I could see this being very effective. I have noticed that the tactile feedback given by the vibration feature in the Nintendo Wii's controller is fantastic. It doens't have to be overwhelming to let you know that something is going on.
I'm not sure how well this will work with the iPhone but I could see it solving the tactile keyboard feedback problem. This is the first I had heard about this feature.
I havent heard anything about Civ V, I was just using that as an example because I ran into this issue with Civ IV and I couldnt get it to run on my shitty windows laptop due to the graphics requirements. Im sure it would have been dog slow anyway, but its Civ, so I would take what I can get.
My current laptop wont run Civ IV either so when I pick up one of these I can also write off several months of my life:-).
Not that I'm going to try to convince you that one button is better than 2, but if your doing mouse based gaming, don't you find track pads in general to be pretty useless? Given that Im likely to buy one of these machines and will finally have a decent gaming laptop, I will probably go out and buy an external mouse for any gaming I might do.
Its probably not very helpful for me since im probably going to buy one of these new machines to replace my 7 year old Ti book but thats pretty cool. Im sure the old laptop will still see some light use so I may as well pick that up.
Generally I agree with you. Im not a hardcore PC gamer, I mostly play consoles. But my primary machine is a mac laptop. Its very convinient for me most of the time, but if I could also play Civ V when it comes out and not a year later when the mac version comes out, that would be pretty nice.
Certainly not "the rig" for hardcore gamers but getting the option to run windows games (probably the only reason I would run windows on it other than maybe working from home) would be a pretty nice upgrade for me. At least for a few years before the graphics card is too old to be useful anymore.
I havent looked at keynote, but really its not like you have to deal with keynote files just because you have a mac. Its a choice. Power point is another choice. Im not sure I like either of them.
if your replacing the vast majority of the computer, it might not be that big of a difference.
Grated if you are building your own machine and you have a nice high end aluminum uber case and such it might not be the case, but I compare apples to commercially available PCs. Any other comparison isn't really fair. If you want to argue that you cant build your own mac you will have to find someone else to argue with.
My point is though that if you get a mac now, later you can upgrade the processor, or drop in more ram or a hard drive. I agree that if you build your own machine and are diligent about it you can keep up with the technology curve but really macs aren't that much less upgradeable than a dell or an HP from a practical standpoint.
Admittedly this might be an issue for the target of this article... power users, but at the same time he is complaining about upgrading the mac mini. The lowest end mac you can buy.
The thing is, if you are upgrading your motherboard and your video card and your processor and maybe buying new ram (or even new hard drives to match your mother boards new built in controller) at what point are you pretty much just replacing the whole system. Sure its nice to keep that DVD burner around but how much are you really saving? And if you were on a Mac Pro you could buy a new one that didn't have the high end optical drive, or the largest hard drive available, and just put your old ones in your new computer.
Sure, its not the same, you cant build your own mac and Im not going to claim that you can, but I think the difference here is not as great as the article makes it out to be. And for the vast majority of users its practically no difference at all.
OS X's screen shot utility (called grab) is great. No it does not let you take a picture of the video playing in the DVD player but im pretty sure this is a restiction place on apple by the DVD standard. your not supposed to be able to capture the raw video output of a DVD when it is displayed on the screen. The DVD player utility uses a key color to mark an area of the screen and a second process fills in that area with the frame of video being displayed Im fairly sure this is the case on other platforms as well (with the likely exception of linux).
This is picking nits and is totally ridiculous. There are plenty of good free utilities out there for the mac.
yea, this article is pretty nuts. I mean lets set asside all the Free and Open Source applications that have been easily ported to OSX. Apple has had one of the most vibrant freeware and shareware communities out there since long before OS X and most of those applications came over to OS X. This couldn't be less accurate.
It is true though that when your mac is old and slow you have to buy a new one. Not like a PC. if your PC is slow you either wave your magic wand over it to make it faster or better yet you install the new Windows OS and its like your hardware is brand new.
I guess his complaint is about upgrading your computer. Of course I use a laptop most of the time so I hardly notice the lack of upgrading. But I thought the new Intel macs had upgradeable CPUs (didn't someone upgrade one to an 8 core before apple released one?) and you can upgrade the ram and the hard drive. I admit I know nothing about upgrading video cards on the mac these days (laptop again) so that might be an issue.
I don't get it. Sure maybe the mac is a little less upgradeable than the PC, but very few people replace their motherboards these days, its easier to just buy a new machine. This sounds like hyperbole to me.
I caught that too, but really it would not be advised to explain where this "free" electricity comes from to someone writing an article like that.
That said, everyone is focused on using these for waste heat conversion which is great and may improve the efficency of many of our electrical and mechanical systems (including power generation systems), but the other use for this would be harnessing solar power which could be pretty cool if it significantly beats the efficiency of photo voltaic cells.
Even at that im not sure its a violation. Since you can use Express to develop commercial applications. I would think you could use it to develop a plug in for VS. It seems to me that if anyone is breaking the EULA its the people who are actually going through the steps to make the plug in work in Express.
OK, so lets say that you are correct about the technical limitation (I have no idea if you are or not). If that is the case, then MAYBE, using TestDrive.NET with Express is a violation of the EULA.
But the writing of TestDrive.NET was likely done on the full version of Visual Studio. So the developers probably did not violate the EULA. At best MS has a case that END USERS (the ones bound by End User Licencing Agreements) who use a plugin (any plug in, not just this one) with Express, are violating the terms of the EULA. Given that, Microsoft should be going after those users and not after a development company that has simply written a tool for the pro version of the software. The fact that end users can hack the free version to use that tool as well is no concern of the original plugin developer.
Even if he distributes instructions on how to preform this hack Im not sure they have a case against him. He isn't bound by the EULA of software he doesn't use and the information is probably protected in the same way that lock picking guides and cable de-scrambler schematics are.
But somehow I don't remember signing a broadcast agreement with Major League Baseball. Either place shifting is legal or not. MLB's agreements with its broadcasters should have absolutely no bearing on this at all.
I could be wrong but I think you have to show that damage was done to ones reputation to claim libel. While I agree that this is a reprehensible thing to say to a group of people, I'm not sure that one can make a direct connection to damage to the individuals this was directed at.
The stretch argument is that a future employer, doing a search on one of these people, might find this statement and not hire them, but that is probably too much of a stretch.
of course they already charge the sender as well. That sender is paying through the nose for the bandwidth to send those packets to you. So they are already getting profit on both sides of the pipe.. which is reasonable... what they want to do is tripple dip and pay the sender for preferred bandwidth on the "last mile" of pipe that you are already paying for.
Crazy.
How long until they reverse it? Start charging users for "high speed access to your favorite websites" Where you can buy some package that will give you better bandwidth to a block of sites (ESPN.com, MLB.com, SI.com, NFL.com just for the "sports" package). Just think when big news breaks and CNN is at a crawl you could get thorough with your enhanced bandwidth from your "News" package.
yea, I don't think too many people would pay for that either...
by copying the advertising they are making it look like the accessory is some how related to apple when it is not. Now they may be within their rights using the advertising style but apple is within their rights to challenge that use. If their adds were different (and from what I have read apple made a legitimate attempt to get them to change it before filing this suit) there would be no law suit.
This really isn't that unreasonable. They designed those adds to look like apples and apple doesn't want them to do that. They had a chance to avoid going to court and chose not to. If the judge decides that apple is totally off base apple will likely end up paying the legal fees. Your just looking for something to be indignant about here. This isn't that interesting of a story.
Unfortunately this is probably true. Its a shame because most of the time I find treating cops with respect, but also, treating them like normal people, is very effective at managing most situations with them. Unfortunately you never do know how the things you say and do are going to be used in the long run so even if being polite and friendly gets you through 99% of your encounters with the police, being polite and formal keeps that 1% from biting you in the ass.
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I could see this being very effective. I have noticed that the tactile feedback given by the vibration feature in the Nintendo Wii's controller is fantastic. It doens't have to be overwhelming to let you know that something is going on.
I'm not sure how well this will work with the iPhone but I could see it solving the tactile keyboard feedback problem. This is the first I had heard about this feature.
I havent heard anything about Civ V, I was just using that as an example because I ran into this issue with Civ IV and I couldnt get it to run on my shitty windows laptop due to the graphics requirements. Im sure it would have been dog slow anyway, but its Civ, so I would take what I can get.
My current laptop wont run Civ IV either so when I pick up one of these I can also write off several months of my life
Not that I'm going to try to convince you that one button is better than 2, but if your doing mouse based gaming, don't you find track pads in general to be pretty useless? Given that Im likely to buy one of these machines and will finally have a decent gaming laptop, I will probably go out and buy an external mouse for any gaming I might do.
yea but really, couldn't they have used a 2gb dimm so you would have an upgrade path that didnt involve throwing out your old ram?
I know im likely to upgrade to 4gb and its a hell of a lot cheeper to buy them myself than to pay apple to do it. It just seems so terribly wasteful.
Anyone ever have any luck selling the dimms that come out of laptops like this when they are brand new? someone must have a use for them.
Kick ass!
Its probably not very helpful for me since im probably going to buy one of these new machines to replace my 7 year old Ti book but thats pretty cool. Im sure the old laptop will still see some light use so I may as well pick that up.
Thanks
Generally I agree with you. Im not a hardcore PC gamer, I mostly play consoles. But my primary machine is a mac laptop. Its very convinient for me most of the time, but if I could also play Civ V when it comes out and not a year later when the mac version comes out, that would be pretty nice.
Certainly not "the rig" for hardcore gamers but getting the option to run windows games (probably the only reason I would run windows on it other than maybe working from home) would be a pretty nice upgrade for me. At least for a few years before the graphics card is too old to be useful anymore.
I havent looked at keynote, but really its not like you have to deal with keynote files just because you have a mac. Its a choice. Power point is another choice. Im not sure I like either of them.
try this
"I like my hard drives like I like my women: Chained together".
no worries, it was sarcasm.
if your replacing the vast majority of the computer, it might not be that big of a difference.
Grated if you are building your own machine and you have a nice high end aluminum uber case and such it might not be the case, but I compare apples to commercially available PCs. Any other comparison isn't really fair. If you want to argue that you cant build your own mac you will have to find someone else to argue with.
Complaining that the mac mini is not upgradeable enough for a power user is like complaining that a geo metro is unsuitable for towing a boat.
I see what you mean. My bad.
My point is though that if you get a mac now, later you can upgrade the processor, or drop in more ram or a hard drive. I agree that if you build your own machine and are diligent about it you can keep up with the technology curve but really macs aren't that much less upgradeable than a dell or an HP from a practical standpoint.
Admittedly this might be an issue for the target of this article... power users, but at the same time he is complaining about upgrading the mac mini. The lowest end mac you can buy.
The thing is, if you are upgrading your motherboard and your video card and your processor and maybe buying new ram (or even new hard drives to match your mother boards new built in controller) at what point are you pretty much just replacing the whole system. Sure its nice to keep that DVD burner around but how much are you really saving? And if you were on a Mac Pro you could buy a new one that didn't have the high end optical drive, or the largest hard drive available, and just put your old ones in your new computer.
Sure, its not the same, you cant build your own mac and Im not going to claim that you can, but I think the difference here is not as great as the article makes it out to be. And for the vast majority of users its practically no difference at all.
wow so in 30 days he couldnt find NeoOffice. Yea... he must have been looking really hard.
OS X's screen shot utility (called grab) is great. No it does not let you take a picture of the video playing in the DVD player but im pretty sure this is a restiction place on apple by the DVD standard. your not supposed to be able to capture the raw video output of a DVD when it is displayed on the screen. The DVD player utility uses a key color to mark an area of the screen and a second process fills in that area with the frame of video being displayed Im fairly sure this is the case on other platforms as well (with the likely exception of linux).
This is picking nits and is totally ridiculous. There are plenty of good free utilities out there for the mac.
yea, this article is pretty nuts. I mean lets set asside all the Free and Open Source applications that have been easily ported to OSX. Apple has had one of the most vibrant freeware and shareware communities out there since long before OS X and most of those applications came over to OS X. This couldn't be less accurate.
It is true though that when your mac is old and slow you have to buy a new one. Not like a PC. if your PC is slow you either wave your magic wand over it to make it faster or better yet you install the new Windows OS and its like your hardware is brand new.
I guess his complaint is about upgrading your computer. Of course I use a laptop most of the time so I hardly notice the lack of upgrading. But I thought the new Intel macs had upgradeable CPUs (didn't someone upgrade one to an 8 core before apple released one?) and you can upgrade the ram and the hard drive. I admit I know nothing about upgrading video cards on the mac these days (laptop again) so that might be an issue.
I don't get it. Sure maybe the mac is a little less upgradeable than the PC, but very few people replace their motherboards these days, its easier to just buy a new machine. This sounds like hyperbole to me.
I caught that too, but really it would not be advised to explain where this "free" electricity comes from to someone writing an article like that.
That said, everyone is focused on using these for waste heat conversion which is great and may improve the efficency of many of our electrical and mechanical systems (including power generation systems), but the other use for this would be harnessing solar power which could be pretty cool if it significantly beats the efficiency of photo voltaic cells.
Even at that im not sure its a violation. Since you can use Express to develop commercial applications. I would think you could use it to develop a plug in for VS. It seems to me that if anyone is breaking the EULA its the people who are actually going through the steps to make the plug in work in Express.
OK, so lets say that you are correct about the technical limitation (I have no idea if you are or not). If that is the case, then MAYBE, using TestDrive.NET with Express is a violation of the EULA.
But the writing of TestDrive.NET was likely done on the full version of Visual Studio. So the developers probably did not violate the EULA. At best MS has a case that END USERS (the ones bound by End User Licencing Agreements) who use a plugin (any plug in, not just this one) with Express, are violating the terms of the EULA. Given that, Microsoft should be going after those users and not after a development company that has simply written a tool for the pro version of the software. The fact that end users can hack the free version to use that tool as well is no concern of the original plugin developer.
Even if he distributes instructions on how to preform this hack Im not sure they have a case against him. He isn't bound by the EULA of software he doesn't use and the information is probably protected in the same way that lock picking guides and cable de-scrambler schematics are.
But somehow I don't remember signing a broadcast agreement with Major League Baseball. Either place shifting is legal or not. MLB's agreements with its broadcasters should have absolutely no bearing on this at all.
I could be wrong but I think you have to show that damage was done to ones reputation to claim libel. While I agree that this is a reprehensible thing to say to a group of people, I'm not sure that one can make a direct connection to damage to the individuals this was directed at.
The stretch argument is that a future employer, doing a search on one of these people, might find this statement and not hire them, but that is probably too much of a stretch.
of course they already charge the sender as well. That sender is paying through the nose for the bandwidth to send those packets to you. So they are already getting profit on both sides of the pipe.. which is reasonable... what they want to do is tripple dip and pay the sender for preferred bandwidth on the "last mile" of pipe that you are already paying for.
Crazy.
How long until they reverse it? Start charging users for "high speed access to your favorite websites" Where you can buy some package that will give you better bandwidth to a block of sites (ESPN.com, MLB.com, SI.com, NFL.com just for the "sports" package). Just think when big news breaks and CNN is at a crawl you could get thorough with your enhanced bandwidth from your "News" package.
yea, I don't think too many people would pay for that either...
by copying the advertising they are making it look like the accessory is some how related to apple when it is not. Now they may be within their rights using the advertising style but apple is within their rights to challenge that use. If their adds were different (and from what I have read apple made a legitimate attempt to get them to change it before filing this suit) there would be no law suit.
This really isn't that unreasonable. They designed those adds to look like apples and apple doesn't want them to do that. They had a chance to avoid going to court and chose not to. If the judge decides that apple is totally off base apple will likely end up paying the legal fees. Your just looking for something to be indignant about here. This isn't that interesting of a story.
Unfortunately this is probably true. Its a shame because most of the time I find treating cops with respect, but also, treating them like normal people, is very effective at managing most situations with them. Unfortunately you never do know how the things you say and do are going to be used in the long run so even if being polite and friendly gets you through 99% of your encounters with the police, being polite and formal keeps that 1% from biting you in the ass.