Is that what they were talking about? It was such a nebulous description I figured it was something closer to using Office's revision features somehow integrated with Windows so I didn't take a stab at what it was.
I use iChat, it's great.
And windows already has MSN Messanger (which you can barely turn off) so why is that an "improvement" anyway?
Internet Explorer 7 - I've got something better. It's called Safari. It's been out for years.
Righteous eye candy - OS X's eye candy is great, plus it is often functional (see Expose)
Desktop search - I've had it for about a year on OS X. It works great.
Better updates - No longer using Windows Update, instead a seperate application. Hmmm... that sounds like how OS X does it.
More media - OS X has great media handling abilities. And he talks about the improved Windows Movie Maker? I hope so, that program was sorry the last time I used it. From what I've heard it can't hold a candle to iMovie/iDVD. Both of which come free with every Mac. And what do they have to compete with Garage Band and iWeb (also free with every Mac)?
Parental controls - I honestly don't know if OS X has anything like this
Better backups - No registry on OS X. You just copy everything to a external hard drive and you're set. No special software needed.
Peer-to-peer collaboration - Hadn't heard about this. May be interesting.
Quick setup - OS X installs pretty fast, but you don't have to re-install it every year to keep your computer speedy (have they fixed that?)
Seems like I've had 8/10 of those for over a year with my Mac. Way to "innovate". As long as you have to buy a whole new computer to run this OS, why not buy a whole new computer and try a better OS than the one you have now. One that has been out for almost a year (10.4). One that isn't a "1.0" like Vista will be.
If you really like MS though, why not wait for Windows Vista "98" when they iron out the kinks. (OS X had 'em too early on).
It is the same reason people act like scum on message boards: anoninimity. No one knows who they are so they don't have to behave. You see that on/. too. Penny Arcade summed it up excelent once.
"Oh, it costs $3400 a month. And there are no stations."
The article says there are only 12 stations in all of Japan. And they are leasing it to a fuel producing company. This is NOT for normal people yet. The end of the article says that they are making plans to lease them to consumers, but that almost certainly means really rich consumers who want a fun little interesting car that is a toy/curiousity to them. They aren't aiming this at Joe Consumer yet. They aren't aiming it at Joe Consumer's Boss, or even his Boss, or his Boss. They are aiming it at anyone super-wealthy who wants to try it.
I agree it is good PR and will take years to get to consumers (unless some country gets around to mandating Hydrogen soon, like Iceland has been talking about). Let's just hope it's not 10 years.
I personally doubt the Camel idea, but I'll also confess I know next to nothing about those (or most) planes. I would expect they would use a normal engine with the pistons spaced around the crank shaft, instead of in a V or I shape.
Mazda has been using rotary engines for years, but only in the RX-8 (isn't that what it stands for? Rotary eXpirament 8?). They are a very interesting idea, and it's too bad we don't see more of them.
I have to wonder if the car has any other interesting features, like a Continuously Variable Transmission. It is probably just a stock RX-8 modified to use the Hydrogen, so it probably has the same kind of transmission.
If you read the article, it says that it can travel only about 60 miles on Hydrogen, but something much bigger (240?) on Gasoline. I guess the storage tank is either small, or not under huge pressure. What ever happened to those "hydrogen pellets" that were announced last year?
Still, this is how we will have to go over to Hydrogen cars. Just like this is how we will have to move to electric cars. You'll have to give them the ability to run on both Gas and Fuel-X until the stations are prevalent enough. The article says there are only 12 government owned Hydrogen stations in Japan (it doesn't mention how many private stations, but it gives the implication that there aren't any).
I wonder if they plan to move into production of these if they don't find any problems (this is a test car, that they are leasing out to a fuel company for $3500 a month). I'd love to know more about it, like how the hydrogen part works. It looks like they burn it (because of a comparison to fuel cells) but I'm not sure.
Quick question too. I mentioned that I think these dual fuel cars are the way to transition to the future. I'm not old enough to remember the switch to unleaded gas here in the US. I know that was federally mandated (which does tend to speed things along), but were any cars ever mass produced that would run on either leaded or unleaded fuel?
No experience in this area, but here is what I would do. Get a FireWire card. There must be some lost cost ones that work with Linux. Then buy a FireWire video capture box. This won't be too cheap ($100 to $200?), but it will work with Linux, OS X, Windows, and anything else that correctly supports FireWire. It will also have the encoder built in, so it won't tax your CPU to encode/save stuff. If you already have FireWire on your laptop (many in the last few years do) then you don't even need the card.
I'm with my parent poster. I think you'd have a terrible time trying to find what you are looking for.
BTW: The FireWire solution also allows you to hook up a hard drive to store things on to, because as we all know digital video can be BIG.
Portable CD players are much more tolerant of scratches (because they are CDs, not DVDs as UMDs are (that's a lot of letters)). Plus Sony built the PSP so small I would assume a much smaller distance between the discs and the laser than you would see in a standard CD player.
The main reason for the PSP caddies are probably so they can be put in a pocket or something like that. They are still open, but they would survive better than a "naked" disc.
I've always been surprised that we haven't been using CD or DVD caddies for video games since the start. But that's just me.
PS: The contest is rigged. You'll never win the bear. *bwahahahaha*
But there is a serious difference there. In a PS3, you don't need the caddy because the game isn't going anywhere. The console is supposed to be stationary. The XBox 360 is supposed to scratch discs if you change it from vertical to horizontal while it is running or vice versa, but it wasn't designed for that.
Compare that to the PSP. The PSP is designed to be moved around. They had to caddy the discs otherwise people would have ruined them fast. When playing a PSP you may be walking, in a car (which could hit a pothole), on train, on a bus, flying, tripping (oops), etc. And have you ever seen how some people play games? The way the flail their arms around a bit while playing or move the thing left and right in a driving game like that is the controls? With a console they can do that with a controller because it won't be damaged. With a GameBoy they can do that because it is all solid state. If they did that with a PSP and it didn't have the disc caddied... it would be scratch city.
I think they should caddy the PS3 discs. For one thing it would make them harder to pirate. But it would also protect them for the consumer. Caddies may cost more, but it can't be that much more. Just add the extra $1 onto the price of the game and consider it "scratch insurance". Consumers will accept this: witness the success of Zip drives. Those are just HD platters in cartridges.
But I'm with a previous poster (this post's grandparent?). I wouldn't put it past Sony (or MS for that matter) to leave the caddy off just so they can resell the game to people when they mishandle them and get the discs scratched.
Did you play God of War? Yes it was violent and had the little sex minigame thing near the start, but it was a great game. Not only were the controls great making it easy to control Kratos and make him do exactly what you wanted, there was a story.
And the story was not a generic "Bob was wronged, Bob went on a rampage". It's not terribly different from that, but the way it was presented was excelent. You really got involved in the story through the fantastic cut-scenes (which had a very cool art style). Most beat-'em-up games slap on a terribly generic plot and then basically ignore it for the rest of the game. God of War had a very good plot that was integrated very well with the game in terms of story telling.
And why is everyone listening to this guy? All he did was make a great game, that was a blast to play, had a fantastic story, sold very well, and was beloved by critics.
What could the industry possibly learn from him?
In the games as art debate, God of War is one of the titles that, if not art, would be very close to that level.
When watching video, sure, but what about when I want to use my iPod for... I don't know... music? You don't expect me to look at the screen every time I want to change the track do you?
Of course, you post was probably a troll.
But it does make me think of a good point. I love my iPod but as anyone who owns one knows, the thing is a fingerprint magnet. What happens when you are supposed to touch the screen? Good luck keeping it clean then.
Yes. I have a DTiVo and I love the thing. I really dislike that they dropped TiVo, I think they mismanaged the whole thing. It's too bad, I think it (and the HDTV version) were the best TiVos on the market. But since they haven't rushed to add HMO (they seem to be purposely avoiding it) I would be AMAZED if they offered the option I want.
But I don't have much of a choice. I love my TiVo. I adore dual-tuners. My local cable is Comcrud (with picture quality that makes using rabbit-ears look like HDTV). So until they release a true TiVo (they have a partnership, IIRC) that uses all digital channels (avoiding the ugly analog ones) or the new TiVo that supports CableCard comes out (have you seen that? Looks REAL nice to me), I'll fight tooth-and-nail to keep my little DirecTiVo.
Do you like the DirecTV DVR? I've never read any reviews of it.
I saw this somewhere else the other day. The problem is not that they created this version of the language, but what they are calling it. If they called it "C++.Net" all over the place, no one would complain. Even if they called it "C++/CLI" which I think is a little more unwieldy for general use.
But the problem is that MS has taken to calling it.. C++. We already have a C++. If you look at MSDN they have C++.Net code all over the place, but they never call it that. They always call it C++. They make a C++.Net complier, but they just call it C++. From what I've read, they seem to be almost purposely trying to confuse the difference between C++ and C++.Net.
The worry seems to be that if this standard is ratified, MS will continue this practice. One can argue they have done this in the past, trying to confuse J++ and Java (J++ being their "version" of Java). While this all does seem a bit nit-picky, I think it is important.
On the first issue, I think that is pretty well known. The Apple Music Store exists to add value to the iPod, it is not an entity in its self. If they didn't sell iPods, they wouldn't have the music store. But this is all a risk you take. I don't see it as that big a problem, but then again I don't buy music from iTMS even though I own an iPod because I want the physical media. Although, you could always burn your purchased albums to CDs then re-rip them MP3 or AAC-sans-DRM and put them on your new player.
Apple is supposed to be very good about iTMS. And is there anything that says if you sell on iTMS you can't also sell on the other music stores ("Napster", etc.)? I haven't heard of it. And considering what a HUGE portion of the market iTMS has, I would think you would be willing to put up with that limitation.
I don't see anything wrong with what Apple is doing. And from the perspective of an iPod owner, the iTMS is a wonderful thing. I can get just about anything I want on it if I want to. It is integrated so well too.
If you go out and buy a new iPod just because a new iPod comes out, you are either rich, or an idiot. Sorry.
I've got a 3rd gen. It works just great. I'd like the nice clear screen on the 5th gen but I don't need it at all. I'll keep mine until it dies, or they come out with something great (built-in bluetooth or wifi would probably do it). My brother used his 1st gen up until last year when it was stolen. It worked just as well as any other iPod for listening to music.
All that said, at least they are improving their product. So many companies would be content to make a meaningless change every two years or so (and a meaningless one at that) and just rake in the cash. Apple may be raking in the cash, but they are improving their product too. Look at the storage difference between a 1st or 2nd gen and a 5th, along with the screen, battery life, and thickness and tell me they haven't made a substantially better product in many ways.
I don't think this would be a problem if they wanted it not to be. Take the difference between a first generation or second generation iPod and a iPod with Video (aka 5G). The 5G is like half as thick (maybe 1/3). They could easily make the "Video iPod" thicker than a current one, while still having it much thinner than all the competing Portable Media Players. And if they can get 2 hours out of the 5th Gen, imagine what they could get if they doubled or tripled the thickness and used it all for additional battery life.
I'm still a bit dubious over the whole "Video iPod" idea. That said, I can't say that I like the idea of a full touch-screen interface. While it may be nice, it prevents you from using the device without looking at it, unless you buy a remote. I've got a 3rd generation (with the four buttons just below the screen) and it is VERY easy to operate without looking. The newer ones (with the integrated buttons on the wheel, ala the Mini) you can't do that so easily. But at least you can still feel around where the wheel is and which way is "up". When you remove that from the device... you're in trouble.
But I could get stuff off my DirecTiVo onto it I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
If anyone can make a great portable media player, I trust Apple would be the one to do it.
Or we will just get the MacBook, Mac Mini Solo, and a new gizmo that isn't the iPod.
I read a post somewhere (Kotaku, Gizmodo, Joystiq, or somewhere else) that quoted a Sony/IBM official as saying that yeilds on the Cell chips were doing very good now and they got the yields up to the level they are now (whatever that is) MUCH faster than previous new chips. If that's true, then there may not be any shortage problem with the PS3, at least not from the Cell.
There is always the chance that the RAM, GPU, Blu-Ray drive, or something else would end up in short supply.
Yeah, they put that up the day after I tried (although I had suspected as much before hand). People are getting results with large Yagis, the best results with EME arrays.
Really, I don't have the right equipment. Besides the antenna, having multiple radios (so I could tune around looking for a doppler shift) would probably be a BIG help, but I just have my one little HT.
I got up REAL early to listen for Suit Sat last Sunday but didn't hear a thing. I've since heard that they've turn on the ISS's cross-band repeater which boosts the power from under 1/2 Watt to 10 Watts. Still, I don't think I'd be able to pick it up with my equipment. I've got a Yaesu VX-7R and a 18" ducky antenna. If I wasn't so busy right now I'd build a little Yagi and try to use that to pick the thing up.
This is an interesting little article. The most interesting this is that in all this time the flash format is the same. Lucky. I'm not sure that will hold for the next 6 years. CF is popular, but it is wider than ExpressCard 34 (which could be a problem) and it has SD/MiniSD/MicroSD/MS/MS-Duo/Micro-MS/MMC/12 other things biting at it's heals (SD is getting very popular).
I find the difference between the two top Sandisk cards (the normal and the Ultra III) very interesting. I've been meaning to buy a new memory card for my camera (I'd like a bigger one) and knowing that the difference is that little could save me some money.
But that one card's access time is just HORRIDNESS. As the author said, that was bundled for free with a camera, and you do get what you pay for. Wow.
The other reply is right. You get it free because the student does it as course work. You could pay them (I think) but it is not a requirement. The student MUST do a project to prove they know what they are doing to get a degree.
And as the other reply also said, the ability to point to something on your resume and say "I made that" is HUGE compared to "I took generic programming classes A, B, and C."
Now you say you don't want to hire developers without experience. But if you get any say in who works on your project (I don't know if you do if you ask DeVry) you can try to get the best, or ask the teachers for students they know are good because you know it is a challenging project and not a generic "I want a website with a shopping cart" like most senior projects are.
As for the poor engineering, this is why you want good students. But as a senior project, they are not given the description and "let loose". They have to come up with a design and they get feedback from the professors. At my DeVry campus (I don't know about others) you are required to get your database design approved by a database teacher. That alone should be a big help.
I'm not saying it's a perfect solution, but you will help out some students, and get it done for free. If it works great, then great. If it works, good. It can be improved. If it is a mess, it's a mess. But it was free. You don't have much to lose but time. And again the teachers monitor the students progress. I've seen entire teams get "fired" from senior project for screwing up. There is some quality control there.
I agree you'd probably get better results from paying a big-name development house, but can you afford that? Or can you afford to take the risk on getting some college students to do it for you, and getting something that may be great, may need a little polish/TLC thrown it's way by a pro developer, or may need a total rewrite.
One more comment on the free thing: you are basically working as a contractor who gets paid in credits. But if you develop an application for yourself (you come up with the idea and get the project approved) you do get to keep your code and you can sell it after senior project is over. I know of teams who have done that. Who ends up with what rights to the code at the end seems to be something that can be negotiated.
As a CIS student at DeVry, my senior project will be similar. Students can bring in their own project and get it approved, or choose one from a list of projects that have been requested by companies/organizations/individuals and approved by faculty. While it would take a while and may not be perfect (you always run the risk you get a team of slackers), you would get it for free. Depending on complexity, etc it may be a project that is designed to run multiple semesters (one team does it one semester, one finishes it the next). The next semester starts in the start of March (first week or so) because DeVry runs on trimesters.
You may be able to get some very smart students to work on it. The idea of getting to do something with AJAX and such sounds interesting to me.
Even if you don't have a local DeVry (if you are near a big city, you probably do, check their site: DeVry.edu), there are almost certainly similar things at other universities (public and private). Even if you can't get it done as a senior project/self study type thing (which would have faculty oversight to make sure it is done right/good design decisions), you could find some bright college students who would be willing to do it for very little money (compared to hiring professional programmers).
Short of that? There are websites that you can have people do your coding for you. You could try something like that, I suppose.
Re:Put the OS on embedded non-volitile memory alre
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Always on Laptops
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· Score: 1
Yeah, but ROM is slow. You could boot the OS out of the flash, keeping only core files (a few libraries, the kernel, etc). You'd just copy the flash contents to memory (something too expensive back then) and run it there. That would be no different from loading it from disk to memory and running it. But it would be much faster. And since it is only a few OS files, programs would all still be on the C: drive. And if they want to mess with one of those files in the Flash, there would be a copy on the HD as a backup just where the program expected it to be.
Do We Really Need This?
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Always on Laptops
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Do we really need this? It seems rather useless to me. First, so you know, there are pictures of this kind of thing that another comment has linked to.
Now, does that look useless to you or what? I can see my appointments! Wow. My PDA does that now. Or my phone can. Or my watch can. Soon my Toaster will too. And with my PDA I can edit the appointment. With these little screens, you either can't edit it (useless) or it would have to use the disk (must understand filesystem, file format, etc; HDs use battery) or it just saves the changes into memory to be put into the schedule program when you boot it up (that would require battery to keep the memory going). Neither of those seem useful.
But it's on my laptop! So when I want to see an appointment on the road, instead of looking at my PDA or Phone (as I said before), I can pull out my laptop out of it's case and press a button so I can read data off a little 2" screen. Wow. For all that time, I could just use the laptop. My Mac comes out of sleep in about 2 or 3 seconds. I can open the program, look at what I want, and close it back up in under 20. How long would it take me to get details on an appointment with these little screens. Can I even do that? My Mac uses almost no power when in sleep mode (it tells me when it comes out of sleep that it could stay that way for about 10 days). And newer macs have a disk based sleep mode that uses NO power (instead of next-to-no-power).
Sure, it may be useful if you keep your laptop on your desk and you want to be able to glance over at it... but if you do that, leave the laptop plugged in and turned on.
This seems like a solution in search of a problem. People like the little screens on their phones because they can see who is calling. The screen on the laptop doesn't provide that. See if you got new e-mail messages? Nope. It would either have to talk to the e-mail server (waste of battery, complex) or it would have to get the mail program to check (which involves basically running the laptop all the time).
And, after all of this, if you want to act on something you see on the screen by running the program in Windows, you either have to open the lid and wait for it to come out of sleep (can take awhile, from the laptops I've seen around me), or the computer was off and you have to turn it on and wait for a full boot. Genius.
I'm with another post. For that price ($30) you can easily embed 256MB (or maybe even 512 since it doesn't have to bee too small) of Flash on the motherboard and boot the OS kernel and some other stuff out of that. That would cut boot times a ton. That would save power (don't spin up the disk unless you need it). That would make sense.
But adding a little screen that won't give you much value? Don't bother.
Slashdot Mirror
I use iChat, it's great.
And windows already has MSN Messanger (which you can barely turn off) so why is that an "improvement" anyway?
Seems like I've had 8/10 of those for over a year with my Mac. Way to "innovate". As long as you have to buy a whole new computer to run this OS, why not buy a whole new computer and try a better OS than the one you have now. One that has been out for almost a year (10.4). One that isn't a "1.0" like Vista will be.
If you really like MS though, why not wait for Windows Vista "98" when they iron out the kinks. (OS X had 'em too early on).
Comic
"Oh, it costs $3400 a month. And there are no stations."
The article says there are only 12 stations in all of Japan. And they are leasing it to a fuel producing company. This is NOT for normal people yet. The end of the article says that they are making plans to lease them to consumers, but that almost certainly means really rich consumers who want a fun little interesting car that is a toy/curiousity to them. They aren't aiming this at Joe Consumer yet. They aren't aiming it at Joe Consumer's Boss, or even his Boss, or his Boss. They are aiming it at anyone super-wealthy who wants to try it.
I agree it is good PR and will take years to get to consumers (unless some country gets around to mandating Hydrogen soon, like Iceland has been talking about). Let's just hope it's not 10 years.
Mazda has been using rotary engines for years, but only in the RX-8 (isn't that what it stands for? Rotary eXpirament 8?). They are a very interesting idea, and it's too bad we don't see more of them.
I have to wonder if the car has any other interesting features, like a Continuously Variable Transmission. It is probably just a stock RX-8 modified to use the Hydrogen, so it probably has the same kind of transmission.
If you read the article, it says that it can travel only about 60 miles on Hydrogen, but something much bigger (240?) on Gasoline. I guess the storage tank is either small, or not under huge pressure. What ever happened to those "hydrogen pellets" that were announced last year?
Still, this is how we will have to go over to Hydrogen cars. Just like this is how we will have to move to electric cars. You'll have to give them the ability to run on both Gas and Fuel-X until the stations are prevalent enough. The article says there are only 12 government owned Hydrogen stations in Japan (it doesn't mention how many private stations, but it gives the implication that there aren't any).
I wonder if they plan to move into production of these if they don't find any problems (this is a test car, that they are leasing out to a fuel company for $3500 a month). I'd love to know more about it, like how the hydrogen part works. It looks like they burn it (because of a comparison to fuel cells) but I'm not sure.
Quick question too. I mentioned that I think these dual fuel cars are the way to transition to the future. I'm not old enough to remember the switch to unleaded gas here in the US. I know that was federally mandated (which does tend to speed things along), but were any cars ever mass produced that would run on either leaded or unleaded fuel?
I'm with my parent poster. I think you'd have a terrible time trying to find what you are looking for.
BTW: The FireWire solution also allows you to hook up a hard drive to store things on to, because as we all know digital video can be BIG.
The main reason for the PSP caddies are probably so they can be put in a pocket or something like that. They are still open, but they would survive better than a "naked" disc.
I've always been surprised that we haven't been using CD or DVD caddies for video games since the start. But that's just me.
PS: The contest is rigged. You'll never win the bear. *bwahahahaha*
Compare that to the PSP. The PSP is designed to be moved around. They had to caddy the discs otherwise people would have ruined them fast. When playing a PSP you may be walking, in a car (which could hit a pothole), on train, on a bus, flying, tripping (oops), etc. And have you ever seen how some people play games? The way the flail their arms around a bit while playing or move the thing left and right in a driving game like that is the controls? With a console they can do that with a controller because it won't be damaged. With a GameBoy they can do that because it is all solid state. If they did that with a PSP and it didn't have the disc caddied... it would be scratch city.
I think they should caddy the PS3 discs. For one thing it would make them harder to pirate. But it would also protect them for the consumer. Caddies may cost more, but it can't be that much more. Just add the extra $1 onto the price of the game and consider it "scratch insurance". Consumers will accept this: witness the success of Zip drives. Those are just HD platters in cartridges.
But I'm with a previous poster (this post's grandparent?). I wouldn't put it past Sony (or MS for that matter) to leave the caddy off just so they can resell the game to people when they mishandle them and get the discs scratched.
And the story was not a generic "Bob was wronged, Bob went on a rampage". It's not terribly different from that, but the way it was presented was excelent. You really got involved in the story through the fantastic cut-scenes (which had a very cool art style). Most beat-'em-up games slap on a terribly generic plot and then basically ignore it for the rest of the game. God of War had a very good plot that was integrated very well with the game in terms of story telling.
And why is everyone listening to this guy? All he did was make a great game, that was a blast to play, had a fantastic story, sold very well, and was beloved by critics.
What could the industry possibly learn from him?
In the games as art debate, God of War is one of the titles that, if not art, would be very close to that level.
Of course, you post was probably a troll.
But it does make me think of a good point. I love my iPod but as anyone who owns one knows, the thing is a fingerprint magnet. What happens when you are supposed to touch the screen? Good luck keeping it clean then.
But I don't have much of a choice. I love my TiVo. I adore dual-tuners. My local cable is Comcrud (with picture quality that makes using rabbit-ears look like HDTV). So until they release a true TiVo (they have a partnership, IIRC) that uses all digital channels (avoiding the ugly analog ones) or the new TiVo that supports CableCard comes out (have you seen that? Looks REAL nice to me), I'll fight tooth-and-nail to keep my little DirecTiVo.
Do you like the DirecTV DVR? I've never read any reviews of it.
But the problem is that MS has taken to calling it.. C++. We already have a C++. If you look at MSDN they have C++.Net code all over the place, but they never call it that. They always call it C++. They make a C++.Net complier, but they just call it C++. From what I've read, they seem to be almost purposely trying to confuse the difference between C++ and C++.Net.
The worry seems to be that if this standard is ratified, MS will continue this practice. One can argue they have done this in the past, trying to confuse J++ and Java (J++ being their "version" of Java). While this all does seem a bit nit-picky, I think it is important.
Apple is supposed to be very good about iTMS. And is there anything that says if you sell on iTMS you can't also sell on the other music stores ("Napster", etc.)? I haven't heard of it. And considering what a HUGE portion of the market iTMS has, I would think you would be willing to put up with that limitation.
I don't see anything wrong with what Apple is doing. And from the perspective of an iPod owner, the iTMS is a wonderful thing. I can get just about anything I want on it if I want to. It is integrated so well too.
I've got a 3rd gen. It works just great. I'd like the nice clear screen on the 5th gen but I don't need it at all. I'll keep mine until it dies, or they come out with something great (built-in bluetooth or wifi would probably do it). My brother used his 1st gen up until last year when it was stolen. It worked just as well as any other iPod for listening to music.
All that said, at least they are improving their product. So many companies would be content to make a meaningless change every two years or so (and a meaningless one at that) and just rake in the cash. Apple may be raking in the cash, but they are improving their product too. Look at the storage difference between a 1st or 2nd gen and a 5th, along with the screen, battery life, and thickness and tell me they haven't made a substantially better product in many ways.
I don't think this would be a problem if they wanted it not to be. Take the difference between a first generation or second generation iPod and a iPod with Video (aka 5G). The 5G is like half as thick (maybe 1/3). They could easily make the "Video iPod" thicker than a current one, while still having it much thinner than all the competing Portable Media Players. And if they can get 2 hours out of the 5th Gen, imagine what they could get if they doubled or tripled the thickness and used it all for additional battery life.
But I could get stuff off my DirecTiVo onto it I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
If anyone can make a great portable media player, I trust Apple would be the one to do it.
Or we will just get the MacBook, Mac Mini Solo, and a new gizmo that isn't the iPod.
Courtasy of the always great LWN. They are from September of last year.
There is always the chance that the RAM, GPU, Blu-Ray drive, or something else would end up in short supply.
Really, I don't have the right equipment. Besides the antenna, having multiple radios (so I could tune around looking for a doppler shift) would probably be a BIG help, but I just have my one little HT.
--KC0QBP
I find the difference between the two top Sandisk cards (the normal and the Ultra III) very interesting. I've been meaning to buy a new memory card for my camera (I'd like a bigger one) and knowing that the difference is that little could save me some money.
But that one card's access time is just HORRIDNESS. As the author said, that was bundled for free with a camera, and you do get what you pay for. Wow.
And as the other reply also said, the ability to point to something on your resume and say "I made that" is HUGE compared to "I took generic programming classes A, B, and C."
Now you say you don't want to hire developers without experience. But if you get any say in who works on your project (I don't know if you do if you ask DeVry) you can try to get the best, or ask the teachers for students they know are good because you know it is a challenging project and not a generic "I want a website with a shopping cart" like most senior projects are.
As for the poor engineering, this is why you want good students. But as a senior project, they are not given the description and "let loose". They have to come up with a design and they get feedback from the professors. At my DeVry campus (I don't know about others) you are required to get your database design approved by a database teacher. That alone should be a big help.
I'm not saying it's a perfect solution, but you will help out some students, and get it done for free. If it works great, then great. If it works, good. It can be improved. If it is a mess, it's a mess. But it was free. You don't have much to lose but time. And again the teachers monitor the students progress. I've seen entire teams get "fired" from senior project for screwing up. There is some quality control there.
I agree you'd probably get better results from paying a big-name development house, but can you afford that? Or can you afford to take the risk on getting some college students to do it for you, and getting something that may be great, may need a little polish/TLC thrown it's way by a pro developer, or may need a total rewrite.
One more comment on the free thing: you are basically working as a contractor who gets paid in credits. But if you develop an application for yourself (you come up with the idea and get the project approved) you do get to keep your code and you can sell it after senior project is over. I know of teams who have done that. Who ends up with what rights to the code at the end seems to be something that can be negotiated.
You may be able to get some very smart students to work on it. The idea of getting to do something with AJAX and such sounds interesting to me.
Even if you don't have a local DeVry (if you are near a big city, you probably do, check their site: DeVry.edu), there are almost certainly similar things at other universities (public and private). Even if you can't get it done as a senior project/self study type thing (which would have faculty oversight to make sure it is done right/good design decisions), you could find some bright college students who would be willing to do it for very little money (compared to hiring professional programmers).
Short of that? There are websites that you can have people do your coding for you. You could try something like that, I suppose.
Yeah, but ROM is slow. You could boot the OS out of the flash, keeping only core files (a few libraries, the kernel, etc). You'd just copy the flash contents to memory (something too expensive back then) and run it there. That would be no different from loading it from disk to memory and running it. But it would be much faster. And since it is only a few OS files, programs would all still be on the C: drive. And if they want to mess with one of those files in the Flash, there would be a copy on the HD as a backup just where the program expected it to be.
Now, does that look useless to you or what? I can see my appointments! Wow. My PDA does that now. Or my phone can. Or my watch can. Soon my Toaster will too. And with my PDA I can edit the appointment. With these little screens, you either can't edit it (useless) or it would have to use the disk (must understand filesystem, file format, etc; HDs use battery) or it just saves the changes into memory to be put into the schedule program when you boot it up (that would require battery to keep the memory going). Neither of those seem useful.
But it's on my laptop! So when I want to see an appointment on the road, instead of looking at my PDA or Phone (as I said before), I can pull out my laptop out of it's case and press a button so I can read data off a little 2" screen. Wow. For all that time, I could just use the laptop. My Mac comes out of sleep in about 2 or 3 seconds. I can open the program, look at what I want, and close it back up in under 20. How long would it take me to get details on an appointment with these little screens. Can I even do that? My Mac uses almost no power when in sleep mode (it tells me when it comes out of sleep that it could stay that way for about 10 days). And newer macs have a disk based sleep mode that uses NO power (instead of next-to-no-power).
Sure, it may be useful if you keep your laptop on your desk and you want to be able to glance over at it... but if you do that, leave the laptop plugged in and turned on.
This seems like a solution in search of a problem. People like the little screens on their phones because they can see who is calling. The screen on the laptop doesn't provide that. See if you got new e-mail messages? Nope. It would either have to talk to the e-mail server (waste of battery, complex) or it would have to get the mail program to check (which involves basically running the laptop all the time).
And, after all of this, if you want to act on something you see on the screen by running the program in Windows, you either have to open the lid and wait for it to come out of sleep (can take awhile, from the laptops I've seen around me), or the computer was off and you have to turn it on and wait for a full boot. Genius.
I'm with another post. For that price ($30) you can easily embed 256MB (or maybe even 512 since it doesn't have to bee too small) of Flash on the motherboard and boot the OS kernel and some other stuff out of that. That would cut boot times a ton. That would save power (don't spin up the disk unless you need it). That would make sense.
But adding a little screen that won't give you much value? Don't bother.