"It is probably not waterproof, but I would not fear it geting damp or even a bit of rain on the outside. It has few phsyical ports onit for junk to get inside, and no moving parts other than the keyboard."
If you get one wet AND turn it on while it is wet, what usually happens is parts of the memory get wiped. Some people have had bits of the memory go permanently bad, but that's rare. They are sturdy little bastards.
I have to plug the AlphaSmart 3000 here. I have one, and it is great. The only downside is that it isn't collapsible, so it's about 12x8 inches. If all you want to do is type, it will do that, as it has a keyboard. It holds a good amount of text (a bit over 80 pages at 80 chars wide).
The real advantage is that it gets at least 500 hours on three AA batteries. For me, that is a lifesaver, because I absolutely hate charging things and have a tendency to forget to do so (particularly while travelling).
Also handy, It can output over USB or a printer cable, and can send to any computer because it can emulate a USB keyboard and just type really frickin' fast.
I expect you want something smaller than that, as it is close to laptop size. It costs about 300 dollars, which is unfortunate.
Unfortunately, Motorola is refusing to release the specs on the chip, so you can't program your own applets for it. It's only ever good as a word-processor and a primitive calculator, but that's all many people need.
Also unfortunately, the company which makes them doesn't seem to want to make a smaller one, although it can't be too difficult. I've looking inside there: it has almost nothing in it. If they would make one with a smaller screen and a stowaway keyboard, I would be in heaven.
Re:LNUX at $1.94 - Where's the bottom?
on
Groklaw Turns One
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The difference is that the example marked flamebait started ridiculously high, immediately dropped, and then stayed level. The only reason it looks bad is that it was shown on a four-year graph and VA Software was originally wildly overrated.
I think both OJ and Microsoft are great examples of flaws and strengths in the system.
Look at OJ. The system cannot convict when done crappily. Did you ever look at the key points in the trial? The prosecutors SUCKED. It didn't matter that OJ spent a lot of money, his team screwed up tons of times, the prosecutors just screwed up tens times as often. The entire trial was botched in every way, and the result was that he wasn't convicted. In lots of past systems, horrible police-work resulted in people going to prison.
As far as Microsoft, consider whether they truly will last through everything. They've been in the system for eight years or so. Consider that this is a trial dealing with the largest software company in the world, by a fairly long shot. So, the government is careful and slow. Inside of another ten years, it will be resolved.
Yeah, it sucks that Microsoft is around for twenty years too long and OJ got off without prison time, but at least the government can't just walk in and toss someone in jail on shoddy police work or rip apart an organization at a whim.
These are examples of flaws inherent in the system, but not examples of things that should be removed from the system.
That's the trade-off in this sort of a legal system: You have a fair shot in trial and the government cannot just jump all over you, but people get away with things and it is hard to reverse abusive groups.
A better example of something that needs to be fixed and can be fixed is the way the RIAA is acting.
I hear this all the time. People tell me my speech is not so free in the USA. I live in an area that is considered ridiculously religious and conservative (until last year, it was illegal to serve alcohol at a restaurant).
Despite all this, I can discuss anything I want to. Anything. I've never run into anything I could not vocally discuss in public. Ever discussed the validity of the early things Hitler did? How about artistic suicide? Ways to commit terrorist atrocities and get away with it? Why the president is a horrible man? That recent moves have been signaling a return to McCarthyism? That socialism and communism might be an improvement? That freedom of speech is a questionable liberty? That God is an evil being? That God does not exist? That God is a liar, but fairly nice? That the majority of American laws are inappropriate? That specific American laws are inappropriate?
I've discussed everything there on one side or the other, vocally and in public, without ever suffering any repercussions. I have written up opinions on various sides, often detested sides, of many of those issues, and distributed them.
Yet, somehow, I suffer no repercussions. I hear that I have no freedom of speech, yet I still can't find anything I cannot say. If I really don't have this freedom of speech, why don't you recommend a topic for me to try bringing to the attention of people, just to see if it is acceptable?
Keeping at it is probably damn cheap. During the first run, they found out about a million stupid bugs, worked out most of the hardware and interface ideas, got a team into full swing working on it, and covered any other such one-time charges. It even has a recognized name--yes, even a scorned name is better than no name. The second edition is just an update on what they've already got. Why not release it?
"In the majority of cases the rate is 5%+ within 10 years and the exemptions for basic necessities are gone."
They usually get over 5%, but in all four states I've lived in, food has remained untaxed. I was under the impression that food sales were not taxed anywhere in the US. Or were you referring to some other basic necessity? Of food, shelter, heat, and water, only food is bought directly by the consumer; the rest are under property taxes or utilities.
Anything mainstream in the US gets glitz like you just don't want. That Army stunt is a great promo, more cool than most, but it is still just a promo.
However, the issue with game quality isn't so much that it is decreasing, as that it isn't increasing. The problem is, games are replayable. If a game this year is the same as a game from last year, plus arm-hair on the models, nobody cares. The game is As Good, but not better.
It's the same problem a lot of industries run into: all the best stuff comes out quick. The first video game was revolutionary, even if it had nothing. For a long while, everything moved in leaps and bounds. Now, most of the leaping and bounding is done, and at the same time there is tons more attention from those who are not technologically adept.
Yes, finally China is making strides towards more pollutive transportation.
After many long years of primarily using bikes, they are now charging these bikes with power from coal power plants. Once a billion or so people have these, our green goals will finally be completed and mother nature will be thoroughly defeated.
However much I love Linux and respect Linux, I just don't see how he can outstrip people like RMS and Vint Cerf for influence on the world of computing. I mean, Open Source and TCP/IP are rather more important than Linux.
If efforts are made to maintain compatibility for older versions of Windows in WINE, is there a possibility that, in a few years, Linux will be more compatible with Windows95 and Windows98 than the latest versions of the Windows OS?
Kinda strange. Right after this comment was posted, my original post dropped from a 5 to a 3. Do the mods actually think for themselves? Even besides whether the parent was right or wrong, why would it just leap around at an anonymous poster's demand?
Not trying to troll or flame, but seriously, why would the moderation just immediately respond like this?
And, on the note of flaming, why is it karma whoring to give a well-thought-out opinion, exactly? I happen to speak and write verbosely, it is my way.
That famous pic in Iwo Jima was staged. It was taken after the event was over and was completely choreographed.
Now, as people expect things to come so fast, how will we get such good pictures? There's no time for staging things, and enormously less time to just dig through all the pics and find the ones that are actually good.
Say goodbye to quality pics and hello to amateur journalism.
I remember seeing something a while ago about AMD working on a Computer-On-a-Chip system. They bought out the main developers of these, but haven't done too much with it yet.
However, the market looks to be getting ripe. With everyone already saying they will put several cores on a chip, it isn't much of a change to add some cores of other types. By having all the chips share the cache and so-such and by cutting down on the circuitry between chips, they can theoretically reduces board sizes and power costs.
It isn't enough to take the handheld market, but it could do great in the laptop market. Nobody upgrades laptops anyway.
Just think of how close their next chips will be to this: Opteron with two cores, on-board RAM controller, and mostly on-board northbridge.
Also, with NVidia doing worse in the video market, there is potential for cooperation. They already work well together, so they could go in on a chip together, NVidia doing the GPU core and AMD doing the CPU core.
Except, now the airforce has the right to do shit in our airspace when that stuff is happening.
Whether they try some fancy mid-air take-over special-ops godlike coolness, or just blow the plane to kingdom come, those no-fly zones are gonna start working soon.
Microsoft is currently threatened by a barrage of minor issues which add up to something serious when combined.
1) Lack of new products prevents sales and damages customer loyalty.
2) Severe worms damage customer loyalty, increase costs in maintenance and customer service.
3) Competing products getting stronger with OS-X on the desktop on Linux both embedded and in servers cut into what sales they would have.
4) Strong competition generates press for opposing sides, making them appear less innovative than they want to.
5) Constant lawsuits present a steady sapping on resources.
6) Constant web-popups make IE seem sad in comparison to Firebird and Opera, as well as a lack of features being painful. This detracts from their general appearance and aids competitors.
7) More people are satisfied with their current systems and are just refusing to upgrade.
8) Piracy of windows is staying widespread despite product registration, and the lack of legitimate copies is adding to the virus issue.
9) The next version of Java is looking stronger than.Net and reasonably fast, preventing their newest system from completely stealing Sun's thunder. Once again, damaging credibility.
10) Although X-Box started gaining on the other consoles finally, all the competing systems are starting to push even more for handhelds, and likely integration between the two, resulting in an aspect where the X-Box will be lacking.
11) The G5 chip is the first time that a Macintosh processor has been seen as competitive with the top Intel chips, further undermining their superiority.
12) The iTunes music store is still unrivaled, re-solidifying Macintosh as the OS for multimedia, along with programs such as FinalCut and Garage Band and products such as the iPod.
13) Governments are starting to strongly consider open standard, raising the lobbying costs for Microsoft and potentially requiring some new file formats to be supported by them.
14) OpenOffice.org shows a technically capable alternative to MS-Office. Where MS-Office was once clearly on top it may have to start fighting for its place soon. Also, the latest version of MS-Office, MS-Office XP, doesn't run on as old of hardware as OpenOffice.org, so many people with old Windows systems have an alternative upgrade line, as opposed to being locked into upgrading computer, OS, and office suite all at once.
15) Many large contracts for Linux have been seen recently, harming Microsoft's public image more.
There is other stuff, but I can't think of it at the moment.
I would say their strongest pieces at the moment for increasing sales are.Net, the X-Box, and WMA with DRM. MS-Office and Windows are still their biggest products, but they can't increase in sales very much.
Their OS is just not going to be ready before 2006, so it cannot stimulate a recovery. What they need is something to make it worth the wait..Net is that, as it has very much promise and says something about how much total change will come with their next OS release. Also,.Net can compete with Java somewhat, helping them in a buzzword cattle.
MS-Office was traditionally their big seller to tie people into their systems, but it's basically finished up. They have very little room to improve. Most of the improvements that could be of value cost more to develop than they will bring in sales (better type-setting control and similar advanced features) or will have a huge risk of damaging their current monopoly (a new office suite can have a radically new UI and be easier to use without losing customers).
X-Box, on the other hand, is totally up-and-coming and is technically superior to the competition. If they can get the X-Box2 out in a timely manner, they can get press about being innovative, they can get a rush of sales from nowhere, and they can stimulate their gaming division, giving them a third strong arm to thei
The team working on Ogg Theora has done pretty good work, and I wouldn't want them to drop their project, but collaboration would be great. As the two codecs seem to have largely different aims (Ogg Theora is low bitrate, anything compared to MPEG2 is high bitrate) they aren't even directly competing. I'm certain they both run into the same issues all the time, however, and some code sharing would help everyone out immensely.
MPEG4 is not that special at very high bitrates. MPEG4 is for low bitrates almost exclusively. This makes for small files which look good enough, but not files which look perfect.
>>>"You can head in any direction, 360 degrees. They say, 'What am I supposed to do? >>>Give me hints. Provide me service instead of just throwing me into this arena
>>I guess that in Japan, society is a lot more regimented and order-driven than in the >>west, and so they'll seek games that are similar.
>I dunno...Mario 64 is pretty `there you go - do what you want`, and that's Japanese AND it was pretty popular.
As far as which level you went to, yes. But that was only in a completely safe area where you could just run around and not worry about time or monsters. Inside each level it was very straightforward.
Slashdot Mirror
"It is probably not waterproof, but I would not fear it geting damp or even a bit of rain on the outside. It has few phsyical ports onit for junk to get inside, and no moving parts other than the keyboard."
If you get one wet AND turn it on while it is wet, what usually happens is parts of the memory get wiped. Some people have had bits of the memory go permanently bad, but that's rare. They are sturdy little bastards.
I have to plug the AlphaSmart 3000 here. I have one, and it is great. The only downside is that it isn't collapsible, so it's about 12x8 inches. If all you want to do is type, it will do that, as it has a keyboard. It holds a good amount of text (a bit over 80 pages at 80 chars wide).
The real advantage is that it gets at least 500 hours on three AA batteries. For me, that is a lifesaver, because I absolutely hate charging things and have a tendency to forget to do so (particularly while travelling).
Also handy, It can output over USB or a printer cable, and can send to any computer because it can emulate a USB keyboard and just type really frickin' fast.
I expect you want something smaller than that, as it is close to laptop size. It costs about 300 dollars, which is unfortunate.
Unfortunately, Motorola is refusing to release the specs on the chip, so you can't program your own applets for it. It's only ever good as a word-processor and a primitive calculator, but that's all many people need.
Also unfortunately, the company which makes them doesn't seem to want to make a smaller one, although it can't be too difficult. I've looking inside there: it has almost nothing in it. If they would make one with a smaller screen and a stowaway keyboard, I would be in heaven.
The difference is that the example marked flamebait started ridiculously high, immediately dropped, and then stayed level. The only reason it looks bad is that it was shown on a four-year graph and VA Software was originally wildly overrated.
I think both OJ and Microsoft are great examples of flaws and strengths in the system.
Look at OJ. The system cannot convict when done crappily. Did you ever look at the key points in the trial? The prosecutors SUCKED. It didn't matter that OJ spent a lot of money, his team screwed up tons of times, the prosecutors just screwed up tens times as often. The entire trial was botched in every way, and the result was that he wasn't convicted. In lots of past systems, horrible police-work resulted in people going to prison.
As far as Microsoft, consider whether they truly will last through everything. They've been in the system for eight years or so. Consider that this is a trial dealing with the largest software company in the world, by a fairly long shot. So, the government is careful and slow. Inside of another ten years, it will be resolved.
Yeah, it sucks that Microsoft is around for twenty years too long and OJ got off without prison time, but at least the government can't just walk in and toss someone in jail on shoddy police work or rip apart an organization at a whim.
These are examples of flaws inherent in the system, but not examples of things that should be removed from the system.
That's the trade-off in this sort of a legal system: You have a fair shot in trial and the government cannot just jump all over you, but people get away with things and it is hard to reverse abusive groups.
A better example of something that needs to be fixed and can be fixed is the way the RIAA is acting.
I hear this all the time. People tell me my speech is not so free in the USA. I live in an area that is considered ridiculously religious and conservative (until last year, it was illegal to serve alcohol at a restaurant).
Despite all this, I can discuss anything I want to. Anything. I've never run into anything I could not vocally discuss in public. Ever discussed the validity of the early things Hitler did? How about artistic suicide? Ways to commit terrorist atrocities and get away with it? Why the president is a horrible man? That recent moves have been signaling a return to McCarthyism? That socialism and communism might be an improvement? That freedom of speech is a questionable liberty? That God is an evil being? That God does not exist? That God is a liar, but fairly nice? That the majority of American laws are inappropriate? That specific American laws are inappropriate?
I've discussed everything there on one side or the other, vocally and in public, without ever suffering any repercussions. I have written up opinions on various sides, often detested sides, of many of those issues, and distributed them.
Yet, somehow, I suffer no repercussions. I hear that I have no freedom of speech, yet I still can't find anything I cannot say. If I really don't have this freedom of speech, why don't you recommend a topic for me to try bringing to the attention of people, just to see if it is acceptable?
Keeping at it is probably damn cheap. During the first run, they found out about a million stupid bugs, worked out most of the hardware and interface ideas, got a team into full swing working on it, and covered any other such one-time charges. It even has a recognized name--yes, even a scorned name is better than no name. The second edition is just an update on what they've already got. Why not release it?
"In the majority of cases the rate is 5%+ within 10 years and the exemptions for basic necessities are gone."
They usually get over 5%, but in all four states I've lived in, food has remained untaxed. I was under the impression that food sales were not taxed anywhere in the US. Or were you referring to some other basic necessity? Of food, shelter, heat, and water, only food is bought directly by the consumer; the rest are under property taxes or utilities.
I use a folding, man-power-only bike to travel a bit over two miles to school and work, although I jog regularly to stay in shape.
I do not own a car. When I need to travel further, I use mass-transit, taking the local bus into town or using Greyhound for greater distances.
Please remove you foot from your mouth, your toes are complaining about the gastric juices.
It's kinda both.
Anything mainstream in the US gets glitz like you just don't want. That Army stunt is a great promo, more cool than most, but it is still just a promo.
However, the issue with game quality isn't so much that it is decreasing, as that it isn't increasing. The problem is, games are replayable. If a game this year is the same as a game from last year, plus arm-hair on the models, nobody cares. The game is As Good, but not better.
It's the same problem a lot of industries run into: all the best stuff comes out quick. The first video game was revolutionary, even if it had nothing. For a long while, everything moved in leaps and bounds. Now, most of the leaping and bounding is done, and at the same time there is tons more attention from those who are not technologically adept.
As such, they resort to glitz and psuedo-fraud.
Yes, finally China is making strides towards more pollutive transportation.
After many long years of primarily using bikes, they are now charging these bikes with power from coal power plants. Once a billion or so people have these, our green goals will finally be completed and mother nature will be thoroughly defeated.
However much I love Linux and respect Linux, I just don't see how he can outstrip people like RMS and Vint Cerf for influence on the world of computing. I mean, Open Source and TCP/IP are rather more important than Linux.
If efforts are made to maintain compatibility for older versions of Windows in WINE, is there a possibility that, in a few years, Linux will be more compatible with Windows95 and Windows98 than the latest versions of the Windows OS?
Kinda strange. Right after this comment was posted, my original post dropped from a 5 to a 3. Do the mods actually think for themselves? Even besides whether the parent was right or wrong, why would it just leap around at an anonymous poster's demand?
Not trying to troll or flame, but seriously, why would the moderation just immediately respond like this?
And, on the note of flaming, why is it karma whoring to give a well-thought-out opinion, exactly? I happen to speak and write verbosely, it is my way.
That famous pic in Iwo Jima was staged. It was taken after the event was over and was completely choreographed.
Now, as people expect things to come so fast, how will we get such good pictures? There's no time for staging things, and enormously less time to just dig through all the pics and find the ones that are actually good.
Say goodbye to quality pics and hello to amateur journalism.
I remember seeing something a while ago about AMD working on a Computer-On-a-Chip system. They bought out the main developers of these, but haven't done too much with it yet.
However, the market looks to be getting ripe. With everyone already saying they will put several cores on a chip, it isn't much of a change to add some cores of other types. By having all the chips share the cache and so-such and by cutting down on the circuitry between chips, they can theoretically reduces board sizes and power costs.
It isn't enough to take the handheld market, but it could do great in the laptop market. Nobody upgrades laptops anyway.
Just think of how close their next chips will be to this: Opteron with two cores, on-board RAM controller, and mostly on-board northbridge.
Also, with NVidia doing worse in the video market, there is potential for cooperation. They already work well together, so they could go in on a chip together, NVidia doing the GPU core and AMD doing the CPU core.
Damn, that'd be sweet.
"even though the media wouldn't know an Opteron or a dual-core CPU if one jumped up on their desk and did the tap number from 42nd street"
Honestly, if a CPU did a tap number on my desk, I'd be pretty confused about what it was as well.
Except, now the airforce has the right to do shit in our airspace when that stuff is happening.
Whether they try some fancy mid-air take-over special-ops godlike coolness, or just blow the plane to kingdom come, those no-fly zones are gonna start working soon.
Microsoft is currently threatened by a barrage of minor issues which add up to something serious when combined.
.Net and reasonably fast, preventing their newest system from completely stealing Sun's thunder. Once again, damaging credibility.
.Net, the X-Box, and WMA with DRM. MS-Office and Windows are still their biggest products, but they can't increase in sales very much.
.Net is that, as it has very much promise and says something about how much total change will come with their next OS release. Also, .Net can compete with Java somewhat, helping them in a buzzword cattle.
1) Lack of new products prevents sales and damages customer loyalty.
2) Severe worms damage customer loyalty, increase costs in maintenance and customer service.
3) Competing products getting stronger with OS-X on the desktop on Linux both embedded and in servers cut into what sales they would have.
4) Strong competition generates press for opposing sides, making them appear less innovative than they want to.
5) Constant lawsuits present a steady sapping on resources.
6) Constant web-popups make IE seem sad in comparison to Firebird and Opera, as well as a lack of features being painful. This detracts from their general appearance and aids competitors.
7) More people are satisfied with their current systems and are just refusing to upgrade.
8) Piracy of windows is staying widespread despite product registration, and the lack of legitimate copies is adding to the virus issue.
9) The next version of Java is looking stronger than
10) Although X-Box started gaining on the other consoles finally, all the competing systems are starting to push even more for handhelds, and likely integration between the two, resulting in an aspect where the X-Box will be lacking.
11) The G5 chip is the first time that a Macintosh processor has been seen as competitive with the top Intel chips, further undermining their superiority.
12) The iTunes music store is still unrivaled, re-solidifying Macintosh as the OS for multimedia, along with programs such as FinalCut and Garage Band and products such as the iPod.
13) Governments are starting to strongly consider open standard, raising the lobbying costs for Microsoft and potentially requiring some new file formats to be supported by them.
14) OpenOffice.org shows a technically capable alternative to MS-Office. Where MS-Office was once clearly on top it may have to start fighting for its place soon. Also, the latest version of MS-Office, MS-Office XP, doesn't run on as old of hardware as OpenOffice.org, so many people with old Windows systems have an alternative upgrade line, as opposed to being locked into upgrading computer, OS, and office suite all at once.
15) Many large contracts for Linux have been seen recently, harming Microsoft's public image more.
There is other stuff, but I can't think of it at the moment.
I would say their strongest pieces at the moment for increasing sales are
Their OS is just not going to be ready before 2006, so it cannot stimulate a recovery. What they need is something to make it worth the wait.
MS-Office was traditionally their big seller to tie people into their systems, but it's basically finished up. They have very little room to improve. Most of the improvements that could be of value cost more to develop than they will bring in sales (better type-setting control and similar advanced features) or will have a huge risk of damaging their current monopoly (a new office suite can have a radically new UI and be easier to use without losing customers).
X-Box, on the other hand, is totally up-and-coming and is technically superior to the competition. If they can get the X-Box2 out in a timely manner, they can get press about being innovative, they can get a rush of sales from nowhere, and they can stimulate their gaming division, giving them a third strong arm to thei
We now have an elaborate "tag, your it" game with costumes.
For some reason, the Dirac codec was triple licensed. On the Sourceforge page it says it is under the GPL, MPL, and LGPL.
The team working on Ogg Theora has done pretty good work, and I wouldn't want them to drop their project, but collaboration would be great. As the two codecs seem to have largely different aims (Ogg Theora is low bitrate, anything compared to MPEG2 is high bitrate) they aren't even directly competing. I'm certain they both run into the same issues all the time, however, and some code sharing would help everyone out immensely.
This is total crap. Xvid can be interleaved with audio just fine and is enormously better than just a series of JPEGs.
The parent is completely full of crap.
MPEG4 is not that special at very high bitrates. MPEG4 is for low bitrates almost exclusively. This makes for small files which look good enough, but not files which look perfect.
blog = web log
What is slashdot a log of?
>>>"You can head in any direction, 360 degrees. They say, 'What am I supposed to do?
>>>Give me hints. Provide me service instead of just throwing me into this arena
>>I guess that in Japan, society is a lot more regimented and order-driven than in the
>>west, and so they'll seek games that are similar.
>I dunno...Mario 64 is pretty `there you go - do what you want`, and that's Japanese AND it was pretty popular.
As far as which level you went to, yes. But that was only in a completely safe area where you could just run around and not worry about time or monsters. Inside each level it was very straightforward.