Not yet. Fido's web site reports it as "coming soon". Rogers/AT&T doesn't even mention it.
> When you have a PDA and a laptop [...] better have a network.
Can a phone pair with more than one device at a time for network access? I haven't actually played with Bluetooth yet.
Interesting question. I haven't tried to run two simultaneous communications. I don't have the hardware to do so. The manual says the phone can pair with as many as 10 devices in the sense of storing the pairing in its config but doesn't say if all the pairings can be active at the same time. It could be an either/or type of operation. In any case, it seems clear that the phone can be configured as an uplink for more than one device.
> the ultra high-end SonyEricsson T68i at 450$ CDN
Well, not THAT ultra high-end, there are several models with more functionality that are more expensive. Plus, lately it's being discounted because SE is bringing out a successor with (what else?) a camera.
In Canada, the T68i is the top of the line.
Exactly. To me, the PDA plus a few key devices (phone, storage, access point or PC integration) could be the Bluetooth killer app, if only anyone seriously pushed into the market as other than just a high-end checklist item.
Amen. Don't forget about bringing the laptop in that PAN. When you have a PDA and a laptop to connect to the Internet and only one cell phone, better have a network.
If I'm calculating this right, you often transfer around 1M an hour, which would cost C$50 (US$36) if you didn't have a flat-rate plan. OK, T-Mobile has a GPRS plan that costs US$20 (forgive me if I stop converting) for the first 5M and US$5 for each addition 1M. Quite a bit cheaper!
Let's complete the computation. How many hours a month you would use the Internet on your cell phone? When compared to Fido @ 36$US per month, your T-Mobile plan has a breakeven point around 8.2 hours. If you use Internet more than that it will cost you more then 36$US a month.
Next step: is there a good free handwriting recognition software? I mean one that can work in two languages on the same system? The one bundled with Windows restricts you to one language.
I wanted to purchase a Tablet, but it is useless if it can't work both in my mother tongue and in English. There is an Internet here! You can't stick to one language unless you are born English.
OK, I demand to know your service provider. And how much do you end up spending on bandwidth?
It is Fido in Canada. Bandwidth is a flat fee 50$ Canadian per month. This is the only Canadian provide that gets it. All other offer something ridiculous such as 5 cents per kbytes after the first 2 Mbytes. One can add an extra 25$ to his bill every thirty minutes.
I don't see that. I could get a Bluetooth phone for free with the usual 1-year commitment.
Hum, I suppose different market means different prices. Here in Canada only Fido and Rogers/AT&T offer a Bluetooth phone and it is the ultra high-end SonyEricsson T68i at 450$ CDN. We can't get it for free with any commitment.
How about the cost of a Bluetooth PDA? You don't find this feature standard on entry level devices. You have to go for the high midrange or high-end. Bluetooth doesn't come standard on entry level laptops either. Bluetooth cards (Compact Flash, SDIO or PCCard) costs around 200$ CDN. Add the costs of all components and you see it is not cheap. Most people will prefer to stick with cables.
Agree. I would add that in the context of a PAN, Bluetooth is OK to connect to the Internet by using the cell phone as an uplink where there is no 802.11 network to connect to.
I use Bluetooth to connect my PDA to my GSM phone. Now I have access to Internet about everywhere through GPRS. I can do it at the restaurant table while dining with friends or while walking on the street when coming back from work. I like it. This is a fine utilisation of a PAN and as long as Bluetooth is faster than GPRS, none of its limitations matter. Low power low distance is acutally an advantage because it reduces the risk of interference. No big deal for now but what if the technology become pervasive?
The reason Bluetooth doesn't take off is it is poorly marketed. It is waaay overpriced to get any widspread adoption.
I was referring to the home/PC DVD-R recorders that can't print a CSS encoded disk because they don't have access to track 0. They can still print your home movies you took with your camcoders and most DVD players will play them. These recorders can't be used for copying CSS encoded DVD unless you have DeCSS et remove the encoding first.
You can burn a CSS-free DVD-R that will play on most DVD player on the readily available burners. The control of CSS keys does not prevent independent garage-made DVDs.
I don't see any move to stop the existence of unencrypted formats. The consumer electronics industry would not allow that. The __AA just try to make the encrypted ones as unbreakable as they can.
The "real threat" is there and is not going to stop anytime soon.
What is the value of Pd to corporate customers if Microsoft has to sign the code? Many companies will not entrust Microsoft to sign their stuff. There are too many trade secrets in there. Microsoft will get slammed for yet another volley of antitrust compaints/lawsuits.
A more plausible scenario IMHO would be that DRM files are encrypted and Pd/TCPA decrypts the file only for program whose signature belongs to an "authorised" owner. Then other programs, even if signed, can't access the content. In this scenario Microsoft and the **AA has full control of DRMed files without having a monopoly on signatures.
In this scenario Pd is still doomed to fail. It gets slammed by many customers because it kills root access to the computer and will get slammed by the media industry because it can be used to protect P2P networks.
Backdoors won't be a safe move for Microsoft. Pd is supposed to be the "next generation secure computer base". No corporations will trust Pd if it becomes known it has backdoors. It would be even worse it the backdoors are intentional. It may even turn out to be a legal liability.
Pd seems caught in a losing position in every outcome I can think of. Their only good bet would have been to be on the good side of the **AA because of DRM but even that seems to be in question now.
I almost bought a Tablet PC, then I had the opportunity to test one for the job and stalled my purchase. Why? Because the handwriting recognition is language sensitive and they support only one language per Tablet PC. We just can't have two languages and switch from one to another.
English speaking persons may have trouble to understand this, but to people with any mother tongue other than English, dual languages capability is a must. We need to interact with friends in our mother tongue and we need to interact with the Internet in English. Bilinguism is not an option. It is not an "entreprise feature" as Microsoft seems to think. It is a basic capability and an absolute requirement to make the product usable.
The Tablet provide the ultimate in mobility because it can be used in situations where a keyboard is inacceptable. The argument that the flip tablet is an oxymoron doesn't work with me. The keyboard does not add much weight and shields the hand from the uncomfortable heat that comes from the CPU. And if you need a keyboard for laptop-like input, there you have it.
However no matter how I loved the concept of a Tablet, I can't use one as it stands now.
I bet several entreprises in non English speaking countries got the same conclusion. They need their mother tongue to conduct business in their own country and English to interact with the world. An unilingual device is useless. They must have purchased one or two for evaluation and then stalled all other purchases.
I don't like the idea. If IBM buys SCO, it will support the perception that SCO had a valid point. Microsoft will surf on that with FUD and all for years. It is better to win the case the hard way.
VoIP is definitely the future for the carrier's backbones. But you need to know about traffic trends to understand why.
Back in the old days when Internet was embryonic, most of the traffic was telephony. Carriers were operating networks designed for voice and carved into it some channels for the little data applications that were required then.
With the growth of the Internet and entreprises IP networks, this model broke. Carriers had to implement and operate telephony and data networks in parallel.
But the growth of IP traffic did not stop there. Nowadays, most of the traffic is data. Voice requires little bandwidth in comparison and its share of the overall requirements will be less and less every year as the data continues to grow fast. Carriers that can find a way to carve bandwidth for telephony on their data networks can just shut down their their telephony backbone infrastructures with huge cost savings. Then they will be able to pass some of these savings as price reductions to the customer and undercut any competition that doesn't make the same move.
This is basically transparent to the general public because this is purely a backbone thing. Your home phone line will still use the ame old technology. VoIP to the phone technology exist but it is technically less mature and does not have such a clear cut business case.
The future of WiFi with carriers is a different story. You need to understand the state of the mobile Internet to understand why.
Several carriers have invested billions in spectrum licenses to operate 2.5G and 3G mobile networks without having a clear profitable business plan. They did so because the goverments were holding auctions for the spectrum and if the carriers let these go without bidding they would not be able to get into the wireless market at all. These companies are now stuck with heavy debts and are desperate for a killer application to attract customers.
One candidate is the mobile Internet, that is the ability to connect to the Internet anywhere, anytime just like cellular phones let you call a friend anywhere anytime. But there still is a problem of how to make a workable business model out of this idea. One issue is lack of speed. GSM delivers n actual troughput comparable to a 28.8k modem. CDMA-1X is just slightly faster than a 56k modem. In these days of ADSL speed, this performance just does not cut for many people. Carriers are now thinking of installing WiFi hot spots and bundling their 2.5G and WiFi in one single mobile Internet offering. You get WiFi speed in places where people hang out most of the time and 2.5G speed everywhere else.
I just happen to have tested the idea of mobile Internet yesterday. I had a wine tasting party with friends at a restaurant. We wanted to know the grape variety that was used for the wines. I took my PDA and connected to the net over my GSM phone to get the answer. That was cool. But there are many issues to resolve before this kind of things fly in the general public.
The most important issue is pricing. In Canada Fido offers unlimited usage for 50$ CDN. This is right although a bit pricey. Some other carrier offer 500 kbytes for 5$ and each additional kbytes at 5 cents. Considering I consumed 500 Kbytes in just one wine tasting party, these expensive usage pricing models will just stiffle adoption.
Another issue is the mobile hardware. I tested a tablet PC with a built-in WiFi card and CDMA-1X add-on card. It worked cool for work, but the device is too bulky to be used in all situations like a phone could be. If you have a cell phone, it is a shame that the add-on 1X card also require a separate phone number with all the associated fees.
A more mobile solution would be to have a Bluetooth enabled phone and PDA. This is what I used in the wine tasting party. It was cool to be able to surf at the table without wires in the way and without having to make room on the table for a laptop. But the small screen size doesn't work well with many sites.
Disclosing the evidence won't destroy SCO's case but it will ease IBM defense. If IBM's lawyers knew more about SCO's claims, they would have two years to do their homework, finding out and interviewing the programmers that wrote the actual code to discover all the facts before the case actually goes to court. By delaying the disclosure as much as they can, they shorten the time IBM has available to perform this research. They may hope IBM's defense ends up not as thorough as they could be with improved chances for SCO to prevail in court.
Of course they expect to be bought, but failing that they still want to improve their chances to win in court.
Aren't they confusing the security standards?
on
802.11g Slows Down
·
· Score: 1
Insn't the Reg article messed up? I thought WPA was an interim solution until 802.11i is ratified. WPA is a software change based on WEP while 802.11i completely changes the encryption algorithm.
This could work only if Linux contains code that violates SCO's IP because otherwise everything is properly GPLed and can be legally distributed regardless of their suit. IANAL but won't suing them now be construed as an acknowledgement that Linux indeed contains IP infringement?
Funny to see how SCO's own inepty will save them from that one. On the other hand, it is ironic to see how a win on their side means they will get washed out of everything they might gain.
Someone with enough cash should ask the courts to force SCO to publicly release their evidence. They create enough harm in the marketplace to justify such an injunction. They threaten enough people to require a public disclosure. And, IANAL but I think SCO is legally required to do their best to limit the damage caused by the alleged infrigement.
My mom has decided her computer is the best way to manage family protographs and home videos.
We spent half of Christmas in a training/debugging session on how to optimise the JPEG compression on the digital camera and how to transfer the pictures into Photoshop to correct exposure problems.
We spent a portion of my father's bithday party on how to rip a CD to get that music that so wonderfully match the dance of fireflies she captured on video.
That's real family tech support and it is hopeless to get that from Dell.
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Next step: is there a good free handwriting recognition software? I mean one that can work in two languages on the same system? The one bundled with Windows restricts you to one language.
I wanted to purchase a Tablet, but it is useless if it can't work both in my mother tongue and in English. There is an Internet here! You can't stick to one language unless you are born English.
How about the cost of a Bluetooth PDA? You don't find this feature standard on entry level devices. You have to go for the high midrange or high-end. Bluetooth doesn't come standard on entry level laptops either. Bluetooth cards (Compact Flash, SDIO or PCCard) costs around 200$ CDN. Add the costs of all components and you see it is not cheap. Most people will prefer to stick with cables.
I use Bluetooth to connect my PDA to my GSM phone. Now I have access to Internet about everywhere through GPRS. I can do it at the restaurant table while dining with friends or while walking on the street when coming back from work. I like it. This is a fine utilisation of a PAN and as long as Bluetooth is faster than GPRS, none of its limitations matter. Low power low distance is acutally an advantage because it reduces the risk of interference. No big deal for now but what if the technology become pervasive?
The reason Bluetooth doesn't take off is it is poorly marketed. It is waaay overpriced to get any widspread adoption.
I was referring to the home/PC DVD-R recorders that can't print a CSS encoded disk because they don't have access to track 0. They can still print your home movies you took with your camcoders and most DVD players will play them. These recorders can't be used for copying CSS encoded DVD unless you have DeCSS et remove the encoding first.
You can burn a CSS-free DVD-R that will play on most DVD player on the readily available burners. The control of CSS keys does not prevent independent garage-made DVDs.
I don't see any move to stop the existence of unencrypted formats. The consumer electronics industry would not allow that. The __AA just try to make the encrypted ones as unbreakable as they can.
The "real threat" is there and is not going to stop anytime soon.
What is the value of Pd to corporate customers if Microsoft has to sign the code? Many companies will not entrust Microsoft to sign their stuff. There are too many trade secrets in there. Microsoft will get slammed for yet another volley of antitrust compaints/lawsuits.
A more plausible scenario IMHO would be that DRM files are encrypted and Pd/TCPA decrypts the file only for program whose signature belongs to an "authorised" owner. Then other programs, even if signed, can't access the content. In this scenario Microsoft and the **AA has full control of DRMed files without having a monopoly on signatures.
In this scenario Pd is still doomed to fail. It gets slammed by many customers because it kills root access to the computer and will get slammed by the media industry because it can be used to protect P2P networks.
Backdoors won't be a safe move for Microsoft. Pd is supposed to be the "next generation secure computer base". No corporations will trust Pd if it becomes known it has backdoors. It would be even worse it the backdoors are intentional. It may even turn out to be a legal liability.
Pd seems caught in a losing position in every outcome I can think of. Their only good bet would have been to be on the good side of the **AA because of DRM but even that seems to be in question now.
English speaking persons may have trouble to understand this, but to people with any mother tongue other than English, dual languages capability is a must. We need to interact with friends in our mother tongue and we need to interact with the Internet in English. Bilinguism is not an option. It is not an "entreprise feature" as Microsoft seems to think. It is a basic capability and an absolute requirement to make the product usable.
The Tablet provide the ultimate in mobility because it can be used in situations where a keyboard is inacceptable. The argument that the flip tablet is an oxymoron doesn't work with me. The keyboard does not add much weight and shields the hand from the uncomfortable heat that comes from the CPU. And if you need a keyboard for laptop-like input, there you have it.
However no matter how I loved the concept of a Tablet, I can't use one as it stands now.
I bet several entreprises in non English speaking countries got the same conclusion. They need their mother tongue to conduct business in their own country and English to interact with the world. An unilingual device is useless. They must have purchased one or two for evaluation and then stalled all other purchases.
I don't like the idea. If IBM buys SCO, it will support the perception that SCO had a valid point. Microsoft will surf on that with FUD and all for years. It is better to win the case the hard way.
Back in the old days when Internet was embryonic, most of the traffic was telephony. Carriers were operating networks designed for voice and carved into it some channels for the little data applications that were required then.
With the growth of the Internet and entreprises IP networks, this model broke. Carriers had to implement and operate telephony and data networks in parallel.
But the growth of IP traffic did not stop there. Nowadays, most of the traffic is data. Voice requires little bandwidth in comparison and its share of the overall requirements will be less and less every year as the data continues to grow fast. Carriers that can find a way to carve bandwidth for telephony on their data networks can just shut down their their telephony backbone infrastructures with huge cost savings. Then they will be able to pass some of these savings as price reductions to the customer and undercut any competition that doesn't make the same move.
This is basically transparent to the general public because this is purely a backbone thing. Your home phone line will still use the ame old technology. VoIP to the phone technology exist but it is technically less mature and does not have such a clear cut business case.
The future of WiFi with carriers is a different story. You need to understand the state of the mobile Internet to understand why.
Several carriers have invested billions in spectrum licenses to operate 2.5G and 3G mobile networks without having a clear profitable business plan. They did so because the goverments were holding auctions for the spectrum and if the carriers let these go without bidding they would not be able to get into the wireless market at all. These companies are now stuck with heavy debts and are desperate for a killer application to attract customers.
One candidate is the mobile Internet, that is the ability to connect to the Internet anywhere, anytime just like cellular phones let you call a friend anywhere anytime. But there still is a problem of how to make a workable business model out of this idea. One issue is lack of speed. GSM delivers n actual troughput comparable to a 28.8k modem. CDMA-1X is just slightly faster than a 56k modem. In these days of ADSL speed, this performance just does not cut for many people. Carriers are now thinking of installing WiFi hot spots and bundling their 2.5G and WiFi in one single mobile Internet offering. You get WiFi speed in places where people hang out most of the time and 2.5G speed everywhere else.
I just happen to have tested the idea of mobile Internet yesterday. I had a wine tasting party with friends at a restaurant. We wanted to know the grape variety that was used for the wines. I took my PDA and connected to the net over my GSM phone to get the answer. That was cool. But there are many issues to resolve before this kind of things fly in the general public.
The most important issue is pricing. In Canada Fido offers unlimited usage for 50$ CDN. This is right although a bit pricey. Some other carrier offer 500 kbytes for 5$ and each additional kbytes at 5 cents. Considering I consumed 500 Kbytes in just one wine tasting party, these expensive usage pricing models will just stiffle adoption.
Another issue is the mobile hardware. I tested a tablet PC with a built-in WiFi card and CDMA-1X add-on card. It worked cool for work, but the device is too bulky to be used in all situations like a phone could be. If you have a cell phone, it is a shame that the add-on 1X card also require a separate phone number with all the associated fees.
A more mobile solution would be to have a Bluetooth enabled phone and PDA. This is what I used in the wine tasting party. It was cool to be able to surf at the table without wires in the way and without having to make room on the table for a laptop. But the small screen size doesn't work well with many sites.
A
Of course they expect to be bought, but failing that they still want to improve their chances to win in court.
Insn't the Reg article messed up? I thought WPA was an interim solution until 802.11i is ratified. WPA is a software change based on WEP while 802.11i completely changes the encryption algorithm.
Funny to see how SCO's own inepty will save them from that one. On the other hand, it is ironic to see how a win on their side means they will get washed out of everything they might gain.
Someone with enough cash should ask the courts to force SCO to publicly release their evidence. They create enough harm in the marketplace to justify such an injunction. They threaten enough people to require a public disclosure. And, IANAL but I think SCO is legally required to do their best to limit the damage caused by the alleged infrigement.
My mom has decided her computer is the best way to manage family protographs and home videos. We spent half of Christmas in a training/debugging session on how to optimise the JPEG compression on the digital camera and how to transfer the pictures into Photoshop to correct exposure problems. We spent a portion of my father's bithday party on how to rip a CD to get that music that so wonderfully match the dance of fireflies she captured on video. That's real family tech support and it is hopeless to get that from Dell.