Find me a smart phone for under £100 on Pay-as-you-go, with a decent tariff and data rate. It just isn't out there. If there was a smartphone for that price (which I have yet to find by the way) PAYG tariffs always gouge you on the data rate.
The people who want smart phones also don't mind paying monthly. For someone like me who rarely uses their phone for anything other than, well, phoning people, it just isn't worth it.
I've had a mobile phone for nearly 10 years now, and I've still found myself unable to justify paying a monthly contract. I could certainly afford it, but why pay more to do what you're already doing for less.
Nokia do well-featured dumb phones. Like my phone, the 5310, and all the others with symbian 40 on it.
Sure, Nokia are fumbling with their smart phones, but I don't see Apple, HTC or Blackberry catering for the lower end of the market either.
My Issue is that I've got a computer at home, a computer at work, and my 'dumb' phone still does Google Maps (although my data plan is, well, atrocious, I'm PAYG, so it gets used only in emergencies). For those times I know I'll be needing computing power on the move I have an EeePC running EasyPeasy, and has no problem connecting to either mobile broadband or a cafe's wifi. I've had it for a year and a half now, does me well enough. I've never had a need for a smart phone.
My Dumb phone isn't really a pure dumb-phone. More like a hybrid. It's a Nokia XPress Music 5310 (Using Symbian OS), it makes calls, sends texts, and plays my music, that's all I've ever needed a mobile to do, and it's likely not to change. Problem is that finding a dumb phone that both plays music and supports expansion cards is quite difficult now that you're expected to get a pure dumb-phone or a straight up smart phone.
Wow, you get a 3G signal out there? My Mum lives in Helensburgh and I can't get a signal there above 2 bars. Just shows you what a difference of 40 miles can do in the UK:P
The register didn't manage to get it across a country, let alone across a continent. Also, Samsung sponsored it, the guy from rathergood.com, Joel Veitch, was the one who launched them.
I have one. We have a builder, called Aleksander, and his girlfriend has been kidnapped by a giant lizard who's hiding at the top of a very tall building, and is throwing barrels down at him.
Alexi has to then build scaffolding in order to rescue her.
A friend of mine is over in Cairo covering the protests. He's in the main square with the anti-government protesters, so far he's been gassed twice, bricked once and nearly mowed down by a truck, all while on air.
I'm a web developer too, and most of my JS troubles come from different browser behaviours. I mean, for the average web app there's no difference if you're using something like jQuery, but even then, every so often, IE throws up an issue (But jQuery's quite good at making it play along, or degrade nicely). Complicated web apps are harder to do properly on all browsers due to the way sandboxing works over the different browsers. There's no use testing some apps locally as some browsers will refuse to do AJAX calls to the local file system, or communicate between IFrames if running locally, which means running a server to debug. Sandboxes are the biggest hurdle in creating multi-platform apps, some, rightly imo, refuse to load local files into their app, but in some cases they don't. I wrote an app that ran a simple filter on an image stored locally on the users PC. It used getAsDataURL() through the FILE input element, which is only implemented (AFAIK) in Firefox 3.5 +, to load a local image file as a base64 string, and output it to the canvas. As this doesn't exist in Chrome, IE, Opera etc, I'd have to do a server-side work around, or insist the user have a plugin (like Gears) that allows local file access (As it was a proof-of-concept mash up I didn't bother). It's this inconsistency in what is and isn't availible that makes web apps harder to write cross-browser.
JS is faster to develop with than any other language I've used (except maybe Actionscript, but only because of the way it handles classes, and they are essentially the same language otherwise) It's still a hell of alot easier than writing a desktop app cross-platform.
I remember an old CBBC show called "FoT" that basically had this, except it was made up (that was the premise of the show, it'd show a short clip of something that was either "False or True", giving the show its name). I only remember it because the filmed it using my class. And it wasn't a robot, just a speaker/camera. This *was* 1996, and it *was* BBC childrens programming, they probably didn't have the budget.
http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Stories-Arthur-C-Clarke/dp/0312878605 - get yourself this. It's got that story in it and practically all of Clarkes short stories and short novellas. Food of the Gods is about 3 pages long to be honest, although there's one in there thats about 3 paragraphs.
BBC canteens, blech. There's a really good chippy in Callendar. Don't know what they'd think if they got an order for 500 Black Pudding Suppers to the secret underground bunker though.
There was a similar technique that determines if a site has been visited, using user history and CSS. creating a bunch of links and using the:visited CSS tag then use javascript to loop through the links to determine their visited status (ie, using width, or padding, or colour set by the CSS)
The images thing seems to be along the same lines, as far as privacy issues go anyway.
We actually had a "Welcome Back Red Dwarf" party when Back To Earth was shown. We had about 10 people round to watch the first episode. No-one turned up for episode two.
Also, health and safety wouldn't allow it nowadays. You have to be able to call emergency services and a faraday cage would block that. Same goes for cinemas.
The jump to the Starbug-only stories in Series 6 is where it started to fumble, but the writing was still high quality and they made a none-the-less fun show out of it. Series 7 is where the writing team split, and you can tell. There's less jokes and more sci-fi. It's also evident by the tie-in novels. Rob Grant (the funny one) wrote Backwards, which is by far and away the better one, focusing less on the sci-fi elements and more on the characters. Doug Naylors "Last Human" was very sci-fi heavy (soft sci-fi, but still sci-fi), very dramatic, quite dark and in some parts, it didn't "Feel" like Red Dwarf, atleast until Series 7 came along, then it did feel like it. Despite the 2 multi-parters knocking a series 8 from 8 episodes down to 5 from the usual 6, I still liked it. They backtracked slightly towards the feel of series 1, with more prison gags, while keeping the action-oriented storylines. It was a nice balance. Then they threw it out the window for Back To Earth which, to me, was Red Dwarfs "Star Trek V" moment. I hope the next series will be our Star Trek VI moment, and that we won't end up with a Generations moment when they kill the cast off.
Slashdot Mirror
No. Some people just want a phone. And cheaply.
Find me a smart phone for under £100 on Pay-as-you-go, with a decent tariff and data rate. It just isn't out there. If there was a smartphone for that price (which I have yet to find by the way) PAYG tariffs always gouge you on the data rate.
The people who want smart phones also don't mind paying monthly. For someone like me who rarely uses their phone for anything other than, well, phoning people, it just isn't worth it.
I've had a mobile phone for nearly 10 years now, and I've still found myself unable to justify paying a monthly contract. I could certainly afford it, but why pay more to do what you're already doing for less.
Nokia do well-featured dumb phones. Like my phone, the 5310, and all the others with symbian 40 on it.
Sure, Nokia are fumbling with their smart phones, but I don't see Apple, HTC or Blackberry catering for the lower end of the market either.
My Issue is that I've got a computer at home, a computer at work, and my 'dumb' phone still does Google Maps (although my data plan is, well, atrocious, I'm PAYG, so it gets used only in emergencies). For those times I know I'll be needing computing power on the move I have an EeePC running EasyPeasy, and has no problem connecting to either mobile broadband or a cafe's wifi. I've had it for a year and a half now, does me well enough. I've never had a need for a smart phone.
My Dumb phone isn't really a pure dumb-phone. More like a hybrid. It's a Nokia XPress Music 5310 (Using Symbian OS), it makes calls, sends texts, and plays my music, that's all I've ever needed a mobile to do, and it's likely not to change.
Problem is that finding a dumb phone that both plays music and supports expansion cards is quite difficult now that you're expected to get a pure dumb-phone or a straight up smart phone.
Wow, you get a 3G signal out there? My Mum lives in Helensburgh and I can't get a signal there above 2 bars. Just shows you what a difference of 40 miles can do in the UK :P
2003-1939=64, 28% off.
The register didn't manage to get it across a country, let alone across a continent.
Also, Samsung sponsored it, the guy from rathergood.com, Joel Veitch, was the one who launched them.
Why are you telling the waiter your mum's maiden name
One of my favourite games, SWAT 4, doesn't have saves at all (except between missions)
It only adds to the tension and difficulty.
Although most of the time if you took away my quicksave I'd be raging.
It's fun, but it's not ethical. Someone spent time putting those strawmen up. Is it our place to go around burning other peoples flimsy strawmen?
I have one. We have a builder, called Aleksander, and his girlfriend has been kidnapped by a giant lizard who's hiding at the top of a very tall building, and is throwing barrels down at him.
Alexi has to then build scaffolding in order to rescue her.
Bears found to be head of quite large religious group. Pope seen defecating in forested areas.
fixed that for you
A friend of mine is over in Cairo covering the protests. He's in the main square with the anti-government protesters, so far he's been gassed twice, bricked once and nearly mowed down by a truck, all while on air.
I'm a web developer too, and most of my JS troubles come from different browser behaviours.
I mean, for the average web app there's no difference if you're using something like jQuery, but even then, every so often, IE throws up an issue (But jQuery's quite good at making it play along, or degrade nicely).
Complicated web apps are harder to do properly on all browsers due to the way sandboxing works over the different browsers. There's no use testing some apps locally as some browsers will refuse to do AJAX calls to the local file system, or communicate between IFrames if running locally, which means running a server to debug.
Sandboxes are the biggest hurdle in creating multi-platform apps, some, rightly imo, refuse to load local files into their app, but in some cases they don't. I wrote an app that ran a simple filter on an image stored locally on the users PC. It used getAsDataURL() through the FILE input element, which is only implemented (AFAIK) in Firefox 3.5 +, to load a local image file as a base64 string, and output it to the canvas. As this doesn't exist in Chrome, IE, Opera etc, I'd have to do a server-side work around, or insist the user have a plugin (like Gears) that allows local file access (As it was a proof-of-concept mash up I didn't bother).
It's this inconsistency in what is and isn't availible that makes web apps harder to write cross-browser.
JS is faster to develop with than any other language I've used (except maybe Actionscript, but only because of the way it handles classes, and they are essentially the same language otherwise)
It's still a hell of alot easier than writing a desktop app cross-platform.
a bit like Internet Explorer 6 then
I remember an old CBBC show called "FoT" that basically had this, except it was made up (that was the premise of the show, it'd show a short clip of something that was either "False or True", giving the show its name).
I only remember it because the filmed it using my class. And it wasn't a robot, just a speaker/camera. This *was* 1996, and it *was* BBC childrens programming, they probably didn't have the budget.
http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Stories-Arthur-C-Clarke/dp/0312878605 - get yourself this. It's got that story in it and practically all of Clarkes short stories and short novellas. Food of the Gods is about 3 pages long to be honest, although there's one in there thats about 3 paragraphs.
Arthur C Clarke, The Food of the Gods
I see what you did there... Rosie O'Donnell didn't even USE a spoon. Just went in with her face.
BBC canteens, blech. There's a really good chippy in Callendar. Don't know what they'd think if they got an order for 500 Black Pudding Suppers to the secret underground bunker though.
There was a similar technique that determines if a site has been visited, using user history and CSS. creating a bunch of links and using the :visited CSS tag then use javascript to loop through the links to determine their visited status (ie, using width, or padding, or colour set by the CSS)
The images thing seems to be along the same lines, as far as privacy issues go anyway.
We actually had a "Welcome Back Red Dwarf" party when Back To Earth was shown. We had about 10 people round to watch the first episode. No-one turned up for episode two.
You read Colony? Rob Grants solo book? Suitably dark AND funny. It's still a group of idiot misfits suck in deep space, but it's a decent read.
Also, health and safety wouldn't allow it nowadays. You have to be able to call emergency services and a faraday cage would block that. Same goes for cinemas.
The jump to the Starbug-only stories in Series 6 is where it started to fumble, but the writing was still high quality and they made a none-the-less fun show out of it. Series 7 is where the writing team split, and you can tell. There's less jokes and more sci-fi. It's also evident by the tie-in novels. Rob Grant (the funny one) wrote Backwards, which is by far and away the better one, focusing less on the sci-fi elements and more on the characters. Doug Naylors "Last Human" was very sci-fi heavy (soft sci-fi, but still sci-fi), very dramatic, quite dark and in some parts, it didn't "Feel" like Red Dwarf, atleast until Series 7 came along, then it did feel like it.
Despite the 2 multi-parters knocking a series 8 from 8 episodes down to 5 from the usual 6, I still liked it. They backtracked slightly towards the feel of series 1, with more prison gags, while keeping the action-oriented storylines. It was a nice balance. Then they threw it out the window for Back To Earth which, to me, was Red Dwarfs "Star Trek V" moment. I hope the next series will be our Star Trek VI moment, and that we won't end up with a Generations moment when they kill the cast off.
SOAP!
http://www.blizzardnewmmo.com/