It's not the hardware, it's the games. We agree totally. I own two consoles -- a Wii (and a lot of plastic to go with it) and PS2 (that I rescued from someone's garbage).
Nintendo simply hasn't put anything new on the Wii. They're all sequels or ports or ports of sequels. Even TP is a Gamecube game.
The only title I can think of that's original is No More Heroes.
It's not just this. These benchmarks are all just games, and people are powergaming the tests. Sure, the Chinese blew away this one specific test, but how powerful is that machine? IE9 cheated on SunSpider and got better results and better ad copy.
What they have to do is come up with a new benchmarks each year. Have it based roughly on the old test so you know what's going to be tested but have different questions. Otherwise it'll be just like my classes at engineering school. Some students memorized last year's tests and got artificially inflated grades. They couldn't figure out that e.g. 3.8V on the meter was, in fact, 4V when you add in the resistor tolerance.
My point is that unless you are actually testing ability rather than specifics at one rote task you end up with a generation of machines that "need propsal got approved pls can you will write me paper?"
Well, it is true. The 1st Amendment of the US allows for... let me look it up...
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances"
Okay, so the part about religion doesn't apply unless there's an esoteric branch of Hinduism that allows for the reincarnation of bits as MP3s.
Freedom of speech...really, when you get right down to it, when you download music, that's a form of censorship. You're taking money away from the MPAA, and that's money they use to bribe congressmen and senators and presidents. How can they redress the Government when they don't have any money?
For freedom of the press, how important is it to be able for the media to access the Internet? You have newspapers and television and radio. Admittedly, half of those are official government propaganda machines and the other half is owned by media conglomerates, but the idea is still there.
Assembly? For online stuff? Come on, it's not like you could use something like twitter to tell the outside world about how things are going in your country.
That's not really a helpful answer. First, I already OWN the netbook. I was waiting for a power upgrade, so I got a dual-core netbook when it was first available. It's also got the anti-glare screen, not the crappy glossy garbage you see everywhere.
Next, it's not even cheaper. System76 is $385 US before shipping and it looks like roughly the same book as what I have. Mine was $320 CDN in town -- and when the prices HERE are cheaper, it's a lot cheaper elsewhere. I will pick up some of the Ubuntu stickers, though, so that was helpful.;) ZaReason starts at $450 US for their netbooks. That's the old single-core processor, too. Both your examples cost more, so where is that MS tax going?
Now, not everyone lives in the US. To ship something to where I live (Canada) is expensive and time-consuming. I can't drive down to the US to pick something up either, as it requires a ferry ride and about a day. (It would run me about $250 to go to the US.) Shipping to Canada will run me in the neighbourhood of $100 after UPS decides to broker it, customs decides to tax and duty it, etc.
Now don't get the wrong idea here -- in order to install Ubuntu, you have to remember that you're playing a different game altogether. You're not just buying a computer to use as an appliance, you're buying a toy to play with that requires tweaks and fixes to work properly. I have a nice bicycle; I enjoy working on her (yes, my bike has a name) and maintaining her in top form is part of the fun of owning a bike, at least as far as I am concerned. I like rebuilding and truing the wheels. I like adjusting the various bits until they work just the way I want them to. I like owning the tools and the equipment to do it right. I like knowing what all the parts are and how they work together to make a machine that runs better and faster than anything you can buy stock. The same with a computer -- part of the fun of owning one is getting a chance to muck about with it and enjoy it. When I get these things working properly (and I will, it is just a matter of time) and write a thread on "So you bought an NF210 and want to run Ubuntu" for the forums, I'll know that it was me that put the pieces together and figured out how to get my netbook working.
That doesn't mean that U:NR isn't without flaws -- it is. But like a jewel or a person, those flaws are what makes it endearing, precious, and unique.
I use the phonebook too; it's faster than going to the computer, turning it on, waiting for it to boot, loading up FF, clicking on the Canada411 link in the toolbar, and typing in the name... retyping the name because it changed the focus and cleared the data I'd already entered... then changing the city because ONE TIME I looked up a number in a different city... then waiting for the search results to filter.
Oh, the version of me that looked up the number in a phone book is already done ordering the pizza.
I just bought a new Samsumg NF-210 and it came with Win7 Starter. The manufacturer has a splash screen to start up either normally or with recovery mode, and with Ubuntu installed it still has that screen. It can't be disabled.
Ubuntu Netbook doesn't work right. There are some great features, like taking advantage of virtualization to keep it at four cores all the time. (It's a dual-core N550 processor with hyperthreading).
Out of the box, the Fn keys don't work. If you download an add-on from a different repository and tweak some config files, they can be fixed but it's a deal-breaker for anyone who's a casual computer user. (Which would, of course, be 95% of the netbook market, [citation needed]) That's because the keys don't send a release, they expect a release from the OS. That OS is MS... and it's BS. It is workable but it's not very easy to do.
Networking Manager does not recover from sleep or hibernate. There are two ways to get it to work afterwards: reboot or ctrl-alt-t; sudo rmmod ath9k [pw]; sudo modprobe ath9k. Don't answer "just edit acpi-support" because that's deprecated and power is handled now by a daemon that doesn't read the acpi configuration.
Multitouch is also not supported in ubuntu nor is the edge scrolling. That's another thing that works great in Win7 but doesn't work at all in U:NR 10.10. Yes, I've read the link on how to create a new file and hal restart and enjoy mutlitouch BUT there's no HAL in U:NR or if there is it's not in a documented location.
If it doesn't work for me, good luck getting the rest of netbook users to even bother trying it.
One interesting thing to note is that the performance in U:NR is about the same even though there's 500 MB more RAM free. (Win7 had 750MB used sitting at the desktop; U:NR has about 256 used.)
I'm still keeping U:NR because it's a nicer looking OS with a better interface and works better with the way I want to use my computer. I also cut a lot of slack because there's a good chance there's a dozen or less of these books with U:NR.
I've got a DEX of 18 and I'm wearing normal clothing. I've got cover from the chair and cubicle so there's a +4 bonus and a 20% miss chance.
I took Dodge as my Human feat (I took non-combatant(-1 to melee), shaky(-2 ranged weapons), non-violent (-1 damage), vulnerable(-1 AC), bad vision(-4 to spot checks), and slow start (double penalties for child / youth age groups) as flaws, so I have a LOT of feats. What can I say, my parents were power gamers, apparently.) so that puts me at 17AC.
You miss. Given that I'm unarmed and have a to-hit of +2 (+5 BaB, +2 from STR, -1 from feats, -4 for non-proficiency) and damage of 1d3 + 1 subdual, this could go on for a while.
I've worked with end users that had access to power tools and the desire to use them. There is no limit to the dumn fucking themng sht eht do .
No, really, there was one time when they thought a bridge didn't look strong enough so they drilled and tapped a hole in the bottom and added mild steel... to a marine-grade Aluminium superstructure that had been designed by a team of professional engineers. So yeah, don't make the mistake of thinking "Nah, they couldn't possibly..." and I never do. Actually, one end user was a wolverine that sheared off a stainless antenna with the cleanness of a laser. That was pretty cool.
A lot of/. users are condescending to new computer users. But now computers are applicances like toasters or microwaves or consumer goods like cars or jackets. You buy whatever one looks the shiniest with the features you like. Gone forever are the days when you had to put together your own, swap around jumpers, and get something that worked that you built on your own. (I know, for high-performance stuff you still do, sometimes, but for 99% of users it's just as good to get a "gamer" package from Alienware -- whoops, I mean Dell -- if you want to game.) Anyone can get a computer and get online, and access FB and porn and email and/. and WoW and/b/ and usenet and PB and mediafire and wikipedia and netflix and youtube and everything else. That's something like 90% of users.
That 90% is the group that are the power users now. They use more bandwidth and have more raw computer power at their disposal than everyone on/. (and I've had access to a supercomputer)
Eh, I usually send out only three types of email anyway:
1. No, that design will fail. 2. The estimate doesn't have enough hours. 3. I told you three months ago that the design would fail and the plan didn't have enough hours.
Now, hah ha, I'm such an awesome user because I use Linux, but seriously, the thing we have to remember is these popups look good. Not "huh, 1997 emailed and said they wanted their msgbox back" but "holy shit Windows is flipping the fuck out!...wait, I'm not running Windows on this box. What the fuck is going on here?" If you haven't seen it, it's an awesome piece of chicanery that uses open / save API to read your files -- I shit you not, even on Ubuntu since it only requires read access -- and tells you that your own files are at risk. Compound this with the MacAfee Heel: most OTS boxes come with MacAfee installed at least as a demo. The bad guys know this and know that they can dupe the users, or at least enough of the users to make some serious bank.
Personally, I would pocket the 30 Euro and call it a day, since its not a crime to write shitty software.
(*)Also because IMHO, if we will ever reach the stars, gradual spreading towards and across our Oort cloud (and eventually, after thousands of years, some groups hitching a ride in the clouds of passing star) seems like the way to go (though embryo colonization also looks practical)
The sky calls to us -- and if we do not destroy ourselves, we will, one day, venture to the stars.
Well, it had been great for long time (we've been together for 15 years), but about about five years ago (after the second kid) it started hurting her after she'd climax so she'd start dreading it and then it just went to hell. It doesn't matter what we do, it hurts. But the crying wasn't from physical pain, it's from how she feels about us.
When I told her I just couldn't take it anymore she told me she felt relief and we haven't even tried since.
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In Soviet Russia, overlords meme you!
It's not the hardware, it's the games. We agree totally. I own two consoles -- a Wii (and a lot of plastic to go with it) and PS2 (that I rescued from someone's garbage).
Nintendo simply hasn't put anything new on the Wii. They're all sequels or ports or ports of sequels. Even TP is a Gamecube game.
The only title I can think of that's original is No More Heroes.
For the third time, this was a joke. You don't have to get a warrant to laugh, sjames.
It's not just this. These benchmarks are all just games, and people are powergaming the tests. Sure, the Chinese blew away this one specific test, but how powerful is that machine? IE9 cheated on SunSpider and got better results and better ad copy.
What they have to do is come up with a new benchmarks each year. Have it based roughly on the old test so you know what's going to be tested but have different questions. Otherwise it'll be just like my classes at engineering school. Some students memorized last year's tests and got artificially inflated grades. They couldn't figure out that e.g. 3.8V on the meter was, in fact, 4V when you add in the resistor tolerance.
My point is that unless you are actually testing ability rather than specifics at one rote task you end up with a generation of machines that "need propsal got approved pls can you will write me paper?"
You do if it's a dual-core machine.
I assumed that the reference to an esoteric branch of Hinduism would alert you that my post was, in fact, meretricious.
My tongue was firmly in cheek. ;)
Well, it is true. The 1st Amendment of the US allows for ... let me look it up...
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances"
Okay, so the part about religion doesn't apply unless there's an esoteric branch of Hinduism that allows for the reincarnation of bits as MP3s.
Freedom of speech...really, when you get right down to it, when you download music, that's a form of censorship. You're taking money away from the MPAA, and that's money they use to bribe congressmen and senators and presidents. How can they redress the Government when they don't have any money?
For freedom of the press, how important is it to be able for the media to access the Internet? You have newspapers and television and radio. Admittedly, half of those are official government propaganda machines and the other half is owned by media conglomerates, but the idea is still there.
Assembly? For online stuff? Come on, it's not like you could use something like twitter to tell the outside world about how things are going in your country.
That's not really a helpful answer. First, I already OWN the netbook. I was waiting for a power upgrade, so I got a dual-core netbook when it was first available. It's also got the anti-glare screen, not the crappy glossy garbage you see everywhere.
Next, it's not even cheaper. System76 is $385 US before shipping and it looks like roughly the same book as what I have. Mine was $320 CDN in town -- and when the prices HERE are cheaper, it's a lot cheaper elsewhere. I will pick up some of the Ubuntu stickers, though, so that was helpful. ;) ZaReason starts at $450 US for their netbooks. That's the old single-core processor, too. Both your examples cost more, so where is that MS tax going?
Now, not everyone lives in the US. To ship something to where I live (Canada) is expensive and time-consuming. I can't drive down to the US to pick something up either, as it requires a ferry ride and about a day. (It would run me about $250 to go to the US.) Shipping to Canada will run me in the neighbourhood of $100 after UPS decides to broker it, customs decides to tax and duty it, etc.
Now don't get the wrong idea here -- in order to install Ubuntu, you have to remember that you're playing a different game altogether. You're not just buying a computer to use as an appliance, you're buying a toy to play with that requires tweaks and fixes to work properly. I have a nice bicycle; I enjoy working on her (yes, my bike has a name) and maintaining her in top form is part of the fun of owning a bike, at least as far as I am concerned. I like rebuilding and truing the wheels. I like adjusting the various bits until they work just the way I want them to. I like owning the tools and the equipment to do it right. I like knowing what all the parts are and how they work together to make a machine that runs better and faster than anything you can buy stock. The same with a computer -- part of the fun of owning one is getting a chance to muck about with it and enjoy it. When I get these things working properly (and I will, it is just a matter of time) and write a thread on "So you bought an NF210 and want to run Ubuntu" for the forums, I'll know that it was me that put the pieces together and figured out how to get my netbook working.
That doesn't mean that U:NR isn't without flaws -- it is. But like a jewel or a person, those flaws are what makes it endearing, precious, and unique.
You're missing the point. The sysadmin is aware of any program or peripheral that runs on any computer in the network.
I use the phonebook too; it's faster than going to the computer, turning it on, waiting for it to boot, loading up FF, clicking on the Canada411 link in the toolbar, and typing in the name... retyping the name because it changed the focus and cleared the data I'd already entered... then changing the city because ONE TIME I looked up a number in a different city... then waiting for the search results to filter.
Oh, the version of me that looked up the number in a phone book is already done ordering the pizza.
The same is true in Canada.
I just bought a new Samsumg NF-210 and it came with Win7 Starter. The manufacturer has a splash screen to start up either normally or with recovery mode, and with Ubuntu installed it still has that screen. It can't be disabled.
Ubuntu Netbook doesn't work right. There are some great features, like taking advantage of virtualization to keep it at four cores all the time. (It's a dual-core N550 processor with hyperthreading).
Out of the box, the Fn keys don't work. If you download an add-on from a different repository and tweak some config files, they can be fixed but it's a deal-breaker for anyone who's a casual computer user. (Which would, of course, be 95% of the netbook market, [citation needed]) That's because the keys don't send a release, they expect a release from the OS. That OS is MS... and it's BS. It is workable but it's not very easy to do.
Networking Manager does not recover from sleep or hibernate. There are two ways to get it to work afterwards: reboot or ctrl-alt-t; sudo rmmod ath9k [pw]; sudo modprobe ath9k. Don't answer "just edit acpi-support" because that's deprecated and power is handled now by a daemon that doesn't read the acpi configuration.
Multitouch is also not supported in ubuntu nor is the edge scrolling. That's another thing that works great in Win7 but doesn't work at all in U:NR 10.10. Yes, I've read the link on how to create a new file and hal restart and enjoy mutlitouch BUT there's no HAL in U:NR or if there is it's not in a documented location.
If it doesn't work for me, good luck getting the rest of netbook users to even bother trying it.
One interesting thing to note is that the performance in U:NR is about the same even though there's 500 MB more RAM free. (Win7 had 750MB used sitting at the desktop; U:NR has about 256 used.)
I'm still keeping U:NR because it's a nicer looking OS with a better interface and works better with the way I want to use my computer. I also cut a lot of slack because there's a good chance there's a dozen or less of these books with U:NR.
I've heard of FP. My sysadmin gets an email when a device is plugged into a USB port.
For the first, I got 38/50 on a Wonderlick test about a year ago, so I know I'm in the 99th percentile.
As for the second, I'm below average. Someone has to be. It's still a waste since I've been married for a while...
I was born via c-section, you insensitive clod.
I've got a DEX of 18 and I'm wearing normal clothing. I've got cover from the chair and cubicle so there's a +4 bonus and a 20% miss chance.
I took Dodge as my Human feat (I took non-combatant(-1 to melee), shaky(-2 ranged weapons), non-violent (-1 damage), vulnerable(-1 AC), bad vision(-4 to spot checks), and slow start (double penalties for child / youth age groups) as flaws, so I have a LOT of feats. What can I say, my parents were power gamers, apparently.) so that puts me at 17AC.
You miss. Given that I'm unarmed and have a to-hit of +2 (+5 BaB, +2 from STR, -1 from feats, -4 for non-proficiency) and damage of 1d3 + 1 subdual, this could go on for a while.
Yeah, and I'm playing a CG Paladin / Beguiler.
I'm still not having sex, but that's because I've been married for 13 years.
I've worked with end users that had access to power tools and the desire to use them. There is no limit to the dumn fucking themng sht eht do .
No, really, there was one time when they thought a bridge didn't look strong enough so they drilled and tapped a hole in the bottom and added mild steel... to a marine-grade Aluminium superstructure that had been designed by a team of professional engineers. So yeah, don't make the mistake of thinking "Nah, they couldn't possibly..." and I never do. Actually, one end user was a wolverine that sheared off a stainless antenna with the cleanness of a laser. That was pretty cool.
A lot of /. users are condescending to new computer users. But now computers are applicances like toasters or microwaves or consumer goods like cars or jackets. You buy whatever one looks the shiniest with the features you like. Gone forever are the days when you had to put together your own, swap around jumpers, and get something that worked that you built on your own. (I know, for high-performance stuff you still do, sometimes, but for 99% of users it's just as good to get a "gamer" package from Alienware -- whoops, I mean Dell -- if you want to game.) Anyone can get a computer and get online, and access FB and porn and email and /. and WoW and /b/ and usenet and PB and mediafire and wikipedia and netflix and youtube and everything else. That's something like 90% of users.
That 90% is the group that are the power users now. They use more bandwidth and have more raw computer power at their disposal than everyone on /. (and I've had access to a supercomputer)
Eh, I usually send out only three types of email anyway:
1. No, that design will fail.
2. The estimate doesn't have enough hours.
3. I told you three months ago that the design would fail and the plan didn't have enough hours.
So go ahead.
I've seen the same popup on Ubuntu.
Now, hah ha, I'm such an awesome user because I use Linux, but seriously, the thing we have to remember is these popups look good. Not "huh, 1997 emailed and said they wanted their msgbox back" but "holy shit Windows is flipping the fuck out! ...wait, I'm not running Windows on this box. What the fuck is going on here?" If you haven't seen it, it's an awesome piece of chicanery that uses open / save API to read your files -- I shit you not, even on Ubuntu since it only requires read access -- and tells you that your own files are at risk. Compound this with the MacAfee Heel: most OTS boxes come with MacAfee installed at least as a demo. The bad guys know this and know that they can dupe the users, or at least enough of the users to make some serious bank.
Personally, I would pocket the 30 Euro and call it a day, since its not a crime to write shitty software.
Hulu isn't a selling point for most people. It's a black screen for anyone outside the US.
So the question you're asking is not, "do people want digital magazines?" but, "do americans want digital magazines?".
NOT A FUCKING PLANET.
(*)Also because IMHO, if we will ever reach the stars, gradual spreading towards and across our Oort cloud (and eventually, after thousands of years, some groups hitching a ride in the clouds of passing star) seems like the way to go (though embryo colonization also looks practical)
The sky calls to us -- and if we do not destroy ourselves, we will, one day, venture to the stars.
My definition is musical:
If it's not in the Holst suite, it's not a planet.
Well, it had been great for long time (we've been together for 15 years), but about about five years ago (after the second kid) it started hurting her after she'd climax so she'd start dreading it and then it just went to hell. It doesn't matter what we do, it hurts. But the crying wasn't from physical pain, it's from how she feels about us.
When I told her I just couldn't take it anymore she told me she felt relief and we haven't even tried since.