how hard would it have been to include a wireless browser in the interface outside of games?
Not very hard. (My own personal wishlist item for the DS workbench is to be able to return to the main screen after configuring something without having to power cycle. There must be something about the boot process that I'm not aware of that prevented them from doing this.)
Keep in mind though, the DS is still a games console, and a LOT of its users are children. Nintendo is smart enough to realize that offering children unrestricted access to the World Wide Web could be a very bad idea -- if I had a 10-year-old I wouldn't want him using his DS to look at porn sites, and neither would you. And some form of restricted web access would have a similar number of problems.
I'd love to see Nintendo or one of its licensees release a Web Browser "game" cartridge for the DS, so that parents and non-parents alike can enable or disable web browsing from the device as they wish. There's already versions of Opera running on other ARM-based devices...
they almost drove Sega into the grave with their 3rd party licensing agreements back in the 80's.
At least some of the blame for Sega's pathetic showing during the 8-bit generation has to go to Sega themselves, for their decision to let Tonka mismanage the distribution for the Master System. And those bland graph-paper cartridge boxes, ugh.
actually, it [units shipped] is the preferred accounting number to use.
Sure, if what you want to measure is the amount of money made by the manufacturer. (And with Sony and Microsoft, that metric tends to be negative when discussing console hardware.)
On the other hand, if what you want to measure is the popularity of a console, a more valuable metric is to look at how many consoles are actually owned by the gaming populace. As a bonus, retail sales are relatively easy to quantify and audit.
Perhaps an even MORE valuable metric would be to look at how gamers spend their time playing those consoles, but that can't be measured as accurately as sales can. I did see an interesting survey about the current generation of home consoles a while back though, which suggested that about 40% of gamers' time was spent on Xbox, while PS2 and Gamecube were around 10%. If true, this would suggest that even if equal numbers of Xboxen and PS2s were sold, the MS offering is actually a much more successful product.
That would be nice, but you always have the option to, you know, RTFA.
That's the attitude of someone who has no respect for other peoples' time. You're allowed, but I expect better of Slashdot's editorial staff. What is their function if not to save readers from unnecessary effort?
Why, in the world, have a 10 GB HD, when -- by 2009 -- you'll be able to have (for a slightly higher premium) 8 GB of flash?
Well, ten is two more than eight, innit?
We also don't know yet just what kind of "higher premium" you'll pay for Flash over microdrives three years from now. If, in 2009, a 10GB microdrive costs $100 to an OEM, and an 8GB Flash unit costs $250, which do you think designers of cell phones and MP3 players are going to choose for their devices?
Perhaps Slashdot editors could do what every professional editor on the planet does, and define what an acronym means the first time it's referenced in every article.
This is common sense. I will grant, due to Slashdot's subject matter there are some acronyms that are common enough that they don't need to be defined (GNU, MS, RIAA) but if, as you suggest, this is the first time the term 'DAP' has appeared in a Slashdot story summary, the reader is owed a definition.
Just because he writes a pop-science book and you've heard of him doesn't make him a 'great' in physics.
A legitimate goal of Science is to further humanity's understanding of the world around us, no?
By that criterion, I'd say a pop-science author who is capable of describing complex phenomena in a way that can be understood by "lay people", as Hawking does, has contributed more to the state of Science than an academic who makes a discovery that is only meaningful to the 20 other career postdocs in the world with sufficient background in the field.
Netwosix sounds like something Homer Simpson would make.
OK, I get the concept behind the name. It's like NetBSD, except based on a Linux 2.6 kernel. Hence, Net-Two-Six.
And yet everytime my eyes scan the name, my brain thinks, "Net-Wos-Ix". It's poorly portmanteaued.
Beyond that, the name is poor because it doesn't account for future kernel revision numbers, which are pretty much a statistical certainty. Can we look forward to a "Net-Woe-Ight" somewhere down the line? Or will it just be "Net-Wosix Version 2.8"?
It doesn't matter what version of IE you use install the IE5.5 power toys which will add two settings to the tools menu called add to restricted zone and add to trusted zone. It ain't rocket science.
Seriously. You just need to download an officially unsupported Microsoft utility, and every user has to put on a network administrator hat for a while. What's so difficult about that?
clerktroopers who follow orders and resist the Jedi Mind Trick ultimately find themselves scheduled for termination
Never worked in retail, huh?
It's pretty rare these days that a sales clerk will lose their job as a result of customers choosing to walk away rather than complete a sale. Heck, if you can show up on time every day and keep the register from being short $50 at the end of the shift, you'll be employed for as long as you wish to stay there.
Don't let this get in the way of your fantasy about harm coming to the sales associates who are merely doing what the corporation has instructed them to do, though. Take that, scummy clerktroopers!
How many real-world use cases are there for MP3 players? Is this number closer to three, or closer to "thousands"?
Apple is consumer friendly because they try to keep consumers from wasting their time on meaningless decisions. If you want to listen to a few tunes while jogging, the iPod shuffle is for you. If you want to have your entire music collection accessible at all times, the standard iPod. If you're somewhere in between, maybe the iPod nano is a good choice. A consumer knows within minutes which product is closest to their needs.
Apple revolutionizing retail by forcing stores to sell all their products at very specific (and high) prices, who needs competition!
Seriously, what other company could get away with this?
Most of 'em. I'm thinking of the video game industry, in particular. If you can find a place selling Nintendo DS for even a cent less than $129.99, I'd like to know about it.
Just how many times are people going to the apple store to buy a $200 to $500 product that it really benefits them to take the time to put in their information to make checkout faster?
Obviously they're in a pilot program now, using this system for only iPod sales. If it works well, and if people view it favorably, they'll start using it for sales of all products at all their stores, from $3 screen protectors to $3000 Cinema Displays.
The 12-for-a-penny music services like BMG and Columbia House were still not a terrible deal, back in the day. Even with the overpricing and handling fees of 'regular price' discs, after your contractual obligations were out of the way it still only worked out to $7 or $8 per CD.
The main drawback of the system, assuming you remembered to decline the club selection when you didn't want it each month, is the main drawback of iTunes Music Store and the like today: many popular acts are simply not available. Good luck finding The Beatles or Metallica anywhere but at your local brick-and-mortar CD store, for instance.
I actually have a friend who complained that his boss wouldnt help him enough whenever my friend had a problem with his work. I couldnt believe what I was hearing.
Consider why a boss is a boss.
Is it simply because they have been at the company longer? Because they have an old college friend in senior management? Because they're better at telling people what to do than actually doing work themselves?
Or is it because they have a greater wealth of understanding of the work?
Granted, all these scenarios do exist. But the last one, in my opinion, is the only valid reason to promote an employee over others; so that they may effectively share their expertise with the team, allowing everybody to work more effectively. An employee is SUPPOSED to rely on their boss for help when needed. That's what a boss is for.
Also granted, I don't know what kind of help your friend is asking for from his boss. If it's help understanding a complex set of business rules, that's one thing; if it's figuring out the difference between * and & when dealing with pointers in C, that's another.
The real issue here, one which the article seems to have missed entirely, is whether we can rely on the newspaper industry, which has historically been resistant to change, to understand and best take advantage of this "new" medium of the internet. It's not enough to simply lay out a computer screen so it looks like a printed page--and the debates about how to do that are misguided. What new opportunities exist on the web that CANNOT be accomplished through ink on paper? What kinds of interaction are now possible? What new forms of news reporting are there to explore?
And even if they do "get it", do they have the resources to follow through? I worked for a major online news organization for six years, and while our Creative Director had no shortage of great ideas, there simply wasn't enough time or money in the company to get any of his initiatives through; we all spent our (underpaid) workdays simply maintaining the status quo of the 24-hour news cycle, the 50-cents-per-letter private party classified ad.
Meanwhile, companies like Craigslist and Google are innovating the newspaper industry's core business right out from under it.
And if Sal Cangeloso really cares that much, there is nothing stopping him from getting involved and changing it. It isn't like the source is closed
Are you suggesting that he join the project team for every Linux software project whose name he finds confusing? And they'll all happily change their names if he suggests they do so?
Or will the existing project leaders insist that the names are fine as is and tell him to piss off?
Slashdot Mirror
how hard would it have been to include a wireless browser in the interface outside of games?
Not very hard. (My own personal wishlist item for the DS workbench is to be able to return to the main screen after configuring something without having to power cycle. There must be something about the boot process that I'm not aware of that prevented them from doing this.)
Keep in mind though, the DS is still a games console, and a LOT of its users are children. Nintendo is smart enough to realize that offering children unrestricted access to the World Wide Web could be a very bad idea -- if I had a 10-year-old I wouldn't want him using his DS to look at porn sites, and neither would you. And some form of restricted web access would have a similar number of problems.
I'd love to see Nintendo or one of its licensees release a Web Browser "game" cartridge for the DS, so that parents and non-parents alike can enable or disable web browsing from the device as they wish. There's already versions of Opera running on other ARM-based devices...
they almost drove Sega into the grave with their 3rd party licensing agreements back in the 80's.
At least some of the blame for Sega's pathetic showing during the 8-bit generation has to go to Sega themselves, for their decision to let Tonka mismanage the distribution for the Master System. And those bland graph-paper cartridge boxes, ugh.
actually, it [units shipped] is the preferred accounting number to use.
Sure, if what you want to measure is the amount of money made by the manufacturer. (And with Sony and Microsoft, that metric tends to be negative when discussing console hardware.)
On the other hand, if what you want to measure is the popularity of a console, a more valuable metric is to look at how many consoles are actually owned by the gaming populace. As a bonus, retail sales are relatively easy to quantify and audit.
Perhaps an even MORE valuable metric would be to look at how gamers spend their time playing those consoles, but that can't be measured as accurately as sales can. I did see an interesting survey about the current generation of home consoles a while back though, which suggested that about 40% of gamers' time was spent on Xbox, while PS2 and Gamecube were around 10%. If true, this would suggest that even if equal numbers of Xboxen and PS2s were sold, the MS offering is actually a much more successful product.
If they're being made then they're being sold.
One would hope. But one can never be sure, especially not in the videogame industry.
I'm sure some Atari exec was crowing about how many copies of "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" were shipping, back in 1982...
If you're in the US I believe there's free access to be had at any McDonalds.
Not ANY McDonald's; I believe there's only about 6000 or so with Nintendo Wifi deployed (which is still nothing to sneeze at).
http://www.nintendowifi.com/ has a search feature you can use to locate compatible hotspots near you.
That would be nice, but you always have the option to, you know, RTFA.
That's the attitude of someone who has no respect for other peoples' time. You're allowed, but I expect better of Slashdot's editorial staff. What is their function if not to save readers from unnecessary effort?
Why, in the world, have a 10 GB HD, when -- by 2009 -- you'll be able to have (for a slightly higher premium) 8 GB of flash?
Well, ten is two more than eight, innit?
We also don't know yet just what kind of "higher premium" you'll pay for Flash over microdrives three years from now. If, in 2009, a 10GB microdrive costs $100 to an OEM, and an 8GB Flash unit costs $250, which do you think designers of cell phones and MP3 players are going to choose for their devices?
Perhaps a SlashDot Glossary would be a good idea?
Perhaps Slashdot editors could do what every professional editor on the planet does, and define what an acronym means the first time it's referenced in every article.
This is common sense. I will grant, due to Slashdot's subject matter there are some acronyms that are common enough that they don't need to be defined (GNU, MS, RIAA) but if, as you suggest, this is the first time the term 'DAP' has appeared in a Slashdot story summary, the reader is owed a definition.
Just because he writes a pop-science book and you've heard of him doesn't make him a 'great' in physics.
A legitimate goal of Science is to further humanity's understanding of the world around us, no?
By that criterion, I'd say a pop-science author who is capable of describing complex phenomena in a way that can be understood by "lay people", as Hawking does, has contributed more to the state of Science than an academic who makes a discovery that is only meaningful to the 20 other career postdocs in the world with sufficient background in the field.
Netwosix sounds like something Homer Simpson would make.
OK, I get the concept behind the name. It's like NetBSD, except based on a Linux 2.6 kernel. Hence, Net-Two-Six.
And yet everytime my eyes scan the name, my brain thinks, "Net-Wos-Ix". It's poorly portmanteaued.
Beyond that, the name is poor because it doesn't account for future kernel revision numbers, which are pretty much a statistical certainty. Can we look forward to a "Net-Woe-Ight" somewhere down the line? Or will it just be "Net-Wosix Version 2.8"?
It doesn't matter what version of IE you use install the IE5.5 power toys which will add two settings to the tools menu called add to restricted zone and add to trusted zone. It ain't rocket science.
Seriously. You just need to download an officially unsupported Microsoft utility, and every user has to put on a network administrator hat for a while. What's so difficult about that?
why don't you consider Linux which I'm sure offers a better DVD watching experience than Vista on that hardware?
And which readily available, legally clean-and-clear software for the decryption and playback of DVDs under Linux do you recommend ?
clerktroopers who follow orders and resist the Jedi Mind Trick ultimately find themselves scheduled for termination
Never worked in retail, huh?
It's pretty rare these days that a sales clerk will lose their job as a result of customers choosing to walk away rather than complete a sale. Heck, if you can show up on time every day and keep the register from being short $50 at the end of the shift, you'll be employed for as long as you wish to stay there.
Don't let this get in the way of your fantasy about harm coming to the sales associates who are merely doing what the corporation has instructed them to do, though. Take that, scummy clerktroopers!
How exactly is Apple more consumer friendly?
How many real-world use cases are there for MP3 players? Is this number closer to three, or closer to "thousands"?
Apple is consumer friendly because they try to keep consumers from wasting their time on meaningless decisions. If you want to listen to a few tunes while jogging, the iPod shuffle is for you. If you want to have your entire music collection accessible at all times, the standard iPod. If you're somewhere in between, maybe the iPod nano is a good choice. A consumer knows within minutes which product is closest to their needs.
Apple revolutionizing retail by forcing stores to sell all their products at very specific (and high) prices, who needs competition!
Seriously, what other company could get away with this?
Most of 'em. I'm thinking of the video game industry, in particular. If you can find a place selling Nintendo DS for even a cent less than $129.99, I'd like to know about it.
the genius bars (god what a horrible name)
I disagree. It's very apropos given Apple's customer base and their relationship with technology.
And it beats the pants off of Best Buy's degrading "Geek Squad" counterpart.
Just how many times are people going to the apple store to buy a $200 to $500 product that it really benefits them to take the time to put in their information to make checkout faster?
Obviously they're in a pilot program now, using this system for only iPod sales. If it works well, and if people view it favorably, they'll start using it for sales of all products at all their stores, from $3 screen protectors to $3000 Cinema Displays.
The 12-for-a-penny music services like BMG and Columbia House were still not a terrible deal, back in the day. Even with the overpricing and handling fees of 'regular price' discs, after your contractual obligations were out of the way it still only worked out to $7 or $8 per CD.
The main drawback of the system, assuming you remembered to decline the club selection when you didn't want it each month, is the main drawback of iTunes Music Store and the like today: many popular acts are simply not available. Good luck finding The Beatles or Metallica anywhere but at your local brick-and-mortar CD store, for instance.
I actually have a friend who complained that his boss wouldnt help him enough whenever my friend had a problem with his work. I couldnt believe what I was hearing.
Consider why a boss is a boss.
Is it simply because they have been at the company longer? Because they have an old college friend in senior management? Because they're better at telling people what to do than actually doing work themselves?
Or is it because they have a greater wealth of understanding of the work?
Granted, all these scenarios do exist. But the last one, in my opinion, is the only valid reason to promote an employee over others; so that they may effectively share their expertise with the team, allowing everybody to work more effectively. An employee is SUPPOSED to rely on their boss for help when needed. That's what a boss is for.
Also granted, I don't know what kind of help your friend is asking for from his boss. If it's help understanding a complex set of business rules, that's one thing; if it's figuring out the difference between * and & when dealing with pointers in C, that's another.
Why would someone else's boring day suddenly be interesting because they wrote about it.
I dunno. Why would you assume that all blogs are just boring people writing about their boring days?
In fact, why would you read, hear, or watch ANY media of any kind? It's just people talking about or doing stuff. Boring.
Blogs are just authoritative statements from non-authorities who want their narcisistic rush.
They share much in common with this comment of yours, then.
The real issue here, one which the article seems to have missed entirely, is whether we can rely on the newspaper industry, which has historically been resistant to change, to understand and best take advantage of this "new" medium of the internet. It's not enough to simply lay out a computer screen so it looks like a printed page--and the debates about how to do that are misguided. What new opportunities exist on the web that CANNOT be accomplished through ink on paper? What kinds of interaction are now possible? What new forms of news reporting are there to explore?
And even if they do "get it", do they have the resources to follow through? I worked for a major online news organization for six years, and while our Creative Director had no shortage of great ideas, there simply wasn't enough time or money in the company to get any of his initiatives through; we all spent our (underpaid) workdays simply maintaining the status quo of the 24-hour news cycle, the 50-cents-per-letter private party classified ad.
Meanwhile, companies like Craigslist and Google are innovating the newspaper industry's core business right out from under it.
'Laptop and home users also have the right to run an insecure PC.'
Your right to run an insecure PC ends where my network infrastructure begins.
And if Sal Cangeloso really cares that much, there is nothing stopping him from getting involved and changing it. It isn't like the source is closed
Are you suggesting that he join the project team for every Linux software project whose name he finds confusing? And they'll all happily change their names if he suggests they do so?
Or will the existing project leaders insist that the names are fine as is and tell him to piss off?
I don't even know how to PRONOUNCE "xine". That's a significant obstacle to users learn to associate a name with anything.