I'm in the US and I can tell you it won't work for me. I'm betting it also won't work for lots of others. I Accept PayPal payments and probably close to 25% of them ARE direct from checking or savings account transfers. As a merchant, I have to wait for these to clear just like I would a check.
But why won't I use them? I don't have a credit card! I know, it sounds amazing, but it's true. I also do quite a lot of shopping on line. Well, I say I don't have a credit card, but I do now have one of those nifty debit cards that you can use as a credit card. And guess what? It came from PayPal and has their name on it! So not only will they allow me to pay by check, they give me an alternative to a real credit card with all it's fees. There is no fee's to use the PayPal card as debit or credit (at least not fees from PayPal). Oh, then there's another offer of theirs. If you are a merchant and will put up 1 PayPal graphic on your website saying you accept PayPal, that debit/credit card remains a debit card, but becomes a credit card that offers 1% back on all credit card purchases. And let me tell you it's instant cash back. As soon as the charge shows up in PayPal, 1% is immediately credited back.
I understand lots of people have had problems with PayPal, but, like anything else, it's the law of averages. PayPal has a huge customer base, some people are going to have problems. I'm also not stupid. If funds get to a certain level where it would be dangerous if the account suddenly disappeared (acct froze, or whatever), I transfer money out of PayPal and into a real bank account. If Google isn't allowing you to pay by bank account, I doubt they are letting you transfer to a bank account either, so, unless you buy something using your Google account, any money you have there may just be stranded there, unless they will send you a check, but that would be costly on them!
It's been covered elsewhere, but, as a small merchant, PayPal beats the pants off of any credit card merchant account that I've ever had, even when I refused to sign merchant deals that had a monthly fee involved.
And lately, I've not been happy with Google anyway. My GMail account was down for 8-10 hrs the other day. No news from Google on the outage, no word when it would be fixed or what caused it... Just, Sorry, Unable to process your request. For hours and hours. And then there's what got them started, search. Well, these days, Google's search results seem no better than any other mainstream search engine out there. There are too many of those damn catch all keyword sites that nothing but an ad words page with dynamically generated crap on it that pretends to be what you want. I have started using other search engines again in an effort to find the productivity that Google has seem to have lost. If I have to read through 3 or more pages of results, and look at ads... other search engines are beginning to offer a real challenge to Google's dominance in my opinion. Its also been mentioned elsewhere that their spider comes around a lot less often than the spiders from any of the other search engines, and my web server logs bear this out as well.
Last, but most certainly not least, is what seems to be Goggle's mentality of "All your information is belonging to us." G.. G.. Google... G.. G.. Government... I consider it bad that both probably know just as much about me. I've got to where I trust both about equally as well, and thats not much.
I have a "Personal Cooler" from Sharper Image, though it is about 5yrs old. Looking at the picture on their site it doesn't look like they've changed it much. (But I don't know that for a fact so this all refers to my little bit older one.)
My review: Like most other things that Sharper Image sells, save your money!
I've used it (or tried to) while walking, while mowing, while working in the yard and in a few other instances, some during leisure, some during manual labor.
First, I'm not a very large guy. My neck is pretty small in diameter. The thing doesn't hold on tight enough for my neck and it ends up sliding around or facing completely backwards and falling off before I can grab it. This happens much more frequently as you get hot and sweat more. Forget wearing it to play sports.
Here in SE Texas, I can't even tell I am wearing it. The metal plate that contacts my neck becomes just as hot as I am in a very short amount of time and you can't tell there is any kind of cooling effect from it at all, save for the first couple of minutes you put it on until the metal plate gets to your temperature. (And trust me, this doesn't take long!)
If it's like it used to be, you put water into a hole in it and a sponge soaked the water up in an attempt to keep it from spilling. Well, just a little too much water and this little water retention system ends up cooling you off inadvertently because it spills all over you. (Hey, at least it has the potential to cool you off, at least a little, somehow.)
At least on mine, the little fan that spins that is suppose to help provide the evaporative cooling is so weak that I can put my hands over the little vent and barely tell if there is any air moving at all, though its close enough to my ears that I can hear it unless I'm doing something that makes a lot of noise.
I think it could be made to work, if they have not gotten the kinks out already. The fan needs to be larger and more powerful, there needs to be a real way to contain the water and there has to be some way it can stay on anyones neck, regardless of their size. The principles involved seem sound, it's the implementation that needs work.
As for the other link (didn't read TFL, just looked at the pictures), I haven't seen one of those before, but based on previous experience with similar methods, I believe that it is also based on sound principles. As an ex-firefighter in hot Florida I can tell you when we needed to cool off fast the best thing to do was run cool/cold water over your wrists. This helped with evaporative cooling on the skin, and if you are skinny like me with large veins close to the surface, it also might cool the blood itself a little.
Must be a YMMV thing because I've had Vonage as my sole phone provider (no landline or cell) for well over two years and it's never even dropped a call unless Cox was having problems. (Which was obvious because nothing worked, not just VOIP.) And no, I did not participate in the IPO... Who the hell has any money these days?
If I had mod points I'd mod you up. I can't believe this was called flamebait as it's a wonderful service and more feature rich alternative than what the TFA provides.
Orb can stream pretty much any (XVID, DIVX, MPEG, QT, RM, WMV and more) prerecorded video to any device with an internet connection. I've even used it over 26.4k dialup with acceptable results (considering the speed). At 26.4k normal streaming radio stations want to buffer every three or four minutes, but with orb streaming video at that same speed I can watch for an hour or more without any rebuffering.
Throw a capture card in your PC and it can also record via antenna, cable, satellite, etc. You can then watch the recorded content via stream at any time.
Better than that, you can stream live TV! You can change the channel right from your normal media player (pretty much any) while watching. You use the forward and back buttons and it changes the channels up or down. Need a break? Hit pause. When you are ready it will pick right up where you left off.
You can put up pictures so anytime you want you can look at the picture of your baby (or your PC if you are that much of a geek).
Orb also streams whatever audio you may have and want it to.
Another nifty thing, you can setup "shared folders" so you can allow others to see your media (suppose to be for only media you actually own the rights to, not TV or the Simpsons episodes you ripped from your DVDs.
I'll tell ya, it makes the weekend or holidays at the in-laws bearable. Pick up my iPaq and hit an access point and at least I'm entertained for a while.
The only current draw back for me is that it won't currently run on any flavor of 64 bit Windows (at least not the live TV part which is the biggest draw for me. And it's likely that is an issue with Directshow and the capture card drivers.)
Shhh... Lets not tell the **AA about this! This is a service I for sure don't want to lose but I can't believe exists in the first place.
It's a sad day indeed.
However, if they close up shop this easy, were they the right ones to be leading this fight?
I also just love how I had to hear about this on/. Nothing like keeping your community informed of what's going on.
The worst part is they probably picked up 50,000 or more subscribers over the period of the DDOS. It was actually much better advertising than they could have ever bought. Heck, it got me to join!
Cool, so that means it's gonna cost about the same to make my old PS1 games playable on a PS3 as they cost when they were brand new to the PS1. I like retro as much as the next guy, but not when even the cost has gone retro.
Wait, now why am I wanting to play PS1 games that are years old and could probably be played on any new calculator on my new 600.00 piece of eye candy?
They don't supply spammers with the addresses of their members. What they do is offer a tool that cleans our email addresses (which are contained in an encrypted database) out of their spam address databases. So all that was done is the spammer in question compared a pre-cleaned version with a post-cleaned version and any addresses that no longer appeared were obviously members of BlueSecurity.
Also, the spam reports that are sent out are sent from a proxy type email address. My normal address wouldn't show up, but username@reports.bluesecurity.com is where it would come from.
Personally, I see nothing wrong with sending 1 unsubscribe request per piece of spam I get. BlueSecurity has just automated this method so I don't have to take the time, and they also handle escalation to the proper authorities if the situation isn't resolved.
If the spammer perceives getting 1 unsubscribe request per spam he sends a DDOS attack then I would think the best course of action would be not to send to those people. Heck, we are the ones who wouldn't buy anything from them anyway.
Also, based on what I have read in the blog itself (when it was still accessible) it was a user in the comments that suggested redirecting the site and error pages to the blog so users would at least have some clue what was going on. It's likely they took the advice without contemplating the potential outcome.
When I started reading the review I thought I might enjoy reading the book, but by the time I got to the end of the review I felt like I had just read the book!
Not affiliated, just a happy customer. I have been using Vonage for at least a couple years now on a Cox cable account. It has been perfect. Not one moment of downtime that wasn't caused by Cox network problems, not one dropped call, no static, no cutting in and out, just perfect. The router they sent has QOS that you can turn on so even if I am maxing out my connection, if a call comes in or is placed, it throttles everything else down to give the call the bandwith it needs. There are also a couple other QOS slots you can setup for other things as well. Nice for VNC when I'm away from home and my connection is flooded for whatever reason.
I can't speak for anyone else that may have or have tried Vonage, but it has been great for me. As soon as I got Vonage up (about 2 mins after I opened the box it came in) I called the local telco and told them where they could shove it. I don't normally like to burn bridges but I was pouring gasoline on that one while lighting the match.
I recommend Vonage to anyone with broadband, especially if they are fed up with MaBell.
I have to comment on this, even over modding in this story, because I've seen it myself. I hope you are talking ancient history here, and even then, this stuff I'm working with is more ancient than I'd like.
I have at work at least one printed uptime screen shot of an NT4 server I administer that is a Primary Domain Controller, DHCP, WINS and also runs a factory automation package. The uptime in the screen shot is over 800 days I believe. (I'm not at work so I can't swear to it exactly. Whatever it says, it is accurate: the server is in use 24/7 and any down time would be noticed instantly in lots of ways by lots of people.) The last time I checked it I didn't take a screen shot but it was over 900 days at that point. The network this server is connected to is not connected to the outside world in any way, and doesn't have any other vectors of infection either. (No floppy, no cd, etc, etc) I admit this is not a typical environment, but if you have no legitimate reason to apply the security patches, can assure the power and get lucky with some hardware it can be done.
And to top it all off, this is an old desktop class Pentium Pro 200 with 192mb of ram (I know weird number, ya can't make this stuff up) and a single SCSI hard drive. This is circa 1995 stuff. Last time I took it down prior to that 900 days was to replace a failed AT style power supply.
And no bitching about using stuff this old. If I had any choice in the matter it would be on much more modern, and probably redundant technology.
I can and will produce the evidence upon request. Lots of people here on/. make it sound like what I have is an impossibility and I therefore conclude it must be worth lots of money for its rarity. I believe however that in industries, automation and lots of other places most people don't think about that these numbers are common if not on the low side.
Another interesting thing, I have had more problems with bad network cabling and bad network devices (hub/switch/other) than I have with this server in that same 900 days. Some cabling had to be replaced, some had to have rj45s replaced, and in that time I've had to reboot and replace multiple network devices. Go figure.
Everyone is complaining that this thing doesn't include a cellular phone. Am I the only one that is very happy it doesn't? I don't even own a cell anymore. And since it is a PC that runs XP and is connected via wifi, why hasn't someone mentioned that if you need phone functionality that there is always Vonages SoftPhone or Skype, or any number of other solutions, or you could substitute email, IM, heck even IRC if you needed to. It's not like this thing isn't a PC running XP. For the most part, if you can run it on your desktop, you should be able to run it on this. Personally, I work in an environment where I specifically can't take a cell phone into work, so if it had an integrated phone, I couldn't even use it at the office, and that's a big chunk of the day.
Personally, I have been waiting for this for years. I always wanted a tablet PC but could never afford one, and they are a little bigger than I would like/need. Several years ago I bought an iPaq 3670. It was/is nice and all that, but it's too limited what with its size and the fact that it runs CE instead of XP. Need to do a little coding? That's tough. Want to VNC into a 1024x768 or higher res screen? You can, but I sure hope you aren't in a hurry and like to scroll. Newer versions of Pocket IE have gotten better, but in the version that came with my iPaq, browsing is worse than pulling teeth.
So far the biggest things I see it missing is better battery life and GPS. (Though GPS may be something the individual OEM decides to implement.) Along the same lines, isn't a keyboard in some form or fashion something the individual OEMs may get to select or not select for their product? An adapter that will allow a connection to a normal monitor like is available on the Dell Axims would also be on the want list. Maybe they will throw a fuel cell in at some point, or maybe the advances in battery tech will get to be shown off in this device. I wonder how it would run with LiPo batteries? Oh, and bluetooth would be nice if it doesn't already have it. The ability to wirelessly add headphones, a keyboard or mouse if needed would be nice.
For $500.00 or so, I just don't see the down side. The above mentioned iPaq was more than that when new and in my mind, isn't nearly as productive. What's the worst that could happen? I end up with a very expensive programmable remote control with network/internet access built in?
For me, I'd love to be able to go outside and lay in the hammock and still be able to watch a movie over wifi, or do some coding, or remotely check on the servers, (the list could go on for a while) all while enjoying the outdoors.
If the devices end up having those things listed above as "missing", I'd be in line today to buy one (if it were available today), and I've never stood in line for a XBox, Playstation, event tickets or anything else, but to me, this would be worth it.
"What would the esteemed Slashdot readers think of shifting all these machines to a Linux distro"
Pretty sure you could have gone without posting and still known exactly what those at/. would think of replacing any MS OS with any distro of Linux. Heck, I certainly knew before I ever started reading comments.
Well, having never heard of Acclaim's B.O.T.S. or B.O.T.S. ][ before, it didn't take very long to figure out. The very first sentence on the http://bots2.net/ site says "...text-only..." and TFA for http://botsgame.com/ speaks of "cleanly rendered" and the site itself is full of graphics, well, that was my first clue anyway.
Couldn't resist the troll for those who may not know. The UAE is not your typical "Arab nation". In fact, they are quite a bit more friendly with us than many other nations, Islamic, Arabic or not.
Here is the State Department's take on the UAE. Actually some pretty interesting information to be had.
After playing EQ and other MMORPG games for years, in the end it won't matter. Certain groups or classes will always feel slighted and make noise about it whether it is truly the case or not.
There's a big difference between "stuck" and "dead" pixels. Stuck pixels at least have the potential to become "unstuck" with the video that was linked above. "Dead" pixels are just that, dead. There is no way to fix them that I am aware. The video certainly won't.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm in the US and I can tell you it won't work for me. I'm betting it also won't work for lots of others. I Accept PayPal payments and probably close to 25% of them ARE direct from checking or savings account transfers. As a merchant, I have to wait for these to clear just like I would a check.
But why won't I use them? I don't have a credit card! I know, it sounds amazing, but it's true. I also do quite a lot of shopping on line. Well, I say I don't have a credit card, but I do now have one of those nifty debit cards that you can use as a credit card. And guess what? It came from PayPal and has their name on it! So not only will they allow me to pay by check, they give me an alternative to a real credit card with all it's fees. There is no fee's to use the PayPal card as debit or credit (at least not fees from PayPal). Oh, then there's another offer of theirs. If you are a merchant and will put up 1 PayPal graphic on your website saying you accept PayPal, that debit/credit card remains a debit card, but becomes a credit card that offers 1% back on all credit card purchases. And let me tell you it's instant cash back. As soon as the charge shows up in PayPal, 1% is immediately credited back.
I understand lots of people have had problems with PayPal, but, like anything else, it's the law of averages. PayPal has a huge customer base, some people are going to have problems. I'm also not stupid. If funds get to a certain level where it would be dangerous if the account suddenly disappeared (acct froze, or whatever), I transfer money out of PayPal and into a real bank account. If Google isn't allowing you to pay by bank account, I doubt they are letting you transfer to a bank account either, so, unless you buy something using your Google account, any money you have there may just be stranded there, unless they will send you a check, but that would be costly on them!
It's been covered elsewhere, but, as a small merchant, PayPal beats the pants off of any credit card merchant account that I've ever had, even when I refused to sign merchant deals that had a monthly fee involved.
And lately, I've not been happy with Google anyway. My GMail account was down for 8-10 hrs the other day. No news from Google on the outage, no word when it would be fixed or what caused it... Just, Sorry, Unable to process your request. For hours and hours. And then there's what got them started, search. Well, these days, Google's search results seem no better than any other mainstream search engine out there. There are too many of those damn catch all keyword sites that nothing but an ad words page with dynamically generated crap on it that pretends to be what you want. I have started using other search engines again in an effort to find the productivity that Google has seem to have lost. If I have to read through 3 or more pages of results, and look at ads... other search engines are beginning to offer a real challenge to Google's dominance in my opinion. Its also been mentioned elsewhere that their spider comes around a lot less often than the spiders from any of the other search engines, and my web server logs bear this out as well.
Last, but most certainly not least, is what seems to be Goggle's mentality of "All your information is belonging to us." G.. G.. Google... G.. G.. Government... I consider it bad that both probably know just as much about me. I've got to where I trust both about equally as well, and thats not much.
I have a "Personal Cooler" from Sharper Image, though it is about 5yrs old. Looking at the picture on their site it doesn't look like they've changed it much. (But I don't know that for a fact so this all refers to my little bit older one.)
My review: Like most other things that Sharper Image sells, save your money!
I've used it (or tried to) while walking, while mowing, while working in the yard and in a few other instances, some during leisure, some during manual labor.
First, I'm not a very large guy. My neck is pretty small in diameter. The thing doesn't hold on tight enough for my neck and it ends up sliding around or facing completely backwards and falling off before I can grab it. This happens much more frequently as you get hot and sweat more. Forget wearing it to play sports.
Here in SE Texas, I can't even tell I am wearing it. The metal plate that contacts my neck becomes just as hot as I am in a very short amount of time and you can't tell there is any kind of cooling effect from it at all, save for the first couple of minutes you put it on until the metal plate gets to your temperature. (And trust me, this doesn't take long!)
If it's like it used to be, you put water into a hole in it and a sponge soaked the water up in an attempt to keep it from spilling. Well, just a little too much water and this little water retention system ends up cooling you off inadvertently because it spills all over you. (Hey, at least it has the potential to cool you off, at least a little, somehow.)
At least on mine, the little fan that spins that is suppose to help provide the evaporative cooling is so weak that I can put my hands over the little vent and barely tell if there is any air moving at all, though its close enough to my ears that I can hear it unless I'm doing something that makes a lot of noise.
I think it could be made to work, if they have not gotten the kinks out already. The fan needs to be larger and more powerful, there needs to be a real way to contain the water and there has to be some way it can stay on anyones neck, regardless of their size. The principles involved seem sound, it's the implementation that needs work.
As for the other link (didn't read TFL, just looked at the pictures), I haven't seen one of those before, but based on previous experience with similar methods, I believe that it is also based on sound principles. As an ex-firefighter in hot Florida I can tell you when we needed to cool off fast the best thing to do was run cool/cold water over your wrists. This helped with evaporative cooling on the skin, and if you are skinny like me with large veins close to the surface, it also might cool the blood itself a little.
http://www.wallwatcher.com/ is your friend
Must be a YMMV thing because I've had Vonage as my sole phone provider (no landline or cell) for well over two years and it's never even dropped a call unless Cox was having problems. (Which was obvious because nothing worked, not just VOIP.) And no, I did not participate in the IPO... Who the hell has any money these days?
If I had mod points I'd mod you up. I can't believe this was called flamebait as it's a wonderful service and more feature rich alternative than what the TFA provides.
Orb can stream pretty much any (XVID, DIVX, MPEG, QT, RM, WMV and more) prerecorded video to any device with an internet connection. I've even used it over 26.4k dialup with acceptable results (considering the speed). At 26.4k normal streaming radio stations want to buffer every three or four minutes, but with orb streaming video at that same speed I can watch for an hour or more without any rebuffering.
Throw a capture card in your PC and it can also record via antenna, cable, satellite, etc. You can then watch the recorded content via stream at any time.
Better than that, you can stream live TV! You can change the channel right from your normal media player (pretty much any) while watching. You use the forward and back buttons and it changes the channels up or down. Need a break? Hit pause. When you are ready it will pick right up where you left off.
You can put up pictures so anytime you want you can look at the picture of your baby (or your PC if you are that much of a geek).
Orb also streams whatever audio you may have and want it to.
Another nifty thing, you can setup "shared folders" so you can allow others to see your media (suppose to be for only media you actually own the rights to, not TV or the Simpsons episodes you ripped from your DVDs.
I'll tell ya, it makes the weekend or holidays at the in-laws bearable. Pick up my iPaq and hit an access point and at least I'm entertained for a while.
The only current draw back for me is that it won't currently run on any flavor of 64 bit Windows (at least not the live TV part which is the biggest draw for me. And it's likely that is an issue with Directshow and the capture card drivers.)
Shhh... Lets not tell the **AA about this! This is a service I for sure don't want to lose but I can't believe exists in the first place.
It's a sad day indeed. /. Nothing like keeping your community informed of what's going on.
However, if they close up shop this easy, were they the right ones to be leading this fight?
I also just love how I had to hear about this on
The worst part is they probably picked up 50,000 or more subscribers over the period of the DDOS. It was actually much better advertising than they could have ever bought. Heck, it got me to join!
Cool, so that means it's gonna cost about the same to make my old PS1 games playable on a PS3 as they cost when they were brand new to the PS1. I like retro as much as the next guy, but not when even the cost has gone retro.
Wait, now why am I wanting to play PS1 games that are years old and could probably be played on any new calculator on my new 600.00 piece of eye candy?
Also, the spam reports that are sent out are sent from a proxy type email address. My normal address wouldn't show up, but username@reports.bluesecurity.com is where it would come from.
Personally, I see nothing wrong with sending 1 unsubscribe request per piece of spam I get. BlueSecurity has just automated this method so I don't have to take the time, and they also handle escalation to the proper authorities if the situation isn't resolved.
If the spammer perceives getting 1 unsubscribe request per spam he sends a DDOS attack then I would think the best course of action would be not to send to those people. Heck, we are the ones who wouldn't buy anything from them anyway.
Also, based on what I have read in the blog itself (when it was still accessible) it was a user in the comments that suggested redirecting the site and error pages to the blog so users would at least have some clue what was going on. It's likely they took the advice without contemplating the potential outcome.
When I started reading the review I thought I might enjoy reading the book, but by the time I got to the end of the review I felt like I had just read the book!
I can't speak for anyone else that may have or have tried Vonage, but it has been great for me. As soon as I got Vonage up (about 2 mins after I opened the box it came in) I called the local telco and told them where they could shove it. I don't normally like to burn bridges but I was pouring gasoline on that one while lighting the match.
I recommend Vonage to anyone with broadband, especially if they are fed up with MaBell.
I have at work at least one printed uptime screen shot of an NT4 server I administer that is a Primary Domain Controller, DHCP, WINS and also runs a factory automation package. The uptime in the screen shot is over 800 days I believe. (I'm not at work so I can't swear to it exactly. Whatever it says, it is accurate: the server is in use 24/7 and any down time would be noticed instantly in lots of ways by lots of people.) The last time I checked it I didn't take a screen shot but it was over 900 days at that point. The network this server is connected to is not connected to the outside world in any way, and doesn't have any other vectors of infection either. (No floppy, no cd, etc, etc) I admit this is not a typical environment, but if you have no legitimate reason to apply the security patches, can assure the power and get lucky with some hardware it can be done.
And to top it all off, this is an old desktop class Pentium Pro 200 with 192mb of ram (I know weird number, ya can't make this stuff up) and a single SCSI hard drive. This is circa 1995 stuff. Last time I took it down prior to that 900 days was to replace a failed AT style power supply.
And no bitching about using stuff this old. If I had any choice in the matter it would be on much more modern, and probably redundant technology.
I can and will produce the evidence upon request. Lots of people here on /. make it sound like what I have is an impossibility and I therefore conclude it must be worth lots of money for its rarity. I believe however that in industries, automation and lots of other places most people don't think about that these numbers are common if not on the low side.
Another interesting thing, I have had more problems with bad network cabling and bad network devices (hub/switch/other) than I have with this server in that same 900 days. Some cabling had to be replaced, some had to have rj45s replaced, and in that time I've had to reboot and replace multiple network devices. Go figure.
Glad to know my personal view on the entire Star Wars franchise is flamebait
Won't this Star Wars crap finally go away??
So it was a suppository after all?!
Never thought I'd sat this, but it looks like the French may get it right.
So I guess the US is gonna tell them to go fly a kite because that's all they will be flying?
Personally, I have been waiting for this for years. I always wanted a tablet PC but could never afford one, and they are a little bigger than I would like/need. Several years ago I bought an iPaq 3670. It was/is nice and all that, but it's too limited what with its size and the fact that it runs CE instead of XP. Need to do a little coding? That's tough. Want to VNC into a 1024x768 or higher res screen? You can, but I sure hope you aren't in a hurry and like to scroll. Newer versions of Pocket IE have gotten better, but in the version that came with my iPaq, browsing is worse than pulling teeth.
So far the biggest things I see it missing is better battery life and GPS. (Though GPS may be something the individual OEM decides to implement.) Along the same lines, isn't a keyboard in some form or fashion something the individual OEMs may get to select or not select for their product? An adapter that will allow a connection to a normal monitor like is available on the Dell Axims would also be on the want list. Maybe they will throw a fuel cell in at some point, or maybe the advances in battery tech will get to be shown off in this device. I wonder how it would run with LiPo batteries? Oh, and bluetooth would be nice if it doesn't already have it. The ability to wirelessly add headphones, a keyboard or mouse if needed would be nice.
For $500.00 or so, I just don't see the down side. The above mentioned iPaq was more than that when new and in my mind, isn't nearly as productive. What's the worst that could happen? I end up with a very expensive programmable remote control with network/internet access built in?
For me, I'd love to be able to go outside and lay in the hammock and still be able to watch a movie over wifi, or do some coding, or remotely check on the servers, (the list could go on for a while) all while enjoying the outdoors.
If the devices end up having those things listed above as "missing", I'd be in line today to buy one (if it were available today), and I've never stood in line for a XBox, Playstation, event tickets or anything else, but to me, this would be worth it.
"What would the esteemed Slashdot readers think of shifting all these machines to a Linux distro" Pretty sure you could have gone without posting and still known exactly what those at /. would think of replacing any MS OS with any distro of Linux. Heck, I certainly knew before I ever started reading comments.
Well, having never heard of Acclaim's B.O.T.S. or B.O.T.S. ][ before, it didn't take very long to figure out. The very first sentence on the http://bots2.net/ site says "...text-only..." and TFA for http://botsgame.com/ speaks of "cleanly rendered" and the site itself is full of graphics, well, that was my first clue anyway.
Couldn't resist the troll for those who may not know. The UAE is not your typical "Arab nation". In fact, they are quite a bit more friendly with us than many other nations, Islamic, Arabic or not. Here is the State Department's take on the UAE. Actually some pretty interesting information to be had.
After playing EQ and other MMORPG games for years, in the end it won't matter. Certain groups or classes will always feel slighted and make noise about it whether it is truly the case or not.
And this makes it right, or at least less wrong how exactly?
Even worse, only if they piss off a million people on the do-not-call list.
It's their software, shouldn't they be able to sell it or not sell it where they wish?
There's a big difference between "stuck" and "dead" pixels. Stuck pixels at least have the potential to become "unstuck" with the video that was linked above. "Dead" pixels are just that, dead. There is no way to fix them that I am aware. The video certainly won't.