Men don't flock towards positions in elder care, nursing or child care yet I don't see articles bemoaning this.
Well, to get off-topic for a moment, I'll bet that if you checked magazines/websites in those industries, you would find such articles. I spend between 5-10% of my day in a nursing home hanging with my Dad, and I know they are desperate for male nurses; many of the female nurses simply don't have the physical strength needed to lift patients.
In addition, the school systems are always looking for male teachers -- so many kids these days are without fathers, that there is a real need for male role models in the schools. And, of course, the public schools want to balance out the gender make-up of the staff. (My wife's school has only one male teacher out of about 20.)
I don't know if it's genetics, cultural biases, societal remnants from bygone eras, or what, but technology is not the only industry that is heavily weighted one way or another.
And just to broaden the scope a bit, the make-up of the nursing/patient care staff at my father's nursing home is about 90% philippina, with a few russians thrown in. That is most certainly a cultural thing -- My sister-in-law (also a philippina) helped care for my father when he lived with me.
to defend American society really bothers me in that context.
I don't mean to defend the US at all. American culture sucks in many ways, IMO. But that's irrelevant to my post.
My point was that Jon Katz seemed to have dismissed these and other examples of cultures that are/were far worse than what we are dealing with today, so as to make his story all the more sensational. In doing so, Katz lessened the tragedies those cultures represented.
I read that bit about "it's hard to imagine a more poorly equipped society" and immediately thought of my grandparents who died in a concentration camp in Germany. What was the name of the Nazi "scientist" who did all the experiments on the Jews? Mengele? I guess Katz thinks he would have been a better choice for having control of this information.
Of course, Nazi Germany is not the only such example, just the first that springs to my mind.
I do agree that our (US) culture is hardly ready to handle such technology -- it will be abused and perverted and so on for financial gain. In fact, it already has, by the media.
What dismays me most about Katz's inane comment, however, is how easily he dismisses other eras and cultures that were so much more repressive. Nazi Germany, certainly, should never be forgotten -- would my father be in a nursing home, the victim of multiple strokes, if he had grown up in a normal household with his parents and two sisters instead of an orphanage in a foreign land?
There are others as well, though. I'm sure that the southern whites would have loved to be able to breed the fight out of their slaves a couple hundred years ago. Even today, I'm willing to bet there are a lot of folks in China who would love to be able to make sure they only have male children -- but I guess that's better than abandoning or even killing female offspring.
Jon Katz seems to be no better than the popular media he mocks -- he takes a superficial look at something and makes his pronouncement and sits back to congratulate himself on a job well done.
In this instance, however, I have to speak up. I have personal experience with the results of a culture that would have been far worse at dealing with the Human Genome Project. And, I'd like Jon Katz, and others, not to forget it so blithely.
You might want to be careful about keeping all your archives on floppies. I have had nothing but bad experiences with info on floppies. I've seen new, brand name disks give read errors within a month.
Whups... I didn't mean to imply we only our pics on the floppies... They get copied to a hard drive (and one of these days, will get copied to CD as well). We just keep the floppies around as an extra bit of backup rather than re-using them.
Floppies are cheap, and readily available wherever you go. I'd much rather buy a couple of boxes of floppies for a trip than try to lay in a supply of memory sticks or flash memory modules.
How could I forget? We have a couple hundred recycled floppies that are destined for the Mavica, and once we use a disk, we don't re-use it, we just keep it as an archival copy. And floppies are indeed cheap, and you can buy them even at a grocery store, if necessary.
I haven't priced flash memory lately, but I'm sure it's not cheap. Same for memory sticks and tiny hard drives.
I do like your idea, though, for a hip-pack. Put a 2.5" (or even 3.5") hard drive in it, and you're good to go.
..."Mavica" floppy-disk based digicams. Never really a Nerd product, they appealed to Neo-Luddites who didn't mind trading off image quality to avoid having to deal with cables & software.... Worked great when "high resolution" cameras had 800K pixels. Kinda runs out of gas when you try to cram multiple 6 MB images into a 1.44 MB bag though.
Well, having been a nerd for more years than a lot of slashdot readers have been alive, I have to disagree.
I do a lot of web design and I can tell you I wouldn't have many visitors to my sites if I sprinkled "multiple 6 MB images" throughout. The 640x480 resolution of my Mavica FD-71 is more than adequate for web images, and the amazing zoom is well worth the lesser resolution. The advantage of the floppy disk is certainly there, but it's not the only one.
My wife is not a nerd, but the floppy disk functionality means she can take a picture, then load it right into whichever Mac her student is using at the time. We don't have to worry about having cables for each computer, or loading software on each one, when their small hard drives are already overflowing. (Schools rarely have the latest and greatest, and while she spent about $3K on school supplies (not including computers), she doesn't get paid enough to be buying new computers for her classroom.)
So yes, when everyone has super-high-resolution monitors (more than 72dpi), and photo-printer output is not fiendishly expensive, high-resolution digital cameras will be more important. For now, however, unless you are a professional in the (print) design world, a good old Mavica should be just fine.
One last anecdote: Not long after we got the Mavica, my wife's grandmother had her 93rd birthday party. Naturally, we brought the camera. A little over a week later she passed away. We ran out and bought a new printer (cheapie Epson color inkjet -- <$200 at Price Club) and printed out one of the pictures we had taken. We put it in a frame and put it out at the funeral. Most people didn't realize that it wasn't a photograph until they got up close to it.
This sounds intriguing. I would love to find a case that is not as deep as the average minitower so that it will fit in my entertainment center in the living room. If anyone knows where to find such a beast, I would love to hear about it. Thanks!
There is a great book that covers the basics of logic and fallacies and such. It's called Logic and Mr. Limbaugh and uses the writings of the "Big Fat Idiot" as examples of logical fallacies. Excellent, and extremely amusing, reading.
btw, I have spotted quite a few other possible causes mentioned in other posts for the declining sales:
College kids are poor; rising costs are making them poorer
College kids are buying more CD's online now
College kids, being more likely to be liberal, are boycotting the RIAA
The study covered Q1, a time at which college kids are recovering from buying all those CD's as xmas gifts
There is less music worth buying coming from RIAA artists
I'm sure there are other possible reasons for the statistics that I missed. Note that like the Napster idea (Students aren't buying music, they're pirating it), these are all just possible reasons. Kinda like the reason Cindy Crawford doesn't return my phone calls could be that she thinks she's not good enough for me.
and by clicking the agreement, the clicker agrees not to redistribute the data contained therein. i don't fault slashdot for having the data, submitted by users, but i do fault the users who obviously violated the agreement.
Even if the license was valid (istr the validity of click-thru's is questionable) and that the document was copyrightable, was Microsoft's to copyright, and was not being quoted in fair use (all possible), not all users "obviously violated the agreement". Apparently, it was actually a simple zip file which could be opened with any compression utility. Furthermore, since the license thing only worked under Windows (and, presumably, only recent versions,) Mac, Unix, Amiga, Atari, Win3, MS-DOS, CP/M, etc. users couldn't possibly have seen the notice, and therefore could not possibly be held to it.
I doubt MS would even bother trying to go after individual posters -- it would be far too easy to say "oh, I downloaded it unzipped from some server in Russia. I didn't know it was supposed to be secret. Sorry."
What they're trying to do is clean up the mess after someone let the cat out. Andover's lawyers are trying to see if they have to help with the clean up. (with, I think, an obvious bias towards not wanting to.)
Something I've been wanting to try is my Palm III with a Ricochet (sp?) wireless modem. I know they work together (with a little serial adaptor).
A Ricochet modem looks just like a regular modem to the computer. For internet access via ppp, you just have your dialer call a slightly odd looking number and voila, you're online.
So, the issues you face in doing this with a palm is the serial port, the ppp dialer, and the e-mail/web/etc. client. Those may be easily solvable; I haven't looked into them.
Another option is to use a terminal emulator on the Palm and use the Ricochet to dial into a system where you have a shell account. You can then use whatever e-mail/browser/etc. you want on that system. Note that this costs an extra $5/mo (to cover their costs for modems and outgoing lines) but can be well worth it in some situations.
I know of one guy who has his hooked up to a (iirc) a psion handheld and telnets to his linux box to read e-mail and surf the web. Personally, I prefer a real laptop, but I have big fingers.
So, if you're in one of their covered areas, I strongly recommend them.
So, what if some unknown person, logged on from a public access PC (such as at a library), downloaded this stuff, then posted it, sans license, on a free website, such as geocities? After a bit, it wouldn't really be a secret any more...
On the other hand, what's the big deal? If no one uses Microsoft's extensions, it's a non-issue.
According to the specs at this site (which appears to be a mirror, or the original, unredirected site), it comes with a:
Minitower case and power supply
The idea is great -- I'd love to put one in my car. But, I really don't have room for a minitower.
On the other hand, the MP3VoiceControl does look like a pretty cool piece of software -- I may just set this up in the living room for easy MP3 playing.
Sure, spam wastes a little human time and effort (e.g., the amt. of time/work it takes me to hit "D"-- gotta love PINE) but not nearly so much as that glossy ad for LA CLIPS that I get twice a week--
The end-user cost of spam is indeed low -- and that is part of the problem. You see, most non-technical people don't understand what the big fuss is about, because they delete a message or two and think that's all there is to it.
But it's not that simple. All that effort that goes into producing and sending traditional junkmail is duplicated when sending spam. It's less effort, certainly, but it's still there. The difference is that instead of printing presses and mailmen, you've got mail servers and internet bandwidth.
The other difference -- and this is key -- is that with snailmail, the sender pays the bills while with internet spam, your ISP pays the cost. You delete only one or two message, but if your ISP has 1000 customers, that's one or two thousand e-mails per day for your ISP.
If there are 200 million people in the US alone, that's 200-400 million spam e-mails per day, once they all get on-line. Which will certainly tie up the bandwidth so the legitimate stuff can't get through.
The cost of spam is real, and it is not born by those who send it.
Why is it that we always talk about "voting with our dollars"? Hell, as a nation, we hardly bother to vote with our votes. Sure, where you put your cash makes a sort-of political statement, but actually making political statements, contacting your reps (they're nice folks, even the pig-fuckers) and voting at every freaking opportunity really does a much better job of it.
The problem is spam is not a political issue. It is an economic one. You don't see too many politicians sending spam saying "Vote for me". Spam is almost entirely commercial advertisements -- whether for fly-by-night get-rich-quick schemes, porno sites, or (formerly) legitimate corporations.
Contacting your representatives is fine, if you want a legal solution. But, since when do major corporations ever follow the laws, if they think they can get away with not doing so? Corporations are interested in money. Period. If they think something will impact the incoming flow of money, they're going to do anything they can to make sure that the money keeps coming.
Letting them know that spamming people will reduce their revenue will make them think twice about using spam as a marketing tool. If enough people complain, the companies that want to stay in business will not send out spam.
I have a laptop. (Well, several, actually.) I have a big monitor, external keyboard and mouse, and a docking station at home. Same at my main client's office. But I also use it on the train to and from client sites, here in bed (where I am now), in my Land Rover, at my Dad's place, etc. I even sat in the hospital while my Dad recovered from his stroke and worked.
But not everyone does that. There are a lot of people who need a portable computer, but don't need to pay for, or carry, a relatively large laptop just so they can have a screen and keyboard.
They drive to and from work, don't lie in bed ignoring the beautiful woman next to them while they read Slashdot, maybe don't even turn on a computer at home if they don't have to. (Deviants!)
My client has a bunch of "support notebooks" that people carry home to be able to dial in if necessary when they're on call. Something like this would be much better -- they could take one of these home in their pocket and connect it to their own monitor and keyboard when necessary.
There are huge advantages to being able to have the same setup at home and at work -- having your e-mail, your bookmarks, various files, etc. -- but if you only ever work at your desk (at home and at the office), why not just set up a monitor/keyboard/mouse at each location and shuttle the CPU back and forth?
No, it's not a replacement for a laptop for those who use a laptop creatively and in varying locations, but it is an alternative for those who simply need their data in more than one regular location.
P.S., this isn't a new concept. Going back about 8-10 years, there was a computer called (iirc) the Brick sold by (iirc) Ergo (if you've got one, I'd love to have one in my collection!) that was basically the same thing, albeit much larger. And going back even further, computers such as the Apple IIc were touted as "portables", but you needed a monitor at each location.
You can always kill external frames on your website with some javascript.
True, but I don't like to use JavaScript if I don't have to -- especially since a lot of people have JavaScript disabled (or, and this is especially poignant for a classic computers site, can't run JavaScript.) I prefer to limit my JavaScript usage to stuff where the page is demonstrably better for it.
So, as far as I'm concerned, I shouldn't have to increase my file size and put in unnecessary complexities just because ask.com wants to make money at my expense.
But silly me, I'm one of those weirdos who resents having to put bars on my windows, not being able to walk downtown at night, and having to learn about firewalls.
I know its not ideal, but it hardly seems worth the trouble too sue them,
And therein lies the rub. That's why I haven't done anything about it (except recommend against using AskJeeves to my clients, friends, family, etc.)
The big guy always wins, because the little guy doesn't have the time or the resources to fight it.
and as other posters have pointed out, deep linking is legal, and its not like they've skipped an outer frame that identifies what site it is, or the copyright information.
The issue here is not deep linking; I don't mind (for this site, especially) deep linking. If someone is looking for information about the Sharp PC-5000, the Radio Shack Model 100, or the Iasis Computer in a Book, they should be able to find it directly. I just don't want them to have to put up with an annoying banner ad (that isn't helping to support the site even!) while they get it.
This pisses me off, since people then assume they're looking at content owned/developed/posted/etc. by ask.com. They, of course, don't pay me for this, nor have they asked permission. What makes it worse is that they have their banner add on top, and I certainly do not want unrelated banner ads "on" my site.
Wasn't this (wrapping someone else's content in your frameset so it was unclear where the content came from) ruled illegal (I seem to remember a case involving the New York Times having its content web-napped by another site.)
Anyway, the conceit on the part of Ask.com -- to think that they can just slap their name on someone else's carefully crafted site design -- is incredible. Almost as outrageous as my own. And don't they owe me at least a portion of the revenue they've generated by adding banners to my site?
Am I alone in this, or does it piss others off too?
Kids, Computers, & Teachers - realworld experience
on
Laptops In Education
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· Score: 3
My wife teaches first grade (normally; she's had a K/1 or 1/2 split for the last few years) and is extremely well respected in her district. She arrives at school before 7am and rarely leaves before 5pm. She always spends at least an hour working at home, often 3 or 4 hours. Lately, she has tried to keep the amount of work she does on the weekends down to 3 or 4 hours, total.
She is not a "techie" or a "geek", though she is very intelligent. Her level of computer literacy in general is what I would call adequate. (Her formatting skills in Word are, IMO, atrocious, but she gets it to do what she wants it to, usually.) Mostly, she does word processing, sends/receives e-mail, and surfs the web.
Actually, that's not exactly true. Of the stuff that most people do, that's what she sticks to. Word, Netscape, and Eudora, on a Mac.
But she uses a lot more than that. She has 10 computers in her classroom (bought/scrounged/refurbed by me, for the most part) and uses them all the time. She must have 100 different kids' programs that she has evaluated, tested, and put to use in the classroom.
She is working on her masters (edtech: how best to use technology to better teach language arts [aka reading]) and has taught a number of workshops in the district to show teachers how to put computers to work in their classrooms. She is on the technology committee for her school (or district?) and is working on all kinds of technology-related issues.
She doesn't know, or even care, what a "partition" is, or why SCSI is better (or even different from) MFM. She's seen the inside of a computer, and if forced, could probably name the major parts, but then I've taught her to be able recognize Santana, BB (and Lucille), Eric, Mark, and all the other guitar greats too. But she really doesn't care about MacVsPC/WindowsVsLinux/Overclocking/etc.
I have a point here, honest.
A large portion of the readers of Slashdot see computers as a subject in and of itself. They read reviews of hardware, try different software, maybe even write their own programs. They're into computers.
Rachel, and other teachers, however, see computers as tools. The way Slashdotters think of, perhaps pots and pans (why spend $100 on a calphalon saucepan when you can get a saucepan at the Salvation Army for $1?). Something to be used, and that's it.
Yes, some teachers are into computers as a hobby, just as some Slashdot readers probably know how to -- and do -- work on their own cars. But the majority want to put them to use as teaching tools, along side their unifix cubes, pocket charts, books, crayons, overhead projectors, etc.
So he question of what hardware is best for a classroom, or should kids use computers at all is missing the point entirely. The question should be what is the teacher's teaching style, and do computers fit into it? Should there be computer use in the classroom during regular classtime, or should it be left as a homework/research time activity? (Hint: little kids benefit a lot from computers integrated into the day, older kids can get away with using them more for homework or out-of-class research.)
And how do you teach a teacher? Everyone, I think, agrees that you can't just dump a bunch of computers in a classroom and think you've made a difference. You have to train the teachers.
But it's wrong to think that teachers need to know how to format a hard drive or write a shell script. Instead, they need to know how to integrate the computers into their lesson plans. They need to know what software is available, what areas it's relevant to, and how best to use it.
We are nearing the point where computers are no longer a novelty and are becoming more mainstream. Just as automobiles were once a rarity, and you had to be pretty adventurous to own one, so too were computers once unusual. Now, however, they are becoming an accepted part of our culture, just as cars have. Now we have to concentrate on putting them to work in the best way, not just on getting them to work at all.
$50 seems like a lot. A cheap ethernet card shouldn't be worth much more than a cheap modem.
Sure, I just bought one for $13 in a retail box at ChumpUSA. I'd really prefer to be able to just order an I-Opener with the ethernet card instead of the modem.
But that's not the point here. I would be willing to pay more for an ethernet card to make it worth NetPliance's while to develop it.
You're welcome to wait, however, until they've recouped their costs and drop the price.
I got the same argument from people when I built a field data collection system on the palm pilot -- not rugged enough, they said. Pay $1500 dollars for a rubberized handheld field computer running DOS or some exotic OS, with a low res two line LCD display, they said.
Compared to the I-Opener, the Palm Pilot is ruggedized. The I-Opener case is rather cheap and flimsy. (At least the one I saw at Circuit City.) Sure, I've seen ordinary stuff in extraordinary use, and it has worked. But, the I-Opener is less than ordinary in its ruggedness.
Even so, those uses are significantly different from what the I-Opener seems suited for as it exists today. For ideas that NetPliance could market the (modifiable) I-Opener for right now, in spite of the less-than-rugged casing, take a look at this list of ideas.
But there are already vendors for each of those markets. Telxon does a lot of that (Go to Home Depot and check out the cool mobile pads they have running around on carts.)
The other issue is that the I-Opener is nowhere near to being rugged enough for most of what you suggest. Being able to withstand the abuse of bored little kids on field trips or hyper yuppies spilling double-decaf-soy-mocha-lattes is fiendishly expensive.
There are, however, a lot of applications that it could be used for, as-is except for the addition of an ethernet card and hard drive. (Which I listed in another post.)
First, there are a lot of folks who will rip their I-Opener apart and make (as someone suggested) an electronic dashboard, or whatever. That's cool, and I'm sure I could come up with something like that too.
But NetPliance is probably looking for ways to sell the unmodified I-Opener as is without losing money on it. So here is what I'd like to do with an I-Opener:
Replace the sucky Compaq Portable 486c (256 color LCD lunchbox) in the bedroom for nighttime slashdot reading
MP3 Player/Recipe computer in the kitchen
Bathroom Browsing (in the new ofuro!)
Backyard browsing
Intelligent Telephone (with the modem)
Put one in the garage/workshop for reading woodworking tips/looking at digital plans/looking up auto repair info
hook it up as a voicemail system
Take 20 of them into my wife's classroom, hook them up to a network with a big fileserver.
These are all tasks (maybe with the exception of the bathroom idea) that I would be willing to pay $250 for the machine, even if I had to pay an extra $25 for the cable/bracket kit to add the hard drive and $50 for the ethernet card to replace the modem.
So, what needs to be done:
Fix the IDE connector (or sell/include the cable)
Change the heatsink to allow for the IDE cable
Pre-drill/tap mounting points for the hard drive bracket
Sell/include a hard drive bracket
Offer an ethernet adapter (a $50 charge to replace the modem, $75 in addition to the modem seems reasonable.)
Smart things for NetPliance to do:
List all the Linux-info on their web page (drivers to use, etc.) with links, or even make them availble for download
Set up a forum for discussion of I-Opener mods (Maybe even I-Linux, I-Windows, and I-Other boards)
Accept that they screwed up before and not try to charge people after the fact for service
Figure out at what price they can make money on the I-Opener as-is (modifiable)
Among all the Bazillion-petabytes-on-the-head-of-a-pin stories, I rather like the 10GB roll of scotch tape, myself.
But, what I find interesting about this particular miracle is the possibility of putting a few gigs of storage on the same chip as the CPU. Probably not very practical for general-purpose computers (wanna reload your data just so you can have a faster CPU?), but there are other uses...
Hook a wee bit of this to the equivalent of a 386 or 486, put it in an affordable package, and you could have:
hyper-intelligent watch/notetaker
key-fob sized MP3 player
standard-sized 5x7 picture frame that changes pictures every hour to show a different image of the wife and kids
electronic books
those flying balls inspired by the thing from Star Wars
smart appliances (oh no, not again!)
and so on...
Of course, it all depends on the final cost.
Re:all I want is an HTML programmable alarm clock
on
The Home Of The Future
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· Score: 2
Look, all I want is to not press little silly alarm clock buttons, but rather program my alarm clock from my web broswer on a real computer. Things like "get up at 7:00am on weekdays, and 9am on weekends and holidays" is a lot easier when you aren't pushing dinky little alarm clock buttons from hell.
So write a web-based interface to the crontab file and have your linux box turn on a buzzer or something. You could even set it to play one of the Brandenburg concertos at max volume on work days (from an MP3 file), and Morning in Marin by Santana for the weekends.
Hmmmm... I may do that... (Hmmmm... Is there such a thing as a computer controlled audio router/patchbay? There must be...)
Well, that's certainly interesting, but I'm trying to stick to the practical. The Caller-ID bit might be useful, and the doorbell cam (Actually, that would be very useful, since my new office will be on the 4th floor.) But I really don't need to know how often and for how long my toilet flushes...
One of my planned projects is to write a CGI-based web scheduling system (in my copious spare time, of course) so that from any computer in the house, we can check what's on the schedule. (Or, what I'm supposed to do that I've forgotten.)
Slashdot Mirror
Well, to get off-topic for a moment, I'll bet that if you checked magazines/websites in those industries, you would find such articles. I spend between 5-10% of my day in a nursing home hanging with my Dad, and I know they are desperate for male nurses; many of the female nurses simply don't have the physical strength needed to lift patients.
In addition, the school systems are always looking for male teachers -- so many kids these days are without fathers, that there is a real need for male role models in the schools. And, of course, the public schools want to balance out the gender make-up of the staff. (My wife's school has only one male teacher out of about 20.)
I don't know if it's genetics, cultural biases, societal remnants from bygone eras, or what, but technology is not the only industry that is heavily weighted one way or another.
And just to broaden the scope a bit, the make-up of the nursing/patient care staff at my father's nursing home is about 90% philippina, with a few russians thrown in. That is most certainly a cultural thing -- My sister-in-law (also a philippina) helped care for my father when he lived with me.
My point was that Jon Katz seemed to have dismissed these and other examples of cultures that are/were far worse than what we are dealing with today, so as to make his story all the more sensational. In doing so, Katz lessened the tragedies those cultures represented.
Of course, Nazi Germany is not the only such example, just the first that springs to my mind.
I do agree that our (US) culture is hardly ready to handle such technology -- it will be abused and perverted and so on for financial gain. In fact, it already has, by the media.
What dismays me most about Katz's inane comment, however, is how easily he dismisses other eras and cultures that were so much more repressive. Nazi Germany, certainly, should never be forgotten -- would my father be in a nursing home, the victim of multiple strokes, if he had grown up in a normal household with his parents and two sisters instead of an orphanage in a foreign land?
There are others as well, though. I'm sure that the southern whites would have loved to be able to breed the fight out of their slaves a couple hundred years ago. Even today, I'm willing to bet there are a lot of folks in China who would love to be able to make sure they only have male children -- but I guess that's better than abandoning or even killing female offspring.
Jon Katz seems to be no better than the popular media he mocks -- he takes a superficial look at something and makes his pronouncement and sits back to congratulate himself on a job well done.
In this instance, however, I have to speak up. I have personal experience with the results of a culture that would have been far worse at dealing with the Human Genome Project. And, I'd like Jon Katz, and others, not to forget it so blithely.
Whups... I didn't mean to imply we only our pics on the floppies... They get copied to a hard drive (and one of these days, will get copied to CD as well). We just keep the floppies around as an extra bit of backup rather than re-using them.
How could I forget? We have a couple hundred recycled floppies that are destined for the Mavica, and once we use a disk, we don't re-use it, we just keep it as an archival copy. And floppies are indeed cheap, and you can buy them even at a grocery store, if necessary.
I haven't priced flash memory lately, but I'm sure it's not cheap. Same for memory sticks and tiny hard drives.
I do like your idea, though, for a hip-pack. Put a 2.5" (or even 3.5") hard drive in it, and you're good to go.
Well, having been a nerd for more years than a lot of slashdot readers have been alive, I have to disagree.
I do a lot of web design and I can tell you I wouldn't have many visitors to my sites if I sprinkled "multiple 6 MB images" throughout. The 640x480 resolution of my Mavica FD-71 is more than adequate for web images, and the amazing zoom is well worth the lesser resolution. The advantage of the floppy disk is certainly there, but it's not the only one.
My wife is not a nerd, but the floppy disk functionality means she can take a picture, then load it right into whichever Mac her student is using at the time. We don't have to worry about having cables for each computer, or loading software on each one, when their small hard drives are already overflowing. (Schools rarely have the latest and greatest, and while she spent about $3K on school supplies (not including computers), she doesn't get paid enough to be buying new computers for her classroom.)
So yes, when everyone has super-high-resolution monitors (more than 72dpi), and photo-printer output is not fiendishly expensive, high-resolution digital cameras will be more important. For now, however, unless you are a professional in the (print) design world, a good old Mavica should be just fine.
One last anecdote: Not long after we got the Mavica, my wife's grandmother had her 93rd birthday party. Naturally, we brought the camera. A little over a week later she passed away. We ran out and bought a new printer (cheapie Epson color inkjet -- <$200 at Price Club) and printed out one of the pictures we had taken. We put it in a frame and put it out at the funeral. Most people didn't realize that it wasn't a photograph until they got up close to it.
This sounds intriguing. I would love to find a case that is not as deep as the average minitower so that it will fit in my entertainment center in the living room. If anyone knows where to find such a beast, I would love to hear about it. Thanks!
btw, I have spotted quite a few other possible causes mentioned in other posts for the declining sales:
I'm sure there are other possible reasons for the statistics that I missed. Note that like the Napster idea (Students aren't buying music, they're pirating it), these are all just possible reasons. Kinda like the reason Cindy Crawford doesn't return my phone calls could be that she thinks she's not good enough for me.
Even if the license was valid (istr the validity of click-thru's is questionable) and that the document was copyrightable, was Microsoft's to copyright, and was not being quoted in fair use (all possible), not all users "obviously violated the agreement". Apparently, it was actually a simple zip file which could be opened with any compression utility. Furthermore, since the license thing only worked under Windows (and, presumably, only recent versions,) Mac, Unix, Amiga, Atari, Win3, MS-DOS, CP/M, etc. users couldn't possibly have seen the notice, and therefore could not possibly be held to it.
I doubt MS would even bother trying to go after individual posters -- it would be far too easy to say "oh, I downloaded it unzipped from some server in Russia. I didn't know it was supposed to be secret. Sorry."
What they're trying to do is clean up the mess after someone let the cat out. Andover's lawyers are trying to see if they have to help with the clean up. (with, I think, an obvious bias towards not wanting to.)
A Ricochet modem looks just like a regular modem to the computer. For internet access via ppp, you just have your dialer call a slightly odd looking number and voila, you're online.
So, the issues you face in doing this with a palm is the serial port, the ppp dialer, and the e-mail/web/etc. client. Those may be easily solvable; I haven't looked into them.
Another option is to use a terminal emulator on the Palm and use the Ricochet to dial into a system where you have a shell account. You can then use whatever e-mail/browser/etc. you want on that system. Note that this costs an extra $5/mo (to cover their costs for modems and outgoing lines) but can be well worth it in some situations.
I absolutely love my Ricochet modem and will always have it.
I know of one guy who has his hooked up to a (iirc) a psion handheld and telnets to his linux box to read e-mail and surf the web. Personally, I prefer a real laptop, but I have big fingers.
So, if you're in one of their covered areas, I strongly recommend them.
On the other hand, what's the big deal? If no one uses Microsoft's extensions, it's a non-issue.
The idea is great -- I'd love to put one in my car. But, I really don't have room for a minitower.
On the other hand, the MP3VoiceControl does look like a pretty cool piece of software -- I may just set this up in the living room for easy MP3 playing.
The end-user cost of spam is indeed low -- and that is part of the problem. You see, most non-technical people don't understand what the big fuss is about, because they delete a message or two and think that's all there is to it.
But it's not that simple. All that effort that goes into producing and sending traditional junkmail is duplicated when sending spam. It's less effort, certainly, but it's still there. The difference is that instead of printing presses and mailmen, you've got mail servers and internet bandwidth.
The other difference -- and this is key -- is that with snailmail, the sender pays the bills while with internet spam, your ISP pays the cost. You delete only one or two message, but if your ISP has 1000 customers, that's one or two thousand e-mails per day for your ISP.
If there are 200 million people in the US alone, that's 200-400 million spam e-mails per day, once they all get on-line. Which will certainly tie up the bandwidth so the legitimate stuff can't get through.
The cost of spam is real, and it is not born by those who send it.
The problem is spam is not a political issue. It is an economic one. You don't see too many politicians sending spam saying "Vote for me". Spam is almost entirely commercial advertisements -- whether for fly-by-night get-rich-quick schemes, porno sites, or (formerly) legitimate corporations.
Contacting your representatives is fine, if you want a legal solution. But, since when do major corporations ever follow the laws, if they think they can get away with not doing so? Corporations are interested in money. Period. If they think something will impact the incoming flow of money, they're going to do anything they can to make sure that the money keeps coming.
Letting them know that spamming people will reduce their revenue will make them think twice about using spam as a marketing tool. If enough people complain, the companies that want to stay in business will not send out spam.
But not everyone does that. There are a lot of people who need a portable computer, but don't need to pay for, or carry, a relatively large laptop just so they can have a screen and keyboard.
They drive to and from work, don't lie in bed ignoring the beautiful woman next to them while they read Slashdot, maybe don't even turn on a computer at home if they don't have to. (Deviants!)
My client has a bunch of "support notebooks" that people carry home to be able to dial in if necessary when they're on call. Something like this would be much better -- they could take one of these home in their pocket and connect it to their own monitor and keyboard when necessary.
There are huge advantages to being able to have the same setup at home and at work -- having your e-mail, your bookmarks, various files, etc. -- but if you only ever work at your desk (at home and at the office), why not just set up a monitor/keyboard/mouse at each location and shuttle the CPU back and forth?
No, it's not a replacement for a laptop for those who use a laptop creatively and in varying locations, but it is an alternative for those who simply need their data in more than one regular location.
P.S., this isn't a new concept. Going back about 8-10 years, there was a computer called (iirc) the Brick sold by (iirc) Ergo (if you've got one, I'd love to have one in my collection!) that was basically the same thing, albeit much larger. And going back even further, computers such as the Apple IIc were touted as "portables", but you needed a monitor at each location.
True, but I don't like to use JavaScript if I don't have to -- especially since a lot of people have JavaScript disabled (or, and this is especially poignant for a classic computers site, can't run JavaScript.) I prefer to limit my JavaScript usage to stuff where the page is demonstrably better for it.
So, as far as I'm concerned, I shouldn't have to increase my file size and put in unnecessary complexities just because ask.com wants to make money at my expense.
But silly me, I'm one of those weirdos who resents having to put bars on my windows, not being able to walk downtown at night, and having to learn about firewalls.
And therein lies the rub. That's why I haven't done anything about it (except recommend against using AskJeeves to my clients, friends, family, etc.)
The big guy always wins, because the little guy doesn't have the time or the resources to fight it.
The issue here is not deep linking; I don't mind (for this site, especially) deep linking. If someone is looking for information about the Sharp PC-5000, the Radio Shack Model 100, or the Iasis Computer in a Book, they should be able to find it directly. I just don't want them to have to put up with an annoying banner ad (that isn't helping to support the site even!) while they get it.
This pisses me off, since people then assume they're looking at content owned/developed/posted/etc. by ask.com. They, of course, don't pay me for this, nor have they asked permission. What makes it worse is that they have their banner add on top, and I certainly do not want unrelated banner ads "on" my site.
Wasn't this (wrapping someone else's content in your frameset so it was unclear where the content came from) ruled illegal (I seem to remember a case involving the New York Times having its content web-napped by another site.)
Anyway, the conceit on the part of Ask.com -- to think that they can just slap their name on someone else's carefully crafted site design -- is incredible. Almost as outrageous as my own. And don't they owe me at least a portion of the revenue they've generated by adding banners to my site?
Am I alone in this, or does it piss others off too?
She is not a "techie" or a "geek", though she is very intelligent. Her level of computer literacy in general is what I would call adequate. (Her formatting skills in Word are, IMO, atrocious, but she gets it to do what she wants it to, usually.) Mostly, she does word processing, sends/receives e-mail, and surfs the web.
Actually, that's not exactly true. Of the stuff that most people do, that's what she sticks to. Word, Netscape, and Eudora, on a Mac.
But she uses a lot more than that. She has 10 computers in her classroom (bought/scrounged/refurbed by me, for the most part) and uses them all the time. She must have 100 different kids' programs that she has evaluated, tested, and put to use in the classroom.
She is working on her masters (edtech: how best to use technology to better teach language arts [aka reading]) and has taught a number of workshops in the district to show teachers how to put computers to work in their classrooms. She is on the technology committee for her school (or district?) and is working on all kinds of technology-related issues.
She doesn't know, or even care, what a "partition" is, or why SCSI is better (or even different from) MFM. She's seen the inside of a computer, and if forced, could probably name the major parts, but then I've taught her to be able recognize Santana, BB (and Lucille), Eric, Mark, and all the other guitar greats too. But she really doesn't care about MacVsPC/WindowsVsLinux/Overclocking/etc.
I have a point here, honest.
A large portion of the readers of Slashdot see computers as a subject in and of itself. They read reviews of hardware, try different software, maybe even write their own programs. They're into computers.
Rachel, and other teachers, however, see computers as tools. The way Slashdotters think of, perhaps pots and pans (why spend $100 on a calphalon saucepan when you can get a saucepan at the Salvation Army for $1?). Something to be used, and that's it.
Yes, some teachers are into computers as a hobby, just as some Slashdot readers probably know how to -- and do -- work on their own cars. But the majority want to put them to use as teaching tools, along side their unifix cubes, pocket charts, books, crayons, overhead projectors, etc.
So he question of what hardware is best for a classroom, or should kids use computers at all is missing the point entirely. The question should be what is the teacher's teaching style, and do computers fit into it? Should there be computer use in the classroom during regular classtime, or should it be left as a homework/research time activity? (Hint: little kids benefit a lot from computers integrated into the day, older kids can get away with using them more for homework or out-of-class research.)
And how do you teach a teacher? Everyone, I think, agrees that you can't just dump a bunch of computers in a classroom and think you've made a difference. You have to train the teachers.
But it's wrong to think that teachers need to know how to format a hard drive or write a shell script. Instead, they need to know how to integrate the computers into their lesson plans. They need to know what software is available, what areas it's relevant to, and how best to use it.
We are nearing the point where computers are no longer a novelty and are becoming more mainstream. Just as automobiles were once a rarity, and you had to be pretty adventurous to own one, so too were computers once unusual. Now, however, they are becoming an accepted part of our culture, just as cars have. Now we have to concentrate on putting them to work in the best way, not just on getting them to work at all.
Sure, I just bought one for $13 in a retail box at ChumpUSA. I'd really prefer to be able to just order an I-Opener with the ethernet card instead of the modem.
But that's not the point here. I would be willing to pay more for an ethernet card to make it worth NetPliance's while to develop it.
You're welcome to wait, however, until they've recouped their costs and drop the price.
Even so, those uses are significantly different from what the I-Opener seems suited for as it exists today. For ideas that NetPliance could market the (modifiable) I-Opener for right now, in spite of the less-than-rugged casing, take a look at this list of ideas.
The other issue is that the I-Opener is nowhere near to being rugged enough for most of what you suggest. Being able to withstand the abuse of bored little kids on field trips or hyper yuppies spilling double-decaf-soy-mocha-lattes is fiendishly expensive.
There are, however, a lot of applications that it could be used for, as-is except for the addition of an ethernet card and hard drive. (Which I listed in another post.)
But NetPliance is probably looking for ways to sell the unmodified I-Opener as is without losing money on it. So here is what I'd like to do with an I-Opener:
- Replace the sucky Compaq Portable 486c (256 color LCD lunchbox) in the bedroom for nighttime slashdot reading
- MP3 Player/Recipe computer in the kitchen
- Bathroom Browsing (in the new ofuro!)
- Backyard browsing
- Intelligent Telephone (with the modem)
- Put one in the garage/workshop for reading woodworking tips/looking at digital plans/looking up auto repair info
- hook it up as a voicemail system
- Take 20 of them into my wife's classroom, hook them up to a network with a big fileserver.
These are all tasks (maybe with the exception of the bathroom idea) that I would be willing to pay $250 for the machine, even if I had to pay an extra $25 for the cable/bracket kit to add the hard drive and $50 for the ethernet card to replace the modem.So, what needs to be done:
- Fix the IDE connector (or sell/include the cable)
- Change the heatsink to allow for the IDE cable
- Pre-drill/tap mounting points for the hard drive bracket
- Sell/include a hard drive bracket
- Offer an ethernet adapter (a $50 charge to replace the modem, $75 in addition to the modem seems reasonable.)
Smart things for NetPliance to do:- List all the Linux-info on their web page (drivers to use, etc.) with links, or even make them availble for download
- Set up a forum for discussion of I-Opener mods (Maybe even I-Linux, I-Windows, and I-Other boards)
- Accept that they screwed up before and not try to charge people after the fact for service
- Figure out at what price they can make money on the I-Opener as-is (modifiable)
- Make the case less flimsy
If they do this stuff, I'll buy several.But, what I find interesting about this particular miracle is the possibility of putting a few gigs of storage on the same chip as the CPU. Probably not very practical for general-purpose computers (wanna reload your data just so you can have a faster CPU?), but there are other uses...
Hook a wee bit of this to the equivalent of a 386 or 486, put it in an affordable package, and you could have:
- hyper-intelligent watch/notetaker
- key-fob sized MP3 player
- standard-sized 5x7 picture frame that changes pictures every hour to show a different image of the wife and kids
- electronic books
- those flying balls inspired by the thing from Star Wars
- smart appliances (oh no, not again!)
and so on...Of course, it all depends on the final cost.
So write a web-based interface to the crontab file and have your linux box turn on a buzzer or something. You could even set it to play one of the Brandenburg concertos at max volume on work days (from an MP3 file), and Morning in Marin by Santana for the weekends.
Hmmmm... I may do that... (Hmmmm... Is there such a thing as a computer controlled audio router/patchbay? There must be...)
One of my planned projects is to write a CGI-based web scheduling system (in my copious spare time, of course) so that from any computer in the house, we can check what's on the schedule. (Or, what I'm supposed to do that I've forgotten.)