Really? If this is so, I want to buy stock in this company. Not that I disbelieve you, but I've never heard of this and it's very exciting news. Every record should come with a coat of this on it...and if the technology is there it could potentially change a lot of the music industry. The only con to a record is that it wears out. If you can give me a record for life (i.e., it gets dusty and skips around? throw it in the dishwasher), I'll pay a premium for it. And I'm sure the professional audio industry will too.
I agree, however we also need to take into account that there are only so many jobs in the world to support people and they don't grow in a 1:1 ratio with population. As we move forward with technology, these jobs and the need for unskilled or tradition skilled labor starts diminishing as the population will continue growing. We're getting to an odd turning point in civilization that I don't think anyone would have predicted we would be at 100 years ago. And I'm not sure that anyone really has a good solid plan of what we should do about it, especially now that we can avert many of these plagues that used to ravish and thin out our populations. Hopefully there's no huge new war in the horizon to take care of that one either. No longer will our genepools improve themselves through resistant people mating with resistant people. We're truely getting to the point where we have to create our own future if we want to succeed. It's all interesting to think about, if nothing else.
Here's the thing though. I don't subscribe to cable. I also don't live my life by when network tv decides to play the shows that I like to watch. Between catching up with shows (in HD) from the networks site or sites like Hulu AND streaming Netflix, I know I blow through bandwidth. Heck, if I'm at home and not watching streaming media, chances are I'm streaming music if not streaming music and playing online games. If I'm hitting the upper limit, that's fine, but I wouldn't spend the extra $30 on more internet. I would probably spend it to upgrade my Netflix account or get cheap dish service.
Average people, sure...but they're already overpaying for what they use. If anything, there should be more reasonably priced "slow internet" accounts available for mom and gramps. Heaven forbid we actually use a service that we pay $40-60 a month for, if not more.
Welcome to the year 2000 (er, 2010) and meet your new friend Information Anxiety. I'm 30 years old and I feel it. I constantly feel like I need to keep up with news, this and that, hobbies and interests that are fueled by easy access to information on the internet, social networking, friends, internet friends, real life friends that I only really see on the internet these days. Now compound all of that into a teenager's mind along with high school pressures, school work, trying to find themselves, hormones and being awkward, the opposite sex (or even harder yet, maybe the same sex), etc.
100 years ago, our main concerns were food, shelter, and family. These are second thoughts for many these days. I recently quit social networking for half a year and it was one of the best things I've ever done for myself.
So basically what you're saying is that we can build small scale models of stuff, pee on them for a few days, and they'll turn into the real deal. Kinda like those little dinosaur toys that you put in water and they grow to fill the glass. I'm down with that.
Can you even consider it a tablet if it doesn't have a touchscreen or stylus? Otherwise it's just a funky pc that nobody wants. Come back to me when this thing is $199 and has a touch screen...otherwise it's not much of a story, IMHO.
Part of Apple's problem is that they've never been able to admit when they're wrong. They were wrong with the 1 button mouse. They've been wrong many times. They often get away with their mis-steps because, even though they're not practical, they're appealing and attractive (G4 cube).
The one button mouse is the equivalent of having training wheels on your bike. Everyone can ride a bike with training wheels. Well, then why do we make bikes without training wheels? They're limiting after you make the initial leap of learning balance. The one button mouse is great for those who have never used a computer, but then the limitations start to kick in. The fact that they've just recently released the mighty mouse (which again seems to be a mis-step) is their way of realizing their mouse might not cut the mustard with modern users needing more control over their computer. The fact that everyone I know who owns a Mac uses a Microsoft or Logitech mouse speaks volumes....and a lot of these people are old school mac folk too.
Am I missing something here? Did they just change the default webpage? You can always just type in www.google.com or even, gasp, bing "google" to get to Google. It's actually the first hit when you do. This actually isn't new with Verizon at all, just possibly new to certain phones. All of my verizon phones over the years have had similar lockdown. I had to use bitpim to edit my old phones to force the default webpage to what I wanted.
Google gives Android away for free, but they make money off of your personal information and ad revenues generated by you. You give something up in exchange for Android, even if handset makes do not, so basically you're paying for the OS on your handset through use of the handset. There is a cost to you, even though it is not monetary.
The big difference is Linux is free. Android is not. It's open source and free to use, but you have to be kidding yourself if you don't think that Google makes money off of Android. It's tied into all of their services. It's pushing them more advertisement revenue. Linux is most definitely not developed around a business model to make money.
The reason we have paid applications for Android is because it's a successful platform and people don't mind spending a dollar or two at a time for a new toy. No one is stopping you from making a paid Linux app; however, the competition is much more fierce with Linux. People create free software for Linux because it replaces software that would otherwise cost a substantial amount of money ($30-hundreds of dollars). People won't impulse buy productivity software. Feel free to write your own Linux app and charge for it...many do, but it's hard to have success on a platform based around free, open source software.
I'm not the trickle down economics type...in fact I'm fervently the opposite...but you do realize that corporations will find their way to make money one way or the other. If you spend millions on technology to be green, you'd be a fool to think that they're not going to make up for the money elsewhere...mainly through eliminating jobs or investing in new technologies to eliminate existing jobs. While I would like to think that most people are generally good and think about the masses before themselves, you're dealing with companies with thousands of shareholders. At the end of the day they answer to the shareholders, not Al Gore.
Well, the real crime was what GM did to the design. They tried their best to make Saabs look like any other car on the road. The 2003+ Saab's weren't instantly recognizable as a Saab, and that was sad. The build quality also went down the crapper. I should know, I have a 5 year old one that's been nothing but a junk bucket. The engineering isn't logical or intellegent. The old ones were very logical how they were constructed. Only a few things really ever went wrong with them and they were easy to work on. The new ones are just a disaster. I plan to buy a 2002 prior model eventually and dump what I have now.
Apparently the industry doesn't learn from past mistakes. I thought it was pretty clear that we didn't want this when Shenmue was released, and then again when Shenmue II was released. I suppose the logic this time is "Oh, but the graphics are like 100x's better, people will buy it. And, to a degree, I suppose they're right. It'll sell...at least enough to make the money back. To the same people who liked Shenmue and possibly games like Myst. It'll also sell to people who always buy whatever game currently has the hottest graphics. Reviewers will be besides themselves not knowing whether to review the game based on art and concept or based on gameplay or lack there of. But it will probably be rememebered as another game that looks pretty, yet has no depth.
No, I'm not an action fan. I'm actually a pretty big RPG fan, which is the one part of me that wants to hold onto hope everytime a game like this is released. I've always thought a non-action sandbox game such as this, but with an odd twist (think Groundhogs Day or Back to the Future) would be tremendous, but they always turn into sloppy detective games.
Making it too easy? It was too easy from day one and they haven't made any strides to really up the difficulty. To WoW developers, adding grind is upping the difficulty...you know, instead of doing something like add strategy to a game that's designed around a bunch of people in a group all hitting their attack button at the same time. That kinda worked with Diablo (and was part of what made it great to some extent), but this is a different beast entirely. In fact, I'd blame the watering down of the entire genre on WoW. The last time I decided to take SoE up on a free month of EverQuest to check up on my old characters, I was kinda disgusted at how much they've tried to dumb down the game to try and draw over people who've gotten bored with WoW.
I'll be completely honest, I'd be happy that I was getting anything for an internship. In a good internship situation, you're getting paid by the knowledge of the paid employees. In most cases, it's costing the company money to have their employees sit down and train you and you're more than likely getting in their way when you're shadowing them. $8/h is a nice "thank you, quit your part time college job and just stay here." Never expect to make real money with an internship because, until you've been in the field for a year, you probably don't know how to do real work.
Granted, if I took an internship and turned into a coffee boy (regardless of pay), I'd walk out right then. You're giving up your time for experience. If you're not getting experience, you're wasting your time.
It's not worth it, no, but it'll sell a whole bunch of videocards to people. There's a whole sect of people out there who constantly buy the newest / fastest video card just to they can wank off to the graphics. I don't even think these guys play the games and they might as well just look at screenshots.
You realize that this machine is intended for browsing the internet and updating your blog on the couch or at *bucks, not replacing your normal computer, right? No one is expecting anyone to get work done on this thing...it'd be too small to be a productive work computer to begin with...but it'd be good enough for social networking, instant messaging, e-mail, etc.
You can't have it both ways. You want total control over all your software on a free machine? That's never going to happen. I suspect a tool like this would be perfect for older people who just want to e-mail their kids/grandkids and check their bank account and perfect for younger people who don't have the money for a netbook or laptop but want a portable internet device. Not to mention college students who want something small and portable for taking notes in class. There really is a lot of potential to the device, although I don't see anyone getting it for free. Maybe $50, but free is a stretch.
It's not that Gimp is too powerful for the normal desktop user, it's the fact that Gimp's user interface is way, way too confusing for anyone but those who REALLY want to learn it. I've been using Adobe and Corel paint/photoediting programs for 15 years now and, let me tell you, that knowledge does not necessarily translate to Gimp. It's like starting from scratch, and not in the "about time someone rebuilt this from the ground up" kind of way, more of the "what the hell were they thinking?" kinda way. Then again, it's open source. It's powerful software created by people who'd rather be using a command line anyway...
Well, look at it this way. A cell phone, at its core, is very basic. A PDA is more complicated, but only really requires a stylus. A web browser requires very little besides a stylus. A phone just requires the camera components and a viewfinder of sorts. An MP3 player just requires a basic interface and a headphone jack. Combination devices such as the iPhone and Android phones have been very successful because each function is very basic.
No all-in-one device has ever successfully integrated games. You can argue til your blue in the face that the iPhone has, but it's a terrible platform for anything but point and click adventures, card games, and Monkey ball. The reason devices fail is that gaming is the single most complex task an all-in-one device needs to cover.
For me, if Nintendo made a phone version of the DS, I'd be all over it. I'd know gaming was adequately taken care of. The rest of the functions I might want are basic and simple to integrate and, in fact, the only one the DS hasn't already touched is the cell phone portion (and I believe there's hacked skype type programs you can use if you want to get nit picky).
I do agree, I hate it when extra functions are thrown onto a device just to say it can do more than one thing. I almost always prefer devices that do one thing and one thing perfectly; however, there's really no reason why a DS shouldn't be able to do any other funciton you'd want it to perfectly.
I've never understood most peoples complaints about larger laptops. I buy 17" laptops exclusively and carry them everywhere I go. I think my current one is about 8.5lbs. Once I put it in my bag and throw it over my shoulder, it doesn't bother me one bit...and even if I did, the slight discomfort would be justified by the added resolution (1920x1200) and power under the hood when I actually had to use the computer. You can actually get a pretty powerful system on the cheap if you opt for a 17" too...I'm assuming it's just easier to fit it all in a larger case and cool it. As you said, to each their own, but it's actually counter productive for me to try to do real work on a display that small.
You should thank Sony for that instead for driving the PS3 into the ground from the getgo. Why release a high profile title like FFXIII on a floundering system, loose momentum, and then release it on a healthy system a year later when people have forgotten about it? It'll do much better with a simultaneous release. Remember, the core fanbase of FFXIII will buy whatever system the game comes out on to come out on, but the large masses that will also buy the game will skip it if it's not on the system they already own.
We're obviously talking about two different things. I never said that life expectancy would drop due to use of pesticides. Pesticides and fertilizers are bad for the environment and run off (which is especially common around my parts) ruins ecosystems in lakes and rivers. That's why we should be farming organic...it's for the environment more than us. This goes hand in hand with sustainability. I'm much more concerned about the environment than I am about us. Our footprint on the environment runs much larger than the regions we occupy.
Slashdot Mirror
Really? If this is so, I want to buy stock in this company. Not that I disbelieve you, but I've never heard of this and it's very exciting news. Every record should come with a coat of this on it...and if the technology is there it could potentially change a lot of the music industry. The only con to a record is that it wears out. If you can give me a record for life (i.e., it gets dusty and skips around? throw it in the dishwasher), I'll pay a premium for it. And I'm sure the professional audio industry will too.
I agree, however we also need to take into account that there are only so many jobs in the world to support people and they don't grow in a 1:1 ratio with population. As we move forward with technology, these jobs and the need for unskilled or tradition skilled labor starts diminishing as the population will continue growing. We're getting to an odd turning point in civilization that I don't think anyone would have predicted we would be at 100 years ago. And I'm not sure that anyone really has a good solid plan of what we should do about it, especially now that we can avert many of these plagues that used to ravish and thin out our populations. Hopefully there's no huge new war in the horizon to take care of that one either. No longer will our genepools improve themselves through resistant people mating with resistant people. We're truely getting to the point where we have to create our own future if we want to succeed. It's all interesting to think about, if nothing else.
Most of these films are filmed at 24fps, so I don't see what the issue with this is really.
Here's the thing though. I don't subscribe to cable. I also don't live my life by when network tv decides to play the shows that I like to watch. Between catching up with shows (in HD) from the networks site or sites like Hulu AND streaming Netflix, I know I blow through bandwidth. Heck, if I'm at home and not watching streaming media, chances are I'm streaming music if not streaming music and playing online games. If I'm hitting the upper limit, that's fine, but I wouldn't spend the extra $30 on more internet. I would probably spend it to upgrade my Netflix account or get cheap dish service.
Average people, sure...but they're already overpaying for what they use. If anything, there should be more reasonably priced "slow internet" accounts available for mom and gramps. Heaven forbid we actually use a service that we pay $40-60 a month for, if not more.
Welcome to the year 2000 (er, 2010) and meet your new friend Information Anxiety. I'm 30 years old and I feel it. I constantly feel like I need to keep up with news, this and that, hobbies and interests that are fueled by easy access to information on the internet, social networking, friends, internet friends, real life friends that I only really see on the internet these days. Now compound all of that into a teenager's mind along with high school pressures, school work, trying to find themselves, hormones and being awkward, the opposite sex (or even harder yet, maybe the same sex), etc.
100 years ago, our main concerns were food, shelter, and family. These are second thoughts for many these days. I recently quit social networking for half a year and it was one of the best things I've ever done for myself.
So basically what you're saying is that we can build small scale models of stuff, pee on them for a few days, and they'll turn into the real deal. Kinda like those little dinosaur toys that you put in water and they grow to fill the glass. I'm down with that.
Can you even consider it a tablet if it doesn't have a touchscreen or stylus? Otherwise it's just a funky pc that nobody wants. Come back to me when this thing is $199 and has a touch screen...otherwise it's not much of a story, IMHO.
Part of Apple's problem is that they've never been able to admit when they're wrong. They were wrong with the 1 button mouse. They've been wrong many times. They often get away with their mis-steps because, even though they're not practical, they're appealing and attractive (G4 cube).
The one button mouse is the equivalent of having training wheels on your bike. Everyone can ride a bike with training wheels. Well, then why do we make bikes without training wheels? They're limiting after you make the initial leap of learning balance. The one button mouse is great for those who have never used a computer, but then the limitations start to kick in. The fact that they've just recently released the mighty mouse (which again seems to be a mis-step) is their way of realizing their mouse might not cut the mustard with modern users needing more control over their computer. The fact that everyone I know who owns a Mac uses a Microsoft or Logitech mouse speaks volumes....and a lot of these people are old school mac folk too.
1) Download: http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/
2) Install
3) Run program.
Hell, I'll even give you free PC optimization months down the road after your PC looses it's new PC smell!
1) Download: http://www.ccleaner.com/
2) Install
3) Run program.
You're welcome.
Am I missing something here? Did they just change the default webpage? You can always just type in www.google.com or even, gasp, bing "google" to get to Google. It's actually the first hit when you do. This actually isn't new with Verizon at all, just possibly new to certain phones. All of my verizon phones over the years have had similar lockdown. I had to use bitpim to edit my old phones to force the default webpage to what I wanted.
Google gives Android away for free, but they make money off of your personal information and ad revenues generated by you. You give something up in exchange for Android, even if handset makes do not, so basically you're paying for the OS on your handset through use of the handset. There is a cost to you, even though it is not monetary.
The big difference is Linux is free. Android is not. It's open source and free to use, but you have to be kidding yourself if you don't think that Google makes money off of Android. It's tied into all of their services. It's pushing them more advertisement revenue. Linux is most definitely not developed around a business model to make money.
The reason we have paid applications for Android is because it's a successful platform and people don't mind spending a dollar or two at a time for a new toy. No one is stopping you from making a paid Linux app; however, the competition is much more fierce with Linux. People create free software for Linux because it replaces software that would otherwise cost a substantial amount of money ($30-hundreds of dollars). People won't impulse buy productivity software. Feel free to write your own Linux app and charge for it...many do, but it's hard to have success on a platform based around free, open source software.
I'm not the trickle down economics type...in fact I'm fervently the opposite...but you do realize that corporations will find their way to make money one way or the other. If you spend millions on technology to be green, you'd be a fool to think that they're not going to make up for the money elsewhere...mainly through eliminating jobs or investing in new technologies to eliminate existing jobs. While I would like to think that most people are generally good and think about the masses before themselves, you're dealing with companies with thousands of shareholders. At the end of the day they answer to the shareholders, not Al Gore.
Well, the real crime was what GM did to the design. They tried their best to make Saabs look like any other car on the road. The 2003+ Saab's weren't instantly recognizable as a Saab, and that was sad. The build quality also went down the crapper. I should know, I have a 5 year old one that's been nothing but a junk bucket. The engineering isn't logical or intellegent. The old ones were very logical how they were constructed. Only a few things really ever went wrong with them and they were easy to work on. The new ones are just a disaster. I plan to buy a 2002 prior model eventually and dump what I have now.
Tell me about it. I've been reading comments here for half an hour now and it already seems like an eternity.
Apparently the industry doesn't learn from past mistakes. I thought it was pretty clear that we didn't want this when Shenmue was released, and then again when Shenmue II was released. I suppose the logic this time is "Oh, but the graphics are like 100x's better, people will buy it. And, to a degree, I suppose they're right. It'll sell...at least enough to make the money back. To the same people who liked Shenmue and possibly games like Myst. It'll also sell to people who always buy whatever game currently has the hottest graphics. Reviewers will be besides themselves not knowing whether to review the game based on art and concept or based on gameplay or lack there of. But it will probably be rememebered as another game that looks pretty, yet has no depth.
No, I'm not an action fan. I'm actually a pretty big RPG fan, which is the one part of me that wants to hold onto hope everytime a game like this is released. I've always thought a non-action sandbox game such as this, but with an odd twist (think Groundhogs Day or Back to the Future) would be tremendous, but they always turn into sloppy detective games.
Making it too easy? It was too easy from day one and they haven't made any strides to really up the difficulty. To WoW developers, adding grind is upping the difficulty...you know, instead of doing something like add strategy to a game that's designed around a bunch of people in a group all hitting their attack button at the same time. That kinda worked with Diablo (and was part of what made it great to some extent), but this is a different beast entirely. In fact, I'd blame the watering down of the entire genre on WoW. The last time I decided to take SoE up on a free month of EverQuest to check up on my old characters, I was kinda disgusted at how much they've tried to dumb down the game to try and draw over people who've gotten bored with WoW.
I'll be completely honest, I'd be happy that I was getting anything for an internship. In a good internship situation, you're getting paid by the knowledge of the paid employees. In most cases, it's costing the company money to have their employees sit down and train you and you're more than likely getting in their way when you're shadowing them. $8/h is a nice "thank you, quit your part time college job and just stay here." Never expect to make real money with an internship because, until you've been in the field for a year, you probably don't know how to do real work.
Granted, if I took an internship and turned into a coffee boy (regardless of pay), I'd walk out right then. You're giving up your time for experience. If you're not getting experience, you're wasting your time.
It's not worth it, no, but it'll sell a whole bunch of videocards to people. There's a whole sect of people out there who constantly buy the newest / fastest video card just to they can wank off to the graphics. I don't even think these guys play the games and they might as well just look at screenshots.
You realize that this machine is intended for browsing the internet and updating your blog on the couch or at *bucks, not replacing your normal computer, right? No one is expecting anyone to get work done on this thing...it'd be too small to be a productive work computer to begin with...but it'd be good enough for social networking, instant messaging, e-mail, etc.
You can't have it both ways. You want total control over all your software on a free machine? That's never going to happen. I suspect a tool like this would be perfect for older people who just want to e-mail their kids/grandkids and check their bank account and perfect for younger people who don't have the money for a netbook or laptop but want a portable internet device. Not to mention college students who want something small and portable for taking notes in class. There really is a lot of potential to the device, although I don't see anyone getting it for free. Maybe $50, but free is a stretch.
It's not that Gimp is too powerful for the normal desktop user, it's the fact that Gimp's user interface is way, way too confusing for anyone but those who REALLY want to learn it. I've been using Adobe and Corel paint/photoediting programs for 15 years now and, let me tell you, that knowledge does not necessarily translate to Gimp. It's like starting from scratch, and not in the "about time someone rebuilt this from the ground up" kind of way, more of the "what the hell were they thinking?" kinda way. Then again, it's open source. It's powerful software created by people who'd rather be using a command line anyway...
Well, look at it this way. A cell phone, at its core, is very basic. A PDA is more complicated, but only really requires a stylus. A web browser requires very little besides a stylus. A phone just requires the camera components and a viewfinder of sorts. An MP3 player just requires a basic interface and a headphone jack. Combination devices such as the iPhone and Android phones have been very successful because each function is very basic.
No all-in-one device has ever successfully integrated games. You can argue til your blue in the face that the iPhone has, but it's a terrible platform for anything but point and click adventures, card games, and Monkey ball. The reason devices fail is that gaming is the single most complex task an all-in-one device needs to cover.
For me, if Nintendo made a phone version of the DS, I'd be all over it. I'd know gaming was adequately taken care of. The rest of the functions I might want are basic and simple to integrate and, in fact, the only one the DS hasn't already touched is the cell phone portion (and I believe there's hacked skype type programs you can use if you want to get nit picky).
I do agree, I hate it when extra functions are thrown onto a device just to say it can do more than one thing. I almost always prefer devices that do one thing and one thing perfectly; however, there's really no reason why a DS shouldn't be able to do any other funciton you'd want it to perfectly.
I've never understood most peoples complaints about larger laptops. I buy 17" laptops exclusively and carry them everywhere I go. I think my current one is about 8.5lbs. Once I put it in my bag and throw it over my shoulder, it doesn't bother me one bit...and even if I did, the slight discomfort would be justified by the added resolution (1920x1200) and power under the hood when I actually had to use the computer. You can actually get a pretty powerful system on the cheap if you opt for a 17" too...I'm assuming it's just easier to fit it all in a larger case and cool it. As you said, to each their own, but it's actually counter productive for me to try to do real work on a display that small.
You should thank Sony for that instead for driving the PS3 into the ground from the getgo. Why release a high profile title like FFXIII on a floundering system, loose momentum, and then release it on a healthy system a year later when people have forgotten about it? It'll do much better with a simultaneous release. Remember, the core fanbase of FFXIII will buy whatever system the game comes out on to come out on, but the large masses that will also buy the game will skip it if it's not on the system they already own.
We're obviously talking about two different things. I never said that life expectancy would drop due to use of pesticides. Pesticides and fertilizers are bad for the environment and run off (which is especially common around my parts) ruins ecosystems in lakes and rivers. That's why we should be farming organic...it's for the environment more than us. This goes hand in hand with sustainability. I'm much more concerned about the environment than I am about us. Our footprint on the environment runs much larger than the regions we occupy.