In my business I handle a lot of SD, SDHC, and CF cards every week.
First failure is very common, maybe universal, in SD cards: as it comes from the factory, the card works fine in digital cameras and readers attached to computers, but in a Windows Mobile PDA (all five different Dell and HP models I've tried), a small number of files in folders copied from Windows XP or Mac don't show up--the folder's there, but the file inside isn't. When I look at it on a reader on the original Windows XP or Mac OS X, the file is there and I can copy, open, etc. It's perfect. But no WM device can see that file. The problem seems to get worse the more the card is used. After formatting the SD card in the Windows Mobile PDA itself using a formatting utility, it works perfectly on all devices. Folks on forums have said that formatting it in a digital camera also prevents/fixes the problem. Reformatting it on Win XP or Mac doesn't help--same problem as when factory fresh. I don't know if other formats suffer from this--I now format every card in a PDA as soon as I get it to head off problems.
Problem 2 comes up when someone yanks a card out of a card reader without following the computer's proper procedure for doing so. Some files can't be accessed, and sometimes the file and folder names are converted to gibberish. It's luck of the draw: 9 times out 10, there's no voltage flowing when you yank the card and you'll get away with it so maybe you'll think it's safe, but keep doing it and eventually you'll toast a card. To do it right on a Mac, drag the card to the trash, or select the card and enter command e, or Control Click on the card and choose "eject" or "safely remove" (I forget which). In Win, right click on the card and choose Eject. In Windows, if you've named the card, then when after choosing Eject the name of the drive changes from the correct name to "Removable Drive," it's safe to remove the card from the reader.
OO is a pain--crashes for no reason far too often, and formatting (spacing, sizes, positioning) isn't compatible with MS (a document made in OO comes out looking completely different in MS, and vice versa).
Don't tell me there's a way to do this by "simply" doing A, B, and G, then standing on my head in the rain facing east on a Tuesday. I'm not a Luddite, but I also don't want to spend hours figuring out to configure the program. I won't buy a car that doesn't work properly until I've spend 10 hours under the hood rebuilding it--why should my standards for software be any less? And I'll be your office is full of people like me who just want their software to work. OO is nowhere near that critical "it just works" level yet.
fishtop records seems to be the only one who remembers why we really got into the ISS. It was discussed openly but quietly at the time (look at the debates in the House and Senate)--the main purpose of the ISS was to keep the Russian space program up and running and to keep those skilled, experienced Russian engineers--folks with vast knowledge of propulsion systems, fuels, guidance systems, etc.--happily employed at a time when staying in Russia otherwise meant watching their children starve and looking for work overseas meant interviewing in Iran, North Korea, etc. All the nice spreads in Pop Science focused on science and technology, but the articles in the Times about what the people who decided to pay for this thing were talking about made it clear that we weren't spending those billions for science. So what'd we get for our money? Not much science, to be sure. But Iran is only now developing even medium range missiles of any accuracy, and all of North Korea's more ambitious attempts end up either blowing up on the launch pad or falling into the Sea of Japan. As the international situation has changed since construction began on the ISS in the `90s, the real motivation for the project has grown only more compelling, and what we've gotten for our money now seems even more valuable. Lousy science? Of course. Waste of money? Not at all.
"unless you are willing to get under the hood (which you can do with the Pepper Pad!)"
This very sentence is a perfect example of why the pepper pad is doomed. If it's attracting the market of people who "exclamation point" the idea of getting under the hood--the market of slashdotters--then it's clearly going to miss the much larger market of people who buy lots of things to keep products afloat. People don't want to get under the hood. Correction: except for you and me and 58 other posters to this thread, people don't want to get under the hood. If anyone is stupid enough to put "getting under the hood" as a marketing point, he's going to have about 60 sales. That's the whole Linux thing--why everyone but the devotees takes it as a given that Linux is going nowhere until it truly gets beyond it's "getting under the hood" fascination. I run a web site advising how to set up a Palm as a Japanese dictionary--it's cheaper, more powerful, more portable, and in every way better than the alternative single purpose electronic dictionaries (http://www.peterrivard.com/Pages/SuperDictionary. html. It's even easier to use than EDs. But most of the people who look into it are afraid of the Palm OS. My analog alarm clock has an interface more complicated than Palm OS! But because of who the early adopters naturally tended to be, PDAs in general, like Linux, have a geek-chic that makes non-techies intimidated and afraid to even try to use them. Raving about "getting under the hood" is the perfect way to keep them scared of this new platform, too. We have to be careful about mistaking what excites us as enthusiasts with what actually excites the larger public enough to buy the machine and keep it alive.
Slashdot Mirror
In my business I handle a lot of SD, SDHC, and CF cards every week. First failure is very common, maybe universal, in SD cards: as it comes from the factory, the card works fine in digital cameras and readers attached to computers, but in a Windows Mobile PDA (all five different Dell and HP models I've tried), a small number of files in folders copied from Windows XP or Mac don't show up--the folder's there, but the file inside isn't. When I look at it on a reader on the original Windows XP or Mac OS X, the file is there and I can copy, open, etc. It's perfect. But no WM device can see that file. The problem seems to get worse the more the card is used. After formatting the SD card in the Windows Mobile PDA itself using a formatting utility, it works perfectly on all devices. Folks on forums have said that formatting it in a digital camera also prevents/fixes the problem. Reformatting it on Win XP or Mac doesn't help--same problem as when factory fresh. I don't know if other formats suffer from this--I now format every card in a PDA as soon as I get it to head off problems. Problem 2 comes up when someone yanks a card out of a card reader without following the computer's proper procedure for doing so. Some files can't be accessed, and sometimes the file and folder names are converted to gibberish. It's luck of the draw: 9 times out 10, there's no voltage flowing when you yank the card and you'll get away with it so maybe you'll think it's safe, but keep doing it and eventually you'll toast a card. To do it right on a Mac, drag the card to the trash, or select the card and enter command e, or Control Click on the card and choose "eject" or "safely remove" (I forget which). In Win, right click on the card and choose Eject. In Windows, if you've named the card, then when after choosing Eject the name of the drive changes from the correct name to "Removable Drive," it's safe to remove the card from the reader.
OO is a pain--crashes for no reason far too often, and formatting (spacing, sizes, positioning) isn't compatible with MS (a document made in OO comes out looking completely different in MS, and vice versa). Don't tell me there's a way to do this by "simply" doing A, B, and G, then standing on my head in the rain facing east on a Tuesday. I'm not a Luddite, but I also don't want to spend hours figuring out to configure the program. I won't buy a car that doesn't work properly until I've spend 10 hours under the hood rebuilding it--why should my standards for software be any less? And I'll be your office is full of people like me who just want their software to work. OO is nowhere near that critical "it just works" level yet.
fishtop records seems to be the only one who remembers why we really got into the ISS. It was discussed openly but quietly at the time (look at the debates in the House and Senate)--the main purpose of the ISS was to keep the Russian space program up and running and to keep those skilled, experienced Russian engineers--folks with vast knowledge of propulsion systems, fuels, guidance systems, etc.--happily employed at a time when staying in Russia otherwise meant watching their children starve and looking for work overseas meant interviewing in Iran, North Korea, etc. All the nice spreads in Pop Science focused on science and technology, but the articles in the Times about what the people who decided to pay for this thing were talking about made it clear that we weren't spending those billions for science. So what'd we get for our money? Not much science, to be sure. But Iran is only now developing even medium range missiles of any accuracy, and all of North Korea's more ambitious attempts end up either blowing up on the launch pad or falling into the Sea of Japan. As the international situation has changed since construction began on the ISS in the `90s, the real motivation for the project has grown only more compelling, and what we've gotten for our money now seems even more valuable. Lousy science? Of course. Waste of money? Not at all.
"unless you are willing to get under the hood (which you can do with the Pepper Pad!)" This very sentence is a perfect example of why the pepper pad is doomed. If it's attracting the market of people who "exclamation point" the idea of getting under the hood--the market of slashdotters--then it's clearly going to miss the much larger market of people who buy lots of things to keep products afloat. People don't want to get under the hood. Correction: except for you and me and 58 other posters to this thread, people don't want to get under the hood. If anyone is stupid enough to put "getting under the hood" as a marketing point, he's going to have about 60 sales. That's the whole Linux thing--why everyone but the devotees takes it as a given that Linux is going nowhere until it truly gets beyond it's "getting under the hood" fascination. I run a web site advising how to set up a Palm as a Japanese dictionary--it's cheaper, more powerful, more portable, and in every way better than the alternative single purpose electronic dictionaries (http://www.peterrivard.com/Pages/SuperDictionary. html. It's even easier to use than EDs. But most of the people who look into it are afraid of the Palm OS. My analog alarm clock has an interface more complicated than Palm OS! But because of who the early adopters naturally tended to be, PDAs in general, like Linux, have a geek-chic that makes non-techies intimidated and afraid to even try to use them. Raving about "getting under the hood" is the perfect way to keep them scared of this new platform, too. We have to be careful about mistaking what excites us as enthusiasts with what actually excites the larger public enough to buy the machine and keep it alive.