I've used Opera Mobile on WiFi a fair bit, on Windows Mobile platforms that should (by hardware spec) be much faster. Mobile Safari is much, much better. Haven't really used Opera Mini much, but I expect the proxified setup is indeed a whole lot faster on 2G data networks.
The iPhone users use 30x the data of others. That's because Mobile Safari is about 30x better than the competition.
I use an iPod Touch (iPhone minus the phone) as a portable web browser. Some great jail-broken apps (helluv'a ebook reader), too. Amazing experience, yet with mind-boggling weaknesses, too (copy and paste, people???). I'm hoping Opera 9 is going to catch up, because there were other advantages to more conventional PDAs, but, Mobile Safari is just too good to go away from.
'95 was really the moment where the hype had to work. And it did. I remember lines out the door at midnight. Had it been less functional or cool than it was, competitors could have emerged and carved a niche, and the Windows lock-in wouldn't have happened. BeOS, unfortunately, was just a little late in the game and 95 was solidly entrenched by the time Be came out on commodity hardware.
Windows 2000 was the other pretty-good-OS. All the geeks took it home and installed it on parents machines, etc. Thus, we forget that it was never a home OS. The upgrade path was ME->XP (more likely 98SE->XP) for Joe Sixpack, so they never thought of W2K. It's finally starting to creak to an end (software packages that won't install for whatever reason).
The other OS that is really good is one you can't legally get. It's called "Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs". Only available (legit) for big corporations. XP stripped the heck down. No BS, no activations, updates work. Best Microsoft OS yet. And they won't sell it to anyone. At, say, a $30 price tag (probably less than they're getting from Dell for OEM Vista), I'd buy ten copies today.
I've been wondering how long this would take to get into a more public role. I've had ham radio based APRS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Position_Reporting_System) installed in my cars for a while. When I show people a publicly available map of my travels, reaction ranges from salivating impressed (it's probably been ham radio's last "killer app"), to absolute horror ("you mean, you don't care if people know where you are?").
But, I think a lot of people would willingly turn on such a feature (say, on a mobile phone with a GPS chip and a GPRS connection.
While the hard drives are destroyed, it shouldn't be too hard to determine what was on them. Recovering data is exactly why the administration has been so adamantly for "alternative interrogation techniques".
I've looked inside my digital over-the-air (ATSC) box, and no camera there. $675 a year (basic cable after taxes here) for TV that is still 30% advertising? Ha ha... no way!
If you aren't trying to get a specific job, I recommend getting deep into an assembly for a few months. Preferably, something simple. Something 8-bit (I started with MOS 6502... but the 68HC11/12 with flash/EEPROM and BUFFALO debugger is even easier). Something on a board you've wire-wrapped yourself. Make it blink an LED. Hook it to a DAC. Hook it to a motor, moving something. Learn every opcode on the little chip.
From there, you'll understand what a C compiler (portable assembly) is doing, at least on a basic level.
Instead of Postscript, I'd suggest the language that Postscript is born of... FORTH. Heck, when you get bored with the assembly on your microcontroller board, burn a simple, fixed-point FORTH onto it, and get a whole new appreciation of what can be done with a few 1000 bytes.
I was suggesting the 30 MHz range from 54-88 MHz (minus the 72-76 that is not a TV allocation) will probably be assigned to something other than TV at some point. It was a very good place for NTSC signals, but is not turning out to be a good band for ATSC.
There are a number of stations broadcasting in VHF DTV presently, and there will be quite a few more post-Feb09 transition. Several VHF stations will retake their VHF frequency for DTV. The biggest reason to go to VHF is that it needs substantially less power to cover a certain number of square miles.
Very few stations, though, will be in the low-VHF ranges (channels 2-6). Ignition noise, lightning, etc, are big problems in low-VHF. Those frequencies covered a lot of ground for the watt, even with more interference in that band. But, the errors are generally too much for digital reception, so there aren't but a dozen or so low-VHF digital transmitters now. I expect that 30 MHz will eventually be repurposed.
But, high-VHF (RF channels 7-13) is probably with us for quite a while.
Sometime in 1998, I got one of the very first CD players (discman style) that played discs burned with MP3s. Wonder how much that cost me at the time? Of course, I didn't have a CD burner, but my office did. Blanks were expensive, but you got a whole lot on one. Still skippable and non-pocket-sized, though.
My $30 player with an SD chip slot (and FM tuner) is quite nice enough for me. Also have an in-dash player in the car with an SD slot.
"Obama has a vision, but I have never seen him actually state what the vision is."
That's kind of sad. Obama published an award-winning 384 page book of his vision (The Audacity of Hope), but people are quite convinced he doesn't have one.
The nifty thing for Obama, is that he is far enough ahead in pledged delegates that he still doesn't have to go sharply negative. Notice the things he hasn't talked about. Tax returns? Bill's last minute pardons (against the advice of the Justice Department, but for people who paid consulting fees to Hillary's brothers)? Kazakhstan? Clinton library donors? Lincoln bedroom guest list? Norman Hsu? Trying to win the nomination without getting these matters in the mainstream media is a kindness to the Democratic Party that the superdelegates would be blind to ignore.
The only question left is Florida and Michigan. Particularly the latter. If she manages to seat her Michigan delegates and none for Obama (since he wasn't on the ballot), I will be disappointed if Detroit doesn't take to the streets.
This is one of modern Linux's greatest assets. When I re-install a box for Windows I have to:
Find the right OEM disc. Step through the install. Deal with activation headaches. Uninstall a dozen OEM programs I don't want. Run through several reboot cycles of upgrades. Download drivers, antivirus, utilities from a dozen sites. Download the free (beer and speech) apps I need and use from more than a dozen sites. Go back and get Windows add-ons I needed for things like Paint.NET. Round up 7 or 8 CDs worth of software. Many of them needing codes and activation (or cracks). Install these one by one.
A full day shot.
Needless to say, Ubuntu Gutsy is much faster to get going. I've used Unixes for 13 years now. But, I use synaptic because I don't want to have to care any more. If I worked with 200 Windows machines, I'd create a images and force matching computers. But, I (like many small business types) am dealing with only 15 or 20 computers, every single one of which is unique.
Now I may actually have a reason to care about Starbucks. I'm on AT&T DSL (it's slow, but the cable company here has not-too-liberal bandwidth caps/exorbitant over-your-limit fees, plus I don't want cable TV). The fact that DSL also gets me local dial-in numbers in quite a few places and occasional WiFi (typically McDonald's and Barnes&Noble) have been real nice additions. Adding Starbucks to the list helps even more.
Of course, the bad for them is that getting more ubiquitious WiFi means I'm less inclined to buy a cellphone with data. (I'm a $100 a year pre-paid guy myself).
Hey... that'd be a real neat trick. Could they get WiFi enabled ATTWireless phones (iPhones among others) to automatically register (no login) to these access points and push data that way whenever possible? Damn good idea.
Damn you AT&T. I want to hate you, but you're so damn convenient.
See. I didn't know that. According to Matt Stearns of McClatchy, "In her autobiography, 'Living History,' Clinton mentions two cases. In one, she represented a canning company against a man who found part of a dead rat in his pork and beans. In another, she represented a logging company accused of wrongdoing after an accident injured several workers. While Clinton used both anecdotes for comic effect, in both cases she was working for corporate interests." Not all patent and IP.
This is a job interview. I have been on hiring committees. Not filling out your resume looks bad. If you don't mention a high-profile well-paid job you held for 6 years (Wal-Mart board and attorney), but mention a job you held for less than 9 months (Children's Defense Fund), you start to get suspicious about the job that isn't mentioned. Say "I tried but could only do so much". Say something.
Clinton was a known quantity - she had represented the company in legal actions in the past - as well as a significant stockholder... Clinton isn't doing as good of a job of explaining her backstory as Obama has been This is the problem with her Arkansas years. She really can't explain the story to us (and again, she just doesn't mention it). She mentions she was an attorney for the Children's Defense Fund (less than 9 months), but not attorney for Wal-Mart (7 years). John Edwards' ambulance-chasing was one thing. Her corporate defense work (and there was a lot more of it than public-service work) would be harder to sell. So, she doesn't say it and we are left to infer our worst suspicions.
I guess I say minor because neither plan is going to be passed exactly like the candidates are proposing. That's just not how law-making works. An uncompromising position is going to get no further than 1993 did, and Senator Clinton knows that now.
Policy differences between Clinton and Obama? Minor.
Leadership?
I worry about provenance with Clinton. Why was she the head of the Healthcare task force? A recognized health expert? A well-known elected official? Wife of a guy who got 43% of the vote? That 'mandate', plus too much secrecy, doomed a not-so-bad health care plan and has cost us a lot of jobs and bankrupt Americans in the last 14 years.
Then again, why was she on the board of Wal-Mart? We mention that (well, she doesn't mention on her website that she was the first female board member of America's #1 retailer). But, why? Was she a business expert? Run a corner store? Worked her way up from the mailroom? Was she the wife of the governor of Wal-Mart's home state?
Obama has taken every step. He's sprinted to the top, no doubt. But, he's gone from knocking on doors in the projects to fighting a political machine in his district to convincing both rural and urban Illinois to inspiring a generation. No shortcut.
Not to say she's been a bad senator. But, the Iraq vote is very troubling. Only six Senators are on record as checking in to the locked room to read the full (96 page) intelligence report. Yes, it was full of lies. But, John Edwards *did*. Clinton? McCain? Neither. They believed.
And thinking of Iraq. The *only* way out of Iraq is to offer a new deal to the Iraqis. Clinton? The wife of a man whose crippling sanctions and annual bombing runs caused a whole lot of misery and entrenched the regime? Sure, from here we can say the sanctions were a good thing. But, for the man on the street who lost a child to deprivation? We need a president who is not connected to that legacy.
Perhaps the start of a recession (or recession talk) is leading to a second and third look at the question "could we get away with using FOSS software in this task?". Training costs are one thing. But, in a deep enough recession, people are looking to save their jobs. They'll learn whatever they are told to learn, and they'll do it on their own time (go read the FOSS community pages/wiki if need be). Those that can't, well, will be the first to be furloughed.
TV broadcasting isn't all that profitable and is severely inefficient. The OTA converter boxes for the small minority who need one (and I am one... rooftop antenna and curbside free 25" TV is good enough for me) will be readily available soon enough. There are hundreds of thousands of them in shipping containers on boats from China at this moment.
The quite independent cable company in this town has always had caps. 10 GB a month on the mid-range $40+ (even more if you don't want video) plan. No cutoff, but warning and overage of $2 a GB (but you can buy add'l GBs at $1 in advance).
I don't typically go over 10 GB. But, I absolutely *hate* worrying about what I've used. So, I live, just fine, on my 2.5/512 DSL line for $25 or so. I'm not even sure why it bothers me. I have no problem with PAYG cellphones.
Lots of people grumble about the caps. But, the cable company is doing just fine. Most people never hit the cap. Those who do are torn between the much-much-faster cable and the hands-off DSL. If they want cable (I'm in the deep minority who would rather have a rooftop antenna than pay $675 a year for TV that still has ads), they'll probably get a cable modem.
It's not about bandwidth from the headend to the home. They can shape that, price that, and build that out. It's about fiefdoms and petty accountants. People who won't sign off on intra-Tier 2 peering agreements because they can't make a buck on it.
A couple of other people mentioned it... the best keyboard design (for me) is the Kinesis contoured (bowl-shaped) keyboard.
Of course, I double the weirdness by typing Dvorak on mine. What's really weird, though, is the mental programming. I simply cannot type QWERTY on a Kinesis. I can, with a little zenning-out, type in Dvorak on a flat or laptop keyboard, though I type in QWERTY just fine on those.
The only problem with the Kinesis is the little rubber keys for F1-F12 and Escape. I really hated the Escape, so I programmed it to be swapped with the CapsLock key (which I never use, anyway).
A lot of people will get vendor lock-in, actually. I work in education. With a teacher who's used any technology for several years, explain that doing something in a proprietary system is like building great lessons in HyperCard. Thousands of teachers did... it was great... then Apple didn't see it being interesting, and now it's pretty much impossible to use those files. If every step of the system was open-source, if there was any interest at all, someone would port the app to the latest shiny distro on the latest shiny processor. Lawyers weren't quite as put out with their dependency on WordPerfect (since it never fully died, import filters were passable, and you can still run DOS WP51 on most boxes), but they understand the impact if you just say WordPerfect, since it was a pain in the ass for most. It's a real problem, and FOSS is a real alternative.
Slashdot Mirror
Claude Shannon eyeing the, at most, 50 kHz suspiciously.
I've used Opera Mobile on WiFi a fair bit, on Windows Mobile platforms that should (by hardware spec) be much faster. Mobile Safari is much, much better. Haven't really used Opera Mini much, but I expect the proxified setup is indeed a whole lot faster on 2G data networks.
The iPhone users use 30x the data of others. That's because Mobile Safari is about 30x better than the competition.
I use an iPod Touch (iPhone minus the phone) as a portable web browser. Some great jail-broken apps (helluv'a ebook reader), too. Amazing experience, yet with mind-boggling weaknesses, too (copy and paste, people???). I'm hoping Opera 9 is going to catch up, because there were other advantages to more conventional PDAs, but, Mobile Safari is just too good to go away from.
'95 was really the moment where the hype had to work. And it did. I remember lines out the door at midnight. Had it been less functional or cool than it was, competitors could have emerged and carved a niche, and the Windows lock-in wouldn't have happened. BeOS, unfortunately, was just a little late in the game and 95 was solidly entrenched by the time Be came out on commodity hardware.
Windows 2000 was the other pretty-good-OS. All the geeks took it home and installed it on parents machines, etc. Thus, we forget that it was never a home OS. The upgrade path was ME->XP (more likely 98SE->XP) for Joe Sixpack, so they never thought of W2K. It's finally starting to creak to an end (software packages that won't install for whatever reason).
The other OS that is really good is one you can't legally get. It's called "Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs". Only available (legit) for big corporations. XP stripped the heck down. No BS, no activations, updates work. Best Microsoft OS yet. And they won't sell it to anyone. At, say, a $30 price tag (probably less than they're getting from Dell for OEM Vista), I'd buy ten copies today.
I've been wondering how long this would take to get into a more public role. I've had ham radio based APRS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Position_Reporting_System) installed in my cars for a while. When I show people a publicly available map of my travels, reaction ranges from salivating impressed (it's probably been ham radio's last "killer app"), to absolute horror ("you mean, you don't care if people know where you are?").
But, I think a lot of people would willingly turn on such a feature (say, on a mobile phone with a GPS chip and a GPRS connection.
While the hard drives are destroyed, it shouldn't be too hard to determine what was on them. Recovering data is exactly why the administration has been so adamantly for "alternative interrogation techniques".
I've looked inside my digital over-the-air (ATSC) box, and no camera there. $675 a year (basic cable after taxes here) for TV that is still 30% advertising? Ha ha... no way!
If you aren't trying to get a specific job, I recommend getting deep into an assembly for a few months. Preferably, something simple. Something 8-bit (I started with MOS 6502... but the 68HC11/12 with flash/EEPROM and BUFFALO debugger is even easier). Something on a board you've wire-wrapped yourself. Make it blink an LED. Hook it to a DAC. Hook it to a motor, moving something. Learn every opcode on the little chip.
From there, you'll understand what a C compiler (portable assembly) is doing, at least on a basic level.
Instead of Postscript, I'd suggest the language that Postscript is born of... FORTH. Heck, when you get bored with the assembly on your microcontroller board, burn a simple, fixed-point FORTH onto it, and get a whole new appreciation of what can be done with a few 1000 bytes.
I was suggesting the 30 MHz range from 54-88 MHz (minus the 72-76 that is not a TV allocation) will probably be assigned to something other than TV at some point. It was a very good place for NTSC signals, but is not turning out to be a good band for ATSC.
There are a number of stations broadcasting in VHF DTV presently, and there will be quite a few more post-Feb09 transition. Several VHF stations will retake their VHF frequency for DTV. The biggest reason to go to VHF is that it needs substantially less power to cover a certain number of square miles.
Very few stations, though, will be in the low-VHF ranges (channels 2-6). Ignition noise, lightning, etc, are big problems in low-VHF. Those frequencies covered a lot of ground for the watt, even with more interference in that band. But, the errors are generally too much for digital reception, so there aren't but a dozen or so low-VHF digital transmitters now. I expect that 30 MHz will eventually be repurposed.
But, high-VHF (RF channels 7-13) is probably with us for quite a while.
Sometime in 1998, I got one of the very first CD players (discman style) that played discs burned with MP3s. Wonder how much that cost me at the time? Of course, I didn't have a CD burner, but my office did. Blanks were expensive, but you got a whole lot on one. Still skippable and non-pocket-sized, though.
My $30 player with an SD chip slot (and FM tuner) is quite nice enough for me. Also have an in-dash player in the car with an SD slot.
"Obama has a vision, but I have never seen him actually state what the vision is."
That's kind of sad. Obama published an award-winning 384 page book of his vision (The Audacity of Hope), but people are quite convinced he doesn't have one.
The nifty thing for Obama, is that he is far enough ahead in pledged delegates that he still doesn't have to go sharply negative. Notice the things he hasn't talked about. Tax returns? Bill's last minute pardons (against the advice of the Justice Department, but for people who paid consulting fees to Hillary's brothers)? Kazakhstan? Clinton library donors? Lincoln bedroom guest list? Norman Hsu? Trying to win the nomination without getting these matters in the mainstream media is a kindness to the Democratic Party that the superdelegates would be blind to ignore.
The only question left is Florida and Michigan. Particularly the latter. If she manages to seat her Michigan delegates and none for Obama (since he wasn't on the ballot), I will be disappointed if Detroit doesn't take to the streets.
This is one of modern Linux's greatest assets. When I re-install a box for Windows I have to:
Find the right OEM disc.
Step through the install.
Deal with activation headaches.
Uninstall a dozen OEM programs I don't want.
Run through several reboot cycles of upgrades.
Download drivers, antivirus, utilities from a dozen sites.
Download the free (beer and speech) apps I need and use from more than a dozen sites. Go back and get Windows add-ons I needed for things like Paint.NET.
Round up 7 or 8 CDs worth of software. Many of them needing codes and activation (or cracks). Install these one by one.
A full day shot.
Needless to say, Ubuntu Gutsy is much faster to get going. I've used Unixes for 13 years now. But, I use synaptic because I don't want to have to care any more. If I worked with 200 Windows machines, I'd create a images and force matching computers. But, I (like many small business types) am dealing with only 15 or 20 computers, every single one of which is unique.
Now I may actually have a reason to care about Starbucks. I'm on AT&T DSL (it's slow, but the cable company here has not-too-liberal bandwidth caps/exorbitant over-your-limit fees, plus I don't want cable TV). The fact that DSL also gets me local dial-in numbers in quite a few places and occasional WiFi (typically McDonald's and Barnes&Noble) have been real nice additions. Adding Starbucks to the list helps even more.
Of course, the bad for them is that getting more ubiquitious WiFi means I'm less inclined to buy a cellphone with data. (I'm a $100 a year pre-paid guy myself).
Hey... that'd be a real neat trick. Could they get WiFi enabled ATTWireless phones (iPhones among others) to automatically register (no login) to these access points and push data that way whenever possible? Damn good idea.
Damn you AT&T. I want to hate you, but you're so damn convenient.
See. I didn't know that. According to Matt Stearns of McClatchy, "In her autobiography, 'Living History,' Clinton mentions two cases. In one, she represented a canning company against a man who found part of a dead rat in his pork and beans. In another, she represented a logging company accused of wrongdoing after an accident injured several workers. While Clinton used both anecdotes for comic effect, in both cases she was working for corporate interests." Not all patent and IP.
This is a job interview. I have been on hiring committees. Not filling out your resume looks bad. If you don't mention a high-profile well-paid job you held for 6 years (Wal-Mart board and attorney), but mention a job you held for less than 9 months (Children's Defense Fund), you start to get suspicious about the job that isn't mentioned. Say "I tried but could only do so much". Say something.
One more for the list: Joe Biden did.
I guess I say minor because neither plan is going to be passed exactly like the candidates are proposing. That's just not how law-making works. An uncompromising position is going to get no further than 1993 did, and Senator Clinton knows that now.
Policy differences between Clinton and Obama? Minor.
Leadership?
I worry about provenance with Clinton. Why was she the head of the Healthcare task force? A recognized health expert? A well-known elected official? Wife of a guy who got 43% of the vote? That 'mandate', plus too much secrecy, doomed a not-so-bad health care plan and has cost us a lot of jobs and bankrupt Americans in the last 14 years.
Then again, why was she on the board of Wal-Mart? We mention that (well, she doesn't mention on her website that she was the first female board member of America's #1 retailer). But, why? Was she a business expert? Run a corner store? Worked her way up from the mailroom? Was she the wife of the governor of Wal-Mart's home state?
Obama has taken every step. He's sprinted to the top, no doubt. But, he's gone from knocking on doors in the projects to fighting a political machine in his district to convincing both rural and urban Illinois to inspiring a generation. No shortcut.
Not to say she's been a bad senator. But, the Iraq vote is very troubling. Only six Senators are on record as checking in to the locked room to read the full (96 page) intelligence report. Yes, it was full of lies. But, John Edwards *did*. Clinton? McCain? Neither. They believed.
And thinking of Iraq. The *only* way out of Iraq is to offer a new deal to the Iraqis. Clinton? The wife of a man whose crippling sanctions and annual bombing runs caused a whole lot of misery and entrenched the regime? Sure, from here we can say the sanctions were a good thing. But, for the man on the street who lost a child to deprivation? We need a president who is not connected to that legacy.
Perhaps the start of a recession (or recession talk) is leading to a second and third look at the question "could we get away with using FOSS software in this task?". Training costs are one thing. But, in a deep enough recession, people are looking to save their jobs. They'll learn whatever they are told to learn, and they'll do it on their own time (go read the FOSS community pages/wiki if need be). Those that can't, well, will be the first to be furloughed.
TV broadcasting isn't all that profitable and is severely inefficient. The OTA converter boxes for the small minority who need one (and I am one... rooftop antenna and curbside free 25" TV is good enough for me) will be readily available soon enough. There are hundreds of thousands of them in shipping containers on boats from China at this moment.
The quite independent cable company in this town has always had caps. 10 GB a month on the mid-range $40+ (even more if you don't want video) plan. No cutoff, but warning and overage of $2 a GB (but you can buy add'l GBs at $1 in advance).
I don't typically go over 10 GB. But, I absolutely *hate* worrying about what I've used. So, I live, just fine, on my 2.5/512 DSL line for $25 or so. I'm not even sure why it bothers me. I have no problem with PAYG cellphones.
Lots of people grumble about the caps. But, the cable company is doing just fine. Most people never hit the cap. Those who do are torn between the much-much-faster cable and the hands-off DSL. If they want cable (I'm in the deep minority who would rather have a rooftop antenna than pay $675 a year for TV that still has ads), they'll probably get a cable modem.
It's not about bandwidth from the headend to the home. They can shape that, price that, and build that out. It's about fiefdoms and petty accountants. People who won't sign off on intra-Tier 2 peering agreements because they can't make a buck on it.
A couple of other people mentioned it... the best keyboard design (for me) is the Kinesis contoured (bowl-shaped) keyboard.
Of course, I double the weirdness by typing Dvorak on mine. What's really weird, though, is the mental programming. I simply cannot type QWERTY on a Kinesis. I can, with a little zenning-out, type in Dvorak on a flat or laptop keyboard, though I type in QWERTY just fine on those.
The only problem with the Kinesis is the little rubber keys for F1-F12 and Escape. I really hated the Escape, so I programmed it to be swapped with the CapsLock key (which I never use, anyway).
A lot of people will get vendor lock-in, actually. I work in education. With a teacher who's used any technology for several years, explain that doing something in a proprietary system is like building great lessons in HyperCard. Thousands of teachers did... it was great... then Apple didn't see it being interesting, and now it's pretty much impossible to use those files. If every step of the system was open-source, if there was any interest at all, someone would port the app to the latest shiny distro on the latest shiny processor. Lawyers weren't quite as put out with their dependency on WordPerfect (since it never fully died, import filters were passable, and you can still run DOS WP51 on most boxes), but they understand the impact if you just say WordPerfect, since it was a pain in the ass for most. It's a real problem, and FOSS is a real alternative.