Interesting, and I thought that was just my setup getting old (on both Bioshock and Fallout 3)... I'm used to 0-latency gaming (never got into consoles other than Mario Kart 64 and Mario Tennis), so that was a bit of a shock...
I guess the logic is that a paperback isn't copyable in a completely lossless way, whereas a digital copy is 3 clicks away from 1000+ seeders on Isohunt... It's a bit different from CDs, since those are digitally copyable anyway.
The thing is, with book DRM we'll have the same problem as with DRM'd music - the DRM servers will go offline or the files will be incompatible with the new eBook reader you've just bought, or some jackass at the eBook store will decide to pull all the copies of your book including the annotations you've made (see Amazon & 1984...). That's why DRM is inherently shitty...
Why don't any of the corporate bigshots realize that people would be more than willing to pay for a decent eBook service? Price 'em appropriately (not $10-$20 for a freakin eBook of a novel), make sure they're good quality, and make 'em available in a variety of formats (including hosted HTML versions in a decent reader that can be accessed via mobile devices)... actually ADD VALUE instead of just restricting how much of the already existent value can be utilized.
For the love of God, why WiFi? I've been seeing articles about WiFi-enabled memory cards for ages now, and I truly have no idea what the hell anyone would use them for... is everyone so Facebook/Flickr/Twitter addicted now that all snapped photos must automatically and immediately be uploaded so that everyone has near-real-time updates of your pictures?
My God, I'm pretty much as geeky as they come, but why, WHY do you need WiFi on a camera?
That sounds pretty much like my connection here in Germany (16mbit down, 1mbit up for 35 per month - so about $50) - okay, I get about 1500kB/sec down from most servers (2000kB/sec is possible, but rare), but still, I'd rather pay $30 a month and still get a consistent 1000/100 down/up...
You're not all that much worse off - at least where you live. Rural areas are going to be different, obviously - there's still a lot of places here in Germany that can only get 768k/128k...
Same here. For instance, right now my web browser is taking up the left 1050x1050 quadrant of the screen, while my e-mail inbox is open on the right 630x1050 quadrant.
Aero Snap should boost the popularity of this habit, and as long as I've got 1000+px of vertical space, I'm happy. I just hope all the laptop manufacturers don't regress to using 1600x900...
They seem to want to save vertical screen space, which is a valid argument with current machines (like netbooks) coming out with only 600 pixels of vertical space.
Then again, why not just use full screen mode on those?
I just deleted my Win7 partition and went back to my trusty XP Pro Sp3 x86. - mainly because, IMO, Windows 7 _isn't_ a decent upgrade for XP users who (by now should) know what they're doing. However, I would recommend it to Vista users looking for a speed boost, or people new to Windows.
What's nice about 7 is that there's a lot less mucking about in driver control panels when using bog-standard hardware, which makes it a lot easier for beginners to slide in and start working without much fuss. The "find drivers online" function actually works now (at least for popular hardware - obviously stuff like the fingerprint reader and HSDPA adapter on my Thinkpad weren't found off the bat), and things like display drivers are automatically installed with no fuss at all (and actually work right away).
Other advantages over XP include:
-Hooking up an HDMI monitor now automatically enables it too (in XP you'd need to plug in and then activate the secondary display manually in the Display Properties or a program like Ultramon. Little tweaks like this are obviously nice.
-Per-Application volume mixing, just like Vista... I'm still wondering if there's a way to add this to XP - that would pretty much take care of my needs for the next few years or so:)
-Aero Snap - very useful, and the XP addon (AeroSnap) that does this is sadly pretty unstable.
-Mobile Device Center - didn't try it out, but it's GOT to be better than the steaming pile of crap called ActiveSync
Other than that, it was pretty much just filled with annoyances... the interface has become far too user-friendly:)
Disadvantages over Windows XP:
-Audio engine is still laggier with ASIO, at least with my E-Mu interface and with on-board. Latencies are roughly twice as high as in XP, and very unstable (In-Out 7ms in XP, ~10-20ms in Win7).
-Aero drains battery life like crazy, and Aero basic without translucency is the ugliest crap I've ever seen on an OS. Windows 3.11 looked better than that... Sure, you can just switch to a standard XP visual style, but having installed the required DLLs for that on a Vista installation before, I didn't feel like going to the trouble of that...
-Aero causes my graphics chip to run very hot - with power management enabled, or the performance locked to Standard 2D mode, I get about 45 degrees C at idle. Since the CPU and GPU are all cooled by the same big heatsink/fan assembly, the CPU runs nice and cool (30 degrees) when the GPU is under 50 degrees - but when running Vista, the CPU idle temperature climbs to 45+ degrees, because the GPU is idling at almost 60C...
-Once again, driver availability. My laptop is less than half a year old... You'd think that manufacturers would have released working drivers for at least Vista 64-bit by now - at least for hardware that's still on the market today... but it's still the same old problem. I'm assuming 32-bit support is better.
All in all, upgrading from XP isn't worth it, IMO... Causes more problems than it's worth.
New users, on the other hand, or people sick of Vista's crawling speed (although it seemed to me that Win7 just makes certain processes, which used to lock up the system, low priority), should definitely be encouraged to use Windows 7. The benefits (speed, ease of use) are pretty much no-brainers, and the learning curve (as far as I can tell) is far less steep than that of 2K/XP.
All correct - however, does a phone really need to be designed to withstand 130kg of fat nerd sitting down on it once a day? Thin nerds are probably even worse, since their asses are small and spiky enough to focus all of their weight on the phone:)
Now imagine sitting on a lawn chair with a seat made up of widely spaced slats, with the smartphone placed right across one of the spaces and then sat upon - you can only overengineer so much in such a confined space...
I'm not saying that smartphones are all designed adequately, or that what Apple is doing by placing the blame for their little accidents squarely on the consumers, but that I'm not surprised that some of the phones are exploding or melting - the way people handle them, it's no big surprise.
Haven't you ever assumed that some people are just stupid?
Would you sit on a laptop? How about a Sony Vaio P (which they also showed in someone's back pocket as part of an advertising campaign)? How about a 2.5" hard drive? Or a stick of RAM in packaging...?
Just because you can fit it in there doesn't mean you should sit on it...
I wouldn't sit on a phone or any other delicate high-tech device that contains a battery pack... I thought that was common sense. Hell, I've dropped my smartphone off of balconies, drowned it in iced tea (getting all the sugar off the mainboard was brutal) and accidentally melted off parts of the casing by leaving it next to the stove when cooking... but I don't think I'd EVER put it in my back pocket and then proceed to sit down.
Where would you get the idea that ANY manufacturer considers people stupid enough to put a $400+ piece of (fragile!) equipment in their back pocket?
There's also 300MBit 802.11n wireless - just don't go expecting 300mbps of actual throughput. If it's anything like 802.11g, it'll probably hit 30-60% of that... 10-20% if you're unlucky enough to live in an area so densely populated with WiFi that there's no free non-overlapping frequencies.
The problem is finding a "good soul" that's actually knowledgable. Going from my experiences on Linux support forums, the friendly ones usually don't know as much (in fact, I've never once gotten a useful answer from a friendly reply on a Linux forum), and then ones that do actually have the knowledge I'm requesting are complete jackasses.
So hitting a non-moving wall while going 60mph is the same as hitting a wall moving towards you at 60mph, while you're still also going 60mph? You're aware that the closing speed is doubled when the wall is also moving, right?
USB ports disappear, within the next 15 years? With USB 3.0 probably not reaching widespread adoption for another 5 years, I highly doubt it:)
I think the days of highly available, backwards compatible interfaces that are used by pretty much everyone just disappearing are pretty much over. What reasons are there why you shouldn't be able to develop USB 4.0, 5.0, 6.0 and so on, while still maintaining compatibility for 1.0?
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Interesting, and I thought that was just my setup getting old (on both Bioshock and Fallout 3)... I'm used to 0-latency gaming (never got into consoles other than Mario Kart 64 and Mario Tennis), so that was a bit of a shock...
Sounds pretty good to me. I just hope the calling rules (i.e. so that you can set "Skype only on WiFi" if you want) are customizable :)
Elaborate, please.
"2) Amazon retains remote kill-switch features in the Kindle and they have shown their willingness to use it."
That's the only problem I see.
I guess the logic is that a paperback isn't copyable in a completely lossless way, whereas a digital copy is 3 clicks away from 1000+ seeders on Isohunt... It's a bit different from CDs, since those are digitally copyable anyway.
The thing is, with book DRM we'll have the same problem as with DRM'd music - the DRM servers will go offline or the files will be incompatible with the new eBook reader you've just bought, or some jackass at the eBook store will decide to pull all the copies of your book including the annotations you've made (see Amazon & 1984...). That's why DRM is inherently shitty...
Why don't any of the corporate bigshots realize that people would be more than willing to pay for a decent eBook service? Price 'em appropriately (not $10-$20 for a freakin eBook of a novel), make sure they're good quality, and make 'em available in a variety of formats (including hosted HTML versions in a decent reader that can be accessed via mobile devices)... actually ADD VALUE instead of just restricting how much of the already existent value can be utilized.
For the love of God, why WiFi? I've been seeing articles about WiFi-enabled memory cards for ages now, and I truly have no idea what the hell anyone would use them for... is everyone so Facebook/Flickr/Twitter addicted now that all snapped photos must automatically and immediately be uploaded so that everyone has near-real-time updates of your pictures?
My God, I'm pretty much as geeky as they come, but why, WHY do you need WiFi on a camera?
That sounds pretty much like my connection here in Germany (16mbit down, 1mbit up for 35 per month - so about $50) - okay, I get about 1500kB/sec down from most servers (2000kB/sec is possible, but rare), but still, I'd rather pay $30 a month and still get a consistent 1000/100 down/up...
You're not all that much worse off - at least where you live. Rural areas are going to be different, obviously - there's still a lot of places here in Germany that can only get 768k/128k...
Never mind, I overlooked the link to the screenshot.
Yeap, that looks pretty good to me - although in this case you'll probably run into the problem that 1024px width isn't wide enough :P
Uh, wut? Could you maybe explain further? I'm not quite sure what you mean...
Same here. For instance, right now my web browser is taking up the left 1050x1050 quadrant of the screen, while my e-mail inbox is open on the right 630x1050 quadrant.
Aero Snap should boost the popularity of this habit, and as long as I've got 1000+px of vertical space, I'm happy. I just hope all the laptop manufacturers don't regress to using 1600x900...
They seem to want to save vertical screen space, which is a valid argument with current machines (like netbooks) coming out with only 600 pixels of vertical space.
Then again, why not just use full screen mode on those?
I just deleted my Win7 partition and went back to my trusty XP Pro Sp3 x86. - mainly because, IMO, Windows 7 _isn't_ a decent upgrade for XP users who (by now should) know what they're doing. However, I would recommend it to Vista users looking for a speed boost, or people new to Windows.
What's nice about 7 is that there's a lot less mucking about in driver control panels when using bog-standard hardware, which makes it a lot easier for beginners to slide in and start working without much fuss. The "find drivers online" function actually works now (at least for popular hardware - obviously stuff like the fingerprint reader and HSDPA adapter on my Thinkpad weren't found off the bat), and things like display drivers are automatically installed with no fuss at all (and actually work right away).
Other advantages over XP include:
-Hooking up an HDMI monitor now automatically enables it too (in XP you'd need to plug in and then activate the secondary display manually in the Display Properties or a program like Ultramon. Little tweaks like this are obviously nice.
-Per-Application volume mixing, just like Vista... I'm still wondering if there's a way to add this to XP - that would pretty much take care of my needs for the next few years or so :)
-Aero Snap - very useful, and the XP addon (AeroSnap) that does this is sadly pretty unstable.
-Mobile Device Center - didn't try it out, but it's GOT to be better than the steaming pile of crap called ActiveSync
Other than that, it was pretty much just filled with annoyances... the interface has become far too user-friendly :)
Disadvantages over Windows XP:
-Audio engine is still laggier with ASIO, at least with my E-Mu interface and with on-board. Latencies are roughly twice as high as in XP, and very unstable (In-Out 7ms in XP, ~10-20ms in Win7).
-Aero drains battery life like crazy, and Aero basic without translucency is the ugliest crap I've ever seen on an OS. Windows 3.11 looked better than that... Sure, you can just switch to a standard XP visual style, but having installed the required DLLs for that on a Vista installation before, I didn't feel like going to the trouble of that...
-Aero causes my graphics chip to run very hot - with power management enabled, or the performance locked to Standard 2D mode, I get about 45 degrees C at idle. Since the CPU and GPU are all cooled by the same big heatsink/fan assembly, the CPU runs nice and cool (30 degrees) when the GPU is under 50 degrees - but when running Vista, the CPU idle temperature climbs to 45+ degrees, because the GPU is idling at almost 60C...
-Once again, driver availability. My laptop is less than half a year old... You'd think that manufacturers would have released working drivers for at least Vista 64-bit by now - at least for hardware that's still on the market today... but it's still the same old problem. I'm assuming 32-bit support is better.
All in all, upgrading from XP isn't worth it, IMO... Causes more problems than it's worth.
New users, on the other hand, or people sick of Vista's crawling speed (although it seemed to me that Win7 just makes certain processes, which used to lock up the system, low priority), should definitely be encouraged to use Windows 7. The benefits (speed, ease of use) are pretty much no-brainers, and the learning curve (as far as I can tell) is far less steep than that of 2K/XP.
Speaking as a musician: if it's not ruggedized, it's fragile. :)
As for price: You're aware that most phones these days cost somewhere between $300 and $900 (unsubsidized, obviously), right?
All correct - however, does a phone really need to be designed to withstand 130kg of fat nerd sitting down on it once a day? Thin nerds are probably even worse, since their asses are small and spiky enough to focus all of their weight on the phone :)
Now imagine sitting on a lawn chair with a seat made up of widely spaced slats, with the smartphone placed right across one of the spaces and then sat upon - you can only overengineer so much in such a confined space...
I'm not saying that smartphones are all designed adequately, or that what Apple is doing by placing the blame for their little accidents squarely on the consumers, but that I'm not surprised that some of the phones are exploding or melting - the way people handle them, it's no big surprise.
LOL... maybe Firefox should include a "Does that sound dirty"-checker in addition to the spellchecker...
The common theme here being that what I managed to do was accidental, whereas sitting on your phone in general is, well, stupid.
Haven't you ever assumed that some people are just stupid?
Would you sit on a laptop? How about a Sony Vaio P (which they also showed in someone's back pocket as part of an advertising campaign)? How about a 2.5" hard drive? Or a stick of RAM in packaging...?
Just because you can fit it in there doesn't mean you should sit on it...
I wouldn't sit on a phone or any other delicate high-tech device that contains a battery pack... I thought that was common sense. Hell, I've dropped my smartphone off of balconies, drowned it in iced tea (getting all the sugar off the mainboard was brutal) and accidentally melted off parts of the casing by leaving it next to the stove when cooking... but I don't think I'd EVER put it in my back pocket and then proceed to sit down.
Where would you get the idea that ANY manufacturer considers people stupid enough to put a $400+ piece of (fragile!) equipment in their back pocket?
There's also 300MBit 802.11n wireless - just don't go expecting 300mbps of actual throughput. If it's anything like 802.11g, it'll probably hit 30-60% of that... 10-20% if you're unlucky enough to live in an area so densely populated with WiFi that there's no free non-overlapping frequencies.
Good point. I really need to freshen up my Physics (lack of) knowledge :)
The problem is finding a "good soul" that's actually knowledgable. Going from my experiences on Linux support forums, the friendly ones usually don't know as much (in fact, I've never once gotten a useful answer from a friendly reply on a Linux forum), and then ones that do actually have the knowledge I'm requesting are complete jackasses.
Wow. Have you been reading my posts on the Ubuntu forums?
Seriously though, that pretty much describes my experience to within about 98% accuracy...
So hitting a non-moving wall while going 60mph is the same as hitting a wall moving towards you at 60mph, while you're still also going 60mph? You're aware that the closing speed is doubled when the wall is also moving, right?
USB ports disappear, within the next 15 years? With USB 3.0 probably not reaching widespread adoption for another 5 years, I highly doubt it :)
I think the days of highly available, backwards compatible interfaces that are used by pretty much everyone just disappearing are pretty much over. What reasons are there why you shouldn't be able to develop USB 4.0, 5.0, 6.0 and so on, while still maintaining compatibility for 1.0?
Just out of curiosity - what would you suggest people in the future use _instead_ of files?