Hate might be a bit of a strong word but I was pissed with Microsoft in the early days for the underhanded way they made them a monopoly. In the early days of PCs, about the time of Windows 3.0 and 3.1 Windows was shipped on approximately 100% of PCs. People didn't mind because it was free, or so they were lead to believe. This lead to the situation we have today Windows is used for the simple reason it is 'the supported standard' without regard to it's technical merits. Of course now most users know it's not free but I'm guessing many still don't know it is often the most expensive part of the system they just purchased.
Of course those were simpler times, without the part suppliers, which is why it was possible to hide the cost of Windows. 16 Bit Windows was a truly horrible product for mission critial applications as it was so prone to crashing etc. Having suffered though that, as a programmer, I started watching what Microsoft did. I switched to OS/2 only to see the way Microsoft did things to irritate me further.
With Windows 2000 they finally introduced an OS one could actually use in a commercial environment but subsequent version seem to be more focused on owning the user and making life more difficult for the user.
I course big companies make an easy target for kicking;-)
Sure, I think in general you 'should' be right but it sounds like they have already target one guy, see thread http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=159125&c id=13327258 and at the end of the day it would only take one letter to me, no matter how bogus, to make me put any 'offending' content because I have nothing to gain by leaving it. I know it sounds wimpy but I like to pick my fights and supplementary web content wouldn't rate high enough.
I run a small part time computer business. I am more than happy install open source software on PCs free if my customers want it. I make no money by doing that. I do it because I think both my customers and the open source community are better off as a result. However if some laywer is going to get on my case because I have the trademarked word Linux on my website somewhere I will pull it because there is no way I am going to pay to give people something for free. Personally I think this is a very sad day for Aussie Linux fans, just glad nobody has done that crap here, yet...
My first video card had 1K, not 1MB. It was an ETI kit set for the S100 bus and gave 64 x 16 characters and 128 x 48 graphics. Monty Python Quote And you tell the young people today that and they won't believe you !
Unlike the US we have a shortage skill people so finding work is not too hard. You will be paid about half what you do in the US but the cost living is a lot cheaper too. We may not be 'the land of the free' but once you leave your lawyers and guns behind I think you will find we have more real freedom here and less stress. Lifes not perfect here but there is a reason they call it's 'gods own', can't think of anywhere else to live long term. There is a lot of cutting edge development done here, I work for Navman for example. Dispite our our high profile worldwide we are a New Zealand based company and do most of our development in Auckland. We also have development centers in Christchurch and Wellington because of the shortage of engineers in Auckland. Your biggest problem with working here is the local equivalant of the green card system.
Once the whole PC thing is a generation old the problem should go away. In my case this happened this year when my son got a car. Now when my parents call with a PC problem I call my son and tell him it's time to pay his grandparents a visit;-)
Yes it was a botch up and made visits to the city interesting. One thing overlooked is that there was a large engineering project underway to replace the cables at the time but was not due for completion for a couple of years. It was a new tunnel designed to carry new cables and allow future upgrades and maintenance. In that respect they were unlucky it didn't quite goes the distance but I think the key thing is that serious money was being spent to upgrade the supply before the failure.
I know the problem first hand as both a buyer and a seller.
As already mentioned seller are worried about fraud as is it's the seller who wears the cost. I run a small computer company part time and I don't export out of New Zealand unless the customer will pay via TT. I have had several people ask me to export high value items overseas and pay by credit card but not get back to us when ask to pay by TT. We had a great time playing with one thief by trying to get him to pay shipping up front. If you want a good laugh read http://www.mavericks.co.nz/Scammer.html for the full email exchange.
With that background I recently tried to purchase a Zaurus SL-5600 out of the US as you can't buy them here. It took a lot of searching but I found a couple of companies who would export them but in one case the ship was going to be $150 on a $450 purchase ! Many will sell to foreigners if it is shipped to a US address. In the end that's what I did and I purchased it from www.thinkgeek.com and I am going to get a co-worker to pick it up from our US office later this month. I came very close to giving up because of all the companies that wouldn't deal with me. It was so bad I almost brought a PocketPC again. Now the problem is waiting a few weeks to get my new toy.
I have Red Hat 9.0 running ok as a laptop on mine. For the stuff I want do on Linux on it right now that is enough as I only need the tablet mode about 8hr a week. The digitizer doesn't work but it isn't an issue for me right now. The wireless networking is fine. I recall I had to make a small change to the default configuration as it was confusing device names between the wired and wireless devices. I moved to the patched drivers once I had it working so I can run airsnort etc. I am at work right now so I have to run XP but if you email at 'david at annett.co.nz' I can see if I can find the key changes for you later.
You hit the nail on the head. Bluetooth is a PAN and WiFi is a LAN. For people who are confused I always tell them for Bluetooth think USB and WiFi think Ethernet. It pretty clear what each of those is best at and like USB, Bluetooth's biggest problem was too much hype too soon but at least it is starting to deliver. People used put down USB as hype and a waste of time, but you don't hear that anymore. At the current roll out rate Bluetooth should get past that point before the end of this year, with cheaper product already on the shelves.
I also used to work for a company that made equipment that adds on to gaming machines and was subjected to the same legal test requirements. I am in New Zealand and we use the Australian machines and labs. What happens in the UK wouldn't happen here as there are four separate parties involved each with different motives.
1. The government which takes a big cut of machine profits as tax. They mandate the basic operation, in particular the return percentage lbonser refers to. Our government actually has a legal maximum (95%?) to ensure they get better income !
2. The gaming machine manufactures who only make money from the machine sales and is not allowed to operate them. They are the only ones in the best position to rig the machines but have no thing to gain by doing so. They also have to get their machines through the testing lab.
3. The testing labs that check and certify the code. They take the source code, build the eproms and CRC them. They then read the source code and play the machines. If the government thinks a machine as be 'fixed' they could pull the eproms and CRC them. The lab makes its money by testing fees. Manufactures want to keep these fees down so avoid suspect code.
4. The site operators in New Zealand are two classes. Casinos that get to keep the money and are quite happy to keep the 5 to 10% that the 90 to 95% return yields in the same way their card tables work. For bars and pub type operators they get a fixed site rental fee and want the returns higher than the government allows to keep punters playing and buying drinks.
Of course it's the last group who are frustrated at the lost potential and are most likely to try and skim some funds. However they usually use low-tech methods and get caught out pretty quickly.
For many people the answer will be nothing. In my case I am using a Toshiba Portege 3500 Tablet PC for business meetings and for a couple of papers I am doing at university. It is great. I dock it to a larger monitor and USB I/O for development work and have it dual booting Red Hat 9 as a reasonable Linux laptop but I have to give credit to MS (as much as I hate them) for the journal program.
It is the journal program and the full paper size that means it can really replace paper for note taking and the trick editing keeps helps deal with lecatures who change their mind about stuff on their white board. I can take notes from my third year engineering maths course better that I could on paper. I have a PocketPC and have used both it,and the Palm, daily for several years. There is no way they could match a half my paper writing speed and I couldn't draw full blown equations, graphs or diagrams. The bottom line is the Tablet PC is the most natural interface I have used and I love every over priced cent of it. Most people won't need the features but if you do it's great.
I recently travelled to the US from New Zealand and found the money a real pain. Kiwi money is plastic and all different colours and sizes. Over here you simply look at the edge of the notes in your wallet to see the correct colour and fish out that one. While in the US I had to remove the notes from my wallet first so I could read the numbers. As a tourist this made me feel uncomfortable about doing public transactions, not being one who likes to 'flash the cash'.
I worked on note vending machines at the time of our change from paper to plastic money so I was one of the people invited to the Reserve Bank to see the features of the new money. We where given real and counterfeit US money and asked to tell which was which, it was impossible to tell to the untrained eye. Then we where shown some of the methods used to try and counterfeit the Australian currency, which uses the same technology as ours. At was funny to see bits of paper with holes cut in them for the clear window etc. They also showed off some ideas they haven't used yet. One was a clear window at each end with printed lines that create an interference pattern when the note is folded in half.
I also saw what happens if you over heat the plastic notes, they shrink ! But don't worry you have to get them real hot to do that. On a practical note (no pun intended) you need to look at static handling for new plastic notes in note handling machines or else the stick together.
The repeats may be annoying but for some of us 1st April was yesterday making it 'off topic' as well. How about some of that 'News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.' ?
Here in New Zealand we have both networks. I do development of communications products using both systems. As I see it, for the end users, CDMA really only has an advantage if you need faster data. The other 99% of the users would be better off with GSM. CDMA proponents will give plenty of sound technical reasons why CDMA is better and they are right but from a practical point of view GSM wins almost every time. Some of the reasons for GSM are:
1. Don't have pay the Qualcomm fees so the pones are cheaper.
2. Sim cards allow the user to choose where and when to get their phone from instead of having to get permission to change from their telco.
3. There is generally a larger range of phones (see 2.), although some GSM telcos control network access, ours doesn't. The local CDMA phones are just plain ugly !
4. Roaming is better, my phone works in almost any country including the US, and you can count the number of countries a CDMA user can roam to with one hand.
On a political note I have to say this isn't a good look for country claiming to be there to help the local, not themself...
For me it has to be that classic Kiwi road movie Goodbye Pork Pie. I guess it helps when you know some of the locations from your home town rather than somewhere on the other side of the world. While watching it for the first time you had to wonder how many bits they can take off a Mini and keep it running. A couple years after the movie was made I found myself flatting in the director's house, Geoff Murphy. They actually used three Minis in different states of disassembly to make the film. Geoff kept the good one, which I drove once !
There is a company call IBM who make PC's with LCD fitted to them. I think they are called Thinkpads. I gather other people make them as well, try googling 'Notebook' or 'Laptop'.
Yes the points about spread-spectrum and directional antennae are right, nothing new here. However the claim GNU radio is now "able to decode two broadcasts over a single frequency" just don't hold. If you look at the code the SDR is actually receiving two different frequencies in the same band. I don't care how clever your radio is, once you have a signal at the single front end of the receiver you are not going to be able to pick out two different FM signals on the same frequency.
I am travelling from New Zealand to San Francisco with couple of days on Los Angeles in late April and I was wonder some of the same kind of things. What are the 'Must See' things for a Hi-Tech tourist in thoses areas ?
Slashdot Mirror
Hate might be a bit of a strong word but I was pissed with Microsoft in the early days for the underhanded way they made them a monopoly. In the early days of PCs, about the time of Windows 3.0 and 3.1 Windows was shipped on approximately 100% of PCs. People didn't mind because it was free, or so they were lead to believe. This lead to the situation we have today Windows is used for the simple reason it is 'the supported standard' without regard to it's technical merits. Of course now most users know it's not free but I'm guessing many still don't know it is often the most expensive part of the system they just purchased.
;-)
Of course those were simpler times, without the part suppliers, which is why it was possible to hide the cost of Windows. 16 Bit Windows was a truly horrible product for mission critial applications as it was so prone to crashing etc. Having suffered though that, as a programmer, I started watching what Microsoft did. I switched to OS/2 only to see the way Microsoft did things to irritate me further.
With Windows 2000 they finally introduced an OS one could actually use in a commercial environment but subsequent version seem to be more focused on owning the user and making life more difficult for the user.
I course big companies make an easy target for kicking
Sure, I think in general you 'should' be right but it sounds like they have already target one guy, see thread http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=159125&c id=13327258 and at the end of the day it would only take one letter to me, no matter how bogus, to make me put any 'offending' content because I have nothing to gain by leaving it. I know it sounds wimpy but I like to pick my fights and supplementary web content wouldn't rate high enough.
I run a small part time computer business. I am more than happy install open source software on PCs free if my customers want it. I make no money by doing that. I do it because I think both my customers and the open source community are better off as a result. However if some laywer is going to get on my case because I have the trademarked word Linux on my website somewhere I will pull it because there is no way I am going to pay to give people something for free. Personally I think this is a very sad day for Aussie Linux fans, just glad nobody has done that crap here, yet...
My first video card had 1K, not 1MB. It was an ETI kit set for the S100 bus and gave 64 x 16 characters and 128 x 48 graphics.
Monty Python Quote
And you tell the young people today that and they won't believe you !
Unlike the US we have a shortage skill people so finding work is not too hard. You will be paid about half what you do in the US but the cost living is a lot cheaper too. We may not be 'the land of the free' but once you leave your lawyers and guns behind I think you will find we have more real freedom here and less stress. Lifes not perfect here but there is a reason they call it's 'gods own', can't think of anywhere else to live long term.
There is a lot of cutting edge development done here, I work for Navman for example. Dispite our our high profile worldwide we are a New Zealand based company and do most of our development in Auckland. We also have development centers in Christchurch and Wellington because of the shortage of engineers in Auckland. Your biggest problem with working here is the local equivalant of the green card system.
Designing communications systems is one thing but taking pics of a model wearing a 'Real Boobs Rock' Tee is way more fun. Scroll down at http://www.mavericks.co.nz/mavericks/index.php?mai n_page=product_info&products_id=134 to see the results.
We use Zen Cart software and sell mainly offensive Tees and some geeks ones at http://www.mavericks.co.nz/. Don't make much money but it's fun !
WARNING: Please do not visit site if your are easily offended !
Once the whole PC thing is a generation old the problem should go away. In my case this happened this year when my son got a car. Now when my parents call with a PC problem I call my son and tell him it's time to pay his grandparents a visit ;-)
Yes it was a botch up and made visits to the city interesting. One thing overlooked is that there was a large engineering project underway to replace the cables at the time but was not due for completion for a couple of years. It was a new tunnel designed to carry new cables and allow future upgrades and maintenance. In that respect they were unlucky it didn't quite goes the distance but I think the key thing is that serious money was being spent to upgrade the supply before the failure.
I know the problem first hand as both a buyer and a seller.
As already mentioned seller are worried about fraud as is it's the seller who wears the cost. I run a small computer company part time and I don't export out of New Zealand unless the customer will pay via TT. I have had several people ask me to export high value items overseas and pay by credit card but not get back to us when ask to pay by TT. We had a great time playing with one thief by trying to get him to pay shipping up front. If you want a good laugh read http://www.mavericks.co.nz/Scammer.html for the full email exchange.
With that background I recently tried to purchase a Zaurus SL-5600 out of the US as you can't buy them here. It took a lot of searching but I found a couple of companies who would export them but in one case the ship was going to be $150 on a $450 purchase ! Many will sell to foreigners if it is shipped to a US address. In the end that's what I did and I purchased it from www.thinkgeek.com and I am going to get a co-worker to pick it up from our US office later this month. I came very close to giving up because of all the companies that wouldn't deal with me. It was so bad I almost brought a PocketPC again. Now the problem is waiting a few weeks to get my new toy.
I have Red Hat 9.0 running ok as a laptop on mine. For the stuff I want do on Linux on it right now that is enough as I only need the tablet mode about 8hr a week. The digitizer doesn't work but it isn't an issue for me right now. The wireless networking is fine. I recall I had to make a small change to the default configuration as it was confusing device names between the wired and wireless devices. I moved to the patched drivers once I had it working so I can run airsnort etc. I am at work right now so I have to run XP but if you email at 'david at annett.co.nz' I can see if I can find the key changes for you later.
You hit the nail on the head. Bluetooth is a PAN and WiFi is a LAN. For people who are confused I always tell them for Bluetooth think USB and WiFi think Ethernet. It pretty clear what each of those is best at and like USB, Bluetooth's biggest problem was too much hype too soon but at least it is starting to deliver. People used put down USB as hype and a waste of time, but you don't hear that anymore. At the current roll out rate Bluetooth should get past that point before the end of this year, with cheaper product already on the shelves.
I also used to work for a company that made equipment that adds on to gaming machines and was subjected to the same legal test requirements. I am in New Zealand and we use the Australian machines and labs. What happens in the UK wouldn't happen here as there are four separate parties involved each with different motives.
1. The government which takes a big cut of machine profits as tax. They mandate the basic operation, in particular the return percentage lbonser refers to. Our government actually has a legal maximum (95%?) to ensure they get better income !
2. The gaming machine manufactures who only make money from the machine sales and is not allowed to operate them. They are the only ones in the best position to rig the machines but have no thing to gain by doing so. They also have to get their machines through the testing lab.
3. The testing labs that check and certify the code. They take the source code, build the eproms and CRC them. They then read the source code and play the machines. If the government thinks a machine as be 'fixed' they could pull the eproms and CRC them. The lab makes its money by testing fees. Manufactures want to keep these fees down so avoid suspect code.
4. The site operators in New Zealand are two classes. Casinos that get to keep the money and are quite happy to keep the 5 to 10% that the 90 to 95% return yields in the same way their card tables work. For bars and pub type operators they get a fixed site rental fee and want the returns higher than the government allows to keep punters playing and buying drinks.
Of course it's the last group who are frustrated at the lost potential and are most likely to try and skim some funds. However they usually use low-tech methods and get caught out pretty quickly.
For many people the answer will be nothing. In my case I am using a Toshiba Portege 3500 Tablet PC for business meetings and for a couple of papers I am doing at university. It is great. I dock it to a larger monitor and USB I/O for development work and have it dual booting Red Hat 9 as a reasonable Linux laptop but I have to give credit to MS (as much as I hate them) for the journal program. ,and the Palm, daily for several years. There is no way they could match a half my paper writing speed and I couldn't draw full blown equations, graphs or diagrams.
It is the journal program and the full paper size that means it can really replace paper for note taking and the trick editing keeps helps deal with lecatures who change their mind about stuff on their white board. I can take notes from my third year engineering maths course better that I could on paper. I have a PocketPC and have used both it
The bottom line is the Tablet PC is the most natural interface I have used and I love every over priced cent of it. Most people won't need the features but if you do it's great.
I recently travelled to the US from New Zealand and found the money a real pain. Kiwi money is plastic and all different colours and sizes. Over here you simply look at the edge of the notes in your wallet to see the correct colour and fish out that one. While in the US I had to remove the notes from my wallet first so I could read the numbers. As a tourist this made me feel uncomfortable about doing public transactions, not being one who likes to 'flash the cash'.
I worked on note vending machines at the time of our change from paper to plastic money so I was one of the people invited to the Reserve Bank to see the features of the new money. We where given real and counterfeit US money and asked to tell which was which, it was impossible to tell to the untrained eye. Then we where shown some of the methods used to try and counterfeit the Australian currency, which uses the same technology as ours. At was funny to see bits of paper with holes cut in them for the clear window etc. They also showed off some ideas they haven't used yet. One was a clear window at each end with printed lines that create an interference pattern when the note is folded in half. I also saw what happens if you over heat the plastic notes, they shrink ! But don't worry you have to get them real hot to do that. On a practical note (no pun intended) you need to look at static handling for new plastic notes in note handling machines or else the stick together.
The repeats may be annoying but for some of us 1st April was yesterday making it 'off topic' as well. How about some of that 'News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.' ?
Here in New Zealand we have both networks. I do development of communications products using both systems. As I see it, for the end users, CDMA really only has an advantage if you need faster data. The other 99% of the users would be better off with GSM. CDMA proponents will give plenty of sound technical reasons why CDMA is better and they are right but from a practical point of view GSM wins almost every time. Some of the reasons for GSM are:
1. Don't have pay the Qualcomm fees so the pones are cheaper.
2. Sim cards allow the user to choose where and when to get their phone from instead of having to get permission to change from their telco.
3. There is generally a larger range of phones (see 2.), although some GSM telcos control network access, ours doesn't. The local CDMA phones are just plain ugly !
4. Roaming is better, my phone works in almost any country including the US, and you can count the number of countries a CDMA user can roam to with one hand.
On a political note I have to say this isn't a good look for country claiming to be there to help the local, not themself...
For me it has to be that classic Kiwi road movie Goodbye Pork Pie. I guess it helps when you know some of the locations from your home town rather than somewhere on the other side of the world. While watching it for the first time you had to wonder how many bits they can take off a Mini and keep it running. A couple years after the movie was made I found myself flatting in the director's house, Geoff Murphy. They actually used three Minis in different states of disassembly to make the film. Geoff kept the good one, which I drove once !
There is a company call IBM who make PC's with LCD fitted to them. I think they are called Thinkpads. I gather other people make them as well, try googling 'Notebook' or 'Laptop'.
Yes the points about spread-spectrum and directional antennae are right, nothing new here. However the claim GNU radio is now "able to decode two broadcasts over a single frequency" just don't hold. If you look at the code the SDR is actually receiving two different frequencies in the same band. I don't care how clever your radio is, once you have a signal at the single front end of the receiver you are not going to be able to pick out two different FM signals on the same frequency.
I am travelling from New Zealand to San Francisco with couple of days on Los Angeles in late April and I was wonder some of the same kind of things. What are the 'Must See' things for a Hi-Tech tourist in thoses areas ?