You are supposed to be an adult, who takes responsibility for what you learn, at least to the extent that you read and try to understand the day's subject before the lecture, so you can pick up the presumably few points you didn't quite understand. Lectures are only meant to be a minor part of your effort, so I think your rant is misplaced.
I always had a problem with this, because I have to use almost all of my willpower to learn from a book, whereas I can usually remember, often word for word, information that is said in a lecture. Ideas I struggle with on the page are intuitive when I hear them coming from a human's mouth. Reading the subject before hand would be a massive investment of my time an energy, and make the lecture boring as the ideas wouldn't be new to me. I will continue to review the materials after the lecture, because it works for me, but I'm curious what you think of that.
Excellent rebuttal, I wish I could mod you up. Playing devil's advocate here, it is politically better to reform a project that is doing poorly than to stand up for it because, if it fails, it will look like it could have been scrapped early, and if it succeeds, early problems will distract from the accomplishment.
I don't care if it costs 6.5 trillion. The amount of knowledge gained from peering that far back is invaluable.
I agree, but a project that is 4 years off, is already running over budget and is expected to get worse is worrying. These are signs of a project with intrinsic problems that will probably get in the way of the research trying to be done. It is worth considering starting over in order to avoid a multi billion dollar boondoggle. If the project is projected to cost more than twice as much as planned, odds are their plan wasn't very good, and will continue to cause problems.
I think the advantages of Chrome Os are for a completely different class of computer than Windows, or even iOS or Android.
Let's use for base hardware the Apple TV. It has the same processing capabilities as the iPad and considering Apple's love of high profit margins, is probably way cheaper to make than $99. This means that you could probably release equivalent hardware with a wireless mouse and keyboard for about the same price. What that adds up to is if you have a HDMI compatible screen, you could add Chrome OS to it for less than the price of a Windows license.
To the people who think of Chrome OS as a useless, stripped down OS: Sure, Chrome Os probably won't see much life on a modern desktop, but the potential this has to bring the internet, simply and securely, to almost every other screen in a home is something I won't dismiss so easily. Having spent more on some adapter cables than the hardware this OS could require, I am curious to see how the final product turns out.
More StarCrafty: Supreme Commander 2 (think ugly Starcraft with the ability to fully zoom out)
Supreme Commaner 2 is a bastardization of the franchise (which started with Total Annihilation). I would recommended the original Supreme Commander if you want a great alternative to the Starcraft style RTS. Be forewarned, the learning curve is very steep. In exchange you have an RTS where every bullet, every laser, every unit/building exploding is physically modeled in real time in game. Where Starcraft has upper high and low ground, things like a gently sloping hill will effect battles in Supreme Commander. Even the time it takes a shot to travel in the air is relevant, as faster units will simply move too fast for artillery (lasers will usually hit their mark but have limited range). I just wish this game was available on Steam like the sequel is.
For what it's worth the iPad has 256MB. Given the lower resolution of the Cherry Pad 256MB should be enough. From what I've been able to scrape together from Googling, the performance of the 800mhz ARM 11 CPU is comparable to the iPhone 3GS (although the ARM is more versatile). Multitasking is a confounding factor, but iOS 4.2 beta users have not been leaking that there are performance problems multitasking on the iPad, so IMHO the CPU is holding back the speed more the RAM.
I'm disappointed the reviewer didn't put in this minimal amount of effort before publishing his review.
. I just don't really *care* if someone reinvents the office suite yet again.
Couldn't agree with you more. The current MSOffice, LibreOffice, Google Docs triumvirate is very similar to the IE, Firefox, Chrome one, and covers the bases rather well. I don't really like the idea of Firefox moving from the first group to the second; it would leave a gaping hole where an independent (read: doesn't have billions of dollars in other interests) solution used to exist.
I said this before and I will say this again. Google, just like MS, is playing the version game so they make an immature browser seem equal to other browser, at least to the unsophisticated portion of the customer base.
This is not to say that Google is not catching up fast, just that they are focusing on version numbers in their add copies, while primarily fixing bugs in actuality.
Compare this to firms that are actually trying to deliver a useful feature set to customers, rather than just focusing on metrics that have long been shown to be meaningless. Firefox is happy at 3.6 Safari is happy at 5. Opera, which may have been around longer than google itself, is only at 10.63. These are people who deliver useful browser.
Chrome updates automatically in the background, unsophisticated users actually don't even know this is happening. The numbering system is really for, well, numbering and it's smart of Chrome to have an excuse for a quick blurb about them every couple of months to let more sophisticated users know what features have been added (most are invisible unless you look for them). I'm sorry this bothers you in some way.
However, just because Chrome is only 2 years old, does not mean it is not a useful browser. The strides it has made in those 2 years have been pretty big. Extensions, syncing, speed improvements and cross platform support have all come since launch. Most of the other browser you mentioned don't even have all these features, even though they have been around for more than twice as long, which brings me to my final point:
Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera and IE all have different goals. For what Google is trying to do, they have done an incredible job in such a short time, and I could give the fuck how they number them.
Android may have some great devs behind it but they surely don't seem to have anyone that is trying to come up with new and interesting things
Catching up quickly is a strength of open source. Highly refined innovative features are a strength of a closed, leader driven team. IMHO Android should focus on being compatible with everything, and remaining nimble, not paving the way. When Apple announces something in the summer, I want a working Android equivalent by the holidays, that is compatible with as many similar solutions as possible. Case in point, Apple created Face Time, Android 3.0 should have Google Talk Video chat working, compatible with every open Video chat standard that they can this year.
After implementing a feature from a competitor, Android can build on it very quickly, which Apple always fails to do. Conversely, great new ideas on Android often have too many rough edges to be really usable.
Bottom line, I love innovation happening in as many places as possible, but I feel that Android is probably not an efficient place to do it. They focus on technical details more than user experience, and I love them for it.
What good does ever-increasing speed do if I just end up blowing through my data cap that much faster? I can live with lower speeds, I just want reasonable prices per GB.
I get what you're saying, but I have a 100mb plan, and I use it accordingly (no video, no browsing, just e-mail and calendar). But once in a while I need to pull down a few megs for some web browsing or something like that, and I don't want to wait, especially if the limiting factor is my phone and not the network. This can actually become a safety issue when I'm pulling up google maps because I've been drinking and am not in the best part of town. Being able to pull up the quickest route home and put my phone away quickly is a feature I'm going to pay a premium for.
For my usage pattern, more data isn't very valuable, I want more speed (particularly latency).
I think this is an awesome idea. I would love to play a game like supreme commander but options like that. It would turn every game into a real battle of strategies, instead of who can best micromanage their resources.
Science is a noble endeavor, but it's also a low-yield endeavor
This may be true, but it is the ONLY reliable yielding endeavor. Everything else that works, can't prove it works. If you could prove it, it would be science.
Science is like democracy. It's the worse system there is, except for all the other systems.
You are wrong! This clearly needs to be decided by pundits on Fox News and the Daily Show. We should hold a vote. Those elitist scientist don't get to decide where earthlike planets reside in their ivory towers. It's our right as free people to decide whether or not god made other earthlike planets.
Why, we'd have a Nokia N-Gage gaming phone. Brilliant.
Hey clueless analysts, 2003 called and they want their shitty ideas back.
The N-Gage failed because it was designed by fools (sorry Nokia fans, but this device was a real turd). You can't have a gaming platform that requires you to remove the battery to change games. You also can't have a cell phone that makes you look like an idiot if you make calls. It was a failure of design that would be hard to reproduce without trying.
A PSP Go is already superior in almost every way. It already can make calls through Skype, it already has wireless game downloads so you don't even have to use cartridges. Just add a bigger battery, a cell phone antenna and a phone app to the XMB and you've already got a compelling product for gamers, especially if it has a carrier subsidy. It even has a browser.
Really no part of your comparison applies at all except that, yes, 7 years ago it was possible to release a totally worthless gaming phone. However today, Sony only needs to tweak its existing product line to outdo anything currently on the market. I, for one, find the idea of a PSPhone if it ran full blown Android and controlled just like a PSPGo with a full touch screen very compelling.
I hate the attitude that the Nexus One was a failure. They made a phone for Google employees that they also made available to the public. They didn't want to sell millions of them. If they wanted to they would have sold it just about everywhere, but they didn't. They sold it only on a special web site where you'd have to know about it to even find it. They don't want to support a millions of high end cell phones in the hands of the idiot masses. That they leave to their cell phone partners.
If anything the Nexus One was a total success, bringing a true Android experience to everyone who wanted one, providing their employees with a phone that would meet their needs much better than anything else on the market, and showing phone manufacturers what they should be doing.
Sony just does not have the developer support for 2 systems, I suspect they would be better served by focusing on one or the other.
It's not necessary to split the developers. A PSPhone could just be android with a PSP2 app. Sure, it would need to have somewhat higher specs to run the background phone processes while gaming, but the subsidies from 2 year contracts could hide those costs (much in the same way the iPhone does).
Since Sony has a cell phone devision, already produces several android devices, and from a CPU/GPU standpoint the PSP2 is probably comparable to a high end android phone, I think Sony would be, frankly, foolish not to at least try an PSPhone, even as a niche product at an outrageous price point.
I have no idea who Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr is so I can't comment on him, but I do know who Micheal Moore is, and I hate that guy for the very same reasons I hate Fox News. My problem is with not with bias, since reporters are only human, but a lack of any shame when they are inaccurate. Reporting is exactly the opposite of "you decide"; it is about having someone out there with integrity doing the hard work for you and providing you trustworthy information. And I don't mean you should blindly trust anyone, but you should be able to reasonably trust reporters even if you disagree with them.
Fox News is the business of feigning integrity while instilling bias. It is the opposite of what reporting is about. They don't feel bad about being inaccurate, and I don't care how many other places do it, it's wrong. It should be unacceptable. Instead it is the number one source of news in the US.
Alright, it seems I spoke way too fast. I did some research on HTML (checked wikipedia) and it seems that updating HTML twice a year would be reckless. However, HTML4 was published as a W3C recommendation in 1997. Just to put that in perspective Windows98 and Napster were yet to happen. This is what AOL.com looked like at the time.
I respect what we've been able to achieve on this platform, but I can't help but feel it is holding us back as well.
They can't ratify a new speck for YEARS? That's just not good enough. I know it's an important standard, but in 2 years they need to be finalizing HTML6. The web moves fast. If they want to take this long to move things forward, I'm all in favor of Google, Apple and Firefox working out the standards themselves. HTML should update twice yearly, just like Ubuntu.
I honestly can't think of anything more useless than an OS that will not work if you don't have an internet connection.
A friend of mine has a similar opinion, and allow me to provide a rebuttal:
Is your web browser useless since it won't work without an internet connection? Of course not. Chrome OS is vastly limited, but that doesn't mean it's useless. Conversely, my Windows and Ubuntu machines are usually pretty useless when I don't have a connection. The only thing I do off-line is game, and many games are on-line only.
The real problem with Chrome OS is that you still need a good amount of processing power to surf the web. Chrome OS could be a pretty great deal when sub $100 tablets can run the top websites flawlessly. For now if you have a machine capable of running fast on the web, you might as well have a more fully featured OS.
Is there an open VOIP protocol that is compatible with both Blackberry and iPhone? I could really use it to talk to a friend who can't seem to get Skype to work with her carrier.
I can't argue with that. I can only say that I don't want obsolescence built into the software. If keep my PC, just as it is, forever, it should run my software forever. I can only hope backwards compatible solutions get better as virtualization gets more and more mainstream.
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You are supposed to be an adult, who takes responsibility for what you learn, at least to the extent that you read and try to understand the day's subject before the lecture, so you can pick up the presumably few points you didn't quite understand. Lectures are only meant to be a minor part of your effort, so I think your rant is misplaced.
I always had a problem with this, because I have to use almost all of my willpower to learn from a book, whereas I can usually remember, often word for word, information that is said in a lecture. Ideas I struggle with on the page are intuitive when I hear them coming from a human's mouth. Reading the subject before hand would be a massive investment of my time an energy, and make the lecture boring as the ideas wouldn't be new to me. I will continue to review the materials after the lecture, because it works for me, but I'm curious what you think of that.
Excellent rebuttal, I wish I could mod you up. Playing devil's advocate here, it is politically better to reform a project that is doing poorly than to stand up for it because, if it fails, it will look like it could have been scrapped early, and if it succeeds, early problems will distract from the accomplishment.
I don't care if it costs 6.5 trillion. The amount of knowledge gained from peering that far back is invaluable.
I agree, but a project that is 4 years off, is already running over budget and is expected to get worse is worrying. These are signs of a project with intrinsic problems that will probably get in the way of the research trying to be done. It is worth considering starting over in order to avoid a multi billion dollar boondoggle. If the project is projected to cost more than twice as much as planned, odds are their plan wasn't very good, and will continue to cause problems.
I think the advantages of Chrome Os are for a completely different class of computer than Windows, or even iOS or Android.
Let's use for base hardware the Apple TV. It has the same processing capabilities as the iPad and considering Apple's love of high profit margins, is probably way cheaper to make than $99. This means that you could probably release equivalent hardware with a wireless mouse and keyboard for about the same price. What that adds up to is if you have a HDMI compatible screen, you could add Chrome OS to it for less than the price of a Windows license.
To the people who think of Chrome OS as a useless, stripped down OS:
Sure, Chrome Os probably won't see much life on a modern desktop, but the potential this has to bring the internet, simply and securely, to almost every other screen in a home is something I won't dismiss so easily. Having spent more on some adapter cables than the hardware this OS could require, I am curious to see how the final product turns out.
More StarCrafty: Supreme Commander 2 (think ugly Starcraft with the ability to fully zoom out)
Supreme Commaner 2 is a bastardization of the franchise (which started with Total Annihilation). I would recommended the original Supreme Commander if you want a great alternative to the Starcraft style RTS. Be forewarned, the learning curve is very steep. In exchange you have an RTS where every bullet, every laser, every unit/building exploding is physically modeled in real time in game. Where Starcraft has upper high and low ground, things like a gently sloping hill will effect battles in Supreme Commander. Even the time it takes a shot to travel in the air is relevant, as faster units will simply move too fast for artillery (lasers will usually hit their mark but have limited range). I just wish this game was available on Steam like the sequel is.
(Tongue in cheek subject)
For what it's worth the iPad has 256MB. Given the lower resolution of the Cherry Pad 256MB should be enough. From what I've been able to scrape together from Googling, the performance of the 800mhz ARM 11 CPU is comparable to the iPhone 3GS (although the ARM is more versatile). Multitasking is a confounding factor, but iOS 4.2 beta users have not been leaking that there are performance problems multitasking on the iPad, so IMHO the CPU is holding back the speed more the RAM.
I'm disappointed the reviewer didn't put in this minimal amount of effort before publishing his review.
Is resistance necessary?
That question is presupposing resistance isn't futile. If it is futile, it doesn't matter whether you need to or want to.
. I just don't really *care* if someone reinvents the office suite yet again.
Couldn't agree with you more. The current MSOffice, LibreOffice, Google Docs triumvirate is very similar to the IE, Firefox, Chrome one, and covers the bases rather well. I don't really like the idea of Firefox moving from the first group to the second; it would leave a gaping hole where an independent (read: doesn't have billions of dollars in other interests) solution used to exist.
I said this before and I will say this again. Google, just like MS, is playing the version game so they make an immature browser seem equal to other browser, at least to the unsophisticated portion of the customer base.
This is not to say that Google is not catching up fast, just that they are focusing on version numbers in their add copies, while primarily fixing bugs in actuality.
Compare this to firms that are actually trying to deliver a useful feature set to customers, rather than just focusing on metrics that have long been shown to be meaningless. Firefox is happy at 3.6 Safari is happy at 5. Opera, which may have been around longer than google itself, is only at 10.63. These are people who deliver useful browser.
Chrome updates automatically in the background, unsophisticated users actually don't even know this is happening. The numbering system is really for, well, numbering and it's smart of Chrome to have an excuse for a quick blurb about them every couple of months to let more sophisticated users know what features have been added (most are invisible unless you look for them). I'm sorry this bothers you in some way.
However, just because Chrome is only 2 years old, does not mean it is not a useful browser. The strides it has made in those 2 years have been pretty big. Extensions, syncing, speed improvements and cross platform support have all come since launch. Most of the other browser you mentioned don't even have all these features, even though they have been around for more than twice as long, which brings me to my final point:
Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera and IE all have different goals. For what Google is trying to do, they have done an incredible job in such a short time, and I could give the fuck how they number them.
Android may have some great devs behind it but they surely don't seem to have anyone that is trying to come up with new and interesting things
Catching up quickly is a strength of open source. Highly refined innovative features are a strength of a closed, leader driven team. IMHO Android should focus on being compatible with everything, and remaining nimble, not paving the way. When Apple announces something in the summer, I want a working Android equivalent by the holidays, that is compatible with as many similar solutions as possible. Case in point, Apple created Face Time, Android 3.0 should have Google Talk Video chat working, compatible with every open Video chat standard that they can this year.
After implementing a feature from a competitor, Android can build on it very quickly, which Apple always fails to do. Conversely, great new ideas on Android often have too many rough edges to be really usable.
Bottom line, I love innovation happening in as many places as possible, but I feel that Android is probably not an efficient place to do it. They focus on technical details more than user experience, and I love them for it.
What good does ever-increasing speed do if I just end up blowing through my data cap that much faster? I can live with lower speeds, I just want reasonable prices per GB.
I get what you're saying, but I have a 100mb plan, and I use it accordingly (no video, no browsing, just e-mail and calendar). But once in a while I need to pull down a few megs for some web browsing or something like that, and I don't want to wait, especially if the limiting factor is my phone and not the network. This can actually become a safety issue when I'm pulling up google maps because I've been drinking and am not in the best part of town. Being able to pull up the quickest route home and put my phone away quickly is a feature I'm going to pay a premium for.
For my usage pattern, more data isn't very valuable, I want more speed (particularly latency).
I think this is an awesome idea. I would love to play a game like supreme commander but options like that. It would turn every game into a real battle of strategies, instead of who can best micromanage their resources.
Science is a noble endeavor, but it's also a low-yield endeavor
This may be true, but it is the ONLY reliable yielding endeavor. Everything else that works, can't prove it works. If you could prove it, it would be science.
Science is like democracy. It's the worse system there is, except for all the other systems.
I can't resist being a smart ass so forgive me,
You are wrong! This clearly needs to be decided by pundits on Fox News and the Daily Show. We should hold a vote. Those elitist scientist don't get to decide where earthlike planets reside in their ivory towers. It's our right as free people to decide whether or not god made other earthlike planets.
Google phone: Failure
Sony PSP: Marketshare loser
But what if we combined them?!
Why, we'd have a Nokia N-Gage gaming phone. Brilliant.
Hey clueless analysts, 2003 called and they want their shitty ideas back.
The N-Gage failed because it was designed by fools (sorry Nokia fans, but this device was a real turd). You can't have a gaming platform that requires you to remove the battery to change games. You also can't have a cell phone that makes you look like an idiot if you make calls. It was a failure of design that would be hard to reproduce without trying.
A PSP Go is already superior in almost every way. It already can make calls through Skype, it already has wireless game downloads so you don't even have to use cartridges. Just add a bigger battery, a cell phone antenna and a phone app to the XMB and you've already got a compelling product for gamers, especially if it has a carrier subsidy. It even has a browser.
Really no part of your comparison applies at all except that, yes, 7 years ago it was possible to release a totally worthless gaming phone. However today, Sony only needs to tweak its existing product line to outdo anything currently on the market. I, for one, find the idea of a PSPhone if it ran full blown Android and controlled just like a PSPGo with a full touch screen very compelling.
I hate the attitude that the Nexus One was a failure. They made a phone for Google employees that they also made available to the public. They didn't want to sell millions of them. If they wanted to they would have sold it just about everywhere, but they didn't. They sold it only on a special web site where you'd have to know about it to even find it. They don't want to support a millions of high end cell phones in the hands of the idiot masses. That they leave to their cell phone partners.
If anything the Nexus One was a total success, bringing a true Android experience to everyone who wanted one, providing their employees with a phone that would meet their needs much better than anything else on the market, and showing phone manufacturers what they should be doing.
Sony just does not have the developer support for 2 systems, I suspect they would be better served by focusing on one or the other.
It's not necessary to split the developers. A PSPhone could just be android with a PSP2 app. Sure, it would need to have somewhat higher specs to run the background phone processes while gaming, but the subsidies from 2 year contracts could hide those costs (much in the same way the iPhone does).
Since Sony has a cell phone devision, already produces several android devices, and from a CPU/GPU standpoint the PSP2 is probably comparable to a high end android phone, I think Sony would be, frankly, foolish not to at least try an PSPhone, even as a niche product at an outrageous price point.
This reminds me of Fox News accusing Fox news co-owner of terror funding.
I love the fact Fox News did this to themselves because it forces this:
If Fox News tell the truth
Then Fox News is partly owned by terrorists
Else Fox News does not tell the truth
I have no idea who Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr is so I can't comment on him, but I do know who Micheal Moore is, and I hate that guy for the very same reasons I hate Fox News. My problem is with not with bias, since reporters are only human, but a lack of any shame when they are inaccurate. Reporting is exactly the opposite of "you decide"; it is about having someone out there with integrity doing the hard work for you and providing you trustworthy information. And I don't mean you should blindly trust anyone, but you should be able to reasonably trust reporters even if you disagree with them.
Fox News is the business of feigning integrity while instilling bias. It is the opposite of what reporting is about. They don't feel bad about being inaccurate, and I don't care how many other places do it, it's wrong. It should be unacceptable. Instead it is the number one source of news in the US.
I'm all in favor of Google, Apple and Firefox working out the standards themselves. HTML should update twice yearly, just like Ubuntu.
Who do you think the committee is made up of?
Well that is just bizzar, they are adding public support for features they are publicly (through this committee) asking developers not to use.
Alright, it seems I spoke way too fast. I did some research on HTML (checked wikipedia) and it seems that updating HTML twice a year would be reckless. However, HTML4 was published as a W3C recommendation in 1997. Just to put that in perspective Windows98 and Napster were yet to happen. This is what AOL.com looked like at the time.
I respect what we've been able to achieve on this platform, but I can't help but feel it is holding us back as well.
the final version is not due for several years
They can't ratify a new speck for YEARS? That's just not good enough. I know it's an important standard, but in 2 years they need to be finalizing HTML6. The web moves fast. If they want to take this long to move things forward, I'm all in favor of Google, Apple and Firefox working out the standards themselves. HTML should update twice yearly, just like Ubuntu.
I honestly can't think of anything more useless than an OS that will not work if you don't have an internet connection.
A friend of mine has a similar opinion, and allow me to provide a rebuttal:
Is your web browser useless since it won't work without an internet connection? Of course not. Chrome OS is vastly limited, but that doesn't mean it's useless. Conversely, my Windows and Ubuntu machines are usually pretty useless when I don't have a connection. The only thing I do off-line is game, and many games are on-line only.
The real problem with Chrome OS is that you still need a good amount of processing power to surf the web. Chrome OS could be a pretty great deal when sub $100 tablets can run the top websites flawlessly. For now if you have a machine capable of running fast on the web, you might as well have a more fully featured OS.
Is there an open VOIP protocol that is compatible with both Blackberry and iPhone? I could really use it to talk to a friend who can't seem to get Skype to work with her carrier.
I can't argue with that. I can only say that I don't want obsolescence built into the software. If keep my PC, just as it is, forever, it should run my software forever. I can only hope backwards compatible solutions get better as virtualization gets more and more mainstream.