Mobile phones manage to transmit back to their towers despite being small, low-power devices. The key: the base station's receivers are very sensitive and the coding schemes used for uplink transmission include more error detection/correction.
Granted, mobile phones don't work over the vast distances used by broadcast radio and television, but they serve as a good example of a low-power, two-way transmission system.
However, I think Apple's initial plans are to use the Flash on these drives as more of a Read area for portions of OSX that are accessed at startup or frequently. Not unlike the old days when some of the core OS functionality was stored in a custom Mac ROM. Funny how things are cyclical.
> > My GF is a graphics designer who specializes in print media.
> Your GF probably shouldn't be trying to get by with a cheapo desktop printer, then.
Who said the user in question was looking for a cheapo desktop printer? Inkjets aren't all cheap crap. As is the case with others who have posted here, I use an Epson 2200 for my small business (artwork reproductions) daily, and combined with some $500 software and display calibration, I can produce amazingly accurate prints that will last a lifetime on a variety of media.
Sure, this is different from how most people use their inkjets, but for my uses the technology is as revolutionary as digital cameras.
No, AppleWorks doesn't have half the features of word. Then again, do you use half the features of Word ? It occupies that niche for folks who aren't going to pay for Office. It's $79 new, and though I doubt they sell a lot of copies that way, it's still a hell of a lot cheaper than Office.
And for those of us that already own a copy of AppleWorks (I think it came with my iBook years ago), it fills many roles just fine. Like you said, it's a bit dated, and there are one or two little features that I would like to have, but by and large it works fine for lightweight word processing, vector drawing, and spreadsheet use. It came with MacLink, so I can read and write mostly MS Office-compatible files. It's fun to see such old still useful.
One tip: put some sort of shroud around the glass and the camera to keep the background dark, making the text easier to read. The teleprompters I've seen all have this, and it also makes a nice matte box for the camera.
I have to give my praise for White House Custom Color (WHCC). They are still small enough that they will sometimes call you to make sure you're happy with their work, send you five free 8x10s of your images and samples of all of their paper when you open an account with them, and I've never seen photos packaged so carefully when they are mailed to me.
I don't work for WHCC, etc., just a satisfied customer, but it's also a great example of a brick and mortar service company that has expanded to embrace the Internet.
BTW, this is based on my experiences where I did all of my own color correction with calibrated monitors in a controlled lighting environment. I can't speak for their color correction services.
I'm surprised no company has come out with a USB based IR receiver that can be taught so you can control all your apps with it. Seems like a simple little item, not much needed to make and could be sold cheap enough to return a decent product and get lots of people to buy.
According to this MacCentral page, the audio output jack of the RadioShark also doubles as an external antenna input. Not sure of the wiring or input impedance.
I was going to post a link to the radio webcast of the event, but I'd rather be able to listen to it myself! If all of you start listening too, none of us will get a good feed.
This has been discussed on/. before, and if I don't bring it up someone else will...There are some tech differences between phones in the US (GSM, CDMA, TDMA, different frequencies), but there are more reasons for providers to insist that you buy a phone from them.
Consumers rarely pay full price for their cell phone. Providers give you a steep discount on the phone when you sign a contract: they're willing to eat some of the cost of the phone if you're going to be paying them monthly bills for at least 12/24 months. What's their incentive to let you take that phone to another provider, or to let you use a phone from another provider when they can get away with making you buy a new one?
There are other issues, as other readers have pointed out: many providers specify custom menus, etc., for the phones that are used on their network. Without these, technical support would get exponentially more complicated. By keeping the phones (and the user experience) relatively common between phones, they save money.
The Push-To-Talk feature of Nextel's service has never really attracted the average user, but it's been a huge selling point for business customers. Think of construction sites or warehouses where you might use a walkie-talkie, and replace it with an inexpensive system that lets you two-way with anyone regarless of their location..
AND, lets you choose one-to-one communication, or one-to-many. You can use the same device to call Joe that you use to talk amongst a group of five people, totally ad-hoc.
While we're on the topic of Powerbook annoyances, I am disappointed that they removed the battery backup capacitor from the 12" Powerbook. My friend has a 15" Powerbook, and he can put his computer to sleep, remove the battery, to put in a fully charged one, and the computer does not have to be shut off. They apparently removed this feature from the 12" Powerbook, what a shame.
This feature is missing in the 12" iBooks as well (perhaps the 14" models?), and considering that the 12" PB seems to be based heavily on the 12" iBook, I'm not surprised that it's missing.
I'm not complaining though -- this is the first Apple portable for which I haven't owned two batteries. One battery (and a charger for the airplane rides) has done me fine for six months now.
I was just about to say, "Having tried it...I'm going to walk down to the neighborhood record store." Very little indie pop, etc., and when I thought I could at least find some good old 60's pop I couldn't find what I wanted.
Still, 90% of what's on there will satisfy 60% of the customers, so it's a smart move. I just hope they provide a means for indie artists to sign up, upload there stuff, and start collecting quarters from downloads. The efficient browsing system will actually help unknown acts be discovered.
CDMA cellular networks use GPS receivers at the base station to help keep them all synchronized. Many SprintPCS phones can be put in a debug/service mode (search the web for instructions) where you can see the latitude and longitude of the nearest tower.
On the other hand, if you need coordinates to give you such a rough idea of where you are, you are probably out of range of the Sprint network. =)
Press and hold down the play button for about two seconds and the iPod will immediately turn off.
When you turn the iPod off this way, you lose your place in the song/playlist/album list. When you turn it back on again you're back at the main menu with no song selected. If instead you pause and lock the device it will start up again where you paused it -- like the "resume" feature on Sony portable CD players.
Generally I like being able to resume where I left off. On the other hand, if I had to choose a new album every time I turned my iPod on I wouldn't get stuck in the rut of listening to the same few albums. =)
Oddly I've heard this question three times in the last two weeks, but only four times total in the 16 months I've owned an iPod.
Anyway, my preferred method is to hit PAUSE then lock the unit (the sliding switch on top). Fastest method I know of, includes locking the device so it won't be turned on again by accident, and it only takes two minutes for the iPod to shut itself down.
And with this new update we hopefully won't have to worry about those two minutes killing our battery.
Why doesn't anybody make desktop LCD displays with low-glare glass over the plastic LCD? I bought an Apple 17" LCD display and I'm tired of slapping my friends' hands when the reach to point at something on the screen...
What Reed is talking about isn't particularly revolutionary, but it's difficult to implement given the existing radio infrastructure (I'm speaking with the US in mind here). The idea of "polite" radios in a market where corporations have spent billions building radio networks is laughable.
What I'm unclear about is what he proposes we use all these radios for. Is he talking about making cellular networks more open and inexpensive? Is he talking about making radio and TV licenses cheaper and easier to acquire? Is he talking about replacements for Bluetooth and 802.11b/a/g? I guess he's talking about all of the above and more. Having spectrum open to such a wide array of uses with "autonegotiation" will result in huge drops in throughput. The article suggests that autonegotiation is used in frequency hopping systems,
``This inspired the first "frequency-hopping" technology: The transmitter and receiver were made to switch, in sync, very rapidly among a scheduled, random set of frequencies. Even if some of those frequencies were in use by other radios or jammers, error detection and retransmission would ensure a complete, correct message. The U.S. Navy has used a version of frequency-hopping as the basis of its communications since 1958. So we know that systems that enable transmitters and receivers to negotiate do work -- and work very well.''
Um..the TX and RX aren't negotiating -- they're following a very strict prescribed pattern of frequencies to which they hop. Same is true in cell networks, 802.11, Bluetooth..doesn't matter if it's frequency hopping or direct sequence spread spectrum, everything is planned out.
Where I work we've been doing preliminary work on software-definable radios for a couple of years now. The two biggest problems we foresee are: (a) how to justify the cost to customers up front, and (b) how to justify (to our company) selling someone a radio they will (conceivably) never have to replace. We're struggling to make money through software upgrades, and we've already seen that it's really hard to displace an existing, working system with a new, better system (just look at UMTS adoption).
Once that thing left the pad, (and at that point everything seamed as right as could be) there is nothing any engineering analysis could do.
Even if a problem couldn't be fixed in orbit, and even if they knew they were doomed upon reentry, any information collected about the effect the foam had on the structural integrity of the orbiter would certainly be useful now that we're trying to put the pieces back together, wouldn't it?
I understand that the means to inspect the bottom of the orbiter are limited at best, but anything they could have done would be rather useful right now.
Of course I had to bring up security -- this is Slashdot afterall.
In my office floppies are used rarely, VERY rarely. Instead everyone sets their Windows box to share the local drives so they can access their files everywhere. This makes our work easier and avoid floppies (which are too small for most of our work anyway), but few people take the time to set up proper security/permissions.
If the, say, 50% of computer users that still sneakernet things switches to insecure file sharing on their Windows desktops the security implications could be severe.
Slashdot Mirror
How about paying reputable security researchers (or testers) to evaluate the software?
Mobile phones manage to transmit back to their towers despite being small, low-power devices. The key: the base station's receivers are very sensitive and the coding schemes used for uplink transmission include more error detection/correction.
Granted, mobile phones don't work over the vast distances used by broadcast radio and television, but they serve as a good example of a low-power, two-way transmission system.
> > My GF is a graphics designer who specializes in print media.
> Your GF probably shouldn't be trying to get by with a cheapo desktop printer, then.
Who said the user in question was looking for a cheapo desktop printer? Inkjets aren't all cheap crap. As is the case with others who have posted here, I use an Epson 2200 for my small business (artwork reproductions) daily, and combined with some $500 software and display calibration, I can produce amazingly accurate prints that will last a lifetime on a variety of media.
Sure, this is different from how most people use their inkjets, but for my uses the technology is as revolutionary as digital cameras.
And for those of us that already own a copy of AppleWorks (I think it came with my iBook years ago), it fills many roles just fine. Like you said, it's a bit dated, and there are one or two little features that I would like to have, but by and large it works fine for lightweight word processing, vector drawing, and spreadsheet use. It came with MacLink, so I can read and write mostly MS Office-compatible files. It's fun to see such old still useful.
A Brief History of ClarisWorks/AppleWorks.
Apparently he's not the first to do something like this with a Mac, as variety of software is designed to make it easy
One tip: put some sort of shroud around the glass and the camera to keep the background dark, making the text easier to read. The teleprompters I've seen all have this, and it also makes a nice matte box for the camera.
I have to give my praise for White House Custom Color (WHCC). They are still small enough that they will sometimes call you to make sure you're happy with their work, send you five free 8x10s of your images and samples of all of their paper when you open an account with them, and I've never seen photos packaged so carefully when they are mailed to me.
I don't work for WHCC, etc., just a satisfied customer, but it's also a great example of a brick and mortar service company that has expanded to embrace the Internet.
BTW, this is based on my experiences where I did all of my own color correction with calibrated monitors in a controlled lighting environment. I can't speak for their color correction services.
According to this MacCentral page, the audio output jack of the RadioShark also doubles as an external antenna input. Not sure of the wiring or input impedance.
anyone know of anything live?
I was going to post a link to the radio webcast of the event, but I'd rather be able to listen to it myself! If all of you start listening too, none of us will get a good feed.
If you can find it (not hard), you're in luck.
You may be able to control all of those streams using this hint: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20040 60806111322
Basically set up a playlist, play it as your multiple users, and control it with one final user (adding/deleting tracks).
Completely off topic, but..Did you watch it? The "No Man's Land" you got is a lot better than the "No Man's Land" you thought you were getting.
Why not post a story titled, "Like free beer?"
I'm almost as tired of the weekly whiny stories as I am tired of working 60 hour weeks without overtime pay.
This has been discussed on /. before, and if I don't bring it up someone else will...There are some tech differences between phones in the US (GSM, CDMA, TDMA, different frequencies), but there are more reasons for providers to insist that you buy a phone from them.
Consumers rarely pay full price for their cell phone. Providers give you a steep discount on the phone when you sign a contract: they're willing to eat some of the cost of the phone if you're going to be paying them monthly bills for at least 12/24 months. What's their incentive to let you take that phone to another provider, or to let you use a phone from another provider when they can get away with making you buy a new one?
There are other issues, as other readers have pointed out: many providers specify custom menus, etc., for the phones that are used on their network. Without these, technical support would get exponentially more complicated. By keeping the phones (and the user experience) relatively common between phones, they save money.
The Push-To-Talk feature of Nextel's service has never really attracted the average user, but it's been a huge selling point for business customers. Think of construction sites or warehouses where you might use a walkie-talkie, and replace it with an inexpensive system that lets you two-way with anyone regarless of their location..
AND, lets you choose one-to-one communication, or one-to-many. You can use the same device to call Joe that you use to talk amongst a group of five people, totally ad-hoc.
This feature is missing in the 12" iBooks as well (perhaps the 14" models?), and considering that the 12" PB seems to be based heavily on the 12" iBook, I'm not surprised that it's missing.
I'm not complaining though -- this is the first Apple portable for which I haven't owned two batteries. One battery (and a charger for the airplane rides) has done me fine for six months now.
I was just about to say, "Having tried it...I'm going to walk down to the neighborhood record store." Very little indie pop, etc., and when I thought I could at least find some good old 60's pop I couldn't find what I wanted.
Still, 90% of what's on there will satisfy 60% of the customers, so it's a smart move. I just hope they provide a means for indie artists to sign up, upload there stuff, and start collecting quarters from downloads. The efficient browsing system will actually help unknown acts be discovered.
CDMA cellular networks use GPS receivers at the base station to help keep them all synchronized. Many SprintPCS phones can be put in a debug/service mode (search the web for instructions) where you can see the latitude and longitude of the nearest tower.
On the other hand, if you need coordinates to give you such a rough idea of where you are, you are probably out of range of the Sprint network. =)
Generally I like being able to resume where I left off. On the other hand, if I had to choose a new album every time I turned my iPod on I wouldn't get stuck in the rut of listening to the same few albums. =)
Oddly I've heard this question three times in the last two weeks, but only four times total in the 16 months I've owned an iPod.
Anyway, my preferred method is to hit PAUSE then lock the unit (the sliding switch on top). Fastest method I know of, includes locking the device so it won't be turned on again by accident, and it only takes two minutes for the iPod to shut itself down.
And with this new update we hopefully won't have to worry about those two minutes killing our battery.
Why doesn't anybody make desktop LCD displays with low-glare glass over the plastic LCD? I bought an Apple 17" LCD display and I'm tired of slapping my friends' hands when the reach to point at something on the screen...
What I'm unclear about is what he proposes we use all these radios for. Is he talking about making cellular networks more open and inexpensive? Is he talking about making radio and TV licenses cheaper and easier to acquire? Is he talking about replacements for Bluetooth and 802.11b/a/g? I guess he's talking about all of the above and more. Having spectrum open to such a wide array of uses with "autonegotiation" will result in huge drops in throughput. The article suggests that autonegotiation is used in frequency hopping systems,
Um..the TX and RX aren't negotiating -- they're following a very strict prescribed pattern of frequencies to which they hop. Same is true in cell networks, 802.11, Bluetooth..doesn't matter if it's frequency hopping or direct sequence spread spectrum, everything is planned out.
Where I work we've been doing preliminary work on software-definable radios for a couple of years now. The two biggest problems we foresee are: (a) how to justify the cost to customers up front, and (b) how to justify (to our company) selling someone a radio they will (conceivably) never have to replace. We're struggling to make money through software upgrades, and we've already seen that it's really hard to displace an existing, working system with a new, better system (just look at UMTS adoption).
I understand that the means to inspect the bottom of the orbiter are limited at best, but anything they could have done would be rather useful right now.
Of course I had to bring up security -- this is Slashdot afterall.
In my office floppies are used rarely, VERY rarely. Instead everyone sets their Windows box to share the local drives so they can access their files everywhere. This makes our work easier and avoid floppies (which are too small for most of our work anyway), but few people take the time to set up proper security/permissions.
If the, say, 50% of computer users that still sneakernet things switches to insecure file sharing on their Windows desktops the security implications could be severe.
From Audible.com: "Audible's spoken-word programs are downloaded in files designed to be more compressed than MP3 music files."
I presume that's what "spoken word support" means.