Heh...sounds like the (Discovery Channel?) short documentary I saw where they talk, among other things, about hot dry rock geothermal and the subsequent earthquakes. Probably the plant in Basel. I can just imagine selling that one to the Swiss government:
"OK guys, we've got good news and bad news. Now I know that the word 'earthquake' gets thrown around quite a bit these days, but...wait! Hear me out! Come on that was only like a 3 or a 4! It was totally that new guy Gary's fault too!"
The raw installed base numbers (honestly, I don't know how they'd even get those besides a phone survey or something) don't tell the whole story. My site gets just about half IE and half FF, and it's not a site for a tech crowd. I see most people saying the same thing, which leads me to believe that, even though the installed base is probably lower, the Firefox users are browsing more heavily.
Also, how would the installed base of IE go down? I doubt that there's enough people manually removing 6 to make a dent in those numbers.
I saw the betas and early RCs crash a couple of times. But running the 3.0 release on my MBP, I have not seen it crash once. I will typically leave it open for days, sometimes putting the computer to sleep, sometimes not. I have extensions, I have plugins, I open large numbers of tabs.
For whatever reason, I *have* seen FF3 crash on Windows. I don't know what's different there but I'm not willing to lay the blame entirely on the FF team since it runs fine on my Mac.
I wouldn't even go that far. Caching is useful for speeding up page loads. Cookies are necessary for persistent sessions. It's not like the stuff is the work of the devil. People ask a site to serve them files, and then get pissed off when it actually happens. That's not paranoia, it's not being able to make up your damn mind.
As others have said: it's actually a feature that existed in extensions for a while, too. I guess what's new here is the idea that it needs to be included with the browser. But it's kind of useful, and FF3 is snappier on the whole, so I can't complain too much (this time)
Amen, brother. Every time some "great" new feature makes its way in, I do some quiet mumbling about how I'd rather have this in an extension, so I don't have to install it. It's inevitable that as FF gains marketshare they're going to expand the feature-set. Doesn't mean we can't gripe about it though.
Nice thing about standards compliance, even from Microsoft (maybe especially from Microsoft) is that it lowers the barrier to entry...I could at some point shift to a leaner browser and be confident that the rendering will be close.
Despite the heated rhetoric of the semantic web peanut gallery, most web developers want their web applications to look and function the same no matter what the platform.
They do, naturally, but trying to jam a square peg in a round hole usually takes a little time. The web was not initially designed to be an application platform, or to render like a piece of paper. How do you do italics on a screen reader? What use is a three-column layout on a pda or phone?
Also, consider how much more advanced a markup-based approach was than something like telnet.
Some people remember back when the goal was really semantics over strict presentation. Honestly, it was only a few years ago. But this system for platform-independent information sharing is struggling to keep pace with the cries of "I gots to have my flash".
You're right, things have changed, the web is much more powerful now, and in the end that's what really matters. But I think you're too hard on the academics. It's going to be an uphill battle as HTML and the associated technologies are updated to match what people want to use them for. Honestly, I think the more semantic HTML stays, the better. The code can stay in a script or on the server. The presentation can stay in the style sheet. That way, the information is still there...there's no reason in 2008 for a page to not degrade gracefully.
Honestly, I think the real problem there is that businesses aren't allowed to charge more for purchases made by credit card. But I don't remember that being a law anyway, just something the CC companies dictate.
Having the ability to take credit cards costs businesses in fees (both per-transaction and monthly) and liability, not to mention equipment rental costs. The CC companies are idiots for telling businesses what or how to price things, when at the end of the day all they really want is for their logo to be accepted at these businesses. The financial world seems to be filled with guys who think they can make money by being cleverer than the next guy, and that ignoring reality makes you clever.
Exactly which part of "his is" timing was off? He said mail order predated modern taxes, and he was right. Indoor plumbing didn't come to many places in many homes in the US until after electric lighting did.
I know on modded consoles "homebrew" is a euphemism for emulators, just like "backup" is for copied game discs. But the GP2X was open by design and there is a thriving homebrew scene for it, as well as some commercial games. Yeah, there's a big focus on emulators and ROMs, but many people are only interested in the legitimate homebrew. Which, again, there is a lot of. Much of it very entertaining. Your snark is unwarranted.
Reverse engineering is legal, at least in the US. Most tech companies would be out of business if it wasn't.
Reverse engineering has nothing to do with copyright or copy-protection. I can't figure out if you're talking about the DMCA or what, but you definitely are confusing things, perhaps on purpose.
Emulators aren't illegal. End of story. NES hardware clones have nothing to do with emulation. Again, you're either confused or purposefully being confusing.
This isn't the music industry. Nobody's "targeting" anybody. ROM sites aren't elaborate honeypots as you seem to be suggesting. Even the ROM sites don't get hassled, providing they stay in line with what the ESA asks (no high-profile games like Mario, Zelda, etc).
Judges interpret the law as written. That it doesn't agree with your personal beliefs doesn't mean it's wrong or that any particular judge is an idiot.
There's no commercials. For Christ's sake, they're probably hoping to sell 50,000 tops, half of them in South Korea. To the extent that they advertise that you can play emulated games, it's because in Korea they can get away with it and everywhere else they're way under the radar.
Sony and Nintendo can do as they please? You said reverse engineering, and by association, emulation, was illegal. By that logic, they'd still be breaking the law.
Look, obviously most of these ROM files are being played computers, MAME boxes, and devices like this, by people who don't own the originals. Downloaded from people who don't have distribution rights. And I'm not going to tell you not to vilify people when you're clearly so good at it. But for god's sakes, at least get your damn facts straight. Reverse engineering is legal. Emulators are legal. Both are important tools and used every day in the tech industry. LEARN TO READ.
If by Starcraft-type games you mean games where you need a full keyboard and mouse to comfortably control them then I wouldn't say handhelds are crying out for that. Even so, the Pandora's got it covered:D
Assuming it will be handled like the GP2X, you'd be buying it from a distributor. Here is a list of gp2x distributors that should be fairly recent. For other info, the largest english-speaking GP2X forum (and maybe the largest in general?) is located at www.gp32x.com, and sometimes there are threads about who has the best price for a specific region.
Since the announcement was just made, the info in the forums is still kind of fresh regarding the Wiz and I haven't seen anyone say specifically which distros will have it and which won't, but that wiki link is the best place to start. I know gp2x.co.uk will have it and I believe they ship everywhere.
Before I rattle off a couple I have to point out some things. First a lot of the must-haves are actually ports, but they look awesome on the 320x240 screen and play better on buttons + d-pad than computer keyboard. Cave Story is one example. Ur-Quan masters is another. Second, very little software outside of the emulators is gp2x-only because (a) most of it is done with SDL and the authors typically often PC versions as well, (b) some of it has been ported from the predecessor unit, GP32.
But there's quite a large library of gp2x-only software, and much of it is very good. My favorites include games called Reword (anagram game), Ghostpix (picross game), Sqdef (tower defense game). Those three are puzzle & strategy games but there are many more in all genres.
The crown jewel of GP2X exclusives was probably Wind and Water: The Puzzle Battles. But the creators have ported it to Dreamcast now, and there are rumors of a possible Pandora port. An incredible and highly original puzzle game with lots of sexy pixel art and good original music.
Parent is correct. The GP2X is a nice product, but it's not everything that GPH's marketing said about it on day one. For instance, I think at one point they were talking about WMA support, which I don't think happened but it was a long time before they stopped saying it had it. A lot of features and fixes were picked up over time from the community (which nobody objected to...in fact, the main gripe was that they could have done more to incorporate fixes that originated with the scene).
Absolutely. The GP2X is a great little device, and the Wiz improves on a lot of key areas of its design. Essentially it's somewhere between a hardware revision for the '2X and a new product.
The Pandora, on the other hand, was developed in response to what the GP2X community was interested in, with lots of feedback and every step. As a result we have two fairly different devices on the way: a GP2X "micro" with improvements all around (but an unfortunately lack of regular buttons on the right hand side) and the Pandora, which is closer to an UMPC but runs on ARM and is designed around gaming.
In the end, though, I don't think the big difference will be the built-in controls, as both these devices do a lot more than just play games. I think it's going to be the price, and the fact that the Pandora has WLAN.
A lot of bloggers are professionals...that is, they're published on sites owned by traditional media companies, submit their work to editors, etc. I'm not saying anything about journalistic integrity, because honestly I think it's sort of a stretch to imply that print media is more credible. Maybe it was at one point but, well, I'm not going to go there. My point is, a lot of the bloggers getting these press passes are the guys who work from an office and have book deals coming.
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Heh...sounds like the (Discovery Channel?) short documentary I saw where they talk, among other things, about hot dry rock geothermal and the subsequent earthquakes. Probably the plant in Basel. I can just imagine selling that one to the Swiss government:
"OK guys, we've got good news and bad news. Now I know that the word 'earthquake' gets thrown around quite a bit these days, but...wait! Hear me out! Come on that was only like a 3 or a 4! It was totally that new guy Gary's fault too!"
Absolutely.
The raw installed base numbers (honestly, I don't know how they'd even get those besides a phone survey or something) don't tell the whole story. My site gets just about half IE and half FF, and it's not a site for a tech crowd. I see most people saying the same thing, which leads me to believe that, even though the installed base is probably lower, the Firefox users are browsing more heavily.
Also, how would the installed base of IE go down? I doubt that there's enough people manually removing 6 to make a dent in those numbers.
I saw the betas and early RCs crash a couple of times. But running the 3.0 release on my MBP, I have not seen it crash once. I will typically leave it open for days, sometimes putting the computer to sleep, sometimes not. I have extensions, I have plugins, I open large numbers of tabs.
For whatever reason, I *have* seen FF3 crash on Windows. I don't know what's different there but I'm not willing to lay the blame entirely on the FF team since it runs fine on my Mac.
I wouldn't even go that far. Caching is useful for speeding up page loads. Cookies are necessary for persistent sessions. It's not like the stuff is the work of the devil. People ask a site to serve them files, and then get pissed off when it actually happens. That's not paranoia, it's not being able to make up your damn mind.
As others have said: it's actually a feature that existed in extensions for a while, too. I guess what's new here is the idea that it needs to be included with the browser. But it's kind of useful, and FF3 is snappier on the whole, so I can't complain too much (this time)
Amen, brother. Every time some "great" new feature makes its way in, I do some quiet mumbling about how I'd rather have this in an extension, so I don't have to install it. It's inevitable that as FF gains marketshare they're going to expand the feature-set. Doesn't mean we can't gripe about it though.
Nice thing about standards compliance, even from Microsoft (maybe especially from Microsoft) is that it lowers the barrier to entry...I could at some point shift to a leaner browser and be confident that the rendering will be close.
They do, naturally, but trying to jam a square peg in a round hole usually takes a little time. The web was not initially designed to be an application platform, or to render like a piece of paper. How do you do italics on a screen reader? What use is a three-column layout on a pda or phone?
Also, consider how much more advanced a markup-based approach was than something like telnet.
Some people remember back when the goal was really semantics over strict presentation. Honestly, it was only a few years ago. But this system for platform-independent information sharing is struggling to keep pace with the cries of "I gots to have my flash".
You're right, things have changed, the web is much more powerful now, and in the end that's what really matters. But I think you're too hard on the academics. It's going to be an uphill battle as HTML and the associated technologies are updated to match what people want to use them for. Honestly, I think the more semantic HTML stays, the better. The code can stay in a script or on the server. The presentation can stay in the style sheet. That way, the information is still there...there's no reason in 2008 for a page to not degrade gracefully.
Honestly, I think the real problem there is that businesses aren't allowed to charge more for purchases made by credit card. But I don't remember that being a law anyway, just something the CC companies dictate.
Having the ability to take credit cards costs businesses in fees (both per-transaction and monthly) and liability, not to mention equipment rental costs. The CC companies are idiots for telling businesses what or how to price things, when at the end of the day all they really want is for their logo to be accepted at these businesses. The financial world seems to be filled with guys who think they can make money by being cleverer than the next guy, and that ignoring reality makes you clever.
Exactly which part of "his is" timing was off? He said mail order predated modern taxes, and he was right. Indoor plumbing didn't come to many places in many homes in the US until after electric lighting did.
Probably because the ICC is mostly an excuse for the FBI to act like God these days.
I was talking about the Wiz.
- rokdcasbah
I know on modded consoles "homebrew" is a euphemism for emulators, just like "backup" is for copied game discs. But the GP2X was open by design and there is a thriving homebrew scene for it, as well as some commercial games. Yeah, there's a big focus on emulators and ROMs, but many people are only interested in the legitimate homebrew. Which, again, there is a lot of. Much of it very entertaining. Your snark is unwarranted.
Look, obviously most of these ROM files are being played computers, MAME boxes, and devices like this, by people who don't own the originals. Downloaded from people who don't have distribution rights. And I'm not going to tell you not to vilify people when you're clearly so good at it. But for god's sakes, at least get your damn facts straight. Reverse engineering is legal. Emulators are legal. Both are important tools and used every day in the tech industry. LEARN TO READ.
John Titor, is that you?
You could even play your Wiz soundtrack on it! For when you're easin' on down the road...
If by Starcraft-type games you mean games where you need a full keyboard and mouse to comfortably control them then I wouldn't say handhelds are crying out for that. Even so, the Pandora's got it covered :D
I think it will have shoulder buttons too. But yeah nowhere near GBA-micro size. Just shorter in height than the gp2x and has that nice curve to it.
Assuming it will be handled like the GP2X, you'd be buying it from a distributor. Here is a list of gp2x distributors that should be fairly recent. For other info, the largest english-speaking GP2X forum (and maybe the largest in general?) is located at www.gp32x.com, and sometimes there are threads about who has the best price for a specific region.
Since the announcement was just made, the info in the forums is still kind of fresh regarding the Wiz and I haven't seen anyone say specifically which distros will have it and which won't, but that wiki link is the best place to start. I know gp2x.co.uk will have it and I believe they ship everywhere.
Before I rattle off a couple I have to point out some things. First a lot of the must-haves are actually ports, but they look awesome on the 320x240 screen and play better on buttons + d-pad than computer keyboard. Cave Story is one example. Ur-Quan masters is another. Second, very little software outside of the emulators is gp2x-only because (a) most of it is done with SDL and the authors typically often PC versions as well, (b) some of it has been ported from the predecessor unit, GP32. But there's quite a large library of gp2x-only software, and much of it is very good. My favorites include games called Reword (anagram game), Ghostpix (picross game), Sqdef (tower defense game). Those three are puzzle & strategy games but there are many more in all genres. The crown jewel of GP2X exclusives was probably Wind and Water: The Puzzle Battles. But the creators have ported it to Dreamcast now, and there are rumors of a possible Pandora port. An incredible and highly original puzzle game with lots of sexy pixel art and good original music.
Parent is correct. The GP2X is a nice product, but it's not everything that GPH's marketing said about it on day one. For instance, I think at one point they were talking about WMA support, which I don't think happened but it was a long time before they stopped saying it had it. A lot of features and fixes were picked up over time from the community (which nobody objected to...in fact, the main gripe was that they could have done more to incorporate fixes that originated with the scene).
Absolutely. The GP2X is a great little device, and the Wiz improves on a lot of key areas of its design. Essentially it's somewhere between a hardware revision for the '2X and a new product.
The Pandora, on the other hand, was developed in response to what the GP2X community was interested in, with lots of feedback and every step. As a result we have two fairly different devices on the way: a GP2X "micro" with improvements all around (but an unfortunately lack of regular buttons on the right hand side) and the Pandora, which is closer to an UMPC but runs on ARM and is designed around gaming.
In the end, though, I don't think the big difference will be the built-in controls, as both these devices do a lot more than just play games. I think it's going to be the price, and the fact that the Pandora has WLAN.
God only knows how many tons of spam that firewall is holding back...it's not win-win when no one can email anymore :)
A lot of bloggers are professionals...that is, they're published on sites owned by traditional media companies, submit their work to editors, etc. I'm not saying anything about journalistic integrity, because honestly I think it's sort of a stretch to imply that print media is more credible. Maybe it was at one point but, well, I'm not going to go there. My point is, a lot of the bloggers getting these press passes are the guys who work from an office and have book deals coming.
Please quit writing papers about it.