I've always thought the Zire was worthless. For $20-$40 you can get a m100 in great shape that does everything the Zire does but adds 2 more buttons and a backlight.
They make great gifts too, since everyone thinks Palms are expensive. For $20 it sure beats giving them a CD.
"For me, a Palm m100 is mostly worthless. For that matter, any current Palm OS model is. I use my PDAs like a 'real computer,' it is just as useful (or perhaps even more so) than a cheap laptop."
I originally went with Palms because of the size & price: they pack more into a smaller area than any PocketPC and Palm's are half the price. Ok sure I can't play movies (until now) but I can shove it in my pocket and carry it with me everywhere without looking like a dork carrying a purse or beltcase around. My m515 in a strong aluminum case is smaller than my wallet, try doing that with a PocketPC.
I think of it like this: what good is a $500+ PocketPC I don't carry around with me because it needs a giant case?
"...then blame it on Grub if the FBI comes busting through your door."
Great idea! So after you're arrested for kiddy porn and your picture is on the front page of the local paper and the local nightly news, your friends and family disown you, and after a year in jail you finally go to trial to be found not guilty because your $10,000 lawyer argues it was really Grub and the FBI *finally* releases.
"Doesn't have to be a fast state of the art computer, just have a lot of drive space.
If you were creative you could probably come up with a 1TB server (IDE drives) and a GigE network card for under $1,500."
First, everyone on here has already said HDs are under $1/gig... make that way under ($94 shipped for 120gig), so less than $800 for the hard drives. Unless the "not state-of-the-art PC" + Gb card cost more than $200 (you can buy a freakin' 1.1ghz PC from Wal-mart for $200 so I'm sure you can do better) a 1TB server could be built for closer to $1000.
Also, if we go with the "not state-of-the-art PC" (I'm thinking 200-500mhz) is it really going to need a Gb card? I doubt it could write to the hard drives that fast (max speed of 120mB/s), a much cheaper 100mbps (max speed of 12mB/s) card and hub (a Gb hub is a lot of $$$$$ compared to 100mbps) would probably suffice, transferring 1 gB every 83 seconds is a pretty decent backup speed (43gigs/hr).
I hear people liked doing that with Windows 3.1 - sort of an instant-on feature.
Windows 3.1 was what, like 5 megs?? With modern ATA hard drives reading at upwards of 60meg/sec I'd think Windows 3.1 would load instantly anyway even without the RAMDisk.
OH wait, maybe you're right, it'd take 1/8th of a second, not quite instant-on but I'll just grab a cup of coffee while I wait.
"It was worth it to add a Gig of RAM to an old machine (PII/300) and create a 768M RAMdrive though, because when I tried to burn CDs from the hard drive at 12x it always suffered buffer underrun.... adding $100 worth of RAM to that system saved me from having to buy a whole new computer."
right, that makes sense... or you could have just bought one of the "new" (been out for 2+ years, is that new?) CD burners with burn-proof (or JustLink) technology making it IMPOSSIBLE to buffer underrun since it can actually stop recording completely and restart mid-way through.
Could have bought a 48x burner for $40 and be burning at triple the speed right now with $60 extra in your pocket to boot, but instead you're now $100 short and still burning at 12x.
Well, considering the Divx movies only need to be 320x320 to match the screen's resolution, probably an entire 2 hour movie, and that's if a Palm has the processing power to decode a DivX video. If that's not enough then you can always slip in a SD memory card.
You guys are missing the point. The Palm really was never meant to play movies, mp3s, or even display pictures, so the fact that all of those are now possible is quite amazing.
Also remember this is a seven-fold increase over the largest Palm memory size so far. Imagine if the current largest hard drive was increased seven times, 250gigs to 1.75 tera, and sold for the roughly the same price as the 250gig drive? Puts it more in perspective doesn't it?
Anyone else notice the page title is "ExtremeTech - Print Article"? Couldn't they call it something useful like "ExtremeTech - DIY Linux Media Jukebox"
It's just common little mistakes like that that make finding bookmarked pages extremely frustrating.
They're upgrading the ps2 but still leaving out vcd support? Why? That's the only reason why I haven't bought a ps2 yet, because it doesn't support vcds and most of my movie collection is vcd or divx.
Every standard dvd player includes vcd support, I really wish Sony would wise up and throw vcd support in the ps2.
just the fact that we now know the Blackboard system is flawed is enough for someone to take advantage of the system, so DMCA really didn't change anything, sure they prevented the information from being widely distributed, but now others may become curious and hack the system the same way they did.
So, in effect, DMCA really didn't do anything. Actually DMCA made it worse, since this information probably wouldn't have shown up on/. and other news organizations had DMCA not stepped in. Now there's millions more people out there who know the system is flawed, and perhaps thousands with the knowledge and determination to hack the system for (essentially) free money. I've seen kids hack systems for much less incentive, so no doubt Blackboard is very appealing.
The DMCA just fucked itself. Should have just kept DMCA out of it, let the news lauch quietly, then the owners of Blackboard could have announced a "patch" a week later. Even if there wasn't a patch some people wouldn't bother attempting to hack the system after hearing a patch was made.
those kids that were raided by the police for hacking their broadband had their computers taken, and as far as I know they were never returned, so that just goes to show you that you don't necessarily need to have illegal files for the police to take your PC.
And yes, I believe "security through obscurity" would work very well if the police did raid your place, I don't think they turn the PC on and search the network for wireless connections, they simply remove every biege box with wires protruding from them.
The left over water could be used for water injection, which may increase power and/or mileage, or perhaps the water could be used to help with cooling the engine.
From article: "Take a look at this almost-20-year-old image (left) scanned from the October 1984 issue of Byte magazine, which covered the rollout of the original IBM PC AT. If you've ever opened up your PC, the overall layout will instantly seem familiar, and you'll recognize many of the components. Note the power supply in the rear right corner, the floppies in the open bays on the right, the hard drive in the closed bay near the center, the system switches and speaker, and the card slots to the left."
But look at cars from 90 years ago! Notice the four tires, the two lights in front for night driving, and the steering wheel! How much longer must this go on!
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. When I think "legacy free" I think "major headache": USB only (new keyboard and printer time), firewire, SATA and floppy-less PCs, but the operating systems out there aren't ready.
Did you know any RAID or SCSI device must be installed using a floppy when installing XP as a fresh install? Doesn't read the CD, it specifically asks for a floppy to read the drivers. Without this you can't use any drive connected to the RAID/SCSI as the boot drive, which almost defeats the purpose of having fast SCSI or RAID controllers if the OS is installed on a slow IDE drive.
So all this talk of "Legacy Free" PCs is just a pipedream until (hopefully) the next OS support it.
The new GBA SP has a rechargeable battery, a frontlight, folds up to be incredibly small, and plays ALL GBA games for less than $100 USD locally.
The GP32 doesn't have a rechargeable battery, DOES NOT HAVE A INTERNAL LIGHT, is much larger than the GBA SP, doesn't play GBA games, and costs at least $150.
So why exactly is this so great?? It's designed to be a portable gaming unit, and there's already a better/cheaper/BRIGHTER portable gaming unit, so why did/. even bother covering the GP32?
If you want to cover something, cover this: new GPi
It's the new GP32, adding:
--16 Megs of internal memory
--operates on Linux OS: Kernel 2.4
--web browser
--multimedia player (including Divx)
--text viewer/editor program (aka word processor)
--built in Li+ rechargeable battery
--INTERNAL LIGHT
That's what slashdot should be covering, the GP32 is about 2 years too late.
I'm sure someone has already mentioned this, but a laser rifle would be great for snipers since a beam of light can not be manipulated by gravity or wind, so no more complicated shots or kick-back, just line up in the scope and pull the trigger.
Kinda takes all the mystic out of being a sniper though.
You are oh so wrong. You forget how many people/kids out there have nothing better to do than hack. How many "cheap" (less than $50) programs out there have been hacked? Remember those paid-to-surf schemes? There were lots of sits offering only a few dollars a month for many hours of surfing, and almost immediately there were automatic surfing programs that even moved the pointer.
Anyone that thinks this won't be hacked within months doesn't know the boredom facing America's PC-savvy youth and the challenge that free money presents.
I don't think Intel is locking chips to please the big business gods, I mean after all, the only PC resellers that were selling overclocked PCs were small mom-n-pop shops, and how many big businesses *really* go down to the local mom-n-pop store to buy a few hundred PCs?
No, that doesn't make sense. Could they use this as a selling point?.. Eh, maybe, but how many people out there even know what "overclocking" is, and if they did know would they even worry about it? I'd say no to that too, I don't think people are calling Dell to be reassured their new PC isn't going to be overclocked.
That only leads to one conclusion (that I can see): they must be doing this to stop that 0.1% of the public that overclocks their PC.
Businesses don't buy PCs from companies that might try to sell overclocked PCs, and the vast majority of the PC buying public don't even know what overclocking is so they're not concerned about it, so stopping overclockers seems to be the only reason they're doing this.
Well that just takes the fun out of building PCs doesn't it? Hell I might have to go back to AMD and their POS chips that crack.
Slashdot Mirror
They make great gifts too, since everyone thinks Palms are expensive. For $20 it sure beats giving them a CD.
I originally went with Palms because of the size & price: they pack more into a smaller area than any PocketPC and Palm's are half the price. Ok sure I can't play movies (until now) but I can shove it in my pocket and carry it with me everywhere without looking like a dork carrying a purse or beltcase around. My m515 in a strong aluminum case is smaller than my wallet, try doing that with a PocketPC.
I think of it like this: what good is a $500+ PocketPC I don't carry around with me because it needs a giant case?
I think it's time to sell my m515 and upgrade.
oh shit, does this mean we need to launch a vessel into the center of the earth and set-off a few nuclear explosions??
Great idea! So after you're arrested for kiddy porn and your picture is on the front page of the local paper and the local nightly news, your friends and family disown you, and after a year in jail you finally go to trial to be found not guilty because your $10,000 lawyer argues it was really Grub and the FBI *finally* releases.
Swell plan you have there.
High two-figure range sounds about right for my budget, sure beats the hell out of having to carry clothes to the wash machine.
If you were creative you could probably come up with a 1TB server (IDE drives) and a GigE network card for under $1,500."
First, everyone on here has already said HDs are under $1/gig... make that way under ($94 shipped for 120gig), so less than $800 for the hard drives. Unless the "not state-of-the-art PC" + Gb card cost more than $200 (you can buy a freakin' 1.1ghz PC from Wal-mart for $200 so I'm sure you can do better) a 1TB server could be built for closer to $1000.
Also, if we go with the "not state-of-the-art PC" (I'm thinking 200-500mhz) is it really going to need a Gb card? I doubt it could write to the hard drives that fast (max speed of 120mB/s), a much cheaper 100mbps (max speed of 12mB/s) card and hub (a Gb hub is a lot of $$$$$ compared to 100mbps) would probably suffice, transferring 1 gB every 83 seconds is a pretty decent backup speed (43gigs/hr).
Windows 3.1 was what, like 5 megs?? With modern ATA hard drives reading at upwards of 60meg/sec I'd think Windows 3.1 would load instantly anyway even without the RAMDisk.
OH wait, maybe you're right, it'd take 1/8th of a second, not quite instant-on but I'll just grab a cup of coffee while I wait.
right, that makes sense... or you could have just bought one of the "new" (been out for 2+ years, is that new?) CD burners with burn-proof (or JustLink) technology making it IMPOSSIBLE to buffer underrun since it can actually stop recording completely and restart mid-way through.
Could have bought a 48x burner for $40 and be burning at triple the speed right now with $60 extra in your pocket to boot, but instead you're now $100 short and still burning at 12x.
Well, considering the Divx movies only need to be 320x320 to match the screen's resolution, probably an entire 2 hour movie, and that's if a Palm has the processing power to decode a DivX video. If that's not enough then you can always slip in a SD memory card.
You guys are missing the point. The Palm really was never meant to play movies, mp3s, or even display pictures, so the fact that all of those are now possible is quite amazing.
Also remember this is a seven-fold increase over the largest Palm memory size so far. Imagine if the current largest hard drive was increased seven times, 250gigs to 1.75 tera, and sold for the roughly the same price as the 250gig drive? Puts it more in perspective doesn't it?
rednecks have YARDS, not LAWNS
Anyone else notice the page title is "ExtremeTech - Print Article"? Couldn't they call it something useful like "ExtremeTech - DIY Linux Media Jukebox"
It's just common little mistakes like that that make finding bookmarked pages extremely frustrating.
They're upgrading the ps2 but still leaving out vcd support? Why? That's the only reason why I haven't bought a ps2 yet, because it doesn't support vcds and most of my movie collection is vcd or divx.
Every standard dvd player includes vcd support, I really wish Sony would wise up and throw vcd support in the ps2.
just the fact that we now know the Blackboard system is flawed is enough for someone to take advantage of the system, so DMCA really didn't change anything, sure they prevented the information from being widely distributed, but now others may become curious and hack the system the same way they did.
/. and other news organizations had DMCA not stepped in. Now there's millions more people out there who know the system is flawed, and perhaps thousands with the knowledge and determination to hack the system for (essentially) free money. I've seen kids hack systems for much less incentive, so no doubt Blackboard is very appealing.
So, in effect, DMCA really didn't do anything. Actually DMCA made it worse, since this information probably wouldn't have shown up on
The DMCA just fucked itself. Should have just kept DMCA out of it, let the news lauch quietly, then the owners of Blackboard could have announced a "patch" a week later. Even if there wasn't a patch some people wouldn't bother attempting to hack the system after hearing a patch was made.
No big deal, obviously the guy didn't use his penis much any more if he couldn't feel 3rd degree burns developing on his penis.
"boffin" is the right word.
the sad thing is that he had 19" wheels and that huge wing, but getting to 60 in leisurely 8.6
The epitimy of "rice boy".
those kids that were raided by the police for hacking their broadband had their computers taken, and as far as I know they were never returned, so that just goes to show you that you don't necessarily need to have illegal files for the police to take your PC.
And yes, I believe "security through obscurity" would work very well if the police did raid your place, I don't think they turn the PC on and search the network for wireless connections, they simply remove every biege box with wires protruding from them.
The left over water could be used for water injection, which may increase power and/or mileage, or perhaps the water could be used to help with cooling the engine.
At any rate the water wouldn't need to be wasted.
Why don't you tell us what they needed, and we could identify the software that would be best.
"Take a look at this almost-20-year-old image (left) scanned from the October 1984 issue of Byte magazine, which covered the rollout of the original IBM PC AT. If you've ever opened up your PC, the overall layout will instantly seem familiar, and you'll recognize many of the components. Note the power supply in the rear right corner, the floppies in the open bays on the right, the hard drive in the closed bay near the center, the system switches and speaker, and the card slots to the left."
But look at cars from 90 years ago! Notice the four tires, the two lights in front for night driving, and the steering wheel! How much longer must this go on!
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. When I think "legacy free" I think "major headache": USB only (new keyboard and printer time), firewire, SATA and floppy-less PCs, but the operating systems out there aren't ready.
Did you know any RAID or SCSI device must be installed using a floppy when installing XP as a fresh install? Doesn't read the CD, it specifically asks for a floppy to read the drivers. Without this you can't use any drive connected to the RAID/SCSI as the boot drive, which almost defeats the purpose of having fast SCSI or RAID controllers if the OS is installed on a slow IDE drive.
So all this talk of "Legacy Free" PCs is just a pipedream until (hopefully) the next OS support it.
The GP32 doesn't have a rechargeable battery, DOES NOT HAVE A INTERNAL LIGHT, is much larger than the GBA SP, doesn't play GBA games, and costs at least $150.
So why exactly is this so great?? It's designed to be a portable gaming unit, and there's already a better/cheaper/BRIGHTER portable gaming unit, so why did /. even bother covering the GP32?
If you want to cover something, cover this: new GPi
It's the new GP32, adding:
--16 Megs of internal memory
--operates on Linux OS: Kernel 2.4
--web browser
--multimedia player (including Divx)
--text viewer/editor program (aka word processor)
--built in Li+ rechargeable battery
--INTERNAL LIGHT
That's what slashdot should be covering, the GP32 is about 2 years too late.
I'm sure someone has already mentioned this, but a laser rifle would be great for snipers since a beam of light can not be manipulated by gravity or wind, so no more complicated shots or kick-back, just line up in the scope and pull the trigger.
Kinda takes all the mystic out of being a sniper though.
but I can't discuss it, lawsuit pending.
You are oh so wrong. You forget how many people/kids out there have nothing better to do than hack. How many "cheap" (less than $50) programs out there have been hacked? Remember those paid-to-surf schemes? There were lots of sits offering only a few dollars a month for many hours of surfing, and almost immediately there were automatic surfing programs that even moved the pointer.
Anyone that thinks this won't be hacked within months doesn't know the boredom facing America's PC-savvy youth and the challenge that free money presents.
I don't think Intel is locking chips to please the big business gods, I mean after all, the only PC resellers that were selling overclocked PCs were small mom-n-pop shops, and how many big businesses *really* go down to the local mom-n-pop store to buy a few hundred PCs? No, that doesn't make sense. Could they use this as a selling point? .. Eh, maybe, but how many people out there even know what "overclocking" is, and if they did know would they even worry about it? I'd say no to that too, I don't think people are calling Dell to be reassured their new PC isn't going to be overclocked.
That only leads to one conclusion (that I can see): they must be doing this to stop that 0.1% of the public that overclocks their PC.
Businesses don't buy PCs from companies that might try to sell overclocked PCs, and the vast majority of the PC buying public don't even know what overclocking is so they're not concerned about it, so stopping overclockers seems to be the only reason they're doing this.
Well that just takes the fun out of building PCs doesn't it? Hell I might have to go back to AMD and their POS chips that crack.