Haibane.info

Category: Geek service

  • the iPhone is NOT a netbook, Mr. Jobs

    Steve Jobs confirmed what I have long suspected: he has no clue at all what a typical consumer’s usage-model is for their personal computers:

    A recurring question among Apple watchers for decades has been, “When is Apple going to introduce a low-cost computer?

    Mr. Jobs answered that decades-old complaint by stating, “We don’t know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk.” He argued instead that the company’s mission was to add more value for customers at current price points.

    However, he gave a more nuanced answer to the question of whether Apple plans to jump into the “nascent” market for netbooks, essentially restating his comments on the question from last week at the Macbook introduction in Cupertino by saying the company was taking a wait-and-see attitude.

    At the same time, he noted that the company already had a powerful entry in the category: the iPhone. (By that standard, Apple is already the dominant netbook manufacturer by orders of magnitude.)

    The idea that the iPhone – sexy and cool as it is – is equivalent to a netbook is laughable. But what’s the real implication of Job’s comment? Is the iPhone a computer? If it’s a netbook, then yes, but it’s also sub-$500 in cost and therefore by Jobs’ own standard, “a piece of junk”. If the iPhone is not a computer, but a phone, then how can it be a netbook?

    What IS a netbook? In essence, a small but full-fledged computer, weighing 3lbs or less, with full wireless capabilities and a real, physical keyboard. The gold standard is the Asus EEE, which has the added feature of a solid-state drive, which in my opinion is the must-have feature that provides power economy for all-day computing as well as boosted performance. The key however is that the netbook must be fully-functional, ie it should be able to run any software that the user desires. This idea behind a netbook is to be able to connect and compute anywhere. Since the iPhone is a locked-down device which only runs permitted applications, it can not and never be a true computing replacement. On my EEE, I can run MATLAB for scientific calculations, write a paper in Microsoft Word, edit my website templates, pay my bills, and even do an impromptu podcast. On the iPhone, you can only do what the pre-approved apps in the Apple software store permit you to do.

    Now, it must be noted that Google’s Android platform – which is now officially open-source – does provide full-functionality computing. The only difference between an Android phone and a netbook will be the keyboard, and it’s not hard to imagine a simple keyboard-cum-case being developed that slots the phone in if you really need traditional typing ergonomics. Apple makes a nice device but it’s way out of its league here in even comprehending why netbooks matter, let alone it’s absurd claim to already be making them. Nice phone, though.

  • NTT DoCoMo rates

    I am aghast with sheer envy. Not just at the rates, but also at the concise use of descriptive graphs to assist you in choosing a cell phone plan:

    NTT DoCoMo handy chart for cellphone plan rates
    NTT DoCoMo handy chart for cellphone plan rates

    the rates top out at 14,600 yen, equal to $133/month. Thats really not bad, considering you also get a handset that is superior to the best of the US-based handsets in just about every way. Can you buy a coke with your iphone?

  • Amazon primed

    I find that increasingly I turn to Amazon over Newegg for even electronics purchases. I just ordered a few items for around the house (a surge protector, a spare handset for our landline, a USB hub, etc) and I got my items the next day, even though I had specified two-day shipping (with Amazon prime, you get 2-business day shipping for free). In general, order fulfillment seems to be unbelievably snappy with Amazon and always seems glacial with Newegg. Maybe it’s partly because I pay for the Amazon Prime service – Its a feedback cycle in which I find myself ordering more and more from Amazon just because the convenience of free shipping is so addictive. I’m thinking of going the Amazon grocery route for restocking diapers, cereals, etc as well – it reminds me of the PeaPod service that was all the rage about 10 years ago but fizzled out. The funny thing is I don’t think I’ve bought a book, CD or DVD from Amazon in years.

  • LHC – It’s the end of the world as we know it

    These pictures of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN are awe-inspiring, but also make me a bit sad. It’s depressing to think that Big Science like this can’t be done in the US anymore. Or rather, won’t be done.

    these are just a few of the amazing photos available. For captions, and many more, check out the original link.

    I visited Fermilab as a kid and then actually worked on some hardware for an experiment there as a summer student in college at UW. I don’t know much about particle physics but I do know that every square foot of those massive, intricate assemblies is the product of some grad student’s or researcher’s life work. It’s humbling to think of the intellectual capital invested in this machine, built to answer what amount to such fundamental, even basic questions.

    I had a similar reaction when I visited the Saturn V on the grounds of the Johnson Space Center in Clear Lake, TX. That was once functioning hardware; had there been the money, it could have flown to the moon. Instead it rusts in a placid Texas field.

    It occurs to me that I’ve never seen the equal of these pictures of the LHC in any science fiction, on TV or film. Nothing in the imagination of our storytellers has equaled the sheer complexity and power of the simple photos here.

  • 1.5 TB for the desk, SSD for the road

    it’s even got it’s own gravitational field:

    The new Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB HDD is 50 percent larger than the 1TB desktop drives available today, while the 500GB Momentus drives (available in 5400rpm and 7200rpm flavors) are 56 percent larger than the current high-capacity 320GB 2.5″ laptop drives.
    …
    The main difference between the new 1.5TB drive and the 1TB ST31000340AS already available is their platter density. Both disks are four-platter designs, but the 1TB drive uses four 250GB platters, while the new 1.5TB is apparently using four 375GB platters.
    …
    We could see modest increases through the end of the year, but 2TB before 2009 is a toss-up. 500GB platters are probably still a ways away, and while a 5x400GB platter configuration would do the trick, the first generation 1TB five platter drives tended to run hotter and noisier than the units that the followed.

    I am fully aware that in five years someone will link to this post and guffaw at what a rube we all were for being impressed by this. I think Ars is being conservative here – someone is sure to roll out a 2TB drive (on 5 platters) before the end of the year. If not Seagate, then Hitachi.

    While the desktop drive is noteworthy for its sheer size, the laptop drive doesn’t impress me at all, however. The future of laptop drives is SSD and SSD alone (I say this without irony, even though I just bought a 250 GB drive for my own laptop a few months ago). The far more important news on that front is that Samsung is opening the flood gates of volume production:

    Seoul, Korea – July 9, 2008: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, announced today that it has begun mass producing 1.8- and 2.5-inch multi-level cell (MLC)-based solid state drives (SSD) with a 128 Gigabyte (GB) storage capacity. Mass production of the Samsung MLC-based 64GB SSD also began this month.
    …
    Power consumption for the Samsung SSD is exceptionally low in standby mode at approximately 0.2 watts and in active mode at 0.5 watts. The Samsung MLC-based SSD has a write speed of 70MB/s and a read speed of 90MB/s.

    Somehow I don’t think SSDs will ever supplant 3.5″ on the desktop, though I do think that eventually 2.5″ will become desktop standard. So the progress by Seagate on pushing the envelope on the notebook drive capacity is still relevant.

  • Enter the GPS

    This is our second week in Madison and already one difference between here and Marshfield is readiy apparent: this place takes more than 5 minutes to drive across. It’s been particularly difficult for my wife who has to drive to several different clinics across town for her resident duties, so we finally decided to buy a GPS unit in lieu of having her call me throughout the day for quick Google Maps consultations. We picked up a Garmin Nuvi 260 at WalMart (mainly because they had a no-restock-fee return policy) to evaluate and I have to admit it’s been pretty useful thus far. For her, it’s handy because it helps her get to where she needs to go, when she doesn’t know how to get there. For me, it’s let me attempt an unfamiliar route to a place I do know how to get to already. I confess to having been skeptical at first, but I can see the value-add even though I largely pride myself on my independent sense of direction. To be honest, the GPS hasn’t actually given me any new information in terms of a better route anywhere, but it was still nice to have just in case.

    Garmin nüvi 360    I am planning to return the Nuvi 260 to WalMart though – for the price, we can get a much better deal on a Nuvi 360 at Amazon, which adds mp3 playback and bluetooth for hands-free dialing. I think that this will be very useful later on in the year when we take various trips such as to Indianapolis for a conference, or elsewhere. My main concern was that I don’t become dependent on it and let my own navigating skills atrophy, but now that we’ve played with the 260 a bit I can see that this won’t happen. It’s an information multiplier, not a crutch.

  • for great justice

    Steve Gillmor celebrates Independence Day by heralding the arrival of the Enterprise iPhone (or ePhone) by Apple. I guess I was wrong, the Singularity and Transhumanism really are here after all.

  • The Napkin PC

    I love this concept:

    Napkin PC

    The Napkin PC design closely resembles a Napkin holder, combining multiple touchscreen devices within a collaborative network. Digital pens allow users to draw on these touchscreens just like they would on a napkin.

    The design talks about collaborative work, but imagine instead if these were used in a single-user context instead. It’s almost the complete deconstruction of the PC into slices. One could imagine each being powerful enough to run a couple of web apps, so you might have one set aside on your fridge to rotate photos from Flickr, and another with an alarm clock and email app, for next to your bed. Another in the shower for watching streaming video or NPR audio, and one on your desk for notetaking. Manufacture the “napkins” cheaply enough and you have ubiquitous computing.

  • Philips DVP 5990

    philips dvp 5990
    Our old Samsung DVD player had been acting up of late – half the discs we inserted got a “no disc inserted” error and skipping had become a major problem, even on discs with no discernible scratches. So, I picked up a Philips DVP 5990 from Walmart yesterday evening, with an eye towards using it with the HDTV we will eventually buy. Note that Walmart is offering $100 gift cards for anyone buying a Blu-ray player (including the PS3) until next Sunday, but we didn’t want to spend that kind of money, so a regular upconverting DVD player seemed like the most reasonable choice.

    The 5990 is a 1080p upconverting player, which makes it future-proof. There is a hack available to make it fully region-free, which is nice in theory but in practice something I am unlikely to need unless I buy DVDs abroad. More useful is the unit’s DIVX support, and the USB2 port on the front. This means I can load up video files that I’ve dowloaded onto a USB flash drive and play them on my TV.

    Of course, my TV is still the analog set I’ve had for over ten years, so none of this will look as good as it does on my laptop screen, but eventually when we do go HDTV I am looking forward to having the convenience.

  • The Telectroscope

    A while back, I mentioned the coast-to-coast Burrito Tunnel. Now comes word of a new tunnel, the Telectroscope, connecting New York and London:

    The telectroscope, a looking-glass tunnel connecting New York and London has been completed at last, over 100 years after it was abandoned. The tunnel, which starts in Brooklyn, was designed and partly executed by late 1800s inventor Alexander Stanhope St. George. A series of mirrors, cameras and a large underground tunnel, connects the two cities.

    More details at the New York Times (seriously). The telectroscope goes live on June 15th. Some photos of the terminal ends in London and New York: