I'm pretty sure that woodworking is still very much an analog art, and therefore does not fall under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Just a hunch.
The reason I see for disliking the new standard is not that they're changing the speed of the current standard, but that they're changing the form factor and interface.
When they moved from 16bit PCMCIA to 32bit cardbus adapters, it wasn't that big of a deal. If you had a cardbus slot, you were fortunate! You could use the nifty new faster, better devices, but because the form factor between the two is the same, cardbus slots had no trouble handling the old pcmcia cards.
In changing the physical size of the card, manufacturers will be forced to either include the new standard size, or include both legacy slots and the new slots. No possibly of reverse compatibility exists in that case. You won't be able to insert the 56k modem you already own because you can't get the winmodem on your laptop to work with other operating systems, nor will you be able to insert a cardbus tv tuner, or a multitude of other devices that already exist and are in circulation.
I'm entirely in favor of a new standard, but only if I know I can use my current devices on my next laptop.
With all this bidding you're going to convince the RIAA that their music might actually be worth the ridiculous numbers they use in their court cases. Then when cost goes up, everyone who hasn't purchased the new CDs can be sued, because the decreased sales must mean that everyone is pirating! Whee, slippery slopes are fun!:)
That's the first thing I thought of when I saw this article. Personally, I don't see many people using horizontal scrolling that much. Graphics and spreadsheets might be good uses, but other than that, it would probably be yet another feature that half the planet doesn't even know how to use, like keyboard shortcut keys.
This isn't as bad a suggestion as it may sound. In my experience, while elderly users may be more difficult to teach computer skills than average users, they are much more cooperative in trying to learn them. They generally accept that you are not at fault because their computer stopped working, and are generally too cautious to do any major damage. When you have someone thinks they've broken the computer because their Start menu is on the left side of their screen and not on the bottom, you also have someone who is not going to be deleting files from \winnt or anything like that. Of course, this makes most of their problems easier to fix, as they're generally simple changes in their computer's behavior, and at the end of the day, you've made a quick buck, helped someone, and your client knows something new, hopefully to assist them the next time something changes.
From article: Getting groups together is easier these days thanks to e-mail, Savage says, but that's only the start. Imagine how simple it will be to assemble a flash mob, he says, when cell phones and handheld computers are equipped with "location aware" technology that will emit a "ping" at the right moment and tell potential mobbers exactly where to go.
Just replace "potential mobbers" with "police." 'nuff said. Not in my cell phone!
But on topic, what these people are doing is seriously funny. If I lived in a major city that was doing those things it seems like it would be a great thing to do to ward off boredom and seriousness. Normally, I'm the kind of person who's paranoid about the cameras, under the fear that I'll do something that "looks" suspicious in my every day activities, and be questioned for no reason because of it. This seems like a good way to confuse the heck out of normal people, with pure surreal action.
In a way, it reminds me of something we used to organize way back in school. Anyone else have a tradition where a large group of classmates would pick a keyphrase to wait for a lecturer to say, and then upon that word, everybody shifts weight, turns a page, or something of the like? Less organized than these 'mobs' but still a lot of fun, as immature as we were. I mean, are. Yeah...
I had the same thoughts for the "Cooling unit for the Cray-2." I was just envisioning how a nice transparent box that says "Cray" on it would look near my computer, regardless of if it had function or not.
Well, from the perspective of a student, I can say that the weight, at least for me, makes all the difference. When you're out all day on campus and have to walk around with 20-30lbs of the day's course books, notes, etc with you already, a 10lb laptop can seem to make a huge difference. At one point I had given up on carrying a laptop at all for this reason, and then wound up regretting it when I couldn't work on X project because I didn't have a computer with the appropriate software on it (Lab computers are good for some things, but I don't like having to install software every time I get an extra 20 minutes between classes.)
You do have a point about using it being a bit difficult in the standard configuration of a computer as small as the one in the article, but after jacking up font sizes it actually becomes quite usable. 120% zoom in Opera and Word do nicely. People were once happily using 640x480 on a 15" screen, back in the day, ya know? The keyboard can feel a bit cramped at times, if only because the Lifebook P2000 put the right shift key in an odd spot. After getting used to it, it feels no more cramped than any other laptop I've owned. Losing a bit of screen real estate for the benifit of losing 7lbs is a great thing, IMO.:)
Fujitsu has had the p2000 in production for quite a while now, at least in design. I remember looking at the Loox-T (Japanese version of the p2000) at least 3 years ago, and longed for one, but couldn't afford the extra expense to have it imported. Now that I own a P I'm impressed by its weight and built-in features (DVD-R drives should be available soon, I'm told) but not so much impressed by speed. The Crusoe may save battery life, but the 800mhz processor in my P2046 seems to perform just a touch below my previous laptop, a p3-500.
I'm tempted to try one of the intel models, but I almost have to shy away from the higher performing processors, at least for laptops, because I'm a heat freak. I can stand to have my P on my lap for hours on end without it hardly getting warm, even maxing its pathetic processor out, but most of the other laptops I've tried get extrordinarily hot on the bottom when they run, and many even have started putting the cooling intake on the bottom of the computer. I'm not even sure my P even has a cooling fan, as I've certainly never heard one run. Anyone have a p5000 series who can give a review of it's lapability?
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Why do I get the feeling you've just invented yet another reason to not want to go to the hospital in an ambulance?
I'm pretty sure that woodworking is still very much an analog art, and therefore does not fall under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Just a hunch.
The reason I see for disliking the new standard is not that they're changing the speed of the current standard, but that they're changing the form factor and interface.
When they moved from 16bit PCMCIA to 32bit cardbus adapters, it wasn't that big of a deal. If you had a cardbus slot, you were fortunate! You could use the nifty new faster, better devices, but because the form factor between the two is the same, cardbus slots had no trouble handling the old pcmcia cards.
In changing the physical size of the card, manufacturers will be forced to either include the new standard size, or include both legacy slots and the new slots. No possibly of reverse compatibility exists in that case. You won't be able to insert the 56k modem you already own because you can't get the winmodem on your laptop to work with other operating systems, nor will you be able to insert a cardbus tv tuner, or a multitude of other devices that already exist and are in circulation.
I'm entirely in favor of a new standard, but only if I know I can use my current devices on my next laptop.
With all this bidding you're going to convince the RIAA that their music might actually be worth the ridiculous numbers they use in their court cases. Then when cost goes up, everyone who hasn't purchased the new CDs can be sued, because the decreased sales must mean that everyone is pirating! Whee, slippery slopes are fun! :)
How long before I get a trackball embedded in my mouse?
I'm surprised it wasn't done years ago.
You mean kind of like this one?
That's the first thing I thought of when I saw this article. Personally, I don't see many people using horizontal scrolling that much. Graphics and spreadsheets might be good uses, but other than that, it would probably be yet another feature that half the planet doesn't even know how to use, like keyboard shortcut keys.
This isn't as bad a suggestion as it may sound. In my experience, while elderly users may be more difficult to teach computer skills than average users, they are much more cooperative in trying to learn them. They generally accept that you are not at fault because their computer stopped working, and are generally too cautious to do any major damage. When you have someone thinks they've broken the computer because their Start menu is on the left side of their screen and not on the bottom, you also have someone who is not going to be deleting files from \winnt or anything like that. Of course, this makes most of their problems easier to fix, as they're generally simple changes in their computer's behavior, and at the end of the day, you've made a quick buck, helped someone, and your client knows something new, hopefully to assist them the next time something changes.
From article: Getting groups together is easier these days thanks to e-mail, Savage says, but that's only the start. Imagine how simple it will be to assemble a flash mob, he says, when cell phones and handheld computers are equipped with "location aware" technology that will emit a "ping" at the right moment and tell potential mobbers exactly where to go.
Just replace "potential mobbers" with "police." 'nuff said. Not in my cell phone!
But on topic, what these people are doing is seriously funny. If I lived in a major city that was doing those things it seems like it would be a great thing to do to ward off boredom and seriousness. Normally, I'm the kind of person who's paranoid about the cameras, under the fear that I'll do something that "looks" suspicious in my every day activities, and be questioned for no reason because of it. This seems like a good way to confuse the heck out of normal people, with pure surreal action.
In a way, it reminds me of something we used to organize way back in school. Anyone else have a tradition where a large group of classmates would pick a keyphrase to wait for a lecturer to say, and then upon that word, everybody shifts weight, turns a page, or something of the like? Less organized than these 'mobs' but still a lot of fun, as immature as we were. I mean, are. Yeah...
I had the same thoughts for the "Cooling unit for the Cray-2." I was just envisioning how a nice transparent box that says "Cray" on it would look near my computer, regardless of if it had function or not.
Caffeine free..... You mean free as in beer?
Well, from the perspective of a student, I can say that the weight, at least for me, makes all the difference. When you're out all day on campus and have to walk around with 20-30lbs of the day's course books, notes, etc with you already, a 10lb laptop can seem to make a huge difference. At one point I had given up on carrying a laptop at all for this reason, and then wound up regretting it when I couldn't work on X project because I didn't have a computer with the appropriate software on it (Lab computers are good for some things, but I don't like having to install software every time I get an extra 20 minutes between classes.)
:)
You do have a point about using it being a bit difficult in the standard configuration of a computer as small as the one in the article, but after jacking up font sizes it actually becomes quite usable. 120% zoom in Opera and Word do nicely. People were once happily using 640x480 on a 15" screen, back in the day, ya know? The keyboard can feel a bit cramped at times, if only because the Lifebook P2000 put the right shift key in an odd spot. After getting used to it, it feels no more cramped than any other laptop I've owned. Losing a bit of screen real estate for the benifit of losing 7lbs is a great thing, IMO.
Fujitsu has had the p2000 in production for quite a while now, at least in design. I remember looking at the Loox-T (Japanese version of the p2000) at least 3 years ago, and longed for one, but couldn't afford the extra expense to have it imported. Now that I own a P I'm impressed by its weight and built-in features (DVD-R drives should be available soon, I'm told) but not so much impressed by speed. The Crusoe may save battery life, but the 800mhz processor in my P2046 seems to perform just a touch below my previous laptop, a p3-500.
I'm tempted to try one of the intel models, but I almost have to shy away from the higher performing processors, at least for laptops, because I'm a heat freak. I can stand to have my P on my lap for hours on end without it hardly getting warm, even maxing its pathetic processor out, but most of the other laptops I've tried get extrordinarily hot on the bottom when they run, and many even have started putting the cooling intake on the bottom of the computer. I'm not even sure my P even has a cooling fan, as I've certainly never heard one run. Anyone have a p5000 series who can give a review of it's lapability?