I don't know about anywhere else in the country (or world for that matter) but as someone that has been "casually" looking locally for a Wii since it launched, I have yet to see *ANY* sitting on the shelf of any store I have been to in South East Texas. This includes Walmart, Target and the like, as well as Hastings (a book and music and movie chain, same people that started and own NetFlix I believe), as well as EB Games and Gamestop.
I don't know, but I've seen shipments at the big electronics retailer (like Circuit City or Best Buy - not sure if you have them) at least once a week, and they tend to last 1-2 days. In Canada, one retailer I visit regularly (because it's down the block from work) gets 80-100 every week. Takes 'em usually around 1-2 days before they're completely sold out. But it's better than it was a few months ago, where they sold out in 20 minutes.
EB Games/Gamestop tends to probably get around 10 or so, so they go quickly since everyone tries there first. Ditto with the other stores - for some reason or other, they get really small shipments. Then again, they probably have tons in the back and only bring out two...
Stop defending Apple's queer design decision and admit that 16GB is not enough for some people.
According to iTunes, my 5.5G iPod (80GB) has 45GB used. Of that, my entire MP3 collection is only 12.7GB. Oh. Wait. The bar next to it says "Video 11.1GB". I have a lot of music, and I carry my entire collection with me, because my music tastes are definitely not mainstream, and my mood can have me picking song I've not played in years. My "working set" of music for the past couple of months is under 4GB, but there are times I want to play something I've not heard in a while. Having lots of space makes it less likely for me to go "damn, I realy want to listen to X right now!".
That's why the Touch is so close, yet so far. The thing plays video. With such a nice screen, how can one resist? Luckily, video is easier to swap in and out, but still, they're big. Carry around a few movies and you'll find you'll have to make the same decisions you did when the largest MP3 player around had 64MB of storage.
If it had the 160GB hard disk, I'd buy (err, preorder) it in an instant. I'd carry around my old iPod, because it's a standard Mass Storage device, but my Touch would be in my pocket...
iPods now only work with USB. (I once made the mistake of using a Firewire iPod cable with a 5G iPod. The iPod itself will display an error message. It simply doesn't support Firewire any more.)
Actually, to transfer files you need USB. To charge a 5/5.5G iPod, FireWire works great. (I use the old Firewire adapter that came with my 3G iPod to charge). Don't know if it charges any faster, though, but it certainly means I don't need my PC to charge it, or buy another adapter.
That's because LCDs don't refresh. They don't have a beam that scans the screen 60 times a second, like CRTs do. Instead, their pixels remain at that value until they are given the signal to change, and the faster that change happens, the faster the screen is. That's why an LCD could be at 1 Hz and you wouldn't notice anything (until the picture changed, anyway).
False, actually.
LCDs are refreshed much the same way as CRTs are. You start at the upper left, write the pixel's data, then the next pixel, until you've finished the line. Then you go down the next line and repeat the process.
The thing that makes LCDs not flicker is that the persistence of each pixel is a lot longer than the persistence of the phosphor of a CRT. An active matrix LCD (the kind with a transistor at every pixel) is effectively write-only DRAM memory, with the actual liquid crystal and electrode plates forming the capacitor, and the transistor being the addressing transistor. Like DRAM memory, it needs refreshing, or the image fades. Pull the LCD data cable out and you'll see it fade - make take a few seconds though. The thing is, like DRAM memory, it's easy to write a new value to each pixel - if it's displaying white, I can make it display black trivially by "rewriting" its color value. A CRT screen can't change a pixel that's on to off - all it can do is turn off pixels on. So they have to be very quick to turn off or you get the same "refresh time" issue like LCDs.
Early CRTs ghosted quite like early LCD panels... nowadays the phosphors are much less persistent so they make the image so blurry. As a side effect, the screen flickers much more. Passive LCD screens are much like CRTs...
Everytime I go there, the place is always freaking crowded, and store layout is a random mess, and if it weren't for the fact that one can find an odd gem used game there, I really detest visiting the place. (I sometimes hear of games many moons after release, or it piques my interest later, and thus have to hunt for it).
It seems for new releases, I just bypass GS/EB and head to my local big-box electronics retailer, who may often be equally crowded, but at least manages to make it not appear so (at least, I don't keep bumping into people as you try to navigate the store). Prices are typically the same (or lower - bonus), but it generally appears to be a much saner place to shop at.
Heck, even service at these big-box retailers tends to be better as there's actual employees roaming the floor (and they know just as much as the clerks at GS/EB), who aren't busy handing the 12+ deep lineup of people to pay. Everytime I had a question at GS/EB, I had to wait in the SAME BLOODY LINEUP.
The whole 'Hot Coffee' thing was massively overblown; the content was not accessible to normal users, you had to go and download a mod to get it working. Complaining about content that requires a user-generated mod to run is like complaining that you can stick a mod on a game to play a porno every time the game starts (which, actually, probably takes less effort to write than it took to find the 'hot coffee' settings in the first place).
Perhaps, but the entire point of the Hot Coffee was that the *developer* left that content on the disc. If we want stretched analogies, we could say a PG-13 movie was released on DVD. However, the studio also included some pr0n vids on there by accident (say, by a previous mastering session). They aren't accessible via the menus since they're unlinked videos, and perhaps a casual scan of the DVD in a PC won't find anything unusual either. But perhaps if you decided to scrub through the VOB file by hand, you might come across it. That would lead to a huge public outcry, even though you have to go online and download a tool (e.g., VideoLAN) to actually access it.
It's not just a user-generated mod, it's more of a patch that unlocks hidden content. Basically, it became an elaborate easter egg. (Elaborate because of all the trouble you have to go through to get at it).
And remember, the developers have a self-interest in being honest with the content they show - if games get misrated because developers chose only the "good" parts, we'd end up with a solution far worse than than things are now (government legislation). Of course, Hot Coffee was a HUGE mistake on the developer's part since someone left the content on there, but it does happen. And now everyone's on edge because it only takes a few screwups before people think the government can do a better job than some group they believe acts in the self interest of that group.
I don't care for Manhunt 2, nor the controversy, but you have to ask what were they thinking when they decided to release it at a time when the public already hears of "games make killers!!!!1111one" headlines. Especially when people are already knee-jerking to have government step in.
As the above posters have mentioned, Sony removed the hardware emulation to cut costs on the unit and added another 20GB to make you feel like you got something in exchange. The problem (or not depending on how you look at it) is that they increased the price by $100 for 20GB...yea thats not what I would call an "acceptable" cost trade-off. Thus they made the 60GB look much more lucrative for those who care about the backwards compatibility, die-hards, or to those looking for a better deal. In turn the 80GB looks like you get something for the extra $100 to the ill-informed.
Well, they did sweeten the pot a little more. The 80GB models on the shelves right now come with Motorstorm, and a tossed-in HDMI cable. So while it doesn't cost Sony any extra $100 for these extras, it might tilt the value proposition that way for the consumer. (After all, it's only a little bit extra in cost - a game plus a cable is only a few bucks for Sony).
As an embedded engineer, I've encountered numerous cases where power cycling RAM did not alter the contents.
In fact, I've seen systems boot and run even after the power was cut for several seconds. Some types of SRAM and SDRAM have the ability to retain an (imperfect) memory image even at very low voltage levels. Sure, it's not guaranteed to be accurate by the manufacturer, but RAM "images" are a pretty well known phenomenon. In some cases, the contents of memory can be reconstructed even after the computer has been powered off and removed to a forensic laboratory.
This is not random at all. In fact, it's more likely to produce an easily exploitable RNG than anything else; I would not be at all surprised if the standard UNIX random number generator provided better security.
I've had this bite me, and exploited it.
It bit me when booting into Windows CE - you'd power cycle the thing, and the OS would boot with the old RAM disk you had - we'd gotten to the point where we'd have the bootloader wipe the kernel memory so the data structures were all corrupted by the time the OS was trying to decide between mounting the RAM disk (object store) and starting fresh. It turns out that the longer an image is unchanged in RAM, the more likely the cells woudl be biased such that if you cycle the power on them, they're more likely to lean towards the way they were before power was cut.
The time I exploited it, I didn't have any way of logging. Logging to serial port caused issues (timing-sensitive code), so I logged to memory (and no, I had no filesystem running, so I couldn't log to file). My trick was to simply log to a circular RAM buffer. When it crashed, I would just power cycle and dump the RAM buffer. Even though the data was fresh, it was enough to make out what my debug message was trying to say (almost always perfect). This was readable after a brief power cycle, and was still readable after turning power off for nearly a minute. The characters got corrupted, but since it was regular ASCII, you could still make out the words.
...how bad is its DRM? That's really the only thing I care about. Whichever format will give me - a paying customer - the freedom to do what I want with my movies will get my money. If none do, I'm sticking with regular DVDs.
DVDs have DRM... just it's been broken. Funnily enough, one of the "losing" parties in this high-def wars also has their DRM broken. (Yes, it's HD-DVD... AACS has been broken, all that can be done is they change the keys. Blu-Ray has also been broken, but there's many more forms of DRM that still can be applied).
"losing" because it's difficult to tell who is actually losing the high-def format wars. Just generally considered that it'll be a dead format these days despite it's lower costs.
If only Sony would open up the specs to the PS3, this could already be a reality. I'm sure someone will reverse engineer it given enough time, but using the official specs would be the real deal.
Just because the PS3 runs Linux, doesn't mean it has full bare metal access! Linux on the PS3 runs virtualized. There's a nice hypervisor that the PS3 is running that virtualizes the hard drive, memory card slots, video, blu-ray drive and a few other devices. The hard disk is partitioned from the "Game OS", and only the "OtherOS" partition is actually exposed to the "Other OS". Which is then partitioned by Linux into the regular Linux partitions. Unless there's a bug in the hypervisor, there's no way to get access to the flash ROM of the PS3 (other than a tiny portion of it used to serve as a way to communicate between the normal "Game OS" and "Other OS", hold the bootloader, etc.
The hypervisor denies access to the GPU and to the WiFi hardware. It exposes a simple framebuffer interface that the hypervisor then passes to the real GPU. It's not a matter of "framebuffer because there's no driver", it's "Framebuffer because that's the only way it works".
The only way to "free" up the PS3 is for someone to find a bug in the hypervisor that suddenly lets it get full supervisor access to the PPEs. (Basically, find a way to break out of the virtualization).
Of a, b, g, y, n? If they started with o at least they could have a joke in there.
Actually A and B came out together. A was for a 54Mbps enhanced rate PHY on 5GHz, while B was to improve the old 802.11 wireless standard to support 11Mbps.
Alas, we have 802.11g because c through f were used for other 802.11 things. See Wikipedia.
Because it can be done from anywhere there's a wifi connection, not just at home? If someone really enjoys a game, it's a neat idea to be able to play it a little from work/school/coffee shops, or even friends houses. I'd suspect lag would make it largely unplayable for action games, but it's still a good way to show someone the game or get a quick fix.
Remote Play, for anyone who hasn't tried it yet, is like VNC. Basically, when it's enabled, the PS3 switches from whatever high-def output it's doing to 480i, puts up a 480i "Remote Play in progress" screen, and what the PS3 would've outputted is redirected to WiFi. Complete with the characteristic lag.
Heck, you can do it right now! Using VNC, play a game. Solitaire and Minesweeper on Windows works great, but try playing Tux Racer. Same effect.
Now you want to play over the internet... adding even more lag, and limited upstream bandwidth causing the display to refresh even slower. And yes, it's more like VNC, and less like RDP or even X. PS3 draws image into framebuffer, framebuffer is redirected to WiFi to display on PSP's screen...
The problem is, as I see it, that their ToS is "fluid". In other words, the ToS can be changed at any time by the company. Whether or not this is in fact legal remains to be seen, but I suspect that it probably is (at least in the U.S. which is where I assume we are referring).
Recent decisions have changed the playing-field for revisions to contracts over the Web. Unless Comcast sent their updates out to customers, I'm not sure the updates will hold up.
Two different issues, actually. The ToS terms are very "fluid" - it's not that the company revises them secretly, but more like the terms are so wide that doing *anything* is probably violating some term or another. Even just browsing a web site probably violates some term. (Heck, most ToS' have a "no servers" clause, and if you're using FTP..., and most have rules against downloading copyrighted content... which most content on the web is! Sure you have permission to download said content, but it can be considered a ToS violation).
Most ToS' are a CYA so they have carte blanche to do anything they want. If you ask them why they're cutting you off, they can cite the ToS knowing you've violated some clause or another (because the only way not to is unplug the modem).
Still waiting for Steve Jobs' "Insanely Fair Scheduler."
Alas, such a thing won't exist... and we'll end up with the "Reality Distortion Fair Scheduler" - it looks like things are fairly scheduled, but deep inside, the scheduler isn't. It's just everyone is so happy using MacOS X with the RDFS that they don't notice *grin*.
Also, from TFA: "A succession of Canadian governments have sat on their hands and done nothing," he said.
Excellent. That's the best kind of government. The type that doesn't make laws just to please some industry group.
Have to admit, that's one of the benefits of a minotity government - the politicians are too busy playing petty politics between themselves that they can't really do anything else. I'm sure had there been a majority government (doesn't matter *which* majority), it would've caved "to protect Canadian culture". (Neverminding the fallacy of that statement itself, that is...)
I really don't see why this pure hatred of flash. With sure the official versions are not open source. But all in all it is better then what we had before.
[... snip...]
Is it just because because it is Not Open Source? Is it that you are annoyed because it doesn't work on your obscure OS / hardware, or server hardware which you probably needed to hack just to get a display on it? Is it just because your a purist for sake of being a purist not caring about the benefit, only focusing on the flash adds? Or are you just jelious that you didn't make it yourself. And you spent so much time learning how to program Java Applets that you feel ripped off.
How about, none of the above?
Flash hatred comes from several arenas.
First, Flash is a CPU hog. If you keep several tabs and such open, your CPU (and browser) starts to bog down. If you're in the middle of a build and want to browse a little bit, boom, you're hit with flash ads that peg your CPU at 100%.
Second, most web developers misuse flash. Just like people misused java. Which results in people getting annoyed at all the little flash widgets all sucking up little bits of CPU here and there just so they can have clicky animated rollover buttons.
Third, most flash-heavy websites work poorly (see second point). Either they work at a fixed resolution, which sucks on any display that doesn't match the developer's (including widescreen, HDTVs, non-standard laptop resolutions, high-res displays, etc), you end up with an unresizable squinty mess.
Fourth, most flash features don't work across platforms. YouTube only works on desktop (and laptop) PCs (and Macs). What about when I don't want to schlep around a laptop, and have my PSP? Oh, it supports flash, but not the one required to watch YouTube. Nevermind Linux, either. Now there's YouTube mobile, which basically is a specialized YouTube client for platforms that don't support flash video (i.e., most platforms). Surfing the net on cellphones/psps/non-computer devices is getting more popular these days. Flash locks out all these (just like javascript did befor).
Fifth, until very recently, flash video wasn't easily viewable. And still isn't viewable with transcoding to other platforms. While practically every portable video player around can handle one of DivX/XviD/h.264/vc-1, almost none support flash video directly. Sure it's changing, but still.
It appears that browsing the web requires a UMPC more and more, simply because you need to run a full OS and full browser with full flash support to just do anything on the web.
Flash is basically what Microsoft wanted to do with ActiveX - turn the web less into a platform, and into something that locks people into a specific platform.
Now, I admit, there are a few good animations/flash games out there. However, the sheer amount of flash crap greatly outweighs the good. Thank god for FlashBlock. Nevermind the flash ads, which make it impossible to surf the web with your speakers/headphones on. I don't think there's any other software technology out there that really makes one wish they could rip the sound card OUT of their computer.
I am backing whoever defeats DRM so I can connect an HDMI cable to my MythTV box and record.watch Hi-Def content. Until that happens I will record analog only and get the High-Def content through other channels.
You're aware that the AACS key for HD-DVD was released, right? And that all the breaks have happened to HD-DVD?
You see, Blu-Ray is technologically superior to HD-DVD in every way. Including DRM. They haven't even rolled out usage of ROM-Mark (where the BD has a fingerprint identifying the source press, and disc type, so couterfeits can be traced to who made them, and if a player discovers it's a BD-R playing back a commercial movie, it won't play), and BD+, another VM like protection mechanism.
Sure Blu-Ray will be broken, but why, when HD-DVD already is... in fact, other than AACS, HD-DVD has less protections than even DVD. (HD-DVD is region free, for example).
Given the value of this target, why on earth are people installing random binaries on their iPhone when they have absolutely no way of ascertaining whether they can trust the original provider of said binaries?
Writing malware is not particularly difficult when you have a good SDK. The iPhone is, for most purposes, a fully functional and familiar UNIX environment, and the APIs necessary to build a SpyPhone are not a secret. Given the lack of insight the average user will have into the operating system on a handheld device, they'd likely never know of an infection.
While I *very much doubt* we'll ever see a mass malware infection, users need to be careful about what they put on their phone, who made the binaries, and how they verify the source. Even one compromised iPhone would be very valuable to a nefarious malfeasant.
Well, you've more or less have put on a major concern of *ALL* smartphones. Whether it runs OS X (iPhone), Windows Mobile, Linux, Symbian, RIM OS (Blackberry) - they all meet the same criteria. Most people will install a random binary on their smartphone if it does something "interesting", regardless of what it runs.
In fact, I'd say that Windows Mobile, Linux and Symbian have better SDKs than the iPhone. The iPhone SDK is just a hacked together version of GCC, headers from desktop OS X, and libraries from the iPhone itself. There's no official SDK for the iPhone. Windows Mobile has one courtesy of Microsoft, Linux well, it's all open source and easily available, and Symbian provides an SDK of their own as well. And the APIs of Windows mobile, Linux and Symbian are way more documented than the iPhone's "hidden" API set.
The younger set might have trouble appreciating the difference in auditory quality that the compact disc represented over vinyl or cassette tapes
Cue the vinyl fanatics who will whine about how "warm" their vinyls sound
Actually, there's a bit of truth to that (and ditto on valve amps). Transistor amplifiers, and digital electronics also, suffer from a phenomenon known as "clipping" if you give them too large an input. (For an amp, that would be the at the amp's input, for digital, it would be during the conversion to digital process, if the input peaked over the ADC's max input, or during processing which causes the sample's value to overflow).
If you take a decently powerful headphone amp (decently powerful - most headphone outputs on devices are very weedy), and plug its output into the line level input of another device, say, your soundcard, then playback the audio, it sounds like crap. Clipping is very harsh to the audio, and just sounds so bad. (People should do line-level checks as well - you can clip on those, but it's harder to come up with a decent demonstration).
Or, take an MP3 or other audio file on your computer, and open them in Audacity or other audio editor. Simply apply the "Amplify" effect to 200%, then listen. A mess - you may be able to make out what's happening, but it sounds just plain bad. Unfortunately, a lot of MP3s are apparently created like this... people don't seem to know how to rip CDs, so do the D/A/D thing without properly setting levels.
Valve amps, and vinyl don't clip when subjected to out-of-bounds input. Instead, they distort (which is why good guitar amps are valve based). This distortion makes the audio less accurate, but still much more pleasing to the ear. (And some argue that when it's distorted properly, even better). That's why valve amps are almost always in the power amplifier section (never preamp - the input levels to a preamp tends to be fairly standard (line-level, minding above)) - the preamp can easily overload the power amp inputs, which should trigger the distortion. If there are transistors in front of the tubes, they must be set so they don't clip before the tube distorts, or it's all for nought.
(In vinyl, the distortion comes because the needle cannot move very far before it impacts the neighboring grooves).
Alas, the vast majority of people don't actually configure their hardware correctly.
I'm a TransFan, and bought the Transformers game (if you must know, I have it on PC and PS3 - the latter bought first, the former bought for a different reason other than to play it). So there are ads in it for Helio phones, which don't exist, it seems. Maybe in the US they do, but certainly not elsewhere in the world.
If it wasn't for the fact that I read Gizmodo and the like, I wouldn't have known that Helio was a phone carrier - I would've thought they were some sort of phone manufacturer (and like all phone manufacturers - what's so special?). The ads are hardcoded, they're in the credits and all that. Heck, I hear the Xbox360 version has achievements based on doing things with the billboards!
Problem is, should Helio go the way of Amped Mobile, it'll be more of a "WTF is this?" later on... (it already is, since Helio doesn't exist outside the US).
So maybe these people ought to make their ads more localised or something...
Untill recently, the clock speed was only 222, now they have upgraded it so it can go to the full speed of 333mhz, however, you can't do this while running the wi-fi. People have not found a floor, just a limit to the extra given in the new update, everything was working fine at 222mhz and no one complained about slowness so you should have no problems on the wi-fi, there just wont be the extra snapiness, sony probably only did this to save battery or something.
Except if the game needs the full speed (the bus/CPU/GPU speeds are all locked together - at 222MHz CPU, it's 111MHz system bus, at 333MHz, it's 166MHz system bus). I can't remember what the system-bus-to-GPU ratio is (I think it's x1 system bus frequency).
So it makes multiplayer interesting - if things get busy, you can have the game become choppy because the models are too datailed for the GPU, while it may be adequate in single player because the GPU can render everything fast enough.
It's an interesting limitation - but the whole homebrew community has unlocked 333MHz practically from day 1 - I don't recall there being any sort of issue with wifi at that speed. Perhaps it really is battery life... but would 333MHz plus WiFi make that big of a difference? (If so, it means WiFi already takes a lot of power... in which case you get better battery life turning it off. If not, then the extra 50% in speed, WiFi will take little in comparison?).
Are those "long" tons (2240lb), "short" tons (2000lb), or "metric" tons (1000kg)?
A "metric" ton is actually known as a "tonne". (And people usually emphasize the "-ne" part, so it' becomes "ton-nay"). Which, for most of the world, means 1000 kg, or more correctly, a million grams. (And if precision is key, they will NOT use shortform words like tonne - they really will just say 1Mg.).
It's the imperial measurement system that's screwed up, with two values for tons, gallons, miles, etc. At least things improved somewhat since all the imperial units are now defined in SI units. Having to re-do your measuring sticks everytime the king changed is annoying.
I assume it's easy to boot checked builds into a mode that accepts unsigned drivers, since that is what the build is designed to test.
You can also just use the OEM Test Certificate to test-sign your driver, then use it on a regular Vista "free" build. The only caveat is that a driver using the OEM Test Certificate will cause the system to put "OEM Test" or some such text in the background. This is so driver writers can test their driver outside the checked environment - there are a number of things that differ between the debug and retail versions (anyone who has programmed something in debug mode and suddenly have it crash horrendously the instant they took out the debug options...). It's only Microsoft that can sign your driver so that it can be released without causing "OEM Test" to show up.
Even for Windows XP, vendors cheat and even ask how to hide the fact they use the OEM Test certificate. It's actually amazing just how bad some vendors are, knowing they can hide behind "Windows sucks" veil. (Yes, it's not all Microsoft's fault! And no, I hate Windows as much as the next guy - prefer Linux and OS X...).
What I wonder about is when a bidder cancels the auction just before close. In one case, I had a really good price on an item, and just before ending the seller closed the auction with the reason "item was found to be lost/broken"
I watched the seller for awhile to see if he re-listed and tried to sell the same item, as I think he just didn't get the high bids he had hoped for, but after a while said to heck with it. What would the obligations of a seller be in this case?
It's perfectly legal to do that, as the "sale" hasn't officially happened yet. It's a bit tricky with auctions, since the official sale happens when the auction ends, while in regular retail sales, it happens when money is exchanged. Perhaps the closest analogy happens for say, e-commerce. You buy an item, but the seller decides he doesn't want to sell it to you and cancels your order - it's still legal, as the sale hasn't happened yet. He may even have taken your money, but if said product hasn't left his door, he's under no obligation to complete the sale (of course, he will have to give you a refund or it becomes fraud).
Like the recent Dell case - Dell didn't ship anyone their goods, so they had the power to cancel all their orders (the case was about what remedies could be had in the case - forced arbitration). The older Amazon case, where officially Amazon undercharged people and shipped them product, is something where the consumer's in the right, since the sale has occurred, and a seller has no recourse to recoup the losses from consumers who actually received the inadvertently discounted product.
So your eBay seller decided the auction wasn't going to end the way he wanted, and removed the product from sale before the sale was compelte. In the case of the article, though, the seller didn't cancel the auction, and thus the sale was made.
It's also like that state department trying to get rid of surplus, and putting stuff on eBay to sell. It didn't sell well, but they never cancelled their auction, leading them to have to sell the equipment at cut-rate prices (or face legal ramifications).
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I don't know, but I've seen shipments at the big electronics retailer (like Circuit City or Best Buy - not sure if you have them) at least once a week, and they tend to last 1-2 days. In Canada, one retailer I visit regularly (because it's down the block from work) gets 80-100 every week. Takes 'em usually around 1-2 days before they're completely sold out. But it's better than it was a few months ago, where they sold out in 20 minutes.
EB Games/Gamestop tends to probably get around 10 or so, so they go quickly since everyone tries there first. Ditto with the other stores - for some reason or other, they get really small shipments. Then again, they probably have tons in the back and only bring out two...
According to iTunes, my 5.5G iPod (80GB) has 45GB used. Of that, my entire MP3 collection is only 12.7GB. Oh. Wait. The bar next to it says "Video 11.1GB". I have a lot of music, and I carry my entire collection with me, because my music tastes are definitely not mainstream, and my mood can have me picking song I've not played in years. My "working set" of music for the past couple of months is under 4GB, but there are times I want to play something I've not heard in a while. Having lots of space makes it less likely for me to go "damn, I realy want to listen to X right now!".
That's why the Touch is so close, yet so far. The thing plays video. With such a nice screen, how can one resist? Luckily, video is easier to swap in and out, but still, they're big. Carry around a few movies and you'll find you'll have to make the same decisions you did when the largest MP3 player around had 64MB of storage.
If it had the 160GB hard disk, I'd buy (err, preorder) it in an instant. I'd carry around my old iPod, because it's a standard Mass Storage device, but my Touch would be in my pocket...
Actually, to transfer files you need USB. To charge a 5/5.5G iPod, FireWire works great. (I use the old Firewire adapter that came with my 3G iPod to charge). Don't know if it charges any faster, though, but it certainly means I don't need my PC to charge it, or buy another adapter.
False, actually.
LCDs are refreshed much the same way as CRTs are. You start at the upper left, write the pixel's data, then the next pixel, until you've finished the line. Then you go down the next line and repeat the process.
The thing that makes LCDs not flicker is that the persistence of each pixel is a lot longer than the persistence of the phosphor of a CRT. An active matrix LCD (the kind with a transistor at every pixel) is effectively write-only DRAM memory, with the actual liquid crystal and electrode plates forming the capacitor, and the transistor being the addressing transistor. Like DRAM memory, it needs refreshing, or the image fades. Pull the LCD data cable out and you'll see it fade - make take a few seconds though. The thing is, like DRAM memory, it's easy to write a new value to each pixel - if it's displaying white, I can make it display black trivially by "rewriting" its color value. A CRT screen can't change a pixel that's on to off - all it can do is turn off pixels on. So they have to be very quick to turn off or you get the same "refresh time" issue like LCDs.
Early CRTs ghosted quite like early LCD panels... nowadays the phosphors are much less persistent so they make the image so blurry. As a side effect, the screen flickers much more. Passive LCD screens are much like CRTs...
Everytime I go there, the place is always freaking crowded, and store layout is a random mess, and if it weren't for the fact that one can find an odd gem used game there, I really detest visiting the place. (I sometimes hear of games many moons after release, or it piques my interest later, and thus have to hunt for it).
It seems for new releases, I just bypass GS/EB and head to my local big-box electronics retailer, who may often be equally crowded, but at least manages to make it not appear so (at least, I don't keep bumping into people as you try to navigate the store). Prices are typically the same (or lower - bonus), but it generally appears to be a much saner place to shop at.
Heck, even service at these big-box retailers tends to be better as there's actual employees roaming the floor (and they know just as much as the clerks at GS/EB), who aren't busy handing the 12+ deep lineup of people to pay. Everytime I had a question at GS/EB, I had to wait in the SAME BLOODY LINEUP.
Perhaps, but the entire point of the Hot Coffee was that the *developer* left that content on the disc. If we want stretched analogies, we could say a PG-13 movie was released on DVD. However, the studio also included some pr0n vids on there by accident (say, by a previous mastering session). They aren't accessible via the menus since they're unlinked videos, and perhaps a casual scan of the DVD in a PC won't find anything unusual either. But perhaps if you decided to scrub through the VOB file by hand, you might come across it. That would lead to a huge public outcry, even though you have to go online and download a tool (e.g., VideoLAN) to actually access it.
It's not just a user-generated mod, it's more of a patch that unlocks hidden content. Basically, it became an elaborate easter egg. (Elaborate because of all the trouble you have to go through to get at it).
And remember, the developers have a self-interest in being honest with the content they show - if games get misrated because developers chose only the "good" parts, we'd end up with a solution far worse than than things are now (government legislation). Of course, Hot Coffee was a HUGE mistake on the developer's part since someone left the content on there, but it does happen. And now everyone's on edge because it only takes a few screwups before people think the government can do a better job than some group they believe acts in the self interest of that group.
I don't care for Manhunt 2, nor the controversy, but you have to ask what were they thinking when they decided to release it at a time when the public already hears of "games make killers!!!!1111one" headlines. Especially when people are already knee-jerking to have government step in.
Well, they did sweeten the pot a little more. The 80GB models on the shelves right now come with Motorstorm, and a tossed-in HDMI cable. So while it doesn't cost Sony any extra $100 for these extras, it might tilt the value proposition that way for the consumer. (After all, it's only a little bit extra in cost - a game plus a cable is only a few bucks for Sony).
I've had this bite me, and exploited it.
It bit me when booting into Windows CE - you'd power cycle the thing, and the OS would boot with the old RAM disk you had - we'd gotten to the point where we'd have the bootloader wipe the kernel memory so the data structures were all corrupted by the time the OS was trying to decide between mounting the RAM disk (object store) and starting fresh. It turns out that the longer an image is unchanged in RAM, the more likely the cells woudl be biased such that if you cycle the power on them, they're more likely to lean towards the way they were before power was cut.
The time I exploited it, I didn't have any way of logging. Logging to serial port caused issues (timing-sensitive code), so I logged to memory (and no, I had no filesystem running, so I couldn't log to file). My trick was to simply log to a circular RAM buffer. When it crashed, I would just power cycle and dump the RAM buffer. Even though the data was fresh, it was enough to make out what my debug message was trying to say (almost always perfect). This was readable after a brief power cycle, and was still readable after turning power off for nearly a minute. The characters got corrupted, but since it was regular ASCII, you could still make out the words.
DVDs have DRM... just it's been broken. Funnily enough, one of the "losing" parties in this high-def wars also has their DRM broken. (Yes, it's HD-DVD... AACS has been broken, all that can be done is they change the keys. Blu-Ray has also been broken, but there's many more forms of DRM that still can be applied).
"losing" because it's difficult to tell who is actually losing the high-def format wars. Just generally considered that it'll be a dead format these days despite it's lower costs.
Just because the PS3 runs Linux, doesn't mean it has full bare metal access! Linux on the PS3 runs virtualized. There's a nice hypervisor that the PS3 is running that virtualizes the hard drive, memory card slots, video, blu-ray drive and a few other devices. The hard disk is partitioned from the "Game OS", and only the "OtherOS" partition is actually exposed to the "Other OS". Which is then partitioned by Linux into the regular Linux partitions. Unless there's a bug in the hypervisor, there's no way to get access to the flash ROM of the PS3 (other than a tiny portion of it used to serve as a way to communicate between the normal "Game OS" and "Other OS", hold the bootloader, etc.
The hypervisor denies access to the GPU and to the WiFi hardware. It exposes a simple framebuffer interface that the hypervisor then passes to the real GPU. It's not a matter of "framebuffer because there's no driver", it's "Framebuffer because that's the only way it works".
The only way to "free" up the PS3 is for someone to find a bug in the hypervisor that suddenly lets it get full supervisor access to the PPEs. (Basically, find a way to break out of the virtualization).
Actually A and B came out together. A was for a 54Mbps enhanced rate PHY on 5GHz, while B was to improve the old 802.11 wireless standard to support 11Mbps.
Alas, we have 802.11g because c through f were used for other 802.11 things. See Wikipedia.
And apparently, they decided to reserve "o"...
Remote Play, for anyone who hasn't tried it yet, is like VNC. Basically, when it's enabled, the PS3 switches from whatever high-def output it's doing to 480i, puts up a 480i "Remote Play in progress" screen, and what the PS3 would've outputted is redirected to WiFi. Complete with the characteristic lag.
Heck, you can do it right now! Using VNC, play a game. Solitaire and Minesweeper on Windows works great, but try playing Tux Racer. Same effect.
Now you want to play over the internet... adding even more lag, and limited upstream bandwidth causing the display to refresh even slower. And yes, it's more like VNC, and less like RDP or even X. PS3 draws image into framebuffer, framebuffer is redirected to WiFi to display on PSP's screen...
Two different issues, actually. The ToS terms are very "fluid" - it's not that the company revises them secretly, but more like the terms are so wide that doing *anything* is probably violating some term or another. Even just browsing a web site probably violates some term. (Heck, most ToS' have a "no servers" clause, and if you're using FTP..., and most have rules against downloading copyrighted content... which most content on the web is! Sure you have permission to download said content, but it can be considered a ToS violation).
Most ToS' are a CYA so they have carte blanche to do anything they want. If you ask them why they're cutting you off, they can cite the ToS knowing you've violated some clause or another (because the only way not to is unplug the modem).
Alas, such a thing won't exist... and we'll end up with the "Reality Distortion Fair Scheduler" - it looks like things are fairly scheduled, but deep inside, the scheduler isn't. It's just everyone is so happy using MacOS X with the RDFS that they don't notice *grin*.
(yes, the above was a joke - laugh).
Have to admit, that's one of the benefits of a minotity government - the politicians are too busy playing petty politics between themselves that they can't really do anything else. I'm sure had there been a majority government (doesn't matter *which* majority), it would've caved "to protect Canadian culture". (Neverminding the fallacy of that statement itself, that is...)
How about, none of the above?
Flash hatred comes from several arenas.
First, Flash is a CPU hog. If you keep several tabs and such open, your CPU (and browser) starts to bog down. If you're in the middle of a build and want to browse a little bit, boom, you're hit with flash ads that peg your CPU at 100%.
Second, most web developers misuse flash. Just like people misused java. Which results in people getting annoyed at all the little flash widgets all sucking up little bits of CPU here and there just so they can have clicky animated rollover buttons.
Third, most flash-heavy websites work poorly (see second point). Either they work at a fixed resolution, which sucks on any display that doesn't match the developer's (including widescreen, HDTVs, non-standard laptop resolutions, high-res displays, etc), you end up with an unresizable squinty mess.
Fourth, most flash features don't work across platforms. YouTube only works on desktop (and laptop) PCs (and Macs). What about when I don't want to schlep around a laptop, and have my PSP? Oh, it supports flash, but not the one required to watch YouTube. Nevermind Linux, either. Now there's YouTube mobile, which basically is a specialized YouTube client for platforms that don't support flash video (i.e., most platforms). Surfing the net on cellphones/psps/non-computer devices is getting more popular these days. Flash locks out all these (just like javascript did befor).
Fifth, until very recently, flash video wasn't easily viewable. And still isn't viewable with transcoding to other platforms. While practically every portable video player around can handle one of DivX/XviD/h.264/vc-1, almost none support flash video directly. Sure it's changing, but still.
It appears that browsing the web requires a UMPC more and more, simply because you need to run a full OS and full browser with full flash support to just do anything on the web.
Flash is basically what Microsoft wanted to do with ActiveX - turn the web less into a platform, and into something that locks people into a specific platform.
Now, I admit, there are a few good animations/flash games out there. However, the sheer amount of flash crap greatly outweighs the good. Thank god for FlashBlock. Nevermind the flash ads, which make it impossible to surf the web with your speakers/headphones on. I don't think there's any other software technology out there that really makes one wish they could rip the sound card OUT of their computer.
You're aware that the AACS key for HD-DVD was released, right? And that all the breaks have happened to HD-DVD?
You see, Blu-Ray is technologically superior to HD-DVD in every way. Including DRM. They haven't even rolled out usage of ROM-Mark (where the BD has a fingerprint identifying the source press, and disc type, so couterfeits can be traced to who made them, and if a player discovers it's a BD-R playing back a commercial movie, it won't play), and BD+, another VM like protection mechanism.
Sure Blu-Ray will be broken, but why, when HD-DVD already is... in fact, other than AACS, HD-DVD has less protections than even DVD. (HD-DVD is region free, for example).
Well, you've more or less have put on a major concern of *ALL* smartphones. Whether it runs OS X (iPhone), Windows Mobile, Linux, Symbian, RIM OS (Blackberry) - they all meet the same criteria. Most people will install a random binary on their smartphone if it does something "interesting", regardless of what it runs.
In fact, I'd say that Windows Mobile, Linux and Symbian have better SDKs than the iPhone. The iPhone SDK is just a hacked together version of GCC, headers from desktop OS X, and libraries from the iPhone itself. There's no official SDK for the iPhone. Windows Mobile has one courtesy of Microsoft, Linux well, it's all open source and easily available, and Symbian provides an SDK of their own as well. And the APIs of Windows mobile, Linux and Symbian are way more documented than the iPhone's "hidden" API set.
Hmm... wait a minute... spyware for Blackberries already exist...
Actually, there's a bit of truth to that (and ditto on valve amps). Transistor amplifiers, and digital electronics also, suffer from a phenomenon known as "clipping" if you give them too large an input. (For an amp, that would be the at the amp's input, for digital, it would be during the conversion to digital process, if the input peaked over the ADC's max input, or during processing which causes the sample's value to overflow).
If you take a decently powerful headphone amp (decently powerful - most headphone outputs on devices are very weedy), and plug its output into the line level input of another device, say, your soundcard, then playback the audio, it sounds like crap. Clipping is very harsh to the audio, and just sounds so bad. (People should do line-level checks as well - you can clip on those, but it's harder to come up with a decent demonstration).
Or, take an MP3 or other audio file on your computer, and open them in Audacity or other audio editor. Simply apply the "Amplify" effect to 200%, then listen. A mess - you may be able to make out what's happening, but it sounds just plain bad. Unfortunately, a lot of MP3s are apparently created like this... people don't seem to know how to rip CDs, so do the D/A/D thing without properly setting levels.
Valve amps, and vinyl don't clip when subjected to out-of-bounds input. Instead, they distort (which is why good guitar amps are valve based). This distortion makes the audio less accurate, but still much more pleasing to the ear. (And some argue that when it's distorted properly, even better). That's why valve amps are almost always in the power amplifier section (never preamp - the input levels to a preamp tends to be fairly standard (line-level, minding above)) - the preamp can easily overload the power amp inputs, which should trigger the distortion. If there are transistors in front of the tubes, they must be set so they don't clip before the tube distorts, or it's all for nought.
(In vinyl, the distortion comes because the needle cannot move very far before it impacts the neighboring grooves).
Alas, the vast majority of people don't actually configure their hardware correctly.
I'm a TransFan, and bought the Transformers game (if you must know, I have it on PC and PS3 - the latter bought first, the former bought for a different reason other than to play it). So there are ads in it for Helio phones, which don't exist, it seems. Maybe in the US they do, but certainly not elsewhere in the world.
If it wasn't for the fact that I read Gizmodo and the like, I wouldn't have known that Helio was a phone carrier - I would've thought they were some sort of phone manufacturer (and like all phone manufacturers - what's so special?). The ads are hardcoded, they're in the credits and all that. Heck, I hear the Xbox360 version has achievements based on doing things with the billboards!
Problem is, should Helio go the way of Amped Mobile, it'll be more of a "WTF is this?" later on... (it already is, since Helio doesn't exist outside the US).
So maybe these people ought to make their ads more localised or something...
Except if the game needs the full speed (the bus/CPU/GPU speeds are all locked together - at 222MHz CPU, it's 111MHz system bus, at 333MHz, it's 166MHz system bus). I can't remember what the system-bus-to-GPU ratio is (I think it's x1 system bus frequency).
So it makes multiplayer interesting - if things get busy, you can have the game become choppy because the models are too datailed for the GPU, while it may be adequate in single player because the GPU can render everything fast enough.
It's an interesting limitation - but the whole homebrew community has unlocked 333MHz practically from day 1 - I don't recall there being any sort of issue with wifi at that speed. Perhaps it really is battery life... but would 333MHz plus WiFi make that big of a difference? (If so, it means WiFi already takes a lot of power... in which case you get better battery life turning it off. If not, then the extra 50% in speed, WiFi will take little in comparison?).
A "metric" ton is actually known as a "tonne". (And people usually emphasize the "-ne" part, so it' becomes "ton-nay"). Which, for most of the world, means 1000 kg, or more correctly, a million grams. (And if precision is key, they will NOT use shortform words like tonne - they really will just say 1Mg.).
It's the imperial measurement system that's screwed up, with two values for tons, gallons, miles, etc. At least things improved somewhat since all the imperial units are now defined in SI units. Having to re-do your measuring sticks everytime the king changed is annoying.
You can also just use the OEM Test Certificate to test-sign your driver, then use it on a regular Vista "free" build. The only caveat is that a driver using the OEM Test Certificate will cause the system to put "OEM Test" or some such text in the background. This is so driver writers can test their driver outside the checked environment - there are a number of things that differ between the debug and retail versions (anyone who has programmed something in debug mode and suddenly have it crash horrendously the instant they took out the debug options...). It's only Microsoft that can sign your driver so that it can be released without causing "OEM Test" to show up.
Even for Windows XP, vendors cheat and even ask how to hide the fact they use the OEM Test certificate. It's actually amazing just how bad some vendors are, knowing they can hide behind "Windows sucks" veil. (Yes, it's not all Microsoft's fault! And no, I hate Windows as much as the next guy - prefer Linux and OS X...).
It's perfectly legal to do that, as the "sale" hasn't officially happened yet. It's a bit tricky with auctions, since the official sale happens when the auction ends, while in regular retail sales, it happens when money is exchanged. Perhaps the closest analogy happens for say, e-commerce. You buy an item, but the seller decides he doesn't want to sell it to you and cancels your order - it's still legal, as the sale hasn't happened yet. He may even have taken your money, but if said product hasn't left his door, he's under no obligation to complete the sale (of course, he will have to give you a refund or it becomes fraud).
Like the recent Dell case - Dell didn't ship anyone their goods, so they had the power to cancel all their orders (the case was about what remedies could be had in the case - forced arbitration). The older Amazon case, where officially Amazon undercharged people and shipped them product, is something where the consumer's in the right, since the sale has occurred, and a seller has no recourse to recoup the losses from consumers who actually received the inadvertently discounted product.
So your eBay seller decided the auction wasn't going to end the way he wanted, and removed the product from sale before the sale was compelte. In the case of the article, though, the seller didn't cancel the auction, and thus the sale was made.
It's also like that state department trying to get rid of surplus, and putting stuff on eBay to sell. It didn't sell well, but they never cancelled their auction, leading them to have to sell the equipment at cut-rate prices (or face legal ramifications).
I guess this would be a good instance of copyfraud... where people are marking as copyrighted things that aren't.