I'd rather have some kind of standard video port (probably via a dongle for size reasons), so that I can connect my phone to a computer screen or TV or projector (pico or not) as I feel the need. And a pico projector on the side, which I may use with my phone or with my netbook, but I don't think I'll use that a lot.
There could be some specialty phones with an integrated pico projector, but that doesn't sound like a basic feature to me.
Doesn't it depend on how they present the product ? Let's say the product is the software, the physical media, the packaging, and maybe online access.
- if 'online' is an option, then I should be able to get a refund if I'm not interested. By law, 'linked sale' must be breakable into constitutive parts in my country (France).
- if 'online' is an integral part of the product, then I should be able to resell it along with the software itself.
We're going to see some fancy marketing-legalese footnotes on those games...
Are you saying that top sportsmen/women don't use drugs ?
On which planet ?
I'd actually be surprised if a single one of the top 20 athletes in every sport was NOT using drugs. Popular team sports seem to suffer less from the issue than athletics only because they are more commercial, thus care less about fairness and the health of their practitioners, thus enforce much less strict controls. It took deaths on the Tour de France for cyclism to tackle the issue.
Agreed. 3D graphics add nothing to the game, they could at least make them switchable.
The other bad thing about Civ4 were the crashes, I had 2-3 per game at the beginning (and nothing else crashed on my PC). It's better now with the latest patches, I'm down to 1 crash every once in a long while.
I don't know, I've been playing the official releases, in fact I'm still playing them. The things I like best are the slow pace and the lack of social aspect and competition (I play vs the computer, never won on the 2 highest levels btw). Slow pace because I'm getting older, I guess, FPSes don't relax me anymore. Lack of social aspects because, frankly, between Counterstrike and WoW, I'm fed up with with 15-25 yo who need attention by the bucket, be it positive or negative, and will go to any length to get it.
But then again the other games I play are online card games (belote & tarot: the 2 best reasons to be French, I'll never forget the bemused stares we got when I was studying in the US and playing at the local ice cream parlor).
No. The big icon bar at the bottom is a major waste of space. I read here on/. that even Apple's UI guru wanted to get rid of it, but they kept it because it looked so good in the store.
Anyhooo, I guess the issue is not only about default settings, but also about how easily you can change them. I can tweak stuff easily in Windows (but that's 'coz I'm used to it, and not afraid to look around). I haven't found MacOS easier to tweak than Windows, just different enough to be hard to grasp. And Linux is a bit to a lot harder... Linux devs need to get that 99.99% of users don't want to edit config files nor have to read the manual, and are too new to feel confident tinkering such an ominous OS.
Actually, even worse than nuclear and coal is DHMO (dihydrogen monoxide). Thousands of deaths per year and millions if not billions of damage per year (including in developed countries), used in major chemical processes, even by farmers (and not totally removed by rinsing fruits).
What are some uses of Dihydrogen Monoxide? Despite the known dangers of DHMO, it continues to be used daily by industry, government, and even in private homes across the U.S. and worldwide. Some of the well-known uses of Dihydrogen Monoxide are:
as an industrial solvent and coolant, in nuclear power plants, by elite athletes to improve performance, in biological and chemical weapons manufacture, in the development of genetically engineering crops and animals, as a major ingredient in many home-brewed bombs, as a byproduct of hydrocarbon combustion in furnaces and air conditioning compressor operation, historically, in Hitler's death camps in Nazi Germany, and in prisons in Turkey, Serbia, Croatia, Libya, Iraq and Iran, n animal research laboratories, and in pesticide production and distribution.
Each year, Dihydrogen Monoxide is a known causative component in many thousands of deaths and is a major contributor to millions upon millions of dollars in damage to property and the environment. Some of the known perils of Dihydrogen Monoxide are: Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities. Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage. Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically life-threatening side-effects. DHMO is a major component of acid rain. Gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns. Contributes to soil erosion. Leads to corrosion and oxidation of many metals. Contamination of electrical systems often causes short-circuits. Exposure decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes. Found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions. Given to vicious dogs involved in recent deadly attacks. Often associated with killer cyclones in the U.S. Midwest and elsewhere, and in hurricanes including deadly storms in Florida, New Orleans and other areas of the southeastern U.S. Thermal variations in DHMO are a suspected contributor to the El Nino weather effect.
We're seeing more and more vendors trying to target their OS not only to specific devices, but to very specific components (vid cards, resolutions, network cards...), following in Apple's footsteps. What percentage of dev time does Canonical spend on driver and config support ? Do you think it makes sense for the 'official' distros to alleviate the burden at the cost of some users no longer getting official support ?
because it's easy to block it and get rid of 80% of obnoxious ads. With HTML5 coming up, i'm dreading having no choice but christmas-tree websites all over.
also, note that there's a bunch of things that would save more lives, such as medicine (preventive and curative) , education, clean water, food, peace...
maybe i'm being whoooshed, but doesn't "communication for everyone, everywhere" sound rather socialist ? Not that i'm against it... right wing would be "communication for whomever can pay for it, wherever it's profitable", wouldn't it ?
Depends. There are bad products that sell, maybe because of hype, or their badness surfacing later, or the sales turning into a warranty nightmare. Plus the definition of 'bad' evolves... There's good products that don't sell, too. The Palm iPod precursor comes to mind.
I'm interested in how the iPad experiment will turn out too: It seems a bunch of much more capable, but a bit less sexy, hyped and easy to use tablets will launch this year. I personally find them more enticing than the iPad (Asus T101MT, Notion Ink Adam, even the smallish Dell Streak), but the general public may think otherwise.
Since that thing has integrated USB ports, you can put it pretty much on any stand you like to keep it propped up while you eat. It will also work with a range of USB and Bluetooth keyboards/mice, making conversion to a netbook easy. The CPU should be quite good, and the screen looks like a winner. I'm a bit worried about price though.
DRM also has a strong impact on the "portability" argument. How portable will your CDs be, if you MUST use reader X from company Y using DRM Z to read them ? How sure are you that 5, 10 years down the line, those 3 will not only still exist, but be competitive ?
To me, the HTC HD2 because it offers the following advantages: - size = 0. Since I'll be carrying a smartphone anyway, the ereader adds 0 weight/space - cost = 0. Same reasons. ditto extra stuff to carry. - web browser, including offline (I do a surprising amount of "reading" off web sites, winhttrack is my friend) - color - video and music are nice extras - support for almost all formats - Wifi + 3g included, for free too since I pay for them as a phone. - wide choice of software
drawbacks: - smallish screen (4"3)... I'm waiting on the Dell Streak - LCD screen not as good as e-ink in bright sunlight (but better in all other cases) - good only for recreational reading, I wouldn't read a manual, course book... on it.
I think it's rather that religious people get very excited over a bunch of issues so out of this world that nobody else sees where the problem could possibly be, which makes it seem like there's ONLY rabid idiots, while in fact they are a very small minority. Rabid idiots win over laid-back gentlemen everytime, see nazism and russian revolution.
after breaking my tailbone, I'm more of the Stupid Design school. Or Perverse Design. Why the f*** endow me with a vestigial tail since I clearly never had one !
I'm not so sure about power. Hardware specs are at par, no more; the locked OS on anything non-Mac is starting to alienate the more sophisticated users, as is the lack of hardware options. I'd probably have an iPhone if there was one with a bigger screen.
I'm not quite sure about ease of use either. It's no longer DOS vs MacOS, and as a Windows users that sometimes uses a Mac, I find MacOS does things not only differently, but not that intuitively either. My brother had to teach me how to launch apps that are not in the big bottom bar; changing networks params is at least as complicated as in Windows...
To me Apple is about design, not power, and ease of use at the cost of flexibility. Better for my retired parents and my high-school niece than for me.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd rather have some kind of standard video port (probably via a dongle for size reasons), so that I can connect my phone to a computer screen or TV or projector (pico or not) as I feel the need. And a pico projector on the side, which I may use with my phone or with my netbook, but I don't think I'll use that a lot.
There could be some specialty phones with an integrated pico projector, but that doesn't sound like a basic feature to me.
Doesn't it depend on how they present the product ? Let's say the product is the software, the physical media, the packaging, and maybe online access.
- if 'online' is an option, then I should be able to get a refund if I'm not interested. By law, 'linked sale' must be breakable into constitutive parts in my country (France).
- if 'online' is an integral part of the product, then I should be able to resell it along with the software itself.
We're going to see some fancy marketing-legalese footnotes on those games...
the comparison is between cheating and cheating... is that hard to understand ?
Are you saying that top sportsmen/women don't use drugs ?
On which planet ?
I'd actually be surprised if a single one of the top 20 athletes in every sport was NOT using drugs. Popular team sports seem to suffer less from the issue than athletics only because they are more commercial, thus care less about fairness and the health of their practitioners, thus enforce much less strict controls. It took deaths on the Tour de France for cyclism to tackle the issue.
We already have a bunch of false gods, thank you :-p
Agreed. 3D graphics add nothing to the game, they could at least make them switchable.
The other bad thing about Civ4 were the crashes, I had 2-3 per game at the beginning (and nothing else crashed on my PC). It's better now with the latest patches, I'm down to 1 crash every once in a long while.
I don't know, I've been playing the official releases, in fact I'm still playing them. The things I like best are the slow pace and the lack of social aspect and competition (I play vs the computer, never won on the 2 highest levels btw). Slow pace because I'm getting older, I guess, FPSes don't relax me anymore. Lack of social aspects because, frankly, between Counterstrike and WoW, I'm fed up with with 15-25 yo who need attention by the bucket, be it positive or negative, and will go to any length to get it.
But then again the other games I play are online card games (belote & tarot: the 2 best reasons to be French, I'll never forget the bemused stares we got when I was studying in the US and playing at the local ice cream parlor).
No. The big icon bar at the bottom is a major waste of space. I read here on /. that even Apple's UI guru wanted to get rid of it, but they kept it because it looked so good in the store.
Anyhooo, I guess the issue is not only about default settings, but also about how easily you can change them. I can tweak stuff easily in Windows (but that's 'coz I'm used to it, and not afraid to look around). I haven't found MacOS easier to tweak than Windows, just different enough to be hard to grasp. And Linux is a bit to a lot harder... Linux devs need to get that 99.99% of users don't want to edit config files nor have to read the manual, and are too new to feel confident tinkering such an ominous OS.
the Improbality Drive, we're all good.
or use foxit reader ?
Actually, even worse than nuclear and coal is DHMO (dihydrogen monoxide). Thousands of deaths per year and millions if not billions of damage per year (including in developed countries), used in major chemical processes, even by farmers (and not totally removed by rinsing fruits).
Taken from http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html#DANGERS :
What are some uses of Dihydrogen Monoxide?
Despite the known dangers of DHMO, it continues to be used daily by industry, government, and even in private homes across the U.S. and worldwide. Some of the well-known uses of Dihydrogen Monoxide are:
as an industrial solvent and coolant,
in nuclear power plants,
by elite athletes to improve performance,
in biological and chemical weapons manufacture,
in the development of genetically engineering crops and animals,
as a major ingredient in many home-brewed bombs,
as a byproduct of hydrocarbon combustion in furnaces and air conditioning compressor operation,
historically, in Hitler's death camps in Nazi Germany, and in prisons in Turkey, Serbia, Croatia, Libya, Iraq and Iran,
n animal research laboratories, and
in pesticide production and distribution.
Each year, Dihydrogen Monoxide is a known causative component in many thousands of deaths and is a major contributor to millions upon millions of dollars in damage to property and the environment. Some of the known perils of Dihydrogen Monoxide are:
Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities.
Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage.
Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically life-threatening side-effects.
DHMO is a major component of acid rain.
Gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns.
Contributes to soil erosion.
Leads to corrosion and oxidation of many metals.
Contamination of electrical systems often causes short-circuits.
Exposure decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes.
Found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions.
Given to vicious dogs involved in recent deadly attacks.
Often associated with killer cyclones in the U.S. Midwest and elsewhere, and in hurricanes including deadly storms in Florida, New Orleans and other areas of the southeastern U.S.
Thermal variations in DHMO are a suspected contributor to the El Nino weather effect.
We're seeing more and more vendors trying to target their OS not only to specific devices, but to very specific components (vid cards, resolutions, network cards...), following in Apple's footsteps. What percentage of dev time does Canonical spend on driver and config support ? Do you think it makes sense for the 'official' distros to alleviate the burden at the cost of some users no longer getting official support ?
because it's easy to block it and get rid of 80% of obnoxious ads. With HTML5 coming up, i'm dreading having no choice but christmas-tree websites all over.
also, note that there's a bunch of things that would save more lives, such as medicine (preventive and curative) , education, clean water, food, peace...
maybe i'm being whoooshed, but doesn't "communication for everyone, everywhere" sound rather socialist ? Not that i'm against it... right wing would be "communication for whomever can pay for it, wherever it's profitable", wouldn't it ?
Depends. There are bad products that sell, maybe because of hype, or their badness surfacing later, or the sales turning into a warranty nightmare. Plus the definition of 'bad' evolves... There's good products that don't sell, too. The Palm iPod precursor comes to mind.
I'm interested in how the iPad experiment will turn out too: It seems a bunch of much more capable, but a bit less sexy, hyped and easy to use tablets will launch this year. I personally find them more enticing than the iPad (Asus T101MT, Notion Ink Adam, even the smallish Dell Streak), but the general public may think otherwise.
Since that thing has integrated USB ports, you can put it pretty much on any stand you like to keep it propped up while you eat. It will also work with a range of USB and Bluetooth keyboards/mice, making conversion to a netbook easy. The CPU should be quite good, and the screen looks like a winner. I'm a bit worried about price though.
DRM also has a strong impact on the "portability" argument. How portable will your CDs be, if you MUST use reader X from company Y using DRM Z to read them ? How sure are you that 5, 10 years down the line, those 3 will not only still exist, but be competitive ?
To me, the HTC HD2 because it offers the following advantages:
- size = 0. Since I'll be carrying a smartphone anyway, the ereader adds 0 weight/space
- cost = 0. Same reasons. ditto extra stuff to carry.
- web browser, including offline (I do a surprising amount of "reading" off web sites, winhttrack is my friend)
- color
- video and music are nice extras
- support for almost all formats
- Wifi + 3g included, for free too since I pay for them as a phone.
- wide choice of software
drawbacks:
- smallish screen (4"3)... I'm waiting on the Dell Streak
- LCD screen not as good as e-ink in bright sunlight (but better in all other cases)
- good only for recreational reading, I wouldn't read a manual, course book... on it.
RTFA ?
Just watched it, had a good time. Thanks !
because one is science, and the other, religion. they do not belong in the same textbook.
I think it's rather that religious people get very excited over a bunch of issues so out of this world that nobody else sees where the problem could possibly be, which makes it seem like there's ONLY rabid idiots, while in fact they are a very small minority. Rabid idiots win over laid-back gentlemen everytime, see nazism and russian revolution.
after breaking my tailbone, I'm more of the Stupid Design school. Or Perverse Design. Why the f*** endow me with a vestigial tail since I clearly never had one !
I'm not so sure about power. Hardware specs are at par, no more; the locked OS on anything non-Mac is starting to alienate the more sophisticated users, as is the lack of hardware options. I'd probably have an iPhone if there was one with a bigger screen.
I'm not quite sure about ease of use either. It's no longer DOS vs MacOS, and as a Windows users that sometimes uses a Mac, I find MacOS does things not only differently, but not that intuitively either. My brother had to teach me how to launch apps that are not in the big bottom bar; changing networks params is at least as complicated as in Windows...
To me Apple is about design, not power, and ease of use at the cost of flexibility. Better for my retired parents and my high-school niece than for me.