Couldn't your post have saved some space and bandwidth by just being shortened to:
I, for one, welcome our new jackbooted police-state thug overlords!
Straight to the point, lets us all know where your nose is, and even fits a/. trend (and well all know you're into being a sheep, right? so, go ahead and follow the trend).
The light/fluffy stuff is easy, straight forward, and friendly on a Mac, and it's Unix underneathe, so I can get real work done as well (I do tons of develpment on my Macs (home and work workstation) that then is easily moved over to my Solaris servers for testing and then production).
True, games aren't as plentiful. That's what my playstation2 (and soon 3) is for.
(and, after many years, I have once again delved into the linux pond... and I now own the first and only linux box that I've ever liked... my nokia n800... so far, it's the only decent linux UI I've ever come across)
Yes, I think that's the point that is being made in this side-thread: The person who said it's like every other phone doesn't know the difference between "standby" and "off". This ignorance on their part undermines the assertion that they were trying to make.
"Standby" is not the same as "Off", and clearly the person in question who is claiming that "off isn't off" doesn't know the difference. His ignorance is a failing on his part, not on the part of the people trying to talk to him.
Further, any phone which makes it difficult to distinguish between "standby" and "off" (or, worse, makes it difficult to select between them) has a defective user interface design.
I have a motorola (i60 or t60, can't remember). Off means "no power". It has an actual power button to accomplish this. Just like every other mobile/cell phone I've ever owned. Off means "off/no-power", and "on" means able to make or receive calls. Note: the power button is NOT the same as the "end call" button.
How does it receive calls? If I turn it on, but don't make an outgoing call, then it can receive calls. Just like every other cell phone on the planet. If I want to receive calls, it has to be turned on.
You seem to be confused between "on but able to receive a call" and "off". It's like you don't know the difference between "closing a clamshell phone" and "hitting the power button". That or you don't understand the difference between the "end call" operation and the "turn off the power" operation. Any phone which doesn't make a clear distinction between the two modes needs to be recalled.
I think his point wasn't "DVD's are good", I think his point was "I'm not going to shift to a NEW format unless it is good". In essence, he's saying "I'm not going to shift from smoking cigarettes to smoking cigars, because cigars can cause cancer, so I'll stick with the carcinogen I've got until there's a non-carcinogen alternative".
You could argue, as you seem to, that "if you don't stop smoking cigarettes while you wait for a non-carcinogen alternative to come along, then you're still at risk of cancer"...
But I think his perspective is "I'll keep the devil I know, instead of adopting the devil I don't know".
I see your point: if none are good, then pick none (not even DVD's). But, I also think it's not very realistic. The only people who are going to pick that option are people who aren't enamored with the movies in the first place. So, saying it to someone who clearly is enamored with movies is just pissing into the wind.
IF you have one, IF it's on you*, and IF it's government issued**.
Otherwise, no, you don't.
(* if you're driving, you'd better have your drivers license on you... but if you're not, there's no reasonable expectation that you'd have it on you) (** IIRC, your drivers license is the property of the state that issued it, in most states)
If MS is violating the DHCP standard, then the right thing for EVERY vendor and ISP-type-organization is to _REFUSE_TO_INTEROPERATE_ with MS's non-standard-compliant code. The problem here is not the Swedish ISP, the problem here is idiots who are willing to dilute formal standards because the gorilla in the room decides not to obey them.
Formal standards exist for a reason. If you aren't willing to tell Microsoft to fuck-off or obey them, then YOU are a MUCH BIGGER problem than Microsoft.
There's a leadership saying that goes "it's better to have a lion at the head of an army of sheep, than a sheep at the head of an army of lions". You, sir, are a sheep. And that Swedish ISP is not being "dick-ish", they're being a lion. Too bad more of the so-called industry leaders are as sheepish and incompetent as you are.
Wow. I _really_ like that. You've changed my mind about something for which I had a long held preference (and people say that NEVER happens in internet discussions;-) ).
Good refutation of IRV as well.
I wonder if it'd eliminate the need for primaries, as well.
You rank the candidates instead of just picking one. On the first pass of counting, the highest ranked candidate on your ballot gets your vote.
Then they eliminate the lowest ranked candidate. Then the ballots are re-counted, and anyone who had that as their highest rank has their vote go to their 2nd ranked candidate.
Repeat until you have a clear winner.
The advantages are:
1) if you have single issue candidates, then the first round of counting tells you how important each of those single issue candidates were
2) if you put your highest rank on your "idealist" candidate, and second rank on your "practical candidate", then you get to make both of those votes without throwing your vote away.
Al Gore (referenced in the post you were replying to) already gave us the layman's description of the internet, 15 years ago (during the 1992 election):
The Information Superhighway.
It's not perfect, but it works.
Re:I thought it was rather good.
on
DIY Laptop
·
· Score: 1
I had hoped the article would have more meat about the actual construction of the "laptop". And that it hadn't been based on "wood". I have been going through a similar thought process, for a PDA, lately. Finding the right motherboard and chip architecture (Gumstix vs PC-104 vs something else, and x86 family vs ARM family, etc.), tracking down the right LCD to use (right resolution for my goals, but in the right physical size), figuring out how to deal with batteries (one of the hard parts being I'm a CompSci guy and not a Comp Eng guy), and coming up with the right kind of case.
And that last one is the hardest of the four. You can easily go out and buy a desktop computer case. You can even easily Google for desktop computer cases. Try doing that for PDAs. You wont get back "the plastic enclosure which holds the components", you'll get back all of the tons of carry cases that people sell for PDAs.
As near as I can tell, and I'd love to be proven wrong, no one makes "off the shelf laptop and PDA cases" that you can buy for hobby/DIY projects. The closest I've come are industrial cases for industrial controllers and sensors. Some of them might end up being "close enough" for what I'm going to do, but none of them are what I really want.
(for those who are reading this and want to know what I found: www.polycase.com www.rose-bopla.com and pactecenclosures.com... some of the enclosures at pac tec could be used, but what I want is something that's like a side-kick, mylo, or oqo design (keyboard slides out from under the screen). None of those 3 sites offer a service for that kind of fine customization (just custom coloring and silk screening, it looks like), and I can't find anyone who sells such a pre-made case... I may have to have something completely custom made)
It would be nice if there was such a product base out there for DIYers who want to build something other than desktops and servers.
HP predicted that in 12 or so years, we'll have watches that act as a communications gateway. The watch is the cellular/wifi router, and your various personal devices (handset, ear piece, PDA, laptop, camera, etc.) will connect to your watch via Wifi or Bluetooth. (so, you'll have an external (watch->hotspot) Wifi network, and an internal (device->watch) Wifi network).
So, your handset becomes just a bluetooth device that can tell the watch what # to dial, whether to use the cellular network to make the call, or a SIP/VOIP interface via IP (the cellular IP capabilities or via the local Wifi hotspot if one is available), and then also acts as your bluetooth speaker and microphone. The watch itself might have a simple UI for making calls, and then a "screen saver" that might make it look like a watch (analog, digital, xearth faces would be cool... one of the xearth clones that uses actual earth images instead of flat green and blue). Combine that with Seagate's new bluetooth hard drive, Sony's stereo bluetooth headset, and you have a distributed network of specialized devices that implement all of these functions instead of a monolithic device (ie. lets embrace the unix philosophy here!).
The thing is: I don't think we need to wait 12 years. I don't think it would take too much to add to a Trolltech Qtopia Green Phone to make it usable as such a device. The complication is: making it smaller (take off the keypad, clearly), and where do you put the antenna?
I think a basic antenna could go in the watchband, but you could also have various external antenna ideas that depend on how "geek chique" you want to be. Perhaps an extended "watchband" that goes up over the back of your hand, adding a keypad and antenna extension inside of the extra area. Or a "gauntlet" type watchband that has antennas in it, a keypad, and maybe pouches for extra batteries and other accessories like the bluetooth hard drives. That gives you basic connectivity with the "normal" watchband, and then better connectivity depending on how "out of the ordinary" you want to look. Or you could have slightly more stealthy extensions like the ipod jacket that puts wires into the fabric of the jacket, so your antenna is somewhere in your jacket, and your accessory pouches are in the jacket pockets... you'd just need a wire to go from your sleeve to the expansion port on the watch. Then you could have jackets in multiple styles (windbreaker, blazer, etc.)
But, if you remove the area on the green phone where the keypad is, are you left with enough physical space for the rest of the device? I don't know. I think it would be worth looking into. I know that you can already eliminate the area of the phone's board that makes up the camera, and probably some of what implements the storage space and external storage card. All of that gets moved to other devices.
(Note: a company in australia already does make a cell phone watch, but it's a flip-phone kinda thing.. and I don't think it acts as much of a gateway for other devices. And, another company makes a watch that can act as a bluetooth device will tell you who is calling, and I think allow you to make/accept calls by telling your phone what to do, so the "bluetooth handset" isn't much of an extrapolation, for those who really want to have a handset.)
That's the communication device I want. The watch cellular/wifi gateway. Sony's MyLO could already make use of it, along with other Wifi/SIP phones.
I seem to recall that the MyLo IS linux based.
They just haven't opened it up to other developers.
Frankly, if the MyLO had a general SIP phone capability (with or without Skype and/or Vonage), and could do a 80x24 text screen with an SSH client... I'd be all over it. (and I hate linux, so that's saying quite a bit)
Yeah, I wasn't thinking that it would find listeria in my intestines, I was thinking that it might find the various bacteria that ARE in our intestines and attack those. But, if you're saying it would get digested long before it got that far into my intestines, then that's good news.
(and, I definitely wasn't suggesting it would attack our actual cells)
Thanks for the information. (see, like I said: put out worst case thoughts, let someone who knows more about it refute them)
The best case is: the virus doesn't mutate to attack the bacteria in our intestines
The middle case is: the virus ends up in our intestines, gets hungry when it runs out of listeria, mutates to live on the bacteria in our intestines, and after 3 or 4 days of us having diarrhea, the virus dies and passes out of our system. In the worst of that case: you end up on an IV for a few days.
The worst case: the virus keeps mutating as it runs out of bacteria to eat, and keeps attacking another type of bacteria in our bodies, and then it might take more then 3 or 4 days... a LOT more than 3 or 4 days... for the virus to run out of things to attack. Especially since your body eventually does repopulate its own intestinal flora (you don't _have_ to eat yogurt to recover from a bad case of diarrhea, for example). Now we've got a virus in our intestines that lives longer than we can go without digesting food, and we can't digest any food until it dies. The way they'd probably have to fight this is: a) the IV, b) antibiotics (to keep your body from hosting any bacteria long enough for the virus to starve)... which then goes back to the "over-use of antibiotics" debate. How long before our bodies, needing to repopulate our intestines, start to develop intestinal flora that are immune to our antibiotics, and thus our bodies produce a steady stream of food for the virus, so the virus keeps on going. Now you've got someone stuck on an IV for a really long time.
Note: that probably sounds like FUD and "doom and gloom" type hysteria... I'm really just trying to think through the situation so that others, who understand it better, can shoot it down completely. Produce the worst case so that it can be refuted, and then no one has to worry about that worst case.
I'm also curious about how contagious the virus is. If I end up with some of it in my system, how likely is it to jump from me to someone else I know? For the best case scenario, this is trivia... but for the other two cases, it's a good question.
I'm surprised no one mentioned how similar this is to so many sci-fi (especially sci-fi rpg) standard materials out there: rigid plastic that immediately hardens with impact, forming a temporary hard surface.
What I'm wondering is: how long before we see martial arts equipment makers selling gloves made with the stuff. Imagine two thin layers of a fabric with a layer of this liquid between them. Nice soft pliable gloves usable for grabbing and grappling, but which become like brass knuckles when you punch someone.
You wouldn't even need the stuff to be "everywhere" on the glove. Just along the knuckles and back of the first (base) digit for conventional fist strikes (maybe along the 2nd digit for those kinds of strikes), along the side of the palm for strikes along there. And then maybe a gauntlet type long glove with the stuff along the forearm for protecting the arm during blocking. Actually, with a long gauntlet type glove, you might be able to get several of the benefits of a tonfa out of your glove (using it for both blocking and striking). (but not all of the benefits, as a tonfa gets some benefits out of rotating it around its handle, that cause some extra kinetic energy).
I wonder if it would be good or bad for race car driver body suits. Wonder where else it'd be good.
Slashdot Mirror
Couldn't your post have saved some space and bandwidth by just being shortened to:
/. trend (and well all know you're into being a sheep, right? so, go ahead and follow the trend).
I, for one, welcome our new jackbooted police-state thug overlords!
Straight to the point, lets us all know where your nose is, and even fits a
That's why I have a Mac.
... and I now own the first and only linux box that I've ever liked ... my nokia n800 ... so far, it's the only decent linux UI I've ever come across)
The light/fluffy stuff is easy, straight forward, and friendly on a Mac, and it's Unix underneathe, so I can get real work done as well (I do tons of develpment on my Macs (home and work workstation) that then is easily moved over to my Solaris servers for testing and then production).
True, games aren't as plentiful. That's what my playstation2 (and soon 3) is for.
(and, after many years, I have once again delved into the linux pond
Yes, I think that's the point that is being made in this side-thread: The person who said it's like every other phone doesn't know the difference between "standby" and "off". This ignorance on their part undermines the assertion that they were trying to make.
"Standby" is not the same as "Off", and clearly the person in question who is claiming that "off isn't off" doesn't know the difference. His ignorance is a failing on his part, not on the part of the people trying to talk to him.
Further, any phone which makes it difficult to distinguish between "standby" and "off" (or, worse, makes it difficult to select between them) has a defective user interface design.
I have a motorola (i60 or t60, can't remember). Off means "no power". It has an actual power button to accomplish this. Just like every other mobile/cell phone I've ever owned. Off means "off/no-power", and "on" means able to make or receive calls. Note: the power button is NOT the same as the "end call" button.
How does it receive calls? If I turn it on, but don't make an outgoing call, then it can receive calls. Just like every other cell phone on the planet. If I want to receive calls, it has to be turned on.
You seem to be confused between "on but able to receive a call" and "off". It's like you don't know the difference between "closing a clamshell phone" and "hitting the power button". That or you don't understand the difference between the "end call" operation and the "turn off the power" operation. Any phone which doesn't make a clear distinction between the two modes needs to be recalled.
I think his point wasn't "DVD's are good", I think his point was "I'm not going to shift to a NEW format unless it is good". In essence, he's saying "I'm not going to shift from smoking cigarettes to smoking cigars, because cigars can cause cancer, so I'll stick with the carcinogen I've got until there's a non-carcinogen alternative".
You could argue, as you seem to, that "if you don't stop smoking cigarettes while you wait for a non-carcinogen alternative to come along, then you're still at risk of cancer"
But I think his perspective is "I'll keep the devil I know, instead of adopting the devil I don't know".
I see your point: if none are good, then pick none (not even DVD's). But, I also think it's not very realistic. The only people who are going to pick that option are people who aren't enamored with the movies in the first place. So, saying it to someone who clearly is enamored with movies is just pissing into the wind.
How's that for a mixed bag of metaphors
IF you have one,
IF it's on you*, and
IF it's government issued**.
Otherwise, no, you don't.
(* if you're driving, you'd better have your drivers license on you
(** IIRC, your drivers license is the property of the state that issued it, in most states)
I'm sorry, but you're wrong.
If MS is violating the DHCP standard, then the right thing for EVERY vendor and ISP-type-organization is to _REFUSE_TO_INTEROPERATE_ with MS's non-standard-compliant code. The problem here is not the Swedish ISP, the problem here is idiots who are willing to dilute formal standards because the gorilla in the room decides not to obey them.
Formal standards exist for a reason. If you aren't willing to tell Microsoft to fuck-off or obey them, then YOU are a MUCH BIGGER problem than Microsoft.
There's a leadership saying that goes "it's better to have a lion at the head of an army of sheep, than a sheep at the head of an army of lions". You, sir, are a sheep. And that Swedish ISP is not being "dick-ish", they're being a lion. Too bad more of the so-called industry leaders are as sheepish and incompetent as you are.
Wow. I _really_ like that. You've changed my mind about something for which I had a long held preference (and people say that NEVER happens in internet discussions
Good refutation of IRV as well.
I wonder if it'd eliminate the need for primaries, as well.
I'd rather have the Australian voting system.
You rank the candidates instead of just picking one. On the first pass of counting, the highest ranked candidate on your ballot gets your vote.
Then they eliminate the lowest ranked candidate. Then the ballots are re-counted, and anyone who had that as their highest rank has their vote go to their 2nd ranked candidate.
Repeat until you have a clear winner.
The advantages are:
1) if you have single issue candidates, then the first round of counting tells you how important each of those single issue candidates were
2) if you put your highest rank on your "idealist" candidate, and second rank on your "practical candidate", then you get to make both of those votes without throwing your vote away.
I was just about the say the same thing:
Al Gore (referenced in the post you were replying to) already gave us the layman's description of the internet, 15 years ago (during the 1992 election):
The Information Superhighway.
It's not perfect, but it works.
I had hoped the article would have more meat about the actual construction of the "laptop". And that it hadn't been based on "wood". I have been going through a similar thought process, for a PDA, lately. Finding the right motherboard and chip architecture (Gumstix vs PC-104 vs something else, and x86 family vs ARM family, etc.), tracking down the right LCD to use (right resolution for my goals, but in the right physical size), figuring out how to deal with batteries (one of the hard parts being I'm a CompSci guy and not a Comp Eng guy), and coming up with the right kind of case.
And that last one is the hardest of the four. You can easily go out and buy a desktop computer case. You can even easily Google for desktop computer cases. Try doing that for PDAs. You wont get back "the plastic enclosure which holds the components", you'll get back all of the tons of carry cases that people sell for PDAs.
As near as I can tell, and I'd love to be proven wrong, no one makes "off the shelf laptop and PDA cases" that you can buy for hobby/DIY projects. The closest I've come are industrial cases for industrial controllers and sensors. Some of them might end up being "close enough" for what I'm going to do, but none of them are what I really want.
(for those who are reading this and want to know what I found: www.polycase.com www.rose-bopla.com and pactecenclosures.com ... some of the enclosures at pac tec could be used, but what I want is something that's like a side-kick, mylo, or oqo design (keyboard slides out from under the screen). None of those 3 sites offer a service for that kind of fine customization (just custom coloring and silk screening, it looks like), and I can't find anyone who sells such a pre-made case ... I may have to have something completely custom made)
It would be nice if there was such a product base out there for DIYers who want to build something other than desktops and servers.
HP predicted that in 12 or so years, we'll have watches that act as a communications gateway. The watch is the cellular/wifi router, and your various personal devices (handset, ear piece, PDA, laptop, camera, etc.) will connect to your watch via Wifi or Bluetooth. (so, you'll have an external (watch->hotspot) Wifi network, and an internal (device->watch) Wifi network).
So, your handset becomes just a bluetooth device that can tell the watch what # to dial, whether to use the cellular network to make the call, or a SIP/VOIP interface via IP (the cellular IP capabilities or via the local Wifi hotspot if one is available), and then also acts as your bluetooth speaker and microphone. The watch itself might have a simple UI for making calls, and then a "screen saver" that might make it look like a watch (analog, digital, xearth faces would be cool ... one of the xearth clones that uses actual earth images instead of flat green and blue). Combine that with Seagate's new bluetooth hard drive, Sony's stereo bluetooth headset, and you have a distributed network of specialized devices that implement all of these functions instead of a monolithic device (ie. lets embrace the unix philosophy here!).
The thing is: I don't think we need to wait 12 years. I don't think it would take too much to add to a Trolltech Qtopia Green Phone to make it usable as such a device. The complication is: making it smaller (take off the keypad, clearly), and where do you put the antenna?
I think a basic antenna could go in the watchband, but you could also have various external antenna ideas that depend on how "geek chique" you want to be. Perhaps an extended "watchband" that goes up over the back of your hand, adding a keypad and antenna extension inside of the extra area. Or a "gauntlet" type watchband that has antennas in it, a keypad, and maybe pouches for extra batteries and other accessories like the bluetooth hard drives. That gives you basic connectivity with the "normal" watchband, and then better connectivity depending on how "out of the ordinary" you want to look. Or you could have slightly more stealthy extensions like the ipod jacket that puts wires into the fabric of the jacket, so your antenna is somewhere in your jacket, and your accessory pouches are in the jacket pockets ... you'd just need a wire to go from your sleeve to the expansion port on the watch. Then you could have jackets in multiple styles (windbreaker, blazer, etc.)
But, if you remove the area on the green phone where the keypad is, are you left with enough physical space for the rest of the device? I don't know. I think it would be worth looking into. I know that you can already eliminate the area of the phone's board that makes up the camera, and probably some of what implements the storage space and external storage card. All of that gets moved to other devices.
(Note: a company in australia already does make a cell phone watch, but it's a flip-phone kinda thing.. and I don't think it acts as much of a gateway for other devices. And, another company makes a watch that can act as a bluetooth device will tell you who is calling, and I think allow you to make/accept calls by telling your phone what to do, so the "bluetooth handset" isn't much of an extrapolation, for those who really want to have a handset.)
That's the communication device I want. The watch cellular/wifi gateway. Sony's MyLO could already make use of it, along with other Wifi/SIP phones.
I seem to recall that the MyLo IS linux based.
They just haven't opened it up to other developers.
Frankly, if the MyLO had a general SIP phone capability (with or without Skype and/or Vonage), and could do a 80x24 text screen with an SSH client... I'd be all over it. (and I hate linux, so that's saying quite a bit)
Yeah, I wasn't thinking that it would find listeria in my intestines, I was thinking that it might find the various bacteria that ARE in our intestines and attack those. But, if you're saying it would get digested long before it got that far into my intestines, then that's good news.
(and, I definitely wasn't suggesting it would attack our actual cells)
Thanks for the information. (see, like I said: put out worst case thoughts, let someone who knows more about it refute them)
That's my concern as well.
The best case is: the virus doesn't mutate to attack the bacteria in our intestines
The middle case is: the virus ends up in our intestines, gets hungry when it runs out of listeria, mutates to live on the bacteria in our intestines, and after 3 or 4 days of us having diarrhea, the virus dies and passes out of our system. In the worst of that case: you end up on an IV for a few days.
The worst case: the virus keeps mutating as it runs out of bacteria to eat, and keeps attacking another type of bacteria in our bodies, and then it might take more then 3 or 4 days ... a LOT more than 3 or 4 days ... for the virus to run out of things to attack. Especially since your body eventually does repopulate its own intestinal flora (you don't _have_ to eat yogurt to recover from a bad case of diarrhea, for example). Now we've got a virus in our intestines that lives longer than we can go without digesting food, and we can't digest any food until it dies. The way they'd probably have to fight this is: a) the IV, b) antibiotics (to keep your body from hosting any bacteria long enough for the virus to starve) ... which then goes back to the "over-use of antibiotics" debate. How long before our bodies, needing to repopulate our intestines, start to develop intestinal flora that are immune to our antibiotics, and thus our bodies produce a steady stream of food for the virus, so the virus keeps on going. Now you've got someone stuck on an IV for a really long time.
Note: that probably sounds like FUD and "doom and gloom" type hysteria ... I'm really just trying to think through the situation so that others, who understand it better, can shoot it down completely. Produce the worst case so that it can be refuted, and then no one has to worry about that worst case.
I'm also curious about how contagious the virus is. If I end up with some of it in my system, how likely is it to jump from me to someone else I know? For the best case scenario, this is trivia ... but for the other two cases, it's a good question.
and bugs.
I'm surprised no one mentioned how similar this is to so many sci-fi (especially sci-fi rpg) standard materials out there: rigid plastic that immediately hardens with impact, forming a temporary hard surface.
What I'm wondering is: how long before we see martial arts equipment makers selling gloves made with the stuff. Imagine two thin layers of a fabric with a layer of this liquid between them. Nice soft pliable gloves usable for grabbing and grappling, but which become like brass knuckles when you punch someone.
You wouldn't even need the stuff to be "everywhere" on the glove. Just along the knuckles and back of the first (base) digit for conventional fist strikes (maybe along the 2nd digit for those kinds of strikes), along the side of the palm for strikes along there. And then maybe a gauntlet type long glove with the stuff along the forearm for protecting the arm during blocking. Actually, with a long gauntlet type glove, you might be able to get several of the benefits of a tonfa out of your glove (using it for both blocking and striking). (but not all of the benefits, as a tonfa gets some benefits out of rotating it around its handle, that cause some extra kinetic energy).
I wonder if it would be good or bad for race car driver body suits. Wonder where else it'd be good.
SGI is still able to make the news for something other than being on the verge of final death.