A person's inability to balance was one of the driving reasons behind the Segway. The technology in the Segway started in the Ibot, nicked Fred Upstairs (after Fred Astaire, hence "Ginger") that was a 4 wheel, self-balancing device for people that would replace wheelchairs. It was able to climb up and downstairs, which is something otherwise chair-bound folk could not do. It had potnetial for people with all sorts of mobility limitations.
From the Segway site:
"One day Dean Kamen saw a young man in a wheelchair struggling to get over a curb. He thought about it, and realized that the problem wasn't ineffective wheelchairs, it was that the world was built for people who could balance. So he and his team created the Independence IBOT (TM) Mobility System, a self-balancing mobility device that enables users to climb stairs and negotiate sand, rocks, and curbs. But restoring balance also accomplished something even more dramatic--it elevated them on two wheels, so they could see the world at eye level. If balancing technology could provide such benefits to people who couldn't walk, what could it do for people with full mobility?"
So, at least the company started out with good intentions (and they may still have them) but funny how you don't see a lot of disabled people using them.
I don't see anything about this that would give an iPod a run for the money. Compared against the iPod Mini, Virgin's device is only.4 ounces lighter, only has 1GB more storage and costs the same.
The extra features are not really much of a value add; dual headphone jacks? FM Tuner? I'm sorry, but if someone is in the market for an iPod and sees this, the chances they'll pick it over a pod are really slim.
The Centaur looks much more nimble, I don't think I'd care for several hundred pounds of ATV rolling over on me.
Clearly though, if the range was mediocre, I wouldn't be going very far unless I could swap out batteries.
Your point is completely valid though, however maybe it would be better if a gas/electric hybrid could be made out of this. It wouldn't add much wieght to it at all. If they did that, the range would increase dramatically (espcially if the gas engine was used only to charge the batts once in a while).
Take that you environmentalists who want to shut down parks from ATV use!
It doesn't climb stairs, alone or in pairs, but WILL roll over you neighbor's dog. It's not fit for a snack but fits on your back, it's log - log - log. Er, Wheelman.
Seriously though, I would buy one of the Centaurs, if for nothing else than hunting and collecting fossils. Some of the terrain I go out on is steep for people but easily handled by ATVs.
I've seen Segways being used by parking meter guys here in Seattle with big ass steel boxes on the side, I imagine the same kind of saddlebag outfit could be made to work on a Centaur for packing equipment and specimens into.
Why would I use it over an ATV? Balance and braking for one, less noisy, little (no?) risk of starting fires from hot exhaust and it looks like fun. If it could carry extra batts, all the better.
Why switch OS's? Just switch clients. I use (ha! There, I admit it!) AIM. Why? No crap spam messages like you get with ICQ, It's not a MS product so I can limit the amount of fluff I see, it's free, doesn't require a sub to anything, and it's not an interface using an account I'd have to create anyway (hi Trillian) just so I can say I don't use it.
Yes, it has an ad in the main window with my buddy list, so what? I don't see that part of the app 99% of the time anyway. Nobody sends me messages at random asking if I want to enlarge my penis, see hot teenagers, buy Viagra or need a free mortgage calculator.
I use Win XP primarily (look at that, another confession), and AIM works fine for my needs. And if you really want to get rid of the tiny ad, there are ways to do it.
Besides, if I was doing anything sneaky, I'd just use Waste. (oh, did I say that?)
What would having an RFID tag in your license accomplish? At that form factor, it's too small to generate enough signal strength to be picked up by anything not in very close proximity, so its use as a tracking method is negated. Even if some kind of network could be set up, if you're going to go hijack a plane- you could leave the damn thing at home that day or throw it in the garbage somewhere along the way.
Using it for a unique identifier or for authentication (at airport entrances? truck rentals?) could be done just as easily with a smart card and you don't get the paranoia overhead associated with RFID. There are a thousand better things you could do with RFID than this, I think it is impractical for such an application.
story author probably wants to spy on his neighbor's teenage daughter(s).
Probably, but since it seems those babysitters are always popping up on shows like "When nannys attack" on Fox, and having two kids myself, I can understand the uneasiness.
In either case though the quickest way may be to go with an X10 setup (yes, THOSE guys). For under $200 you can get 3 wireless color cameras setup (cams, receiver, transceiver, remote, batt pack, motion sensors, etc) that will record when motion activated to either your PR or VCR.
The cams and sensors are totally visible though, which can be a detterent in and of itself, but if you're looking for something you can hide, a quick Google search will bring up thousands of companies. I looked at the ones who bought the keyword ads, and some have some pretty cool stuff for around 200 bucks.
There is also third party software out there that allows you to look in on what your cam sees by sending a snap shot to your cell phone (proper Net connections required.)
Holy crap! That's almost 2 grand! It looks like they just slapped 4 x 2GB sticks together (the center "cylinder" appears almost twice the size of the outer).
It'd be an interesting (but expensive) experiment to create a 10-20 USB port bus and make a Flash RAID. Hot-swapability is already built right in, though even at 8GB size, there's no justification. But it would be neat.
1GB is the biggest I've seen and the best deal on that is at newegg. $84 is hard to beat for a 1GB stick.
Remarkable how much these have dropped in price, it wasn't very long ago that 1GB flash was up around 200-300 bucks! I remember thinking I got a deal when I bought a 64MB for $20 a year and a half ago.
I found one instance where a fix actually allows you to pirate OTHER software (or at the very least violate otherwise restrictive "one machine at a time" clauses in the EULA).
I installed SP2 and didn't notice any problems at all. Then, I fired up Fireworks which has a little util that sees if other copies using the same license are running on the network (who, me?) and was prompted by Windows telling me that the service had been blocked and did I want to Continue Blocking, Unblock or should it Ask Me Later.
Well, so far, choosing Ask Me Later has enabled (for testing, of course) running multiple copies of single license software when we would not have been able to previously.
Sub 2 cups cheese for 1 ea cheesy mobile device (Nokia N-gage is fine)
1 cup spinach
Enrich your spinach until it produces power.
Remove any battery packs from the device, set aside for future uses.
Pack spinach into battery compartment.
Bake at 350 for 1 hour.
There's almost nothing for anyone TO see, most of that stuff is outdated and none of it is real-time, what good is it?
I don't understand it myself, there's almost nothing you would be able to discern about a potential target from sat images that you couldn't just by typing it into Google or driving by the damn thing.
Where I live, there are three major Navy installations- Bangor sub base, Keyport Naval Undersea Warfare Engineering Station and PSNS (Puget Sound Naval Shipyard) and guess what? There are road signs all over the place for them! Gate markers, directions, and so on, all on the highway. You can see into just about every part of PSNS and Keyport from the residential areas, water and hills that surround it which, to a terrorist, would be way more informative than staring at outdated aerial shot of it. Bangor can be peeked in on from the water or from across the water. If you're gathering intel on these places, it's not hard (given what they do) to guess that the flat railroad car with the giant drum on the back and Marine escort is probably carrying a reactor core or nuke materials, or that those buildings the subs go into are probably where refuelling and weapons loading happens. You can see this kind of stuff on a daily basis during a commute, and nywhere you can see, you can shoot- guns, rockets, whatever.
Really though, it's not a bad looking mouse, but its looks are the only new "feature."
I have been using the Optical Intellimouse for a few years and there's no incentive to switch. It would just be too hard to switch over to the Starck mouse. I enjoy the 5 buttons, not only because it drives anyone who sits down to drive my box mad, but because I actually make good use out of the extra buttons.
If it had something more, I would switch to the Starck if it had maybe a click wheel and two more buttons or maybe even if it had a tilt wheel. Until one or both of those things happens, I'll stay with the Intellimouse Optical.
BTW- anyone else think that with the name- S+arck and its looks, that this mouse should be sold at Ikea?
A specific example of this is1 how differently the brands owned by Real are viewed by the user population.
RealPlayer tends to cause immediate irritation in people's minds and postings on the net.
Mention Rhapsody, though, and not a lot of flak is sent up. Why?
Other than the obvious trespassings Real had in the past, they've continued to exhibit ambigous messages to the public. The Helix system is open, but doesn't support premium services the Realplayer does, You have the Realplayer for Windows, Mac and Linux but the majority of servies and features only work on Windows, Harmony loads content onto almost any device (not just the iPod, that's a misconception) but the Real music store only works on Windows PCs, no Macs or Linux boxes. There's the implied message they are universal but in truth they're really a Windows product with some reach into Mac.
With Rhapsody, there's no bad name attached. They've never gotten mixed up in bad consumer practices- due in large part to the fact they listened to their consumers (imagine that!), they have a compelling product but the key difference is that Rhapsody is never marketed in any light other than the one that shines for Windows PCs. There's no ambiguity.
Yeah, Real had made serious attempts to clean up the brand but heavy promotion focused around ads that show a friggin iPod implying universal support but not actual having it is the next biggest hurdle. Mac users who have an iPod can't take advantage of the 49cent service because there's no store for the Mac.
Plus, does Real seriously think that by considering the feedback they received only the work of a "vocal minority" instead of 1200+ (at this writing) comments that might actually have some value, even if it is buried in vulgarity.
They have a Mac client- here's a list of all clients minus the bullshit you'd get otherwise by going to their home page.
I thought about it and the only explanation I could come up with for why they ignored non-windows clients for so long was that they got too comfortable back in 99-2000 being the most widely distributed player (I think at one point they had almost 90% marketshare of desktop players) and took it for granted. Rather than put effort into a single cross-platform player, they put all their eggs in a combined all in one player built only for Windows. That, along with the horrible mistakes they made in how they delivered the Realone player, how it installed and its overly aggressive means of capturing file types and user info just added to the downfall. Where they used to be number one, they are now like 3rd or 4th.
The first benefit of this was that with the v10 release, all of that crappy install and mime-type hoarding has gone away.
The second benefit of this it that it seems they are finally paying serious attention to Linux and Mac and maybe now will put some equally serious thought into a truly universal player instead of just a marketed "universal" player.
This is probably exactly WHY they say it may double. They didn't get the "windfall" they were totally (but stupidly) expecting to get by extorting non-SCO Linux-using companies, so, when following the same train of thought that brought the first idea, the next "logical" step is of course to raise the cost of their licenses.
At the end of the day, they're just another company that isn't going to survive on revenue from its products and will instead turn to lawsuits as a way to not only "generate" revenue (assuming a win) but also as another creative way of saying "Our revenues are up! (If you don't count the millions we're spending on litigation)
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A person's inability to balance was one of the driving reasons behind the Segway. The technology in the Segway started in the Ibot, nicked Fred Upstairs (after Fred Astaire, hence "Ginger") that was a 4 wheel, self-balancing device for people that would replace wheelchairs. It was able to climb up and downstairs, which is something otherwise chair-bound folk could not do. It had potnetial for people with all sorts of mobility limitations.
From the Segway site:
"One day Dean Kamen saw a young man in a wheelchair struggling to get over a curb. He thought about it, and realized that the problem wasn't ineffective wheelchairs, it was that the world was built for people who could balance. So he and his team created the Independence IBOT (TM) Mobility System, a self-balancing mobility device that enables users to climb stairs and negotiate sand, rocks, and curbs. But restoring balance also accomplished something even more dramatic--it elevated them on two wheels, so they could see the world at eye level. If balancing technology could provide such benefits to people who couldn't walk, what could it do for people with full mobility?"
So, at least the company started out with good intentions (and they may still have them) but funny how you don't see a lot of disabled people using them.
Maybe you missed the post about Cherry OS the other day. It's not a native x86 Mac OS, but an emulator that runs it.
You can't polish a turd
Oh yes you can! See?
And I remember on the old Ripley's show (circa 80's) a farmer that made jewelry out of chicken droppings.
I don't see anything about this that would give an iPod a run for the money. Compared against the iPod Mini, Virgin's device is only
The extra features are not really much of a value add; dual headphone jacks? FM Tuner? I'm sorry, but if someone is in the market for an iPod and sees this, the chances they'll pick it over a pod are really slim.
The Centaur looks much more nimble, I don't think I'd care for several hundred pounds of ATV rolling over on me.
Clearly though, if the range was mediocre, I wouldn't be going very far unless I could swap out batteries.
Your point is completely valid though, however maybe it would be better if a gas/electric hybrid could be made out of this. It wouldn't add much wieght to it at all. If they did that, the range would increase dramatically (espcially if the gas engine was used only to charge the batts once in a while).
Take that you environmentalists who want to shut down parks from ATV use!
It doesn't climb stairs, alone or in pairs, but WILL roll over you neighbor's dog. It's not fit for a snack but fits on your back, it's log - log - log. Er, Wheelman.
Seriously though, I would buy one of the Centaurs, if for nothing else than hunting and collecting fossils. Some of the terrain I go out on is steep for people but easily handled by ATVs.
I've seen Segways being used by parking meter guys here in Seattle with big ass steel boxes on the side, I imagine the same kind of saddlebag outfit could be made to work on a Centaur for packing equipment and specimens into.
Why would I use it over an ATV? Balance and braking for one, less noisy, little (no?) risk of starting fires from hot exhaust and it looks like fun. If it could carry extra batts, all the better.
Why switch OS's? Just switch clients. I use (ha! There, I admit it!) AIM. Why? No crap spam messages like you get with ICQ, It's not a MS product so I can limit the amount of fluff I see, it's free, doesn't require a sub to anything, and it's not an interface using an account I'd have to create anyway (hi Trillian) just so I can say I don't use it.
Yes, it has an ad in the main window with my buddy list, so what? I don't see that part of the app 99% of the time anyway. Nobody sends me messages at random asking if I want to enlarge my penis, see hot teenagers, buy Viagra or need a free mortgage calculator.
I use Win XP primarily (look at that, another confession), and AIM works fine for my needs. And if you really want to get rid of the tiny ad, there are ways to do it.
Besides, if I was doing anything sneaky, I'd just use Waste. (oh, did I say that?)
What would having an RFID tag in your license accomplish? At that form factor, it's too small to generate enough signal strength to be picked up by anything not in very close proximity, so its use as a tracking method is negated. Even if some kind of network could be set up, if you're going to go hijack a plane- you could leave the damn thing at home that day or throw it in the garbage somewhere along the way.
Using it for a unique identifier or for authentication (at airport entrances? truck rentals?) could be done just as easily with a smart card and you don't get the paranoia overhead associated with RFID. There are a thousand better things you could do with RFID than this, I think it is impractical for such an application.
story author probably wants to spy on his neighbor's teenage daughter(s).
Probably, but since it seems those babysitters are always popping up on shows like "When nannys attack" on Fox, and having two kids myself, I can understand the uneasiness.
In either case though the quickest way may be to go with an X10 setup (yes, THOSE guys). For under $200 you can get 3 wireless color cameras setup (cams, receiver, transceiver, remote, batt pack, motion sensors, etc) that will record when motion activated to either your PR or VCR.
The cams and sensors are totally visible though, which can be a detterent in and of itself, but if you're looking for something you can hide, a quick Google search will bring up thousands of companies. I looked at the ones who bought the keyword ads, and some have some pretty cool stuff for around 200 bucks.
There is also third party software out there that allows you to look in on what your cam sees by sending a snap shot to your cell phone (proper Net connections required.)
Everything is better with hot chicks, but somethings are just cool on their own.
Holy crap! That's almost 2 grand! It looks like they just slapped 4 x 2GB sticks together (the center "cylinder" appears almost twice the size of the outer).
It'd be an interesting (but expensive) experiment to create a 10-20 USB port bus and make a Flash RAID. Hot-swapability is already built right in, though even at 8GB size, there's no justification. But it would be neat.
1GB is the biggest I've seen and the best deal on that is at newegg. $84 is hard to beat for a 1GB stick.
Remarkable how much these have dropped in price, it wasn't very long ago that 1GB flash was up around 200-300 bucks! I remember thinking I got a deal when I bought a 64MB for $20 a year and a half ago.
Excellent 3d graphics, poor 2d acting.
It's got me wondering if those circular locks on soda, vending and cigarette machines and phone booths are vulnerable to a similar exploit?
ALMOST want to try
Oh, BTW- those "Security" lug nuts on your custom rims can all be undone using a Gator Grip King Gator socket
I found one instance where a fix actually allows you to pirate OTHER software (or at the very least violate otherwise restrictive "one machine at a time" clauses in the EULA).
I installed SP2 and didn't notice any problems at all. Then, I fired up Fireworks which has a little util that sees if other copies using the same license are running on the network (who, me?) and was prompted by Windows telling me that the service had been blocked and did I want to Continue Blocking, Unblock or should it Ask Me Later.
Well, so far, choosing Ask Me Later has enabled (for testing, of course) running multiple copies of single license software when we would not have been able to previously.
Neat! Thanx Bill!
Geek Recipe for Spanikopita (serves 1)
Sub 2 cups cheese for 1 ea cheesy mobile device (Nokia N-gage is fine)
1 cup spinach
Enrich your spinach until it produces power.
Remove any battery packs from the device, set aside for future uses.
Pack spinach into battery compartment.
Bake at 350 for 1 hour.
I KNOW there's something illegal here, I just need more time to find it.
Why even make a hack? Just take whatever you recorded and burn it DVD or dump it to VHS.
...it's butt ugly. My thumbs are killing me just looking at that, um, key pad thing.
There's almost nothing for anyone TO see, most of that stuff is outdated and none of it is real-time, what good is it?
I don't understand it myself, there's almost nothing you would be able to discern about a potential target from sat images that you couldn't just by typing it into Google or driving by the damn thing.
Where I live, there are three major Navy installations- Bangor sub base, Keyport Naval Undersea Warfare Engineering Station and PSNS (Puget Sound Naval Shipyard) and guess what? There are road signs all over the place for them! Gate markers, directions, and so on, all on the highway. You can see into just about every part of PSNS and Keyport from the residential areas, water and hills that surround it which, to a terrorist, would be way more informative than staring at outdated aerial shot of it. Bangor can be peeked in on from the water or from across the water. If you're gathering intel on these places, it's not hard (given what they do) to guess that the flat railroad car with the giant drum on the back and Marine escort is probably carrying a reactor core or nuke materials, or that those buildings the subs go into are probably where refuelling and weapons loading happens. You can see this kind of stuff on a daily basis during a commute, and nywhere you can see, you can shoot- guns, rockets, whatever.
Really though, it's not a bad looking mouse, but its looks are the only new "feature."
I have been using the Optical Intellimouse for a few years and there's no incentive to switch. It would just be too hard to switch over to the Starck mouse. I enjoy the 5 buttons, not only because it drives anyone who sits down to drive my box mad, but because I actually make good use out of the extra buttons.
If it had something more, I would switch to the Starck if it had maybe a click wheel and two more buttons or maybe even if it had a tilt wheel. Until one or both of those things happens, I'll stay with the Intellimouse Optical.
BTW- anyone else think that with the name- S+arck and its looks, that this mouse should be sold at Ikea?
A specific example of this is1 how differently the brands owned by Real are viewed by the user population.
RealPlayer tends to cause immediate irritation in people's minds and postings on the net.
Mention Rhapsody, though, and not a lot of flak is sent up. Why?
Other than the obvious trespassings Real had in the past, they've continued to exhibit ambigous messages to the public. The Helix system is open, but doesn't support premium services the Realplayer does, You have the Realplayer for Windows, Mac and Linux but the majority of servies and features only work on Windows, Harmony loads content onto almost any device (not just the iPod, that's a misconception) but the Real music store only works on Windows PCs, no Macs or Linux boxes. There's the implied message they are universal but in truth they're really a Windows product with some reach into Mac.
With Rhapsody, there's no bad name attached. They've never gotten mixed up in bad consumer practices- due in large part to the fact they listened to their consumers (imagine that!), they have a compelling product but the key difference is that Rhapsody is never marketed in any light other than the one that shines for Windows PCs. There's no ambiguity.
Yeah, Real had made serious attempts to clean up the brand but heavy promotion focused around ads that show a friggin iPod implying universal support but not actual having it is the next biggest hurdle. Mac users who have an iPod can't take advantage of the 49cent service because there's no store for the Mac.
Plus, does Real seriously think that by considering the feedback they received only the work of a "vocal minority" instead of 1200+ (at this writing) comments that might actually have some value, even if it is buried in vulgarity.
They have a Mac client- here's a list of all clients minus the bullshit you'd get otherwise by going to their home page.
I thought about it and the only explanation I could come up with for why they ignored non-windows clients for so long was that they got too comfortable back in 99-2000 being the most widely distributed player (I think at one point they had almost 90% marketshare of desktop players) and took it for granted. Rather than put effort into a single cross-platform player, they put all their eggs in a combined all in one player built only for Windows. That, along with the horrible mistakes they made in how they delivered the Realone player, how it installed and its overly aggressive means of capturing file types and user info just added to the downfall. Where they used to be number one, they are now like 3rd or 4th.
The first benefit of this was that with the v10 release, all of that crappy install and mime-type hoarding has gone away.
The second benefit of this it that it seems they are finally paying serious attention to Linux and Mac and maybe now will put some equally serious thought into a truly universal player instead of just a marketed "universal" player.
This is probably exactly WHY they say it may double. They didn't get the "windfall" they were totally (but stupidly) expecting to get by extorting non-SCO Linux-using companies, so, when following the same train of thought that brought the first idea, the next "logical" step is of course to raise the cost of their licenses.
At the end of the day, they're just another company that isn't going to survive on revenue from its products and will instead turn to lawsuits as a way to not only "generate" revenue (assuming a win) but also as another creative way of saying "Our revenues are up! (If you don't count the millions we're spending on litigation)