The Amiga did it first! Google the saga of Jim Drew and the Emplant board. The same types of claims were made. It could emulate the Sega Genesis, the PC and the Mac at full speed using some revalutionary Amiga-Fu.
I have to disagree with you about the quality of the firmware. The functions are needlessly difficult to access. Button use isn't consistant. I've had it for 6 months and I still forget when to tap the remote's nav wheel and when to press and hold it. I think you tap it to view directories, then press and hold it to back up. Pressing and holding it first shows the settings menu. Or something like that. My wife called from the car asking how to turn shuffle mode off. On an Archos or iPod, it would be as simple as pressing the menu button and choosing "shuffle off". I had to tell her to try pressing and holding or double tapping all the buttons until it went off.
The hardware is brilliant, but the firmware really has the feel of something that was hacked together with no advanced planning or thought.
There is another important factor to consider in your previous situation. You started at the company as an intern. I assume this means you were not paid very well.
It is very hard to get significant raises if you start at too low of a salary. The company will always think of you as being inexpensive, regardless of the quality of your work. In cases like that, it is common to double your salary (or more) just by switching jobs.
I mostly agree. I've used a Palm since my Pilot 1000. I showed it to geeks all over New York who had never seen or heard of one. That is how long I've been using Palm.
What I really want is multi-threading. The most regular unpleasant experience I have with my Palm is on my Treo 180 when the GPRS connection heads south. The entire machine locks up while the networking software chugs along and eventually times out. It can sometimes take several minutes of waiting and waiting, then hitting cancel, then waiting more, then resetting the radio, then reconnecting - before I can check my email.
I think the multithreading in OS6 will fix this. As for only one UI at a time? I could care less.
It sounds like a wireless video decoder/sender so you can use your broadband connection as a pipe for video on demand.
The hardware won't be what makes this successful or not, it will be the deals they can make with content providers. This is probably where Tivo could help.
I don't have much hope for Strangeberry's success given the entertainment industry's history with new delivery technologies.
The article is clueless technically. The panorama cam takes hundreds of 1 megapixel images and stitches them together to produce the panoramas that have been published on the web.
Anyone can acheive a similar effect with their digital camera by taking enough pictures and stitching them together with software.
To get an idea of what the raw ccd images look like from the panoramic cam, check out the raw image gallery from JPL:
You make a good point about Concorde. It is also sobering to note that the development costs of Concorde ran to well over a billion 1973 dollars. The small number of scheduled flights could never hope to pay off these development cost.
Sounds like you need a better browser. The new design looks great on my super-advanced IE brand browser from our friendly pals at Microsoft running full screen on a 1600 x 1200 display. Well, at least it looks just like the old design.
Also, the new design still allows the user to change the font size. Thank god for that. So many sites now use absolute pixel sizing in their stylesheets to apply their 12 pt. Times font.
Definatley get the LCD monitor. An investment in a good monitor will last for years, while this Mac will seem clunky and limiting in about two years compared to newer computers.
These iMac monitors are so nice, it is a shame to have them tied to hardware which will become obsolete so much sooner.
I'd bet on Rutan also for a first flight. However, Carmack may end up furthering the goals of the X-Prize more than Rutan.
Carmack seems to be focusing on basic engine refinement - making engines cheaper to build and run. Getting mass into space isn't hard, it just requires a lot of money for the vehicle and the fuel. If he is as successful with this as he has been in refining 3D rendering algorhithms, his effect on space access will be profound.
I agree with you, except for one thing. A CD isn't just a piece of plastic sold in stores, there is a technical specification that must be conformed to (Red Book). These CDs aren't conforming to that spec. So they may be plastic disks with music on them, but they aren't "CD"s. Selling them as "CD"s is therefore wrong.
I have a feeling that these releases are just technical exercises by the RIAA - they know they won't get any results from them. People who buy and rip their own CDs will be hurt, but these are the people who actually buy CDs. The pirate types will download from their usual sources - and it only takes one person in the world to rip the CD to satisfy those people.
Should have outsourced design and marketing to US
on
State Of The Simputer
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· Score: 1
Maybe if they had outsourced the design and marketing to the U.S. the thing would be successfull!;)
Would this be practical in London? I live in New York, and honestly I can't think of any situation in which taking to the river would be faster than driving. The main problem in NY is that there are no access points to the rivers. It is basically a 5-10 foot drop off a wall anywhere within 15 miles of downtown.
So to get to the airport I'd be looking at driving 15 miles out of my way in traffic to get to someplace to put in, then another 15 miles on the water, then another search for a place to get out.
The Airforce museum in Dayton is wildly incredible. It will ruin you for any other air museum. Besides all the well-known warbirds from the Sopwith Camel to Me-163, standouts include a B-36, the XB-70 Valkarie, and the X-15.
Burt Rutan designed and built the Voyager, but it was flown by his brother, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager. Dick Rutan is the older brother, and focused his energies on flying including a distingueshed record in Vietnam. Burt Rutan's interests were model airplanes and design. His company, Scaled Composites, was formed to scale up model airplane manufacturing techniques to create larger planes such as Voyager and White Knight.
The last I saw, the crew posisition was still to be determined. The X-Prize requires a three person crew. Their capsule is pretty small and wouldn't allow for the three people to be fully reclined. They'd have to be mostly vertical. This means that during half the trip they'd have to be vertical and upside-down.
Digital cameras will die when high quality optics become free/very cheap. Until then, the novelty cameras in devices like phones will have plastic lenses and terrible optics in order to cut costs on a feature no one really cares about.
People pay for quality in a dedicated digital camera.
The point of the article is to hilight programming languages and environments that are approachable for kids and can teach some basic logic and simple programming.
VB would be good for this except for the required overhead (Visual Studio).
VBScript or PHP scripts fit the bill nicely.
Expecting a 10 year-old to pick up C++ and start working on the next Doom is ridicuous. Kids want something that is simple, easy to understand, and allows them to create fun applications. They don't want to get mired in the arcitecture and process and years of time neccessary to write a modern commerical application.
I'd suggest a kid get an inexpensive web account or learn how to install a web server on their computer (such as PWS for Windows). Messing around with server-side scripting is very approachable, and the UI is a webpage, which every kid understands.
Not exactly a ground-breaking idea. Just shift your camera a few inches to the side and take another picture. I used to do this all the time. To view in stereo, just hold the prints side-by-side and cross your eyes until the images overlap.
It works very well, although it isn't as nice as a dedicated 3D viewer.
The biggest problem with doing this on Earth is that almost everything moves at least a little in a second or two. A tree's branches shift in the wind. A car moves a little. Your friend's smile shifts a little. All of these things cause problems.
On Mars it would probably work fine, unless there is a dust storm going on.
I'd guess that is would be cheaper and more reliable to just put two cameras on the mast instead of some kind of moving mount and controller.
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The Amiga did it first! Google the saga of Jim Drew and the Emplant board. The same types of claims were made. It could emulate the Sega Genesis, the PC and the Mac at full speed using some revalutionary Amiga-Fu.
Of course it was all B.S. then too.
I have to disagree with you about the quality of the firmware. The functions are needlessly difficult to access. Button use isn't consistant. I've had it for 6 months and I still forget when to tap the remote's nav wheel and when to press and hold it. I think you tap it to view directories, then press and hold it to back up. Pressing and holding it first shows the settings menu. Or something like that. My wife called from the car asking how to turn shuffle mode off. On an Archos or iPod, it would be as simple as pressing the menu button and choosing "shuffle off". I had to tell her to try pressing and holding or double tapping all the buttons until it went off.
The hardware is brilliant, but the firmware really has the feel of something that was hacked together with no advanced planning or thought.
There is another important factor to consider in your previous situation. You started at the company as an intern. I assume this means you were not paid very well.
It is very hard to get significant raises if you start at too low of a salary. The company will always think of you as being inexpensive, regardless of the quality of your work. In cases like that, it is common to double your salary (or more) just by switching jobs.
I mostly agree. I've used a Palm since my Pilot 1000. I showed it to geeks all over New York who had never seen or heard of one. That is how long I've been using Palm.
What I really want is multi-threading. The most regular unpleasant experience I have with my Palm is on my Treo 180 when the GPRS connection heads south. The entire machine locks up while the networking software chugs along and eventually times out. It can sometimes take several minutes of waiting and waiting, then hitting cancel, then waiting more, then resetting the radio, then reconnecting - before I can check my email.
I think the multithreading in OS6 will fix this. As for only one UI at a time? I could care less.
It sounds like a wireless video decoder/sender so you can use your broadband connection as a pipe for video on demand.
The hardware won't be what makes this successful or not, it will be the deals they can make with content providers. This is probably where Tivo could help.
I don't have much hope for Strangeberry's success given the entertainment industry's history with new delivery technologies.
The article is clueless technically. The panorama cam takes hundreds of 1 megapixel images and stitches them together to produce the panoramas that have been published on the web.
i t_ p011.html
Anyone can acheive a similar effect with their digital camera by taking enough pictures and stitching them together with software.
To get an idea of what the raw ccd images look like from the panoramic cam, check out the raw image gallery from JPL:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/spir
You make a good point about Concorde. It is also sobering to note that the development costs of Concorde ran to well over a billion 1973 dollars. The small number of scheduled flights could never hope to pay off these development cost.
The U.S. didn't agree to give up it's nuclear warheads as a condition of a cease-fire agreement. Iraq did.
If they didn't want to cooperate with the U.N., they shouldn't have signed the Gulf War cease fire.
How is ATI's support for multiple monitors under Win2K?
I'm mainly interested in using dual monitors for productivity (code in one monitor, interface in the other).
Is an ATI card good enough at this to make a dual-monitor setup worth it, or should I get a single, larger monitor instead?
Sounds like you need a better browser. The new design looks great on my super-advanced IE brand browser from our friendly pals at Microsoft running full screen on a 1600 x 1200 display. Well, at least it looks just like the old design.
Also, the new design still allows the user to change the font size. Thank god for that. So many sites now use absolute pixel sizing in their stylesheets to apply their 12 pt. Times font.
Definatley get the LCD monitor. An investment in a good monitor will last for years, while this Mac will seem clunky and limiting in about two years compared to newer computers.
These iMac monitors are so nice, it is a shame to have them tied to hardware which will become obsolete so much sooner.
There is a Palm "laptop" which is similar to the eMate. It is called the Alphasmart Dana. There is also a wireless model available. Alphasmart Dana
I'd bet on Rutan also for a first flight. However, Carmack may end up furthering the goals of the X-Prize more than Rutan.
Carmack seems to be focusing on basic engine refinement - making engines cheaper to build and run. Getting mass into space isn't hard, it just requires a lot of money for the vehicle and the fuel. If he is as successful with this as he has been in refining 3D rendering algorhithms, his effect on space access will be profound.
I agree with you, except for one thing. A CD isn't just a piece of plastic sold in stores, there is a technical specification that must be conformed to (Red Book). These CDs aren't conforming to that spec. So they may be plastic disks with music on them, but they aren't "CD"s. Selling them as "CD"s is therefore wrong.
I have a feeling that these releases are just technical exercises by the RIAA - they know they won't get any results from them. People who buy and rip their own CDs will be hurt, but these are the people who actually buy CDs. The pirate types will download from their usual sources - and it only takes one person in the world to rip the CD to satisfy those people.
Maybe if they had outsourced the design and marketing to the U.S. the thing would be successfull! ;)
Would this be practical in London? I live in New York, and honestly I can't think of any situation in which taking to the river would be faster than driving. The main problem in NY is that there are no access points to the rivers. It is basically a 5-10 foot drop off a wall anywhere within 15 miles of downtown.
So to get to the airport I'd be looking at driving 15 miles out of my way in traffic to get to someplace to put in, then another 15 miles on the water, then another search for a place to get out.
The normal roads are bad, but not THAT bad.
The Airforce museum in Dayton is wildly incredible. It will ruin you for any other air museum. Besides all the well-known warbirds from the Sopwith Camel to Me-163, standouts include a B-36, the XB-70 Valkarie, and the X-15.
http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/index.htm
Burt Rutan designed and built the Voyager, but it was flown by his brother, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager. Dick Rutan is the older brother, and focused his energies on flying including a distingueshed record in Vietnam. Burt Rutan's interests were model airplanes and design. His company, Scaled Composites, was formed to scale up model airplane manufacturing techniques to create larger planes such as Voyager and White Knight.
Pendulum or no, any significant wind on landing is going to cause the nose-cone to bend (instead of crush).
The last I saw, the crew posisition was still to be determined. The X-Prize requires a three person crew. Their capsule is pretty small and wouldn't allow for the three people to be fully reclined. They'd have to be mostly vertical. This means that during half the trip they'd have to be vertical and upside-down.
Digital cameras will die when high quality optics become free/very cheap. Until then, the novelty cameras in devices like phones will have plastic lenses and terrible optics in order to cut costs on a feature no one really cares about.
People pay for quality in a dedicated digital camera.
The point of the article is to hilight programming languages and environments that are approachable for kids and can teach some basic logic and simple programming.
VB would be good for this except for the required overhead (Visual Studio).
VBScript or PHP scripts fit the bill nicely.
Expecting a 10 year-old to pick up C++ and start working on the next Doom is ridicuous. Kids want something that is simple, easy to understand, and allows them to create fun applications. They don't want to get mired in the arcitecture and process and years of time neccessary to write a modern commerical application.
PHP or VB/ASP are very simple and easy to learn.
I'd suggest a kid get an inexpensive web account or learn how to install a web server on their computer (such as PWS for Windows). Messing around with server-side scripting is very approachable, and the UI is a webpage, which every kid understands.
Do you mean Mars Pathfinder? That had a rover, but was 25 years after Viking returned all those beatiful color pictures of the surface.
Not exactly a ground-breaking idea. Just shift your camera a few inches to the side and take another picture. I used to do this all the time.
To view in stereo, just hold the prints side-by-side and cross your eyes until the images overlap.
It works very well, although it isn't as nice as a dedicated 3D viewer.
The biggest problem with doing this on Earth is that almost everything moves at least a little in a second or two. A tree's branches shift in the wind. A car moves a little. Your friend's smile shifts a little. All of these things cause problems.
On Mars it would probably work fine, unless there is a dust storm going on.
I'd guess that is would be cheaper and more reliable to just put two cameras on the mast instead of some kind of moving mount and controller.