It's amazing how the article mentions nothing about the current, best machanism - I found that e-books work very well on PDA's.
It started as PeanutPress, but is now known as http://www.ereader.com/ has a free e-reader that works on Palm and Pocket PC PDA's as well as Mac and Windows desktops/notebooks.
They have a pretty good selection of current titles as well as a lot of classics.
As far as the reading experience goes, I think the current standard of Palm PDA's (320x320 or 320x480) works just fine. In fact I find that I much prefer to read on the PDA than the dead-tree version. It's lighter, smaller, it's always with me (fits in my pocket) (bit of geek factor - sigh). I can change the font size as might sight degrades with age:-). It has a built in back light - no more disturbing the spoulsal overunit.
I read "The Count of Monte Cristo" not long ago which is 1,000 pages or so (on par with "War and Peace"). I never would have finished it if not for the the PDA version. The book is huge. I was able to get a lot of reading done in the kids room while they were drifting off to sleep, or while waiting to pick them up, or while commuting.
There has been this misguided notion that the device needs to have the same look and feel as a book to succeed. Nonsense. In this case, the PDA form factor is much better regarding size and heft. The text width is much like reading a newspaper column - very natural. In fact, when I was sick for a spell, I found I could read much longer with a PDA than a "real" book. It's an easy one handed job (I suppose that may bring up other advantages) and I could roll over an many positions.
I even found their DRM to be pretty much a non-issue. You have a library on their web sight that includes every book that you purchaced. If you ever need to re-download it to a new device, it is all right there. The book is encrypted using your name and credit card number as keys. Thus you can open the book on any device that you have the free e-reader on.
The downsides?
1) Yes, I can't lend it to a friend, or sell it used.
2) I can't impress my friends with my impressive bookshelf when they come over. But how many among us actually have friends that come over:-)
3) They are often a bit less expensive than dead tree versions, but I think that they ought to be even less expensive given the lack of material, manufacturing and storage costs. Then again, shipping is always free - and really d*mn fast.
I have worked with a Bluetooth device from a Swedish company that we were able to get a good connection at about a mile. This was out of the box - just a bigger box:-)
They were very directional dishes (about the size of a Frisbee(tm)). To get a mile range, we had to point them fairly carefully. As you got closer, it wasn't so bad. It came in two flavors (last time I looked): one was essentially an ethernet repeater (point to point) the other was a serial port repeater (again point to point.
The developer claimed that they started using WiFi, but ran into timing or synch issues that drove them to evaluate using BT instead. This was a while ago, so details are vague. I suppose if someone is interested, I could try to remember who made the devices. Clearly, this is p*ss poor attempt at product promotion:-)
Oh, and yes. This particular test was done 2 am on a Thursday night. It was the only time we could get a straight shot on the street without getting killed. While I personally was not using this as an attempt to get dates (I was already married) there may be an advantage to using this as a date scheme from such a distance... It gives either party a better head start when they decide to run away.
It turns out to be much harder than that even for unencrypted data.
The frequency hopping is a major factor. The psuedo-random hopping sequence is determined when the devices first connect. If you're not listening at that time (and know the device addresses of each), to get on track is far more difficult than it is worth. Remember its hopping ~1000 times a second.
I've used $40K USD Bluetooth sniffers for development and debugging. It's difficult enough to get the sniffer to sync when you are carefully controlling all three devices.
I just think it's pretty funny that people are so worried about people snooping in on their BT headset conversations while they sit in a restaraunt annoying the hell out of everyone as it is.
That it is designed to run in small systems where there will be a maximum of 32 processes?
Thanks a lot! I can write such an OS. An OS with a static array of 16 processes of equal priority.
Where did you get that information from? It is completely incorrect. It may have been true for a very old version, but current versions have no such limitation.
Each thread can have a scheduling priority ranging from 1 to 63 (the highest priority), independent of the scheduling policy....
The threads on the ready queue are ordered by priority. The ready queue is actually implemented as 64 separate queues, one for each priority.
P.S What command do I use to indicate a URL (and/or where is it documented)?
Slashdot Mirror
It started as PeanutPress, but is now known as http://www.ereader.com/ has a free e-reader that works on Palm and Pocket PC PDA's as well as Mac and Windows desktops/notebooks.
They have a pretty good selection of current titles as well as a lot of classics.
As far as the reading experience goes, I think the current standard of Palm PDA's (320x320 or 320x480) works just fine. In fact I find that I much prefer to read on the PDA than the dead-tree version. It's lighter, smaller, it's always with me (fits in my pocket) (bit of geek factor - sigh). I can change the font size as might sight degrades with age :-). It has a built in back light - no more disturbing the spoulsal overunit.
I read "The Count of Monte Cristo" not long ago which is 1,000 pages or so (on par with "War and Peace"). I never would have finished it if not for the the PDA version. The book is huge. I was able to get a lot of reading done in the kids room while they were drifting off to sleep, or while waiting to pick them up, or while commuting.
There has been this misguided notion that the device needs to have the same look and feel as a book to succeed. Nonsense. In this case, the PDA form factor is much better regarding size and heft. The text width is much like reading a newspaper column - very natural. In fact, when I was sick for a spell, I found I could read much longer with a PDA than a "real" book. It's an easy one handed job (I suppose that may bring up other advantages) and I could roll over an many positions.
I even found their DRM to be pretty much a non-issue. You have a library on their web sight that includes every book that you purchaced. If you ever need to re-download it to a new device, it is all right there. The book is encrypted using your name and credit card number as keys. Thus you can open the book on any device that you have the free e-reader on.
The downsides?
1) Yes, I can't lend it to a friend, or sell it used.
2) I can't impress my friends with my impressive bookshelf when they come over. But how many among us actually have friends that come over :-)
3) They are often a bit less expensive than dead tree versions, but I think that they ought to be even less expensive given the lack of material, manufacturing and storage costs. Then again, shipping is always free - and really d*mn fast.
Cheers,
Steve
They were very directional dishes (about the size of a Frisbee(tm)). To get a mile range, we had to point them fairly carefully. As you got closer, it wasn't so bad. It came in two flavors (last time I looked): one was essentially an ethernet repeater (point to point) the other was a serial port repeater (again point to point.
The developer claimed that they started using WiFi, but ran into timing or synch issues that drove them to evaluate using BT instead. This was a while ago, so details are vague. I suppose if someone is interested, I could try to remember who made the devices. Clearly, this is p*ss poor attempt at product promotion :-)
Oh, and yes. This particular test was done 2 am on a Thursday night. It was the only time we could get a straight shot on the street without getting killed. While I personally was not using this as an attempt to get dates (I was already married) there may be an advantage to using this as a date scheme from such a distance... It gives either party a better head start when they decide to run away.
Cheers,
Steve
It turns out to be much harder than that even for unencrypted data.
The frequency hopping is a major factor. The psuedo-random hopping sequence is determined when the devices first connect. If you're not listening at that time (and know the device addresses of each), to get on track is far more difficult than it is worth. Remember its hopping ~1000 times a second.
I've used $40K USD Bluetooth sniffers for development and debugging. It's difficult enough to get the sniffer to sync when you are carefully controlling all three devices.
I just think it's pretty funny that people are so worried about people snooping in on their BT headset conversations while they sit in a restaraunt annoying the hell out of everyone as it is.
Cheers
From: http://www.qnx.com/developer/docs/momentics621_doc s/neutrino/sys_arch/kernel.html
P.S What command do I use to indicate a URL (and/or where is it documented)?