I am trying to see where having some webpage open 5 milliseconds faster or something like that is any sort of huge advantage that I should pay hundreds of dollars for.
If all you do is surf the web and watch movies, well then you'll be fine for some time. I edit movies quite often at work, and at 720x480x2000kb/s, I'm screaming for as much horsepower as I can get my hands on. I'm currently on a P2.4 with 1Gb of memory, and i'd like at least 4 times as much power as that. Cost be damnned. It'll pay for itself in saved time even before it becomes obsolete.
Ok, I want one. I don't care if its meant for the "masses" or not.
Trolltech is making a smart move here. Once these phones are sold out, and nerds everywhere are hacking on it, they'll have a ton of good software to choose from when they start pushing their stack onto the major carriers.
Here's what I want:
1. Apt. I want to fire up a telephone version of synaptic (on my phone and/or my computer) and have debian style repositories to pick and choose from for software.
2. Real calendar/todo/whatever syncing with Evolution/Kontact. My current Sony/Ericsson Z520a can do this pretty well over bluetooth with multisync, but its not perfect, and the native PIM software on the phone blows goats.
3. Nethack. Had to say it:)
4. SSH - no nerd is complete with a ssh terminal in front of them at any time. Sadly, that includes me.
5. A stable API for companies like Opera, Yahoo, AOL, etc. to port their software to.
6. Push style email would be nice, but then Trolltech would get sued, a la RIM.
Um, how is this security if its easily bypassed? Isn't the point behind any security layer to make it so nobody can bypass it? Seems to me that if its that easy to circumvent, Microsoft is just spinning its wheels, and there will be plenty of market for companies like Symantec/McAffee to compete in. Its not like the virus/trojan/malware writers give a single shit about any layer of security that they can bypass. Easily.
Symantec should be glad that Vista will have this ineffective security layer, so they can sell software to patch it.
Friers set up for french fries are set at about 350 degress Fahrenheit. Ice is presumably 32 degrees Fahrenheit or lower.
If you throw one ice cube in the fryer, it'll explode somewhat and you'll get some hot grease on you.
If you throw a handful, they'll explode a lot, and get grease everywhere.
If you fill a frybasket with ice and drop it in the fryer, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE. the fryer will become a fountain of hot grease and steam with about a 12 foot blast zone. Soon after you get done cleaning it out of the exhaust hoods, between the fryers, off the employees that didn't end up in the hospital, the computers at the drive through station, the soda machine, a customer or two, the floor, the walls, and probably the ceiling, you'll get your last paycheck.
After that, you'll go across the street to the other fast-food restaurant and get a fresh minimum wage job. This takes about 15 minutes at worst.
In my 3 years at BK (best job i ever had), I've seen all 3, more than once. I highly reccommend it as a creative way to quit, provided that there aren't any other humans or managers around.
Hadn't thought about doing quests on the thing, but thats a good idea. AFAIK, every MMOG has its tedious points, and it'd be nice to get that out of the way when I'm not playing at home. Times such as my lunch hour when I'm completely bored. That'd leave me more time to enjoy the game with others while I'm at home, which is the part I enjoy the most. I'm sure there are other folks out there that feel the same way.
My first console was a coleco-vision that I had when I was about 5 years old. Since then, obviously, everything about gaming has changed. Graphics are "better" and in 3D now, the game worlds are enormous, and everything has become very complicated. Remember Super Mario 1? 8 worlds. I can beat that game in under 2 hours now, with the assistance of 20 years of practice:). Still one of the better games out there.
What I want to see is this: I want to be able to play the same game on multiple devices. Since SE is on topic today, I'll talk about FFXI, which I've been playing for about 2 years now. FFXI is huge. Its time consuming, and very complicated. I spend hours upon hours farming ingredients, then more hours crafting them into something I can use or sell. Then I gotta warp back to Jeuno, check Ye Olde Delivery Box for any cash, and refill the Auction House. Rinse and repeat.
I'd like to offload some of that onto a PSP. Hear that Sony? I'll buy a PSP, then buy another copy of FFXI for it, just so I can play parts of the same game mobile. Crafting is an obvious pastime that could be done anywhere, since it doesn't require any interatction with other players. Gardening and the soon-to-be-released chocobo raising lend itself well to that too. Perhaps fishing or choco-digging as well. Note that nothing here requires a psp, just makes the game more accessable, and possibly less tedious.
Technically, getting your PSP to sync up with your PS2 or PS3 doesn't look all that hard to me. There will be some issues with abuse (playing both at the same time, for instance) but those can be solved.
That's just one game. There are other, proabably better possibilities with other games, notably anything that isn't a MMOG.
Thats some good info, and clears up some of what confuses me. However, it still seems likely that with today's technology, we're not going to be able to detect anything that doesn't glow (infrared, xray, gamma ray, or otherwise) unless its a body of some appreciable mass. Definitely something bigger than my reflective, infrared emitting rear end:). Here, in our own solar system, there are tons of things that we have a hard time detecting, even with today's powerful telescopes, i.e. small asteroids.
I would blindly submit that there are things like that, and other things not-so-like-that all over the universe. Whether or not 95% of our universe is made up of this stuff sounds like its up for quite a bit of debate.
On the somewhat off-topic of dark matter, what is the big deal with scientists searching for all this matter that we can't see? Perhaps I'm missing something really important here, but why is it so important that there might be all this matter in the universe that we can't currently detect? So what if it doesn't glow, or emit x-rays, etc. Aren't we dark matter? It stands to reason to me that the majority of mass in the universe probably isn't glowing or burning, or emitting some cosmic ray that we can detect here on earth. Can somebody with a real clue on this subject chime in, tell me i'm an idiot, and why?
Also, google is a huge beast.What if they started stealing ideas and implement them in house, without ofcourse releasing to public ever
Ummm, companies do that sort of thing all the time. There's nothing at all stopping Microsoft, Sun, Cisco, the church around the corner, etc, from hitting up sf.net and getting any code they want to use internally. If they turn it into a product and release it to the public, then there might be a problem, depending on the license (read: gpl).
Thats real funny, what you just wrote there. I didn't RTFA either, but I did see the CNN interview with the audio of it, at the end of which, AOL's letter clearly states that "John" isn't working there anymore. Hmm, why would they have gotten rid of him if he wasn't doing anything wrong, helping, even?
it is going to be tougher to sell ring tones in the future. people start to look for low quality MP3s and this kind of files you can download from any place including your own PC/Linux/Win32...
I agree, but not for the reason you mention. With mp3 ringtones, easy access to audio editing software, and bluetooth file transfer, you can make your own in a very short amount of time. It took me about 5 minutes to import an old Cream song, cut out everything but the guitar riff at the beginning, and export to a 32k mp3.
I'm pretty technically savvy, but my 11-year-old, not so much. It took him about 15 minutes to make his own.
I was running a drupal+acidfree site from home for awhile, but gave up due to connection instability and started forking out the $10/month for hosting over at dreamhost. Photos are pretty bandwidth-intensive, especially if you want folks to be able to download full-res images (slashdot effect, anyone?). When I had my site going, I could tell when folks were on it by the slowness of my connection.
Correct. I'm not at home right now, so I can't test my upload speed, but I believe it to be somewhere in the 512-768k range. I didn't bother to mention it earlier, but I have gotten comparable download speeds via ftp back before bittorrent was being used as the primary means of getting linux ISOs. Haven't ever gotten anything better than that though. Broadbandreports.com puts me between 2 and 4 megabits.
The speed thing doesn't bother me as much as the connection instability, and lack of features (static IP, real DNS servers). I've asked them to replace my cable modem and gotten a flat "no". Can't wait til there's some competition in the area so I can switch.
I have Comcast cable internet, and tv with some of the goodies. Supposedly, its 6Mbs. Yeah, right. I get at most, 400k down on torrents.
The problem is, where I live (Southeast of Portland, Oregon) there's no competition for broadband and they know it. Comcast is it. Period. Every time i've called customer service to complain about it going out twice a day, they tell me "well, thats too bad, would you like to sign up for our voip service?".
I pay about $50 a month for it too, which I consider to be way too expensive considering the speed and reliablility, but I'm locked in.
Anybody know an alternative? I've heard bad things about satellite, and as far as I know, there isn't any community wireless around here, except for some belkin router at one of my neighbor's houses, which I assume is hooked up to the same crappy connection i get.
Unfortunatly, since he's apparently sued them for legal malpractice, any letters would go to his attorney's office, not to him. There is also some legal "expectation" that says if it got sent via USPS, then it got there. You can also pay extra and get a delivery receipt proving that the letter got to where it was addressed. IANAL, but I do work for a few of them.
...who actually likes having my phone do multiple tasks.
I have a Sony/Ericsson Z520a phone that I got about a month ago. It includes a crappy camera, some commercials disguised as games (which i deleted immediately), bluetooth support, and some basic PIM funcionality.
Yesterday morning, I was out in the field with a customer, and took a couple quick photos of a room so I could get a good idea of where to set up some equipment. 5 minutes later, another customer called to see if I was available during the afternoon anytime next week. Since I use one of those wireless headset thingies, I was able to keep talking while pulling up my calendar, checking the dates, and ultimately scheduling an appointment. At lunch today, I used the crappy internet access to read some news while i was eating.
Now, I am very aware that the text input on my telephone sucks, the camera sucks, the bluetooth radio is weak, and the battery doesn't last nearly as long as i'd like. But for me, its really nice to have 1 thing in my pocket that I can use for more than one purpose, if the need arises.
The only real complaint that I have is the text input. Its nearly unpossible to enter anything in my calendar unless I have 5 minutes to work through it. I get by by giving the appointment a simple name, such as the initials of the person that called, then giving it a better description on my laptop later. The bad camera, slow internet access, and all the other half-assed features don't bother me, since I use my phone as an Information Management device, not a laptop. Someday I might need to graduate to a full-on PDA, but I can't see ever needing anthing more powerful than a treo.
And by the way, It works pretty good for making telephone calls, too.
So, am I the only one here that finds that stuff useful?
To everybody who replied to this: This is a pre-canned troll that is used all the time on Fark. So much so, that its quickly becoming one of those "fark cliches", and being used as a joke. Don't take parent seriously. Or perhaps nobody got what would have been an obvious joke on other sites.
But of course, if the Galka doesn't want to be healed (or, in my case, covered), then that's his choice and his experience points to lose. (Repeat after me: Bastard Tarutaru from Hell)
Nah, I never just let people die. Even if they really did piss me off for some reason, It just creates downtime. Usually, I'll just make some dumbass remark about them being big and dumb, ie "Roasted Taru, huh? Hmm, I didn't know that Galka had discovered fire yet.", or some other childish nonsense.
Flame away. If I were an English major, I would probably be reading something other than Slashdot. Here comes a new paragraph for ya.
I do find it unfortunate when folks bring racism to a game. Its not like its easy to tell who is black/white/green/etc. I do, however, get a kick out of the playful "racist" comments made about the different character types. I play a taru, and get to hear endless jokes about having a stick shoved up my ass and roasted over a fire for some galka to eat.
It amazes me that these people will actually whine about being treated differently than other players, when their actions do nothing to help the greater good of the game. In FFXI, the'yre called gilfarmers, and I've never once heard anybody attack them racially. Nationally, sometimes, since the common opinion is that they're probably from china. Their existance in game makes everybody else's in-game life more difficult and time-consuming, since they camp NMs all day and inflate prices on high-level gear. Gilfarmers are singled out as a nuisance, because the common opinion is that they are are a nuisance. it doesn't matter if they're from China, Russia, USA, england, or the moon. If you make everybody else's life a pain in the ass, you're gonna get treated badly by other players. Also singled out, at least on the server I play on, are the folks who admit to buying gil, accounts, or items from these purveyors. I've seen people get kicked out of my LS (FFXI speak for guild) for helping to sustain the business model.
Slashdot Mirror
If all you do is surf the web and watch movies, well then you'll be fine for some time. I edit movies quite often at work, and at 720x480x2000kb/s, I'm screaming for as much horsepower as I can get my hands on. I'm currently on a P2.4 with 1Gb of memory, and i'd like at least 4 times as much power as that. Cost be damnned. It'll pay for itself in saved time even before it becomes obsolete.
Ok, I want one. I don't care if its meant for the "masses" or not.
:)
Trolltech is making a smart move here. Once these phones are sold out, and nerds everywhere are hacking on it, they'll have a ton of good software to choose from when they start pushing their stack onto the major carriers.
Here's what I want:
1. Apt. I want to fire up a telephone version of synaptic (on my phone and/or my computer) and have debian style repositories to pick and choose from for software.
2. Real calendar/todo/whatever syncing with Evolution/Kontact. My current Sony/Ericsson Z520a can do this pretty well over bluetooth with multisync, but its not perfect, and the native PIM software on the phone blows goats.
3. Nethack. Had to say it
4. SSH - no nerd is complete with a ssh terminal in front of them at any time. Sadly, that includes me.
5. A stable API for companies like Opera, Yahoo, AOL, etc. to port their software to.
6. Push style email would be nice, but then Trolltech would get sued, a la RIM.
Um, how is this security if its easily bypassed? Isn't the point behind any security layer to make it so nobody can bypass it? Seems to me that if its that easy to circumvent, Microsoft is just spinning its wheels, and there will be plenty of market for companies like Symantec/McAffee to compete in. Its not like the virus/trojan/malware writers give a single shit about any layer of security that they can bypass. Easily.
Symantec should be glad that Vista will have this ineffective security layer, so they can sell software to patch it.
Friers set up for french fries are set at about 350 degress Fahrenheit. Ice is presumably 32 degrees Fahrenheit or lower.
If you throw one ice cube in the fryer, it'll explode somewhat and you'll get some hot grease on you.
If you throw a handful, they'll explode a lot, and get grease everywhere.
If you fill a frybasket with ice and drop it in the fryer, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE. the fryer will become a fountain of hot grease and steam with about a 12 foot blast zone. Soon after you get done cleaning it out of the exhaust hoods, between the fryers, off the employees that didn't end up in the hospital, the computers at the drive through station, the soda machine, a customer or two, the floor, the walls, and probably the ceiling, you'll get your last paycheck.
After that, you'll go across the street to the other fast-food restaurant and get a fresh minimum wage job. This takes about 15 minutes at worst.
In my 3 years at BK (best job i ever had), I've seen all 3, more than once. I highly reccommend it as a creative way to quit, provided that there aren't any other humans or managers around.
Hadn't thought about doing quests on the thing, but thats a good idea. AFAIK, every MMOG has its tedious points, and it'd be nice to get that out of the way when I'm not playing at home. Times such as my lunch hour when I'm completely bored. That'd leave me more time to enjoy the game with others while I'm at home, which is the part I enjoy the most. I'm sure there are other folks out there that feel the same way.
My first console was a coleco-vision that I had when I was about 5 years old. Since then, obviously, everything about gaming has changed. Graphics are "better" and in 3D now, the game worlds are enormous, and everything has become very complicated. Remember Super Mario 1? 8 worlds. I can beat that game in under 2 hours now, with the assistance of 20 years of practice :). Still one of the better games out there.
What I want to see is this: I want to be able to play the same game on multiple devices. Since SE is on topic today, I'll talk about FFXI, which I've been playing for about 2 years now. FFXI is huge. Its time consuming, and very complicated. I spend hours upon hours farming ingredients, then more hours crafting them into something I can use or sell. Then I gotta warp back to Jeuno, check Ye Olde Delivery Box for any cash, and refill the Auction House. Rinse and repeat.
I'd like to offload some of that onto a PSP. Hear that Sony? I'll buy a PSP, then buy another copy of FFXI for it, just so I can play parts of the same game mobile. Crafting is an obvious pastime that could be done anywhere, since it doesn't require any interatction with other players. Gardening and the soon-to-be-released chocobo raising lend itself well to that too. Perhaps fishing or choco-digging as well. Note that nothing here requires a psp, just makes the game more accessable, and possibly less tedious.
Technically, getting your PSP to sync up with your PS2 or PS3 doesn't look all that hard to me. There will be some issues with abuse (playing both at the same time, for instance) but those can be solved.
That's just one game. There are other, proabably better possibilities with other games, notably anything that isn't a MMOG.
I would blindly submit that there are things like that, and other things not-so-like-that all over the universe. Whether or not 95% of our universe is made up of this stuff sounds like its up for quite a bit of debate.
On the somewhat off-topic of dark matter, what is the big deal with scientists searching for all this matter that we can't see? Perhaps I'm missing something really important here, but why is it so important that there might be all this matter in the universe that we can't currently detect? So what if it doesn't glow, or emit x-rays, etc. Aren't we dark matter? It stands to reason to me that the majority of mass in the universe probably isn't glowing or burning, or emitting some cosmic ray that we can detect here on earth. Can somebody with a real clue on this subject chime in, tell me i'm an idiot, and why?
Ummm, companies do that sort of thing all the time. There's nothing at all stopping Microsoft, Sun, Cisco, the church around the corner, etc, from hitting up sf.net and getting any code they want to use internally. If they turn it into a product and release it to the public, then there might be a problem, depending on the license (read: gpl).
Hmm, I always thought pot was a gateway drug!
Okay, old joke, but I thought it was fitting.
Thats real funny, what you just wrote there. I didn't RTFA either, but I did see the CNN interview with the audio of it, at the end of which, AOL's letter clearly states that "John" isn't working there anymore. Hmm, why would they have gotten rid of him if he wasn't doing anything wrong, helping, even?
600 what? I'm using Dapper on a PIII 733 with 384Mb memory here.
$free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 386320 378232 8088 0 4524 112504
-/+ buffers/cache: 261204 125116
Swap: 500432 156224 344208
Thats running gnome, firefox, vlc, limewire, rhythmbox, a gnome-terminal with 2 tabs, and I have a couple of nautilus windows open.
I agree, but not for the reason you mention. With mp3 ringtones, easy access to audio editing software, and bluetooth file transfer, you can make your own in a very short amount of time. It took me about 5 minutes to import an old Cream song, cut out everything but the guitar riff at the beginning, and export to a 32k mp3.
I'm pretty technically savvy, but my 11-year-old, not so much. It took him about 15 minutes to make his own.
I was running a drupal+acidfree site from home for awhile, but gave up due to connection instability and started forking out the $10/month for hosting over at dreamhost. Photos are pretty bandwidth-intensive, especially if you want folks to be able to download full-res images (slashdot effect, anyone?). When I had my site going, I could tell when folks were on it by the slowness of my connection.
The speed thing doesn't bother me as much as the connection instability, and lack of features (static IP, real DNS servers). I've asked them to replace my cable modem and gotten a flat "no". Can't wait til there's some competition in the area so I can switch.
The problem is, where I live (Southeast of Portland, Oregon) there's no competition for broadband and they know it. Comcast is it. Period. Every time i've called customer service to complain about it going out twice a day, they tell me "well, thats too bad, would you like to sign up for our voip service?".
I pay about $50 a month for it too, which I consider to be way too expensive considering the speed and reliablility, but I'm locked in.
Anybody know an alternative? I've heard bad things about satellite, and as far as I know, there isn't any community wireless around here, except for some belkin router at one of my neighbor's houses, which I assume is hooked up to the same crappy connection i get.
I got $50 that says no individual person will do any time for this in the next 5 ... oh wait.
Unfortunatly, since he's apparently sued them for legal malpractice, any letters would go to his attorney's office, not to him. There is also some legal "expectation" that says if it got sent via USPS, then it got there. You can also pay extra and get a delivery receipt proving that the letter got to where it was addressed. IANAL, but I do work for a few of them.
-jtw
I have a Sony/Ericsson Z520a phone that I got about a month ago. It includes a crappy camera, some commercials disguised as games (which i deleted immediately), bluetooth support, and some basic PIM funcionality.
Yesterday morning, I was out in the field with a customer, and took a couple quick photos of a room so I could get a good idea of where to set up some equipment. 5 minutes later, another customer called to see if I was available during the afternoon anytime next week. Since I use one of those wireless headset thingies, I was able to keep talking while pulling up my calendar, checking the dates, and ultimately scheduling an appointment. At lunch today, I used the crappy internet access to read some news while i was eating.
Now, I am very aware that the text input on my telephone sucks, the camera sucks, the bluetooth radio is weak, and the battery doesn't last nearly as long as i'd like. But for me, its really nice to have 1 thing in my pocket that I can use for more than one purpose, if the need arises.
The only real complaint that I have is the text input. Its nearly unpossible to enter anything in my calendar unless I have 5 minutes to work through it. I get by by giving the appointment a simple name, such as the initials of the person that called, then giving it a better description on my laptop later. The bad camera, slow internet access, and all the other half-assed features don't bother me, since I use my phone as an Information Management device, not a laptop. Someday I might need to graduate to a full-on PDA, but I can't see ever needing anthing more powerful than a treo.
And by the way, It works pretty good for making telephone calls, too.
So, am I the only one here that finds that stuff useful?
Troll.
To everybody who replied to this: This is a pre-canned troll that is used all the time on Fark. So much so, that its quickly becoming one of those "fark cliches", and being used as a joke. Don't take parent seriously. Or perhaps nobody got what would have been an obvious joke on other sites.
Nah, I never just let people die. Even if they really did piss me off for some reason, It just creates downtime. Usually, I'll just make some dumbass remark about them being big and dumb, ie "Roasted Taru, huh? Hmm, I didn't know that Galka had discovered fire yet.", or some other childish nonsense.
I do find it unfortunate when folks bring racism to a game. Its not like its easy to tell who is black/white/green/etc. I do, however, get a kick out of the playful "racist" comments made about the different character types. I play a taru, and get to hear endless jokes about having a stick shoved up my ass and roasted over a fire for some galka to eat.
OK, before i get flamed into the seventh level of hell, my aplogies for not capitalizing England. Typos happen.
It amazes me that these people will actually whine about being treated differently than other players, when their actions do nothing to help the greater good of the game. In FFXI, the'yre called gilfarmers, and I've never once heard anybody attack them racially. Nationally, sometimes, since the common opinion is that they're probably from china. Their existance in game makes everybody else's in-game life more difficult and time-consuming, since they camp NMs all day and inflate prices on high-level gear. Gilfarmers are singled out as a nuisance, because the common opinion is that they are are a nuisance. it doesn't matter if they're from China, Russia, USA, england, or the moon. If you make everybody else's life a pain in the ass, you're gonna get treated badly by other players. Also singled out, at least on the server I play on, are the folks who admit to buying gil, accounts, or items from these purveyors. I've seen people get kicked out of my LS (FFXI speak for guild) for helping to sustain the business model.
They "make" pretty good keyboards too.