I've paid more to GoG than Activision and EA combined.
Yes, I really bought TONS of stuff from them. They have many old games which I want to re-play, but I cannot find my old CDs anymore (or, in the case of Baldur's Gate 2, they they were already barely readable when I bought the original years ago). Especially their bundles are great, whole Baldur's Gate series or whole Neverwinter Nights collection with easy installation - great! Ultima Underworld 1+2 -awesome!
And, like many others already mentioned, even if you can find the old installation media and it is readable, some games might not really work anymore these days on your Windows 7 PC, because they are DOS games. The GoG games come preconfigured with a working DOSBox-Setup. I like fiddling around with stuff on my computer, but when I just want to play that game, I'll gladly fork over some $ for an easy setup.
Has anyone patented civet-processed coffee? For those of you not up to date on this technology, civet cats eat the coffee berries including the "beans" which are the stones of the berries. After they go through the cat and are dropped behind it, men gather the "beans" and then roast them as usual for coffee beans from other sources. Some connoisseurs consider such beans to be the "ne plus ultra" of coffee.
I guess those civet cats better get a good lawyer, then. Or get a license to poop.
Of course there are speed limits on the German autobahn, contrary to what many non-Germans think. As far as I know, there are even more autobahn-kilometers with a speed limit than without (both fixed speed limits and variable ones depending on traffic/weather/...).
You do not need the keyfob. You need an AUTHENTICATOR. And that can be had for free (on your phone) or even as a free application on your PC : http://code.google.com/p/winbma/
So the extra cost to get the needed authenticator is exactly $0.
ad 4) It is not in Toshiba's interest to run behind 3rd-party sites to make sure they update their outdated manuals.
Also, we have this thing called the "web", which is built by making so-called "links". Every company, and Toshiba too, has a website where you can select your model and download its manual. Directly from the manufacturer. https://uk.computers.toshiba-europe.com/innovation/download_manuals.jsp I can see why you would want for yourself a folder with the laptops you repair, but it's unnecessary to redistribute.
That said, there is no real reason manuals shouldn't be CC BY-ND or at least CC BY-NC-ND.
I do not think the "manuals" this website was offering are the same "manuals" which you can get via that link. There is a certain difference between an end-user manual (i.e. "do not microwave this notebook or feed it to your dog") and a REPAIR manual, which describes in detail how to access and replace the motherboard and which screws have to be removed in which order to do so.
I guess quite Valve will sell quite some games to Linux gamers, but it will not change anything about Windows being the main gaming platform for PC gaming.
First, there is the HUGE amount of previous games, which still won't work correctly on Linux. That would mean gamers would have to set up a separate Linux installation, maybe by dual booting or getting another PC, just to be able to play both new and old games - which would also mean having to reboot if you want to play a game only installed under the other OS. Combine this with the second point - that game developers will not suddenly switch to "Linux only", because they still want to sell games to all those WIndows users, and there really is no incentive for gamers to switch to Linux. They still have their Windows OS which can play all old and new games, so what REASON would there be to switch to Linux? There would have to be an IMMENSE advantage to using Linux to play newer games, like either some new AAA games only available for Linux (which won't happen), or the performance difference between the two OS so big that you could get away with a PC a generation or two older than on Windows to play the newest games - and even that would only interest the hardcore gamers, normal people do not really care about benchmark numbers.
It seems contrary to aim at the record for highest downward velocity and the one for longest freefall time at the same time.
Exactly. It is kind of obvious that if you jump from a height not THAT much higher than the previous record and try to set a new record speed while falling down, you won't be able to also set the record for taking the most time while doing so.
I suppose it depends on the exact definition of theory, it can mean a well established explanation, also (2) a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural and subject to experimentation. But, you are right, in that creationists attempt to place their (weak) theory (or postulate) on the same level as evolution that is well tested; thus trying to gain credibility by association. The theories that you mention all started out as 'postulates' but were then found to be supported by the evidence, make good predictions, etc, creationism does not travel far down this road.
In the scientific sense, creatonism is no theory, but evolution is a well-established theory.
I may be off here but I thought the main argument for eating organic was that it wasn't covered with pesticides and herbicides that you end up ingesting.
And that it tastes better. Which, at least around here, it generally does. The taste difference between a cheapo mass-produced greenhouse tomato from the Netherlands and an organic one bought on the local market here is mindblowing.
Apparently it's supposed to be a smallish laptop, with emphasis on performance(must have SSD, must have good battery life) and small size, which according to the "choose two out of three" rule means it obviously cannot be cheap. Which means that a "non-ultra" laptop with the same performance and a bit more weight/size costs around $600, while the ultrabook costs $1000.
What they did not think of and what now causes the slow sales is that the price makes ultrabooks a LUXURY item. Most people will look at the ultrabook and think "well, it sure looks nice, but here I can get about the same performance at a couple hundred dollars less". Or, if they DO have the money, they will go buy a Macbook, because "Apple" still has higher bragging value than "Asus" or "Samsung".
However, privacy advocates do not like this so they have been pushing for the creation and implementation of a Do Not Track standard. The problem is that if users are not tracked, then websites cannot deliver targeted advertising. Instead, websites would only be able to use non-targeted advertising which does not generate as much revenue.
Well... yeah. That's the whole point.
If your business idea needs the revenue from targeted advertising and the revenue from NON-targeted advertising would mean you'd have to close down, then your business idea is not good enough. It does NOT mean that everybody else has to endure being tracked so that you can make more money. Of course, you're free to prevent whoever you do not like from visiting your website. But your sense of entitlement ("we cannot have user privacy because *I* deserve more money!") is wrong.
Not that I think those "do not track" settings ever will work, because they rely on the bad guys cooperating, and advertisers clearly have shown over the years that they will do ANYTHING to get around advertising restrictions. But the general idea (users should be able to decline targeted advertising) is good.
For what it's worth, "could care less" has a meaning that is well-known and unambiguous. Nobody would hear "could care less" and think that the speaker cared by some amount (according to the phrase's technical meaning). Any time a pedant comes along to call someone out on their usage, they never first ask "did you mean that you did care, or did you mean that you didn't?" No, the meaning is already clear: the speaker/writer did not care at all.
Be careful with that - in countries which are NOT aware of this intentional misuse of the English language (i.e. pretty much anywhere outside the US), people WILL misunderstand the speaker and actually think "oh, he says he COULD care less, that means he DOES care at least a little bit". Which means that it is bad to use "could care less" when posting something on a website which is read by people from all over the world.
I am from Germany, and the first couple times I read "could care less" I was quite confused about what the poster actually meant. Now, it is just annoying, the same way as somebody writing "their" instead of "they're" or using a "plural apostrophe" as in "several CD's".
except the locales issue applies in the United States due to the national ISP's. Simply put, some products are regional and can't be bought by me, yet I see ads for them all the time
How is that bad? Do you actually READ the ads? I just ignore them, so I do not really care whether the ads are for something in my town or on some other continent.
Different states have different shapes/colors/sizes/fonts/etc. for their state highways signs and yet they are all clearly recognizable as highway signs. You know it's a highway sign. Every country has enumerated highways if it has highways, and it has signs of some kind on those highways. Anyone would know it's a highway sign.
Actually I did not know it was supposed to be a highway sign. I have never seen a sign like that in my life, being from Europe. Since I know that the whole icon is for "maps" (because of the obvious street lines and the map pin), I knew that it probably stood for some map feature, but not for which one (point of interest? gas station?)
Desktop and laptop PCs have simply passed the point where even an entry-level model is sufficient for everyday home and business tasks like reading e-mail, web browsing, working on office documents and database applications, and playing audio/video files.
As soon as that happened, the upgrade treadmill was doomed. That sucks for the businesses who were happily coasting along knowing that every 2–3 years someone was going to pay them more money just to get a faster PC and all the preinstalled software that would come with it. It's good news for everyone who actually uses these devices, though, at least until the industry responds by doing shady things that build in obsolescence and try to keep the treadmill running artificially.
This. There is this weird opinion by many that "less PC are sold" automatically means "less people use a PC". That is not true - personal computers are still being used everywhere, it's just that a.) by now everybody who wants one has one, because they got cheaper and everybody can afford one now and b.) the hardcore upgraders (i.e. those who upgraded their board/CPU/graphics card every 6 months because of new games etc. which benefitted from those upgrades) do not NEED to upgrade as often anymore, because even the CPU/graphics card from 2 years ago can still run the latest games. I sure can still remember that around 2000-2005 or so I upgraded my main machine here every couple months because it actually provided a noticeable speed upgrade, that is not the case anymore. My core2 duo lasted 3 years in my main machine before I upgraded it - not out of necessity, but because I just felt like doing some hardware fiddling again.
85 mph or even 100 is not fast or dangerous. Here in Germany, about 30% of all car traffic is Autobahn traffic but only 7% of all accidents happen there (according to you-get-laughed-at-if-you-quote-it Wikipedia), and a large part of the Autobahn is completely unrestricted. Even driving for an hour or two at speeds of up to 150+ mph is safe and totally unspectacular, if you are used to it and have a car which has been designed with such speeds in mind. It's actually kind of funny to read these articles which compare speeds of 100mph to hurricanes, as if people would instantly die if they drive that fast:-) Not even my mother is scared when we go visit my uncle who lives an hour away and I hit 150 mph or so in my Golf GTI.
Because of this require ancient insecure versions. Some still only work in java 1.4 in XP. THis is the biggest pain. If the software worked in all versions of modern java that a sys admin could update without worrying about compatility.
So true. The one thing I hate most about Java (on the desktop) is that despite all the claims of "Java works anywhere, on all platforms", it just doesn't. For some disgusting reason, many admin tools (HP iLO, IBM RSA, web interfaces for switches, pass-thru modules of IBM Bladecenter,...) all use Java. And many of them are not happy with the current, mostly secure version of the JRE, they ONLY work with older versions (e.g. the FC pass-thru module of the Bladecenter H we recently got brand new explicitly states it ONLY works with 1.4.2). So I need to run a couple VM with various (known unsecure) versions of the JRE just to cover all the stuff I need to connect to. And it's also fun if we want to roll out security updates to our servers and application administrators tell us to please NOT update Java because it would break their applications.
Why does everyone here want/recommend an idevice? I thought slashdot was a little more enlightened than this, and an ipad2? The screen resolution's not all that special at reading range and it's too large, what about the lovely nexus7, high res screen, good size for reading, cheap, or if you must get a 10" device how about the asus transformer 101, pad only since you want it primarily for reading, refurbished for ~$200.
If all you want is to READ, then any e-ink device is much better than any tablet. First, because of the display and second because they are much LIGHTER than tablets. When I want to read in bed, I can comfortably hold my Kindle with one hand over my hand while lying on my back and use the thumb to page up/down. If you'd try the same with an ipad, you'd get muscle cramps within a few minutes. E-ink readers are built specifically for reading and do that exceptionally well - display, battery life, size/weight are all much much better than on any tablet. Tablets are built for so many more functions than only reading (video, games, surfing,...) that if all you want is read e-books, they are too expensive and too big.
Only situation where I could accept choosing a tablet over an e-ink reader is if you mainly read pdf files which are heavy on colour photos/diagrams, because the b/w e-ink displays suck at those.
There's no difference between spending hours browsing the web and spending hours reading an eBook.
Wrong.
Browsing the web needs a.) a network connection b.) a colour display (otherwise you cannot really use a lot of the websites) c.) halfway decent CPU/RAM to handle all the javascript/graphics/animated stuff/...
Reading text (ebook, ascii file) needs none of that. The text is already on the ebook reader, so you need no network connection. You need no colour display, because it's just text, black on white/grey. Which means the e-ink display is perfect for the job, and it also uses far less battery power than a backlit display. And, in my opionion at least, is FAR easier on the eyes. If I had the choice of using the latest and greatest ipad or my kindle to read a book, I'd still choose the kindle even though the ipad has a really good colour display - the e-ink display is just better for text. And you can get away with far less CPU grunt because all the reader needs to do is refresh the display when you press the "next page" button, and text files use no java script or any other stuff websites use.
So, really, reading websites is not the same as reading an ebook.
I went with a kindle instead of an iPad not for the price and not for the size, but because of the eInk display. It makes for a much nicer reading than any display I had sofar. Of course this makes the kindle solely a book-reading device. But for this, it's close to optimal.
Have to agree here. I, too, have a Kindle (the older non-touch one), and it is close to perfect for reading text. Which is what I personally want to do with my "reader device", I could not care less about a colour display or web browsing / facebooking / whatever. I just want to read books I purchase on amazon or texts/manga I upload via USB. The eInk display is absolutely perfect for that, especially when reading outdoors on a sunny day - but even indoors, it feels (at least to me) far more comfortable on the eyes than a backlit display.
If Apple a new "iPad Mini", it will probably have some uber awesome "retina" display and cost upwards of $300 - and any ebook reader with an eInk display will still be better for reading books and have a longer battery life, too.
Sometimes the developers want to move out the the parents basement, sometime the parents want them out. They have devoted a considerable amount of time developing a product and so attempt to monetize it. Seems reasonable to me.
I only have problems when devs write a small lightweight program for one specific function (downloading files) and then, when the program does that job perfectly fine and does not really need improvement except for bugfixes, they add on function after function, hire another dev or two to write more bloat and then one day they post on their website "sorry people, writing all that stuff costs money, so we now have to put advertising into our program". The program was fine, there was no need to add more functions nobody is interested in, especially if doing so costs so much time/money that you need advertising.
Devs create small, easy to use program which does the one job it was designed to do very well. Lots of people start using the program because it is good and lightweight and not annoying. Devs think "oh, our program is very good, but we cannot simply leave it as it is, we need to have MORE FEATURES". More features get put in, making users angry, because they use the program for its ONE job it initially was designed to do, not for anything else, because they already have OTHER programs which do those jobs better anyway. Devs think "oh, time to make some money". Ads get put in, plus "oh you can buy the premium version". Users leave.
First Azureus, which transformed from a simple bittorrent client to a "your personal multimedia database/video streaming/community" monstrosity called "Vuze". Now uTorrent goes down the same road, from a small, lightweight "I can only download and nothing else and that is my whole selling point" bittorrent client to a "you can stream video and organize your multimedia experience for all your mobile gadgets" monster and now they add advertising on top of it, but oh, you can buy the premium version without advertising.
Thanks, but no. I'll just move on to another free and lightweight bittorrent client, because that's why I came from Azureus(Vuze) to uTorrent in the first place. But now you turned into Vuze, too. It's not as if there aren't any other clients around, uTorrent really does not have any distinguishing features, so I just kept using it our of pure laziness to install something else and put up with the added bloat instead. But when devs really think their bittorrent client is awesome enough to make users put up with advertising, it's time to move on.
I wonder if the same people at MS who are insisting on Metro on the desktop are the same people who insisted on the desktop interface on WinCE phones. Maybe MS thinks touch monitors will take over on the desktop or tablets will largely outsell desktops.
Then they should be sacked as soon as possible. Touchscreen will not take over the desktop anytime soon, because the human body simply is not built to sit and point at things for hours. A keyboard/mouse is much MUCH more comfortable than having to raise your arm to click on stuff. And that's not even taking into account that most people have their (TFT) screen too far away on their desk to even REACH it with their hand.
Slashdot Mirror
I've paid more to GoG than Activision and EA combined.
Yes, I really bought TONS of stuff from them. They have many old games which I want to re-play, but I cannot find my old CDs anymore (or, in the case of Baldur's Gate 2, they they were already barely readable when I bought the original years ago). Especially their bundles are great, whole Baldur's Gate series or whole Neverwinter Nights collection with easy installation - great! Ultima Underworld 1+2 -awesome!
And, like many others already mentioned, even if you can find the old installation media and it is readable, some games might not really work anymore these days on your Windows 7 PC, because they are DOS games. The GoG games come preconfigured with a working DOSBox-Setup. I like fiddling around with stuff on my computer, but when I just want to play that game, I'll gladly fork over some $ for an easy setup.
No, at the bottom so the reader must scroll all the way to the bottom to see the reply.
Nope, best way would be obviously to reply to all, NOT quote the original mail and just write "OK".
Has anyone patented civet-processed coffee? For those of you not up to date on this technology, civet cats eat the coffee berries including the "beans" which are the stones of the berries. After they go through the cat and are dropped behind it, men gather the "beans" and then roast them as usual for coffee beans from other sources. Some connoisseurs consider such beans to be the "ne plus ultra" of coffee.
I guess those civet cats better get a good lawyer, then. Or get a license to poop.
Of course there are speed limits on the German autobahn, contrary to what many non-Germans think. As far as I know, there are even more autobahn-kilometers with a speed limit than without (both fixed speed limits and variable ones depending on traffic/weather/...).
You do not need the keyfob. You need an AUTHENTICATOR. And that can be had for free (on your phone) or even as a free application on your PC : http://code.google.com/p/winbma/
So the extra cost to get the needed authenticator is exactly $0.
ad 4) It is not in Toshiba's interest to run behind 3rd-party sites to make sure they update their outdated manuals.
Also, we have this thing called the "web", which is built by making so-called "links".
Every company, and Toshiba too, has a website where you can select your model and download its manual. Directly from the manufacturer.
https://uk.computers.toshiba-europe.com/innovation/download_manuals.jsp
I can see why you would want for yourself a folder with the laptops you repair, but it's unnecessary to redistribute.
That said, there is no real reason manuals shouldn't be CC BY-ND or at least CC BY-NC-ND.
I do not think the "manuals" this website was offering are the same "manuals" which you can get via that link. There is a certain difference between an end-user manual (i.e. "do not microwave this notebook or feed it to your dog") and a REPAIR manual, which describes in detail how to access and replace the motherboard and which screws have to be removed in which order to do so.
The free hypervisor is here: http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere-hypervisor/overview.html
You'll need a license key, which you can also get (for free of course) on that website.
I guess quite Valve will sell quite some games to Linux gamers, but it will not change anything about Windows being the main gaming platform for PC gaming.
First, there is the HUGE amount of previous games, which still won't work correctly on Linux. That would mean gamers would have to set up a separate Linux installation, maybe by dual booting or getting another PC, just to be able to play both new and old games - which would also mean having to reboot if you want to play a game only installed under the other OS. Combine this with the second point - that game developers will not suddenly switch to "Linux only", because they still want to sell games to all those WIndows users, and there really is no incentive for gamers to switch to Linux. They still have their Windows OS which can play all old and new games, so what REASON would there be to switch to Linux? There would have to be an IMMENSE advantage to using Linux to play newer games, like either some new AAA games only available for Linux (which won't happen), or the performance difference between the two OS so big that you could get away with a PC a generation or two older than on Windows to play the newest games - and even that would only interest the hardcore gamers, normal people do not really care about benchmark numbers.
It seems contrary to aim at the record for highest downward velocity and the one for longest freefall time at the same time.
Exactly. It is kind of obvious that if you jump from a height not THAT much higher than the previous record and try to set a new record speed while falling down, you won't be able to also set the record for taking the most time while doing so.
I suppose it depends on the exact definition of theory, it can mean a well established explanation, also (2) a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural and subject to experimentation. But, you are right, in that creationists attempt to place their (weak) theory (or postulate) on the same level as evolution that is well tested; thus trying to gain credibility by association. The theories that you mention all started out as 'postulates' but were then found to be supported by the evidence, make good predictions, etc, creationism does not travel far down this road.
In the scientific sense, creatonism is no theory, but evolution is a well-established theory.
I may be off here but I thought the main argument for eating organic was that it wasn't covered with pesticides and herbicides that you end up ingesting.
And that it tastes better. Which, at least around here, it generally does. The taste difference between a cheapo mass-produced greenhouse tomato from the Netherlands and an organic one bought on the local market here is mindblowing.
Apparently it's supposed to be a smallish laptop, with emphasis on performance(must have SSD, must have good battery life) and small size, which according to the "choose two out of three" rule means it obviously cannot be cheap. Which means that a "non-ultra" laptop with the same performance and a bit more weight/size costs around $600, while the ultrabook costs $1000.
What they did not think of and what now causes the slow sales is that the price makes ultrabooks a LUXURY item. Most people will look at the ultrabook and think "well, it sure looks nice, but here I can get about the same performance at a couple hundred dollars less". Or, if they DO have the money, they will go buy a Macbook, because "Apple" still has higher bragging value than "Asus" or "Samsung".
From the link:
However, privacy advocates do not like this so they have been pushing for the creation and implementation of a Do Not Track standard. The problem is that if users are not tracked, then websites cannot deliver targeted advertising. Instead, websites would only be able to use non-targeted advertising which does not generate as much revenue.
Well... yeah. That's the whole point.
If your business idea needs the revenue from targeted advertising and the revenue from NON-targeted advertising would mean you'd have to close down, then your business idea is not good enough. It does NOT mean that everybody else has to endure being tracked so that you can make more money. Of course, you're free to prevent whoever you do not like from visiting your website. But your sense of entitlement ("we cannot have user privacy because *I* deserve more money!") is wrong.
Not that I think those "do not track" settings ever will work, because they rely on the bad guys cooperating, and advertisers clearly have shown over the years that they will do ANYTHING to get around advertising restrictions. But the general idea (users should be able to decline targeted advertising) is good.
For what it's worth, "could care less" has a meaning that is well-known and unambiguous. Nobody would hear "could care less" and think that the speaker cared by some amount (according to the phrase's technical meaning). Any time a pedant comes along to call someone out on their usage, they never first ask "did you mean that you did care, or did you mean that you didn't?" No, the meaning is already clear: the speaker/writer did not care at all.
Be careful with that - in countries which are NOT aware of this intentional misuse of the English language (i.e. pretty much anywhere outside the US), people WILL misunderstand the speaker and actually think "oh, he says he COULD care less, that means he DOES care at least a little bit". Which means that it is bad to use "could care less" when posting something on a website which is read by people from all over the world.
I am from Germany, and the first couple times I read "could care less" I was quite confused about what the poster actually meant. Now, it is just annoying, the same way as somebody writing "their" instead of "they're" or using a "plural apostrophe" as in "several CD's".
except the locales issue applies in the United States due to the national ISP's. Simply put, some products are regional and can't be bought by me, yet I see ads for them all the time
How is that bad? Do you actually READ the ads?
I just ignore them, so I do not really care whether the ads are for something in my town or on some other continent.
Different states have different shapes/colors/sizes/fonts/etc. for their state highways signs and yet they are all clearly recognizable as highway signs. You know it's a highway sign. Every country has enumerated highways if it has highways, and it has signs of some kind on those highways. Anyone would know it's a highway sign.
Actually I did not know it was supposed to be a highway sign. I have never seen a sign like that in my life, being from Europe. Since I know that the whole icon is for "maps" (because of the obvious street lines and the map pin), I knew that it probably stood for some map feature, but not for which one (point of interest? gas station?)
Power isn't what matters. Useful power is.
Desktop and laptop PCs have simply passed the point where even an entry-level model is sufficient for everyday home and business tasks like reading e-mail, web browsing, working on office documents and database applications, and playing audio/video files.
As soon as that happened, the upgrade treadmill was doomed. That sucks for the businesses who were happily coasting along knowing that every 2–3 years someone was going to pay them more money just to get a faster PC and all the preinstalled software that would come with it. It's good news for everyone who actually uses these devices, though, at least until the industry responds by doing shady things that build in obsolescence and try to keep the treadmill running artificially.
This. There is this weird opinion by many that "less PC are sold" automatically means "less people use a PC". That is not true - personal computers are still being used everywhere, it's just that a.) by now everybody who wants one has one, because they got cheaper and everybody can afford one now and b.) the hardcore upgraders (i.e. those who upgraded their board/CPU/graphics card every 6 months because of new games etc. which benefitted from those upgrades) do not NEED to upgrade as often anymore, because even the CPU/graphics card from 2 years ago can still run the latest games. I sure can still remember that around 2000-2005 or so I upgraded my main machine here every couple months because it actually provided a noticeable speed upgrade, that is not the case anymore. My core2 duo lasted 3 years in my main machine before I upgraded it - not out of necessity, but because I just felt like doing some hardware fiddling again.
85 mph or even 100 is not fast or dangerous. Here in Germany, about 30% of all car traffic is Autobahn traffic but only 7% of all accidents happen there (according to you-get-laughed-at-if-you-quote-it Wikipedia), and a large part of the Autobahn is completely unrestricted. Even driving for an hour or two at speeds of up to 150+ mph is safe and totally unspectacular, if you are used to it and have a car which has been designed with such speeds in mind. It's actually kind of funny to read these articles which compare speeds of 100mph to hurricanes, as if people would instantly die if they drive that fast :-) Not even my mother is scared when we go visit my uncle who lives an hour away and I hit 150 mph or so in my Golf GTI.
Because of this require ancient insecure versions. Some still only work in java 1.4 in XP. THis is the biggest pain. If the software worked in all versions of modern java that a sys admin could update without worrying about compatility.
So true. The one thing I hate most about Java (on the desktop) is that despite all the claims of "Java works anywhere, on all platforms", it just doesn't. For some disgusting reason, many admin tools (HP iLO, IBM RSA, web interfaces for switches, pass-thru modules of IBM Bladecenter, ...) all use Java. And many of them are not happy with the current, mostly secure version of the JRE, they ONLY work with older versions (e.g. the FC pass-thru module of the Bladecenter H we recently got brand new explicitly states it ONLY works with 1.4.2). So I need to run a couple VM with various (known unsecure) versions of the JRE just to cover all the stuff I need to connect to. And it's also fun if we want to roll out security updates to our servers and application administrators tell us to please NOT update Java because it would break their applications.
Why does everyone here want/recommend an idevice? I thought slashdot was a little more enlightened than this, and an ipad2? The screen resolution's not all that special at reading range and it's too large, what about the lovely nexus7, high res screen, good size for reading, cheap, or if you must get a 10" device how about the asus transformer 101, pad only since you want it primarily for reading, refurbished for ~$200.
If all you want is to READ, then any e-ink device is much better than any tablet. First, because of the display and second because they are much LIGHTER than tablets. When I want to read in bed, I can comfortably hold my Kindle with one hand over my hand while lying on my back and use the thumb to page up/down. If you'd try the same with an ipad, you'd get muscle cramps within a few minutes. E-ink readers are built specifically for reading and do that exceptionally well - display, battery life, size/weight are all much much better than on any tablet. Tablets are built for so many more functions than only reading (video, games, surfing, ...) that if all you want is read e-books, they are too expensive and too big.
Only situation where I could accept choosing a tablet over an e-ink reader is if you mainly read pdf files which are heavy on colour photos/diagrams, because the b/w e-ink displays suck at those.
There's no difference between spending hours browsing the web and spending hours reading an eBook.
Wrong.
Browsing the web needs a.) a network connection b.) a colour display (otherwise you cannot really use a lot of the websites) c.) halfway decent CPU/RAM to handle all the javascript/graphics/animated stuff/...
Reading text (ebook, ascii file) needs none of that. The text is already on the ebook reader, so you need no network connection. You need no colour display, because it's just text, black on white/grey. Which means the e-ink display is perfect for the job, and it also uses far less battery power than a backlit display. And, in my opionion at least, is FAR easier on the eyes. If I had the choice of using the latest and greatest ipad or my kindle to read a book, I'd still choose the kindle even though the ipad has a really good colour display - the e-ink display is just better for text. And you can get away with far less CPU grunt because all the reader needs to do is refresh the display when you press the "next page" button, and text files use no java script or any other stuff websites use.
So, really, reading websites is not the same as reading an ebook.
I went with a kindle instead of an iPad not for the price and not for the size, but because of the eInk display. It makes for a much nicer reading than any display I had sofar. Of course this makes the kindle solely a book-reading device. But for this, it's close to optimal.
Have to agree here. I, too, have a Kindle (the older non-touch one), and it is close to perfect for reading text. Which is what I personally want to do with my "reader device", I could not care less about a colour display or web browsing / facebooking / whatever. I just want to read books I purchase on amazon or texts/manga I upload via USB. The eInk display is absolutely perfect for that, especially when reading outdoors on a sunny day - but even indoors, it feels (at least to me) far more comfortable on the eyes than a backlit display.
If Apple a new "iPad Mini", it will probably have some uber awesome "retina" display and cost upwards of $300 - and any ebook reader with an eInk display will still be better for reading books and have a longer battery life, too.
Sometimes the developers want to move out the the parents basement, sometime the parents want them out. They have devoted a considerable amount of time developing a product and so attempt to monetize it. Seems reasonable to me.
I only have problems when devs write a small lightweight program for one specific function (downloading files) and then, when the program does that job perfectly fine and does not really need improvement except for bugfixes, they add on function after function, hire another dev or two to write more bloat and then one day they post on their website "sorry people, writing all that stuff costs money, so we now have to put advertising into our program". The program was fine, there was no need to add more functions nobody is interested in, especially if doing so costs so much time/money that you need advertising.
Devs create small, easy to use program which does the one job it was designed to do very well.
Lots of people start using the program because it is good and lightweight and not annoying.
Devs think "oh, our program is very good, but we cannot simply leave it as it is, we need to have MORE FEATURES".
More features get put in, making users angry, because they use the program for its ONE job it initially was designed to do, not for anything else, because they already have OTHER programs which do those jobs better anyway.
Devs think "oh, time to make some money".
Ads get put in, plus "oh you can buy the premium version".
Users leave.
First Azureus, which transformed from a simple bittorrent client to a "your personal multimedia database/video streaming/community" monstrosity called "Vuze". Now uTorrent goes down the same road, from a small, lightweight "I can only download and nothing else and that is my whole selling point" bittorrent client to a "you can stream video and organize your multimedia experience for all your mobile gadgets" monster and now they add advertising on top of it, but oh, you can buy the premium version without advertising.
Thanks, but no. I'll just move on to another free and lightweight bittorrent client, because that's why I came from Azureus(Vuze) to uTorrent in the first place. But now you turned into Vuze, too. It's not as if there aren't any other clients around, uTorrent really does not have any distinguishing features, so I just kept using it our of pure laziness to install something else and put up with the added bloat instead. But when devs really think their bittorrent client is awesome enough to make users put up with advertising, it's time to move on.
I wonder if the same people at MS who are insisting on Metro on the desktop are the same people who insisted on the desktop interface on WinCE phones. Maybe MS thinks touch monitors will take over on the desktop or tablets will largely outsell desktops.
Then they should be sacked as soon as possible. Touchscreen will not take over the desktop anytime soon, because the human body simply is not built to sit and point at things for hours. A keyboard/mouse is much MUCH more comfortable than having to raise your arm to click on stuff. And that's not even taking into account that most people have their (TFT) screen too far away on their desk to even REACH it with their hand.