A pleasant thought, but the two browsers began on their divergent compatability paths back when the browsers *were* competing with each other. Netscape lobbied like Hell to get layers included in the W3C standard and then, after they weren't approved by the consortium, left them in the browser anyway, making all of us DHTML coders write two sets of scripts to handle them and IE's DIV tags.
MS had been playing catch up to all of Netscape's quirks up until that point, but when IE 4 came out they knew they were going to take the lead, so they didn't bother worrying about layers. They were too busy planning all the IE-only extensions *they* would make once they held the lead in the race (stuff like those crappy XML behaviors). Now that the browser war has been won (by the bad guys, of course), Microsoft actually does a pretty decent job of sticking with the W3C and maintaining the standards, since they don't have to worry about the competition getting an even playing field so much any more.
One could make the case that neither company had the time to wait for the W3C to release new, "official" standards when they busy innovating like Hell in order to get a leg up on the competition. In either case the disparity, I feel, is a direct result of having two browsers in direct, heated competition. I'm afraid this would come back if the browser wars were to start back up again. I really don't want to start writing two sets of code again.
You know it's only a matter of time before an evil super-villian figures out a way to simultaneously ignite all that hydrogen under the Earth's crust, thereby threatening to cause a global, cataclysmic earthquake unless we pay him a ransom of one hundred.. billion... dollars!
This is a little OT, but can we get a poll to see what kind of monitors everyone is using and in what sizes? I'd love to know how many of us are using LCDs or dual-monitor setups, and what size screen most/.ers gaze upon daily.
"Then you have people, such as the palestinians, who expect to just be happy because some book I've never read says they deserve it. They picked a fight, they lost. And now they're really loosing. (Good.) They expect the US to wave a magic wand and just solve all their problems for them, without any effort on their part. Even if the world did work that way, and history has consistantly shown us it doesn't, why on Earth would we possibly intervene on behalf of the palestinians, given the past years events, and the occasions they choose for celebration?"
I highly doubt the average Palestinian wants the US to do anything other than stay the fuck out of their homeland, and stop supplying Israel with money and guns. We do, by the way, hand them billions each year in aid which they turn around and use to buy tanks, planes and other weapons from us. The same weapons they eventually use to attack Palestinians targets with, often killing innocent civilians, women and children in the process. You have no right to act like the Palestinians want the US to fix this "problem" they're having with Israel like we have nothing to do with it, when the US has been arming and supporting Israel no matter what atrocities it's committed for years. Why do you think it's so fucking newsworthy anytime an American official even *hints* at criticizing an Israeli policy? It's because it almost never happens, no matter what the Israelis do.
"According to him the US is directly responsible for palestinian deaths because the Isralies use some american hardware, and the palestinians are not directly responsible Isralie civilian casualties because they are short on saritonin re-uptake inhibitors, or something. They really feel entitled to everything, and it's somehow our obligation to just give it to them, and they shouldn't even have to stop killing innocent people to get it. It's pretty obvious I've got no pity left for the palestinians."
Again, what the fuck is the matter with you? The Palestinians were pushed off their homeland when Israel was created as a haven for Jews. Wanting your stolen land back is not feeling "entitled to everything". Nor are they asking the US to give them anything. All they've ever asked of us is to stop arming the people who are blowing up their police stations and killing thousands of their people (both terrorists and civilians).
Seriously, man, you are badly misinformed on this issue if you indeed think (as it appears) that the Palestinians are a bunch of welfare-babies who want the good life handed to them by the rich and powerful because they think they deserve it. That's a far cry from the truth.
Think it's idiotic the way the labels go about their copy-protected CD strategy?
Now I don't mean the specific technology used, or the fact that it's stupid in general. I'm referring to their choices of *which* CDs to use the copy-protection on.
So far, they've all been big releases that they're going to sell a million or more copies of (N'Sync, Natalie Imbruglia). They don't do it at all to the smaller releases, which basically ensures a lack of success.
All the copy protection does is make it harder for someone to make an illegal copy. It doesn't make it anywhere near impossible. If you want a copy in mp3 bad enough, you just find a CD player that can play the disk (if you can, of course), run a line into the back of your PC, record it to wave files, then encode to mp3. I ripped a record this way, it'll certainly work for CDs. At that point the guy doing it is probably pissed off at the labels enough to make his freshly made mp3's available on a P2P network of his choice, at which time they get copied over and over again, and the whole "copy-protected" CD is all over the net. Thus all you can really accomplish by putting that crap on a blockbluster CD release is a lot of bad press and a few weeks in delay before everyone has a copy on their hard drive.
With smaller releases, however, it could work. There aren't as many people who want a copy of the music, which means less who have the knowledge and desire to rip the stuff correctly. If the labels put protection on the under-500k-sales category, they might make a serious dent in the amount of pirated music out there because it would be a pain in the ass for all the hackers to get it into the mp3 format, so fewer would bother with smaller releases and the copies would never get made that crucial first time.
It astounds me that the record companies are to stupid to even use the technology they undoubtedly paid a mint for in the correct way. I suppose I should just expect any implementation of technology by them to be exactly backwards by now.
The real tragedy in all of this is that the music studios are going to release these crappy, restricted music download services for probably the next year or so. No one's going to use them because of the extra rules they impose (like the 200 track max - who wants their music collection limited to twenty CDs?) and their proprietary formats that won't go onto a CD or mp3 portable. They'll fail like Circuit City's DivX did, not because there's anything wrong with the concept, people just won't want to deal with the hassle of managing when their songs "expire" or which one they have to delete to make room for the new N'Sync single.
The record labels are then going to go to Congress and say "Look, we tried letting these people download music, but the thieves won't use them. We have to have draconian legislation and internet police in order to keep our disgustingly fat and corrupt industry alive!". Congress will examine their campaign funds, find a way to slip RIAA money past McCain-Feingold, and pass the law.
I bet they've got this entire plan in an MS Project file at RIAA headquarters.
Re:This is a trojan horse, plain and simple.
on
Spy v. Spy
·
· Score: 2
You're quite right. They never specifically mention any type of alteration of the system. They do however include these two paragraphs (as do most other programs, unfortunately):
8. NO WARRANTIES. WinWhatWhere expressly disclaims any warranty for the SOFTWARE. THE SOFTWARE AND ANY RELATED DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OR MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NONINFRINGEMENT. THE ENTIRE RISK ARISING OUT OF USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THE SOFTWARE REMAINS WITH YOU.
9. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY. IN NO EVENT SHALL WINWHATWHERE OR ITS SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY CONSEQUENTIAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR INDIRECT DAMAGES OF ANY KIND ARISING OUT OF THE DELIVERY, PERFORMANCE, OR USE OF THE SUCH DAMAGES. IN ANY EVENT, WINWHATWHERE'S LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT, OR ANY OTHER THEORY OF LIABILITY WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF U.S. $1.00 OR LICENSE FEE PAID BY YOU.
I wonder if they can slip it through this way, since you apparently give up your right to get pissy if the software hoses your machine when you install it.
Re:This is a trojan horse, plain and simple.
on
Spy v. Spy
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
"Without warning the user, WinWhatWhere disables another piece of software for which that person has paid good money. That's like IE deleting Netscape if it detects it on your system. That's like your trusty Chevy switching to Battlebots mode every time it detects a Honda in the highway."
No way they do it without a warning. I would stake what little fortune I have that they explicitly demand permission to do the altering in the EULA. No one reads them anyway, and even fewer would recognize what the legal-speak meant when they say that you grant them the right to alter "certain incompatible software modules installed herewith and therefore, etc". Once you click through the installer, they'd be free and clear.
This is kind of a stretch, but does anyone actually have a copy of their Licensing Agreement? I bet it's a good read.
Don't forget this older slashdot article that deals with the dangers of tidal power, namely that since it's the moon's gravitational pull that powers the tides, by harnessing them for power, we'll slow the moon down in its orbit, causing it to fall and crash into the earth. Probably onto some kind of target laid out by Taco Bell as a free taco promotion.
"This will never happen or if it does, it won't last long. The greatest way to lose a customer is to limit their choices with your product. The second my cable company says I can't visit xyz.com over their IP network, I get a new provider and tell my friends about it"
That's just the point. You won't be able to. Cable companies have a monopoly in their area because of the significant barrier to market involved with planting cable in an area. There's not enough ROI to justify the huge expense of laying the pipe when you're only going to get half the customers (on average).
Thus when your cable company (who probably runs their own ISP like Comcast or has an exclusive agreement with one partner ISP) says "You can't run this P2P app, or go to these questionable sites or newsgroups", you're going to either deal with it, or start hooking a phoneline back into your PC.
And yes, DSL is an alternative, but it's not available everywhere, so many people will have to deal with the possibility of choosing between a crappy cable monopoly and a dialup.
It sounds like you want to do away with the buttons and D-pad on PDA's completely, and just have one big screen. I can understand that, as I've often wanted the same thing.
The only problem with this is that a lot of PDAs have hardware that takes up the entire depth of the unit in the same area as the buttons. The iPaqs, for example, have their speaker integrated with the directional button. It you extend the screen over the entire face of the device, you'll either have to kill the speaker or find some way to shrink it, which they have as yet to do. There are other components besides the speaker with the same issue, of course, that's just the first one that sprang to mind.
As for increasing the size of the device, I think you'd be surprised how much difference an inch or two makes. It'll no longer fit in a pocket at that point, so you'd be relegated to carrying it solely in a briefcase or backpack which is a huge hassle, IMO.
Erm no, you can't. With technology where it is today in terms of miniaturization, there is no "extra" space for a bigger screen. Have you ever taken apart an iPaq? There's not exactly a ton of room in there.
Most people want a PDA form factor that will either a) fit into a pants pocket or b) fit into a sport coat's pocket easily. There's just no room in devices of that size for a bigger screen right now.
The tech's only going to get better, though, and the Sony units that have a clamshell design are a step in the right direction. In the meantime, if you're dying for a bigger screen, just get a true palmtop like the Libretto that Toshiba used to put out. Several ocmpanies still make comparable units, and they all have nice big screens.
The LOOX was announced weeks ago. Brighthand already had a forum up for it in February. Toshiba also announced their next PocketPC (XScale processor and embedded 802.11b included) last month.
A month behind the times? That's just shameful guys.
Seems to me one of the biggest problems with using one of these cards is that all of the information is available to anyone who scans the card for any part of the info on it. Say I go to a club, and instead of having a bouncer look at the ID, the club makes me run it through a card-reader of some sort. How do I know that they're just taking my age and name off the thing, and not my name, age, address, phone, blood type, and all the other info I don't think they need?
It would be cool if the cards had some kind of method to block off certain parts of the info. Like if you squeezed a spot of the card for two seconds, it would open up the address and phone stuff for the next sixty seconds. If you squeezed another spot, your medical history stuff would be available. The default state (no squeezes) would just reveal name, number and age.
Obviously someone could just squeeze it before the scan it in a surreptitious manner, but that's not really my point here. You could work the interface any way you wanted - maybe a second card that links to it and you squeeze that one, so bouncers can't make changes to their access. If you could give people a way to control the info coming off of their cards, the potential for privacy invasion (while still there) would at least be reduced.
Microsoft and the government have released a new, revised settlement agreement, according to this article at the Washington Post. Changes include removing a provision that apparently would have let Microsoft use hardware patents without compensating the owners (?!), more requirements for API disclosure by MS, and a broadening of the language of the document to make it harder for MS to weasel out of things.
Anyway, thought it might be an interesting read to go along with this story.
As a web developer, the primary difference for me between designing for the web and designing for any other publishing medium is liquidity. You never really know the size of the browser the user's going to be viewing you in, so you better make damn sure your page flows correctly to fit.
Nothing makes me madder than having to scroll back and forth across a web page because some idiot figured that since the site looked fine in his maximized browser on his 1024x768 display, he could hardcode the tables to be 1000 pixels wide and no one with have any trouble with it. Other than people using too much superfluous flair for its own sake, I think this is probably highest on the list of big problems designers make.
Take steps in the beginning of your design process to avoid the problem. Start using the percentages for widths in your table tags. Start using the ALIGN and VALIGN attributes correctly. Don't rely on FrontPage to position things for you with style properties, instead put them into properly formed table tags with the alignments set right so that the page flows when it's resized.
Congress today approved a grant today towards a medical program that will implant small chip into the brain of every American child shortly after birth. Its function will be to monitor the sounds brought in by the ears and shut them off for a period of five minutes if any pirated music is heard by the implantee.
Auto insurance companies are engaged in a furious fight to stop the next version of the B-chip, which will include the capability to instantly shut down the eyes in a similar manner.
"The problem isn't the media, it's that most people can't find the time or more often, the interest to find out for themselves what their media is deliberately not telling them."
Actually, they're both the problem. Why does soft money make waves in the political world? Because campaigners use it to make misinforming ads, which are given heed by stupid voters. The situation requires both morons and sleazebags (and unfortunately our country has too many of both). Same goes for other media and other issues.
Of course, you can somewhat justify the average American by saying that no one has the time to go researching everything our government does. Sure, I read al-jazeera.com occasionally through an Arabic translator, but I don't keep up with what crackhead senator is raising dairy subsidies to send some pork back to his state, or who's altering environmental standards to make life easier for his rich oil buddies. Our country would grind to a halt if everyone tried to stay versed on everything that our governments make decisions about.
That's why we need journalists to help us out in this area. We need the good ones. That's what makes the bad ones suck so hard.
Personally, I find misinformation and omission much scarier than censorship. They're both far more of a threat to us here in the US.
Foucault used to say that he who controlled and influenced the way people think had the real power in the world, because he could control what is true and what is false, since the concepts really only exist in our minds. Media companies and governments know this, and not just in China.
For a modern example, think about Iran. Most Americans, when asked about Iran, would respond that they don't like the Iranian people, and think they're a bunch of terrorists. Why? The average American doesn't know any Iranians. How you can you hate them when you don't know the names of more than one or two at most? Because all you see on Television is Iranians burning flags, holding up pictures of militants, and holding guns. You never see the average Iranian farmer, or baker, or homemaker. You never see the normal, decent people of that country. Same thing goes for North Korea. People have these amazingly harsh opinions about people and countries they don't know anything about simply because of what they've been told by the media.
It works both ways too. Most of what those people see of us is our President saying mean things about them that get repeated over and over by their media, and the business end of our military photographed onto their front page. They never see the average Joe working his construction job, or Mom baking an apple pie.
So now you have two groups of people that barely know each other, but hate the other side with wild abandon.
Like I said, misinformation scares me more than censorship.
But the USB ID of a device is spat out by (usually) a little chip on the device. Couldn't controller manufacturers build two of the chips onto the board along with a switch to change between them? Why is this such a big deal?
Slashdot Mirror
A pleasant thought, but the two browsers began on their divergent compatability paths back when the browsers *were* competing with each other. Netscape lobbied like Hell to get layers included in the W3C standard and then, after they weren't approved by the consortium, left them in the browser anyway, making all of us DHTML coders write two sets of scripts to handle them and IE's DIV tags.
MS had been playing catch up to all of Netscape's quirks up until that point, but when IE 4 came out they knew they were going to take the lead, so they didn't bother worrying about layers. They were too busy planning all the IE-only extensions *they* would make once they held the lead in the race (stuff like those crappy XML behaviors). Now that the browser war has been won (by the bad guys, of course), Microsoft actually does a pretty decent job of sticking with the W3C and maintaining the standards, since they don't have to worry about the competition getting an even playing field so much any more.
One could make the case that neither company had the time to wait for the W3C to release new, "official" standards when they busy innovating like Hell in order to get a leg up on the competition. In either case the disparity, I feel, is a direct result of having two browsers in direct, heated competition. I'm afraid this would come back if the browser wars were to start back up again. I really don't want to start writing two sets of code again.
You know it's only a matter of time before an evil super-villian figures out a way to simultaneously ignite all that hydrogen under the Earth's crust, thereby threatening to cause a global, cataclysmic earthquake unless we pay him a ransom of one hundred.. billion... dollars!
<insert maniacal Dr. Evil laughter>
This is a little OT, but can we get a poll to see what kind of monitors everyone is using and in what sizes? I'd love to know how many of us are using LCDs or dual-monitor setups, and what size screen most /.ers gaze upon daily.
Dude, what the fuck is the matter with you?
"Then you have people, such as the palestinians, who expect to just be happy because some book I've never read says they deserve it. They picked a fight, they lost. And now they're really loosing. (Good.) They expect the US to wave a magic wand and just solve all their problems for them, without any effort on their part. Even if the world did work that way, and history has consistantly shown us it doesn't, why on Earth would we possibly intervene on behalf of the palestinians, given the past years events, and the occasions they choose for celebration?"
I highly doubt the average Palestinian wants the US to do anything other than stay the fuck out of their homeland, and stop supplying Israel with money and guns. We do, by the way, hand them billions each year in aid which they turn around and use to buy tanks, planes and other weapons from us. The same weapons they eventually use to attack Palestinians targets with, often killing innocent civilians, women and children in the process. You have no right to act like the Palestinians want the US to fix this "problem" they're having with Israel like we have nothing to do with it, when the US has been arming and supporting Israel no matter what atrocities it's committed for years. Why do you think it's so fucking newsworthy anytime an American official even *hints* at criticizing an Israeli policy? It's because it almost never happens, no matter what the Israelis do.
"According to him the US is directly responsible for palestinian deaths because the Isralies use some american hardware, and the palestinians are not directly responsible Isralie civilian casualties because they are short on saritonin re-uptake inhibitors, or something. They really feel entitled to everything, and it's somehow our obligation to just give it to them, and they shouldn't even have to stop killing innocent people to get it. It's pretty obvious I've got no pity left for the palestinians."
Again, what the fuck is the matter with you? The Palestinians were pushed off their homeland when Israel was created as a haven for Jews. Wanting your stolen land back is not feeling "entitled to everything". Nor are they asking the US to give them anything. All they've ever asked of us is to stop arming the people who are blowing up their police stations and killing thousands of their people (both terrorists and civilians).
Seriously, man, you are badly misinformed on this issue if you indeed think (as it appears) that the Palestinians are a bunch of welfare-babies who want the good life handed to them by the rich and powerful because they think they deserve it. That's a far cry from the truth.
"200 tracks can generally fit on 11 or 12 CD's - without compression"
:)
You're obviously not as much of a fan of progressive rock music as I am.
Think it's idiotic the way the labels go about their copy-protected CD strategy?
Now I don't mean the specific technology used, or the fact that it's stupid in general. I'm referring to their choices of *which* CDs to use the copy-protection on.
So far, they've all been big releases that they're going to sell a million or more copies of (N'Sync, Natalie Imbruglia). They don't do it at all to the smaller releases, which basically ensures a lack of success.
All the copy protection does is make it harder for someone to make an illegal copy. It doesn't make it anywhere near impossible. If you want a copy in mp3 bad enough, you just find a CD player that can play the disk (if you can, of course), run a line into the back of your PC, record it to wave files, then encode to mp3. I ripped a record this way, it'll certainly work for CDs. At that point the guy doing it is probably pissed off at the labels enough to make his freshly made mp3's available on a P2P network of his choice, at which time they get copied over and over again, and the whole "copy-protected" CD is all over the net. Thus all you can really accomplish by putting that crap on a blockbluster CD release is a lot of bad press and a few weeks in delay before everyone has a copy on their hard drive.
With smaller releases, however, it could work. There aren't as many people who want a copy of the music, which means less who have the knowledge and desire to rip the stuff correctly. If the labels put protection on the under-500k-sales category, they might make a serious dent in the amount of pirated music out there because it would be a pain in the ass for all the hackers to get it into the mp3 format, so fewer would bother with smaller releases and the copies would never get made that crucial first time.
It astounds me that the record companies are to stupid to even use the technology they undoubtedly paid a mint for in the correct way. I suppose I should just expect any implementation of technology by them to be exactly backwards by now.
The real tragedy in all of this is that the music studios are going to release these crappy, restricted music download services for probably the next year or so. No one's going to use them because of the extra rules they impose (like the 200 track max - who wants their music collection limited to twenty CDs?) and their proprietary formats that won't go onto a CD or mp3 portable. They'll fail like Circuit City's DivX did, not because there's anything wrong with the concept, people just won't want to deal with the hassle of managing when their songs "expire" or which one they have to delete to make room for the new N'Sync single.
The record labels are then going to go to Congress and say "Look, we tried letting these people download music, but the thieves won't use them. We have to have draconian legislation and internet police in order to keep our disgustingly fat and corrupt industry alive!". Congress will examine their campaign funds, find a way to slip RIAA money past McCain-Feingold, and pass the law.
I bet they've got this entire plan in an MS Project file at RIAA headquarters.
You're quite right. They never specifically mention any type of alteration of the system. They do however include these two paragraphs (as do most other programs, unfortunately):
8. NO WARRANTIES. WinWhatWhere expressly disclaims any warranty for the SOFTWARE. THE SOFTWARE AND ANY RELATED DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OR MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NONINFRINGEMENT. THE ENTIRE RISK ARISING OUT OF USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THE SOFTWARE REMAINS WITH YOU.
9. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY. IN NO EVENT SHALL WINWHATWHERE OR ITS SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY CONSEQUENTIAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR INDIRECT DAMAGES OF ANY KIND ARISING OUT OF THE DELIVERY, PERFORMANCE, OR USE OF THE SUCH DAMAGES. IN ANY EVENT, WINWHATWHERE'S LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT, OR ANY OTHER THEORY OF LIABILITY WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF U.S. $1.00 OR LICENSE FEE PAID BY YOU.
I wonder if they can slip it through this way, since you apparently give up your right to get pissy if the software hoses your machine when you install it.
"Without warning the user, WinWhatWhere disables another piece of software for which that person has paid good money. That's like IE deleting Netscape if it detects it on your system. That's like your trusty Chevy switching to Battlebots mode every time it detects a Honda in the highway."
No way they do it without a warning. I would stake what little fortune I have that they explicitly demand permission to do the altering in the EULA. No one reads them anyway, and even fewer would recognize what the legal-speak meant when they say that you grant them the right to alter "certain incompatible software modules installed herewith and therefore, etc". Once you click through the installer, they'd be free and clear.
This is kind of a stretch, but does anyone actually have a copy of their Licensing Agreement? I bet it's a good read.
Dude, it was an April Fool's post from last year. I linked to it as a joke.
Chill.
Don't forget this older slashdot article that deals with the dangers of tidal power, namely that since it's the moon's gravitational pull that powers the tides, by harnessing them for power, we'll slow the moon down in its orbit, causing it to fall and crash into the earth. Probably onto some kind of target laid out by Taco Bell as a free taco promotion.
"This will never happen or if it does, it won't last long. The greatest way to lose a customer is to limit their choices with your product. The second my cable company says I can't visit xyz.com over their IP network, I get a new provider and tell my friends about it"
That's just the point. You won't be able to. Cable companies have a monopoly in their area because of the significant barrier to market involved with planting cable in an area. There's not enough ROI to justify the huge expense of laying the pipe when you're only going to get half the customers (on average).
Thus when your cable company (who probably runs their own ISP like Comcast or has an exclusive agreement with one partner ISP) says "You can't run this P2P app, or go to these questionable sites or newsgroups", you're going to either deal with it, or start hooking a phoneline back into your PC.
And yes, DSL is an alternative, but it's not available everywhere, so many people will have to deal with the possibility of choosing between a crappy cable monopoly and a dialup.
It sounds like you want to do away with the buttons and D-pad on PDA's completely, and just have one big screen. I can understand that, as I've often wanted the same thing.
The only problem with this is that a lot of PDAs have hardware that takes up the entire depth of the unit in the same area as the buttons. The iPaqs, for example, have their speaker integrated with the directional button. It you extend the screen over the entire face of the device, you'll either have to kill the speaker or find some way to shrink it, which they have as yet to do. There are other components besides the speaker with the same issue, of course, that's just the first one that sprang to mind.
As for increasing the size of the device, I think you'd be surprised how much difference an inch or two makes. It'll no longer fit in a pocket at that point, so you'd be relegated to carrying it solely in a briefcase or backpack which is a huge hassle, IMO.
Erm no, you can't. With technology where it is today in terms of miniaturization, there is no "extra" space for a bigger screen. Have you ever taken apart an iPaq? There's not exactly a ton of room in there.
Most people want a PDA form factor that will either a) fit into a pants pocket or b) fit into a sport coat's pocket easily. There's just no room in devices of that size for a bigger screen right now.
The tech's only going to get better, though, and the Sony units that have a clamshell design are a step in the right direction. In the meantime, if you're dying for a bigger screen, just get a true palmtop like the Libretto that Toshiba used to put out. Several ocmpanies still make comparable units, and they all have nice big screens.
The LOOX was announced weeks ago. Brighthand already had a forum up for it in February. Toshiba also announced their next PocketPC (XScale processor and embedded 802.11b included) last month.
A month behind the times? That's just shameful guys.
Seems to me one of the biggest problems with using one of these cards is that all of the information is available to anyone who scans the card for any part of the info on it. Say I go to a club, and instead of having a bouncer look at the ID, the club makes me run it through a card-reader of some sort. How do I know that they're just taking my age and name off the thing, and not my name, age, address, phone, blood type, and all the other info I don't think they need?
It would be cool if the cards had some kind of method to block off certain parts of the info. Like if you squeezed a spot of the card for two seconds, it would open up the address and phone stuff for the next sixty seconds. If you squeezed another spot, your medical history stuff would be available. The default state (no squeezes) would just reveal name, number and age.
Obviously someone could just squeeze it before the scan it in a surreptitious manner, but that's not really my point here. You could work the interface any way you wanted - maybe a second card that links to it and you squeeze that one, so bouncers can't make changes to their access. If you could give people a way to control the info coming off of their cards, the potential for privacy invasion (while still there) would at least be reduced.
I stole it from someone on a BBS back in the eighth grade, which was about ten years ago. Of course, that guy probably stole it from someone else...
Microsoft and the government have released a new, revised settlement agreement, according to this article at the Washington Post. Changes include removing a provision that apparently would have let Microsoft use hardware patents without compensating the owners (?!), more requirements for API disclosure by MS, and a broadening of the language of the document to make it harder for MS to weasel out of things.
Anyway, thought it might be an interesting read to go along with this story.
As a web developer, the primary difference for me between designing for the web and designing for any other publishing medium is liquidity. You never really know the size of the browser the user's going to be viewing you in, so you better make damn sure your page flows correctly to fit.
Nothing makes me madder than having to scroll back and forth across a web page because some idiot figured that since the site looked fine in his maximized browser on his 1024x768 display, he could hardcode the tables to be 1000 pixels wide and no one with have any trouble with it. Other than people using too much superfluous flair for its own sake, I think this is probably highest on the list of big problems designers make.
Take steps in the beginning of your design process to avoid the problem. Start using the percentages for widths in your table tags. Start using the ALIGN and VALIGN attributes correctly. Don't rely on FrontPage to position things for you with style properties, instead put them into properly formed table tags with the alignments set right so that the page flows when it's resized.
It really does make a huge difference.
Congress today approved a grant today towards a medical program that will implant small chip into the brain of every American child shortly after birth. Its function will be to monitor the sounds brought in by the ears and shut them off for a period of five minutes if any pirated music is heard by the implantee.
Auto insurance companies are engaged in a furious fight to stop the next version of the B-chip, which will include the capability to instantly shut down the eyes in a similar manner.
I love technology.
"The problem isn't the media, it's that most people can't find the time or more often, the interest to find out for themselves what their media is deliberately not telling them."
Actually, they're both the problem. Why does soft money make waves in the political world? Because campaigners use it to make misinforming ads, which are given heed by stupid voters. The situation requires both morons and sleazebags (and unfortunately our country has too many of both). Same goes for other media and other issues.
Of course, you can somewhat justify the average American by saying that no one has the time to go researching everything our government does. Sure, I read al-jazeera.com occasionally through an Arabic translator, but I don't keep up with what crackhead senator is raising dairy subsidies to send some pork back to his state, or who's altering environmental standards to make life easier for his rich oil buddies. Our country would grind to a halt if everyone tried to stay versed on everything that our governments make decisions about.
That's why we need journalists to help us out in this area. We need the good ones. That's what makes the bad ones suck so hard.
Personally, I find misinformation and omission much scarier than censorship. They're both far more of a threat to us here in the US.
Foucault used to say that he who controlled and influenced the way people think had the real power in the world, because he could control what is true and what is false, since the concepts really only exist in our minds. Media companies and governments know this, and not just in China.
For a modern example, think about Iran. Most Americans, when asked about Iran, would respond that they don't like the Iranian people, and think they're a bunch of terrorists. Why? The average American doesn't know any Iranians. How you can you hate them when you don't know the names of more than one or two at most? Because all you see on Television is Iranians burning flags, holding up pictures of militants, and holding guns. You never see the average Iranian farmer, or baker, or homemaker. You never see the normal, decent people of that country. Same thing goes for North Korea. People have these amazingly harsh opinions about people and countries they don't know anything about simply because of what they've been told by the media.
It works both ways too. Most of what those people see of us is our President saying mean things about them that get repeated over and over by their media, and the business end of our military photographed onto their front page. They never see the average Joe working his construction job, or Mom baking an apple pie.
So now you have two groups of people that barely know each other, but hate the other side with wild abandon.
Like I said, misinformation scares me more than censorship.
There's a bunch of other good reviews of the set in all its forms and splendor.
Digit-Life
HardOCP
AnandTech
AMDDb
Via Hardware
</karmawhoring>
They should have just released every other slashdot user up to #500k or so. God knows we can't get laid.
But the USB ID of a device is spat out by (usually) a little chip on the device. Couldn't controller manufacturers build two of the chips onto the board along with a switch to change between them? Why is this such a big deal?