I like the Blackberry Tour, it is a really nice piece of hardware, very well built and with a great keyboard and great battery life, but the OS is just plain ancient compared to the Pre.
The Pre is missing some of the more advanced features that are present in the the blackberry, but missing a button or an option in the email client is different than missing the entire browser. From the hardware point of view, having a slightly superior keyboard does not make up for the complete lack of touch screen on the BB. I do wish the Pre had an android-like touchball instead of that button though. One of my biggest missing features in the Pre is the lack of Public Transit directions in Google Maps app, but on the other hand it has both wifi and multitouch on a larger display, which makes the whole experience a lot better. Public transit can be easily added in to the app later, but the blackberry will always be constrained by the lack of any navigation device other than the trackball. Switching apps requires using hardware buttons and menus, whereas with the Pre it is as seamless as can be.
The Blackberry will always be king for certain business users, but I think the Pre is a more well rounded device. Besides, it runs Linux. You can SSH into it and get it to spit out a value from the ambient light sensor, how cool is that?
As someone that has experienced 3 california wild fires, I can tell you that the media exaggerates the threat to no end. I would be watching TV and they would have maps showing my entire neighborhood on fire. The reality is that when the fire gets to the houses, the firefighters are well trained and well prepared and can save the large majority of them. Nobody is going to let a multimillion dollar observatory burn down.
Ya, but it is harder to make a movie about Turing than it is about Patton.
I only found out that Turing was gay and involved in the war when I read Cryptonomicon recently(I always assumed he was just tinkering in a basement somewhere, completely separated from the events of history, although I did know about the significance of Bletchley). Of course, most people don't read books, and most people don't care about history, and computer history isn't really taught anywhere, so how would people find out about him?
I think we absolutely must ban open source software from being used in right wing political campaigns. Having something so poorly managed being associated with Linux could backfire on us. I can already see the Microsoft ads:
"John McCain ran his campaign on open source software. Price of Hardware: $76,000. Price of Software: $0. Total Cost of Ownership: Failure. "
Somebody who generally knows what he is talking about says that it is actually built on Gstreamer, which means that it will support Ogg unless Nokia intentionally crippled it.
Theres this one door that has a pull sign that actually goes both ways. One day I went, pushed it like usual, and it didn't open. It was locked and I started to walk away, but some guy behind me came and pulled it really hard while looking in my general direction; didn't open for him either, and he just stood there looking like a douche.
I don't think that has anything to do with it. I think this is ATT afraid of the fact that people are now less tied in to them, with the ability to switch networks or even have multiple phones from multiple networks simultaneously.
When I get a smartphone in a few months, I will use google voice to ring both my smartphone as well as a T Mobile prepaid phone. I can keep the tmobile shoved in my backpack, but if the battery on the smartphone dies or if there is an emergency or if Sprint(most likely going to be my next carrier) doesn't have service in the area, it will be there.
With MS cashback, you can sometimes get a TMobile phone, with a 25 dollar prepaid card, for about $14 ($20-CB).
THE MORE YOU BUY THE MORE YOU SAVE! ACT NOW!!!
on
F-22 Raptor Cancelled
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· Score: 1
I see browser-based bittorrent that lets you watch videos in real time taking over. If google won't finance our useless videos, then we'll just have to do it ourselves. I can't imagine many people would actually pay for youtube.
(certainly not when you can watch youtube videos all day for free on CNN)
If the HTC Hero wasn't so ridiculously expensive to get unlocked, I would already have one. I doubt I will be upgrading to an n900 from my 800. It just isn't fun using the device. By far the most absurd thing to me, considering that this is an internet tablet, is that the browser is still running on a pre-release version of Gecko for Firefox 2, taken from svn some time around december 2007. This may have been updated in diablo, but I don't notice it. It is nowhere near the capability of webkit/3.5. Nokia really dropped the ball here. THere is no technical reason why web browsing has to be so slow with so many amazing open source rendering engines around.
Granted though, the n8xx is playing with one or two generation old technology. All it really needs is just multitouch and a faster CPU and just a tiny bit of attention to detail to the software and it could be great.
You have the dual slot SDHC, the stereo sound, high res, giant screen, excellent build quality, the kickstand and just so many things that make it stand out. Now that I have a netbook though, I don't think the n800 is worth the space it takes up in my pocket.
Unfortunately, the n8x0 development community has been kind of dead since the introduction of The Great One. It isn't completely gone of course, but it is a lot less active than it was a year ago. The current stable of apps aren't going to be as useful as we would like them to be. The other thing is that there never really was that many to begin with, nothing even approaching what the iPhone has. Most of the development seemed to revolve around fixing deficiencies wit hteh OS(alternate environments, media players, web browsers and other things that got done right the first time in android/iphone/pre). Also, many of the apps were just straight ports of desktop gnome/gtk apps, and it would be rather trivial to do the same thing with qt/kde apps.
Another thing is that by switching to qt you can tap in to the KDE development community. KDE devs who were never interested in writing gtk for the n800 may now get excited about the 900 and pick it up.
Ideally, there would be a desktop wizard which would give you links to download one of a variety of browsers. They can have a continuously updated list of the top 5 browsers, which right now would be chrome/safari/opera/ie/firefox. Check the boxes for the browsers you want and it will download/install them automatically and set one of them as your default.
Likeliness of happening? Not too great, especially considering apple will never let MS distribute safari(how else will they shovel their crapware bundle to consumers if they can't use a variety of misleading checkboxes during the download and install process?). Still, there is no reason why MS can't distribute Firefox, given that it is open source... or maybe Iceweasel.
You are overpaying for the case. You can get a good Antec case for about $60 during one of their very frequent sales. Sometimes they come with the excellent Earthwatts PSUs, save another 140 bucks. Video card is overkill too, you can get a very good card for a hundred bucks. HDD is excellent choice, as is DVD burner. A good AMD motherboard would save you quite a lot of money, same on the CPU, a hundred dollars combined.
Basically you can get a similarly capable system for about 7 or 8 hundred if not less.
1. Group A invents something 2. Nobody buys it. 3. Apple does the same thing, but worse, and more expensive. 4. Everyone wants it. 5. Groups B-K try and copy Apple, making something better, uglier and cheaper. 6. Everyone still wants the Apple thing they can't afford. 7. Massive credit card debt and economic crisis.
Slashdot Mirror
15 seconds of trying to make sense of an article I can't read without a subscription:
This is a tablet PC with a built in fingerprint reader AND a touchscreen.
Next time spend 30 seconds before making a snarky comment. Also, try reading the fucking article you link to.
The touchscreen can't be used for fingerprint analysis.
I like the Blackberry Tour, it is a really nice piece of hardware, very well built and with a great keyboard and great battery life, but the OS is just plain ancient compared to the Pre.
The Pre is missing some of the more advanced features that are present in the the blackberry, but missing a button or an option in the email client is different than missing the entire browser. From the hardware point of view, having a slightly superior keyboard does not make up for the complete lack of touch screen on the BB. I do wish the Pre had an android-like touchball instead of that button though. One of my biggest missing features in the Pre is the lack of Public Transit directions in Google Maps app, but on the other hand it has both wifi and multitouch on a larger display, which makes the whole experience a lot better. Public transit can be easily added in to the app later, but the blackberry will always be constrained by the lack of any navigation device other than the trackball. Switching apps requires using hardware buttons and menus, whereas with the Pre it is as seamless as can be.
The Blackberry will always be king for certain business users, but I think the Pre is a more well rounded device. Besides, it runs Linux. You can SSH into it and get it to spit out a value from the ambient light sensor, how cool is that?
As someone that has experienced 3 california wild fires, I can tell you that the media exaggerates the threat to no end. I would be watching TV and they would have maps showing my entire neighborhood on fire. The reality is that when the fire gets to the houses, the firefighters are well trained and well prepared and can save the large majority of them. Nobody is going to let a multimillion dollar observatory burn down.
Games don't scale to 6 cores. At all. In fact, most desktop applications have a hard time scaling to 6 cores, even ones that can do 4 or 8 cores.
Ya, but it is harder to make a movie about Turing than it is about Patton.
I only found out that Turing was gay and involved in the war when I read Cryptonomicon recently(I always assumed he was just tinkering in a basement somewhere, completely separated from the events of history, although I did know about the significance of Bletchley). Of course, most people don't read books, and most people don't care about history, and computer history isn't really taught anywhere, so how would people find out about him?
I think we absolutely must ban open source software from being used in right wing political campaigns. Having something so poorly managed being associated with Linux could backfire on us. I can already see the Microsoft ads:
"John McCain ran his campaign on open source software. Price of Hardware: $76,000. Price of Software: $0. Total Cost of Ownership: Failure. "
Somebody who generally knows what he is talking about says that it is actually built on Gstreamer, which means that it will support Ogg unless Nokia intentionally crippled it.
He said unprecedented scale, not unprecedented degree.
Your response would be much more constructive if you address his point.
Blue LEDs were cool when the iPod came out and it was the only one to use them for backlighting.Color screens make blue LEDs obsolete.
On the other hand, Laser Beams are Forever.
There will never be a time in the future when laser beams will be considered uncool. That is a fact.
Blue LED
Dual Laser Beams
It doesn't take a genius to figure out which is the cooler solution.
Because it will sell, and the margins could be high. I imagine something like this would be popular in "developing markets" as well.
Theres this one door that has a pull sign that actually goes both ways. One day I went, pushed it like usual, and it didn't open. It was locked and I started to walk away, but some guy behind me came and pulled it really hard while looking in my general direction; didn't open for him either, and he just stood there looking like a douche.
saying they duplicate existing functionality.
I don't think that has anything to do with it. I think this is ATT afraid of the fact that people are now less tied in to them, with the ability to switch networks or even have multiple phones from multiple networks simultaneously.
When I get a smartphone in a few months, I will use google voice to ring both my smartphone as well as a T Mobile prepaid phone. I can keep the tmobile shoved in my backpack, but if the battery on the smartphone dies or if there is an emergency or if Sprint(most likely going to be my next carrier) doesn't have service in the area, it will be there.
With MS cashback, you can sometimes get a TMobile phone, with a 25 dollar prepaid card, for about $14 ($20-CB).
It practically* pays for itself!
It can rever back to G, so people who don't know what N means probably don't even need it and won't notice the difference anyway.
It is so fast they can't even print it. It has to stay as a virtual journal because by the time they cut the tree down it is already obsolete.
I see browser-based bittorrent that lets you watch videos in real time taking over. If google won't finance our useless videos, then we'll just have to do it ourselves. I can't imagine many people would actually pay for youtube.
(certainly not when you can watch youtube videos all day for free on CNN)
If the HTC Hero wasn't so ridiculously expensive to get unlocked, I would already have one. I doubt I will be upgrading to an n900 from my 800. It just isn't fun using the device. By far the most absurd thing to me, considering that this is an internet tablet, is that the browser is still running on a pre-release version of Gecko for Firefox 2, taken from svn some time around december 2007. This may have been updated in diablo, but I don't notice it. It is nowhere near the capability of webkit/3.5. Nokia really dropped the ball here. THere is no technical reason why web browsing has to be so slow with so many amazing open source rendering engines around.
Granted though, the n8xx is playing with one or two generation old technology. All it really needs is just multitouch and a faster CPU and just a tiny bit of attention to detail to the software and it could be great.
You have the dual slot SDHC, the stereo sound, high res, giant screen, excellent build quality, the kickstand and just so many things that make it stand out. Now that I have a netbook though, I don't think the n800 is worth the space it takes up in my pocket.
Unfortunately, the n8x0 development community has been kind of dead since the introduction of The Great One. It isn't completely gone of course, but it is a lot less active than it was a year ago. The current stable of apps aren't going to be as useful as we would like them to be. The other thing is that there never really was that many to begin with, nothing even approaching what the iPhone has. Most of the development seemed to revolve around fixing deficiencies wit hteh OS(alternate environments, media players, web browsers and other things that got done right the first time in android/iphone/pre). Also, many of the apps were just straight ports of desktop gnome/gtk apps, and it would be rather trivial to do the same thing with qt/kde apps.
Another thing is that by switching to qt you can tap in to the KDE development community. KDE devs who were never interested in writing gtk for the n800 may now get excited about the 900 and pick it up.
Since shrimp on Earth come from salt water, I'm assuming it is the intelligence that will negate the need for additional salt?
Ideally, there would be a desktop wizard which would give you links to download one of a variety of browsers. They can have a continuously updated list of the top 5 browsers, which right now would be chrome/safari/opera/ie/firefox. Check the boxes for the browsers you want and it will download/install them automatically and set one of them as your default.
Likeliness of happening? Not too great, especially considering apple will never let MS distribute safari(how else will they shovel their crapware bundle to consumers if they can't use a variety of misleading checkboxes during the download and install process?). Still, there is no reason why MS can't distribute Firefox, given that it is open source... or maybe Iceweasel.
You are overpaying for the case. You can get a good Antec case for about $60 during one of their very frequent sales. Sometimes they come with the excellent Earthwatts PSUs, save another 140 bucks. Video card is overkill too, you can get a very good card for a hundred bucks. HDD is excellent choice, as is DVD burner. A good AMD motherboard would save you quite a lot of money, same on the CPU, a hundred dollars combined.
Basically you can get a similarly capable system for about 7 or 8 hundred if not less.
It has an apple-ey sounding name...
It usually goes like this:
1. Group A invents something
2. Nobody buys it.
3. Apple does the same thing, but worse, and more expensive.
4. Everyone wants it.
5. Groups B-K try and copy Apple, making something better, uglier and cheaper.
6. Everyone still wants the Apple thing they can't afford.
7. Massive credit card debt and economic crisis.
You may not realize this, but each one of those strips on the ground is actually a farm. This photo was taken from a plane flying over rural England.