I believe USB masters can refuse to provide power altogether, or provide only a limited amount of power. Many hubs do that if you don't power them. They will still work fine with self-powered disk drives or printers.
The reason these PDAs will never make it mainstream is due to the HUGE program base that is out for Palms and PocketPC..
I think that's a misperception. Yes, there are a lot of people selling software for Palm and PocketPC, but most of that is for giving you functionality that Linux users take for granted.
Something like the Yopy (or even the Zaurus) gives you things like ssh, terminal emulation, rsync, 802.1x, WiFi apps, image viewers, editors, huge numbers of special purpose applications, plenty of games, etc out of the box or via a free download. Even if you paid hundreds of dollars for add-on Palm or PocketPC software, you couldn't come close--many of those applications have never been ported to Palm or PocketPC and would be a major project to port to those platforms if anybody tried.
What the Palm does well--better than any Linux PDA--is its built-in apps. But that's pretty much all it does well.
Re:Bit pricy still - but competitive for it's mark
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YOPY Arrives
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· Score: 3, Informative
I'll stick with my $195 backlit Clie that I got from Circuit City
No question, the Clie is a great deal for a basic PDA with a nice screen. But none of the PalmOS devices are particularly good for developing custom applications for because their OS is so different from everything else (oddball memory management, database as the primary storage model, a GUI toolkit that's different from everything else).
And yes, I do realize that making these things are not exactly cheap, but $400+ dollars for those specs - from an unproven manufacturer?
The Yopy has been on the market for several years and is apparently fairly popular in Korea. But the beauty is, it really doesn't matter whether the manufacturer is obscure or not: the thing runs standard Linux and X11, so you know exactly what you are getting. Furthermore, should G.MATE disappear, your investment in the software isn't lost because you can just run it on an iPaq or some other Linux/X11 handheld.
As for the price, you pay $499 for a Yopy with WiFi, which is pretty much the same you pay for a Tungsten C. For the Tungsten C, I think that's overpriced, because PalmOS really has a hard time taking advantage of the 400MHz ARM, 64Mbytes of memory, and WiFi. In contrast, the Yopy makes sense: there are lots of Linux applications for which its compute power makes sense, and all that needs to be done to run them on the Yopy is to recompile them.
Send a link to something about these decades-old keyboards you're talking about, because I am confused.
Here, for example. These kinds of keyboards have been used forever in industrial automation. Note that they are flat, and they require very little pressure, just like the TouchStream thing.
If you are curious about what it takes to type on these keyboards at a reasonable speed, perhaps you could print out the key layout and mock type -- not for accuracy, just speed.
Thanks, but I don't want to repeat the experience; I have used those kinds of light-touch keyboards more than enough in the past.
A simpler way of experiencing the same kind of interface is to tap away on the on-screen keyboard on a Tablet PC (if yours lets you adjust the touch sufficiently well).
But it is the gesturing that makes the ZF typing worth it for me. Except on the keyboards with that stupid eraser-J-key mouse peg thing, nothing lets you do all your mousing without removing your hand from the keyboard, even if you are left-handed.
Actually, the most sensible keyboard/mouse combo is probably one with a trackball under the spacebar: it's efficient, cheap, and intuitive. The IBM TrackPoint is efficient and cheap, but it's not very intuitive at first, which is why a lot of people hate it.
As for gestures, I prefer keyboard chords and keyboard/mouse chords: they would seem to give me, if anything, more possible combinations than any gesture recognizer, they are 100% reliable, and they let me use whatever keyboard I like.
I think the TouchStream stuff is a technology in search of a problem.
looks a lot better than the Zaurus
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YOPY Arrives
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· Score: 3, Informative
This looks great. I just ordered one.
I have a Zaurus and it has generally been a disappointment. The built-in applications are not all that good, and its use of Qt/Embedded makes it very difficult to port most Linux GUI software to it--you have to spend time learning Qt/Embedded. I find the Zaurus mostly useful as a little wireless terminal and music player for around the house, not as a PDA.
The Yopy looks like it gets it right: standard Linux with X11. Note that G.MATE also first tried to use some other embedded window system and then saw the light.
Also, the keyboard on the Yopy looks like it's more functional to me than what the Zaurus has. The Zaurus keyboard feels nice, but the sliding mechanism is kind of clunky. On the Yopy, it's right there.
The price seems pretty much in line with the new Zaurus, the PPC, and Palm handhelds, and the Yopy just seems like a nice machine.
simply because certain hardware manufacturers utterly refuse to support anything other than Windows."
Just pick your hardware manufacturers more carefully. There is plenty of analog and digital I/O boards for PCs that have Linux support. Even better, Linux is very popular on embedded systems (like PC104), so you don't even need a whole desktop PC but can use a small, embedded PC running Linux, together with hardware that comes with Linux drivers.
It is also my experience that manufacturers that ship Windows-only hardware are generally substandard. They probably don't support Linux because they are very tight on resources. If they don't give you low-level documentation, it's probably because they don't have it. And you end up between a rock and a hard place with that kind of hardware when VB wants you to upgrade your OS and their proprietary Windows driver won't work anymore.
UNIX itself has a very long tradition for experimental applications, so if there is nothing for Linux, consider getting a cheap Sun workstation with hardware that is supported under Solaris. That will still work a lot better than the Windows stuff, and it will interoperate nicely with Linux machines.
If you absolutely must do something on Windows, use Python, Perl, and/or wxWindows rather than VB. CygWin is also great. That way, your developers will acquire open source and Linux expertise and won't be locked into the Windows upgrade treadmill.
So, while occasionally some cheap peace of Windows hardware may seem alluring, if you just look around a bit more, you'll probably find something at least as good or better for Linux.
To get a better idea about life on Mars, we really need a robotic sample return mission. Such missions are planned for the near future. Having samples returned should make it much easier to settle the question of whether there is life on Mars.
With sample return mission, we can also afford to do things like look for DNA, RNA, and proteins. That would be impractical and too high risk to do with just a robotic lander, but it would be cheap and easy to perform those tests on returned samples.
I have. Except for the gestural input, these kinds of keyboards are decades old. They used to be used on cheap PCs. As you may have noticed, they haven't caught on widely, even though they are cheaper, and that's because they are not very good for typing on.
The force to overcome the springs and such is thousands of times more than simply RELAXING the finger and letting it drop onto the pad. [...] As far as the stress involved on the fingers/hands, I have played piano for 17 years, and that is infinitely more forceful than this keyboard, and I am perfectly fine (I think).
There are several forces at work here. The piano gets it right: you use a lot of force to push down the keys, which helps you play fast and accurately, and the keyboard cushions it, which is why you are still fine after 17 years. That's roughly the way computer keyboards work at well. The "ZeroForce" gets it wrong: because it doesn't cushion your fingers, you have three choices: either you hit a hard surface with a lot of force, which is uncomfortable, or you use a light touch, which slows you down, or you use opposing muscles to be both fast and avoid hitting the surface too hard, which is more effort and strain. Whichever way you choose, you lose something relative to a traditional keyboard.
SCO thinks that if they catch someone in the open source community doing something bad, they somehow get compensation from the whole community. That would work if SCO faced a company like Microsoft or IBM because the entire company is responsible for the entire product. If you catch Microsoft or IBM with their hand in the cookie jar, they are in trouble.
But it's completely inapplicable to open source. Linux isn't a single legal entity. If SCO actually manages to identify some component of Linux that violates their intellectual property (which still seems doubtful), that component will just get replaced by another open source component.
SCO's thinking on intellectual property is as outdated as their software. Legal strategies that worked 20 years ago just don't work today against open source. SCO just can't win this one. At best, they can do a little damage, and manipulate their stock price temporarily.
would the mere allegation of such conditions warrant the ending of distributing Linux under the GPL?
It means exactly what it says: you cannot redistribute the code as long as it infringes patents or other rights. And that is what it is intended to mean. The idea is to keep companies like SCO from trying to charge for open source software. The consequence is that if such problems crop up, you have to address them before you redistribute the code. And that's just what you should do.
All I know is this is a serious issue for Linux and just the accusations of source theft will cause havoc.
It is not a serious issue at all. What it means is that when SCO finally coughs up pieces of code that they consider offending, that code will probably just get removed from Linux distributions (it's easier to remove it than to engage in long legal arguments).
Even in a hypothetical worst case scenario, Linux distributions could just switch to another kernel that's unrelated to the Linux kernel. Either way, SCO will get almost nothing out of this: Linux will remain as a competitor and SCO will not get any licensing fees under any circumstances. The best they might hope for is some money from IBM in the very unlikely event that IBM actually did screw up.
The TouchStream products work with a much better technology than springs, levers and rubber pads: gravity.
At issue isn't what makes your finger go down, at issue is what makes it stop and makes it go up again. If your finger moves fast and hits a solid surface, it will experience a lot of acceleration (well, deceleration, actually). It is just like running into a brick wall. It is that effect that all those springs, levers, and rubber pads are designed to reduce.
you don't 'strike' the keys anymore, you simply lift the finger and let it fall back. Thus you regain all of the energy (except for the losses with your joints, of course;)
Even if we accept your naive view of biomechanics, you are saying that lifting something against gravity doesn't require any force?
In any case, most of the mass that moves when you move your fingers is in your forearms; gravity isn't going to make that go anywhere. What you think of as "gravity" when you try typing "without force" is your fingers return to equilibrium position. You can see that because it basically works the same way when you turn your hands around and you try typing against the underside of a horizontal surface. But if you try typing at any reasonable speed, you need to use your muscles to cause those movements to go faster.
You are still assuming that by getting rid of the springs, you reduce the force and work. But the opposite is true: when you type on a surface, your fingers experience more force and you need to perform more work than if you type on a regular computer keyboard.
As far as I'm aware, there are no passive IR devices avialable. Secondary to that is the issue of practicality. How do you propose to produce a flat
Why do these things need to be passive or flat? First of all, if you use IrDA, people can use their existing phones and handhelds for some transactions. Second, you can make these things into key fobs, just like some banks already are offering credit cards in key fob format.
Still, I don't even see any big problem with making a credit-card sized IrDA device these days. You can integrate a battery, and an IR emitter/receiver does not have to be thick. An almost credit card-sized battery can hold a lot of charge, longer than the card is likely to be valid for.
I'm sure they will provide a decent system - because if not, they will have to foot the bill.
That's a bad bet. When the banks screw up on picking technology, one way or another, the customers pay. For individual screwups, it takes a long time to get one's money back. And the overall losses are recouped through higher fees.
What makes you think you'll come anywhere near 100+ WPM on the TouchStream keyboards? And what good is 100+ WPM anyway if you ruin your hands in the process?
You can choose the silicone keyboards. Another choice is quiet mechanical keyboards. There are a bunch of companies that make those, for example, this one. Untried, expensive, and oddball technology like the TouchStream would be at the bottom of my list of things to try.
data rates as high as 1Megabit/sec over a distance of 20 centimeters
If the action of placing the card close to the reader is supposed to indicate payment, that's too far and invites both security problems and just accidental mixups.
I think IR is actually better suited to these kinds of applications. IrDA already exists, it's on most devices, and it's much more secure. Some businesses are already using it for communicating with PDAs that people bring in (including Sony Theaters).
Yeah right. So hydrogen must be used inspite of it being all of: a) inefficient b) ncredibly expensive c) dangerous d) incredibly bulky e) unsuitable for cars f) unsuitable for aeroplanes g) energy intensive to make (less than 20%)
Except for the "incredibly expensive" part, those things are true. That's why the people actually serious about a hydrogen economy aren't proposing to necessarily use it to run cars or airplanes directly, or to derive it from nuclear energy. Solar generation of hydrogen is actually even less efficient than 20% in most serious proposals, but it's also cheap.
In a sensible hydrogen economy, hydrogen is almost exclusively a bulk energy storage and transport medium. It's what makes exploiting solar energy feasible and cost effective. It means tapping a small percentage of a huge amount of otherwise unused, clean energy. And 20% of a large enough quantity is enough to satisfy our energy needs. That's the point behind a hydrogen economy.
No, I just find it funny that people put so much stock in a conclusion that has no foundation besides their own hackneyed conspiracy theories about big business.
Where did I allege "conspiracy"? The Bush folks are quite open about their economic policies. The real question is why people like you keep electing people like Bush even though they are so forthright about what they are doing.
All logic is presuppositional; but the really egregious circular arguments are amusing. --- International Government: Nowhere left to run from bad laws ---
I think you'd be better off and pay a lot less money by getting one of these. CompUSA has them ($40-60). Silent and waterproof. And they are cushioned and springy--not as nice as a real keyboard but acceptable.
Yaknow, it's great that MS lost and all, but when Linux wins for no more reason than jingoism, everyone loses.
Well, as others have pointed out, it wasn't "jingoism" but rational decision making.
But even if it were jingoism, so what? It would still pale in comparison to the jingoism the US government and US companies display in procurement (of course, all that US jingoism doesn't translate into a positive trade balance, but you can't fault Americans for not giving it a good shot).
Just remember: "Buy American" and "Freedom Fries".
Zero force typing is a myth. When you type, whether on a flat surface or a keyboard, your fingers at some point need to change directions (move up/down, etc.). The forces to bring that about either come from your own muscles or from the keyboard.
Normal keyboards are carefully designed to cushion the strike and let you recover energy to make your finger go up again after going down. That's what all those little springs, levers, and rubber pads are for in your keyboard. A flat surface has none of those.
The difference is similar to jumping barefoot on concrete vs. jumping barefoot on a trampoline. Which would you rather do? Keyboards basically give you a carefully designed trampoline for each finger, and that's good.
Linus didn't copy anything, there are no patents, and he was under no contract with SCO. SCO doesn't have a legal claim, end-of-story. If they cook up some bogus claims then one can address them when they actually come forward with them. Until then, there is no point in wasting any time on it. Slashdot should probably stop posting stories about this as well. It's of no relevance to anything.
And your point is what exactly? Am I supposed to change my "presuppositions" just because some corporate-friendly fool became president? Nuclear energy for generating hydrogen didn't make sense before Bush came to power and it still doesn't make sense.
a) making hydrogen from water is really inefficient (commercial production is done from methane, because it's wayyyy easier/cheaper/less energy)
Of course it's cheaper. It's even cheaper if you burn the methane directly. But we are asking: how can we make energy without burning fossil fuels?
The value of hydrogen is that it gives us an efficient means of storing and transporting electricity derived from solar energy. That makes solar energy practical. Even if the conversion from solar energy into hydrogen is not particularly efficient in terms of energy, you can generate huge amounts of hydrogen that way fairly cheaply.
So, you (and Bush) are kind of missing the point. We don't want to switch to hydrogen because we like hydrogen better or because of its properties as a fuel, we want to switch to hydrogen because it makes solar energy practical. If you aren't going to go solar and instead are going to build lots of nuclear power plants, you might as well just stick with plain electricity.
Hydrogen embrittles most metals, escapes incredibly easily, is explosive, and diffuses incredibly quickly; liquid hydrogen has an annoying habit of condensing oxygen from the air- liquid oxygen forms dangerous explosives with quite a few common materials- such as tarmac- it's a contact explosive; you walk on it- well, you wouldn't want to
Sure, hydrogen is "dangerous" in that it can result in things blowing up. So is oil. The difference is that if a hydrogen tanker blows up, that's all that happens: there is no significant environmental damage.
Lots of people talk about hydrogen powered vehicles. With current technology (and nobody has done better in about 30 years of research), your fuel tank would have to be 10x bigger than it is now.
Hydrogen may or may not be a useful fuel for cars, but that is not the point behind a hydrogen economy. The point behind a hydrogen economy is to let us generate and transport huge amounts of clean, renewable energy across the globe, in regions of the world that are now completely unproductive. You may well end up using hydrogen to charge up a battery for a more conventional electric vehicle.
Renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, are emissions-free. But the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow
One of the main benefits of a hydrogen economy is that you can generate hydrogen cleanly and efficiently in places where there is a lot of sunshine (and access to water) and ship the hydrogen safely to places that need it. Just like oil, only safer, more environmentally friendly, and renewable. And the US has lots of regions that are good for that kind of solar generation of hydrogen.
The Bush administration and Senate Republicans want to give billions of taxpayer dollars to the nuclear industry to make high-temperature, gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs),
I'd prefer greenhouse gases to nuclear waste. Greenhouse gases may end up causing lots of devastation, but they probably go away within a matter of centuries. Nuclear waste poses a lethal risk for tens of thousands of years and can be used for creating dirty bombs and other mischief.
I get the feeling that Bush administration policies can largely explained as using popular issues ("the environment", "national security", etc.) as an excuse to transfer large amounts of government subsidies to big donors.
Likewise, it's probably best to migrate away from Unix since Novell could still bring up infringement claims.
You mean, we should be using a kernel that was developed independently from UNIX but is based on an open, standard POSIX-compliant API? Like Linux, for example?
HuRD or Minix are probably the best alternatives.
With a lot of work, the HURD could be turned into an alternative to Linux. Minix is a toy. But there are other choices: Darwin and the BSD kernels, for example.
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I believe USB masters can refuse to provide power altogether, or provide only a limited amount of power. Many hubs do that if you don't power them. They will still work fine with self-powered disk drives or printers.
The reason these PDAs will never make it mainstream is due to the HUGE program base that is out for Palms and PocketPC..
I think that's a misperception. Yes, there are a lot of people selling software for Palm and PocketPC, but most of that is for giving you functionality that Linux users take for granted.
Something like the Yopy (or even the Zaurus) gives you things like ssh, terminal emulation, rsync, 802.1x, WiFi apps, image viewers, editors, huge numbers of special purpose applications, plenty of games, etc out of the box or via a free download. Even if you paid hundreds of dollars for add-on Palm or PocketPC software, you couldn't come close--many of those applications have never been ported to Palm or PocketPC and would be a major project to port to those platforms if anybody tried.
What the Palm does well--better than any Linux PDA--is its built-in apps. But that's pretty much all it does well.
I'll stick with my $195 backlit Clie that I got from Circuit City
No question, the Clie is a great deal for a basic PDA with a nice screen. But none of the PalmOS devices are particularly good for developing custom applications for because their OS is so different from everything else (oddball memory management, database as the primary storage model, a GUI toolkit that's different from everything else).
And yes, I do realize that making these things are not exactly cheap, but $400+ dollars for those specs - from an unproven manufacturer?
The Yopy has been on the market for several years and is apparently fairly popular in Korea. But the beauty is, it really doesn't matter whether the manufacturer is obscure or not: the thing runs standard Linux and X11, so you know exactly what you are getting. Furthermore, should G.MATE disappear, your investment in the software isn't lost because you can just run it on an iPaq or some other Linux/X11 handheld.
As for the price, you pay $499 for a Yopy with WiFi, which is pretty much the same you pay for a Tungsten C. For the Tungsten C, I think that's overpriced, because PalmOS really has a hard time taking advantage of the 400MHz ARM, 64Mbytes of memory, and WiFi. In contrast, the Yopy makes sense: there are lots of Linux applications for which its compute power makes sense, and all that needs to be done to run them on the Yopy is to recompile them.
Send a link to something about these decades-old keyboards you're talking about, because I am confused.
Here, for example. These kinds of keyboards have been used forever in industrial automation. Note that they are flat, and they require very little pressure, just like the TouchStream thing.
If you are curious about what it takes to type on these keyboards at a reasonable speed, perhaps you could print out the key layout and mock type -- not for accuracy, just speed.
Thanks, but I don't want to repeat the experience; I have used those kinds of light-touch keyboards more than enough in the past.
A simpler way of experiencing the same kind of interface is to tap away on the on-screen keyboard on a Tablet PC (if yours lets you adjust the touch sufficiently well).
But it is the gesturing that makes the ZF typing worth it for me. Except on the keyboards with that stupid eraser-J-key mouse peg thing, nothing lets you do all your mousing without removing your hand from the keyboard, even if you are left-handed.
Actually, the most sensible keyboard/mouse combo is probably one with a trackball under the spacebar: it's efficient, cheap, and intuitive. The IBM TrackPoint is efficient and cheap, but it's not very intuitive at first, which is why a lot of people hate it.
As for gestures, I prefer keyboard chords and keyboard/mouse chords: they would seem to give me, if anything, more possible combinations than any gesture recognizer, they are 100% reliable, and they let me use whatever keyboard I like.
I think the TouchStream stuff is a technology in search of a problem.
This looks great. I just ordered one.
I have a Zaurus and it has generally been a disappointment. The built-in applications are not all that good, and its use of Qt/Embedded makes it very difficult to port most Linux GUI software to it--you have to spend time learning Qt/Embedded. I find the Zaurus mostly useful as a little wireless terminal and music player for around the house, not as a PDA.
The Yopy looks like it gets it right: standard Linux with X11. Note that G.MATE also first tried to use some other embedded window system and then saw the light.
Also, the keyboard on the Yopy looks like it's more functional to me than what the Zaurus has. The Zaurus keyboard feels nice, but the sliding mechanism is kind of clunky. On the Yopy, it's right there.
The price seems pretty much in line with the new Zaurus, the PPC, and Palm handhelds, and the Yopy just seems like a nice machine.
simply because certain hardware manufacturers utterly refuse to support anything other than Windows."
Just pick your hardware manufacturers more carefully. There is plenty of analog and digital I/O boards for PCs that have Linux support. Even better, Linux is very popular on embedded systems (like PC104), so you don't even need a whole desktop PC but can use a small, embedded PC running Linux, together with hardware that comes with Linux drivers.
It is also my experience that manufacturers that ship Windows-only hardware are generally substandard. They probably don't support Linux because they are very tight on resources. If they don't give you low-level documentation, it's probably because they don't have it. And you end up between a rock and a hard place with that kind of hardware when VB wants you to upgrade your OS and their proprietary Windows driver won't work anymore.
UNIX itself has a very long tradition for experimental applications, so if there is nothing for Linux, consider getting a cheap Sun workstation with hardware that is supported under Solaris. That will still work a lot better than the Windows stuff, and it will interoperate nicely with Linux machines.
If you absolutely must do something on Windows, use Python, Perl, and/or wxWindows rather than VB. CygWin is also great. That way, your developers will acquire open source and Linux expertise and won't be locked into the Windows upgrade treadmill.
So, while occasionally some cheap peace of Windows hardware may seem alluring, if you just look around a bit more, you'll probably find something at least as good or better for Linux.
To get a better idea about life on Mars, we really need a robotic sample return mission. Such missions are planned for the near future. Having samples returned should make it much easier to settle the question of whether there is life on Mars.
With sample return mission, we can also afford to do things like look for DNA, RNA, and proteins. That would be impractical and too high risk to do with just a robotic lander, but it would be cheap and easy to perform those tests on returned samples.
My advice, don't knock it til you try it.
I have. Except for the gestural input, these kinds of keyboards are decades old. They used to be used on cheap PCs. As you may have noticed, they haven't caught on widely, even though they are cheaper, and that's because they are not very good for typing on.
The force to overcome the springs and such is thousands of times more than simply RELAXING the finger and letting it drop onto the pad. [...] As far as the stress involved on the fingers/hands, I have played piano for 17 years, and that is infinitely more forceful than this keyboard, and I am perfectly fine (I think).
There are several forces at work here. The piano gets it right: you use a lot of force to push down the keys, which helps you play fast and accurately, and the keyboard cushions it, which is why you are still fine after 17 years. That's roughly the way computer keyboards work at well. The "ZeroForce" gets it wrong: because it doesn't cushion your fingers, you have three choices: either you hit a hard surface with a lot of force, which is uncomfortable, or you use a light touch, which slows you down, or you use opposing muscles to be both fast and avoid hitting the surface too hard, which is more effort and strain. Whichever way you choose, you lose something relative to a traditional keyboard.
SCO thinks that if they catch someone in the open source community doing something bad, they somehow get compensation from the whole community. That would work if SCO faced a company like Microsoft or IBM because the entire company is responsible for the entire product. If you catch Microsoft or IBM with their hand in the cookie jar, they are in trouble.
But it's completely inapplicable to open source. Linux isn't a single legal entity. If SCO actually manages to identify some component of Linux that violates their intellectual property (which still seems doubtful), that component will just get replaced by another open source component.
SCO's thinking on intellectual property is as outdated as their software. Legal strategies that worked 20 years ago just don't work today against open source. SCO just can't win this one. At best, they can do a little damage, and manipulate their stock price temporarily.
would the mere allegation of such conditions warrant the ending of distributing Linux under the GPL?
.
It means exactly what it says: you cannot redistribute the code as long as it infringes patents or other rights. And that is what it is intended to mean. The idea is to keep companies like SCO from trying to charge for open source software. The consequence is that if such problems crop up, you have to address them before you redistribute the code. And that's just what you should do.
All I know is this is a serious issue for Linux and just the accusations of source theft will cause havoc.
It is not a serious issue at all. What it means is that when SCO finally coughs up pieces of code that they consider offending, that code will probably just get removed from Linux distributions (it's easier to remove it than to engage in long legal arguments).
Even in a hypothetical worst case scenario, Linux distributions could just switch to another kernel that's unrelated to the Linux kernel. Either way, SCO will get almost nothing out of this: Linux will remain as a competitor and SCO will not get any licensing fees under any circumstances. The best they might hope for is some money from IBM in the very unlikely event that IBM actually did screw up
The TouchStream products work with a much better technology than springs, levers and rubber pads: gravity.
;)
At issue isn't what makes your finger go down, at issue is what makes it stop and makes it go up again. If your finger moves fast and hits a solid surface, it will experience a lot of acceleration (well, deceleration, actually). It is just like running into a brick wall. It is that effect that all those springs, levers, and rubber pads are designed to reduce.
you don't 'strike' the keys anymore, you simply lift the finger and let it fall back. Thus you regain all of the energy (except for the losses with your joints, of course
Even if we accept your naive view of biomechanics, you are saying that lifting something against gravity doesn't require any force?
In any case, most of the mass that moves when you move your fingers is in your forearms; gravity isn't going to make that go anywhere. What you think of as "gravity" when you try typing "without force" is your fingers return to equilibrium position. You can see that because it basically works the same way when you turn your hands around and you try typing against the underside of a horizontal surface. But if you try typing at any reasonable speed, you need to use your muscles to cause those movements to go faster.
You are still assuming that by getting rid of the springs, you reduce the force and work. But the opposite is true: when you type on a surface, your fingers experience more force and you need to perform more work than if you type on a regular computer keyboard.
As far as I'm aware, there are no passive IR devices avialable. Secondary to that is the issue of practicality. How do you propose to produce a flat
Why do these things need to be passive or flat? First of all, if you use IrDA, people can use their existing phones and handhelds for some transactions. Second, you can make these things into key fobs, just like some banks already are offering credit cards in key fob format.
Still, I don't even see any big problem with making a credit-card sized IrDA device these days. You can integrate a battery, and an IR emitter/receiver does not have to be thick. An almost credit card-sized battery can hold a lot of charge, longer than the card is likely to be valid for.
I'm sure they will provide a decent system - because if not, they will have to foot the bill.
That's a bad bet. When the banks screw up on picking technology, one way or another, the customers pay. For individual screwups, it takes a long time to get one's money back. And the overall losses are recouped through higher fees.
What makes you think you'll come anywhere near 100+ WPM on the TouchStream keyboards? And what good is 100+ WPM anyway if you ruin your hands in the process?
You can choose the silicone keyboards. Another choice is quiet mechanical keyboards. There are a bunch of companies that make those, for example, this one. Untried, expensive, and oddball technology like the TouchStream would be at the bottom of my list of things to try.
data rates as high as 1Megabit/sec over a distance of 20 centimeters
If the action of placing the card close to the reader is supposed to indicate payment, that's too far and invites both security problems and just accidental mixups.
I think IR is actually better suited to these kinds of applications. IrDA already exists, it's on most devices, and it's much more secure. Some businesses are already using it for communicating with PDAs that people bring in (including Sony Theaters).
Yeah right. So hydrogen must be used inspite of it being all of: a) inefficient b) ncredibly expensive c) dangerous d) incredibly bulky e) unsuitable for cars f) unsuitable for aeroplanes g) energy intensive to make (less than 20%)
Except for the "incredibly expensive" part, those things are true. That's why the people actually serious about a hydrogen economy aren't proposing to necessarily use it to run cars or airplanes directly, or to derive it from nuclear energy. Solar generation of hydrogen is actually even less efficient than 20% in most serious proposals, but it's also cheap.
In a sensible hydrogen economy, hydrogen is almost exclusively a bulk energy storage and transport medium. It's what makes exploiting solar energy feasible and cost effective. It means tapping a small percentage of a huge amount of otherwise unused, clean energy. And 20% of a large enough quantity is enough to satisfy our energy needs. That's the point behind a hydrogen economy.
No, I just find it funny that people put so much stock in a conclusion that has no foundation besides their own hackneyed conspiracy theories about big business.
Where did I allege "conspiracy"? The Bush folks are quite open about their economic policies. The real question is why people like you keep electing people like Bush even though they are so forthright about what they are doing.
All logic is presuppositional; but the really egregious circular arguments are amusing. --- International Government: Nowhere left to run from bad laws ---
Look who's talking about "conspiracy theories".
I think you'd be better off and pay a lot less money by getting one of these. CompUSA has them ($40-60). Silent and waterproof. And they are cushioned and springy--not as nice as a real keyboard but acceptable.
Yaknow, it's great that MS lost and all, but when Linux wins for no more reason than jingoism, everyone loses.
Well, as others have pointed out, it wasn't "jingoism" but rational decision making.
But even if it were jingoism, so what? It would still pale in comparison to the jingoism the US government and US companies display in procurement (of course, all that US jingoism doesn't translate into a positive trade balance, but you can't fault Americans for not giving it a good shot).
Just remember: "Buy American" and "Freedom Fries".
Zero force typing is a myth. When you type, whether on a flat surface or a keyboard, your fingers at some point need to change directions (move up/down, etc.). The forces to bring that about either come from your own muscles or from the keyboard.
Normal keyboards are carefully designed to cushion the strike and let you recover energy to make your finger go up again after going down. That's what all those little springs, levers, and rubber pads are for in your keyboard. A flat surface has none of those.
The difference is similar to jumping barefoot on concrete vs. jumping barefoot on a trampoline. Which would you rather do? Keyboards basically give you a carefully designed trampoline for each finger, and that's good.
Linus didn't copy anything, there are no patents, and he was under no contract with SCO. SCO doesn't have a legal claim, end-of-story. If they cook up some bogus claims then one can address them when they actually come forward with them. Until then, there is no point in wasting any time on it. Slashdot should probably stop posting stories about this as well. It's of no relevance to anything.
And your point is what exactly? Am I supposed to change my "presuppositions" just because some corporate-friendly fool became president? Nuclear energy for generating hydrogen didn't make sense before Bush came to power and it still doesn't make sense.
a) making hydrogen from water is really inefficient (commercial production is done from methane, because it's wayyyy easier/cheaper/less energy)
Of course it's cheaper. It's even cheaper if you burn the methane directly. But we are asking: how can we make energy without burning fossil fuels?
The value of hydrogen is that it gives us an efficient means of storing and transporting electricity derived from solar energy. That makes solar energy practical. Even if the conversion from solar energy into hydrogen is not particularly efficient in terms of energy, you can generate huge amounts of hydrogen that way fairly cheaply.
So, you (and Bush) are kind of missing the point. We don't want to switch to hydrogen because we like hydrogen better or because of its properties as a fuel, we want to switch to hydrogen because it makes solar energy practical. If you aren't going to go solar and instead are going to build lots of nuclear power plants, you might as well just stick with plain electricity.
Hydrogen embrittles most metals, escapes incredibly easily, is explosive, and diffuses incredibly quickly; liquid hydrogen has an annoying habit of condensing oxygen from the air- liquid oxygen forms dangerous explosives with quite a few common materials- such as tarmac- it's a contact explosive; you walk on it- well, you wouldn't want to
Sure, hydrogen is "dangerous" in that it can result in things blowing up. So is oil. The difference is that if a hydrogen tanker blows up, that's all that happens: there is no significant environmental damage.
Lots of people talk about hydrogen powered vehicles. With current technology (and nobody has done better in about 30 years of research), your fuel tank would have to be 10x bigger than it is now.
Hydrogen may or may not be a useful fuel for cars, but that is not the point behind a hydrogen economy. The point behind a hydrogen economy is to let us generate and transport huge amounts of clean, renewable energy across the globe, in regions of the world that are now completely unproductive. You may well end up using hydrogen to charge up a battery for a more conventional electric vehicle.
Renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, are emissions-free. But the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow
One of the main benefits of a hydrogen economy is that you can generate hydrogen cleanly and efficiently in places where there is a lot of sunshine (and access to water) and ship the hydrogen safely to places that need it. Just like oil, only safer, more environmentally friendly, and renewable. And the US has lots of regions that are good for that kind of solar generation of hydrogen.
The Bush administration and Senate Republicans want to give billions of taxpayer dollars to the nuclear industry to make high-temperature, gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs),
I'd prefer greenhouse gases to nuclear waste. Greenhouse gases may end up causing lots of devastation, but they probably go away within a matter of centuries. Nuclear waste poses a lethal risk for tens of thousands of years and can be used for creating dirty bombs and other mischief.
I get the feeling that Bush administration policies can largely explained as using popular issues ("the environment", "national security", etc.) as an excuse to transfer large amounts of government subsidies to big donors.
Likewise, it's probably best to migrate away from Unix since Novell could still bring up infringement claims.
You mean, we should be using a kernel that was developed independently from UNIX but is based on an open, standard POSIX-compliant API? Like Linux, for example?
HuRD or Minix are probably the best alternatives.
With a lot of work, the HURD could be turned into an alternative to Linux. Minix is a toy. But there are other choices: Darwin and the BSD kernels, for example.