Actually SCSI drives also allow command queueing while IDE doesn't. This lets requests be intelligently reordered to speed things up. This can help a lot when restricted to using a single drive because even if you aren't using more than one app at once you still have paging (which there is more of since less memory than a desktop) and the OS all stuck doing things on that one drive. On a desktop you're more likely to have your paging, scratch disk, and program disks all seperate if you care about performance.
I had a very busy drive on one of my FTP servers once, replaced it with a SCSI, and it started handling much, much better. With the IDE when that drive was getting a lot of use I couldn't even dir in directories without a long wait, but the SCSI one remained very responsive. Besides, I actually have two drives on my laptop. The optical drive was rather useless so I popped it out for a second HD adapter. It makes photoshop and DV stuff so much faster being able to split the IO. I would jump at SCSI for my laptop in a moment since hard drive performance is where notebooks really lag desktops and they need all the help they can get.
I actually put anime digisubs on my Z (SL-C760) and even the subs are still perfectly readable. Like the other guy said a PDA is held up close, like chest height, whereas a laptop needs support so is down on your lap.
I have a 760 with a microdrive sucking it's batteries constantly and it easily does 4-5...I usually keep it underclocked and with the backlight notched 2-3 down, but it does so much better than 4-5 I bet I could make that with just 1 notch down. Maybe your friends bought one of the crappy battery 750's and are lying their asses off to not seem poor.
giving a software agent my preferences on what I'm willing to accept and not accept and letting it go make decisions seems a lot more of a "meeting of the minds" than what I currently do now - which is just not read anything and click through anyway (sometimes interrupted by some enforced scrolling). ^^ still since the later method takes less effort I have no intention of giving it up until it causes me trouble.
>prevent discussion on the subject of which >of the two major-party candidates
Have you even been watching the debates? The candidates pretty much have pre-worked out spiels and just go through them when a question is even close. Sometimes you'll notice they completely miss answering the question or end up repeating one of them and trying to hide it. There's no discussion going on here.
Adding an "unplanned random factor" as you call it might get some decent telling responses from candidates instead of having us sit through more of the same "say what they want to hear and hide the rest" spiels as we've been getting in speeches.
Anyone else suspect the summary intentionally didn't mention this thing is Flash to try and gain some credibility? Since Flash is most often used for annoying ads I had to go enable it just to see what the site linked was trying to show. Next I reflexively tried to gesture open a bunch buttons into tabs - nothing happened of course since you can't use that on Flash. Next I tried to click the big "The new Web experience" main graphic in the flash - nothing happened. Great, brightest thing in there and it's not even linked to anything. Even on cnn.com, a primarily text based site, I still gesture over the graphics that accompany a story link when they have them. It's more natural to focus on what grabs your attention and a bigger target (and cnn has a clue so they are linked).
So next I try to tab around to see what is clickable and of course that just skips the flash part of the page entirely even though that has the main content. All this time the flash of course ignored my text zoom settings - my grandmother loves using that and a user stylesheet I made for her to ease website use so this would have been a very big no go for her. I notice it's hard coded to a certain resolution as well in the swf's object tag, so you can't use say a PDA with low res or change your browser window's shape to read it while doing other things as easily.
Is a way to make crappy websites like the above really something to get excited about? Ignoring all the problems it took me like 3-4 clicks to drill down to some actual information about Laszlo (first I tried sample, but that wasn't right, then I saw the get info thing which isn't even a real button, but a label next to a button making it less usable, then I had to deal with some stupid email popup when I clicked on a pdf I wanted - too bad the browser can't kill lame Flash popups like it can real ones, would nip that part of this bad site design in the bud - and then finally it opened it up some information). Anyone writing a standard webapp who buried main content that far would be fired, but with Flash this poor design is somehow OK since it's all about pretty crap and not access and usability anyway.
Making your website into a veritable font of data for use however your viewers want is all the rage right now. Wrapping all your content up in a hard to access, proprietary technology entangled, annoying ad engine like Flash is not a good thing to do. Having an XML backend doesn't do shit if your people spend all their time screwing around designing a bad interface that looks a little prettier than the standard web ones like they did here instead of say adding a XML or RSS button so I can quickly get their data/updates later, an HTML view maybe generated by XSLT, another view for PDAs, etc. like they should have been doing.
He never said it would be secret. You have a pretty black mind to assume that instantly, don't you? In fact the low cost and expandable requirements he mentioned are going to preclude super small, wireless/hidden wires by redoing the walls, concealable cameras which are more expensive and more limited. A new father wanting a way to check on his baby while he's out of the house/etc sounds pretty sensible and caring to me although, I'm not that neurotic myself to need that.
I babysat a little when young and there were always some parents who would constantly call asking if the tyke was all right. This is rather annoying as one of the perks of baby sitting is that a lot of times you get to just watch TV or do homework (the uh part of uh...babysitting, I guess ^^) while the kid is asleep or something. Having a way they could do a quick check for themselves would have been a relief rather than a burden.
They've already announced the PSP will have a MemoryStick slot and Sony already sells video recorders that record video onto those. So you can stop hoping and start complaining about Sony's stupid proprietary formats/lock-ins, etc..
Well first, being "tethered to your computer" isn't so bad since anyone capable of setting up a stereo system is also capable of hooking their computer up to it and thus listening anywhere in their home. I noticed a music player on my sister's computer the other day and she can barely use the thing (I have to setup her email whenever she moves). It's probably a lot like an advanced stereo itself to her. Despite the recent popularity of hard drive based MP3 players the vast majority of people still don't have them and keep all their music at home, only taking some of it with them on the go (which you can also do for select songs via Real's service if you buy the song for burning).
Second, one of the things Real advertises is that you can use your account from any networked computer be it home, at work (lol, well I suppose some bosses might let you), or say a wireless laptop on a college campus. I also saw something about Rhapsody over mobile phones w/ headphones. If that performs well then the Rhapsody person not only has access to more music than someone with an MP3 player, he only needs his phone to do it and not a separate player.
I imagine there are still things to work out like battery life of a cell phone playing music for hours, but it's certainly not as limited as you say. The Real guy we had for an interview mentioned some good numbers for Rhapsody subscribers so it is getting people. Personally, though, I just use a flash player with some of my own CDs ripped and think you 'battery sucking, hard drive hauling, need access to a billion songs either by buying/stealing/subscribing people' are insane.;p ^^
Agreed. The blog writer even mentions he wants the owner to get his pictures back at the top of every single page in that header poem with the line: "Maybe you will come here and reclaim this piece of your life."
there's a "change the way windows alerts me" or something close to that option in the left panel of the security center. I unchecked everything in there and don't even have the tray icon anymore, let alone the annoying alerts (I keep the firewall off for some internal nics).
Say what they want to hear and hide the rest..
on
Bush vs. Kerry on Science
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I'm really disappointed the answer to so many of these questions is "Oh, we'll spend more, of course". Kerry's speech at the DNC was much the same. There he started out saying he'll balance the budget and then 90% of his speech is what he'll spend more on. I didn't get to see Bush's speech, but I imagine it was much the same. If politicians weren't allowed to be such flim flams maybe we would start seeing actual solutions being proposed like ending the war on drugs, tossing out the nuke stockpile, breaking up the two party system for something more democratic (lol, ok fat chance on that one), etc..
If your words were true the majority of Christians would believe in the general concept of evolution and consider the biblical contradictions to it as merely part of a morality story. Evolution has a huge preponderance of evidence and is not questioned by any legitimate scientist, although the details of how it happens can be debated. Almost every single Christian I have ever met holds the complete opposite view, however.
I usually make it a point to see how well they are meshing their delusions with reality before considering furthering relations with them and so ask every one I meet. Almost without fail they immediately take the Creationist viewpoint. I'm sorry to say your little face saving theory above about how Christians can properly distance themselves from the parts of the bible that have been completely disproved by considering these parts to be morality stories is not evidenced at all.
Several people have linked the pdf version, also you can get the flash to fill your screen if you access it directly. I agree it's a horrible design, though. On the page it's set all the way down at 440x400 and most of the text isn't even on a clean background. Oo I had to go enable flash just to see it as well, since I usually have it off to avoid annoying ads.
>I'd certainly like to see the official line on this one.
RTFA
>A Symantec official in Beijing confirmed that Norton's >software had designated Freegate a "Trojan horse", >but would not give details of why it had done so.
>can see that almost all americans are dead-set >against pretty much everything bush is doing.
"Almost all," my ass. We elected him once (and a group a newspapers went down, counted everything, and confirmed he would have won even without the court) and he's currently a smidgen ahead in the current election polls (indeed any time after the RNC). You frothing liberals can make up your conspiracy theories and what not and perhaps believe them yourselves, but try not to contradict the bare facts too often like this as it exposes you.
Another article mentioned the forest fire quote like this: "Yonhap cited unidentified sources, with one in Washington saying the incident could be related to a natural disaster such as a forest fire".
When you have idiot citizens and slobbering newsies running around going NUKE NUKE NUKE the mature and sensible thing to do is point out a mushroom cloud is certainly inconclusive of that. A much worse response would be to assume nuke first rather than later after the facts are in since you're going to scare the shit out of people and possibly be forced to begin actions like sending some carrier groups over to protect Japan or even just making statements that press diplomatic relations, etc.
freebies my ass! tuition went up more than 1k the year the uni I was attending started giving the freshmen laptops. the only gain here is that class programs can start assuming you have a laptop to bring to lab, an ipod for stealing music (couldn't think of a legit use students will actually use for that one, sorry. listen to lectures, lol, right), etc.
considering how badly universities choose, mine chose compaq laptops which ended up terrible quality, ipods loose most ways compared to iriver (ogg support, price, doesn't look like a toilet), etc you'd be better off buying these things yourself even if the uni was putting some of their endowment money and getting some large buy discount to cushion the deal.
*shrug* If you like to play the latest games having a Windows boot is a neccesity. Sorry to say it, but it's still true. For programming I use Linux, and my file server. I hate the GUI (using KDE currently), though. If I copy something, close the app, and then go to paste, for example..gah.
I'd like to see a survey on how many people run both OSes, I'd suspect many more than run Linux alone.;p So in other words, I'd find someone with only Linux to be the weird one, not the one you'd assume when criticising someone.
This reminds me of when I downloaded a Mozilla version that refused to let me open certain files like.exe files after downloading (you could just tell it to open most files after they dl, but not the exe ones). I looked around for a way to turn this off, couldn't find it, and immediately changed browsers. OK, it's more secure, but what the f*ck? It's my machine, I want to make the decision about running an exe. Most of the time I was getting the file off a trusted site, so zero need to check for viruses and what not, and just had to go freaking start the file from the OS.
Apparently once any software gets big enough the maintainers start feeling like arrogant assholes. Same with this, there's no legal problem with including a hook to load the binary part here. Some asshat just thinks the concept it's impure and may cause bugs...wth? It's my decision. You don't want, then don't run it and says it's not recommended! Hopefully someone with a little respect for the whole concept of computers being general purpose tools will step in and fix this. It's tougher to switch OSes than it is to switch browsers, but if they keep crippling the thing "for my own good" like Mozilla started to do I certainly will.
>triggering it with an external microchip). With the high >turn-over in player models, however, this strategy has >turned out to be short-sighted (every half a year we have >to build a new chip).
Almost every recorder has a noise/voice activation mode and most of the ones I've used had a mic or line-in as well. So just have an external mic -> custom chip that cuts it off when needed -> recorder. I suppose you could crack open the player and get between the internal mic if you wanted to as well. Either way the custom bit will never go obsolete. I record lectures I go to and found quality is much better with a good external mic anyway, even if it's a pocket size one like the small Sony conference mics.
Where I work (big corporation, over 200k employees) people are constantly leaving the trenches to get MBAs and come back in management positions. It is pretty much the accepted way to advance...
1) Trackball you have to keep petting the damn thing, unless you have it super sensitive in which case you lose accuracy. For a solution designed to minimize hand movement making the user pet constantly vs. using an analog stick would be against the entire design philosophy.
2,3) I'm sorry, but 100$ is a mind numbingly cheap price for a low volume device for this. Let's look at some similar products. A close competitor is the DataHand which sells for 10 times that. A gesture keyboard goes for 340$. A chording keyboard/mouse replacement that's been out for many years and used by wearable people, the twiddler, is 220$. Just a half-keyboard with extra letter mappings to make up for it is 295$. All these companies aren't so expensive because they want to be, manufacturing low volume stuff like this is hideously expensive. You say you want a second version for large hands, that would raise the price even more.
Sure this company brings them across, but they kill the erotic content if present when they do (I've confirmed this was done to Tea Society, others no doubt as well). The sex scenes and being able to go all the way with exotic/interesting/friendly cuties is pretty much the driving force of this genre. For an example, here's the 18+ only gallery page for the japanese version of the Tea Society game mentioned in the article (they are young for my taste here, but obviously different games for different folks ^^). Other companies/more modern games will also have voice samples you can check out as well.
So any game Hirameki brings across is going to get any of the sex edited out and the only option for fans who want to play in English is to put up with the neutered version. Yes there are games without this part that do well in Japan, and games that have clean versions that are successful, but there's no denying the core of the industry. Without the sex you're back to the Myst type games and the flood of "interactive multimedia CD-ROMs" that followed them that people once thought were going to be such a big hit, but flopped terribly.
Anyway, for people who want the full experience, better to stick with the more faithfully brought across games like those available at g-collections. Some are all sex and little story (like Do You Like Horny Bunnies, which does the sex very well and animated, btw ^^), but others are quite funny and entertaining like Heart de Roomate and others have touching stories like Kana ~Little Sister~. And none of those three has had the erotic scenes edited out so you can go all the way and experience the full game if you so desire.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually SCSI drives also allow command queueing while IDE doesn't. This lets requests be intelligently reordered to speed things up. This can help a lot when restricted to using a single drive because even if you aren't using more than one app at once you still have paging (which there is more of since less memory than a desktop) and the OS all stuck doing things on that one drive. On a desktop you're more likely to have your paging, scratch disk, and program disks all seperate if you care about performance.
I had a very busy drive on one of my FTP servers once, replaced it with a SCSI, and it started handling much, much better. With the IDE when that drive was getting a lot of use I couldn't even dir in directories without a long wait, but the SCSI one remained very responsive. Besides, I actually have two drives on my laptop. The optical drive was rather useless so I popped it out for a second HD adapter. It makes photoshop and DV stuff so much faster being able to split the IO. I would jump at SCSI for my laptop in a moment since hard drive performance is where notebooks really lag desktops and they need all the help they can get.
I actually put anime digisubs on my Z (SL-C760) and even the subs are still perfectly readable. Like the other guy said a PDA is held up close, like chest height, whereas a laptop needs support so is down on your lap.
I have a 760 with a microdrive sucking it's batteries constantly and it easily does 4-5...I usually keep it underclocked and with the backlight notched 2-3 down, but it does so much better than 4-5 I bet I could make that with just 1 notch down. Maybe your friends bought one of the crappy battery 750's and are lying their asses off to not seem poor.
giving a software agent my preferences on what I'm willing to accept and not accept and letting it go make decisions seems a lot more of a "meeting of the minds" than what I currently do now - which is just not read anything and click through anyway (sometimes interrupted by some enforced scrolling). ^^ still since the later method takes less effort I have no intention of giving it up until it causes me trouble.
>prevent discussion on the subject of which
>of the two major-party candidates
Have you even been watching the debates? The candidates pretty much have pre-worked out spiels and just go through them when a question is even close. Sometimes you'll notice they completely miss answering the question or end up repeating one of them and trying to hide it. There's no discussion going on here.
Adding an "unplanned random factor" as you call it might get some decent telling responses from candidates instead of having us sit through more of the same "say what they want to hear and hide the rest" spiels as we've been getting in speeches.
Anyone else suspect the summary intentionally didn't mention this thing is Flash to try and gain some credibility? Since Flash is most often used for annoying ads I had to go enable it just to see what the site linked was trying to show. Next I reflexively tried to gesture open a bunch buttons into tabs - nothing happened of course since you can't use that on Flash. Next I tried to click the big "The new Web experience" main graphic in the flash - nothing happened. Great, brightest thing in there and it's not even linked to anything. Even on cnn.com, a primarily text based site, I still gesture over the graphics that accompany a story link when they have them. It's more natural to focus on what grabs your attention and a bigger target (and cnn has a clue so they are linked).
So next I try to tab around to see what is clickable and of course that just skips the flash part of the page entirely even though that has the main content. All this time the flash of course ignored my text zoom settings - my grandmother loves using that and a user stylesheet I made for her to ease website use so this would have been a very big no go for her. I notice it's hard coded to a certain resolution as well in the swf's object tag, so you can't use say a PDA with low res or change your browser window's shape to read it while doing other things as easily.
Is a way to make crappy websites like the above really something to get excited about? Ignoring all the problems it took me like 3-4 clicks to drill down to some actual information about Laszlo (first I tried sample, but that wasn't right, then I saw the get info thing which isn't even a real button, but a label next to a button making it less usable, then I had to deal with some stupid email popup when I clicked on a pdf I wanted - too bad the browser can't kill lame Flash popups like it can real ones, would nip that part of this bad site design in the bud - and then finally it opened it up some information). Anyone writing a standard webapp who buried main content that far would be fired, but with Flash this poor design is somehow OK since it's all about pretty crap and not access and usability anyway.
Making your website into a veritable font of data for use however your viewers want is all the rage right now. Wrapping all your content up in a hard to access, proprietary technology entangled, annoying ad engine like Flash is not a good thing to do. Having an XML backend doesn't do shit if your people spend all their time screwing around designing a bad interface that looks a little prettier than the standard web ones like they did here instead of say adding a XML or RSS button so I can quickly get their data/updates later, an HTML view maybe generated by XSLT, another view for PDAs, etc. like they should have been doing.
He never said it would be secret. You have a pretty black mind to assume that instantly, don't you? In fact the low cost and expandable requirements he mentioned are going to preclude super small, wireless/hidden wires by redoing the walls, concealable cameras which are more expensive and more limited. A new father wanting a way to check on his baby while he's out of the house/etc sounds pretty sensible and caring to me although, I'm not that neurotic myself to need that.
I babysat a little when young and there were always some parents who would constantly call asking if the tyke was all right. This is rather annoying as one of the perks of baby sitting is that a lot of times you get to just watch TV or do homework (the uh part of uh...babysitting, I guess ^^) while the kid is asleep or something. Having a way they could do a quick check for themselves would have been a relief rather than a burden.
They've already announced the PSP will have a MemoryStick slot and Sony already sells video recorders that record video onto those. So you can stop hoping and start complaining about Sony's stupid proprietary formats/lock-ins, etc..
Well first, being "tethered to your computer" isn't so bad since anyone capable of setting up a stereo system is also capable of hooking their computer up to it and thus listening anywhere in their home. I noticed a music player on my sister's computer the other day and she can barely use the thing (I have to setup her email whenever she moves). It's probably a lot like an advanced stereo itself to her. Despite the recent popularity of hard drive based MP3 players the vast majority of people still don't have them and keep all their music at home, only taking some of it with them on the go (which you can also do for select songs via Real's service if you buy the song for burning).
;p ^^
Second, one of the things Real advertises is that you can use your account from any networked computer be it home, at work (lol, well I suppose some bosses might let you), or say a wireless laptop on a college campus. I also saw something about Rhapsody over mobile phones w/ headphones. If that performs well then the Rhapsody person not only has access to more music than someone with an MP3 player, he only needs his phone to do it and not a separate player.
I imagine there are still things to work out like battery life of a cell phone playing music for hours, but it's certainly not as limited as you say. The Real guy we had for an interview mentioned some good numbers for Rhapsody subscribers so it is getting people. Personally, though, I just use a flash player with some of my own CDs ripped and think you 'battery sucking, hard drive hauling, need access to a billion songs either by buying/stealing/subscribing people' are insane.
Agreed. The blog writer even mentions he wants the owner to get his pictures back at the top of every single page in that header poem with the line:
"Maybe you will come here and reclaim this piece of your life."
there's a "change the way windows alerts me" or something close to that option in the left panel of the security center. I unchecked everything in there and don't even have the tray icon anymore, let alone the annoying alerts (I keep the firewall off for some internal nics).
I'm really disappointed the answer to so many of these questions is "Oh, we'll spend more, of course". Kerry's speech at the DNC was much the same. There he started out saying he'll balance the budget and then 90% of his speech is what he'll spend more on. I didn't get to see Bush's speech, but I imagine it was much the same. If politicians weren't allowed to be such flim flams maybe we would start seeing actual solutions being proposed like ending the war on drugs, tossing out the nuke stockpile, breaking up the two party system for something more democratic (lol, ok fat chance on that one), etc..
If your words were true the majority of Christians would believe in the general concept of evolution and consider the biblical contradictions to it as merely part of a morality story. Evolution has a huge preponderance of evidence and is not questioned by any legitimate scientist, although the details of how it happens can be debated. Almost every single Christian I have ever met holds the complete opposite view, however.
I usually make it a point to see how well they are meshing their delusions with reality before considering furthering relations with them and so ask every one I meet. Almost without fail they immediately take the Creationist viewpoint. I'm sorry to say your little face saving theory above about how Christians can properly distance themselves from the parts of the bible that have been completely disproved by considering these parts to be morality stories is not evidenced at all.
Several people have linked the pdf version, also you can get the flash to fill your screen if you access it directly. I agree it's a horrible design, though. On the page it's set all the way down at 440x400 and most of the text isn't even on a clean background. Oo I had to go enable flash just to see it as well, since I usually have it off to avoid annoying ads.
>I'd certainly like to see the official line on this one.
RTFA
>A Symantec official in Beijing confirmed that Norton's
>software had designated Freegate a "Trojan horse",
>but would not give details of why it had done so.
>can see that almost all americans are dead-set
>against pretty much everything bush is doing.
"Almost all," my ass. We elected him once (and a group a newspapers went down, counted everything, and confirmed he would have won even without the court) and he's currently a smidgen ahead in the current election polls (indeed any time after the RNC). You frothing liberals can make up your conspiracy theories and what not and perhaps believe them yourselves, but try not to contradict the bare facts too often like this as it exposes you.
Another article mentioned the forest fire quote like this: "Yonhap cited unidentified sources, with one in Washington saying the incident could be related to a natural disaster such as a forest fire".
When you have idiot citizens and slobbering newsies running around going NUKE NUKE NUKE the mature and sensible thing to do is point out a mushroom cloud is certainly inconclusive of that. A much worse response would be to assume nuke first rather than later after the facts are in since you're going to scare the shit out of people and possibly be forced to begin actions like sending some carrier groups over to protect Japan or even just making statements that press diplomatic relations, etc.
freebies my ass! tuition went up more than 1k the year the uni I was attending started giving the freshmen laptops. the only gain here is that class programs can start assuming you have a laptop to bring to lab, an ipod for stealing music (couldn't think of a legit use students will actually use for that one, sorry. listen to lectures, lol, right), etc.
considering how badly universities choose, mine chose compaq laptops which ended up terrible quality, ipods loose most ways compared to iriver (ogg support, price, doesn't look like a toilet), etc you'd be better off buying these things yourself even if the uni was putting some of their endowment money and getting some large buy discount to cushion the deal.
*shrug* If you like to play the latest games having a Windows boot is a neccesity. Sorry to say it, but it's still true. For programming I use Linux, and my file server. I hate the GUI (using KDE currently), though. If I copy something, close the app, and then go to paste, for example..gah.
;p So in other words, I'd find someone with only Linux to be the weird one, not the one you'd assume when criticising someone.
I'd like to see a survey on how many people run both OSes, I'd suspect many more than run Linux alone.
This reminds me of when I downloaded a Mozilla version that refused to let me open certain files like .exe files after downloading (you could just tell it to open most files after they dl, but not the exe ones). I looked around for a way to turn this off, couldn't find it, and immediately changed browsers. OK, it's more secure, but what the f*ck? It's my machine, I want to make the decision about running an exe. Most of the time I was getting the file off a trusted site, so zero need to check for viruses and what not, and just had to go freaking start the file from the OS.
Apparently once any software gets big enough the maintainers start feeling like arrogant assholes. Same with this, there's no legal problem with including a hook to load the binary part here. Some asshat just thinks the concept it's impure and may cause bugs...wth? It's my decision. You don't want, then don't run it and says it's not recommended! Hopefully someone with a little respect for the whole concept of computers being general purpose tools will step in and fix this. It's tougher to switch OSes than it is to switch browsers, but if they keep crippling the thing "for my own good" like Mozilla started to do I certainly will.
>triggering it with an external microchip). With the high
>turn-over in player models, however, this strategy has
>turned out to be short-sighted (every half a year we have
>to build a new chip).
Almost every recorder has a noise/voice activation mode and most of the ones I've used had a mic or line-in as well. So just have an external mic -> custom chip that cuts it off when needed -> recorder. I suppose you could crack open the player and get between the internal mic if you wanted to as well. Either way the custom bit will never go obsolete. I record lectures I go to and found quality is much better with a good external mic anyway, even if it's a pocket size one like the small Sony conference mics.
Personally I would just go with Gemail, for "Google email". Just so happens you pronounce just like Gmail anyway. ^^
Where I work (big corporation, over 200k employees) people are constantly leaving the trenches to get MBAs and come back in management positions. It is pretty much the accepted way to advance...
1) Trackball you have to keep petting the damn thing, unless you have it super sensitive in which case you lose accuracy. For a solution designed to minimize hand movement making the user pet constantly vs. using an analog stick would be against the entire design philosophy.
2,3) I'm sorry, but 100$ is a mind numbingly cheap price for a low volume device for this. Let's look at some similar products. A close competitor is the DataHand which sells for 10 times that. A gesture keyboard goes for 340$. A chording keyboard/mouse replacement that's been out for many years and used by wearable people, the twiddler, is 220$. Just a half-keyboard with extra letter mappings to make up for it is 295$. All these companies aren't so expensive because they want to be, manufacturing low volume stuff like this is hideously expensive. You say you want a second version for large hands, that would raise the price even more.
Sure this company brings them across, but they kill the erotic content if present when they do (I've confirmed this was done to Tea Society, others no doubt as well). The sex scenes and being able to go all the way with exotic/interesting/friendly cuties is pretty much the driving force of this genre. For an example, here's the 18+ only gallery page for the japanese version of the Tea Society game mentioned in the article (they are young for my taste here, but obviously different games for different folks ^^). Other companies/more modern games will also have voice samples you can check out as well.
So any game Hirameki brings across is going to get any of the sex edited out and the only option for fans who want to play in English is to put up with the neutered version. Yes there are games without this part that do well in Japan, and games that have clean versions that are successful, but there's no denying the core of the industry. Without the sex you're back to the Myst type games and the flood of "interactive multimedia CD-ROMs" that followed them that people once thought were going to be such a big hit, but flopped terribly.
Anyway, for people who want the full experience, better to stick with the more faithfully brought across games like those available at g-collections. Some are all sex and little story (like Do You Like Horny Bunnies, which does the sex very well and animated, btw ^^), but others are quite funny and entertaining like Heart de Roomate and others have touching stories like Kana ~Little Sister~. And none of those three has had the erotic scenes edited out so you can go all the way and experience the full game if you so desire.