Why is everyone talking about this wearable display as if it's already out in the marketplace and people have no choice but to buy it because it has made "legacy" clothing obsolite?
Holy crap - I, for one will not buy something that I cannot control. People are making it seem as if you won't be able to buy a damn thing other than these clothes which will put up Cialis adverts or flash 3.9% mortgage rates across your bum.
You know what I'm going to do - assuming that this stuff comes to market? Probably not buy it. I don't want to walk around looking like a dick at night and attracting the attention of strangers - whose motives may or may not be bad. I certainly doubt that the owner of ShadyAdCorp will decide that he will hijack this stuff to spam from and have everyone else follow suit but even if that does happen, how long do you think it'll take for people to toss this stuff? Shit, I would be much more likely to buy a shirt with an animated Nike logo on it that did what it was supposed to do than one that would change based upon what I walked by (RFID tag or transmitter or spam antenna, etc).
I guess to sum up - I doubt that this will be turned into the über spam tool that people think it will be. Even if it does happen, I doubt people would be stupid enough to become light-up billboards selling personal adspace for products from labels other than the one they bought in the first place.
Ugh... amen, the best Waking Life was able to manage in my opinion was a porno-parody; "Wanking Life."
Someone should have made that. Seriously.
My girlfriend and I cued it up, she got sick of it after about 5 minutes and I "gave it a chance" and got fed up after 15. Supposedly the rotoscope effect was done because the original film was poorly shot or something. Take an effect that was really cool for all of three minutes, add uninteresting characters and no apparent plot, stir with a dirty spoon and serve to two extremely unimpressed people.
I had a friend who SWORE by that movie as the Most Amazing Thing Ever and I just don't see it. Go watch "eXistenZ" if you want an interesting movie.
It's a 4 year old laptop which probably has a used up battery and it sounds like it needs to run off the battery during the day. It also needs a new optical drive. It doesn't sound like it's even worth sending anywhere.
Granted, I don't live in a 3rd world nation (but I am near Miami and was about as close to being carjacked last night as I'd like to ever come) but I wouldn't want something that is so worn out. I suppose the fact that it's a computer at all is good because chances are they'll still get some use out of it.
BTW: You'll probably get a storm of "put linux on it" which is a decent idea since it won't cost you anything. You may be better just loading Win95 on it for the sake of it being easier to administer.
What a waste of a USB drive if you're just going to boot off of it to repartition a drive.
Make a bootable CD, that's what I do. I have a CD with a bunch of DOS stuff that boots from a Windows 98 "recovery disk." It loads cd-rom drivers, copies some stuff to a ramdisk it sets up and then quits to the prompt. Then I can partition, ghost, format, test drives, install windows 98 (it's an old cd) and some other little things like zap track 0 if I want.
The only problem I've ever had relating to not having a floppy drive to boot from has been trying to update the firmware on a hard drive for my laptop. The flash utility needs to write to the disk and it obviously can't do that with a CDRW. I actually just solved my own problem by executing it in the ramdisk:) there, problem solved!
Yeah, PocketPC sucks but it's "oK' for tiny devices. I actually ignored PocketPC for about two years and a coworker showed me his new HP. Very nice, interface sucks. It took him 10 minutes of fiddling with it and an extra five of mine to figure out where the MAC address for the wireless card is.
This thing first and foremost is a telephone, I could at least see holding this thing up to my head to make a phone call. I'd hate to have to pull my Libretto L5* out and hold it up to my head like a Nokia N-gage. (just kidding, had to make the joke) Seriously, you would have to get a Bluetooth headset and either a BT laptop or a USB dongle for it or get a corded headset and at that point it's just a big pain in the ass.
I have a Motorola V400 and I consider it to be a bit on the biggish side.
I don't think IM will ever go away, or at least not for quite some time until something equally "silent" takes its place.
For me (and I really don't use IM much at all) I can have a conversation with someone and not be tied to the phone AND I don't have to sit there and small talk if I'm doing something in the background or waiting for someone else to do something.
I don't really see it going away any time soon but I also don't see it breaking any new ground either. The mobile phone providers seem to have stopped trying to cram text messaging down our throats in the US but abroad it seems as though texting from your mobile is cheaper than speaking into it.
So i've been reading a lot of the replies here and I just want to know this: Who the hell does anyone think they are telling Yahoo what they are allowed to do with Yahoo's IM protocol/service/client/bandwidth/etc? Yahoo provides a free client that runs with Yahoo's protocol on Yahoo's servers, they are allowed to do any damn thing they please and NOT allow anyone to connect if they don't want them to.
I understand that there are valid reasons for not using the Yahoo client like unsupported OS's or "it sucks" - whatever. In the end, you are using their service for free and they aren't obligated to give you a damn thing. They could fold their tents tomorrow and wouldn't owe anyone but their creditors and customers (those who pay for services).
Why doesn't some enterprising person create a P2P chat client? I was going to go on a rant about how if someone wanted to have a totally free IM client, they could buy the servers to host connections, pay for bandwidth, etc.. but the P2P chat may be better in the long run. Granted, that doesn't solve the problem connecting to Yahoo (or the like) but it's a good start, right?
I bought a VWCDPIC auxiliary audio interface for ~$45, a female headphone to RCA y-adapter and a 20' M-M headphone extension. Plugged the WVCDPIC in to the cd changer harness, plugged the Y adapter into the WVCDPIC, plugged the extension into the adapter and ran it under the kick panels and through the trim panel under the dash.
I bought about $3 worth of square plastic tube (1/4" dia) and some thin plastic sheet. With a lot of patience and effort, I constructed an open box that the iPod slides into and attached that to a "C" shaped bracket that I wedged between the top and bottom of the center A/C vent. Works great! Some company makes the same thing but ready to go for $90+s/h.
Before anyone asks about condensation from the A/C hitting the back of the unit - It's been humid as all hell here with the A/C on solid and it doesn't seem to be affected in any way. I've also had it installed for about 5 months with no issues. The only problems are these:
I have to shut the backlight off during the day because the display washes out when it comes on. I of course also have to turn it back on at night.
Not as elegant as buying something off the shelf.
Still have to move my hands to change tracks - but I don't have the remote on the steering wheel anyway so that's moot. The VWCDPIC has some serial interface that can control a dedicated MP3 changer thingie via the CD head unit buttons that the designer links on his website - it takes a 2.5" HD and you stick it in your trunk. You could also add a LCD display if I'm not mistaken.
Oh yeah, the iPod (at least my 1G) has the WORST random track logic!
It's all relative to where you live, I had a coworker at a company I worked for who got a job making $40k in North Carolina as an IT manager. He nearly crapped his pants when they gave him the offer because the cost of living up there was almost nothing. I think he said renting a 3 bedroom house with a yard would cost in the neighborhood of $750 a month. My 2 bedroom apartment here in South Florida is $1000 a month.
I knew someone when I worked at a different company who had a 3 bedroom house built 1.5 hours north of the company (Port St Lucie) for $90,000 including buying the land. You can't even find a crackhouse here for $90k. Another friend of mine sold his house for $280k in a week and a half (3 bedroom) two months ago and it wasn't even a large house.
I don't recall the tone of my original post having any whining in it. In fact, I think I recall asking where I could find one of those jobs.
I have never seen a position similar to mine posted anywhere in my area prior to interviewing here. If I had, I would more than likely have tried to pursue it. As it stands - South Florida IT jobs are saturated, I got a lucky break and an easy to manage workload and you can believe me when I say I am _not_ whining about it.
To sum up; Happy with my job but I would certainly entertain the thought of making more money. I spent over 10 years of my life getting here and I'm grateful for getting my paycheck every week.
I hope he just had to transport it and took a picture of it in his trunk.
I use a 10 gig iPod, VWcdPIC audio interface, 12' of 1/8" headphone jack cable and a stereo RCA to 1/8" jack Y cable.
Or something like this:
1. $15 worth of Radio Shack audio cables
2. iPod received as gift
3. $45 audio interface to factory cd changer interface
4. ???
5. Cheaper and ligher than a server in my GTI.
Here's my cell phone experience thus far (it stretches back a ways)
MANY years ago I bought in to GSM in North America through OmniPoint. I knew it would be the Next Thing tech wise. So I had my cool GSM phone (it was like 1995 or 1997) which took full size SIM cards, btw. It was a pre-pay deal that eventually was converted to a regular billing account. financial troubles kept them from continuing the contract and in the end Omnipoint and I parted ways after I paid the bill. They were still VERY nice to me even as they told me my credit score with them was "Q" and that was pretty bad apparently.
I went on to find another cellular provider. This time with ATTWS with a DAMPS phone. My credit was still too bad to avoid paying a deposit BUT they had an awesome service that would allow me to pay ahead for a standard bill and if I went over my minute plan it would either shut the phone off until I paid the balance or re-bill my card. That was an awesome plan, I wish more carriers would have done that instead of wanting $500 deposits at the time.
Fast forward a few years, I'd gone through a few phones with ATTWS and a number of years of service without a problem and they start to roll out GSM. This is my big mistake. South Florida GSM was shit through ATTWS. I had changed to a Sony-Ericsson T68i through an ATTWS reseller because of the price ($0 for the phone after rebate, 1 year contract and I heard the phone was excellent). The rep I spoke to said I would have no problem converting my existing DAMPS plan to the GSM phone but I couldn't do it due to the fact that I had bought the new phone through an outside ATTWS rep - this all completely after the fact. So whatever, I dropped the old phone down to the lowest plan and paid $25/month for the remaining 4 months.
The T68 SUCKED here. I don't know what the problem was but it would drop calls almost 80% of the time and it was rare for me to be able to use the phone at all for more than a 30 second call without a drop. I bought a cheapie Nokia 7190 on Ebay and that was quite a bit better but was bulky. When I finally bit the bullet and bought a Motorola T720 all my problems were solved regarding being able to receive and place calls. At a cost of over $200 to me because ATTWS refused to believe that I could have so many problems within two months of new service and they sent me new headsets, blah blah blah.... completely passing the buck. I considered having the T68 flashed to newer firmware because it "might" increase reception but in the end decided against it and just got the T720.
Fast forward more, I had two months left on the ATTWS contract and couldn't WAIT to get rid of them.. I dumped them for Cingular and got a Moto V400. I ported my number, reduced the ATTWS contract to the lowest (25/month) and ATTWS tried to bill me $150 for early disconnect. Never mind that I was with them for 6 years, when I got the new phone it was a 12 month contract, blah blah... I still had a contract with them, just not a phone number. A rather terse email to them was returned with an apology so at least someone there is on the ball.
Cingular is a great company to deal with. My data rates (which i really don't use) are cheaper than ATTWS, the minute packages are all cheaper, I have free incoming and roll-over minutes, coverage is better, etc etc... I'm pleased with the overall experience of Cingular. ATTWS just bit off way more than they could chew when they rolled out GSM and I paid the price for my eagerness to transfer over. ATTWS left me with a bad taste in my mouth and that sucks because I had given them money for many years.
I do love all the corporate double-speak though. If you talk to an ATTWS rep about roll-over minutes, they will swear up and down that you get it for one year and then "poof" it's gone. Cingular states that the minutes expire after 12 months and the service renews the following month until you opt out of the plan. I would be more inclined to believe Cingular, personally. Another good one is the fact that nobody keeps
meh, if i want to be acosted by sales clerks trying to make me buy something, i'll GO to a B&M store. my online shopping experience is so great because i don't have to talk to anyone, just add to cart, pay and go.
Announcements like these make me wish I still worked for an apple authorized reseller. We always would see cool new product come in for some reason or another after being announced. Now I just manage some two year old MDD's. It was very cool to be able to actually work on brand new units a month or two after their release. Apple has always put the latest tech into production machines way earlier than 'mainstream' PC companies have.
I don't miss making chump change and having to drive all day to fix them though.:)
Even though "online" has such a stigma attached to it, lots of people meet other people just fine. What if someone is severely handicapped and can't otherwise easily leave the house?
I've met people socially who I met online, some were freaks and some were decent well adjusted people. It's the same as meeting people in the real world.
I'll admit that I have a bit of social anxiety in person and it's easier for me to start a conversation with a total stranger online and to subsequently dip out on the conversation if I don't like the tone or direction:).
It boils down to a case of personal aesthetics. After looking around for a couple months, I decided on the Swatch.
I don't know what sort of watch you wear but personally I wanted a unique watch. It also doesn't hurt that it weighs roughly half of my old Guess Microsteel watch did.
Since I don't wear any jewelry - I like to wear a nice fashionable watch. Not to Chuck Woolery standards but something that might be noticed and admired.
Dick Tracy Watch?
Although this is cool but showing as discontinued. I remember they were covered a couple years ago, Fossil was going to carry them, blah blah... never saw them actually for sale, then the Wrist Net crap came out, now the Palm watches are in Fossil's catalog (after not being there a few weeks ago) and marked as discontinued? Odd...
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Holy crap - I, for one will not buy something that I cannot control. People are making it seem as if you won't be able to buy a damn thing other than these clothes which will put up Cialis adverts or flash 3.9% mortgage rates across your bum.
You know what I'm going to do - assuming that this stuff comes to market? Probably not buy it. I don't want to walk around looking like a dick at night and attracting the attention of strangers - whose motives may or may not be bad. I certainly doubt that the owner of ShadyAdCorp will decide that he will hijack this stuff to spam from and have everyone else follow suit but even if that does happen, how long do you think it'll take for people to toss this stuff? Shit, I would be much more likely to buy a shirt with an animated Nike logo on it that did what it was supposed to do than one that would change based upon what I walked by (RFID tag or transmitter or spam antenna, etc).
I guess to sum up - I doubt that this will be turned into the über spam tool that people think it will be. Even if it does happen, I doubt people would be stupid enough to become light-up billboards selling personal adspace for products from labels other than the one they bought in the first place.
(h) And I for one welcome our new $thread overlords!
Someone should have made that. Seriously.
My girlfriend and I cued it up, she got sick of it after about 5 minutes and I "gave it a chance" and got fed up after 15. Supposedly the rotoscope effect was done because the original film was poorly shot or something. Take an effect that was really cool for all of three minutes, add uninteresting characters and no apparent plot, stir with a dirty spoon and serve to two extremely unimpressed people.
I had a friend who SWORE by that movie as the Most Amazing Thing Ever and I just don't see it. Go watch "eXistenZ" if you want an interesting movie.
Granted, I don't live in a 3rd world nation (but I am near Miami and was about as close to being carjacked last night as I'd like to ever come) but I wouldn't want something that is so worn out. I suppose the fact that it's a computer at all is good because chances are they'll still get some use out of it.
BTW: You'll probably get a storm of "put linux on it" which is a decent idea since it won't cost you anything. You may be better just loading Win95 on it for the sake of it being easier to administer.
Make a bootable CD, that's what I do. I have a CD with a bunch of DOS stuff that boots from a Windows 98 "recovery disk." It loads cd-rom drivers, copies some stuff to a ramdisk it sets up and then quits to the prompt. Then I can partition, ghost, format, test drives, install windows 98 (it's an old cd) and some other little things like zap track 0 if I want. The only problem I've ever had relating to not having a floppy drive to boot from has been trying to update the firmware on a hard drive for my laptop. The flash utility needs to write to the disk and it obviously can't do that with a CDRW. I actually just solved my own problem by executing it in the ramdisk :) there, problem solved!
Does the TV Game thing play Stroker 64?
This thing first and foremost is a telephone, I could at least see holding this thing up to my head to make a phone call. I'd hate to have to pull my Libretto L5* out and hold it up to my head like a Nokia N-gage. (just kidding, had to make the joke) Seriously, you would have to get a Bluetooth headset and either a BT laptop or a USB dongle for it or get a corded headset and at that point it's just a big pain in the ass.
I have a Motorola V400 and I consider it to be a bit on the biggish side.
*I don't own one but wouldn't mind one at all.
I'd hate to have to wake up next to a female t-rex one morning.. don't they know that they should brush their tongues when they brush their teeth?
For me (and I really don't use IM much at all) I can have a conversation with someone and not be tied to the phone AND I don't have to sit there and small talk if I'm doing something in the background or waiting for someone else to do something.
I don't really see it going away any time soon but I also don't see it breaking any new ground either. The mobile phone providers seem to have stopped trying to cram text messaging down our throats in the US but abroad it seems as though texting from your mobile is cheaper than speaking into it.
I understand that there are valid reasons for not using the Yahoo client like unsupported OS's or "it sucks" - whatever. In the end, you are using their service for free and they aren't obligated to give you a damn thing. They could fold their tents tomorrow and wouldn't owe anyone but their creditors and customers (those who pay for services).
Why doesn't some enterprising person create a P2P chat client? I was going to go on a rant about how if someone wanted to have a totally free IM client, they could buy the servers to host connections, pay for bandwidth, etc.. but the P2P chat may be better in the long run. Granted, that doesn't solve the problem connecting to Yahoo (or the like) but it's a good start, right?
I bought a VWCDPIC auxiliary audio interface for ~$45, a female headphone to RCA y-adapter and a 20' M-M headphone extension. Plugged the WVCDPIC in to the cd changer harness, plugged the Y adapter into the WVCDPIC, plugged the extension into the adapter and ran it under the kick panels and through the trim panel under the dash.
I bought about $3 worth of square plastic tube (1/4" dia) and some thin plastic sheet. With a lot of patience and effort, I constructed an open box that the iPod slides into and attached that to a "C" shaped bracket that I wedged between the top and bottom of the center A/C vent. Works great! Some company makes the same thing but ready to go for $90+s/h.
Before anyone asks about condensation from the A/C hitting the back of the unit - It's been humid as all hell here with the A/C on solid and it doesn't seem to be affected in any way. I've also had it installed for about 5 months with no issues. The only problems are these:
I have to shut the backlight off during the day because the display washes out when it comes on. I of course also have to turn it back on at night.
Not as elegant as buying something off the shelf.
Still have to move my hands to change tracks - but I don't have the remote on the steering wheel anyway so that's moot. The VWCDPIC has some serial interface that can control a dedicated MP3 changer thingie via the CD head unit buttons that the designer links on his website - it takes a 2.5" HD and you stick it in your trunk. You could also add a LCD display if I'm not mistaken.
Oh yeah, the iPod (at least my 1G) has the WORST random track logic!
I knew someone when I worked at a different company who had a 3 bedroom house built 1.5 hours north of the company (Port St Lucie) for $90,000 including buying the land. You can't even find a crackhouse here for $90k. Another friend of mine sold his house for $280k in a week and a half (3 bedroom) two months ago and it wasn't even a large house.
I have never seen a position similar to mine posted anywhere in my area prior to interviewing here. If I had, I would more than likely have tried to pursue it. As it stands - South Florida IT jobs are saturated, I got a lucky break and an easy to manage workload and you can believe me when I say I am _not_ whining about it.
To sum up; Happy with my job but I would certainly entertain the thought of making more money. I spent over 10 years of my life getting here and I'm grateful for getting my paycheck every week.
Granted the only one in my department is me but I support 45 people and their computers!
I use a 10 gig iPod, VWcdPIC audio interface, 12' of 1/8" headphone jack cable and a stereo RCA to 1/8" jack Y cable.
Or something like this: 1. $15 worth of Radio Shack audio cables 2. iPod received as gift 3. $45 audio interface to factory cd changer interface 4. ??? 5. Cheaper and ligher than a server in my GTI.
Especially when you consider that it's $2999 w/o Linux.
Thanks, troll. I was referring to the first comment to this story - not since time began as we know it.
I can't be the only one who thinks this would be great for 3D games? Can I?
MANY years ago I bought in to GSM in North America through OmniPoint. I knew it would be the Next Thing tech wise. So I had my cool GSM phone (it was like 1995 or 1997) which took full size SIM cards, btw. It was a pre-pay deal that eventually was converted to a regular billing account. financial troubles kept them from continuing the contract and in the end Omnipoint and I parted ways after I paid the bill. They were still VERY nice to me even as they told me my credit score with them was "Q" and that was pretty bad apparently.
I went on to find another cellular provider. This time with ATTWS with a DAMPS phone. My credit was still too bad to avoid paying a deposit BUT they had an awesome service that would allow me to pay ahead for a standard bill and if I went over my minute plan it would either shut the phone off until I paid the balance or re-bill my card. That was an awesome plan, I wish more carriers would have done that instead of wanting $500 deposits at the time.
Fast forward a few years, I'd gone through a few phones with ATTWS and a number of years of service without a problem and they start to roll out GSM. This is my big mistake. South Florida GSM was shit through ATTWS. I had changed to a Sony-Ericsson T68i through an ATTWS reseller because of the price ($0 for the phone after rebate, 1 year contract and I heard the phone was excellent). The rep I spoke to said I would have no problem converting my existing DAMPS plan to the GSM phone but I couldn't do it due to the fact that I had bought the new phone through an outside ATTWS rep - this all completely after the fact. So whatever, I dropped the old phone down to the lowest plan and paid $25/month for the remaining 4 months.
The T68 SUCKED here. I don't know what the problem was but it would drop calls almost 80% of the time and it was rare for me to be able to use the phone at all for more than a 30 second call without a drop. I bought a cheapie Nokia 7190 on Ebay and that was quite a bit better but was bulky. When I finally bit the bullet and bought a Motorola T720 all my problems were solved regarding being able to receive and place calls. At a cost of over $200 to me because ATTWS refused to believe that I could have so many problems within two months of new service and they sent me new headsets, blah blah blah.... completely passing the buck. I considered having the T68 flashed to newer firmware because it "might" increase reception but in the end decided against it and just got the T720.
Fast forward more, I had two months left on the ATTWS contract and couldn't WAIT to get rid of them.. I dumped them for Cingular and got a Moto V400. I ported my number, reduced the ATTWS contract to the lowest (25/month) and ATTWS tried to bill me $150 for early disconnect. Never mind that I was with them for 6 years, when I got the new phone it was a 12 month contract, blah blah... I still had a contract with them, just not a phone number. A rather terse email to them was returned with an apology so at least someone there is on the ball.
Cingular is a great company to deal with. My data rates (which i really don't use) are cheaper than ATTWS, the minute packages are all cheaper, I have free incoming and roll-over minutes, coverage is better, etc etc... I'm pleased with the overall experience of Cingular. ATTWS just bit off way more than they could chew when they rolled out GSM and I paid the price for my eagerness to transfer over. ATTWS left me with a bad taste in my mouth and that sucks because I had given them money for many years.
I do love all the corporate double-speak though. If you talk to an ATTWS rep about roll-over minutes, they will swear up and down that you get it for one year and then "poof" it's gone. Cingular states that the minutes expire after 12 months and the service renews the following month until you opt out of the plan. I would be more inclined to believe Cingular, personally. Another good one is the fact that nobody keeps
meh, if i want to be acosted by sales clerks trying to make me buy something, i'll GO to a B&M store. my online shopping experience is so great because i don't have to talk to anyone, just add to cart, pay and go.
Can I type in "FUND" to receive VC money? Can't type it more than 5 times or my server will crash from an earthquake tho... :\
I don't miss making chump change and having to drive all day to fix them though. :)
I've met people socially who I met online, some were freaks and some were decent well adjusted people. It's the same as meeting people in the real world.
I'll admit that I have a bit of social anxiety in person and it's easier for me to start a conversation with a total stranger online and to subsequently dip out on the conversation if I don't like the tone or direction :).
I don't know what sort of watch you wear but personally I wanted a unique watch. It also doesn't hurt that it weighs roughly half of my old Guess Microsteel watch did.
Since I don't wear any jewelry - I like to wear a nice fashionable watch. Not to Chuck Woolery standards but something that might be noticed and admired.
Dick Tracy Watch? Although this is cool but showing as discontinued. I remember they were covered a couple years ago, Fossil was going to carry them, blah blah... never saw them actually for sale, then the Wrist Net crap came out, now the Palm watches are in Fossil's catalog (after not being there a few weeks ago) and marked as discontinued? Odd...