I took a gander at that book, and right away as I skimmed the amazon page, I noticed problems. He may be a wonderful cognitive psychologist, but he's no technocrat.
The whole "Why shouldn't my computer take three nanoseconds to turn on, read my mind, and then never ever have errors!!!?!?one1" thing is a very amateur approach to the problem, if you ask me. Sure, it would be nice, but I'm absolutely sure it's technically impossible.
To be more specific: "There has never been any technical reason for a computer to take more than a few seconds to begin operation when it is turned on." I can name half a dozen; power consumption for suspend to RAM, system process cleanup for suspend to disk, disk space storage for suspend to disk, driver software that doesn't gracefully handle failing down to a hibernate state, plug-and-play hardware detection on bootup... not to mention the whole raft of problems that occur when users never shut down and clog their system up by never ending processes.
The problem with the view he espouses is that it practically requires a suspend-state, when users aren't good with suspend states. It wasn't until Windows XP and the relatively modern (last three or four years) (okay don't flame me I'm sure SOMEWHERE there was a build that had really optimal suspend, but I couldn't find it) linux systems that suspend really started working, and even so, your device drivers really depend on when you can suspend the system and how it restores.
For example, when I tested Vista on my laptop, the base sound driver would for some reason kill the audio after restore from suspend. It just wouldn't make any noise until it rebooted. When I upgraded the driver, it went away.
It is, in fact, only recently that we have had flashmem and the concept of keeping your 'bootfiles' on a seperate flash partition to read from for a quick boot has been a realistic and close to mainstream idea for the desktop.
The same thing comes up here. "Why should you have to double-click anything? What does Ctrl+D mean one thing in one program and a completely different thing in another? And what's the point of the Yes/No confirmation if the user is in the habit of clicking Yes without thinking about it?" All of those things make sense in the context they are being used in, and they're relatively intuitive. After all, it's not the programmers fault the user is an idiot, especially with something as simple as a yes/no dialog box, as long as the dialog box is written in language comprehensible for the designed userbase.
90% of the questions posted by slashdot will fall into one of two categories (or maybe both):
1) Why is Microsoft the Evil Empire and what are you doing to stop this (like using Firefox)
and
2) What the fuck is up with your CSS support, dude?
Look on E-bay; or buy a locked one from a carrier and go on XDA-Developers to get the unlocker tool. You can get them carrier-locked for close to 300 bucks, and unlock it yourself, or you can buy it unlocked and fancy-free for maybe 900 US.
If you know what you're doing, you can get them relatively cheaply.
My phone is almost two years old; it has a 640x480 65K color screen, 192 MB of memory, a 520 Mhz processor, B/G Wifi, Bluetooth, UTMS, and GSM, dual video cameras, and expansion by SD if necessary.
It came unlocked, and if you really wanted, you could also put Linux on it- (there's a linux port out there.)
For god's sake DLink, get your act together.
Recycled in different roles, was what I meant by 'stolen'. Obviously it was not stolen in a copyright sense. It just somewhat surprises me that they didn't bother to design new 96x96 icons for their flagship game! (or whatever size they are.)
When I was eight years old. I placed all the mines on the backs of little robotic spider creatures with GPS. When one went off-line, the mines polled each other to find out who was in charge, and then the leader found the optimal dispersial pattern that moved the least number of mines for the most coverage, and then ordered them to move. They'd unburrow, scuttle around, and then burrow again.
Ah, those were the good old days, when the military could be beaten by an eight year old with an imagination worth speaking of....
And you know you dont have a virus, how exactly? Its not like all of them are the sort which display ads and fux with your system. It doesnt matter how leet or smart or good with computers you are, if you use windows you may get viruses.
Some sitations i can think of off hand:
That's not true. There are certain instances, (direct, targeted attacks) in which an intelligent user can be overthrown. But a knowledgeable user can't be caught by broad-band viruses without making at least one mistake, and if they're smart and working that way, more than one. For example...
1) That hot neighbor you've been chatting with in the hall finaly comes over for dinner and checks her webmail because she doesnt have a comptuer at home. Result: INFECTED
I fail to see how simply checking her webmail brings a virus to my computer, unless you're saying she downloaded some virus and then run it. But simply running as a low-priveledged user would mitigate that, and sandboxing your web browser would eliminate it as a threat.
2) Your crusing for porn and because of your excitment, misclick into some random link. Result: INFECTED
See above.
3) You download some pirated software install it then use the provided crack. Only this isnt just a crack, its a hax0r trojan silently owning you in the background! Result: INFECTED
Are you really this stupid? if you must do this, sandbox it. Otherwise, examine it in a virtual enviornment before running it. Only an idiot is caught like that.
4) Your friend brings their pc over because he cant get deer hunter 2006 to work. You connect it to your local lan (here i assume you dont have internally firewalled vlans). Result: INFECTED
You assume wrong. All temporary computers go on the wilan, which, due to being a wireless network, is inherently DMZed from the main network.
5) Your walking through the park on your way home from work. You find a USB thumb drive lying on the pathway. You get home and plug it in. USB drive was placed there maliciously by haxx0rs. When autorun runs (or even something more clever) you are owned. Result: INFECTED
Tell me seriously, do you actually do this? Or turn on autorun? Or even bring random media peices into your secure network and plug them in without checking them first?!
In short, there are many many attack vetors that virii, trojans, *ware, scripts and bots can infect your system. Norton AV corp, while yes using SOME resources, is not very intesnsive and does not crash or hang the system randomly. Norton consumer grade products are a world apart from their corporate offerings. NIS and any of their 200x renewable every year products, should be reclassified as malware imho.
It is perfectly possible to ensure the security of your individual systems without firewalls or AV software so long as you maintain a secure perimiter. Now, obviously, one would prefer defense in depth, but those attack vectors you outlined are simply ludicrious.
Yes, because I of course I use it on the internet, completely unpatched and unfirewalled. You idiot, I updated it BEFORE the 30 day grace period ran out, and it's sitting behind three layers of pseudo-firewalls (personal, IPtables-enhanced switch, and then NAT). I have never had a virus yet, and I don't plan to start. You're the real fuckwit.
Just wanted to add my two cents. (But hey, what's slashdot for?) My Laptop is an ancient compaq running XP. I never bothered to turn it off, frankly because I've not, and will not, do the XP WPA. It's at approximately 65 days (just sleeping); I keep it on the shelf, (unplugged), take it out every evening, plug it in, use it for six hours or so, unplug it, and put it back on the shelf. I've never had any problems with sleep, wireless network access, or anything else. Open the lid, computer comes back on. Takes about 10 seconds for gaim to re-connect all my messenger accounts, but that's just gaim's speed.
Come to think of it, I've never had a problem with sleep or hibernate on any of my XP desktops. my main desktop hibernates every night, and my biggest complaint is that my IM logs out when I hibernate, so people can't leave me messages. Other than that, it's fast, efficent, and cheap.
Last time I tried that, every CD they sent me was corrupt. The install disks wouldn't install at all, and the LiveCDs crashed at random intervals. I was absolutely not impressed. I've tried to get Ubuntu working, but if they can't even press their CDs correctly, how do they expect anyone to actually bood the damn thing?
>Really? Can you back up this ass-ertion? Certainly.
>Wrong, wrong, right, wrong, wrong.
>Taking your points last first, the keyboard works great for me, and I'm far from being a dwarf.
>There is 32MB of RAM, and I have a 2GB SD card. 2GB is not enough memory for you?
>Yes the camera is crap.
THe keyboard is tiny. I've had many devices with thumbboards, and the Treo one is the worst of the lot. Next came the iPaq 4350, and after that is the really old treo model. The best one I've seen is the one on the HTC Universal.
32 MB of RAM was standard, oh, three years ago. Now it's just an excuse in lazyness. My current phone has 192 MB of memory, with a 4 GB SD card.
And, a better (but still relatively crappy) camera.
>luetooth is not crippled at all. What gave you that idea? Maybe you are thinking of another carrier, not >Sprint. I use my phone as a modem for my bluetooth enabled notebook all the time via bluetooth. It works >great for other things too. Headset, synching, etc., all great. You lack clues.
Conceeded. The bluetooth implementation has since been uncrippled since I last looked at the Treo 650. However, when it was originally released, it was signficantly crippled.
>PalmOS has been updated pretty regularly. I wouldn't claim it is the most advanced OS out there, but it >has the best human-friendly UI. It does suck for multitasking, but I can live with that on a mobile >device for now. And if I want a more updated OS, maybe you forgot, I also suggested the 700 and beyond. >Read the post. It's there.
Palm OS 6 was released in 2003. It's 2006. Try June 10, 2002 for the release date of OS5, which is what the Treo 650 is running on. The operating system and the feature set are both obsolete. I personally think the UI sucks big-ass donkey balls, but then I run windows mobile on my phone.
The best way to compare hardware without OS is to look at the Treo 700 and the Treo 650. The 700's screen is crap, the RAM is too low, the processor's weak, there's no Wifi, it's not 3G, and it's only on fucking verizon.
Palm has done this time and again; they've constantly released devices with years out of date OSes and device feature-sets, and they usually make them way too expensive for what you get, too. It's why I'll never buy another device from Palm; I had a UX50 from Sony, and then moved to my Universal/XDA Exec as my main phone. It's what a PDA/phone should be.
And as for you... >Mine works fine for the OP's requirements. Bluetooth DUN on Verizon, good sync software available >(Missing Sync for PalmOS). The camera is chintzy, but I don't know of a good camera built into a phone. >Maybe it exists, but I carry my Sony T1 with me when I need quaity. Mine has 16MB of RAM which I believe >is more than most phones, and it can take a 4GB SD card. The keyboard is small, but that's a tradeoff >for pocket size. I'm going to pick up one of those projection bluetooth keyboards so I don't need to >carry my laptop as often. Oh, and PalmOS is going Linux, so it'll be better this time next year. The >interface isn't anything Apple could sell, but it's better than most phones I've tried.
I don't sync my PC with a desktop for anything other than moving files, I sync with Exchange Server, (which also has push e-mail as an added bonus), so I have no idea how sync software is doing these days. your 16 MB of RAM is pitiful- Palm was releasing devices with 16 MB of RAM three years ago. Goodwin's Law, people. You can get devices now with 256 MB of storage space before expansion cards!
And palm OS has been 'going to linux' for years. The projection now is that they'll simply drop Palm OS entirely, and Access, who now owns PalmSource, will go ahead and kill OS6, which is probably completely useless to them now, and build their own OS from the ground up if they care to. PalmOne will probably build WM devices after their OS5 becomes completely useless, because they've got no other OS to move to.
The fact that the Treo 650 is an underfeatured piece of crap? PalmOS hasn't advanced in years, the bluetooth implimentation is crippled, the camera is garbage, there's almost no RAM, and the keyboard only works if you're a dwarf.
I loved C&C Tiberium Sun, it was the game that really got me hooked on RTS. To this day, I still fire it up to play a multiplayer skirmish now and then. The tech tree was great, and I loved the story line. The graphics weren't bad, but when Generals came out and after I'd played it, I wished they'd taken the Generals engine and slapped a sequel to Tiberium Sun on there. Even without that, Generals was one of the best RTS games I'd ever played. This, if EA doesn't screw it up, has the possibility of besting any of the other C&C games by a mile. I really hope they don't.
Except wasn't the reason carriers were so effective in the first place because 100 miles is almost nothing compared to the strike range a carrier can put out? (not sure what it is, 700 or so?)
Plus, sometimes it helps to have eyes in the sky on the situation, and a large object on station at the same time. How many people could you evac to a DD(X) via helicopter? Does it even carry them?
(Plus, when was the last time somebody on board a carrier died as a result of a strike on that carrier? sixty years ago?)
I don't know about you. But as another poster notes, the CRCs are very hard to get. I've read some of Geist's stuff, and he's not stupid. He does know what he's talking about, he just talks about it from a legal perspective, (he does commentary), and his own perspective. and do you know what? I'd be really, really surprised if he DOESN'T know everything you laid out. He does work with the technology. He does understand how it can be used. But he is, first and formost, a lawyer and a commentator, not a techie. And if you can't get the fact that maybe he's just as smart as you are, but coming at it from a different angle through your head, you're too stupid to complain that he should shut his mouth. I'd ask you to do the same, but your foot is already in it.
Nobody says he has better opinions than you. But being a law professor and with his CV, he probably does have special knowledge, and he apparently performs quite skillfully. So his opinions might not be better, but his facts are likely to be a lot better, and he probably knows a lot more about the entire legal aspect than you (and most people) do.
He's a law professor and holds a chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law. How much more of an expert do you want?
Re:Comment about "web performance" amusing
on
Treo 700w Review
·
· Score: 1
No, WM supports 480x480- BETTER than the Treo. PALM was the one who did not put in the higher resolution screen. Really, it's a very simple concept, one which the article appears to have deliberately missrepresented.
Re:indows won't support the sharper image.
on
Treo 700w Review
·
· Score: 1
That's not what I argued against- I simply said it was fallacious to claim that Windows Mobile didn't support sharper screens than 240x240, which is what the article appeared to be claiming.
Slashdot Mirror
I took a gander at that book, and right away as I skimmed the amazon page, I noticed problems. He may be a wonderful cognitive psychologist, but he's no technocrat.
The whole "Why shouldn't my computer take three nanoseconds to turn on, read my mind, and then never ever have errors!!!?!?one1" thing is a very amateur approach to the problem, if you ask me. Sure, it would be nice, but I'm absolutely sure it's technically impossible.
To be more specific:
"There has never been any technical reason for a computer to take more than a few seconds to begin operation when it is turned on."
I can name half a dozen; power consumption for suspend to RAM, system process cleanup for suspend to disk, disk space storage for suspend to disk, driver software that doesn't gracefully handle failing down to a hibernate state, plug-and-play hardware detection on bootup... not to mention the whole raft of problems that occur when users never shut down and clog their system up by never ending processes.
The problem with the view he espouses is that it practically requires a suspend-state, when users aren't good with suspend states. It wasn't until Windows XP and the relatively modern (last three or four years) (okay don't flame me I'm sure SOMEWHERE there was a build that had really optimal suspend, but I couldn't find it) linux systems that suspend really started working, and even so, your device drivers really depend on when you can suspend the system and how it restores.
For example, when I tested Vista on my laptop, the base sound driver would for some reason kill the audio after restore from suspend. It just wouldn't make any noise until it rebooted. When I upgraded the driver, it went away.
It is, in fact, only recently that we have had flashmem and the concept of keeping your 'bootfiles' on a seperate flash partition to read from for a quick boot has been a realistic and close to mainstream idea for the desktop.
The same thing comes up here.
"Why should you have to double-click anything? What does Ctrl+D mean one thing in one program and a completely different thing in another? And what's the point of the Yes/No confirmation if the user is in the habit of clicking Yes without thinking about it?"
All of those things make sense in the context they are being used in, and they're relatively intuitive. After all, it's not the programmers fault the user is an idiot, especially with something as simple as a yes/no dialog box, as long as the dialog box is written in language comprehensible for the designed userbase.
90% of the questions posted by slashdot will fall into one of two categories (or maybe both): 1) Why is Microsoft the Evil Empire and what are you doing to stop this (like using Firefox) and 2) What the fuck is up with your CSS support, dude?
Look on E-bay; or buy a locked one from a carrier and go on XDA-Developers to get the unlocker tool. You can get them carrier-locked for close to 300 bucks, and unlock it yourself, or you can buy it unlocked and fancy-free for maybe 900 US. If you know what you're doing, you can get them relatively cheaply.
It is indeed an HTC Universal, branded an Imate Jasjar. And I've run Linux on it, too!
My phone is almost two years old; it has a 640x480 65K color screen, 192 MB of memory, a 520 Mhz processor, B/G Wifi, Bluetooth, UTMS, and GSM, dual video cameras, and expansion by SD if necessary. It came unlocked, and if you really wanted, you could also put Linux on it- (there's a linux port out there.) For god's sake DLink, get your act together.
If true that is amazingly funny and ironic. Phantom of the Operating SYstem to Phantom of The Opera? Lucky you!
Recycled in different roles, was what I meant by 'stolen'. Obviously it was not stolen in a copyright sense. It just somewhat surprises me that they didn't bother to design new 96x96 icons for their flagship game! (or whatever size they are.)
Is it just me (I have never played WoW), but are all those Icons for Mage talents stolen from WC3? I can recognize dozens of them from previous games.
That has nothing to do with map data. That's transferring the positional data to the PSP.
I have not RTFA, but how does a GPS reciever transfer Google Maps map data to the PSP? That smells suspiciously like bullshit.
When I was eight years old. I placed all the mines on the backs of little robotic spider creatures with GPS. When one went off-line, the mines polled each other to find out who was in charge, and then the leader found the optimal dispersial pattern that moved the least number of mines for the most coverage, and then ordered them to move. They'd unburrow, scuttle around, and then burrow again. Ah, those were the good old days, when the military could be beaten by an eight year old with an imagination worth speaking of....
Yes, because I of course I use it on the internet, completely unpatched and unfirewalled. You idiot, I updated it BEFORE the 30 day grace period ran out, and it's sitting behind three layers of pseudo-firewalls (personal, IPtables-enhanced switch, and then NAT). I have never had a virus yet, and I don't plan to start.
You're the real fuckwit.
Just wanted to add my two cents. (But hey, what's slashdot for?)
My Laptop is an ancient compaq running XP. I never bothered to turn it off, frankly because I've not, and will not, do the XP WPA. It's at approximately 65 days (just sleeping); I keep it on the shelf, (unplugged), take it out every evening, plug it in, use it for six hours or so, unplug it, and put it back on the shelf. I've never had any problems with sleep, wireless network access, or anything else. Open the lid, computer comes back on. Takes about 10 seconds for gaim to re-connect all my messenger accounts, but that's just gaim's speed.
Come to think of it, I've never had a problem with sleep or hibernate on any of my XP desktops. my main desktop hibernates every night, and my biggest complaint is that my IM logs out when I hibernate, so people can't leave me messages. Other than that, it's fast, efficent, and cheap.
Last time I tried that, every CD they sent me was corrupt. The install disks wouldn't install at all, and the LiveCDs crashed at random intervals. I was absolutely not impressed. I've tried to get Ubuntu working, but if they can't even press their CDs correctly, how do they expect anyone to actually bood the damn thing?
>Really? Can you back up this ass-ertion?
Certainly.
>Wrong, wrong, right, wrong, wrong.
>Taking your points last first, the keyboard works great for me, and I'm far from being a dwarf.
>There is 32MB of RAM, and I have a 2GB SD card. 2GB is not enough memory for you?
>Yes the camera is crap.
THe keyboard is tiny. I've had many devices with thumbboards, and the Treo one is the worst of the lot. Next came the iPaq 4350, and after that is the really old treo model. The best one I've seen is the one on the HTC Universal.
32 MB of RAM was standard, oh, three years ago. Now it's just an excuse in lazyness. My current phone has 192 MB of memory, with a 4 GB SD card.
And, a better (but still relatively crappy) camera.
>luetooth is not crippled at all. What gave you that idea? Maybe you are thinking of another carrier, not >Sprint. I use my phone as a modem for my bluetooth enabled notebook all the time via bluetooth. It works >great for other things too. Headset, synching, etc., all great. You lack clues.
Conceeded. The bluetooth implementation has since been uncrippled since I last looked at the Treo 650. However, when it was originally released, it was signficantly crippled.
>PalmOS has been updated pretty regularly. I wouldn't claim it is the most advanced OS out there, but it >has the best human-friendly UI. It does suck for multitasking, but I can live with that on a mobile >device for now. And if I want a more updated OS, maybe you forgot, I also suggested the 700 and beyond. >Read the post. It's there.
Palm OS 6 was released in 2003. It's 2006. Try June 10, 2002 for the release date of OS5, which is what the Treo 650 is running on. The operating system and the feature set are both obsolete. I personally think the UI sucks big-ass donkey balls, but then I run windows mobile on my phone.
The best way to compare hardware without OS is to look at the Treo 700 and the Treo 650. The 700's screen is crap, the RAM is too low, the processor's weak, there's no Wifi, it's not 3G, and it's only on fucking verizon.
Palm has done this time and again; they've constantly released devices with years out of date OSes and device feature-sets, and they usually make them way too expensive for what you get, too. It's why I'll never buy another device from Palm; I had a UX50 from Sony, and then moved to my Universal/XDA Exec as my main phone. It's what a PDA/phone should be.
And as for you...
>Mine works fine for the OP's requirements. Bluetooth DUN on Verizon, good sync software available >(Missing Sync for PalmOS). The camera is chintzy, but I don't know of a good camera built into a phone. >Maybe it exists, but I carry my Sony T1 with me when I need quaity. Mine has 16MB of RAM which I believe >is more than most phones, and it can take a 4GB SD card. The keyboard is small, but that's a tradeoff >for pocket size. I'm going to pick up one of those projection bluetooth keyboards so I don't need to >carry my laptop as often. Oh, and PalmOS is going Linux, so it'll be better this time next year. The >interface isn't anything Apple could sell, but it's better than most phones I've tried.
I don't sync my PC with a desktop for anything other than moving files, I sync with Exchange Server, (which also has push e-mail as an added bonus), so I have no idea how sync software is doing these days.
your 16 MB of RAM is pitiful- Palm was releasing devices with 16 MB of RAM three years ago. Goodwin's Law, people. You can get devices now with 256 MB of storage space before expansion cards!
And palm OS has been 'going to linux' for years. The projection now is that they'll simply drop Palm OS entirely, and Access, who now owns PalmSource, will go ahead and kill OS6, which is probably completely useless to them now, and build their own OS from the ground up if they care to.
PalmOne will probably build WM devices after their OS5 becomes completely useless, because they've got no other OS to move to.
The fact that the Treo 650 is an underfeatured piece of crap?
PalmOS hasn't advanced in years, the bluetooth implimentation is crippled, the camera is garbage, there's almost no RAM, and the keyboard only works if you're a dwarf.
I loved C&C Tiberium Sun, it was the game that really got me hooked on RTS. To this day, I still fire it up to play a multiplayer skirmish now and then. The tech tree was great, and I loved the story line. The graphics weren't bad, but when Generals came out and after I'd played it, I wished they'd taken the Generals engine and slapped a sequel to Tiberium Sun on there.
Even without that, Generals was one of the best RTS games I'd ever played.
This, if EA doesn't screw it up, has the possibility of besting any of the other C&C games by a mile. I really hope they don't.
Nobody else does- why seperate yourself from the crowd!?
Except wasn't the reason carriers were so effective in the first place because 100 miles is almost nothing compared to the strike range a carrier can put out? (not sure what it is, 700 or so?) Plus, sometimes it helps to have eyes in the sky on the situation, and a large object on station at the same time. How many people could you evac to a DD(X) via helicopter? Does it even carry them? (Plus, when was the last time somebody on board a carrier died as a result of a strike on that carrier? sixty years ago?)
I don't know about you. But as another poster notes, the CRCs are very hard to get. I've read some of Geist's stuff, and he's not stupid. He does know what he's talking about, he just talks about it from a legal perspective, (he does commentary), and his own perspective. and do you know what? I'd be really, really surprised if he DOESN'T know everything you laid out. He does work with the technology. He does understand how it can be used. But he is, first and formost, a lawyer and a commentator, not a techie. And if you can't get the fact that maybe he's just as smart as you are, but coming at it from a different angle through your head, you're too stupid to complain that he should shut his mouth. I'd ask you to do the same, but your foot is already in it.
Nobody says he has better opinions than you. But being a law professor and with his CV, he probably does have special knowledge, and he apparently performs quite skillfully. So his opinions might not be better, but his facts are likely to be a lot better, and he probably knows a lot more about the entire legal aspect than you (and most people) do.
He's a law professor and holds a chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law. How much more of an expert do you want?
No, WM supports 480x480- BETTER than the Treo. PALM was the one who did not put in the higher resolution screen. Really, it's a very simple concept, one which the article appears to have deliberately missrepresented.
That's not what I argued against- I simply said it was fallacious to claim that Windows Mobile didn't support sharper screens than 240x240, which is what the article appeared to be claiming.