No, this is more like buying a car that has been intentionally sold with a governor to limit your speed to 60 miles per hour, and if you pay them, they replace that 60mph governor with a 70mph governor, which may not even let you use the car to its full potential. That is very different from selling a car that has been tuned to a given speed, but that you yourself can tweak or do a chip reprogram to get better performance out of, with the idea that the manufacturer will not guarantee anything beyond the initial settings.
I prefer the AMD method, make the system so you can just drop a new CPU in, without needing to replace the whole motherboard whenver a new generation comes out that uses the same socket. Socket 939 went a LONG way, going from single-core to dual core, and Socket AM2, AM2+, AM3, and AM3+ really allows consumers to keep their motherboards for a far longer time than Intel allows.
There are still many places in the USA where there is no 3G, or limited 3G while 2G coverage is decent. As a result, turning off 3G is needed if you want reliable service.
How many cellular dead spots do I run across during the day? Too many, far too many, with both Verizon and AT&T providing no service in many places. 3G...the big 66Kbps speeds we get in places...yea, that will work for gaming with 1200ms pings being the norm.
The real point is that single player does not require cheat protection to save us from others, and for those who have more of a life, playing the game for the sake of ENJOYING playing the game is more important than competing for some high score or level or whatever. It isn't the destination, it's the journey that should be fun. I don't care how great a story is if I hate playing the game.
The problem with Linux is that there is very little standardization on the Linux side of things. Which distribution do you have, 32 bit vs. 64 bit? What library versions do you have? What about the windowing system, since there is more than just one? It really makes it difficult to release a product when Linux has so much variety based on what the system owner wants it to look like. And then you DO have the issues of hardware support, where Blizzard would need to help troubleshoot why your fresh Debian install doesn't get sound on your machine but your friend who has a one year old Redhat machine can run it perfectly...think you would be happy to have support tell you they don't provide support and the problem is with your Linux install? Would you accept that if you were running Windows and had them tell you to contact Microsoft for anything that doesn't work?
That is why Dungeons and Dragons Online still has one of the best designs for a MMO until you hit the high end game, less waiting overall. The only reason I quit was because new content was being released too slowly for my taste, and at the high end, you really are forced to have a group to do anything really challenging.
BluRay....it's going to be obsolete in 5-10 years when a new standard is released that supports higher resolutions. Oh, cars...no one will be able to afford a car, so in the next 50 years, people will just pay for transportation everywhere with robotic drivers, no need to drive with smart cars. Computers are evolving as well, but in the same way that there will always be a need/desire for more powerful devices for WORK related tasks, and because mobile devices will always be less powerful due to heat related issues, there will ALWAYS be a market for different tiers of computing devices.
The real problem is this trend of aiming for the lowest common denominator. If software developers aim for the lowest end machines out there, with no benefits for those with higher end machines, then there becomes less of a reason to get a higher end machine. All of this nonsense of "cloud computing" assumes everyone will always be online, and with bandwidth limits, that is also a really foolish approach. What we need is for executives who know the business the company is in, rather than generic businessmen/women who know about business management, but couldn't come up with good original ideas that will really improve how things are done.
And this is why The Witcher 1 and 2 are better games, because they appeal to those who want that darker game world. I am also sick of the "let's make all games for teenagers, and ignore that there are more adults out there playing games" attitude out there right now.
Good economy only applies to multi-player. If you don't care about multi-player and just want to play single-player, then there shouldn't be the restriction for being online. It wouldn't be difficult to make it so multi-player is always online while single-player can be offline.
And Apple...they come up with one or two good UI designs in 11 years and they don't touch it after that. MacOS and iOS have not gotten significant improvements to the UI...EVER.
With LCD screens becoming more and more common in cars, all of those number codes can easily be replaced by a warning that says what the problem is. The Fiesta, which is far from being a high end vehicle, has a LCD screen that already eliminates many of the old basic lights and tells or even shows you more about problems without resorting to numeric codes. Why would you need to ask your car what is wrong if the car by default tells you what is wrong?
The Touchpad only started selling retail on July 1st, so any reports about how well/poorly it was selling would have come after this promotion was launched. It is true that a sale like this will push units out to the public quickly, and you can't really fault them for that. WebOS is a VERY solid OS, and hype about how well it works is needed. How do you generate hype without getting it into the hands of users to test out?
Back in February, a single-core 1.4GHz with 512MB of RAM was still solid and not "last years specs". The problem is that we are six months later, the Pre 3 is still not out, and HP isn't talking about it.
The Republicans look even more incompetent, since they can't come up with any ideas on how to fix problems, and only complain about spending. How about all those conservatives suggest a 10 percent pay cut for all government employees, since the economy is in horrible shape and tax revenues are going down?
Go to speedtest.net and test your line, if you see less than 7Mbps down, call customer service to get your problem fixed. Any company WILL have problems with areas or individual customers, but if people don't call to report the problems, how is Cablevision supposed to know and test to find the source of the problem?
And in those countries, the government subsidizes the network. Here in the USA, the government is all about helping big oil and energy companies, and politicians are generally anti-technology, except for military technology.
Out here in Eastern Suffolk County(Eastern Long island, NY), customers get between 7 and 13 megabit/second out of the 15 megabit/second cap for regular Optimum Online. Customers that see less than that are having problems, and it is normally a routine service call to solve the problem. These speeds are based on speedtest.net.
In general, unless there is an excess of capacity(meaning few customers), people should not expect to see 100 percent of the advertised speed. Initial service offerings will have excess capacity, but as the number of customers increases, there WILL be capacity limitations. FIOS at this point is probably running at a loss while trying to get more customers if there is that much extra capacity on that network.
You assume the programmers in India and wherever actually have training, rather than just hacking code the way any high school student might. This is the real problem with outsourcing, where the developers may have no skill or talent, and that is why we see low quality software that gets released. The very concept of plan the design of the code before you start to write it is lost on many people.
Flash and HTML 5 both have their place, and HTML 5 does NOT replace Flash for more complex applications. Yes, animations are better left to HTML 5, but guess what, Flash is about more than animated banner advertisements, and it can do many things that HTML 5 just is not able to do. Just accept that, and stop complaining about how Flash is the evil that has caused all of the problems in your life, because it's not.
And this pushes people to get an education, rather than thinking they can get through life by putting in the least amount of effort. If we want the species to become more intelligent with each new generation, we need to change society into WANTING to be more intelligent, and letting the criminally stupid just die out, or have fewer children compared to those with more intelligence. Stop trying to save the stupid people, because we should WANT them to be weeded out of the gene pool!
Many people here in the USA and other nations have faced the decline in domestic manufacturing, which has been a big source in the surge in the Chinese market. I have suggested in the past that if the USA were to halt the import of goods from China for even three months, the Chinese economy might implode as a loss in jobs would cause all sorts of problems from people being out of work.
Now, picture what will happen if robots remove the jobs in China. People will be out of work, there will be no replacement jobs, and all hell will break loose over there. Malware and spam from China will go way up as people look to scam money from people around the world, and China as a whole will suffer. This is why the USA should be focused on robotics, since if the jobs won't be HERE, at least China won't benefit since manufacturing could return to the USA, even if manufacturing jobs won't really come back. If China doesn't have manufacturing to bring in money from the rest of the world, how long would it take before the Chinese government collapses as the economy there crashes?
Patents are designed to protect those who invent something with the intent to actually create the thing they are trying to patent. Since these patent trolls have not actually been trying to create a product to make use of these patents, they should all lose the patents in question. That's it, end of story, and the system needs to start enforcing that idea where people or companies MUST put in some effort to actually implement the patent in a product themselves, or sell it to someone who is. If a company then drops the attempt to implement the "invention" into a product, that patent should also just be killed.
It's too bad that so few people here in the USA are familiar with these two companies. I have a great pair of B&W P6 speakers that I picked up ten years ago and it will take an upturn in the economy before I can even think about upgrading them(as if it's needed). Rotel is one of those companies that also makes a product that really is GOOD, and not watered down.
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No, this is more like buying a car that has been intentionally sold with a governor to limit your speed to 60 miles per hour, and if you pay them, they replace that 60mph governor with a 70mph governor, which may not even let you use the car to its full potential. That is very different from selling a car that has been tuned to a given speed, but that you yourself can tweak or do a chip reprogram to get better performance out of, with the idea that the manufacturer will not guarantee anything beyond the initial settings.
I prefer the AMD method, make the system so you can just drop a new CPU in, without needing to replace the whole motherboard whenver a new generation comes out that uses the same socket. Socket 939 went a LONG way, going from single-core to dual core, and Socket AM2, AM2+, AM3, and AM3+ really allows consumers to keep their motherboards for a far longer time than Intel allows.
There are still many places in the USA where there is no 3G, or limited 3G while 2G coverage is decent. As a result, turning off 3G is needed if you want reliable service.
How many cellular dead spots do I run across during the day? Too many, far too many, with both Verizon and AT&T providing no service in many places. 3G...the big 66Kbps speeds we get in places...yea, that will work for gaming with 1200ms pings being the norm.
The real point is that single player does not require cheat protection to save us from others, and for those who have more of a life, playing the game for the sake of ENJOYING playing the game is more important than competing for some high score or level or whatever. It isn't the destination, it's the journey that should be fun. I don't care how great a story is if I hate playing the game.
The problem with Linux is that there is very little standardization on the Linux side of things. Which distribution do you have, 32 bit vs. 64 bit? What library versions do you have? What about the windowing system, since there is more than just one? It really makes it difficult to release a product when Linux has so much variety based on what the system owner wants it to look like. And then you DO have the issues of hardware support, where Blizzard would need to help troubleshoot why your fresh Debian install doesn't get sound on your machine but your friend who has a one year old Redhat machine can run it perfectly...think you would be happy to have support tell you they don't provide support and the problem is with your Linux install? Would you accept that if you were running Windows and had them tell you to contact Microsoft for anything that doesn't work?
That is why Dungeons and Dragons Online still has one of the best designs for a MMO until you hit the high end game, less waiting overall. The only reason I quit was because new content was being released too slowly for my taste, and at the high end, you really are forced to have a group to do anything really challenging.
BluRay....it's going to be obsolete in 5-10 years when a new standard is released that supports higher resolutions. Oh, cars...no one will be able to afford a car, so in the next 50 years, people will just pay for transportation everywhere with robotic drivers, no need to drive with smart cars. Computers are evolving as well, but in the same way that there will always be a need/desire for more powerful devices for WORK related tasks, and because mobile devices will always be less powerful due to heat related issues, there will ALWAYS be a market for different tiers of computing devices.
The real problem is this trend of aiming for the lowest common denominator. If software developers aim for the lowest end machines out there, with no benefits for those with higher end machines, then there becomes less of a reason to get a higher end machine. All of this nonsense of "cloud computing" assumes everyone will always be online, and with bandwidth limits, that is also a really foolish approach. What we need is for executives who know the business the company is in, rather than generic businessmen/women who know about business management, but couldn't come up with good original ideas that will really improve how things are done.
And this is why The Witcher 1 and 2 are better games, because they appeal to those who want that darker game world. I am also sick of the "let's make all games for teenagers, and ignore that there are more adults out there playing games" attitude out there right now.
And, if you want to play single-player, you shouldn't need that online connection. What do you get for being online in a single-player game?
Good economy only applies to multi-player. If you don't care about multi-player and just want to play single-player, then there shouldn't be the restriction for being online. It wouldn't be difficult to make it so multi-player is always online while single-player can be offline.
And Apple...they come up with one or two good UI designs in 11 years and they don't touch it after that. MacOS and iOS have not gotten significant improvements to the UI...EVER.
With LCD screens becoming more and more common in cars, all of those number codes can easily be replaced by a warning that says what the problem is. The Fiesta, which is far from being a high end vehicle, has a LCD screen that already eliminates many of the old basic lights and tells or even shows you more about problems without resorting to numeric codes. Why would you need to ask your car what is wrong if the car by default tells you what is wrong?
The Touchpad only started selling retail on July 1st, so any reports about how well/poorly it was selling would have come after this promotion was launched. It is true that a sale like this will push units out to the public quickly, and you can't really fault them for that. WebOS is a VERY solid OS, and hype about how well it works is needed. How do you generate hype without getting it into the hands of users to test out?
Back in February, a single-core 1.4GHz with 512MB of RAM was still solid and not "last years specs". The problem is that we are six months later, the Pre 3 is still not out, and HP isn't talking about it.
The Republicans look even more incompetent, since they can't come up with any ideas on how to fix problems, and only complain about spending. How about all those conservatives suggest a 10 percent pay cut for all government employees, since the economy is in horrible shape and tax revenues are going down?
More like dollar saved, 2,000 earned since as global supplies go down, the value goes up.
Wall street people are fairly clueless about anything in the realm of technology, so who cares what THEY think?
Go to speedtest.net and test your line, if you see less than 7Mbps down, call customer service to get your problem fixed. Any company WILL have problems with areas or individual customers, but if people don't call to report the problems, how is Cablevision supposed to know and test to find the source of the problem?
And in those countries, the government subsidizes the network. Here in the USA, the government is all about helping big oil and energy companies, and politicians are generally anti-technology, except for military technology.
Out here in Eastern Suffolk County(Eastern Long island, NY), customers get between 7 and 13 megabit/second out of the 15 megabit/second cap for regular Optimum Online. Customers that see less than that are having problems, and it is normally a routine service call to solve the problem. These speeds are based on speedtest.net.
In general, unless there is an excess of capacity(meaning few customers), people should not expect to see 100 percent of the advertised speed. Initial service offerings will have excess capacity, but as the number of customers increases, there WILL be capacity limitations. FIOS at this point is probably running at a loss while trying to get more customers if there is that much extra capacity on that network.
You assume the programmers in India and wherever actually have training, rather than just hacking code the way any high school student might. This is the real problem with outsourcing, where the developers may have no skill or talent, and that is why we see low quality software that gets released. The very concept of plan the design of the code before you start to write it is lost on many people.
Flash and HTML 5 both have their place, and HTML 5 does NOT replace Flash for more complex applications. Yes, animations are better left to HTML 5, but guess what, Flash is about more than animated banner advertisements, and it can do many things that HTML 5 just is not able to do. Just accept that, and stop complaining about how Flash is the evil that has caused all of the problems in your life, because it's not.
And this pushes people to get an education, rather than thinking they can get through life by putting in the least amount of effort. If we want the species to become more intelligent with each new generation, we need to change society into WANTING to be more intelligent, and letting the criminally stupid just die out, or have fewer children compared to those with more intelligence. Stop trying to save the stupid people, because we should WANT them to be weeded out of the gene pool!
Many people here in the USA and other nations have faced the decline in domestic manufacturing, which has been a big source in the surge in the Chinese market. I have suggested in the past that if the USA were to halt the import of goods from China for even three months, the Chinese economy might implode as a loss in jobs would cause all sorts of problems from people being out of work.
Now, picture what will happen if robots remove the jobs in China. People will be out of work, there will be no replacement jobs, and all hell will break loose over there. Malware and spam from China will go way up as people look to scam money from people around the world, and China as a whole will suffer. This is why the USA should be focused on robotics, since if the jobs won't be HERE, at least China won't benefit since manufacturing could return to the USA, even if manufacturing jobs won't really come back. If China doesn't have manufacturing to bring in money from the rest of the world, how long would it take before the Chinese government collapses as the economy there crashes?
Patents are designed to protect those who invent something with the intent to actually create the thing they are trying to patent. Since these patent trolls have not actually been trying to create a product to make use of these patents, they should all lose the patents in question. That's it, end of story, and the system needs to start enforcing that idea where people or companies MUST put in some effort to actually implement the patent in a product themselves, or sell it to someone who is. If a company then drops the attempt to implement the "invention" into a product, that patent should also just be killed.
It's too bad that so few people here in the USA are familiar with these two companies. I have a great pair of B&W P6 speakers that I picked up ten years ago and it will take an upturn in the economy before I can even think about upgrading them(as if it's needed). Rotel is one of those companies that also makes a product that really is GOOD, and not watered down.