On that note, a killer feature I'd love to see Google add is the ability for me to blacklist certain sites from ever appearing in results when I'm searching. The most obvious is ExpertSexChange, which I never want to see when looking up the answer to a technical question. Ever.
I think they used to have that feature, too, but I guess it got removed because people were actually using it. But if they can't get away with using the data globally, that's fine with me, just allow me to use it local to my account.
And if you find that a huge number of people remove sites from their searches, then maybe you can start reflecting that back in the search results.
In that case, fire the designer and the people responsible for making those shitty decisions, not the guys who had to implement it, most likely against their own better knowledge. But don't fire the only people who know the friggin' code!
As far as anyone can tell, that's exactly what they did. "Development" in this case means "game development" and not "software development" - they fired the people responsible for designing the game, not implementing the software.
Of course, the client software is shit too, but...
No AH, no sensible group finding tools, nothing to facilitate your interaction with other players.
This aspect really pisses me off, because these are all things that Square Enix already tackled in FFXI. FFXI had a working auction house. I wouldn't call the group finding tools in 11 good but they were still miles ahead of FFXIV.
Square Enix not only managed not to learn the lessons that they should have from the rest of the industry, they managed not to learn the lessons that they already had learned from their own MMO.
Square Enix published Just Cause 2. Avalanche Studios actually made it. And the only reason Square Enix published it is because they bought Eidos, the original publisher.
None of Square Enix's recent first-party games have been any good. FFXIV is just the worst of the bunch, having no redeeming qualities. (On that note, Birth By Sleep is a "second party" game - the developers were owned by Square Enix, but they still weren't Square Enix proper.)
and even most ones pre-WoW (the exception being FF XI)
Maybe now, but at launch, it actually managed to be worse than FFXI's, and that takes antiskill. Mainly because of minor things, like the inability to sort your inventory or the fact that replying to tells worked inconsistently at best. (Both of those were supposedly fixed in the November patch, I haven't actually checked because I only logged in long enough to verify that yes, the game still sucked.) I think they may have managed to get the interface on par with FFXI's, although you're still never going to want to play with keyboard and mouse. You have to use a controller.
The game was shipped with no AH and no mail, and a completely awful player store system instead that makes it a giant timesink just to *find* things that are for sale, let alone do price comparison and things that any modern game should allow.
The most annoying thing about that was how the developers completely disagreed that was a problem. Combine that with the fact that they have this potentially interesting player-driven economy set up, and you've got this potentially great crafting system completely hamstrung by their refusal to provide the most basic services to make it work.
Note that "potentially great" in this case assumes that they completely throw out the crafting UI as it currently is. There are a ton of interface issues, but the idea of an entirely player driven economy and the ability for players to do nothing but craft it they should choose to do so are good ideas.
But it only works with a working marketplace. Like the auction house that FFXI had. It's not like they don't know how to make a working AH, they've done it in the past.
Maybe challenging the claim that the current administration is going to help save money with Obamacare? (Busted?)
It's already busted: look at the latest health stats out in Massachusetts. Our health care costs are through the roof, fewer people are able to see doctors than before, and more people than ever before are getting health care through the emergency room.
On the other hand, adult obesity rates are apparently down, so that's something, although I suppose if you can't afford to eat due to insane health care costs... (Childhood obesity, on the other hand, is up.)
Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, or tits.
Thank you for protecting us from those horrible words, FCC! Despite the fact that as a cable channel, the decency regulations don't actually apply, so the only reason Comedy Central censors themselves is, well, momentum, I guess. Since they'll occasionally run stuff uncensored late at night.
Yay freedom of the press! The freedom to censor itself, I guess.
It honestly amazes me that a game as horrible as FFXIV has fanbois. I'm really not clear on why.
There are far more things that SE has been making updates to in the game if you actually followed the development.
The ability to customize chat colors is the only new feature. Everything else is a bug fix. Sure, I suppose you could argue that things like the ability to sort your inventory is a new feature, but that's like when Apple was advertising that the iPhone could now copy and paste. Congratulations, the game now has a feature that never should have missed beta.
It is new only in that it changes the content.
It changes existing content, along with adding new content. That's not a giant risk? They're completely replacing existing content. That takes guts.
Doesn't make it better or improve graphics, game mechanics or any such thing.
Really? Graphics? You must be new here. As for game mechanics, I'm pretty sure those are completely altered. I'm not really clear on the details, because as previously mentioned, I don't plan on playing WoW anyway. But from what I've read they've completely altered the way talents work.
If anything they continue to nerf the game so that more people can join that don't have to think and play.
Weird. I could have sworn one of the things that Square Enix did in their latest patch was lower the SP (XP for your class) required to level. And fix it so that SP is possible to earn for combat classes. I assume you must be pretty pissed off at Square Enix for "nerfing" the game, then.
And, yes, I did actually try playing FFXIV after they released the November patch. Sure, it's improved, but it's got a loooooooooooong way to go before it's playable.
Meh, I actually like the art design in FFXIV more than WoW. The problem is that the world is like playing on a giant Carcassonne board - the world is very clearly made up of a very limited number of tiles that are frequently reused. And since it's a 3D game, the fact that they've just rotated some of them really doesn't help when you're running along a road - it still looks identical, even if the road is running east/west instead of north/south.
Plus, while WoW has seamless zoning, FFXIV requires you to load in a new area whenever they change tile sets. To try and reduce the number of times you're required to load, the areas that all use the same tile set are vastly oversized. This is presumably a technical limitation that they'll blame on the PS3, but really, who cares why the world is bland, just that it is.
There's no way to fix the world map other than to completely redo it from scratch. Which is why it's nice to see that it's possible to completely update your world map, even if there's absolutely no chance it'll happen in FFXIV before they're forced to cancel it. (I give FFXIV through maybe September of 2011, when it becomes clear that no one is willing to play it on the PS3, either.)
With all the player friendly changes finally incorporated into the old world the game
The fact that this is working for Blizzard gives me hope that Square Enix will ape it to fix the horrible world that is Final Fantasy XIV. Even if they fixed everything else in that game, they're still stuck with the most bland, most boring, most oversized, most repetitive world map that's ever been in an MMO.
I don't really intend to play WoW, but it's nice to see that at least one MMO company is willing to take risks like completely redoing their original world map when they feel it needs to be redone. Apparently there's already talk from Sony about doing something similar to EQ2 for similar reasons.
Of course, considering that rather than fixing gameplay flaws in their "big patch," Square Enix instead offered the ability to customize chat colors, I highly doubt that they'll actually fix their world. But it's nice to see that it can be done by MMO companies with a spine.
Because the sole measure of how well an economy is doing is unemployment, right?
I don't know about you, but I'm doing far worse now than I was under Bush, and I'm still employed. So, yeah, I'd say that from my point of view, the economy is far worse now than it was before.
Of course, I live in Massachusetts, which completely fucked up their health care system, so part of the increase in costs is due to that. Luckily for the rest of you, the problems that Massachusetts created for itself (more people getting care from the emergency room than ever before, fewer medical services being offered, fewer doctors, and on) are local to the state, and aren't a huge mistake that the federal government is duplicating across the nation.
...Oh, wait.
I should probably post AC since I have, in the past, supported the health care program, but recent facts of how it went in Massachusetts show it to be a complete disaster. And that's a link to an NPR story, so this isn't just random conservative talking points, it really has been a complete disaster, which the entire nation gets to share in now. Yay change.
That I can then get _my_ books off of my nook onto my laptop in a readable format?
I don't know about the Nook Color, but for the Nook itself, yes you can: easily. Without jailbreaking.
First, connect the Nook via USB. It's just a USB storage device using FAT32. All your downloaded ebooks will be in "my B&N downloads" on the root of the device. Annoyingly they're named by random numbers, but whatever, you can still grab them and get them off the device.
They will be DRMed, but the DRM is cracked and trivial: the key is the name on your credit card plus the credit card number itself. The idea is that you won't be willing to distribute the key. (Which is somewhat silly, since the key is actually an SHA1 hash of your credit card and name, and therefore you're really not giving anything out.)
Just Google for "ignoblekey" and "ignobleepub" and you should find two Python scripts to handle decrypting the files.
Finally, you'll need an application that supports reading EPUB files on your laptop. Calibre is apparently the best choice for Linux, so try "emerge calibre" and see if that works.
Also, there's no limit to the number of devices that you can copy the epub files to. As long as you log in to the Nook software using your account, you should be able to download books to any device that supports the Nook software. Which doesn't include Linux. Or Mac OS X. But does include the iPad, making me wonder why anyone would want to get a Nook Color.
I do with Nintendo would come out with a Wii+ or something as a second-gen device, which would be nice... even a bump to 1080p, and built in blue ray for an extra $100-150 would be a big seller, would mean a faster CPU, but minimal changes as far as compatability...
Bah, fuck the graphics, I wish Nintendo would fix one of the most brain-dead design decisions that they're stuck with: the limited storage and the fixed save space per game.
Each game is required (as far as I can tell) to say "I need xMB" and is then allocated that space on the 512MB internal storage. And that's all it gets. So games will limit you to between three and ten save slots. Which is complete BS in a console with an SD card slot. Actually, considering that all games have a limited number of save slots, I expect this is a Nintendo requirement as well.
Further more, both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 have you tie saves to user accounts. In this case it's more of a side effect of their online services, but it's still a good feature and one that the Wii should use: it means that you can't accidentally delete a different user's save games.
And the Wii has a perfect system for this with Miis. Pick an "active" Mii and tie save games to that Mii - it's a simple system that I expect children could easily pick up and it would allow individual players to have their own save slots. Even if they kept strict limits on saves per user, this would be a big improvement.
I expect that when it comes to sharing consoles between family members, the Wii's got to be one of the most shared consoles, and the lack of save slots is just ludicrous. There's no need for hard limits on the number of saves.
Then we can move on to things like the needlessly limited storage, or the fact that WiiWare downloads are tied to the specific console and not a user account, or even the graphics. (And, hell, that WiiWare one has to be hurting sales. I know that there are people out there who would have "upgraded" to a different color Wii if only they could have moved their WiiWare/Virtual Console collection. Stupid and pointless, maybe, but if they want to throw $200 at Nintendo for no good reason, why would Nintendo stop them?)
Actually, there is: the PS3 turns on HDCP as soon as you start playing a game. If you're using composite/component it won't use it, but if you're using HDMI, you must have an HDCP-equipped display.
Note that if you hook up the PS3 and get nothing, you're doing something wrong, since HDCP isn't required just to look at the XMB. It's only required for playing games, if you're using HDMI.
I hit the "registration required" wall when trying to read the article, which is weird, because as far as I know I haven't viewed any Times articles in - well, ages. I guess that's not the pay wall, but I definitely couldn't access the article. Clearing/refusing cookies didn't resolve it either.
As far as I can tell, the article does in fact require registration to read.
Theoretically (code word for "I'm not convinced this isn't utter bullshit"), Kinect does quite a bit more than just simple voice recognition. It uses the camera to track the player's mouth, so it knows where it should be listening and can then do spatial noise canceling to listen to just the player's voice.
This is according to the articles I've read about the Kinect, at least, and I'm not entirely convinced that the authors of the articles actually know how it works and aren't speculating. So... whatever. That's the innovation they're talking about - combining motion tracking with a microphone to get clearer audio without requiring a headset.
You seem to have completely missed the point of the complaints - it's not that Apple won't allow Flash on, it's the Apple picks and chooses third party apps that are blessed with being allowed to run on their device.
I can kinda see that making sense for a phone, but iOS now covers iPads and iPods, where it makes absolutely no sense. Except for Apple's bottom line.
So, here's the question you should be answering: If I want Flash on my phone, why doesn't Apple allow me to install it?
Keeping in mind that you can replace Flash with anything. For example, say, an Ogg Theora or WebM video player.
You missed the important part of the sentence: "for UI glue code."
The code in question is just for wizards. The time spent loading and starting Java is presumably longer than the time spent running any actual code. Don't forget, the majority of OOo code is already in C/C++, all the Java code is doing is stringing together a series of UI screens. All the heavy lifting is already done by native code.
If you removed the Java, then you would need to write the interface code for each platform you support.
Or they could pick a scripting language and write the UI in that. I hear that Python runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X (the three platforms LibreOffice appears to support), so maybe they could use that.
Or if they're really attached to the letters J, A, and V, they could use Mozilla's JavaScript engine.
Both of which would likely be faster and lighter-weight than trying to use Java for UI glue code.
This may be way too late to post to this discussion, but, oh well.
Don't forget that the use of JavaScript in the UI means it's possible to get the "A script is running slowly" dialog for UI script. The great thing about that is that it's exactly the same dialog as would appear for a page, and it counts time spent in a file dialog as a "script running slowly." "Sure, stop the script....What happened to my download?"
I get why they did it to an extent. It's not exactly a horrible decision, it makes an amount of sense to have the basic browser UI glue code be in JavaScript.
Which doesn't change the fact that way more than simple glue code is done in JavaScript and that XUL is absolutely horrible.
Well, I might as well troll you, since I might actually get a meaningful answer.:)
Does this speed-up translate to faster render speed or is it just somewhat meaningless faster JavaScript? Because I haven't ever really run into any instances where the speed of executing JavaScript has really mattered. When I experience slowdown in Firefox, it always seems to come down to rendering speed.
I know that the latest version does hardware acceleration (under Windows Vista/7 only?), but from my experience, that doesn't really speed anything up. Plus I had to disable it, because 3D apps work best if only one of them is using the 3D card. (I'll blame Minecraft, even though the real culprit was Final Fantasy XIV. I just don't want to admit to having played FFXIV in its current state. Both in windowed mode - leaving the Firefox window behind FFXIV at least causes horrible tearing.)
Not to mention that the Beta 6 font smoothing is all kinds of weird with hardware acceleration turned on, it seems to randomly switch between monochrome antialiasing and subpixel antialiasing.
For whatever reason, Chrome just "feels" faster, and I'm not entirely sure why. I don't think it's JavaScript performance, though, I think it comes down to the renderer. Ultimately I'm not entirely convinced that it's really worthwhile to speed up JavaScript performance.
But since I really don't know the inner workings of Firefox (I know that there's a lot of chrome JavaScript), I have no idea how useful increasing JavaScript speed is.
And on that note, I think I need to restart Chrome, since some of its tabs have randomly crashed, a problem I've never encountered in Firefox.
And if you recognize the UCC as being the church that Obama went to and that preached "God damn America!" you'd be right. Same denomination. And, yes, the church organization as a whole fervently backs Jeremiah White, no matter what the members might think. Mainly because he's black, and the vast majority of the church is white. And we're not racist, 'cause we have a black friend. Er, preacher.
What radio button? There is no radio button. And unchecking the "Use Dynamic Discussions" does nothing, it just instantly rechecks itself when I save.
Basically, I'm forced to use the useless new discussion interface no matter what I pick.
The really infuriating thing is that I had my discussion interface set to show posts +3 or higher, but the dynamic system ignores that, and seems to randomly pick posts to show. If I could set ranges of posts to show and abbreviate, that would be useful, but the dynamic system appears to pick posts to "show" versus "abbreviate" at random.
I was using the classic system for a reason, and I'm rather pissed that I'm no longer allowed to do so.
You seem to forget that in the US, you're not allowed to protest these things at all.
Apparently the right of people to peacefully assemble somehow means that the government is allowed to tell people where they can peacefully assemble, so whenever something like a G20 summit or the Democratic National Convention occurs,US Police set up "free speech zones" where people are allowed to protest without any danger of anyone noticing them.
Protesting anywhere else will get your arrested.
And, yes, I'm calling out the DNC here, not because the Republicans don't do it too (they do), but because the Democrats did it first.
Quite a few people who post on Slashdot are developers. I happen to be employed to write Java webapps. To do this, I need the JDK.
If you're doing the full 77MB download, you're grabbing the JDK. As I posted, as far as I know, Sun never offered patches for the JDK: your only choice was to redownload the entire thing. Oracle appears to be continuing that practice.
If all you're using is the JRE, the download is much smaller (16MB versus 77MB) and it should be able to automatically update via patches.
However for quite a few Slashdot posters, the JRE is not an option, and we're stuck downloading the entire JDK. Every. Single. Freaking. Time. It's a bit annoying, especially seeing as some 20+MB are just documentation and examples that rarely change between updates.
Slashdot Mirror
On that note, a killer feature I'd love to see Google add is the ability for me to blacklist certain sites from ever appearing in results when I'm searching. The most obvious is ExpertSexChange, which I never want to see when looking up the answer to a technical question. Ever.
I think they used to have that feature, too, but I guess it got removed because people were actually using it. But if they can't get away with using the data globally, that's fine with me, just allow me to use it local to my account.
And if you find that a huge number of people remove sites from their searches, then maybe you can start reflecting that back in the search results.
In that case, fire the designer and the people responsible for making those shitty decisions, not the guys who had to implement it, most likely against their own better knowledge. But don't fire the only people who know the friggin' code!
As far as anyone can tell, that's exactly what they did. "Development" in this case means "game development" and not "software development" - they fired the people responsible for designing the game, not implementing the software.
Of course, the client software is shit too, but...
No AH, no sensible group finding tools, nothing to facilitate your interaction with other players.
This aspect really pisses me off, because these are all things that Square Enix already tackled in FFXI. FFXI had a working auction house. I wouldn't call the group finding tools in 11 good but they were still miles ahead of FFXIV.
Square Enix not only managed not to learn the lessons that they should have from the rest of the industry, they managed not to learn the lessons that they already had learned from their own MMO.
Square Enix published Just Cause 2. Avalanche Studios actually made it. And the only reason Square Enix published it is because they bought Eidos, the original publisher.
None of Square Enix's recent first-party games have been any good. FFXIV is just the worst of the bunch, having no redeeming qualities. (On that note, Birth By Sleep is a "second party" game - the developers were owned by Square Enix, but they still weren't Square Enix proper.)
and even most ones pre-WoW (the exception being FF XI)
Maybe now, but at launch, it actually managed to be worse than FFXI's, and that takes antiskill. Mainly because of minor things, like the inability to sort your inventory or the fact that replying to tells worked inconsistently at best. (Both of those were supposedly fixed in the November patch, I haven't actually checked because I only logged in long enough to verify that yes, the game still sucked.) I think they may have managed to get the interface on par with FFXI's, although you're still never going to want to play with keyboard and mouse. You have to use a controller.
The game was shipped with no AH and no mail, and a completely awful player store system instead that makes it a giant timesink just to *find* things that are for sale, let alone do price comparison and things that any modern game should allow.
The most annoying thing about that was how the developers completely disagreed that was a problem. Combine that with the fact that they have this potentially interesting player-driven economy set up, and you've got this potentially great crafting system completely hamstrung by their refusal to provide the most basic services to make it work.
Note that "potentially great" in this case assumes that they completely throw out the crafting UI as it currently is. There are a ton of interface issues, but the idea of an entirely player driven economy and the ability for players to do nothing but craft it they should choose to do so are good ideas.
But it only works with a working marketplace. Like the auction house that FFXI had. It's not like they don't know how to make a working AH, they've done it in the past.
Maybe challenging the claim that the current administration is going to help save money with Obamacare? (Busted?)
It's already busted: look at the latest health stats out in Massachusetts. Our health care costs are through the roof, fewer people are able to see doctors than before, and more people than ever before are getting health care through the emergency room.
On the other hand, adult obesity rates are apparently down, so that's something, although I suppose if you can't afford to eat due to insane health care costs... (Childhood obesity, on the other hand, is up.)
Well, I know what he won't say about it:
Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, or tits.
Thank you for protecting us from those horrible words, FCC! Despite the fact that as a cable channel, the decency regulations don't actually apply, so the only reason Comedy Central censors themselves is, well, momentum, I guess. Since they'll occasionally run stuff uncensored late at night.
Yay freedom of the press! The freedom to censor itself, I guess.
It honestly amazes me that a game as horrible as FFXIV has fanbois. I'm really not clear on why.
There are far more things that SE has been making updates to in the game if you actually followed the development.
The ability to customize chat colors is the only new feature. Everything else is a bug fix. Sure, I suppose you could argue that things like the ability to sort your inventory is a new feature, but that's like when Apple was advertising that the iPhone could now copy and paste. Congratulations, the game now has a feature that never should have missed beta.
It is new only in that it changes the content.
It changes existing content, along with adding new content. That's not a giant risk? They're completely replacing existing content. That takes guts.
Doesn't make it better or improve graphics, game mechanics or any such thing.
Really? Graphics? You must be new here. As for game mechanics, I'm pretty sure those are completely altered. I'm not really clear on the details, because as previously mentioned, I don't plan on playing WoW anyway. But from what I've read they've completely altered the way talents work.
If anything they continue to nerf the game so that more people can join that don't have to think and play.
Weird. I could have sworn one of the things that Square Enix did in their latest patch was lower the SP (XP for your class) required to level. And fix it so that SP is possible to earn for combat classes. I assume you must be pretty pissed off at Square Enix for "nerfing" the game, then.
And, yes, I did actually try playing FFXIV after they released the November patch. Sure, it's improved, but it's got a loooooooooooong way to go before it's playable.
Meh, I actually like the art design in FFXIV more than WoW. The problem is that the world is like playing on a giant Carcassonne board - the world is very clearly made up of a very limited number of tiles that are frequently reused. And since it's a 3D game, the fact that they've just rotated some of them really doesn't help when you're running along a road - it still looks identical, even if the road is running east/west instead of north/south.
Plus, while WoW has seamless zoning, FFXIV requires you to load in a new area whenever they change tile sets. To try and reduce the number of times you're required to load, the areas that all use the same tile set are vastly oversized. This is presumably a technical limitation that they'll blame on the PS3, but really, who cares why the world is bland, just that it is.
There's no way to fix the world map other than to completely redo it from scratch. Which is why it's nice to see that it's possible to completely update your world map, even if there's absolutely no chance it'll happen in FFXIV before they're forced to cancel it. (I give FFXIV through maybe September of 2011, when it becomes clear that no one is willing to play it on the PS3, either.)
With all the player friendly changes finally incorporated into the old world the game
The fact that this is working for Blizzard gives me hope that Square Enix will ape it to fix the horrible world that is Final Fantasy XIV. Even if they fixed everything else in that game, they're still stuck with the most bland, most boring, most oversized, most repetitive world map that's ever been in an MMO.
I don't really intend to play WoW, but it's nice to see that at least one MMO company is willing to take risks like completely redoing their original world map when they feel it needs to be redone. Apparently there's already talk from Sony about doing something similar to EQ2 for similar reasons.
Of course, considering that rather than fixing gameplay flaws in their "big patch," Square Enix instead offered the ability to customize chat colors, I highly doubt that they'll actually fix their world. But it's nice to see that it can be done by MMO companies with a spine.
Because the sole measure of how well an economy is doing is unemployment, right?
I don't know about you, but I'm doing far worse now than I was under Bush, and I'm still employed. So, yeah, I'd say that from my point of view, the economy is far worse now than it was before.
Of course, I live in Massachusetts, which completely fucked up their health care system, so part of the increase in costs is due to that. Luckily for the rest of you, the problems that Massachusetts created for itself (more people getting care from the emergency room than ever before, fewer medical services being offered, fewer doctors, and on) are local to the state, and aren't a huge mistake that the federal government is duplicating across the nation.
...Oh, wait.
I should probably post AC since I have, in the past, supported the health care program, but recent facts of how it went in Massachusetts show it to be a complete disaster. And that's a link to an NPR story, so this isn't just random conservative talking points, it really has been a complete disaster, which the entire nation gets to share in now. Yay change.
That I can then get _my_ books off of my nook onto my laptop in a readable format?
I don't know about the Nook Color, but for the Nook itself, yes you can: easily. Without jailbreaking.
First, connect the Nook via USB. It's just a USB storage device using FAT32. All your downloaded ebooks will be in "my B&N downloads" on the root of the device. Annoyingly they're named by random numbers, but whatever, you can still grab them and get them off the device.
They will be DRMed, but the DRM is cracked and trivial: the key is the name on your credit card plus the credit card number itself. The idea is that you won't be willing to distribute the key. (Which is somewhat silly, since the key is actually an SHA1 hash of your credit card and name, and therefore you're really not giving anything out.)
Just Google for "ignoblekey" and "ignobleepub" and you should find two Python scripts to handle decrypting the files.
Finally, you'll need an application that supports reading EPUB files on your laptop. Calibre is apparently the best choice for Linux, so try "emerge calibre" and see if that works.
Also, there's no limit to the number of devices that you can copy the epub files to. As long as you log in to the Nook software using your account, you should be able to download books to any device that supports the Nook software. Which doesn't include Linux. Or Mac OS X. But does include the iPad, making me wonder why anyone would want to get a Nook Color.
I do with Nintendo would come out with a Wii+ or something as a second-gen device, which would be nice... even a bump to 1080p, and built in blue ray for an extra $100-150 would be a big seller, would mean a faster CPU, but minimal changes as far as compatability...
Bah, fuck the graphics, I wish Nintendo would fix one of the most brain-dead design decisions that they're stuck with: the limited storage and the fixed save space per game.
Each game is required (as far as I can tell) to say "I need xMB" and is then allocated that space on the 512MB internal storage. And that's all it gets. So games will limit you to between three and ten save slots. Which is complete BS in a console with an SD card slot. Actually, considering that all games have a limited number of save slots, I expect this is a Nintendo requirement as well.
Further more, both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 have you tie saves to user accounts. In this case it's more of a side effect of their online services, but it's still a good feature and one that the Wii should use: it means that you can't accidentally delete a different user's save games.
And the Wii has a perfect system for this with Miis. Pick an "active" Mii and tie save games to that Mii - it's a simple system that I expect children could easily pick up and it would allow individual players to have their own save slots. Even if they kept strict limits on saves per user, this would be a big improvement.
I expect that when it comes to sharing consoles between family members, the Wii's got to be one of the most shared consoles, and the lack of save slots is just ludicrous. There's no need for hard limits on the number of saves.
Then we can move on to things like the needlessly limited storage, or the fact that WiiWare downloads are tied to the specific console and not a user account, or even the graphics. (And, hell, that WiiWare one has to be hurting sales. I know that there are people out there who would have "upgraded" to a different color Wii if only they could have moved their WiiWare/Virtual Console collection. Stupid and pointless, maybe, but if they want to throw $200 at Nintendo for no good reason, why would Nintendo stop them?)
Actually, there is: the PS3 turns on HDCP as soon as you start playing a game. If you're using composite/component it won't use it, but if you're using HDMI, you must have an HDCP-equipped display.
Note that if you hook up the PS3 and get nothing, you're doing something wrong, since HDCP isn't required just to look at the XMB. It's only required for playing games, if you're using HDMI.
I hit the "registration required" wall when trying to read the article, which is weird, because as far as I know I haven't viewed any Times articles in - well, ages. I guess that's not the pay wall, but I definitely couldn't access the article. Clearing/refusing cookies didn't resolve it either.
As far as I can tell, the article does in fact require registration to read.
And where's the innovation in voice commands?
Theoretically (code word for "I'm not convinced this isn't utter bullshit"), Kinect does quite a bit more than just simple voice recognition. It uses the camera to track the player's mouth, so it knows where it should be listening and can then do spatial noise canceling to listen to just the player's voice.
This is according to the articles I've read about the Kinect, at least, and I'm not entirely convinced that the authors of the articles actually know how it works and aren't speculating. So... whatever. That's the innovation they're talking about - combining motion tracking with a microphone to get clearer audio without requiring a headset.
And, generally, people complain about that too.
Or have you never heard of "home brew?"
Every single software or hardware maker does what Apple does.
Oh, that explain why you can't run Linux on a PC or compile your own apps for Mac OS X.
No, wait, something seems off here...
You seem to have completely missed the point of the complaints - it's not that Apple won't allow Flash on, it's the Apple picks and chooses third party apps that are blessed with being allowed to run on their device.
I can kinda see that making sense for a phone, but iOS now covers iPads and iPods, where it makes absolutely no sense. Except for Apple's bottom line.
So, here's the question you should be answering: If I want Flash on my phone, why doesn't Apple allow me to install it?
Keeping in mind that you can replace Flash with anything. For example, say, an Ogg Theora or WebM video player.
You missed the important part of the sentence: "for UI glue code."
The code in question is just for wizards. The time spent loading and starting Java is presumably longer than the time spent running any actual code. Don't forget, the majority of OOo code is already in C/C++, all the Java code is doing is stringing together a series of UI screens. All the heavy lifting is already done by native code.
If you removed the Java, then you would need to write the interface code for each platform you support.
Or they could pick a scripting language and write the UI in that. I hear that Python runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X (the three platforms LibreOffice appears to support), so maybe they could use that.
Or if they're really attached to the letters J, A, and V, they could use Mozilla's JavaScript engine.
Both of which would likely be faster and lighter-weight than trying to use Java for UI glue code.
This may be way too late to post to this discussion, but, oh well.
Don't forget that the use of JavaScript in the UI means it's possible to get the "A script is running slowly" dialog for UI script. The great thing about that is that it's exactly the same dialog as would appear for a page, and it counts time spent in a file dialog as a "script running slowly." "Sure, stop the script. ...What happened to my download?"
I get why they did it to an extent. It's not exactly a horrible decision, it makes an amount of sense to have the basic browser UI glue code be in JavaScript.
Which doesn't change the fact that way more than simple glue code is done in JavaScript and that XUL is absolutely horrible.
Well, I might as well troll you, since I might actually get a meaningful answer. :)
Does this speed-up translate to faster render speed or is it just somewhat meaningless faster JavaScript? Because I haven't ever really run into any instances where the speed of executing JavaScript has really mattered. When I experience slowdown in Firefox, it always seems to come down to rendering speed.
I know that the latest version does hardware acceleration (under Windows Vista/7 only?), but from my experience, that doesn't really speed anything up. Plus I had to disable it, because 3D apps work best if only one of them is using the 3D card. (I'll blame Minecraft, even though the real culprit was Final Fantasy XIV. I just don't want to admit to having played FFXIV in its current state. Both in windowed mode - leaving the Firefox window behind FFXIV at least causes horrible tearing.)
Not to mention that the Beta 6 font smoothing is all kinds of weird with hardware acceleration turned on, it seems to randomly switch between monochrome antialiasing and subpixel antialiasing.
For whatever reason, Chrome just "feels" faster, and I'm not entirely sure why. I don't think it's JavaScript performance, though, I think it comes down to the renderer. Ultimately I'm not entirely convinced that it's really worthwhile to speed up JavaScript performance.
But since I really don't know the inner workings of Firefox (I know that there's a lot of chrome JavaScript), I have no idea how useful increasing JavaScript speed is.
And on that note, I think I need to restart Chrome, since some of its tabs have randomly crashed, a problem I've never encountered in Firefox.
It could be worse, the church I go to advertises itself with a runon sentence.
And if you recognize the UCC as being the church that Obama went to and that preached "God damn America!" you'd be right. Same denomination. And, yes, the church organization as a whole fervently backs Jeremiah White, no matter what the members might think. Mainly because he's black, and the vast majority of the church is white. And we're not racist, 'cause we have a black friend. Er, preacher.
What radio button? There is no radio button. And unchecking the "Use Dynamic Discussions" does nothing, it just instantly rechecks itself when I save.
Basically, I'm forced to use the useless new discussion interface no matter what I pick.
The really infuriating thing is that I had my discussion interface set to show posts +3 or higher, but the dynamic system ignores that, and seems to randomly pick posts to show. If I could set ranges of posts to show and abbreviate, that would be useful, but the dynamic system appears to pick posts to "show" versus "abbreviate" at random.
I was using the classic system for a reason, and I'm rather pissed that I'm no longer allowed to do so.
You seem to forget that in the US, you're not allowed to protest these things at all.
Apparently the right of people to peacefully assemble somehow means that the government is allowed to tell people where they can peacefully assemble, so whenever something like a G20 summit or the Democratic National Convention occurs,US Police set up "free speech zones" where people are allowed to protest without any danger of anyone noticing them.
Protesting anywhere else will get your arrested.
And, yes, I'm calling out the DNC here, not because the Republicans don't do it too (they do), but because the Democrats did it first.
Quite a few people who post on Slashdot are developers. I happen to be employed to write Java webapps. To do this, I need the JDK.
If you're doing the full 77MB download, you're grabbing the JDK. As I posted, as far as I know, Sun never offered patches for the JDK: your only choice was to redownload the entire thing. Oracle appears to be continuing that practice.
If all you're using is the JRE, the download is much smaller (16MB versus 77MB) and it should be able to automatically update via patches.
However for quite a few Slashdot posters, the JRE is not an option, and we're stuck downloading the entire JDK. Every. Single. Freaking. Time. It's a bit annoying, especially seeing as some 20+MB are just documentation and examples that rarely change between updates.