Analog watches are not about telling time. We all have cellphones, VCRs, microwave ovens, car dashboards and little clocks on our computer screens that tell us the exact time wherever we look. Analog watches are worn for for many reasons, one of which is that a little wheel that oscilates back and fourth five times a second, is powered by wrist movements (in automatic watches) and somehow manages to keep time accurately to within a few seconds per day is an awesome triumph of engineering, something to be admired on its own.
The word "phone" means sound, meaning speaking to someone. The way to think of cellphones now is to think of them as "all the electronic devices I need to carry with me all in one package." That is the future of them, and it's great. Sure, a lot of people still just want voice and a phone book, but that is a commodity market now. Manufacturers don't make money selling those. Manufacturers make money selling camera/PDA/Web/music/video/game phones. Hey, you can always buy the lowest-end phone and you won't be paying for extra features you don't want. However, you can't really buy a phone without messaging and wireless web these days. Just don't use those features and let the rest of us have fun sending phone pictures.
These features are what sell the phones
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KISS
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Think back to the pre-digital days of cellphones. The cellphone had status. The smaller the phone, the more status. Remember when the Motorola Startac sold for over $1000? It was so incredibly small! And then of course more and more stuff got integrated onto chips, and lithium batteries came out, and then they had the ability to make phones really really small. These same developments also made them cheaper.
The result was that the cellphone lost its status (remember Zoolander's mobile?). So, what is it now?
Two things: a practical voice communication tool, of course.
And... entertainment, and a new status thing in the form of having more cool features.
Have you noticed that cellphones now are getting bigger? There will always be the older generation who want the phone to be as simple and convenient as possible and have no added features, but those are not high-markup sales. In fact those phones are sold in very small margins.
The real money is being made on phones with cameras, two color screens, MP3 players, PDA features, push-to-talk, video players, and Java games, all in a three-ounce package that you can take with you.
And yes, you can still buy basic phones. You can't buy a phone without a phone book, messaging and a minibrowser anymore, but those features are unobtrusive and users who don't care can just ignore them.
For the rest of us, phones are cool.
The cosmic rays that are outside of the Earth's magnetosphere very energetic. Is that what likely caused this? Or could it be something else? If I open a branch office there, will we need special case mods to protect the BIOS?
Setting up the domain name is a good start, but wap.slashdot.org still serves html, not wml. I would definitely like to read/. on my mobile, if they would get it set up. Chiral Software would be happy to help.
When are we going to be able to read/. on our mobiles?/. seems to be everyone (ok, all the/. readers') favorite way to waste time, and what better than to be able to waste time all the time, even when you're not at a computer? If any/. editors are reading this and want to try out some software to help in the task, please drop me an email.
I would like to see less things in the 2.7 kernel than in the 2.6 kernel. Getting device drivers, network drivers, etc, out of the kernel core and into modules was a step forward, but I think the next step forward would be to get these things out of the kernel entirely, and into userland. That would give Linux a huge advantage over Microsoft Windows. Installing and un-installing device drivers would become much easier for users. Manufacturers would like this too because then there would be less concern about GPL and device drivers. It would be easier to release binary-only drivers.
Too many office choices on Linux now!
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Koffice 1.3 Released
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Let's see, OpenOffice, Textmaker, Microsoft Office, KOffice, Kingsoft... what else? It seems that there are now more office choices for Linux than for Windows. Fortunately all except Microsoft Office seem to be moving towards the StarOffice XML format so we can have one file format that works on all of them.
Phones have more "peripherals" and capabilities than many computers today. A camera, a radio, two phones, speaker, microphone, a GPS. Does your computer have those things? I'm looking forward to writing server software and games for these, too.
Serve WAP and WML content automatically from your existing Apache web server.
Buy some aerogels, made in Germany. We know that they have great insulating properties, but is it insulating per unit weight? If that is the case, it is probably because they weigh so little and therefore they don't allow any convective cooling. All the cooling has to be by temperature conduction, which is not efficient in air.
would include picture phones, SMS, and PDA phones. Maybe it's time for a phone that has all the features of a modern high-end mobile phone (camera, mobile Web, SMS, organizer) just without the voice features?
Slashdot Mirror
Create a WAP wireless server now
Create a WAP server now
Sony PS2/Linux vs. Gamecube Linux vs. Xbox Linux? I'm looking forward to seeing which is the better choice for my database cluster.
The word "phone" means sound, meaning speaking to someone. The way to think of cellphones now is to think of them as "all the electronic devices I need to carry with me all in one package." That is the future of them, and it's great. Sure, a lot of people still just want voice and a phone book, but that is a commodity market now. Manufacturers don't make money selling those. Manufacturers make money selling camera/PDA/Web/music/video/game phones. Hey, you can always buy the lowest-end phone and you won't be paying for extra features you don't want. However, you can't really buy a phone without messaging and wireless web these days. Just don't use those features and let the rest of us have fun sending phone pictures.
Think back to the pre-digital days of cellphones. The cellphone had status. The smaller the phone, the more status. Remember when the Motorola Startac sold for over $1000? It was so incredibly small! And then of course more and more stuff got integrated onto chips, and lithium batteries came out, and then they had the ability to make phones really really small. These same developments also made them cheaper. The result was that the cellphone lost its status (remember Zoolander's mobile?). So, what is it now? Two things: a practical voice communication tool, of course. And... entertainment, and a new status thing in the form of having more cool features. Have you noticed that cellphones now are getting bigger? There will always be the older generation who want the phone to be as simple and convenient as possible and have no added features, but those are not high-markup sales. In fact those phones are sold in very small margins. The real money is being made on phones with cameras, two color screens, MP3 players, PDA features, push-to-talk, video players, and Java games, all in a three-ounce package that you can take with you. And yes, you can still buy basic phones. You can't buy a phone without a phone book, messaging and a minibrowser anymore, but those features are unobtrusive and users who don't care can just ignore them. For the rest of us, phones are cool.
The cosmic rays that are outside of the Earth's magnetosphere very energetic. Is that what likely caused this? Or could it be something else? If I open a branch office there, will we need special case mods to protect the BIOS?
Setting up the domain name is a good start, but wap.slashdot.org still serves html, not wml. I would definitely like to read /. on my mobile, if they would get it set up. Chiral Software would be happy to help.
When are we going to be able to read /. on our mobiles? /. seems to be everyone (ok, all the /. readers') favorite way to waste time, and what better than to be able to waste time all the time, even when you're not at a computer? If any /. editors are reading this and want to try out some software to help in the task, please drop me an email.
I would like to see less things in the 2.7 kernel than in the 2.6 kernel. Getting device drivers, network drivers, etc, out of the kernel core and into modules was a step forward, but I think the next step forward would be to get these things out of the kernel entirely, and into userland. That would give Linux a huge advantage over Microsoft Windows. Installing and un-installing device drivers would become much easier for users. Manufacturers would like this too because then there would be less concern about GPL and device drivers. It would be easier to release binary-only drivers.
Let's see, OpenOffice, Textmaker, Microsoft Office, KOffice, Kingsoft... what else? It seems that there are now more office choices for Linux than for Windows. Fortunately all except Microsoft Office seem to be moving towards the StarOffice XML format so we can have one file format that works on all of them.
This is called bootstrapping. The Software Council of Southern California is having a presentation on it.
Serve WAP and WML content automatically from your existing Apache web server.
This is what they are going to do to MONO, too. Stay far away from their formats.
Buy some aerogels, made in Germany. We know that they have great insulating properties, but is it insulating per unit weight? If that is the case, it is probably because they weigh so little and therefore they don't allow any convective cooling. All the cooling has to be by temperature conduction, which is not efficient in air.
would include picture phones, SMS, and PDA phones. Maybe it's time for a phone that has all the features of a modern high-end mobile phone (camera, mobile Web, SMS, organizer) just without the voice features?