Actually that is an excellent point; the "killer device" for me would be the thing that manages to replace my notebook. I think the iPad could do that, with the right apps.
Why not use a notebook then? For one, an iPad or similar device gives me access to additional information, in e-books or online. And when I carry a device for that purpose (an iPad or netbook), I wouldn't also want to have to carry a notepad, if the device is capable of note-taking. In addition, the ability to transfer notes and especially diagrams from a device straight into minutes of meetings or documents would be a good time-saver. This makes the information immediately shareable and more importantly: searchable.
They may be super cool to you and you think that you paid 500 bucks for a great thing, but you know in your heart that you paid 500 bucks for a goof-off device.
Why on earth wouldn't paying $500 for a goof-off device be a good thing? It's just the right size for some idle browsing or watching movies, and small and light enough to be an easy carry. $500 bucks may be a lot if you're shopping for a netbook or a light laptop, but remember that not too long ago we paid this much for rather crappy portable dvd players.
Actually I plan on using mine for work too. The things that come to mind immediately are:
- e-reader/browser for reference material. I don't always have a twin monitor setup available, and the iPad makes a great e-reader for reference books. For this sort of work the screen beats a typical netbook, though it won't replace my e-paper reader for heavy reading anytime soon.
- taking notes in meetings. It may not be the best device for this, but it does let me quickly draw diagrams as well as write text, and it is thin enough to slip into my leather folder for easy carrying.
- Capturing ideas. Again the ability to do some quick diagrams come in real handy for this. Netbooks, laptops or even desktops kind of suck for this, as the drawing tools (mouse + primitives) distract from the thought process, whereas a tablet lets you draw naturally (fingers on a touchscreen).
I am by no means convinced yet that the iPad is the better choice for my particular line of work, but it sure hit the ground running. The fact that it lets me goof of in ways hereto unimagined is just a bonus... by the way, what gave you the idea that gaming on iPads suck? The thing just hit the market but there's already a couple of great games available. Different games than we play on our desktops, to be sure....
Anyways, I am not sure how useful this thing will turn out to be... for sure, it is a whole different way of working. But if it turns out to be not so good, at least making someone else happy with it should prove easy.
Seriously, something more convenient than Bittorrent? Hunt around for that rare movie, find out there's only one extremely slow seeder and after days of downloading (if the seeder didn't disappear altogether) you find that it is a version dubbed in f-ing German. Or has hardcoded subtitles in piss-poor Dutch? No, I would love to pay for good, reliable downloads straight from the (legal) source.
Exactly. And that is where I get my music; I haven't illegally downloaded any music in ages, ever since there has been a viable legal alternative.
I still download movies illegally (though in the Netherlands downloading isn't strictly illegal if you don't upload at the same time). Why? Not because I am unwilling to spend my money, but because the pirates offer a better product. I fully agree with our MPs who state that downloading of copyrighted material will not be prosecuted until there is a viable legal alternative. Viable... This means a good selection, a good price, a variety of formats, and no DRM so that I can actually download to own and play movies on any of my devices.
I can understand the "panic mode" thinking when being offered a reward to solve a puzzle in 5 minutes. But does that really affect your work when you are being offered a large bonus at the end of the year? The bonus probably influences your decisions, as the article shows with the example of Wall Street bonuses, but it does so for very different reasons.
All of that is already well known though. Money is a good incentive when there is a direct and immediate relation between your paycheck and your output: if you get paid $1 per Widget X made, you are well motivated to work a little faster, take shorter breaks, and make a couple extra widgets at the end of the workday. But when there is no direct relation between pay and performance, money turns into what is known as a "hygiene factor": the reward needs to be adequate up to a certain point or it will work as a demotivator, but anything past that point will work as motivator only very briefly.
And while we are dissing business applications, I find the default Sharepoint site layout to be confusing, infuriating and generally shitty to use. Really, even MS could have done better there.
Or specialise. Get into serious games. It may be a bit less glamorous than doing big ticket games for entertainment, but serious gaming is about to hit mainstream business in a big way, and there are precious few people who understand them. It is not just the game environment itself that is different; serious games have different technical, architectural, organisational and "soft skills" challenges and requirements as well.
As with anyone getting an IT-related degree, I'd advise people who take this course to study a different subject on the side!. Business administration, law, accounting, anything business related... Game designers getting into serious gaming, learn about teaching & learning or psychology.
Or is the software part of the laptop in this setup? By the same token, I think colloquial use of the word "robot" does include the computer controlling the mechanics, probably including software as well. Just thought I'd throw that in while we were being geeky;)
The media don't really help either. As someone lamented (might have been Dambisa Moyo): when the media show someone in Africa, it'll either be a fly ridden hunger victim... or Nelson Mandela. But there's a great deal in between.
Actually the Dutch system isn't all that bad. One good thing is that judgments are not made up by people in a locked room, who flipped a coin to decide for all we know. The judge's decision comes with argument that explains how he arrived at his verdict. If his reasoning or application of the law is flawed, or his weighing of the evidence is biased, this will be reflected in the court ruling. An appeals court will not only examine process, the admissibility of evidence, or the credibility of witnessesin any particular case; it will also examine the reasoning behind the final verdict. And just like plaintiffs and defendants in the US can toss jurors, in the Netherlands they can toss judges if either side thinks they are biased.
It's not all good though: you pointed out the strange position of our constitution and the fact that it is perfectly legal to make unconstitutional laws in our country (we do have a few of those). But the most insane (and recently hotly disputed) rule is that lawyers of any stripe can (after due selection and screening) be asked to sit as a judge in case real judges are in short supply.
You'd think so, and so did a lot of people from the north of Europe stranded in the south (and the other way around). There's an excellent fast rail link between the north and south, but it passes through France and of course there is a strike on. You might also think this would be a good opportunity to temporarily lift the strike and start getting people home... but you'd be wrong.
No kidding: Apple -are- focusing on doing one thing extremely well: vertical integration. Look at the iPhone: the design, the hardware, the OS, the interface, the app store, the tie-in with mobile operators, connections to other services: none of it really stands out as truly innovative. And not all of it is of particularly high quality in itself, in fact some components are decidedly sucky. But it all comes together extremely well. Call it vertical integration, or controlling the platform as another/.er did... Jobs himself called it "controlling the user experience" IIRC, but that is what they are good at: controlling it, and delivering an experience that is unmatched even if it is lacking in functionality or freedom of choice.
ps. I'm not a heavy Apply user, my PCs are all Wintel... I do however own an iPhone.
I think you are wrong... The initial success of Wow was for a large part due to being at the right place at the right time, after that simple momentum took over. People play WoW because their friends play WoW. That is how it works for all sites or software with a strong social element; it's not quite winner-takes-all but a single dominating entity does tend to emerge.
Attempts to copy WoW or trying to copy WoW's success is almost certainly doomed. I remember the attempt to bring the by far most successful MMO of the time (Lineage) from Korea to the West and making it the most succesful one here has resulted in failure, for the same reasons. What worked then and there is not so likely to succeed in displacing the current market leaders here and now. That doesn't mean people should or will stop developing MMOs altogether, they can and will still be profitable to operate without beating WoW's subscription numbers. But if you are aiming to beat WoW, prepare for disappointment.
Developing and running an MMO is a very expensive and complex proposition, and the returns may not be all that good. Quick buck artists are not going to turn to MMOs even with the lure of WoW's $1 billion + revenue; they know they are not likely to make even a fraction of that with a lot of work. Emulating Zynga's model seems a much more fertile field, it is still new enough for early players to make a killing with far less effort, so I expect this business model to gain a foothold in the near future. I am sad to see a decent company like Turbine partnering with these scumbags, but I expect more of them may fall if the revenue is large enough.
The good news is that, at least here in the Netherlands and Europe, regulators are increasingly becoming wary of such scams. The most notorious and lucrative ones foisting expensive SMS subscriptions on unsuspecting kids are already being addressed effectively, and privacy watchdogs take a dim view of teasing information from unwary visitors. Consumers are becoming increasingly wary of these scams as well, and I expect this wariness to increase sharply as these scams become more prevalent, and more people get stung by them. The Zynga business model is one that will gain a foothold in the near future, but I expect it to be a short-lived success.
3D does add immersion when done well, but perhaps it works better on some people than on others.
Avatar'd 3D was rather well done, I think. There was no real *wow* factor in the sense that they kept throwing stuff in your face like they did in those 3D movies from the 80's; lot's of things flying straight at you, sticks being pointed at you etc. Those extermely overemphasized 3D effects were notably absent from Avatar, which made the few rare scenes were they did try and subtly show off the 3D appear as gimmicky. The result, for me at least, was immersion. Somehow the movie "stuck with me" for hours after watching it, it's hard to describe what exactly it is, but I can assure you it had nothing to do with the ho-hum story.
The kicker will be the "base fee", or whatever the proper English word for this is. You will continue to pay a fixed monthly fee to which the metered traffix will be added. Grandma will pay a little less, mum & dad will pay about the same, but anyone who actually downloads stuff regularly will end up paying more. The ISPs will do very well out of this, I assure you.
You guys in the US could do with some proper competition. The pattern is the same every time. If the government runs things, you get crappy service, like the old state-run telco where waiting times to be connected to the phone service was often over 1 year even if you already had the local loop into your home. If you get a monopoly or cartel, the corporations will fleece the public like our national health insurers, who fought tooth and nail to keep other European insurers off our markets. But if you have real competition, you generally see lower prices and better service like we have in our mobile phone or indeed our ISP market. Companies may still try to deceive you a little with confusing plans, but no ISP here would dare suggest metered service.
That's a really useful trick... Good for barns, garden sheds and places that are usually dark. Cheaper than a skylight and less maintenance as well, probably.
As for the high-tech thing mentioned in the article... that would be a lot more useful if the "lights" had a lightbulb fixture inside of them, and a system to automatically add more artificial light if the sunlight dims for a moment (for example, if a cloud passes). That way you get a constant brightness inside while still saving energy.
Overflowing bookshelves is one of the reasons I got myself an e-book reader. I read a fair bit, so I thought I'd give it a try and so far I am not disappointed. Most of the ebooks I buy are around $5, and many are DRM-free. The only problem is that I wanted an 8" reader and those are still rather pricey.
Books that I will want to re-read, or if I know someone else who would like to borrow it, I'll get a paper copy. If I don't plan on re-reading or loaning the book, or if it's DRM-free reference books that I like to have handy (like the o'Reilly books), I get the e-book version. It's worked well so far.
No benefit? These things allow the power company to balance the grid load and "pass the savings on to you", as they say.
When I was in college, some 20 years ago, our home had a water boiler with a "smart" meter connected to it. The meter wasn't very smart and certainly not computerised, but it did allow the power company to switch on our boiler when they had some excess power capacity to get rid of. It was strictly opt-in (the boiler could be switched to manual), but if we used it we always had warm water at about 1/3rd of what it would have cost us at regular energy rates.
Sure, but do you educate, or forbid? The USA seems to focus on the latter, but when it comes to teen pregnancies, they sure seem to have a hell of a lot more of them than more liberal* countries.
(* liberal meaning "free", not "leftie" though for some those two meanings are the same).
Really? IIRC there are some US air defense ships (or whatever they are called) that have a "kill anything that looks unfriendly" mode, which pretty much makes autonomous decisions. I wouldn't be surprised if we'll soon see flying or land-based robots that make autonomous kill decisions. I suppose an operator will still have to tell the robot to stand down or go hot, and perhaps have a self destruct option.
I love LED lighting too... when I get good quality bulbs. Currently, LEDs suffer from the same problems as the early CFL lights. There are good and bad LED lights on the market, but I've found that buying the more expensive ones or even the better brands is by no means a guarantee of getting a good one. Right now I will not buy any LED light unless it's a known good one, i.e. I have seen it in action.
The most common problems that persist in many of the LED bulbs on the market are:
- Less bright than advertised
- "warm" LED light is actually a horrible yellow/green tint
- "white" LED light is an awful cold blue tint.
Nostalgia, and attention spans. Sure, our attention spans, of us, the old farts!
We do not know the whole widget anymore from top to bottom like we did with the 8-bit machines of our childhoods... but if I talk to kids with an interest in computers today, they know a great deal more about the nitty-gritty of modern machines than I do. Sure they aren't taking a soldering iron to the motherboard anymore like I used to do with the C64 to make some sort of interface, instead they stick some components on a breadboard and plug it right into a USB socket... and then proceed to write a driver for whatever it is they whacked together. What I really miss is having the time and dedication to do that sort of thing... but I don't. You are right, computers are different but no less accessible to tinkering. What has really changed is us
It really depends on what you want from such a device. At first I wondered why on earth I'd want an iPad... but then it struck me that I would really like a good device for on the coffee table in the living room, for light browsing and such. Something that:
- is small, lightweight, and looks good
- instantly switches on (no booting, no taking bloody ages to come out of hybernation)
- has a usable touch screen... I do not give a toss about multitouch, but I love the iPhone touch screen because it works very well even with fat fingers.
I'm very much a Wintel guy, but I've considered getting an Apple laptop, mainly because they really do come out of hybernation instantly, making them useful to have lying around in the living room. Now I might get an iPad instead... Lack of a physical keyboard makes the device lighter and better looking, and if the touch screen is as good as the iPhone's, it'll be more than good enough for casual use. And the user interface is very well suited to this scenario.
The iPad looks like a winner for me... Unless one of those Linux ones measure up. But it'll take a lot to beat Apple when DRM is not an issue and their out-of-the-box product already does what I want.
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Actually that is an excellent point; the "killer device" for me would be the thing that manages to replace my notebook. I think the iPad could do that, with the right apps.
Why not use a notebook then? For one, an iPad or similar device gives me access to additional information, in e-books or online. And when I carry a device for that purpose (an iPad or netbook), I wouldn't also want to have to carry a notepad, if the device is capable of note-taking. In addition, the ability to transfer notes and especially diagrams from a device straight into minutes of meetings or documents would be a good time-saver. This makes the information immediately shareable and more importantly: searchable.
Why on earth wouldn't paying $500 for a goof-off device be a good thing? It's just the right size for some idle browsing or watching movies, and small and light enough to be an easy carry. $500 bucks may be a lot if you're shopping for a netbook or a light laptop, but remember that not too long ago we paid this much for rather crappy portable dvd players.
Actually I plan on using mine for work too. The things that come to mind immediately are:
- e-reader/browser for reference material. I don't always have a twin monitor setup available, and the iPad makes a great e-reader for reference books. For this sort of work the screen beats a typical netbook, though it won't replace my e-paper reader for heavy reading anytime soon.
- taking notes in meetings. It may not be the best device for this, but it does let me quickly draw diagrams as well as write text, and it is thin enough to slip into my leather folder for easy carrying.
- Capturing ideas. Again the ability to do some quick diagrams come in real handy for this. Netbooks, laptops or even desktops kind of suck for this, as the drawing tools (mouse + primitives) distract from the thought process, whereas a tablet lets you draw naturally (fingers on a touchscreen).
I am by no means convinced yet that the iPad is the better choice for my particular line of work, but it sure hit the ground running. The fact that it lets me goof of in ways hereto unimagined is just a bonus... by the way, what gave you the idea that gaming on iPads suck? The thing just hit the market but there's already a couple of great games available. Different games than we play on our desktops, to be sure....
Anyways, I am not sure how useful this thing will turn out to be... for sure, it is a whole different way of working. But if it turns out to be not so good, at least making someone else happy with it should prove easy.
Seriously, something more convenient than Bittorrent? Hunt around for that rare movie, find out there's only one extremely slow seeder and after days of downloading (if the seeder didn't disappear altogether) you find that it is a version dubbed in f-ing German. Or has hardcoded subtitles in piss-poor Dutch? No, I would love to pay for good, reliable downloads straight from the (legal) source.
Exactly. And that is where I get my music; I haven't illegally downloaded any music in ages, ever since there has been a viable legal alternative.
I still download movies illegally (though in the Netherlands downloading isn't strictly illegal if you don't upload at the same time). Why? Not because I am unwilling to spend my money, but because the pirates offer a better product. I fully agree with our MPs who state that downloading of copyrighted material will not be prosecuted until there is a viable legal alternative. Viable... This means a good selection, a good price, a variety of formats, and no DRM so that I can actually download to own and play movies on any of my devices.
I can understand the "panic mode" thinking when being offered a reward to solve a puzzle in 5 minutes. But does that really affect your work when you are being offered a large bonus at the end of the year? The bonus probably influences your decisions, as the article shows with the example of Wall Street bonuses, but it does so for very different reasons.
All of that is already well known though. Money is a good incentive when there is a direct and immediate relation between your paycheck and your output: if you get paid $1 per Widget X made, you are well motivated to work a little faster, take shorter breaks, and make a couple extra widgets at the end of the workday. But when there is no direct relation between pay and performance, money turns into what is known as a "hygiene factor": the reward needs to be adequate up to a certain point or it will work as a demotivator, but anything past that point will work as motivator only very briefly.
What about SAP? Dear god...
And while we are dissing business applications, I find the default Sharepoint site layout to be confusing, infuriating and generally shitty to use. Really, even MS could have done better there.
Or specialise. Get into serious games. It may be a bit less glamorous than doing big ticket games for entertainment, but serious gaming is about to hit mainstream business in a big way, and there are precious few people who understand them. It is not just the game environment itself that is different; serious games have different technical, architectural, organisational and "soft skills" challenges and requirements as well.
As with anyone getting an IT-related degree, I'd advise people who take this course to study a different subject on the side!. Business administration, law, accounting, anything business related... Game designers getting into serious gaming, learn about teaching & learning or psychology.
... the laptop just runs the software.
;)
Or is the software part of the laptop in this setup? By the same token, I think colloquial use of the word "robot" does include the computer controlling the mechanics, probably including software as well. Just thought I'd throw that in while we were being geeky
The media don't really help either. As someone lamented (might have been Dambisa Moyo): when the media show someone in Africa, it'll either be a fly ridden hunger victim... or Nelson Mandela. But there's a great deal in between.
Solution: let those Chinese guys assemble a whole bunch of these robots cheaply, then send them home. Of course they'll then be jobless...
Actually the Dutch system isn't all that bad. One good thing is that judgments are not made up by people in a locked room, who flipped a coin to decide for all we know. The judge's decision comes with argument that explains how he arrived at his verdict. If his reasoning or application of the law is flawed, or his weighing of the evidence is biased, this will be reflected in the court ruling. An appeals court will not only examine process, the admissibility of evidence, or the credibility of witnessesin any particular case; it will also examine the reasoning behind the final verdict. And just like plaintiffs and defendants in the US can toss jurors, in the Netherlands they can toss judges if either side thinks they are biased.
It's not all good though: you pointed out the strange position of our constitution and the fact that it is perfectly legal to make unconstitutional laws in our country (we do have a few of those). But the most insane (and recently hotly disputed) rule is that lawyers of any stripe can (after due selection and screening) be asked to sit as a judge in case real judges are in short supply.
You'd think so, and so did a lot of people from the north of Europe stranded in the south (and the other way around). There's an excellent fast rail link between the north and south, but it passes through France and of course there is a strike on. You might also think this would be a good opportunity to temporarily lift the strike and start getting people home... but you'd be wrong.
No kidding: Apple -are- focusing on doing one thing extremely well: vertical integration. Look at the iPhone: the design, the hardware, the OS, the interface, the app store, the tie-in with mobile operators, connections to other services: none of it really stands out as truly innovative. And not all of it is of particularly high quality in itself, in fact some components are decidedly sucky. But it all comes together extremely well. Call it vertical integration, or controlling the platform as another /.er did... Jobs himself called it "controlling the user experience" IIRC, but that is what they are good at: controlling it, and delivering an experience that is unmatched even if it is lacking in functionality or freedom of choice.
ps. I'm not a heavy Apply user, my PCs are all Wintel... I do however own an iPhone.
I think you are wrong... The initial success of Wow was for a large part due to being at the right place at the right time, after that simple momentum took over. People play WoW because their friends play WoW. That is how it works for all sites or software with a strong social element; it's not quite winner-takes-all but a single dominating entity does tend to emerge.
Attempts to copy WoW or trying to copy WoW's success is almost certainly doomed. I remember the attempt to bring the by far most successful MMO of the time (Lineage) from Korea to the West and making it the most succesful one here has resulted in failure, for the same reasons. What worked then and there is not so likely to succeed in displacing the current market leaders here and now. That doesn't mean people should or will stop developing MMOs altogether, they can and will still be profitable to operate without beating WoW's subscription numbers. But if you are aiming to beat WoW, prepare for disappointment.
Developing and running an MMO is a very expensive and complex proposition, and the returns may not be all that good. Quick buck artists are not going to turn to MMOs even with the lure of WoW's $1 billion + revenue; they know they are not likely to make even a fraction of that with a lot of work. Emulating Zynga's model seems a much more fertile field, it is still new enough for early players to make a killing with far less effort, so I expect this business model to gain a foothold in the near future. I am sad to see a decent company like Turbine partnering with these scumbags, but I expect more of them may fall if the revenue is large enough.
The good news is that, at least here in the Netherlands and Europe, regulators are increasingly becoming wary of such scams. The most notorious and lucrative ones foisting expensive SMS subscriptions on unsuspecting kids are already being addressed effectively, and privacy watchdogs take a dim view of teasing information from unwary visitors. Consumers are becoming increasingly wary of these scams as well, and I expect this wariness to increase sharply as these scams become more prevalent, and more people get stung by them. The Zynga business model is one that will gain a foothold in the near future, but I expect it to be a short-lived success.
3D does add immersion when done well, but perhaps it works better on some people than on others.
Avatar'd 3D was rather well done, I think. There was no real *wow* factor in the sense that they kept throwing stuff in your face like they did in those 3D movies from the 80's; lot's of things flying straight at you, sticks being pointed at you etc. Those extermely overemphasized 3D effects were notably absent from Avatar, which made the few rare scenes were they did try and subtly show off the 3D appear as gimmicky. The result, for me at least, was immersion. Somehow the movie "stuck with me" for hours after watching it, it's hard to describe what exactly it is, but I can assure you it had nothing to do with the ho-hum story.
The kicker will be the "base fee", or whatever the proper English word for this is. You will continue to pay a fixed monthly fee to which the metered traffix will be added. Grandma will pay a little less, mum & dad will pay about the same, but anyone who actually downloads stuff regularly will end up paying more. The ISPs will do very well out of this, I assure you.
You guys in the US could do with some proper competition. The pattern is the same every time. If the government runs things, you get crappy service, like the old state-run telco where waiting times to be connected to the phone service was often over 1 year even if you already had the local loop into your home. If you get a monopoly or cartel, the corporations will fleece the public like our national health insurers, who fought tooth and nail to keep other European insurers off our markets. But if you have real competition, you generally see lower prices and better service like we have in our mobile phone or indeed our ISP market. Companies may still try to deceive you a little with confusing plans, but no ISP here would dare suggest metered service.
That's a really useful trick... Good for barns, garden sheds and places that are usually dark. Cheaper than a skylight and less maintenance as well, probably.
As for the high-tech thing mentioned in the article... that would be a lot more useful if the "lights" had a lightbulb fixture inside of them, and a system to automatically add more artificial light if the sunlight dims for a moment (for example, if a cloud passes). That way you get a constant brightness inside while still saving energy.
Overflowing bookshelves is one of the reasons I got myself an e-book reader. I read a fair bit, so I thought I'd give it a try and so far I am not disappointed. Most of the ebooks I buy are around $5, and many are DRM-free. The only problem is that I wanted an 8" reader and those are still rather pricey.
Books that I will want to re-read, or if I know someone else who would like to borrow it, I'll get a paper copy. If I don't plan on re-reading or loaning the book, or if it's DRM-free reference books that I like to have handy (like the o'Reilly books), I get the e-book version. It's worked well so far.
No benefit? These things allow the power company to balance the grid load and "pass the savings on to you", as they say.
When I was in college, some 20 years ago, our home had a water boiler with a "smart" meter connected to it. The meter wasn't very smart and certainly not computerised, but it did allow the power company to switch on our boiler when they had some excess power capacity to get rid of. It was strictly opt-in (the boiler could be switched to manual), but if we used it we always had warm water at about 1/3rd of what it would have cost us at regular energy rates.
Sure, but do you educate, or forbid? The USA seems to focus on the latter, but when it comes to teen pregnancies, they sure seem to have a hell of a lot more of them than more liberal* countries.
(* liberal meaning "free", not "leftie" though for some those two meanings are the same).
Really? IIRC there are some US air defense ships (or whatever they are called) that have a "kill anything that looks unfriendly" mode, which pretty much makes autonomous decisions. I wouldn't be surprised if we'll soon see flying or land-based robots that make autonomous kill decisions. I suppose an operator will still have to tell the robot to stand down or go hot, and perhaps have a self destruct option.
Operator: "20 bucks says I can shoot the turban off of that guy's head".
Supervisor: "You're on!".
I love LED lighting too... when I get good quality bulbs. Currently, LEDs suffer from the same problems as the early CFL lights. There are good and bad LED lights on the market, but I've found that buying the more expensive ones or even the better brands is by no means a guarantee of getting a good one. Right now I will not buy any LED light unless it's a known good one, i.e. I have seen it in action.
The most common problems that persist in many of the LED bulbs on the market are:
- Less bright than advertised
- "warm" LED light is actually a horrible yellow/green tint
- "white" LED light is an awful cold blue tint.
Nostalgia, and attention spans. Sure, our attention spans, of us, the old farts!
We do not know the whole widget anymore from top to bottom like we did with the 8-bit machines of our childhoods... but if I talk to kids with an interest in computers today, they know a great deal more about the nitty-gritty of modern machines than I do. Sure they aren't taking a soldering iron to the motherboard anymore like I used to do with the C64 to make some sort of interface, instead they stick some components on a breadboard and plug it right into a USB socket... and then proceed to write a driver for whatever it is they whacked together. What I really miss is having the time and dedication to do that sort of thing... but I don't. You are right, computers are different but no less accessible to tinkering. What has really changed is us
It really depends on what you want from such a device. At first I wondered why on earth I'd want an iPad... but then it struck me that I would really like a good device for on the coffee table in the living room, for light browsing and such. Something that:
- is small, lightweight, and looks good
- instantly switches on (no booting, no taking bloody ages to come out of hybernation)
- has a usable touch screen... I do not give a toss about multitouch, but I love the iPhone touch screen because it works very well even with fat fingers.
I'm very much a Wintel guy, but I've considered getting an Apple laptop, mainly because they really do come out of hybernation instantly, making them useful to have lying around in the living room. Now I might get an iPad instead... Lack of a physical keyboard makes the device lighter and better looking, and if the touch screen is as good as the iPhone's, it'll be more than good enough for casual use. And the user interface is very well suited to this scenario.
The iPad looks like a winner for me... Unless one of those Linux ones measure up. But it'll take a lot to beat Apple when DRM is not an issue and their out-of-the-box product already does what I want.