Surely the law, at least nominally, is about the few games that are potentially harmful or at least ill-suited to minors in people's eyes.
The way magazine stands handle this is that the potentially harmful ones get the label and are withheld from minors, while the ones that are clearly child-friendly don't carry a burden of having to be rated.
Since this involves automated checks in the consoles, perhaps it would be best if games that are clearly free of mature content could be self-labeled by the game publishers without submission to some board. Actually, allow all games to be labeled by the publisher according to guidelines set forth by the state. Anything that was labeled incorrectly according to guidelines set forth by the state could open a company to liability. If the publisher has any doubts about edge cases, they could submit a game to a ratings board or state oversight committee. Everybody wins.
Well, the memory is a good point. As are the headphone-level audio jack, the USB ports, and the VGA signal pins. None of those other than the memory are drawing any power until some peripheral is hooked up to them, though. Then the draw across them could be said to be caused by the peripherals.
More drivers and applications are always nice. How many of the low-voltage x86 chips have dual integer processing units, though? Using an ARM or a PowerPC to get multiple cores below 5 watts is a nice advantage.
Well, it raises the barrier to entry in the console market a little. I doubt with overall development and design costs that label restriction code for the console is a very big burden, though. If it was handled incorrectly, it could be a significant barrier for small game developers, though. If run realistically, it's only a small burden on them, too.
You have the option to set a static IP on the printer, which I did. It's much nicer, because I since I use the web server interface I don't have to mess with figuring out where it is this week or using dynamic DNS for it.
There's a CherryPal branded media player. According to the articles I've read, though, they do have the iTunes. It's not inconceivable that Apple would be willing (at the expense of CherryPal's investores, probably) to put iTunes on another platform in order to get the song sales.
The recycling place I use ships to a place in Illinois that recovers the precious metals and grinds the printed circuit boards into filler for road construction. The hazardous materials mostly get sent to a cement plant that uses them in the manufacture of their product. The rest go to a place where they reclaim rare-earth minerals and reclaim the lead for use in batteries.
It is good to know what kind of recycling place you're using, as some aren't as dedicated as others. Still, even if they just grab the gold and silver at least that's gold and silver that's not being mined for new stuff.
Ummmmm... 400 Mhz dual-IPU PowerPC. This isn't your father's Pentium II. I can run Photoshop, Safari, Firefox, and Pidgin on my single-core G4 500 just fine.
It's a tradeoff, though. A multicore RISC vs. a single-core CISC of similar clock speed, for one. No Wifi included in your price. IT has nice flexibility, though.
Why do you need a high-bandwidth (I assume you mean high data rate) link in the car when there's a built-in media player and it supports the thumb drive the poster mentioned? Only most apps are over the cloud on this thing.
A Fit-PC has no Wifi. A CherryPal has only one wired Ethernet port. Both have USB, but I'm not sure what it'd take to get a USB Ethernet adapter running on the embedded Debian CherryPal is pushing.
Since the Freescale MPC5121e mobileGT processor has the PCI bus, SATA controller, PATA controller, timers, real-time clock, DMA controller, memory card controllers, Flash memory interfaces, Ethernet, 2D and 3D graphics, and USB integrated I'd like to ask which other components you're talking about.
It's a true embedded processor, and is actually listed as an automotive systems processor on Freescale's site. It has two IPUs, BTW, so I wish people would stop comparing it to single-core CISC chips like the Geode.
That's not the unit itself using that extra 5 watts, though. It's just a conduit. The USB devices can use that amount or less (or more if they're not bus-powered).
You have $249 for a 400Mhz PowerPC with two integer units, a double-precision FPU, one Ethernet, WiFi 4GB solid-state storage, and no sound ports vs. $295 for a single-core 500Mhz x86 with two Ethernet ports, no Wifi, sound, and 60GB 2.5" IDE drive. They have the same amount of RAM.
The CherryPal will be faster. The FitPC will have a wider range of software compatibility and more built-in storage. The CherryPal has online storage for free, but that's only as reliable as the business behind it.
Of course, there's also the Eee 2G Surf for $299. Asus lists the power draw as 22W. That's including the screen. It has sound, Wifi, wired Ethernet, twice the RAM, only 2GB on-board storage but supports USB drives and has an SD slot, and can run from battery for nearly 3 hours.
I can recommend the HP PhotoSmart C6180. It's not the cheapest device around.
It does print from cameras, USB drives, several formats of memory cards, USB connection from a PC, or through its built-in print server over wired Ethernet or WiFi.
It's also a scanner, copier, and fax. It lets you replace the 6 different ink colors individually, so you're not throwing away unused ink in some combo tricolor or quadcolor cartridge.
The thing even scans over the network, and not just from PCs with special software installed. You can connect to the device's built-in web server with a browser and tell it to scan, then save the image from your browser.
I've had one for over a year and I have few complaints. One is that I need a separate phone handset if I need to pick up a call on the fax line for some reason, because there's no handset built in. That's annoying, but it's a $5 fix. It does cost about $70 to fill it with full-size ink cartridges, but since there's so little ink wasted that's not such a big deal. HP still gouges people on the ink, but their mid-level printers aren't as bad as the entry-level consumer ones.
Oh, and my 40 megabyte hard drive on my 286 can store quite a bit of information in the right formats. A 4GB drive was a mid-end desktop part ten years ago and a high-end server part five years before that.
You can always throw your own NAS on your local network, too. Cisco markets one under their Linksys brand that pulls 60 watts to power itself and two SATA drives. Being a NAS, you could use it with a handful of computers and split the energy costs. If you had 4 CherryPals and one of those from Linksys, you'd be running four desktops with a decent amount of shared storage at 68 watts.
I doubt it needs Wine. iTunes runs on OS X, which is built on a Unix core. It even runs on OS X on PowerPC, which is the same processor family the CherryPal uses. I don't know exactly what hackery they've used to get it running, but there's a fair chance it has nothing to do with a Windows compatibility layer when they could much more easily be running the PowerPC OS X version.
The great part is that by having the Eee as a second computer is that when you want to play a demanding game, you can fire up the your big beastly desktop just while you're playing without giving it up completely.
A second home system is one of the markets CherryPal is targeting (along with low-spec first computers, dorm systems, and maybe business desktops)
You could, after you rescue another dumpster-ridden system with more performance per watt, recycle that one. A recycling search at MyGreenElectronics.org lets you find recycling centers near your ZIP code in the US and has information on recycling programs from big companies like Apple, Dell, and even Best Buy.
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Surely the law, at least nominally, is about the few games that are potentially harmful or at least ill-suited to minors in people's eyes.
The way magazine stands handle this is that the potentially harmful ones get the label and are withheld from minors, while the ones that are clearly child-friendly don't carry a burden of having to be rated.
Since this involves automated checks in the consoles, perhaps it would be best if games that are clearly free of mature content could be self-labeled by the game publishers without submission to some board. Actually, allow all games to be labeled by the publisher according to guidelines set forth by the state. Anything that was labeled incorrectly according to guidelines set forth by the state could open a company to liability. If the publisher has any doubts about edge cases, they could submit a game to a ratings board or state oversight committee. Everybody wins.
Well, the memory is a good point. As are the headphone-level audio jack, the USB ports, and the VGA signal pins. None of those other than the memory are drawing any power until some peripheral is hooked up to them, though. Then the draw across them could be said to be caused by the peripherals.
More drivers and applications are always nice. How many of the low-voltage x86 chips have dual integer processing units, though? Using an ARM or a PowerPC to get multiple cores below 5 watts is a nice advantage.
I think you have all the precedents of girlie magazines being labeled and kept behind counters to overcome, but I like your line of thinking.
Well, it raises the barrier to entry in the console market a little. I doubt with overall development and design costs that label restriction code for the console is a very big burden, though. If it was handled incorrectly, it could be a significant barrier for small game developers, though. If run realistically, it's only a small burden on them, too.
If you make the game engine flexible and put the quests and such in the data, then open-sourcing the code won't give much away.
You have the option to set a static IP on the printer, which I did. It's much nicer, because I since I use the web server interface I don't have to mess with figuring out where it is this week or using dynamic DNS for it.
There's a CherryPal branded media player. According to the articles I've read, though, they do have the iTunes. It's not inconceivable that Apple would be willing (at the expense of CherryPal's investores, probably) to put iTunes on another platform in order to get the song sales.
The recycling place I use ships to a place in Illinois that recovers the precious metals and grinds the printed circuit boards into filler for road construction. The hazardous materials mostly get sent to a cement plant that uses them in the manufacture of their product. The rest go to a place where they reclaim rare-earth minerals and reclaim the lead for use in batteries.
It is good to know what kind of recycling place you're using, as some aren't as dedicated as others. Still, even if they just grab the gold and silver at least that's gold and silver that's not being mined for new stuff.
It supports storage on a USB drive. I'm not sure, but I imagine you'll be able to save to your own servers, too.
Okay, $4 USB hub. Fixed. Printer with Ethernet print server, or a $20 Ethernet to USB print server appliance. Fixed. $259 Dell Inspiron 520N, anyone?
Ummmmm... 400 Mhz dual-IPU PowerPC. This isn't your father's Pentium II. I can run Photoshop, Safari, Firefox, and Pidgin on my single-core G4 500 just fine.
You have PS/2 port thumb drives?
It's a tradeoff, though. A multicore RISC vs. a single-core CISC of similar clock speed, for one. No Wifi included in your price. IT has nice flexibility, though.
Why do you need a high-bandwidth (I assume you mean high data rate) link in the car when there's a built-in media player and it supports the thumb drive the poster mentioned? Only most apps are over the cloud on this thing.
The manufacturer has said the online apps and storage will be ad-supported with no subscription fees necessary.
A Fit-PC has no Wifi. A CherryPal has only one wired Ethernet port. Both have USB, but I'm not sure what it'd take to get a USB Ethernet adapter running on the embedded Debian CherryPal is pushing.
Since the Freescale MPC5121e mobileGT processor has the PCI bus, SATA controller, PATA controller, timers, real-time clock, DMA controller, memory card controllers, Flash memory interfaces, Ethernet, 2D and 3D graphics, and USB integrated I'd like to ask which other components you're talking about.
It's a true embedded processor, and is actually listed as an automotive systems processor on Freescale's site. It has two IPUs, BTW, so I wish people would stop comparing it to single-core CISC chips like the Geode.
That's not the unit itself using that extra 5 watts, though. It's just a conduit. The USB devices can use that amount or less (or more if they're not bus-powered).
That's actually a tough call.
You have $249 for a 400Mhz PowerPC with two integer units, a double-precision FPU, one Ethernet, WiFi 4GB solid-state storage, and no sound ports vs. $295 for a single-core 500Mhz x86 with two Ethernet ports, no Wifi, sound, and 60GB 2.5" IDE drive. They have the same amount of RAM.
The CherryPal will be faster. The FitPC will have a wider range of software compatibility and more built-in storage. The CherryPal has online storage for free, but that's only as reliable as the business behind it.
Of course, there's also the Eee 2G Surf for $299. Asus lists the power draw as 22W. That's including the screen. It has sound, Wifi, wired Ethernet, twice the RAM, only 2GB on-board storage but supports USB drives and has an SD slot, and can run from battery for nearly 3 hours.
I can recommend the HP PhotoSmart C6180. It's not the cheapest device around.
It does print from cameras, USB drives, several formats of memory cards, USB connection from a PC, or through its built-in print server over wired Ethernet or WiFi.
It's also a scanner, copier, and fax. It lets you replace the 6 different ink colors individually, so you're not throwing away unused ink in some combo tricolor or quadcolor cartridge.
The thing even scans over the network, and not just from PCs with special software installed. You can connect to the device's built-in web server with a browser and tell it to scan, then save the image from your browser.
I've had one for over a year and I have few complaints. One is that I need a separate phone handset if I need to pick up a call on the fax line for some reason, because there's no handset built in. That's annoying, but it's a $5 fix. It does cost about $70 to fill it with full-size ink cartridges, but since there's so little ink wasted that's not such a big deal. HP still gouges people on the ink, but their mid-level printers aren't as bad as the entry-level consumer ones.
It supports USB storage devices. A 500GB hard drive is another $100, or you can hook up an 8GB USB pocket drive for $30. That's assuming you don't have those things already. For about $68 you can get an 80GB USB drive that doesn't require a separate power source or you can get a 120GB bus-powered one for $70.
Oh, and my 40 megabyte hard drive on my 286 can store quite a bit of information in the right formats. A 4GB drive was a mid-end desktop part ten years ago and a high-end server part five years before that.
You can always throw your own NAS on your local network, too. Cisco markets one under their Linksys brand that pulls 60 watts to power itself and two SATA drives. Being a NAS, you could use it with a handful of computers and split the energy costs. If you had 4 CherryPals and one of those from Linksys, you'd be running four desktops with a decent amount of shared storage at 68 watts.
I doubt it needs Wine. iTunes runs on OS X, which is built on a Unix core. It even runs on OS X on PowerPC, which is the same processor family the CherryPal uses. I don't know exactly what hackery they've used to get it running, but there's a fair chance it has nothing to do with a Windows compatibility layer when they could much more easily be running the PowerPC OS X version.
The great part is that by having the Eee as a second computer is that when you want to play a demanding game, you can fire up the your big beastly desktop just while you're playing without giving it up completely.
A second home system is one of the markets CherryPal is targeting (along with low-spec first computers, dorm systems, and maybe business desktops)
It's better yet to recycle the P2-166.
You could, after you rescue another dumpster-ridden system with more performance per watt, recycle that one. A recycling search at MyGreenElectronics.org lets you find recycling centers near your ZIP code in the US and has information on recycling programs from big companies like Apple, Dell, and even Best Buy.