What's with the Bluetooth folks? I've been hearing about this stuff for ages, yet there's so little in the way of actual products out there. What gives?
...and looked it up. Turns out they call it "ScrollPoint". You can see one here. Mine is an older model, and so doesn't look like that, isn't that color, and isn't optical. Still, looks like they do still make them.
Just for the record, for a general laptop mouse, I don't particularly like those TrackPoint ones; I prefer the touchpad kind. But as a scrolly deal, it's pretty neat. I just wonder when someone will try to put a touchpad on a regular mouse.
Obviously, to make it easier to read poorly-designed websites. Err...
Seriously, though, (folks,) I do find tend to find it useful for scrolling around wide program listings or for sites whose text column is narrow enough for my browser window, but is merely offset to the right for some vertical navigation bar or advertising column.
How long before I get a trackball embedded in my mouse?
I'm surprised it wasn't done years ago. I'm also surprised at the relative failure of the IBM TrackPoint (I think that's what they were called) mice -- a kind of sideways-saddle shaped version of the piezoelectric pencil-eraser-looking mice they like to put in their notebook keyboards, only where the wheel would otherwise be. I have one at work, and it's quite nice. Lots less *roll* *roll* *roll* *roll* when scrolling down a page; just pull it back a little and wait. Or pull it harder and wait less. (Did I just say that?) Anyway, it handles vertical and horizontal scrolling, which I find myself doing much more readily using that mouse. Oh, and there's a small button just past the TrackPoint thingy so you can do the equivalent of wheel-clicks.
The shame of it is, my company has a lot of these mice around, but no one has the drivers installed, and so the TrackPoint becomes completely useless. *Sigh*
You'd think that a gargantuan behemoth like MS would think "who cares about some snivelling little toy OS like Linux". But you'd be wrong. Remember, a young, nobody upstart (MS and DOS) shoved aside the top dog (DR and CP/M) not by being richer, or smarter, or faster, or better, but by being more alert. Gary Kildall was semi-unavailable and/or not that interested in talking with IBM, and Gates and Allen were very available and interested, and here we all are.
MS sees this whole Bazaar/Cathedral thing and it makes sense -- faster updates, more solid code, thousands of eyes, etc. It's a lot of alertness (and is thus a threat), plus it's got that magic word: FREE. But the whole premise of Bill G's life is that software should not be free -- that was his major contribution to the old Homebrew Computer Club, where everyone freely traded/borrowed (??AAs would say "stole") software. Thus, MS's dilemma: how to beat someone at their own game, when their game is completely contrary to all the rules they live by.
For further (this time, actually good) reading about MS and Linux, see this. For another possible reason MS wants to get inside Linux's head, see this -- a.k.a. "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em".
No kidding. I submitted a story about a piece of hardware that was about a hundred times more interesting than this YAMP (Yet Another Music Player(tm)) -- an autonomous robot that drives around looking for vulnerabilities (or crackers) in your network via Wi-Fi -- and it was rejected outright. What denomination of coin do you suppose is flipped to make these decisions?
Now, with that quasi-offtopic yammering out of the way...
Gateway. MP3 player. Front page of Slashdot. Hm. Does someone around here work for Gateway or something? Or own Gateway stock? Else why the blatant plug?
Someone mentioned there's no DRM; it just shows up as a drive letter. Is that supposed to be the big deal? So what? Someone already mentioned the Archos thing; a quick look-around also finds something called the Victory NEX II, which uses regular CompactFlash for storage. Which can be put in a regular CF reader. Which won't have any DRM either. Seems to me there must be many more players where this came from, too.
they dumped the OS they had to pay for in favor of the one they don't.
So what? Still makes good press. And it would make good marketing (if there were such a thing as a Linux Marketing Department). "Wow, you mean I can use the exact same stuff the fancy movie people do? And it's free?? Well goll-l-lly!"
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
-- The Bene Gesserit Litany of Fear Dune by Frank Herbert
Now technology has struck again--people are inventing new ways to make money.
How is a business method a new technology? Come to that, how is any algorithm a new technology?
In fact, lawmakers have proposed bills that would make things even worse, such as allowing sports "techniques" to be patented. Imagine pitchers paying a royalty every time they threw a forkball.
If an algorithm is patentable, then the forkball, logically, must be patentable, as must every conceivable dance, as must every way of playing a musical instrument, as must hanging toilet paper overhanded, as must touch-typing, as must anything you or anyone else ever does.
whiny littly communists. "It's too hard to make money when the other guy has a shiny new business model. Mommy, make him share!" Bah.
Ah, a troll. Never mind. For a second, I thought you actually believed what you were saying.
"mao che minh (611166)" points out that this story is a rapid-fire dupe, and gets a +5, Informative. I say the same thing (albeit in a more smartassed way) -- and even go to the trouble of self-deprecating as "obvious" -- and get a -1, Troll?? What am I trolling for, complete apathy?
I was expecting a +2, Funny, or, at worst, 0, Redundant. Are mod points being passed out in Cracker Jacks these days, or what?
(Now watch as the original modders also mod down this complaint against them.)
Who says such a system needs to be located in the cockpit? Why not under the floor? Or in a wing? Or the tail? Or why not several redunant ones in several of these locations?
Come to that, why have a cockpit at all? Computers have been good enough to take off, fly, evade dangers, and land safely all by themselves for some time now. Why have human pilots at all? Put several computers around the plane, redunantly, with auto-failover; harden them against EMP. Done! Now in order to hijack the plane, you'd have to (1) simultaneously disable all of them at once right when the plane's pointing at, and at the correct range from, what you want to hit (in order to make the plane coast into it -- could be made impossible by correctly designing the programmed route), or simultaneously hack into all of them at once (pretty difficult when there's no access to any of them). About all you could do is explode the whole plane with a large bomb (bad enough, but at least not 9/11).
"The Listenable Universe"?
"The Radioable Universe"?
"The Tune-In-Able Universe"?
"The Don't-Touch-That-Dial-able Universe"?
"The Universe We Can Sense Using This Telescope Right Here"?
I sort of assumed there was such a thing all along. Something like those "pinpression" toys with all the parallel pins that you can push on and make an imprint of your hand, only driven by actuators. Why wouldn't this work?
(Hold on...after a little Googling, I found this instance of the exact thing I'm proposing. Go and buy it, blind people! And not just for anti-spam graphics; as with any new medium, just imagine the pr0n possibilities.)
Slashdot Mirror
What's with the Bluetooth folks? I've been hearing about this stuff for ages, yet there's so little in the way of actual products out there. What gives?
It's called eBay.
Thank you, try the veal.
Clearly, they would also need to rename from "mapAmobile", as we Leftpondians don't call them mow-biles. My suggestion? "seekAcell".
Not to be confused with Sickle Cell.
...and looked it up. Turns out they call it "ScrollPoint". You can see one here. Mine is an older model, and so doesn't look like that, isn't that color, and isn't optical. Still, looks like they do still make them.
Just for the record, for a general laptop mouse, I don't particularly like those TrackPoint ones; I prefer the touchpad kind. But as a scrolly deal, it's pretty neat. I just wonder when someone will try to put a touchpad on a regular mouse.
Seriously, though, (folks,) I do find tend to find it useful for scrolling around wide program listings or for sites whose text column is narrow enough for my browser window, but is merely offset to the right for some vertical navigation bar or advertising column. I'm surprised it wasn't done years ago. I'm also surprised at the relative failure of the IBM TrackPoint (I think that's what they were called) mice -- a kind of sideways-saddle shaped version of the piezoelectric pencil-eraser-looking mice they like to put in their notebook keyboards, only where the wheel would otherwise be. I have one at work, and it's quite nice. Lots less *roll* *roll* *roll* *roll* when scrolling down a page; just pull it back a little and wait. Or pull it harder and wait less. (Did I just say that?) Anyway, it handles vertical and horizontal scrolling, which I find myself doing much more readily using that mouse. Oh, and there's a small button just past the TrackPoint thingy so you can do the equivalent of wheel-clicks.
The shame of it is, my company has a lot of these mice around, but no one has the drivers installed, and so the TrackPoint becomes completely useless. *Sigh*
It seems to be recording small snippets of news programs wherein SCO is mentioned. It also automatically puts three "thumbs downs" on each one.
You'd think that a gargantuan behemoth like MS would think "who cares about some snivelling little toy OS like Linux". But you'd be wrong. Remember, a young, nobody upstart (MS and DOS) shoved aside the top dog (DR and CP/M) not by being richer, or smarter, or faster, or better, but by being more alert. Gary Kildall was semi-unavailable and/or not that interested in talking with IBM, and Gates and Allen were very available and interested, and here we all are.
MS sees this whole Bazaar/Cathedral thing and it makes sense -- faster updates, more solid code, thousands of eyes, etc. It's a lot of alertness (and is thus a threat), plus it's got that magic word: FREE. But the whole premise of Bill G's life is that software should not be free -- that was his major contribution to the old Homebrew Computer Club, where everyone freely traded/borrowed (??AAs would say "stole") software. Thus, MS's dilemma: how to beat someone at their own game, when their game is completely contrary to all the rules they live by.
For further (this time, actually good) reading about MS and Linux, see this. For another possible reason MS wants to get inside Linux's head, see this -- a.k.a. "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em".
Call me what you will, but at least I'm no trolling AC.
Within minutes vs. within hours, I suppose. I dunno.
No kidding. I submitted a story about a piece of hardware that was about a hundred times more interesting than this YAMP (Yet Another Music Player(tm)) -- an autonomous robot that drives around looking for vulnerabilities (or crackers) in your network via Wi-Fi -- and it was rejected outright. What denomination of coin do you suppose is flipped to make these decisions?
Now, with that quasi-offtopic yammering out of the way...
Gateway. MP3 player. Front page of Slashdot. Hm. Does someone around here work for Gateway or something? Or own Gateway stock? Else why the blatant plug?
Someone mentioned there's no DRM; it just shows up as a drive letter. Is that supposed to be the big deal? So what? Someone already mentioned the Archos thing; a quick look-around also finds something called the Victory NEX II, which uses regular CompactFlash for storage. Which can be put in a regular CF reader. Which won't have any DRM either. Seems to me there must be many more players where this came from, too.
Next story, please. Move along, nothing to see.
...this new mantra of security.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
-- The Bene Gesserit Litany of Fear
Dune by Frank Herbert
...but they forgot a row in the table:
Effect on SCO:
Everyone hates them
Everyone hates them
Everyone hates them
Everyone hates them
Everyone hates them
Everyone hates them
...scornful Slashdot readers.
Now, if you want a positive repsonse, how 'bout coming up with a sound-canceling system inside the case? Then you'd have high tech and low heat.
Hang on just a gol-durn minute here!
"mao che minh (611166)" points out that this story is a rapid-fire dupe, and gets a +5, Informative. I say the same thing (albeit in a more smartassed way) -- and even go to the trouble of self-deprecating as "obvious" -- and get a -1, Troll?? What am I trolling for, complete apathy?
I was expecting a +2, Funny, or, at worst, 0, Redundant. Are mod points being passed out in Cracker Jacks these days, or what?
(Now watch as the original modders also mod down this complaint against them.)
/obvious
One trick LCDs still can't (really) do.
Who says such a system needs to be located in the cockpit? Why not under the floor? Or in a wing? Or the tail? Or why not several redunant ones in several of these locations?
Come to that, why have a cockpit at all? Computers have been good enough to take off, fly, evade dangers, and land safely all by themselves for some time now. Why have human pilots at all? Put several computers around the plane, redunantly, with auto-failover; harden them against EMP. Done! Now in order to hijack the plane, you'd have to (1) simultaneously disable all of them at once right when the plane's pointing at, and at the correct range from, what you want to hit (in order to make the plane coast into it -- could be made impossible by correctly designing the programmed route), or simultaneously hack into all of them at once (pretty difficult when there's no access to any of them). About all you could do is explode the whole plane with a large bomb (bad enough, but at least not 9/11).
- Marketecture: architecture done by someone named Mark
- Tarchitecture: the design of a roadbed
- Farkitecture: what Drew Curtis does all day
- Sarkitecture: the organization behind the guards in Tron
- Darkitecture: the buildings in Tim Burton's Batman movies, or Blade Runner
- Quarkitecture: how you wind up with five-quarked subatomic particle
- Barkitecture: secondary phloem, periderm, lenticels
- Narcitecture: planning a drug-related sting operation
- Arkitecture: how Noah built his boat
- Parkitecture: the annoying way they lay out parking structures so that there's always some sort of deficiency
(By the way, none of these are to be confused with Barkitexture, Darkitexture, etc.)"The Listenable Universe"?
"The Radioable Universe"?
"The Tune-In-Able Universe"?
"The Don't-Touch-That-Dial-able Universe"?
"The Universe We Can Sense Using This Telescope Right Here"?
I sort of assumed there was such a thing all along. Something like those "pinpression" toys with all the parallel pins that you can push on and make an imprint of your hand, only driven by actuators. Why wouldn't this work?
(Hold on...after a little Googling, I found this instance of the exact thing I'm proposing. Go and buy it, blind people! And not just for anti-spam graphics; as with any new medium, just imagine the pr0n possibilities.)