With the go you pay more for less. You loose the UMD so you loose access to all the cheap used games and the old PSP will get a software update to allow you to get games online just like the go. The features of the Go are good. The actual device I think will be a bust.
You forgot that while you have 16GB of memory onboard, if you want more, you have have to buy the even more expensive Memory Stick Micros. Just when 16GB memory stick duos are becoming available for mere mortals (you can get 16GB in other formats for cheaper), Sony uses their new format which is at least double the cost as the memory stick duo.
Hope 16GB is good enough - the micros are pricey. And you can't get an SDHC to Memory Stick Micro adapter without it being a clunky thing with ribbon cables and such (MS Micro is just a bit bigger than microSD). At least Duos were even cheaper when using the microSD adapters.
"The morons who cancelled us not only got fired, but also got beaten! Badly!"
The biggest problem plaguing Fox was the constant shuffling of executives in charge of the schedule. Because the new guy in place feared that a succesful show implemented by its predecessor would not give HIM credit, he'd just move it around, keeping prime slots for his own pet projects. Fast forward six months, change execs again, repeat until your schedule is a stinker parade surrounding a few scant barely palatable options. Good shows get lost in the cracks.
The other issue is that sports often pre-empted Futurama (and many other shows), or in some timezones, extended over it. So even if you knew when Futurama was supposed to be on (that week), there's a good chance it would get pre-empted anyhow. This often led to seasons being cut short because not only did the timeslot move constantly, but the show would be aired erratically.
It's not like Fox doesn't have uh, Fox Sports to show that stuff on... those not interested catch it close to live, those who want to watch sports (always live) can use their DVRs or VCRs to record the programming as normal.
The Fox network is probably why people need DVRs to keep track of the constant schedule shifts, and have those DVRs check almost hourly to ensure shows are still going to be aired and not pre-empted by something else. And Fox will then still screw it up.
For those not blessed with DVRs (they were fairly new and unusual nearly a decade ago), it was trivially easy to miss a new episode of Futurama thinking spotrs would be on, or trying to catch Futurama and catching the end of football or something. At least there were several enterprising people back then putting up episodes for download...
Hrm. I remember about 20 years ago I could see the night sky with stars. These days I can't, and I'm still in the same general area.
Of course, the first time in years I started seeing the stars was flying overhead of the area at around 3000' or so. Night flight training can be wonderful at times. Then bloody annoying because the city lights drown out the airport beacon, and you have to hope that the darker patch on the ground is the airport. Easy with ARCAL systems since clicking the mic will turn on the lights (and the change in illumination is easy to detect). Not so easy with towered fields which have the lights on, but which are drowned out by the nearby city lights (and only a few airports I go to have the nice sequenced approach lights).
Sometimes my best hope is catching the runway lights. And this is said as I'm familiar with the area so I knew where I was, and where to look. It didn't help that their beacon changed to a LED one. I thought I was going nuts until my instructor also metnioned he had difficulty finding that airport. At least my home airport (not too far away) is easier to spot from the air.
The points system is the stupidest thing. I have to buy a block of points that don't have a covnversion rate in base 10 (instead, it's 80 points to the dollar).
Then, the sellers pick an arbitrary number of points (320 points) and want me to do a conversion in my head to figure out what I'm actually being charged (which I'm capable of, but shouldn't have to. In this case, $4). Then, if I have only have 300 MS points, I have to buy a block of at least 400 more.
MS needs to ditch the points system. I rarely buy anything on XBL (except when I win points through sweepstakes). If they would just cut the bullshit I'd buy a lot more.
They aren't ditching the points system, but they're giving you the option of direct-billing your credit card instead.
Me personally, I always buy my points on sale (they count as "accessories" - to which Dell and many stores often have sales of 10% off or more on). So people like you will always be able to buy that game for $10 off your credit card directly, while people like me get bargains and get it cheaper in exchange for having the oddball balance. Of course, I also don't have to give Microsoft my credit card number, but that's a different thing altogether (one less vendor to update CC information on).
Microsoft listened.
Heck, in the US, you can buy XBLA games off Amazon.com! Pay Amazon the money, you get a code and get the game. Microsoft's just extending that to everyone else. (You save maybe a penny or two over the normal point value cost...)
The points system will stay around because it's way too useful (e.g., "allowances" and the like to those who don't have a credit card). And at least the US has a consistent exchange rate of $1.25 to 100 points. Worldwide, it's different (mostly to account for fluctuating currencies) - big stinks have been raised over pricing when currency fluctuates.
Heck, I wish Sony would release points cards in Canada too, but they don't have 'em. Wouldn't mind grabbing stuff with discount point cards.
Emulation is great, and I would crack my PSP just for that, if I had one.
But it is just a bit disingenuous of the summary to not mention game piracy. It is one of the main reasons people install the new firmware; I suspect it's by far the primary driving force. It's also the main reason Sony is constantly plugging the holes and making revisions. It's not to combat emulation and homebrew.
I have no problem with modifying things you own; but the actual reasons that most people are interested in it shouldn't be just ignored. That's not intellectually honest.
Yeah, because it turns out, running your game off the memory stick makes for a much more acceptable portable play experience in every way compared to the crappy UMD. A PSP with UMD gives you a console like experience, with slow "loading" screens and all. There's an old YouTube video showing a game taking 7 minutes to get into the gameplay.
The PSP2k supposedly fixes this, but I can't justify buying a new PSP. Of course, I wonder how many PSP1000 owners bought a PSP2000 to get potentially a better game experience.
Sony's pretty much admitted that UMD sucks with their PSP Go. Unfortunately, the PSP Go's limitations means either re-buying your collection, giving up used games, giving up your old memory stick collection for a smaller, more expensive format (Memory Stick Micro), and paying more for the privilege.
Alas, the only way I'd want to get a PSP Go would be if there was a custom firmware for it, so I can play my legally purchased UMDs (new and used) on my new hardware.
Sony's rumored to allow people to get their UMDs in downloadable formats, but I don't see how you can do it without sending Sony your UMDs...
For me, the PalmOS emulation is going to sell it - or not. I'm not getting a smartphone until it can replace the most-used stuff on my T3. I hope this is it!
The emulator's available - it's in the Pre store. I don't know how much it costs though.
The only downside is the Pre's touchscreen isn't as precise as the old Palms, being that you use a stylus on the old Palms, but you have to use your finger on the Pre (capacitive touchscreen, like the iPhone).
OTOH, Nokia n700, n800, and n810 users can use Garnet VM for free during the beta.
But yeah, I need something to replace my Palm. My T|c died, and I haven't found a good replacement for it. My T|x works, but the lack of keyboard is disappointing. Plus it's slower than my T|c was.
DVD has copy and region protection. The only reason I have a large DVD collection today, is because the copy protection was utterly destroyed early on, ensuring my fair use indefinitely, of the discs I own. More modern protection schemes haven't been shredded to my satisfaction, so I won't be buying into them any time soon.
Actually, DVDs haven't been utterly destroyed. There's an alarming number of DVDs that are "unrippable" because of the wierd tricks people play on them. Just look at the release notes of AnyDVD - it contains many updates (at least every few weeks) usually to break through new DVD protections as they're discovered.
Disney DVDs tend to be the worst - they always have something that breaks DVD rippers.
The only good thing is that most DVDs you buy don't use these advanced techniques - probably because it costs a lot. The interesting thing is that most of the new protections are in other regions.
(I've purchased a few copies of AnyDVD - the frequency of updates and being practically the only DVD decryptor that's updated with all the latest protections constantly...).
Does anyone have any info yet about what is going to be done about buying UMD games and movies in stores and getting them onto the PSP Go?
No info on that. But apparently from this point going forward, any new PSP game that's available as a UMD will also be available as a download. I'm sure a decent portion of the back catalog will get moved online also.
I think the problem with the PSP Go is that a custom firmware will suddenly make it a very useful device.
Right now, it's overpriced and useless - you'll have to re-buy your PSP games since there's no UMD drive to play your existing discs, it costs more than a regular PSP, and it takes the Memory Stick Micro memory. So now you have to use the even smaller memory stick format that costs more. And it makes those SD-to-Memory-Stick adapters useless since they won't fit.
Add a custom firmware so people can dump their UMDs and it'll suddenly have more value (save the memory format)...
Aside from the history of Creative Labs, I'd suggest you get a new sound card. Not that it's any fun or anything to do so, but it'll be less aggravating in the long run.
Even the poor performance of having an integrated sound system beats a sound system that you don't even turn on, and there's plenty of alternatives.
The history of Creative Labs is anything but creative: they're a vendor. They have other people make their chips, and all they do is brand the product (and maybe, maybe, write a program or two).
If you're looking for decent X-Fi sound, you'll either have to resort to non-Creative drivers (try the chip manufacturer's drivers?) or even hack up your own from a similar product. I've done it before, and so can you!
Even a driver that has only half the capabilities of the X-Fi that works is a plus. Constant crackling and such is the mark of the wrong drivers being used anyways... (at least in my experience from ages ago). Is it so surprising that Creative branded drivers and such that weren't complete?
Actually, Creative Labs makes their own chipsets (they do license them to others, though, but there's only one other third party that actually uses them). The DSP onboard their cards are their design (well, acquired from E-Mu Systems), and while they do buy codec chips from others, those are interfaced to their DSP in proprietary ways. It's also why their earlier PCI boards were very sensitive to what chipset you had on your motherboard - apparently there were fine little differences that could cause the PCI bus to lockup (and thus your computer) on non-Intel chipsets. This started around the Live era, and the Audigys fixed most of the issues, and I believe the X-Fi's finally resolved any issues left.
At best, you get the benefit of open source drivers, but no telling how much they utilize that DSP.
As such, Creative Labs writes their own drivers, which besides several dick moves they did years ago (like charging $20 for drivers and nor providing downloads), have gotten extremely horrible over the years (just when the hardware actually fixed the issues, now it falls on software to reintroduce them!).
Personally, these days I go for a C-Media chipset - if only because they tend to have Dolby Digital Live or DTS Live encoders. My computer is hooked ot my A/V receiver which gives you the nice 5.1 surround audio. Really, more sound cards should have the option to connect their digital outputs to A/V receivers. Though, I am surprised there's so pure software solution (since excepting the nVidia nForce chipsets, the C-Media and others use software DD/DTS encoding) that'll just use the DD/DTS passthrough of modern soundcards, and have a fake 5.1 software-only "soundcard" that'll output via the real soundcard's digital out.
Are they simply licensing the brand and making completely different vehicles to Military Specs?
From what I'm told, AM General makes the HumVee, which for the original Hummer, was sold to GM as-is (well, a stripped down version anyhow). GM then painted them, added luxuries and such and then sold them to the public. That's why the H2 and H3 were so different compared to the original H1 - GM does not own the design of the H1 at all - they merely resold the hardware after some modifications. The H2 and H3 were original GM designs.
So no, the Chinese are not getting military information out of it, other than perhaps how to add leather seats and cupholders to an existing H1.
And who can forget the years lost playing Tetrinet?
Nothing like playing with a bunch of friends over a LAN or the Internet... Heck, I still remember some of the crazy cheats that were possible by misusing the text box. (They don't work anymore, and most servers will kick you if you try).
I had some nice Tetrinet themes (a few MIDs of the Tetris music, plus a nice "cheater" skin...).
If the disk is good, but the OS hosed, try a Vista install DVD. Boot it into recovery mode, and one of the options is "copy files". (Honestly, the recovery tools included with Vista are a good first step). It'll copy the files to a USB hard disk.
If not, then it's time to boot Knoppix (which can mount NTFS just fine, thanks to ntfs-3g). If the disk is dying, but still good, use something like ddrescue to make an image (ddrescue uses dd to clone the disk, but it'll first do the good parts (fast), then try harder and harder on the parts the disk has problems with - this way you'll get the good parts of the disk off quickly and it can concentrate on the bad parts).
If you lost your partitions, gpart wourks great at seeking and finding 'em. One of my coworkers had just that problem and gpart managed to recover the partition table...
I'm amazed by the negative comments I immediately received from people who didn't actually buy the game.
Unless there's a lot of people with hacked Apple accounts, it's not possible. To rate an app, you have to have purchased it. The stars when you delete it (which won't work on jailbroken/pirated apps, no worries there), or the comments after you go back to iTunes. iTunes won't let you rate an app you didn't buy (I tried it on an app I beta tested that was released, I had to buy it to leave my comment).
Maybe those 25 "challenging" levels proved to be less challenging to those people? Or maybe they found a fundamental flaw that made the game unexpectedly easy? Or if your game has a difficulty setting, they left it on default easy?
Even phones have plenty of RAM. What they lack is CPU power, so any sort of acceleration he can take advantage of will help.
And acceleration usually means even more memory usage.:P
You assume that, but 2MB is a huge chunk if you're coding for say, Windows Mobile. Until WinMo 7 comes out, every application in WinMo is limited to 32MB total. That is code, stack, heap, and associated DLL's required, memory-mapped files, etc.
So even if your WinMo phone has 128MB of RAM, each application's memory area is only 32MB in size. There are tricks you can do to allocate memory from another "slot", but each slot is, again, 32MB in size. If other apps did the same, you could run out, and your requests will fail.
This 32MB/process limit comes from Windows CE (of which Windows Mobile borrows its base) 5 and below. Windows CE 6, and Windows Mobile 7 use a more traditional memory model akin to a regular traditional OS (0-2GB user, 2+-4GB kernel memory model).
That 2MB of code could very well mean there's barely enough room to fit the rest of the app and its data in memory...
Sorry, I meant with high precision, not accuracy. Tap the same spot twice on the iPhone screen and you'll end up with different coordinates. Big buttons make it easier by allowing a larger error radius, though.
Actually, a big problem with capacitive screens is... you can't tap accurately. Instead of a sharp "point" on a resistive touchscreen (within the accuracy of the analog side and the ADC), you get an area. Things like controls (buttons, fields, etc) tend to have to be larger and spaced out on a capacitive screen because getting an accurate point is extremely difficult.
It's like trying to draw using a mouse vs. a touchpad. It'd doable, just a bit more difficult.
Adding fine detail to a photo is extremely hard on the iPhone, unless you have good zoom-in modes that enlarge the tap area. Even so, it'll be hard to align things in a straight line since a little offset in the way you tap can alter the returned coordinates.
I can't think of a better way than to hide a public notice than in the local newspaper. In the past, when everyone got the newspaper, they actually read it all the way through. There wasn't much else to do. Since more people are getting their news online, it makes sense to move the notices online as well. I don't think they should be gotten rid of in the newspaper, there are plenty of people (poor or older) who don't have Internet access.
Well, in a real newspaper (not one of those "public notice" papers that no one reads), you're more likely to spot a public notice because it'll be posted on a page, and if you're scanning the page for interesting articles, you may come acorss it. Just because it's there.
Online, it's something one has to actively pull information from. And most people who visit their online news sites don't have big blocks of public notices near the side of the article... (they could, but it's difficult to do in the limited ad-space you have).
That's one of the fundamental differences between online news and newspapers I find. Online news I can skim in 5 minutes, while it takes me half an hour to get through the paper. Online, I read only the articles with interesting headlines and stories that interest me. Newspapers, I might be scanning headlines and come across an interesting phrase in the text of an unrelated article, and end up reading an article I wouldn't otherwise. Blogs seem to have a nice mix, with abstracts, but I also find it easy to skip over something potentially interesting.
Just something odd I've noticed (I read both news online and newspapers. Newspapers are good for catching up on things I might've missed the day before...).
Just download a copy of Visual [C++|C#|VB] and you can do all kinds of fun stuff.
Or, if you're doing games on Windows, you might want Microsoft's XNA instead, a game development environment, with the advantage that if you pay a little bit of money, you can play them on your Xbox360. It's effectively a sanctioned way to do homebrew on the 360.
And that's what domestication does - we domesticated animals to live with us in an orderly (somewhat) way. Ironically, this is a skill that us humans haven't done in many years (63,000-ish?) when we last domesticated animals.
But dogs and wolves are the same species and you do have wolf-dog hybrids around, as well as unintentional crossbreeding. I remember an article a few months back on how wolves actually acquired some traits from dogs in order to better survive in the wild.
As for the wide variety of breeds, because of dogs being domesticated, we humans have selectively bred them with certain characteristics. Nothing terribly unusual - catatonic (fainting) goats being a great example of "natural" selection being pre-empted.
I watched the animations on the site, and nowhere did I see the mention of the Kama Sutra. Then again if you can find the Kama Sutra in a search, how is this any different from Google or Safari?
The funny thing with apps is - can you tell where the app ends and the downloaded network content begins?
A number of apps make remote content appear as if it was local - sure things may be streaming and fetched from webservers and displayed in embedded WebKit frameworks, but they have the look and feel of the app itself.
Using Safari, one knows they're accessing content on the Internet. Using an app, it can be quite difficult to tell what content's coming off the Internet, and what content's actually stored in the app itself. Especially since some apps hit the network to retrieve the content, while others build it in for offline use. It can be hard to tell - unless apps start putting up a big banner saying "You are now accessing online content" screen you have to tape through like some websites do when hitting 3rd-party links.
(The same issue will happen with the Pre - the Internet is so seamlessly integrated that where the app ends and online content begins is very blurry).
As for a sweatshop in Asia, well, it would explain it - local customs and all...
They didn't create the portable music digital music player. They did create a market for a very sleek-looking higher-end one with its own proprietary locked-in store, which now sells un-DRMed music like everyone else was already using.
Actually, the iPod got to where it is by basically being the right device at the right time:
* Space - it had a lot of it. (Competitors had more, though) * Size - it had a lot of space for its size (The Creative Nomad was bigger than a contemporary CD player. The iPod was much smaller - slightly thicker than a pack of playing cards). Other MP3 players in the same size had a pitiful handful of songs at best. * Speed - Parallel port, serial port, USB1.1 suck for filling space. Great if you're only dealing with 128MB of memory, but lousy when you want to actually fill in gigabytes and have it take a reasonable amount of time. Firewire was the only option at the time. * Market - MP3 players were niche at the moment. MP3-CD players were the item to get, but they're big (see size), and cumbersome (burning a CD... and having huge books of MP3 CDs to pick one to play). Apple got in early and rode the wave as MP3 players started getting mainstream (no doubt helped by Apple's marketing making everyone want one).
Apple released the iPod at the right time with the right combination of features that people wanted - a small player that holds a decent quantity of music that doesn't take all day to transfer. MP3 players were still pretty niche when the iPod was released (MP3s weren't, thanks to Napster, but people were listening via their computers). Apple got in during this time - either by luck or pure business savvy. A few years later and the iPod may have been the next Newton as the market gets flooded with new entrants.
The iTunes store came *MUCH* later (2003-ish or so), by Apple dragging the kicking and screaming music industry into it.
The problem is, netbooks are already mainstream, and the race to the bottom has stopped more or less because the bottom has been reached. Instead, now we see netbooks clamoring for the low-end laptop market with larger screens and higher prices. At best, Apple would be another competitor in the high-end netbook market, but probably not a very worthy one (it *IS* Apple, and they don't have the iPod advantage). Unless Apple comes up with something "must have" that redefines the market (at least that's Apple's strength... finding the few things that make people go "why didn't I think of that"?).
The idea of P2P connections between members of a multiplayer game seems like pretty much a no-brainer, but because of NAT, it's a total P.I.T.A. Everyone likes to say, "We don't need IPv6, just use NAT". But, NAT makes lots of things more complicated (like needing to setup port-forwarding to accept in-bound connections, or using a third-party server that isn't behind a NAT that everyone makes an outbound connection to). Plus, port forwarding sucks because only one computer per network can have any given port forwarded to it (that is, you *CAN* forward different ports to different computers, say have port 5000 forwarded to 192.168.1.10, and have port 5001 forwarded to 192.168.1.11, but you can't forward port 5000 to both computers - but if they each had their own unique, public IP, they can both receive traffic on the same port).
I long for an IPv6 world where NAT is basically a thing of the past (and for those who say NAT is good for security, there's no reason you can't still have firewalls built into routers).
Get ready for a surprise, then. You'll encounter NATv6.
Every computer having a public IP is dead. Even with IPv6 making it possible for everyone and their dog to have a million IPs. I expect the IPv6 world to be similar to the IPv4 one. Sure you can get a range of IPv6 addresses, but you'll get one that'll be routable to your broadband connection - the rest being dropped. If you want more, you'll do what everyone does these days and buy another IPv6 address (there are NAT routers that do allow multiple IPs and many-to-many IP mapping). (I can have up to 5 IPv4 IPs on my cable connection, and we're given 2 by default, if I'm willing to pay the $5/10 a month for it.)
ISPs will nickel and dime you the same way in IPv6 as they nickel and dime you today in IPv4.
And most home users will probably just buy a cheap firewall (NATv6 or otherwise) and we'd still have the same issues.
The explosion of NAT does have an upside for it's prepared everyone for the world of firewalls. If you go back 10-12 years or so and saw what it took to get multiplayer working, it usually involved opening 10+ TCP and UDP ports on your firewall (usually entire ranges) just to join a game. Hosting may require way more. Nowadays we get gaming protocols that are way more friendly to firewalls where to use them requires 1 port, maybe 2, and usually only if you want to host. Sure the easiest way is to stick your PC in the DMZ, but in modern times, you don't really have to. Especially with all the crap that'll infect Windows at the drop of a hat because some idiot game programmer though it wise to disable Windows Firewall while you're playing the game.
On the other other hand, Memorex and Imation-branded DVDs have been around for ages, are reasonably popular, and Toshiba chose to wait it out. IANAL, but I remember reading something about asking for retroactive damages when you know full well that infringement is happening, and how that's a bad idea.
And how do we know that DVD6C and Memorex/Imation/etc weren't in discussions the whole time?
Patent violation lawsuits can take years from first infringement to actual filing. Mostly because it can easily take years to negotiate all the costs and other stuff. Perhaps Memorex/Imation violated first, Toshiba called them on it, and they were in negotiations the whole time (how much is really owed, how much they should pay for willfully infringing, future license fees, etc). Heck, a more innocent explanation is that Memorex/Imation thought they had a license already.
On the other hand, this is why killing HD-DVD was such an important thing. Putting two major patent holders (Toshiba and Microsoft) in charge of the direction of the de facto media format would have been disastrous.
Instead we've got nine major patent holders - Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Thomson, LG Electronics, Hitachi, Sharp, and Samsung - in charge of Blu-ray. Is that really an improvement ?
Actually, that's why there's patent corsortiums. There's the DVD6C, which handles all the patents related to DVD. If you wanted to make a DVD player/writer/disc/whatever, you pay one fee to DVD6C, and they'll break it up and pay the patent holders. For you, the manufacturer, it's easier to deal with one fee to license all DVD patents for DVD usage.
Similarly, there is the 4CEntity/5CEntity licensing out security specifications used by SD cards, DVD (CSS, but maybe DVD6C automatically offers a license?), etc.
MPEG has the MPEG-LA to license patents associated with various MPEG standards.
Blu-Ray will have its own as well, so instead of dealing with the 9 license holders, you deal with 1.
It's basically a one-stop shop for licensing of patents. Of course, since these consortiums don't own the patents, the patent holders have to go after violators. In this case, Toshiba, but the other patent holders may do the same as well outside of any other agreement. It's not like these consortiums are secret either - if you're making a product, the standards for your product will often point to whom you can license the patents from.
There's been some rumblings from console devs that they're wanting to put DRM on it to prevent used sales. Seems they're convinced that somehow, because they only profit once, that's unfair if the game trades hands again. You know, just like how car manufacturers couldn't survive if people bought used cars.... I guess now is not the best time to make that sarcastic comment, but before anyone says anything to that end, I think we can agree that the big problem for the american auto industry is not used car sales.
They already do.
The way it's done is with special "promo codes" that are tossed into the the case. When you buy the game, you get the game, but if you enter the promo code, you get a little bit of extra DLC you can enjoy with the game. But once it's used, it's used - even if you pass the promo code on, it can't be used again.
You're still free to sell the game, but the next buyer, if they want what the promo code gave, either they're SOL, or they have to spend a bit to get the content you got for free.
(You can argue that if they wanted the game and the special content that badly, they'd have bought it new, but I'd argue that maybe they got into the game long after release, such that only used copies are avaialble).
And that is what I love about used games - I get into games later than normal, and unless it's digitally downloadable, well, it means I can miss the first game of the series. (I got into Halo on a lark when it was a $10 game, but this was long after Halo 2 came out, and I couldn't find a new collector's edition to save my life (I did accidentally though months afterwards). Ditto with Half-Life 2, but at least I could play the original Half-Life by getting it off Steam. There's probably another dozen or so games I got "late"...).
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You forgot that while you have 16GB of memory onboard, if you want more, you have have to buy the even more expensive Memory Stick Micros. Just when 16GB memory stick duos are becoming available for mere mortals (you can get 16GB in other formats for cheaper), Sony uses their new format which is at least double the cost as the memory stick duo.
Hope 16GB is good enough - the micros are pricey. And you can't get an SDHC to Memory Stick Micro adapter without it being a clunky thing with ribbon cables and such (MS Micro is just a bit bigger than microSD). At least Duos were even cheaper when using the microSD adapters.
The other issue is that sports often pre-empted Futurama (and many other shows), or in some timezones, extended over it. So even if you knew when Futurama was supposed to be on (that week), there's a good chance it would get pre-empted anyhow. This often led to seasons being cut short because not only did the timeslot move constantly, but the show would be aired erratically.
It's not like Fox doesn't have uh, Fox Sports to show that stuff on... those not interested catch it close to live, those who want to watch sports (always live) can use their DVRs or VCRs to record the programming as normal.
The Fox network is probably why people need DVRs to keep track of the constant schedule shifts, and have those DVRs check almost hourly to ensure shows are still going to be aired and not pre-empted by something else. And Fox will then still screw it up.
For those not blessed with DVRs (they were fairly new and unusual nearly a decade ago), it was trivially easy to miss a new episode of Futurama thinking spotrs would be on, or trying to catch Futurama and catching the end of football or something. At least there were several enterprising people back then putting up episodes for download...
Hrm. I remember about 20 years ago I could see the night sky with stars. These days I can't, and I'm still in the same general area.
Of course, the first time in years I started seeing the stars was flying overhead of the area at around 3000' or so. Night flight training can be wonderful at times. Then bloody annoying because the city lights drown out the airport beacon, and you have to hope that the darker patch on the ground is the airport. Easy with ARCAL systems since clicking the mic will turn on the lights (and the change in illumination is easy to detect). Not so easy with towered fields which have the lights on, but which are drowned out by the nearby city lights (and only a few airports I go to have the nice sequenced approach lights).
Sometimes my best hope is catching the runway lights. And this is said as I'm familiar with the area so I knew where I was, and where to look. It didn't help that their beacon changed to a LED one. I thought I was going nuts until my instructor also metnioned he had difficulty finding that airport. At least my home airport (not too far away) is easier to spot from the air.
They aren't ditching the points system, but they're giving you the option of direct-billing your credit card instead.
Me personally, I always buy my points on sale (they count as "accessories" - to which Dell and many stores often have sales of 10% off or more on). So people like you will always be able to buy that game for $10 off your credit card directly, while people like me get bargains and get it cheaper in exchange for having the oddball balance. Of course, I also don't have to give Microsoft my credit card number, but that's a different thing altogether (one less vendor to update CC information on).
Microsoft listened.
Heck, in the US, you can buy XBLA games off Amazon.com! Pay Amazon the money, you get a code and get the game. Microsoft's just extending that to everyone else. (You save maybe a penny or two over the normal point value cost...)
The points system will stay around because it's way too useful (e.g., "allowances" and the like to those who don't have a credit card). And at least the US has a consistent exchange rate of $1.25 to 100 points. Worldwide, it's different (mostly to account for fluctuating currencies) - big stinks have been raised over pricing when currency fluctuates.
Heck, I wish Sony would release points cards in Canada too, but they don't have 'em. Wouldn't mind grabbing stuff with discount point cards.
Yeah, because it turns out, running your game off the memory stick makes for a much more acceptable portable play experience in every way compared to the crappy UMD. A PSP with UMD gives you a console like experience, with slow "loading" screens and all. There's an old YouTube video showing a game taking 7 minutes to get into the gameplay.
The PSP2k supposedly fixes this, but I can't justify buying a new PSP. Of course, I wonder how many PSP1000 owners bought a PSP2000 to get potentially a better game experience.
Sony's pretty much admitted that UMD sucks with their PSP Go. Unfortunately, the PSP Go's limitations means either re-buying your collection, giving up used games, giving up your old memory stick collection for a smaller, more expensive format (Memory Stick Micro), and paying more for the privilege.
Alas, the only way I'd want to get a PSP Go would be if there was a custom firmware for it, so I can play my legally purchased UMDs (new and used) on my new hardware.
Sony's rumored to allow people to get their UMDs in downloadable formats, but I don't see how you can do it without sending Sony your UMDs...
The emulator's available - it's in the Pre store. I don't know how much it costs though.
The only downside is the Pre's touchscreen isn't as precise as the old Palms, being that you use a stylus on the old Palms, but you have to use your finger on the Pre (capacitive touchscreen, like the iPhone).
OTOH, Nokia n700, n800, and n810 users can use Garnet VM for free during the beta.
But yeah, I need something to replace my Palm. My T|c died, and I haven't found a good replacement for it. My T|x works, but the lack of keyboard is disappointing. Plus it's slower than my T|c was.
Actually, DVDs haven't been utterly destroyed. There's an alarming number of DVDs that are "unrippable" because of the wierd tricks people play on them. Just look at the release notes of AnyDVD - it contains many updates (at least every few weeks) usually to break through new DVD protections as they're discovered.
Disney DVDs tend to be the worst - they always have something that breaks DVD rippers.
The only good thing is that most DVDs you buy don't use these advanced techniques - probably because it costs a lot. The interesting thing is that most of the new protections are in other regions.
(I've purchased a few copies of AnyDVD - the frequency of updates and being practically the only DVD decryptor that's updated with all the latest protections constantly...).
I think the problem with the PSP Go is that a custom firmware will suddenly make it a very useful device.
Right now, it's overpriced and useless - you'll have to re-buy your PSP games since there's no UMD drive to play your existing discs, it costs more than a regular PSP, and it takes the Memory Stick Micro memory. So now you have to use the even smaller memory stick format that costs more. And it makes those SD-to-Memory-Stick adapters useless since they won't fit.
Add a custom firmware so people can dump their UMDs and it'll suddenly have more value (save the memory format)...
Actually, Creative Labs makes their own chipsets (they do license them to others, though, but there's only one other third party that actually uses them). The DSP onboard their cards are their design (well, acquired from E-Mu Systems), and while they do buy codec chips from others, those are interfaced to their DSP in proprietary ways. It's also why their earlier PCI boards were very sensitive to what chipset you had on your motherboard - apparently there were fine little differences that could cause the PCI bus to lockup (and thus your computer) on non-Intel chipsets. This started around the Live era, and the Audigys fixed most of the issues, and I believe the X-Fi's finally resolved any issues left.
At best, you get the benefit of open source drivers, but no telling how much they utilize that DSP.
As such, Creative Labs writes their own drivers, which besides several dick moves they did years ago (like charging $20 for drivers and nor providing downloads), have gotten extremely horrible over the years (just when the hardware actually fixed the issues, now it falls on software to reintroduce them!).
Personally, these days I go for a C-Media chipset - if only because they tend to have Dolby Digital Live or DTS Live encoders. My computer is hooked ot my A/V receiver which gives you the nice 5.1 surround audio. Really, more sound cards should have the option to connect their digital outputs to A/V receivers. Though, I am surprised there's so pure software solution (since excepting the nVidia nForce chipsets, the C-Media and others use software DD/DTS encoding) that'll just use the DD/DTS passthrough of modern soundcards, and have a fake 5.1 software-only "soundcard" that'll output via the real soundcard's digital out.
From what I'm told, AM General makes the HumVee, which for the original Hummer, was sold to GM as-is (well, a stripped down version anyhow). GM then painted them, added luxuries and such and then sold them to the public. That's why the H2 and H3 were so different compared to the original H1 - GM does not own the design of the H1 at all - they merely resold the hardware after some modifications. The H2 and H3 were original GM designs.
So no, the Chinese are not getting military information out of it, other than perhaps how to add leather seats and cupholders to an existing H1.
And who can forget the years lost playing Tetrinet?
Nothing like playing with a bunch of friends over a LAN or the Internet... Heck, I still remember some of the crazy cheats that were possible by misusing the text box. (They don't work anymore, and most servers will kick you if you try).
I had some nice Tetrinet themes (a few MIDs of the Tetris music, plus a nice "cheater" skin...).
If the disk is good, but the OS hosed, try a Vista install DVD. Boot it into recovery mode, and one of the options is "copy files". (Honestly, the recovery tools included with Vista are a good first step). It'll copy the files to a USB hard disk.
If not, then it's time to boot Knoppix (which can mount NTFS just fine, thanks to ntfs-3g). If the disk is dying, but still good, use something like ddrescue to make an image (ddrescue uses dd to clone the disk, but it'll first do the good parts (fast), then try harder and harder on the parts the disk has problems with - this way you'll get the good parts of the disk off quickly and it can concentrate on the bad parts).
If you lost your partitions, gpart wourks great at seeking and finding 'em. One of my coworkers had just that problem and gpart managed to recover the partition table...
Unless there's a lot of people with hacked Apple accounts, it's not possible. To rate an app, you have to have purchased it. The stars when you delete it (which won't work on jailbroken/pirated apps, no worries there), or the comments after you go back to iTunes. iTunes won't let you rate an app you didn't buy (I tried it on an app I beta tested that was released, I had to buy it to leave my comment).
Maybe those 25 "challenging" levels proved to be less challenging to those people? Or maybe they found a fundamental flaw that made the game unexpectedly easy? Or if your game has a difficulty setting, they left it on default easy?
You assume that, but 2MB is a huge chunk if you're coding for say, Windows Mobile. Until WinMo 7 comes out, every application in WinMo is limited to 32MB total. That is code, stack, heap, and associated DLL's required, memory-mapped files, etc.
So even if your WinMo phone has 128MB of RAM, each application's memory area is only 32MB in size. There are tricks you can do to allocate memory from another "slot", but each slot is, again, 32MB in size. If other apps did the same, you could run out, and your requests will fail.
This 32MB/process limit comes from Windows CE (of which Windows Mobile borrows its base) 5 and below. Windows CE 6, and Windows Mobile 7 use a more traditional memory model akin to a regular traditional OS (0-2GB user, 2+-4GB kernel memory model).
That 2MB of code could very well mean there's barely enough room to fit the rest of the app and its data in memory...
Sorry, I meant with high precision, not accuracy. Tap the same spot twice on the iPhone screen and you'll end up with different coordinates. Big buttons make it easier by allowing a larger error radius, though.
Actually, a big problem with capacitive screens is... you can't tap accurately. Instead of a sharp "point" on a resistive touchscreen (within the accuracy of the analog side and the ADC), you get an area. Things like controls (buttons, fields, etc) tend to have to be larger and spaced out on a capacitive screen because getting an accurate point is extremely difficult.
It's like trying to draw using a mouse vs. a touchpad. It'd doable, just a bit more difficult.
Adding fine detail to a photo is extremely hard on the iPhone, unless you have good zoom-in modes that enlarge the tap area. Even so, it'll be hard to align things in a straight line since a little offset in the way you tap can alter the returned coordinates.
Well, in a real newspaper (not one of those "public notice" papers that no one reads), you're more likely to spot a public notice because it'll be posted on a page, and if you're scanning the page for interesting articles, you may come acorss it. Just because it's there.
Online, it's something one has to actively pull information from. And most people who visit their online news sites don't have big blocks of public notices near the side of the article... (they could, but it's difficult to do in the limited ad-space you have).
That's one of the fundamental differences between online news and newspapers I find. Online news I can skim in 5 minutes, while it takes me half an hour to get through the paper. Online, I read only the articles with interesting headlines and stories that interest me. Newspapers, I might be scanning headlines and come across an interesting phrase in the text of an unrelated article, and end up reading an article I wouldn't otherwise. Blogs seem to have a nice mix, with abstracts, but I also find it easy to skip over something potentially interesting.
Just something odd I've noticed (I read both news online and newspapers. Newspapers are good for catching up on things I might've missed the day before...).
Or, if you're doing games on Windows, you might want Microsoft's XNA instead, a game development environment, with the advantage that if you pay a little bit of money, you can play them on your Xbox360. It's effectively a sanctioned way to do homebrew on the 360.
And that's what domestication does - we domesticated animals to live with us in an orderly (somewhat) way. Ironically, this is a skill that us humans haven't done in many years (63,000-ish?) when we last domesticated animals.
But dogs and wolves are the same species and you do have wolf-dog hybrids around, as well as unintentional crossbreeding. I remember an article a few months back on how wolves actually acquired some traits from dogs in order to better survive in the wild.
As for the wide variety of breeds, because of dogs being domesticated, we humans have selectively bred them with certain characteristics. Nothing terribly unusual - catatonic (fainting) goats being a great example of "natural" selection being pre-empted.
The funny thing with apps is - can you tell where the app ends and the downloaded network content begins?
A number of apps make remote content appear as if it was local - sure things may be streaming and fetched from webservers and displayed in embedded WebKit frameworks, but they have the look and feel of the app itself.
Using Safari, one knows they're accessing content on the Internet. Using an app, it can be quite difficult to tell what content's coming off the Internet, and what content's actually stored in the app itself. Especially since some apps hit the network to retrieve the content, while others build it in for offline use. It can be hard to tell - unless apps start putting up a big banner saying "You are now accessing online content" screen you have to tape through like some websites do when hitting 3rd-party links.
(The same issue will happen with the Pre - the Internet is so seamlessly integrated that where the app ends and online content begins is very blurry).
As for a sweatshop in Asia, well, it would explain it - local customs and all...
Actually, the iPod got to where it is by basically being the right device at the right time:
* Space - it had a lot of it. (Competitors had more, though)
* Size - it had a lot of space for its size (The Creative Nomad was bigger than a contemporary CD player. The iPod was much smaller - slightly thicker than a pack of playing cards). Other MP3 players in the same size had a pitiful handful of songs at best.
* Speed - Parallel port, serial port, USB1.1 suck for filling space. Great if you're only dealing with 128MB of memory, but lousy when you want to actually fill in gigabytes and have it take a reasonable amount of time. Firewire was the only option at the time.
* Market - MP3 players were niche at the moment. MP3-CD players were the item to get, but they're big (see size), and cumbersome (burning a CD... and having huge books of MP3 CDs to pick one to play). Apple got in early and rode the wave as MP3 players started getting mainstream (no doubt helped by Apple's marketing making everyone want one).
Apple released the iPod at the right time with the right combination of features that people wanted - a small player that holds a decent quantity of music that doesn't take all day to transfer. MP3 players were still pretty niche when the iPod was released (MP3s weren't, thanks to Napster, but people were listening via their computers). Apple got in during this time - either by luck or pure business savvy. A few years later and the iPod may have been the next Newton as the market gets flooded with new entrants.
The iTunes store came *MUCH* later (2003-ish or so), by Apple dragging the kicking and screaming music industry into it.
The problem is, netbooks are already mainstream, and the race to the bottom has stopped more or less because the bottom has been reached. Instead, now we see netbooks clamoring for the low-end laptop market with larger screens and higher prices. At best, Apple would be another competitor in the high-end netbook market, but probably not a very worthy one (it *IS* Apple, and they don't have the iPod advantage). Unless Apple comes up with something "must have" that redefines the market (at least that's Apple's strength... finding the few things that make people go "why didn't I think of that"?).
Get ready for a surprise, then. You'll encounter NATv6.
Every computer having a public IP is dead. Even with IPv6 making it possible for everyone and their dog to have a million IPs. I expect the IPv6 world to be similar to the IPv4 one. Sure you can get a range of IPv6 addresses, but you'll get one that'll be routable to your broadband connection - the rest being dropped. If you want more, you'll do what everyone does these days and buy another IPv6 address (there are NAT routers that do allow multiple IPs and many-to-many IP mapping). (I can have up to 5 IPv4 IPs on my cable connection, and we're given 2 by default, if I'm willing to pay the $5/10 a month for it.)
ISPs will nickel and dime you the same way in IPv6 as they nickel and dime you today in IPv4.
And most home users will probably just buy a cheap firewall (NATv6 or otherwise) and we'd still have the same issues.
The explosion of NAT does have an upside for it's prepared everyone for the world of firewalls. If you go back 10-12 years or so and saw what it took to get multiplayer working, it usually involved opening 10+ TCP and UDP ports on your firewall (usually entire ranges) just to join a game. Hosting may require way more. Nowadays we get gaming protocols that are way more friendly to firewalls where to use them requires 1 port, maybe 2, and usually only if you want to host. Sure the easiest way is to stick your PC in the DMZ, but in modern times, you don't really have to. Especially with all the crap that'll infect Windows at the drop of a hat because some idiot game programmer though it wise to disable Windows Firewall while you're playing the game.
And how do we know that DVD6C and Memorex/Imation/etc weren't in discussions the whole time?
Patent violation lawsuits can take years from first infringement to actual filing. Mostly because it can easily take years to negotiate all the costs and other stuff. Perhaps Memorex/Imation violated first, Toshiba called them on it, and they were in negotiations the whole time (how much is really owed, how much they should pay for willfully infringing, future license fees, etc). Heck, a more innocent explanation is that Memorex/Imation thought they had a license already.
Actually, that's why there's patent corsortiums. There's the DVD6C, which handles all the patents related to DVD. If you wanted to make a DVD player/writer/disc/whatever, you pay one fee to DVD6C, and they'll break it up and pay the patent holders. For you, the manufacturer, it's easier to deal with one fee to license all DVD patents for DVD usage.
Similarly, there is the 4CEntity/5CEntity licensing out security specifications used by SD cards, DVD (CSS, but maybe DVD6C automatically offers a license?), etc.
MPEG has the MPEG-LA to license patents associated with various MPEG standards.
Blu-Ray will have its own as well, so instead of dealing with the 9 license holders, you deal with 1.
It's basically a one-stop shop for licensing of patents. Of course, since these consortiums don't own the patents, the patent holders have to go after violators. In this case, Toshiba, but the other patent holders may do the same as well outside of any other agreement. It's not like these consortiums are secret either - if you're making a product, the standards for your product will often point to whom you can license the patents from.
They already do.
The way it's done is with special "promo codes" that are tossed into the the case. When you buy the game, you get the game, but if you enter the promo code, you get a little bit of extra DLC you can enjoy with the game. But once it's used, it's used - even if you pass the promo code on, it can't be used again.
You're still free to sell the game, but the next buyer, if they want what the promo code gave, either they're SOL, or they have to spend a bit to get the content you got for free.
(You can argue that if they wanted the game and the special content that badly, they'd have bought it new, but I'd argue that maybe they got into the game long after release, such that only used copies are avaialble).
And that is what I love about used games - I get into games later than normal, and unless it's digitally downloadable, well, it means I can miss the first game of the series. (I got into Halo on a lark when it was a $10 game, but this was long after Halo 2 came out, and I couldn't find a new collector's edition to save my life (I did accidentally though months afterwards). Ditto with Half-Life 2, but at least I could play the original Half-Life by getting it off Steam. There's probably another dozen or so games I got "late"...).