If the "smartphone" is PDA sized, it's too big to be a good cell phone, if it's cell phone sized, the screen is too small to use comfortable as a PDA. It can't be the right size to do both well.
How do you use the PDA when the screen is pressed into your cheek to talk? Or do you mean using a speaker phone so everyone within 50 feet hears both sides of your call instead of just you shouting into your PDA? Or maybe the headset which is even more to carry, more to buy, and more trouble to pull out of a pocket than a tiny cell phone.
If you didn't lose any phone fuctionality while using the PDA, why do they sell a carriage that holds your visorphone and lets you use it without the PDA?
If you lose both your PDA and cell phone at the same time, my arguements still stand; you don't need to upgrade both at once, and they're not likely to both break at once. I'd consider buying a visor prism for the colour screen, but there is no way I'd also pay for a new cell phone; my fairly new (and tiny) samsung clam-shell is just fine.
I don't know how you can hit the keys then. My fingers push at least 4 keys and once, and even when I try with my fingernails (which is a pain), my finger hits the key below the one I get with my nail.
The fact that you say there's so many features beyond my deluxe but don't mention any makes your statements weak (the newer OS version, more memory, faster CPU don't count because that's just enhancing the PDA and we already know the visor is 3 year old technoly, so of course any new PDA would up the specs. The products you're talking about aren't just upgraded PDAs; if they were, I'd have no problem with them.
90% of commercials are so annoying the prevent me from buying a product. There are products I haven't bought for years because of annoying commercials. 8% of commercials have no impact on my buying habits, and then there's the last 2% which I like and increase the chances I will buy the product.
If monitoring which commercials people skip causes companies to produce better and more entertaining ads, I'm all for it.
I think it's option C, getting smart about what is greatest. These "communicators" do a half-assed job as a PDA and as phone.
You can't use the PDA while on the phone, it's a lot bigger than a modern cell phone, costs more than both devices, makes it difficult to upgrade because then you lose you phone and PDA and have to replace both and lose all your accessories for both, same thing if it breaks. In the specific case of the treos they have a thumb keyboard which is useless for any adult male with normal-size hands.
There is no way I'd replace my Visor Deluxe with one of these pieces of crap even if they offered a straight trade. If it broke, I'd buy a used Visor Prism.
Then I guess you don't drive because cars threw aside the horse based economy and changed a way of living. It put a lot of people out of work; blacksmiths, horse breaders and trainers, feed providers, etc.
You also don't eat then. On a modern farm, a single farmer can produce as much food as 100 farmers 200 years ago. That means 99% of the population who would have been farmers 200 years ago is doing other things today, such as programming computers, flying airplanes, and doing hundreds of other things they prefer to farming.
The only abomintation is stagnation. Human progress has been going on for hundreds of thousands of years. Would you prefer to still be living in caves and die of old age by the time you're 20?
That being said, I don't believe a machine can replace a human umpire. Even if the machine makes every call perfectly, the players and fans will not accept the calls against them. There's nobody to argue with and it's against human nature to accept a machine making judgements about them. I let some friends play chess on my computerized board once (they just wanted a normal chess board, but that was all I had), they let the computer referee their game. Eventually they got into a situation where one of them was in check, but neither saw it, so the computer wouldn't let the player make the move he wanted to. Their solution was to turn off the computer and make the move anyway.
This is the same sort of marketing that AMD uses with their XP processor speeds. I was watching the computer hour on the home shopping network a few weeks ago (it's funnier than any comedy show), and they were selling an XP 2000+. The sales snake kept emphasizing the "plus" which means it's better than just a normal 2GHz machine.
We, as consumers, allow AMD to get away with deliberately confusing marketing, so why should we be surprised when other organizations do the same thing? My current system is my first Intel since my 286 because I couldn't stand the though of buying into AMD's scheme.
That sounds like a good place to look. I'm assuming I can rent a dewar as the poster above you suggested. There's a lot of places at the local fish market that sell dry ice, but LN2 is a lot more fun.
At school a couple of the buildings had huge tanks of it (used for cooling the NMR machines) so I could get as much as I wanted for free. It's just since I graduated a few years ago that I haven't had access. Do you have any idea how long it will keep in a styrofoam cooler? That's what I used in school but I never kept it for more than an hour anyway.
I never did try the ice cream; if I can get some LN2, that's third on my list (after swirling my hand in it and throwing handfuls across the floor to race it for distance).
I don't know about the rest of Canada, but in Ontario, the provincial government modified the Employment Standards Act in 2001 to explicitly make this kind of exploitation legal for IT workers and several other categories.
The software is just a 2 dimensional representation. I find it almost impossible to solve the normal cube in the software version and I can solve a physical cube in under 5 minutes. A 4D cube might be interesting but not a 2D representation of one. I like the 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 cubes at rubiks.com.
Handspring Visor deluxe. Except for a color display and slightly newer version of palmOS, there's still no PDA I'd rather have.
How much did your spare battery cost? As I said, my two sets were $10. That way I always have one charging and one in the Palm. I also use the alkalines that came with for when the ones in it die. After over a year, they're still more than 90% full.
Charging the palm from the cradle is useless because I don't leave my computer on when I'm not using it. The power adapter is almost as bad...It's yet one more thing that ties up an outlet. I have 3 power bars in here already and no free outlets. I also have lots of other devices that take standard batteries; minidisc player, digital camera, gameboy, etc. So I don't even have to think about charging proprietary batteries specifically for the PDA.
The only thing I have a non-standard battery for is my cell phone, and that's the only thing that consistantly lets me down with a dead battery. I will not pay $90 for a battery for a phone that was $110 with a battery; especially when 5 AAA's would cost $12.50 have the same capacity (and fit in the same space).
Batteries come in standard sizes like AA and D. They're designed to plug into any device. It's just these cell phone and notebook computer that want to rip off their customers by forcing them to buy proprietary sizes. My main criteria in picking my PDA was one that took ordinary batteries; not the internal rechargables that some have. I got 2 sets NiMH batteries for it for $10 and that's been a lot more useful than having to charge the PDA in a proprietary cradle.
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That site you're working on is an example of why the ADA is very important
Jason
ProfQuotes
What does that have to do with the product itself?
Sorry I didn't make it clear. Where do you think the company gets the money to run the ad? By buying the product, you are paying them to annoy you.
Jason
ProfQuotes
That's not random; you have to go to the extra effort of moving it only where you want it to print.
Jason
ProfQuotes
If the "smartphone" is PDA sized, it's too big to be a good cell phone, if it's cell phone sized, the screen is too small to use comfortable as a PDA. It can't be the right size to do both well.
How do you use the PDA when the screen is pressed into your cheek to talk? Or do you mean using a speaker phone so everyone within 50 feet hears both sides of your call instead of just you shouting into your PDA? Or maybe the headset which is even more to carry, more to buy, and more trouble to pull out of a pocket than a tiny cell phone.
Jason
ProfQuotes
If you didn't lose any phone fuctionality while using the PDA, why do they sell a carriage that holds your visorphone and lets you use it without the PDA?
If you lose both your PDA and cell phone at the same time, my arguements still stand; you don't need to upgrade both at once, and they're not likely to both break at once. I'd consider buying a visor prism for the colour screen, but there is no way I'd also pay for a new cell phone; my fairly new (and tiny) samsung clam-shell is just fine.
I don't know how you can hit the keys then. My fingers push at least 4 keys and once, and even when I try with my fingernails (which is a pain), my finger hits the key below the one I get with my nail.
The fact that you say there's so many features beyond my deluxe but don't mention any makes your statements weak (the newer OS version, more memory, faster CPU don't count because that's just enhancing the PDA and we already know the visor is 3 year old technoly, so of course any new PDA would up the specs. The products you're talking about aren't just upgraded PDAs; if they were, I'd have no problem with them.
Jason
ProfQuotes
90% of commercials are so annoying the prevent me from buying a product. There are products I haven't bought for years because of annoying commercials. 8% of commercials have no impact on my buying habits, and then there's the last 2% which I like and increase the chances I will buy the product.
If monitoring which commercials people skip causes companies to produce better and more entertaining ads, I'm all for it.
Jason
ProfQuotes
I think it's option C, getting smart about what is greatest. These "communicators" do a half-assed job as a PDA and as phone.
You can't use the PDA while on the phone, it's a lot bigger than a modern cell phone, costs more than both devices, makes it difficult to upgrade because then you lose you phone and PDA and have to replace both and lose all your accessories for both, same thing if it breaks. In the specific case of the treos they have a thumb keyboard which is useless for any adult male with normal-size hands.
There is no way I'd replace my Visor Deluxe with one of these pieces of crap even if they offered a straight trade. If it broke, I'd buy a used Visor Prism.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Include a notice on the page that prohibits harvesters from using your page, then sue them for license violations.
Jason
ProfQuotes
It might make politians think twice next time.
It would be nice if they'd think once.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Then I guess you don't drive because cars threw aside the horse based economy and changed a way of living. It put a lot of people out of work; blacksmiths, horse breaders and trainers, feed providers, etc.
You also don't eat then. On a modern farm, a single farmer can produce as much food as 100 farmers 200 years ago. That means 99% of the population who would have been farmers 200 years ago is doing other things today, such as programming computers, flying airplanes, and doing hundreds of other things they prefer to farming.
The only abomintation is stagnation. Human progress has been going on for hundreds of thousands of years. Would you prefer to still be living in caves and die of old age by the time you're 20?
That being said, I don't believe a machine can replace a human umpire. Even if the machine makes every call perfectly, the players and fans will not accept the calls against them. There's nobody to argue with and it's against human nature to accept a machine making judgements about them. I let some friends play chess on my computerized board once (they just wanted a normal chess board, but that was all I had), they let the computer referee their game. Eventually they got into a situation where one of them was in check, but neither saw it, so the computer wouldn't let the player make the move he wanted to. Their solution was to turn off the computer and make the move anyway.
Jason
ProfQuotes
You *will* be screwed by this ruling, regardless of where you live. Prices for various electronics will be going up
Even up here in Canada?
This might lower prices as the electronics companies try to unload their excess inventories that were aimed at the US.
Jason
ProfQuotes
This is the same sort of marketing that AMD uses with their XP processor speeds. I was watching the computer hour on the home shopping network a few weeks ago (it's funnier than any comedy show), and they were selling an XP 2000+. The sales snake kept emphasizing the "plus" which means it's better than just a normal 2GHz machine.
We, as consumers, allow AMD to get away with deliberately confusing marketing, so why should we be surprised when other organizations do the same thing? My current system is my first Intel since my 286 because I couldn't stand the though of buying into AMD's scheme.
Jason
ProfQuotes
That sounds like a good place to look. I'm assuming I can rent a dewar as the poster above you suggested. There's a lot of places at the local fish market that sell dry ice, but LN2 is a lot more fun.
At school a couple of the buildings had huge tanks of it (used for cooling the NMR machines) so I could get as much as I wanted for free. It's just since I graduated a few years ago that I haven't had access. Do you have any idea how long it will keep in a styrofoam cooler? That's what I used in school but I never kept it for more than an hour anyway.
I never did try the ice cream; if I can get some LN2, that's third on my list (after swirling my hand in it and throwing handfuls across the floor to race it for distance).
Jason
ProfQuotes
...but where can I get some liquid nitrogen?
Jason
ProfQuotes
I don't know about the rest of Canada, but in Ontario, the provincial government modified the Employment Standards Act in 2001 to explicitly make this kind of exploitation legal for IT workers and several other categories.
Jason
ProfQuotes
don't you mean
void main() {for(;;)fork();}?
Jason
ProfQuotes
Hey, my chainsaw has teeth...oh wait...damn, I have to get a new chain.
Jason
ProfQuotes
While we're at it, the courts should declare SCO a generic term for "silly lawsuit"
Jason
ProfQuotes
That wouldn't hold back many geeks at the sight of a female geek.
Jason
ProfQuotes
My real-time prof said that for space ship and car engine code, a good programmer can do an average of about 3 assembly instructions per day.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Rubik's makes a special cube for "less intelligent puzzlers". You might want to pick up one of these.
Jason
ProfQuotes
The software is just a 2 dimensional representation. I find it almost impossible to solve the normal cube in the software version and I can solve a physical cube in under 5 minutes. A 4D cube might be interesting but not a 2D representation of one. I like the 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 cubes at rubiks.com.
Jason
ProfQuotes
If you can't remember to charge batteries, it's your problem. I don't see how you can remember to charge the PDA but not batteries.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Handspring Visor deluxe. Except for a color display and slightly newer version of palmOS, there's still no PDA I'd rather have.
How much did your spare battery cost? As I said, my two sets were $10. That way I always have one charging and one in the Palm. I also use the alkalines that came with for when the ones in it die. After over a year, they're still more than 90% full.
Charging the palm from the cradle is useless because I don't leave my computer on when I'm not using it. The power adapter is almost as bad...It's yet one more thing that ties up an outlet. I have 3 power bars in here already and no free outlets. I also have lots of other devices that take standard batteries; minidisc player, digital camera, gameboy, etc. So I don't even have to think about charging proprietary batteries specifically for the PDA.
The only thing I have a non-standard battery for is my cell phone, and that's the only thing that consistantly lets me down with a dead battery. I will not pay $90 for a battery for a phone that was $110 with a battery; especially when 5 AAA's would cost $12.50 have the same capacity (and fit in the same space).
Jason
ProfQuotes
Batteries come in standard sizes like AA and D. They're designed to plug into any device. It's just these cell phone and notebook computer that want to rip off their customers by forcing them to buy proprietary sizes. My main criteria in picking my PDA was one that took ordinary batteries; not the internal rechargables that some have. I got 2 sets NiMH batteries for it for $10 and that's been a lot more useful than having to charge the PDA in a proprietary cradle.
Jason
ProfQuotes