer, I leave parchment to continue this work, if perchance any man survive and any of the race of Adam escape this pestilence and carry on the work which I have begun..."
My brother told me once that tobacco was the most addictive drug he had ever tried (including marijuana). While the claims that the big T is more addictive than cocaine are dubious, I don't doubt that it is HIGHLY addictive.
I remember an aside from a prof that heroin has better quit rates than nicotine. Google found a few mentions of this, even in journals like the bmj, but I couldn't find any references to actual studies.
The same thing about the world is also true about Canada - in most towns and cities there are the typical restrictions about watering lawns, etc., and occasional water shortages. That's why there are concerns about U.S. companies trying to force Canada to agree to sell water under NAFTA - they're not going to be taking the immense amounts of water up in the N.W.T. that will never see a human being before it washes into the sea, but water closer to the border that the cities might need. The idea of paying for access to your own water - that has been guaranteed to Americans under some ridiculous NAFTA contract - isn't very appealing.
I figured it was clear from the bit about flamethrowers and diamond claws that I was joking. (And I completely forgot to mention nerve gas...) Seriously, though, a realistic defense mechanism might be a conductive casing rigged up to some decent capacitors to discharge when someone grabs it improperly (to steal or destroy it). Though there'd have to be some way to safely ground it...
Since I'm totally offtopic anyway... can Esperanto be considered wholly artificial if it bears simililarity to other languages? Why not teach 'em Solresol?;-)
Just out of curiosity, what do you dislike so much about ATI's software? It is a bit cludgy - the guide is a completely separate program, and the default skins for the apps suck. But the only thing that really pisses me off about it is that I can't find a way of using it as a true PVR because a)the guide is extremely difficult to read on a TV at any resolution (though it's great on a monitor) and b)activating the guide while the remote is plugged in brings up Easylook, so all you can see is the TV. So it actually requires a mouse to use.
I believe the idea was to "guard" (watch) the house while you're not home. Shoddily executed, though. It should at least have a built-in gun and the ability to recognize and shoot intruders. Laser beams, flamethrowers, and diamond claws are optional.
Eh? Why so hostile? And please don't imply that you're doing me some favour by condescending to speak to me. Anyway, Sony's new PEG-TH55 looks very nice, though it's hard to tell except in person. I'd prefer to go with Palm instead of Sony and their memory sticks, but it looks like the latter's market share will continue to grow. It's just frustrating to me to see a machine that is perfect internally, but useless to me because of the exterior design.
I'd be more willing to just get a case if I could find one that wasn't bulky, awkward, and generally annoying.
About the digitizer thing, my Handera 330's still worked on the top half even with a crack leaking purple liquid crystal junk in the bottom half, though Handera did use a different screen type.
Esperanto? A quick google search finds the top estimates to be anywhere from one million to ten million, and possibly much lower if you require fluency above that of, say, Arnold Rimmer. Feel free to refute this, it was merely a quick search. I suppose there might be a wider distribution of speakers than most other languages with that few speakers, but they'd still probably be better off learning someother language. French is pretty widely distributed, too.
Not merely historical - Latin words and word components are used in medical and scientific terminology. Greek components are more commonly used, though.
Actually, I'm disparaging machines that appear to be designed solely to look cool on a display rack, with little or no thought put into durability. This is the first time I've met anybody who has found such a device handy; I suspect that these things are usually bought to be shown off and wind up in a drawer somewhere.
Rugged? Have you tried the Tungsten C? Lovely specs, but it feels like a toy. I doubt many of the new models would survive being dropped onto carpet, let alone a hard floor. My Palm IIIxe survived a couple drops onto concrete with no damage at all. My Handera 330 was hit by a truck and merely had a crack in the screen - the machine still worked and the data was recoverable. I'm not sure what you mean about having to replace the digitizers. Did they stop recognizing graffiti or something? I never had that happen with any of my Palms.
The design of the OS and apps is much more useful, but I find many of the newer models have tiny screens and short battery life. I had a Palm IIIxe, and it was durable enough that I never bothered with a case and never got a scratch on the screen. The problem with cases is that they are more cumbersome than just snatching my SJ33 from my labcoat pocket and flipping the lid open. I'm pretty rough on it - it has small scratches all over both sides of the cover, but not on the screen.
If it were a flimsy, coverless PDA, I'd worry about wrecking it. It would be less useful - more of a toy.
Wow, thanks! It also seems to come in a wireless version (sold out at the main site, but available at the Canadian distributor). I think it would be better if the screen were built into a folding lid like a typical laptop, since then it wouldn't need a case so badly, but very cool nonetheless.
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(CF support would be nice too, but c'mon, this is Sony...)
I've read dozens, on a Palm IIIxe (160x160), a Handera 330 (240x320), and a Sony SJ33 (320x320). Yet the latter is the least comfortable to read on because of its smaller screen area.
The fact that it was dog slow (I never even got the index site loaded to see what was on it) the only time I got it working for a while is a relatively minor flaw.
Anyways, if Intel can get away from clock-speed ratings, I hope it can get away from 100 watt processors. Where are the quiet and efficient Pentium M desktop systems? Some companies are designing motherboards for them, but there isn't anything easily available. I'm typing this on a 1.3GHz Celeron system (the 1GHz VIA C3 was just a little too slow, crippled by its tiny cache and weak FPU...I'm using the same near-silent heatsink setup as before, and getting 38 degrees versus 32), but a Pentium M would be ideal for a quiet but powerful general-purpose system.
2)Then the employee should either tell the manager and get it corrected, or face the consequences of falsely billing extra time. (And if he actually worked the extra minutes by mistake, maybe he could just leave earlier some other day.)
As someone who is Canadian, I'd appreciate info on what positions the other parties have on these issues (copyright law/cd-r tax). Has anyone heard anything from the Conservatives or NDP?
Sure, no problem. After all, I don't download music. Now how about they pay me back the hundreds of dollars they've taken (stolen) from me in levies on CD-Rs for backups?
"Alfador only likes me."
No, no, that would be tricot, of course. ;)
Yeah, kinda like how certain other companies and industries have to pay crippling tariffs to the U.S. for years before it is finally ruled that this was a violation of free trade/NAFTA/whatever, but the Americans get to keep the money to subsidize their industries and go on to do the same thing again, and again...
It all ends up as heat eventually - unless you use it to drive an endothermic process or store some of the energy. Most of the joules used by a computer would probably be heat from resistance, etc. and any light, sound, and whatnot produced should wind up as heat pretty quickly, too.
Doomsday Book is an earlier work of Connie Willis and certainly has weightier subject matter, though I enjoyed both books immensely. From the prologue:
"And lest things which should be remembered perish with time and vanish from the memory of those who are to come after us, I, seeing so many evils and the whole world, as it were, placed within the grasp of the Evil One, being myself as if among the dead, I, waiting for death, have put into writing all the things that I have witnessed.
And, lest the writing should perish with the writer and the work fail with the laborer, I leave parchment to continue this work, if perchance any man survive and any of the race of Adam escape this pestilence and carry on the work which I have begun..."
Brother John Clyn
1349
I remember an aside from a prof that heroin has better quit rates than nicotine. Google found a few mentions of this, even in journals like the bmj, but I couldn't find any references to actual studies.
The original poster was referring to the high malpractice insurance rates raising medical insurance rates (by making doctors charge more).
The same thing about the world is also true about Canada - in most towns and cities there are the typical restrictions about watering lawns, etc., and occasional water shortages. That's why there are concerns about U.S. companies trying to force Canada to agree to sell water under NAFTA - they're not going to be taking the immense amounts of water up in the N.W.T. that will never see a human being before it washes into the sea, but water closer to the border that the cities might need. The idea of paying for access to your own water - that has been guaranteed to Americans under some ridiculous NAFTA contract - isn't very appealing.
I figured it was clear from the bit about flamethrowers and diamond claws that I was joking. (And I completely forgot to mention nerve gas...) Seriously, though, a realistic defense mechanism might be a conductive casing rigged up to some decent capacitors to discharge when someone grabs it improperly (to steal or destroy it). Though there'd have to be some way to safely ground it...
Since I'm totally offtopic anyway... can Esperanto be considered wholly artificial if it bears simililarity to other languages? Why not teach 'em Solresol? ;-)
Just out of curiosity, what do you dislike so much about ATI's software? It is a bit cludgy - the guide is a completely separate program, and the default skins for the apps suck. But the only thing that really pisses me off about it is that I can't find a way of using it as a true PVR because a)the guide is extremely difficult to read on a TV at any resolution (though it's great on a monitor) and b)activating the guide while the remote is plugged in brings up Easylook, so all you can see is the TV. So it actually requires a mouse to use.
I believe the idea was to "guard" (watch) the house while you're not home. Shoddily executed, though. It should at least have a built-in gun and the ability to recognize and shoot intruders. Laser beams, flamethrowers, and diamond claws are optional.
I'd be more willing to just get a case if I could find one that wasn't bulky, awkward, and generally annoying.
About the digitizer thing, my Handera 330's still worked on the top half even with a crack leaking purple liquid crystal junk in the bottom half, though Handera did use a different screen type.
Esperanto? A quick google search finds the top estimates to be anywhere from one million to ten million, and possibly much lower if you require fluency above that of, say, Arnold Rimmer. Feel free to refute this, it was merely a quick search. I suppose there might be a wider distribution of speakers than most other languages with that few speakers, but they'd still probably be better off learning some other language. French is pretty widely distributed, too.
Not merely historical - Latin words and word components are used in medical and scientific terminology. Greek components are more commonly used, though.
Rugged? Have you tried the Tungsten C? Lovely specs, but it feels like a toy. I doubt many of the new models would survive being dropped onto carpet, let alone a hard floor. My Palm IIIxe survived a couple drops onto concrete with no damage at all. My Handera 330 was hit by a truck and merely had a crack in the screen - the machine still worked and the data was recoverable. I'm not sure what you mean about having to replace the digitizers. Did they stop recognizing graffiti or something? I never had that happen with any of my Palms.
If it were a flimsy, coverless PDA, I'd worry about wrecking it. It would be less useful - more of a toy.
Wow, thanks! It also seems to come in a wireless version (sold out at the main site, but available at the Canadian distributor). I think it would be better if the screen were built into a folding lid like a typical laptop, since then it wouldn't need a case so badly, but very cool nonetheless.