Apple don't make any device called the iTouch. I'm no fanboy but I still can't understand why people insist on calling it the "iTouch" when there are plenty of other things with that name - its just about the least original name going in the tech world
I never herd of people talking about the iMini or the iNano or iClassic but for some reason iTouch seems to be used a lot
Now where did I put that 8P8C connector?
Back in the winter of 1999 the Irish GSM network Eircell first allowed prepaid users to send SMS - they were free to send and receive and very few people especially my age didn't have phones at the time. Most people switched their phones off at night to save battery or whatever so as long as you weren't deliberately trying to piss someone off you could text who you liked, when you liked. It was mostly just a bit of fun, a new and unusual method to communicate with fellow GSM handset owners.
But its no longer the case, texting has become a more widespread method of communication and therefore more formal. Especially since about 2006/7 when everybody started moving to Facebook with private profile, switched off Bluetooth and basically refused to talk to randomers anymore due to their paranoia.
Now if I meet a girl there is a perfect interval I have to wait
1. Before sending the first text
2. Before replying to a text
3. Before sending a second text after no reply (much longer)
4. Random 'padding' time in addition to these. A constant delay = freaky/stalker-ish
There is also the number of texts I can send without reply before I have to assume she wants absolutely nothing to do with me anymore ever or risk being publicly denounced as a stalker/rapist type person. (usually only 2 or 3)
Before I could send someone a text and they would get it when they are available and have their phone switched on. Now if I wake up at 4am and think of something I have to tell them I have to use a PyS60 script to schedule the text to be sent at a sociable time. Otherwise the person will go around saying "omg, he sent me a text at 4am!!! the crazy stalker, he is awake and thinking about me at 4am! how obsessive! lets call cops now pls kthbai!"
Voice calls are not immune either - I cant call someone out of the blue for a chat, before I could but now they assume there is something wrong with me if I do that. In the early 00's I could call people and talk about an hour and they'd think nothing of it. Now its common to text before call
When you send a text there is also risk that someone wishing to stir up some drama can isolate that particular text from the rest of the conversation and try to pass you off as a bad person.
True. iPhones and the like have nothing on my Foretrex 401, or even the ordinary yellow eTrex. The interface on these devices is even much better than that on smartphone GPS applications - some are so oversimplified you can't even see the coordinates.
The foretrex is wrist mounted so its actually more convenient than an all in one device, unless you feel like strapping an iphone to your wrist.
They will start charging for it when, and if they think they can get away with it. If there is no decent free alternative and they have a good market share they will most likely start to charge for it.
This is why its important to keep projects like http://www.openstreetmap.org/ going, even if just to keep them on their toes
Also one James Bond movie (cant remember the name) where someguy was put in a capsule with an oxygen flask and smuggled out of the country through an oil pipeline
Buy a racing-spec car or build a kit car. Easier to fix with the lack of paneling, electronic gadgets and the like. No self respecting Slashdot reader should have any issues with using ODB-2 and the like either - in fact that stuff should make it easier.
The cars themselves should last 20+ years but in that time a lot of the crappy consumer electronic gadgets they permanently affix to the interior will give up the ghost and their replacement can be quite tedious.
This 'new cars are harder to fix' stuff is mostly a load of Bee Ess. More solid state components can only be a good thing, sure some cars are easier to fix than others but it has always been that way. More luxury usually implies harder to fix
No, you can use any email account now. Even http://uggsrock.com/. Most current and future facebook users are of the affluent liberal 'put everything in the cloud' type people, it wouldn't be in their interest to block facebook
Say you are gone on an awsome holiday in Spain, post reasonably well photoshopped pictures of you having a great time over there, pretend to be a member of several societies you have no interest in. When people question you about it just say "sort of lost interest in that a while back"
Add friends by brute force, find randomers, try to add a bunch of their friends, move on to the next randomer and do the same thing. A significant number will accept your request? Why? because most people on those sites are attention seeking whores.
Have several profiles you use for different groups of people (who shall never meet), each with their own collection of random friends and false memories from years spent abroad.
The more charismatic you appear to be on these social sites, the more people you appear to be seen having a good time with the more people will trust you and the more employers will want to hire you. and it won't matter a damn who'se basement you live in and what sort of a van you drive past the local school
If you want you can even provide false status updates, its not like anyone will ever notice except those who deserve to be lead astray anyway. Say you are in Starbucks sipping a caramellate when really you are out hunting with a high-powered rifle or doing some other activity others might not be comfortable with
I'd rather have an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Atom with the bare minimum of gadgets and gimmicks than some driverless luxobarge with built-in twitter support.
Modern cars isolate the driver from the road far too much. Soundproofing and power everything makes it easy to forget you are doing 100mph in a large lump of metal.
There is if course also the issue of Twitter and Facebook being long dead (hopefully) before the car reaches half it's expected lifetime.
Of course i have nothing really against driverless cars and people who have no interest in driving a car shouldn't have to, as long as I can still get on the same roads with a completely manual car
Not only do they want to turn your own PC against you with their DRM, they also want to use your upstream bandwidth. All the disadvantages of torrents and all the disadvantages of legally bought "treats the buyer as a criminal" DRMified files rolled into one
Is a great way of increasing your control over society.
If you want to take over the world you need people who rely on you not only for internet search but more basic things like energy, food, communications (like all the fibre optic cables Google controls)
Right now if google went away I'd just go back to using yahoo for search, my life won't change much but if Google does all your computing for you in De Cloud via HTTP, supplies you with power and internet (Google TiSP), organises your transport via driverless pod then it becomes a bit harder to tell them to go f*** themselves with their privacy-invading ways.
I'm willing to bet that using such a device will require more effort to use than say a trackball or mouse.
Trackball - move your fingers
Mouse - move your hand
Touch screen / gesture thing - move your arm
Motion based gaming thing - move everything
Sure all these gesture things are great for games and helping fatties lose weight but for ordinary folk who actually need to use it for a large part of their day it will just cause gorilla arm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorilla_arm#Gorilla_Arm
4 square miles of solar panels in the desert? No that shouldn't be hard to expensive to maintain and keep all those uber expensive solar panels clean and unbroken
That is possible, as is it possible that they realised a certain hard drive can actually store more data reliably than they originally thought it would, however we have never seen hard drive manufacturers putting up new capacity enhancing firmware.
sony could have decided to start making a "blueray 2" format out of this, but that would drive people away from blue-ray and back to the torrents and hard drives so they had a good incentive. hdd manufacturers dont when you buy a 500gb hard drive since it affects one device not an entire proprietary storage medium
also, never underestimate the convenience of being able to manufacture millions of units of exactly the same product and selling them as anything from low-end to high-end. look at Intel Core 2 processors for example and their locked multipliers. Hardware crippling (besides DRM and bad firmware) definitely goes on, but the question is how common is it?
What else can be upgraded in capacity with a simple firmware upgrade
I have always been suspicious of some of those Seagate hard-drives, particularly the 1" CompactFlash style ones they used to make.
What other storage medium has been crippled for the convenience of being able to sell *exactly* the same chip/disk at different capacities with very different prices?
Anytime you're working with a PDF where you're entering information, JavaScript is used to do things like verify that the date you entered is the right format
I really can't remember the last time I saw a PDF that had a form in it that you could submit. Was it 2001? possibly 2003 at the very latest. The idea never caught on, and why would it? you get some minimal HTTP POST support in a proprietary format. To me it would seem more important that you have an up-to-date version of the form you are submitting, rather than having the form's formatting look *exactly* right without loss in formatting which is the whole point of PDF.
JavaShit, forms, DRM in PDF files should all be removed - all they do is make the reading software more bloated
I always think that privacy went out the window for a large percentage of the population (though more for young people) once they realised they could exchange privacy for attention or the illusion of getting attention on sites like Facebook
there is also a distinct lack of support for good old shared secret and one-time pad encryption in modern email/IM standards so that isn't helping either. maybe even if things like PGP and 'off the record' plugins were standard then it might be used outside the realm of nerds.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple don't make any device called the iTouch. I'm no fanboy but I still can't understand why people insist on calling it the "iTouch" when there are plenty of other things with that name - its just about the least original name going in the tech world
I never herd of people talking about the iMini or the iNano or iClassic but for some reason iTouch seems to be used a lot Now where did I put that 8P8C connector?
or EMP the hell out of them with that device that was intended to be used by cops in car chases
Back in the winter of 1999 the Irish GSM network Eircell first allowed prepaid users to send SMS - they were free to send and receive and very few people especially my age didn't have phones at the time. Most people switched their phones off at night to save battery or whatever so as long as you weren't deliberately trying to piss someone off you could text who you liked, when you liked. It was mostly just a bit of fun, a new and unusual method to communicate with fellow GSM handset owners.
But its no longer the case, texting has become a more widespread method of communication and therefore more formal. Especially since about 2006/7 when everybody started moving to Facebook with private profile, switched off Bluetooth and basically refused to talk to randomers anymore due to their paranoia.
Now if I meet a girl there is a perfect interval I have to wait
1. Before sending the first text
2. Before replying to a text
3. Before sending a second text after no reply (much longer)
4. Random 'padding' time in addition to these. A constant delay = freaky/stalker-ish
There is also the number of texts I can send without reply before I have to assume she wants absolutely nothing to do with me anymore ever or risk being publicly denounced as a stalker/rapist type person. (usually only 2 or 3)
Before I could send someone a text and they would get it when they are available and have their phone switched on. Now if I wake up at 4am and think of something I have to tell them I have to use a PyS60 script to schedule the text to be sent at a sociable time. Otherwise the person will go around saying "omg, he sent me a text at 4am!!! the crazy stalker, he is awake and thinking about me at 4am! how obsessive! lets call cops now pls kthbai!"
Voice calls are not immune either - I cant call someone out of the blue for a chat, before I could but now they assume there is something wrong with me if I do that. In the early 00's I could call people and talk about an hour and they'd think nothing of it. Now its common to text before call
When you send a text there is also risk that someone wishing to stir up some drama can isolate that particular text from the rest of the conversation and try to pass you off as a bad person.
640 ports aught to be enough for anyone!
No wonder it was canceled, it sounds way too much like the title of a movie I could only download from The Pirate Bay after logging in.
He should have tried the Nokia E63 - it has a much better keyboard than the iPhone or Palm Treo
True. iPhones and the like have nothing on my Foretrex 401, or even the ordinary yellow eTrex. The interface on these devices is even much better than that on smartphone GPS applications - some are so oversimplified you can't even see the coordinates.
The foretrex is wrist mounted so its actually more convenient than an all in one device, unless you feel like strapping an iphone to your wrist.
They will start charging for it when, and if they think they can get away with it. If there is no decent free alternative and they have a good market share they will most likely start to charge for it.
This is why its important to keep projects like http://www.openstreetmap.org/ going, even if just to keep them on their toes
This guy is being too picky and unwilling to compromise
Great, so now you need to own two domains, one for your personal website and another that is just for professional email
Also one James Bond movie (cant remember the name) where someguy was put in a capsule with an oxygen flask and smuggled out of the country through an oil pipeline
It's probably lithium ion or that variety so 3.7v or 7.4v if they are using two cells in series.
Twould be interesting if you could simply format this phone and put your own OS on it.
Buy a racing-spec car or build a kit car. Easier to fix with the lack of paneling, electronic gadgets and the like. No self respecting Slashdot reader should have any issues with using ODB-2 and the like either - in fact that stuff should make it easier.
The cars themselves should last 20+ years but in that time a lot of the crappy consumer electronic gadgets they permanently affix to the interior will give up the ghost and their replacement can be quite tedious.
This 'new cars are harder to fix' stuff is mostly a load of Bee Ess. More solid state components can only be a good thing, sure some cars are easier to fix than others but it has always been that way. More luxury usually implies harder to fix
No, you can use any email account now. Even http://uggsrock.com/. Most current and future facebook users are of the affluent liberal 'put everything in the cloud' type people, it wouldn't be in their interest to block facebook
Say you are gone on an awsome holiday in Spain, post reasonably well photoshopped pictures of you having a great time over there, pretend to be a member of several societies you have no interest in. When people question you about it just say "sort of lost interest in that a while back"
Add friends by brute force, find randomers, try to add a bunch of their friends, move on to the next randomer and do the same thing. A significant number will accept your request? Why? because most people on those sites are attention seeking whores.
Have several profiles you use for different groups of people (who shall never meet), each with their own collection of random friends and false memories from years spent abroad.
The more charismatic you appear to be on these social sites, the more people you appear to be seen having a good time with the more people will trust you and the more employers will want to hire you. and it won't matter a damn who'se basement you live in and what sort of a van you drive past the local school
If you want you can even provide false status updates, its not like anyone will ever notice except those who deserve to be lead astray anyway. Say you are in Starbucks sipping a caramellate when really you are out hunting with a high-powered rifle or doing some other activity others might not be comfortable with
I'd rather have an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Atom with the bare minimum of gadgets and gimmicks than some driverless luxobarge with built-in twitter support.
Modern cars isolate the driver from the road far too much. Soundproofing and power everything makes it easy to forget you are doing 100mph in a large lump of metal.
There is if course also the issue of Twitter and Facebook being long dead (hopefully) before the car reaches half it's expected lifetime.
Of course i have nothing really against driverless cars and people who have no interest in driving a car shouldn't have to, as long as I can still get on the same roads with a completely manual car
See BBC iPlayer/Kontiki
Not only do they want to turn your own PC against you with their DRM, they also want to use your upstream bandwidth. All the disadvantages of torrents and all the disadvantages of legally bought "treats the buyer as a criminal" DRMified files rolled into one
Is a great way of increasing your control over society.
If you want to take over the world you need people who rely on you not only for internet search but more basic things like energy, food, communications (like all the fibre optic cables Google controls)
Right now if google went away I'd just go back to using yahoo for search, my life won't change much but if Google does all your computing for you in De Cloud via HTTP, supplies you with power and internet (Google TiSP), organises your transport via driverless pod then it becomes a bit harder to tell them to go f*** themselves with their privacy-invading ways.
I'm willing to bet that using such a device will require more effort to use than say a trackball or mouse.
Trackball - move your fingers
Mouse - move your hand
Touch screen / gesture thing - move your arm
Motion based gaming thing - move everything
Sure all these gesture things are great for games and helping fatties lose weight but for ordinary folk who actually need to use it for a large part of their day it will just cause gorilla arm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorilla_arm#Gorilla_Arm
4 square miles of solar panels in the desert? No that shouldn't be hard to expensive to maintain and keep all those uber expensive solar panels clean and unbroken
That is possible, as is it possible that they realised a certain hard drive can actually store more data reliably than they originally thought it would, however we have never seen hard drive manufacturers putting up new capacity enhancing firmware.
sony could have decided to start making a "blueray 2" format out of this, but that would drive people away from blue-ray and back to the torrents and hard drives so they had a good incentive. hdd manufacturers dont when you buy a 500gb hard drive since it affects one device not an entire proprietary storage medium also, never underestimate the convenience of being able to manufacture millions of units of exactly the same product and selling them as anything from low-end to high-end. look at Intel Core 2 processors for example and their locked multipliers. Hardware crippling (besides DRM and bad firmware) definitely goes on, but the question is how common is it?
What else can be upgraded in capacity with a simple firmware upgrade
I have always been suspicious of some of those Seagate hard-drives, particularly the 1" CompactFlash style ones they used to make.
What other storage medium has been crippled for the convenience of being able to sell *exactly* the same chip/disk at different capacities with very different prices?
so basically it is like a posh hostel, with an enclosure built around your bed. are there any real hostels in japan, the non-enclosed kind?
Anytime you're working with a PDF where you're entering information, JavaScript is used to do things like verify that the date you entered is the right format
I really can't remember the last time I saw a PDF that had a form in it that you could submit. Was it 2001? possibly 2003 at the very latest. The idea never caught on, and why would it? you get some minimal HTTP POST support in a proprietary format. To me it would seem more important that you have an up-to-date version of the form you are submitting, rather than having the form's formatting look *exactly* right without loss in formatting which is the whole point of PDF.
JavaShit, forms, DRM in PDF files should all be removed - all they do is make the reading software more bloated
I always think that privacy went out the window for a large percentage of the population (though more for young people) once they realised they could exchange privacy for attention or the illusion of getting attention on sites like Facebook
there is also a distinct lack of support for good old shared secret and one-time pad encryption in modern email/IM standards so that isn't helping either. maybe even if things like PGP and 'off the record' plugins were standard then it might be used outside the realm of nerds.