but weren't we promised that they don't save the image!! don't you believe what your government tells you??/sarcasm:-)
if that were to happen a few times i think it would be the kiss of death for these systems. somebody somewhere would think it funny to get a politicians/famous persons naked image.
i've always thought that the way ballmer runs microsoft day to day is like apple in the 90s. no real direction. that some day gates is going to do a steve jobs and waltz back in and 'save' microsoft. he always comes across as wanting to be like jobs. sseeing this just reinforces this opinion.
2 screens are necessary for some ebooks. i've been using ebooks regularly since i got a palm iiix. it's small display was great to carry a few books and read them when i got a chance. in 2010 however i have a large collection of ebooks and screens a5 like the 5-7" ebook readers deal with most of them nicely enough. even on my phones (iphone 3g or htc hero) simple text is easily read.
except pdfs. i have a lot of rpg gaming manuals that are scans of the manuals in pdf format. some are readable on an a5 screen many are not. so an a4 sized screen is necessary. all well and good. except there are quite a few pdfs that will not read nicely on those screens. what are those?
electronic comic files. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Book_Archive_file i read a british comic called 2000ad as a kid and it was an a4 comic. i now have many of them in electronic format. the thing was the central spread every week was read across the 2 pages so i can either get an a3 sized ereader or get a reader with 2 screens. i suspect a twin screened a4 sizes ereader is going to be cheaper and more portable than an a3 sized model. reading while zooming in and out and flipping back and forth between 2 pages to read a single spread is annoying and distracting (i learned that with rpg manuals on a5 sized devices!) so i'll wait till i have an a3 equivalent device before getting into the 2000ad properly.
yes it's probably a niche market but a large percentage of a niche market can be quite profitable. so i'm definitely in the market for this device, _if_ they get it right.
or perhaps it's like valve radio technology which the audiophiles swear sounds far superior to any transistor ever made. my parents were given a beautiful phillips valve radio for a wedding present which i used as a kid and the sound from that was like nothing i have ever used since. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audiophile#Amplifiers
i do buy unlocked phones. and used to use vodafone sims on prepay here in ireland. till they changed their prepay service so that pages i browsed had shitty vodafone links and logos at the top. rang to ask how to turn the crap off and was told you couldn't so threw the sim away.
i've always wondered if the way to eliminate shill accounts was to eliminate making as many accounts as you want. something more like the gmail invitation system where people earn invites that they can send out. it might allow you to stop spammers, trolls. those that get through could be cut off and you could track who is letting the idiots in and reduce their invitations. just a thought. no need for ids, credit cards. we all know people who we trust online and off and invitations would get to those who want them.
i've tried digg and reddit and seen the groupthink/mod downs at it's worst. having a submission modded down in seconds to see a duplicate modded up a few minutes later made me give up on those sites.
i've seen this as well. however when i recovered from the recovery partition and set the system back to factory defaults it let me burn the disk again.
i would rather pay an extra 100 than have ms count one more licence for their shitty os sold. it costs them nothing to make that windows licence. you're not getting a physical product like a cd or manual.
if they were selling their product below cost like their xbox consoles and buying the product and nothing else cost them money then yes i would buy it.
thankfully they turned the audible cues back on within a few days after the blind complained. people couldn't believe the blind hadn't been asked about switching off the audible cues.
most of the people who step unsafely into the road are ipod using, blackberry focused idiots who ignore their surroundings. when as a a cyclist i had to try and cycle through traffic lights that were green but were covered by pedestrians breaking the lights there was only one thing they noticed and paid attention to. shouting get out of the way or ringing a bell doesn't really work. shouting "NO BRAKES!" on the other hand engages their survival mechanism and they cleared the road very very fast!:-) quick simple and worked every day for years.
in europe it is very different. i haven't bought a subsidised phone since the n70 in 2005. the crapware loaded on that by vodafone that was unremoveable made be buy all phones after that sim free.
wasn't much of a change for me as i use all my phones on prepay so the price went up around 100. i even bought an iphone 3g on prepay. 630 if i remember rightly. when i go to a linux potd meeting i reckon 90% of the mobiles there are sim free. less hassle. you're dealing with fewer companies to get your device.
when nokia announced the n97 and it was looking initially like it would cost 700 most of my friends and mates were still interested. most didn't end up buying it as it was junk when it was released.
so i spent 400 on my htc hero and spend about 5 a month on credit. most of my data is on wifi when i'm at work, home or most of the locations i meet up with others so i only pay for a tiny amount of data.
the nexus one to me was of no interest as i want my next android phone to have a real keyboard (the htc hero was the cheapest android device i could find to test how i would like android). just a pity that motorola removed themselves from that list with the efuse debacle. htc removed themselves when they started paying ms royalties for every android device sold.
i have a htc hero. nice phone. but i'm not going to buy a htc if they are paying ms. just rubs me up the wrong way. not buying a motorola because of the efuse nonsense. google aren't staying in the market selling nexus either. so that leaves much smaller selection.
when you try to access piratebay.org from eircom you are get a page which says amongst other things
eircom would like to reassure customers that:
* eircom will not monitor customer's activities at any stage, nor will it place any monitoring equipment or software on its network in order to facilitate this block.
* eircom will not provide personal details or any information relating to customers to any third party, including the record companies.
i suppose we were using it for different tasks. i used the psions as a pc replacement. couldn't afford a laptop but managed to do all the things i wanted on the psions.
had a psion 3a, 3c, 5, 5mx. there were things i could do with the software that i struggle to do on more modern systems. the agenda and data app were extraordinarily flexible. i could set an recurring appointment that occurred on the last saturday of every second month. iphone, palm, symbian, google calender on android can't do this. one customer wanted a wince device (it was ages ago) to hold all his customers information (8000 records) and none of the devices of the day would do the job. while talking to him i exported his data as a csv and imported it into the psion over a serial cable and stored it in a compressed easy to search database file.
went to palm iiix, iiic, m125, visor neo, palm e. probably the first device that i would describe as an ereader. read 1-2 books on the psion but the shape was wrong to read a book comfortably away from a desk. read dune for the first time on a iiix.
one thing i really miss from the palm is the palm desktop app and its sync facility. my iphone sync corrupts every now and again duplicating the notes i have so i stopped using it. using android for notes now. the palm sync never mucked up that badly. android syncs ok but has no great note app.
i found the difference was the amount of data i could enter on the palm v the amount i entered on the psion. i could type 30-40 wpm on the 3a. slightly slower on the 5. the flat base made it slightly more uncomfortable to use. maybe 25wpm. palm i could just about managed 15-20wpm. this however dropped when the brought in grafitti2.
i wanted a psion 7 as well but as you say they were expensive.
ooooh the z88! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Z88 that was a beautiful machine and i wish somebody made a device like this still with a more modern os. i keep looking at the alphasmart dana http://www.neo-direct.com/intro.aspx but the os is just a little short of what i want (i want a programming language, the psions had easy to learn opl). oh well, i'll stick with the olpc for now.
10 years? same here. the last sony item i bought was a fm/shortwave radio in 97. beautiful radio. it was soon after that mp3 playback began to be added to generic cd players and sony persisted in not doing the same. then their cd players were the only ones that wouldn't play cd-r copies of cds. after that i never bought sony again. what for you was the tipping point?
the jupiter based systems were competition with the psion 5. they failed. microsoft even bought a key company who supplied their microbrowser but thankfully opera stepped into that breach. http://www.ericlindsay.com/epoc/bweb5.htm
i could work on word and excel documents on the device which i could convert on the device or the desktop to the psions formats. when i was given a very old word doc when the euro came into force to update some banking software the psion was the only computer in the building that could accurately open the file with its tables. every year i meet an accountant, architecht or some other maths heavy profession who used a psion 10 years ago. none of the modern systems are a match to the flexibility of those devices.
if psion were to release a psion with the same software but that could use wifi or bluetooth and usb i'd buy one in a heart beat.
why? * because it was independent of a desktop computer. i used a psion for 2 years as my main computer. * iphone/ipad need a desktop with itunes. * android is still pretty clunky. i can view spreadsheets and word docs but cannot freely edit them. the editors that are available are pretty crude. it's getting better fast so it's what i'm using now. * windows mobile is still a joke. * symbian which was the successor to epoc the psion os went backwards for years and lost a lot of the great features that were integral to psions success. the data app and opl were the ones i missed most. they lost me when nokia stopped selling camera phones that didn't make a frickin stupid click noise. * all this offline on a 25mhz processor running for a week on 2 aa batteries. the earlier psion 3a was about the same but the software was much cruder.
Slashdot Mirror
but weren't we promised that they don't save the image!! don't you believe what your government tells you?? /sarcasm :-)
if that were to happen a few times i think it would be the kiss of death for these systems. somebody somewhere would think it funny to get a politicians/famous persons naked image.
fingers crossed!
seems like
http://xkcd.com/779/
would make it as embarrassing to security doing pat downs as viewing the scanner results
i've always thought that the way ballmer runs microsoft day to day is like apple in the 90s. no real direction. that some day gates is going to do a steve jobs and waltz back in and 'save' microsoft. he always comes across as wanting to be like jobs. sseeing this just reinforces this opinion.
my 2c.
it will be simpler than that. a simple upgrade called HD Genuine Advantage. Got to make those pr departments earn their money.
2 screens are necessary for some ebooks. i've been using ebooks regularly since i got a palm iiix. it's small display was great to carry a few books and read them when i got a chance. in 2010 however i have a large collection of ebooks and screens a5 like the 5-7" ebook readers deal with most of them nicely enough. even on my phones (iphone 3g or htc hero) simple text is easily read.
except pdfs. i have a lot of rpg gaming manuals that are scans of the manuals in pdf format. some are readable on an a5 screen many are not. so an a4 sized screen is necessary. all well and good. except there are quite a few pdfs that will not read nicely on those screens. what are those?
electronic comic files. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Book_Archive_file
i read a british comic called 2000ad as a kid and it was an a4 comic. i now have many of them in electronic format. the thing was the central spread every week was read across the 2 pages so i can either get an a3 sized ereader or get a reader with 2 screens. i suspect a twin screened a4 sizes ereader is going to be cheaper and more portable than an a3 sized model. reading while zooming in and out and flipping back and forth between 2 pages to read a single spread is annoying and distracting (i learned that with rpg manuals on a5 sized devices!) so i'll wait till i have an a3 equivalent device before getting into the 2000ad properly.
yes it's probably a niche market but a large percentage of a niche market can be quite profitable. so i'm definitely in the market for this device, _if_ they get it right.
most worrying thing?
the motto for the german army is 'third time lucky'.
windowless bunker or happy place. choose one.
or perhaps it's like valve radio technology which the audiophiles swear sounds far superior to any transistor ever made. my parents were given a beautiful phillips valve radio for a wedding present which i used as a kid and the sound from that was like nothing i have ever used since.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audiophile#Amplifiers
or those engineers who still see advantages to steam.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_engine#Advantages
just because something is newer and cheaper does not mean it is better.
my 2c.
add sendo to your list
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/01/06/microsofts_masterplan_to_screw_phone/
partner with ms, get fecked oved.
i do buy unlocked phones. and used to use vodafone sims on prepay here in ireland. till they changed their prepay service so that pages i browsed had shitty vodafone links and logos at the top. rang to ask how to turn the crap off and was told you couldn't so threw the sim away.
i've always wondered if the way to eliminate shill accounts was to eliminate making as many accounts as you want. something more like the gmail invitation system where people earn invites that they can send out. it might allow you to stop spammers, trolls. those that get through could be cut off and you could track who is letting the idiots in and reduce their invitations. just a thought. no need for ids, credit cards. we all know people who we trust online and off and invitations would get to those who want them.
i've tried digg and reddit and seen the groupthink/mod downs at it's worst. having a submission modded down in seconds to see a duplicate modded up a few minutes later made me give up on those sites.
i've seen this as well. however when i recovered from the recovery partition and set the system back to factory defaults it let me burn the disk again.
i would rather pay an extra 100 than have ms count one more licence for their shitty os sold. it costs them nothing to make that windows licence. you're not getting a physical product like a cd or manual.
if they were selling their product below cost like their xbox consoles and buying the product and nothing else cost them money then yes i would buy it.
yes i hate ms that much. hey it's slashdot! :-)
ymmv
but every now and again the underdog wins
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case
in dublin ireland we made it fun for the blind when they turned off the audible cues of the crossing lights after it confused the sighted. yes you read that right.
http://www.enil.eu/enil/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=332&Itemid=82
thankfully they turned the audible cues back on within a few days after the blind complained. people couldn't believe the blind hadn't been asked about switching off the audible cues.
most of the people who step unsafely into the road are ipod using, blackberry focused idiots who ignore their surroundings. when as a a cyclist i had to try and cycle through traffic lights that were green but were covered by pedestrians breaking the lights there was only one thing they noticed and paid attention to. shouting get out of the way or ringing a bell doesn't really work. shouting "NO BRAKES!" on the other hand engages their survival mechanism and they cleared the road very very fast! :-) quick simple and worked every day for years.
i use g-mon
http://www.appbrain.com/app/de.carknue.gmon2
capture ssid, lat long. pretty neat and free.
in the us may be.
in europe it is very different. i haven't bought a subsidised phone since the n70 in 2005. the crapware loaded on that by vodafone that was unremoveable made be buy all phones after that sim free.
wasn't much of a change for me as i use all my phones on prepay so the price went up around 100. i even bought an iphone 3g on prepay. 630 if i remember rightly. when i go to a linux potd meeting i reckon 90% of the mobiles there are sim free. less hassle. you're dealing with fewer companies to get your device.
when nokia announced the n97 and it was looking initially like it would cost 700 most of my friends and mates were still interested. most didn't end up buying it as it was junk when it was released.
so i spent 400 on my htc hero and spend about 5 a month on credit. most of my data is on wifi when i'm at work, home or most of the locations i meet up with others so i only pay for a tiny amount of data.
the nexus one to me was of no interest as i want my next android phone to have a real keyboard (the htc hero was the cheapest android device i could find to test how i would like android). just a pity that motorola removed themselves from that list with the efuse debacle. htc removed themselves when they started paying ms royalties for every android device sold.
and paid microsoft a royalty.
http://technorati.com/technology/android/article/htc-to-pay-microsoft-royalties-on/
i have a htc hero. nice phone. but i'm not going to buy a htc if they are paying ms. just rubs me up the wrong way. not buying a motorola because of the efuse nonsense. google aren't staying in the market selling nexus either. so that leaves much smaller selection.
massive files. zero content. that will get your useless content below 50% right there.
pity as otherwise a bakesale for the us navy or any navy working of the east coast of africa might have counted. :-)
when you try to access piratebay.org from eircom you are get a page which says amongst other things
eircom would like to reassure customers that:
* eircom will not monitor customer's activities at any stage, nor will it place any monitoring equipment or software on its network in order to facilitate this block.
* eircom will not provide personal details or any information relating to customers to any third party, including the record companies.
of course this is the same isp that setup wifi for their customers with next to no encryption;
http://www.mulley.net/2007/10/01/150000-eircom-modems-can-have-their-password-guessed-how-will-eircom-react/
so i guess it's time to find where the politicians live and use their wifi to download a ton of crappy music.
ironically a musician here in ireland i occasionly do tech support for says that he knows almost no musician in ireland that uses legit software.
i suppose we were using it for different tasks. i used the psions as a pc replacement. couldn't afford a laptop but managed to do all the things i wanted on the psions.
had a psion 3a, 3c, 5, 5mx. there were things i could do with the software that i struggle to do on more modern systems. the agenda and data app were extraordinarily flexible. i could set an recurring appointment that occurred on the last saturday of every second month. iphone, palm, symbian, google calender on android can't do this. one customer wanted a wince device (it was ages ago) to hold all his customers information (8000 records) and none of the devices of the day would do the job. while talking to him i exported his data as a csv and imported it into the psion over a serial cable and stored it in a compressed easy to search database file.
went to palm iiix, iiic, m125, visor neo, palm e. probably the first device that i would describe as an ereader. read 1-2 books on the psion but the shape was wrong to read a book comfortably away from a desk. read dune for the first time on a iiix.
one thing i really miss from the palm is the palm desktop app and its sync facility. my iphone sync corrupts every now and again duplicating the notes i have so i stopped using it. using android for notes now. the palm sync never mucked up that badly. android syncs ok but has no great note app.
i found the difference was the amount of data i could enter on the palm v the amount i entered on the psion. i could type 30-40 wpm on the 3a. slightly slower on the 5. the flat base made it slightly more uncomfortable to use. maybe 25wpm. palm i could just about managed 15-20wpm. this however dropped when the brought in grafitti2.
i wanted a psion 7 as well but as you say they were expensive.
ooooh the z88! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Z88 that was a beautiful machine and i wish somebody made a device like this still with a more modern os. i keep looking at the alphasmart dana http://www.neo-direct.com/intro.aspx but the os is just a little short of what i want (i want a programming language, the psions had easy to learn opl). oh well, i'll stick with the olpc for now.
>The Palm Pilot was the first successful PDA
in the us perhaps. otherwise you would have to list the psion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_3
every accountant, architect i dealt with seemed to have one of these or even the earlier psion ii. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Organiser
> The Foleo was a netbook, a couple of years before netbooks took off.
psion owned the name netbook, the psion 7 was by any definition you could use, a netbook. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_PLC#Psion_and_the_term_Netbook
10 years? same here. the last sony item i bought was a fm/shortwave radio in 97. beautiful radio. it was soon after that mp3 playback began to be added to generic cd players and sony persisted in not doing the same. then their cd players were the only ones that wouldn't play cd-r copies of cds. after that i never bought sony again. what for you was the tipping point?
the jupiter based systems were competition with the psion 5. they failed. microsoft even bought a key company who supplied their microbrowser but thankfully opera stepped into that breach. http://www.ericlindsay.com/epoc/bweb5.htm
i could work on word and excel documents on the device which i could convert on the device or the desktop to the psions formats. when i was given a very old word doc when the euro came into force to update some banking software the psion was the only computer in the building that could accurately open the file with its tables. every year i meet an accountant, architecht or some other maths heavy profession who used a psion 10 years ago. none of the modern systems are a match to the flexibility of those devices.
if psion were to release a psion with the same software but that could use wifi or bluetooth and usb i'd buy one in a heart beat.
why?
* because it was independent of a desktop computer. i used a psion for 2 years as my main computer.
* iphone/ipad need a desktop with itunes.
* android is still pretty clunky. i can view spreadsheets and word docs but cannot freely edit them. the editors that are available are pretty crude. it's getting better fast so it's what i'm using now.
* windows mobile is still a joke.
* symbian which was the successor to epoc the psion os went backwards for years and lost a lot of the great features that were integral to psions success. the data app and opl were the ones i missed most. they lost me when nokia stopped selling camera phones that didn't make a frickin stupid click noise.
* all this offline on a 25mhz processor running for a week on 2 aa batteries. the earlier psion 3a was about the same but the software was much cruder.
ymmv