I'm moving across the country. I don't get my final pay-out (which, including my banked holidays pay, is around $5000), until Friday. Moving costs are about $3000 to ship my stuff, payable now. Pulling that directly from my bank (along with all the other costs that moving has accumulated) would dip my balance into the unpleasant area where my bank racks up the service fees.
So I put it on my card today, and on Friday my card gets paid off. No interest, and it actually saves me a whole lot of hassle and some cash too in regards to service fees etc.
Credit cards don't create bad debt, not paying off debt creates bad debt
In one case, it adds to the cost of hiring a contractor, thus raising the price of short or quick contract work (bad for contractors). On the other hand, hiring an in-house IT guy to do coding (which I'd assume isn't taxed beyond normal income taxes) may seem better, which perhaps means more permanent jobs.
Stupid taxes are still stupid, but is this one good or bad for the IT sector in general?
Plenty of plot, without the expensive actors or special effects (well, sometimes anyhow). Voice actors can still be pricey though, and bad US voice-acting is one of the reasons I generally go for subtitled shows with Japanese voice-actors rather than the horrible US ones. However, when you're not limited to live actors or scenes, then the only real limitation is time, creativity, and imagination (well, that and marketing).
Actually, my girlfriend and I have fun watching them and switching between Japanese and English. The English voices tend to sound very immature and definitely lack the depth of expression given with the Japanese ones... but it's amusing to switch between and wait until she tells me "geeze that's terrible, switch it back already":-)
I must say that I really am happy to find that you could come around like this, rather than the usual flamewar escalation I find on slashdot. As well, I would add that I found the "fapping" comment rather less than mature myself, and it certainly didn't do much to start the conversation in the right direction.
As for the MS-Surface, I've seen demos before here and overall was quite impressed with the possibilities of the technology. In fact, it's one of the few MS initiatives that I've seen that has impressed some of my more anti-MS pro-Linux friends or co-workers.
While I'd like to see tech like this become commonplace, I think we'll probably have to wait a few years before the price-point drops enough to make that feasible, but hey even digital projects, DVD-RW drives, and many others use to be prohibitively expensive, so if it catches on then it could come around quite quickly.
Anyhow, thats for turning what was an ugly situation back into a mature discussion. We need more of such attitude on/.
So now you're telling me that I don't know what my own preferences are? The fact is that you decided to ignore what I was looking for - because for some reason you decided it wasn't as important as what you thought I should be looking for. Get a life.
For the record, I have several mini-itx machines. Many lack for power (particularly the VIA ones) although you can get decent power in shuttle which is fairly luggable. Those are great for if you need to drag a small machine from place to place, provided that the keyboard, mouse, LCD, etc are all available. Certainly it's not convenient to lug all of those with you.
That is not what I was talking about. What I was indicating is that a laptop-style machine - aka LCD, touchpad, and keyboard (preferably full-size) inclusive, would be preferable. At the moment I've got an old HP zd7000. It's got a 2.8Ghz P4 and an NVidia 5600 mobile graphics chip. It's also rather big and heavy compared to more mobile latops, but it does satisfy the needs of mobility - while (although less so nowadays) providing the CPU and GPU power for games, graphics editing, etc - hmuch more than dragging around a desktop and all the accessories.
I don't need a machine to use on the subway or a plane, I need one that I can plug in to a power outlet where one is convenient, and still have the capabilities of my desktop. Having the battery in such a unit significantly adds to the space consumption (that could be better put to use), and the weight is noticeably differently between having the battery in and out. At the same time, the nature of a laptop suggests it might be easier to accidentally yoink the plug, so one that doesn't come out easily would be best (aka something that clips in, with the clip being easy to release by hand but not by accident). As per your initial comment: "Some people feel that the Magsafe disconnects too easily"
I don't want something that disconnects easily at all. To repeat, I want something that clips into place, and can be easily unclipped but not accidentally so. Responding to my post with what is essentially "get an apple product" completely ignores the main issue of the leaving out the battery (which you've chosen to now state is stupid) and the high likelyhood that I am not a Mac user. If I were a mac user, I guess I'd already be happy with said power plug, but I'm not about to switch my architecture and my whole fricking OS to satisfy the need for a specific plug (which again, does not meet my needs).
So yes, it's likely fanboism. Why? Because it completely ignored what I was looking for, in favour of a product that didn't meet my stated needs while at the same time likely adding an additional layer of incompatibility what I use my machine for. I personally don't have an issue with macs, just with those that seem to think they'll solve everyone's issues irrelevant of their needs and requirements. By the same token I am equally annoyed by users that advocate other foolishness like switching to Linux when one is a PC gamer (I actually use Linux in most cases, but do recognize that it - also - does not meet everyone's needs)
Actually, I think that the new upcoming ghostbusters game might do quite well for the Wii. My buddy was over recently and showed off a bunch of videos he had on his laptop of the game. Another friend's comment was, "it will be kinda lame if it's a console game." The first friend mentioned that it would likely be out for Wii, at which point they both pretty much agreed that the Wiimote would be a real winner with this game.
Yup, so if you have a common place that you plug in, just have a small UPS on-site. It still saves you the internal space of a built-in-battery (and mine is probably 1/4 to 1/3 of the lower chassis), which you can use for other things, or just less weight overall.
Some people do need batteries for sure, especially those that do stuff on the plane, train, etc (for typing I have a PDA/w keyboard that works fine though), but a lot of us would find more economical use of space in portable desktops as opposed to battery-powered laptops.
The point was to remove the battery, thus no internal power backup, thus pulling the plug would mean that it's lights-out. In other words, I don't want something that pulls out more easily, I want it to be more difficult, and for safely add some traction-pads on the bottom.
So despite the "fapping" comment made by the subsequent poster, I definitely do not want something that's easier to disconnect, so really that response was pretty much mac fanboism by somebody who hadn't really read my post anyways.
Most people I know (myself included) tend to use laptops as more of a "portable desktop." Perhaps if we dump the batteries we could add more cooling and - in general - get more use out of them for that purpose?
At the same time, I've seen various different models of power bricks, but I much prefer the ones that attach to the laptop snugly rather than the standard rounded barrel-connector. Perhaps something that clicks into place but isn't a pain to remove (because without batteries, it would suck to accidentally knock out that easily-disconnected power jack).
I've been saying for years that they should do another movie. Provided that they keep with the spirit (pun not intended) of the first two, modern special effects combined with a good script could make for a great movie.
Given hollywood's abysmal track record in late-sequals though, I think perhaps it would be better off without any, regardless of whether it is a movie or game.
Ignoring the lack of point to the parent story, I have to wonder how many people would embrace and how many would be fearfully wary of direct-to-brain communication. Seriously, once we reach the point where it is possible to have bi-directional communication with the human brain, society is probably going to have some major problems?
Think that the situation with computer viruses is bad now, think that lack of a voting trail is scary... how about what happens when somebody managed to "hack" the brain of a political leader. How about your own brain?
And how about military and warfare technology. Pre-program your soldiers, while in the meantime the enemy is simply encoding civilians to become suicide bombers.
How about the Starwars kid. The next one won't be caught on video-tape, he'll just have his most private thoughts downloaded from his brain while sleeping, and then uploaded to the internet by malicious pranksters.
While I think that it would be cool to experience truly immersive VR in the way that only a direct-brain connection can achieve, I'm way too afraid of what the consequences could be in giving outsiders the keys to my mind.
How feasible would a game to the scale of WOW be if the servers had to meticulously track every little detail of every player? CPU power is high, but I'd imagine that part of the reason the client handles some things is that it would just be too much load for the server(s) to handle all these details for every client. Perhaps random checks against expected/actual values would work best?
While we're at it, do you think we can try it on spammers too?
Depends on where you work
on
Lap Desks
·
· Score: 1
For myself, I like to lean back on the couch a bit, with a hot drink on the coffee table, and my faithful laptop chugging away. I couldn't really do that with a desktop.
To prevent crotch-burn, a large wooden cutting-board serves as a buffer between my overly-hot 2.8Ghz P4 laptop (earlier generation, so hotter) and my important bodily parts.
Wasn't there a disease that made a cat not only unafraid of cats, but attracted to their smell? I can't remember the name, but it infects the cat too, which incubates and spawns more of the disease in the stool etc, which then infects more rodents. It's also supposed to be one of the reasons that pregnant women should stay away from cats (or at least litter boxes) as it may have links to various child developmental issues.
I replaced mine and it worked for awhile, but then died again (not sure why). You can give it a shot, since caps are cheap. Basically you need to find caps with the same rating, clip the existing ones so there's some stalk above the board, and then solder a new cap onto the remnants of the old stalk.
Sadly, it seems that VIA uses (or at least used to use, not sure about current) inferior caps, as I had an M10000 and an M10000-2 (or whatever the one with the PCMCIA slot is) fry over the summer. If you're replacing it, I'd look into the Jetway boards with VIA CPU's (but watch for the TV-Out/Firewire, not all of those have 'em onboard if you need them). I used to use the VIA boards as low-power webservers, now I'm running Jetway boards with 1.5GHZ C7 CPUs and Dual 1GB LANs. They're a bit flakey until you update the firmware, but after that they run wonderfully.
Take this with a grain of salt, as I last actually played with 3d graphics on a VIA board sometime ago. Years back, the drivers were a royal PAIN in the butt to get working, but nowadays there's acceleration built into the kernel if I remember correctly. In either case, the 3d acceleration is decent enough to play neverball, and I've never had any issues playing DVD's, DivX movies, and using TV out etc on my 1GHZ Epia M10000 (that is, until it blew a capacitor).
As to Warcraft III, I couldn't comment. Back when it first came it, I had little luck getting it to work in Cedega and Wine didn't do the copy-protection thing very well. This may be due to lack of nice support between Cedega and the VIA chipsets, though, rather than a lack of power in the chip itself.
Don't expect it to play any newer games, but the simple 3d stuff works just fine.
So what does the data from the virus look like? If somebody can post it I can probably whip up some happy little javascripts and perl scripts to send them all kinds of fun data.
We have been pained enough by MS-Office suddenly demanding you to pop in the origial CD/DVD-ROM to get a particular module
You want to see something really funny? Try installing a copy of Office 97. Now try to uninstall without the disc in the drive. It will require the disc. No I'm not kidding, it needs the original disc to remove the software from your PC.
Nah. I hadn't really played since Red Alert, and back in those days it was LAN games (sometimes there were issues, but not *that* often). I think I played Tiberium Dawn in the single-player for awhile too, but no multiplayer.
If I had known what dogmeat C&C3 would be, I wouldn't have bought it (or I would have waiting a year or two until network is fixed up and it's on the bargain-bin shelf where it belongs).
The sad part is that the gameplay would be great if not for the bugginess in multiplayer... well that and the fact that most people who play online seem to prefer the most craptastically small maps possible so the can rush.
The problem I have with that is that the constant charge-discharge cycle is supposed to wear the Li+ batteries out faster. I wouldn't mind a PDAphone- except for the added bulk. For the mp3 player though, I'd definitely want that as a separate article.
At the moment I've got an Insignia NS-DV4G. It's pretty small, convenient, and it works in both windows/Linux (amarok in 'nix for the MTP song+playlist stuff)
If google pumped out the features, and they fit nicely into a plan, I'd be all for a gphone. Why?
My current cell has a decent screen. It's not great for high-res graphics, but it could probably do well enough for a small map that one could scroll and zoom around. So tie this with some of the google maps offerings, and allow customers to pull up maps on their phone with the directions or even common routes. This would be *really* convenient for me. How about a feature that pulls up the area info based on what cell tower you're connected too, even better (except for those that worry about cell tracking, but the ability is there regardless).
There are a lot of things I don't want in my phone. I like my battery life, and keep my mp3 player, PDA, etc separate. For navigation though, I'd much rather have a mapping system and search engine at my fingertips. It won't really be a drain on batteries, and google can surely make money off the ads. Want to grab some shoes or pizza. Check your phone based on the entered or triangulated (from the towers) location, get a listing of local resources (paying customers first, so that's money to google), and a map.
Sounds like this could be a good sell for google, so long as they don't actually pop up banners etc to steal the real-estate on my phone, but google isn't really known for obtrusive advertising anyhow.
How about their customers quitting because of the poor games quality. When I got C&C3, I was very impressed. It ran great and rather bug-free (there was one mission that would lock up on completion, even after patching, but a reinstall fixed that so it could have been corrupt data on my network install).
Lately, however, I have been trying out online play. Bugs everywhere. If an opponent lags out, you can kick them, but then the whole game is frozen without resuming. It's so bad that while you can chat with other players still, you can't move units, and even the quit buttons etc cease to function (CTRL+ALT+DEL is needed). Numerous other netplay bugs have abounded, and overall the experience is tainted by nasty lag and general flakiness. Many people on there are extremely ticked with EA, and have stated that unless fixes are found soon they're not going to be buying any future products.
Some games are wonderful for backup of saves. There's an easy-to-find subfolder called "SaveGames" or "SaveData" or whatever. Others have it buried in a directory structure five levels deep past the game root, in an obscurely named folder and file like "C:\Program Files\Electronic Farts\Control and Overcome\gd\sd\sg0001\sg.dat", while others save in "My Documents\Leisure Suit Harry - Spoon Tang\Savedata\Save001.dat." The first is obviously really confusing and annoying. The second isn't too bad, except that in cases where I have the game installed on a particular drive (such as a USB portable) it gets irritating when the save data doesn't accompany it. So far, the best is something like "C:\Program Files\IceStorm\Planet of BattleCrap\SaveGames\Save001.dat"
All the data goes with me when I install to USB (so if I use the exact same path on two PC's, I can flip between the laptop and desktop without changes, etc).
I can't remember the exact name of the condition, but there is one that causes an extreme reaction to sun, as well as other symptoms such as receding gums (making teeth appear longer etc). Those who "die" are actually sometimes just torporous, and have recover to some extent for awhile. This explains many vampire myths. I've head supposition that the lack of certain key blood cells also may have led those suffering from this syndrome may also find a taste for blood to replace their own lack, but this may be just hearsay.
There are also people who suffer from extreme hair-growth, leading them to appear animalistic and wolflike. These may be the source of werewolf legends. I thought this was clinical Lycanthropy, but that appears to be more of a delusion of being able to shape-shift, so again I'm not sure of the actual name of this condition.
Given the above and many others, it could be possible that zombies were early day sufferers of some disease. Perhaps some form of leprosy... as it would attack the nerves early on, deadening the victims to pain, while the putrification of flesh would make them appear to be the walking dead?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm moving across the country. I don't get my final pay-out (which, including my banked holidays pay, is around $5000), until Friday. Moving costs are about $3000 to ship my stuff, payable now. Pulling that directly from my bank (along with all the other costs that moving has accumulated) would dip my balance into the unpleasant area where my bank racks up the service fees.
So I put it on my card today, and on Friday my card gets paid off. No interest, and it actually saves me a whole lot of hassle and some cash too in regards to service fees etc.
Credit cards don't create bad debt, not paying off debt creates bad debt
In one case, it adds to the cost of hiring a contractor, thus raising the price of short or quick contract work (bad for contractors). On the other hand, hiring an in-house IT guy to do coding (which I'd assume isn't taxed beyond normal income taxes) may seem better, which perhaps means more permanent jobs.
Stupid taxes are still stupid, but is this one good or bad for the IT sector in general?
Plenty of plot, without the expensive actors or special effects (well, sometimes anyhow). Voice actors can still be pricey though, and bad US voice-acting is one of the reasons I generally go for subtitled shows with Japanese voice-actors rather than the horrible US ones. However, when you're not limited to live actors or scenes, then the only real limitation is time, creativity, and imagination (well, that and marketing).
:-)
Actually, my girlfriend and I have fun watching them and switching between Japanese and English. The English voices tend to sound very immature and definitely lack the depth of expression given with the Japanese ones... but it's amusing to switch between and wait until she tells me "geeze that's terrible, switch it back already"
I must say that I really am happy to find that you could come around like this, rather than the usual flamewar escalation I find on slashdot. As well, I would add that I found the "fapping" comment rather less than mature myself, and it certainly didn't do much to start the conversation in the right direction.
/.
As for the MS-Surface, I've seen demos before here and overall was quite impressed with the possibilities of the technology. In fact, it's one of the few MS initiatives that I've seen that has impressed some of my more anti-MS pro-Linux friends or co-workers.
While I'd like to see tech like this become commonplace, I think we'll probably have to wait a few years before the price-point drops enough to make that feasible, but hey even digital projects, DVD-RW drives, and many others use to be prohibitively expensive, so if it catches on then it could come around quite quickly.
Anyhow, thats for turning what was an ugly situation back into a mature discussion. We need more of such attitude on
So now you're telling me that I don't know what my own preferences are? The fact is that you decided to ignore what I was looking for - because for some reason you decided it wasn't as important as what you thought I should be looking for. Get a life.
For the record, I have several mini-itx machines. Many lack for power (particularly the VIA ones) although you can get decent power in shuttle which is fairly luggable. Those are great for if you need to drag a small machine from place to place, provided that the keyboard, mouse, LCD, etc are all available. Certainly it's not convenient to lug all of those with you.
That is not what I was talking about. What I was indicating is that a laptop-style machine - aka LCD, touchpad, and keyboard (preferably full-size) inclusive, would be preferable. At the moment I've got an old HP zd7000. It's got a 2.8Ghz P4 and an NVidia 5600 mobile graphics chip. It's also rather big and heavy compared to more mobile latops, but it does satisfy the needs of mobility - while (although less so nowadays) providing the CPU and GPU power for games, graphics editing, etc - hmuch more than dragging around a desktop and all the accessories.
I don't need a machine to use on the subway or a plane, I need one that I can plug in to a power outlet where one is convenient, and still have the capabilities of my desktop. Having the battery in such a unit significantly adds to the space consumption (that could be better put to use), and the weight is noticeably differently between having the battery in and out. At the same time, the nature of a laptop suggests it might be easier to accidentally yoink the plug, so one that doesn't come out easily would be best (aka something that clips in, with the clip being easy to release by hand but not by accident). As per your initial comment: "Some people feel that the Magsafe disconnects too easily"
I don't want something that disconnects easily at all. To repeat, I want something that clips into place, and can be easily unclipped but not accidentally so. Responding to my post with what is essentially "get an apple product" completely ignores the main issue of the leaving out the battery (which you've chosen to now state is stupid) and the high likelyhood that I am not a Mac user. If I were a mac user, I guess I'd already be happy with said power plug, but I'm not about to switch my architecture and my whole fricking OS to satisfy the need for a specific plug (which again, does not meet my needs).
So yes, it's likely fanboism. Why? Because it completely ignored what I was looking for, in favour of a product that didn't meet my stated needs while at the same time likely adding an additional layer of incompatibility what I use my machine for. I personally don't have an issue with macs, just with those that seem to think they'll solve everyone's issues irrelevant of their needs and requirements. By the same token I am equally annoyed by users that advocate other foolishness like switching to Linux when one is a PC gamer (I actually use Linux in most cases, but do recognize that it - also - does not meet everyone's needs)
Actually, I think that the new upcoming ghostbusters game might do quite well for the Wii. My buddy was over recently and showed off a bunch of videos he had on his laptop of the game. Another friend's comment was, "it will be kinda lame if it's a console game." The first friend mentioned that it would likely be out for Wii, at which point they both pretty much agreed that the Wiimote would be a real winner with this game.
Yup, so if you have a common place that you plug in, just have a small UPS on-site. It still saves you the internal space of a built-in-battery (and mine is probably 1/4 to 1/3 of the lower chassis), which you can use for other things, or just less weight overall.
/w keyboard that works fine though), but a lot of us would find more economical use of space in portable desktops as opposed to battery-powered laptops.
Some people do need batteries for sure, especially those that do stuff on the plane, train, etc (for typing I have a PDA
The point was to remove the battery, thus no internal power backup, thus pulling the plug would mean that it's lights-out. In other words, I don't want something that pulls out more easily, I want it to be more difficult, and for safely add some traction-pads on the bottom.
So despite the "fapping" comment made by the subsequent poster, I definitely do not want something that's easier to disconnect, so really that response was pretty much mac fanboism by somebody who hadn't really read my post anyways.
Most people I know (myself included) tend to use laptops as more of a "portable desktop." Perhaps if we dump the batteries we could add more cooling and - in general - get more use out of them for that purpose?
At the same time, I've seen various different models of power bricks, but I much prefer the ones that attach to the laptop snugly rather than the standard rounded barrel-connector. Perhaps something that clicks into place but isn't a pain to remove (because without batteries, it would suck to accidentally knock out that easily-disconnected power jack).
I've been saying for years that they should do another movie. Provided that they keep with the spirit (pun not intended) of the first two, modern special effects combined with a good script could make for a great movie.
Given hollywood's abysmal track record in late-sequals though, I think perhaps it would be better off without any, regardless of whether it is a movie or game.
Ignoring the lack of point to the parent story, I have to wonder how many people would embrace and how many would be fearfully wary of direct-to-brain communication. Seriously, once we reach the point where it is possible to have bi-directional communication with the human brain, society is probably going to have some major problems?
Think that the situation with computer viruses is bad now, think that lack of a voting trail is scary... how about what happens when somebody managed to "hack" the brain of a political leader. How about your own brain?
And how about military and warfare technology. Pre-program your soldiers, while in the meantime the enemy is simply encoding civilians to become suicide bombers.
How about the Starwars kid. The next one won't be caught on video-tape, he'll just have his most private thoughts downloaded from his brain while sleeping, and then uploaded to the internet by malicious pranksters.
While I think that it would be cool to experience truly immersive VR in the way that only a direct-brain connection can achieve, I'm way too afraid of what the consequences could be in giving outsiders the keys to my mind.
How feasible would a game to the scale of WOW be if the servers had to meticulously track every little detail of every player? CPU power is high, but I'd imagine that part of the reason the client handles some things is that it would just be too much load for the server(s) to handle all these details for every client. Perhaps random checks against expected/actual values would work best?
While we're at it, do you think we can try it on spammers too?
For myself, I like to lean back on the couch a bit, with a hot drink on the coffee table, and my faithful laptop chugging away. I couldn't really do that with a desktop.
To prevent crotch-burn, a large wooden cutting-board serves as a buffer between my overly-hot 2.8Ghz P4 laptop (earlier generation, so hotter) and my important bodily parts.
Wasn't there a disease that made a cat not only unafraid of cats, but attracted to their smell? I can't remember the name, but it infects the cat too, which incubates and spawns more of the disease in the stool etc, which then infects more rodents. It's also supposed to be one of the reasons that pregnant women should stay away from cats (or at least litter boxes) as it may have links to various child developmental issues.
Short answer is... kinda.
I replaced mine and it worked for awhile, but then died again (not sure why). You can give it a shot, since caps are cheap. Basically you need to find caps with the same rating, clip the existing ones so there's some stalk above the board, and then solder a new cap onto the remnants of the old stalk.
Sadly, it seems that VIA uses (or at least used to use, not sure about current) inferior caps, as I had an M10000 and an M10000-2 (or whatever the one with the PCMCIA slot is) fry over the summer. If you're replacing it, I'd look into the Jetway boards with VIA CPU's (but watch for the TV-Out/Firewire, not all of those have 'em onboard if you need them). I used to use the VIA boards as low-power webservers, now I'm running Jetway boards with 1.5GHZ C7 CPUs and Dual 1GB LANs. They're a bit flakey until you update the firmware, but after that they run wonderfully.
Take this with a grain of salt, as I last actually played with 3d graphics on a VIA board sometime ago. Years back, the drivers were a royal PAIN in the butt to get working, but nowadays there's acceleration built into the kernel if I remember correctly. In either case, the 3d acceleration is decent enough to play neverball, and I've never had any issues playing DVD's, DivX movies, and using TV out etc on my 1GHZ Epia M10000 (that is, until it blew a capacitor).
As to Warcraft III, I couldn't comment. Back when it first came it, I had little luck getting it to work in Cedega and Wine didn't do the copy-protection thing very well. This may be due to lack of nice support between Cedega and the VIA chipsets, though, rather than a lack of power in the chip itself.
Don't expect it to play any newer games, but the simple 3d stuff works just fine.
So what does the data from the virus look like? If somebody can post it I can probably whip up some happy little javascripts and perl scripts to send them all kinds of fun data.
We have been pained enough by MS-Office suddenly demanding you to pop in the origial CD/DVD-ROM to get a particular module
You want to see something really funny? Try installing a copy of Office 97. Now try to uninstall without the disc in the drive. It will require the disc. No I'm not kidding, it needs the original disc to remove the software from your PC.
How pointless and frustrating is that?
Nah. I hadn't really played since Red Alert, and back in those days it was LAN games (sometimes there were issues, but not *that* often). I think I played Tiberium Dawn in the single-player for awhile too, but no multiplayer.
If I had known what dogmeat C&C3 would be, I wouldn't have bought it (or I would have waiting a year or two until network is fixed up and it's on the bargain-bin shelf where it belongs).
The sad part is that the gameplay would be great if not for the bugginess in multiplayer... well that and the fact that most people who play online seem to prefer the most craptastically small maps possible so the can rush.
The problem I have with that is that the constant charge-discharge cycle is supposed to wear the Li+ batteries out faster. I wouldn't mind a PDAphone- except for the added bulk. For the mp3 player though, I'd definitely want that as a separate article.
At the moment I've got an Insignia NS-DV4G. It's pretty small, convenient, and it works in both windows/Linux (amarok in 'nix for the MTP song+playlist stuff)
If google pumped out the features, and they fit nicely into a plan, I'd be all for a gphone. Why?
My current cell has a decent screen. It's not great for high-res graphics, but it could probably do well enough for a small map that one could scroll and zoom around. So tie this with some of the google maps offerings, and allow customers to pull up maps on their phone with the directions or even common routes. This would be *really* convenient for me. How about a feature that pulls up the area info based on what cell tower you're connected too, even better (except for those that worry about cell tracking, but the ability is there regardless).
There are a lot of things I don't want in my phone. I like my battery life, and keep my mp3 player, PDA, etc separate. For navigation though, I'd much rather have a mapping system and search engine at my fingertips. It won't really be a drain on batteries, and google can surely make money off the ads. Want to grab some shoes or pizza. Check your phone based on the entered or triangulated (from the towers) location, get a listing of local resources (paying customers first, so that's money to google), and a map.
Sounds like this could be a good sell for google, so long as they don't actually pop up banners etc to steal the real-estate on my phone, but google isn't really known for obtrusive advertising anyhow.
How about their customers quitting because of the poor games quality. When I got C&C3, I was very impressed. It ran great and rather bug-free (there was one mission that would lock up on completion, even after patching, but a reinstall fixed that so it could have been corrupt data on my network install).
Lately, however, I have been trying out online play. Bugs everywhere. If an opponent lags out, you can kick them, but then the whole game is frozen without resuming. It's so bad that while you can chat with other players still, you can't move units, and even the quit buttons etc cease to function (CTRL+ALT+DEL is needed). Numerous other netplay bugs have abounded, and overall the experience is tainted by nasty lag and general flakiness. Many people on there are extremely ticked with EA, and have stated that unless fixes are found soon they're not going to be buying any future products.
Some games are wonderful for backup of saves. There's an easy-to-find subfolder called "SaveGames" or "SaveData" or whatever. Others have it buried in a directory structure five levels deep past the game root, in an obscurely named folder and file like "C:\Program Files\Electronic Farts\Control and Overcome\gd\sd\sg0001\sg.dat", while others save in "My Documents\Leisure Suit Harry - Spoon Tang\Savedata\Save001.dat." The first is obviously really confusing and annoying. The second isn't too bad, except that in cases where I have the game installed on a particular drive (such as a USB portable) it gets irritating when the save data doesn't accompany it. So far, the best is something like "C:\Program Files\IceStorm\Planet of BattleCrap\SaveGames\Save001.dat"
All the data goes with me when I install to USB (so if I use the exact same path on two PC's, I can flip between the laptop and desktop without changes, etc).
I can't remember the exact name of the condition, but there is one that causes an extreme reaction to sun, as well as other symptoms such as receding gums (making teeth appear longer etc). Those who "die" are actually sometimes just torporous, and have recover to some extent for awhile. This explains many vampire myths. I've head supposition that the lack of certain key blood cells also may have led those suffering from this syndrome may also find a taste for blood to replace their own lack, but this may be just hearsay.
There are also people who suffer from extreme hair-growth, leading them to appear animalistic and wolflike. These may be the source of werewolf legends. I thought this was clinical Lycanthropy, but that appears to be more of a delusion of being able to shape-shift, so again I'm not sure of the actual name of this condition.
Given the above and many others, it could be possible that zombies were early day sufferers of some disease. Perhaps some form of leprosy... as it would attack the nerves early on, deadening the victims to pain, while the putrification of flesh would make them appear to be the walking dead?