Having alternatives is nice, and I'm all for breaking MS's near-monopoly in this area, but the big question is about quality: do these products do the job, and do it well? Do they offer analogs to the features that many MS Office users have come to love and depend on? Do they read Office formats?
Don't forget, when charging it acts like a wired remote.
And if the designers had any sense, they'd adopt a policy like that on the XBox, where if the main controler suddenly lost connection, the game pauses and waits for you to plug back in.
Because listening to music on your phone drains the battery of a communication device which, for many people, is essential. That, and you can't boot a PC off of a cell phone.
Oh yeah, and it has a lot more memory to boot. More memory NOW, not a year down the line.
I'm certain there are a number of other good reasons, but this is all I got right now.
If any citizen even jokes about using a gun against the government, he is immediately arrested for terrorism and not given access to a lawyer.
Not exactly - they still haven't taken our freedom of speech. And yes, the founding fathers defined treason that way, but remember, they themselves were treasonous British citizens. Treason isn't always a bad thing.
The citizens of the US don't have guns to shoot school children. We have guns to shoot at the government, in case they get too tyranical. In case you'd forgotten, the framers of the Constitution had just gotten done FIGHTING A WAR against a tyranical government, one that was doing its best to prevent those it ruled over from having guns, thus making them either more complacent, or just easier to control. If I were a British officer during colonial times, I would certainly rather be fighting an enemy armed with clubs and knives than one armed with a musket.
Speaking of a tyranical government, anyone up for a tea party? I hear the weather in Boston is lovely this time of year.
Actually, most Swedes speak english as well or better than Americans, or so I have been given to believe. Looking more and more inviting by the second.
Hopefully, the "strict constructionists" that were recently appointed to the SCOTUS will see these bills and immediatly say, "Hey, that violates the 4th Amendment, we can't have that". I can't wait to hear the bitching from the Republican party when "their" judges smack this law down.
Giving the government tools is not the same as letting the government take our rights by force. I'd be perfectly willing to help foot the bill to give our intelligence agencies better equipment to help fight terrorism, but I'm not willing to give up my rights in the process. The 4th Amendment is still a part of the Constitution, the "Law of the Land". Not even the President can overstep this.
How many of our liberties must the government take in order to make us safe? Wait, no, I see how it is, this is a democracy export program. We invade other countries and give them freedom by taking it from our own citizens. Brilliant.
...it lets you retrieve or delete files from your stolen computer if it's ever connected again to the Internet.
All potential security holes aside, this presumes that the thieves didn't replace your HD after stealing it, or reformat/reinstall. What would be more useful would be a call-home email to your addy that gives you an IP address, nslookup and tracert data, as well as any other information that can be used to track it back to a physical address. Maybe a keystroke log as well, and a list of recently opened files and visited URL's?
For the more screen-intensive games, I can see your point. FPS's are out then. However, for RTS especially, I can see this being useful.
Imagine a game of Starcraft where you're playing, say, the Zerg, constantly throwing unit groups together and tossing them at your enemies defenses. It could be very useful to see which keys you've assigned to your expendable zerglings, and which keys are for your Ultralisks at a glance, without having to waste time flipping through the groups and seeing that oh, I assigned the Ultra's to group 8. Also, if it were possible to move the minimap off the screen and onto the keyboard, then you could free up more viewable area to see the battlefield.
This kind of functionality, combined with Supreme Commander's built-in support for multiple monitors, could provide powerful tools for the armchair general.
Your point about eye strain remains though... on one hand, refocusing your eyes more often can help prevent vision problems by keeping the focusing muscles strong (or so I've heard), but that's not something I'd want to deal with in the middle of a game. There's no real good solution to this I'm afraid. I'd be willing to give it a try at least.
RTS Assign a group of units to a button, and the button picture changes to, say, what the majority unit is in that group! Also, you could use the keyboard as a secondary output device, and reserve, say, the numpad for an overhead map. Hell, you could press a key on the numpad to go to that area of the map on the screen, cutting down on scroll time.
FPS
Buttons light up for various weapons as they become available, complete with updating ammo counts! Ok, not the most useful or original idea, as who is going to be looking at the keyboard during a deathmatch, but still...
RPG
Buttons blink when the special abilities they are linked to become active, complete with cooldown timers. Again, the number of available uses can show on the keys as well (reagents? mana pool/mana cost?). Your health potion button could start flashing when you *really* need one... many possibilities here.
Am I the only one who wants to make a driver hack for the Optimus so that when the computer says, "Press any key to continue" that there actually IS an Any key?
Yes, but the Wonkavator was powered by love. Love, dammit! As Americans, we are somewhat lacking in that particular natural resource, so the technology wouldn't work for us. However, if left as it is, the border security problems could one day allow enough Latinos into the US to solve this problem, raising our love-per-capita counts to the levels necessary to power such a device, hell, a whole fleet of such devices! Imagine, a Wonkavator in every garage, and a bunch of molten candy in every oven... the new American dream!
The number of cores does not directly translate to speed. Also, I can't help but think the speeds of the individual cores will not be as high as they could be.
Slashdot Mirror
Having alternatives is nice, and I'm all for breaking MS's near-monopoly in this area, but the big question is about quality: do these products do the job, and do it well? Do they offer analogs to the features that many MS Office users have come to love and depend on? Do they read Office formats?
Don't forget, when charging it acts like a wired remote.
And if the designers had any sense, they'd adopt a policy like that on the XBox, where if the main controler suddenly lost connection, the game pauses and waits for you to plug back in.
Because listening to music on your phone drains the battery of a communication device which, for many people, is essential.
That, and you can't boot a PC off of a cell phone.
Oh yeah, and it has a lot more memory to boot. More memory NOW, not a year down the line.
I'm certain there are a number of other good reasons, but this is all I got right now.
If any citizen even jokes about using a gun against the government, he is immediately arrested for terrorism and not given access to a lawyer.
Not exactly - they still haven't taken our freedom of speech. And yes, the founding fathers defined treason that way, but remember, they themselves were treasonous British citizens. Treason isn't always a bad thing.
The citizens of the US don't have guns to shoot school children. We have guns to shoot at the government, in case they get too tyranical. In case you'd forgotten, the framers of the Constitution had just gotten done FIGHTING A WAR against a tyranical government, one that was doing its best to prevent those it ruled over from having guns, thus making them either more complacent, or just easier to control. If I were a British officer during colonial times, I would certainly rather be fighting an enemy armed with clubs and knives than one armed with a musket.
Speaking of a tyranical government, anyone up for a tea party? I hear the weather in Boston is lovely this time of year.
I've wanted to do the same to some of the places I've worked in. Especially since that incident involving my stapler...
Actually, most Swedes speak english as well or better than Americans, or so I have been given to believe. Looking more and more inviting by the second.
Problem? Sounds to me like your little girl is getting plenty of exercise in addition to her video gaming. A good balance, IMHO.
...the coming clash of the civilizations.
Bah, Civilization III is clearly superior to Civilization II. It will win the clash.
Hopefully, the "strict constructionists" that were recently appointed to the SCOTUS will see these bills and immediatly say, "Hey, that violates the 4th Amendment, we can't have that". I can't wait to hear the bitching from the Republican party when "their" judges smack this law down.
Here's to hoping.
Giving the government tools is not the same as letting the government take our rights by force. I'd be perfectly willing to help foot the bill to give our intelligence agencies better equipment to help fight terrorism, but I'm not willing to give up my rights in the process. The 4th Amendment is still a part of the Constitution, the "Law of the Land". Not even the President can overstep this.
How many of our liberties must the government take in order to make us safe? Wait, no, I see how it is, this is a democracy export program. We invade other countries and give them freedom by taking it from our own citizens. Brilliant.
That's fine for now, but the problems start when the worms start turning the planet into a desert.
Nah, the anti-matter wasn't that hungry, it only had a nibble.
...it lets you retrieve or delete files from your stolen computer if it's ever connected again to the Internet.
All potential security holes aside, this presumes that the thieves didn't replace your HD after stealing it, or reformat/reinstall. What would be more useful would be a call-home email to your addy that gives you an IP address, nslookup and tracert data, as well as any other information that can be used to track it back to a physical address. Maybe a keystroke log as well, and a list of recently opened files and visited URL's?
PC: Hi, I'm a PC.
Mac: Hi, I'm a Mac. Hey, what do you have there?
PC: Oh, just some games.
Mac: Oh neat. Can I play too?
PC: No.
Having John Shea as a character in that show just killed it for me, as everytime I saw him in it I'm like, "Wait, Lex Luthor is a good guy now?".
Sir, your post deserves some +informative and +funny. Thank you for making my dreams come true.
My first read was "Intel's "Tentacle" Vision".
I'm a sick, sick man.
Well, good for Marketing. When it stops mattering to someone who matters, let me know.
...spoke about why processing power matters again.
When did it stop mattering, and why wasn't I told?
For the more screen-intensive games, I can see your point. FPS's are out then. However, for RTS especially, I can see this being useful.
Imagine a game of Starcraft where you're playing, say, the Zerg, constantly throwing unit groups together and tossing them at your enemies defenses. It could be very useful to see which keys you've assigned to your expendable zerglings, and which keys are for your Ultralisks at a glance, without having to waste time flipping through the groups and seeing that oh, I assigned the Ultra's to group 8. Also, if it were possible to move the minimap off the screen and onto the keyboard, then you could free up more viewable area to see the battlefield.
This kind of functionality, combined with Supreme Commander's built-in support for multiple monitors, could provide powerful tools for the armchair general.
Your point about eye strain remains though... on one hand, refocusing your eyes more often can help prevent vision problems by keeping the focusing muscles strong (or so I've heard), but that's not something I'd want to deal with in the middle of a game. There's no real good solution to this I'm afraid. I'd be willing to give it a try at least.
Also, consider various gaming possibilities:
RTS
Assign a group of units to a button, and the button picture changes to, say, what the majority unit is in that group! Also, you could use the keyboard as a secondary output device, and reserve, say, the numpad for an overhead map. Hell, you could press a key on the numpad to go to that area of the map on the screen, cutting down on scroll time.
FPS
Buttons light up for various weapons as they become available, complete with updating ammo counts! Ok, not the most useful or original idea, as who is going to be looking at the keyboard during a deathmatch, but still...
RPG
Buttons blink when the special abilities they are linked to become active, complete with cooldown timers. Again, the number of available uses can show on the keys as well (reagents? mana pool/mana cost?). Your health potion button could start flashing when you *really* need one... many possibilities here.
Am I the only one who wants to make a driver hack for the Optimus so that when the computer says, "Press any key to continue" that there actually IS an Any key?
Yes, but the Wonkavator was powered by love. Love, dammit! As Americans, we are somewhat lacking in that particular natural resource, so the technology wouldn't work for us. However, if left as it is, the border security problems could one day allow enough Latinos into the US to solve this problem, raising our love-per-capita counts to the levels necessary to power such a device, hell, a whole fleet of such devices! Imagine, a Wonkavator in every garage, and a bunch of molten candy in every oven... the new American dream!
The number of cores does not directly translate to speed. Also, I can't help but think the speeds of the individual cores will not be as high as they could be.