The case absolutely does matter - but not for the reasons mentioned above (lights and looks).
It's all about the cooling - get the right fan placement and air flow in the right place and that's what matters. When you're running an AMD processor faster than a 4200 with an Nvidia 7800 SLI rig, it will matter that you have the right case to get it cool.
Wouldn't you think that the cost is really more? It sounds like the school wants to standardize on one OS - and having machines that run 95 or 98 and can't physically upgrade to XP due to hardware not being up to par would cost more - you'd have to upgrade the machines, just so they could run XP.
$1000 to a school of 200-250 kids is expensive, when you look at all the other costs schools are assumed to support these days.
Looking at the Edubuntu Tour, some of the programs seem to be for a younger age, around kindergarten and up, but the SchoolTool calendar for teachers looks interesting.
OpenOffice is included (of course). You don't mention what applications the kids may need - if it's just for internet browsing and research, and maybe some of the other educational things already included (Typing, etc), Edubuntu may fit your needs.
The upcoming 6.04 release of Ubuntu's Dapper Drake may fit you better, as it will have a formal support cycle. (I want to say 3 years).
I'm surprised the reviewer stuck to some of the major case makers in the review (Antec, Lian Li).
HTPC's, IMHO, are still very much a niche product, and the specialty case makers like a Silverstone or Ahanix would seem more appropriate.
The review focused on some of the bigger cases out there - when you realize how big the assortment is to choose from, from mini-ITX to slimline to full size, there are quite a number of choices out there.
The article was good, from 10,000 feet, but I thought it missed a few points.
Musicmatch is owned by Yahoo - why is it different? (Yahoo Music engine is a 3 meg download for Windows - a tiny player with pretty good functionality, especially compared to Napsters memory hogging skinned Windows Media Player).
With the Windows Plays for Sure stuff (Yahoo, Napster to Go) it only transfers to a Plays for Sure portable. While the article briefly touches that mentioning it's only a handful of players now, they should have specifically called "Doesn't work with iPods!" As someone already noted in the comments, iPod has 80-90% share of the portable MP3 market.
And last but not least, licenses. With the exception of Yahoo (I believe), if your hard drive crashes you lose your license for tracks you've purchased for 99 cents each. Gone, poof. Like losing a CD. You'd think that buying a song online, they'd have a record of your purchase and let you re-download, but no.
I've used most of the services, except iTunes on a Mac, and if Yahoo puts some marketing muscle behind YME they have a shot at 2nd place and displacing Napster. They offer the same functionality for less than half what Napster and Rhapsody try.
As a Linux only user, I'm contiually frustrated by my lack of music buying options online. I suppose I should try out SharpMusique as an iTunes interface one of these days.
I can't complain about NeroLINUX - it worked for me just fine. Because of my job, I have a couple copies of Nero for Windows, so it was easy for me to download the.deb and pop a key in.
I'm running Ubuntu - as a Gnome only user, I'd rather install Nero than K3B and not have to worry about all the KDE libraries, especially as they're unsupported in Ubuntu. Yes, I know running Ubuntu is my personal choice, as is running only Gnome.
But you know what? Nero worked, and it worked just fine. I'm either burning audio CDs or ISOs of linux distributions, and it does the job. Most Gnome CD burning apps are still in development (don't get me going on XCDRoast) and Coaster is still in active development. I may be lucky that I had a couple Nero keys laying around, but I'm not going to be disappointed by any commerical company releasing an application for linux if it helps linux as a whole - and I think Nero helps. Sure, it's GTK1 and it's kind of ugly (GTK 2 please!) and it's not HIG compliant, but it IS their first relase version for Linux, and they were kind enough to release RPMs AND debs - usually you only see RPMs from a commerical vendor it seems.
1920x1080 is the MPEG HDTV standard. The TV does exactly what it should do.
Now granted, if you wanted to use it as a computer monitor, it would be different, but 99% of folks are going to use this as a TV, so that resolution is right on.
The only difference between this and what's going on in the US, is in this case, it's a state-controlled monopoly and in the US it's the few remaining Baby Bells doing the same with trying to ban municipal wi-fi.
Unfortunately, it's all about the telecom industry, both in the US, and abroad, trying to consolidate power, and shut out open access, whether it's data or voice.
I used Redhat & Fedora for years. I'd always try a new distro, but I'd end up coming back. And I tried a lot of them, including Mandrake, Debian, Gentoo and Suse.
When Fedora.US first launched, and then was subsumed into Redhat, a lot of user submitted files and extras just seemed to disappear.
Dags and Freshrpms were probably the best place to get the stuff RH didn't supply for Fedora, but even though they're interoperable, I wouldn't say either of them are community driven.
Ubuntu is the first distro that's kept me from coming back to Fedora. From ease of use, it's just as good, if not better, than Fedora. It just seems to do so many small things that Fedora wanted to do, but didn't. Ubuntu ships on one CD, has the power of APT (don't get me started on Yum, and I used APT for years on Fedora / RH w/Freshrpms), and Ubuntu has that community feel to it, even if it is a millionaire funding 'em.
Sorry Red Hat, you came close for many years, but in the end, close wasn't good enough.
"It looks like even Valve wasn't quite prepared for Half Life 2's popularity."
I have a hard time believing Valve underestimated demand - they knew how many pre-orders they had from Steam, and they knew how many boxes shipped to all of the retailers. Retailers regularily share projections of what sales will be by week (especially since they have to know how much product to order). They had models to follow, and NPD and others track sales weekly, so they probably knew at a minimum they would do the same, if not better, than Doom3 in August.
The fact of the matter is, their system can't handle the load, plain and simple.
Unfortunately, it's still Gnome 2.6 and some updated KDE stuff, but one of the most interesting things built in is Novell's new iFolder, an interesting way to share folders remotely, including over different OS's.
It's based on Suse 9.1, but it will be interesting to see what changes the Ximian guys have added to it. The timing seems a bit weird though as Suse 9.2 just came out. Novell's strategy will be something to watch, to see how they position Suse Server, Suse 9.2 and Novell Linux between homes and offices.
This is good to see, they've been out of stock, what, going on two months now? I've been (im)patiently awaiting buying one of these to build my Myth box.
The card itself won't be illegal as the headline implies, but it will be illegal to import any card or component that ignores the Broadcast flag. Any cards or tuners built and installed prior to July 1st, 2005 will be grandfathered in and should work just fine.
This is one of they key reasons to support the EFF - visit their HDTV Action Center and and learn more about the Broadcast Flag. The second link about the Broadcast Flag has some great information and links to building a HTPC for multiple OS's and exactly what the federal government is trying to do.
I've very disappointed by the FCC's decision - it shouldn't be up to Hollywood to decide what TV I can and can't record and when I want to watch it. This battle has been fought (and won!) before, and here is the government messing with it again.
The car version, a 20GB hard drive that I had professionally installed under my rear passenger seat, lasted a week. Made by Rockford-Fosgate, in a large case to support the hard drive, you would think it could take the bumps and shocks of the road. It couldn't.
It would skip when I would hit a bump, even at 15 miles per hour pulling into the gas station. At the point it would skip, it would lock up for 30 seconds, then resume, but every 30 seconds would pause for another 30 seconds. Ejecting the hard drive and putting it back in would reset it to the point of the bump, then it would play fine until I hit another bump.
The pro's of the unit were you could plug a USB 802.11b card into the casing, and automatically transfer your music wirelessly right into your garage. If you didn't have a wireless network, you could eject the hard drive and it had a USB port to hook up to your PC. It had a really slick interface in the car, and setting up a wireless network over the in-dash spin dial thing was a breeze, they did a a really good job with that, with the different ways you could input your WEP key.
The cons were the bumping of the car made it pause, the USB wireless network adapter just kind of hung out in your car, no where to mount it. And the software interface on a Windows pc (SimpleCenter) was one of the most horrid music applications I have ever used. And it didn't do Ogg.
I'm skeptical of any hard drive based car player until they can more than account for the shocks and bumps, and it needs to come with some kind of warranty plan. How long will those hard drives last?
This is pretty interesting news. I used e-smith for about 3 years before replacing it a year or so ago after Mitel announced they would stop developing / supporting the community version of e-smith.
This was an awesome product for it's time. As a hobbyist being introduced to linux, it made everything very easy, especially the samba and email server (and built-in webmail). Today on a FC2 version using Webmin, I still struggle learning the in's and out's of running an email server that e-smith made so easy.
One of the downsides to me, was e-smith's use of templates to update configuration files. I understood why they did it that way (so you wouldn't screw up your config files), but finding and updating their template files, for example php instead of using/etc/php.ini, was frustrating unless you knew the ins and outs of how e-smith wanted you to update it, then run the script to update from the templates to your actual config files. I also didn't care for their iptables configuration, but at the time there were some great community resources to help with that, though I find smoothwall a better solution for me personally these days.
It will be interesting to see Lycoris work on development. One of the main reasons I switched to FC2 was using apt-get to update the server, especially security fixes as it wasn't always the most timely of updates. If they can keep on top of that, and use the community resources available, they could have a measure of success, in both introductin linux as a server distro for home users and small businesses.
I remember seeing this story originally on Boing Boing, and the author, Frozen North, leaves some facts out that his site covers. However, his submission is a bit of flamebait.
Alex Halavais did the same experiment, changing 13 things, and all of those were changed. He did most of them over the course of the same day from the same IP, so they got caught.
Wikipedia is a tool, nothing more. If you believe everything you read on the internet, well, you get it.
I understand in a society of instant gratification TV on a cell phone could be cool.
But how often do you turn on MSNBC or Fox Sports and get the news you want right then without having to wait for the top of the hour news or ticker scores instead.
What I would actually use on a cell phone is some kind of customized RSS feed, but more than what exists today. I'd think there has to be a way for a Fox Sports or an ESPN to create an RSS feed every 15 minutes with the latest scores. Let me subscribe to that over a cell internet connection, and let me pick the feed (for example NHL, NBA, NFL, MLB etc) or do the same for customized news.
This way you can avoid televesion commercials and have some content on your phone personalized for what you want instead of taking what the big media companies give you.
This is extremeley disappointing. After seeing the technology at this past CES, I've specifically held off buying an HDTV to wait until next spring to get one of these.
With Toshiba canceling their LCOS earlier this year, and now this, I'm starting to wonder exactly what is wrong with LCOS. I've heard rumors that the yield isn't high enough, but still.
From what I was told at CES, Intel was hoping to revolutionize TVs like they did computers. Their goal in creating a LCOS chipset was to basically create a motherboard for TVs. Want to build a 36" LCOS HDTV tv? Use this board plus this chip. Want a 50"? Same board with a slightly bigger socket to hold the chip / mirror.
It wasn't even the price reduction that got me excited - the quality of the picture was supposed to have been a step up from current DLP (and at half the price, I wasn't going to complain). Ah well, back to drooling over the Samsung or JVC DLPs.
Join the EFF. When I'm asked what EFF stands for on the hat I wear all the time, THIS is the stuff I talk about.
As much as I respect the work the EFF does around fighting the RIAA and DirecTV, this kind of action is what really makes a difference in people's lives. Fighting the travesties that are the Patriot Act and the DMCA is an important piece of work, and the EFF does a phenomenal job through education and communication around these issues.
I regularily take my 8 year old son to our local library. We live in a fairly outlying suburb of Minneapolis.
By my standards, the library is very small (the book selection is poor at best, but you can request books from within the county's system or even the city's county).
For such a small library, they have at least 6 computer terminals, and I'm always surprised they are always in use. Just glancing at the folks using them, it's IM applications to games to research. But they're always being used.
I'm always suprised and pleased to see it. I'm so used to taking the computers I have at home for granted, I can't imagine what life would be like not having one - but to the folks using them, I bet it's a godsend.
If this is the evolution of the public library, it can only be a good thing. The other posters comments about monitoring and tracking library patrons is quite concerning, and if students are using the internet for research, are they aware that everything you read on the internet isn't true?
While I agree with the overall subject of the article, what is the root cause that is driving the awards?
Who exactly is hypeing these games that gets them the awards? If E3 is such a source of anxiety to the developers and publishers, maybe they should start by setting realistic expectations of when they're games will be delivered. It's not that I don't agree with id's philosophy of "when it's done" - but why show the game that early if they know the game isn't going to be released until *after* the following year's E3?
Do they need all the publicity to hype a game that far out? I would assume that the smaller game developers probably do - but if you look at the ones winning the awards - Doom3, HalfLife 2, Halo 3, they're going to get the coverage in the press regardless if the game is there or not.
I don't know what the answer or the solution is - my choice would be for E3 to have a rule that games to be shown should be released within 6-8 months of the show, but the inevitable "code leak", "revamping", or some other excuse would poke holes in that quicker than anything.
I can understand the concerns Europeans may have, but then again, this is an opt-in procedure.
If you don't want to use Gmail, you have other options through your ISP, other free services, etc.
It just seems to me this is an extension of social networking, but from a business perspective. - target based advertising based on what you surf for based on your cookie.
It seems similar in a way to what Gnome's Nat Friedman wants to do with Dashboard. Based on your email & IM, having the desktop provide you with links to what you're talking about.
To me, the pro's at this point from what we know may outweight the cons - yes they'll target me with ad's based on my surfing behavior, but the ability to index and search my email rather than using "To" "From" and "Subject" headers is definitely a step forward in email management.
Slashdot Mirror
The case absolutely does matter - but not for the reasons mentioned above (lights and looks).
It's all about the cooling - get the right fan placement and air flow in the right place and that's what matters. When you're running an AMD processor faster than a 4200 with an Nvidia 7800 SLI rig, it will matter that you have the right case to get it cool.
Wouldn't you think that the cost is really more? It sounds like the school wants to standardize on one OS - and having machines that run 95 or 98 and can't physically upgrade to XP due to hardware not being up to par would cost more - you'd have to upgrade the machines, just so they could run XP.
$1000 to a school of 200-250 kids is expensive, when you look at all the other costs schools are assumed to support these days.
Edubuntu may be the way to go.
Edubuntu FAQ
Looking at the Edubuntu Tour, some of the programs seem to be for a younger age, around kindergarten and up, but the SchoolTool calendar for teachers looks interesting.
OpenOffice is included (of course). You don't mention what applications the kids may need - if it's just for internet browsing and research, and maybe some of the other educational things already included (Typing, etc), Edubuntu may fit your needs.
The upcoming 6.04 release of Ubuntu's Dapper Drake may fit you better, as it will have a formal support cycle. (I want to say 3 years).
I'm surprised the reviewer stuck to some of the major case makers in the review (Antec, Lian Li).
HTPC's, IMHO, are still very much a niche product, and the specialty case makers like a Silverstone or Ahanix would seem more appropriate.
The review focused on some of the bigger cases out there - when you realize how big the assortment is to choose from, from mini-ITX to slimline to full size, there are quite a number of choices out there.
The article was good, from 10,000 feet, but I thought it missed a few points.
Musicmatch is owned by Yahoo - why is it different? (Yahoo Music engine is a 3 meg download for Windows - a tiny player with pretty good functionality, especially compared to Napsters memory hogging skinned Windows Media Player).
With the Windows Plays for Sure stuff (Yahoo, Napster to Go) it only transfers to a Plays for Sure portable. While the article briefly touches that mentioning it's only a handful of players now, they should have specifically called "Doesn't work with iPods!" As someone already noted in the comments, iPod has 80-90% share of the portable MP3 market.
And last but not least, licenses. With the exception of Yahoo (I believe), if your hard drive crashes you lose your license for tracks you've purchased for 99 cents each. Gone, poof. Like losing a CD. You'd think that buying a song online, they'd have a record of your purchase and let you re-download, but no.
I've used most of the services, except iTunes on a Mac, and if Yahoo puts some marketing muscle behind YME they have a shot at 2nd place and displacing Napster. They offer the same functionality for less than half what Napster and Rhapsody try.
As a Linux only user, I'm contiually frustrated by my lack of music buying options online. I suppose I should try out SharpMusique as an iTunes interface one of these days.
Download your official Star Wars Excuse Note to give to your employer / school / etc.
HD TiVo's can't decode the MPEG 4 streams, which is what the new satellites will be broacasting (I believe the current HD stream is MPEG 2).
You can read more here @ PVRBlog
I can't complain about NeroLINUX - it worked for me just fine. Because of my job, I have a couple copies of Nero for Windows, so it was easy for me to download the .deb and pop a key in.
I'm running Ubuntu - as a Gnome only user, I'd rather install Nero than K3B and not have to worry about all the KDE libraries, especially as they're unsupported in Ubuntu. Yes, I know running Ubuntu is my personal choice, as is running only Gnome.
But you know what? Nero worked, and it worked just fine. I'm either burning audio CDs or ISOs of linux distributions, and it does the job. Most Gnome CD burning apps are still in development (don't get me going on XCDRoast) and Coaster is still in active development. I may be lucky that I had a couple Nero keys laying around, but I'm not going to be disappointed by any commerical company releasing an application for linux if it helps linux as a whole - and I think Nero helps. Sure, it's GTK1 and it's kind of ugly (GTK 2 please!) and it's not HIG compliant, but it IS their first relase version for Linux, and they were kind enough to release RPMs AND debs - usually you only see RPMs from a commerical vendor it seems.
1920x1080 is the MPEG HDTV standard. The TV does exactly what it should do.
Now granted, if you wanted to use it as a computer monitor, it would be different, but 99% of folks are going to use this as a TV, so that resolution is right on.
The only difference between this and what's going on in the US, is in this case, it's a state-controlled monopoly and in the US it's the few remaining Baby Bells doing the same with trying to ban municipal wi-fi.
Unfortunately, it's all about the telecom industry, both in the US, and abroad, trying to consolidate power, and shut out open access, whether it's data or voice.
I used Redhat & Fedora for years. I'd always try a new distro, but I'd end up coming back. And I tried a lot of them, including Mandrake, Debian, Gentoo and Suse.
When Fedora.US first launched, and then was subsumed into Redhat, a lot of user submitted files and extras just seemed to disappear.
Dags and Freshrpms were probably the best place to get the stuff RH didn't supply for Fedora, but even though they're interoperable, I wouldn't say either of them are community driven.
Ubuntu is the first distro that's kept me from coming back to Fedora. From ease of use, it's just as good, if not better, than Fedora. It just seems to do so many small things that Fedora wanted to do, but didn't. Ubuntu ships on one CD, has the power of APT (don't get me started on Yum, and I used APT for years on Fedora / RH w/Freshrpms), and Ubuntu has that community feel to it, even if it is a millionaire funding 'em.
Sorry Red Hat, you came close for many years, but in the end, close wasn't good enough.
I have a hard time believing Valve underestimated demand - they knew how many pre-orders they had from Steam, and they knew how many boxes shipped to all of the retailers. Retailers regularily share projections of what sales will be by week (especially since they have to know how much product to order). They had models to follow, and NPD and others track sales weekly, so they probably knew at a minimum they would do the same, if not better, than Doom3 in August.
The fact of the matter is, their system can't handle the load, plain and simple.
Luis Villa's blog has some more interesting information and links as well. (He's a Novell, former Ximian guy).
You can download an "eval" copy, after some registration, it's 3 ISO files, but is the full version according to Luis.
Novell has also released the source.
Unfortunately, it's still Gnome 2.6 and some updated KDE stuff, but one of the most interesting things built in is Novell's new iFolder, an interesting way to share folders remotely, including over different OS's.
It's based on Suse 9.1, but it will be interesting to see what changes the Ximian guys have added to it. The timing seems a bit weird though as Suse 9.2 just came out. Novell's strategy will be something to watch, to see how they position Suse Server, Suse 9.2 and Novell Linux between homes and offices.
I looked at it before it got Slashdotted. I want to say $189, but it may have been $199. Either way, under $200.
This is good to see, they've been out of stock, what, going on two months now? I've been (im)patiently awaiting buying one of these to build my Myth box.
The card itself won't be illegal as the headline implies, but it will be illegal to import any card or component that ignores the Broadcast flag. Any cards or tuners built and installed prior to July 1st, 2005 will be grandfathered in and should work just fine.
This is one of they key reasons to support the EFF - visit their HDTV Action Center and and learn more about the Broadcast Flag. The second link about the Broadcast Flag has some great information and links to building a HTPC for multiple OS's and exactly what the federal government is trying to do.
I've very disappointed by the FCC's decision - it shouldn't be up to Hollywood to decide what TV I can and can't record and when I want to watch it. This battle has been fought (and won!) before, and here is the government messing with it again.
Support the EFF and make your voice heard!
I have an Omnifi for my home and car.
The car version, a 20GB hard drive that I had professionally installed under my rear passenger seat, lasted a week. Made by Rockford-Fosgate, in a large case to support the hard drive, you would think it could take the bumps and shocks of the road. It couldn't.
It would skip when I would hit a bump, even at 15 miles per hour pulling into the gas station. At the point it would skip, it would lock up for 30 seconds, then resume, but every 30 seconds would pause for another 30 seconds. Ejecting the hard drive and putting it back in would reset it to the point of the bump, then it would play fine until I hit another bump.
The pro's of the unit were you could plug a USB 802.11b card into the casing, and automatically transfer your music wirelessly right into your garage. If you didn't have a wireless network, you could eject the hard drive and it had a USB port to hook up to your PC. It had a really slick interface in the car, and setting up a wireless network over the in-dash spin dial thing was a breeze, they did a a really good job with that, with the different ways you could input your WEP key.
The cons were the bumping of the car made it pause, the USB wireless network adapter just kind of hung out in your car, no where to mount it. And the software interface on a Windows pc (SimpleCenter) was one of the most horrid music applications I have ever used. And it didn't do Ogg.
I'm skeptical of any hard drive based car player until they can more than account for the shocks and bumps, and it needs to come with some kind of warranty plan. How long will those hard drives last?
This is pretty interesting news. I used e-smith for about 3 years before replacing it a year or so ago after Mitel announced they would stop developing / supporting the community version of e-smith.
/etc/php.ini, was frustrating unless you knew the ins and outs of how e-smith wanted you to update it, then run the script to update from the templates to your actual config files. I also didn't care for their iptables configuration, but at the time there were some great community resources to help with that, though I find smoothwall a better solution for me personally these days.
This was an awesome product for it's time. As a hobbyist being introduced to linux, it made everything very easy, especially the samba and email server (and built-in webmail). Today on a FC2 version using Webmin, I still struggle learning the in's and out's of running an email server that e-smith made so easy.
One of the downsides to me, was e-smith's use of templates to update configuration files. I understood why they did it that way (so you wouldn't screw up your config files), but finding and updating their template files, for example php instead of using
It will be interesting to see Lycoris work on development. One of the main reasons I switched to FC2 was using apt-get to update the server, especially security fixes as it wasn't always the most timely of updates. If they can keep on top of that, and use the community resources available, they could have a measure of success, in both introductin linux as a server distro for home users and small businesses.
I remember seeing this story originally on Boing Boing, and the author, Frozen North, leaves some facts out that his site covers. However, his submission is a bit of flamebait.
Alex Halavais did the same experiment, changing 13 things, and all of those were changed. He did most of them over the course of the same day from the same IP, so they got caught.
Wikipedia is a tool, nothing more. If you believe everything you read on the internet, well, you get it.
I understand in a society of instant gratification TV on a cell phone could be cool.
But how often do you turn on MSNBC or Fox Sports and get the news you want right then without having to wait for the top of the hour news or ticker scores instead.
What I would actually use on a cell phone is some kind of customized RSS feed, but more than what exists today. I'd think there has to be a way for a Fox Sports or an ESPN to create an RSS feed every 15 minutes with the latest scores. Let me subscribe to that over a cell internet connection, and let me pick the feed (for example NHL, NBA, NFL, MLB etc) or do the same for customized news.
This way you can avoid televesion commercials and have some content on your phone personalized for what you want instead of taking what the big media companies give you.
This is extremeley disappointing. After seeing the technology at this past CES, I've specifically held off buying an HDTV to wait until next spring to get one of these.
With Toshiba canceling their LCOS earlier this year, and now this, I'm starting to wonder exactly what is wrong with LCOS. I've heard rumors that the yield isn't high enough, but still.
From what I was told at CES, Intel was hoping to revolutionize TVs like they did computers. Their goal in creating a LCOS chipset was to basically create a motherboard for TVs. Want to build a 36" LCOS HDTV tv? Use this board plus this chip. Want a 50"? Same board with a slightly bigger socket to hold the chip / mirror.
It wasn't even the price reduction that got me excited - the quality of the picture was supposed to have been a step up from current DLP (and at half the price, I wasn't going to complain). Ah well, back to drooling over the Samsung or JVC DLPs.
So do what I did last week.
Join the EFF. When I'm asked what EFF stands for on the hat I wear all the time, THIS is the stuff I talk about.
As much as I respect the work the EFF does around fighting the RIAA and DirecTV, this kind of action is what really makes a difference in people's lives. Fighting the travesties that are the Patriot Act and the DMCA is an important piece of work, and the EFF does a phenomenal job through education and communication around these issues.
I regularily take my 8 year old son to our local library. We live in a fairly outlying suburb of Minneapolis.
By my standards, the library is very small (the book selection is poor at best, but you can request books from within the county's system or even the city's county).
For such a small library, they have at least 6 computer terminals, and I'm always surprised they are always in use. Just glancing at the folks using them, it's IM applications to games to research. But they're always being used.
I'm always suprised and pleased to see it. I'm so used to taking the computers I have at home for granted, I can't imagine what life would be like not having one - but to the folks using them, I bet it's a godsend.
If this is the evolution of the public library, it can only be a good thing. The other posters comments about monitoring and tracking library patrons is quite concerning, and if students are using the internet for research, are they aware that everything you read on the internet isn't true?
While I agree with the overall subject of the article, what is the root cause that is driving the awards?
Who exactly is hypeing these games that gets them the awards? If E3 is such a source of anxiety to the developers and publishers, maybe they should start by setting realistic expectations of when they're games will be delivered. It's not that I don't agree with id's philosophy of "when it's done" - but why show the game that early if they know the game isn't going to be released until *after* the following year's E3?
Do they need all the publicity to hype a game that far out? I would assume that the smaller game developers probably do - but if you look at the ones winning the awards - Doom3, HalfLife 2, Halo 3, they're going to get the coverage in the press regardless if the game is there or not.
I don't know what the answer or the solution is - my choice would be for E3 to have a rule that games to be shown should be released within 6-8 months of the show, but the inevitable "code leak", "revamping", or some other excuse would poke holes in that quicker than anything.
That in and of itself is a reason to turn the TV off.
Though personally I'm not sure how I'll reconcile 24 being on against Alias this Sunday night!
I can understand the concerns Europeans may have, but then again, this is an opt-in procedure.
If you don't want to use Gmail, you have other options through your ISP, other free services, etc.
It just seems to me this is an extension of social networking, but from a business perspective. - target based advertising based on what you surf for based on your cookie.
It seems similar in a way to what Gnome's Nat Friedman wants to do with Dashboard. Based on your email & IM, having the desktop provide you with links to what you're talking about.
To me, the pro's at this point from what we know may outweight the cons - yes they'll target me with ad's based on my surfing behavior, but the ability to index and search my email rather than using "To" "From" and "Subject" headers is definitely a step forward in email management.