I'm sure you could scroll around the virtual screen and use the stylus as a mouse in addition to inserting text where the curser is - just like pretty much all the other VNC software out there.
The biggest draw to handheld PDAs over laptops is that they weigh next to nothing and you can use them one-handed. I can use my Inspiron laptop on my hand but it weighs a ton compared to a PDA. I love the 1024x768 screen but the trade-off is portability for size. For example, you can buy a portable barcode reader and use a handheld as a data collection device without lugging around a ton of stuff and input directly into a local database or wirelessly to a remote one via Coldfusion over the web. The total weight of the equipment would be under a couple pounds and in some cases, you can get a barcode reader for a CF or SD card slot and not even have a tethered reader.
What do you consider range? My 2.4ghz phone (see my post above) can get about 120' away from the base and still have somewhat decent signal (somewhat being I have to orient myself towards the antenna for it to be usable).
We just bought a Vtech 2.4ghz phone system - two handsets, one base w/ answering machine and a base with a charger. The system said "2.4ghz Friendly" and it replaced a Vtech 2.4ghz phone bought earlier in the year (and subsequently killed during a storm) which would knock the 802.11 offline unless I set my AP to channel 6.
I haven't bothered to change the AP to a different channel but so far it's working fine.
Worthy of mention is that the new handsets come with speakerphone and use three NiMH AAA cells instead of a shrinkwrapped battery with a lead. Plus they sound great and I don't have the problem I used to have on the older phone where the microphone was too sensitive and I heard background noise at too high a level in the earpiece.
In TFA, it says that the owner of Katie.com is deluged with all sorts of emails ranging from stories of abuse to sickos who think that sort of thing is OK.
The Wave has rounded surfaces where your palm contacts the grips. I tried the old Leatherman and didn't like how it bit into my hand, the Wave is an amazing tool and it's comfortable to use.
My only complaint is that the screw driver tips don't have a lock and you can end up having them fold into your knuckles when the tool slips off the screw.
That's actually pretty cool - their artificial heart diagram looks like a turbocharger:)
How long does this thing last on battery power? It seems to have an infinite lifespan due to no physical contact of moving surfaces but I expect it still needs a battery.
the good stories you can wait out on until they become movies. so the only reason to read anything today on a paper format is for
1. astetics.. you like reading paper
2. "multiple monitors" keep different books open to different pages to have more infomation in fron t of you without having multiple monitors/windows open
3. you genuinly like to read. this is different for each person because frankly i can't read paper anymore.
What the hell? Yes the good stories could become movies but have you ever read a book adaptation of a movie? They slice out a lot of information for continuity or time constraints. Book stories generally have quite a bit more story and character development than their movie counterparts. For example: In Silence of the Lambs, the night-vision goggle scene doesn't make sense, it just "appears" in the movie. You actually understand why they come into the story in the book.
And to answer your bullet points:
1. I like reading books. I've read the entire Harry Potter series and William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition" sitting on the toilet over the past few months. Books are go anywhere devices that don't require batteries, won't burn my legs and are quite a bit lighter than my Dell laptop.
2. That's all fine and good until you want to read somewhere. Have you ever tried to read a book in a moving car? Try that with a laptop or a desktop with multiple monitors.
3. I genuinely like to read. I don't read as much as I should because finding good authors is a crap shoot now a days but I know people who love to read and spend hundreds of dollars buying books on half.com and the like just so they have them to read when they finally get to them.
Like I said above in point #1; Books are light, cheap, don't need batteries, are uncomplicated and readily available. I'm right now finishing a website for my boss's senior class reunion - I have his yearbook from 1966 and aside from it's musty smell is in great shape. I don't need any special program or hardware to read it, just my hands and eyes.
That said, I would love this Sony eBook reader, only if it would accept standard document types and not their proprietary crap. Sony seems to enjoy the "check in, check out" style of media control and that is very cumbersome. I'm on page 750 or thereabouts in the last HP book, I set it down for a couple months and haven't really been in a rush to read it so it's taken me about six months** of off and on reading. I would have had to "rent" it three times if I had Sonys' DRM to deal with.
**I read Gibson's Pattern Recognition in between and only while crapping in the bathroom, just so nobody thinks I'm a slow reader.
Now that I have almost no time on my hands and when i do have spare minutes, I don't want to screw around with a game - I have come up with a short list of games that I like:
Grand Theft Auto for the Xbox - it's really long in the tooth since they didn't do much for the graphics engine but it's still easy to get a mission or two done in half an hour or just screw off and drive around looking for bonuses.
Simpsons Hit & Run - similar to GTA but better graphics and different plot
Driver 3 - Just started playing this, controls SUCK but it's got potential if I can get my muscle memory out of Halo and into the backwards controls. Missions seem to last about 10 minutes.
Futurama - AWESOME platform/adventure game. Fun to play, difficult without being impossible. Missions are anywhere between 10-25 minutes. I'm stuck on one level with Dr Zoidberg and it's frustrating the hell out of me so I haven't touched it for a month:)
I play games maybe 10 hours a month now. I was never really "into" it hard core so this isn't much of a departure for me.
I'm looking forward to an Xbox 2 for my unborn child though:) The whole idea of having kids is to allow you to relive your childhood with them. That was really something that only came to me a few days ago; I don't have to give up being a kid, I can do kid stuff with my kid!
If you want to buy Panther, wait till next year for 10.4 (Tiger). If you want to "get" Panther, it's out there and you aren't missing anything that comes in the retail box.
10.2 is OK, 10.3 is better. Not much breaks between OS versions anymore like it did from 10.1 to 10.2. Panther brings some speed improvements and some stability but it's not the quantum leap forward like 10.2 was from 10.1.
There are programs (never used them, personally) that emulate various functions of 10.3 in 10.2. You can get them at Versiontracker.com. Windowshade is Exposé, App Switcher is the... app switcher:), and Konfabulator is the Dashboard in 10.4. The above are just an example, I'm sure there are many others as well.
By the way, I assume when you say 550 powerbook, you mean Titanium. Get a gig of memory and you'll be fine. OSX likes 512 and loves 1024 megs. Anything over that is of course fine but it'll depend on what you do. My desktop at work has 1024 and it's good for what I do (GoLive, Photoshop, Word, etc...)
Regarding wether what you saw was an i or eMac, the eMac is the all in one 17" monitor and the iMac is the "lamp." The iMac is scheduled to be refreshed soon before the end of the year so if you're looking and can wait, it should be a G5 iMac - according to last week's Slashdot story on the new iMac.
Apple power adaptors have been less than reliable due to design flaws. What model iBook (white or colored) and what model power adaptor (brick or yo-yo) was it? The yo-yo style was prone to fray at the base and the other end at the power connector. The brick was also prone to failure at each end.
If you had a "duck head" (that's what they call it, no joke) you probably had a white brick. They upgraded the older 45w bricks to 65w - mostly for the 17" Powerbook's additional draw, the power connectors should still fit without a problem. The only obvious difference between 45 and 65 watt units is the switch from a plastic post to a metal post where the power plug goes.
By the way, Apple's power adaptors suck:) Buy a nice aftermarket one for $70 when your warranty expires instead of their failure prone garbage for $130ish.
Apple's Depot repair service seems to only hire idiot jackasses to do the repairs. I've gotten back some things worse than when they were sent in! The turnaround time is usually excellent but you have to do some hand-holding to make sure they get it right. They usually forget to replace PRAM batteries on older units when it's obvious they have failed.
Bleh... it looks like a Duo ate a fax machine and a bucket of white paint fell on it.
I would really like to see a color screen, iSync compatable, Bluetooth enabled Apple GSM phone. Probably won't happen though. Too damn many players in the phone market and Apple's product would end up being $600-700 before any carrier subsidy - if any. For my $700 I would have a crack at quite a few "smart phones" that are already out.
I'd love to see Apple make a 5x7" LCD tablet with one of the iPod hard drives, USB and Firewire running 10.3 on a low power G4. That is where their R&D should go towards, they already have the greatest handwriting recognition system in the world (Inkwell, from the Newton Rosetta Stone), all they need to do is deploy it!
My fiancé bought the Kameleon remote at my insistence to replace my old Remote Commander that she destroyed when a paper towel holder landed on the display and crushed the digitizer.
I love the Kameleon remote. If it could only stay lit up longer (stays on for 5 seconds and has an inertia sensor to turn on). The company is OneForAll which pretty much has the universal remote OEM/ODM market covered. Strangely enough - the Kameleon remote isn't on their page at all, they must ODM for Radio Shack on that model exclusively.
By the way, yes it does have 'tactile' response - the buttons make a definite "snap" when you press them down. The old Remote Commander was a huge pain in the ass because you had to look directly at the button for the feature, press it (they were tiny, too) and then hope you got the right function. The only commands you could do without looking at the remote was input selection, channel, volume and mute because they were the only physical buttons.
Did I mention the contrast sucked on the RM200? It did.:)
he obviously did something to trip up the MPAA and cause the to play the "patriot act card".
That would be offering the episodes of the show for download directly off of his server. Other sites (the-realworld.de) get around this by using eDonkey or BitTorrent links instead of actually hosting the data themselves.
The FBI involvement is questionable to say the least... I would suspect that they were called in because this was something that crossed state lines via the internet. That's painting with a pretty broad brush though.
"Up to now, the world of downloads has been far too close to a world where the CD you buy in one store wouldn't play on the CD player you bought in another," Larry Kenswil, president of Universal Music's eLabs division, said in a statement. "We applaud RealNetworks' efforts to help correct this situation and appeal to all people and companies in this area to work toward a world of universal interoperability."
Isn't that like going to a B&M store and buying an audio CD that has DRM and won't play on a CD player you bought in another store because the player chokes on the DRM code on the CD? Universal Interoperability would suggest that you can take any music CD and play it on any player without it choking.
Isn't Apple's profit in selling the device and using the music to push device sales? Won't this just sell more devices for Apple?
Of course, Real's software and technology sucks but in the end it's about one company who has a bad product (Real) trying to grasp on to a superior design platform (iPod) to try to push their own profit while driving up the sales of their competitor's device. It is funny to note that Real hates Apple and tries to belittle the ITMS/iPod while attempting to latch on to the iPod's obvious market share and popularity at the same time.
Worthy of note would be that it's entirely possible that Real's "hack" is to convert their music data from the proprietary format to something without DRM like MP3.
I for one welcome you! Anyhow... there is no damn way that they could avoid grandfathering in existing equipment, they will just hope that eventually it'll break and be discarded. This would most likely drive up a black market for "pre-ban" devices.
Similar to gun parts regarding clips over 10 rounds. I'm sure a used Glock clip goes for a bit more than a new one for the same model did before the ban.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure you could scroll around the virtual screen and use the stylus as a mouse in addition to inserting text where the curser is - just like pretty much all the other VNC software out there.
The biggest draw to handheld PDAs over laptops is that they weigh next to nothing and you can use them one-handed. I can use my Inspiron laptop on my hand but it weighs a ton compared to a PDA. I love the 1024x768 screen but the trade-off is portability for size. For example, you can buy a portable barcode reader and use a handheld as a data collection device without lugging around a ton of stuff and input directly into a local database or wirelessly to a remote one via Coldfusion over the web. The total weight of the equipment would be under a couple pounds and in some cases, you can get a barcode reader for a CF or SD card slot and not even have a tethered reader.
I wish I had a mod point to give you, I'd break the cycle and moderate it "insightful."
Informative? That should be moderated Funny.
I agree! I should be getting coffee right now but I've put it off to read /.
Throw in some typewriters and we may get some Shakespeare!
What do you consider range? My 2.4ghz phone (see my post above) can get about 120' away from the base and still have somewhat decent signal (somewhat being I have to orient myself towards the antenna for it to be usable).
http://www.vtechphones.com/vtechui/shop/productdet ail.cfm?itemID=1299
I haven't bothered to change the AP to a different channel but so far it's working fine.
Worthy of mention is that the new handsets come with speakerphone and use three NiMH AAA cells instead of a shrinkwrapped battery with a lead. Plus they sound great and I don't have the problem I used to have on the older phone where the microphone was too sensitive and I heard background noise at too high a level in the earpiece.
In TFA, it says that the owner of Katie.com is deluged with all sorts of emails ranging from stories of abuse to sickos who think that sort of thing is OK.
It uses SyncML which is an open standard AFAIK. You could even run your own SyncML client and connect over the air to it.
My only complaint is that the screw driver tips don't have a lock and you can end up having them fold into your knuckles when the tool slips off the screw.
How long does this thing last on battery power? It seems to have an infinite lifespan due to no physical contact of moving surfaces but I expect it still needs a battery.
Proper use of Slashdot Mod Points, the Missing Manual. :)
What the hell? Yes the good stories could become movies but have you ever read a book adaptation of a movie? They slice out a lot of information for continuity or time constraints. Book stories generally have quite a bit more story and character development than their movie counterparts. For example: In Silence of the Lambs, the night-vision goggle scene doesn't make sense, it just "appears" in the movie. You actually understand why they come into the story in the book.
And to answer your bullet points:
1. I like reading books. I've read the entire Harry Potter series and William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition" sitting on the toilet over the past few months. Books are go anywhere devices that don't require batteries, won't burn my legs and are quite a bit lighter than my Dell laptop.
2. That's all fine and good until you want to read somewhere. Have you ever tried to read a book in a moving car? Try that with a laptop or a desktop with multiple monitors.
3. I genuinely like to read. I don't read as much as I should because finding good authors is a crap shoot now a days but I know people who love to read and spend hundreds of dollars buying books on half.com and the like just so they have them to read when they finally get to them.
Like I said above in point #1; Books are light, cheap, don't need batteries, are uncomplicated and readily available. I'm right now finishing a website for my boss's senior class reunion - I have his yearbook from 1966 and aside from it's musty smell is in great shape. I don't need any special program or hardware to read it, just my hands and eyes.
That said, I would love this Sony eBook reader, only if it would accept standard document types and not their proprietary crap. Sony seems to enjoy the "check in, check out" style of media control and that is very cumbersome. I'm on page 750 or thereabouts in the last HP book, I set it down for a couple months and haven't really been in a rush to read it so it's taken me about six months** of off and on reading. I would have had to "rent" it three times if I had Sonys' DRM to deal with.
**I read Gibson's Pattern Recognition in between and only while crapping in the bathroom, just so nobody thinks I'm a slow reader.
Doesn't Sell?
Grand Theft Auto for the Xbox - it's really long in the tooth since they didn't do much for the graphics engine but it's still easy to get a mission or two done in half an hour or just screw off and drive around looking for bonuses.
Simpsons Hit & Run - similar to GTA but better graphics and different plot
Driver 3 - Just started playing this, controls SUCK but it's got potential if I can get my muscle memory out of Halo and into the backwards controls. Missions seem to last about 10 minutes.
Futurama - AWESOME platform/adventure game. Fun to play, difficult without being impossible. Missions are anywhere between 10-25 minutes. I'm stuck on one level with Dr Zoidberg and it's frustrating the hell out of me so I haven't touched it for a month :)
I play games maybe 10 hours a month now. I was never really "into" it hard core so this isn't much of a departure for me.
I'm looking forward to an Xbox 2 for my unborn child though :) The whole idea of having kids is to allow you to relive your childhood with them. That was really something that only came to me a few days ago; I don't have to give up being a kid, I can do kid stuff with my kid!
10.2 is OK, 10.3 is better. Not much breaks between OS versions anymore like it did from 10.1 to 10.2. Panther brings some speed improvements and some stability but it's not the quantum leap forward like 10.2 was from 10.1.
There are programs (never used them, personally) that emulate various functions of 10.3 in 10.2. You can get them at Versiontracker.com. Windowshade is Exposé, App Switcher is the... app switcher :), and Konfabulator is the Dashboard in 10.4. The above are just an example, I'm sure there are many others as well.
By the way, I assume when you say 550 powerbook, you mean Titanium. Get a gig of memory and you'll be fine. OSX likes 512 and loves 1024 megs. Anything over that is of course fine but it'll depend on what you do. My desktop at work has 1024 and it's good for what I do (GoLive, Photoshop, Word, etc...)
Regarding wether what you saw was an i or eMac, the eMac is the all in one 17" monitor and the iMac is the "lamp." The iMac is scheduled to be refreshed soon before the end of the year so if you're looking and can wait, it should be a G5 iMac - according to last week's Slashdot story on the new iMac.
If you had a "duck head" (that's what they call it, no joke) you probably had a white brick. They upgraded the older 45w bricks to 65w - mostly for the 17" Powerbook's additional draw, the power connectors should still fit without a problem. The only obvious difference between 45 and 65 watt units is the switch from a plastic post to a metal post where the power plug goes.
By the way, Apple's power adaptors suck :) Buy a nice aftermarket one for $70 when your warranty expires instead of their failure prone garbage for $130ish.
Apple's Depot repair service seems to only hire idiot jackasses to do the repairs. I've gotten back some things worse than when they were sent in! The turnaround time is usually excellent but you have to do some hand-holding to make sure they get it right. They usually forget to replace PRAM batteries on older units when it's obvious they have failed.
I would really like to see a color screen, iSync compatable, Bluetooth enabled Apple GSM phone. Probably won't happen though. Too damn many players in the phone market and Apple's product would end up being $600-700 before any carrier subsidy - if any. For my $700 I would have a crack at quite a few "smart phones" that are already out.
I'd love to see Apple make a 5x7" LCD tablet with one of the iPod hard drives, USB and Firewire running 10.3 on a low power G4. That is where their R&D should go towards, they already have the greatest handwriting recognition system in the world (Inkwell, from the Newton Rosetta Stone), all they need to do is deploy it!
I love the Kameleon remote. If it could only stay lit up longer (stays on for 5 seconds and has an inertia sensor to turn on). The company is OneForAll which pretty much has the universal remote OEM/ODM market covered. Strangely enough - the Kameleon remote isn't on their page at all, they must ODM for Radio Shack on that model exclusively.
By the way, yes it does have 'tactile' response - the buttons make a definite "snap" when you press them down. The old Remote Commander was a huge pain in the ass because you had to look directly at the button for the feature, press it (they were tiny, too) and then hope you got the right function. The only commands you could do without looking at the remote was input selection, channel, volume and mute because they were the only physical buttons.
Did I mention the contrast sucked on the RM200? It did. :)
That would be offering the episodes of the show for download directly off of his server. Other sites (the-realworld.de) get around this by using eDonkey or BitTorrent links instead of actually hosting the data themselves.
The FBI involvement is questionable to say the least... I would suspect that they were called in because this was something that crossed state lines via the internet. That's painting with a pretty broad brush though.
Of course, Real's software and technology sucks but in the end it's about one company who has a bad product (Real) trying to grasp on to a superior design platform (iPod) to try to push their own profit while driving up the sales of their competitor's device. It is funny to note that Real hates Apple and tries to belittle the ITMS/iPod while attempting to latch on to the iPod's obvious market share and popularity at the same time.
Worthy of note would be that it's entirely possible that Real's "hack" is to convert their music data from the proprietary format to something without DRM like MP3.
Similar to gun parts regarding clips over 10 rounds. I'm sure a used Glock clip goes for a bit more than a new one for the same model did before the ban.