Valve would be better off building their own console, or partnering with Google on an Android based console. Linux is too fragmented and lacks even rudimentary support for so many graphics cards. Even if we get drivers, getting something working on the wide range of distributions and versions will dwarf even Android fragmentation problems. Mainstream gamers are not techies in any way, and even techies don't want to deal with a bunch of compatibility issues when they want to just play games. Linux can't even get support for printers, how on earth is it going to support all the gaming peripherals out there?
Their best hope is that people will reject Windows 8 outright, which is not entirely impossible
I don't know why no one is going all anti trust on Microsoft for Windows 8. Their own bundled app store, libraries that Microsoft apps including their browser are able to use exclusively, the tight integration of Windows Live (now outlook.com I guess) into Windows, and a history of anti trust abuse.
The other option is to undercut Microsoft, take a smaller percentage of the sale price than Microsoft does from their App store.
I am not pro- or anti-solar power, but this is precisely the kind of meaningless 'achievement' that is trumpeted by the media and publicity seekers and will be used to push public opinion in favour of solar energy use and subsidies. What precisely is the point of a town sized nation going all solar? How can it be all solar? They don't use electricity at night? Actually they use a large bank of wonderful expensive polluting short lived rechargaeable batteries to store enough energy for the whole island for the night on cloudy days. They replaced their generator that used just 200 litres of fuel per day (a single truck can use that much) with this pointless and expensive project? I presume they have to import oil, but they can buy and stockpile a hell of a lot of diesel for the money they spent on this project. There is no way they have the expertise or raw material to make batteries or solar panels. So the self reliance theory goes out of the window - if they used wind or tidal energy that might have had some credence. What did the world gain from it? The equivalent of one less diesel truck on the roads, while spending enough money on solar cells and inverters and batteries to keep that truck running for decades. Does it help greenhouse emissions? No. Does it make the island self reliant? No. Is it a technology that can ever be viable to supply energy to the 3 billion or so people in india and china and the billion or so Africa will have at the current rate? Hell no. It's just a pointless vanity project for some big politician or UN do gooder or attention seeking billiionaire or an advertising project for some large corporation. I can't be bothered finding out which.
I don't understand. The trial isn't about whether Samsung copied Apple. It's not about the morals or ethics of copying. It's about whether Samsung violated Apple's utility and design patents. While the focus on copying is relevant to the design patents, even then, this shouldn't be about moral questions. If Samsung decided to copy Apple, it doesn't matter. IANAL but I saw this with the iPad design patent trial in Germany too and I couldn't understand. The trial should be about the patent. And the iPad design patent shows a fat tablet that looks nothing like any iPad. So I never understood how Samsung could have been found to have violated that patent. Similarly, for Apple's utility patents, the software patents, the trial should be focused on the validity and violation of the patents, namely prior art and the 'obviousness' and patentability of the patents, and whether Samsung actually infringes on them.
If it turns out that Samsung has to pay a few million even a few hundred million to Apple to Apple for the iPhone design patent violated by the Galaxy S, it won't affect things much. While I still feel that would be a case of the legal system going overboard, Samsung clearly did copy many aspects of the iPhone design. But as the Galaxy S 2 and S 3 look nothing like any iPhone, it shouldn't affect any current products. Samsung can afford to pay that much and Apple has more money than it knows what to do with. Whereas if Apple win on one of the software patents that would be a terrifying outcome that would be followed by preliminary injunctions blocking virtually all Android phones in the U.S. This isn't a moral crusade. If Samsung copied Apple and Apple still lose, well boohoo, it wouldn't make the list of the top one million horrible things that happened in the world that day.
It's not about being morally right or wrong. Not just the coverage, but so much of the testimony and evidence and court proceedings seem to focus on that. And this judge is an ignorant nutcase, who ordered a preliminary injunction before a trial to ban the Galaxy Nexus from the United Status. Yes, she decided that having a common search for local and web items is a valid patent, is clearly violated, and having that violated harms Apple's business much more than having the GN banned would harm consumers. I would love to see Apple get that reasoning past Posner. At least make them win in a goddam trial, does she even understand she will be fundamentally undermining the market dynamics of the fastest growing, emerging area of technology in the world and handing the market to Apple on a platter with bans like those, and if that is really justified by a dubious patent?
To add tothis, I think people criticizing the nature of the award are missing the larger point. A Wall street investor capitalist billionaire type gave away millions of dollars to theoretical physicists studying the fundamental nature of.. well, everything. How can that possibly be a bad thing.
It is great to hear of an effort similar to the Perimeter institute, of technology billionaires giving back to science.
As a first year undergraduate Physics student, I had a chance to meet one of the awardees, Dr. Ashoke Sen for lunch with a group of physics students. Not only is he a brilliant scientist, he is the rare combination of a brilliant scientist, and an extraordinarily inspiring and patient teacher. I won't forget the two hours we spent peppering him with utterly stupid physics questions young students tend to ask, and he answered them all with interminable patience and good humour. Couldn't happen to a better person.
When did winning best picture become the benchmark for a great movie, a great story? Titanic won best picture. Slumdog Millionnaire won best picture. To win best picture, you make a big budget movie, full of hollywood tropes like triumph over adversity, little guys winning, unlikely romances, nostalgia for a bygone era, perhaps throw in some high end CGI or epic chases and camera shots. It's a race to the bottom, a challenge to make something that pleases the largest number of people, achieving the lowest common denominator. And then your big shot studio will market the hell out of it to make sure every academy member knows about it.
I can never understand how a live action movie that has no hope of winning any acting or screenplay prizes can ever possibly be a candidate for best picture.
I went back and watched the LOTR movies again recently. This time at home on a smaller screen, so the pyrotechnics and CGI doesn't dazzle you as much and you are more focused on the story or characters. And I realized that when I watched the movies in a cinema, I was inserting the real story in between the great CGI rather than focusing too much on the story as Jackson presented it. When you focus on the story as it is in the movies, you realize how badly Jackson has bastardized the story and every single important character. It's nor just Gimli, the way Elrond and Aragorn are fundamentally altered is incredible. I mean, I understand the challenges of bringing the story into the form of a movie, but this was clearly a simplified, significantly altered interpretation of the story. And it was all done to make sure it fits well worn hollywood tropes that have proved to be popular in the past. And judging by how much money the movies made, they succeeded brilliantly. But there were so many artistic compromises made, that I can't help but be cynical when Jackson seems to suggest that he is making three movies to try and present more of Tolkien's world. He already had a chance to present Tolkien's world, and he took the more commercially viable option. This is all about milking the cash cow and earning billions.
Of course you could. My point is that even at $200 or so the savings are already not looking that great for a likely defective substandard product with NO warranty ('If you like have a problem umm.. you could ship it to us all the way in Korea and we might do something about it' is not a warranty). The duty makes the savings even smaller.
In Australia, I have also bought more than one U2711 second hand where I was able to go pick one up personally and check for dead pixels etc. Cost only slightly more than the Korean stuff and still came with over two years of Dell's next business day warranty. I still don't get why you would buy something as failure prone as LCD screens from some two bit yum cha manufacturer who is clearly using reject screens.
I have no idea where you got the 500-700 discount figure from. Have you heard of the Dell U2711? In Australia it is routinely offered in Dell's frequent sales for under $630, and I imagine it costs about the same in Canada considering the dollars are about equal and usually stuff is more expensive in Australia.
For the $200 or two you save, you have to:
1) Pray that customs doesn't catch you and make you pay the real duty on it. Bonus warm inner glow of willingly and knowingly breaking the law. 2) There seems to be a dead pixel guarantee on these things, going by all the reviews I have seen on forums. A guarantee that you'll get dead pixels. 3) No controls and far fewer inputs and no inbuilt powered USB hub that you get with the Dell. 4) The Dell is sturdy and has an adjustable stand. 5) The Dell never gets that hot 6) With the Dell you get a three year next business day warranty
Too much praying involved for me, praying that customs don't catch you, praying that it doesn't show up with a million dead pixels, praying that it doesn't break down because there's no warranty.
16:9 actually works well on 27" screens, as now you have enough room to open two windows side by side with a substantial amount of content. With a monitor that size, height isn't a big issue, and more width is actually useful! It's laptop screens with a measly 1366x768 screens that it really becomes an annoyance. Even on my 1080p 15.6" laptop screen, it's really not a big deal, and I think if I end up getting a 17" laptop, I would prefer a 16:9 screen for the same reason as thee 27" monitor.
Sounds like a better upgrade than Windows 8...
on
OS X Mountain Lion Review
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Mountain Lion might be the thing that tips me over. The retina Macbook Pro is becoming hard to resist and there is no comparable Windows laptop on the horizon. I like Windows 7, I am comfortable with it, but if I am going to relearn stuff from scratch, I would pick ML over the travesty that is Windows 8. I'll pick something that doesn't show me a blocky touch based interface on a goddamn laptop. I never wish to use a touch screen on a laptop or a desktop, it's the most uncomfortable thing ever, I don't know why Microsoft and everyone forgot about Gorilla Arm. OSX doesn't look like it's going to anything that crazy, some of the things copied over from iOS, like notifications, are actually worth copying over. At least for now, Mac OS still doesn't put restrictions on anyone who wants to do stuff from the command line or install unapproved apps. App support in Macs has improved with growing market share. The only thing I will miss about Windows is games, but for the few times I do play games, dual booting with Boot Camp will do.
I can't think of a reason why I shouldn't 'learn' ML rather than learning Windows 8.
Seriously, what are these analysts paid for. Anyone who knows the slightest bit about about what's happening in technology knows what's happening. The iPhone 5 doesn't even have a huge challenge. All they have to do is make the phone in a nicer metal body (liquid body) and maybe slimmer, which is one thing Apple can be depended on for, since their designs are industry leading. Make the screen a bit larger, make Siri a bit more functional, improve the camera a bit, and other iOS 6 features are coming anyway, put in a bigger battery, LTE, and NFC. This is all they need to do to make an absolute killing with the iPhone 5. This isn't a trivial industrial design challenge, but stuff Apple can do as a routine now. It is nothing like the quantum leap needed to launch the iPhone or the iPad. All the other pieces are in place. Their app ecosystem is in place, and thanks to Android fragmentation, the app experience with iOS apps is miles ahead of most Android apps. Only Samsung have the marketing and industry clout to take on Apple, but their design and development departments are far behind. It won't take much to make the SGS3 look plasticky and tacky in comparison, hell it already does. Whatever HTC do, they're too small to tale on carriers and market their products as Samsung and Apple are able to, which is why the superior HTC One X is getting trounced by the SGS3. The iPad is still killing the tablet market, over two years after release. Making a successful 7" iPad is again absolutely trivial for Apple because they have a tablet app ecosystem to back them up that is miles ahead of Android, with the lead growing every day. And a disappointment? It took Samsung two months to sell 10 million Galaxy S3, but Apple still sold 26 million iPhones in three months. This is before Apple even launches the next iPhone. If I could, I would be buying up Apple stock like crazy.
Even by the standards of the average website or forum, Youtube comments are an absolute cesspool of racism, abuse, infantile arguments, and wanton stupidity. Thus, I see no big loss in this move. I have never commented on a Youtube video, and probably never will. Perhaps this means we'll run into some intelligent comments at thee bottom of Youtube videos, and I don't know if that's a bad thing. Nothing good was coming out of allowing anonymous comments on youtube. Absolutely nothing. If there were decent comments, they got pushed down by utter garbage. I have never ever read an interesting comment on a youtube video.
And I don't know why we're picking on Google here. Every single site these days that allows comments seems to want me to sign in using Facebook. Over my dead body.
The issue is that fragmentation affects you even if your phones runs the latest version of Android. For example, it is very likely that for a few months the Nexus devices will be the only ones running 4.1, which means if an application is broken on 4.1, the developers will be in no hurry to fix them. And no one would write an app exclusively for Jelly Bean.
The summary is misleading. What Google is saying is that if certain patents are considered standard essential for communication (3G, WiFi etc.), then parents on touch screens, scrolling etc. should also be considered the same. Apple would not be forced to share them, they would be forced to license them at a fair cost. Right now, Google-Motorola cannot use their patents the way Apple uses theirs because they are classified as FRAND, whereas Apple can use their patents to force import bans on Motorola and HTC products, for example. Apple would still be paid for the licenses to those patents, but would not be able to refuse to license them or charge an exorbitant fee.
The alternative would be to, you know, not issue broad patents for scrolling and slide to unlock etc.
Thickness matters. And yes I am still talking about phones.
People who claim that iPhones are the perfect size have never used bigger phones. And iPhones are thicker than current state of the art phones. . Plus, iPhones are super expensive and scratch prone, so most people stick a cover on them. A thinner wider longer phone slides easily into most pockets. And considering the things I (and most slashdot users I would think) use our phones - reading, browsing, maps, text input, you want the biggest screen you can live with. Not the other way around. It is no longer about which phone is the least noticeable in your pocket. Most people want the largest screen that they can live with without it being too inconvenient. The minor inconvenience most people decide to live with, because you really can't go back once you've used a big screen phone.
Even if the price of selling in the market is low, the price of production, especially the capital costs are often not low. And once players are driven out of the market, the capital costs need to be paid all over again for any new entrant. Which means that the monopoly or duopoly parties can temporarily cut prices to make it uneconomical for any new parties to enter the market. And so no new competitors enter the market.
So no, it's not a naturally self regulating ideal system. At least everyone stopped pretending any marxist/socialist system is 'ideal', somehow free marketeers can still get away with making that absolutist claim.
Oh please. I live in India, a '100F' day in summer is something to feel cheerful about. Humans can survive. It's uncomfortable, but we'll survive. The biggeer issue is crops, lack of freshwater, desertification. Think of it this way: if they average temperature goes up by a couple of degrees, we'll feel it but we'll survive. But imagine the amount of heat it takes to raise the temperature of a huge landmass by even one degree. That has got to have massive consequences, much beyond summers becoming slightly more uncomfortable for humans.
That makes no sense. We turn off mobile cameras in restrooms, we can take off these things.
It is trivially easy to hide a tiny camera in a shirt button or something these days if you want to record stuff in secret. That technology is already here, the privacy concerns already exist.
Obviously, with these glasses, you can control what you record, and when video/still recording is on or off. And frankly google has a much better record of giving you control of your own content than Facebook. Besides, we record all this stuff in cellphones from many companies and carriers, how does this create new privacy issues?
Ditto for the copyright concerns. You can lounge around the house and record stuff with your celpphone camera, hell, any camera. How is this different???
The automobile accident? Well these days I am sure if your passenger happens to be recording video while you drive, that can be used as legal evidence. The same goes here.
It's not recording your life 24/7. You record when you want to, you don't when you don't.
The rest of the industry seems completely devoid of imagination. They'll just stick the latest from nVidia, AMD, and Intel into the same old pathetic badly designed and built laptop and desktop designs and race to the bottom to see who can sell the latest i9 ten core the cheapest, or try to ape whatever Apple came up with. Even the 2560x1440 27" monitors really only became cheaper after the 27" iMac came out. Plus, Windows isn't really set up to work well with very high resolution displays, and Windows 8 doesn't seem to be built for anyone who doesn't think that tablets are so awesome we can throw away our multi screen workstations.
Once Apple puts 200+ ppi displays into their laptops and desktop models, the industry will race to copy them. Until then, we're stuck with lovely 1366x768 displays, or 1920x1080 'Full HD' if you really search hard and limit your other options. But hey, you get the latest quad core Ivy Bridge on it! Who cares that yiu can see big square pixels and blocky text.
This project needs to die, and die fast. It doesn't matter just how it happens, it's a colossal waste of money. Datawind were trying to sell awful junk for more than it costs to just buy a bit less awful junk from China. The Indian government department concerned is clueless about technology, from the minister all the way down.
The reason for poor internet penetration at this point isn't that much to do with cost right now. There are many many people who can well afford to get internet access and afford basic but adequate computing devices in India but don't. Maybe we should start with those people first. I'll write something about the state of internet penetration in India, if anyone's interested you can subscribe to the blog if wordpress lets you do that.
The app still doesn't do basic stuff that the Skype app on Android does fine, like being able to receive calls when the app is not active. From what I read, this is a limitation of the platform. I really don't understand the glowing reviews for the Lumia 900 and the relentless praise for Windows Phone 7, in glowing reviews like this one: http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/15/nokia-lumia-900-review-this-ones-a-no-brainer/
It seems people can't stop making excuses for WP7, just because it's different to iOS and Android. It doesn't support dual core processors and resolutions higher than 800x480, and now it looks like no current phone will get an upgrade to Windows Phone 8, which is even worse than Android fragmentation issues. And it sounds like a repeat the HTC HD2 story, the HD2 was never upgraded to Windows 7 despite having the hardware to support it. It comes with a childish and uncustomizable homescreen. The applications screen consists of one long scrolling list that becomes a pain once you have a few apps installed. It was clever when it came out, but as Joshua Topolsky said for WP7 it's time we stopped giving it a pass.
Slashdot Mirror
Valve would be better off building their own console, or partnering with Google on an Android based console. Linux is too fragmented and lacks even rudimentary support for so many graphics cards. Even if we get drivers, getting something working on the wide range of distributions and versions will dwarf even Android fragmentation problems. Mainstream gamers are not techies in any way, and even techies don't want to deal with a bunch of compatibility issues when they want to just play games. Linux can't even get support for printers, how on earth is it going to support all the gaming peripherals out there?
Their best hope is that people will reject Windows 8 outright, which is not entirely impossible
I don't know why no one is going all anti trust on Microsoft for Windows 8. Their own bundled app store, libraries that Microsoft apps including their browser are able to use exclusively, the tight integration of Windows Live (now outlook.com I guess) into Windows, and a history of anti trust abuse.
The other option is to undercut Microsoft, take a smaller percentage of the sale price than Microsoft does from their App store.
I am not pro- or anti-solar power, but this is precisely the kind of meaningless 'achievement' that is trumpeted by the media and publicity seekers and will be used to push public opinion in favour of solar energy use and subsidies. What precisely is the point of a town sized nation going all solar? How can it be all solar? They don't use electricity at night? Actually they use a large bank of wonderful expensive polluting short lived rechargaeable batteries to store enough energy for the whole island for the night on cloudy days. They replaced their generator that used just 200 litres of fuel per day (a single truck can use that much) with this pointless and expensive project? I presume they have to import oil, but they can buy and stockpile a hell of a lot of diesel for the money they spent on this project. There is no way they have the expertise or raw material to make batteries or solar panels. So the self reliance theory goes out of the window - if they used wind or tidal energy that might have had some credence. What did the world gain from it? The equivalent of one less diesel truck on the roads, while spending enough money on solar cells and inverters and batteries to keep that truck running for decades. Does it help greenhouse emissions? No. Does it make the island self reliant? No.
Is it a technology that can ever be viable to supply energy to the 3 billion or so people in india and china and the billion or so Africa will have at the current rate? Hell no.
It's just a pointless vanity project for some big politician or UN do gooder or attention seeking billiionaire or an advertising project for some large corporation. I can't be bothered finding out which.
I don't understand. The trial isn't about whether Samsung copied Apple. It's not about the morals or ethics of copying. It's about whether Samsung violated Apple's utility and design patents. While the focus on copying is relevant to the design patents, even then, this shouldn't be about moral questions. If Samsung decided to copy Apple, it doesn't matter. IANAL but I saw this with the iPad design patent trial in Germany too and I couldn't understand. The trial should be about the patent. And the iPad design patent shows a fat tablet that looks nothing like any iPad. So I never understood how Samsung could have been found to have violated that patent. Similarly, for Apple's utility patents, the software patents, the trial should be focused on the validity and violation of the patents, namely prior art and the 'obviousness' and patentability of the patents, and whether Samsung actually infringes on them.
If it turns out that Samsung has to pay a few million even a few hundred million to Apple to Apple for the iPhone design patent violated by the Galaxy S, it won't affect things much. While I still feel that would be a case of the legal system going overboard, Samsung clearly did copy many aspects of the iPhone design. But as the Galaxy S 2 and S 3 look nothing like any iPhone, it shouldn't affect any current products. Samsung can afford to pay that much and Apple has more money than it knows what to do with. Whereas if Apple win on one of the software patents that would be a terrifying outcome that would be followed by preliminary injunctions blocking virtually all Android phones in the U.S. This isn't a moral crusade. If Samsung copied Apple and Apple still lose, well boohoo, it wouldn't make the list of the top one million horrible things that happened in the world that day.
It's not about being morally right or wrong. Not just the coverage, but so much of the testimony and evidence and court proceedings seem to focus on that. And this judge is an ignorant nutcase, who ordered a preliminary injunction before a trial to ban the Galaxy Nexus from the United Status. Yes, she decided that having a common search for local and web items is a valid patent, is clearly violated, and having that violated harms Apple's business much more than having the GN banned would harm consumers. I would love to see Apple get that reasoning past Posner. At least make them win in a goddam trial, does she even understand she will be fundamentally undermining the market dynamics of the fastest growing, emerging area of technology in the world and handing the market to Apple on a platter with bans like those, and if that is really justified by a dubious patent?
To add tothis, I think people criticizing the nature of the award are missing the larger point. A Wall street investor capitalist billionaire type gave away millions of dollars to theoretical physicists studying the fundamental nature of.. well, everything. How can that possibly be a bad thing.
It is great to hear of an effort similar to the Perimeter institute, of technology billionaires giving back to science.
As a first year undergraduate Physics student, I had a chance to meet one of the awardees, Dr. Ashoke Sen for lunch with a group of physics students. Not only is he a brilliant scientist, he is the rare combination of a brilliant scientist, and an extraordinarily inspiring and patient teacher. I won't forget the two hours we spent peppering him with utterly stupid physics questions young students tend to ask, and he answered them all with interminable patience and good humour. Couldn't happen to a better person.
When did winning best picture become the benchmark for a great movie, a great story? Titanic won best picture. Slumdog Millionnaire won best picture. To win best picture, you make a big budget movie, full of hollywood tropes like triumph over adversity, little guys winning, unlikely romances, nostalgia for a bygone era, perhaps throw in some high end CGI or epic chases and camera shots. It's a race to the bottom, a challenge to make something that pleases the largest number of people, achieving the lowest common denominator. And then your big shot studio will market the hell out of it to make sure every academy member knows about it.
I can never understand how a live action movie that has no hope of winning any acting or screenplay prizes can ever possibly be a candidate for best picture.
I went back and watched the LOTR movies again recently. This time at home on a smaller screen, so the pyrotechnics and CGI doesn't dazzle you as much and you are more focused on the story or characters. And I realized that when I watched the movies in a cinema, I was inserting the real story in between the great CGI rather than focusing too much on the story as Jackson presented it. When you focus on the story as it is in the movies, you realize how badly Jackson has bastardized the story and every single important character. It's nor just Gimli, the way Elrond and Aragorn are fundamentally altered is incredible. I mean, I understand the challenges of bringing the story into the form of a movie, but this was clearly a simplified, significantly altered interpretation of the story. And it was all done to make sure it fits well worn hollywood tropes that have proved to be popular in the past. And judging by how much money the movies made, they succeeded brilliantly. But there were so many artistic compromises made, that I can't help but be cynical when Jackson seems to suggest that he is making three movies to try and present more of Tolkien's world. He already had a chance to present Tolkien's world, and he took the more commercially viable option. This is all about milking the cash cow and earning billions.
Of course you could. My point is that even at $200 or so the savings are already not looking that great for a likely defective substandard product with NO warranty ('If you like have a problem umm.. you could ship it to us all the way in Korea and we might do something about it' is not a warranty). The duty makes the savings even smaller.
That's what boot camp is for :) It is unlikely to be my primary work laptop, and for the occasional emergency, there's boot camp.
I was trying to address his situation in Canada.
In Australia, I have also bought more than one U2711 second hand where I was able to go pick one up personally and check for dead pixels etc. Cost only slightly more than the Korean stuff and still came with over two years of Dell's next business day warranty. I still don't get why you would buy something as failure prone as LCD screens from some two bit yum cha manufacturer who is clearly using reject screens.
and it states the bleeding obvious... Is TFA more interesting?
I have no idea where you got the 500-700 discount figure from. Have you heard of the Dell U2711? In Australia it is routinely offered in Dell's frequent sales for under $630, and I imagine it costs about the same in Canada considering the dollars are about equal and usually stuff is more expensive in Australia.
For the $200 or two you save, you have to:
1) Pray that customs doesn't catch you and make you pay the real duty on it. Bonus warm inner glow of willingly and knowingly breaking the law.
2) There seems to be a dead pixel guarantee on these things, going by all the reviews I have seen on forums. A guarantee that you'll get dead pixels.
3) No controls and far fewer inputs and no inbuilt powered USB hub that you get with the Dell.
4) The Dell is sturdy and has an adjustable stand.
5) The Dell never gets that hot
6) With the Dell you get a three year next business day warranty
Too much praying involved for me, praying that customs don't catch you, praying that it doesn't show up with a million dead pixels, praying that it doesn't break down because there's no warranty.
16:9 actually works well on 27" screens, as now you have enough room to open two windows side by side with a substantial amount of content. With a monitor that size, height isn't a big issue, and more width is actually useful! It's laptop screens with a measly 1366x768 screens that it really becomes an annoyance. Even on my 1080p 15.6" laptop screen, it's really not a big deal, and I think if I end up getting a 17" laptop, I would prefer a 16:9 screen for the same reason as thee 27" monitor.
Mountain Lion might be the thing that tips me over. The retina Macbook Pro is becoming hard to resist and there is no comparable Windows laptop on the horizon. I like Windows 7, I am comfortable with it, but if I am going to relearn stuff from scratch, I would pick ML over the travesty that is Windows 8. I'll pick something that doesn't show me a blocky touch based interface on a goddamn laptop. I never wish to use a touch screen on a laptop or a desktop, it's the most uncomfortable thing ever, I don't know why Microsoft and everyone forgot about Gorilla Arm. OSX doesn't look like it's going to anything that crazy, some of the things copied over from iOS, like notifications, are actually worth copying over. At least for now, Mac OS still doesn't put restrictions on anyone who wants to do stuff from the command line or install unapproved apps. App support in Macs has improved with growing market share. The only thing I will miss about Windows is games, but for the few times I do play games, dual booting with Boot Camp will do.
I can't think of a reason why I shouldn't 'learn' ML rather than learning Windows 8.
Seriously, what are these analysts paid for. Anyone who knows the slightest bit about about what's happening in technology knows what's happening. The iPhone 5 doesn't even have a huge challenge. All they have to do is make the phone in a nicer metal body (liquid body) and maybe slimmer, which is one thing Apple can be depended on for, since their designs are industry leading. Make the screen a bit larger, make Siri a bit more functional, improve the camera a bit, and other iOS 6 features are coming anyway, put in a bigger battery, LTE, and NFC. This is all they need to do to make an absolute killing with the iPhone 5. This isn't a trivial industrial design challenge, but stuff Apple can do as a routine now. It is nothing like the quantum leap needed to launch the iPhone or the iPad. All the other pieces are in place. Their app ecosystem is in place, and thanks to Android fragmentation, the app experience with iOS apps is miles ahead of most Android apps. Only Samsung have the marketing and industry clout to take on Apple, but their design and development departments are far behind. It won't take much to make the SGS3 look plasticky and tacky in comparison, hell it already does. Whatever HTC do, they're too small to tale on carriers and market their products as Samsung and Apple are able to, which is why the superior HTC One X is getting trounced by the SGS3.
The iPad is still killing the tablet market, over two years after release. Making a successful 7" iPad is again absolutely trivial for Apple because they have a tablet app ecosystem to back them up that is miles ahead of Android, with the lead growing every day.
And a disappointment? It took Samsung two months to sell 10 million Galaxy S3, but Apple still sold 26 million iPhones in three months. This is before Apple even launches the next iPhone.
If I could, I would be buying up Apple stock like crazy.
Even by the standards of the average website or forum, Youtube comments are an absolute cesspool of racism, abuse, infantile arguments, and wanton stupidity. Thus, I see no big loss in this move. I have never commented on a Youtube video, and probably never will. Perhaps this means we'll run into some intelligent comments at thee bottom of Youtube videos, and I don't know if that's a bad thing. Nothing good was coming out of allowing anonymous comments on youtube. Absolutely nothing. If there were decent comments, they got pushed down by utter garbage. I have never ever read an interesting comment on a youtube video.
And I don't know why we're picking on Google here. Every single site these days that allows comments seems to want me to sign in using Facebook. Over my dead body.
RTFA :)
The issue is that fragmentation affects you even if your phones runs the latest version of Android. For example, it is very likely that for a few months the Nexus devices will be the only ones running 4.1, which means if an application is broken on 4.1, the developers will be in no hurry to fix them. And no one would write an app exclusively for Jelly Bean.
The summary is misleading. What Google is saying is that if certain patents are considered standard essential for communication (3G, WiFi etc.), then parents on touch screens, scrolling etc. should also be considered the same. Apple would not be forced to share them, they would be forced to license them at a fair cost. Right now, Google-Motorola cannot use their patents the way Apple uses theirs because they are classified as FRAND, whereas Apple can use their patents to force import bans on Motorola and HTC products, for example. Apple would still be paid for the licenses to those patents, but would not be able to refuse to license them or charge an exorbitant fee.
The alternative would be to, you know, not issue broad patents for scrolling and slide to unlock etc.
Thickness matters. And yes I am still talking about phones.
People who claim that iPhones are the perfect size have never used bigger phones. And iPhones are thicker than current state of the art phones. . Plus, iPhones are super expensive and scratch prone, so most people stick a cover on them. A thinner wider longer phone slides easily into most pockets. And considering the things I (and most slashdot users I would think) use our phones - reading, browsing, maps, text input, you want the biggest screen you can live with. Not the other way around. It is no longer about which phone is the least noticeable in your pocket. Most people want the largest screen that they can live with without it being too inconvenient. The minor inconvenience most people decide to live with, because you really can't go back once you've used a big screen phone.
Even if the price of selling in the market is low, the price of production, especially the capital costs are often not low. And once players are driven out of the market, the capital costs need to be paid all over again for any new entrant. Which means that the monopoly or duopoly parties can temporarily cut prices to make it uneconomical for any new parties to enter the market. And so no new competitors enter the market.
So no, it's not a naturally self regulating ideal system. At least everyone stopped pretending any marxist/socialist system is 'ideal', somehow free marketeers can still get away with making that absolutist claim.
Oh please. I live in India, a '100F' day in summer is something to feel cheerful about. Humans can survive. It's uncomfortable, but we'll survive. The biggeer issue is crops, lack of freshwater, desertification. Think of it this way: if they average temperature goes up by a couple of degrees, we'll feel it but we'll survive. But imagine the amount of heat it takes to raise the temperature of a huge landmass by even one degree. That has got to have massive consequences, much beyond summers becoming slightly more uncomfortable for humans.
That makes no sense. We turn off mobile cameras in restrooms, we can take off these things.
It is trivially easy to hide a tiny camera in a shirt button or something these days if you want to record stuff in secret. That technology is already here, the privacy concerns already exist.
Obviously, with these glasses, you can control what you record, and when video/still recording is on or off. And frankly google has a much better record of giving you control of your own content than Facebook. Besides, we record all this stuff in cellphones from many companies and carriers, how does this create new privacy issues?
Ditto for the copyright concerns. You can lounge around the house and record stuff with your celpphone camera, hell, any camera. How is this different???
The automobile accident? Well these days I am sure if your passenger happens to be recording video while you drive, that can be used as legal evidence. The same goes here.
It's not recording your life 24/7. You record when you want to, you don't when you don't.
The rest of the industry seems completely devoid of imagination. They'll just stick the latest from nVidia, AMD, and Intel into the same old pathetic badly designed and built laptop and desktop designs and race to the bottom to see who can sell the latest i9 ten core the cheapest, or try to ape whatever Apple came up with. Even the 2560x1440 27" monitors really only became cheaper after the 27" iMac came out. Plus, Windows isn't really set up to work well with very high resolution displays, and Windows 8 doesn't seem to be built for anyone who doesn't think that tablets are so awesome we can throw away our multi screen workstations.
Once Apple puts 200+ ppi displays into their laptops and desktop models, the industry will race to copy them. Until then, we're stuck with lovely 1366x768 displays, or 1920x1080 'Full HD' if you really search hard and limit your other options. But hey, you get the latest quad core Ivy Bridge on it! Who cares that yiu can see big square pixels and blocky text.
This project needs to die, and die fast. It doesn't matter just how it happens, it's a colossal waste of money. Datawind were trying to sell awful junk for more than it costs to just buy a bit less awful junk from China. The Indian government department concerned is clueless about technology, from the minister all the way down.
Shameless self promotion, but very relevant: you can read my old blog entry about the folly of this project here: http://colourmeamused.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/4/
The reason for poor internet penetration at this point isn't that much to do with cost right now. There are many many people who can well afford to get internet access and afford basic but adequate computing devices in India but don't. Maybe we should start with those people first. I'll write something about the state of internet penetration in India, if anyone's interested you can subscribe to the blog if wordpress lets you do that.
The app still doesn't do basic stuff that the Skype app on Android does fine, like being able to receive calls when the app is not active. From what I read, this is a limitation of the platform. I really don't understand the glowing reviews for the Lumia 900 and the relentless praise for Windows Phone 7, in glowing reviews like this one: http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/15/nokia-lumia-900-review-this-ones-a-no-brainer/
It seems people can't stop making excuses for WP7, just because it's different to iOS and Android. It doesn't support dual core processors and resolutions higher than 800x480, and now it looks like no current phone will get an upgrade to Windows Phone 8, which is even worse than Android fragmentation issues. And it sounds like a repeat the HTC HD2 story, the HD2 was never upgraded to Windows 7 despite having the hardware to support it. It comes with a childish and uncustomizable homescreen. The applications screen consists of one long scrolling list that becomes a pain once you have a few apps installed. It was clever when it came out, but as Joshua Topolsky said for WP7 it's time we stopped giving it a pass.