Competition is something they have never had (Apple are not revolutionary enough) and for them to kick up a fuss as soon as a credible threat to their market share appears on the horizon shows just how lacking in the potential to innovate they are. Genuine innovators never need fear competition.
The reason you are asmatic is, like most of the western world, because through no fault of your own you were bought up in a home where the windows were closed most of the time so your body was unable (as it is supposed to do) to adapt to the environment. This has been proven in counteless surveys world-wide. No offence intended, but the PCBs used in the manufacturer of Aibo (and most other plastic items) may render you or your offspring sterile or gay.
It doesn't do anything at all useful. If people want a pet, far better to own a real animal that will teach the owner about responsibility and patience - after all, you cannot turn a puppy off. The type of robot that IS useful is the Roomba (spelling?) that vacuums the floor and from reviews, appears to do a good job too. Anyway, I'm a pussy man.
They could be tracked anywhere. And what is to stop someone else 'planting' a tag on any person or vehicle even if the tag was not originally designed for that purpose?
It has been well known for years the regular CDs also deteriate. I have ALWAYS instructed my non-technical friends and family to forget using CDs and simply backup their entire hard drive to an equal or larger capacity external drive - and keep it in a different building to the source material in case disaster strikes. A lot more convenient too. slashdotalex@owonder.com.
Because it's ultra reliable, the batteries last weeks, it does the key orgnisational tasks I require, it incldues an 8Meg Memory Stick for backing up (I only use 250k so far!), it's well made and most importantly, it doesn't pretend to be a multimedia machine. How complicated is it to download video to a Palm T2 and how much can you get in 32Meg? I will by a multimedia PDA when, like the iPod - it has a 30 gig hard drive. And built in 802.11g. Sony's new Clie 50 still lacks the RAM, but it accepts Memory Stick Pro, so one could watch hours of video! Now that is innovation!
Excellent question, and one I face too this very day. The solution is to get a WELL DESIGNED product (whatever the product is does not matter) out the door as soon as possible, but keep the feature set simple to a) Keep it reliable b) Make your life easier c) Help potential customers grasp the concept. THEN, obtain funding and/or use income from Version 1.0 to maintain company stability while you work on the more sophisticated yet equally reliable Version 1.1 or 2.0. alex@owonder.com
Once again, and this shows the arrogance of US writers and is proven by the prevailance of patents from billion dollar corporations such as IBM and others who can afford them. Digest this: Most people, despite having great ideas and the desire to profit from them CANNOT afford to file a patent and pay the huge fees (>$15,000) to maintain and defend a patent. Do you charge $250 an hour and tack a $75 fee onto an invoice for answering a question on the phone? Not very likely.
It is no wonder we cannot get probes to Mars if we have yet to perfect our less sophisticated devices here on Earth. I'm using the seriously over hyped Mac OSX and have an ever increasing list of bugs and flaws in it along with the various applications I run. And I understand that my friends using Windows have similar experiences. (I cannot speak for Linux.) Either way, I have concluded that the reason for the unreliability of most software (OS or app) is because engineers generally (not all!) lack the mind set to create well structured 'anything'. They are excellent problem solvers and good at the 'clever stuff', but are not (always) well organized or 'anal' in their appreciation of organisation and aesthetic. This subject is hard to explain, but maybe some of you out there get what I mean.
The solution would appear to be including industrial design and process concepts in the education of software engineers.
No. I was born in 1963. And it has been known for the West to provoke. I don't think China plans to take over the world using any other method other than offshore sexual reproduction. Attack of the babies! Maybe that's why they are going to the moon? To make moon babies? The term Moonies will have a whole knew mooning. Ouch.
While competition is good fun when it comes to sport, it is about time the West, in particular the USA stopped believing that every time another entity tries to do something newer, bigger or better that such a step is looked upon as a threat. China has never attacked a Western nation and is trying to open up - in particular since SARS. So, we should be supporting and encouraging them. We have worked pretty well with the Russians, that has paid off with their help since Columbia. So we have learned that if you corner the fox he will bite, but if you pamper him he will lick.
I run a business and purchaed a Playstation 1 when it first came out and was blown away by the games. I could not put it down and despite attempts at self control, it ate into my time. I always wanted to have one more go to get past a level. Of course, I was at the time working from home, so the distraction was similar to the well stocked fridge syndrome known to home workers!
That said, now we have an office, I see no reason to go splash out on a PS2 and/or XBox to enjoy the evenings. But then, can the eyes take constant abuse from looking at a video screen all day at work and then into the evening? Is it not better to go out at night and get involved with real people? Another subject for Slashdot!
Indeed they are. Any 'competition' that requests money from the contestents is corrupt by its nature and likely to draw only those who can afford to enter. Like many such awards, it is all about who you know and that magic inner circle. The term pretentious comes to mind too.
That is because it is not ripped from a CD-ROM, but rather, people get to join at their own free will. It has yet to be promoted widely either. it is useful to those who join, and in the long term, to those who want to look up old friends either using their GoNumber or name, keywords etc.
It will now be possible to look directly at the person you are talking to, not up at a camera mounted above the screen. The one problem is that it will be harder to 'cover' the lens for peace of mind if you want privacy. Something that is easy with a regular camera lens by simply putting finger or lens cap over it.
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Just the other day, I wrote an e-mail to my business partner saying the very same thing. If you want a long lasting, well designed printer, whose 4 cartridges last ages, try the £99 Epson C82, that I purchased recently. It is very fast, and while not designed for photos, great for business and what you would otherwise use a laser printer for. It has a straight paper path, and the minimum of switches and levers to make it go wrong. And a clever fold down paper collection tray. All of HP's printers are now poorly constructed. I owned an HP 5110 all-in-one for a month, and it was so unreliable and badly designed I had to take it back, not to mention the most pathetic paper tray design. Like many other people have already said, the expensive short lived cartridges of today's printers is a massive con and a class action lawsuit is due. Alternatively, buy an Epson C82 and vote with your wallet. And no, I don't work for Epson. I just like to sing the praises of a well designed product that works.
Good point! Write on! I won't get into a scrap about this posting! Mulch to do about nothing? (Certainly not.) Let's rip! OK, enough. Cannot thinkg of any more paper puns.
Why this is not still on the market at £75 ($100) I do not know. It has 8meg ram and a spare 8Meg memory stick for on the road backups. It has a very clear screen and the re-chargables last for ages. It never ever crashes, even if I drop it onto concrete from 4 feet up. I use it about 50 times a day (how sad I am), yet have only used 500k of it's 8Meg. I have friends with the sexy looking, but overly complex iPaq, and a number report all kinds of reliability problems. (Not sure if that is MS or Compaq/HP.) Although I will of course buy a colour Sony Palm OS when there is a decent one with a world phone in it too (Tungsten W not good enough), I could happily keep using the PEG-S300 forever as a trusty ideas log, reminder and 'oops, my mobile got stolen' phone number looker upper. Oh, and it has that kind of cool retro look. Sony were still unsure whether to go the silver or bluple route.
The reason these exciting and liberating developments have not arrived is because of the political and business models that have driven (or hindered) progress since about the 1950s. a) Businesses, including Sony and Microsoft, create products that are intentionally flawed and never feature perfect, therefore, forcing consumer into a lifetime of upgrades. In addition, they keep changing standards, which again, defers utopia. Far worse, other types of business (I have met execs from these firms) exploit the consumer, in particular the poor, and they end up purchasing products that rather than liberating them, cause them strife. The cure for such strife is then purchased from another company that just happens to be part owned by company responsible for said strife. (Example, Longs Drugs sells very unhealthy processed foods sold to the naive underclass, which cause illnesses that are cured by the medicines for sale on the other side of the isle.) b) Politicians are paid by corporations to restrict the development of any product that will damage the growth potential of said corporation. For example, in the 1950s, the US auto giants purchased the public transport companies in major US cities. But rather than use imagination and efficiency to create the promised utopia, they ran them into the ground so they could sell people cars instead. Well, look what it did to LA and London. Fortunately, the latter is now cleaner and more pleasant to live in thanks the recent and somewhat utopian congestion charge imposed by our visionary Mayor. More buses, newer buses, better buses! and reduced fairs have made the city so much nicer just in a few weeks thanks to a massive reduction in traffic and greater reliance on public transport.
The sooner corporate greed and lack of compassionate visionary leadership go the way of the steam engine, the better we all will be. And folks, that time will come soon, as world opinion on the oil war is proving. The Hydrogen Economy is the future. And flying cars will arrive soon too. Only one problem to solve on that, an affordable, effficient, safe and quiet engine. But humanking will do it, we always do!
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't do anything at all useful. If people want a pet, far better to own a real animal that will teach the owner about responsibility and patience - after all, you cannot turn a puppy off. The type of robot that IS useful is the Roomba (spelling?) that vacuums the floor and from reviews, appears to do a good job too. Anyway, I'm a pussy man.
They could be tracked anywhere. And what is to stop someone else 'planting' a tag on any person or vehicle even if the tag was not originally designed for that purpose?
It has been well known for years the regular CDs also deteriate. I have ALWAYS instructed my non-technical friends and family to forget using CDs and simply backup their entire hard drive to an equal or larger capacity external drive - and keep it in a different building to the source material in case disaster strikes. A lot more convenient too. slashdotalex@owonder.com.
Because it's ultra reliable, the batteries last weeks, it does the key orgnisational tasks I require, it incldues an 8Meg Memory Stick for backing up (I only use 250k so far!), it's well made and most importantly, it doesn't pretend to be a multimedia machine. How complicated is it to download video to a Palm T2 and how much can you get in 32Meg? I will by a multimedia PDA when, like the iPod - it has a 30 gig hard drive. And built in 802.11g. Sony's new Clie 50 still lacks the RAM, but it accepts Memory Stick Pro, so one could watch hours of video! Now that is innovation!
Excellent question, and one I face too this very day. The solution is to get a WELL DESIGNED product (whatever the product is does not matter) out the door as soon as possible, but keep the feature set simple to a) Keep it reliable b) Make your life easier c) Help potential customers grasp the concept. THEN, obtain funding and/or use income from Version 1.0 to maintain company stability while you work on the more sophisticated yet equally reliable Version 1.1 or 2.0. alex@owonder.com
GoNumber.net/Personal
The solution would appear to be including industrial design and process concepts in the education of software engineers.
GoNumber.net/Business
And some actual early customers here...
GoNumber.net/Hot
No. I was born in 1963. And it has been known for the West to provoke. I don't think China plans to take over the world using any other method other than offshore sexual reproduction. Attack of the babies! Maybe that's why they are going to the moon? To make moon babies? The term Moonies will have a whole knew mooning. Ouch.
While competition is good fun when it comes to sport, it is about time the West, in particular the USA stopped believing that every time another entity tries to do something newer, bigger or better that such a step is looked upon as a threat. China has never attacked a Western nation and is trying to open up - in particular since SARS. So, we should be supporting and encouraging them. We have worked pretty well with the Russians, that has paid off with their help since Columbia. So we have learned that if you corner the fox he will bite, but if you pamper him he will lick.
That said, now we have an office, I see no reason to go splash out on a PS2 and/or XBox to enjoy the evenings. But then, can the eyes take constant abuse from looking at a video screen all day at work and then into the evening? Is it not better to go out at night and get involved with real people? Another subject for Slashdot!
That is because it is not ripped from a CD-ROM, but rather, people get to join at their own free will. It has yet to be promoted widely either. it is useful to those who join, and in the long term, to those who want to look up old friends either using their GoNumber or name, keywords etc.
It will now be possible to look directly at the person you are talking to, not up at a camera mounted above the screen. The one problem is that it will be harder to 'cover' the lens for peace of mind if you want privacy. Something that is easy with a regular camera lens by simply putting finger or lens cap over it.
-----
Just the other day, I wrote an e-mail to my business partner saying the very same thing. If you want a long lasting, well designed printer, whose 4 cartridges last ages, try the £99 Epson C82, that I purchased recently. It is very fast, and while not designed for photos, great for business and what you would otherwise use a laser printer for. It has a straight paper path, and the minimum of switches and levers to make it go wrong. And a clever fold down paper collection tray. All of HP's printers are now poorly constructed. I owned an HP 5110 all-in-one for a month, and it was so unreliable and badly designed I had to take it back, not to mention the most pathetic paper tray design. Like many other people have already said, the expensive short lived cartridges of today's printers is a massive con and a class action lawsuit is due. Alternatively, buy an Epson C82 and vote with your wallet. And no, I don't work for Epson. I just like to sing the praises of a well designed product that works.
Postage and Shipping not included. Add $4995.
Why this is not still on the market at £75 ($100) I do not know. It has 8meg ram and a spare 8Meg memory stick for on the road backups. It has a very clear screen and the re-chargables last for ages. It never ever crashes, even if I drop it onto concrete from 4 feet up. I use it about 50 times a day (how sad I am), yet have only used 500k of it's 8Meg. I have friends with the sexy looking, but overly complex iPaq, and a number report all kinds of reliability problems. (Not sure if that is MS or Compaq/HP.) Although I will of course buy a colour Sony Palm OS when there is a decent one with a world phone in it too (Tungsten W not good enough), I could happily keep using the PEG-S300 forever as a trusty ideas log, reminder and 'oops, my mobile got stolen' phone number looker upper. Oh, and it has that kind of cool retro look. Sony were still unsure whether to go the silver or bluple route.
The sooner corporate greed and lack of compassionate visionary leadership go the way of the steam engine, the better we all will be. And folks, that time will come soon, as world opinion on the oil war is proving. The Hydrogen Economy is the future. And flying cars will arrive soon too. Only one problem to solve on that, an affordable, effficient, safe and quiet engine. But humanking will do it, we always do!