They're not even quite Sega Megadrive/Genesis power, and frankly the games didn't look any more educational than playing Sonic either, but the V-Tech's stick looked rather attractive to hotwire it for use on a real console, since my son keeps trying to play on my Soul Calibur 2 stick (no, I don't let him watch SC2, but I use it for Ikaruga).
Then I tried one - it's a horrible soggy mess. Sure it's built to cope with kids, but I'd rather get him a cheap proper stick to use when he's old enough than one of these.
You've clearly not looked at Lego (there is no S) recently. My son had the Baby Lego range from 6 months, and there was no way he was going to get a block an inch a side down his throat.
He's getting Quatro for Christmas (he'll be 15 months then), then moving up to Duplo, and won't get the 'real' lego bricks until he's about 4 or so. They've really got the toddler market sorted now.
Generally, you're almost certainly correct. I do know there are a number of film DVDs where the sub track goes down even lower, however. Not that there's anything particularly interesting down there, but try the opening Earth-explosion in Titan A.E. for a rather noisy example - they've got bass rumble all the way down.
You could always go in via Music > Albums and avoid the Artist tree completely, but then you'd get a fairly big old list. Personally, I want to see all the artists I've got on my iPod when I look at the list, because I've got a lot of singles on there too. But I do understand that it's just personal preference, and you can't please everyone without making things rather more complex.
Though the more I think about it, a tickbox in preferences to seperate Compilations out into a seperate section (like Podcasts already are) might be a really useful thing. The iTunes Music Library on your hard-drive already does this, so it can't be too complicated for them to implement.
In this particular case the easiest way is to make a list of Genre = dance or Genre = hiphop, and then in the big ANDed one have playlist = your 1st list.
It's a bit of a pain, but smart playlists don't take up much room and obviously update themselves, so it really isn't much of one. I use them regularly too; mainly with an additional clause of playlist = Songs, where my Songs playlist is set up to avoid all my podcasts, audiobooks, iTrip channels, classical works and film scores. Most of the time you don't want those in, so this makes life easier.
Actually, there's a metric shitload of technology involved in Sin City. Not only turning all the footage that they shot in colour into monochrome (which is relatively simple), but a lot of the sets were created 100% digitally, and the actors shot on green-screen.
It's worse than that. GTA London is an expansion, rather than a full game, but the proper boxed copy of London I have doesn't work with the downloadable GTA, and the proper boxed GTA doesn't run on Windows XP, which is why I run the download.
You may have RTFM'd, but they do mention that they're dealing with quantities of data that won't fit on a DVDR. Many hospitals don't have giant fat broadband links to habitually transfer that kind of data with them either. So they're mainly using the iPod as a really convenient 40Gb-60Gb portable hard drive that travels with the patient or doctor because a bunch of them from a publicity-hungry Apple (who probably give them a discount) is a lot cheaper than installing that fat hospital network.
The files on the iPod just exist in a hidden folder. If you're not the kind of weirdo (and/or Mac owner) whose file navigation program of choice doesn't show hidden files and folders you'll get them easily enough.
As for putting files onto the iPod for playing, it's because the device won't recognise a music file until the internal database knows about it. There are some third-party tools for doing that too, but you're right that you can't just drag and drop. It's a hangover of the fact that Apple were fairly late in going to smaller flash-based devices, and so still regard scanning the whole filesystem as a nasty waste of disk activity when you can keep it all in a database that lets you slice the data by artist, title, album or playlist.
If that's not what you want to do, then certainly I'd recommend staying with the competition. Personally, I've only once hit the situation where I've got an MP3 sitting on my iPod that the database doesn't yet know about, but I really wanted to listen to it right away.
Blame the decision to make "+1, Funny" not award Karma any more. The post probably deserves one of those, but if it gets a couple, then gets marked back down with even one "-1, Overrated" then the poster actually ends up worse off than they started. So many people are awarding Informative, Insightful and all the other innapropriate positive moderations in less-than-great attempt to work around it.
I'm not sure I agree with the idea, but I can understand why they feel that way.
There _is_ a lot more money around at Christmas, though. Last year, the top 10 games in the December chart ALL outsold the number one from June.
Many kids can't afford £40/$50 for a new game themselves, so only get them as presents. Many of us adults get bought games as presents too, because it's something that we can easily say "I'd quite like such-and-such" to people when they ask what to get you.
So yes, it's a lot easier to get your game noticed in the summer. But if you're one of the big titles, you're much better off going for the megabucks floating around in the winter.
Ever since/. broke the mod system by not awarding karma for a +1, Funny, but still removing one for a -1, Overrated, many and varied people mark comedy (and hey, I thought it was still funny, even if you're right that it's been done before) with other marks.
So no, it isn't particularly insightful, but at least this way the poor guy hasn't lost out because someone voted him 'Flamebait' for something so blatently tongue-in-cheek.
No, I didn't make it up. I trudge through the "right-click on the System Tray icon, select 'safely remove hardware', get the pop-up, choose which device I wish to detach, click close, confirm that I really wanted to do so, close the pop-up, usually with a several second wait at each stage" rite on a regular basis on both my home and work XP machines.
I've only just unplugged twice, however - the second time I lost data, and both times I got "helpful" admonishments from XP. But then, this is still the company that decided it was a good idea for Windows to tell you off for not shutting down properly every time the box bluescreened. So I do things the Microsoft way, even though it's annoying.
Really? I distinctly remember playing both the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP in shops before their release dates here in the UK. This seems to be just a new thing in the US.
Re:lousy photo storage, so-so MP3 player
on
Video iPod Screen Test
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Not if you don't want XP to spend the next five minutes whining at you for not wading through three different popup menus for the "Safely Remove Harware" wizard. Clicking Eject in iTunes is lovely in comparison.
Optical digital output actually built into the iPod strikes me as an enormous waste of space, but if they could supplement the analogue line-out on the back of the Dock with an optical one it would be very nice indeed. If I need an optical output, it's to feed a hi-fi that's capable of exploiting the difference in sound quality between the two, which probably means it's both big and stationary enough to make the Dock the ideal place.
you'll see that Apple themselves countered complaints that their iPod sales were underwhelming:
Apple responded that Mini shipments were wound down prior to the Nano launch, that overall iPod sales came in as expected, that it couldn't meet Nano demand, and that the company would be launching new products in the music segment in time for the holiday season.
That last bit definitely points toward something 'music' being announced today. The invitation card to today's announcement had a cinema curtain as the backdrop to the words 'One More Thing...'
So, while they don't come out and say 'Video iPod' in advance of today's press conference, they drop some pretty obvious hints.
Not a dedicated DVR, as that would be a somewhat odd thing for Apple to make. But an official box that is like an expanded Mac Mini, containing all the video/audio ins and outs to turn it into a media jukebox complete with a built-in Dock, still running OSX? That's something I'd pay some serious money to have sat under my TV.
Not a couple of seconds, but a small fraction of a second (yet still noticeable that its there)? Yes, they do.
However, iTunes includes the ability to turn your multiple tracks into one big file in order to cut the gap out, if it really bothers you. It seems to be some sort of problem with the way mp3 files decode, as Winamp does it too if you don't use an additional plugin that crossfades on the fly.
Slashdot Mirror
They're not even quite Sega Megadrive/Genesis power, and frankly the games didn't look any more educational than playing Sonic either, but the V-Tech's stick looked rather attractive to hotwire it for use on a real console, since my son keeps trying to play on my Soul Calibur 2 stick (no, I don't let him watch SC2, but I use it for Ikaruga).
Then I tried one - it's a horrible soggy mess. Sure it's built to cope with kids, but I'd rather get him a cheap proper stick to use when he's old enough than one of these.
Well, mine _does_ rather like watching me play Super Monkey Ball.
You've clearly not looked at Lego (there is no S) recently. My son had the Baby Lego range from 6 months, and there was no way he was going to get a block an inch a side down his throat.
He's getting Quatro for Christmas (he'll be 15 months then), then moving up to Duplo, and won't get the 'real' lego bricks until he's about 4 or so. They've really got the toddler market sorted now.
Generally, you're almost certainly correct. I do know there are a number of film DVDs where the sub track goes down even lower, however. Not that there's anything particularly interesting down there, but try the opening Earth-explosion in Titan A.E. for a rather noisy example - they've got bass rumble all the way down.
You could always go in via Music > Albums and avoid the Artist tree completely, but then you'd get a fairly big old list. Personally, I want to see all the artists I've got on my iPod when I look at the list, because I've got a lot of singles on there too. But I do understand that it's just personal preference, and you can't please everyone without making things rather more complex.
Though the more I think about it, a tickbox in preferences to seperate Compilations out into a seperate section (like Podcasts already are) might be a really useful thing. The iTunes Music Library on your hard-drive already does this, so it can't be too complicated for them to implement.
In this particular case the easiest way is to make a list of Genre = dance or Genre = hiphop, and then in the big ANDed one have playlist = your 1st list.
It's a bit of a pain, but smart playlists don't take up much room and obviously update themselves, so it really isn't much of one. I use them regularly too; mainly with an additional clause of playlist = Songs, where my Songs playlist is set up to avoid all my podcasts, audiobooks, iTrip channels, classical works and film scores. Most of the time you don't want those in, so this makes life easier.
Actually, there's a metric shitload of technology involved in Sin City. Not only turning all the footage that they shot in colour into monochrome (which is relatively simple), but a lot of the sets were created 100% digitally, and the actors shot on green-screen.
Why would being served even targetted adverts over my recordings be preferable to the current solution of no adverts at all?
This is a solution in search of a problem, surely?
It's worse than that. GTA London is an expansion, rather than a full game, but the proper boxed copy of London I have doesn't work with the downloadable GTA, and the proper boxed GTA doesn't run on Windows XP, which is why I run the download.
Good job I have both on the PS1 as well.
You may have RTFM'd, but they do mention that they're dealing with quantities of data that won't fit on a DVDR. Many hospitals don't have giant fat broadband links to habitually transfer that kind of data with them either. So they're mainly using the iPod as a really convenient 40Gb-60Gb portable hard drive that travels with the patient or doctor because a bunch of them from a publicity-hungry Apple (who probably give them a discount) is a lot cheaper than installing that fat hospital network.
The files on the iPod just exist in a hidden folder. If you're not the kind of weirdo (and/or Mac owner) whose file navigation program of choice doesn't show hidden files and folders you'll get them easily enough.
As for putting files onto the iPod for playing, it's because the device won't recognise a music file until the internal database knows about it. There are some third-party tools for doing that too, but you're right that you can't just drag and drop. It's a hangover of the fact that Apple were fairly late in going to smaller flash-based devices, and so still regard scanning the whole filesystem as a nasty waste of disk activity when you can keep it all in a database that lets you slice the data by artist, title, album or playlist.
If that's not what you want to do, then certainly I'd recommend staying with the competition. Personally, I've only once hit the situation where I've got an MP3 sitting on my iPod that the database doesn't yet know about, but I really wanted to listen to it right away.
Blame the decision to make "+1, Funny" not award Karma any more. The post probably deserves one of those, but if it gets a couple, then gets marked back down with even one "-1, Overrated" then the poster actually ends up worse off than they started. So many people are awarding Informative, Insightful and all the other innapropriate positive moderations in less-than-great attempt to work around it.
I'm not sure I agree with the idea, but I can understand why they feel that way.
There _is_ a lot more money around at Christmas, though. Last year, the top 10 games in the December chart ALL outsold the number one from June.
Many kids can't afford £40/$50 for a new game themselves, so only get them as presents. Many of us adults get bought games as presents too, because it's something that we can easily say "I'd quite like such-and-such" to people when they ask what to get you.
So yes, it's a lot easier to get your game noticed in the summer. But if you're one of the big titles, you're much better off going for the megabucks floating around in the winter.
Ever since /. broke the mod system by not awarding karma for a +1, Funny, but still removing one for a -1, Overrated, many and varied people mark comedy (and hey, I thought it was still funny, even if you're right that it's been done before) with other marks.
So no, it isn't particularly insightful, but at least this way the poor guy hasn't lost out because someone voted him 'Flamebait' for something so blatently tongue-in-cheek.
No, I didn't make it up. I trudge through the "right-click on the System Tray icon, select 'safely remove hardware', get the pop-up, choose which device I wish to detach, click close, confirm that I really wanted to do so, close the pop-up, usually with a several second wait at each stage" rite on a regular basis on both my home and work XP machines.
I've only just unplugged twice, however - the second time I lost data, and both times I got "helpful" admonishments from XP. But then, this is still the company that decided it was a good idea for Windows to tell you off for not shutting down properly every time the box bluescreened. So I do things the Microsoft way, even though it's annoying.
Really? I distinctly remember playing both the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP in shops before their release dates here in the UK. This seems to be just a new thing in the US.
Not if you don't want XP to spend the next five minutes whining at you for not wading through three different popup menus for the "Safely Remove Harware" wizard. Clicking Eject in iTunes is lovely in comparison.
Just for comparison, DVD is 720x480, so it's only horizontal resolution you're missing out on.
Do you have a huge amount of flac that you don't want to convert to Apple Lossless?
By definition, it's not going to sound any different, and Apple Lossless is indeed supported on the iPod.
Of course, if they wanted to really highlight how original it is, they could have just recycled the name of the 2-hour pilot episode.
Oh.
Optical digital output actually built into the iPod strikes me as an enormous waste of space, but if they could supplement the analogue line-out on the back of the Dock with an optical one it would be very nice indeed. If I need an optical output, it's to feed a hi-fi that's capable of exploiting the difference in sound quality between the two, which probably means it's both big and stationary enough to make the Dock the ideal place.
If you head to The Register and reads last night's story on Apple's financials at
_ q4_2005/
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2005/10/11/apple
you'll see that Apple themselves countered complaints that their iPod sales were underwhelming:
Apple responded that Mini shipments were wound down prior to the Nano launch, that overall iPod sales came in as expected, that it couldn't meet Nano demand, and that the company would be launching new products in the music segment in time for the holiday season.
That last bit definitely points toward something 'music' being announced today. The invitation card to today's announcement had a cinema curtain as the backdrop to the words 'One More Thing...'
So, while they don't come out and say 'Video iPod' in advance of today's press conference, they drop some pretty obvious hints.
I think you might well be on to something.
Not a dedicated DVR, as that would be a somewhat odd thing for Apple to make. But an official box that is like an expanded Mac Mini, containing all the video/audio ins and outs to turn it into a media jukebox complete with a built-in Dock, still running OSX? That's something I'd pay some serious money to have sat under my TV.
Not a couple of seconds, but a small fraction of a second (yet still noticeable that its there)? Yes, they do.
However, iTunes includes the ability to turn your multiple tracks into one big file in order to cut the gap out, if it really bothers you. It seems to be some sort of problem with the way mp3 files decode, as Winamp does it too if you don't use an additional plugin that crossfades on the fly.
Do I want to watch a 2 hour movie on an iPod? No.
Do I want to watch a 10 minute news bulletin podcasted to my iPod? Yes.
Do I want to watch a 22 minute episode of the Simpsons on my iPod? Yes.
Don't think films, think TV.