It means one of two things, and I don't think we'll know which until after the machine even comes out. Either it's an emulator that isn't functionally complete, but they'll at least iron out any bugs in the games they consider it worth testing, or less likely there will be new executables (but obviously not new data files) built for a few of the most popular 1st-party titles they consider it worth bothering with.
The big problem with an emulator is that they've switched graphics from NVidia to ATi and have apparently been having a devil of a time negotiating the necessary licenses to emulate all the GeForce-specific shader API.
The programmers behind Killzone stated last October that Killzone 2 was in the works for PS2, because they hadn't even been given details of the PS3 hardware yet, let alone seen a devkit.
So either they wrote that in 6 months, or it's a render. I'm guessing the latter.
People jizzing all over it seem to have fogotten just how impressive the original Killzone looked when being trailered, as well, and turned out to be utterly horrible.
I'd say it was quite close then, given how Toyotas seem to be built like brick outhouses, while the Germans have suffered a number of reliability problems, and are generally bought by people who want the brand, just like 'natural' diamonds will become a brand to differentiate themselves from ultra-pure synthetic ones.
In that case, could you fix the fact that your links column is completely over-writing the little box about the RSS feed on Firefox unless I make my browser window huge?
Hold whatever view you want. But if it isn't science, keep it the fuck out of a science lesson.
Intelligent Design is the most feeble, 3rd-grade, brain-dead attempt at religion pretending to be science the fundies have come up with yet. At least the "I believe the universe was created in 4004BC at 8am in the morning, and if you disagree you're going to HELL!!!" ranters are honest about what they're up to. The ID Wedge Strategy is a deceitful little piece of work that should be filed next to Eugenics as one of the worst perversions of scientific wording for political ends in the last 100 years.
Don't they sell those any more, then? I bought one for my Amiga 1200 way back, as they took 2.5" drives as well.
All the 44-pin 2.5" drive connector needs is the standard 40 pins of a 3.5" IDE drive, and the remaining 4 are the same as on your basic molex connector. So it's fiddly, but not brain surgery.
Ultimately, though, it completely negates the point of the Mini being Mini. If you want a full-size box, Apple would much rather sell you a rather expensive PowerMac. If you don't need the performance of a new one, you're much better off hitting the Bay for a second-hand one.
It's certainly nothing to complain about (assuming the replacement system doesn't cause too much overhead in order to allow it, obviously).
It's just that upgrading graphics drivers isn't something you tend to do on a serious box unless there's either a new problem (which normally means new software), or a new card (which means new hardware).
Gamers like new drivers fairly often, but if you use your box in a way that a reboot is a serious issue, rather than an inconvenience that takes 5 minutes out of your day, then it isn't something you normally need to do.
The thing is, though, that there are really only two defining features of the Mac Mini in relation to the rest of the range. If you get rid of its 'mini'ness, that just leaves the entry-level price, and a 2GHz G5 isn't going to leave it particularly cheap. All you've really got is a low-end PowerMac that you can't upgrade.
If you look at the specs, it's pretty clear that the Mac Mini is to a fair extent an iBook without all the screen and keyboard gubbins. So my guess is that you won't see an upgrade on the Mini front until they solve the G5 power-and-heat problem for the laptops. Try again around September/October.
That's disgraceful! Doesn't O'Gara realise that by supplying her shilling services for free, she impacts the incomes of those that charge money to shill for companies? Somebody ought to sue her, or something.
If I make a 'witty' tk comment about the number of Blue-On-Blue incidents that have happened in his brother's excursion to Iraq, I'll get modded as Flamebait, won't I?
Really? I didn't know that. Still, as Luxembourg is an EU member (it is, isn't it?) both you and the Dutch should be able to order iPods from anywhere that does ship throughout the EU.
Why would it lead to illgal importing, when legal importing is much easier?
It's against European law for the Dutch Government to interfere if any Dutch citizen orders an iPod from Amazon.de - as long as applicable taxes are paid in any one EU country, none of the others can add an additional levy as it comes in.
European law states that you can do exactly that, and there's a big fat zero the Dutch government could do about it.
a) Picking one up over the border and taking it back is legal. b) European law means they can't even do you for the levy as you come home again. c) Applecare is applicable worldwide on iPods without having to return it to the country you bought it in.
Therefore, the Dutch Government are screwed if they try this, as everyone will just import.
Fair enough then; like I said it's mainly the price I found insane, rather than the device per se. I agree about the iRiver, by the way - a friend of mine has one, and if it weren't for the slow interface (it would take me far too long to drill through to any particular album with the amount of music I have, while I find the iPod does that really well), it's very nice. Better sound quality than my iPod, and the ability to store photos on the hard drive while on holiday is great.
My T610 is almost exactly the width of the difference between the SP and an (original, I've never seen the updated version) NGage. Being able to put the two in seperate pockets, or even leave the SP behind, is more convenient to me than the single device, which wouldn't fit, actually.
Still, if you got one for free there's nothing to complain about...
If you're prepared to do without the power of the dedicated devices, then just take the T610 and the iPod. Between them they're still only as big as this Nokia monstrosity, as well as half the price. It's what I do - T610 in left trouser pocket, Mini in right jacket pocket, and I'm perfectly happy.
It really isn't a bad idea in theory. But (a) it looks like arse, and (b) it's an absolute bloody fortune.
Presumably, the reason for not doing so is that if you can run something reasonably tiny to get access to raw-mode anyway, then that is the first thing any worm is going to do.
The real message is that if you need these proper TCP/IP features, use a proper OS.
I don't know why you wouldn't want one, but I didn't want one because it was _huge_. As in took up more pocket space than my T610 and GBA SP together. Come to think of it, there was probably enough space left to stuff an iPod Shuffle, as well.
Convergence is only of any use at all if it reduces the space you need to lug stuff around in.
If it were possible, I'd have modded myself -1, Flamebait, to be honest. There's just few things more annoying to a Brit than having their spelling 'corrected' to the American variant.
Mind you, if it's irritating when done by a real person, imagine how bad it is when some piece of Microsoft junk hacks your article about automatically.
The thing is that the colour screen and low-res pinhole camera add a pitiful amount to the manufacturing price of the device. I'd suggest you give in and buy a Sony T610, which is the nicest 'budget' Bluetooth-compatible phone I know.
The BBC article claims that this 4Gb device can hold "up to 3000 songs in CD quality".
Bollocks it does. My 4Gb iPod Mini claims to hold 1000 songs (I actually hit around 800, due to having some long stuff on there), and I don't know anyone that claims 128kbps lossy compression is actually "CD Quality". God only knows how they fudge the numbers to get that value.
Sony T610: £99 - lovely phone, far better interface than the Nokia, on Pay As You Go/without contract.
4Gb iPod Mini: £139 - i.e. the same size drive, and a completely unparalleled interface.
Olympus C-370Z: £92 - for the times when the low-res camera in the T610 isn't enough, a 3.2MPixel dedicated device.
Sony PSP: £179 - because Symbian games are admittedly better than the T610 ones. But not this good.
And yet still have £20 left. Sure, the above lot will take up more space, but you don't always need all your stuff with you, and I don't think there will be any competition on capability...
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It means one of two things, and I don't think we'll know which until after the machine even comes out. Either it's an emulator that isn't functionally complete, but they'll at least iron out any bugs in the games they consider it worth testing, or less likely there will be new executables (but obviously not new data files) built for a few of the most popular 1st-party titles they consider it worth bothering with.
The big problem with an emulator is that they've switched graphics from NVidia to ATi and have apparently been having a devil of a time negotiating the necessary licenses to emulate all the GeForce-specific shader API.
The programmers behind Killzone stated last October that Killzone 2 was in the works for PS2, because they hadn't even been given details of the PS3 hardware yet, let alone seen a devkit.
So either they wrote that in 6 months, or it's a render. I'm guessing the latter.
People jizzing all over it seem to have fogotten just how impressive the original Killzone looked when being trailered, as well, and turned out to be utterly horrible.
I'd say it was quite close then, given how Toyotas seem to be built like brick outhouses, while the Germans have suffered a number of reliability problems, and are generally bought by people who want the brand, just like 'natural' diamonds will become a brand to differentiate themselves from ultra-pure synthetic ones.
In that case, could you fix the fact that your links column is completely over-writing the little box about the RSS feed on Firefox unless I make my browser window huge?
Kansas, they Evolution Doesn't Happen!
Rest of world say, what happened to Kansas? Oh, they all died of drug-resistant disease strains. Never mind.
Hold whatever view you want. But if it isn't science, keep it the fuck out of a science lesson.
Intelligent Design is the most feeble, 3rd-grade, brain-dead attempt at religion pretending to be science the fundies have come up with yet. At least the "I believe the universe was created in 4004BC at 8am in the morning, and if you disagree you're going to HELL!!!" ranters are honest about what they're up to. The ID Wedge Strategy is a deceitful little piece of work that should be filed next to Eugenics as one of the worst perversions of scientific wording for political ends in the last 100 years.
Don't they sell those any more, then? I bought one for my Amiga 1200 way back, as they took 2.5" drives as well.
All the 44-pin 2.5" drive connector needs is the standard 40 pins of a 3.5" IDE drive, and the remaining 4 are the same as on your basic molex connector. So it's fiddly, but not brain surgery.
Ultimately, though, it completely negates the point of the Mini being Mini. If you want a full-size box, Apple would much rather sell you a rather expensive PowerMac. If you don't need the performance of a new one, you're much better off hitting the Bay for a second-hand one.
It's certainly nothing to complain about (assuming the replacement system doesn't cause too much overhead in order to allow it, obviously).
It's just that upgrading graphics drivers isn't something you tend to do on a serious box unless there's either a new problem (which normally means new software), or a new card (which means new hardware).
Gamers like new drivers fairly often, but if you use your box in a way that a reboot is a serious issue, rather than an inconvenience that takes 5 minutes out of your day, then it isn't something you normally need to do.
The thing is, though, that there are really only two defining features of the Mac Mini in relation to the rest of the range. If you get rid of its 'mini'ness, that just leaves the entry-level price, and a 2GHz G5 isn't going to leave it particularly cheap. All you've really got is a low-end PowerMac that you can't upgrade.
If you look at the specs, it's pretty clear that the Mac Mini is to a fair extent an iBook without all the screen and keyboard gubbins. So my guess is that you won't see an upgrade on the Mini front until they solve the G5 power-and-heat problem for the laptops. Try again around September/October.
That's disgraceful! Doesn't O'Gara realise that by supplying her shilling services for free, she impacts the incomes of those that charge money to shill for companies? Somebody ought to sue her, or something.
If I make a 'witty' tk comment about the number of Blue-On-Blue incidents that have happened in his brother's excursion to Iraq, I'll get modded as Flamebait, won't I?
Really? I didn't know that. Still, as Luxembourg is an EU member (it is, isn't it?) both you and the Dutch should be able to order iPods from anywhere that does ship throughout the EU.
Why would it lead to illgal importing, when legal importing is much easier?
It's against European law for the Dutch Government to interfere if any Dutch citizen orders an iPod from Amazon.de - as long as applicable taxes are paid in any one EU country, none of the others can add an additional levy as it comes in.
European law states that you can do exactly that, and there's a big fat zero the Dutch government could do about it.
a) Picking one up over the border and taking it back is legal.
b) European law means they can't even do you for the levy as you come home again.
c) Applecare is applicable worldwide on iPods without having to return it to the country you bought it in.
Therefore, the Dutch Government are screwed if they try this, as everyone will just import.
Fair enough then; like I said it's mainly the price I found insane, rather than the device per se. I agree about the iRiver, by the way - a friend of mine has one, and if it weren't for the slow interface (it would take me far too long to drill through to any particular album with the amount of music I have, while I find the iPod does that really well), it's very nice. Better sound quality than my iPod, and the ability to store photos on the hard drive while on holiday is great.
My T610 is almost exactly the width of the difference between the SP and an (original, I've never seen the updated version) NGage. Being able to put the two in seperate pockets, or even leave the SP behind, is more convenient to me than the single device, which wouldn't fit, actually.
Still, if you got one for free there's nothing to complain about...
If you're prepared to do without the power of the dedicated devices, then just take the T610 and the iPod. Between them they're still only as big as this Nokia monstrosity, as well as half the price. It's what I do - T610 in left trouser pocket, Mini in right jacket pocket, and I'm perfectly happy.
It really isn't a bad idea in theory. But (a) it looks like arse, and (b) it's an absolute bloody fortune.
Presumably, the reason for not doing so is that if you can run something reasonably tiny to get access to raw-mode anyway, then that is the first thing any worm is going to do.
The real message is that if you need these proper TCP/IP features, use a proper OS.
I don't know why you wouldn't want one, but I didn't want one because it was _huge_. As in took up more pocket space than my T610 and GBA SP together. Come to think of it, there was probably enough space left to stuff an iPod Shuffle, as well.
Convergence is only of any use at all if it reduces the space you need to lug stuff around in.
If it were possible, I'd have modded myself -1, Flamebait, to be honest. There's just few things more annoying to a Brit than having their spelling 'corrected' to the American variant.
Mind you, if it's irritating when done by a real person, imagine how bad it is when some piece of Microsoft junk hacks your article about automatically.
The thing is that the colour screen and low-res pinhole camera add a pitiful amount to the manufacturing price of the device. I'd suggest you give in and buy a Sony T610, which is the nicest 'budget' Bluetooth-compatible phone I know.
The BBC article claims that this 4Gb device can hold "up to 3000 songs in CD quality".
Bollocks it does. My 4Gb iPod Mini claims to hold 1000 songs (I actually hit around 800, due to having some long stuff on there), and I don't know anyone that claims 128kbps lossy compression is actually "CD Quality". God only knows how they fudge the numbers to get that value.
You also missed the point that I could buy iPod Minis for my entire family for less than the price of the phone. Mini = £139, Phone = £499
It's an absolutely ludicrous price.
You could instead purchase the following:
Sony T610: £99 - lovely phone, far better interface than the Nokia, on Pay As You Go/without contract.
4Gb iPod Mini: £139 - i.e. the same size drive, and a completely unparalleled interface.
Olympus C-370Z: £92 - for the times when the low-res camera in the T610 isn't enough, a 3.2MPixel dedicated device.
Sony PSP: £179 - because Symbian games are admittedly better than the T610 ones. But not this good.
And yet still have £20 left. Sure, the above lot will take up more space, but you don't always need all your stuff with you, and I don't think there will be any competition on capability...