Good points, but I think the most useful tools which Windows comes with out of the box are notepad.exe and calc.exe
It's so easy to Start+R and then type notepad or calc, depending on whether you need to perform a quick calculation or take details during a phone call etc.
My smartphone does all this, with different software of course (Nokia Music Player, Web Browser etc) and more.
With an external bluetooth GPS receiver, I can run Tom Tom sat nav software on my phone. I can also run a wide range of third party apps which don't need to be signed by Nokia/Symbian - my favourite right now is a dieting application to monitor my daily calory intake. I have Skype on my phone (iSkoot client with the network operator gateway installed at their end). You can get VoIP clients for my phone. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
I actually find the PS2's dualshock controller to be the best controller I've ever used - and I've used a lot of different ones, from joysticks for my old C64 to the SNES controller to the Microsoft sidewinder series. It's really down to personal preference.
I think the game library is more important to a platform's success than the actual graphics or power of a console though. And the PS2's is massive - I only have 20-30 games myself and play maybe 5-10 of those regularly now, and I'm sure there are others in a similar situation, but I'm sure each person's personal library of games will be different.
To be honest, I think a lot of the reasons why the PS2 won the last generation war was because it had a wider appeal to all ages and types of gamers compared to Nintendo's Gamecube. And remember, it offered DVD playback at a time when DVD players cost significantly more than they do now.
I tried using T9 on the recommendation of a friend, who claimed it allowed him to text so much faster than the "old" texting method.
Sadly, I spent the next hour trying to find a way to change a suggested word without having to go through a single menu, and then I challenged him to a texting contest, and I won.
I still get texts from people where there's a random "on" instead of a "no", and other such grammatical mistakes. They're easy enough to read if you know what to look for, but I'd never use something so non intuitive.
I use the I'm Feeling Lucky feature a lot - if you type a string of text into the Firefox location bar and hit the Enter key, it does an IFL search based on that text.
I find it incredibly handy to be able to type in something like "youtube" or "bbc news" or even "wiki insert topic here" and have it automatically go to the correct page. Sometimes it doesn't take you where you might expect, but I'd say my overall success rate would be 95%+.
If you don't like the iPod/iTunes setup, buy another player. Let the market decide.
And this is precisely the point; if an iPod user decides that their next music player should be, for example, a Creative Zen or even a mobile phone with integrated music player, they currently cannot reuse their existing music that they've purchased from the iTMS.
My mum uses one of these. She's really not into the whole "get a jack-of-all-trades" thing, but just requires a very basic phone in case her car breaks down or in case she's out and wants peace of mind.
I don't know what camera phones you've been using, but take a look at this photo I took with a camera phone. I think the quality is rather better than you might suggest (3 mega pixel).
Cameras within phones aren't yet perfect; the optical zoom hasn't yet been perfected and there's still the small issue of having to hold it quite still, but the camera phone is still good at the job it's intended for. If I'm going on vacation, then sure I'll take my proper digital camera with me. If I'm at a party or even out and about and see a photo opportunity, the phone is an ideal tool to take a quick snap.
Shortly before the iPhone's release, Dean Hall, a seven year software engineer for Motorola, explained in an email the limited usability of an unlocked phone:
"When a phone is unlocked it loses its privileges on a provider's data network. An unlocked phone can make GSM calls and send basic SMS. No MMS, no Internet, no iTS. Apple would either have to reverse engineer a method to gain access to the data network (unlikely as most data networks require SSL-level security to access) or it would have to offer something different."
If Mr Hall is a typical representation of a Motorola software engineer, it may explain why any Motorola phone I've ever had the misfortune to use has experienced software issues. I'm not sure that he has much of an idea about what he's talking about here.
The network I'm on allows me access to voice, text, MMS, and 3G data services. The handset that was provided with my contract (Nokia N80) fully supports all of these features. Now, I've also got a Nokia N70 which was previously locked to another mobile network, and it's now unlocked to work with any network. If I put my current SIM card in and turn it on, perhaps I should be shocked to find that I can access the same services before (after putting in the right settings).
I've used a variety of mobile phones, both SIM-locked and "vanilla" unlocked handsets, on most of the mobile networks for the last ten years and I've never had any problems such as those mentioned by Mr Hall.
Is the automobile industry really that bad where you live?
I wouldn't dream of buying a car without knowing all the ins and outs of it - fuel injection? engine type? etc etc. I can even buy a third party manual for my car (and the vast majority of other cars) detailing the full innards of the car and I could even service it myself with this information, if I had the time and willingness to properly learn. I can even replace any components - including remapping the engine chip to give the engine better torque/BHP.
I use a game console to play games too. However, if one of the consoles supports a next-gen video format such as Blu-Ray out of the box, and the others don't, then the odds that I'll buy one will be firmly stacked in its favour.
If you cast your mind back a few years, back to when DVD players were actually a costly purchase, a lot of people bought the PS2 specifically because it had DVD support. Granted, the jump between DVD and Blu-Ray isn't perhaps as significant as the jump between VHS and DVD, but it's still a definite bonus in my eyes.
I read the news article linked and didn't see any reference to D-Link releasing the source, nor any request by the GPL Violations group for them to do so.
"It was very sad to see D-Link starting to argue that the GPL would not apply. Given D-Link's repeated license violations, it can be thankful that we've never asked for any kind of damages, but merely to cease and desist from further infringements, plus our expenses. I start to wonder whether they actually deserve such a mild strategy."
The group even mentions themselves that they were only looking to cease and desist from the practise.
While this does seem to be the right step, I'd have at least expected a requirement to release the source in question - if the GPL is valid and a company has released a product contaminated with GPL code, shouldn't they have to release the source rather than simply refraining from the practise?
I think the pressure will come from customers and the bottom line. If I hear that my bank screwed up and let a scammer make a withdrawal, well, that's bad, but as long as the bank takes the hit for the mistake, I'm not going to get too concerned. But if I hear that my bank made a customer take the hit, then I and probably every other fellow customer will move our money out so fast that the FDIC will wonder if the good old days of 19th century style panics and bank runs are back.
Well, it would be expected for the bank to take the hit if they screwed up. Unfortunately, this isn't how phishing typically works.
Phishers send emails to many recipients, telling them to go to a link which is designed to look like the bank's website. Here, they ask for certain information which is required to access the customer's account online - such as username, password, and secret answer.
At my bank, there's a few secret answers; mother's maiden name, father's first name, my first school, place of birth, mother's first name.
So, if a customer was to fall for a phishing email and provide this type of information, I'm not sure why anyone could legitimately blame the bank rather than blaming their own naivety and learning their lesson.
And it's not like this issue hasn't been publicised, now is it?
I'm not saying that I like it, just saying it's inevitable.
Look at the majority of the population; "think of the children", "terrorists", "gas prices" etc will all help to smooth the transition. Those of us that do care about freedom and rights will resist as long as we can, but we aren't going to be able to change much overall.
Only a cataclysmic event, such as a World War or a civil war might help to change attitudes and help somewhat.
It's not about breaking even. Most people can afford $5 a month, but to pay $600 for the cost of a new phone in one go, especially when you don't expect it, can be slightly more difficult.
And by the way, all that stuff on illegal wiretapping? The government here thought that shouldn't be publicly known, too, and the NYT published it anyway and now the government is in all kinds of hot water and other shit for what they've done. The NYT at this point looks rather damn hypocritical.
I wouldn't necessarily say so. With the illegal wiretapping case, the NYT was publishing information to show that the Government was breaching the rights of US Citizens. In this case, they're attempting to maintain the right of an accused person in the UK to have a fair trial.
There isn't really any hypocrisy about it - in both cases, the newspaper was standing up for the rights of citizens.
Consider the guy who successfully argued that the bank shouldn't have let him use so simple a password.
Did something like this actually happen and did someone win a court case against a bank? Whatever happened to personal responsiblity and taking the blame for one's own (erroneous) actions?
Oh, but you forgot the exception. If it's a GPL'd product whose copyright is being infringed, copyight infringement isn't just moral, it's encouraged and celebrated.
Well, all Iran would need to do is drop leaflets over Israel advising the citizens of the bombing campaign and telling them to move out. That way they can be sure that only hostile military forces remain.
After all, that was what Israel found to be an acceptable solution when they tried to wipe Lebanon off the map.
That is why I can run Halo, WoW, SWG, and Half-Life ALL on screen at once and not lose framerates in any of the games. I can even Flip 3D them, and they run in that view without any FPS loss. (See normally, each of these applicaitons would want 'full' access to the GPU and the GPU's RAM.)
Very nice. Does Vista also provide you with enough hands and peripherals so you can play them all at the same time?
You think the itunes interface sucks? Most people disagree. I think the WMP interface sucks - and most iTunes users agree.
I guess this is a matter of personal preference. To me, iTunes seems bloated, whereas WMP (with a nice skin) is perfect for what I need; especially the integration with the Taskbar.
Office is a fucking nightmare. You can't just start typing in Word - oh, no.
Sure you're thinking of MS Word? When I open MS Word, the splash screen appears and then the actual application window appears on screen, with the cursor at the top left of the page. If I spend 5-10 minutes at some stage configuring settings, I can even make it default to my own personal settings.
If you find this difficult, you might want to consider taking the ICDL (International Computer Driving License) course - it's specifically designed for people like yourself who have problems carrying out basic tasks with a computer.
Most of the "illegal" trackers ban certain clients from connecting. For example, I know the one I use (Torrent Damage) bans BitComet from connecting.
As for seeding, it could become a compromise; maintain a good ratio and you get access to the newer stuff, sooner. The more upstream bandwidth you allow, the higher downstream you get. As one of the other posters suggested, if we want the MPAA etc to embrace new technology, then we should be able to embrace the same technology.
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Good points, but I think the most useful tools which Windows comes with out of the box are notepad.exe and calc.exe
It's so easy to Start+R and then type notepad or calc, depending on whether you need to perform a quick calculation or take details during a phone call etc.
My smartphone does all this, with different software of course (Nokia Music Player, Web Browser etc) and more.
With an external bluetooth GPS receiver, I can run Tom Tom sat nav software on my phone. I can also run a wide range of third party apps which don't need to be signed by Nokia/Symbian - my favourite right now is a dieting application to monitor my daily calory intake. I have Skype on my phone (iSkoot client with the network operator gateway installed at their end). You can get VoIP clients for my phone. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
I actually find the PS2's dualshock controller to be the best controller I've ever used - and I've used a lot of different ones, from joysticks for my old C64 to the SNES controller to the Microsoft sidewinder series. It's really down to personal preference.
I think the game library is more important to a platform's success than the actual graphics or power of a console though. And the PS2's is massive - I only have 20-30 games myself and play maybe 5-10 of those regularly now, and I'm sure there are others in a similar situation, but I'm sure each person's personal library of games will be different.
To be honest, I think a lot of the reasons why the PS2 won the last generation war was because it had a wider appeal to all ages and types of gamers compared to Nintendo's Gamecube. And remember, it offered DVD playback at a time when DVD players cost significantly more than they do now.
I tried using T9 on the recommendation of a friend, who claimed it allowed him to text so much faster than the "old" texting method.
Sadly, I spent the next hour trying to find a way to change a suggested word without having to go through a single menu, and then I challenged him to a texting contest, and I won.
I still get texts from people where there's a random "on" instead of a "no", and other such grammatical mistakes. They're easy enough to read if you know what to look for, but I'd never use something so non intuitive.
I use the I'm Feeling Lucky feature a lot - if you type a string of text into the Firefox location bar and hit the Enter key, it does an IFL search based on that text.
I find it incredibly handy to be able to type in something like "youtube" or "bbc news" or even "wiki insert topic here" and have it automatically go to the correct page. Sometimes it doesn't take you where you might expect, but I'd say my overall success rate would be 95%+.
If you don't like the iPod/iTunes setup, buy another player. Let the market decide.
And this is precisely the point; if an iPod user decides that their next music player should be, for example, a Creative Zen or even a mobile phone with integrated music player, they currently cannot reuse their existing music that they've purchased from the iTMS.
My mum uses one of these. She's really not into the whole "get a jack-of-all-trades" thing, but just requires a very basic phone in case her car breaks down or in case she's out and wants peace of mind.
I don't know what camera phones you've been using, but take a look at this photo I took with a camera phone. I think the quality is rather better than you might suggest (3 mega pixel).
Cameras within phones aren't yet perfect; the optical zoom hasn't yet been perfected and there's still the small issue of having to hold it quite still, but the camera phone is still good at the job it's intended for. If I'm going on vacation, then sure I'll take my proper digital camera with me. If I'm at a party or even out and about and see a photo opportunity, the phone is an ideal tool to take a quick snap.
And the reason why you can't just by a CD and rip it to uncompressed flac (or your codec of choice) is...?
The network I'm on allows me access to voice, text, MMS, and 3G data services. The handset that was provided with my contract (Nokia N80) fully supports all of these features. Now, I've also got a Nokia N70 which was previously locked to another mobile network, and it's now unlocked to work with any network. If I put my current SIM card in and turn it on, perhaps I should be shocked to find that I can access the same services before (after putting in the right settings).
I've used a variety of mobile phones, both SIM-locked and "vanilla" unlocked handsets, on most of the mobile networks for the last ten years and I've never had any problems such as those mentioned by Mr Hall.
Is the automobile industry really that bad where you live?
I wouldn't dream of buying a car without knowing all the ins and outs of it - fuel injection? engine type? etc etc. I can even buy a third party manual for my car (and the vast majority of other cars) detailing the full innards of the car and I could even service it myself with this information, if I had the time and willingness to properly learn. I can even replace any components - including remapping the engine chip to give the engine better torque/BHP.
I use a game console to play games too. However, if one of the consoles supports a next-gen video format such as Blu-Ray out of the box, and the others don't, then the odds that I'll buy one will be firmly stacked in its favour.
If you cast your mind back a few years, back to when DVD players were actually a costly purchase, a lot of people bought the PS2 specifically because it had DVD support. Granted, the jump between DVD and Blu-Ray isn't perhaps as significant as the jump between VHS and DVD, but it's still a definite bonus in my eyes.
Activation hasn't stopped a single person from pirating XP. All it's done is annoy people who like to build their own machines.
I think it does what it was meant to do very well. It stops casual piracy, such as me giving my Windows XP install disc to a friend and vice versa.
Now the friend has to either buy a new PC with Windows XP installed, buy a retail version of Windows XP, or pirate XP via one of the torrent sites.
In my situation, they probably would download the pirated copy, but in the vast majority of cases, people would likely submit.
The group even mentions themselves that they were only looking to cease and desist from the practise.
While this does seem to be the right step, I'd have at least expected a requirement to release the source in question - if the GPL is valid and a company has released a product contaminated with GPL code, shouldn't they have to release the source rather than simply refraining from the practise?
Well, it would be expected for the bank to take the hit if they screwed up. Unfortunately, this isn't how phishing typically works.
Phishers send emails to many recipients, telling them to go to a link which is designed to look like the bank's website. Here, they ask for certain information which is required to access the customer's account online - such as username, password, and secret answer.
At my bank, there's a few secret answers; mother's maiden name, father's first name, my first school, place of birth, mother's first name.
So, if a customer was to fall for a phishing email and provide this type of information, I'm not sure why anyone could legitimately blame the bank rather than blaming their own naivety and learning their lesson.
And it's not like this issue hasn't been publicised, now is it?
I'm not saying that I like it, just saying it's inevitable.
Look at the majority of the population; "think of the children", "terrorists", "gas prices" etc will all help to smooth the transition. Those of us that do care about freedom and rights will resist as long as we can, but we aren't going to be able to change much overall.
Only a cataclysmic event, such as a World War or a civil war might help to change attitudes and help somewhat.
They will never take my FREEDOM.
Yes they will. And they'll take mine too. And while we might be able to delay it, we won't ultimately be able to stop it.
It's not about breaking even. Most people can afford $5 a month, but to pay $600 for the cost of a new phone in one go, especially when you don't expect it, can be slightly more difficult.
And by the way, all that stuff on illegal wiretapping? The government here thought that shouldn't be publicly known, too, and the NYT published it anyway and now the government is in all kinds of hot water and other shit for what they've done. The NYT at this point looks rather damn hypocritical.
I wouldn't necessarily say so. With the illegal wiretapping case, the NYT was publishing information to show that the Government was breaching the rights of US Citizens. In this case, they're attempting to maintain the right of an accused person in the UK to have a fair trial.
There isn't really any hypocrisy about it - in both cases, the newspaper was standing up for the rights of citizens.
Consider the guy who successfully argued that the bank shouldn't have let him use so simple a password.
Did something like this actually happen and did someone win a court case against a bank? Whatever happened to personal responsiblity and taking the blame for one's own (erroneous) actions?
Oh, but you forgot the exception. If it's a GPL'd product whose copyright is being infringed, copyight infringement isn't just moral, it's encouraged and celebrated.
Well, all Iran would need to do is drop leaflets over Israel advising the citizens of the bombing campaign and telling them to move out. That way they can be sure that only hostile military forces remain.
After all, that was what Israel found to be an acceptable solution when they tried to wipe Lebanon off the map.
That is why I can run Halo, WoW, SWG, and Half-Life ALL on screen at once and not lose framerates in any of the games. I can even Flip 3D them, and they run in that view without any FPS loss. (See normally, each of these applicaitons would want 'full' access to the GPU and the GPU's RAM.)
Very nice. Does Vista also provide you with enough hands and peripherals so you can play them all at the same time?
You think the itunes interface sucks? Most people disagree. I think the WMP interface sucks - and most iTunes users agree.
I guess this is a matter of personal preference. To me, iTunes seems bloated, whereas WMP (with a nice skin) is perfect for what I need; especially the integration with the Taskbar.
Office is a fucking nightmare. You can't just start typing in Word - oh, no.
Sure you're thinking of MS Word? When I open MS Word, the splash screen appears and then the actual application window appears on screen, with the cursor at the top left of the page. If I spend 5-10 minutes at some stage configuring settings, I can even make it default to my own personal settings.
If you find this difficult, you might want to consider taking the ICDL (International Computer Driving License) course - it's specifically designed for people like yourself who have problems carrying out basic tasks with a computer.
As for seeding, it could become a compromise; maintain a good ratio and you get access to the newer stuff, sooner. The more upstream bandwidth you allow, the higher downstream you get. As one of the other posters suggested, if we want the MPAA etc to embrace new technology, then we should be able to embrace the same technology.