Really? I think of floppy disks as that thing that could be pretty darned useful in SO many ways.
Floppies were CHEAP. Really cheap. Even cheaper when AOL would give me a new one once or twice a month.
The nice thing about that? Great for giving away small bits of information in offline situations.
I know I'm in a minority. I do. But I still use floppies. Regularly. I even buy a new set of 10 every few years or so, because many of my friends have floppy drives, so for example, when it comes to sharing a small file between our studio computers, the floppy I can load up on my computer and just give to my friend, costs me like less than a buck, has all the capacity I need, and then neither computer has to touch the internet.
So in 5 years, I'll probably still be using a laptop, wishing it was, if anything, a convertible tablet, with a wacom digitizer... but unable to afford that, so sucking it up with a "good enough" laptop... with my collection of floppies in my backpack.
(Not to mention the floppies I use to move data from my 286 to my 386 - 5.25" disks, 720KB, and I got them like a year ago... and they work great!)
Not all USB devices are storage devices... I'm assuming GP might be referring to things like scanners, USB audio products, maybe gamepads... etc. Unless there's some way to map my audio interface as a folder...?
(And yes I have had to do this, I run a Win 7 host, but there is some audio analysis software that I use for EQing live systems that won't run on anything higher than Windows XP. In order to grab the proper audio input and output (via my USB audio interface which provides, among other things, phantom power to microphones), I need to have it detected as a USB device in the virtual OS (in this case XP), install the drivers, etc. Of course "Windows XP mode" works good enough for my purposes... though it's insanely slow, takes forever to launch, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone doing anything more than once every 3 months.)
Are you kidding? Canada's government doesn't want information. They killed the long form because of how much they hate having information. The more ignorant they are, the more right they can believe they are!
Then aren't real nerds the ones that look at Apple's UI, compare it to the guidelines they make, and realize that apple hasn't shipped an OS + apps with a consistent UI look and feel since 10.0? The look and feel of apps on OSX now is one of fragmented similarity. It's getting to the point where it is almost as bad as Windows (though Microsoft actually improving things in Windows 7 has helped close the gap).
Examples? Look at iTunes. How long is the latest version of iTunes the same in look and feel as compared to Finder? There are constantly differences in terms of what color the scroll bars are, if the metal look is brushed or not, how light or dark UI components are, if buttons look like buttons or not, where the buttons are to manage the window (left? right? horizontal? vertical?), what those buttons actually do? (There was some consistency at one point by application type but that has largely been left by the wayside)...
Yes everything is generally neutral colors with pretty rounded stuff all over the place. But for a primary selling feature to be look and feel, shouldn't consistency be slightly more of a priority?
Let's get this generally straight - Wikipedia is, for the most part, a tertiary source. Most sources you would discuss would be secondary (that's the kind of source an encyclopedia would cite, whereas Wikipedia cites things as long as the admins don't have a vendetta against it...) and those would typically analyze primary source material (which could include a report from FOX or NBC, though if I were analyzing an article that discussed only FOX reports and wasn't on "The changes in reporting by FOX from 1990-2010" or something similar, I'd tear the article apart for ignoring the multitude of other available sources).
Every 3 years? Are you kidding me? The ribbon interface replaces the menu driven interface that they've been using in office since it's inception... so you're being asked to learn something new every 15 years. In the field of computing, doesn't 15 years actually seem pretty generous? I mean, the iPod Touch must have REALLY sucked, because it forced people to learn a new interface after only 6 years!
Do you do content creation? Especially the kind of content creation where massive parallelism is built in? (ie many tasks involved in recording an album?) No? Fine, don't complain. I reserve the right to want more cores in my poor compy:)
I like Blackberry OS. It's fast, it's clean, it does what I need it to do with no hassle. It's even better since I moved off the trackball to the trackpad - very intuitive. The only exception was a regression in adding a contact from a received text message that was a regression somewhere around 5.0.600, so I could really either go back and fix it, or ignore it but warn my friends about it when they ask how I like my device... which is what I do.
Ok fine, then... Download your apps from places other than appworld? It's not the only place to get blackberry apps. Crackberry has a feature rich store, etc. Yes appworld is one of the easiest ways to start an ota install from your mobile but even then I've had apps before that I installed from the browser. This is, perhaps the difference between RIM and Apple - with Apple, the only way to get your app on a non-jail broken device is to sell it through their store. With RIM that's just one option.
My favourite was the Halo 2 "cut-scene commentary" that was included on the DVD accompanying the upper editions of Halo 3 - where essentially the Developers were like "So the jump here in the plot doesn't make much sense... to be fair, that's where sections 7 through 11 were supposed to go..."
Someone should work on a Zune type front end to Media Monkey. Zune had... well, a confusing store, and a frustrating database engine (especially for classical lovers)... really Tagging all around was bad... but the listening experience was amazing... it took music to a whole new level with it's HD photography of bands, and band bios, etc... If it weren't for the complete lack of syncing to relevant devices, and the database and tagging problems, I probably would have loved it. As is, media monkey is MORE useful to me, because I'd rather have visual rather than functional sacrifices if I have to chose (and it seems like I do)... but Microsoft did a pretty damn good job at envisioning new ideas for what playing music could look and feel like. On the software side of things at the very least.
(Also - does the Zune Social count as being pretty darned similar to Ping? It's been a while since I used either... but I seem to remember similarities...)
If you have Windows, try Media Monkey (www.mediamonkey.com). It's NOT open source, and it's free version isn't as functional as it's non-free version, but the cost of the lifetime license as well as the MP4/AAC encoder has been worth it to me so far. They've been really good at pushing updates to sync with new versions of iOS (though I have a Classic 6G so that hasn't been an issue for me), and although they only support music right now, they will support video in the next version. It's the first alternative to iTunes that actually had me uninstalling iTunes from my system completely... I only use iTunes to "reset my iPod to factory defaults". You can write your own custom scripts to do stuff, and many are avaliable to download, it works with a LOT of WinAmp plugins, and it's skinable... though I prefer the ugly but fast and functional "Don't skin it and look like a windows app".
Downsides: SOME podcasts are itms only, and check for an iTunes client version. That's ridiculous of the podcast provider, but there you go. It doesn't currently do video. It is windows only. The free version lacks some of the advanced AutoPlaylist creation. It can't currently sync an autoplaylist to an iPod as a smart playlist that dynamically changes (though to be fair, I'm not sure if that ever worked on the Classic anyway), and the AAC encoding doesn't play nice with the iPod 100% of the time, so I generally wind up doing a transcode to MP3 whenever I sync, which isn't a huge issue for me. Also there are some "niceness" fixes that could be done, but haven't so far in the name of speed... so... yeah.
Not perfect, but a reasonable solution on Windows for music now, and video soon. Ebooks and apps... you'll have to boot up iTunes every so often.
How big is your media collection, I'm curious? I know that my collection of near 40,000 songs and podcasts makes iTunes cry like a kid that just got punched in the face, but iTunes does seem to run OK when indexing the 30 or so tunes I purchase at a time. Well, it seems to run OK except when purchasing the tunes themselves at which point it gets to "processing file" or whatever, and maxes out both of my cores... but who knows, that could be some odd codec problem or something. But like, most people I know who say that iTunes works fine on Windows have probably averagely small collections. Not a problem per se for iTunes if they handle "most people" "good enough", though if there is some general limit at which their database engine fails miserably, then it seems like it might be hard to make money from the iTunes store past that point...
Congrats. You've realized you don't need to buy it. I realized the same time when I saw the controller. Clearly, as they are only selling the controller with the play and charge kit as a bundle, even Microsoft isn't pushing this hard, and you will still be able to buy plenty of the regular controllers, all over the place.
So... don't buy this one. Don't recommend it to your friends. Etc.
Teach them that the proper use of language is important, even when you're using a computer. It is almost guaranteed that at some point in their working life, they will use the computer as a communications tool, so it's an important thing to know (that most teens seem not to know)... additionally it would make comments on Facebook easier to decode.
I know it's not strictly IT... but it's on a computer... wait... I smell a method patent coming... "Proper use of language... ON THE INTERNET".
Only not actually 20 years for any of them, as they all got remade for Vista, and thus the versions now in Windows are entirely different than those launched 20 years ago, or 19 years ago, and have been for quite some time. Those of you still on XP can, I think, even find places to download the new versions which have been stripped of compatibility checks. The new apps use WPF to achieve a certain level of resolution independence as well, so they look quite nice on larger screens...
I thought that was only for the Win3.1 and Mac versions? I could be wrong, but I do know that the deals were different between the 95 version and the 3.1 and Mac versions...
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Really? I think of floppy disks as that thing that could be pretty darned useful in SO many ways. Floppies were CHEAP. Really cheap. Even cheaper when AOL would give me a new one once or twice a month. The nice thing about that? Great for giving away small bits of information in offline situations. I know I'm in a minority. I do. But I still use floppies. Regularly. I even buy a new set of 10 every few years or so, because many of my friends have floppy drives, so for example, when it comes to sharing a small file between our studio computers, the floppy I can load up on my computer and just give to my friend, costs me like less than a buck, has all the capacity I need, and then neither computer has to touch the internet. So in 5 years, I'll probably still be using a laptop, wishing it was, if anything, a convertible tablet, with a wacom digitizer... but unable to afford that, so sucking it up with a "good enough" laptop... with my collection of floppies in my backpack. (Not to mention the floppies I use to move data from my 286 to my 386 - 5.25" disks, 720KB, and I got them like a year ago... and they work great!)
Not all USB devices are storage devices... I'm assuming GP might be referring to things like scanners, USB audio products, maybe gamepads... etc. Unless there's some way to map my audio interface as a folder...? (And yes I have had to do this, I run a Win 7 host, but there is some audio analysis software that I use for EQing live systems that won't run on anything higher than Windows XP. In order to grab the proper audio input and output (via my USB audio interface which provides, among other things, phantom power to microphones), I need to have it detected as a USB device in the virtual OS (in this case XP), install the drivers, etc. Of course "Windows XP mode" works good enough for my purposes... though it's insanely slow, takes forever to launch, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone doing anything more than once every 3 months.)
Are you kidding? Canada's government doesn't want information. They killed the long form because of how much they hate having information. The more ignorant they are, the more right they can believe they are!
Then aren't real nerds the ones that look at Apple's UI, compare it to the guidelines they make, and realize that apple hasn't shipped an OS + apps with a consistent UI look and feel since 10.0? The look and feel of apps on OSX now is one of fragmented similarity. It's getting to the point where it is almost as bad as Windows (though Microsoft actually improving things in Windows 7 has helped close the gap). Examples? Look at iTunes. How long is the latest version of iTunes the same in look and feel as compared to Finder? There are constantly differences in terms of what color the scroll bars are, if the metal look is brushed or not, how light or dark UI components are, if buttons look like buttons or not, where the buttons are to manage the window (left? right? horizontal? vertical?), what those buttons actually do? (There was some consistency at one point by application type but that has largely been left by the wayside)... Yes everything is generally neutral colors with pretty rounded stuff all over the place. But for a primary selling feature to be look and feel, shouldn't consistency be slightly more of a priority?
Let's get this generally straight - Wikipedia is, for the most part, a tertiary source. Most sources you would discuss would be secondary (that's the kind of source an encyclopedia would cite, whereas Wikipedia cites things as long as the admins don't have a vendetta against it...) and those would typically analyze primary source material (which could include a report from FOX or NBC, though if I were analyzing an article that discussed only FOX reports and wasn't on "The changes in reporting by FOX from 1990-2010" or something similar, I'd tear the article apart for ignoring the multitude of other available sources).
Every 3 years? Are you kidding me? The ribbon interface replaces the menu driven interface that they've been using in office since it's inception... so you're being asked to learn something new every 15 years. In the field of computing, doesn't 15 years actually seem pretty generous? I mean, the iPod Touch must have REALLY sucked, because it forced people to learn a new interface after only 6 years!
Not everyone's economy is as bad as America's right now. There are places in the rest of the world that are doing pretty well actually.
Do you do content creation? Especially the kind of content creation where massive parallelism is built in? (ie many tasks involved in recording an album?) No? Fine, don't complain. I reserve the right to want more cores in my poor compy :)
I like Blackberry OS. It's fast, it's clean, it does what I need it to do with no hassle. It's even better since I moved off the trackball to the trackpad - very intuitive. The only exception was a regression in adding a contact from a received text message that was a regression somewhere around 5.0.600, so I could really either go back and fix it, or ignore it but warn my friends about it when they ask how I like my device... which is what I do.
Ok fine, then... Download your apps from places other than appworld? It's not the only place to get blackberry apps. Crackberry has a feature rich store, etc. Yes appworld is one of the easiest ways to start an ota install from your mobile but even then I've had apps before that I installed from the browser. This is, perhaps the difference between RIM and Apple - with Apple, the only way to get your app on a non-jail broken device is to sell it through their store. With RIM that's just one option.
My favourite was the Halo 2 "cut-scene commentary" that was included on the DVD accompanying the upper editions of Halo 3 - where essentially the Developers were like "So the jump here in the plot doesn't make much sense... to be fair, that's where sections 7 through 11 were supposed to go..."
Because you couldn't do the same thing on Windows?
Someone should work on a Zune type front end to Media Monkey. Zune had... well, a confusing store, and a frustrating database engine (especially for classical lovers)... really Tagging all around was bad... but the listening experience was amazing... it took music to a whole new level with it's HD photography of bands, and band bios, etc... If it weren't for the complete lack of syncing to relevant devices, and the database and tagging problems, I probably would have loved it. As is, media monkey is MORE useful to me, because I'd rather have visual rather than functional sacrifices if I have to chose (and it seems like I do)... but Microsoft did a pretty damn good job at envisioning new ideas for what playing music could look and feel like. On the software side of things at the very least. (Also - does the Zune Social count as being pretty darned similar to Ping? It's been a while since I used either... but I seem to remember similarities...)
If you have Windows, try Media Monkey (www.mediamonkey.com). It's NOT open source, and it's free version isn't as functional as it's non-free version, but the cost of the lifetime license as well as the MP4/AAC encoder has been worth it to me so far. They've been really good at pushing updates to sync with new versions of iOS (though I have a Classic 6G so that hasn't been an issue for me), and although they only support music right now, they will support video in the next version. It's the first alternative to iTunes that actually had me uninstalling iTunes from my system completely... I only use iTunes to "reset my iPod to factory defaults". You can write your own custom scripts to do stuff, and many are avaliable to download, it works with a LOT of WinAmp plugins, and it's skinable... though I prefer the ugly but fast and functional "Don't skin it and look like a windows app". Downsides: SOME podcasts are itms only, and check for an iTunes client version. That's ridiculous of the podcast provider, but there you go. It doesn't currently do video. It is windows only. The free version lacks some of the advanced AutoPlaylist creation. It can't currently sync an autoplaylist to an iPod as a smart playlist that dynamically changes (though to be fair, I'm not sure if that ever worked on the Classic anyway), and the AAC encoding doesn't play nice with the iPod 100% of the time, so I generally wind up doing a transcode to MP3 whenever I sync, which isn't a huge issue for me. Also there are some "niceness" fixes that could be done, but haven't so far in the name of speed... so... yeah. Not perfect, but a reasonable solution on Windows for music now, and video soon. Ebooks and apps... you'll have to boot up iTunes every so often.
But not all smart phones are touch based.... what's wrong with a keyboard centric game on a phone with a full keyboard?
Don't people have as much right to complain that iTunes is a slow piece of crap on Windows as Apple does to complain that Flash sucks on MacOS?
How big is your media collection, I'm curious? I know that my collection of near 40,000 songs and podcasts makes iTunes cry like a kid that just got punched in the face, but iTunes does seem to run OK when indexing the 30 or so tunes I purchase at a time. Well, it seems to run OK except when purchasing the tunes themselves at which point it gets to "processing file" or whatever, and maxes out both of my cores... but who knows, that could be some odd codec problem or something. But like, most people I know who say that iTunes works fine on Windows have probably averagely small collections. Not a problem per se for iTunes if they handle "most people" "good enough", though if there is some general limit at which their database engine fails miserably, then it seems like it might be hard to make money from the iTunes store past that point...
Congrats. You've realized you don't need to buy it. I realized the same time when I saw the controller. Clearly, as they are only selling the controller with the play and charge kit as a bundle, even Microsoft isn't pushing this hard, and you will still be able to buy plenty of the regular controllers, all over the place. So... don't buy this one. Don't recommend it to your friends. Etc.
I fully agree (only I'm a poor history major... so I may have to wait until the 4ed before I can afford a copy...)
Teach them that the proper use of language is important, even when you're using a computer. It is almost guaranteed that at some point in their working life, they will use the computer as a communications tool, so it's an important thing to know (that most teens seem not to know)... additionally it would make comments on Facebook easier to decode. I know it's not strictly IT... but it's on a computer... wait... I smell a method patent coming... "Proper use of language... ON THE INTERNET".
To be fair, their little keyboards combined with unlimited push data is why I actually have a blackberry...
I'm pretty sure that "A Long Time Ago, In A Galaxy Far Far Away" doesn't scroll at all.
Oh the banana stand... so fun...
Only not actually 20 years for any of them, as they all got remade for Vista, and thus the versions now in Windows are entirely different than those launched 20 years ago, or 19 years ago, and have been for quite some time. Those of you still on XP can, I think, even find places to download the new versions which have been stripped of compatibility checks. The new apps use WPF to achieve a certain level of resolution independence as well, so they look quite nice on larger screens...
I thought that was only for the Win3.1 and Mac versions? I could be wrong, but I do know that the deals were different between the 95 version and the 3.1 and Mac versions...