If the word "Free!" is enough to get users to download the screensaver, game, utility, etc., then this sort of thing will continue.
Somebody has to pay for the server bandwidth and the time to write the programs, and one viable model is adware. I deplore the installation of software that's a)not in the EULA or installer screens and b)damn hard to get rid of, but the 'legit' adware is what's paying the bills of the guys giving you free stuff.
There's always a subset of users who can circumvent the installation of the unasked-for bundles, but the average user without updated anti-spyware, firewall or anti-virus software will make enough money for the vendors to keep us in freebies for quite some time to come...
A PDA isn't ideal for books with pre-formatted material, be it graphics or tables or formatted code.
It's great for plain prose where the reader can wrap to screen size without losing any information.
Small (i.e. less than 320x320 pixels) graphics look fine, larger embedded graphics can be scaled and/or scrolled around, but it's less than ideal.
Horses for courses, but I'd stick to paper or larger screens (laptop or notepad PC) for this sort of material.
It's worth noting that the DPI is actually better on high-res PDA screens than on most desktop monitors, so the text looks very clear and crisp, especially if anti-aliasing algorithms are used. It's just that there's not many "I"s to fit those "D"s into!
The paperback's a perfect form-factor only because it's the compromise point between ease of holding it and getting enough words to make the effort of turning pages not too onerous. (Try flipping through a kid's book with 20 words/page. Now that's a real page-turner!)
Now change the effort required to 'turn the page' to a slight pressure on the button that your finger's already on. (Like a mouse-click when you're already holding the mouse.) Having fewer words per page now matters less and the perfect form-factor shifts towards ease of holding.
I don't notice when I change pages, any more than you notice the page turns if you're sitting comfortably. I can also be lying in bed and not notice the page 'turns', one handed.
I hold the PDA at the same distance I once held a paperback, and a 320x480 pixel screen is very legible. If you forget your glasses, just increase the font size!
Why put a fake horse in front of the automobile?
on
Sony Reader Taking Hold?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
These dedicated e-readers are all trying to look like a dead-tree book and are missing a big part of the point. My PDA is small enough to fit in my shirt pocket. A book, even a paperback, isn't. Neither is a paperback-sized e-reader.
It's like trying to make automobiles palatable to horse'n'cart users by putting a fake horse in front of it.
I do all my reading on a Palm (T3, if you care) and have done for years. All it took to make it worthwhile was a paper-white screen with 320x320 or better resolution.
Why do I prefer ebooks? The 800-page book I just read weighed no more than the short story I read before that. And I could have hundreds of 800-page books in my pocket at once. I can touch a word on the page and instantly call up a definition from a 150,000 word dictionary. I can read in the dark, I can read while waiting in a queue, I can read while floating in a canoe (with the PDA in a waterproof bag.) I can bookmark interesting pages, I can jot notes in an electronic 'margin', I can copy a relevant passage into an email without re-typing it. If my house burns down, I have an off-site backup of my library. I can search for a character's name or a phrase I want to look up.
And I don't need something that _looks_ like a book to do it!
Low tech? You're using an 18x18 pixel video camera that takes over a thousand snapshots a second of the shadows of your desk, then uses a DSP to calculate the differences between those images and thus how far and in what direction the mouse has moved, and you call it LOW TECH?!!
And all this in a chip that costs the manufacturer about a buck.
Since you're worried about low power, I'm assuming this is an embedded type product, probably battery powered.
Embedded memory's just not that expensive anymore... Freescale's 64k flash MCU with built-in Zigbee (MC13213 (there's 13211/2/4 as well) is sampling now and should cost you less than USD5 each. the 32k or 16k versions (with reduced stack functionality) are a little cheaper.
If you want a robust, highly-capable stack, it's a lot cheaper/quicker than writing your own. If the only reason for selecting it is to access future interoperable devices, it's a more marginal decision.
(ObDisclaimer: I work for a Freescale distributor.)
I have no problem with this particular case, as there seems to be ample corroborating evidence on multiple sites about this store's bad practices.
(I'm an Aussie; we know about corroborees and stuff)
But what's to stop someone with a personal grudge or a commercial agenda from doing the same thing? Sure, it's a lottery to see if your blog-rave captures any attention on/. or BoingBoing or Digg etc., but the costs are low and the potential damage high.
How can a reputable business (even one with a couple of justly unhappy customers; nobody's service is perfect) protect themselves?
and they need to collect it electronically because, when they used to print it out on a piece of paper, those slips were often confiscated at check-in because terrorists could threaten to give someone a really nasty paper cut with it...
I'm in my mid-40s and still hear that 16kHz whine from many TVs and monitors when the PC's turned off.
I learned to protect my hearing when I was in the (Royal Australian) Air Force. While the young d00ds were being macho and enduring the loud noises as jets flew overhead, the brass who'd been around awhile had no qualms about wearing earplugs or putting their fingers in their ears as appropriate.
My fellow (then) teenagers probably ended up cool, but deaf.
I hate the way that it keeps charging me 99c every time a music track plays in the background...
At least it won't have some of the annoying features of Windows Media. I hate it when Clippy appears and says "You seem to be watching pro wrestling. Shall I e-order beer and pizza for you?"
There's a common belittling of the sheer amount of complexity we need to deal with to interact in a social environment. There's movement towards acknowleging this with things like "EQ" as well as "IQ" being measured, but it's couched in a lot of New Agey jargon too much of the time.
Being able to do complex maths and write good computer programs involves a lot of brain activity, but so does being able to effectively model a person's personality in your mind and interact more effectively with them using that model.
I usually score as more introverted than extroverted on MBPT tests and the like, but I still enjoy the process of experiencing social and group dynamics at times, and playing with it in a similar way to the way I'd work on a logic problem.
The fact that I could remember the name of the substance 20+ years after reading the Good Doctor's story should tell you something about how much I liked the concept!
This will not only ensure that your photo of Auntie May is in focus, but the camera will make sure that the image is captured at a time when her eyes are open and she's smiling.
They'd better hope this technology takes off, or they're going to have lots of terabytes of inaccessible storage in a few years, when the spares for their readers run out...
Mind you, this is hardly a unique problem, only a large-scale concentration of a wide-spread one.
Slashdot Mirror
Somebody has to pay for the server bandwidth and the time to write the programs, and one viable model is adware. I deplore the installation of software that's a)not in the EULA or installer screens and b)damn hard to get rid of, but the 'legit' adware is what's paying the bills of the guys giving you free stuff.
There's always a subset of users who can circumvent the installation of the unasked-for bundles, but the average user without updated anti-spyware, firewall or anti-virus software will make enough money for the vendors to keep us in freebies for quite some time to come...
A PDA isn't ideal for books with pre-formatted material, be it graphics or tables or formatted code.
It's great for plain prose where the reader can wrap to screen size without losing any information.
Small (i.e. less than 320x320 pixels) graphics look fine, larger embedded graphics can be scaled and/or scrolled around, but it's less than ideal.
Horses for courses, but I'd stick to paper or larger screens (laptop or notepad PC) for this sort of material.
It's worth noting that the DPI is actually better on high-res PDA screens than on most desktop monitors, so the text looks very clear and crisp, especially if anti-aliasing algorithms are used. It's just that there's not many "I"s to fit those "D"s into!
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/3 0/168239&tid=126&tid=14
Now change the effort required to 'turn the page' to a slight pressure on the button that your finger's already on. (Like a mouse-click when you're already holding the mouse.) Having fewer words per page now matters less and the perfect form-factor shifts towards ease of holding.
I don't notice when I change pages, any more than you notice the page turns if you're sitting comfortably. I can also be lying in bed and not notice the page 'turns', one handed.
I hold the PDA at the same distance I once held a paperback, and a 320x480 pixel screen is very legible. If you forget your glasses, just increase the font size!
These dedicated e-readers are all trying to look like a dead-tree book and are missing a big part of the point. My PDA is small enough to fit in my shirt pocket. A book, even a paperback, isn't. Neither is a paperback-sized e-reader.
It's like trying to make automobiles palatable to horse'n'cart users by putting a fake horse in front of it.
I do all my reading on a Palm (T3, if you care) and have done for years. All it took to make it worthwhile was a paper-white screen with 320x320 or better resolution.
Why do I prefer ebooks?
The 800-page book I just read weighed no more than the short story I read before that. And I could have hundreds of 800-page books in my pocket at once.
I can touch a word on the page and instantly call up a definition from a 150,000 word dictionary.
I can read in the dark, I can read while waiting in a queue, I can read while floating in a canoe (with the PDA in a waterproof bag.)
I can bookmark interesting pages, I can jot notes in an electronic 'margin', I can copy a relevant passage into an email without re-typing it.
If my house burns down, I have an off-site backup of my library.
I can search for a character's name or a phrase I want to look up.
And I don't need something that _looks_ like a book to do it!
And all this in a chip that costs the manufacturer about a buck.
Perspective!
And we don't care.
Embedded memory's just not that expensive anymore... Freescale's 64k flash MCU with built-in Zigbee (MC13213 (there's 13211/2/4 as well) is sampling now and should cost you less than USD5 each. the 32k or 16k versions (with reduced stack functionality) are a little cheaper.
If you want a robust, highly-capable stack, it's a lot cheaper/quicker than writing your own. If the only reason for selecting it is to access future interoperable devices, it's a more marginal decision.
(ObDisclaimer: I work for a Freescale distributor.)
(I'm an Aussie; we know about corroborees and stuff)
But what's to stop someone with a personal grudge or a commercial agenda from doing the same thing? Sure, it's a lottery to see if your blog-rave captures any attention on /. or BoingBoing or Digg etc., but the costs are low and the potential damage high.
How can a reputable business (even one with a couple of justly unhappy customers; nobody's service is perfect) protect themselves?
To even suggest that Slashdotters would fall for trollish statements and react hotly to perceived criticism of things we hold dear is... is....
That has to be deliberate!
and they need to collect it electronically because, when they used to print it out on a piece of paper, those slips were often confiscated at check-in because terrorists could threaten to give someone a really nasty paper cut with it...
I'm in my mid-40s and still hear that 16kHz whine from many TVs and monitors when the PC's turned off. I learned to protect my hearing when I was in the (Royal Australian) Air Force. While the young d00ds were being macho and enduring the loud noises as jets flew overhead, the brass who'd been around awhile had no qualms about wearing earplugs or putting their fingers in their ears as appropriate. My fellow (then) teenagers probably ended up cool, but deaf.
That's who you want installing your VOIP software!
I hate the way that it keeps charging me 99c every time a music track plays in the background... At least it won't have some of the annoying features of Windows Media. I hate it when Clippy appears and says "You seem to be watching pro wrestling. Shall I e-order beer and pizza for you?"
There's a common belittling of the sheer amount of complexity we need to deal with to interact in a social environment. There's movement towards acknowleging this with things like "EQ" as well as "IQ" being measured, but it's couched in a lot of New Agey jargon too much of the time. Being able to do complex maths and write good computer programs involves a lot of brain activity, but so does being able to effectively model a person's personality in your mind and interact more effectively with them using that model. I usually score as more introverted than extroverted on MBPT tests and the like, but I still enjoy the process of experiencing social and group dynamics at times, and playing with it in a similar way to the way I'd work on a logic problem.
(Hey, every second post is saying this, and I didn't have enough moderator points to mark them all all "redundant"!)
The fact that I could remember the name of the substance 20+ years after reading the Good Doctor's story should tell you something about how much I liked the concept!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Endochronic_Prop
This will not only ensure that your photo of Auntie May is in focus, but the camera will make sure that the image is captured at a time when her eyes are open and she's smiling.
ohh... geek novels... I thought they said Greek novels.
Mind you, this is hardly a unique problem, only a large-scale concentration of a wide-spread one.
Oops. Wrong Mr. Kurtz...
then beware of geeks bearing GIFs.