Not sure about whether or not confidentiality is implied in emails, but all outgoing emails from my company contain a notice that goes something like, "This message is for the designated recipient only and may contain proprietary/confidential information. Unauthorized use of this email is prohibited."
Not sure how well this would hold up if taken to court though.
I've seen it. Actually, my lab partner for my microcontrollers class last year at school had one and loved it.
Don't knock it just because it's Microsoft - While the overall majority of their products (especially software) are shit, they have some good products, esp. in the hardware arena. (Look at their input devices - MS does make great mice and joysticks)
This might've been a different unit, but the one my friend had had no fancy graphical LCD or anything, it was just a plain cordless phone with a few extra buttons and a base station that could hook up to the computer.
i.e. it didn't have some bastard version of Windows shoehorned into it.
Most of MS's hardware products are pretty good as long as they don't include Windows in any way, shape, or form. As soon as Windows (PC version or CE) gets embedded, it's a whole different story...
a) You can have longer battery life while making the battery smaller. Simply use less power by optimizing the electronics. Standby times given equivalent battery capacity have been constantly going up, as manufacturers squeeze more and more efficiency out of their circuitry. Also, you can reduce the size of the electronics, especially by integrating functionality provided by multiple ICs into one chip. This reduces cost and size, and often reduces overall power consumption too. (No need to drive long bus lines). As a result, you have more room left for the battery.
Also, as time goes on and more people are using cellphones, providers will have to put up more towers. The side effect of this is that you'll be closer to the tower you're using on average, which allows the phone to transmit at a lower power.
b) If more space is needed to make the phone sound better, then why are there plenty of smaller phones than the current smartphones that have better sound quality? It's primarily a matter of proper design planning, not of the phone's physical size. Yes, it's easier to get better quality out of a larger device, but it's still pretty easy to get good sound quality out of a small device (Like a StarTAC or those Motorola micro-phones)
Some design decisions in form factor may increase volume while reducing the size perception of the phone to the user - Witness clamshell-style flip phones. Many of these are thicker, but are seen as smaller because the other two dimensions are smaller. (Motorola's micro-phone - I think it's one of the v-series phones is a good example of this. Thicker than a StarTAC, but overall smaller)
I don't think the Treos are the best - I never liked the UI for their phone functionality.
That said, they're one of the only viable PDA/phone combos I've seen, and come close to being the best. The best I've encountered so far is the Kyocera 6035.
So far, I love my Kyocera - It is clearly designed as a phone first and not a PDA. I can dial the phone with a nice, big, easy to dial numeric keypad just like a normal cellphone without even opening up the flip of the phone. (The keypad is on the face of the flip, as opposed to being under the flip as in the Treos.
The Treo is probably a bit better of a PDA, at least for now. Color screen, more recent PalmOS, faster CPU. The 6035 is admittedly aging, but as a phone, none of the other smartphones can beat it. PDA/phone integration is also excellent.
The upcoming Kyo 7135 is going to be VERY nice. Color screen, OS 4.1, SDIO expansion slot, 16M RAM, MP3 capability, and 1xRTT (2.5G) data capability - Lack of 1xRTT is probably the 6035's biggest shortcoming these days, although on a PDA circuit-switched 14.4 data (2G data, which the 6035 does have) does pretty well.
I have to agree with wbm6k - I have a 6035 and I LOVE it.
Unlike every other "smartphone" I've seen, phone functionality is not sacrificed. Phone/PDA integration is excellent.
Yes, websurfing is a bit kludgy, but better than mose WinCE devices - They're STILL forcing people to pan left/right???? EudoraWeb (text-only) flattens everything vertically (a la Lynx), and the third-party image capable browsers (such as Handspring Blazer) also do the same flattening.
As far as WAP browsing - For mobile-specific sites, the 6035 is a dream for WAP. Big screen, you can tap on links with the stylus, and enter text into forms using Graffiti.
Don't forget PQAs - Probably my 10-15 PQAs are the most often used apps on my 6035.
Upcoming 7135 adds a color screen, clamshell (a la StarTAC) design that is smaller overall, MP3 capability, an SDIO port, 16M RAM, PalmOS 4.1, with only a small sacrifice in battery life. (4-5 days instead of 5-6 days with the phone portion on. With phone off, it can go a month or two at least. Most phone-only devices like my Kyo 2035a only do 3-4 days phone standby.) The 7135 is due out Any Month Now - It's in advanced beta testing with Verizon. Sprint customers will have to wait longer.
www.smartphonesource.com is an excellent user discussion board for the 6035/7135.
The upcoming Samsung I500 should be nice too - Very similar to the 7135. Slightly smaller and quite a bit faster (66 MHz as opposed to 33, but who needs more than 33 with PalmOS unless you're running a GameBoy emulator?), but no expandability.
I'd rather have slower trains with better coverage/low prices than an insanely expensive fast train that doesn't run anywhere near where I live.
High-speed trains? Don't expect my support until the NJ Transit Raritan Valley Line is electrified and goes direct into NYC. (A much easier project than building a maglev or upgrading tracks to high-speed capability).
I have a train line 10 minutes from my house. It's great, despite being a non-direct diesel. The Northeast Corridor is faster and would be nice, but the NEC is "fast enough" without having super-expensive upgrades being done.
Also, for long distances, trains just don't compete economically in the US. Amtrak (the only long-distance provider) has prices that are on average equal to or greater than air travel. In a number of areas you can compare Amtrak prices directly to local commuter rail - On the Northeast Corridor in New Jersey, NJT does New Brunswick, NJ to NYC in only 10-20 minutes more than Amtrak. NJT's round-trip price is 1/4 that of Amtrak's one-way.
The problem is that Amtrak has to use their profitable lines (NEC, etc.) to subsidize the much less profitable (in fact, overall money-losing) Midwestern lines.
I think the solution is to give up on rail where it won't work - For long runs in the Midwest, air has won and trains can't compete. For selected areas (Northeast Corridor, i.e. DCNYCBoston), form smaller companies to operate those lines. They can probably offer the service at much lower prices then, which will provide a large gain in ridership for those lines.
Unfortunately, thanks to Amtrak's prohibitive cost, it's cheaper to hire a limo service to go from central Jersey to Washington, DC (Yes, people do this. Apparently a significant portion of the business of many of the area's limo services are now for DC runs). It's faster to drive than take the airplane, and while the train is the fastest, it isn't worth the insane cost. Train travel could easily beat air travel in the Northeast, but it has to be reduced in price so that it can compete first.
a) It means that lowbies can be warned about threats such as that uber mob. I would love to be warned by a "radar" user than be ganked out of the blue.
b) It gives guilds using ShowEQ an advantage in killing "uber" mobs. That's the bad thing. Of course, if ShowEQ is as rampant as it sounds, overall it benefits people since no guild is really getting that much of an advantage, since they all have access to it.
Everything I've seen about Everquest seems to indicate that SOE caters to the "Haves" while screwing over the "Have-Nots" - For example, at one point raising the level cap from 50 to 60, and now to 65, something that only benefits the most hardcore. Also, the EQ economy is riddled with holes and massively inflated so that only macroers and hardcord players can afford anything.
DAoC (which I play), on the other hand, has a level cap of 50. Period. Mythic has repeatedly stated that this will never change. (You can progress a bit beyond 50 with "Realm abilities", obtained in realm vs. realm combat rather than player vs. monster, but it isn't THAT much of a difference.)
Also, in DAoC, except for jewelry items, there is no such thing as rare armor/weapons anymore. Players can now craft the best items in the game. Yes, it'll cost you, but it's a fixed price (the materials needed from merchants) that will never change.
To combat inflation, Mythic has always kept the money supply tight in DAoC (and in fact recently made it tighter by removing the closest thing to an exploit the economy had - Certain items could be salvaged for a pretty good profit, and now are only worth 75% as much. You still had to work for them though...), and also has plenty of cash sinks in DAoC (Both crafting, which is VERY expensive, and keeping your realm's keeps in good repair - Probably 50-75% of the money in the economy is used to buy wood for keep doors that just gets bashed down by a ram in a day or two.)
I've noticed that cell phones that act as modems have two methods that they use to do it:
a) Dialing to a normal ISP, they act just like a normal modem. You have to wait until it connects to the other end before it issues a CONNECT statement.
b) Dialing to Sprint or Verizon's Quick Net Connect (#777 on Verizon), it issues a CONNECT command immediately, but doesn't actually initiate a call until your PPP stack starts talking to the phone.
Something about this behavior confuses some OSes, including RedHat's standard PPP connecton scripts.
Here's a trick to try: Set your PPP dialer to give you a terminal window at connect. (MacOS can do this, right? Windows can (built-in to PPP system) and Linux can (Minicom calling pppd as a download handler). Have it dial #777 and bring up the terminal window. You should see CONNECT and then... Nothing. Wait 2-3 seconds, then do whatever you have to do to start PPP (Windows has a button to do this, in Minicom you use whatever download handler slot has pppd assigned to it).
If you're not using a QNC system (i.e. you're simply dialing into a normal ISP), well, then your OS is simply broken. As another poster said, these simply implement an AT command set. Some modems have INF strings to optimize their performance, but the generic init strings (or even no init string at all, the way I do it, just ATDT) always work.
Last but not least - Although this is OS-independent so would be breaking your setup under Windows too - Some phones require you to explicity put it into "data/fax" mode - This may only apply to integrated PDA/phones to decide what gets access to what though.
So far in the market, it seems that for "convergence" devices, consumers have rejected devices that are PDAs with mobile phone capability (Thera (WinCE), I300 (PalmOS), I330 (PalmOS)) in favor of devices that are phones with PDA functionality (Kyocera 6035 (PalmOS), upcoming 7135 (Also PalmOS), upcoming Samsung I500 (PalmOS), and most Symbian devices are primarily phones.)
Yes, I agree, Palm has been doing a crap job with their hardware since the Palm III. I don't see why anyone would want to buy a "geniune" Palm when Sony's PalmOS devices are so much better. (Or if you're looking for PDA/phone integration, either a Treo or Kyocera - The Tungsten W is going to be DOA in the market because it's phone capabilities are crap.)
I have a 6035 and I love it. PQAs + CDMA data = wonderful convenience.
Because UMTS and GSM/GPRS use entirely different modulation schemes, there is NO WAY to make a phone for both systems that is not excessively expensive and/or large with good battery life.
Because of the fact that cdmaOne and CDMA2000 have very closely related modulation schemes (In fact, they're almost identical), a CDMA2000 phone only needs one receiver/IF system and one transmit subsystem to use 2G, 2.5G, or in the future 3G networks. At worst it needs two RF frontends for dual-band capability, but everything from the IF on can be shared. To make a combination GSM/GPRS and UMTS phone, you need a complete receiver chain and a complete transmit chain for each network type, since they not only are on different frequencies, they have different modulation schemes and require different IF passbands. It's possible to gain some flexibility by using IF-sampling and software demodulators/downconverters, but such techniques are currently somewhat more costly and MUCH more power-hungry than "traditional" RF/IF subsystems.
"All the standards are designed to progress from the base European infrastructure, which is why you'll notice American operators installing 2.5G networks now, to use the European migration plans to get to 3G."
Excuse me, but WHAT migration plan?
And how is UMTS in any way based on GSM/GPRS?
There is no interoperability between GSM/GPRS and UMTS whatsoever - New spectrum, new handsets, and new base stations are needed. Essentially, to go to 3G in a GSM/GPRS system, you have no option but to essentially build an entirely new network from the ground up. (As a result, many European providers are hurting financially, thanks to being forced to buy new spectrum at outrageous prices.)
Meanwhile, CDMA2000 (2.5G/3G) and cdmaOne (2G) are fully interoperable - cdmaOne handsets like my Kyocera 6035 will work fine on a CDMA2000 network, whether 1xRTT (2.5G) or 1xEV-DO (3G), and CDMA2000-capable handsets will work fine in areas where CDMA2000 capability has not been added and only cdmaOne base stations are available. No new spectrum is needed, providers can use their existing frequency assignments.
There is a clear upgrade for CDMA providers from 2G(cdmaOne)->2.5G(1xRTT)->3G(1xEV-DO) - Where's the upgrade path for GSM providers? 2G(GSM)->2.5G(GPRS)->dead end.
They should've realized from the tough time they had against Palm in the PDA market that they should just not even bother with embedded devices.
In the PDA market, size, reliability, and battery life are major factors, and those three have held WinCE devices back constantly - PalmOS devices have been able to do more with far less. (A 33 MHz Palm is far more responsive UI-wise than a 200 MHz WinCE device, and lasts far longer on battery.)
Now they're not only up against PalmOS (There are some great PalmOS smarphones out there, such as the Kyocera 6035 and 7135, Treos, and the upcoming Samsung I500 - I don't consider the I300 to be great since it's a PDA first and not a very good phone.) and Symbian (All of the Symbian devices I've seen performed their phone functions very well and had excellent integration.
What does WinCE have? It doesn't have battery life or reliability, and its hardware requirements mean that CE devices are almost always larger than their PalmOS and Symbian brethren. All three of these factors held CE back in the PDA market, but are even more critical in the phone market, where the Kyocera 6035 (One of the smaller smartphones) is considered to be monstrous in size.
Every MS-based phone that has hit the market has flopped, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
I see Symbian winning the market for "basic" smartphones, and PalmOS winning the market for "power users" who need mainstream PDA capabilities.
I want to see an exact accounting of what portions of the price of my purchase go where. Last I checked, for CD:
Cost of pressing CD: Pennies. (Let's assume $1 at worst) Amount of money that gets to artist: Pennies Let's assume that distributor and retailer are getting 50% of the retail price of the CD (I don't find this unreasonable, say 25% each)
So for a $15 CD, where's the other $7 going?
I want to see proof that the artist is getting at least 20% of what I'm paying for the content before I start buying music again.
I think this is one reason why people don't rant as much about the movie industry. a) Movies cost a LOT more to produce b) Movies cost on average only 10-30% more than their soundtracks, despite containing a LOT more content. (4 gigs of data vs. 650M, which was probably harder and more expensive to create byte for byte) c) We can see plenty of proof that the actors aren't getting shafted, since their pay for a given movie is often public knowledge.
Unless your amplifier is horrible it's not going to do anything to the timing of the CDMA signal... It may delay it, but that's the same effect as walking away fromt he base station.
On the other hand, CDMA uses some neat tricks to overlay numerous signals on one channel. The one disadvantage of this is that it requires extreme linearity for any amplifier the signal passes through, otherwise the multiple CDMA carriers will garble each other.
Not that I'm complaining, solving nonlinearity problems in power amps is what keeps my company in business and the paychecks coming.:)
If you go to Best Buy though, Dazzle sells an external analog video digitizer. (Analog to DV and I believe vice versa too.) Since it's DV it should work with any program that groks DV. (Kino, Cinelerra on Linux)
If it says, "VIA chipset", then it's almost guaranteed to be OHCI compliant.
The only other 1394 host implementation I know about is the TI PCILynx chipset, and TI themselves have been moving towards OHCI. PCILynx chips are semi-supported under Linux.
As soon as the virus has to send to a different TCP port, it's neutered.
IIS worms are dependent on the ability to connect to TCP port 80. If the virus starts using 81, it just hits "connection refused" at the other end (unless someone switched their copy of IIS to switch to 81...)
I'm in the US, and I want wireless data. No, I don't want GPRS. GPRS is a dead-end technology with no upgrade path. CDMA2000 is far superior - Backwards compatibility with cdmaOne, higher capacity, less frequent dropped calls. Face it, CDMA is superior, even Europe now concedes it by basing their 3G technology on a (badly implemented) CDMA variant.
While the European providers are struggling to provide 3G services without going bankrupt (They need to buy new spectrum, completely replace 100% of their infrastructure, and replace all phones, essentially they need to build an entire new network from scratch), existing CDMA providers will upgrade as the need and demand arises, since cdmaOne phones will work on a CDMA2000 network and vice versa. The upgrade from cdmaOne to 1xRTT capability has been simple and easy for service providers, and they can easily roll out 1xEV-DO when they want to, without forcing a full handset upgrade. 1x-EV-DO handsets will work with older infrastructure (even cdmaOne base stations) and 1xEV-DO base stations will work fine with old cdmaOne handsets. GPRS providers don't have that luxury in the W-CDMA transition.
Also, W-CDMA and CDMA2000 have already faced each other in direct competition in Japan - DoCoMo's name is mud thanks to W-CDMA. Their competitor, KDDI, has 5 times as many 3G subscribers as they do now.
I want high-speed data. I just don't want it for $99/month. (But this is going to change soon - Sprint already has reduced pricing on their Vision plans and Verizon will almost surely follow suit soon.)
There are a lot of areas that Vindigo simply doesn't cover.
That said, AvantGo provides a decent amount of Vindigo functionality for free, and until recently, was about the only thing I used my Palm for. (Mapopolis is the other thing I used) Mapopolis allowed me to get away from carrying around a monster atlas of my county and neighboring ones. AvantGo stored movie times, weather, and all sorts of other stuff.
These days I hardly ever use AvantGo - I have a Kyocera 6035 (Phone with a built-in IIIxe equivalent) - PQAs now rule supreme. I've got TV Guide, MovieFone, a custom PQA I wrote myself to look up people in the Cornell electronic directory, MapQuest, and many others.
I've found myself using Memo Pad and Date Book at work a lot - I have a bad tendency to forget meetings.
From your description, a Kyocera 6035 (or the upcoming 7135) is exactly what you want. Especially if you don't need color.
Unlike a lot of the PDA/phone combos out there, the 6035 is a phone first and PDA second. (Read: It's the only PalmOS phone with a physical numeric keypad for dialing.) The upcoming 7135 will be the same.
I have a 6035 and absolutely love it. Palm-wise, it's closest to a IIIxe. (8M RAM, OS 3.5)
The "enhanced" screen on the IIIx and above units was the worst mistake Palm ever made - They are plain and simple a bitch to read. Basically, starting with the IIIx, the Palm inverts everything when backlit. BackHack returns it to the "old" III-and-before behavior, which makes things much better.
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Not sure about whether or not confidentiality is implied in emails, but all outgoing emails from my company contain a notice that goes something like, "This message is for the designated recipient only and may contain proprietary/confidential information. Unauthorized use of this email is prohibited."
Not sure how well this would hold up if taken to court though.
I've seen it. Actually, my lab partner for my microcontrollers class last year at school had one and loved it.
Don't knock it just because it's Microsoft - While the overall majority of their products (especially software) are shit, they have some good products, esp. in the hardware arena. (Look at their input devices - MS does make great mice and joysticks)
This might've been a different unit, but the one my friend had had no fancy graphical LCD or anything, it was just a plain cordless phone with a few extra buttons and a base station that could hook up to the computer.
i.e. it didn't have some bastard version of Windows shoehorned into it.
Most of MS's hardware products are pretty good as long as they don't include Windows in any way, shape, or form. As soon as Windows (PC version or CE) gets embedded, it's a whole different story...
a) You can have longer battery life while making the battery smaller. Simply use less power by optimizing the electronics. Standby times given equivalent battery capacity have been constantly going up, as manufacturers squeeze more and more efficiency out of their circuitry. Also, you can reduce the size of the electronics, especially by integrating functionality provided by multiple ICs into one chip. This reduces cost and size, and often reduces overall power consumption too. (No need to drive long bus lines). As a result, you have more room left for the battery.
Also, as time goes on and more people are using cellphones, providers will have to put up more towers. The side effect of this is that you'll be closer to the tower you're using on average, which allows the phone to transmit at a lower power.
b) If more space is needed to make the phone sound better, then why are there plenty of smaller phones than the current smartphones that have better sound quality? It's primarily a matter of proper design planning, not of the phone's physical size. Yes, it's easier to get better quality out of a larger device, but it's still pretty easy to get good sound quality out of a small device (Like a StarTAC or those Motorola micro-phones)
Some design decisions in form factor may increase volume while reducing the size perception of the phone to the user - Witness clamshell-style flip phones. Many of these are thicker, but are seen as smaller because the other two dimensions are smaller. (Motorola's micro-phone - I think it's one of the v-series phones is a good example of this. Thicker than a StarTAC, but overall smaller)
I don't think the Treos are the best - I never liked the UI for their phone functionality.
That said, they're one of the only viable PDA/phone combos I've seen, and come close to being the best. The best I've encountered so far is the Kyocera 6035.
So far, I love my Kyocera - It is clearly designed as a phone first and not a PDA. I can dial the phone with a nice, big, easy to dial numeric keypad just like a normal cellphone without even opening up the flip of the phone. (The keypad is on the face of the flip, as opposed to being under the flip as in the Treos.
The Treo is probably a bit better of a PDA, at least for now. Color screen, more recent PalmOS, faster CPU. The 6035 is admittedly aging, but as a phone, none of the other smartphones can beat it. PDA/phone integration is also excellent.
The upcoming Kyo 7135 is going to be VERY nice. Color screen, OS 4.1, SDIO expansion slot, 16M RAM, MP3 capability, and 1xRTT (2.5G) data capability - Lack of 1xRTT is probably the 6035's biggest shortcoming these days, although on a PDA circuit-switched 14.4 data (2G data, which the 6035 does have) does pretty well.
I have to agree with wbm6k - I have a 6035 and I LOVE it.
Unlike every other "smartphone" I've seen, phone functionality is not sacrificed. Phone/PDA integration is excellent.
Yes, websurfing is a bit kludgy, but better than mose WinCE devices - They're STILL forcing people to pan left/right???? EudoraWeb (text-only) flattens everything vertically (a la Lynx), and the third-party image capable browsers (such as Handspring Blazer) also do the same flattening.
As far as WAP browsing - For mobile-specific sites, the 6035 is a dream for WAP. Big screen, you can tap on links with the stylus, and enter text into forms using Graffiti.
Don't forget PQAs - Probably my 10-15 PQAs are the most often used apps on my 6035.
Upcoming 7135 adds a color screen, clamshell (a la StarTAC) design that is smaller overall, MP3 capability, an SDIO port, 16M RAM, PalmOS 4.1, with only a small sacrifice in battery life. (4-5 days instead of 5-6 days with the phone portion on. With phone off, it can go a month or two at least. Most phone-only devices like my Kyo 2035a only do 3-4 days phone standby.) The 7135 is due out Any Month Now - It's in advanced beta testing with Verizon. Sprint customers will have to wait longer.
www.smartphonesource.com is an excellent user discussion board for the 6035/7135.
The upcoming Samsung I500 should be nice too - Very similar to the 7135. Slightly smaller and quite a bit faster (66 MHz as opposed to 33, but who needs more than 33 with PalmOS unless you're running a GameBoy emulator?), but no expandability.
I'd rather have slower trains with better coverage/low prices than an insanely expensive fast train that doesn't run anywhere near where I live.
High-speed trains? Don't expect my support until the NJ Transit Raritan Valley Line is electrified and goes direct into NYC. (A much easier project than building a maglev or upgrading tracks to high-speed capability).
I have a train line 10 minutes from my house. It's great, despite being a non-direct diesel. The Northeast Corridor is faster and would be nice, but the NEC is "fast enough" without having super-expensive upgrades being done.
Also, for long distances, trains just don't compete economically in the US. Amtrak (the only long-distance provider) has prices that are on average equal to or greater than air travel. In a number of areas you can compare Amtrak prices directly to local commuter rail - On the Northeast Corridor in New Jersey, NJT does New Brunswick, NJ to NYC in only 10-20 minutes more than Amtrak. NJT's round-trip price is 1/4 that of Amtrak's one-way.
The problem is that Amtrak has to use their profitable lines (NEC, etc.) to subsidize the much less profitable (in fact, overall money-losing) Midwestern lines.
I think the solution is to give up on rail where it won't work - For long runs in the Midwest, air has won and trains can't compete. For selected areas (Northeast Corridor, i.e. DCNYCBoston), form smaller companies to operate those lines. They can probably offer the service at much lower prices then, which will provide a large gain in ridership for those lines.
Unfortunately, thanks to Amtrak's prohibitive cost, it's cheaper to hire a limo service to go from central Jersey to Washington, DC (Yes, people do this. Apparently a significant portion of the business of many of the area's limo services are now for DC runs). It's faster to drive than take the airplane, and while the train is the fastest, it isn't worth the insane cost. Train travel could easily beat air travel in the Northeast, but it has to be reduced in price so that it can compete first.
As I see this, this is a double-edged sword:
a) It means that lowbies can be warned about threats such as that uber mob. I would love to be warned by a "radar" user than be ganked out of the blue.
b) It gives guilds using ShowEQ an advantage in killing "uber" mobs. That's the bad thing. Of course, if ShowEQ is as rampant as it sounds, overall it benefits people since no guild is really getting that much of an advantage, since they all have access to it.
Everything I've seen about Everquest seems to indicate that SOE caters to the "Haves" while screwing over the "Have-Nots" - For example, at one point raising the level cap from 50 to 60, and now to 65, something that only benefits the most hardcore. Also, the EQ economy is riddled with holes and massively inflated so that only macroers and hardcord players can afford anything.
DAoC (which I play), on the other hand, has a level cap of 50. Period. Mythic has repeatedly stated that this will never change. (You can progress a bit beyond 50 with "Realm abilities", obtained in realm vs. realm combat rather than player vs. monster, but it isn't THAT much of a difference.)
Also, in DAoC, except for jewelry items, there is no such thing as rare armor/weapons anymore. Players can now craft the best items in the game. Yes, it'll cost you, but it's a fixed price (the materials needed from merchants) that will never change.
To combat inflation, Mythic has always kept the money supply tight in DAoC (and in fact recently made it tighter by removing the closest thing to an exploit the economy had - Certain items could be salvaged for a pretty good profit, and now are only worth 75% as much. You still had to work for them though...), and also has plenty of cash sinks in DAoC (Both crafting, which is VERY expensive, and keeping your realm's keeps in good repair - Probably 50-75% of the money in the economy is used to buy wood for keep doors that just gets bashed down by a ram in a day or two.)
I've noticed that cell phones that act as modems have two methods that they use to do it:
a) Dialing to a normal ISP, they act just like a normal modem. You have to wait until it connects to the other end before it issues a CONNECT statement.
b) Dialing to Sprint or Verizon's Quick Net Connect (#777 on Verizon), it issues a CONNECT command immediately, but doesn't actually initiate a call until your PPP stack starts talking to the phone.
Something about this behavior confuses some OSes, including RedHat's standard PPP connecton scripts.
Here's a trick to try: Set your PPP dialer to give you a terminal window at connect. (MacOS can do this, right? Windows can (built-in to PPP system) and Linux can (Minicom calling pppd as a download handler). Have it dial #777 and bring up the terminal window. You should see CONNECT and then... Nothing. Wait 2-3 seconds, then do whatever you have to do to start PPP (Windows has a button to do this, in Minicom you use whatever download handler slot has pppd assigned to it).
If you're not using a QNC system (i.e. you're simply dialing into a normal ISP), well, then your OS is simply broken. As another poster said, these simply implement an AT command set. Some modems have INF strings to optimize their performance, but the generic init strings (or even no init string at all, the way I do it, just ATDT) always work.
Last but not least - Although this is OS-independent so would be breaking your setup under Windows too - Some phones require you to explicity put it into "data/fax" mode - This may only apply to integrated PDA/phones to decide what gets access to what though.
So far in the market, it seems that for "convergence" devices, consumers have rejected devices that are PDAs with mobile phone capability (Thera (WinCE), I300 (PalmOS), I330 (PalmOS)) in favor of devices that are phones with PDA functionality (Kyocera 6035 (PalmOS), upcoming 7135 (Also PalmOS), upcoming Samsung I500 (PalmOS), and most Symbian devices are primarily phones.)
Yes, I agree, Palm has been doing a crap job with their hardware since the Palm III. I don't see why anyone would want to buy a "geniune" Palm when Sony's PalmOS devices are so much better. (Or if you're looking for PDA/phone integration, either a Treo or Kyocera - The Tungsten W is going to be DOA in the market because it's phone capabilities are crap.)
I have a 6035 and I love it. PQAs + CDMA data = wonderful convenience.
Because UMTS and GSM/GPRS use entirely different modulation schemes, there is NO WAY to make a phone for both systems that is not excessively expensive and/or large with good battery life.
Because of the fact that cdmaOne and CDMA2000 have very closely related modulation schemes (In fact, they're almost identical), a CDMA2000 phone only needs one receiver/IF system and one transmit subsystem to use 2G, 2.5G, or in the future 3G networks. At worst it needs two RF frontends for dual-band capability, but everything from the IF on can be shared. To make a combination GSM/GPRS and UMTS phone, you need a complete receiver chain and a complete transmit chain for each network type, since they not only are on different frequencies, they have different modulation schemes and require different IF passbands. It's possible to gain some flexibility by using IF-sampling and software demodulators/downconverters, but such techniques are currently somewhat more costly and MUCH more power-hungry than "traditional" RF/IF subsystems.
"All the standards are designed to progress from the base European infrastructure, which is why you'll notice American operators installing 2.5G networks now, to use the European migration plans to get to 3G."
Excuse me, but WHAT migration plan?
And how is UMTS in any way based on GSM/GPRS?
There is no interoperability between GSM/GPRS and UMTS whatsoever - New spectrum, new handsets, and new base stations are needed. Essentially, to go to 3G in a GSM/GPRS system, you have no option but to essentially build an entirely new network from the ground up. (As a result, many European providers are hurting financially, thanks to being forced to buy new spectrum at outrageous prices.)
Meanwhile, CDMA2000 (2.5G/3G) and cdmaOne (2G) are fully interoperable - cdmaOne handsets like my Kyocera 6035 will work fine on a CDMA2000 network, whether 1xRTT (2.5G) or 1xEV-DO (3G), and CDMA2000-capable handsets will work fine in areas where CDMA2000 capability has not been added and only cdmaOne base stations are available. No new spectrum is needed, providers can use their existing frequency assignments.
There is a clear upgrade for CDMA providers from 2G(cdmaOne)->2.5G(1xRTT)->3G(1xEV-DO) - Where's the upgrade path for GSM providers? 2G(GSM)->2.5G(GPRS)->dead end.
They should've realized from the tough time they had against Palm in the PDA market that they should just not even bother with embedded devices.
In the PDA market, size, reliability, and battery life are major factors, and those three have held WinCE devices back constantly - PalmOS devices have been able to do more with far less. (A 33 MHz Palm is far more responsive UI-wise than a 200 MHz WinCE device, and lasts far longer on battery.)
Now they're not only up against PalmOS (There are some great PalmOS smarphones out there, such as the Kyocera 6035 and 7135, Treos, and the upcoming Samsung I500 - I don't consider the I300 to be great since it's a PDA first and not a very good phone.) and Symbian (All of the Symbian devices I've seen performed their phone functions very well and had excellent integration.
What does WinCE have? It doesn't have battery life or reliability, and its hardware requirements mean that CE devices are almost always larger than their PalmOS and Symbian brethren. All three of these factors held CE back in the PDA market, but are even more critical in the phone market, where the Kyocera 6035 (One of the smaller smartphones) is considered to be monstrous in size.
Every MS-based phone that has hit the market has flopped, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
I see Symbian winning the market for "basic" smartphones, and PalmOS winning the market for "power users" who need mainstream PDA capabilities.
Even after previewing I STILL often miss errors or omissions.
Often it's more than a few seconds - Many times a minute or two later, I'll think, "Oh, I forgot about this..."
I want to see an exact accounting of what portions of the price of my purchase go where. Last I checked, for CD:
Cost of pressing CD: Pennies. (Let's assume $1 at worst)
Amount of money that gets to artist: Pennies
Let's assume that distributor and retailer are getting 50% of the retail price of the CD (I don't find this unreasonable, say 25% each)
So for a $15 CD, where's the other $7 going?
I want to see proof that the artist is getting at least 20% of what I'm paying for the content before I start buying music again.
I think this is one reason why people don't rant as much about the movie industry.
a) Movies cost a LOT more to produce
b) Movies cost on average only 10-30% more than their soundtracks, despite containing a LOT more content. (4 gigs of data vs. 650M, which was probably harder and more expensive to create byte for byte)
c) We can see plenty of proof that the actors aren't getting shafted, since their pay for a given movie is often public knowledge.
Unless your amplifier is horrible it's not going to do anything to the timing of the CDMA signal... It may delay it, but that's the same effect as walking away fromt he base station.
:)
On the other hand, CDMA uses some neat tricks to overlay numerous signals on one channel. The one disadvantage of this is that it requires extreme linearity for any amplifier the signal passes through, otherwise the multiple CDMA carriers will garble each other.
Not that I'm complaining, solving nonlinearity problems in power amps is what keeps my company in business and the paychecks coming.
Don't know of anything like that.
If you go to Best Buy though, Dazzle sells an external analog video digitizer. (Analog to DV and I believe vice versa too.) Since it's DV it should work with any program that groks DV. (Kino, Cinelerra on Linux)
The article mentions that people can set up businesses such as a coffee shop or bakery, etc.
I want to join some find sim-Italians in setting up a business that deals in "protection", something that those other businesses clearly need.
Uncle Vito
Which is almost any PCI Firewire card out there.
If it says, "VIA chipset", then it's almost guaranteed to be OHCI compliant.
The only other 1394 host implementation I know about is the TI PCILynx chipset, and TI themselves have been moving towards OHCI. PCILynx chips are semi-supported under Linux.
As soon as the virus has to send to a different TCP port, it's neutered.
IIS worms are dependent on the ability to connect to TCP port 80. If the virus starts using 81, it just hits "connection refused" at the other end (unless someone switched their copy of IIS to switch to 81...)
That Register article is such BS...
I'm in the US, and I want wireless data. No, I don't want GPRS. GPRS is a dead-end technology with no upgrade path. CDMA2000 is far superior - Backwards compatibility with cdmaOne, higher capacity, less frequent dropped calls. Face it, CDMA is superior, even Europe now concedes it by basing their 3G technology on a (badly implemented) CDMA variant.
While the European providers are struggling to provide 3G services without going bankrupt (They need to buy new spectrum, completely replace 100% of their infrastructure, and replace all phones, essentially they need to build an entire new network from scratch), existing CDMA providers will upgrade as the need and demand arises, since cdmaOne phones will work on a CDMA2000 network and vice versa. The upgrade from cdmaOne to 1xRTT capability has been simple and easy for service providers, and they can easily roll out 1xEV-DO when they want to, without forcing a full handset upgrade. 1x-EV-DO handsets will work with older infrastructure (even cdmaOne base stations) and 1xEV-DO base stations will work fine with old cdmaOne handsets. GPRS providers don't have that luxury in the W-CDMA transition.
Also, W-CDMA and CDMA2000 have already faced each other in direct competition in Japan - DoCoMo's name is mud thanks to W-CDMA. Their competitor, KDDI, has 5 times as many 3G subscribers as they do now.
I want high-speed data. I just don't want it for $99/month. (But this is going to change soon - Sprint already has reduced pricing on their Vision plans and Verizon will almost surely follow suit soon.)
There are a lot of areas that Vindigo simply doesn't cover.
That said, AvantGo provides a decent amount of Vindigo functionality for free, and until recently, was about the only thing I used my Palm for. (Mapopolis is the other thing I used) Mapopolis allowed me to get away from carrying around a monster atlas of my county and neighboring ones. AvantGo stored movie times, weather, and all sorts of other stuff.
These days I hardly ever use AvantGo - I have a Kyocera 6035 (Phone with a built-in IIIxe equivalent) - PQAs now rule supreme. I've got TV Guide, MovieFone, a custom PQA I wrote myself to look up people in the Cornell electronic directory, MapQuest, and many others.
I've found myself using Memo Pad and Date Book at work a lot - I have a bad tendency to forget meetings.
From your description, a Kyocera 6035 (or the upcoming 7135) is exactly what you want. Especially if you don't need color.
Unlike a lot of the PDA/phone combos out there, the 6035 is a phone first and PDA second. (Read: It's the only PalmOS phone with a physical numeric keypad for dialing.) The upcoming 7135 will be the same.
I have a 6035 and absolutely love it. Palm-wise, it's closest to a IIIxe. (8M RAM, OS 3.5)
Palm i705?
Also, the upcoming 2.5G (Sprint Vision/Verizon Express Network) PDA/phone combos fit the bill.
Devices include:
Samsung I330
Kyocera 7135
Samsung I500
Usability-wise I wouldn't touch the I300 series, but the Kyo 7135 and I500 are looking very nice.
I have a Kyo 6035 - Most of what you want, although not always-on. But it does have a built-in CDMA modem.
The "enhanced" screen on the IIIx and above units was the worst mistake Palm ever made - They are plain and simple a bitch to read. Basically, starting with the IIIx, the Palm inverts everything when backlit. BackHack returns it to the "old" III-and-before behavior, which makes things much better.