Author: Steven Edwards
Date: 07:45:55 09/27/03
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On September 27, 2003 at 10:16:39, Alastair Scott wrote: >On September 27, 2003 at 08:29:38, Steven Edwards wrote: >>Perhaps the current digital clock makers could incorporate Bluetooth in future >>clocks. And DGT along with any other maker of electronic chessboards could >>install Bluetooth on the board itself for an even more integrated product. > >I have tried similar things with IR and PalmOS; I would guess that the volumes >of chess-related products are so small that the R&D to include Bluetooth can't >be justified ... especially given that there are licence fees and all manner of >Chinese walls to climb over: > >http://www.radioregs.co.uk/bluetoot.htm > >(Don't know about the USA, but certainly in the UK there is enormous and, I >suggest, quite excessive nervousness about radio interference; rollout of DSL >was fought until the Radiocommunications Agency, a truly hideous regulatory >organisation which seems to be against everything by default, was sidelined). There's a similar sad story in France where 802.11b/g wireless (WiFi/AirPort) is restricted to a single channel of the standard fourteen because the French military doesn't want to concede its near monopoly of the 2.4 GHz band. In the United States, only three of the fourteen are off limit by government fiat. I have noted that my Palm is not the best when it comes to timing accuracy; it gains several seconds per day and there is no rate adjustment capability. Will Bluetooth become ubiquitous? Apple Computer thinks so, and its track record as the initial popularizer of the mouse, the 3.5 inch floppy (vs the 5.25 inch), SCSI, USB, and the desktop flat panel monitor gives some support to this. >But amen to the sentiment; quite apart from the wiredness, why are digital >things generally so _ugly?_ Highly skilled experts of industrial design demand big paychecks and most companies are reticent to spend any money that won't produce near immediate results. >None of the digital chess clocks I know look good and there is a similar problem >with barometers and thermometers for one; the Oregon Scientific ones do >everything imaginable but are, in aesthetic terms, brutal lumps of plastic. The same could be said of most computers aimed at the consumer mass market.
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