Why did the parent modded as troll? It's quite true. For example, look at The Computer Language Shootout. Sun's JVM is much faster than Perl in almost every benchmark except for startup times. Perl's memory consumption is somewhere better, but not even close to the same degree that Java is faster.
Those benchmarks are based on Java 1.5, too. 1.6 is even faster.
Which do you want more of? Free and open source software? or commercial, proprietary software?
Eh, I don't really care, as long as it works well. Open source software is nice when all other things are equal, since it doesn't cost me anything and I could potentially hack at it myself, but that's secondary compared to the software's functionality. I have no problem with paying for a good product.
But how many people are going to be willing (or able) to drop $500 (or even $600) for this thing?
I'd be one of the first in line to buy a $500 one -- I'd love to have a phone, PDA, and music player that has an interface as slick as the iPhone's looks to be. I abhor the tiny little keyboards that come on "smart phones," and the average cell phone interface is even worse. The iPhone looks to me like I'll be able to use it without cramping my hand.
On the other hand, the fact that I'd have to buy a contract with Cingular is a deal-breaker. More per month than other providers for worse service? No thanks. I have a feeling that this will hurt Apple; their target is clearly tech-savvy people with money to spend, but they chose one of the lowest-ranked providers nationally. Maybe in a few years, when I can get service with somebody else...
Battery life: "A lot of these phones have low battery life. We've managed to get 5 hours of battery of talk time, video, and browsing. 16 hours of audio playback."
"5 hours of battery of talk time". There you go. No idea what the standby time will be like, or if that's a realistic estimate, but considering that 2 to 3 hours of realistic talk time is reasonable for a "normal" cell phone...
What matters in life are people, and it's so much easier to connect with people in Europe than it is in these conservative bedrocks where people think the neighbours are too close if they can see their house.
So in other words, you've never actually been to any of the big cities in Texas. Come back and try again when you have something other than hyperbole.
In some parts of N. America (yes, Texas), if you don't conform to the hegemony then you better damn well keep quiet about it lest you might offend somebody.
That's true in some places of any country. In practice, however, you'll find that all big cities have quite a bit of diversity in them.
Yes, some of the most awesome and amazing people I know are Americans, and my life would be immensely impoverished without them. It's too bad about where they live, and the endless, mindlessly dull, condescending and jingoistic nob-ends around them.
Ah, I see. It's not Texas that's boring, but all of America. Your trolling has exceeded the limits of believability.
it's just so a superficial air
Well, if we're going to take cheap shots at people who don't meticulously comb over their grammar when posting to Slashdot...
AUSTIN Inspiration for Slacker, epicenter of the first EFF battle, home to Dell, Whole Foods, and South by Southwest. Not to mention host to the most dorkbot attendees in the country. Only downside: It's surrounded by Texas.
I'm going to have to chime in with the other people who are disagreeing. While it sure is popular to hate on Texas, I'd be willing to be that the vast majority of people who do so have never actually lived here. We've got beautiful landscapes, a low cost-of-living, plenty of space, and three of the top ten largest cities in the US. Yes, the majority of people here consider themselves Republicans, but if you're willing to get past somebody's political views, there are also lots of friendly people. About the only thing I don't like is that the summers get so dang hot.. but the mild winters (unless you live up in the panhandle) make up for it.
A sign that some Slashdotters are very very sad: the "haha" tag. What exactly is funny here? How poor said bloggers skew the world around them and their inept behavior?
No, the funny thing is that Microsoft's marketing attempt backfired on them. People don't want the laptops they were given for free, and they using them to fund the EFF, which is perceived as an anti-Microsoft organization. Does it make sense now?
The US terror rate since (and before) 911 death toll was 3,300 TOTAL.
What the hell is a "terror rate"? Besides that -- the goal of terrorism isn't to kill, it's to terrorize. You're saying the equivalent of something like "We shouldn't worry about forest fires because almost no forest fires were caused due to 9/11."
We maintained our constitution for over 200 years with the number of murders growing the whole time, and we didn't take that as a reason to torch our own constitution.
What the fuck does that mean? The number of murders per year climbs over time (but not necessarily constantly; sometimes it drops, too) and that means we should torch the constitution? Could you please insert some logic in there?
Besides that -- the number of people in the US has been constantly growing. Guess what: when you have more people, there are going to be more murders. On top of that, technology has made it easier to kill over time. It's also made it easier to discover murders & murderers, so naturally, the number of reports will climb. Can you show me a single country that's had such a massive growth in population and technology in the US that hasn't had their number of murders per year climb?
In the past, "innovative" controllers have been released for Nintendo consoles (Power Glove, U-Force, Power Pad, ROB the robot), but none of those ever had more than a couple of games at most that were really designed for the controller, because releasing it as a new controller for an existing system made it a gimmick.
Nintendo has always innovated with their controllers. You're only listing the ones that were failures. Oh, and they didn't make the Power Glove, that was a third-party accessory. The NES had the crosspad; the SNES had a diamond-shaped set of buttons and shoulder buttons; the N64 had an analog stick in addition to a crosspad, and an expansion slot for rumble/memory cards; and the Gamecube controller had analog shoulder buttons. Also, relatively late in the GC's life, they released the Wavebird, which was widely hailed as the first first-party wireless controller that didn't suck (largely because it used RF rather than infrared). Don't forget the entire concept of the DS, if you want to include handhelds.
Sure, the expansion slot in the N64 controller didn't catch on -- but how common are those other features now? All of these innovations have been copied (to various degrees of success) by other console manufacturers; the reason Nintendo waited until so late into Wii development to announce its controller was so that the other console manufacturers couldn't copy it without making it look like a last-minute hack (hi, Sony).
I suppose this means that there could be a way to get Virtual Console games for free or to leach them from someone else downloading them.
I highly doubt that knowing how the protocol works will enable people to get Virtual Console games for free. Everybody knows how HTTPS works, but you don't see people getting things for free from online stores all over the world. I suppose, in theory, it might be possible for somebody to sniff the connection of a download in progress, intercept the binary game data, and get it over to their Wii -- but the number of people who are capable of doing that, let alone would do it, is insignificant compared to the rest of the market.
You appear to be under the misconception that the Wii is produced by Microsoft. It's not. It was created by Nintendo. Unlike Microsoft, they're not obsessed with encrypting everything under the sun. Why would they care if somebody figures out their network protocol?
Re:Why replace something that works well (PS/2)?
on
Leopard Vs. Vista
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· Score: 2, Insightful
There are a ton of good reasons for ditching PS/2. First, most computers have several USB ports, and you can plug any USB device into any of them; meanwhile, most only have two PS/2 ports, and thanks to bonehead motherboard manufacturers, you can only plug a keyboard into one of them. If that port malfunctions, you're screwed. Hotplugging support is also an issue; you never know when hotplugging a PS/2 keyboard into a powered motherboard will fry it. That's not a problem with USB keyboards. The connector itself is also much simpler physically, and so it's less likely to break. The only reason not to use USB connectors for keyboards is just because that's what some people are used to using -- but really, who cares if your old keyboards won't plug into a new motherboard? Go pick up a cheap one for $5.
The WLAN vs ethernet comparison is completely different, as ethernet actually has technical advantages. EFI vs BIOS, on the other hand, is another issue where EFI is simply better. I'll let you do your own research on that.
"Think about how stupid the average (American, Person, Senator, ___) is. By definition, half of them are more stupid than that."
That is not necessarily true, actually. It would be true if you said "mean" instead of "average" and "equally or more stupid than" instead of "more stupid than." However it's entirely possible for the average value of a set to not fall at the halfway mark. For example, take these values: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 100000
The average value is about 11,115. That means that only one of those is above average; 88.9% of them are below average.
The point is, it's entirely possible for a majority of people to be above or below average intelligence, and there's no way of knowing unless we can quantify everybody's intelligence.
I wasn't "bitching" about anything, I was answering the previous poster's question. Perhaps you should take a step back from the computer and think about why you're letting yourself get worked up over a few words on the internet.
Because there is nothing BSD-specific about KDE. It also runs on Linux, OS X, and probably some other operating systems as well. It makes as much sense to post a KDE article in BSD as it would to post an article about Firefox.
Yah, Nintendo fanboys will boast that they havn't played a console in years even though they have a gamecube and 12 different mario games for it
Why would any console fanboy boast that they haven't played a console in years? That makes no sense at all.
But anyone saying they will buy a Wii without even playing one first is just as much of a sheep and fanboy as a final fantasy droolboy.
Except that many people have played Wiis at demos and verified that the controller works wonderfully. The only people who are calling it a "gimmick" nowadays are anti-fanboys. Besides that, there are plenty of people who would buy a Wii for the Virtual Console, regardless of whether the Wii games are any good.
Pick up an xbox original and mod it (which is actually not that difficult), install xbox media center, and not only play nes, snes, n64, tg16, genesis, MAME, etc games for free
If you don't like breaking multiple laws, sure. All of those ROMs aren't public domain, you know, and some of us prefer being in the legal when possible. You may say modding is "not that difficult," but a lot of people would argue that any difficulty is to much, especially when you can just plug in a Wii and go, legally.
Alot of the xbox games have 480p 16:9 if you have an HDTV
There are also a lot of Gamecube and PS2 games that support 16:9 and/or 480p. Your point?
seriously, did anyone play through more than 25 hours of dragon warrior VIII or kingdom hearts 2 without wanting to rip their eyeballs out?
Yes. What's the point of this statement, other than to troll? Should I flame all of the genres featured prominently on the Xbox that I don't enjoy, and presume that nobody else enjoys them, as well?
Otherwise most games on the ps2 are available on the xbox, and the xbox is a bit more mod friendly (with xbox media center + emulators, etc).
You could also argue that most of the Xbox's good games are available for the PC, not to mention all the emulators you can dream of.
I think what may happen is alot of the people who skipped out on the gamecube may just get a Wii to play gamecube games they missed out on.
Have you read any previous Slashdot discussions on the Wii? Almost nobody is buying a Wii because they want to play the Gamecube games they missed out on. Anybody who wants that can go pick up a Gamecube right now for $80 or less.
Why should the government tell me which choices are "wrong"? How would you feel if the government ruled that alchoholic beverages are illegal because they cause people to behave irresponsibly and can cause alcohol poisoning?
I see far more "cool" beer commercials than I do Pepsi commercials, coincidentally.
I never borrow anything and always pay off my credit cards in full, and I can't say that I've ever been refused at a store.. nor have I ever been refused anything, in fact, due to my credit score. What are you talking about?
Re:I don't care for these commercials
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New "Get a Mac" TV ads
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· Score: 4, Insightful
For instance, Windows runs fine out of the box, there's virtually no advanced configuration after you've installed it.
You're not being literal enough. They're talking about hardware, not software. With your typical Dell PC, after you get it out of the box, you've got to set up the tower and the monitor, then connect them, then also plug in your mouse, keyboard, and speakers. The monitor, tower, and speakers will also all require their own power. On the other hand, all of the hardware in an iMac is contained in a single unit. You plug the power into the unit, then plug in your keyboard and mouse. The keyboard and mouse will also plug into any USB port -- if you have a PC with a PS/2 keyboard and mouse, you have to be careful not to plug them in wrong, and then you also have to figure out which one of those little jacks your speakers should plug in to.
Yes, I'm sure that's not a big deal to you, but you have to realize that all of that is pretty daunting to anybody who's never owned a computer before (or never set up their own, at least).
No, actually, I don't get your point. Pulling hypothetical numbers out of your ass doesn't prove anything.
What if I were to tell you that 80% of programmers know what portable code is and they write it, 15% are too lazy to write portable code, and 5% don't know how to write portable code? Guess what, those numbers are just as likely to be true as yours are.
I'm just going to chip in that if you like text-based adventure games, it is completely worth buying a DS just for Phoenix Wright. It's a fantastic game. It doesn't hurt that Capcom is working on a translation of the sequel!
Slashdot Mirror
Why did the parent modded as troll? It's quite true. For example, look at The Computer Language Shootout. Sun's JVM is much faster than Perl in almost every benchmark except for startup times. Perl's memory consumption is somewhere better, but not even close to the same degree that Java is faster.
Those benchmarks are based on Java 1.5, too. 1.6 is even faster.
Which do you want more of? Free and open source software? or commercial, proprietary software?
Eh, I don't really care, as long as it works well. Open source software is nice when all other things are equal, since it doesn't cost me anything and I could potentially hack at it myself, but that's secondary compared to the software's functionality. I have no problem with paying for a good product.
But how many people are going to be willing (or able) to drop $500 (or even $600) for this thing?
I'd be one of the first in line to buy a $500 one -- I'd love to have a phone, PDA, and music player that has an interface as slick as the iPhone's looks to be. I abhor the tiny little keyboards that come on "smart phones," and the average cell phone interface is even worse. The iPhone looks to me like I'll be able to use it without cramping my hand.
On the other hand, the fact that I'd have to buy a contract with Cingular is a deal-breaker. More per month than other providers for worse service? No thanks. I have a feeling that this will hurt Apple; their target is clearly tech-savvy people with money to spend, but they chose one of the lowest-ranked providers nationally. Maybe in a few years, when I can get service with somebody else...
Are you sure you read the article? I quote:
Battery life: "A lot of these phones have low battery life. We've managed to get 5 hours of battery of talk time, video, and browsing. 16 hours of audio playback."
"5 hours of battery of talk time". There you go. No idea what the standby time will be like, or if that's a realistic estimate, but considering that 2 to 3 hours of realistic talk time is reasonable for a "normal" cell phone...
Actually, the name is derived from the Caddoan word "tejas," which means "friends." Have a nice day!
What matters in life are people, and it's so much easier to connect with people in Europe than it is in these conservative bedrocks where people think the neighbours are too close if they can see their house.
So in other words, you've never actually been to any of the big cities in Texas. Come back and try again when you have something other than hyperbole.
In some parts of N. America (yes, Texas), if you don't conform to the hegemony then you better damn well keep quiet about it lest you might offend somebody.
That's true in some places of any country. In practice, however, you'll find that all big cities have quite a bit of diversity in them.
Yes, some of the most awesome and amazing people I know are Americans, and my life would be immensely impoverished without them. It's too bad about where they live, and the endless, mindlessly dull, condescending and jingoistic nob-ends around them.
Ah, I see. It's not Texas that's boring, but all of America. Your trolling has exceeded the limits of believability.
it's just so a superficial air
Well, if we're going to take cheap shots at people who don't meticulously comb over their grammar when posting to Slashdot...
AUSTIN
Inspiration for Slacker, epicenter of the first EFF battle, home to Dell, Whole Foods, and South by Southwest. Not to mention host to the most dorkbot attendees in the country. Only downside: It's surrounded by Texas.
I'm going to have to chime in with the other people who are disagreeing. While it sure is popular to hate on Texas, I'd be willing to be that the vast majority of people who do so have never actually lived here. We've got beautiful landscapes, a low cost-of-living, plenty of space, and three of the top ten largest cities in the US. Yes, the majority of people here consider themselves Republicans, but if you're willing to get past somebody's political views, there are also lots of friendly people. About the only thing I don't like is that the summers get so dang hot.. but the mild winters (unless you live up in the panhandle) make up for it.
A sign that some Slashdotters are very very sad: the "haha" tag. What exactly is funny here? How poor said bloggers skew the world around them and their inept behavior?
No, the funny thing is that Microsoft's marketing attempt backfired on them. People don't want the laptops they were given for free, and they using them to fund the EFF, which is perceived as an anti-Microsoft organization. Does it make sense now?
The US terror rate since (and before) 911 death toll was 3,300 TOTAL.
What the hell is a "terror rate"? Besides that -- the goal of terrorism isn't to kill, it's to terrorize. You're saying the equivalent of something like "We shouldn't worry about forest fires because almost no forest fires were caused due to 9/11."
We maintained our constitution for over 200 years with the number of murders growing the whole time, and we didn't take that as a reason to torch our own constitution.
What the fuck does that mean? The number of murders per year climbs over time (but not necessarily constantly; sometimes it drops, too) and that means we should torch the constitution? Could you please insert some logic in there?
Besides that -- the number of people in the US has been constantly growing. Guess what: when you have more people, there are going to be more murders. On top of that, technology has made it easier to kill over time. It's also made it easier to discover murders & murderers, so naturally, the number of reports will climb. Can you show me a single country that's had such a massive growth in population and technology in the US that hasn't had their number of murders per year climb?
In the past, "innovative" controllers have been released for Nintendo consoles (Power Glove, U-Force, Power Pad, ROB the robot), but none of those ever had more than a couple of games at most that were really designed for the controller, because releasing it as a new controller for an existing system made it a gimmick.
Nintendo has always innovated with their controllers. You're only listing the ones that were failures. Oh, and they didn't make the Power Glove, that was a third-party accessory. The NES had the crosspad; the SNES had a diamond-shaped set of buttons and shoulder buttons; the N64 had an analog stick in addition to a crosspad, and an expansion slot for rumble/memory cards; and the Gamecube controller had analog shoulder buttons. Also, relatively late in the GC's life, they released the Wavebird, which was widely hailed as the first first-party wireless controller that didn't suck (largely because it used RF rather than infrared). Don't forget the entire concept of the DS, if you want to include handhelds.
Sure, the expansion slot in the N64 controller didn't catch on -- but how common are those other features now? All of these innovations have been copied (to various degrees of success) by other console manufacturers; the reason Nintendo waited until so late into Wii development to announce its controller was so that the other console manufacturers couldn't copy it without making it look like a last-minute hack (hi, Sony).
I suppose this means that there could be a way to get Virtual Console games for free or to leach them from someone else downloading them.
I highly doubt that knowing how the protocol works will enable people to get Virtual Console games for free. Everybody knows how HTTPS works, but you don't see people getting things for free from online stores all over the world. I suppose, in theory, it might be possible for somebody to sniff the connection of a download in progress, intercept the binary game data, and get it over to their Wii -- but the number of people who are capable of doing that, let alone would do it, is insignificant compared to the rest of the market.
You appear to be under the misconception that the Wii is produced by Microsoft. It's not. It was created by Nintendo. Unlike Microsoft, they're not obsessed with encrypting everything under the sun. Why would they care if somebody figures out their network protocol?
There are a ton of good reasons for ditching PS/2. First, most computers have several USB ports, and you can plug any USB device into any of them; meanwhile, most only have two PS/2 ports, and thanks to bonehead motherboard manufacturers, you can only plug a keyboard into one of them. If that port malfunctions, you're screwed. Hotplugging support is also an issue; you never know when hotplugging a PS/2 keyboard into a powered motherboard will fry it. That's not a problem with USB keyboards. The connector itself is also much simpler physically, and so it's less likely to break. The only reason not to use USB connectors for keyboards is just because that's what some people are used to using -- but really, who cares if your old keyboards won't plug into a new motherboard? Go pick up a cheap one for $5.
The WLAN vs ethernet comparison is completely different, as ethernet actually has technical advantages. EFI vs BIOS, on the other hand, is another issue where EFI is simply better. I'll let you do your own research on that.
"Think about how stupid the average (American, Person, Senator, ___) is. By definition, half of them are more stupid than that."
That is not necessarily true, actually. It would be true if you said "mean" instead of "average" and "equally or more stupid than" instead of "more stupid than." However it's entirely possible for the average value of a set to not fall at the halfway mark. For example, take these values:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 100000
The average value is about 11,115. That means that only one of those is above average; 88.9% of them are below average.
The point is, it's entirely possible for a majority of people to be above or below average intelligence, and there's no way of knowing unless we can quantify everybody's intelligence.
I wasn't "bitching" about anything, I was answering the previous poster's question. Perhaps you should take a step back from the computer and think about why you're letting yourself get worked up over a few words on the internet.
Because there is nothing BSD-specific about KDE. It also runs on Linux, OS X, and probably some other operating systems as well. It makes as much sense to post a KDE article in BSD as it would to post an article about Firefox.
Oh, there are already plenty of humans who can tolerate cats in the environment. We just need to work on getting rid of the ones who can't. ;-)
Yah, Nintendo fanboys will boast that they havn't played a console in years even though they have a gamecube and 12 different mario games for it
Why would any console fanboy boast that they haven't played a console in years? That makes no sense at all.
But anyone saying they will buy a Wii without even playing one first is just as much of a sheep and fanboy as a final fantasy droolboy.
Except that many people have played Wiis at demos and verified that the controller works wonderfully. The only people who are calling it a "gimmick" nowadays are anti-fanboys. Besides that, there are plenty of people who would buy a Wii for the Virtual Console, regardless of whether the Wii games are any good.
Pick up an xbox original and mod it (which is actually not that difficult), install xbox media center, and not only play nes, snes, n64, tg16, genesis, MAME, etc games for free
If you don't like breaking multiple laws, sure. All of those ROMs aren't public domain, you know, and some of us prefer being in the legal when possible. You may say modding is "not that difficult," but a lot of people would argue that any difficulty is to much, especially when you can just plug in a Wii and go, legally.
Alot of the xbox games have 480p 16:9 if you have an HDTV
There are also a lot of Gamecube and PS2 games that support 16:9 and/or 480p. Your point?
seriously, did anyone play through more than 25 hours of dragon warrior VIII or kingdom hearts 2 without wanting to rip their eyeballs out?
Yes. What's the point of this statement, other than to troll? Should I flame all of the genres featured prominently on the Xbox that I don't enjoy, and presume that nobody else enjoys them, as well?
Otherwise most games on the ps2 are available on the xbox, and the xbox is a bit more mod friendly (with xbox media center + emulators, etc).
You could also argue that most of the Xbox's good games are available for the PC, not to mention all the emulators you can dream of.
I think what may happen is alot of the people who skipped out on the gamecube may just get a Wii to play gamecube games they missed out on.
Have you read any previous Slashdot discussions on the Wii? Almost nobody is buying a Wii because they want to play the Gamecube games they missed out on. Anybody who wants that can go pick up a Gamecube right now for $80 or less.
I think it's more likely that most /. readers took "Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Keyboard)" at first level.
And, to be more nitpicky, the "Ambidexterity" feat doesn't exist any more in 3.5e. It's been combined with Two-Weapon Fighting.
Why should the government tell me which choices are "wrong"? How would you feel if the government ruled that alchoholic beverages are illegal because they cause people to behave irresponsibly and can cause alcohol poisoning?
I see far more "cool" beer commercials than I do Pepsi commercials, coincidentally.
I never borrow anything and always pay off my credit cards in full, and I can't say that I've ever been refused at a store.. nor have I ever been refused anything, in fact, due to my credit score. What are you talking about?
For instance, Windows runs fine out of the box, there's virtually no advanced configuration after you've installed it.
You're not being literal enough. They're talking about hardware, not software. With your typical Dell PC, after you get it out of the box, you've got to set up the tower and the monitor, then connect them, then also plug in your mouse, keyboard, and speakers. The monitor, tower, and speakers will also all require their own power. On the other hand, all of the hardware in an iMac is contained in a single unit. You plug the power into the unit, then plug in your keyboard and mouse. The keyboard and mouse will also plug into any USB port -- if you have a PC with a PS/2 keyboard and mouse, you have to be careful not to plug them in wrong, and then you also have to figure out which one of those little jacks your speakers should plug in to.
Yes, I'm sure that's not a big deal to you, but you have to realize that all of that is pretty daunting to anybody who's never owned a computer before (or never set up their own, at least).
Linux/Bliss.
Now you've heard of one. There are more out there, too, if you bother to look.
No, actually, I don't get your point. Pulling hypothetical numbers out of your ass doesn't prove anything.
What if I were to tell you that 80% of programmers know what portable code is and they write it, 15% are too lazy to write portable code, and 5% don't know how to write portable code? Guess what, those numbers are just as likely to be true as yours are.
I'm just going to chip in that if you like text-based adventure games, it is completely worth buying a DS just for Phoenix Wright. It's a fantastic game. It doesn't hurt that Capcom is working on a translation of the sequel!