I think with the success of the original XBox and the way that things are looking for the XBox 360 companies will fork up the money to do it. Just look at Apple's strategy. It keeps only high quality products being created. This will ensure that the XBox stays a hot product and will also ensure that people aren't exploiting the XBox. I think it's a good move.
So far I really don't see Microsoft introducing anything new. Windows XP introduces a little bit of the flashy new UI - the start menu fades in for example. I could really care less about fewer reboots - I only reboot my windows xp machine once every month anyways, so I could care less. In terms of installing windows, a reboot on my 3ghz machine takes no time at all, so once again, I can care less. I have a desktop PC so all of the laptop features are useless to me (although they'd be interesting on my Mac laptop. It'd be cool to watch a dvd without turning on my laptop).
So lets see what else new they've added. A new UI? I could really care less. Indigo doesn't really add anything different to the OS experience. There have been programs to add transparency out for windows for a while and if I really wanted transparency I could have done it. I really could care less about it. Icon previews? Are they really that important? 90% of the time you know what file you want and you don't need a little preview icon to show you its contents. The same goes for searching. I'd rather have my files in an organized manner and not in some random "virtual directory structure." Sure I could use the search tool to find the file for me, but what if I've completely forgotten the file name or a a few words in the file, but I do know that it's a file from my history class that I took junior year. Sure I could search by date but it'd be much easier if I had organized all my files in terms of "My Documents -> School work -> Junior Year -> History 101 -> some_file.doc." (which I currently do).
The only thing I see MS doing with this release is trying to creep up on the updates that Mac OS X or some of the linux versions have added. All the new great improvements like WinFS got scraped.
I got to watch the liftoff while at work, at a place where many of the parts of the shuttle were built. It was pretty cool watching it next to guys who had helped build it! All their explanations definitely made the launch even more exciting. God speed to the crew and lets hope they have a successful mission and a safe return!
Some jobs do in fact prevent you from working for the competitor. A lot of the time it's part of the non-disclosure agreement. If you work for a defense contractor, for example, Lockheed Martin, they will make you sign an agreement that you will not work for Boeing, Northrop, Raytheon, etc for a 3 year period. This prevents you from being able to take your knowledge of a product that you were working on at company A to company B. This kind of practice is completely ethical. Taking your knowledge from 1 company to another is very unethical and these type of rules prevent these thigns from happening.
The window that fell off weighed less than 2 lbs and caused only minor damage to the heat shield panels. The panels were replaced with no delay to the launch.
The sensors control when the engin cuts off due to low fuel. If the engin is working at its maximum ability and all of a sudden runs out of fuel the entire engin will be destroyed and could lead to other catasrophic problems. The sensors detect how much fuel is left and shuts down the engin before it runs out of fuel, avoiding any problems to the engin. Now does this sound so absurd anymore? I think not.
The things they need to send the ISS cannot be sent from a boeing heavy lift rocket. The only thing large enough to bring the equipment to the ISS and have it installed is the Shuttle. How do you propose to send a rocket towards the ISS, have it stop right before the ISS and then drop off it's supplies? A heavy lift rocket can get something into orbit but it still needs to make its way to the ISS.
A new design is in the works, by both Lockheed Martin and a Northrop Grumman/Boeing team. Just today NASA approved a $28million contract to both teams to prepare for their design review in July 2006. It takes time to design a vehicle that will be used for years to come (and go to both the moon and to mars). Just gotta sit tight and be patient.
"There is no word how long the delay will last and when Discovery's launch could be rescheduled. NASA has through July 31 to launch Discovery or else wait until September 9 due to the need to lift off and separate the external tank in daylight."
Um, I think you people have completely missed the whole point of the safety precautions in this new space shuttle launch. When the shuttle launches they have their backup shuttle waiting should something go wrong. If something goes wrong, Discovery like, where the shuttle makes it to the ISS but can't return to earth, they still have the backup shuttle to launch and bring them home.
The point of the cameras is to determine if something broke on the shuttle. If something breaks the shuttle will not return to Earth. The cameras aren't there to say "OMG, SOMETHING WENT WRONG, ABORT." The cameras are there to determine if something went wrong and if so, to send the backup shuttle into space to return the astornauts safely to earth.
According to SpaceFlightNow there will be NO delays with the launch.
"NASA managers Thursday evening decided to begin preparing the shuttle Discovery for a possible roll back to the protection of the Vehicle Assembly Building should Hurricane Dennis take a turn to the east and threaten the Space Coast. At a midnight meeting, however, officials put those preparations on hold. And this morning the decision was made to cancel any rollback.
Technicians at launch pad 39B have disconnected explosive ordnance as part of early rollback preparations. At a midnight senior management meeting, however, officials decided not to continue with the list of chores to unhook Discovery from its seaside complex given a more optimistic weather outlook that keeps Dennis well away from Kennedy Space Center. Proceeding with more rollback activities overnight would have prevented an on-time launch Wednesday.
Rollback to the VAB would have to be completed before the wind reaches 40 knots (46 MPH). [It would take] about 48 hours from the time the decision is made to the time we are in the VAB. We had a weather briefing and at this point we are fairly confident we will not have to fuss with the storm, at least this one this time. It's a long hurricane season."
Now this only means that in the future this Supreme Court ruling can be used to, for example, decide that your domain name of microsoftsucks.com should be given to microsoft in order to promote a healthier public opinion of company and thereby improving our life style.
Right.....
Despite all the advances in computing it is still VERY hard to take a photo and program a computer to find a sign or civic number and be able to read it. Although I'm sure google has the brains to do it, I just don't know how accurate it would be. Prob. easier to just drive around in a certain programmed path that knows the route. Not worth spending all the time and money (in people's salaries) to program some Image Processing algorithm to read it.
PC games aren't going to go anywhere. The market is partially combined but partially seperate. The combination comes into play when console games (like racing games, Halo, etc) are also available on the PC. Need for Speed for example I played first on my PS2 and then on my PC. I actually enjoyed it more on my PC because I could navigate around the menu options much quicker with a keyboard than on a controller/joystick.
On the other hand, PC only games offer an entirely different type of gameplay that is not going to go away. MMORG's, first person shooters and basically any type of online game is always going to be better on a PC than on a console. Part of the reason why I like games such as World of Warcraft is because you can interact with other people. And I don't just mean you can go up against them and fight with them, I mean you can talk with them, joke around with them, become friends with them (if you already aren't) or get annoyed with them (although getting rid of all the annoying 5 year olds screaming "you hacker" in CS would be nice).
Granted, the console games could add a keyboard and allow this, but now you're merging PC games into a console game. This hasn't really been done before. Currently the only merge is from console games to PC games and I can't see the reverse actually happening.
There's a lot more to consider than just price, or performance. Internet connectiosn for example must be taken into account Some of the most popular games are online games (Warcraft, Counter Strike, etc). People with dialup or a slower broadband connection are able to turn down the performance settings on their PC games so that they will be able to play online games without lagging. I don't see console games allowing their users to turn down performance settings.
I think Gates has a point -- look at all those slashdot articles that I see posted and just ignore immediatly. Guess that didn't happen with this one though.
I find it funny that all the anti-piracy agencies don't realize that taking down a website doesn't work. Suing/taking down torrent trackers or torrent hosting websites does nothing. When you take down 1 site, 10 pop up in its place. Look at suprnova, that went down and already over 20 sites have popped up that host as many torrents as suprnova did.
The anti-piracy people should look to solve their problem a different way. Why are people pirating things? Maybe it's because of the price. People certainly don't get a thrill out of piracy in the same way that people do other illegal things. Stop making moves $10 to go to, stop making someone pay $1/song, stop over-charging and blaming increasing charges on piracy when that is a complete lie. It's time to attack the problem elsewhere - not in those sharing the files.
For my senior design project my group actually made a voice-controlled remote control. We used a TI DSP chip in conjunction with an IR transmitter. Performing the voice reconigition was harder than we thought but it had about 90% accuracy using a basic algorithm. Programs like ViaVoice have improved a lot and with a little training the voice recognition can get *VERY* accurate. Making it work for 1 or 2 users is pretty easy -- making it work for everyone is a bit more difficult. It is still possible, as seen by UPS now using an entirely voice operated telephone system ("Please say your tracking code now") - Microsoft does the same for getting a new CD key.
As other users pointed out, this isn't a new product. It's been done in the past, the demand for it just isn't high. If you're going to have a remote, you might as well push the buttons. Our "remote" that we designed was meant to be placed and left on a coffee table and that way you would never lose it, but could always control the TV from anywhere near the microphone. IT had a special catch work which activated it so that normal audio from the TV would not activate the remote functions.
I must say that when I bought my iPod several years ago I had no intention of switching to the Mac OS. But as I've now gone through 3 different iPods and each time I love the apple products more and more, I started wondering if maybe a Mac computer would be a good idea too. I work at the computer lab at school (we have about 200 macs and 300 pcs) and I spent a week playing on the Macs. I was extremely impressed. In November I bought myself a G4 Powerbook and I've loved it ever since.
The iPod represents exactly what Apple is: an innovator. They release produts that innovate the market. The iPod and the iPod music store have revolutionized mp3 audio. While there were products before the iPod it was Apple's ingeniuos design that innovated the mp3 player boom. And thanks to the iPod music store we might soon see even cheaper than 99cent mp3s for download (see the slashdot article on 5 cent music).
The Mac OS is similar to the iPod. If you play around with it you will wonder why Windows hasn't picked up on some of the things. Expose, for example, will re-arrange the windows open or in a certain application so you can easily choose which one you want. Buttons such as "OK" and "Cancel" are all placed in the same exact spots (OK on the right, cancel on the left) in every application. Mac OS encourages their developers to stick to standards and for the most part, they do (ex: not having a 2 button mouse prevents developers from loading things into the right click menu, which many novice users do not know about). The design of the Powerbook alone blows my mind. For $1,000 cheaper than the PC counterpart I have a top of the line processor with a gorgeous screen, a large hard drive and plenty of RAM. But it doesn't stop there - the Powerbook has a light sensor that knows when to light up my keyboard (if it's too hard to see the letters on the keys) or turn it off if it gets light enough. I won't list all the wonderful features, you can go search google for that.
Conclusion: When I switched to Mac OS I was reluctant to give up on my PC. Now I find myself reluctant to use my PC even for the simplest of tasks.
I've found that if you write "Check ID" on the back, often stores will ask to check your ID. Granted this only works when the employee actually takes a look at the back of the card, but it does work about 75% of the time.
Signatures on the other hand are becoming less and less used anyways. For example, go to any supermarket and you scan your own card. The store never ever looks at your card and the signture that you sign is worthless.
There is a reason that the credit card companie are looking into alterative ways to protect security.
I'm not sure if this was intended to sound like some new ground breaking technique, but it really isn't. I am a masters Electrical Engineering student and am currently taking an Image Processing class. Using neighboring images to reconstruct an image is a VERY VERY common task - in fact, it's almost the only way to do it. How else are you supposed to guess the colors (or what pixel is *supposed* to be there) without knowing what's around it. It's obvious that the highest correlation will be between the nearest neighbors (except on some edges).
Maybe next time we can make a program that just guesses the colors and look at how interesting those come out!
Let me first start off saying that I originally grew up on a Mac. When I hit 7th grade I bought myself a PC and I've stuck with a windows machine ever since. I work at the computing site at school (we have 150 macs and about 250 PCs in the lab) and I started to play around with Macs. As more and more of my EECS friends (I am an EE masters student) bought powerbooks and I decided I needed a laptop I ended up buying the powerbook. In the 3 months that I've had it I must say that I absolutly love it. I have become quite used to running the mac and working with it. Since I'm up on the Engineering school most of the day I spend most of my time on my Mac. I will say however, that I am still much more comfortable on the Windows machine than on the PC.
Maybe it's just a comfort issue, but I find that programs like Office, Dreamweaver, Matlab, Firefox, etc, all run much smoother on the PC. While some things run nicely on the Mac, the layout of things, such as the toolbars in Office for Mac seem to be scattered and clutter the screen. I prefer the same layout as that on the PC and I end up spending more time formatting my word files while on the Mac than I do on the PC. Dreamweaver for Mac has been nothing but trouble. Toolsbars randomly dissapear until I hit a key, or when I close dreamweaver and reopen it all the toolbars are no longer open and I have to manually open them. Trying to go to the begining or end of a line on the Mac is not exactly an easy task. Whereas I would hit "home" or "end" on the PC the Mac is very scattered and depends upon the program you're using. Holding function and left or right in Adium (AIM for Mac) will prefer the same function as home/end on the PC. But in firefox, for example, control and left/right performs this. In other programs you can't do this functionality at all.
People may argue that they hate the start menu but I'm personally a fan (sort of). I hate the new XP version of the start menu and always revert to the old classic start menu. My "applications" folder on the Mac has been completly reorganized to somewhat mimic the start menu. I hated having an entire listing of a million programs in the applications folder. I had to scroll for 10 minutes just to find my programs. Instead I organized my applications folder into certain groups just as I would on the PC (aka my "Applications" folder has become my "start menu").
Not having the right click can be a pain. yes pressing cntrl + click serves as the right click and yes I can get 2-button mouse but on a laptop this uses extra power and is cumbersome.
With all that said I do love my Mac. I think some of the software is great. I wish there was a version of Adium for the PC (I tried Trillian once but I wasn't all that impressed). iPhoto sucks (Picasa for PC all the way) but iCalc is awesome, QuickSilver is awesome, and Delicious Library is awesome.
One thing that I noticed while playing around with the new Google Maps is that the interface for it is very similar to the GMail interface. The search bar at the very top followed by 2 links for either help or feedback or some extra option (in Gmail it's create a filter). The same "print" and "email" links are on the right hand side as well (similar to GMail).
I'm sure Google has a bigger picture in mind and we will eventually see some integrated package between Google the Search Engin, Google the Email serve, Google the map provider, and Google the watever. Throw in Google Desktop and maybe we have the first hints on a Google OS (I don't know I'm just speculating now?).
For me the page took almost a minute to load. The startup page with the map of the USA took about 30 seconds to load and I ended up sitting there waiting for the maps with directions and route markers to load. Although I was highly impressed by the actual functionatily, it must be a goal of google to make it faster. I can imagine that the java(script) or whatever programming behind the coding of that takes a decent amount of time to load. But just like gmail, I'm sure we'll see speed increases.
On another note, I managed to refresh my gmail inbox, open an email, close an email and open another email in the time that it took for the google maps page to load, so no, my T1 internet connection is not just really slow.
In a day and age when it seems that almost everyone uses digital cameras, I'm not surprised that they came out with disposable digital cameras. If you look now, most people are using either digital, or film disposable cameras (aside from professional cameras, which are increasingly turning digital).
Digital cameras make things so much easier - no bad pictures (as this one disposable will allow), you can see the picture after it's taken and you can get a copy of it digitally (non-scanned). There are so many reasons for a disposable digital camera - they include every reason to have a digital camera over a film camera.
Slashdot Mirror
I think with the success of the original XBox and the way that things are looking for the XBox 360 companies will fork up the money to do it. Just look at Apple's strategy. It keeps only high quality products being created. This will ensure that the XBox stays a hot product and will also ensure that people aren't exploiting the XBox. I think it's a good move.
So lets see what else new they've added. A new UI? I could really care less. Indigo doesn't really add anything different to the OS experience. There have been programs to add transparency out for windows for a while and if I really wanted transparency I could have done it. I really could care less about it. Icon previews? Are they really that important? 90% of the time you know what file you want and you don't need a little preview icon to show you its contents. The same goes for searching. I'd rather have my files in an organized manner and not in some random "virtual directory structure." Sure I could use the search tool to find the file for me, but what if I've completely forgotten the file name or a a few words in the file, but I do know that it's a file from my history class that I took junior year. Sure I could search by date but it'd be much easier if I had organized all my files in terms of "My Documents -> School work -> Junior Year -> History 101 -> some_file.doc." (which I currently do).
The only thing I see MS doing with this release is trying to creep up on the updates that Mac OS X or some of the linux versions have added. All the new great improvements like WinFS got scraped.
I really don't see any point in upgrading.
I got to watch the liftoff while at work, at a place where many of the parts of the shuttle were built. It was pretty cool watching it next to guys who had helped build it! All their explanations definitely made the launch even more exciting. God speed to the crew and lets hope they have a successful mission and a safe return!
Is there a reason why all these slashdot posts are coming here days after they appear on digg? This was on digg like 8 days ago.
In MS's case, I think this is obsurd!
The sensors control when the engin cuts off due to low fuel. If the engin is working at its maximum ability and all of a sudden runs out of fuel the entire engin will be destroyed and could lead to other catasrophic problems. The sensors detect how much fuel is left and shuts down the engin before it runs out of fuel, avoiding any problems to the engin. Now does this sound so absurd anymore? I think not.
A new design is in the works, by both Lockheed Martin and a Northrop Grumman/Boeing team. Just today NASA approved a $28million contract to both teams to prepare for their design review in July 2006. It takes time to design a vehicle that will be used for years to come (and go to both the moon and to mars). Just gotta sit tight and be patient.
NASA has through July 31 to launch Discovery or else wait until September 9 due to the need to lift off and separate the external tank in daylight.
"There is no word how long the delay will last and when Discovery's launch could be rescheduled. NASA has through July 31 to launch Discovery or else wait until September 9 due to the need to lift off and separate the external tank in daylight."
The point of the cameras is to determine if something broke on the shuttle. If something breaks the shuttle will not return to Earth. The cameras aren't there to say "OMG, SOMETHING WENT WRONG, ABORT." The cameras are there to determine if something went wrong and if so, to send the backup shuttle into space to return the astornauts safely to earth.
"NASA managers Thursday evening decided to begin preparing the shuttle Discovery for a possible roll back to the protection of the Vehicle Assembly Building should Hurricane Dennis take a turn to the east and threaten the Space Coast. At a midnight meeting, however, officials put those preparations on hold. And this morning the decision was made to cancel any rollback.
Technicians at launch pad 39B have disconnected explosive ordnance as part of early rollback preparations. At a midnight senior management meeting, however, officials decided not to continue with the list of chores to unhook Discovery from its seaside complex given a more optimistic weather outlook that keeps Dennis well away from Kennedy Space Center. Proceeding with more rollback activities overnight would have prevented an on-time launch Wednesday.
Rollback to the VAB would have to be completed before the wind reaches 40 knots (46 MPH). [It would take] about 48 hours from the time the decision is made to the time we are in the VAB. We had a weather briefing and at this point we are fairly confident we will not have to fuss with the storm, at least this one this time. It's a long hurricane season."
Now this only means that in the future this Supreme Court ruling can be used to, for example, decide that your domain name of microsoftsucks.com should be given to microsoft in order to promote a healthier public opinion of company and thereby improving our life style. Right.....
Despite all the advances in computing it is still VERY hard to take a photo and program a computer to find a sign or civic number and be able to read it. Although I'm sure google has the brains to do it, I just don't know how accurate it would be. Prob. easier to just drive around in a certain programmed path that knows the route. Not worth spending all the time and money (in people's salaries) to program some Image Processing algorithm to read it.
if (osToLoad == "Mac OS X")
{
blowUpComputer();
}
On the other hand, PC only games offer an entirely different type of gameplay that is not going to go away. MMORG's, first person shooters and basically any type of online game is always going to be better on a PC than on a console. Part of the reason why I like games such as World of Warcraft is because you can interact with other people. And I don't just mean you can go up against them and fight with them, I mean you can talk with them, joke around with them, become friends with them (if you already aren't) or get annoyed with them (although getting rid of all the annoying 5 year olds screaming "you hacker" in CS would be nice).
Granted, the console games could add a keyboard and allow this, but now you're merging PC games into a console game. This hasn't really been done before. Currently the only merge is from console games to PC games and I can't see the reverse actually happening.
There's a lot more to consider than just price, or performance. Internet connectiosn for example must be taken into account Some of the most popular games are online games (Warcraft, Counter Strike, etc). People with dialup or a slower broadband connection are able to turn down the performance settings on their PC games so that they will be able to play online games without lagging. I don't see console games allowing their users to turn down performance settings.
All in all, PC games aren't going anywhere.
I think Gates has a point -- look at all those slashdot articles that I see posted and just ignore immediatly. Guess that didn't happen with this one though.
The anti-piracy people should look to solve their problem a different way. Why are people pirating things? Maybe it's because of the price. People certainly don't get a thrill out of piracy in the same way that people do other illegal things. Stop making moves $10 to go to, stop making someone pay $1/song, stop over-charging and blaming increasing charges on piracy when that is a complete lie. It's time to attack the problem elsewhere - not in those sharing the files.
As other users pointed out, this isn't a new product. It's been done in the past, the demand for it just isn't high. If you're going to have a remote, you might as well push the buttons. Our "remote" that we designed was meant to be placed and left on a coffee table and that way you would never lose it, but could always control the TV from anywhere near the microphone. IT had a special catch work which activated it so that normal audio from the TV would not activate the remote functions.
The iPod represents exactly what Apple is: an innovator. They release produts that innovate the market. The iPod and the iPod music store have revolutionized mp3 audio. While there were products before the iPod it was Apple's ingeniuos design that innovated the mp3 player boom. And thanks to the iPod music store we might soon see even cheaper than 99cent mp3s for download (see the slashdot article on 5 cent music).
The Mac OS is similar to the iPod. If you play around with it you will wonder why Windows hasn't picked up on some of the things. Expose, for example, will re-arrange the windows open or in a certain application so you can easily choose which one you want. Buttons such as "OK" and "Cancel" are all placed in the same exact spots (OK on the right, cancel on the left) in every application. Mac OS encourages their developers to stick to standards and for the most part, they do (ex: not having a 2 button mouse prevents developers from loading things into the right click menu, which many novice users do not know about). The design of the Powerbook alone blows my mind. For $1,000 cheaper than the PC counterpart I have a top of the line processor with a gorgeous screen, a large hard drive and plenty of RAM. But it doesn't stop there - the Powerbook has a light sensor that knows when to light up my keyboard (if it's too hard to see the letters on the keys) or turn it off if it gets light enough. I won't list all the wonderful features, you can go search google for that.
Conclusion: When I switched to Mac OS I was reluctant to give up on my PC. Now I find myself reluctant to use my PC even for the simplest of tasks.
Signatures on the other hand are becoming less and less used anyways. For example, go to any supermarket and you scan your own card. The store never ever looks at your card and the signture that you sign is worthless.
There is a reason that the credit card companie are looking into alterative ways to protect security.
I'm not sure if this was intended to sound like some new ground breaking technique, but it really isn't. I am a masters Electrical Engineering student and am currently taking an Image Processing class. Using neighboring images to reconstruct an image is a VERY VERY common task - in fact, it's almost the only way to do it. How else are you supposed to guess the colors (or what pixel is *supposed* to be there) without knowing what's around it. It's obvious that the highest correlation will be between the nearest neighbors (except on some edges).
Maybe next time we can make a program that just guesses the colors and look at how interesting those come out!
Maybe it's just a comfort issue, but I find that programs like Office, Dreamweaver, Matlab, Firefox, etc, all run much smoother on the PC. While some things run nicely on the Mac, the layout of things, such as the toolbars in Office for Mac seem to be scattered and clutter the screen. I prefer the same layout as that on the PC and I end up spending more time formatting my word files while on the Mac than I do on the PC. Dreamweaver for Mac has been nothing but trouble. Toolsbars randomly dissapear until I hit a key, or when I close dreamweaver and reopen it all the toolbars are no longer open and I have to manually open them. Trying to go to the begining or end of a line on the Mac is not exactly an easy task. Whereas I would hit "home" or "end" on the PC the Mac is very scattered and depends upon the program you're using. Holding function and left or right in Adium (AIM for Mac) will prefer the same function as home/end on the PC. But in firefox, for example, control and left/right performs this. In other programs you can't do this functionality at all.
People may argue that they hate the start menu but I'm personally a fan (sort of). I hate the new XP version of the start menu and always revert to the old classic start menu. My "applications" folder on the Mac has been completly reorganized to somewhat mimic the start menu. I hated having an entire listing of a million programs in the applications folder. I had to scroll for 10 minutes just to find my programs. Instead I organized my applications folder into certain groups just as I would on the PC (aka my "Applications" folder has become my "start menu"). Not having the right click can be a pain. yes pressing cntrl + click serves as the right click and yes I can get 2-button mouse but on a laptop this uses extra power and is cumbersome.
With all that said I do love my Mac. I think some of the software is great. I wish there was a version of Adium for the PC (I tried Trillian once but I wasn't all that impressed). iPhoto sucks (Picasa for PC all the way) but iCalc is awesome, QuickSilver is awesome, and Delicious Library is awesome.
Anyways, that's just my thoughts.
I'm sure Google has a bigger picture in mind and we will eventually see some integrated package between Google the Search Engin, Google the Email serve, Google the map provider, and Google the watever. Throw in Google Desktop and maybe we have the first hints on a Google OS (I don't know I'm just speculating now?).
On another note, I managed to refresh my gmail inbox, open an email, close an email and open another email in the time that it took for the google maps page to load, so no, my T1 internet connection is not just really slow.
Digital cameras make things so much easier - no bad pictures (as this one disposable will allow), you can see the picture after it's taken and you can get a copy of it digitally (non-scanned). There are so many reasons for a disposable digital camera - they include every reason to have a digital camera over a film camera.