suppose it's possible that Apple and Cingular would try to control installation, but it doesn't seem realistic. First, it would discourage 3rd party development.
It's impossible for me to resist a belly laugh at this comment. The entire business model of modern cell phone providers is based around aftermarket sales of media and, to a lesser degree, software.
I've been a "cell phone geek" for years now, and I can assure you that it is very likely that Cingular will insist the phone be locked down to all third party software. There is a hope, however, that Apple will insist the opposite. Since it's Apple's device, they are the only ones who can actually develop these locks. And since they are so high profile now, Cingular will hopefully not be stupid enough to refuse the phone simply because someone can use their own ringtones or software.
So there is hope, but it is certainly not the usual way of the US cellular "market" (a.k.a. complete and utter joke).
If you've watched gamehead you know it's a long infomercial for the PS3. Why would this be any different? The next "episode" will gather a group of people who are anti-change and sic them on the Wii... oh boy.
The 360 has FFXI. Also that little Square spin-off dev house Mistwalker has dropped two games, coming soon or maybe they are out already? One is Blue Dragon, and the other is Lost Odyssey.
I don't know how the financials are working these days, if it's really an independent dev house or if it's just a different name to attempt a different marketing strategy. But, the talent is directly exported from past Square projects.
Claiming the inclusion of software like IE or WMP is an antitrust violation is about as logical as claiming the inclusion of back seats and carpet in a car is an antitrust violation. Every modern OS comes with browsers and media players now. And think about this for a moment: If your OS didn't include a browser, how would you get your first browser? What if you didn't have it on a CD or another computer?
The savvy could get it by ftp I suppose, that's how I used to do it back in the day prior to the inclusions. But, for the rest of us? It makes no sense to call this anti-trust for those reasons.
However, I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons:)
It's amazing! An application installed to your phone can do things!
Why is this even posted like it's some kind of new concept?
If you install an application to your desktop machine, it can do all of those things. Why do you think the phone is any different? If you don't like the idea of malicious software then don't use a smartphone of any variety.
In fact, this should be good news. A person has to go to the extra length of signing their application before it has this access. Of course, on my smartphone an application cannot be installed without my confirmation, regardless of signatures. Is this not the case with the blackberry? If so, shame on you RIM.
Now when we finally get a sustainable fusion reaction that produces more energy that it uses, that would be something to write about!
Isn't this a violation of thermodynamics or is this a miss-statement?
AFAIK nothing can produce more energy than it uses.
I believe what you might have meant was that we seek a way to produce recurring fusion reaction that produces more energy than is required to fuel the reactor. However, we will never find an energy source that produces more energy than it consumes, unless the basis for most all physics is completely flawed:) The desireable fusion reactor will consume more energy than it produces because it will be consuming the fuel which is matter which is energy.
To illustrate for others: reactors require power to begin and perpetuate the reactor (i.e. power coolant pumps and etc.) for regular nuclear (fission) reactors. This at first glance seems silly because the whole point is to generate electricity or power from the reactor. However, the combination of an incoming power source with the nuclear reaction results in a net gain of power. I'm not sure about modern reactors as I haven't researched it recently but I believe they can sustain themselves once the process begins and relies on grid power in case of self power failures?
Just to remind you, combustion engines work in exactly the same manner. They require an outside power source to begin then usually perpetuate themselves via an alternator + battery source as they require an ignitor for the combustion to occur. Due to combining the original power input with the resulting explosion of fuel, you get a net gain. Of course, as soon as you factor in the massive loss of energy from the incredibly inefficient use of power and fuels you actually have a net loss. This is always the case with any machine. If it were not the case, it would be perpetual motion or better and that isn't possible according to contemporary physics.
Anyhow, the problem with a fusion reactor is that the energy required to cause the reaction is greater than the energy released from the reaction because it does not perpetuate itself like fission. So your 100 gigawatts of input results in 10 gigawatts output or whatever the real numbers are and obviously that's not useful regardless of how scientifically cool it is:)
Of course, IANAP, I just pulled all of that out of my ass. Does that make me a true slashdotter?
I've personally never had so much fun with video games outside of this game. I used to play it every day at lunch with my programmer friends at my old employer. 1-2 hours every day. Even the boss played. Talk about fun.
It's a lot more fun, admittedly, when you have opponents that can actually play though. I tried to repeat the enjoyment with random people after I got a better job and it just wasn't the same because they stood literally zero chance against me... too much practice I guess:)
It's still the most fun in a video game I've ever had.
The iPod is the only device available which can be connected to my car stereo and allow for control from the head unit.
What more reason would I need than that? No other devices exist that can compete here. Zero. Zilch. Connecting via a stereo mini-jack and controlling the device itself is sub-par for what I desire. I have that capability, I used my old device that way, I hated it.
And as if that wasn't simply reason enough: iTunes iPod interconnectivity is so smooth and useable compared to anything and everything offered by every other player that I can't even dream of going back to third party software or, *shiver* WiMP.
So, when people wonder why iPod is so successful, don't leave out these two extremely important concepts. Despite my being a bit of a computer geek (*cough* engineer *cough*) the average person is going to find these same two reasons highly elevated once they actually get into USING their devices.
I have to be honest, there are many things I dislike about the iPod otherwise that simply don't knock these two positive reasons down at all. Some examples:
- Click wheel: Who thought this was a good idea? Nothing about this is ergonomic. I miss the items I'm trying to choose constantly and the thing randomly decides to change sensitivity on me. Not to mention the fact that half the time I go to push one of the buttons the wheel detects my finger and reacts as if I was sliding along to change the volume or something.
- No queueing on the iPod: What insanity is this? Every other device I've owned allowed me to, while shuffling the entire collection, choose the song that would play next. Apple's iTunes has the party shuffle. Why doesn't the iPod have party shuffle? That would satisfy me.
- USB interface that confuses Windows: Poor Windows can barely keep up with all of the USB devices I have. I plug them into a different port and the poor machine has a panic attack. So, why did Apple think it was necessary to slip a mickie to the USB subsystem for the iPod on Windows? In Linux it's just a regular mass storage device but on Windows if you do so much as plug the device in before the proper drivers are installed then good luck getting that to work. Of course, if you followed the instructions nothing bad will happen. Go figure.
So, despite these things that irk me about the iPod, I still prefer it for the original reasons. I've owned two iRiver (one without WiMP support, one with it) and a Zen. I feel I have a wide enough breadth of experience to avoid the common missteps of forming opinions on these devices.
Now of course, if you truly don't care about managing your music as conveniently as possible and you have absolutely no use ever for remote control of the device in the manner of the bottom port of the iPod then more power to you. Pick the device that does what you need. To be honest, I'm kind of sad that the iPod is the only viable choice for the first reason I gave. Proprietary sucks.
Maybe try thinking of paper as the Linux of communication tools - universal, almost free (as in beer) and accessible to anyone, anywhere without the use of proprietary tools.
Careful now, be sure to release this derivative description under the GPL lest ye be hunted down by RMS ninjas. Consider yerself warned! Arrr!
The only reason an open source project might do that is if they wanted better MS Windows support because historically QT hasn't been as available on windows as gtk. With qt4 I think this is going to change however.
Actually historically speaking Qt has been better supported on Windows than GTK and still is. There are actually two hinderances here: 1) In the past there has been no GPL license for the windows version of Qt (or Mac) but that has changed. Mac has a GPL version and Windows either has one or is getting it in the next major release. But, the more important limitation (anyone could've built binaries with a paid license to Qt...) is that KDE apps require KDE libs which are built on top of Qt and make many assumptions about the underlying OS being a unix-like OS. Sure you could use cygwin to get around this I imagine, and there ARE some prior examples of KDE running on Windows but it always worked terribly.
However, with the licensing question gone for Windows, it is much more likely that KOffice and the required KDE libraries to compile and run it could get a Windows port.
I wish this would happen. I would much rather use KOffice than blOatpenOffice.org.
Don't be surprised at all. Kopete has a rather bumpy past and continually exists as one of the buggiest, worst-designed instant messaging program I've ever encountered (and I'm a big IM geek).
The fact that they waste their time adding useless skin support instead of fixing the thousands of bugs that must exist in the codebase is enough evidence that the developers have no idea what they should be prioritizing.
The real solution here is to forget kopete, and stick with gaim despite how ugly and non-kde it is (yes, I know it's gtk+). Do so until someone who actually knows how to manage and develop an application comes to the table for kopete. Although it won't happen as their seems to be a pathological habit of whoever becomes the lead on that project to reject any and all input from sane people who actually use their application. That includes rejecting patches regardless of how they are submitted, despite providing perfect solutions to the bugs they won't address themselves!
At least, that's been my experience with them, YMMV.
I wish this was true. In all the videos advertising the system the actors are doing just that: Acting. The actual gameplay is far less involving. While it is infinitely more spatially involving than a regular buttons and sticks controller, you still don't move much while playing most games. The practical issue here is how tired one would get if it required constant movement.
Most of my fat gamer friends can't make it through 5 songs on DDR, I don't imagine they'd FPS all night long if it required anywhere near the same amount of effort and thus, would not be happy to play these games.
Also you have to consider the opportunity for injury and how paranoid Nintendo already is about such things with their warnings on the Nintendo DS being obligatory every time you start up the system. This has even made its way into some of the GBA games! (Ex. Final Fantasy IV)
So while the myth may have the effect you describe, the reality won't. You will be flicking your hands about and that's as far as it will go for most games. Golf or baseball style games, or perhaps games like WarioWare will probably see the greatest motions but in a low impact sort of way.
You seem to have missed about half the point here. You are correct about the costs being insignificant to the XBOX project for Microsoft. Well, not entirely insignificant, but certainly nowhere near untenable.
However, the real point of this article is about the patent trolls. If you look at it as a case as MS having to decide if paying for trials or paying the desired settlement (which is bound to be less than what is asked in the trial itself) then you'll see that MS may be better off just paying these guys without a trial. This is a serious problem with the legal system.
You see, if Microsoft decided to take this to court, and they won, then a precedent would be set for similar cases in the future. This precedent would serve the smaller companies that can't really afford to pay out settlements. But instead, MS will probably just settle and give into this extortion and future cases just like this will continue to come about with no new ammunition against them.
It's unfortunate but, our legal system relies heavily on precedents and if none are set, well, no progress is ever made.
The phone has a horrible keyboard and is huge. Really, it's huge. It's as big as a razr unfolded, and those phones are much larger than people realize. However, it still does what you want.
Most people, quite possibly yourself included, don't realize how big it is until comparisons are made, so perhaps you could just avoid that. It comes with an adapter to use your own headphones, and if you look around on eBay you can find one unlocked for your carrier (assuming it's a GSM carrier).
Apple, however, designs the casing and engineers the requirements to be met at Sony's manufacturing plant for the cells themselves. Apple is still responsible if they order to the wrong specifications.
Although more likely it was a bad batch of cells, or less likely, a problem with the charging hardware.
There's that, but there is also a whole new segment of usually non-gamers buying DS Lites to play the non-gamers games (such as Brain Age, Nintendogs or Animal Crossing).
Not that I misunderstand your point, it is valid. But these are not non-gamers games. Just because they are not the games you grew up with or the kind you like to play, does not mean that they are not played by gamers. They are actually closer to the sort of "games" people played before video games came around, and the kinds that people still play today. It's just that people are used to playing these games in the newspaper, or in other more tangible ways.
Brain Age = Paper book games, I used to play with them as a kid
Nintendogs = Have you ever owned or raised your own pet? It's one helluva game where your loss means a dead animal on your hands, and a win is companionship that is incomparable.
Animal Crossing = I don't have a good analog for this one, but it is a simulation game, albeit an odd one, so perhaps this shouldn't even be included in your non-gamers list for any reason at all. It's very similar in concept to the Sims series of games.
So while I understand your point, it has nothing to do with "non-gamers" it simply has to do with an entirely different demographic of gamers who you don't understand, and who the gaming industry as a whole has not understood for a number of years.
The fact that Nintendo is successful in this arena is not a surprise. This is where they started with card games over 40 years ago.
Also, I don't mean for this to be a flame, simply a post to try and clear the air of this stupid gamers vs. non-gamers nonsense. The "elderly" played games long before you were even conceived.
You and many of the other excitable slashdotters are missing the whole point.
The problem all of these whining morons are trying to solve is selling M rated games to minors. No different than not selling R rated move tickets to minors.
If you as a parent feel like your kid should play games that involve mature themes, then buy them for your kids. No problems are introduced by any of this legislation in regards to that.
The only thing that might happen is when the clerk at gamestop sells a 10 year old a copy of GTA, gamestop will be fined.
I completely agree that it's the burden of parents to raise their children, however, far too many parents are lazy worthless idiots who let their children do whatever they want. This tends to occur mostly within families producing stupid children, who are probably much more impressionable by fake violence than the kids raised intelligently. So if the fearmongerers are actually right, and kids ARE influenced in their actions by the games they play, then I'd rather not be shot in the back at a mall by some jackass kid who effectively has no parents.
And for those comparing video games to movies, you don't make the choice of committing violent acts in movies. It's completely different in a video game, you are pulling the trigger, regardless of reality, it has a far deeper meaning relating to behavior than merely observing the act.
To sum up: Parents - Nobody's taking away your responsibility of raising your children, some jerks are just trying to make it harder for your kids to get their nasty little hands on these "violent" games on their own. Tinfoil Hat Wearers - What are you worried about? Are you under 18? If so, too bad, wait a few years and this will not be a problem for you.
This has to be the most benign of the stupid things going on in government at the moment. While I'm in complete disgust at how our government is bloating up in these last 6 years, this particular issue couldn't be any less meaningful in the scheme of things. Any worthwhile retailer already attempts to enforce the rules that might become laws.
If the government wanted to do something useful, they could apply some monetary assistance tot he ESRB so that they can actually experience more of the games they rate to produce more accurate ratings.
It offers all of the features that Azureus supports, with a much faster slicker interface. It is of course, Windows only. I have no idea if it works on WINE. It is also very very small, a single executable file currently 154.44k (The download page doesn't even bother to zip up the exe file)
I always used azureus until I found this beauty. Everyone should give it a shot if they are on Windows.
It takes five minutes to setup a passport account associated with any arbitrary email address and thus far has generated absolutely zero spam to my email account. You can also sign-up with a "Limited" passport account, which means, you can sign up with no association with any actual email address whatsoever. You end up creating a fake @passport.com address for signing in.
The contracts are not any different than what you would agree to with Google, Yahoo, or any other online service provider.
I only wish this were true. Unfortunately every single computer user I know, outside of the software engineers and hardcore gamers are pathologically incapable of avoiding spyware infestations.
Call them stupid, call them uneducated, call them what you will. The fact of the matter is, most computer users these days fit in the same category. The computer is a common appliance now and as such, should be treated like one. A greater divide between the OS a developer uses and the one your average user is protected by is going to be a necessity to prevent botnets and the theft of sensitive information.
While it's true that this information benefits the sales of Vista, it is also not simply FUD. It's a factual, verified problem that, frankly, I'm sick of dealing with. I am so incredibly tired of the weekly comments about how the spyware's back, or the computer is "really slow all of the sudden," and all of the other associated issues in relation to this.
This problem won't be solved from the outside in, it is going to require a strict runtime environment for the less savvy.
I take it you haven't actually owned or used a PSP for watching movies as these times are terribly inaccurate. The PSP will last 3 hours, maybe, while regularly reading from the UMD media. On the other hand, if you are referring to watching movies off of a memory stick then, fine, 8 hours is feasible (though, as a PSP owner, I've never had the PSP last 8 hours doing ANYTHING, let alone watching video or playing games).
Given that you are referring to memory stick videos, and you want to watch a full length movie on one, let's look at what that entails:
- Let's ignore the fact that it takes a long time to convert a movie to the proper format for memory stick.
- Let's ignore that you can't fit more than one, maybe 2 movies at a lower quality rating, on a 1gb memory stick (definitely nowhere near the quality of even UMD, let alone DVD).
- Let's ignore that most consumers will pay full MSRP for a 1gb memory stick duo, which is the only hope of having 2 movies (at low framerate and quality) on the same stick. That full price, btw, is $99. On pricewatch I found one for $74. Best price I can find for 2gb is $146.67 (pricewatch)
- Let's also ignore that some *cough*evil*cough* organizations feel it is illegal for us to rip a movie for any purpose.
Ok now that we've ignored most all of the pertinent facts, we conclude that it's great to get to watch movies for 8 hours straight, assuming you like watching at 8-10fps, 320x200 resolution, with lots of encoding artifacts. You also don't mind shelling out $250 for the base device with a 4" screen, another $74 per 2 movies ($150 to maximize your 8 hours on average), or spending a weekend converting the movies you're completely certain you will want to watch the next time you're out and about.
Yeah, that's a good deal!
By all means, the PSP is a cool little device, it's just severely lacking in a few aspects that would help make it THE device to have. My examples would be the poor *REAL* battery life, the inability to do say, listen to music while browsing or looking at text files http://gutenberg.org/, or a useful amount of storage http://store.palm.com/product/index.jsp?productId= 1999092&cp=1157580
Of course, this is all opinion, blending with facts and personal experience. No need to get upset if you disagree.
p.s. Yes, I do feel like I got majorly jilted when I bought my PSP. Almost a year later, my psp has no new games that interest me, no value in the videos (cripes, at least make them half the price of a dvd since they have half the quality and none of the features!), and my DS has brought me many hours of quality unique entertainment... I should sell the PSP.
That gives you access to your EXISTING dvd collection, rather than paying more money for lower quality versions of movies you may very well already have, that will not play on ANY other device besides the PSP. Furthermore, get yourself a DVD burner and burn 4.7GB (or 8.5gb if you shell the cash for DL) worth of MP3's to listen to on the go.
Granted, the PSP is smaller and looks "sexier" but it also only has a, what, 4.5" screen? The dvd player I cite (and there are others, especially in the car-only segment, you can get a dual screen setup for $250) has a 7" tft.
Battery time is also directly comparable, not due to portable dvd players having good battery life, but instead due to the PSP having terrible battery life.
Clearly there are pros and cons to both, but, this post claiming "Nice that they're finally doing something defining with the console" makes me realize just how sad the PSP's showing really is.
Nothing in the post today can't be done on a DVD. I guess if you really want to shell out $249.99 msrp for vendor media lockin on movies, a smaller screen, and access to *WOW* digital comics *laugh*, then by all means, buy a PSP.
p.s. I didn't even bother comparing digital media players due to price, but, the price vs. feature set, with emphasis on size comparison with the PSP, also makes these devices a much better deal if you're looking at the PSP with movie watching in mind.
Slashdot Mirror
It's impossible for me to resist a belly laugh at this comment. The entire business model of modern cell phone providers is based around aftermarket sales of media and, to a lesser degree, software.
I've been a "cell phone geek" for years now, and I can assure you that it is very likely that Cingular will insist the phone be locked down to all third party software. There is a hope, however, that Apple will insist the opposite. Since it's Apple's device, they are the only ones who can actually develop these locks. And since they are so high profile now, Cingular will hopefully not be stupid enough to refuse the phone simply because someone can use their own ringtones or software.
So there is hope, but it is certainly not the usual way of the US cellular "market" (a.k.a. complete and utter joke).
If you've watched gamehead you know it's a long infomercial for the PS3. Why would this be any different? The next "episode" will gather a group of people who are anti-change and sic them on the Wii... oh boy.
You've misunderstood the term "orientation"...
If you use a Clay Aiken signature pen the screen will turn all rainbow-colored.
The 360 has FFXI. Also that little Square spin-off dev house Mistwalker has dropped two games, coming soon or maybe they are out already? One is Blue Dragon, and the other is Lost Odyssey.
I don't know how the financials are working these days, if it's really an independent dev house or if it's just a different name to attempt a different marketing strategy. But, the talent is directly exported from past Square projects.
Claiming the inclusion of software like IE or WMP is an antitrust violation is about as logical as claiming the inclusion of back seats and carpet in a car is an antitrust violation. Every modern OS comes with browsers and media players now. And think about this for a moment: If your OS didn't include a browser, how would you get your first browser? What if you didn't have it on a CD or another computer?
:)
The savvy could get it by ftp I suppose, that's how I used to do it back in the day prior to the inclusions. But, for the rest of us? It makes no sense to call this anti-trust for those reasons.
However, I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons
It's amazing! An application installed to your phone can do things!
Why is this even posted like it's some kind of new concept?
If you install an application to your desktop machine, it can do all of those things. Why do you think the phone is any different? If you don't like the idea of malicious software then don't use a smartphone of any variety.
In fact, this should be good news. A person has to go to the extra length of signing their application before it has this access. Of course, on my smartphone an application cannot be installed without my confirmation, regardless of signatures. Is this not the case with the blackberry? If so, shame on you RIM.
I gazed above
as often I do
the clouds had parted
the light shone through
I thought to myself
as often I do
"Teh boobies r safe!"
I cried. "Woohoo!"
Isn't this a violation of thermodynamics or is this a miss-statement?
AFAIK nothing can produce more energy than it uses.
I believe what you might have meant was that we seek a way to produce recurring fusion reaction that produces more energy than is required to fuel the reactor. However, we will never find an energy source that produces more energy than it consumes, unless the basis for most all physics is completely flawed
To illustrate for others: reactors require power to begin and perpetuate the reactor (i.e. power coolant pumps and etc.) for regular nuclear (fission) reactors. This at first glance seems silly because the whole point is to generate electricity or power from the reactor. However, the combination of an incoming power source with the nuclear reaction results in a net gain of power. I'm not sure about modern reactors as I haven't researched it recently but I believe they can sustain themselves once the process begins and relies on grid power in case of self power failures?
Just to remind you, combustion engines work in exactly the same manner. They require an outside power source to begin then usually perpetuate themselves via an alternator + battery source as they require an ignitor for the combustion to occur. Due to combining the original power input with the resulting explosion of fuel, you get a net gain. Of course, as soon as you factor in the massive loss of energy from the incredibly inefficient use of power and fuels you actually have a net loss. This is always the case with any machine. If it were not the case, it would be perpetual motion or better and that isn't possible according to contemporary physics.
Anyhow, the problem with a fusion reactor is that the energy required to cause the reaction is greater than the energy released from the reaction because it does not perpetuate itself like fission. So your 100 gigawatts of input results in 10 gigawatts output or whatever the real numbers are and obviously that's not useful regardless of how scientifically cool it is
Of course, IANAP, I just pulled all of that out of my ass. Does that make me a true slashdotter?
Super Smash Brothers Melee!
:)
<chant>GAAANNONDORRRRF, GAAANNONDORRRRRF, GAAANNONDORRRRF</chant>
I've personally never had so much fun with video games outside of this game. I used to play it every day at lunch with my programmer friends at my old employer. 1-2 hours every day. Even the boss played. Talk about fun.
It's a lot more fun, admittedly, when you have opponents that can actually play though. I tried to repeat the enjoyment with random people after I got a better job and it just wasn't the same because they stood literally zero chance against me... too much practice I guess
It's still the most fun in a video game I've ever had.
The iPod is the only device available which can be connected to my car stereo and allow for control from the head unit.
What more reason would I need than that? No other devices exist that can compete here. Zero. Zilch. Connecting via a stereo mini-jack and controlling the device itself is sub-par for what I desire. I have that capability, I used my old device that way, I hated it.
And as if that wasn't simply reason enough: iTunes iPod interconnectivity is so smooth and useable compared to anything and everything offered by every other player that I can't even dream of going back to third party software or, *shiver* WiMP.
So, when people wonder why iPod is so successful, don't leave out these two extremely important concepts. Despite my being a bit of a computer geek (*cough* engineer *cough*) the average person is going to find these same two reasons highly elevated once they actually get into USING their devices.
I have to be honest, there are many things I dislike about the iPod otherwise that simply don't knock these two positive reasons down at all. Some examples:
- Click wheel: Who thought this was a good idea? Nothing about this is ergonomic. I miss the items I'm trying to choose constantly and the thing randomly decides to change sensitivity on me. Not to mention the fact that half the time I go to push one of the buttons the wheel detects my finger and reacts as if I was sliding along to change the volume or something.
- No queueing on the iPod: What insanity is this? Every other device I've owned allowed me to, while shuffling the entire collection, choose the song that would play next. Apple's iTunes has the party shuffle. Why doesn't the iPod have party shuffle? That would satisfy me.
- USB interface that confuses Windows: Poor Windows can barely keep up with all of the USB devices I have. I plug them into a different port and the poor machine has a panic attack. So, why did Apple think it was necessary to slip a mickie to the USB subsystem for the iPod on Windows? In Linux it's just a regular mass storage device but on Windows if you do so much as plug the device in before the proper drivers are installed then good luck getting that to work. Of course, if you followed the instructions nothing bad will happen. Go figure.
So, despite these things that irk me about the iPod, I still prefer it for the original reasons. I've owned two iRiver (one without WiMP support, one with it) and a Zen. I feel I have a wide enough breadth of experience to avoid the common missteps of forming opinions on these devices.
Now of course, if you truly don't care about managing your music as conveniently as possible and you have absolutely no use ever for remote control of the device in the manner of the bottom port of the iPod then more power to you. Pick the device that does what you need. To be honest, I'm kind of sad that the iPod is the only viable choice for the first reason I gave. Proprietary sucks.
Careful now, be sure to release this derivative description under the GPL lest ye be hunted down by RMS ninjas. Consider yerself warned! Arrr!
Actually historically speaking Qt has been better supported on Windows than GTK and still is. There are actually two hinderances here: 1) In the past there has been no GPL license for the windows version of Qt (or Mac) but that has changed. Mac has a GPL version and Windows either has one or is getting it in the next major release. But, the more important limitation (anyone could've built binaries with a paid license to Qt...) is that KDE apps require KDE libs which are built on top of Qt and make many assumptions about the underlying OS being a unix-like OS. Sure you could use cygwin to get around this I imagine, and there ARE some prior examples of KDE running on Windows but it always worked terribly.
However, with the licensing question gone for Windows, it is much more likely that KOffice and the required KDE libraries to compile and run it could get a Windows port.
I wish this would happen. I would much rather use KOffice than blOatpenOffice.org.
Don't be surprised at all. Kopete has a rather bumpy past and continually exists as one of the buggiest, worst-designed instant messaging program I've ever encountered (and I'm a big IM geek).
The fact that they waste their time adding useless skin support instead of fixing the thousands of bugs that must exist in the codebase is enough evidence that the developers have no idea what they should be prioritizing.
The real solution here is to forget kopete, and stick with gaim despite how ugly and non-kde it is (yes, I know it's gtk+). Do so until someone who actually knows how to manage and develop an application comes to the table for kopete. Although it won't happen as their seems to be a pathological habit of whoever becomes the lead on that project to reject any and all input from sane people who actually use their application. That includes rejecting patches regardless of how they are submitted, despite providing perfect solutions to the bugs they won't address themselves!
At least, that's been my experience with them, YMMV.
I wish this was true. In all the videos advertising the system the actors are doing just that: Acting. The actual gameplay is far less involving. While it is infinitely more spatially involving than a regular buttons and sticks controller, you still don't move much while playing most games. The practical issue here is how tired one would get if it required constant movement.
Most of my fat gamer friends can't make it through 5 songs on DDR, I don't imagine they'd FPS all night long if it required anywhere near the same amount of effort and thus, would not be happy to play these games.
Also you have to consider the opportunity for injury and how paranoid Nintendo already is about such things with their warnings on the Nintendo DS being obligatory every time you start up the system. This has even made its way into some of the GBA games! (Ex. Final Fantasy IV)
So while the myth may have the effect you describe, the reality won't. You will be flicking your hands about and that's as far as it will go for most games. Golf or baseball style games, or perhaps games like WarioWare will probably see the greatest motions but in a low impact sort of way.
You seem to have missed about half the point here. You are correct about the costs being insignificant to the XBOX project for Microsoft. Well, not entirely insignificant, but certainly nowhere near untenable.
However, the real point of this article is about the patent trolls. If you look at it as a case as MS having to decide if paying for trials or paying the desired settlement (which is bound to be less than what is asked in the trial itself) then you'll see that MS may be better off just paying these guys without a trial. This is a serious problem with the legal system.
You see, if Microsoft decided to take this to court, and they won, then a precedent would be set for similar cases in the future. This precedent would serve the smaller companies that can't really afford to pay out settlements. But instead, MS will probably just settle and give into this extortion and future cases just like this will continue to come about with no new ammunition against them.
It's unfortunate but, our legal system relies heavily on precedents and if none are set, well, no progress is ever made.
You can get a 2 GB MicroSD card for this:
http://www.cingular.com/SLVR_iTunes/
The phone has a horrible keyboard and is huge. Really, it's huge. It's as big as a razr unfolded, and those phones are much larger than people realize. However, it still does what you want.
Most people, quite possibly yourself included, don't realize how big it is until comparisons are made, so perhaps you could just avoid that. It comes with an adapter to use your own headphones, and if you look around on eBay you can find one unlocked for your carrier (assuming it's a GSM carrier).
This isn't new, btw, it's over a year old.
This should be a 5, awesome reference!
Every apple laptop I've seen uses Sony batteries.
Apple, however, designs the casing and engineers the requirements to be met at Sony's manufacturing plant for the cells themselves. Apple is still responsible if they order to the wrong specifications.
Although more likely it was a bad batch of cells, or less likely, a problem with the charging hardware.
Not that I misunderstand your point, it is valid. But these are not non-gamers games. Just because they are not the games you grew up with or the kind you like to play, does not mean that they are not played by gamers. They are actually closer to the sort of "games" people played before video games came around, and the kinds that people still play today. It's just that people are used to playing these games in the newspaper, or in other more tangible ways.
So while I understand your point, it has nothing to do with "non-gamers" it simply has to do with an entirely different demographic of gamers who you don't understand, and who the gaming industry as a whole has not understood for a number of years.
The fact that Nintendo is successful in this arena is not a surprise. This is where they started with card games over 40 years ago.
Also, I don't mean for this to be a flame, simply a post to try and clear the air of this stupid gamers vs. non-gamers nonsense. The "elderly" played games long before you were even conceived.
You and many of the other excitable slashdotters are missing the whole point.
The problem all of these whining morons are trying to solve is selling M rated games to minors. No different than not selling R rated move tickets to minors.
If you as a parent feel like your kid should play games that involve mature themes, then buy them for your kids. No problems are introduced by any of this legislation in regards to that.
The only thing that might happen is when the clerk at gamestop sells a 10 year old a copy of GTA, gamestop will be fined.
I completely agree that it's the burden of parents to raise their children, however, far too many parents are lazy worthless idiots who let their children do whatever they want. This tends to occur mostly within families producing stupid children, who are probably much more impressionable by fake violence than the kids raised intelligently. So if the fearmongerers are actually right, and kids ARE influenced in their actions by the games they play, then I'd rather not be shot in the back at a mall by some jackass kid who effectively has no parents.
And for those comparing video games to movies, you don't make the choice of committing violent acts in movies. It's completely different in a video game, you are pulling the trigger, regardless of reality, it has a far deeper meaning relating to behavior than merely observing the act.
To sum up: Parents - Nobody's taking away your responsibility of raising your children, some jerks are just trying to make it harder for your kids to get their nasty little hands on these "violent" games on their own. Tinfoil Hat Wearers - What are you worried about? Are you under 18? If so, too bad, wait a few years and this will not be a problem for you.
This has to be the most benign of the stupid things going on in government at the moment. While I'm in complete disgust at how our government is bloating up in these last 6 years, this particular issue couldn't be any less meaningful in the scheme of things. Any worthwhile retailer already attempts to enforce the rules that might become laws.
If the government wanted to do something useful, they could apply some monetary assistance tot he ESRB so that they can actually experience more of the games they rate to produce more accurate ratings.
Yes, at least one. The best Windows bittorrent client ever: http://www.utorrent.com/
It offers all of the features that Azureus supports, with a much faster slicker interface. It is of course, Windows only. I have no idea if it works on WINE. It is also very very small, a single executable file currently 154.44k (The download page doesn't even bother to zip up the exe file)
I always used azureus until I found this beauty. Everyone should give it a shot if they are on Windows.
It takes five minutes to setup a passport account associated with any arbitrary email address and thus far has generated absolutely zero spam to my email account. You can also sign-up with a "Limited" passport account, which means, you can sign up with no association with any actual email address whatsoever. You end up creating a fake @passport.com address for signing in.
4 .0.5610.0&cbalt=www&vv=400&lc=1033
The contracts are not any different than what you would agree to with Google, Yahoo, or any other online service provider.
Furthermore, with only accepting the passport license, it's a bit shorter than hotmail's. Try reading it yourself. The TOS is actually very short and easy to read if you're not illiterate: https://accountservices.passport.net/PPTOU.srf?x=
I only wish this were true. Unfortunately every single computer user I know, outside of the software engineers and hardcore gamers are pathologically incapable of avoiding spyware infestations.
Call them stupid, call them uneducated, call them what you will. The fact of the matter is, most computer users these days fit in the same category. The computer is a common appliance now and as such, should be treated like one. A greater divide between the OS a developer uses and the one your average user is protected by is going to be a necessity to prevent botnets and the theft of sensitive information.
While it's true that this information benefits the sales of Vista, it is also not simply FUD. It's a factual, verified problem that, frankly, I'm sick of dealing with. I am so incredibly tired of the weekly comments about how the spyware's back, or the computer is "really slow all of the sudden," and all of the other associated issues in relation to this.
This problem won't be solved from the outside in, it is going to require a strict runtime environment for the less savvy.
I take it you haven't actually owned or used a PSP for watching movies as these times are terribly inaccurate. The PSP will last 3 hours, maybe, while regularly reading from the UMD media. On the other hand, if you are referring to watching movies off of a memory stick then, fine, 8 hours is feasible (though, as a PSP owner, I've never had the PSP last 8 hours doing ANYTHING, let alone watching video or playing games).
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Given that you are referring to memory stick videos, and you want to watch a full length movie on one, let's look at what that entails:
- Let's ignore the fact that it takes a long time to convert a movie to the proper format for memory stick.
- Let's ignore that you can't fit more than one, maybe 2 movies at a lower quality rating, on a 1gb memory stick (definitely nowhere near the quality of even UMD, let alone DVD).
- Let's ignore that most consumers will pay full MSRP for a 1gb memory stick duo, which is the only hope of having 2 movies (at low framerate and quality) on the same stick. That full price, btw, is $99. On pricewatch I found one for $74. Best price I can find for 2gb is $146.67 (pricewatch)
- Let's also ignore that some *cough*evil*cough* organizations feel it is illegal for us to rip a movie for any purpose.
Ok now that we've ignored most all of the pertinent facts, we conclude that it's great to get to watch movies for 8 hours straight, assuming you like watching at 8-10fps, 320x200 resolution, with lots of encoding artifacts. You also don't mind shelling out $250 for the base device with a 4" screen, another $74 per 2 movies ($150 to maximize your 8 hours on average), or spending a weekend converting the movies you're completely certain you will want to watch the next time you're out and about.
Yeah, that's a good deal!
By all means, the PSP is a cool little device, it's just severely lacking in a few aspects that would help make it THE device to have. My examples would be the poor *REAL* battery life, the inability to do say, listen to music while browsing or looking at text files http://gutenberg.org/, or a useful amount of storage http://store.palm.com/product/index.jsp?productId
Of course, this is all opinion, blending with facts and personal experience. No need to get upset if you disagree.
p.s. Yes, I do feel like I got majorly jilted when I bought my PSP. Almost a year later, my psp has no new games that interest me, no value in the videos (cripes, at least make them half the price of a dvd since they have half the quality and none of the features!), and my DS has brought me many hours of quality unique entertainment... I should sell the PSP.
Granted, the PSP can play games, but who really wants to pay $250 for the one or two good games it has to offer?
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On the other hand, for almost $100 less money you can have this: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=697
That gives you access to your EXISTING dvd collection, rather than paying more money for lower quality versions of movies you may very well already have, that will not play on ANY other device besides the PSP. Furthermore, get yourself a DVD burner and burn 4.7GB (or 8.5gb if you shell the cash for DL) worth of MP3's to listen to on the go.
Granted, the PSP is smaller and looks "sexier" but it also only has a, what, 4.5" screen? The dvd player I cite (and there are others, especially in the car-only segment, you can get a dual screen setup for $250) has a 7" tft.
Battery time is also directly comparable, not due to portable dvd players having good battery life, but instead due to the PSP having terrible battery life.
Clearly there are pros and cons to both, but, this post claiming "Nice that they're finally doing something defining with the console" makes me realize just how sad the PSP's showing really is.
Nothing in the post today can't be done on a DVD. I guess if you really want to shell out $249.99 msrp for vendor media lockin on movies, a smaller screen, and access to *WOW* digital comics *laugh*, then by all means, buy a PSP.
p.s. I didn't even bother comparing digital media players due to price, but, the price vs. feature set, with emphasis on size comparison with the PSP, also makes these devices a much better deal if you're looking at the PSP with movie watching in mind.